We recently connected with Sharlet Too and have shared our conversation below.

Sharlet, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Zawadi Empire came about back in 2019 when we had our first AirBNB listing in Frisco, Texas. All our clients kept complimenting the wonderful design in our listing. They would ask my husband and I if the home was professionally designed as it was modern, elegant and yet still so cozy. This is when I realized that I needed to really pursue my passion for Design.

I had to follow my childhood dream. My “Why”. Interior Design and styling is something that stuck with me for years ever since my childhood days. I remember my mom telling me how she used to find me re-decorating our home everyday and somehow loved the color yellow. Over the years, I found myself loving to play with colors, ensuring that every room I was in was well organized and with some sense of style and I kept that passion going until I was grown.

We started off by designing family members and friends homes for a little fee and posted our work on social media and website. Just as a joke, we began getting a lot of inquiries and consultations from strangers who loved our work. With no time, the business started to grow. Later on, we took a Home Staging and Redesign course by HSR to advance our business by becoming Certified Home Staging and Redesign Specialists. It’s been a journey since then; many winning moments, some mistakes made, tough losses and equally great gains. We pray to keep adapting to new trends, growing and learning as we continue to design each and every home in EXCELLENCE.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Zawadi Empire is a Professional Interior Decorating and Home Staging firm. We purpose on providing Home Design services with a spirit of excellence. We work with realtors and Home Owners through staging to help them sell their houses in a short period of time and at TOP DOLLAR. We also work with new homeowners (most of the time), Airbnb investors and homeowners who need a revamp or home “facelift” through our Redesign services. We mostly specialize on modern and contemporary design when it comes to our redesign services- but the goal is to always achieve the client’s desired style.

What sets us apart is our spirit of excellence. My team and I value the art of doing a job right. I was raised to know that if you can’t do a job right, then just don’t do it all. I saw both parents do so and it was subconsciously instilled in my life and my sister too. I am a firm believer of 1 Corinthians 10:31- “Whatsover ye do, do for the glory of God” This sums it all up, if you ever hire us, be sure to enjoy a project well done 🙂

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My business partner/Co founder is my lovely husband Elly. We decided to start this business together back in 2019 and have gone through all the highs and lows ever since. As I look back, I could never imagine having any other business partner! He has been fundamental in all our operations and pretty much all the “behind the scenes”. His commitment to our company has played a big role to our growth. He also has a love and eye for outdoor design; he is all about plants and everything nature. Our skills really compliment each other which is a big plus. Besides, his bubbly spirit helps our team get through every project (especially the tough ones) seamlessly :)

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Over the years as we keep growing our business, we have learnt that LESS IS MORE or rather QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. This question takes me back to our first few years in business, we priced our services so low in order to attract the masses. We believed that the more the clients we had, the more the revenue. This would attract “problematic” clients; clients who would always want more services or rather top notch services for so little. We found that at the end of the projects, we’ve wasted a lot of time and in some cases took some tough financial losses by dealing with these “red flag” clients. As we kept building our brand and clientele, we changed our focus and niche. We started working with high end clients as we had purposed to be a luxury brand. As we continue to grow, we now have a good and manageable volume of projects that pay us much more and with 100% less stress. I would say, pick your poison (every niche has it’s pros and cons), identify your niche and see which clientele suits your brand and most importantly your business goals.

Contact Info:

• Website: zawadiempire.com
• Instagram: zawadi_empire
• Facebook: zawadi_empire
• Other: Email- stoo@zawadiempire.com Phone- 469.714.2012

Image Credits
Creating your world studios Raquel Rivera photography