Today we’d like to introduce you to Brenda Blaylock.
Hi Brenda, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My Dream, My Journey, My Horizon
I’ve always been an entrepreneur and visionary at heart. I am always thinking about what is needed, what is missing, and what would make a difference. At a young age I knew I wanted to make something of myself that I would be proud of and have a positive impact. When we are young, we are dreamers. As we grow up, we learn how to make our dreams come to fruition. It takes desire, hard work, and action to build something. My journey started when I decided not to finish college. I was ready to get into the hustle and bustle of life and a career. I didn’t know who or what I wanted to be I just knew I was ready to get started. Being from a small town, my dream had always been to move to Dallas. I wanted to be immersed in the big city life. I found a fantastic job for an international merchandising company. They allowed me to learn about the buying and selling of commodities and the significance of creating relations and doing business with other countries. Our country has always taken such great pride in manufacturing and I was proud to be working for a company that valued this and the importance of these relationships.
During this time, I met my husband, who had just finished medical school. We fell in love, and my life shifted dramatically. My focus was no longer on my career; it was on his. I felt his job was more important than mine. It took an extreme amount of commitment, focus, hard work, but most of all he was caring for people and their well-being. I had never been around someone so driven, and I was thrilled to have someone so special in my life. The next few years were spent following him through his residency, and before he finished his residency, I became pregnant. I saw my life shift again, and it was amazing being a mom and a wife, but at the same time, I started missing myself. The dreamer, the worker, the confident girl that believed I could do anything… I still wanted to be someone. Someone with a career that I was proud of and made a difference. I loved being a wife and a mom, but I wanted to be “me” too. I wanted a purpose and a passion. The wonderful thing is my husband wanted that for me too, but even though he did, it was still so hard to find something that “l” could do that would give me purpose.
Becoming a doctor’s wife put me in a position that everyone thought I was privileged and should be happy with being a mom and a wife. But I still had a burning desire to do something for myself so that I could be proud of “myself”. The next phase was we were going to move where David’s job took us. I had hoped it would be a big city, but it was the absolute opposite. He took a job in the small town of Decatur. Well, I was happy to be a mom, happy to be married to the man of my dreams, but moving to a small town, I knew my opportunities would be so much smaller. I took jobs while he was in residency that were nowhere close to being one I was proud of or set me on a path to career I wanted. I was just taking what I could get as we moved around. It took the air out from under my wings, and now I was in Decatur. It was not all doom and gloom. I was thrilled because we were buying our first house and we were having fun with our family and friends. I was truly blessed but I still needed something for myself. This is where things can change on a dime. As David was starting his practice, he needed to have contracts between him and all the insurance companies; he needed to hire a billing company to bill and collect for all of his services.
As he started looking into all of this and looking over what this would entail, I told him I could do it. I had never done any of this, but everything I had done in life there was always the first time and I knew I was not scared to learn and that I had gained confidence through everything I done before. If you don’t try, you will never know, and the most significant thing was I was working for our income and making sure that we received everything we were supposed to. I had an invested interest and this is the best position to be in. Through this journey, we built one of the largest independent anesthesia companies in North Texas. I negotiated contracts with all the insurance companies and billed for all the services provided in three counties. During this period, I grew a lot and gained an immense amount of knowledge and confidence. I saw in a short amount of time that big things could happen. This gave me a fire in my belly and the desire in my heart to create and do more.
Stepping into the Design World and Finding my True Calling.
We decided to have a second child and wanted to find some land and build a home. I considered this another business I could learn about. What it takes to find and buy a property and what it takes to design and build a home. Wow, was I in heaven on this one? I definitely wasn’t a designer, but I knew what I liked and learned how important each decision is and how it impacted the beauty, functionality, and comfort of a home. I was in my element. I realized that I was creative, and I could envision the spaces and rooms. I learned I was a perfectionist when it came to the look, the symmetry and the balance of a space. Through this, I learned about the architectural phase and how to create the perfect layout. I learned about the construction phase and asked a million questions. I wasn’t afraid to show that I didn’t know something because when I did, the person seemed to explain in even more detail. It was their time to impress, and I took it all in. I also learned about all the interior selections and the order it’s done, the importance of putting it perfectly together, and learning what it took to decorate the home. Wow, was this a big journey! I went to many, many stores and bought hundreds of magazines (no Pinterest, Houzz, or Instagram then).
