In the latest episode of Love What You Do, Dianne Kimiko Murata, Furniture Planning Strategist, Accidental Environmentalist, and Founder of Kimiko Designs, shares why recognizing your strengths, trusting others to bring theirs, and leaving room for the unexpected leads to better results. From leaning into what you do best to asking the furniture industry to think a little more like the world of rescue animals, it’s a conversation about learning to recognize potential.
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Welcome to the Love What You Do podcast. I'm your host Doug Shapiro. These are the conversations that open doors to what's possible when you love what you do.
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You grew up on a rural life. I just learned this because as we're driving here, four-hour drive together, we're driving past these farms. Four and a half if you include the stop at Subway.
That's true, in Oakville, Illinois. Tiny town. You know what, did you have animals? Like what was your least favorite chore? I grew up in the city, but all of my family or my mom's family is all farmers.
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So we would spend the summers and the holidays on the farm and literally roll around in the hay, but in the literal sense, not in the figurative sense. It's super itchy, but we always had dogs. I always had a dog.
What was your least favorite chore growing up? Cleaning the bathrooms, but can we talk about my favorite chore? So I grew up in a single family or with a single mom and my chore was to get the groceries after I could drive. That's the best chore because you get to decide what goes in the basket. And so apple juice is on the list.
You get the apple juice that you want. So what's the best thing you cook right now? Oh, so comfort food. I can say this because my daughter was home this weekend and she's a junior in college, so she was needing some food love and some mama love.
And so I made mushroom meatballs or meatballs and mushroom sauce. Oh yummy. And that's, I think it's comfort food for for all of us in my house.
Yeah. Is that tradition or is that your own thing? It's probably Midwestern cooking, prairie cooking. It's super simple, more simple than a casserole.
So yeah, it's delicious, a little bit salty. There's some Japanese rice in it just to make it interesting. That's good.
And then the girl's happy. She wants to hang out on the couch with her mom. Oh, that sounds wonderful.
You're warmed up now. Okay. I'm gonna introduce you.
Diane, you're the president and founder of the Kamiko Green. And you do work, furniture planning and specifications for dealers, manufacturers, design firms, end-users. You're kind of all over the industry and you're all over geographically too.
We're actually gonna get to that point as well where your team is completely remote. And then you've built a really beautiful organization with Kamiko Green that has a sustainability mission. So I want to touch on all that.
Sounds really big girl. But okay, I'm here for it. Yeah.
But I was thinking about the people we just met. So your team is here. We're in Jasper.
Thank you for making the trip. And they were so grateful for their work. Like your team loves their their job.
They do. They love that they found you. They all kind of had the same story.
I was here. I was burnt out. I found Kamiko and it's changed my life.
Or, you know, I love my work. I'm getting all of that from, you know, all these different angles. That has to feel good.
Like I don't know if that was your mission, but it has to feel good. It feels really good. I'll tell you, we did one-on-ones with by the team, by the studio, just last month.
And we ended up in every discussion talking about what surprised them about what they enjoyed or didn't enjoy when they came to work as a contractor for Kamiko Designs. And the common thread throughout everybody was that essentially they felt like they didn't any longer have to choose between the work that they love and the family that they love and need. And so I think giving that, providing that option to love what you do.
To love what you do, but also love the people that you love and have the life that you want to live. Yeah. That's awesome.
So you've helped people discover that. Where are you on that journey? I mean, because like being an owner is quite a bit different. How's your burnout scale? Do you know? Okay.
So full transparency, like there's been a lot of personal crisis in my life last five years, you know, medical crisis. Not that it's a crisis when your kids leave to go to college, but it can be. So I find myself, you know, a real empty nester having gone through five years of medical crisis with my ex.
And, um, can you repeat the question? Just where are you on your journey of burnout? Like, are you, are you together with, I mean, do you feel like you've got the time to explore the things in your world you want to explore? Yes. Finally. Awesome.
And I hate for myself or anybody else that's been through this. I hate that it took some personal crisis to, um, empower the team to step back, to really own my gifts and, and recognize that there are a lot of things that I'm not really good at, but that we all thrive and we are all much more successful when, when I let somebody else run the project or I let somebody or somebody else who loves the spreadsheets. Actually, I love the spreadsheets too, but Excel is my love language.
But, but when I let those other people, our team, speaking of our team, they're so detailed. So when I step back and just let them be them, it allows me to do the things that are my superpowers and things that I love to do. And even through five really hard years, these past few years, to be able to, I, there's been a lifetime of life the last five years, and I can't think of any time where I didn't want to get out of bed.
