Matt Goodrich

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: I am here with Matthew Goodrich. Matt, thanks so much for being here today.

Matt Goodrich: Thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

SSR: Okay, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

MG: So I grew up in Philadelphia in a suburb, and kind of had a very typical kind of near a big city growing up. But I think one of the really interesting things about my very young life was when I was two, from two till when I was six, my family moved to Brussels and we lived in Belgium. And I went to two years of school in a French-speaking school, had no idea what was going on. But the best part of it is we traveled all around Europe on weekends in a light blue VW microbus, which sounds very hippie. We weren’t a very hippie family, but got to go kind of all over Europe. So I kind of feel like even though I was so young when that happened, some of that sort of went deep into my brain and deep into my soul, and is part of what seeded my love of art and design and architecture.

SSR: I love that. Why did you go to Brussels? Was it because of your dad’s job?

MG: Yeah, my dad was an attorney. And he worked for a firm that had an office there. So it was sort of a stint to go there for four years and a stint to come back. And I am still so in awe that my parents did that and they actually had my younger brother while we were living there. It was a pretty bold thing to do as young parents. I’m not sure I would’ve been as brave to do it myself.

SSR: Yeah. And what were you like as a kid? Were you curious? Was there any explanation that design would be your path forward?

MG: I was very artistic, read not athletic or sporty or a jock at all. I loved drawing and painting and making things. And I loved dressing up and theater and music and all that kind of stuff from a very, very young kid all the way through high school. And I was really lucky to go to a school that had lots of arts and arts programming and stuff. So I was really, if you’re sort of looking at it as being balanced, I was all the way over on one end of the spectrum. I was highly creative, and it was sort of no wonder that I was going to do something creative as my work but I didn’t necessarily know that it would be design. As a kid, I didn’t necessarily understand that was a field that I could go into.

SSR: Yeah. What did your mom do? Or was she an influence in any way on the side?

MG: Yeah, so my mom actually is one of my personal heroes. She worked for the Episcopal Church. We grew up as Episcopalians and she focused very much on stewardship of time. So a lot of churches are trying to raise money from people for things, and her kind of approach to it. And she ended up doing this on the whole diocesan level in Pennsylvania, was to get people to pledge their talent and their skills instead of just money. So she basically was a very, very large scale volunteer coordinator essentially. And it really taught me, I think the earliest lessons about collaboration, actually. This sense that if you have a project, you can throw money at it, but you can also bring together a lot of people’s different experience and make something happen with talent and sort of elbow grease. So it made a big impression on me, I think, especially now that we work in such a collaborative way.

SSR: Yeah, love that. Okay, so you were creative as a kid. So you moved back from Brussels and you spent most of the rest of your time outside of Philadelphia.

MG: Correct, correct. Like a very suburban childhood, although an unprotected suburban childhood in the sense that we used to open the back door and be able to go wander around the neighborhood and that kind of stuff. So it was sort of a pretty imagination-filled growing up, which then extended I think into all that creative pursuits of drawing and painting and making things as well, so a lot of imaginative play.

SSR: So what did you decide for college? Did you know what you wanted to be?

MG: It was tricky because I wanted to study art, but I was pretty scared about making that big a bet on myself as a creative person. So I ended up going to Skidmore College, which is a great liberal arts school, it has an amazing studio art program. And it was sort of this perfect way of being able to really put all my eggs into the creative basket, but also have sort of a fallback. So I studied art history and studio art and ended up having an art history degree, which definitely gave me something “to fall back on.” But also, really gave me a way to focus on what became my biggest interest in design, which is sort of research and precedent and history and learning about architecture and decorative arts history as well as fine art history. So it ended up being kind of a great foundation for all the work that I’ve done ever since.

SSR: Oh. And your first job out of school or jobs out of school, it was actually in galleries and museums, right?

MG: Right. My first job I worked at MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art. And then I worked in a gallery called Max Protetch, which was really interesting because they represented fine artists as well as sold architectural drawings and architectural artifacts. So there was this study room of drawings directly across from my desk, and on breaks I could go open these flat file drawers and look at Mies van der Rohe drawings, Aldo Rossi drawings, Frank Lloyd Wright drawings. And so, that was my first really direct physical connection to the process of architecture.

And then, after that gallery, I worked for almost five years directly for artists in their studios, so stretching canvases, painting underpaintings, building armatures, a lot of kind of grunt work. And that got me very excited about the process of putting exhibitions together. So I went back to grad school, I went to Pratt and studied interior design, but the focus was on museum exhibition design. And my thought was, “I’m going to make museum exhibits and kind of design them and build them.” And obviously, there’s a lot of other steps in the way, but it’s definitely kind of informed the way that I think about putting spaces together with that education, really focusing on objects and on context.

