0:00:00 - (Linda Habak): Welcome to another episode of Build Beautiful. Today we step into a life carved with timber and tenacity. A story that begins on the factory floor and unfolds into one of Australia's most quietly powerful interior design studios. My guest, Darren Jenner, co founder of Studio Minosa. A designer whose journey isn't just about form and finish, but about falling in love with the process again and again.

0:00:25 - (Linda Habak): This is a conversation about what it means to build a creative life from the ground up.

0:00:30 - (Darren Genner): From.

0:00:30 - (Linda Habak): From the sawdust days of his early apprenticeship to the intuitive precision of his award winning practice. Darren's story is one of resilience, of grit and of great love, both for his partner Simona and for the life they've built together through design. We talk about the beauty of problem solving, the philosophy behind Design Life Better, and why the best work comes from paying attention not just to what's in front of you, but to who you're becoming along the way. Because. Because sometimes the road is long, but when you build with care, it becomes beautiful.

0:01:04 - (Linda Habak): Darren, welcome.

0:01:05 - (Darren Genner): Beautiful. Well said.

0:01:09 - (Linda Habak): We were in similar circles. We were kind of around, you know, on forums that we'd comment on on LinkedIn and then we saw each other at an event last year and I said to you before, I didn't remember the exact detail of the conversation, thank you, menopause, but I remember how I felt and I remember thinking, he's a guy who's been around for a really long time, who knows his shit and almost a bit anti establishment, I want to say. But just it was a really interesting conversation and I know I kind of walked away thinking, I would love to get to know the story more.

0:01:44 - (Linda Habak): So I'm really excited.

0:01:45 - (Darren Genner): I think it might have been a bit of an unload that night, someone who was in Melbourne and, you know, we're very much, we like to do our thing in the way we want to do things. So yeah, it was a bit of an unload because that happens.

0:01:57 - (Linda Habak): That happens right when you're around for 24 years. But let's go back to the story.

0:02:00 - (Darren Genner): Let's go back, let's go.

0:02:01 - (Linda Habak): Take me back to the shop floor. Apprenticeship days. How did you get into. Well, you were a joiner first.

0:02:08 - (Darren Genner): Well, I think I've got to take a step back a little bit. So year 10 in high school, I wasn't. I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney and Granville. So did I. Yeah. So I grew up out there and school wasn't really good for me. I just, I didn't really like it. I didn't really like the environment where I was. So end of year 10, I said to my dad, I'm out. I'm not gonna do year 12. And he goes, no, you're gonna do year 12.

0:02:32 - (Darren Genner): I said, no, I'm gonna do something else. And he's like, well, you got six months to get a job or you gotta join the Army. And I went, oh, shit. Flat feet, blind. This is not really gonna go down too well. So I thought, okay. But at that time, I was a bunch of great mates that are still great mates. So we loved skateboarding and we were out and we were having a great time, you know, So I kept getting the reminder, one month down, two months down.

0:02:54 - (Darren Genner): And at the time, he also said to me, you know, look for an institution job. You know, I love working with wood. I like doing technical drawings. I thought, okay, well, let's look at the institutional. Two, three months in, I thought, well, let's look at Garden Island. Being a shipwright, I could work there. Government job. Anyway, so I found this ad in the paper. It was for Nobby Kitchens. It was an apprenticeship, mass produced kitchens.

0:03:19 - (Darren Genner): I went, oh, what the hell? That'll do. I'm not joining the Army. So I went in for the interview and got it on the spot. And, you know, away we went. Day one or day two of being there, I was. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I was on a factory floor. We were producing 34 kitchens a day. It was huge. Just 200 people on a floor. And I hated it. I just couldn't stand. My dad kept encouraging me, just four years, get through it, get a trade under your belt, see how you develop, and then go from there.

0:03:47 - (Darren Genner): Anyway, started to do okay. I started to. I didn't like the establishment. Back to what you said. I had guys that had been there for 30 years, all these older guys trying to tell me how I should do something. And me young thinking, no, I can't this way, you know. So I used to get my knuckles wrapped a lot. And one guy took me under his wing and he said to me at the time that a chef will never tell you the ingredients.

0:04:09 - (Darren Genner): You have to always watch. Yeah. And at the first. Well, he didn't tell me straight away about the watching part. He just said about the ingredients. And I went away thinking about watching and all that sort of jazz. And it's something that stays. That stays with you. Yeah. So I all through that time in working for Nobby Kitchens, I ended up staying there for seven years. And after three years, I became a leading Hand of a section because CNC machinery came in and people weren't prepared to adapt.

0:04:34 - (Darren Genner): You know, the older guys, they thought they looked at, they kind of like AI. Now everybody looks at AI and we're thinking, oh, that's going to take away jobs. But go back to 19. Sometime before 2000, there was these CNC machines coming in, and all the guys didn't want to use them because they thought, you're going to take away our jobs. So I said, I'll do it, you know, And I just learned from there.

0:04:54 - (Linda Habak): Do you think it's because you had youth on your side, or was it just a mindset because you were a curious person?

0:05:00 - (Darren Genner): No, I think it was because as a younger, I was looking at it, my first pay packet was cash, $93. That's what I got in an envelope, you know, and you go home, you give your folks 30 bucks for board, and there was the rest for you. And as a young kid, I was thinking, shit, how am I going to get more money here? How am I going to get it better? So I kept looking, okay, how do I get his job? How do I get that? How do I get better?

0:05:22 - (Linda Habak): How do you move forward? How do you better?

0:05:24 - (Darren Genner): How do I progress through. How do I progress through this? And I always saw it as learning, and I saw the CAD machines as an opportunity. I saw it and I thought, okay, well, they were sitting idle there. No one was really using them or getting the best out of them. So me and another young guy, we said, well, let's really get into this. And we sort of challenged ourself a little bit by pushing and learning things. And it was. Yeah, it was cool.

0:05:44 - (Linda Habak): Amazing. Did you work much with your hands at the time before the CAD machines, or. No, it was really just process.

0:05:51 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, no, it was. I just. I liked woodturning when I was in high school. I liked machining things. I liked making things. I liked that. But I was always really bad at finishing them off. Like, I could do the machining part of it, but putting it together and that was, you know, I seemed to rush it a little bit.

0:06:07 - (Linda Habak): Do you find that you still want that process to progress quickly?

0:06:11 - (Darren Genner): Look, I'm. I'm patient, but I'm not. Yeah. So I can. Yeah, I like the process, but I'm sometimes. And Simone would tell you that. That I'm sometimes in too much of a hurry.

0:06:20 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. Oh, well, I know that feeling well.

0:06:22 - (Darren Genner): Yeah.

0:06:22 - (Linda Habak): You know, would you say you were creative back then? Like, did you know you were a creative person? Or has that Come later in life.

0:06:29 - (Darren Genner): No, no. There was always something like, I. I broke my arm in my first year of my apprenticeship, skateboarding, and I was laid off for three months. I had operations and all sorts of stuff, and I picked up a camera because I couldn't skateboard with my mates, so I was taking photos. So at that stage, I started to develop this love of photography. So that was something. Yeah, so there was that side of it.

0:06:50 - (Darren Genner): I was a DJ when I was younger, so I loved playing music.

0:06:53 - (Linda Habak): All creative outlets.

0:06:54 - (Darren Genner): It's all creative outlets. Yeah. But you don't realize that at the time, Right. And there was always an entrepreneurialship, so we, you know, through the playing music, it was like, oh, shit, how do we make a business out of this? So a couple of my mates, we started a company, we started DJing on the weekends. And there was always a level of entrepreneurship that we were trying. That whole, how do we get more? How do we get more? How do we become better?

0:07:14 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, how do you improve? But I think entrepreneurship, the foundation of it is creativity, because you have to be a creative thinker. You've got to think out outside of the box.

