When the Economy Crashes…Diversify or Die | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this insightful episode, Matt Zaun talks with Marcy Sagel, CEO & Principal of MSA Interiors, a Baltimore-based commercial interior design firm with over 30 years of experience designing multifamily, student housing, senior living, hospitals, and more.

They unpack how Marcy built a downturn-proof business by diversifying revenue streams, locking in budgets early, and adapting her leadership through crisis...including the sudden loss of her hearing during COVID.

Marcy shares how the pain of the 2008 recession reshaped her entire approach to business, what today’s developers need most amid rising costs, and how confidence and grit develop across decades of entrepreneurship.

In this episode, they cover:

✅ Surviving 2008–2011 — how Marcy went three years without paying herself, kept her entire team employed, and rebuilt her firm through diversification.

✅ Leading through adversity — Marcy’s story of losing her hearing during COVID and the practical ways she adapted as a business leader.

✅ Team longevity & culture — why she invests heavily in great people, profit-sharing, and happiness, and lets go of misaligned hires faster.

✅ Confidence for women in leadership — advice for young women learning to find their voice in male-dominated industries: “Speak early, speak often, and get reps through public speaking.”

…and much more!

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Marcy, welcome to the Stories of Traction Podcast. but what so we'll off ALT Eliot Network.

 

Marcy Sagel

Thanks. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on board.

 

Matt Zaun 

Absolutely. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. I'm really excited for our conversation today. I have a lot of curiosity regarding the commercial real estate industry, something that you have over 30 years experience with.

So I want to touch on that. I want to unpack elements of your story. But before we do, can you share with my audience a little bit about what you do at MSA Interiors, some of the clients that you've worked with, and some of the projects that you've worked on over the years?

 

Marcy Sagel

Sure. So we have a commercial interior design firm based in Baltimore, Maryland. We specialize in multifamily, market rate, affordable housing, student housing, senior housing, hospitals, data centers.

We do stadiums. We have a very, very broad portfolio of projects that we do and just have a really phenomenal team here.

 

Matt Zaun 

So when you think about the future, I'm fascinated by this industry. square ofatives. Okay. Especially as we focus more and more on the future, and what this might mean for commercial real estate.

So, obviously no one can completely predict what's going to happen in the future, but based on all your experience, decades and decades of your work in this industry, if you were to think about the next five years, based on any patterns that you've seen, what would be some of the things that you would say as a predictor, more than likely this is going to happen?

 

Marcy Sagel

So, I lived through the 0811 downturn in multifamily, and what we saw was projects basically came to a complete halt, stopped.

So, people stopped spending money, and we had to wait for, you know, a few years for it to really kind of pick back up.

What I see now is more of a pause. We had some projects go on pause last year, and when I talked to...

Other design firms, they pretty much had the same thing, but we are incredibly busy, and the reason why we're incredibly busy is because after the 0811 downturn, we decided to diversify our revenue streams and open our client base up to all of those other revenue streams that I mentioned at the beginning.

So we don't just do market rate multifamily, which is what we used to do in 0811. We now do affordable housing.

We do a lot of the student housing, like I mentioned, senior housing, and all of the different areas that we diversified in.

So in my opinion, you really have to take what you're currently doing and make sure that you have enough revenue streams to get you through any kind of downturn of any economy.

And so when you do that, you are able to get through some of the difficult spots. What we're seeing now is a lot of the commercial developers are getting partners.

Thank you. If own the land, then they'll have someone else that maybe partners with them to build the building so that they have less of a financial load on just one group.

And they're partnering sometimes with three, four different groups of developers that typically would just work amongst their own group.

So we're seeing that a lot. That's definitely a trend that we're seeing. I'm actually even been introducing different developers to each other for different types of partnerships, so been doing that a whole lot.

And what we're finding is everyone, everyone wants the most bang for the buck. So, you know, construction costs have gone up.

Everything's gone up. So we're really focused on making sure the project looks great and sticking to our budget. So when we give our client a budget, that budget is what it is.

