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Eva Amurri - Buiding a Business and a Brand · She’s Smart

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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On today's episode, I sat down with Eva Amuri.
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You know Eva as the creator of HappilyEvaAfter, her lifestyle brand and blog,
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where she shares everything from motherhood and home design to personal style and wellness.
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But beyond the perfectly curated spaces and smart, relatable takes on modern
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life, Eva is a powerhouse, an entrepreneur, a mom of three, and someone who
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has navigated reinvention in so many ways.
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We dive into what it means to evolve in your 30s and 40s, the art of saying
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no, and the importance of female friendships.
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Eva gets real about career transitions, co-parenting, and balancing public life
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with personal boundaries.
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Plus, she shares the scoop on her latest projects, including her Benchmade Modern
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Furniture Collection and an exciting new home-build project in Westport, Connecticut.
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This conversation is packed with honesty, wisdom, and plenty of laughs.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart.
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Music.
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Hi. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so happy to be here.
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It's so fun. I feel like we've all hit this middle 40 age and we've been doing
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the same thing for so long that we're not sure.
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It's time to reinvent. It's time to do something fresh and new.
1:33
Yeah, I get that. Right? And that's when you're almost 40.
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Yeah, I'm turning 40 in two months. My God. It's so crazy. Are you going to do something fun?
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My stepdad is working in London right now. He's shooting this show called Silo on Apple TV.
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I think they're filming their third season. I'm not a sci-fi girly by any means,
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but I actually love this show because it's very character driven.
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He's out there for six months out of the year, every year, and he has this apartment with four bedrooms.
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So he was like, why don't you guys come? You can bring the kids.
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So we're going to go for 10 days over my birthday. We're just going to be out
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there and I'm going to take off of work, which literally never happens. Yeah.
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I'm sure, you know, I won't fully take off of work because that's also what always happens.
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I don't think any of us who work the way we do and have our lives the way we do ever do.
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Really completely turn it off well you know do you find
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you have any moments where you do this career
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that i have chosen for myself this
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very weird and oftentimes
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wonderful career i feel like the line between work and life is so blurry for
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me it's actually taken me my company will be 10 years old and do congrats thanks
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it's very surreal but it Well,
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actually, it's taken me until about two years ago to really figure out boundaries
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that work for me in terms of the work-life balance.
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It's something I've really had to work at. And I'm still not great at it,
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but I feel like I'm a lot better.
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But it's so hard for me, too. You know, I got divorced five years ago.
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I was a single mom for a long time. And financially, that's really hard.
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I also wasn't in a place where I could say no.
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Yeah, so you were just anything that someone wanted or asked if you were doing
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it. It was like throwing all the spaghetti at the wall, like seeing what stuck.
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I had so many lines in the water. I really ran myself ragged.
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And I feel like I'm slowly coming out of that period of my life,
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which is very rewarding. But also I have these habits from the last five years because of that.
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Necessity to work that I feel like I jumped to say yes.
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So I'm really practicing saying no, because saying no is very powerful.
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It's a powerful place to be.
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I saw this meme that was like, unless it's a hell yes, it's a no. That is what I say. Yeah.
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Haunston. Yeah. Unless it's a hell yes, it's actually an F now.
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They find that this has been a huge commentary on this podcast with every woman that sits down with me.
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We're all of a certain age. We're all, our kids are at a place. They are at school.
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They've got their activities. You have more time to really kind of hone in on
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what you want and create those boundaries.
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When they were little, I didn't have boundaries. Now as they've gotten older, I'm figuring that.
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So I'm a very boundaried parent, and I had to be because I went back to work
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with all three of my kids immediately, which I do not recommend.
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I had to run a tight ship because I was, I actually pre-COVID was traveling
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a ton for work. I was going to the city a ton for work.
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I was still like acting also kind of for a period of time.
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So I have had to run this super tight ship, which has turned out well ultimately.
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But now that they're all in school full time, we actually transitioned.
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I always had a nanny because I was gone all the time and my ex-husband worked.
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My current husband works and we were always a dual income family.
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But now that my youngest is in preschool full-time and going to kindergarten
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next year, we actually, for the past six months, haven't had a nanny.
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That has been a really big shift, which has actually been a positive change
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for our family unexpectedly.
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For me, I thought it was going to really be a shit show, honestly, but we've kind of...
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All improved upon our individual roles within the family. I think the kids now
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are old enough that they've taken on more responsibility.
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And so now it's kind of like we're this unit who's all sort of working together.
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And it's not always perfect, but I find that the kids also really like being with us.
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There's sort of that camaraderie. Yeah. I love that you all did New Year's together.
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That's what we do every year. It was so cute.
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The kids love to be with other kids. Parents get to be with parents.
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Yeah. Everyone's vibing and having a great time.
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You know, it's nice. Honestly, I don't know about you. I'm out of my party era.
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I am a selective party girl. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this event. I'm good.
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But no, gone are the days where it was like real raging care anymore.
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I mean, there's really not all that many people that I like spending time with, period. Yeah.
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I find that I've gotten more selective and kind of more of a hermit in my older
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age. But I don't really think there's anything wrong with that. No.