0:07:23 - (Darren Genner): You have to think outside the box. It's what makes. It's what separates us from being business owners to employees.

0:07:28 - (Linda Habak): Really? Absolutely. Let's talk about how you met Simona and how it all started, because you've described it as the moment that changed everything.

0:07:37 - (Darren Genner): It's definitely a change for me because growing up where I did and the circles that I kept, I didn't really have people that were designers or creative friends. And I was. I'd worked at the time in the factory. I'd moved on to a bespoke joinery company.

0:07:52 - (Linda Habak): So that was after Nobby kicked in.

0:07:53 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. So after Nobby's, I developed this skill with the CAD machinery and I got known through the Italian companies that brought it into the country for the skill that I had in programming it. And then another company had just picked up this machine and it was laying idle in their factory because they didn't know how to use it. I went there and I demonstrated what I could do with the machine and they hired me on the spot.

0:08:15 - (Darren Genner): Then I started on the factory floor working that machine, and then from there I went into production planning. And that's where I started to learn to draw kitchens in cad.

0:08:24 - (Linda Habak): Okay.

0:08:25 - (Darren Genner): And I picked that up really fast. And this is where it started. This is where the design and the curiosity and things started for me because suddenly I was getting these drawings that check measurers were handing Me, then I had to draw them, then I had to send them to the floor to be manufactured. And when you're producing 15, 16, 18, 20 kitchens a week, it's a lot.

0:08:44 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:08:45 - (Darren Genner): And then I started to see these designs and I started to develop an opinion on them.

0:08:51 - (Linda Habak): That surprised me, Darren, what is that?

0:08:53 - (Darren Genner): You really put the bin there and the dishwasher there. Why would you put that? Makes more sense to go here. But anyway, so I started to develop this opinion.

0:08:59 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:09:00 - (Darren Genner): And then again, wanting to be better and push through it, at the time, I was taken under a wing of, funnily enough, the joinery company that we still use to this day, John Little. I went under his wing and he taught me about a lot, about kitchen pricing and manufacture and joinery and all this sort of stuff. So I sort of moved through production planning into contract management. So I'd have to sit with these contracts that these designers had brought back.

0:09:26 - (Darren Genner): You had to analyse the plan, make sure it was functional, make sure they priced it right, tell them what they were getting paid. And then I started to think, shit, this is not the greatest. I could do this. So I started doing that and then that's where I started to want more. Because then I saw this ad in a Vogue magazine for Polyform Kitchens and I thought, ooh, this was before no handles. They brought in, there's no handle.

0:09:47 - (Darren Genner): And I went into their showroom in Surry Hills and I saw the kitchen. I snuck over there, I opened the door and I put my hand up behind like this. Cause trying to figure out how they'd made this, how the detail was, and I felt these screws. I went, oh, shit, that's how they made it. And then surely enough, a cupboard opens beside me and this head comes in and it's Simona. She goes, so, who do you work for?

0:10:09 - (Darren Genner): And instantly we became friends. Instantly, we hit it off and for the next hour in the showroom, we. I had my girlfriend at the time standing over at the back, but Simone was there and it was. Was a great conversation and it was something that we instantly connected with each other. From there, it really changed everything. So we tried to. Someone. I really wanted me to come and work at Poliform, but her boss and I never saw eye to eye on things. He was a Gemini, just like I was. And we didn't. We didn't quite connect, let's say.

0:10:37 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. So Simone and I then just became friends and, you know, became.

0:10:41 - (Linda Habak): So she was working at Poliform at the time.

0:10:44 - (Darren Genner): Simone was the first person that set Varenna Kitchens up here in Australia. She moved from Melbourne to do that.

0:10:50 - (Linda Habak): Right, okay.

0:10:51 - (Darren Genner): So, yeah, she was one of the founding people behind that here in Australia, so. Which was awesome. We learn a lot. And then her and I would have these great conversations about Italian design and Italian manufacture versus Australian made and handmade and bespoke and all this sort of stuff. And it used to go on for bottles and bottles of wine and night's end, and it used to go on and on. So we became really good friends.

0:11:15 - (Linda Habak): Okay, when did you both sort of come together? Cause obviously you're together in life and in business. Talk me through that whole process of when that union came together. And was it business first and then.

0:11:30 - (Darren Genner): No, no, it wasn't. It's sort of. It was friendship first. So first we were friends, and then I became someone as plus one for design events. Right. Because it was like someone. I had moved from Melbourne. She didn't. She had a few friends here in Sydney. But then these events would come up, a plus one or a dinner, and I'd come and her and I. It'd be like, there's no one else in the room. And all those. You know, we'd be standing there for hours just talking.

0:11:52 - (Darren Genner): And there could be a million things going on around us, but we're just still. And then it evolved to becoming a partnership together. And from there it just. It sort of found itself. And one night we were heading to her auntie's place in Wollongong to Mount Kira. We're going down this. It's, you know, like a. Not a dirt track, but a single lane road, no street lights. And I was working for a software company at the time, Python, which is who we're using now. And I wasn't working there. I was going there to learn how to use software. Again, the development part, I created this image of a wash basin and a cabinet. Cause I was doing something for somebody. And we couldn't get through on the road that night. And we had to pull over. And we're sitting there and I said, hey, look at this, what I did today.

0:12:32 - (Darren Genner): And I showed her. And then that's it. That was really the start of we could do something locally. We could do this, we could do that. And we sat there while the road was blocked for, I don't know, however long it was. Could have been days as far as we were concerned. But we were talking and all of a sudden there was this idea was born, you know, and then we went to dinner. Wonderful food, wonderful wine. And then that night we. We Headed home. And it was the shortest car ride home I think we've ever had because it just. It seemed to have gone like that because we just had all this idea and thought.

0:13:01 - (Darren Genner): Anyway, I don't know if it was the next day or the few days after I sat down where I was in a share accommodation at the time, and I said, I think I've got a name for the business. And she goes, what is it? I said, mimosa. She goes, how'd you come up with that? I said, well, it's your name scrambled up. It's an anagram. And it was like, bang. I still get goosebumps hanging out.

0:13:17 - (Linda Habak): Oh, my God, I love that because that was one of my questions. How did you come up with that?

0:13:21 - (Darren Genner): And then from there, I think someone. I might have registered it the next day, which was. It was actually Friday, just gone. 24 years ago.

0:13:29 - (Linda Habak): I saw that on LinkedIn.

0:13:30 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, yeah, 24 years ago. So it's. Yeah, it was magic. It was magic.

0:13:34 - (Linda Habak): It's amazing.

0:13:35 - (Darren Genner): And then we had. I don't know, we had $500 in the bank. So we said, fuck it, let'

0:13:40 - (Linda Habak): and the rest is history.

0:13:42 - (Darren Genner): We should have disappeared overseas somewhere. But, you know, wow. Madly. We set up a business.

0:13:46 - (Linda Habak): That's amazing. And you started with designing wash basins originally, and then it morphed into more so.

0:13:52 - (Darren Genner): So back in the progression, back in the early 2000s, I don't know if you remember, but we had a water problem. Yeah, There was no wells labeling on tapware. Water was still coming out of a hand basin at 16 or 19 liters a minute. We were using excessive amounts of water. Anyway, Saran and I had researched how we could create a wash basin, seemingly flat, and control water to make people be conscious of their water consumption.

0:14:18 - (Darren Genner): So we created these products called the Puddle Scoop Ovo Cava. So they were relatively flat basins, all made out of Corian and they were all handmade here in Sydney. And to this day they still are. So we designed this, the photo that you might have seen on LinkedIn the other day, that was us en route to Melbourne for DesignX so many, many, many, many years ago to launch this product, this with CASF on their stand. And, yeah, so we started out with wash basins and then we got a. From there we went to Italy. We saw what was happening at the Milan fair and eurocachina. And we came back and we set up a little showroom in Annandale on Parramatta Road.