Through all of this visual research, I learned to create my vision with a culmination of all the things I saw that I loved. I was immersed in the details. A picture was a million little pieces to me. I saw every little detail and figured out what I liked and didn’t like. I created my taste and my style. I didn’t realize I was doing that at the time, but I now know that I had been doing this more through the years. I was creating myself and what is perfect for me. This is how I learned that you have to be confident in what makes you happy inside and aesthetically. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and oh, is that so true. During our home building, we had a second precious child, and life was blissful and busy. I had a family, a career, and a new home.
Then came the next opportunity for me to learn. We had the chance to be part of a commercial property development. I was so excited to learn about another new area of business. We built a strip shop center across the street from the hospital. I was a sponge. I moved our billing business into one of the spaces and helped with leasing the other spaces. When we worked on leasing the last space in the center, our partner and friends suggested to me to open a coffee house since the town didn’t have one and an interiors store. Them asking was a huge compliment. They believed in me and my ability to start and build something new. I loved the idea of creating something special that was unique and different from anything I had seen.
This is where I used my ability to see and merge other ideas together. At that time, I loved the Friends television show coffee house. The setup of everyone sitting around on sofas and chairs and hanging out with their friends. I also loved the allure of a beautiful interiors and gift store. I decided to put them together in one space. I wanted people to come in and order a coffee or smoothie and be able to sit down and visit or walk through the store and enjoy looking at all the incredible things I had curated for them to buy. I wanted it to be an experience (Now remember this was the year 2000, and the term experiential had not been coined). B Kay’s Interiors and Coffee Haus was born! Through this venture, I found my true calling. Through my business experience and my success in creating a beautiful retail space and coffee house, I knew what I wanted to do and was proud of myself for doing it. I couldn’t have done it without my desire to do and learn everything before this.
During this time, I worked with another designer on some projects and saw a future in us working together. With that being said, I presented to her my thoughts as to why I think it would be great for us to partner in a design business. We were both very driven women and loved designing. This was when Grandeur Design came to be. We were doing design jobs and having a ball, but I still wanted to build bigger and create something unique. During this time, my husband and I started on another commercial project, and I decided to grow my interiors store and coffee house. I wanted my coffee house to become a cafe. I wanted my interior business to become a larger furniture store that offered design services and custom in-house drapery services. This now would make your experience even more impactful when you visited my store. I jumped in wholeheartedly. I found a fantastic chef/baker who had a very successful business in Decatur and offered her the opportunity to be part of the cafe. She would take care of making the specialty lunches and baked goods, and I would provide everything else. I then designed the store and cafe to be a space that opened up to each other. You could come in and eat and then walk through the beautiful gate I designed between the cafe and showroom and shop to your heart’s content.
I offered everything to decorate your home. It was set up where Grandeur would sell you the big furnishings and drapery, and B Kay’s would sell all the decorative accessories. After working on drapery with my partner and seeing how she went to many stores in Dallas to select fabrics and then go all the way to Houston to have them made, I wanted to take the middlemen out of the equation and provide this service in-house. I knew the quality, service, and time we spent producing the drapery would be so much better and more profitable if it was in-house. I decided to figure out where the fabric stores were buying their fabrics and we hired seamstresses to work for us. This was a massive shift for our business with great success. I now loved creating, designing, and producing the treatments. I did all of this while continuing to run the anesthesia billing business. I designed the office space for this business to be connected to my interior store with a window in my office that allowed me to oversee everything, literally!
After a few years and great success with the coffee house, the big daddy of coffee houses came to town. That’s right, Starbucks. Unfortunately, everything changed after that, and I decided to close the business’s coffee house portion. Even though this was a hard decision, it allowed me to put more time into the design business.
