Business of Home Trade Tales Podcast
Business of Home Trade Tales Podcast
Why Beth Dotolo and Carolina Gentry get real about the design process on social media
When Carolina Gentry and Beth Dotolo first started working together, their paths had never crossed before: Gentry was a senior designer with a decade of experience under her belt, while Dotolo was just starting out in the industry, taking an internship at the same multifamily-focused firm in Dallas. After a few short years, it was as if they’d known each other forever. By then, both were at a senior level within the firm. They also lived across the hall from each other in the same loft building.
Driving home from the latest in a series of installations that hadn’t gone smoothly, everything changed. “We were at a stoplight, and I looked at her and I was like, ‘We can do this ourselves. What are we doing?’” Dotolo tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of Trade Tales. “We literally went back to our loft right after that and I bought a [website] domain, and we went through the naming exercise, and really set it up so that it was ready for us when we were ready to jump.”
In 2007, the pair officially launched their firm, Pulp Design Studios, and pivoted their focus to the residential market. They got creative about finding leads—utilizing blogging and later Instagram to find their voice and access a new pool of clientele. When Dotolo moved to Seattle a few years later, the pair took the relocation as a chance to grow their business, kicking off a new era of growth that led it to become the dual-market studio it is today.
“Of course, it came with some issues: It is hard to run a business when the two owners are not in the same city—but we figured it out,” says Gentry. “Eventually, it paved the way to having all these different styles of projects in these different markets, to making our business a little bit more national, and also making our business a little bit more desirable for partners that want to work with us.”
Elsewhere in the episode, the duo share how they make sure the chemistry is right with prospective clients, why video plays a major role in their intake process, and how they use social media to connect with both new and old clientele.
Crucial insight: While many design firms send prospective clients a PDF document or a slide deck to kick off the intake process, Dotolo and Gentry instead created a video explaining their services. According to the pair, this format not only allows them to better sell their value, but also provides a crucial opportunity for clients to get a taste of their personalities—a deciding factor in their working partnerships. “You’re going into a relationship with this person. You’re entering their personal space, and they’re taking your advice on how you can better their environment, make their house at home, make their lives better,” says Gentry. “So you have to like each other—you have to have a chemistry check.”
Key quote: “We’ve learned that you never arrive. Every time you reach a milestone, you want to reach another milestone, and you still have the same difficulties and challenges,” says Dotolo. “You learn from them, and then new challenges pop up. It’s always a shifting, changing animal—and I think that’s what’s exciting about it.”