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It feels really freeing to not have that feeling where you're like,
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oh, I have to be at that thing. Now it's like, no, I get to be selective.
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And I've got my friends. I'm so good with that family we've created here and those people.
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Yeah. No, definitely. It's a really fortunate feeling to have that.
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I don't know if a lot of women get that. I always feel badly for people who
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don't have really great female friends around them.
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I think for me, that has kind of been my touchstone and my survival over the
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years is having those great friendships.
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And honestly, it takes a long time to find your people. And it's okay to move
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on from people that don't feel like those people.
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So that's a lesson I've learned over time. Well, when you moved here,
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you didn't know anyone, right?
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Not one person. Not one person. Was Kyle from here?
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Yeah, so Kyle's from Westport. We moved back. We were living in L.A., which...
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I loved. Since we got married, he was working in Connecticut.
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So he was actually gone four days a week, which was actually,
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since we got married so young, I was 25 when we got married,
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was great at first because I could do my own thing, have my own life.
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He would work, we'd come back together. When I was pregnant,
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it was less fun. When I had a baby, it was a lot less fun.
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I was just basically single parenting in a marriage, which was a nightmare. And I was working.
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And when I got pregnant with Major, we were kind of like, listen,
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this is not working. We have to move closer.
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And he had this aversion to moving back to Westport.
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He just was like too close to the home.
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And that's his own things, which he's entitled to, but he didn't feel comfortable
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moving to Westport at first. So we looked in Weston.
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Found a house, renovated, and I was eight months pregnant when we moved into our house in Weston.
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And I had to move in because I home birthed my kids. So I give birth to them
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in the house. I loved that house.
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And then we found this historic home in Westport.
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We had always kind of dreamed of renovating a historic home.
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So we bought that, renovated it for two years, got divorced.
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Which I won't say was the reason we got divorced, But it wasn't not a contributing factor.
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Yeah. As anybody who is renovated knows, that's kind of a joke, but it's also real.
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And I lived in there. Then COVID happened.
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And I really wanted to keep the kids in there for a while.
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It was so much change so quickly. A new sibling, a divorce, and this whole thing
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was really important to me to stay in the house.
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And it was really hard financially to stay in the house. But I did it.
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And then finally, I was like, this is insane. Yeah.
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Why am I bankrupting myself over like a piece of geography?
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Like this is not a good idea. And the market was great. So I sold the house,
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moved into a different part of Westport, which I actually love.
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But it was a lot of moving in a very short period of time. And when you moved
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here, you didn't have those female friendships.
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How did you come to find all of those great girls that you have now?
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That had to have taken a while. I mean, it took me a while. When I moved here,
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I didn't know a single person.
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You finally found those women that you connected with? I always say to people,
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when you move somewhere new, you know nobody as...
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Difficult as it is to hear it really
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takes two full years yeah and going
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into it if you know that it makes it a little easier but
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it really takes those two full years when I started honing in on the people
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I connected with the most was actually I joined this mom entrepreneur dinner
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club oh cool okay so for me personally it was so hard out here especially at
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the time COVID to find women who worked who had kids.
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It's impossible.
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So for me, it was really different because I full-time worked.
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So a lot of times to perpetuate friendships or get closer, people would suggest
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play date at 11 a.m. or coffee at 2.
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And I was like, I just simply cannot do this. So it's really hard to get closer to people.
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When I joined this Entrepreneur Dinner Club, I met these other women like myself,
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who a lot of them own their own companies like I did.
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It was a great way of both bouncing ideas off of each other and also connecting
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on a deeper level that I felt like I couldn't connect with other women who were
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not experiencing having super small kids and working at the same time.
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Because for a lot of years, I think that was my entire personality.
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How do I manage these two things.
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So that's how I found them.
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And then I feel like my circle has gotten smaller over the years.
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Going through a divorce was really wild.
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Any woman who's been through a divorce will tell you your circle gets a lot
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smaller because there are a lot of people who are either A, surprisingly unsupportive
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when you're going through that, or B, they are very triggered.
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Because maybe they're in an unhappy marriage or and you, for whatever reason,
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going through that is extremely triggering to them and they'll kind of pull
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away or be nasty or whatever it is.
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I definitely edited down when I got divorced and kind of saw people for who they really were.
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And I think these big life events, whether it's grief or, I mean,
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divorce definitely incorporates grief as well, or even these really wonderful
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moments in life can show you where you stand with people.
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So I definitely edited a lot. And it's just been a constant process.
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But I'm obsessed with my girlfriends.
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No, isn't it fun to be obsessed with them? It is. We joke that we're going to
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all just live together at some point with just a bunch of dogs.
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I love that for you. And just be on a farm.
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I'm like, I will not work the farm. But I'm happy to run and do whatever else.
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You're like, I'll design the farm. I'll just put everyone's closets together.
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Yeah. And how do you balance, because you are a public person. Yeah.
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And you're also really open and honest when you're on social media and in your
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blog and talk about your life, what's going on.
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So people connect with what you're talking about. But how do you balance being
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public with putting information out there that your family is going through,
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but also is very vulnerable, that brings other people in to connect with you in that way?
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So I have this term that I like to use called radical vulnerability.
