Episode 80 - Losers Are Winners: Why Quitting Was the Smartest Move Luciano Patiño Ever Made
Episode #80 | Losers Are Winners | Why Quitting Was the Smartest Move Luciano Patiño Ever Made
In this Losers Are Winners episode, Mark sits down with Luciano Patiño of Elliano Design to talk about failure… and how it turned out to be the best gift of his career. From walking away from a business he co-founded to building his design firm with a true CEO mindset, this one is packed with real talk. We dive into business coaching, identity, collaboration, and the power of asking for help. If you’ve ever wondered whether your “loss” is actually setting you up for a bigger win, this episode is for you.
About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Luciano Patino 00:03
Ian now with AI assistants. You know, we're always being recorded on our zoom calls, and when we're meeting with clients or with with other, you know, vendors, etc. And so you get this, like, laundry list of tasks that you said, and, you know, I forget three quarters of them. It's why you have the note taker there to begin with. But just have somebody parse through them and say, like, Nope, this isn't really stuff that we were going to do. Were going to do. Are we doing this? Are we not like, what's the priority you want to do? All right,
Mark D. Williams 00:33
welcome to curse builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams. Your host today is our losers are winners series, and we've got a winner who used to be a loser. Luciano Patino from Ian. Oh, design. What's up, Luke, Hi,
Mark D. Williams 00:45
I'm good. How do you like that intro? Oh, yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, certainly winner today, right? That's what matters. Today is brutal the day we're recording. It's like, what? Minus 25 Below windshield, I don't know. Like my car was reading minus seven and barely, barely made it out of the driveway before it started warming up. So, yeah, see, it's our that's why we have such warm personalities here. And look at this color combo you got. You got the glasses, the sweater, the hair you're rocking. I'm on brand today. I'm on brand. You are on brand. Well, let's, let's dive right into it. What is, what is one of the biggest, either losses or one of the biggest struggles you've had in your design career? You know, actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back even before design, I think design is my second business. This design business that I started, I've heard from some people with a lot of wisdom around business in general, that sometimes your second business is your strongest and and I think I can really relate to that a lot. I was founding partner at a consulting accounting firm, and I ran that with some partners for about three years, and it was a wonderful experience. We were successful. We had lots of clients, but I also learned a lot of things that you shouldn't be doing as a business owner at first, like, you know, be picky about your clients, right? If you have a particular vision of what you want your business to be, right? Be really picky about your clients. We weren't that and and it ended up sort of just, we were all working. We're working ragged, absolutely, you know, I work. I worked a couple times till seven in the morning preparing for client meetings. Yeah, it was bad.
Luciano Patino 02:13
And so the decision to leave, right, to leave, something that you started, like, I felt like I wasn't allowed to do that, right? Like, oh, like, how do you how do I start something and then say, actually, like, I think I'm in the wrong.
Mark D. Williams 02:25
Because you and I'm sure the self doubt came in and you thought probably, like anybody, you think, well, if I quit or I leave, that's failure, absolutely and like, so how we look at, quote, failure, especially if we were to look back and talk to our younger self, is is much different today than it was at the beginning of your career.
Luciano Patino 02:42
I bet I absolutely felt like a failure when I left that business, like completely and in hindsight, when I look back a couple of things, number one, like, I say, we set out to do a thing that we didn't, we didn't stay disciplined about right? And so that was an important lesson. But also, like, if there was a failure, it was a failure of planning. It wasn't like, Oh, I'm a failure because I don't work hard enough, or I don't care enough, right? Or I'm not smart enough to do it, but it was a failure of planning and, um, and the other thing is that, like, actually, it was just a huge gift. I mean, like, just the all of the, all of the ways that I am a good business owner today are because of lessons I learned during that experience, and I could do it again. I like, if I was unhappy as a designer, I could very easily today say, like, this isn't working and I'm out, and it wouldn't be hard, but at the time, it felt like the world was crashing.
Mark D. Williams 03:32
I think so many people have their identity wrapped up in their business. They don't know how to separate it. And I you know, you can see the angst or the Yeah, that you can just see it, it there's so much personal pain when their business fails, they feel like they're a failure. And I think a big part of what we try to do on this podcast, and just in sharing people's stories, is separate the two. I'm not saying that we can't have that are that our businesses don't have a huge part of us, but if our sole self worth is through our business like that means life is going to be super volatile. And I think there's ways around that. Yeah, I
Luciano Patino 04:08
think it's not even just business owners. I think it's work, you know? I mean, I've been in a sort of a group, group meetings or, like, where we're doing icebreakers with people, and where hosts have said you're not allowed to talk about what you do for work, because it's the first thing we default to, right when we meet people and actually, like, we're so much more than that. So yeah, I think we, I think we over emphasize what we do for work.