SSR: hat must’ve been so cool, in your twenties working with these amazing artists.

MG: Oh, it was awesome. I think it taught me a lot about working in a creative space and sort of holding your own and contributing a lot without taking over. The artists that I worked for were very established, obviously established enough to be able to pay for assistance to come and help them do their work.

And they had a big vision and they had an idea of what they were doing, but they still hit roadblocks along the way or they’d come to a point where they would sort of have to question what they were doing. And so, you had to learn to sort of be there and be helpful and be pushing things forward. But also, when you get to one of those moments, one of those forks in the road, to kind of step back a little or maybe not push an idea to help ideate and then see, “Do we want to go in this direction or this direction or that direction?” So it taught me to be kind of a gentle collaborator, knowing when is it helpful to say something and when is it actually just clogging the channel to be kind of raising your hand and saying, “What if we did this?”

SSR: Yeah, totally. Did you ever want to think, or did you ever think that you would be an artist yourself?

MG: That was definitely my vision at the time, and I thought, oh, I had studied drawing and painting. I had this art history major as my fallback, but my dream was that I was going to be a painter. And it was actually the experience of working with such established artists who were doing such good work that kind of taught me, “Okay, first of all, where does my talent lie in the grand spectrum here?”

SSR: Like a come to Jesus. You’re like, “Okay.”

MG: Right. “Am I really going to be at the level of these amazing artists?” But also, even just working in the process, that was the first experience I had with my hands of working where it was like, “Oh, there is someone that’s setting the vision, but there are all these other people that are doing parts of it.”

And I realized that what I loved about the exhibition design or going on site with the artists and installing stuff was that it was so collaborative and a lot of different people. I was not actually as excited by going and sitting at a drawing table and working through ideas as I was at getting everybody together and saying, “Okay, here’s how we’re going to make this all happen.” So it was partly the come to Jesus of, “I’m not the next Jasper Johns,” but also really realizing, “Actually, I don’t really want to be alone in a studio for 20, 30 years until I can hire an assistant. I want to actually be in dialogue with other people making things.”

SSR: Yeah, got it. So how did you transition from this work into hospitality in a more interior design-focused career?

MG: Yeah. So I studied, as I said, museum exhibition design was my focus at Pratt under the umbrella of the interior design department. So we learned how to write scripts for exhibitions, how to plan things out. When I graduated, it was right after September 11th, like the OG September 11th. And there were just no jobs in museums. There were no jobs. There was no way I was going to become an exhibition designer that year. So I started working in branding actually, and doing showrooms and retail spaces, B2B for Knoll and ICF Group and other furniture manufacturers. And that kind of strengthened my multidisciplinary approach a little bit to design. So I was working, I was the only interior designer in an office doing more digital graphics and web-based stuff.

And then, a friend said, “You should really check out Rockwell Group.” And I applied for a job at Rockwell, and they hired me because I had this interest in museums and this experience. And then, I think this is a classic Rockwell experience. A lot of people will resonate. When I got there, they were like, “Oh, wait. You know a lot about this? We’re not going to have you work on the museum. We’re going to have you work on this other thing that you kind of don’t know anything about.” And it was such a great lesson because I was there for seven and a half years. My experience of it anyway, I’m sure everyone has different experiences, but was this constant shifting of new different project types. As soon as you get good at one thing, they’re like, “Okay, now do this thing you don’t know anything about.”

And it really taught me, obviously I got to work on hospitality projects, which was great, and it taught me a lot about it. But I also would just, every couple projects, they’d be like, “Do this thing you don’t know anything about.” And I did a cruise ship, I did the sets for the Academy Awards. I worked on a Broadway stage set design. I worked on a dialysis unit. I worked on education projects. And so, it kind of taught me design really is kind of universal at its base. And especially what David taught all of us is you have to think about the person that’s using the space. And if you’re always thinking about that and designing from the eyes or the body of the person using the space, you’re going to make something interesting and good. And you can learn the technical things. You need great technical support, great consultants around you. It’s not that those things aren’t important, it’s just more that innocent eye, that fresh take on something often is going to create a really interesting result.

SSR: Yeah. I love that. And was there one project there that you think really kind of cemented your love for hospitality or what you wanted to do?