As a businesswoman, I knew there was always room for growth, so I continued to think about growing the interiors and design business. One day while shopping at stores on the square in Decatur, I saw that one of the big beautiful buildings that had been there for almost 100 years was for sale. Once again, my inner sense told me there could be a great opportunity in this. When I felt this excitement, I knew I was committed. There wasn’t any hesitation. I wanted more products to sell. I wanted more room for seamstresses and more space for fabrics and trims. Well, a few weeks later, we were moving to the more prominent building. I now owned more real estate and could lease the space I left since it was in a prime location. During our time on the square, we became a full-service design company. We did many show homes. We created a custom bedding line that we sold to retail stores in the US. We had a store in the design district in Dallas that sold customs florals and trees and furnishings to the trade. I felt my hands had been in so many businesses, but I still felt there was more to be done. I felt having this business in Decatur was holding us back. I wanted to have a store in the “big” city.
Fort Worth was my favorite place, and we had designed many homes and show homes in Fort Worth, so I decided to look for a space for a store there. I didn’t know if my business partner would want to do this. We both were raising our families in Decatur. Her children were younger than mine, and I didn’t know if this would work for her. She had gone with my visions for our growth so far, so I hoped she would with this one. Well, she did. I found a great space in Fort Worth, and in just a few months, we were up and running with our second location. Life comes at you quickly. Through all of this, my husband and I were raising a beautiful family. We had some major life hurdles we went through in other business ventures and many more struggles, but the positives and love for what we were doing outweighed it all.
Having the store in Fort Worth was terrific. We were immersed in the community and creating and designing, and having a blast doing it. Our store was magnificent, and it was our calling card to the caliber and creativity that we offer to our clientele. We were leasing the store space we were in; however, its location began to cater to a different crowd. With that being said, my partner and I started thinking about what our next move would be. I had always wanted to sell to the trade, be the largest fabric store, sell tile, and so much more. To offer our clients the selections we were hired to pick for them. I still had a vision, and I knew this would be a fantastic thing for everyone who loves design. Although my partner and I didn’t see things the same way, we had been in business for 16 years and knew we had to make a move, so I began looking for space. I knew it would be a better financial investment if we owned our store. We each started looking for what we thought would be the best next move. One day, I was driving down a popular street in Fort Worth when I saw a for-sale sign on an old, dilapidated building and property. This wasn’t a fixer-upper but a tearer downer. I saw an opportunity. It was in a great location, and Fort Worth was in a resurgence of taking old areas and making them new again. I couldn’t wait to tell my partner I found a diamond in the rough and that this would be the most incredible move we could make. After weighing out what she found and what I found, we decided to move forward with the land I found.
Once we bought the land, it was time to design the building. I had a lot of ideas and visions and talked it over with my partner, and she said, “You design it.” Once again, I wanted to create something unique. Something that would stand out in Fort Worth and become a landmark for many years to come. Something that would reflect the caliber of design you would receive when hiring Grandeur Design. After endless nights of visualizing and drawing, I finalized the design and layout. I couldn’t wait to show her, and she loved it. I was so excited and couldn’t believe that after 17 years, I had crafted something that was going to be part of the beautiful city of Fort Worth. My heart was full of accomplishment and pride.
The process of buying the land and designing the building took quite a bit of time, so we moved out of our store. We were fortunate that we still had our operation in Decatur to continue business without any hiccups. We were busier than ever, and clients found us through our website, referrals, and marketing. The process of building our new building had many complications and was continually delayed. And this is when my partner and I decided to go down separate paths. Once again, life can turn on a dime, and you end up finding yourself standing in a place you thought you would never be. I never thought I would not have Grandeur Design. I spent 17 years of my life building and living and breathing this company. It was going to be my legacy. I was so proud of it, and I loved how incredible it was. My partner didn’t see it the same way and closed it. How is that possible? I don’t know, but it happened. One day, I went to bed with a company that was rocking and rolling and woke up the next day being told if she didn’t want it, then it wasn’t going to be. She didn’t want a store, and she only wanted to do design.