It's not going to go over not by $5, not by $500,000. It's actually going to be what we tell them.

So our design fee is locked in our FF&E package. So, We locked in, they know exactly early on what that cost is going to be.

So, you know, for example, now we have tariffs, we have soft good pricing going up, we have framing going up, you know, all of these different things are going up, the material goods are going up, and, you know, we get them from the US instead of from overseas to save us on tariffs.

You know, there's a lot of different balls to juggle now and I think what we're finding is that, you know, you have to look at smarter ways to do things.

The developer wants the same product, they want a good looking product at a cost that they know is going to be that cost that we discussed from the beginning.

So I think it's really important to give people options and show them what those costs are up front when we're developing the project, so that we can all select things based on what those costs are.

 

Matt Zaun 

Thanks for sharing that. really appreciate that. I want to, I do want to talk a little bit about the 2008, 2011 period that you had.

And as soon as you were mentioning that, I remembered a moment that was a defining moment for me, and I'm interested to learn about defining moments for you, especially as it pertains to this time period.

So I remember when the recession was officially announced by President Bush, where I was, I remember I was at the gym, I was on a treadmill, and there's about a dozen TVs surrounding me, and he was talking about the severity of what's going to come.

And I'll never forget this, because one of the things, I wrestled for 10 years, so I wrestled, I played football, and in wrestling, there's a ton of running.

And I remember my father used to always tell me, regardless of how hard it gets, Matt, you have to keep running.

And his point in that was, in wrestling, you have to have, you have to have the stamina in order to keep up with your competitors.

So I remember I'm on the treadmill, I'm watching all these TVs, President Bush is on, talking about how terrible it's basically going to be.

And very diplomatic words, but basically, this recession is going to hit really hard. It's going We to have a massive ripple effect across our economy, and I remember running at that moment and hearing my father's words echo in my mind, Matt, just keep running.

And those years were tough. Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. was really tough, but that defined me personally because I remember I had the most intensive personal growth in those years of that recession than I think of any other time in my life, right?

And that was a defining moment. It helped me significantly in business because of different things that I did. So I want to learn a little bit about your moment.

Clearly, that was probably not a fun season in your life. I'm sure there was a lot of headaches, a lot of stress.

Can you think of a time within that three-year gap where you were overcome with fear or uncertainty or any kind of anxiety?

Maybe maybe it was sleepless nights. Maybe it was not knowing how your business might have even survived during that time.

 

Marcy Sagel

Is there a defining moment that you can So I had a lot of stress, probably most I've ever my life, and, you I come from a family entrepreneurs, and so I had a lot of stress, like probably the most I've ever had in my life, and, you know, you, I come from a family of entrepreneurs.

And so entrepreneurs have had good and bad times. You know, I've been very fortunate. But that time period was a big game changer for me.

I did not pay myself a salary for three years. I kept all my employees on at their current salaries, and did not get rid of any staff at all.

And I just didn't pay myself. I don't think I would do that again, lesson learned. But, um, during that time, you know, I just.

Just. So decided if I can get through this, I'm going to pivot and I'm going to have so many revenue streams that nothing's going to affect me the way it did during this economy.

And that pivoted me to move into so many different directions of design. And I did that with purpose. And I did it every year.

I added another one or two revenue streams that we added to the business. And it really helped be a game changer when the economy is kind of shaky and it's not sure what it's going to do.

But internally, I not only didn't sleep, I, you know, am I worried too much about my business? Am I worried too much about my mother and where, you know, what I'm going to be?

You know, I've had an incredibly close relationship with her. I went there at least three times a day, okay, when my mother was at the sort of end game.

And so, you know, you don't want to work at all, but you have to work. have a business to run.

You have employees. You've got things. And it helped get me through a difficult emotional time. Working on my business helped me get through that time period.

And a lot of gratefulness and prayer and basically me telling myself, if I can get through this, I can get through anything, because it just doesn't get much worse than this.