Mark D. Williams 04:32
For sure, I agree, yeah, I think specifically. I mean, I can't speak to her because I I've never, I mean, I've traveled across the world a little bit, but I'm older now. I haven't done it now with kids as much, but it'd be kind of fun to, like, sit down and talk to people like, what interests you like? Why are you traveling like when you're I find travel so rejuvenating because that's very whimsical. It's very futuristic. It's very but also very present, because you're not in your your normal life, if you will, unless you're a professional Nomad, which would be kind of fun sometimes. Yeah. But I think you're right. I think, you know, if you go to a cocktail party, you go to you meet with your neighbors, or whatever, one of the if you don't ask somebody what they do, it's a very common starting point that would actually be interesting to, like, change that. Like, what would you what would you ask somebody if you didn't say, What did you do?
Luciano Patino 05:15
Yeah, I think it's an easy default to go to work, but just anything. I mean, really, like, Are you from around here? Right? Did you, you know? Why did you move here? You know, and try to steer away from a lot of people will say they moved here for work, right? So you can try to steer away from that, or just to say, you know, you know, I love what you're wearing, right? Like, where does this tell me the story of how you got this, just anything other than starting with what we do for work, not that I'm not curious about that, that it, of course, what you do for work actually is a core component of your personality, right? Like, you chose this for a reason, but, but just to, like, begin with something else, I think this is really interesting.
Mark D. Williams 05:49
Going back to the, you know, the what you perceived as failure at that time, what are some things today that you've learned from that? Fail? Quote, air. Quote, failure. Yeah, that's really just, we all know now. It's just a building block future success.
Luciano Patino 06:04
Yeah, it really was. Boy, how much time do you have? I So, so, coming in with a CEO mindset, right? Starting this business with the idea that, like, I actually am, I came in not just, it's not just designer. I'm not just designer, right? Like, I have a very particular kind of client that I want to work with. I have a vision for where I want to be in three years and five years, and so to have more of a really specific idea of where we're going, and knowing that I'm the one responsible for maintaining that vision, for planning for that vision, that's probably the number one thing. But there are so many other things. I mean, I will not run an under resourced business again, right? Like I I am relatively new, but I have a design assistant, and I have a virtual assistant. And I think we as business owners in general, under resource ourselves and end up doing things that we shouldn't be doing, that that make us tired when we need to be focused on other things that are much more important, right? So I, I will not run an under resourced business again. That means, that means, you know, subscriptions to online tools, you know, having the right kind of technology, hiring the right people to do contract work for you, right? Like, I try to hand off things whenever I can having business coaches. I don't think anybody should be in business without a business coach. Like, I just think we all need people with more wisdom than we have, with more experience than we have to bounce ideas off of and for them to hold us to account for the things that we like, Hey, you said you were going to do this three months ago, and it sounded really important, was it, you know, or, or, Why haven't you done it then? And it's like, no, actually, I really, I really need to, like, this week, that's what we're doing. So, yeah, I learned so many things.
Mark D. Williams 07:53
Yeah, you know, you're in our design collective here in Minnesota, and one of the things you brought up in one of our last collectives last fall was this idea that, you know, like, I think you even just kind of hinted to it, like, I won't start a business or continue business without a VA, and you were raving about your VA, yeah, Clyde, yeah. Clyde is amazing. And from the Philippines, correct, if I recall. And, you know, walk us a little bit through that search. Like, because I think a lot of people listening to this a few of our different points of their career. Some people are just starting early on. And there's always this temptation, because I love, I think, the key ethos of what you says Begin with the end in mind, like, you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, which is wonderful. And there's always this struggle. Of, like, if you have too many people, too much overhead, you know, your rocket fuel burns out before you get into the atmosphere. It's true. And if you but yet, at the same time, if you do it all yourself, your rock is never going to be power enough to get to space. So it's like the how have you navigated that balance? Because if you, if you get too many employees or too many things, then you your cash flow becomes a massive issue. But if you don't, you can't really grow either. How have you navigated that?