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And for me, that's about I feel the most empowered, the most like myself when
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I'm authentically myself. And I believe that through connection is where we find strength.
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I have a lot of experience being a public figure. I grew up with public figures.
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I was in the public eye from a very young age.
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I will say that I'm probably more comfortable than people who have become public
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figures in adulthood. Yeah, I could see that.
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Because I feel most like myself when I am completely myself and expressing myself in an authentic way.
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I find a lot of strength in that because that's how you connect on a human level with people.
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You realize you have more in common with people than you previously may have
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expected because of things you all have gone through.
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It doesn't always go well for me. And I think when you are open and share of
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yourself, there's always going to be people who don't agree with things that
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you're going through or have their own take or who are very triggered by that.
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Yeah. You learn to take the bad with the good and...
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Honestly, I've developed such a thick skin that I don't really give a shit anymore.
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I've realized over the years that people's reaction to your truth is more about
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them than it is about you.
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That's something I truly believe. That's not just a soundbite that I tell myself
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when I'm feeling bad, but I really truly believe that and I've come to experience
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that. So I don't really care. I do it for me.
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Secondly, I do it for people who may be experiencing the same thing but feel
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very alone because nobody talks about certain taboo subjects,
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which is why I shared about my miscarriage.
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Divorce, co-parenting, certain feelings about parenting that I've had,
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insecurities, toxic relationships I've been a part of.
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Just these topics that I think are hard for people to talk about,
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particularly in the public eye. Yeah.
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And so hopefully, and I've experienced feedback that this has been the case
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for some people, hopefully it makes people feel less alone in what they're going through.
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I truly believe that the truth will set you free. I find it to be inspirational, too.
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The more women who talk freely about these topics, it really helps us all connect
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together so that there isn't this weird drama, jealousy, or judgment.
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So I find that there's a lot of judgment out there.
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And I agree with you. If you're able to talk about it, it sets you free.
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It took a long time to figure out, though, to get to that point.
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But I always think what's so funny about it is I find it hilarious because I
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also have people who really come for me in a really extreme way.
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Like, in my opinion, if you go out of your way to go online and type out your
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feelings about someone, you're actually a fan.
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Yeah. That is an amount of energy that is a little suspect, in my opinion.
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I always think to myself, it's so funny that people who do this kind of stuff
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don't realize that it says everything about them and absolutely nothing about
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me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely.
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We all have judgments in our own mind. A lot of the times judgment within ourselves
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comes from unspoken or unprocessed feelings about the topic,
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right? It's mostly about us.
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But there's a difference between thinking those things, processing them,
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and outwardly expressing them. And I don't mean to your girlfriend or your sister.
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I mean to the public. It's wild
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that this person doesn't realize this is actually embarrassing for them.
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So it doesn't affect me personally because I think...
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This is actually so embarrassing for you. I just honestly, I feel badly for
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them that they're going through whatever it is they're going through,
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that they are in a place where they're putting their energy into this. I mean, why do you care?
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Yeah. Can we talk about dry January? You mentioned that you were doing dry January.
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I'm more doing like California dry January.
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There's this term California sober, which obviously is not real sober,
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but it basically means that you smoke weed, but not alcohol, I guess.
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I love that. But being from California, I appreciate it very much.
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So I have not had alcohol so far in January.
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Amazing. But I have been having these kind of jang, THC things every now and then.
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I think dry January, it's a great way to reset. There are many people who experience
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dry January and realize that alcohol is not serving them through that process.
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And that's great. And I think if it exists for those people just to become sober
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at a time when everybody else is doing it and then go from there, that's fantastic.
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But I also don't judge anyone who doesn't do Dry January, doesn't make it through Dry January.
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Who cares? I'm a live and let live kind of person.
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But I do highly recommend these THC cocktails.
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They're fantastic. We were at a luncheon and they were serving these THC cocktails.
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And the person who bought it thought
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it was like a cbd thing oh well there
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are some like that but i guess this was not but our friend who
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drank one did not realize it was thc it was like i can't i need to go home like
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this is amazing that is we realize the difference yeah but that's good to know
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i'm not i'm not a big thc fan in general so i'm curious not at all okay i'm
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very freaked out by it. I had a bad experience.
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One time, Kyle and I went to a Roger Waters concert in L.A. Okay.
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I'm just like not a drug girly in general. It's just like not my thing.
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I don't like feeling out of control.
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We went to a dispensary in L.A. This was like.
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I think maybe even before. No, maybe we'd just gotten married.
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Yeah. We were very young.
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I think I was 24. Yeah. Anyway, we got these lollipops at the thing.
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I'm like, oh, this is great. I'll have a lollipop to have during the show.
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So nobody told us you're supposed to take like two licks of the lollipop.
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I ate an entire lollipop at this concert and I was feeling a little messed up as we got home.
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But I woke up and I was so fucked up.
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I was like, you have to taking me to the hospital. Like, I'm dying.
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I was so freaked out. And then you just have to wait for it to go away.
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Nothing else you can do. So I got so scared and traumatized by this experience
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that for years I was like, I would hear THD and be like, hell no, no way.
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Yeah. And then a girlfriend of mine, Julia Jofik, she has a blog, Lemon Stripes. Yeah.