And so that really was the pivoting time for me. And after that, it was just growth, new revenue streams, learning about how to run a business better, streamlining things, and basically being a lot more economical about where we were going and how we were going to get there.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. Wow. I appreciate you mentioning, especially the pain points where that pain really, really led to more clarity for you and helped create a stronger business.

Yeah. When COVID hit, did you have thoughts of 2008 to 11? Like when it first... When it first happened and the world was shutting down, what was going through your mind then, and has COVID changed your industry for you personally?

 

Marcy Sagel

So, fortunately, our projects did not get put on hold during COVID, interestingly enough. I actually had to get on a plane a few times.

I had clients going, get this done while we can. Let's just knock this stuff out. And so, things were moving at a very rapid pace during COVID for us.

I would say, initially, people kind of paused and said, let's figure out where we're going. And then as it ramped up, I think the majority of our clients were like, let's get in there and do renovations.

Let's get in there and do our new builds as quickly as we can. And the pivot was that they really wanted there to be more independent study and more independent work and play areas within the amenity spaces.

So the pivot was less group, more individual. So we just had to just change some of the design of the amenity spaces, but I don't think that that was too difficult.

And also making a lot more outdoor areas for people to go to within these communities of multifamily development. Creating outdoor space, dog walking areas, bike riding areas, that kind of thing.

Hangout areas outside so that people could get out of the apartment complex and really feel a little fresh air.

So we do hospital work as well. So that completely halted during COVID. Obviously, they were overwrought and that came to a standstill.

because I had these revenue generators that were multiple different revenue streams, we were able to be fine during COVID.

I came to the office every single day. Mary Beth. She works at the other end of the hall here.

Her husband's the president of a hospital. The both of us came in every single day. Everyone else was remote.

We were already set up remotely anyway because our designers like to sometimes work on a weekend or an evening and fill in the gap with just, you know, working on a project.

They might want to put some extra hours on it. So, fortunately, we were already able to be remoted, so we didn't have to scramble to do that.

We were also already using Zoom prior to COVID. And, you know, we pretty much had everything set up, so I felt really lucky in that regard.

But during COVID, I lost my hearing. So, you know, when you don't have one thing, you get another thing, I always say.

So while business was fantastic, I instantly woke up and lost my hearing and was at Hopkins every single week, having shots in my eardrum and trying to get my hearing back.

And it just, it just didn't work. So fortunately, you know, zoom, no one even knew that I lost my hearing during all that time.

And I did find out that another developer had lost his hearing during that time as well. And we both didn't know until sort of the end of COVID when I went to a job site, and someone said, you know, what happened, I have a cochlear implant.

So they said, Oh, what happened to your hearing? We have another friend that had that happen. And I know him, and I had no idea that he lost his hearing.

So that was sort of my eye opener during COVID. And other than that, it was work as usual, coming in every single day, setting up.

I also like to go to the gym a lot. I do a lot of Pilates. So I literally would open my laptop and do online courses every single day, just to keep myself on my regular schedule.

And Mary Beth also did the exact same thing. We would do workout in the middle of the day. Right here on the landing in our, in our building.

So pretty funny.

 

Matt Zaun 

So let's talk about that hearing loss piece, because I think that's, I don't just want to breeze over that, because I'm sure that that has changed things for you.

Is there, is there some accommodations that you've had to have that you've learned through?

 

Marcy Sagel

And what would some of those things be? So initially, when I lost my hearing, I lost 100% in one year and 40% in another year, I was having trouble walking, because I was having severe vertigo.

So I couldn't drive my car, couldn't walk very well. Went to the doctor figured out what it was. And it, you know, the vertigo, I was fortunate, it started to go away.

But I had a very hard time driving a car. Um, when you have complete and sudden hearing loss, your brain doesn't like it too much.

And so, um, your brain is very. And so I had to learn how to drive a car I would only drive in the right lane because I couldn't hear on the right side.

So on the left side, I could hear everything. So it made it a little easier. But, you know, I tried not to go on the highway too often.