Luciano Patino 08:56
Well, well, I'll say this. So this is if we go back to like, that lesson I learned in the accounting business, right? My partners had that point whenever I said, Hey, I need an assistant, and they would say, like, well, you know, we're new, like, we have a limited resources. We have to hire accountants, which we did, and so there was always this resistance for me to get an assistant. And my point to them was always like, I know what my how my brain works, right? Like, I am not a typical I'm a very good technical accountant. But like, I I'm not a typical accountant. My brain is a creative brain, and it goes in multiple different directions. And so I need someone to help me focus that energy, right? And I know I like, I know I need this. So when I started the design business, I said, I'm not going to limit myself there. Like, if so, it's not about investing in, like, you know, a huge staff. I don't have a huge staff, but I it is about investing in the things that I know I need, right? I know I need this set, this kind of discipline. And so Clyde and I check in every morning. We do my timesheet, we do our accounting every morning, so our accounting is up to date every day. We. Is a blessing as a business owner, because, like, the worst is you never get behind. You're always, yeah, trying to find receipts at the end of the month, trying to figure out, I don't know what that charge was, right? It's hard, and I closed the month now at the end of the month in an hour, right? So I've always got a view of, like, what's happening financially. But we do. We do thank you notes, because I do a lot of written thank you notes. We do. So like, just, there's these, there's these little tasks that, like, I wouldn't sit down to do every morning if I didn't have somebody on a video screen, meeting with me sort of keeping me, keeping me disciplined about it, and and then there's all sorts of other stuff he does when we're not together that are things that I really shouldn't be doing, like calendaring and email the the affordability thing. You know, I I was nervous initially to hire somebody from the Philippines, because I felt like it was exploitative. Like, here's somebody who, like, just because they live in another part of the world, like, why wouldn't I pay them what I would have to pay somebody here? And if I had to pay a salary here, I wouldn't be able to afford a full time virtual assistant. I'm just too new. So, but then my business coach said, you know, hey, like, I know people who are doing this, and it's really changed how they do their work. And I called some of my Filipino friends and I said, like, is this exploitative? They're like, No, like, these people need work. You're it's a good money. This is good money for them. A lot of folks ask for five bucks an hour. I paid like, 10, and I've got him, I went from 10 hours to 20 to 40, so I sort of ramped up as I needed him more. But honestly, it's just like, even as an even, just the loneliness of, like, being an entrepreneur, 100% right? Like, alone starting like, even that, like, it's huge.
Mark D. Williams 11:35
You know, in my entire I've been building now for 21 years, and at each step, I was always hesitant to hire the next person, and every single time I did, I felt relaxed. And I've always said, Why didn't I do that earlier? Yeah, and so I have a very Dr and Jekyll Hyde personality around scaling, because, you know, my marketing mind and, like, what I want scales, but like this, the simple life of like, you know, less is more, and they war with each other, and I don't know if I'll ever find complete balance there. Like, I'm always sort of, like, you know, kind of trying to navigate that. But Leah, who, you know, who helps me run the collectives, and is amazing. She is so overwhelmed that right now we're jointly interviewing for after our last Collective, we are jointly interviewing someone from the Philippines for a for an assistant role, and we're working with an agency that helps you sort of find it and that kind of thing. And they'll probably be 70% Leah's assistant. So my assistant has an assistant now, yeah, and then that will allow her get rid of a lot of those menial tasks. So it allows her to get more into the creative space. And it'll be nice for me that, you know, to have an agenda and just be like, I would love the idea that I would show up on Monday and almost like there's something relaxing, of, like, this is what you need to do this week. And we would, I assume you set those priorities together, obviously, but it's kind of like just the reminder of, like, Hey, this is what you need to have a successful week. Like, you know, do these five things. If you do these three extra things, like, you're in bonus, like, you got you we, I don't know if you do this, you kind of gamify it. I gamify almost everything.
