NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - The Drink with Kate Snow: Galey Alix

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Designer and influencer Galey Alix got her own home renovation show on MAX, “Home In A Heartbeat,” after posting videos on social media. She tells NBC News’ Kate Snow how she bounced back from a personal setback and leveraged her skillset to transform rooms in strangers’ homes.  

Hi everyone, this is Kate Snow. This latest conversation for my series, The Drink, is a little different. Gaylee Alex is a design influencer who reimagines the homes of strangers. The Drink is always about how people got to the top, and Gaylee's story is raw, honest, and powerful. She didn't set out to do this work, but when you hear what it took and what she overcame, I think you're going to be as blown away as I was. This one is for everyone whose life has not gone as planned. You can hear a lot more stories of success from top artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. You can find them all at NBCNews.com slash The Drink.

You start saying yes to people you don't even know. Never met them in my life. And you're going to go into their homes. I am in their underwear drawers. I am in their medicine cabinets. I see their underwear drawers. I am in their medicine cabinets. I see their prescriptions. And I have their credit card. I literally, the room just talks to me.

And I need you to be out of the house for a weekend. I love it, dog. Gailey Alex, we are in the Peacock Lounge, which is the mezzanine of 30 Rockefeller Center. This is so cool. What's your drink? This is Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice. Excellent.

So excited. Okay, you are, I don't even know how to describe you, designer, influencer, I know you don't love that term. Social media extraordinaire. You have millions of followers. How'd you get here? How did this happen? I feel a little bit like the universe has just rewarded me for working really hard, for wanting to surprise other people. Everything is done.

It's perfect. And the family gets to come home tomorrow morning and see their new home. I'm so excited. When you went to college, you had no idea that you'd get into design. Oh gosh, no. In fact, when I went off to college,

I had no idea of all of the things that were about to happen. My boyfriend in college, his mother was a portfolio manager at an investment firm. She drove a Mercedes. And I was like, if I'm going to make money for myself,

then I need to go into finance. And so Goldman Sachs found out about me and they reached out. And I got Sachs found out about me, and they reached out, and I got my dream job at 24 when most people are in their mid-30s. 2018, you get engaged? Yes. To a guy, tell me the story. You get engaged to a guy you met in New York.

So I was in New York for a conference at Goldman, and I met somebody who instantly I just fell head over heels for. So a year later we got engaged and he proposes to me in the bedroom of our forever dream home that he just bought up in Connecticut. And I said, I want to marry you, but I've worked so hard to build my career in Florida in finance. Can you allow me to work one more year? And I will commute up here and be with you every single weekend. You volunteer to kind of help renovate the house that you guys are going to move into together.

I am a control freak. If you haven't picked up on that. No. And I, like, when we went to order this, I was like, make sure it's Welch's. It used to be Welch's. It is Welch's. It is Welch's. I tasted it and was like, when we went to order this, I was like, make sure it's Welch's. It used to be Welch's. It is Welch's. It is Welch's. I tasted it and was like, good job, Kate.

So, at it, girl. So when I was up there on the weekends, I was like, I need to find a contractor I can work with. I need to find a designer. I need to find DIY or handyman. To redo the rooms. To fix this house because it was brand new. It needed curtains. It needed everything. And I couldn't find anybody to work on the weekends,

and I wasn't going to let work happen with me not at the house. So the control freak in me was like, I'll just figure out how to DIY it myself. I would wake him up in the morning, and then I'd have the camera set up, and I'd walk him in, and I'd do a surprise reveal. The reveal. So you post all these videos, and some people watch them. Yeah, they weren't going viral or anything, but the people that were there loved them and were commenting on his reaction,

how sweet it was. It's coming up on your wedding, and what happens? You tell him stuff that you hadn't told him before. I tell him stuff that I hadn't even admitted to myself ever. I realized I was not okay and that the anxiety of leaving my career and my stability and my kind of identity. Yeah. Leaving that to be somebody's wife and losing kind of control, right? Which an eating disorder is all about control, right? Which an eating disorder is all about control, right? I found out later

in therapy that you develop an eating disorder oftentimes because you feel out of control in your life. And I think I've always felt a little out of control. Do you tell your fiance that you have an eating disorder? I do. And his reaction is one of shock, but also like pain because he can't believe what he said was he can't believe that I let him love me so long while I was so sick and and that he feels he can never trust me again and that I've completely manipulated him into marrying me and loving me. And I have about an hour and a half to pack my things and be gone. And I just that week finally finished the house I've been working a year on. So by trying to be real and honest, in one fell swoop, I lost my job because I had resigned to get married and move.

I lost the home that I'd worked so hard and got sick trying to perfect. I lost who I thought was the love of my life and the future family we were trying to create. And I lost my health. And so I got on a plane back to Fort Lauderdale, and I landed, and I felt like literally 24 hours before I thought I had everything. And I was dying with my eyes wide open on the inside. And it was like I was screaming, and nobody could hear me. I used to say, like, I was so broken. But the more I think about it, I don't like saying I was broken because I don't think people break.

