Nate Berkus on Design, Great Neighborhoods, and Hard Work

in the economics of his state sales. He went from a one time guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show to becoming the show's design expert for the next twelve years, and finally he's one of the most sought after interior designers in the country. Without further delay, please enjoy my insightful and inspiring conversation with Nate Burkers. Nate, Yes, sir, how are you? How are you? Very nice to see Oh, I haven't spoken to you in such a long time.

I think it's way too long. I'm sorry if I take total responsibility, but I think everybody gets a free pass. It's what I've said to my mother, at least during the pandemic. So the pandemic is a good excuse. What are we gonna do when the pandemic is over? I mean, I don't want to see anybody. I'm so excited, like I haven't made a plan in a year and a half. It feels great. I read as much as I could

about you. My gut said to me that I felt really strongly that you have this sense of always being older, even from as a childhood. You seem like an old soul. Is that true? Definitely. I've always considered myself an old soul as soon as I had any emotional I q to be able to, you know, kind of assess myself. But I'm married an old soul, and I have two children who are old souls. And there is a distinction.

There's something sort of behind the eyes, there's something that's sense of I've done this before, I've I've had this conversation before, I've i've i've survived this before, I've triumphed before. And you can see it in certain people. You see it almost instantly. For my first course with Nate, we hear a story from his childhood that proves he was an old soul at a young age. We're designing with your mom is a gift by Mitsvah, gift to do your own room in your basement. Yeah, that's not what

most kids going to be teenagers do. But what was it that your mother said or did or provided that gave you such clarity of purpose in that way at that age? I mean, that's a very big deal. That's like jumping into the kitchen and making sufflet's the first time you've cooked. I think for her, she was cognizant from a very early age that spatially, I was very

sensitive that. I was very alert to my environment and she being a designer my whole childhood, that environment changed very frequently, and I again was entitled to have an opinion even as a child. And my mother used to wake me up as a little kid to help her rearrange the fireplace mantle in the family room, and I'd be standing there and like my little pajamas, and she'd say, something doesn't look right. Don't you think something doesn't look right?

And it would be like, you know, nine thirty at night, and I'd be like, I'll sleepy with a bear, and I'd say, yeah, I think, I think you need two of those vases to balance it out or something. So you know, it was a dialogue for me, It was a dialogue that was welcomed. It was a dialogue that was honored, I guess if you will, and and I think that that really gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. And and then giving me my room for my bar Mitzvah.

She wanted me to have my own space. And I think what that what what I interpreted that to mean, and what it actually ended up meaning for me was that as much as I loved going to garage sales and going to antique smalls and things like that with my mother growing up, I didn't have a place to bring anything home to. There wasn't any space that I

could call my own. And so what it did was it actually opened up the opportunity for me to become a collector, even at eleven or twelve or thirteen, because I had a home for the things that were interesting to me. And I've spent the greater part of twenty five years connecting people to their homes, into their interiors by saying over and over the way we tell our

stories is what we allow into our homes. What we allowed across the threshold, whether that's color or pattern or style or a lot of things are a few well chosen things, it speaks volume about where we are in our lives. And I knew that at thirteen because of that gift, I had that sense of of pride, or you know, you walk a little taller when you like your home. You your kids do a little bit better

with homework when they have a neat, organized space. Your life isn't as out of control when you know where to find everything in your home, or when you've you know, just finished spring cleaning and you've got options around what you want to do with your time instead of being behind the eight ball with home organization and cleaning all

the time. And so, you know, I've noticed over the last twenty years, and I've paid attention to what it really means for people to have an environment that rises up to greet them. And what my mother gave me at thirteen years old was an environment that I could choose how to make it rise to greet me at that young age, and it was a massive, massive I

cannot underplay the importance of that gift. Also, your opinion mattered I mean to give a twelve year old or thirteen year old, the ability for opinion to matter is very big, huge, not just it's not just saying you matter, because of course what you matter, but it's an opinion that matters, and to act on that opinion. It's such a hard thing to give a child. But at that age your mother did that so well. It's even harder not only to give the kid an opinion, but write

