Neal Beckstedt grew up on a farm in rural Ohio. When he turned 6, his father gifted him an unconventional toy: a bandsaw. “I loved it, and I started making all these things—woodworking and crafts and painting. That’s how I became a creative,” he tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “In addition to the bandsaw, there’s another very important factor during my childhood: My parents renovated the farmhouse, which was a very critical element that was like, ‘Aha, this is exactly what I want to do.’”

Years later, he traded Ohio for Indiana, where he studied architecture at Ball State University, then moved to New York, where he worked for S. Russell Groves for nearly a decade before starting his own firm in 2010. Once word of his departure got out, the calls came flooding in. “I quickly thought, ‘Is this going to be something in the first week?’ By the end of the month, I’m like, ‘I can’t work from home. This is crazy.’ By the second or third month, we had five employees. It was hopping,” says Beckstedt, who has since made it onto Elle Decor’s A-List and the AD100.

The designer maintains that he wasn’t born with taste; rather, it has been a muscle he has had to exercise over time. “It’s been trained,” he says. “It’s repetition and exposure to that. You have to comprehend, see, try, do, fail, win—you have to do things and fail and see things and succeed, and then improve on that [through] constant repetition. I’ve been doing this since I was very young, painting and drawing, and so the continuation of all that, even to this day—the work is continually growing for me. I’m constantly learning, constantly thinking of new ways and evolving based on that skill set.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Beckstedt discusses how the Kips Bay Decorator Show House boosted his career, why he decided to scale back his firm after Covid, and why he talks about money early on with clients.

Crucial insight: Over the pandemic, Beckstedt found that the firm had grown too large for his liking, and he was more caught up in back-end processes than the details of designing. “Everyone has their limit,” he says. “Everyone has their own ideal. I did not want to deal with more back-office things. I wanted to be in it.” Since then, he has slowly reduced his firm size. Now in his sweet spot of five employees, the designer has become more selective when deciding which projects to take on. “I wanted to talk about the welt size. I wanted to have time to ponder [those details] and not have to look at this spreadsheet and that spreadsheet instead,” he explains. “That’s how I wanted my life to go, so we purposely scaled back. We’ve taken on less work, which has been great, and it really allows me to get more into the projects.”

Key quote: “The details are where the magic happens. A beautiful, incredible project has a lot of details. That doesn’t mean it’s overdone. Even the most minimal space has amazing details. There’s that fine line of being minimal, which is boring. Those details make it rich and gorgeous, whether it’s the patina on the wood or the wood species, or all of the above. It’s the layers that we add that are so important.”

This episode is sponsored by Ernesta and Resource Furniture. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including SideDoor’s next chapter, designer coworking, and a dramatic deadline for Charles Cohen. Later, author John Ota joins the show to discuss his new book, The Dining Room.

This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Newport Brass. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.