And, you know, you just try to make these accommodations to yourself. Everyone was wearing masks when I lost my hearing, so I couldn't read everyone's lips.

So I felt I went from a hearing world to a very deaf world very, very, very quickly. And so when the masks started to come off on Zoom and everything else, I look at captions, but I read lips pretty well.

And so I did get very good at reading lips and just trying to make some self accommodation, so to speak.

And I remember being in one of my forum groups for one of my entrepreneur groups. And everyone said, Oh, what's your favorite book?

I'm reading, and I'm going, oh gosh, you know, I haven't been able to read a book in a year and a half, because my brain wouldn't take in the information yet, so it took me about two years to get sort of acclimated to the hearing loss, and then I was able to read a book again, and, you know, felt a little embarrassed about the fact that I couldn't give a book name, but I basically was just honest and said, since I've had my hearing loss, I'm not really able to read a book.

You know, I can audio a book, but I'm, my brain's not really, it wasn't comprehending the information like it had previously.

So it took some time for it to kind of, what I call, get back to a normal state of taking information in.

 

Matt Zaun

Wow. Do you think that experience helped you relate to others and connect through empathy?

 

Marcy Sagel

Um, I never looked for empathy. I think I just looked for people to understand that I wasn't, I didn't want people to think I was being rude.

Um, and not hearing what they said or not reacting the way I typically would react because again, it was a, it was a journey that I was on.

I, I wasn't like instantly having like comfortability with being deaf. But, um, what I learned was that if I just up front with people and just say, Hey, I lost my hearing, I'm figuring it out.

People are a lot more understanding, you know, less empathy, more understanding. And that's really what I wanted, especially in a business world.

I think for the first couple of years, when I would sit at a table with people after losing my hearing, I would just tell people just, I lost my hearing, you know, um, I sit in a certain strategic place in meetings so that I can basically hear a little bit with my left ear.

And, um, and then I was using a little app on my phone to kind of hear what other people were saying in the room.

And it would just, you know, pick up the sound for me kind of thing, um, and translate. So, um, all of those little nuances.

of things. I was just trying all kinds of different helping things to try to get through meetings and business stuff.

Sure.

 

Matt Zaun 

And not necessarily people showing you empathy, but you having the ability to empathize more with others. Do you think that experience helped connect you to others and position you as a stronger leader because you can empathize with others' pain?

 

Marcy Sagel

I think I learned a lot about myself. I learned how to adjust and get myself to a place where I felt that I could be useful again, to be honest.

mean, those are the key words. I didn't want to feel like I was just sitting in a meeting and not participating.

I, you know, I've been in this business for a long while and, you know, I definitely have opinions and I definitely have thought process, you know, on different jobs that we're working on.

And I felt like I became very quiet. I wasn't, I definitely was not presenting anymore. I decided that I was going to let everybody else present in the office.

I thought it was a good time. So it was a good transition. But at the same time, I didn't want people to think I was not interested.

So I think it was just easier to just come out and say, hey, lost my hearing. You know, I'm just trying to make the most out of the meetings.

And if I miss something, you know, I certainly don't mean to. And I'm just as interested as I was in the project before as I am now.

I'm just learning how to adjust in a different way.

 

Matt Zaun 

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate your vulnerability with that, for sure. All So we talked a little bit about the past.

We talked about COVID. We talked about the Great Recession. Let's go back even further because you seem like an individual that has tremendous grit.

So I want to unpack where did this grit come from? So if I were to ask Marcy, when she was a high schooler, what she wanted to be or what she was interested in, what kind of response?

 

Marcy Sagel

So I had two loves at that time, and one of them was interior design, and one was graphic design.

I loved designing, and I kind of felt like the two were very connected. Anything from textile design to interior design to graphic design, to me, it was all sort of connected.

And so I knew I wanted to be in that industry. I knew I wanted to be an interior designer from probably my early teens.

My mother worked with a different designer every year. I'm the only daughter. I'm the eldest. I was asked to look at everything, help make decisions, and I really, really loved it.