a check for their opinion. She also did I got to pick the wallpaper, Well, somebody had to put that wallpaper in, and you know that order had to go in. So my mother really didn't balk. Even though she didn't agree with me on every decision, she really let me run with it for the most part. You know, I don't know how many friends you had back then in the design world at thirty, but what did your other friends that you were hanging around think of you were like,

you know, they're out doing whatever they're doing. You're downstairs measuring the walls. Yeah, that's great, that's a great question. So years ago, Mitchell Gold, the furniture maker who has shops all over the country. Mitchell Gold assembled a book called Crisis, and he asked successful gay people to write a chapter in that book about their coming out story,

and the chapter that I wrote. Very briefly, the point of it was that at a very young age, when you're growing up and you know you're gay or you think you're gay, you have to lie. You're taught to lie, and lying is really really important because it's you know, what your interests are, that you want to go out for the t ball team or would you rather be playing with Jennifer's Barbie Corvette that she just got for Christmas. You know, how you're walking, how you talking, what are

you wearing, what's your hair like? So for me, you know, it's funny you ask a very simple question. But the foundation behind that was that I wasn't comfortable as a kid expressing how exciting decorating a design was because I wasn't out and I didn't want to be out, and you know, I was on the Barn Bob Mitzvah circuit. We were all like fooling around with each other in the basement of synagogues around Minneapolis. So it wasn't you know,

there was a lot of glamour going on. I hope you can feel that, you know, I hope you I hope I'm setting the scene is very great Gatsby in the basement of on the shelf there, I get it. So, you know, I had to really keep my enthusiasm and my excitement for it not tampered down. But just you know, it's not what kids want to talk about, and I understood that, and I was conscious enough to know that it wasn't gonna be a topic that would excite the

entire lunch room. You know. Conversely, I had, you know, obviously a handful of very good friends, which I was lucky to have, and many I'm still friends with. But and they refused to sleep over after I finally moved into my own bedroom because I'd say to them, just pick up the side of the bed, I want to see what it looks like on this side, or you know,

help me glue this thing to the ceiling. And they were like, we want to like watch movies and eat popcorn and you know, tell ghost stories and go to sleep. And you're asking us to try and like change the draperies, like don't ever sleep in Nate's house. It's not fun, it's it's work. This is like the kind of stuff my mom would ask me to help her with on a Sunday you couldn't help yourself. It sounds like, I mean,

this is what you who you are. You're a creator of a better vision of what people think they need. And I always look at it is like we both I think or in the business of creating an environment that you think is better than the environment they might have or they've never seen before. Because Oprah always said, people like us, our job is to dream a bigger dream than somebody thought possible for themselves. Whether it's food, whether it's an environment and restaurant, whether it's you know,

a home, whether it's fashion. You know, we're we're meant to be the dreamers were meant to be. We're meant to be holding the space for people to dream a bigger dream. In our second course, Nate share some hard earned business lessons. One lesson is on the hidden economics of auctions. Burgas continues with what he learned from working with one of the most iconic TV personalities of our time. So I want to get back to old and young. But at a young age, you started at an auction house,

and that's where just it got me. I grabbed me like at an auction house. You started at a very young age admiring vintage and old things, the auction house and living in Paris as an exchange student. Where the two moments from me that really ignited what it means to revel in the world that has come before us, revel in history, revel in old other cultures, revel in age and patina and story. Still to this day of what we put in a client's house is vintage, antique, reclaimed.

We really, you know, it's funny, We really as a firm never go to like the new showrooms unless we're buying fabric or wall paper. But if I have the opportunity to buy something old for myself or on behalf of a client, I always pick it. And one that's a really smart thing to do in design because obviously fine interior design knows no upper limits from a financial standpoint, but there's a resell value built into vintage and antique things. And I think all of that philosophy came from my

first job at the auction house. You know, they say in in the auction businesses, the three d s, it's fueled by death, divorce, and debt. And so I would watch these massive estates be unloaded, and all these things that people would spend twenty dollars on a sofa or you know, ten thousand dollars on a custom dining room table would sell for four hundred bucks. And I couldn't believe that it was so wasteful. It really bugged me.