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Wow. And I think that's sometimes a measure of success. It's like, can you just get out of bed in the morning? You know, that's an interesting way to measure success, right? Like if you just looked at your, I don't want to call it enthusiasm level.
Enthusiasm might be a little too peppy, but your connection, it's purpose. Yeah. It's your purpose.
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It's purpose. When I, yes. And I, looking back at the time, even I could sense it, but just now looking back, I can really identify it.
That, that having a purpose, providing work for the 30 design and furniture nerds that are a part of Kimiko Designs, but even this work in sustainability and having impact on reducing landfill and inspiring other people to change the way that they do furniture. I mean, that really at its basic level comes down to purpose, I think. That's your connection to purpose, what you just described.
I mean, that's. I think so. That's pretty awesome.
You have your team, you have a mission with Kimiko Green. You do seem very whole. You said something that I really loved.
You said, own your gifts. And I was like, Oh, you know, like I listen. And a lot of times in a conversation, I'm like, what, what's the title of this? I'm thinking of the title when I'm in conversation.
And I almost like I heard own your gifts. And I'm like, Oh, wow, I hope that's the title. I hope we go there.
Can you explain that? Yeah, so I mean, at its simplest form, there are so many people who are better at so many things than I am, and who can help carry the company forward or help impact the culture that we have at Kimiko Designs. And then there are certain things that I'm really good at. I'm good at seeing the vision for what Kimiko Green could be.
I, I am good at having small, I would, I dare one on one conversations, but I'm aware. I thought you were gonna call this small talk. I was like, I'm not going for small talk.
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No, I'm not. And I'm, and I'm not good at small talk. And I'm not good.
And I don't enjoy large crowds. But at Neacon, where there are 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people, but when I can connect with people and sort of hide back in a corner and have real connection and conversations, that's a superpower of mine. And really creative problem solving, like one day, one day, I would love to just have my job to be think tanks and creative problem solving.
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So let's, let's do this. I kind of want to break down these gifts. Okay.
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Because you listed several, like the creative problem solving, not the small talk, but the small conversations, connection, connection. Cause other people probably heard this and they're like, Ooh, that's me. Like, what's, what is your advice to being great at those things? Like, how do you become great at creative problem solving? You stop doing all the other things that are getting in the way of creative problem solving.
You, in my opinion, you stop doing the things that are distracting you from your superpowers. You stop, for me, auditing specifications or anything that requires a real attention to detail. Um, writing copy, I, I draw pictures for a living by choice, right? I chose a profession where I frankly didn't have to write and didn't have to do complex math.
And so by not doing those things, it allows me the capacity to do the things that I am really good at. Um, and I think it's, I know I say this all the time, but there is really something beneficial to taking a beat and having a look at what you're doing, how you're spending your time and, and understanding what feeds you. Like what is the thing that really makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning on the worst day or the worst week of your entire life? I mean, that is gotta be the thing, right? That is that sort of self-awareness.
I feel like it takes time to get there. And I, you know, I don't know when you sort of discovered your gifts, but you probably in younger life had to do the things that you didn't love to. You had to do the things that weren't your gifts in order to number one, discover that they're not, right.
You know, but then to kind of get you to a place where you could start to lean in to what you're great at. And I, I wonder if there's sort of like a miss, like a, the wrong perception out there that like you're just supposed to know what you're great at and then that's what you're supposed to do. But like, I feel like that takes a long time.
Like I wouldn't have put a finger on it until the last, you know, five years of my life to really understood, you know, what I was good at. What are you good at? I'm the one asking the questions here. I know, but I've been waiting for years to get, to get a camera in front of us so I could ask you a couple of questions too.
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Oh, you know, um, I think I'm good at listening and finding great things in other people. That is my experience of you, Doug, for sure. Yeah.
So my, my wife would agree with probably one of those things. Would she call me a great listener? Probably not. And, uh, you know, I have, I have some, I could, I could always do better there.
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I think we can all always do better. And sometimes that just requires asking somebody else. My bestie came to me a couple of months ago and said, it's a really simple question, but she said, what am I not seeing? I want more for my life.
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I know I'm capable of more, but I also know that I don't see my blind spot. It's like talking to chat GPT. You have to ask it and prompt it to, to, what are the things that I'm missing? What are the questions I'm not asking? What else do you need from me in order to answer these questions? But, and when she came to me, I thought that was a really incredible question.
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What am I missing? What, what one thing could I do to help me better get to the goals that I'm looking for, to the outcomes that I'm looking for, to the life that I'm wanting to live. Yeah. That's a hard question to answer yourself or to even ask yourself.
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That's why you ask other people. I think. Yeah.
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And people who are willing to be kind and gentle, but also really honest. Really honest. You're right.
