Fresh out of design school and several years into his first job in retail design, Dan Mazzarini was offered a career-changing opportunity to work in store design at Ralph Lauren. Before he made the switch, however, he received the blessing of his first boss and mentor—who made a prediction that Mazzarini’s design journey wouldn’t end there.

“She said, ‘Here’s the thing, kiddo. If you’re going to go anywhere, you have to go there, because it is a university and you will learn everything,’” Mazzarini tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of Trade Tales. “And she said, ‘But I will tell you: You are meant to do your own thing. At some point, if you’re still there and it’s been too long, I will come and tell you [that] you need to go.’”

Luckily, she didn’t have to. After soaking up a world of design knowledge working at the legendary brand, Mazzarini began taking on his own side projects. Before long, his former boss’s prediction came true when he teamed up with fellow designer Brian Humphrey to launch BHDM Design in the early 2010s.

The years since have seen the firm—now named Mazzarini & Co.—expand in all directions, taking on projects in retail, hospitality and residential design. What started as a strategy to maximize the firm’s output has transformed into a key driver of its creativity—paving the way for what Mazzarini refers to as a “cross-pollination” of ideas, keeping the team freshly inspired and offering various design solutions to clients. “Bringing diverse experience and explaining to people how that can benefit their project’s look, feel, operation, everything, is the way that I’ve run the company,” he says.

Elsewhere in the episode, he shares how he used his firm’s recent rebranding as a team-building opportunity, the one question he uses to kick off every project, and how he’s talking to clients about the economics of design in today’s climate.

Crucial insight: Across every project category, Mazzarini has found that while a property’s functionality and design needs may differ, the heart of the creative process often begins in the same place. “I always ask, ‘What’s the story you want to tell the world?’ Because hiring a designer is a luxury, and I think there’s an amount of aspiration for everybody who’s hiring a designer,” he says. “Sometimes the reference is, ‘I loved my aunt Becky’s beach house,’ [and I say], ‘Tell me what that looked like.’ I’m good at getting it out of people.”

Key quote: “Change has never been a bad thing. … If you approach it from a place of love and learning, rather than fear and resistance, what’s the worst that can happen?”

This episode was sponsored by Renewal by Andersen and Dallas Market Center. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.