And so when I started my firm, I I thought, well, if I'm going to buy a reproduction, I'm going to buy it in an auction for four dollars, not twenty thousand. And and why why are we even buying a reproduction? Why don't we find a nineteenth century French table that's the same size, And maybe it's a thousand dollars, but ten years from now it's worth ten thousand dollars. So there was a mathematical philosophical lesson inherent in starting my career in design at auctions. And so you fill homes

with value, not just fund present. Allison and Robbie is a great your our mutual friends. They it took us two years to build that house for them in Tampa. By the time their house was ready to move in, and they're the great architect and a terrific contractor, and

you know that's just how long it took. The things that they had bought sixteen months prior with me to fill their home were worth so much more money than they paid that we actually went and looked at everything and said, should we keep all this or should we sell some of this and buy paintings? You know, like

what are we doing here? And there were a couple of pieces that we thought, you know, we can find who cares about that thing, like, you know, if if that's what the market is right now, on first DIBs or on at Setby's or Christie's, let's get rid of it.

And they were game, and you know, we had a blast, but it was you know, we've done that over and over and over with clients, and we're one of the very few design firms that actually will take our clients things when they change their mind or move or they you know, are done with something, and we'll resell it

for them online. And so, you know, I think that that's also a really important aspect of the business because you know, a custom sofa is a custom sofa, and you pay for good quality, and you pay for yardage of yards and yards of fabric, and you pay for the polsters skill and the time and sorry, like there's

nothing you can do. That's the prices, the price, but the end table and the lamps and the coffee table and the pair of chairs and all of that that could be worth something and should be worth something if you're doing it correctly. How did that? How did the transition from auction? And you you started your own company and when you're twenty four, but how did you transition? It seemed almost effortlessly. Well I sort of know the answer about how did you transition it to TV? And

why was TV such a magnificent place for you? It is so a couple of things. So I thought I had made it. In Chicago, I had my design firm, I had a condo above the Sacks building on Michigan Avenue at a Mercedes. I was like, I'm done. You know, I'm done. This is it. I've surpassed My father. He's jealous but also proud, like we're in great shape, folks,

there's nothing to see here. And my space in my my Chicago office was on the first level of the art gallery district in New York in Chicago called River North, And I did that intentionally so that I could, you know, on the White Walls do a show or invite the community in, you know, occasionally. And so Greg Lauren, Ralph Lauren's nephew, who is a fashion designer and a good friend. He was dating Elizabeth Berkeley at the time and the actress, and they he's a painter. He wanted to do a

show in Chicago. He had had set up one in Santa Monica and one in New York City and wanted to hit Chicago. And so we were connected by a friend and and I decided to do this show. And one of Oprah's producers happened to come to the show, and everyone sort of asked me, Oh, you're on Oprah. So that's how you get best selling books and product lines and you know and all this. And the answer is, yes, exactly, that is exactly how you do that if you have

the good fortune to be on Oprah. But I always remind people that I was on the Oprah Show and I loved it every month roughly for twelve years. There's a lot of people that have been on that stage who have had that moment, who have basically had that opportunity, and they did it once and some people did it

three times. And the only reason I feel like I was able to stay and I worked with the same producers from my first segment to my last when the show ended at twenty five years, was that I always treated the show I was doing as the first show I had ever done there. My work ethic never changed. I was the last person to leave set. I didn't care that I was making all this money from publishing or making all this money from products, and my business had grown, and I my my companies had grown, and