I think we bruise. I healed by getting off of social media. I left all those videos I had made of me surprising him, of the rooms. I left all those videos up, but I deleted the app so I couldn't get in. You took yourself off social media. Exactly. I removed myself.

And so what happened getting out of therapy is I logged back in, waiting to see my 900. To your social media. Yeah, waiting on Instagram, waiting to see my 900 friends and family asking where are the wedding pictures how is the honeymoon where have you been and instead I could not even find a single message from somebody I knew because I had thousands upon thousands of DMs from complete strangers who I guess had seen some of my videos because they

started to go viral when I was in therapy. People were sharing and resharing. And now everybody thinks I'm a decorator and they want me to do their home. Whoa. Getting out of therapy and getting these messages, I just started saying yes to strangers. You start saying yes to people you don't even know. Never met them in my life.

And you're going to go into their homes. I am in their underwear drawers. I am in their medicine cabinets. I see their prescriptions. And I have their credit card because I'm not putting anything on my credit card because I don't know them. They give you their credit cards. But they're going to give me theirs.

And I say, look, I'm not a designer. I don't know how to talk through a couch with you or like go sit in a fabric store. I literally, the room just talks to me and I need you to be out of the house for a weekend. And I was like, I work in finance now and I. You have to do this on the weekend. I can only do this on the weekend. So my dogs are going to come with me because they're my children. Yeah.

So it's going to be me and my dogs. And you're going to move out, go to Disney World for the weekend with the kids or something. I'm not even telling you what rooms I'm doing. But you... They don't even know which rooms? They don't know what colors. They don't know if I'm turning a kitchen into a bedroom. They know nothing.

And I just say, just get out of here and trust me. And so the first family that did, it was the Callaways. And what's crazy is that all of her friends were like, you're doing what? That's what my friends would say. The girl's not even a designer, and you're giving her $80,000 on your credit card? And that's a lot of money to anybody. That's a ton of money. And they have two little kids, and they're just like, I don't know.

We trust her. We like her videos. And so they were the very first ones. And to this day, I have only done surprise reveals. I've never done a consult with a client. Their reaction, I've seen the video, they loved it. The kid fainted. Like Cole fainted, he fell on the ground.

And that video, and I edited the whole thing, and it got 30 million views. You edit your own videos? I have never once let anybody touch and edit on a single thing I have ever posted. I edit all of my content. It wasn't just one family. You start helping a lot of different people. Yeah.

And the videos go completely viral. Yeah, over and over and over again. Like over a few months, you suddenly have hundreds of thousands of viewers. Yeah, a million. Yeah, like million. Yeah, like on TikTok, I think in the first two months I got two million followers. And the videos were at 20 million, 30 million, 18 million. Just they kept going and people just kept wanting more. And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm just going to keep doing it. And then the universe

just kept rewarding me. And then I built out this amazing team. Coming in. Earlier this year, all her hard work culminated in a new design show called Home in a Heartbeat, streaming now on Max. And then we got this show, and I got this amazing production team around me, like, helping, and we're all working towards this dream. You get your own show. And now I'm here having Sprites and Bakes

just like, Kate Snow! Life is so great! Cheers. This horrible set of circumstances happens to you, and yet now you find something completely different. It is always darkest before the dawn. Always. Yeah. And sometimes people see a light at the end of the tunnel and they think it's a train coming straight towards them.

But I promise you, if you just keep crawling towards that light, it is actually your way out. It is not a train. But you can't stop crawling. And every day I just crawled a little bit more and it gets 10 minutes easier and I just started saying yes. No one has ever made me cry on the drink it's not fair are you gonna make me cry I I really I just want people to know that I guess

something just feels really really bad if you are in so much pain and you feel alone in that pain just know that it will get okay. It will be okay. You will be okay if you just keep taking care of yourself. Like don't give up because so many people are giving up right now. And it's the hardest thing to see because I was there and I almost gave up. And if I had let the disease win and I hadn't chose to fight for myself look at what I would have missed out on I wouldn't be here having sparkling grape juice with Kate right like yeah you like you you can't you can't give up and um because life is worth living there's so many things there's so many things. There's so many things

that anybody could do. So many things. Look what you've done. Lightning round. Let's do it. Weirdest thing about you? That I believe I gave birth to my dogs.

What advice would you give someone who's been through a bad breakup? Every time you've ever felt this way before and you felt like you couldn't laugh, you couldn't smile, eventually you did again a hundred percent of the time. So this time is no different. Favorite design trend you have right now? Mixing metals. I think everybody gets so stuck in if this is chrome then this is chrome then that's chrome also. No, I think you need to mix metals because it's gonna make it feel more custom and

unique I think I need to not have you come over to my house it's all matching just give me a bunch of grape juice and I won't even notice the pictures Gailie Alex this has been fantastic thank you so much it's wonderful meeting you