So I felt like that was my calling, so to speak. And it was very natural and very comfortable for me.

And an easy transition, to be honest. I worked in... Both graphic design and interior design, and I knew I really, the passion for me was interior design.

And so that path led forward, and I was able to kind of, you know, do work for other people, and then started my own company, and have been on that journey ever since.

 

Matt Zaun 

Where did your determination come from, though, in high school? So what led you to understand the importance of pushing through difficult circumstances?

 

Marcy Sagel

I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My father was an entrepreneur. His father was an entrepreneur. My brothers are both entrepreneurs.

I have a lot of entrepreneurs in my family. My father had a, my father was, you know, going to college, and he, his father passed away suddenly, so he had to come and run the family business.

He's the eldest of a large family. family. haveम, And, you know, he was great. And he taught me a lot of things.

And the one thing that, you know, he taught me was that, you know, being lazy is not an option.

And so my brothers and I, none of us have ever been lazy. We've always given it everything we had.

And that's how we were raised. You know, don't do something halfway, do it all the way. Give it everything you have.

And we're all, we're all athletes. I have a brother who's a professional tennis player. And I played tennis most of my life.

Gymnastics and a whole lot of other sports. My brothers played soccer and a million different sports in our household.

There were never a shortage of any game going on at my house where I grew up. And we also, I grew up in Annapolis, so we sponsored Midshipmen.

And so we had probably a football or soccer game in the back going on.

 

Matt Zaun 

So when you mentioned your family, you come from a family of entrepreneurs, when you can think, if you think back to your, your, let's say your high school years, and you had mentioned to me prior to, to this podcast interview that you, you actually had a business in high school, right?

So you were already starting to, to get your feelers out for what it means to run a business. Did you, did you honestly view that as a labor of love?

Or at some point during those, those years, did you, did you view it almost like an obligation that you had to be an entrepreneur yourself?

You had, you had to succeed because that was part of your DNA. That was part of your identity. And was it was there a swinging pendulum, if you will, between love and duty and obligation?

And if so, how did you how did you piece those together?

 

Marcy Sagel

That's a great question. So I'm I always felt that you have to do what you love. And from an early stage, I mean, I had a catering business in high school.

OK, I used to make like desserts and hors d'oeuvres for people's parties. And I loved it because I love to cook.

But I also sewed clothes all the time. I'd make these custom tennis outfits and hand stitching on them and just all kinds of really cool stuff.

And people would ask me, like, where'd you get that? And I'm like, oh, I made it. And, you know, so I think I just feel like you have to do what you love.

And if you do what you love, you can persevere, you can get through difficult times. And, you know, I guess that is in my DNA.

I don't. don't really know what it's like to not move forward through things. Whether it's terrible, whether it's good, it doesn't really matter.

There's a path to take. There's things to learn. Go out there and learn the knowledge that you don't have.

And I think when you talked earlier about other game changers for me, a big game changer for me was joining an entrepreneurs organization.

Anyone will do the trick, but for me, joining one and having a peer of other entrepreneurs where I can go to them and get different questions asked and answered, paths that they've taken, mistakes that they've made, you know, the journey that they've had versus the journey I've had.

I can learn so much more from someone else that's already walked that path before. And if I can learn.

They're mistakes, then it might prevent me from making more mistakes in running a business, you know, early on, I don't think I ran a very great business.

I didn't look at everything the way I look at it now. I didn't even know what I didn't know back then.

You know, I have an incredible team of people, we put an incredible amount of time into making sure that people are, you know, trained and do things the way that we want to do things.

What I would say to you is, is that, you know, I didn't really look at whether people that worked for me were happy or not working here a long time ago, but I do care about that now.

I intently care about it. I want people, you know, I want to hire great people. I want to pay them well.

I want to give them amazing benefits. I want to give them profit sharing. I want to give them, you know, a family here, because you're here for a lot of time.