Luciano Patino 13:03
I'm not as I'm not as obsessed with gamification as you are. Yeah, you really, you really, really competitive, really competitive, and I really love doing also all of your activities and your sports. Now, yeah, when
Mark D. Williams 13:19
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Luciano Patino 13:57
For me, it is, it is very much about sort of we do set priorities together, but there's a lot so, you know now, with AI assistance, you know, we're always being recorded on our zoom calls, and when we're meeting with clients or with with other, you know, vendors, etc, and and so you get these, you get this, like, laundry list of tasks that you said, and, you know, I forget three quarters of them. It's why you have the note taker there to begin with. But just have somebody parse through them and say, like, No, this isn't really stuff that we were going to do. And here's the other things that he can ask me about and say, great. Like, are we doing this? Are we not, like, what's the priority? When does it do? You know, there's managing the, you know, monday.com, which is where we do our to do list work is it's just really great to have somebody kind of project managing, you right? Because our job is to project manage clients and make sure that all of us their stuff's done on time, and it's easy to get lost in the client work well,
Mark D. Williams 14:49
and especially in the field that you're in of creativity. I mean, you need to do, there's no question you have to do the mean, not mean ill. It's not, I don't like that word, actually, I you have to do a lot of tasks, sure, but if you don't have that free. Space to be creative. It's really difficult to be the best designer that you can be if you're taking care of the things that need to be taken care of.
Luciano Patino 15:07
Yeah, no, I tell I talk to young designers or people who are interested in getting into business, even if it's not designed, and I say, look, if I design 20% of the time, that's pretty good, right? 20 to 30% of the time, and really what you are as a business owner, and, you know, making sure that all that stuff's taken care of, but the more that you can do that. And I have a long term vision, not only of having a virtual assistant, but having a president that runs the company right, that does all of the all of the accounting and the hiring and all of those things, so that I can focus on the creative work. But my goal is never to get to, like, being 80% design time. Like, it's like, get to 40 Right, right? Or 45 and it very much is, I totally agree, creativity is very much about the quiet moments, right? It's like, you know, sometimes you're driving and that's when the best ideas hit you, because you're finally not in the middle of 17 conversations.
Mark D. Williams 15:57
100% agree, even like, you know, phone isolation, like, we actually leave in six days from this recording for cures builder boot camp, and one of the big parts of it is taking away everybody's phones, myself included. And like, it's that free space where a day is conversations, it's podcasts, it's what you know, reading a book you know right now. We're doing a book series this year called the smile to her. And so like, this book right here, buy back your time. Is the book in q1 so as I interview not our Thursday guests, but on the Monday guests, we'll be using that book as, like a filter, and as I read it, it's like, I can't even get two pages before, like, how many days come flooding in and so, but unless you make that time and prioritize it, where do you get all this creativity from? Yeah, I got really
Luciano Patino 16:36
tired of not reading books, so I started reading before I went to bed every night. And sometimes I'll go three pages, but sometimes I'll go an hour and like, and I finally getting through. I'm really into history, so I'm getting through, like, all these great history books and and that was it did feel like, for a long time, like these devices were just so omnipresent, right? I find that if it's in a drawer or if it's in another room, it's so much easier. It's like, so I'm very intentionally, sort of throwing my phone. If I throw my phone in a drawer during the work day, it really, really helps. But yes, I know, sometimes I'll tell Clyde, like, Look, I'm just, I need two hours here. I need uninterrupted time. And I need to just, like, go, I don't know, like, research tile or or, you know, think about, like, about this mood board or whatever it is, just so that I have the space to sort of get, find, find that spark, right? Whatever that spark is for that
Mark D. Williams 17:26
particular client. What you know, as you look well, actually want to talk about business coaching. You had mentioned this again, and you had some great insight about business coaches. I believe you worked with a in Minneapolis. There was free resources for coaches. Are you still with that coach? Or have you yes talk, and I'm sure every city, wherever you're listening to this, this has it, but it was kind of news to me. I mean, I didn't even think to look there about all the available resources we have that actually don't cost money.
Luciano Patino 17:51
I don't know if every city has it. Oh, really, really lucky. Yeah, okay, um, yeah. So particularly in Hennepin County, there's a program called elevate Hennepin if, if you are in Hennepin County, you run a business in Hennepin County, if you take one thing from today, it's, elevate Hennepin. It's unbelievable. It is. So they have a list of professionals, lawyers, accountants, you know, like I said, business coaches, marketing folks. And you can get 25 free hours per year per consultant. So if you in fact, I've worked with a marketing consultant last year for 25 hours, and I felt like I needed more help, so I went to a second marketing consultant and got another free 25 hours, and it should be everywhere. Because the reality is, again, my first business, we started it because we had a passion for what we were doing, and we're like, we can do this, right? And like, we didn't get any of these, we didn't bring in any of these resources. And now I'm like, how did we even, like, how did we even survive, right? Like this, you know, having having this to tap into at the Elevate Hennepin program has been transformational, absolutely, for my business. And so I do have a business coach through elevate Hennepin. I went through a business accelerator program that I met through my business coach last year, which was 12 weeks. It cost me $500 which is basically nothing for like, the level of coaching and wisdom and intelligence that they brought. We did these sort of simplified business plans over the course of 12 weeks, but like I just I was in awe every one of those meetings. And I'm constantly in awe when I talk to my coach, where I'm like, I just had never, that had never occurred to me. And it's like, of course, none of us are born knowing this. Like we like. We need people with more wisdom than we do to like, help us figure out, you know, to help us think of of new, new ways to solve problems.