0:14:57 - (Darren Genner): We took over our next brothel and it was like, whoa. We just. We just Cause it was cheap. It was really, really cheap. And we couldn't, you know that trying to forge yourself forward.

0:15:04 - (Linda Habak): So we absolutely.

0:15:05 - (Darren Genner): And we built this showroom that was a tiny little thing, but you'd walk in there and you were transported. It was just. It was all dark and moody and the lighting on the BAS basins was awesome. Very much ahead of its time.

0:15:16 - (Linda Habak): Wow.

0:15:16 - (Darren Genner): And that we started selling basins and then Reece got a hand, an eye of it and we started then all. They picked it up as a VIP product and it went national and.

0:15:25 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, amazing. And so when did you transition from doing just product to becoming a full blown design studio? Was it a little bit at a time or was it now?

0:15:37 - (Darren Genner): We were always doing little bits. The showroom was a bit of a filter. Yeah. Because we, we wanted to do the wash basins and the product and things like that. Because we saw could almost become a passive income. And as designers, the one thing that we should all be striving for in some way, shape or form is some kind of passive income because of the talent that we have. So we saw it as that opportunity.

0:15:58 - (Darren Genner): And then when people would come in indirectly, we'd be speaking to them and all of a sudden they'd be talking about bathrooms or they're doing their kitchen and you'd have the plans in front of you and you could almost. You're not telling them that you are a designer, but you're qualifying them and you're understanding if they're the right person. And from there we picked up some wonderful projects. Design.

0:16:15 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. And we started to do interiors and we were doing. We weren't advertising it. Yeah, but we were doing. We were doing that.

0:16:22 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:16:22 - (Darren Genner): And then we had one client that someone was just about to have our first child and they decided not to pay their bill. You know, large, large retainer at the end. And. And that sort of changed our shifting a lot.

0:16:36 - (Linda Habak): Can we unpack that? I really want to stay there because I know this is a conversation that I have with lots of designers and every one of us has been in that situation. So how did you feel? Firstly, because it feels like shit.

0:16:50 - (Darren Genner): Terrible.

0:16:51 - (Linda Habak): How did you deal with that problem to solve it? And then what did you change in your business process to never let that happen again?

0:16:59 - (Darren Genner): Well, in hindsight, I think every bad client and you've got to remember that every year you'll have one, you could have two. And the more clients you have, it's a numbers game, you're going to be closer to the bad client. So I think you've got to Be very mindful of that. Those bad clients are just an experience and a clause. Yeah. Because every time you have it, you add a new clause.

0:17:17 - (Linda Habak): I love it. That bad quiet is an experience and a clause that we are. We are quoting that. That is brilliant.

0:17:24 - (Darren Genner): That's all it is. It becomes a clause. You're right.

0:17:25 - (Linda Habak): And that's exactly. I mean, it's never been articulated that way, but that's exactly what it is. Because every time you have a bad experience with a client or a person, and often it is, in my experience, clients don't want to be assholes.

0:17:38 - (Darren Genner): No, they don't.

0:17:38 - (Linda Habak): They actually don't.

0:17:39 - (Darren Genner): They don't.

0:17:39 - (Linda Habak): I think what I've come to realise is often it is a lack of communication on my part. It's actually not clarifying the process or the detail properly. And part of that is because I'm too, you know, chicken shit. To have a hard conversation. You've got to have the hard conversation. You can't really learn. You can't shy away from the difficult conversation.

0:17:59 - (Darren Genner): It's very true. And I think that you've got to. We did some business coaching last year coming out of COVID We'll get to that later. But the most important part is the communication that we give. And in this case, we can honestly look back and say, our contract was rubbish. It was one piece of paper. Yeah. It was terrible. And in the end, it was an awful situation. Cause we'd both planned to have months off and, you know, relax and enjoy the birth of our first. But what it became was a stressful time. Yeah. So.

0:18:27 - (Darren Genner): But that happens. And from there, we pushed really into products. Yeah, we really pushed into that. But then after a little while, design started to really pick up and more things happened and, you know, just. It just evolved.

0:18:39 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. Wow. So I want to talk about philosophy and process before we get into the grit and the tricky stuff. Design life better.

0:18:48 - (Darren Genner): Yes.

0:18:49 - (Linda Habak): So I love that tagline. Can you tell me not just what it means to you, but how did you get to it? What was the work that you did? Did you work with the marketing agency? Is it something you guys brainstormed amongst you and your team? Like, how do we get. How do you get to that?

0:19:05 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, it's reflection. It's looking at things. So years ago, we took on a new accountant, and new accountants are always, you gotta grow, you gotta grow, you gotta scale. You gotta scale, you gotta do. And we fell into that trap of wanting that. And we did all the things and we started to put everything in place in order. To do that. And one of the things we did at the time, we had a great relationship with Niki Lobo, who is a copywriter, and we got together with her and we told her what we thought. And, you know, Simone and I are raw at times and we love just putting it all out there.

0:19:39 - (Darren Genner): And Nikki really interpreted who we are as people and what we stood for. And we're still using some of her copy today. This might have been 2016 or 2017. And then she came up with the tagline of design life better. But it was never meant to be like a catchphrase. It was more about a moral compass, a way for us to describe what we do. Because a brand. A brand is just a series of actions, right? It's not. You become a brand by your consistency.

0:20:07 - (Linda Habak): Exactly.

0:20:08 - (Darren Genner): Consistency.

0:20:08 - (Linda Habak): That's my favourite word. It's consistency.

0:20:10 - (Darren Genner): So in order for Monosa to grow into itself, it had to have consistency. And that was design life better, or that is design life better. So design life better really breaks down into three categories. So there's the design, there's the life and there's better. Design is craft. It's thought, it's bespoke, it's people you know, so you're designing for them, it's unique, it's about them. Then you've got the life.

0:20:35 - (Darren Genner): It's about home, it's about peaceful, it's about organised, it's about calm, it's about happy, it's about crying. That's life, right? And then you've got better. And better is about the process, it's about everything. If we put all of the processes in place, then it will be better. And if we execute it, then design life's better.

0:20:52 - (Linda Habak): That's awesome. Oh, nailed it. When you take on a project, what guides the way you walk through your process and your concept stage, your design development? Do you have a process that you guys follow or is it. Is it organic?

0:21:07 - (Darren Genner): No, no, we do. It's very. Now 24 years in, it's almost rigid and it's contradicting to the thought of creativity, really, because sometimes we think that in order to be truly creative, we've got to be free, you know, and all this sort of stuff. But I think we've got to be really heavily process driven to allow freedom, to allow thought. Our system is very unique to the. To the industry. So we work.

0:21:28 - (Darren Genner): We work under a brief spatial plan, what we call white box rendering, because everything we do is 3D rendering. So what we try to do is we leave all the 2D drawings, apart from spatial plan to the latter stages. So early on, we're using 3D Whitebox, so we focus purely on the purity of a room in white. So we explain to a client, we design all the elements, do all the lighting, and we show them every single bit of it in 3D.

0:21:55 - (Linda Habak): You have to unpack the. I love this. So talk me. And by the way, I will caveat this by saying that years ago, another touch point that I have with Studio Minosa is I was doing a big project in Abbotsford and the auntie of this client, client was building a house in Five Dock. And my client said to me, could you please see my auntie? She's stressed out. She just needs a sounding board. And I went along, and no background on this project.

0:22:21 - (Linda Habak): Went along, had a chat to this lovely auntie and she started taking me through the process they'd been building for years. La, la, la. And she pulled out this stack of documentation and guess what it was.

0:22:35 - (Darren Genner): It was our house.