I had expanded in all these ways. If the flowers were dead, I went to the grocery store at eleven o'clock at night to replace the flowers, and and sometimes I slept on the floor of the location if I had to wait for paint to try to hang pictures. And I did that from the first time I was on Oprah until the last time I was on Opera. And I also never lied to Oprah, which, by the way, bad plan. Don't do it. If you ever have the opportunity to be with Oprah, don't tell her bullshit. She's very,

very smart, so we had a good relationship. I honored the opportunity, and I was very strategic about how to use that opportunity to build my career. In our third course, Nate lays out his personal philosophy on design, from his thoughts on finding inspiration on social media to how he observes trends over decades and beyond. I think there's a lot of talent out there, you know, and I've never

been threatened by that. I love seeing things. In fact, now, when I'm when I'm pulling ideas for a project, I'm on Instagram and I save them all on my phone, and these little files based on the client and their project, and we don't rip off anything per se, but there's definitely launching points for floor plans or for materials, or we'll take the ceiling treatment from one image and combine it with the marble from Joseph Durand's bathroom, and we'll take the bench that we saw at the end of

that person's bed and use that, you know, in someone's entrance and and recover that in in a vintage textile. So it's all up for grabs, you know, It's it's really up for grabs, and and and I think it's just a lot easier now um using Instagram as especially to communicate the client to be able to say, let me just send this to you. Do you like this?

You should take I remember we did, like thirty years ago, would take it would take two to three weeks to put a deck together to like go take photos of stuff, and now it takes half an hour. Yeah, I mean putting those decks together, you know, was a nightmare of inspiration. I mean you'd have to go through books. You literally have to go through books and take a picture of the book. You didn't have a phone xerox the book. Yeah, you know, it was it was, it was, it was.

It was harder than doing the job. You can't copyright design, you can't copyright recipes. That's just the way it is. And people are gonna borrow. But everybody borrows. I think it's a richer world because we all borrow from It's so flattering when people borrow from us and from me. I'm I go for it, guys, you know, like and and I borrow from people and references and things like that.

Gen roy Air, I can't tell you how many times I've copied the undulating upholstery detail that he's done that he did originally, whether he did it originally or not. I had a big fight with Madeline Wine rib years ago because she she owned ABC here in New York City and I put Ecott prints on Home Shopping Network and she sent me a mean letter right target, She sent me a mean letter, and I called her. I said, Madeleine,

you don't own Ecott. Ecott has been around your You look good, but you have to be three thousand years old to own Ecott. So let's talk about this like you're not. You don't have a lock on this pattern. When that was a big trend, I said, anyone's got anyone's got the right. We've altered it, but anyone's got the right to use this motif. Where'd you find it? Because here's the books that I pulled. Mind, once you let it go, it's gone you you gotta let it go.

And you know, I always tell people like I feel the same way. They can take as many recipes as they wanted for me. I like, I got million more behind that. Help you help yourself, help yourself. Be nice to say this is inspired by Yeah, it would be nice, but made Jeffries and Carrion's Thanksgiving for this, we know. Tag me on Instagram and say I saw this room and we recreated it. You know, I love that stuff, Go for it. What is it that you call your

sort of design philosophy? Is it lifestyle based? And what is people now? People here? Who? HI? Are you? What are they? What are they looking for? Is there like a can you generalize what's happened from when you started twenty four two? What started now? What if you're looking for? How has that changed? So? I don't call it lifestyle at all. Lifestyle is a word from me that's like when you see my dear friend on Instagram. It drives

me crazy. It's like a pet peeve. Yeah. And I used to like only use the word an exclamation mark after the word fire, but I gave up on that because now everybody uses them. But but but yeah, I lifestyle is like a meaningless ubiquitous word that you know whatever. I do. Think what's changed over the course of twenty five years is that, you know, at the beginning, I just want to make money. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to get clients. I wanted to do a

decent job. I didn't have any vendors, I didn't have any relationships. I was building, building, building, And I think, you know what's changed now is that I would like to believe that people come to me not only to craft them a beautiful environment that's in great taste or you know that, that that they feel like they can trust my aesthetic and my listening skills to be able

to capture their aspirational aesthetic. But more importantly, I think people come to me because they want to live in a place that feels storied and feels layered, and feels assembled over time, not a cookie cutter, fancy designer apartment or suburban home or vacation home that they're going to go to dinner at their friend's house that lives in the same area and they're going to see eight of the ten same things that they've got in their friend's house.

