Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad Holley.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
As a baby of the 80’s and a cultural product of the 90’s, half of my childhood consisted of playing video games. One of the things that always endeared me toward the games I liked the most was the imaginative world-building that many of them featured. I was constantly awe-struck by the amount of time that some developers would invest into making unbelievably elaborate environments with all of the thoughtful considerations given to all of the smallest details. Seeing a meticulously crafted landscape always filled me with the greatest amount of wonder.
After high school, I worked several different jobs, but I never really established a career path. I did a semester of community college, but I didn’t take it seriously, and I certainly wasn’t disciplined enough to stick with it. I was a hard worker, but I had no plans. I absolutely saw a future for myself, but I had no clue how to get there. So, like many young men with no direction, I simply pursued the next opportunity that came my way. Followed by the next, and the next, and so on.
After building friendships through different jobs, one of them eventually led me to a job working for a commercial construction company. During my time there, we were hired to renovate an automotive space for the legendary T1 Race Development. T1 is famous for building some of the fastest Nissan GTRs in the entire world. T1’s founder, Tony Palo, presented us with a 3D model of the renovation concept that he had created himself.
If someone were to ask me at what point my life really changed, I would pinpoint the single, solitary moment that I saw Tony’s 3D model. I asked what he had created it with, and his answer was that he had used a relatively new program called “SketchUp”. It was this incredibly versatile, intuitive, and user-friendly program, and most importantly, it was free for anyone to use. I was blown away. I immediately downloaded the program on every computer I used, and I started playing with it like a kid who just got a new toy. I was obsessed.
Months and months went by, and I was getting pretty good at using it. I was designing craft projects that I could build in my garage; I was designing DIY renovations that my wife and I could do inside our home, and I even managed to find a few uses for it at work. The headline here was that I was creating things in a 3D space, which is something I never thought I would be able to do. It seemed like the kind of thing that would have cost untold thousands of dollars to access and would require years of specialized training at an expensive school in order to master. Yet here I was… doing it… all by myself.
One day, I did a Google search on how to perform a certain trick inside SketchUp, and to my surprise, one of the search results was a job posting. It was seeking a design assistant for a successful custom swimming pool designer. I also remember reading that something like 80% of the job would involve using SketchUp and that one of the main requirements was that you needed to be very familiar with it.
At that point in my life, I never really considered myself a very confident person. It’s not that I beat myself up or put myself down or anything, I just rarely considered myself worthy of nice things. Before this time in my life, if you had asked me how I felt about applying for a job that I probably wasn’t qualified for, I probably would have laughed and insisted that it was for someone much more qualified than me. But at that moment, I immediately knew that I *HAD* to apply for this job. The possibility that I might get to play around in 3D all day, every day, and get paid for it–it was too much.
Imagine my surprise when I not only landed the interview (as well as a follow-up interview), but I also got the job!
The man who hired me was Randy Angell. For the uninitiated, Randy is not just “some pool designer.” I had landed a job with one of the most awarded, followed, and imitated outdoor designers in America. This man’s work could be seen in the backyards of countless notable people, including some of Dallas’ most famous and wealthy. Business moguls, CEOs, athletes, local news personalities–this guy was like a secret weapon that only wealthy and successful people whispered to one another in their very exclusive circles. He was a total legend, and I had never even heard of him.
I liked Randy’s story because it was an underdog story. He never received any formal education either, yet he was at the top of his field. And not just locally either. I’m talking nationwide. He started with nothing more than a strong passion for architecture and home design in his high school drafting class. And he definitely had the gift. His teacher referred a custom home builder straight to him so that he could start doing real, professional designs. By the time he had graduated high school, this “kid” had designed dozens of homes which were being built all over the North Dallas area.
I can fully appreciate the value of universities and other institutions of higher learning, and I absolutely see the importance and reverence of committing to and completing a rigorous 4+ year marathon of learning. But I think there was always a small part of me that resented the gate-keeping nature of it all. It seemed that all of the illustrious and respected jobs only came with degrees, while I knew that there were people like myself out there who, if given a chance, could shadow a talented individual and learn how to do everything that they do. So, of course, I gravitated to Randy’s story and even saw myself in it in a way.
I ended up spending 8.5 years being trained and mentored by him. During that time, he was teaching me so much more than just how to design a swimming pool. Randy taught me timeless design principles like size, scale, proportion, balance, contrast, and layering and how a much larger beautiful picture is comprised of so many small but important details.
In the outdoor renovation industry, there is an annual competition known as the “Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge.” Every year, some of the very best outdoor designers, landscape architects, and builders from across the country submit their master-planned design solutions for the same hypothetical home and family. The thing that makes this competition so unique, so challenging, and so fun is that this hypothetical renovation project has a virtually unlimited construction budget (hence the “Million Dollar” part of the name). This means that anyone participating has free reign to design the wildest and most over-the-top outdoor design.