0:22:35 - (Linda Habak): It was your house. And I turned around and I said, said, you don't change a thing. You do not touch this. You execute exactly as they have drawn it, exactly as they have specified it. Do not. You know, she was like, she. You know, when you get a client that's just. They're nervous. It's a long process. So by the time they get to building that, they're like questioning everything but. And it was like a couple of hours, that was it. And I just walked away going, that's the best documentation package I have ever seen.

0:23:07 - (Darren Genner): Thank you so much.

0:23:08 - (Linda Habak): So I really want to.

0:23:09 - (Darren Genner): We really pride ourself on that.

0:23:10 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, exactly. And I really wanted to preface that, but take me through this white box idea, because I'm not quite following.

0:23:16 - (Darren Genner): Okay, so imagine what happens in the industry now. 3D rendering is a standard.

0:23:21 - (Linda Habak): Yep.

0:23:22 - (Darren Genner): So if we go back 24 years ago, it never really was a standard. I remember going to trade shows with a USB stick saying to suppliers, do you have 3D files? I need OBJ, I need 3DS. And they'd look at you like you were mad. But I've always been a believer of showing people in 3D. And it goes back to my early days, when I became a salesman after. Or a designer. Back then, in the days it was really selling, I would take a laptop into people's homes and I'd draw their kitchens on the spot.

0:23:50 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:23:51 - (Darren Genner): So I'd meet you, I'd greet you, I'd understand who you are, and I'd be drawing it on the spot. So I've really had this fascination because I saw how people cause a husband and a wife or a partner. Not everybody understands 2D. People look at a plan and they don't get it.

0:24:04 - (Linda Habak): They don't get it, they don't get it.

0:24:06 - (Darren Genner): And this is where variations come. This is where problems come. This is where all of that can happen is because people don't understand. So Simone and I always saw 3D as a big part of what we do because it was ability for us to show people. It was ability for us to marriage counsel people because they could look at it and it would eliminate fights because all of a sudden people could see it. So we started to develop this process of where we were doing the 3D. And that's where the software, the computer software came in.

0:24:33 - (Darren Genner): Then years in, and as in that growth period where we were trying to grow, we started to get a bit of pushback on the 3D because we were showing color really quickly. What we learned was, was that we were getting to the destination quicker than the client was ready to get to the destination. So we would get there really fast. And then a client would get really nervous because it's like, oh, shit, how did you do that so quick? You know?

0:24:51 - (Linda Habak): So do you think. Sorry to interrupt you, because this is really. I'm processing myself too, because I have this thing that if I can't see it at concept stage, I freak out, I get anxious. And partly because, you know, it's that imposter syndrome in me, because design, interior design, second career for all of us. But. But it's like, if I can't see the end result, then, oh, my God. But I've learned over the years that you actually have to go through a process to be able to see it. But it's okay if I don't fully see every detail, every color, every.

0:25:23 - (Linda Habak): And surrender to the process and the chaos of it. So you were getting there much quicker

0:25:29 - (Darren Genner): than we were getting there too quick. So then we realized, well, let's just try and strip this of all color and all texture. And we presented to a client what we called a white box. They call it clay rendering in the marketing world. So we'd labeled it white box rendering. So we gave it our own little spin. And we would present in all white and what we would talk about at all white. So the first thing we do is we do a spatial plan meeting, a look and feel meeting, and we consolidate the brief. Yeah. So we make sure everybody's on the same page.

0:25:57 - (Darren Genner): Our second meeting would become a white box Meeting where we show people, let's say, this room in pure white. We're not talking about floors or rugs or whatever. We're talking about bookshelf here, window there, light fixture there. This is where it's all going and you get to understand all the details there. It's styled, there's books on the shelves. You see it all. But a client could then feel the space. They could ask the right questions. We could talk about transition and how we move through something. We could talk about the switching of lighting and all of the things that they needed and where they were going to store everything and so on.

0:26:26 - (Linda Habak): Really hone in on function.

0:26:27 - (Darren Genner): Hone in on function, but in three dimensions. Typically in a design development meeting, most people would be talking about it on a 2D plan and you could elevations. You could look at a husband or wife or a partner and they're fogged over. You've been talking for two hours and you just put your head up and all of a sudden you take a breath and they don't have a clue what you're talking about. Whereas 3D, there's nowhere to hide.

0:26:50 - (Darren Genner): You've got the feeling and you can really fall in love with.

0:26:54 - (Linda Habak): And so what then happens? You go away from that meeting. You get buy in, I assume, from the client. Do you then start materializing?

0:27:02 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. So once we. Once we start a project, we'll meet with a client every two weeks. We're very milestone driven. We're very process driven. As designers, we are the ultimate procrastinators. Trying to get to a point where you go, oh, is it good enough? Should I just do it A little bit more done is better than best. It's just get it there, get it over the line. Version one, let's talk about it.

0:27:21 - (Linda Habak): And can I ask you. Because a lot of questions. That's my curious brain.

0:27:26 - (Darren Genner): That's all right.

0:27:26 - (Linda Habak): Do you. So every two weeks. I love that, by the way, because I think it keeps momentum and it keeps the client accountable. And something I've thought about a lot in, you know, when I think about process. Every two weeks. Are you. How do you break up the project if you're doing a whole house? Are you doing a section at a time? Are you doing kitchen for this two weeks? Bathrooms or how do you approach that?

0:27:47 - (Darren Genner): We'll break it up and we'll say it depends on the job and it depends how busy we are. Depends. There's a few things it depends on. As a business owner, it's really that juggling. How do we juggle it all.

0:27:56 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:27:56 - (Darren Genner): So we would look at it and we'd go, okay, we might do a living room white box and a powder room and a laundry.

0:28:02 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:28:02 - (Darren Genner): And then at the next meeting we'll present that in two weeks we'll present that in color and then we'll present the bathrooms in white box. And then at the next meeting we'll swap over. And then what we do is after every meeting, we give the client the opportunity to as one revision, they get their revision, we make an adjustment.

0:28:18 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:28:19 - (Darren Genner): And then we just keep going through the house.

0:28:20 - (Linda Habak): It's quite organic, almost a bit.

0:28:22 - (Darren Genner): But what you're doing is you're getting the client just to fall in love with it slowly and it's process. Because ultimately by the time we get to the documentation stage, which we all know is a ridiculous amount of drawing and time, we want full buy in by that stage.

0:28:36 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. So you're really not starting your documentation package until you've had buy in on all the details 100%. And then you basically go, hell for leather. Document it, Hand it over.

0:28:47 - (Darren Genner): Our last meeting we have before documentation is we go through storage and we'll go through wardrobes and you know, all the things that we need to include. And then we get stuck into drawing because, you know, client, we could be there all day doing revisions on 2D because people don't understand it.

0:29:03 - (Linda Habak): So true.

0:29:03 - (Darren Genner): You know, and especially when you start talking about multicolours and layering and you know, all that sort of stuff, it's better to show it in 3D.

0:29:09 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. And I love that you're doing it as a white box. You know, I say this all the time to clients. We have to get the function right. You can materialize, you can make anything look beautiful. Honestly, like anything can be. Pick the right materials, the right colors, the right style, beautiful. But if you don't get the function right, and that's what you don't see when you open up a magazine or you look at Pinterest or Instagram. You don't see if that actually functions well or not.

0:29:34 - (Darren Genner): Unfortunately. Fortunately, we live in this world now of this digital screen over stylised images where, you know, you could be on a photo shoot and it could take someone two hours to get a towel hanging. Right. You know, so we're not really showing the reality of life. So we, you know, we try to really understyle our work so people can see, see, see what it is. Yeah.

0:29:53 - (Linda Habak): And that is what I mean, that's part of your story and the language. I see. I mean I've been following you guys for years. You really get the sense that you're prioritizing life functionality. And then the work is divine. The detailing is. And I've seen it. I've seen that finished kitchen in five

0:30:11 - (Darren Genner): dock, and it's like, holy.