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She stopped drinking alcohol and found this company, Jang, which is the one I'm talking about.
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She was like, it was so low dose. you have to try to think you're really going to like it.
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So I start off with half a can, which is like laughably low.
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I was so freaked out the first time. I was like, oh my God, how am I going to feel?
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And it was so fine.
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But anyway, my point being, I get it because I was totally that person.
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But for me, it's just this kind of calm, warm and fuzzy.
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You don't feel messed up. It says on the can that one can is equivalent to one
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and a half glasses of wine.
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No. One and a half glasses of wine for me is like nothing.
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Yeah. I'm like, don't even realize I've had wine. Maybe it's because I'm 5'10 and like, you know.
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I don't know, but you're a very small person, but I am not.
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So anyway, but it was very low key. I feel like that's for me is my dry January thing.
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Alcohol is we've recently. Anyone who was surprised by the Surgeon General's warning.
20:31
Come on, babe. It's like waiting for it to happen. You know, exactly.
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Everyone knows alcohol isn't good for you. But I think even in the light of
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that, it's nice just to take a break.
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I agree. It's a good reset. When I was in college, I was not a pot smoker.
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Being from California, surprising. Yeah, you don't seem – I'm not. I'm too controlling.
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I need to know what's going on at all times.
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But in college, we had a split dorm, so the girls were upstairs and the boys
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were downstairs. And the boys in the downstairs were all engineers.
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And all the girls in the top were like arts and science because they wanted
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the engineer boys to have a social life. They put the arts and science up top.
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They were smoking pot one night. Yeah. And I was really good friends with them.
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And I'm like, oh, I can do this. I smoked a little bit in high school.
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I stole my sister's bong at one point and passed it around to my friends.
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Never was a great reaction to it. I did not like it. Yeah. I decided this was
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a great idea, but it was a gravity bong.
21:21
Oh. So it's like you take, you let it all go into your system,
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and then my heart rate was 200.
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I thought I was going to die.
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I was stoned all the way into the next day. Yeah.
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And I was like, that's it. I'm done. I will never touch it again.
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Yeah. It does not need to be a part of my life. Yeah. It's the only thing I've
21:40
ever done other than drink. I'm good.
21:42
Yeah. I'm good. I feel like sometimes those experiences happen and they're so scary.
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It's interesting because having kids that are growing up and becoming teenagers,
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there are no innocent drugs anymore.
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Everything is scary. Everything is horrible. Also, social media is all over
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the place. I was saying to somebody the other day, one of the saddest things
21:59
about our kids' generation is that they have no space to experiment.
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Or make mistakes. No, they can't. It's a huge bummer. You know,
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when you were doing that gravity bong. Imagine if someone filmed it. Exactly.
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So, I mean, I don't know. I think about this a lot. Somebody who works on social
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media, my kids are not getting social media.
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They're not getting phones till well into high school. There are so many things
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that are not good about it.
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For young kids, it makes me sad because Facebook started when I was in college. It was very innocuous.
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There's people uploading like 200 photos of their digital camera the next day.
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Not even deleted, like every photo. Every photo.
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So it wasn't that bad, but I think if I hadn't had those years,
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particularly high school and college, to really...
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Mess up and experiment. Not that I was doing anything crazy.
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In retrospect, I should have been more wild than I was. I wish I was.
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Even just having that time and space where you know that people aren't seeing
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everything that you're doing.
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I think about that a lot as a mom. I think some parents are grateful for that
23:05
in a way because they like to keep tabs, but I'm not.
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No, I just want my kids to bike around and come home before the sun goes down.
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I'm not a surveillance type of gal and
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with my kids like I don't my husband I don't have each
23:20
other's locations I personally find that bizarre when
23:23
people do it no offense to anybody who does that but I
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find that I can't I just feel like
23:29
there's no privacy there isn't there was an incident on the bus oh yeah where
23:33
Easton was asked about liking some girl he was like no come on don't ask me
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that another girl was videotaping him trying to I don't know get him in a position
23:44
of saying something he wasn't supposed to. Right. And sent it to the girl.
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Yeah. And Easton comes home. He was so upset. You did nothing wrong in that video.
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You were so honest and nice. Imagine if someone was filmed saying something
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that can never be taken away.
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I mean, yeah. It was a problem in my mind. This is something I communicate to
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my kids as well. The Internet is forever.
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But so are text messages. So I always tell them you don't put out into the world
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in a digital form, whether that's a text message or an email or a video,
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anything that you would not want, put on a billboard in the middle of town, period.
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And just to start thinking about that is so important.
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And not that, you know, my daughter, who's the oldest in our family,
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she's not interested in all of that stuff.
24:31
And I think one positive from me having the career that I have,
24:35
is that they see that there's space between social media and reality.
24:42
Not to say that what I post isn't real. It is real. But for example, we do two holidays.
24:48
The one that we shoot for the blogs that has to be out two months in advance and the real one.
24:52
You know what I mean? Having these little windows into how social media is not
24:59
complete reality has been a huge learning tool for that. And a good.
25:05
Jumping off place for these types of conversations. But she's really not interested
25:10
and she's not a TikTok girly at all.
25:13
They like learning. My son is a dancer and he likes learning all the dances.