I had casually followed the entries for a couple of years after hearing about it, but it wasn’t until 2022 that Randy finally encouraged me to enter and see how I stacked up against the best outdoor designers that America had to offer. That year, out of ~50+ contestants, I made it to the final judging ceremony in Las Vegas, where I came home with 4th place. I was astonished that I even pulled that off, but I could also feel the very clear confidence boost that it had given me. I waited anxiously for an entire year so that I could finally enter once again. But in November of 2023, I finally ended up winning 1st place as well as the $10,000 grand prize.
It was bizarre. Here I was, feeling like a relative nobody, but at the same time, struggling to accept the fact that I was now being considered one of (if not *THE*) best outdoor & swimming pool designer in the country. To say that I’ve been dealing with a bit of “imposter syndrome” is an understatement, but I’m getting there.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I really feel like I should be able to provide some great story about a bunch of challenging obstacles and the ways that I’ve managed to endure and overcome them. But the truth is, ever since I found my way into this career, things have been relatively easy for me. Granted, I’ve worked on some challenging projects, I’ve dealt with challenging people, and at times, I’ve even felt the self-sabotaging, intense pressure of working (far too many times) right up until the very last minute that a client presentation was due. But in all honesty, the headline for me is that once you finally find your ‘thing’ in life, you’re probably going to notice that it mostly just feels like fun because that’s the thing you should have been doing all along. Over the past 9 years, very few days have felt like hard work for me. When I open up one of my 3D models and start hemorrhaging my imagination all over the virtual space that I’m creating, in a lot of ways, I’m transported right back into the same state of mind that I was in when I would play video games as a kid. What I do should really be considered “play,” and somehow, I’m lucky enough to get paid to do it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
When I worked for Randy Angell, we were exclusively a design firm. Our only expectation and responsibility was to create beautiful master-planned design concepts for all of the outdoor spaces that surrounded our clients’ homes. We were the very best at designing these things, and I should clarify that I still consider Randy to be the very best. Period. No matter how good I or anyone else gets at doing this, I don’t think that anyone will ever replace him.
That being said, when it came to actually building the things we designed, we relied on a very short and exclusive list of trusted builders, all of whom we knew were talented, careful, and capable enough to build the extremely unique things that we would design. Each of them were among the very best in Dallas. After years of operating this way, one of the build firms I came to know and build a relationship with was “Pure Design.” I always appreciated their professionalism, their reliability, their communication, their attention to detail, and their unmatched level of technical expertise when it came to the intricacies of construction. It was not hard to see why this company was included in this short list of “Dallas’ Best Builders.”
So, when they made it public that they were looking to expand their team, I basically asked them to “say more.” I already admired everything about them, and I knew that their modern/contemporary architectural aesthetic perfectly matched mine. They knew me. I knew them. It was kind of a perfect match. Little did I know that the infrastructure on the inside of the company was just as good as it appeared from the outside.
I accepted the position of Design Director for Pure Design, where I now get to share my creative vision and influence with the entire team. Not only that, I’m now in a position where I not only get to continue creating some of the most incredible outdoor projects in Dallas that I did before, but now I get to participate in the construction process and see all of my designs come to life, from start to finish.
I know that with a positive spirit of pride and gumption, there are so many people out there who would casually or even haphazardly claim that their team or organization is the best out there at doing what they do. But after working as a partner with the top 10% of companies in our local market, I feel like I can say with sincerity, confidence, and experience that we truly are the best in D/FW at building luxury backyard environments–hands down.
Maybe this should have been my response to the “obstacles/challenges” question. The worst part about taking this bright, shiny new opportunity with so much potential was wrapping my head around the fact that I was about to walk away from the man who had quite literally changed my life–a man I owed 110% of my success and talent to. He felt like family to me. He had given me the chance of a lifetime during our 8.5 years together. I knew it was going to hurt both of us to walk away from that. And it did.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
I would love to help modernize every backyard in Dallas. If you’re a homeowner looking to totally transform your outdated backyard into one of the most unique spots in the entire neighborhood, I want to work with you! If you’re an architect, custom home builder, or landscape architect, and your client has unusually high expectations for their swimming pool, I want to collaborate with you! If you’re just a casual fan of one-of-a-kind, spectacular designs, follow myself and Pure Design on all the social channels.
Also, do yourself a favor and go follow the Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge organization. The competition doesn’t have its own TV show yet, but if the entire concept isn’t a perfectly made-for-TV design show, then nothing is. I feel like it’s a perfect candidate to be featured on HGTV or something, and maybe in the future, it will be. But for now, I think a huge number of people would enjoy watching it build up to that point.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.puredesign.life
- Instagram: @brad_designs_things / @puredesign_life
- Facebook: @puredesign.life
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-holley-dallas-tx/
- Youtube: @puredesignlife2039
Image Credits
Ashley Holley