0:30:13 - (Linda Habak): I mean, it was. It had been installed, but the whole project hadn't finished yet. And I went back and I'm like, oh, my. Like, this is just. You can tell the years of expertise and brilliance and the layering of materials, and it was amazing.

0:30:29 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, someone is. Someone is really. That's something that she really brought to the table, was that. Whereas I'm a bit more detail and spatial orientated.

0:30:37 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, yeah, it was.

0:30:38 - (Darren Genner): Color's not my thing.

0:30:39 - (Linda Habak): Beautiful. And the materials selections were amazing. But even, like, you know, the detail around how the joins were, like, just.

0:30:48 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, it's important.

0:30:49 - (Linda Habak): It's important. Do you end up. Do you do a lot of the management of the project? Are you involved at that construction phase for most projects?

0:30:58 - (Darren Genner): Well, it's interesting. Like, back to. The. Back to. Going back to the scale part where we tried to scale the business. Yeah. You lose that because you're just really focused on. You bump up the staff, you've got too many. You're not particularly the right people. But where we are now as a business is where we're trying to get less clients. You know, I know it's a bit of a contradiction to business model, but

0:31:17 - (Linda Habak): I'm with you there.

0:31:18 - (Darren Genner): We want less clients. We don't want more. More design jobs. We. We want more clients that buy into our process, that buy into our moral compass, design life better. And that buy into us as a team. So we want to be doing less work, but more things. So now. Yeah, better. We want to be doing it all. So now what we've really started to take on in the last two years is everything, the furniture, the procurement, looking after the whole thing.

0:31:43 - (Darren Genner): And that's really the goal at the moment. We want to minimize the number of personalities that we work for.

0:31:49 - (Linda Habak): How do you go with building relationships with clients like that Trust process? Because I have these conversations with designers all the time. You talked about having the store in Annandale, and that was a really good filter. What's your filtration process now?

0:32:04 - (Darren Genner): How do you build trust? You do what you say you're gonna do.

0:32:07 - (Linda Habak): Yes.

0:32:08 - (Darren Genner): So if you're. In order to build trust with the market, we've got to.

0:32:11 - (Linda Habak): 1.

0:32:12 - (Darren Genner): We've got to promote ourself in a way that they resonate with once they Experience it. It's gotta resonate with what we said it would be. So that's really what it is. And then from there, trust comes. We have the first meeting. There's always a little bit of apprehension at the brief. Then we send a return brief that starts to build a little bit. Then you get to the spatial plan. There's a lot of people question. They question.

0:32:32 - (Darren Genner): But then you give them a few. And then it starts. It happens.

0:32:34 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. It just. Naturally, it comes. Yeah. Can you give me an example of one of the projects you've worked on that you've loved and why you've loved it? Like, is there a particular. Was it the process itself, what I

0:32:46 - (Darren Genner): could say is one of the job that's really pushed us into our mentality. Change is we just completed a job in Melbourne. It's the most recent one. We're photographed, which is in Brunswick.

0:32:55 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:32:56 - (Darren Genner): And once a year, we have this little Black Friday sale. You know, you never discount. Never discount fees. Never do that. But we never do that.

0:33:04 - (Linda Habak): Designers.

0:33:05 - (Darren Genner): We do it once a year.

0:33:06 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:33:06 - (Darren Genner): And we go. We have a bit of fun with it.

0:33:08 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. Right.

0:33:08 - (Darren Genner): So about three years ago, we did it. And this client from Melbourne called and said, I want to get a kitchen done.

0:33:14 - (Linda Habak): So how do you advertise that?

0:33:16 - (Darren Genner): Like what? Instagram. Just on Instagram, 55,000 followers, people. Someone's going to pick it up, you know.

0:33:20 - (Linda Habak): 55,000 followers. Wow.

0:33:22 - (Darren Genner): God. Anyway, there's a long story in detail.

0:33:25 - (Linda Habak): I needed to.

0:33:28 - (Darren Genner): So I flew down, I met her, and, you know, it turned in from that. It turned into. We did the kitchen, we presented it, and then it was like, okay, can you do. We want to do the powder room. We want to do this. And then after we did that, it was like, okay, we're going to do the whole house. So we did the whole house. And then. Then we handed that over. Then they rang, we had a meeting. Okay, we want to build it. Now, how do we go about building it?

0:33:49 - (Darren Genner): So they engaged us to be their partner to assist with the design implementation. And then the client was a builder in a previous life, and then he'd gone off to do other things, run their own business. So he goes, I'm going to build it. You know, can you guys help me through it? So we helped him through it. We ended up having all the joinery made by our joiner here in Sydney.

0:34:09 - (Linda Habak): No way.

0:34:10 - (Darren Genner): And we drove it on the back of a truck and we installed it all in Melbourne. Even our stonemason made everything here in Sydney. And we drove it to Melbourne and installed it. And it became. And then we did all the furniture, we procured everything, all the art, we did everything. And it's just a wonderful. And they're wonderful human beings. And that is really why we do what we do. Right. Because we want.

0:34:29 - (Darren Genner): When people walk in and they have that experience, it's magical.

0:34:33 - (Linda Habak): It is the ultimate sort of project, isn't it, where you get to be part of it from inception right through to putting down the last piece of item.

0:34:43 - (Darren Genner): It's the process. And that's the one thing about this particular job is, is that as difficult as it was and as hard as it was, we'd do site visits once a month, we'd fly in in the morning, we'd go straight to site, we'd spend a day there, which are long days. 6 hours on site is a long time. Back to the airport, on the plane back home, all in 24 hours, all done. You know, and that's. And when you're committed like that and the process is executed and there's complete trust from the client, that's the best job.

0:35:13 - (Linda Habak): It's. It's the unicorn.

0:35:14 - (Darren Genner): That's the unicorn, absolutely.

0:35:16 - (Linda Habak): How has your experience in production or mass production influenced how you approach bespoke interiors now? Bespoke design. Because it's so contradictory. So what is it about that to where you are now?

0:35:29 - (Darren Genner): I think it is, but it isn't. Because the one thing you learn from mass producing something is that everything is a process.

0:35:36 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:35:36 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. You've got to have the carcass end drilled and edged before it comes, go to the next stage and before it can be, go to the assembly shop for it to be assembled. So you learn process. When I became a leading hand in the factory as a third year apprentice, it was my job to make sure that every man that I was looking after had enough work to keep them busy. So it's a process. So you're just. You're juggling that. Yeah. So it's. And I think that's one thing that I learned from that experience.

0:36:02 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. And then I also learnt things. How not to do it. Yeah. Cause I didn't like the idea of things being mass produced and pushed on people that weren't particularly right for them. So I remember questioning people as a young, young boy, how can you be selling kitchens to people on the night in someone's home? But anyway, it's just questioning the establishment, you know.

0:36:20 - (Linda Habak): Well, you've got a curious mind. I think that, you know, it seems like that's held you in good stead all these years, I guess the same question, but in relation to business. You talk about process and making sure people are doing the things that suit their skills. Have you applied that same philosophy in terms of how you run. Run a business?

0:36:39 - (Darren Genner): If someone had her way, we would have been process driven from the start, from the outset, when it was just her and I, you know, slaving away back then. But, you know, I kept pushing to say we've got to get runs on the board before we can go down that path. Now, all these years later, I know that I'm wrong and that she was absolutely right. And in most cases, if you always

0:36:56 - (Linda Habak): are, don't you know, the woman is always right.