25:17
So that's different. But they definitely don't post.
25:21
They've asked me before, you know, how many followers do you have? And I'm like, a lot.
25:25
I don't get into it. Followers are not friends. Yeah. Remember.
25:31
And just even this whole concept of quantities
25:34
and stuff from social media is just so toxic
25:38
and it is i think in australia they've
25:41
banned the number like you cannot see if you
25:44
live in australia and there's an account you can't see how many people have liked
25:46
to post any like you as the person can see it but it's not out there into the
25:50
universe to be like oh well she only got 10 likes right because i mean how awful
25:55
if that's what your self-esteem is coming from well yeah and as a kid and you're
26:01
seeing that so young right we You have enough shit we go through. Totally.
26:04
I mean, look, social media is part of my livelihood.
26:08
Literally how I make money, I do social media marketing on my own channel.
26:13
And for brands that post on theirs, as pervasive as social media marketing is,
26:18
and it really does sell things.
26:19
This is why it has been a disruptor in the marketing space.
26:24
It also comes with some issues.
26:28
There's just no checks and balances within the industry. And I think it's going to change.
26:33
I'm even noticing it's shifting a little bit, which I think is good.
26:38
It's like with any new frontier.
26:40
It goes for a while without any kind of infrastructure, making sure everything's kosher.
26:46
And then you revise it in a healthy and productive way. We're kind of in that space right now.
26:51
I mean, you even saw I was part of a Instagram release or announcement where
26:56
they announced the changes that are happening for kids accounts.
26:59
Nice. which is great now absolutely cannot have an account in Leicester I think
27:04
it's like 15 or something yeah
27:06
They're making you submit documents and the whole thing. There are certain guardrails
27:11
they're putting on those accounts, and they're taking it really seriously because they have to.
27:15
I don't think they were doing it out of the kindness of their hearts.
27:18
I think it is now a legal necessity.
27:20
But I think it's good nonetheless. Even though I do work in that space,
27:25
I definitely am not a blind supporter of that space.
27:30
It's even better for you as that person. You put products out there and you're
27:34
like, I really like this. This isn't me just hawking this and the other.
27:39
No. Well, it's so funny that you say that because people will reach out to me
27:43
after I promote something and they'll say, do you really like this?
27:48
And my response is always, babe, my word is my entire livelihood.
27:54
I would never promote something that I can't stand 100% behind.
27:59
And by the way, there's a lot of things I say no to that I can't stand behind.
28:02
I always say, you know, if I'm putting my word behind something,
28:07
yes, I do really like it. You don't have to ask me twice.
28:11
And there are rules for us as well. Like, for example, people will say,
28:15
oh, well, you're just paid to say that.
28:16
No, no, if I was paid to say it, there would be disclosures.
28:19
You can get in a lot of trouble for not doing that now.
28:22
I think that that's changing as well, which I think is ultimately really good.
28:25
People need to have a higher tolerance for ads on social media.
28:30
You know what I always tell people from October through the end of the year,
28:34
every person who works in social media will be posting a lot of ads.
28:38
What I always say is this is you can go onto my blog for free.
28:42
I create content all day long that I am investing in to put out there,
28:47
whether that's photographers, product, my time, styling, assistance.
28:53
That all is free content. just be supportive of the ads because these brands
28:58
are paying so that you can get your content for free.
29:02
Supporting doesn't mean you have to buy the product. It just means liking it,
29:06
commenting on a post, sharing it, just being supportive.
29:10
That supports us so that we can continue to do this for free. For free for them.
29:15
And that's why we charge brands. It's a great industry, but it costs a lot.
29:19
Anybody who's tried to do it, which you know, because you have Instagram accounts,
29:24
you who have this podcast, people are so...
29:27
Snarky about it until they try to do it and they realize how much work goes into it.
29:33
And then half of them stop. Yeah. Because it takes a lot. And look,
29:36
it's not, we're not curing cancer.
29:38
We're not surgeons. It's not that level of difficulty.
29:42
We're not first responders. But it is more challenging than people realize.
29:47
If it looks easy, that's a sign that somebody is doing it well. Yeah.
29:53
That's a really good point. Because everything you do is very curated.
29:56
But you have put so much into it.
29:59
There's so much into it. I've been doing videos for clients when I'm styling them for videos.
30:04
They've hired all these people and then have to figure out the timing for all these people.
30:09
And then the outfit changes for all these people and this, that, and the other.
30:13
And I find that it's not even like the hours it takes to actually produce something.
30:18
It is the brain space that it takes up.
30:21
I don't know if your brain like ever turns off.
30:24
I mean, at some point it has to, but I find that there is a million different
30:28
things going on from family to work to volunteering that everything has to be
30:36
thought about. No, absolutely.
30:37
All day long. Right. The brain space is even taken up. The time is taken up in mind.
30:42
And it's also how you post production as well.
30:47
When you're posting on social media, you're not just posting, you're optimizing.
30:52
A ton of research goes into it. I study my back end of the blog,
30:57
of social media, of everything, and plan my job that I do is actually like 10 people's jobs, really,
31:05
that go into one job.
31:08
Whether it's social media presence or online brand, I guess you could say.