And I want to make sure that you are happy. And so I didn't really used to think like that, but I think it's super important if you want to keep employees for a long period of time.

And that became a goal for me. Like, I wanted people to stay here for a long period of time.

And the only way to do that is to make sure they have a balance, make sure they're happy. And so you have to learn how to do things differently.

You know, I didn't know how to get rid of someone sooner rather than later. If someone wasn't working out, it was very obvious to everyone in the company.

You know, I didn't know that it would be better to get rid of them sooner rather than later, because it affects everyone in the company.

And so I think you learn these things as you go on, and you figure them out, and you become a better employer, you become a better leader, you become a better teacher.

And those are the things that I learned how to do.

 

Matt Zaun 

Would you say that that perspective shift can... You can pinpoint it back to those peer groups that you had mentioned, basically building a business in isolation versus building a business with people that are going through the similar stories and experiences that you're also going through.

 

Marcy Sagel

Yeah, I think the key is isolation. You're on your own, you're on an island, no one else you think is on that island, and you're just doing the motions, building your business, growing your revenue, you know.

But what you can get in value from other entrepreneurs, and where they've failed, and where they've won, and where they've done a great job, it's invaluable.

I remember I had my forum group that I'm still currently in to this day, you know, one of the guys had over 4000 employees, and grew it from, you know, zero to 4000 employees.

And he, his, he would talk about core, core values, mission statement, and his were amazing and he'd carry these like printed, you know.

So like laminated cards in his wallet, it basically had all of his core values on it. Okay. And he said, he would say them, and I was like, these are amazing.

And all the different, like, sort of like, I don't know, statements that people would make in these group forum meetings, I started to jot them down and make notes, because they were so incredible.

And I thought, I want to, I want to make these come back to my memory every single time I'm having an issue.

So I started making a list of all of their, you know, sort of like mems, so to speak. And I have, now we have a lot of them, because they literally say them all the time.

And so we all keep a running list of them. They're pretty, they're pretty remarkable. And so, you know, being around other people made me feel like, you know, I had value to myself.

And I know that sounds strange, but it made me feel like other people. People are going through the same things that, you know, you can't really go home and talk about all of these things sometimes, you know, I do have one brother that I talked to a lot about being an entrepreneur because, you know, we do have a lot of similarities, um, in terms of, you know, the business and the development of the business and the timeframe of running a business.

And so that's been really, really helpful.

 

Matt Zaun

Thanks so much for sharing that. I really appreciate the core value piece. Talk about living out your values and carrying them with you.

think that's phenomenal. So I really appreciate that story. I want to talk about my daughter for a moment with you.

So you had mentioned, um, earlier on in high school, were into interior design, graphic design. Obviously you're an incredibly creative person.

Uh, my daughter is as well. She's incredibly creative right now. She's into interior design, into graphic design. She sees the world differently than most people see.

And one of the things that I'm trying to navigate with her is she is an incredibly intelligent. And she's around a lot of boys.

have two sons, so they have a lot of friends over. So she's typically the only girl in the room, and the guys will be sharing whatever, having a conversation, and then they'll leave the room, and she'll say something to me, and I'll be thinking like, why didn't you share that with the room?

That's such a powerful, insightful piece of information that you have. And I'm concerned that she's not going to get, at least for a while, get to the place of being able to share in a room full of guys.

So in the event my daughter, who now she's in a family of entrepreneurs herself, in the event that she builds a business herself one day, and she's in a male-dominated world, what words of advice would you give to her to let her know that she does have value and what she has to say?

Bye. Bye! Bye! It does have meaning, and in full honesty, often is a lot better than what other people in the room are saying.

 

Marcy Sagel

Well, ironically, I grew up with two brothers, and we're all very close in age. And I think, probably similarly, I didn't feel like I could probably speak up and have that sort of voice.

And I think, with that, you get a little insecurity. And so, you know, my parents would always tell me, like, you know, I did really well in school.

You know, you're smart, you've got all these things going for you, but you need to have confidence within yourself.