MG: Yeah. I think it’s kind of funny, because for a long time, I was kind of shy about this, but one of the biggest just being dropped in the deep end moments was my principal that I worked under, Carmen Aguilar, put me in charge of this huge project for Disney Cruise Lines. And we did two new ships for Disney at the time. They only had two. And so, here I am, single person, no kids, not a lifelong Disney fan. I’d seen things, but it wasn’t like I was diehard, knew a lot about Disney. Never been on a cruise, didn’t know really anything about naval architecture or anything, and had never really managed a major, major project even at Rockwell. So I was so out of my comfort zone, so out over the edge, and most of the time I was uncomfortable in that project in the many years it took to complete it.

But one of the things I love so much is we worked on this water slide, which at the time and maybe still was the longest water slide at sea. And we built it in our model shop, and we had this idea of doing it in a clear tube so you could see all around. It went out over the edge of the deck. And many, many years later, when my mom turned 70, our whole family went on a Disney cruise together. And my niece and nephews were with all of us. We were riding down that slide. And I really experienced it from the guest perspective, not thinking about it with a punch list in hand or anything. And I think that was maybe the first time I saw that you work with these great clients with big vision who are pushing the edge of design, and you can create things that people will remember forever. So it’s just sort of showing how a hospitality experience could be really transportational.

SSR: Yeah. Do you keep some of those lessons learned now in your own firm about mixing people up, not letting them stay in their comfort zone, trying new things?

MG: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I hope that I’m creating a little more stability than in any other place that I’ve worked. Because as much as I’ve learned so much, I’ve also definitely got a lot of scar tissue and went through a lot, where it was like, “Oh, I wish someone would show me a little bit more best practices or give me the roadmap a little more.” So I’m trying to create a little bit more of a, I don’t know what I would say, a foundation for people to feel really comfortable. But certainly, it’s really our goal that every year or every other year, we’re kind of taking on a project that we have in a way no business doing because we really don’t know.

So a couple years ago we did the UBS Arena, which is the Islanders home stadium out at Belmont Park on Long Island. And at the time, only Chris Rizzo, our Creative Director of Branding, was a hockey fan or knew anything about hockey. And there weren’t really many more of us that knew that much about live music or live entertainment. And so, everybody just kind of jumped from the dock into the water to figure out, “Okay, what do we need to know?” And our entire studio worked on that project because it was so big.

So I love those moments where we can all see that we’re all learning, we all have things to teach each other. And it just builds so much confidence, not only between our team members, but also just in ourselves as a group, like “What are we going to do next?” So I’m always looking for that. Right now we’re working on a big project with Live Nation that’s building on that live entertainment. But we’re in an area that we’d never been in before and sort of always looking for, “What is the thing that will teach us?” So I think that all comes from that experience.

SSR: And I think it’s interesting too, how entertainment venues and sports venues have changed. Right? And it’s more about the hospitality and the service and the food and the beverage.

MG: Yeah, exactly. I think that that was sort of one of the most important parts of our brief on that project, was our client said, “Why is it that when you go to an arena or an airport or two extreme examples, you’re accepting a lower level of hospitality experience than what you would accept if you went to a freestanding restaurant or you checked into a hotel?” And the goal of that whole project was not only bringing up the level of design, but the level of service and the experience and the amenities and the supports to make it on par with what we would accept in our daily lives.

And we’ve even been working this last year on a big financial services firm’s office and doing a big cafe and lobby and different public spaces there and hospitality spaces there. And it’s the same thing. It’s like, “This isn’t a corporate cafeteria, this is a restaurant. It just happens to be operated inside one company.” And so, I think that you’re right. As hospitality designers right now, our expertise and our understanding of how to make people have great experiences, how to bring people together, how to make people mingle and connect with each other, have satisfaction is really valuable, even outside of the typical boundaries of what would be a hospitality project.

SSR: Right. A hundred percent. Okay. So after Rockwell, you went on to AvroKO. So what made you decide to go to AvroKO? And what was your experience like there where you were a creative director?

MG: Yeah. So I had always admired AvroKO, and I confessed in my first interview there that I had probably copied more of their images and put them on mood boards and projects that I had done than anyone else had. But I think what was interesting at the time at Rockwell Group was I felt like I sort of hit a ceiling, that there was a leadership team there that had been there for a long time, didn’t look like there was a way for me to move upward.

And so, it was a little bit like, “Okay, how do I keep growing? How am I going to learn more things?” And a friend of mine knew the partners at AvroKO and knew that they were looking for somebody to come in. And I came in as a Design Director and eventually was Chief Creative Officer. And I was thrilled.