I've never done that. I've always crafted spaces specifically for the people who live there, have never go back to the same resource. Really, my hope is that at this stage, people know that I'm helping them assemble a collection of furniture and objects that tells their story, as opposed to just doing you know, a pretty job that has no character personality. I find it really almost when I approached some things like I don't know what to do, like I I want my restaurant to look like X, Y,

and Z, but I can't do it myself. It's a sense of vulnerability. I have all this taste and I have all this style, but I just don't know how to put it together. And you're actually acting almost like almost like a psychologist in some way. Okay, we we have all these pieces of your brain. They're really good at doing these other things. You just can't assemble what I know. I can put together what you know. We

all know the same thing and what's pretty. But to put it together and make individual things that are eye catching work together is very hard, and you have to sort of give up. Well, let's talk about that for a second, Jeffrey, because I think that's fascinating for a lot of creative people and people who aspire to do things on her own. I can't make a three course meal to save my life. I don't know what temperature things should be. I can't follow a recipe in a cookbook.

I can't do any of it. And I have a massive appreciation for something that's delicious, but I have no interest whatsoever in trying to figure out how to do it for myself. None. Rachel Ray's tried to get me to do I can't do it. I mean I I it's like weird. It's messy, everything smells, it's dirty. I cooked on your show once. You won't stand off as it just you always wasn't natural for you. I could care less. Remember that line in Goldie in Overboard with

Goldie Hans that I prepared and handled raw food. It doesn't sound like me, Like that's me. Couldn't couldn't care less and couldn't be a bigger fan, but couldn't care less. But I will say this, though, you know what design really is the alchemy of design, the alchemy of food, the alchemy of fashion or jewelry, design or painting. What I've always viewed that to be the sort of magic sauce is that it's all just about the references. When you're speaking about design ideas, you have to be speaking

to somebody. All the ideas for a restaurant or the feeling you want to have. You have to be speaking to somebody who can catch the ball and throw it further visually for you to say, there was this place in France that was so unexpected, let me just find it on my phone, or what if we took how in Mexico, how everything is just built out of plaster

and stucco. What if here, let me just you know, look at this, And it's that interpretation of those design ideas paired with a life well lived, hopefully a life well traveled or at least visually well traveled on online. And for me, that's the great distinction and design between a designer, an a d one designer and el decor

a list designer or an Instagram designer. You know, and there is a there is a distinction when when young designers come to me and ask me what they what they should be doing to prepare for real world and design, I say, I've said over and over you're only as good as your references. You've got to dig deep and understand what was happening in Sweden in the nineteenth century, what was happening in Vienna at the turn of the century. You have to know what was going on in France

in the nineteen fifties. And and you don't have to be an expert in everything. No one can, but at least aesthetically, if something interests you, please dig deeper to understand the movement around it. The architecture around it, what was happening in fashion, what was happening in painting, what was happening in photography? Because if you don't have those references, you can't sell your own ship. It's so well said, and I believe that's the same for food. For me,

the food is like fashion. It has a direct coalation of fashion every twenty five years. You know, Steakopav is fantastic again, right, all of us French bestos are like, oh boom, we'll have an artichoke n regret what And weren't people sitting reading the Preppy Handbook eating Steako plav like you know, it's a massive trend and you can just see it because I used to work with all these people who came to my restaurant, Vogue and Hannah Winter,

and the trend of the fashion was the same. So I'm sure now what's trending now was trending years ago in some form or another. And follow interior design as well now a hundred percent. In fact, it's funny. My husband is twelve years younger than me, which you know sends me to the dermatologist about every three hours. But he he his references, what he thinks is fresh, is very like what I grew up with in the eighties. And you know, I'll look at stuff we design a

collection for living spaces together, a furniture. We were working on another massive deal with an American retailer right now together. And so it's really interesting because he'll show me stuff that he thinks is like revolutionary, and I'm like, oh, my grandmother had it at our condo in you know, in Florida. So you know, there is something in between.