31:12
And then, of course, because I'm insane, I added a furniture collection on.
31:16
I want to talk about, it's Benchmade Modern, right?
31:18
I read the background of how you bought something and the kids loved it.
31:22
How did that relationship come about with you and them?
31:25
Yeah, so basically, I was a customer first of theirs.
31:29
And when we were moving into our new home in Westport, I ordered their couch
31:33
because what I love about the brand is that everything is custom sizing.
31:37
I had this huge family room that I really had envisioned a certain kind of way.
31:42
The couch that I had in my old home, which was custom, the way that the L was
31:46
didn't work for the new space, which was so annoying.
31:49
You have a giant couch. What are you going to do with it? Which is literally,
31:51
as we all know, they're like 10 grand, a custom couch.
31:54
So I was like, okay, we have to get a new one.
31:57
And the performance fabrics are amazing. It's made in the U.S.
32:01
And it was also a very short lead time.
32:04
So I was like, okay, we got it. and we became
32:07
like that couple who when people would come over we're
32:10
like you have to sit on the couch feel this couch it
32:13
was actually obnoxious I ended up sharing about the couch and then I guess sold
32:20
a lot of couches amazing so they came to me and they were like listen we love
32:24
your style we love your message we love your brand you sold a lot of our couches.
32:31
Would you want to do a collection with us?
32:33
Which for me, although my blog and my brand is very multi-pronged in terms of
32:39
my focuses, interior design has always been something I've really loved and
32:43
I've been very passionate about.
32:45
And it's also been one of the most successful branches of the blog.
32:49
It's just like monetarily successful.
32:51
So whenever I would post about stuff, people really responded to that and the
32:56
room reveals and everything.
32:57
I had always had in the back of my mind that going into that space was something
33:02
they wanted to do with product.
33:04
And also because I had my own collection of clothing, which was great, which was self-funded.
33:09
I could literally come back on this podcast and talk about just that because
33:13
I think it's very interesting.
33:15
It was so tough because I really wanted to be size inclusive and all this stuff.
33:21
Basically, the nutshell of what I learned was it was so tough to self-fund because
33:27
you have to put up like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
33:30
And especially because the breadth of sizing that I wanted to do was so wide.
33:36
And then just selling clothing, especially now with the fast fashion and all
33:41
this stuff, it's impossible.
33:42
You know, what you have to price stuff at to make up. It was really interesting
33:46
to learn all these lessons.
33:48
I had that. I did a full year of seasons and I was like, you know what?
33:51
This is just not, clothing is not where it's at. And unless you're doing mass
33:55
quantities, you're not getting that price break.
33:58
Totally. And so it just didn't end up, it actually was technically financially
34:03
successful for my company, but it was not,
34:08
tenable. It was ridiculous. It was so stressful.
34:11
Anyway, that's a whole other thing. But this opportunity presented itself to
34:15
me with Benchmade Modern, and it was really just plugging into what was already existing.
34:21
They are, by the way, the most insanely wonderful customer service.
34:25
It is made right here in the USA.
34:27
There were all of these core brand identities they have that I really could
34:32
relate to and that I really respected.
34:35
So to be able to kind of plug into their system, design the line in a space
34:41
that I already was curious about,
34:43
the ethos of having family furniture that can really stand up to family life was important.
34:51
There's some crazy statistic, and I wish I remembered it exactly,
34:54
but the Benchmade team told me something like a very large number of people, when they buy a sofa,
35:01
they'll spend all this money and they actually only have it for one to two years
35:06
because of moving or because of it getting ruined or because of all this stuff.
35:11
Wow. So knowing that, and I've been a victim of that, I've gotten like a,
35:17
I don't want to say the brands, but custom, you know, my own fabric from these
35:22
brands and it really wasn't performance.
35:25
It got trashed by my kids or it didn't, it would start kind of falling apart.
35:30
And it was really annoying when you've spent a lot of money.
35:34
It was important to present a product to families that were like,
35:37
okay, it is an investment because it's high quality.
35:42
It's custom made, all of that.
35:44
But the performance fabric is really performance.
35:47
I mean, I have a white couch. My kids have grown up. They've literally bled on it.
35:52
My son kicked a soccer ball into a glass of red wine that I was holding and
35:57
went all over everything and it's fine.
35:59
But it also, my collection with them is modular.
36:03
So you can add pieces and adjust it if you move, if your family grows.
36:08
That was super important to me too. And it's just been so rewarding and fun, the response to it.
36:16
We've already sold almost a million dollars of furniture in less than a year.
36:21
Yeah, it started like six months ago, right? Yeah.
36:23
That's insane. What's lovely for me is I love having these products that I know
36:29
are amazing in people's homes.
36:31
That just makes me happy to know that these are things that not only are especially
36:36
made for them, because all the couches are.
36:38
Of course, you can buy the chairs and the benches and whatever that,
36:41
you know, just come as they are.
36:42
But you can get these pieces that hopefully will stay in your family for generations
36:47
that are exactly the fabric you want, that you can live on, you can have pets
36:52
on, and that can really become a part of your life.
36:55
That, for me, as a brand, is so great.
36:59
Wonderful. Yeah. And it's what kind of keeps me going.