And I think the biggest change or the biggest shift, two big ones, the first was at Rockwell, the focus was no matter what, your project had to be sort of new, different, dazzling, exciting, and eye-catching. So we were always kind of looking for what’s next or what’s different or what’s going to make an impression. When I got to AvroKO, they were like, “Okay, slow your roll.” Because AvroKO had a very clear sort of set of design principles. So instead of being broad, it was kind of like, “Here is a vision of what feels good, what is sophisticated, what is elevated.” They were very focused on research, very rooted in context, peeling back layers of the places that we were working.

And so it was a huge shift, almost like moving into a fashion house as a new creative director and saying, “Okay, you’re head of Chanel or your head of Dior. What is the history? What is the lineage? What is the point of view?” And that was the first time I had really experienced that as a designer. So it was interesting to have to kind of learn that and learn to work within a very sophisticated but fairly narrow range, but also be teaching that to my colleagues at the same time who I was working with.

And then, the other really big shift for me was moving away from having a pencil or a mouse in my hand, moving to a place where I was overseeing what other people were doing.

And my first experience of that was like, “Why does everybody always come to me with problems? Why has no one come to me with something great?” And it was like, “Oh, because my job is when my colleagues get stuck and when they need to figure out how to resolve something, they’re going to come to me and find me. And I’m going to be a sounding board, a collaborator, an editor.” So it took a long time to learn that I couldn’t just pick up the pen and start drawing. I had to find ways to say, “Explore this avenue. Look at this. Here’s a different reference. Here’s where you’re going wrong” without giving the answer. It was inspiring people to figure out a new, fresh way for them to kind of work through their problems. And so, that took a long time to get comfortable with it.

SSR: Yeah, I’m sure. Was there a project there that you think really helped define your experience or one that you learned the most from? I know you learn something on every single one.

MG: . But I think actually, honestly, the first day that I started, I was in a meeting, the first meeting for Arlo Hotels, the time we did two, the first two, Soho and Nomad. And that was the first meeting. Jason Pomerance was on that project, and I met him on day one. And we worked on this, and the projects were finished very close to the time I was leaving, so it almost just ran directly through the five years of my time at AvroKO. And we were very new in hotels at the time. Obviously, the firm has done so many great projects since. And it was also a very new typology, a micro hotel with a very, they sort of described it as the first kind of five-star micro hotel.

And so, we were working in new territory for anyone as well as for the firm. And I was able to draw on a lot of my own personal longtime inspirations, Black Mountain College, the Albers, different things that were very close to me, and infuse those into the project. So not only did I learn so much about this new hotel typology, but I also got a chance to kind of put maybe my own design voice into a project for the first time, I would say at that level. And so, it to me is probably the most significant project personally that I did while I was there. We were involved in so many gorgeous restaurants and other hotel projects while I was there, but that one I think has the most meaning for me.

SSR: Yeah, two things, one, do you remember that we did a Facebook Live of it?

MG: Yes, I do remember that. That was like OG broadcasting, right?

SSR: OG, right. Remember it cut out in the elevator?

MG: Yes. Yes. Amazing, amazing.

SSR: Sorry. The whole memory just came back, and I remember what I was wearing too. Still love that outfit, which maybe I should retire. And then, two, that also was interesting because that was the beginning of the micro room craze. So it was one of the first brands, besides Citizen M and some of the others, but to really have smaller rooms.

MG: And I remember while it was in gestation, I was on probably at least one or two panels that you or HD sponsored or in other things. And I would talk about this idea and that the room is 200 square feet or 180 square feet or whatever, and people were like, “Oh, it’ll never work.” And I remember on those panels with a lump in my throat, like, “Ooh, what if it doesn’t work?” So it was kind of on the edge, at least at the times. As you said, it was sort of unproven, so it was a huge relief when it did work.

SSR: Yeah, exactly. I just remember walking in the room and both of us couldn’t really fit live. The camera was getting angry at us and put it aside. What we did for coverage back then. Okay, so you were there. How long were you there?

MG: So I was there for five years.

SSR: Okay. And then, what made you decide to take a chance on yourself and go out on your own?

MG: That was a huge leap for me because I had never envisioned starting my own firm. I thought of myself as a really good employee. I always felt very comfortable with a message, a brand, a narrative, a point of view. And I was good at selling that, supporting it, refining it.

