What if your biggest career break came from standing at a cash register and asking a stranger with eight assistants to teach you what they do?

Mikel Welch is a designer, TV personality, and design expert on the Drew Barrymore Show who built his career on pure instinct, relentless faith, and the willingness to work for free. He moved to New York with $500, a miniature schnauzer, and a borrowed couch—then took overnight shifts at the Container Store while posting free design services on Craigslist just to build a portfolio.

Mikel talks about growing up in Detroit building Lego cities as a kid, the 40-minute Crate & Barrel detour that changed his life, and how he learned the business by redesigning green rooms for Michelle Obama and Halle Berry with furniture he'd return the next day.

Mikel opens up about imposter syndrome, not being classically trained, and learning that his gift for envisioning spaces isn't something you can teach—it's just in him. He shares the lesson that changed everything: it can't just be about the money. If you're only chasing a paycheck, it'll never work. It has to be about what you give back.

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What if your job was to create something no one had ever seen before? Not just new, but completely unprecedented. That was the charge Steve and Elaine Wynn gave Roger Thomas when designing Wynn Las Vegas, and it changed everything.

Roger Thomas is the legendary designer behind Bellagio, Wynn, and Encore—spaces that redefined luxury in America. For 40 years, he partnered exclusively with Steve and Elaine Wynn to create resort destinations that feel less like hotels and more like living inside the best movie of your life. Roger calls his approach EVOC architecture—evocative architecture—where every design decision starts with a question: How will this make the guest feel?

Roger talks about inventing an entirely new design vocabulary because nothing in the marketplace could be used if it had been seen before. He explains how he and his team would walk into design meetings asking: How do we create drama? Romance? Surprise? Joy? And then work backwards from emotion to materiality, using female curves for romance, high contrast for drama, and Matisse's palette for pure joy.

But the most powerful part of Roger's story isn't about color theory or custom chandeliers. It's about authenticity. Roger opens up about coming out in his late thirties, quitting drinking, and realizing that surviving his greatest fear gave him the courage to take creative risks he'd never taken before. When he stopped hiding who he was, he stopped playing it safe in his work. That's when the real genius emerged.

Roger wraps with his famous sketchbooks—decades of observations, color combinations, and inventions that he draws back on when tasked with the impossible. And he shares what's next: helping build the Las Vegas Museum of Art, a project 45 years in the making.

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What if your biggest advantage wasn't knowing what you wanted to do, but knowing what you definitely didn't want to do?

Doug Cofiell had that moment sitting in a college marketing class. He looked around at all the corporate politics in the case studies and thought: this is not me. That clarity led him to take over his dad's rep agency, Ivy Stone, and turn it into one of the most respected firms in the gift and home industry through 18 acquisitions over two decades.

Doug talks about starting out with no GPS and no cell phone, building presence in Ohio from scratch with just a map, and how hiring someone better at selling than he was became his template for growth. The turning point came through diner meetings with Ted Goldberg from Drummers Inc.—what started as a potential acquisition became a merger of equals when they realized their businesses were perfectly complementary.

Doug explains why most mergers in this industry fail and why his didn't, and how the infrastructure they built specifically for acquisitions became their competitive advantage. He wraps with his philosophy on technology: partner with the best, integrate everything, but never forget that the best orders still happen in person.

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This week, a special holiday message. Jon shares his favorite insights from the designers, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who joined us this year on the show, reminding us all to keep building, keep pushing, and stay true to who we are.

Thank you for listening and for being part of the Market Makers community. Happy holidays, and here's to 2026!

This week, host Jon Pertchik sits down with designer Peti Lau, founder of Peti Lau Designs in Los Angeles. Peti shares how a lifetime of exploration and creative discovery led her to interior design, and why no experience is ever wasted.

Born in Israel to Chinese-Vietnamese parents, Peti grew up expressing herself through music as an opera singer and pianist. After her father's passing when she was 17, she spent ten years traveling the world—living as an expat in Thailand for seven years—searching for herself and her creative voice. Design eventually found her, and she discovered that all those wandering years had been preparing her for something greater.

In this conversation, Peti opens up about her philosophy that design is about being thoughtful and considerate, and why she sees herself as a director helping clients write their own stories. Jon and Peti explore the importance of craftsmanship in an AI-driven world, her 2023 Rising Star award from her alma mater, and her dreams of designing a boutique hotel that celebrates the nuances that make experiences truly memorable.

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This week, host Jon Pertchik sits down with designer and entrepreneur Megan Molten, founder of Megan Molten Interiors and Shop in Charleston, South Carolina. Megan shares how following her instincts and staying authentically herself became the foundation for building one of Charleston's most recognizable design brands.

Starting with a pharmaceutical sales career that felt secure but unfulfilling, Megan discovered her design talent organically, simply by designing her first home and sharing updates on social media with her network. When friends started asking for help, she had an aha-moment: could this be a real business? Six months after making it official on January 1st, 2018, she had launched both a thriving design practice and an e-commerce shop, met her future husband Hugh, hired her first employees, and moved into office space—all while learning the business in real time.

In this conversation, Megan opens up about conquering the fear of leaving corporate security, the power of knowing your superpower and letting others handle everything else, and why 80% of great design work is actually about relationships. Jon and Megan explore her distinct light, bright, modern coastal aesthetic, her dream project in the Bahamas that changed how she thinks about client selection, and "the mod pod"—the home she renovated with Hugh that beautifully blends both their styles and his collected trinkets.

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This week of The Market Makers, we bring you another story from our Scale Up series. We're sitting down with Alaina Kaczmarski, CEO and co-founder of The Everygirl Media Group.

Back in 2009, Alaina was struggling to get her foot in the door in the media industry, so she opened her laptop and started a blog. Three years later, she and her co-founder launched The Everygirl, an online magazine built to answer one question: How does the every girl who has the vision, work ethic, and dream get ahead if she doesn't know the right person?

Today, The Everygirl Media Group reaches over 2 million monthly readers, employs 33 full-time staff, and has grown into a seven-figure business. Alaina shares the journey from Googling "what is an RFP?" when Coach first reached out, to generating 10+ million views on their holiday gift guides, to building a team that's mostly stayed for over a decade.

You'll hear about the paid partnership that taught them to only work with brands they'd feature organically (even when they needed the revenue), the networking dinner that accidentally unlocked a major revenue stream, and why the future of digital media is about bringing people together in real life.

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This week, we're taking a short Thanksgiving break while the team recharges with friends, family, and maybe a second helping of pie.

Host Jon Pertchik sends good vibes to all the business owners navigating the busiest week of the year - Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday all happening at once. Here's hoping you're making the most of the rush while finding a little time to rest.

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode in our Scale Up mini-series featuring Alaina Kaz, co-founder of The Everygirl Media Group. In this sneak peek, Alaina shares how blogging became her answer to breaking into industries where "it's all about who you know" - and how that led to building an online magazine answering one question: "How does the every girl who has the vision, the work ethic, and the dream get ahead if she doesn't know the right person?"

Follow The Market Makers wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week.