Mark D. Williams 19:36
I think of, you know, coach, mentor, elder. I mean, they always seem to refer to, we always think somebody older. But sometimes it's just, sometimes, I don't know if you're like this, but I just need to get ideas out of my head. I just need to talk to somebody. I mean, honestly, the podcast is, I have, you know, I have 50, well, 104, guests a year, roughly. And so it's like, you know, just having conversations. I mean, I've already taken like, three notes. Like, I'm sure I took those same three notes last time I'm. So it's like you, but it's the repetition. It's It's understanding and getting interested in other people and asking a lot of questions. And I, I think I've often argued that the most underused word in the English language, but honestly, it's probably all languages, is the word Help, help. Because I think if you genuinely ask somebody for help, they will, they will help you.
Luciano Patino 20:20
I totally agree, and I agree with you as well. Like most of my coaches have been younger than me. They've just have more experience in the business world and and so that's, that's what I've needed. We all need coaches like we all need mentors. We all need people to bounce ideas off of. I think we all need a Clyde, you know, because it, you know, we just need that sort of, that relationship that you build co working with someone, like, just, it's just, you know, it's more than twice as much creativity, right? When you have two people working together, you just, it's exponential. But the other thing is that I've also, like, been super, super amazed at the design community and the builder community here in the Twin Cities. I've, I have not had anybody say no to me if I've asked to have coffee with them. Last year, for me, was really building a foundation for the business that I want. So it was both this accelerator program, but it was also lots of networking. It was like very much about, like, getting out, meeting people who were in the industry, meeting vendors, going to all of the showrooms, trying to, like, get my my foundation around being a designer here and and I just, like, it's been so welcoming, and I expected it to be more competitive, right? More sort of, like, I don't have time for you, not at all. I mean, like, just everybody's been super generous, and we all need that. Like, we, this is a we all need each other, right? In order to build a strong ecosystem and to weather the bad days in our business, because, you know, they come and go.
Mark D. Williams 21:47
I think I, first of all, I 100% agree with you. But two, I think when it's authentic and real, and you just ooze authenticity and like, you're very approachable person, and even, like in our collective one of the things that's kind of like this, I'm not, I am a parent, but like in this setting, like a business parent, like a proud parent, like a proud parent, moment, like, it was really cool. There was a couple newer designers, and you were just saying, like, Hey, if you you took the role of mentor to a younger designer, said, Hey, if you want to meet outside, and like, nothing could make me happier. Just, I'm basically creating groups where people can get together to share best practices and best ideas, and then seeing people openly invite each other, like, hey, let's get together. Let's see how we can help each other. And I, you know, I truly believe that. You know, collaboration over competition is, is the is the currency that we live in. And the more that we live it, to preach it and do it, the better, not only our community. The better our lives are the honestly, everyone benefits from it. And so it's a beautiful thing to watch it and watch you even practice it in front of in front of the group. So I suspect that the reason people continue to say yes is twofold. One is Minnesota, we do have a very warm community in general, so that is helpful. But two, I think that power of the word help is can't be under underestimated and how powerful it is. And three, you just, you're pretty easy person to say yes to. So I think, you know, don't sell yourself short, because I think when people when people, when you approach people with sincerity, because we've all been approached where and it's fine, there's no shame on salesman. I mean, I'm a shameless salesperson. But like, I think as you get older, you realize that you don't have you can ask for the sale, and it's a nuanced way. And I think how we do something is very, very important, because we all get hit up on LinkedIn and whatever all the time. And, like, you can kind of see it. It's kind of phony. It's not real. It's more just self serving. Or you'll say something back, and then the next thing will be like, Hey, do this? You know? Like, okay, that just turned me completely off kind of thing. And so seeing people help people for just the sake of helping is really a beautiful thing.