But I think what ended up happening for me is I realized that there was a kind of design culture that I still hoped to cultivate. There was a kind of relationship that I wanted to have to the projects that I couldn’t have overseeing so many projects at once. So I loved being this kind of creative director role, but there were, let’s say I was looking at 50 projects at one time. There was no way to be intimately involved in the steps along the way. And as I said, I ended up being focused on when things got stuck, getting them unstuck or going and sort of refining and polishing.

So it wasn’t that I was like, “Oh, I’m finally in a place where I can have my own studio.” It was more once again, sort of looking at, “Okay, how do I keep learning? And also honestly, how do I stop flying so much?” Because I was just crisscrossing the globe, which was an amazing experience to work on all these projects and be all these places. So I thought, and I’m kind of round numbers here, but let’s say, “I’m looking at 50 projects at a time. What if I just looked at five projects at a time? And if I started my own studio, I could spend 10 times as much energy on each of those projects and get much more satisfaction from each of the individual projects and not put so many miles on the car.”

And so, that was kind of the vision. And so, I made the leap, and then pretty immediately realized like, “Oh, boy.” There is so much else to it, that the creative services part, which is what I at that point had been doing with support by so many amazing colleagues that ever go from marketing, PR, new business, operations. There’s just so many colleagues there making all these things happen. And all of a sudden, here I was with, okay, not even five projects, one. But kind of like, “Whoa. Oh. Oh.”

And what I do always say to people, my own colleagues as well in our studio, is, “If you have this sense that you might do this eventually, that you might have your own firm, pay attention to all the things. And even if you don’t have this sense, try to pay attention to all the things. Be a student of how the business works, every side of it.” Because it took… The biggest lift in starting my own studio was to learn a lot of the operational business development, sort of running the business side of things, that I just had not had very much exposure to.

SSR: Yeah. And I think you’ve been good in that you’ve also leaned into other people in the industry for advice and helped yourself learn it along the way.

MG: So one of the things that I would say to anyone who is thinking about going out is, “We are here for you.” This is true. I was stunned by how many people would offer advice. And they would even call me sometimes and say, “Hey, we have a project. It’s too small. We’re not going to do it. Would you be interested?” Or, “Hey, make sure you avoid this trap.” And people at conferences, being at HD Expo or any of those things like that, that information is really shared. But also, yeah, Dave Trax has given me so much advice along the way that it’s been so helpful. For example, Patrick Thompson in Detroit from minute one has been giving me great, great advice.

And so, what’s really helpful, I think, I really firmly believe that there is enough work for all of us. There are enough opportunities for all of us. Certainly, there are projects that we don’t win that another firm wins that I’m disappointed because I really wanted to work on that or work with that chef or that client. But I don’t begrudge anyone else. And I’m always quite happy to help other people find their way through early stages or whatever growth stages of their business, because I’ve just experienced so much support and help from other people. And I think we tend to sort of suffer a lot on our own. If you don’t have that open, generous heart and share and offer, then things don’t come to you. And that’s just a huge piece of advice I would say to anybody is, “First of all, we are here to help you. But also, the more you share and support other people, the more they will share and support you.”

SSR: Is there anything looking back that you would do differently?

MG: The best piece of advice that I was given, it was by one of our early clients, is , “Be very careful who you let in the door.” And that’s both for team members who you hire and also clients who you hire. I think if I could have earlier said, “No.” It’s not about specific people like, “Oh, I let that person in the door.” It’s a little bit more about the power of no, in terms of saying, “This project isn’t right for us. We’re not really aligned.” So there’s a couple I go back and say, “Okay, that was a lot of pain for our team that we didn’t necessarily have to go through.”

But I do say you have to go through each of these things to grow. And the biggest thing I think I didn’t, as I said before, I think I was pretty… Huge pause. I was pretty unaware of how much I didn’t know on the business side. And so, I think for the first several years of the firm, I so heavily prioritized the creative side that there are certain things that just took a long time to catch up. So I would say if I could do it again, I would’ve hired some of the amazing people that we have now. We have Eileen Vitelli is our Director of Operations. Toni Beaubien is our Director of Finance. I have Jenna Markowitz who used to be with JBI, who’s our Office Manager now. We’ve really built a very robust system that is the chassis on which all this work happens.

But also that’s great advice on process, on what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. And I think instead of thinking that everything is coming from creative process, understanding how much the underpinning of really good operational foundation will affect those employees as they’re making creative work, the design process.

SSR: Yeah, a hundred percent. And what were those early days like? Did you have a project? Did you leap with nothing? And then, how did you start to make sure you let the right people into the building?