37:02
They stick together? The modular part? Like, how does that work?
37:06
You can add pieces to, so let's say you have this couch.
37:10
Yeah. You could then add a piece that has chaise onto it. So it's kind of a
37:16
piece with the part that sticks out. Yeah.
37:18
Or you can add another piece in between here. So let's say this was cut here.
37:23
You can add another piece if you want to make it wider. Yeah.
37:27
So it's great. I have them now like everywhere. That's amazing.
37:30
My house, my sister has a chair and a couch in her house. My stepdad.
37:36
You get a couch. You get a couch.
37:38
Kyle, I made a couch for him. His is beautiful. This is really funny. I was at the OBGYN.
37:44
Not during my exam, but shortly thereafter, my OBGYN was like,
37:49
I love the couch that you did for your ex-husband from your line.
37:53
I was like, thank you. And he was like, I think I'm going to order that.
37:56
What do you recommend? I was dying.
37:59
This is how you know you've made it. Yeah.
38:03
So anyway, his is gorgeous. His is this really beautiful kind of nutmeg performance velvet.
38:09
I have a bright marigold performance velvet in my media room.
38:13
I wanted families to be able to, yes, it's an investment. It can grow with your family.
38:19
Then you're investing and something that lasts. Yeah, that's important.
38:21
We have some very fun expansions to the collection that are happening early this year.
38:27
I'm very excited by this kind of new area.
38:31
And shortly before this goes live, I'm going to announce a really fun new project that I'm doing.
38:37
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I've actually partnered with the Odell Group.
38:43
Chris Odell and his company.
38:46
The Odell Group renovated my house, the house that we renovated for two years.
38:49
Yeah. Got to know him really well.
38:52
Since then, we've kind of had this dream to do a project together.
38:58
So I'm creative directing a new construction build that's going to be on Compo Beach.
39:06
We're starting this spring. It's going to be for the next year.
39:09
It's going to be a complete wellness-focused smart home that we're building from the ground up.
39:17
I'm producing and shooting a web series around it called The Westport Project,
39:23
and that will be releasing in real time.
39:27
Oh, get out! People will have the chance to follow along with the world of the
39:32
build and get some insight into that process.
39:35
So that's really fun and exciting. And it's kind of building off of this momentum
39:41
that, you know, Happily Ever After has in the interior space.
39:45
And it's going to be really fun. Is it going to be under the Happily Ever After?
39:50
Yes. So I think for now, I kind of went down the road of figuring out if I want
39:54
to do this with a network.
39:56
But the lead time is too long. And I really wanted people to be able to see
40:00
it in real time or relative real time a few weeks later. Yeah.
40:05
So I'm going to release it on my YouTube.
40:07
It's going to be 10 to 12 minute episodes every couple of weeks.
40:11
I'm really excited. It's going to be really fun.
40:14
It's going to be something I've never done before.
40:16
It's going to be something the Odell group has never done before.
40:18
But I think that Westport is so wonderful and such an incredible place to live.
40:25
And I think it has more ways to live here than people realize.
40:29
Do you think you'll act again? You know, here's the thing with acting.
40:34
I had a handful of really incredible experiences.
40:38
And I think that's why it was so hard to walk away because I was a working actor,
40:46
like in any relationship or marriage.
40:49
If something's good, but you want better, it's really hard to walk away.
40:55
The thing ultimately with acting was I felt that I was always apologizing for
41:01
being a wife and mother and having those priorities.
41:05
For me, it was hard to be there for my family in the way that I wanted to be
41:09
and also be acting because it really is a very unglamorous job in reality.
41:14
You're shooting these long hours and you're often away from home.
41:17
I did a show in 2022, which I did like an arc on.
41:23
That was fun. Something's shot in New York, maybe.
41:26
Things will come to me that I'll audition for because they're great projects.
41:30
I think it would have to be the right thing. It would be fun at this point.
41:34
It would be so hard to clear my schedule and do it.
41:38
I would do it if it was the right thing. I think sometimes it's so fun,
41:41
especially if you're working with the right people.
41:43
It can be so creatively fulfilling, but it's just not something that I'm seeking out.
41:47
But I always say never say never, that kind of stuff. Definitely.
41:50
If the right thing came. But if it's a hell yes, then you would do it. Exactly.
41:54
Okay. So at the And I always ask three questions. What is something that you
41:58
have changed your mind about recently?
42:00
Something that I've changed my mind about recently. I would say that reality
42:05
TV is something, not watching it, I've always watched it, but being on it was
42:10
something that I didn't ever think I wanted to do.
42:15
And in the last couple of years, it's been something that I've been more and
42:21
more interested and passionate about doing because I think that the way that
42:26
I live, the way that I co-parent,
42:28
the way that I have my blended family, it's really important to put out there
42:34
in a way that is broader than what I could ever show on a blog.
42:39
So that's been something that I'm interested in recently.
42:44
I don't have anything official that I can share right now.
42:47
When you do, you just come back on the podcast and we'll talk about it. Exactly.
42:50
But that has definitely changed how I think about. Oh, fascinating.
42:56
And have you thought about like literally the dynamic of that?
43:00
Like do you have cameras everywhere? So I don't think this is a secret,
43:05
but I actually shot a pilot of a reality show.