0:37:00 - (Darren Genner): I'm learning, I'm learning. There's hope, there's hope. So. So it's. And now we're in that age of our business where it's really important, you know, and we've got. We're fortunate that we've got such a wonderful team. We've taken people from every one of our teams come out of the TAFE system, so we've taken them straight from school and we've helped teach them our way, I suppose. I love that we've given them opportunity where sometimes they might not have had it and they're wonderful. So we've got 13 years, 10 years, seven years, five, you know, so we've got this seven in the studio and it's trust built up over a long period of time and we're now developing the processes of how we do it and analysing and making sure that we're better every time.

0:37:47 - (Linda Habak): I love that. And it actually says a lot when you have staff that have stayed with you for a long time. That speaks volumes, you and Simona and that philosophy. Because what I see is it's all your life. It's not just the way you approach business, it's the way you approach life.

0:38:01 - (Darren Genner): It's the humans. We are.

0:38:02 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:38:02 - (Darren Genner): And we've hired really good humans. And when we are hiring, we're not hiring on skill alone. That's not always what you're looking for. You're looking for the human touch and how they're going to handle situations and things like that.

0:38:15 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, Personality, mindset's all important.

0:38:17 - (Darren Genner): And whether or not they're like lollies or chocolate is always a big one.

0:38:21 - (Linda Habak): That's so funny. Chocolate for me.

0:38:23 - (Darren Genner): You're in the right crowd, then.

0:38:25 - (Linda Habak): Okay, so I want to talk about resilience and grit now. Important part to unpack. Because when you're around for 24 years. You've seen a lot of things. You've seen some highs and lows, maybe. Let's talk about gfc. I know you've got a whole story around the gym.

0:38:40 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, we've got a few great stories in that sense. So we, the gfc, we were in our Annandale showroom at the time. We'd had our child. We were living above our studio. So we had a little bed sit up top where we were staying. And we'd bought a property. We were settling. The GFC hit that day, bang. So we had a plan. We're buying this house. It was an old corner shop. It was completely run down, needed a complete renovation, graffiti'd all over it.

0:39:08 - (Darren Genner): All of a sudden, GFC hits. Our clients since inception have always been business owners. It seems to be that's where we've landed. So all of a sudden we'd had all these clients where their net worth was just gone. And all of a sudden we're just like, shit. We've got the keys to this house. We had a very limited amount of money, but we had grand sort of plans. So we went, okay, we just gotta get in, make it right, and we've gotta get through this. You know, the one thing about a crisis is it's a really good opportunity.

0:39:35 - (Darren Genner): If you can put your mind in the right spot, it can become a great opportunity because you get to learn the most about yourself, the people around you, the people you can trust. Yeah, you learn to cut things off what you're spending and you go, okay, this is what really. This is what is really important. So the gfc, we got into this house and we just had to make it work. And we had a five year plan.

0:39:55 - (Darren Genner): That five year plan ended up turning into 12 years. Because once the GFC hit, we then had to re. Establish ourself and work through it. And then there's other things that come along. The biggest crisis we've all had is Covid came. And then, similarly enough, the same with the same property. We were knee deep renovating this property. We were.

0:40:12 - (Linda Habak): During COVID No, no, just before, Just before.

0:40:15 - (Darren Genner): We were renovating, we were building, we're extending, we're doing everything, spending lots of money and, you know, and then all of a sudden we get wind that there's a. And we're like, okay, shit. We had a rush to get as much to get it livable, and we said, okay, everybody out. We had no kitchen, we had nothing. But we had to move in and, you know, so that we could get through that period. We didn't want to be in a rental property. So again you get in and you adjust and do what you need to do.

0:40:41 - (Linda Habak): How did Covid go for you and your business?

0:40:44 - (Darren Genner): Covid was really good. We learned about our team, we learned a lot about that. We adjusted our work hours through Covid. That stayed with us now because we start at 7:30, we finish at 3:30, we only work Tuesday to Saturday.

0:40:59 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, I saw that. I love that. And so that came about because of

0:41:03 - (Darren Genner): COVID No, the 7:30 to 3:30 did because when it was happening we wanted our staff not to get the train to work. We wanted them to drive. And in order to get car park in Alexandria, you've got to get there early. So they would come in early and we said, well leave early. And then everyone was getting a quality of life. Cause you get more sunshine in the afternoon, it's nicer and so on. So the Tuesday to Saturday part came very early on. So I don't know. Because we were working with business owners, it was very difficult to see them.

0:41:27 - (Darren Genner): We didn't want to work at nighttime, we wanted to work at business hours. So we decided that we were gonna work Tuesday to Saturday. Cause Saturday we can get the partners together and they don't have their phone in their hand and they're not, oh, sorry, I gotta take this. They'll focus. Yeah. So that's just something that stayed with us and we still do it to this day. Tuesday to Saturday. We don't work Mondays.

0:41:48 - (Darren Genner): All the problems of the world happen on Monday. By Tuesday they seem to be gone, which is awesome. And you know, mondayitis is a real thing.

0:41:55 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, totally.

0:41:56 - (Darren Genner): But now, so Mondays are our busiest days. We spend a lot of time preparing and getting ready for the week. But the team love it. We just, you know, we couldn't take that away now because Saturday's such a important day for us. We meet two or three clients on

0:42:08 - (Linda Habak): the day and you just have to be so prepared if you're going to run back to back client meetings. It's exhausting. You need to, you need four days to prep for that. You've got to be ready to gear up for that.

0:42:18 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. And it's, it's really good. And Saturday's quiet. The phone doesn't ring, suppliers don't turn up unannounced. So you can really focus.

0:42:25 - (Linda Habak): It's really clever structure. Actually.

0:42:28 - (Darren Genner): We were fortunate that we were already working remotely with a lot of clients. We'd been doing work in, in Melbourne, in the, in the outer Skirts of this. So we were already using digital platforms to present. So we were lucky in that sense. Through Covid, we had our systems. It was very difficult for creativity because everyone was pushed away from each other. But we got through it. We were very, very busy. We're really busy.

0:42:49 - (Linda Habak): That was my next question. Were you. Did you find that things just took

0:42:52 - (Darren Genner): off over the last couple of years? We were inundated. But the problem we had was not Covid. The problem was coming out of COVID That was our problem.

0:43:00 - (Linda Habak): So talk to me about that.

0:43:01 - (Darren Genner): Well, coming out of COVID you sort of. We really loved it as a group, you know, Samona, our kids, you know, in our house, we, you know, we sort of moved back into our property after we'd renovated it. Simone and I. I wasn't much of a gardener at the time, but we built this garden and it's something now that we cherish and we love. It was a really difficult period coming out of it, because then all of a sudden work dried up, you know, everyone started traveling and then it became hard as a business owner, it's hard to keep everything rolling.

0:43:28 - (Darren Genner): And we kind of found that we'd lost our founder's mentality a little bit. You know, the Founder's Mentality is a great book where it talks about the energy that you have as a founder to solve any problem and to just pick yourself up. So we found ourselves a little bit beaten and a little bit tired and it was really hard going to be a business owner in that period. But we did some mentoring last year, which really sort of gave us back

0:43:52 - (Linda Habak): our verve with the mentoring. Did you choose someone that was outside of the industry?

0:43:58 - (Darren Genner): No, we chose something that was inside the industry and we chose a group thing where. With Andrew Mitchell, the design coach, and we spent time with him and a group of people and it was wonderful because it gave us the opportunity to. To realise what we'd actually achieved in 23 years at that stage, you know, because you start to, you know, there's the. There's the imposter syndrome where you're beating yourself up. You know, things are tough. In 23, we also had a robbery which really played on that our studio got robbed and everything got stolen. So we got.

0:44:29 - (Linda Habak): What do you mean? Like computers, everything.

0:44:32 - (Darren Genner): I was in Madrid with Cosentino and Samana rang and she said we'd been robbed and everything was gone.

0:44:37 - (Linda Habak): That's all awful.