Yeah. That's really good. It's not always easy.
I'm not like, sometimes it hurts, but what's more important? Like is it more important to be comfortable or is it more important to grow? And I think that's, I ask myself that a lot. Yeah. I mean, you've probably gotten in the habit of change.
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Some days, yes. Some days, no. How long have you been doing Kumiko? Yeah.
So we had this past year is our 25th anniversary and, and where we started on dial-up internet 25 years ago, doing specifications and to where we are now providing relief for, for design teams, for dealer designers, for manufacturers, for, I mean, it feels really good to be the Advil of furniture. Yeah, I think so. I think we, one of our main goals is to provide relief.
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Yeah. I mean, you've heard you say it before. Furniture is not a four letter word.
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Yes, it is not a four letter word and it's not the nine letter F word for sure. But for a lot of people, that's how it feels. And so we can pretend that that's not the case or we can really look at it and, and ask why and what can we do about it? How can we do things differently? It was with one of your, your teammates at dinner yesterday and she was like, you know, she was explaining to me with great enthusiasm, how she read the specification manual for, you know, a certain product line and then she re-read it and you could tell she enjoyed it.
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Like she has decoded furniture in a way. It's almost like a, you know, if you've seen the Lego movie, there's that part where like all of a sudden Emmett starts to see how all the Lego pieces come together and it's like the whole world becomes clear to him. And it was like, I could tell like she sees furniture this way.
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Like she understands every screw, every component. And it's pretty cool to develop like a deep competency like that. And then identify it, right? So for people in our industry to recognize that that is, so people who care like that or think like that are real asset to most teams.
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And there are certain characteristics, like I think at dinner too, we were also talking about how if you look at every specifier, so I think, you know, probably on our team there's about 15 or 20 specific, like actual specifiers. That's what they do all day, every day for the most part. And there is unanimously a love for puzzles.
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So we now ask in our interviews, like what do you like to do in your spare time? But we're listening for, do you like puzzles? Do you like putting things together? Right? So Hallmark's a really strong specifier. They love puzzles. They are detail oriented much to most salespeople's chagrin.
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They are detail oriented and they like to do a couple of things at a time. They don't like what I'm guessing for you, but certainly for me, I love to do 20 things at a time and I can get distracted. So I have to remind myself or ask other people to bring me back to focus.
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But really gifted designers like to go deep into a couple of singular topics. So whether it's a product line or whether it's a healthcare specialty, but that's a real Hallmark of a really high quality specifier. I actually love the way you've kind of broken that down and I can see how in an interview, like these are the things you're searching for, um, advice for, for building a remote team and having a culture.
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Cause I know a lot of people are in this position now and even if they're so, you know, back to the office, let's just say it feels like that was like, so three years ago. But anyways, even if that's the case, like you still, a lot of people have more remote relationships now than they've ever had. What's the key to making that successful? So connection is the key, but there is a side piece of that in that in like using creativity and technology to help support that connection.
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So Rachel who leads a couple of ours, um, product studios or our manufacturer studios, she has figured out how to throw an incredible baby shower virtually. Oh no way. And every year one of the things that I look forward to the most is when Rachel puts on the white elephant Christmas exchange and all of that is virtual and she has a deck and it's interactive and it's not a huge ton of effort, but the look to watch all the faces on the team's call and how much fun they're having and how exciting it is and how they fight over whoever brought the puzzles.
Um, I think it's just being simple, being creative, but you have to harness technology. Like technology has to be your friend and there's so many different ways to make that easier. But even it's just, um, having a Christmas party virtually, it's, it's, I don't know, it's taking a few minutes at the beginning of every weekly meeting to who is a dad joke, who has, who did something cool, who, who should throw a dump a couple of photos in the chat so we can see what you did this weekend or what you did for Halloween.
I mean, it's what are the things that create culture? Sorry. What are the things that create connection? I love it. All right.
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Just because you spend so much of your time in this world of furniture, if you could change one thing about furniture or about this industry, what would you change? Oh man. Can you hear my brain exploding right now? I know it's just the just one thing is a, is probably what's holding you back. If I could change one thing about the industry, I would change the perception of pre-owned furniture.
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Okay. And I see that not for me, but for your kids, for my kids, for the next generations. I think there's absolutely a place for beautiful new pieces of furniture, especially if they are long lasting, especially if they are built to last and beautiful and classic.
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But I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the billions and billions and billions of dollars in furniture that end up in the landfill or the billions and billions of pounds of office furniture and equipment that goes to the landfill every year in this country. Wow. Um, that's a unique answer to that question, I believe, but I think it's not an easy either, not an easy answer for sure, but somebody has to be asking those questions.
