205 - TZL - David Shove-Brown

David Shove-Brown [11:42] I just spoke at GW University Corcoran a couple of weeks ago, and so I love going out and talking to students. I think for me, the thing that's most pivotal is that you don't have to know your path early on and it doesn't have to be so straightforward. You can bounce around and enjoy the drive. It's a lot of fun to see the sights as you're going through it all.

Randy Wilburn [12:07] Oh, absolutely. I always tell people, that life is not as linear as you think it is. There are a lot of zigs and zags in there, and if you take a moment and take time to take in those zigs and zags, it's a much more enjoyable journey in my estimation. So listen, I want to talk about //3877, which I'll just put it out there, that is the latitude and longitude of where you guys are located in the DC area. I'm just curious. I'd love for you just to tell the audience a little bit about your company, and what you guys focus on from a practice standpoint. David Shove-Brown [12:46] Sure. So my business partner, Dave, and I, so he's DT and I'm DSP with two days in the office. We got two Dave's, three Meghan's, two Matt's and two Jesse’. So when Dave and I started the firm, we made some really solid conscious decisions to really focus on clients and customer satisfaction, and not just getting a job, but really getting a client and staying with them for the long haul and really focusing on the industries that we knew and really enjoyed. So for us, that was residential, that was hospitality, that was restaurants. We certainly have branched out a little bit from that. We both had done some office space where we had done some space or some work within the fitness arena. And so, those were sort of our core factors or core sectors that we wanted to focus on. We're not the people to design arenas. We're not the people to design a civic building and that's okay. We don't need to be, there are lots of great folks for that. So we wanted to focus on those industries and do really well within them, and understand what we were good at and what we weren't as good at, and being quite frankly, honest with ourselves and with everybody else to say this is what you should come to us for. So, we started off with the two of us in my kitchen in Capitol Hill. And so, it was Dave and me. It was, my wife worked out of the office in the basement. We had our newborn daughter, two dogs and a nanny. So every day was an adventure. And we've grown to just over 30 people, and we've got architects, interior designers, and we've got some office folks. We've put together a team of just insanely talented people. Basically, we hire them and get the hell out of the way and just let them create and it's so fun to watch. It is awesome.

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