7 Lessons on Creating a Design Business from Scratch – with Jersey Ice Cream Co’s Tara Mangini
Have you ever dreamed of switching from a more traditional path to a completely creative career — one that you would really love?
Recently on the podcast, I got to sit down (virtually) with Tara Mangini, who is one half of the talented duo Jersey Ice Cream Co. Tara, together with her partner Percy Bright, have carved a niche for themselves with their unconventional approach to transforming old homes.
Rather than designing from a distance, Tara and Percy move into the space and get to know the home inside and out, letting their intuition guide the renovation process. The result is a perceptive balance of function and beauty that lets the soul of the home shine once again.
>> Catch the full interview with Tara Mangini here on the Imprint podcast.
Tara shares so much wisdom from her experience, particularly around starting, scaling, then actually scaling back to find a sweet spot of doing work she loves while still running a profitable business.
No matter where you are in your creative career, here are valuable reminders from Tara to help you reconnect with your own intuition.
1. Know Thyself
When leaving her 9-5 advertising job, Tara experienced feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm, especially when it felt like everyone else had a plan.
TARA: “I definitely remember going to dinner with friends and doing a lot of entertaining to try to cover up for the fact that everybody else had a real job. And I had no plan. All I knew was that I really felt my soul dying in an office. And I really felt like that wasn’t for me.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
2. You Won’t Know What’s Possible Until You Try
When you’re just starting your creative career, one of the most daunting hurdles is having to promote your own work. As uncomfortable as it can be in the moment, the best opportunities of your career are typically waiting for you on the other side.
TARA: “We sent our work out to Design*Sponge, which was really like the first ‘let’s see if we could maybe trick someone into thinking we’re a designer’ moment.
Then we got our first real full house client job. And I mean, at that point for me, I was like, this is unreal. We have made it. I would have never expected this. Like, what? Just an absolute blessing. Somehow we’re in this person’s house messing around with paint, doing whatever we want creatively, and they’re paying us pennies, but we’re so excited. It just was never in my wildest dreams, you know? It felt like such a shock to me. It still feels like that to me sometimes.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
3. Take It One Step at a Time
Every expert was once a beginner. When Tara and Percy were starting out, they didn’t have formal training or a business plan. But they figured it out one piece at a time.
TARA: “I had no idea what an actual interior designer did, like how they ran a business… We were just making it up as we went and it was kind of going okay. And so I just kept going with it.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
4. Trust Your Intuition
In one of their first projects, a small upstate home redesign, the client had a small budget but was open to letting Tara and Percy do “whatever they thought was best.” And instead of questioning it, Tara says they made the most of it by jumping in with both feet.
TARA: “We took down every wall in that house, rearranged everything, moved the kitchen. And we didn’t even ask them. I don’t even know what was happening in our brains. We were just very in contact with our intuition and going with it and we were not afraid.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
5. Bigger Isn’t Always Better
As Jersey Ice Cream Co. has evolved, Tara and Percy have had to grapple with where to scale and how to find the right balance. Ultimately, they have realised that scaling their business doesn’t bring them joy.
TARA: “Does [scaling] mean more money? Does it mean employees? Does it mean a fancy office? What does it mean? It’s really easy to think that is what it means. It should mean more jobs, bigger jobs, more clients, more money, more employees, just more more more more more. And we were like, we hate doing this. Like whatever we used to do when we liked it, we’re hating this. Like all the good was kind of out of it.
“And then it was like, oh God, now we have to climb back out of this hole to get back to where we were five years ago. What a frustrating feeling. But I feel like we climbed out and got right back where we were.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
6. Live By Your Own Definition of Success
If you want to blaze your own trail, you’ll have to decide what success really means to . Because undoubtedly, comparison will try to creep in — and only you can decide what “enough” looks like.
TARA: “I still find myself in situations where I’m talking to people and… I feel myself shrinking by the minute and feel like I’m a failure. So for us, it was sort of a moment of like, what is important? What is success for us? I want to remember that I like doing this. I want to feel good about the work we’re doing and we don’t need all the money in the world. We just need enough, you know? Most days that still feels like the right choice.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
7. See It Through
No matter how many projects you have under your belt, every designer has moments of doubt — often right in the middle of a project. But in general, it pays to stay the course. Your past self made those decisions for a reason, so now you have to get out of your own way and let the finished product come together. Confidence comes when you move into action.
TARA: “Most of the time you get to the end and you’re like, whatever I was worrying about is totally fine. Whether it was some enormous decision in the room or some tiny stupid detail about how the countertop gets finished, or, you know, things you agonise over. They’re all usually fine! But that’s the process.”
Image credit Tara Mangini // Jersey Ice Cream Co
Tara Mangini and Percy Bright of Jersey Ice Cream Co spend their time moving house to house, job to job, leaving beautiful homes in their wake, and recently landed a show on Magnolia Network called The Story of Home. In their design work, Tara & Percy believe in craftsmanship, timelessness, and leaving things better than they found them. Follow along with their journey on Instagram @jerseyicecreamco.
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