Luciano Patino 23:35
Yeah, thank you. That's really, that's really kind of you to say, yeah. I mean, it is, it is paying it forward. I mean, I can't. I have been given so many, so many blessings over the course of my business career, both in the accounting world and in the design world, if you don't pay that forward, what's the point? You know, like, I mean, you just have to be able to do that. But, but there's a couple of other things. Like, first of all, yes, I've had a younger designers already asked me to sit down to coffee and be like, I want to design one a business like yours. And I'm, like, I don't really have one yet, but like, but like, but okay, but let's talk, and let me tell you what I've learned so far. And and then also, like, come along with me. And do you want to come to a client meeting and come to, you know, some projects, so you can see the way that I work. Like, you know, let's do it, but, but, you know, the other thing is that, you know, in even though I have not been a designer for a long time, I have wisdom to offer. It's not necessarily wisdom of having 30 years of design experience, but not a lot of designers were accountants before. I mean,
Mark D. Williams 24:34
that's a pretty amazing skill set. Honestly, yeah.
Luciano Patino 24:36
And so I've felt really valuable to people when I've been in your collective meetings, and I've been like, Hey, you guys, like, let me give you, like, these three things that you have to do with your accounting right now,
Mark D. Williams 24:47
out of curiosity, are you worried with DISC assessment, like the red, blue, green and yellow? So basically, I've seen it, basically it indicates your personality. But the reason I'm bringing it up is so, like, in the room next to us, good. My controller is all blue green, so it's very analytical, whatever, and usually the visionary seat. But you're a very rare bird, and you probably know this, but it's very rare to be that creative but also be that analytical. It happens very rarely, but it's a powerful combo. The fact that you have both is obviously to your credit and to your business's credit.
Luciano Patino 25:19
Yeah, I know it's rare. I know it's rare. I'm really, and I'm really grateful for it. I i The, kind of, like, the only thing, the what I tell people as a joke, I guess most of the time, is, I'm an artist who was raised by engineers. And that's actually, that's actually what it was, right? Like, I was raised by, I was raised in an entire family of engineers and mathematicians and, you know, and I would tell my family, I'm like, you can hang that painting that way, but it doesn't look right. Like, yes, it's centered, it's perfectly centered, but it doesn't look right. So, like, they will not listen to me. And so, so, yeah, so I think who knows how we got here, but the fact that I can and like, so right now, I'm teaching client accounting, so I don't have to do it every day. And and I'm somehow, like, in awe of my own brain sometimes, where it's like, how do I know that that is the solution, that this journal entry with these sort of things is how we fix this problem? And then I can switch over, and I can be like, I'm designing this bathroom based on the stress that I saw, that I loved, right? And like, those things just feel really incongruous. And, and it's so cool. I mean, it's so it's so cool, and it's so fun. And I know, I know it's rare. Yeah, I'm, I'm really, really grateful for it.
Mark D. Williams 26:28
Yeah, two last questions. We'll keep this Thursday's episode shorter. One was a question from a previous guest was and then you get to leave a question for the next guest. All right, so this question is for you, and it is, what is the best thing that's ever happened to you in your career.
Luciano Patino 26:43
The best thing that's happened for me in my design career was meeting Anna notch from Ultimate interiors, who has been a mentor and a champion of mine since the day. And we're basically, like, inseparable now, like, we hang out a lot, but she's even, like, watched my dogs, right? But like, but that is that relationship is priceless, right? To have a designer of 30 years who's would been willing to take you under their wing, and, and, and, I mean, I have so many, have so many noob questions, right? And so I just have somebody I have, like this, this text message thread that I can always go to and say, like, hey, like this, this bathroom, you know, floor is too thick, like, what do we do? You know? So that's been, but that's the been the biggest gift in my design career, for sure, and a question that I would leave for the next guest. I had this moment. I remember this moment before I was a designer, when I was remodeling my house, which is kind of how I got into all this, where I walked into my my house, after some walls have been taken down and had beamed the space, and I almost started crying, because I was like, Oh, this vision that I had was right, right, like this. I I wasn't sure until I saw this, but in this moment, I just felt like that chill. So what's a moment in your career where, like, you've had that chill, where something has come together and
Mark D. Williams 28:02
and confirmed, right, that something that you weren't sure about was was good. I'm gonna call it the chill of confirmation, the chill of confirmation. There you go. I like iterations. Thanks for coming on the podcast. We'll have your everything in the show notes. If you're interested, reach out to Luciano. You can check them out on Ian. Oh design, and have a great week.
Luciano Patino 28:19
Stay warm. Goodbye, folks, thanks for
Mark D. Williams 28:23
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