20Something: Nicole

“Maybe it wasn’t always everyone’s idea of the best decision, but I wouldn’t be where I’m at if I didn’t.”

There’s a wooden charcuterie board tucked away in my kitchen cabinet that I’m particularly fond of. It’s sort of an oblong blob shape, with wavy edges and a long handle and a circular divot in the middle where you can place a small bowl that holds your nuts or dried fruits or chocolates or whatever your finger food of choice is. I prefer stuffed olives. 

The board is from The Spot, an online home decor boutique where you’ll find pieces ranging from a little eclectic to very eclectic. Per its Instagram bio, The Spot is “Your home for funky interior finds 👋🏽.” The owner of The Spot happens to be my friend, Nicole. 

Blonde and piercingly green-eyed, Nicole was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Chicago. Ours is the kind of friendship that exists on sunny patios with a glass of wine in hand, around sticky bar tables strewn with beers and seltzer cans, on couches facing a half-demolished charcuterie spread. It’s an endless dance of leaning in on our elbows to catch up and leaning back in our chairs to let out a laugh.

I step through her front door on an annoyingly muggy evening, my tote bag dangling from the crook of my arm and my hair curling at the nape of my neck from the humidity. Her apartment always feels comfortable and welcoming; a vase of colorful flowers sits atop a granite island, a row of barstools stands just slightly off-kilter, as if they’d been occupied only a moment before, and a sectional couch that looks like it’s hosted many a cozy chat (not in a dilapidated way, but in a way that makes you feel like the couch is welcoming you with open arms) sits along the far wall. Ever the gracious host, Nicole has an array of Poppi flavors waiting for me. I pluck a Strawberry Lemon out of the lineup and pour it into a wine glass as she preheats her oven and reaches into her freezer. It’s pizza night.

Nicole opened The Spot in November of 2023 and business is already booming. In addition to her online store, she takes The Spot on the road regularly, setting up booths at pop-up shows, street fairs, and farmers markets. It’s her full-time job, and has been a labor of love these past 7 months. But this was not the original plan…

As we settle into her couch (I do indeed feel welcomed into it with open arms), she tells me about the kinds of things that interested her while growing up in suburban Illinois. “I was really interested in the arts,” she begins. “But I knew that there was just, like, so much to see. I just felt like I could never grasp everything I wanted to.”

“The arts are so…” I begin to add.

“...Endless,” she finishes for me. The Arts are endless, and it’s intimidating. (I know this to be true because I come from The Arts, and I never feel like I’ve scratched much below the surface.) So, as she embarked on her college journey, she chose to focus on another interest she’d had from a young age: she loved the idea of being a teacher. And indeed, she graduated with a degree in education and began teaching at an elementary school in Chicago shortly thereafter.  “I loved being a leader,” she says of her time as an educator. “I loved… being able to have an impact.”

Here’s the thing: your first job or two, or even three, out of college are often about figuring out what you want your career to look like, and what kind of job will check the most boxes for you. It’s probably rare to find a job that checks them all right out of the gate, but by trying on a few different hats, you can get pretty close. Teaching checked some of her career boxes, she tells me, but not all of them. 

After three years at the helm of a classroom, something was missing. “There were parts that I enjoyed, but it just wasn’t fulfilling, and I didn’t know what my out was.” (This, a sentiment that I’ve found plagues many of the 20-somethings I talk to, both within the context of this series and beyond it; we find ourselves settling for “fine,” simply because we can’t envision the first step toward a better alternative. Too often, it takes circumstances outside of our control to nudge us in the right direction.) As it happened, Nicole’s out was Covid. Relegated to teaching from home at the beginning of the pandemic, she realized that she’d been presented with a chance to make a change.  

She recalls of her thought process: “If I’m going to do this, it might as well be in my 20s. If I’m going to make a mistake, if it doesn’t go well, I might as well make that mistake in my 20s.”  

Luckily, her next venture was not a mistake. It was a step in the right direction, and one that had her headed back towards the arts by way of interior design. (After all, she jokes, one of her favorite parts of teaching had been decorating her classroom.) Without skipping a beat, she enrolled in a few courses and took an internship at an interior design firm where she could learn the ropes and get her feet wet. Nine months later, she landed a full-time role as a design assistant. 

I pry for more details about her transition from teaching to interior design, the latter of which is an immensely technical skill that many of us would like to think we have an aptitude for, but most of us do not. I, despite my many Pinterest boards (there are upwards of 50), cannot imagine simply picking up one day and designing someone’s home. 

She actually transferred a lot of her skills from teaching, she says. As it turns out, vendor communication and managing contractors take about the same level of organization, explanation, and color coding as it does to run an elementary school classroom. Who knew! The more technical skills, however, she had to dedicate her own time to learning. “That’s the reality of changing careers,” she admits. “You’re just learning and absorbing. But I also just tried to be, like, super open to feedback. Like, I would constantly ask people questions and be like, ‘Hey, how am I doing on this?’ And that’s, I think, a good way to learn. You just can’t be offended by anything,” she adds with a laugh.