And I look at like what if you look at like what the young people are wearing around the streets of New York City right now, it's all like Jack Amiss, this French brand, which looks like Korage looked like to us when you know, and it's just and and and in design, even the textiles, mohair, you know, Miss Sony, like all of that stuff. Even in home it's it's back and you know, I couldn't look at that stuff Pastel's Pastel's. I mean, my mother redid the house seven

hundred times. When I was growing up. I lived through every trend and it's probably why I'm so anti trend. It's fascinating and it's your percent, right Stako puav and a white linen sofa man and we are back, and we're back. Is that where or are we are architecturally

into a design? Wise, there is something you're seeing, even though you hate seeing it, you're noticing it and you don't want to look at it, but you can't help but noticing everybody is doing what When I was growing up, the rich people in the Twin Cities built a house in the nineteen eighties with like a curved sex in an uh boxy situation, And that's what was fancy then. And I just bought the same house in Montauk and

and it looks great again to me. So you know that if anything is not a better example, I've only lived in old homes, old apartments, old homes my whole life. And now I our beach house. Is this nineteen eighties house that could have been in Minnetonka, Minnesota, that I would have gone to a playdate after school. In our

fourth and final course, Nate and I discussed lifestyle. Our conversation weaves from cultural history to what makes his neighborhood so alluring, and even what it's like to work with his husband. But Nate begins by explaining his surprising choice for his all time favorite restaurant. My favorite restaurant in the world, you know, not just in the continental you know states. My favorite restaurant in the world is the

State Fair of Minnesota. Corn Dogs, Baby oh Man corn dogs and and many doughnuts that drop into a paper bag filled with cinnamon and sugar and and Minnesota corn with Lando legs, butter, Lando leg Did you have fried butter? You know what? I drew the line at fried butter because I thought, bye, bye, I'm almost fifty. I'll be

fifty next year. But I thought fried butter. If I actually go up and wait in the line and say, may I have to fried butters please, then that is the bullet train for to me waiting weighing like sift pounds. So fried butter was the only that didn't sound good. So when you were growing up, who is cooking and what was on fire? It sounds like family was very important. Was there a sit town? You had to sit down?

And obviously when you were sitting down, you were checking out the height of the table and the chair to make sure that was correct. But were you sitting every meal you're eating? You know? Yeah, you know what? It was Jeffrey. The truth is a great cultural food history of my family was lost with my grandparents. My grandmother. When I was a boy, we would go to her house for dinner every Saturday night, and she was an excellent cook. I mean she she was an excellent, excellent cook.

And it was sort of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish. You know, all that stuff that I still love to this day, noodle coogle and all those things that you make out of small sliced, thinly sliced potatoes and pot roast and any of that, so, you know those that was the food culture of my childhood was the like Jewish food, and I still crave it. If I if I see like sort of amenable looking, sort of friendly looking Jewish lady, I'll ask her to make me a google. But my

mother was not interested. My stepmother was very, very nutritious growing up her Her mother was part of Shackley, the big vitamin company, So we had carab instead of chocolate. We were there was food combining principles, There was all this business on that side of the family. But my

mother didn't care. You know, she was working. She was dressed well, which wasn't interested in cooking and I didn't care either because I didn't know any differently, But I would say, you know, it was my grandparents, my step my stepfather's mother and my mother's mother who would turn out the table, set out the silver. We would eat beautifully. That's where we were taught our manners. That's where we had things that still to this day, if I close my eyes, I can taste it. You know. It just

