Partners in Life and Business

Shawn and Christina Taylor are living proof that going into business with your spouse can be an excellent move if you know how to work together.

The Taylors own the Los Angeles-based design-build firm Dacotah Studio, and each have different backgrounds in separate industries. Shawn stepped away from his career in financial services in 2007 to pursue his true passion: carpentry. Christina, meanwhile, spent 15 years in the fashion industry where she was a VP of creative services and worked in retail store design. With Shawn’s craftsmanship skills and Christina’s design expertise, they make quite the team.

A New Business Venture

Motivated by a desire to stay close to home, the Covid pandemic, and the birth of their daughter, the Taylors founded Dacotah Studio in 2020. “It was just a matter of time before we realized it would be a good business for us to be in together,” says Shawn.

A key component to their successful blend of home and work life is an awareness of each other’s strengths and roles within the business. That recognition of what they each do best allows them to easily divide the work. “We commingle when we need to, but we stay out of each other’s lane,  which makes it very much a successful practice,” he says. 

Communication

If there’s one thing that Shawn and Christina both excel at, though, it’s communication with their clients, and educating them and guiding them through the whole process. They establish expectations about budgets, design feasibility, project timelines, and the various other factors that go into a remodeling project early in the process so clients have a thorough understanding of the project.

“Visibility and communication are probably the two things that allow us to really bring projects around for folks and make them feel like the expectations are not only being met, but exceeded,” says Shawn.

Asking leading questions and getting a feel for the client and how they plan to use the space also is an important aspect of the early planning process. “That’s one of the biggest parts of our business, creating value through generating good ideas, but also troubleshooting and problem solving,” says Shawn.

Not Just Clients... Partners

Much like their business itself, a defining strength of Dacotah Studio’s client relations is trust and partnership. Treating it like a collaboration, where the client comes to Shawn and Christina with ideas and lets them go to work.

“I think that’s most important… clients don’t have to feel like they’re fully immersed, but they can really trust the process,” says Shawn. “It’s really us coming in and partnering with them and letting them know that we’re there as an advocate and a supporter all the way through.”