Fourteen days after she called herself a designer, she was getting paid to be one.

Emma had abandoned two online courses already, and walking away from a six-figure marketing salary felt reckless. Watch what the team said that made her trust them — and the first Sunday in eight years she didn't dread Monday.

Emma Chicago, USA Former brand manager Clients across the US
Watch the full unedited interview
Emma interview
Jump to a moment
Before the Academy

Golden handcuffs, and a journal full of empty.

Awake at seven and already being Slacked before the first coffee. Zooms from nine to six, then the actual work until nine at night. Promotions, better titles, more money — and, written in her own journal last July, the sentence that she had everything going for her and still felt completely empty.

What she was after

Stop making someone else's dreams come true.

Eight years spent building someone else's brand, and being praised for it. Every apartment she and her husband moved into, she'd redesigned. Every friend who moved, she'd helped. It took a journal and a coffee to notice which of those things she'd never once been paid for.

The results, in her own numbers
$400
her first ever client invoice
14days
from calling herself a designer to that invoice
6weeks
to turn the Denver living room around
8yrs
in marketing she stepped away from
I'm not telling you to do this for the money. I'm telling you to do it to get your Sundays back, and your coffee on the couch in peace.
Your turn

Your story starts the same way Emma's did.

A passion for interiors, and the decision to finally do something with it. We'll help you build the business around it.

Apply to the Academy