was so delicious. The best memories of the memories you can do the food memories, right, It's like, oh my god, this thing that you can get a whiff of an onion and it just brings you right back. Absolutely absolutely, And I know I have you designed a restaurant, No, not not really. I mean we have dabbled, like consulting over the years, but no, I've never sat down and crafted an environment around better or fine dining, which is

usually amazing at it. You'd be amazing at it because you're you're love of the way people flow, how they flow would be just fantastic because restaurants all flow, baby, everything and you're talking about it is how how you flow through your life. Yeah, I mean, I definitely am interested in the moments that people share. I really have always been fixated in on that. I That's why I design well, I think because I'm really putting myself in

other people's shoes. How they wish to be perceived, how they you know, what the what the space, what what how they wish to feel in the space. And I think, listen, it's one of the great luxuries in life is to go to a wonderful restaurant and have a beautiful meal with people that you love and hear the laughter and you know, and it's it's really it's why we moved back to New York City, you know, was that culture

was so missing for us in Los Angeles. Obviously, there's beautiful places to go have dinner, and we have those dinners and breakfasts and things like that in l A. But there's nothing like our life here in New York City, in the West Village where you know, we we decided four minutes before we leave the house with two kids under six, that we're just going to go to this place and and sit and have bolon as. And it's awesome.

So it is if you're if you're in the village, what is your version of the village now as to when you first laid eight on your first house. What what has changed for you? There? Not a lot, I'm happy to report it's got the same exact. I always wanted to live surrounded by something that would be delightful visually, and you know that. That's why I took to Paris and had an apartment there for many years. That's why I like the water, you know, like a lake house

or the beach kind of vibe. But the West Village for me, it's like it makes me laugh every time I walk out my front door that I get to live in the United States in an area that's so old and so protected and so charming. I love the neighborhood. Like I sound like Jerry Seinfeld, but like I have such a deep connection not to all of New York City, but that part of New York City. I just feel lucky.

I feel grateful. I feel like it. You know, post pandemic, a lot of young people are moving back into the neighborhood. We see the moving vands now with moving in instead of moving out, and there's an energy even though everybody's you know, primarily massed up. Still it's there's a street culture and there's a restaurant culture. And there's you know, there's a there's an energy and a spontaneity. I I

say that only because I know it so well. I lived on seventy Perry Street for about four years, and I used to sit on the stoop for hours and watch people. We do that with our kids and Dune. They just sit and watch people and then lay down stairs and grab something to drink or running grab cheerios from my son. But we just hang out. And the way the light hits the trees in the corners of

the street, how they're angled. There's so much perpendicular action going on that there's this incredible lightness of being all the time that you totally keep this gribe. You can't find another neighborhood. And that's why I stay for so long. How is it working with your husband? How do you figure that out? Because it's hard, you know it is.

We don't fight about design. It's really interesting. We can fight to the death, near death about so many other things, but for some reason, with design, we both have a free pass to be completely unconcerned about how the other person is going to receive a statement or an opinion or information. And I think maybe it's because we both do it, or maybe because we're not really that ego driven.

Maybe it's because as people. Maybe it's because we both know that there's not one right way to assemble a space. There's not there's never been one right way to to to to do something in design. So you know, if he it's the last piece of pizza without saying to me, like do you want half of this? We're like a like a Judge Judy that afternoon, like the fight that

comes out. It's like, you know, if I'm like stepping on his underwear, you know, in the bathroom and he just couldn't make it that foot to the hamper, that's another you know, I'm piste off for like seven hours. Design. We can produce the shows that we do, we can do the makeovers that we do on television, which we love. We can design the collections that we work on together.