And confidence, especially at that age for a young girl. It takes some people just . And so I think I really don't think I got that comfortability until I was probably about maybe 35, 40 years old.

So I faked it pretty well, but I think I didn't really get that level of feel comfortable until I was probably about 35 to 40.

And I think it is something probably I could have worked on on myself, but I just didn't know what to do back then.

There are definitely things I would do probably a little differently now. I think being in a room with a lot of other adults where you have to interact is really helpful.

And being able to, you know, hold a conversation with people that might be different or older than you. I you

is something also I think I probably should have gotten a little bit more experience in.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow, I appreciate you sharing that. So you said 40, 35 to 40. If you were to tell your 20-year-old self pieces of information regarding that confidence, what would be some of the things that you would have said in order to fast track your ability to get confidence?

Or do you think it was just reps? You needed significantly more reps to get to that level of feeling confident?

 

Marcy Sagel

Well, I think you don't really, as a young woman, you don't really know who you are yet until you're 30.

I think that that's sort of the common denominator. I think you really come into your own in your 30s.

And so if I had any kind of advice I would give, I would say work on some things that make you feel comfortable about coming out of your shell.

Speak. Speaking engagements, very key. You know, I know your background, and if I had one word of advice, I would say, learn how to speak to an audience of strangers at a young age, and if you can do that, you're going to learn a lot about how to read people and how to feel more comfortable, and I think, you know, that would probably be my first advice to anyone that's young.

Take a speaking class, take a debating class, learn how to talk in front of other people on different topics, and I think it'll give you a lot of confidence at a young age.

 

Matt Zaun 

Fantastic advice. Thank you so much for sharing that, and thank you for this conversation. I appreciate everything that you share with us, your vulnerability, sharing your background, your story, so there's a lot that I got out of it.

There's three things in particular that I'm going to remember. The very first thing that you had mentioned that really stood out to me was you mentioned the years of pain.

I think that's an incredibly important point that you made, that often in life we can go through incredibly painful experiences.

If we're not getting clarity from them, we're just going to go through the pain and not use it as a growth tool.

And you clearly did that. You assessed what was happening. You said this cannot happen again. And you put different things in place for your business to be more robust than ever before.

So I think that was really important that you utilize the pain to create more clarity. The second piece really spoke to your identity when you said your father told you being lazy is not an option.

I think often entrepreneurs want a plan B. They want a ship, so to speak, to sail off in. And they're not willing to burn that ship.

They're not willing to say, I have to make this work at all costs. And that's why I think a lot of people either go out of business or they'll just, they'll create way more unnecessary.

It's very stressed for themselves when they need to, but your identity was really tied up in you do not have an option other than to do and create and make this successful.

Lazy was not an option. That really speaks to your core identity. I appreciate you sharing that. And then the third and final thing that I'm going to take away, and I'm going to do this because I think this is so important.

You mentioned the story of that entrepreneur. You said they went from zero to 4,000 team members, and this individual carried core values in his pocket.

I think that's really important because there's a lot of people that obviously have core values, but sometimes they forget them.

They don't even recognize the importance of them. They don't tie them to core stories so that they can clearly create pictures for them.

But just the fact that you said it was a laminated note in this individual's pocket, carrying that with them, I would challenge everyone listening.

You know, are you carrying your core values with you? Are you living out your core values? Are you remembering them?

Are you creating more of an identity in yourself? Bill거 choppd. Yeah. Bye On this is what I believe, this is what I know, this is what I'm doing.

 

Marcy Sagel

I think there's a lot of power in what you said through that story. So I appreciate that. And then Marcy, if anyone wants to get more information on you, they want to reach out to you for your services, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

You can go right to my website at msainteriors.com and just send a message to the information and I will receive that message and I can get right back to you.

 

Matt Zaun 

Or you can send me a message on LinkedIn. Perfect. I will include those links in the show notes. People could just click and go from there.

Thank you so much, Marcy. Really appreciate your time today.

 

Marcy Sagel

Thank you so much for having me.