“Do you like an environment where you’re learning as you go?” I ask. “Or do you feel more comfortable when you know that you already know everything?”

Her eyes light up. “I love learning as I go,” she says through a smile. 

“That makes sense for you.” I catch her contagious grin. “That’s very fitting.”

She tells me that she spent much of her time during this career change learning and adapting on the fly. Even as she grew into her role, new challenges presented themselves along the way, and she took each of them in stride. For the first couple of years that I knew Nicole, she was always working on some design project or another, her camera roll full of sketches and swatches. The creativity of the design world checked more of the career boxes that teaching did not.  And yet, spoiler alert, this would not be her final destination either. 

Nicole doesn’t describe this next pivot as anything grandiose or dramatic. She hadn’t been plotting her move for years, nor did she need to spend much time debating whether or not it was the right one. She merely followed her own laissez-faire philosophy of letting her 20s be the time for jumping (and potentially falling). And jump, she did.

“I knew from the beginning that my goal was always to have my own business, but I just didn’t really know what that looked like.” She tells me she’s not sure how to phrase this next part, but it’s rather simple, so I’ll abridge: she sought (and found) the fulfillment she’d been lacking elsewhere, in running her own business. “Through my years in interior design, sourcing was my absolute favorite thing.” So why not try her own hand at it? Thus, The Spot was born! 

I ask her if she chose to transition from working at a firm full time to starting her own company because she felt fully ready to be a business owner, or if there was some uncertainty at play. I already know she’s not afraid of a leap of faith, so I’m not surprised when she chalks it up to good timing. “I knew in my heart this was what I wanted to do, and this moment came where it seemed like it made sense… I thought it would be really cool to be able to implement my own vision, right, and so I feel like the only way to kind of do that is to have your own business. I just… I figured it would be way down the road.”

“So you knew you’d get there eventually,” I offer.

“Yes.”

“And things just aligned.”

“Yes, exactly.”

* * * *

All the while we’ve been talking, my eyes catch periodically on some new piece of decor in the room that I’ve never laid eyes on before. This happens frequently when I visit Nicole’s; the space feels dynamic, ever-changing. One spin through her apartment makes it apparent that she has an eye for unique, artisan-made pieces: there’s a large antique cabinet in the entryway, tall arches painted on one wall in alternating colors, and prints and frames of all different materials and sizes scattered across another. For admittedly selfish reasons, I want to know more about her sourcing process. 

Form and texture are very important to her, she tells me, and she focuses on finding the most unique items she can. She chooses pieces that she, as a late-20-something with great taste and a healthy (if not extravagant) budget, would buy for herself. “I’m hoping my audience grows with me,” she explains.  “So right now, we’re in our late 20s. I’m hoping that, you know, into our 30s, maybe the items get a little more expensive, and my people grow with me. That’s the goal.” 

And what role does her personal style play? A big one, apparently. “I’ve just always had this love for decor. I mean, since I was living in my parents’ house, I would just collect items, and I’ve always had a room full of them. And I’ve always had a very specific style.” She describes it as a blend of Indian, bohemian, and African tribal styles, which she now takes care to source from smaller vendors with whom she can form a direct relationship. She looks forward to expanding this network internationally in the future.

Speaking of the future, I ask her where she sees The Spot going. If she could snap her fingers, what would its ultimate form be? Multiple storefronts, connecting with artisans globally, and destination photoshoots are all on the bucket list. Perhaps a hotel collaboration? She would love that.

She continues painting a picture of The Spot’s future, her demeanor becoming notably more animated. Her wine glass has been abandoned on the coffee table, hands gesticulating in emphasis as she explains: “I’m flying by the seat of my pants right now. That’s just how I thrive. Time crunches, and learning as I go. When I’m forced, things are compressed, that’s what I like best.”

I wonder aloud: “Do you think that as you settle into your business now, there will come a point where you’re like, ‘I need to be flying by the seat of my pants again,’ and you’ll want to switch things up on yourself?”

That could come in various forms, she thinks. It could mean taking on more inventory than she’s used to, or attending events she’s never been to, or hiring employees one day. She wants to have a storefront at some point. “In time,” she says. Until then, she’s focused on building a community she can connect with, comprised of both her vendors and her customers. “Chicago is amazing, and it has so much to offer, and the amount of creative people here… I could never figure out how to tap into [that community], and now I’m a part of it, which is just the coolest feeling. It’s endless.”

