Andrea Schumacher can see the future. “I manifest stuff,” says the designer, who has offices for her eponymous firm—Andrea Schumacher Interiors—in Denver, and a new outpost in Santa Barbara, California. Among her recent visions, which she has made true? Hiring a new COO with serious chops in the commercial space: Matt Bosquez. “We're growing and expanding, and he comes from a sector of the interior design world that I don't have or know how to maneuver, which is the hospitality space,” Andrea says. “I love doing residential too, and that part of our business is not changing. We're a hundred percent committed to that also, but we're just adding to it by bringing him on.”
Matt is COO of ASI Residential, and he and Schumacher created a separate LLC together for their new global hospitality business, ASI Studios, of which he is part owner. “He will be in charge [of that] and he is bringing those clients to the table,” she says. “He just got us another project, so we’re full steam ahead.” When she listed the COO position, Schumacher received more than 500 resumes. She spent nine months discussing the opportunity with Matt, who was the perfect fit. “He's been doing this for 20 plus years [and] he's managed 3 billion worth of portfolio assets for his previous company,” she says. “I'm always trying to put people in front of me in my orbit that are smarter than me and that have skill sets I don't have.”
For designers who want to focus on creativity, hiring a COO can be a prescient move. As managing partner at Benjamin Johnston Design, Erich Ploog works as the de facto COO. “My job is really to keep all of our creative folks on track, and my ultimate role goal is to free up as much of Ben's time as possible to service clients and to be creative,” says Eric, who spent the first part of his career in management consulting for Fortune 100 companies. “So all the headaches of managing a business, all the financials, all the payroll, HR, anything related to that stuff he no longer has to worry about. And he just knows that that's all being handled and he can focus on what he's great at.” Benjamin Johnston Design has more than 20 full time employees, and is typically juggling 50-60 projects at the same time. “We also outsourced our accounting and procurement to a company called DesignerAdvantage, which is based out of Boston,” Eric notes. “For us, it was a way to provide a more professional service without having to take on more staff to handle those functions.” Says Andrea, who says that now her role is brand ambassador and business development: “it’s smart to try to remove yourself a little bit from the day to day and let people that are smarter than you drive the ship.”
Hew only regret? Not hiring the position sooner: “I think you could probably even onboard a COO when you have six to eight people running the company so that you're not spinning your wheels with contracts and running the bookkeepers and all that stuff. I don't want to do any of that. I want to keep getting the best clients we can get in the door so we have more and more exciting projects.”
This story is from Issue 6 of The Quarterly. Click here to see the full issue.