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So I, we, you know, I don't know, we've chatted back and forth, but this idea of like, uh, it's like, it's rescue furniture. So we, yes. Ask me if I, I, okay, so I'm going to interpret your question.
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Like if I had the fairy godmother, fairy furniture, fairy godmother magic wand, what would I do? I would, I would make reuse and reconfiguration sexy. But I would, I would, I think if we could treat it the way that we treat rescue pets, the way and the way that it feels good. I mean, I'm a person who has only ever had rescue pets.
So, um, but like it is just natural for the majority of us, I dare say to when, when you're ready to add a pet or an animal to your family, you, you look first at the, at the pound. Yeah. So why can't we, when we need to change our furniture, add more furniture or to do different things, why can't we first look to see what we have in our own warehouses? So we have, we have a commercial idea for you for this, for this, for this subject is to have you, you know, walking in a warehouse of used furniture, Sarah McLaughlin playing in the background, you demoing test chairs.
Yeah. Jordan, maybe you could produce that. That would be awesome.
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I think that's just the general, I mean, yes, fun. And also like, what a concept. Like if it was, and you don't, you don't have to do it all the time, right? You don't have to rescue the furniture all the time.
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You just think about doing one thing. But if, if there's a new project, if there is a certainly at enterprise scale for facility, for end users and facility managers to, to make it feel good, to make, to do the right thing to have impact and rescue some furniture because they're like, I have a rescue dog and he is not a whole lot bacon. He's been on a couple of our posts and a couple of my posts is his, he came, he came from a rescue.
That was his rescue name. And then he never left. So yeah, we still call him bacon.
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But like, he's not really anything to look at, but he is the best dog. He is the best snuggler. He is loyal.
He will work for food. And so why, why couldn't we consider applying that same concept to, to furniture? I like that. I'm just thinking about bacon now.
I mean the dog, what has bacon taught you? Ooh, what has bacon taught me? Sometimes he's taught me. Sometimes it's just really important to sit and do nothing. Did you ever look at bacon and you're like, you have it so easy.
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Like you have no idea. The world is so small in bacon's mind. And bacon has a, we call him bakey.
Bakey has a great life. He has a great life. But I also remember the day that he came to my house and he was covered in fleas and missing half of his hair and 20 pounds lighter and exhausted from running the streets.
He's missing the tip of one of his ears. So I'm guessing it was not an easy life out in the street. But like, you know, some good food, some a steam clean for a front of a chair.
And I mean, and you can have something really great too. I have a soft spot in my heart for, for bacon situation. And I mean, my, my wife's huge into rescue animals.
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And if I wasn't around, we would have probably a house full of them. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I think, you know, with the stuff in my personal life, the last few years we, I had stopped fostering, but I think we're, I have been, I have fostered more than my family and I cause the kids work hard at it too.
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But we fostered more than 150 dogs and puppies. Yeah. We are all allergic to cats, but you can't remember all their names.
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I mean, there's no way. No, but I have a file and a folder that has their little pictures and their cards from the kennel that where they were rescued from. And wow.
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Yeah. So this idea of a furniture reuse, it feels like it's like in your DNA. I just realized, yeah, those are some pretty strong dots to connect.
Yeah. No, you're not wrong there. I mean, I think it's very utilitarian as well, right? Why would I go? I mean, the, we in rescue, they talk about adopt, don't shop.
Yeah. And I think that apply, it can apply in to furniture. And I think everyone's tired of, I think didn't the term hybrid, I think most of us break out in hives now when we hear that term, but I think there is a real strong concept in creating spaces that are a hybrid of, of old and or classic and new.
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And, and I think there's a real mentality that can come out of that that says I think that's a really responsible thing to do and it felt good and it comes with such a great story. Yeah. Yeah.
And that story is really important. I look forward to the day where there is a showroom in Chicago during the Neocon and design days where it's all focused on repurposing furniture. That's really cool.
We call it Rio Con. Yes. Yes.
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I actually, I really, I really like that. And you know, as a manufacturer, we hope we produce something that is beautiful enough and strong enough and patinas and all the right ways in a way that it's like, yeah. I mean, why would you ever get rid of this? I mean that is a core design philosophy in Japanese design for example, right? Like it's to really celebrate that patina to really celebrate the, the nail heads to really celebrate the natural finishes.
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So that is really interesting. And I know objects carry more significance, right? The culture there. Yeah.
And simplicity. Yeah. Okay.
So, uh, I want to ask you generally, you're, you're so great with words and you are, you're a great, you're a great coach. Thank you. Do you, is there like advice that you consistently give people like that is like if you have time, you're coaching somebody on your team, you, you always.