Ingram's November 2022

Katie and Brandon Laughridge NorthTerracePropertyManage- ment and Nell Hills

Katie Laughridge spent nearly 10 years in various marketing jobs while Brandon was polishing his skills in the world of property management. So clear ly, the next step in their marriage had to be . . . acquiring one of the region’s best known boutique home furnishings and décor stores. They made that leap in 2019 with the purchase of Nell Hill’s from found er Mary Carol Garrity, an entrepreneur ial leap that meant a complete career change for Katie, who runs the show at the high-end Northland retail site. Bran don is still doing his thing with North Terrace Property Management, but he’s never far from the decision-making at the store. “I’m constantly offering Brandon a position at Nell Hill’s, but he has yet to take me up on it!” Katie says. He does, however, come in on special projects as needed, she says, “and gives insightful feedback without taking over or getting bogged down by the day-to-day needs of the business. His day job gives him a dif ferent perspective, which I appreciate. We may be in totally different industries, work with different people, and obvious ly have very different businesses, but many of our challenges are very much the same.” Their arrangement works, Brandon says, because “Katie is naturally very detail oriented. I tend to be more of a big-picture, high-level thinker. To steal a cliché, it’s often said that a goal without a plan is just a wish. Our goals have al ways been aligned, but they were mostly just wishes for the first few years of our marriage. Personal growth and various experiences have led us to be far more purposeful in translating goals to plans and leverage our individual strengths to do so.” It helps that his strengths—finance and operations—also complement Ka tie’s experience with culture, customer experience, and marketing. “Fortunate ly for us,” he says, “and perhaps just as intended by our subconscious, we each chose a life partner that had the same sort of complements to our individual business skill sets that we

would also seek out in a business partner.” Working in different day jobs, by definition, means that deeper discus sions about the business take place when they get back together at the end of the day—even with a seven-month- old son added to the mix. So there is no such prohibition about talking business in their time together, Katie says. In fact, “our favorite thing to talk about at dinner and on a night out is business.” With their young one bed ding down around 6:30 p.m., she says, “we don’t have much time to eat dinner together or go out. But when we do, we talk about work a LOT. Challenges, frus

trations, major wins, ideas—these things fire us up and could keep us talking for hours, and usually do.” Brandon, waxing a bit philosophical, says that “serving one another as both partners and outsiders to our respec- tive businesses at once is mutually beneficial. Our roles go far beyond that of a spousal cheerleader. The dis tance from the daily operations of the business we are not involved with al lows us to provide support more easily to one another and serve as a pragmat ic counterbalance in a way that’s not necessarily possible while working in the business.”

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Ingrams.com

November 2022