43:09
Everybody basically knows, even though I haven't confirmed it,
43:12
but a little over a year ago. Okay.
43:16
I can't talk about what ended up happening with it. Okay.
43:21
But I was surprised by how non-invasive it was.
43:26
I also loved working with a really incredible production company that is top
43:33
of the people who do it, who they have such a shorthand, not only with each
43:36
other, but with the people they work with. It was a lovely experience.
43:40
Even my ex-husband, my kids, everybody involved involved.
43:45
We're also surprised by what a positive experience it was.
43:48
Not that they were expecting it to be bad, but I think we have in our minds
43:51
a certain... Yeah, like you're going to eat and there's a camera in your face
43:55
and you're like, can I just like take a bite of my food?
43:57
No, it was very freeing in a way.
44:01
And my husband is a complete introvert. We are basically as opposite in terms of that as you can be.
44:08
And even he felt super comfortable. So I don't know, actually doing it is not
44:13
kind of how I envisioned it. either.
44:15
Fascinating. Yeah. What is one random thing on your bucket list?
44:20
I have an obsession with the idea of going to Dollywood, the Dolly Parton theme park.
44:28
And this is definitely on my bucket list. So when people hear that,
44:32
they're like, I'm sorry, what?
44:33
I'm kind of obsessed with her. And I'm even more obsessed with the concept of
44:38
a theme park based just on her.
44:41
Yeah. So I definitely am trying to put together a girl's trip.
44:45
I was actually talking to my stepdad's girlfriend about putting together a girl's
44:49
trip to go to Dollywood. There's a hotel, too, right?
44:53
Well, I should hope so. The Dollywood hotel that you can stay at.
44:56
I have hyper fixation on that. And that's one of the things on my bucket.
45:01
I love that. Weirdly. That's such a good one.
45:03
What is one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?
45:09
So as i get older the thing
45:12
that i keep on thinking about a
45:15
lot is that you never want to
45:19
be making decisions out of a place of fear if you are making a decision out
45:24
of a place of fear it's a really bad sign for the outcome of that decision so
45:29
many things that i regret in life I did because I was scared.
45:37
To not do them or scared of the unknown, right? I made a decision that was safer.
45:42
That is something I think about often. It's something I talk to my kids about.
45:48
I wish I told myself, for example, when I had been acting since I was in high
45:52
school, by the time I was in college, and even though I finished college and
45:55
graduated, in the summers I would act.
45:57
When I was graduating, a lot of my friends were just, you know,
46:01
obviously starting out in the world, like internships and all these things.
46:06
And I remember at the time being like, should I be? It was kind of a crossroads.
46:11
Try something new and start off from zero.
46:14
Or I could go back to this thing that had been working for me,
46:17
but that I wasn't fully in love with.
46:20
And that I wasn't, I liked it, but it wasn't my calling.
46:24
I knew it wasn't my calling. I was so overwhelmed by the idea of starting over
46:31
and not knowing anything about these other career options that I was interested in.
46:37
I grew up in a family of artists. They didn't teach me about any other options.
46:42
And yeah, I really see that as this kind of turning point that took me 10 years to correct.
46:49
It wasn't until I had my daughter at 29 where I really thought to myself,
46:55
I cannot be telling this girl every day to do something where you feel fulfilled
47:02
and to chase your dreams. And I am not doing that for myself.
47:06
So I wish that I'd had that.
47:10
The wherewithal to say, even if it's scary, even if it's the unknown,
47:14
you cannot turn your back on things that you're interested in because of the fear.
47:20
Yeah. And that lesson repeated itself so many times in my life.
47:24
Over and over. As lessons will do until you kind of process them.
47:29
But that is what I would say. And I still think it holds true into adulthood as well.
47:34
Absolutely. But yeah, I think if I could have learned that lesson earlier,
47:39
my life would have been better sooner.
47:45
And so I think today it's what I tell people a lot.
47:50
I agree with you. It still happens. Yeah. Where you see those people who leaned
47:57
into the fear and you see where they are versus where you are.
48:00
I don't just mean career wise.
48:02
I mean, in their essence, where they are versus where you are,
48:06
if you've leaned away. Yeah.
48:09
They're so much more evolved. Yeah. Whatever it is, that is when you start to
48:14
recognize those things.
48:15
I'm grateful for the path that I went on because it really did literally bring
48:21
me here to this spot right now.
48:24
And of course, once you have kids, you really internalize that you're exactly
48:27
where you're meant to be. I think when we do have children, we have the opportunity
48:31
to pass on a lot of these lessons.
48:33
And that's why I think it is so important to be so honest with our kids,
48:36
not only about our successes, but also about our failure.
48:40
Oh, yeah. Because I think that's how they experience and really internalize things.
48:48
It's one thing to say, I think you should do this for this reason.
48:51
It's another thing to say, this is what I experienced when I did not do those things.
48:56
Well, it's a good way of explaining it to them, too. It's more about like,
48:59
this is what happened to me, not the other way around. That's awesome.
49:04
This has been so fun. Thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for having me.
49:12
Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop every Thursday.
49:17
Don't forget to subscribe and share. Stay cozy.