It’s clear that she loves where she’s landed, but she took a lot of risks to get here. I ask her what the scariest part of making those career pivots was – personally, I find the sound of so much change daunting. (I think I’ve well established by now that my comfort zone is where I thrive. Although as I’m writing this, I realize that maybe I should give myself a bit more credit: I did up and quit my job last year, knowing full well that I was stepping into a freefall. I don’t feel particularly inclined to do that again any time soon, though.) Anyway, this question earns a laugh – “I graduated six years ago from college and I’ve already had, like, three careers!” 

“That’s impressive though,” I insist. And then the oven timer goes off, tugging at both of our focuses for a minute. The pizza needs more time.

When we turn back to each other, she admits that the financial part is the scariest. The downtime between paychecks, the inevitable uncertainty of when consistency will take hold again. But the risk is worth the reward for her – she hasn’t cared this deeply about a job before. Sure, she has more riding on it, but she’s also doing something that lights her up more than a 9-5 would. 

I wonder if she ever worries about evading external validation or facing judgment from those around her when she does things outside the norm of her peers. “Maybe I’m just projecting,” I laugh. I find it all too easy to wind myself into a spiral of obsession over how I’ll be perceived. Does she know what I mean?

Totally, she does. “At some point after I graduated college I had this moment where I was like, ‘I just don’t care anymore.’ I feel like the people that I surround myself with, and the things that I do, I just want [them] to make me happy. And I just try not to let anybody else’s thoughts get in the way of that.” She explains that surrounding herself with work and people that make her happy makes it easy for her to block out any unwanted opinions. “There’s always going to be something negative, right?”

I give an “Mmm” of agreement.

A pause, while she thinks – “I’m sure people have their own thoughts about, you know, everything, but if I’m focused on that I’m not going to grow.” I’m guessing this mindset is a huge factor in her success, I tell her, and she nods. “You’ll never get anywhere if you’re too worried, right? You’ll never be able to press post on something.” In her presence, so self-assured, I find myself feeling a bit silly for all the times my finger has hovered over the Post button, wondering if someone from high school with a full name I can’t remember and face that’s blurry in my mind will see it and think it laughable, or worse, banal.

It’s worth noting that when it comes to the people in her life, she speaks of them in a manner that reads as a mixture of reverence and deep admiration. In the time I’ve known Nicole, I’ve noticed this about her: she cultivates her circles with care and intention. If she invites you somewhere, you’re going to feel included, no matter how many other people are around. This is completely intentional, she tells me. In that same epiphany where she decided not to care too much about others’ opinions, she resolved to only focus on relationships that bring positivity to her life. “I got over the idea of ‘more is more’ when it comes to friendships and relationships. I put more energy into the ones that I really feel like fulfill me, and I fulfill them.” It’s very rewarding, she says.

* * * *

Something comes to my mind that I haven’t thought to ask her yet: how does she find a reasonable work/life balance when she is her own boss, her sole employee, and everything in between?

“Honestly, for me, I would rather put in time on the weekends and have a little bit of flexibility during the week. That’s just how my brain works.” She lets herself wake up naturally, take a slow morning, and plan out her day in blocks. Sometimes she goes back to work after dinner, sometimes she saves it for the next day. “You just have to hold yourself accountable,” she says. “There’s so much freedom that it could be bad if you let it slip.” 

I pose a flip side: “If you’re motivated, and really passionate about your business, it’s probably easy to get sucked into it, and work a ton, and not have any life part of the balance.”

She nods. “I have both types of days. But I want to have a life outside of work. So again, it’s learning a balance.”

I tell her about the summer I spent freelancing, and how untethered I felt without the structure of a 9-5. I prefer to feel tethered, as it were. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t fill a full 8 hour day, but then again, I rarely needed to. 

“Everyone’s wired a different way,” she tells me comfortingly. “And I think that if I wasn’t doing something I love, it would be a lot harder to motivate myself. But it’s like, I know my goals, and if I don’t do it, it’s not going to happen.”

Her advice for people who want to start their own business (a loaded question, she tells me): find something you love, first of all. If you don’t love it, don’t even think about it. Make sure whatever you’re doing is something that you’d be one hundred percent proud to put your name on. Think about the impact you’re leaving on others.

And her advice for anyone who wants to make a career change: just do it. “I probably sound like a crazy person because I’ve done it several times. Maybe it wasn’t always everyone’s idea of the best decision, but I wouldn’t be where I’m at if I didn’t.” And where she’s at, is happy. “You gotta jump sometimes.”

So, did she think her life would turn out like this? 

Yes and no: she knew she had always been surrounded by good people, and would continue to be. She knew that creativity would play some role in her life. But she never pictured herself running her own business – she just didn’t! She’d always wanted to, sure, but an early 20s Nicole didn’t really believe she’d ever end up there. “I honestly have to sometimes, like, pinch myself… it’s surpassed what I ever thought I could do with my career, which is really cool.”

The oven timer goes off again. Her pizza is ready.