After moving across the country and seeking a career reset, real estate entrepreneur Ati Williams knew she had the right- and left-brain know-how to oversee every phase of a design project—including the construction. So she got her general contractor’s license, lawyered up and opened her San Diego–based design-build firm, Honeycomb, in order to capture the higher margins on construction materials and offer her clients a high-touch experience from start to finish. Here, she explains how you can do it, too.
I’m a creative, and I love the design side of things, but I am also the kind of creative who likes spreadsheets. I used to own a real estate brokerage in Washington, D.C., where, for all intents and purposes, I was flipping homes—though I like to think my work was a bit more thoughtful than that. When I moved to California in 2018, I took a year off to figure out my next act. As I was working with a business coach, the idea of a design-build firm kept coming up.
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