MG: Yeah. So had an idea or I had an idea of one project which did come to fruition, which was Life Alive, which is an organic counter service restaurant that’s in Boston. And we did the first location, the first new location. Our client had bought the business and was kind of retooling it to scale it. I started that project on my dining room table, and then as we added more colleagues, we were able to kind of build that up. And we also worked on an amazing, very beautiful project that was a West Elm hotel.

SSR: Oh, right. In Detroit, right?

MG: And obviously, the West Elm hotels didn’t go forward. It was actually, ours was in Oakland.

SSR: That’s right.

MG: But yeah, there were so many great ones and we got to see the model rooms of them and so many beautiful designs. That was our first huge project. And that allowed us to scale pretty quickly and we hired a handful of people. And so, then I have Rosie Rainbow, who’s our Creative Director now, who was there from the very beginning. It allowed us to hire Laura Partica, who was with us for six years, and kind of build our team, figure out how to do a million things that we didn’t know how to do as a team. But that helped us also grow pretty quickly from just a handful of people to kind of zoom up to about 10 or 12 people fairly fast. And so, I think I miss in a way those days because it was like, you have no idea where you’re going. I’m so relieved that we have such a clear, more defined process and that we have so much that we can rely on now that all those people and others have built within our team.

SSR: Yeah. And talk a bit about that process, because I know you have a very unique perspective in how you approach projects. And that’s what I think helps set you apart from others.

MG: Yeah, yeah. So we have a process, the result of which we call the design foundation. And essentially, it’s kind of building on, elaborating on something that we did at AvroKO. And that’s certainly where the genesis of it was. And I believe we kind of evolved it a bit in terms of how we work.

There’s four different points of inspiration that we look for every project. One is always a historical reference. That could be the site or the location. One is always aspirational, which is sort of at our highest and best, what are we trying to create here? And that could be a moonshot, something that would never really happen, but it’s like we’re going to try.

And there’s always a muse. And so, in these sort of four categories, we’re for each project looking for, “Okay, what is going to be our historical pillar of this foundation?” for example. What’s nice about that is anyone on the team can contribute to the process of research, and anyone on the team’s ideas and inspiration can shape the final project in a really fundamental way. So it lets us have very flat hierarchy. It lets us have a very decentralized point of generation of ideas. This is not a top-down design firm. This is not coming from my head. This is coming from all of us. And at any given moment, some of us have more experience or some of us understand more technical things. But the creative part of creating a design foundation is really about, “What will make this project really special?”

And my goal is, or our goal as a firm, is that after 10 years of doing this, we’re seven and a half years in, you might look back at our work and not even understand that the same firm had done both this project and that project, and that the pursuit of that goal really requires every time opening up to the possibilities of what the design could be, what the inspiration could be.

SSR: I love that. And have you been able to create that firm that you wanted to create? I know it’s seven and a half years in. But have you been able to add that layer that you wanted or that you were looking for?

MG:Yeah, I really think so. One of my big hopes in setting up the culture that I wanted to create is to create a really solid kind of safe context in which to create ideas, to elaborate on ideas. And we deal with, I sort of said this the other day to someone, and they were a little horrified that I spelled it out in black and white, but we’re kind of in the rejection business. We’re trying to create art, but we deal with a lot of specific parameters, technical things. We have clients who don’t always understand the level of art that we’re trying to work at. And so, a great day is you show three schemes and one gets approved, and two get thrown in the trash. So that’s a lot of rejection to put up with.

And so, I think the best thing that I could do, and what I hope I’ve achieved in the studio, and it’s with the help of all of my colleagues, is to create this space where we show up every day and say, “Let’s try. Let’s explore this idea. Let’s nurture this thing. This thing got stomped on in a meeting because we hadn’t fully expressed it yet. How do we build it up and show?” So I think the biggest part about what I’m thrilled about is to have created this very supportive, mutually supportive environment where we’re cultivating really beautiful, interesting things.

SSR: Yeah. And how many people now on your team?

MG: I think we’re at 16 now. So we’ve expanded. So we have interiors because we do a lot of branding. We’re doing brand strategy for a lot of big hotel brands and restaurant groups. We’re doing product design, furniture design. Hines Fischer is leading that for us. Chris Rizzo is our Creative Director of Branding and doing a lot of work on the brand side. And we recently hired Asli Uluaydin to be Design Director. She joined us from AvroKO. So we’re able to kind of work broadly right now in a lot of different sectors, and we’re seeing the ways that those things inform each other and kind of help make us very multifaceted in the way we look at our projects.