0:44:38 - (Darren Genner): So we'd lost a lot of our verve, you know, we'd lost a lot of our fight, you know, and this Doing the coaching picked us up and really helped us to, you know, it's

0:44:47 - (Linda Habak): a, it's a great way to stop and reflect, isn't it? And to really kind of go back and look at what you have done and then also reflect on where do you want to go and how do you want to live.

0:44:58 - (Darren Genner): Well, it's lighting of the candle again, you know, because when you're, when you've got the founder's mentality and you're a young business owner or you, you're 10 years in, you're still in a honeymoon period, you still, you still got the energy for it, but 20 something years in, at that stage, you know, you've just been robbed, you've just come out of COVID Things are tough, but you've got this wonderful team. You've got these, you know, and we did everything, we fought as hard, as hard as buggery, you know, and we just, we learn. You learn that in those times that the resilience and persistence, the doggedness not to give up, that's the superpower and that's what business you've got to have this ability just to go, you know what, fuck it, I'm fighting, we're going after this.

0:45:35 - (Linda Habak): How do you pretend, protect your joy in that time? Because it's one thing to have the doggedness, but how do you also keep some level of joy?

0:45:44 - (Darren Genner): Joy comes in little things. It comes in the little moments that you go, oh shit, look what we just did, you know, so I'll go to the, to the robbery. We got robbed. We got all of our computers gone. I think we had one, maybe two computers. One of our, one of our staff was off with a knee reconstruction. So because of. Our computers are really powerful because of what we do with cad. So, so we didn't have a website. We had a. That's. For years. We ran for 20, I think for 20 years we ran with a blog and that's all it was. We'd just post shit up and, you know, we never had a website.

0:46:13 - (Darren Genner): So when this hit all of a sudden we had no income stream. We had no way of, you know, doing it. So we said, shit, we've got to build a website. Let's build a website. So as a group, we came together and we'd had a template that we'd purchased and we were going through an agency at the time and we just said, guys, we're going to handle this ourself, you know, and we, we did together. We all pulled through and we, you know, one Person, this, this. And we all. And then we built this website.

0:46:34 - (Darren Genner): So there was a bit of joy in that. Suddenly we came out of it.

0:46:37 - (Linda Habak): So you're creating. Came out with something because you're not creating an interior, you're still creating something. And that's joyful.

0:46:42 - (Darren Genner): We told our story and it's. And that was joyful because all of a sudden we all had this. This shiny, glossy thing that we were all really proud of.

0:46:49 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. So talking about resilience again, do you think resilience is something is innate in you as a person or. Or as it. People in general, or do you think it's something you learn over time through life experience?

0:47:04 - (Darren Genner): It could be both, but I think both Sauna and I are very headstrong people. We're black sheep in that sense. We like to. If you say no, we say yes. If you say, can't be done, we say yes, it can. You know, so we're that kind of people innately ourselves. So I think it's something you can learn because if you can get up from the knocks and if you can move on and fight, then it's something you can learn.

0:47:30 - (Darren Genner): But I think it's certainly something that you need to have. If you don't have it and you're too soft in this industry, you will

0:47:36 - (Linda Habak): be eating a lie.

0:47:39 - (Darren Genner): You'll be eating a lie. That's the right way to put it.

0:47:42 - (Linda Habak): Talk to me about the industry you've been around for a long time.

0:47:45 - (Darren Genner): Yep.

0:47:46 - (Linda Habak): What are your thoughts, views on this industry? Because, you know, as I said, going back to that conversation we had last year, we did unload, but I don't remember the details.

0:47:58 - (Darren Genner): So I think that the one thing. The one thing Simon and I live by a lot is that we are. Are just interior designers, I think.

0:48:05 - (Linda Habak): What does that mean?

0:48:07 - (Darren Genner): As an industry? We sort of build it up that we're this and we're that, but we're not solving cancer, we're not saving lives. We're just making people feel great about where they live.

0:48:17 - (Linda Habak): But I will say, though, and I'm sure you felt this, we do transform the way people live.

0:48:24 - (Darren Genner): We do. Which is, you know, humans working with humans.

0:48:28 - (Linda Habak): Right. We're humans working and understanding the human condition and trying to make life better for us.

0:48:32 - (Darren Genner): That's right.

0:48:33 - (Linda Habak): And that really does happen through the work that we do. So I get it. I used to be in marketing years ago and I used to work for a cosmetic company, a French company. And French are very personal and passionate and everything Very seriously. And I would sit around going, these guys are fired up. But it's just lipstick. It's just face cream.

0:48:56 - (Darren Genner): That's all it is.

0:48:57 - (Linda Habak): Come on guys, let's get some perspective. So that just reminds me, but I

0:49:01 - (Darren Genner): think that's what it is. I think we can sometimes over focus on what we created, but it's more, I think the human part of it and the story of it and who we create it for, that's really the story, that's really what it's about. And I think we can sometimes get caught up a little bit in it. But look, it's a great industry. It has its highs, it has its incredible lows because it can beat you up a little bit.

0:49:25 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, it sure can. Can talk to me about AI. What's your. Yeah, yeah. So I'm. That's a, like an important thing that I think we need to talk about. It is my husband just came back from a conference, he works for an accounting firm and the whole conference virtually was about AI, you know, this whole sort of almost scaremongering a bit that if we don't take it up, if we don't embrace it, we're going to be left dead in the water and la, la, la. So I'm just interested and it's a conversation I want to have with everybody around.

0:49:57 - (Linda Habak): What are your thoughts on it? Will you embrace it? Have you embraced it? Will you have a process around it?

0:50:02 - (Darren Genner): Yeah, it's something that's growing really quickly and I think it goes back and it's. I remember in year eight of high school we were handed a scientific calculator. I come home and I showed my dad and he goes, that's going to make you stupid. Didn't make me stupid. I'm still here. But the point and back to the CNC machinery that's going to take. Take jobs. And I think we're in that period now. Right? We're in the same, we're at the same point now and it's what a wonderful time to be alive in the sense of what it can do for us. Right. Because I think you've got to embrace it. I love the challenge of it. I love what it can do and I love the idea of it being evolving and we're part of that.

0:50:39 - (Darren Genner): We're getting the opportunity to shape that now, which I think is really cool. So yes, we use it. Yes, we're early adopters to whatever technology we can get our hands on because we just like to. To make the process better. We just want to Go, how can this make us do our job better? And I think people will say AI is going to stifle creativity, but I think it can spark creativity as well.

0:50:59 - (Linda Habak): I agree 100%.

0:51:01 - (Darren Genner): I think through words, we've all learned through ChatGPT that it can really help us a lot. And I think if you can embrace it and you can not be scared of training it and doing that and spending the time with can be wonderful. And we're finding the benefits of that ourselves, of image generation and video generation. It's fascinating what it can do.

0:51:22 - (Linda Habak): Have you trialled the video generation?

0:51:24 - (Darren Genner): Absolutely.

0:51:25 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. How are you finding that?

0:51:26 - (Darren Genner): I love it.

0:51:27 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. Cause I haven't. I haven't quite got there yet. Yeah.

0:51:30 - (Darren Genner): In the early days when we first left gainful employment and started, you know, doing nothing, working really hard for no money whatsoever, we would design a kitchen, we would render it, we would do an animation that would take three days to save and we'd charge a client $350. Oh my God.

0:51:48 - (Linda Habak): You know that it's so much more.

0:51:50 - (Darren Genner): I mean, I remember here we are 24 years later. It's a hell of a lot more money than that. But it's the point being, the point being is that we go through all this time to create that. Now with AI, I can take this image and this image and I can say, now create me a movie and it'll create an animation through that. And what if pictures are great, they tell a thousand words. But what does a video do?

0:52:10 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, absolutely.