Life is a journey, and I have learned through everything I have done and experienced up to this point that God has a plan, and He will reveal His path for me. I was devastated but I knew to have faith in Him.
Where did you go from there?
Well, I had to go back to square one. Everything that I had spent the past 17 years building was gone in a flash. Every contract, every account. The business and building I designed was no longer. I knew I had an enormous mountain to climb to get back to where I had been before, but I also knew that my passion for design and business would guide and push me forward. With that being said, there was one question I still needed to ask myself. What type of business did I want to develop for myself? For so many years, it had been about us. This time I would need to be in a new mindset, and it needed to be about me. It was at that moment that I truly realized the sky’s the limit. I could make my business into anything I wanted. Even though I was looking internally it was still about building something for me and my family. They had always been my biggest supporters and been with me every step of the way. I truly live my life for them.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your new business and where your headed now?
New Business, New Horizon
Alright, so back to basics. That means a new design company, new website, and a new vision. I started acquiring new clients and old clients, but the best thing is my entrepreneurial side started thinking and processing again. I started thinking about my process of designing and how it would help so many with their design projects. I also believe the tools and resources I have need to be more accessible to everyone who wants to do their own designs. There needs to be a set of tools and a process set out for them so that designing is easier and the outcomes are perfectly tailored for them.
This is where my second company is coming to light. I am creating the most amazing process and kit that will make designing easy for anyone who wants to do it themselves or for anyone who wants to become a designer. I am building this company and working to bring it to market.
If designing for my incredible clients and creating this design process and kit wasn’t enough I have one more thing I am so excited to announce. A new clothing line! That’s right, I’m now delving into the fashion realm of the design! It all started from an article of clothing I created one night when I was about to go out. I was in my closet and couldn’t decide what to wear. I was trying to find that perfect jacket and purse combo. A jacket that would kee me warm while also complimenting my outfit, and a purse to match while being big enough to carry my belongings. Why in the world is looking fabulous and feeling confident when we go out so darn hard. Now, remember, I’m a perfectionist who designs not only for beauty but functionality, so this is in my wheelhouse.
“Silhouette” was born! A fabulous piece of clothing that elegantly wraps around you, keeping you warm while also providing a hidden compartments for you to hide your phone, keys, lipstick, blush, brush, business cards, water bottle, and wait for it… sandals! I know what you’re thinking! “What!!??! No way!!” Yes!! I created and designed a piece of clothing that does all of this, and you would never guess you are carrying around so much. I intentionally designed it to have hidden pockets so that no one would know you are carrying around all these things while also making sure you’re looking as fashionable as ever! You can wrap it around you, or lay it across you. It is perfect to wear to a formal event, the movies, a restaurant, or my favorite is to carry it on the plane when I travel. It is my Silhouette. It’s full of all my little secrets.
Knowing that what I created was unique and one-of-a-kind and had a special utility to it I felt it was important to see if I could acquire a patent for it before selling it. I knew this was not an easy task, but it would help secure a stronger future in the value of selling the garment. It took a few years to go through this process, and the great news is I’ve just received the patent. Woohoo!! I am so excited to bring this to stores! Now that I have the design, production, and patent all set up, I have to create the company that will bring it to market and work to make it a part of everyone’s wardrobe.
What does success mean to you?
Finding something that you are passionate about and brings you and other joy. Creating and designing for others has been so fulfilling and has driven me to do so many other things that would help others. I have loved designing homes, creating companies, and most importantly, LIFE. I am here for a short time, and I want to make the most of it and most of all, I want to leave a positive mark in this world and for my family.
Contact Info:
- Email: brenda@hausofblaylock.com
- Website: hausofblaylock.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/hausofblaylock
- Facebook: facebook.com/hausofblaylock
- Twitter: twitter.com/hausofblaylock
- Other: https://www.houzz.com/pro/hausofblaylock
Image Credits
Chloe C. Vaughan