SSR: Yeah. All right. So I’m going to read you something, which I didn’t prep you with this, so sorry. But we gave Rosie Rainbow, your Creative Director, as you mentioned, our Wave of the Future award, which we gave you 10 or so years ago. And she wrote, or we asked her, “Do you have a mentor in the industry?” And she said, “I met Matthew Goodrich during our time at AvroKO. From day one, he had taken me under his wing. When he left to start his own firm, I realized every designer at the studio felt the same way. That’s his superpower. When Matt asked me to join him, we were a team of three sharing one desk, but we were ready to take on the world. He’s a fearless leader and a genuine friend, and I aim to bring that kind of generosity of knowledge and mentorship to my team.” So, how do you feel about that?

MG: I’m obviously very emotional about that. That’s incredible.

SSR: Yeah. Yeah. But I do think that sums you up in terms of what you’ve created for this industry and for your team. So congrats, I guess. But it must be nice to hear that from somebody on your team.

MG: It feels amazing. We’re very much a “we” studio, even from when it was just sort of literally me saying, “I’m going to do the studio.” I always said we, and I do see the success that we have had as a result of what all of us have done together. But it is very much my hope and my vision to be a mentor to anyone who is working with us in the studio. We feel so lucky that we have them with us for the time we have them. And some people now have been here from almost day one, and some people have been here for several years and then move on. It’s sort of like, if you are going to come every day and bring everything you have, then my personal feeling is it’s my job to be a steward of your career, to help you as you go and to help you grow. So it’s tremendously, I don’t know the word to say, it’s gratifying, I guess is the word I would say, to hear that people feel that, and that has been a catalyst for them in their lives, particularly for them to pass it on.

SSR: Yeah. So is there one project that you think put you guys on the map or made you realize, “Hey, this is a good idea. We’re going to fast-forward.”

MG: “I think we’re going to make it.”

SSR: “I think We’re going to make it.”

MG: I think from all factors I would say is Ci Siamo, which is the restaurant we did for Danny Meyer and Union Square Hospitality Group. I think in many ways that’s a high watermark for us in terms of design. And something that’s so special about it is the team on the USHG side that still operates that restaurant at such an insanely high level every day in its third year and it’s been super successful. Hilary Sterling, the chef, Megan Sullivan, who was the opening GM, Danny’s team is extraordinary. And so, I think many designers… to the world, and for a million reasons, business reasons, whatever, it may just sort of hit a wall and not flourish. So it’s a very scary thing when you work so hard on something for years to hand it over, hand the keys over.

SSR: You work so hard on a project and then when you hand the keys over, you’re worried that it’s not going to happen. Yeah.

MG: Yeah. So I think every designer has had the experience of developing design, and once you hand the keys over, you don’t really know what’s going to happen. You lose your control. So we’re control freaks in the design process. You hand it to someone, and because hospitality spaces are operated by many people and enjoyed by many people, they’re their own ecosystem. And what’s been amazing about that project is just to see how much it’s grown and how amazing the experience is to go there and have a meal. And thousands and thousands of people have that experience every week. And it’s very, very gratifying to see that what we set in motion in our collaboration has just been such a great experience for so many people.

SSR: And working with Danny Meyer, that must’ve been a highlight.

MG: Extraordinary. Yeah, we could do a whole podcast just on the lessons that our team learned from Danny. He’s always been a hero. He’s the greatest, a goat. And to have the experience of being able to work with him and to learn so much from him is just, it’s life changing. It’s changed the trajectory of our firm, it’s changed me as a designer. It’s even changed me as a person. So there’s almost not enough superlatives to describe that. Right now we’re working on several projects with him and his team, and that continues to just be such a rewarding collaboration.

SSR: So what’s one nugget, one thing you can share, a quick bit that help that you learned from him?

MG: Just really nuts and bolts is really understanding all these very, very small relationships of people that create connection. And we’ve really learned on that. It’s like, “How close are these tables? How deep is the banquette?” these things that he studied over restaurant after restaurant. And I think sometimes when you’re doing a lot of design work, you lose a little sight of how important these tiny, tiny details are. So I think he just brought us right back down to that guest, like I was saying earlier, that everything has to be designed from the eyes and the body of the guest.

SSR: Amazing. All right. Okay. So we’re coming up on time, but so we’re going to do quick questions. You ready? The short answers. Okay. What is the major challenge of running your own business and the biggest opportunity do you think?