0:52:11 - (Darren Genner): A video suddenly gives people that embracement. They're in the space. So I think it's wonderful. We certainly do. We use it in the briefing process. So we use it for taking clients words that they give us, turning those words into a statement, and then from that statement, then use it to generate images. Because a client's not always articulate with words. They might say they want something modern, but then they show you a picture that's French provincial and they go, this is modern.

0:52:42 - (Darren Genner): So when you take the words and you plug their words into AI and you show them what that looks like, suddenly they. That's not what I'm looking at. And at the early stages of design, especially a 3D studio, where it takes so much time to build a 3D, we've got to be sure about what

0:52:57 - (Linda Habak): we're building, what you're building. Absolutely. I should have asked this question earlier. Go back to the program that you use. Is it Python?

0:53:04 - (Darren Genner): You said so it's a little German known package called Python. And it was made by A family in Germany. They needed to establish how to build a tunnel through a mountain, and they needed to calculate the load. So they'd Very, very intelligent. They built. They made this software. Anyway, I'd learned about this Software back early, 2000s, and I went and knocked on the guy's door. I knew the guy that was bringing it into the country and went. Knocked on his door and I said, do you mind if I come and learn it? And he goes, sure, come, learn it.

0:53:36 - (Darren Genner): Come whenever you want. So I'd be there before his staff would arrive in the morning, I'd be there, and I'd be kicked out of there in the afternoon. And on Saturdays, I'd ring him. I'd say, theo, I. And he goes, well, I'm not open on Saturdays. But I said, man, I've traveled all the way from. So he'd come in, he'd open up, and I'd, you know, learn the software and to learn it and understand it. But we then developed that into what we do and every day of what we do now.

0:53:59 - (Linda Habak): So you've used that for 24 years?

0:54:02 - (Darren Genner): 23 years.

0:54:03 - (Linda Habak): Amazing. So before, almost really before Sketchup, I would say long, long, long before.

0:54:08 - (Darren Genner): And what we've learned is the power of 3D. And I remember sitting down in front of the computer and the guy that was going to train me how to use it, he just opened it up and he goes, what would you like to build? And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, you can build anything you want. I said, I'll take it.

0:54:23 - (Linda Habak): Oh, that's.

0:54:23 - (Darren Genner): And then I said, how much is it? He goes, 20 grand. I said, fuck, I can't afford that. So we had to come to an agreement, you know, so. And then from there it started. And then someone and I started designing kitchens and interior and not charging a lot of money for it at all.

0:54:37 - (Linda Habak): I have seen those renders through that package. And I mean, this was a few years ago, so it really was before kind of Sketchup was even taking off. It was amazing. It was well ahead of its time. My God.

0:54:48 - (Darren Genner): So we could. I mean, we. We can. We've stopped doing it now, but we used to be live in. We can walk people around visually in the scene, we can open doors and we can do things. But we stopped doing that because the requests that you get from there, that we don't want clients to think it's, you know, as easy as it can be.

0:55:02 - (Linda Habak): No, that's. That's.

0:55:03 - (Darren Genner): And that's. The ease only comes with a long, long period of time.

0:55:07 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:55:08 - (Darren Genner): Yeah. It looks easy, but it's. It's not.

0:55:10 - (Linda Habak): No, of course not. Are you still sort of like, obviously you did your mentoring last year. What were the big things that came out of that process, and what have you changed since doing that program?

0:55:24 - (Darren Genner): Communication, the way we communicate who we are and what we want out of a transaction is probably one of the biggest things that we've learned. Okay, we've got our contract better. We've gone to a digital contract now, so it's all online. And we send a link to clients. It's very clear. We've got a menu where they can add things if they want it because they don't realise that you do it, so. And us communicating concept to completion, us communicating that we want to be part of that process all the way through. I think that's probably the biggest takeaway from it, as well as believing in ourself and trusting what we'd achieved in the past. So.

0:56:02 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, I can't believe that you and Simona, who have existed for 24 years and your level of experience, had any level of. Of imposter syndrome.

0:56:12 - (Darren Genner): No, it happens.

0:56:13 - (Linda Habak): It blows my mind.

0:56:14 - (Darren Genner): It does. But I think because you get beaten up and the industry, you know, like, big things happen. Robberies, covids, you know, it happens, you know?

0:56:21 - (Linda Habak): Absolutely.

0:56:21 - (Darren Genner): And I think it can happen to all of us.

0:56:23 - (Linda Habak): Oh, yeah?

0:56:23 - (Darren Genner): Yeah.

0:56:25 - (Linda Habak): Really?

0:56:26 - (Darren Genner): Absolutely.

0:56:27 - (Linda Habak): In every aspect, whether you're designing, podcasting, whatever. Like, it's. It's.

0:56:32 - (Darren Genner): But, you know, the greatest thing that we learned from that set account and all those years ago was just do version version one and just get it on paper, work with it for as long or as short as you want to, and do a version 1.1 and just look at it and go, okay, how could that be better? You know, how can you, at the end of a job, stand there and go, okay, this is awesome, but, you know, perfection's unobtainable.

0:56:54 - (Linda Habak): Absolutely.

0:56:54 - (Darren Genner): Look back at it and say, how could this. How could have this been better?

0:56:57 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, of course. We're coming to the very sad end. I say that a lot. Couple more questions. So if you could go back to that young man on the production floor, what would you say to him?

0:57:10 - (Darren Genner): Be patient. Yeah, be patient and keep watching. Keep learning. You know, it's. I don't have many. There's no. Actually, there's no real regrets because you're just. You're going through. You're going through a process at the time, but it's just. Just really keep watching and just keep learning and you know, keep evolving.

0:57:27 - (Linda Habak): What are you excited for? For the future.

0:57:30 - (Darren Genner): Tomorrow? Yeah.

0:57:31 - (Linda Habak): Love it.

0:57:31 - (Darren Genner): There's a new day tomorrow. There's a new sunrise, there's a new sun, sunset. They're awesome to watch and they're awesome to view. So tomorrow.

0:57:38 - (Linda Habak): Tomorrow. And last question, the signature question. What does Build Beautiful mean to you?

0:57:44 - (Darren Genner): It's a really good question and I reflected on it a bit since you sent me the email, and I sort of realized what it was on Friday last week, because I think in our industry, we start thinking built and we're thinking form and structure and material and all of that stuff. But last Friday, someone who works from home on Fridays, and I came home, I opened the door to our house and the sun was coming through the frangipani and the gum trees and there's all this dappled light on the wall.

0:58:13 - (Darren Genner): My oldest daughter's studying for hsc. She's at the table. My other daughter was sitting on the couch. And it was that feeling of walking into a space going, this is home. And that's what it is. It's what our clients tell us, is that. But when our clients ring us and say, I've got a problem, everyone comes over now and they never leave. Yeah. It's the feeling. It's the way people feel in a space. It's the way that we. It's the way that we feel calm, we feel peaceful, we feel organised, we feel safe. Yeah. So I think designing for people in place and everything that they do, it's feeling, it's that emotion.

0:58:46 - (Linda Habak): Couldn't have a more perfect answer. I love it. Darren, I can't thank you enough, honestly. It's been such a good conversation. It's amazing.

0:58:55 - (Darren Genner): I'm very lucky, man, to have her

0:58:56 - (Linda Habak): part of this journey. Like, I really, for me, Build Beautiful is about highlighting these important stories and not about the work, because everyone knows the work is great, but it's actually about the people behind it.

0:59:08 - (Darren Genner): Human stories.

0:59:09 - (Linda Habak): Stories. The human stories.

0:59:10 - (Darren Genner): There's so many awesome designers out there and creatives and marketing people. Their story needs to be heard.

0:59:16 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:59:17 - (Darren Genner): Thank you very much for having me.

0:59:18 - (Linda Habak): Oh, pleasure. Thank you.

0:59:19 - (Darren Genner): Thank you.