And also you know, we're we're we're back on h GTV now for the first time in a in a big way, and and we're trying we're building something together now. And so the truth is it's just smart business as it is for you to just pick your battles. And and you know, I respect him and I know he respects me. I really respect his perspective. I believe in him as a designer. I believe in his knee jerk reaction. I like his instinct. In many ways, he's I've I've

gone too bad about something. I hated something I didn't think it was the right decision for one of our homes. And he said, I'm doing it anyway. And it comes in and I'm wrong. And I love being wrong because it's You've been doing this for twenty five years, and and and I have a very open environment with my with my employees. It's always the best idea at the

table wins. It's a little bit different when you're you know, wiping some of your kids butt and talking about producing the show and you know, figuring out when your parents are coming to visit and juggling all the things that families deal with. But but I think at the end, I we just like each other. We like we like doing this stuff together. Plus it's they don't call it makeover. I tell people like, they're always so, how do I how do I do it? You make it look so easy?

How how do you cook? How do you get it like this? I'm like, if you make a mistake, you just eat it. It's fine if you choose the wrong paint call you just painted wall again. Well listen, I mean that's the whole Like, that's yet another life philosophy, you know, made by man, fixed by man. I mean we I know, and I've had really high strung clients who get really worked up very quickly, and you know, at forty nine years old, it's just not my perspective anymore.

I I just will say to them, you guys, I'm not replacing your kidney, Like, yes, it came in broken, and yes we waited a long time for it. So here's what we're gonna do. We're going to fix it and then it will be delivered and then everything will be fine. But I'm protective over emotion, and I'm protective over that. I'm protective with my team. I'm you know, I I I don't like it. There's not a lot of space for it, for for elevation in designer, in food.

To me personally, how is it when you get a first time client that really hasn't hired someone as higher level high it's never hired someone like yourself that's at that level. They've done it themselves the whole I can imagine being nightmare. They've done it themselves their whole life. They think they know best, and someone said, please hire Nate to do this. It will be the way you want it to be. It will be the way you never could do it that you've been trying for twenty

five years to do. What happens in that scenario, Well, they've got to want it, you know, to sign on the dot line and pay the depositive. They've got to have wanted it on some level. It's like sony years, like getting ven years right through the pain. You gotta do it or botox. I mean preserving the peace, preserving an environment that that promotes creativity and and fun. I like to enjoy myself. I like to have a good time with my clients. I like my staff to have

a good time. I don't like to have those clients in the roster where no one wants to return the email or you see their number and everybody's like, oh man, oh no. And luckily I've been pretty decent at at calling that out in a in an initial interview like this, this isn't the culture for us to be a part of, because it's not really how we roll. It's not what we love, it's not it's not going to make the space for us to do a great job. But you know what's happened over the years, of course, and I

think I think everything can be solved through conversation. You know, I think you've got it. You can't be fear based. You also have to know your stuff. You have to be able to defend your stuff. But I have fired clients that I've said to them, you know, guys, this isn't working. You're spending all this money and I know you're not having a good time. And guess what, I'm not either, And you know, the truth is is that

this shouldn't be about this. I don't know if it's because you don't trust this process or you don't trust me, or this is just kind of how you move through the world, whatever it is. There's no judgment attached to this.

But I'm not interested in participating. You know, Either we can do it this way, which you know we've done this now for excellent number of years, and then this system really works, or I wish you well, you know like I I, and I'm sure you'll find you know somebody that that wants to work under this kind of

paradigm that you've created. I don't, and I don't want my team working for them either, because we can we can design three spaces and laugh the whole time or of the time, or we can spend the exact same amount of time designing one space. Begrudgingly, it's just not worth it. You're a class act. Mr Burkas. Thank you, Jeffrey, as are you taking time? Really? Really? Thank you for taking time. I could speak two hours, but I only have an hour, which kind of sucks. But maybe we'll

get you back one day. I will student again another list of questions I did not more technical stuff that I'm fascinated to get in that mind of yours. But I appreciate your time. It's my great pleasure. It's great to see you. Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jeffrey zacarian a production of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Four Courses is created by Jeffrey Zacarion, Margaret Zacarion, Jared Keller,

and Tara Halper. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is conducted by Jesselyn Shields. Four Courses is engineered by Molly Swanson. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer at Dogtown Talent. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.