MG: I think the biggest challenge is that you sort of never get a day off. The big questions, the big challenges, the problems come at you and you just have to head directly into them. And I’ve learned that the longer I delay taking on a big thing, the worse it’s going to get. So the no day off thing is hard. The best part is that you’re always pointing your time. There’s a lot of detours, there’s a lot of stuff you got to do. But at least you’re always moving in that direction. And that’s a privilege you have as an owner of a business.

SSR: Amazing. Okay, next question. What is your favorite part of the process and why?

MG: I love the beginning. I love being, we don’t know where in the universe this goes and figuring out what galaxy and then what solar system and then sort of near what planet it needs to be. That early definition is my absolute favorite, a lot of listening, a lot of ideation, a lot of big, big thinking. And I love that before you get to any of the constraints.

SSR: Got it. Okay. Tell us one thing that people might not know about you.

MG: I watch so much YouTube every single day.

SSR: What do you watch on YouTube?

MG: It’s Sunday morning. It’s so weird. But Tom and I get up in the morning and we have coffee, and Tom will say to me, “What do you want to learn?” And so, for the first hour of the day, we’ll watch a bunch of videos. We’ll watch fashion shows, we’ll watch stories about artists. We’ll watch things about historic buildings. And so, half the time it’s things he wants to look at, half the time it’s things I want to do, then there’s whatever YouTube suggests. So I’m sort of a big consumer of YouTube.

SSR: Oh my God, you and my children, you can hang out. Okay. What keeps you passionate about this industry?

MG: It’s the people. That’s sort of a cliche, but it really is. I think what’s so interesting about hospitality is that no matter where you sit on what side, what facet of the table you sit at as operator, as owner, people really have a shared vision of making a good experience for people. And in my experience, that means they treat each other well. And so, I think it’s just the context that we work in, the respect that we have for each other, and also just the fun we have together. That makes it really special.

SSR: Is there one travel or hospitality experience that you’ve had in your life that has stuck with you?

MG: This is so weird and niche, but there was a host at Hotel Griffou, which is a long-closed restaurant on 8th Street in Manhattan who just so embodied what I love about hospitality. She was absolutely gorgeous, so warm. And everybody that came in, she managed to greet them. I felt like she knew me and we were friends. And it was such a relief. People have anxiety about getting through a velvet rope or, “Do I fit in here?” And I loved her sensibility, that she could just immediately through no words, just through energy, make you feel like you were the coolest person in the room and you were so welcome. And I try to think about that when we’re walking through a guest experience and say, “How do we give someone that feeling when they cross a threshold they feel like they belong, they feel like they should be there?”

SSR: Love that. Okay, last question. We always end the podcast on the question that is the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

MG: I think that the thing I said a little earlier about who you let in the door has been the single most useful lesson that I’ve learned. And it’s not so funny that I’m saying that on the back of talking about a host who is very welcoming. It’s just a whole other thing, which is to say, even when you approach the world with this sense of generosity and that there’s enough for everybody, a sense of abundance, you have to be very clear about what your vision is. And that’s true in building the business or whatever you’re trying to create. And it’s true in building a design. The power of narrowing and making clear and clarifying a vision does start with no. And so, I think for somebody who’s always been a yes person and an accommodating person, that was the hardest lesson to learn, that saying no is actually super positive. It’s positive as a business owner, it’s positive in a collaboration. It’s positive in defining something very clearly. And so, I think that’s been the hardest lesson to learn. Catch me on another day and I’m not sure I have learned it, but I would say it’s one of the most useful things I could impart to anybody else.

SSR: Yes. And I think there is a… I was on a podcast the other day too, and I said, “There is the power of no.” Right? There’s the power of yes, but then power of no is harder. And I think you learn that later in life, right?

MG: Absolutely.

SSR: When you’re younger in your 20s, 30s, you should say yes to everything. And then, as you try to figure out what’s next in life and focus, there is great power in the word no.

MG: That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right.

SSR: It’s hard. It’s editing. You have to curate and edit.

MG: Yes, yes, yes. That is so true, Stacey, so true.

SSR: Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, and congrats again on getting Designer of the Year from us at BD. And we are so excited to honor you and so excited to expand that coverage to this chat today.

MG: Fantastic. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to sit and talk with you today. But also, I really want to thank you so much for all the support you personally have given to me and our studio over the years, but also Emerald, hotel design, boutique design have given to us throughout the seven and a half years of us as a firm and well before. It is such a huge gust of wind in the sails that help us keep pointing to where we’re going and moving to where we’re going. And I am deeply, deeply grateful for it.

SSR: Well, it’s well deserved, but thank you. Well, loved seeing you. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.