The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Viral Gen Z Luxury Interior Designer Bilal Rehman Talks Success & New Studio Opening

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Viral Gen Z Luxury Interior Designer Bilal Rehman Talks Success & New Studio Opening Bilalrehmanstudio.com tiktok.com/@bilalrehmanstudio BIO: Bilal Rehman is a luxury interior designer specializing in experimental residential and commercial environments as well as out-of-the-box design collections. Bilal interned at an interior design company where he worked his way up to senior level designer in only 4 years. In October of 2022, Bilal launched his own company, giving him the creative freedom he desired. As CEO of Bilal Rehman Studio based out of Houston, Texas, Bilal has had the chance to work on numerous commercial and residential projects, showcasing his skills and talented eye for design. In January of 2023, Bilal blew up on social media because of his genuine and comedic attitude in his videos. This social media strategy, headed by his sister Maya, has brought attention to him and his studio and opened new doors, such as his soon-to-open gallery that will feature affordable unique pieces from local artists in Houston. Bilal spends most of his time working on design projects, brainstorming for the future, and creating content for his business.

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You can check out what we're doing over there. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. And he has built a media empire on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, pretty much everywhere. He's just a monster promoter and designer as well. So we're going to get talking to him. And of course, I am the consummate person who breaks all the fashion rules. In fact, I have no fashion. That's how much I break the rules. And he's probably going to be here to tell me how much I'm wrong, which he's probably right. Bilal Rahman is on the show with us today. Did I nail that, Bilal? Did I get close?

Very close, yes. I'm still working on it. And he is on the show. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing brand that he's built and everything he's done. Balal is a designer specializing in experimental residential and commercial environments as well as out-of-the-box design collections, creating a multifaceted design that requires you to view every element of design as a piece of architecture. No detail is too small, according to his website. He makes these amazing videos that you can see that are totally inspiring. And of course, everyone loves them who's into fashion.

I'm sure the ladies love it as well. You know, I'm one of those fashion, what would you call it? I was hit in the head. I have some brain damage on a fashion sense. But he makes these amazing videos. People love him. And they're exciting. And we're going to be talking about some of his new projects and kind of get in the background on what built him. So welcome to the show, Bilal. How are you? Thank you so much.

I'm good. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. Really appreciate it. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs, please, sir. Absolutely. It's BilalRahmanStudio.com. There you go.

And so give us an overview of you. Probably a better description than maybe what I laid out in the bio. How do you view yourself and your impact on them? Well, I am a 23-year-old luxury interior designer. And so I work on, like you said, residential commercial projects kind of in all multifaceted spaces and across the nation. And I have a huge social media presence, thankfully, that has been developed due to my sister and her ingenious marketing strategy. And so that's kind of where I am.

And now I'm sitting in our brand new studio that we're about to open within the next couple of weeks. There you go. And how old is your sister, by the way, I should ask? Yeah, she is younger than I am. She's 21. Wow. All right.

Note to self, hire the nieces and nephews to run social media. You know, they get the social media better than I do. So, I mean, you're killing it. I watch much of your TikTok feed. You're killing it over there. You're just rocking and rolling. Give us a little bit about your upbringing, your history. What is your hero's journey that got you to this point? Absolutely. Well, when I was a kid, I always envisioned myself kind of doing something more of the traditional idea of success, you know, being a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. And that's due to my parents. Both of my parents are immigrants. My mom is Lebanese and my dad is

Pakistani. So, you know, they had a very distinct vision of what they wanted their kids to be like. And so the idea of doing something creative as a career and being able to sustain a life and, you know, have financial freedom and a stress-free life while simultaneously doing something creative just really was never something that they even entertained. So I ended up going to college for computer engineering. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I did that for about six months, and I hated it. I hated it. I hated the people.

I hated what I was learning. I hated everything. I could not see myself sitting there every day for the rest of my life doing what I was doing. Is it one of those things where you, sorry to interrupt you, but is it one of those things where you're kind of doing what society and your parents tell you you should do to go make some money? Exactly, exactly. It was just that kind of traditional path of success,

of what our parents think success is, when in reality, there's many ways to achieve success that are not necessarily the traditional way. And what do parents know anyway? Yeah, yeah. And so I ended know, I, I ended up pivoting, I ended up switching majors from computer engineering to interior design. And I did that for probably about, I would say, maybe two months, a month and a half,

something like that. And, and once again, I hated it. I, I just figured that you cannot learn interior design from a book. Interior design is something that you have or you don't have. And so I figured that I would rather go learn it by doing it. So I hunted and hunted and hunted for an internship in the design space. And as you can imagine, that was so hard to get because I had no degree. I had no experience, no portfolio, no nothing. But luckily, I landed an internship and just climbed my way up in that company until I reached senior level designer. And then I left and launched my own studio.

There you go. And you've been killing it. I mean, how big has social media been an impact to getting your version of design and stuff out there? Oh, it's been such a vital tool in everything. I think social media has drastically helped us connect with the right kind of clientele. I don't talk like a normal designer. I don't act like a normal designer. I cuss in my videos and I just talk like a normal person.

This is how we all talk. And so that idea of being like this prim and proper designer and I'm above everybody else because I'm a designer and blah, blah, blah. That to me was such a horrible, you know house is really ugly or whatever. We really like it. And it's really turned into such a great filter almost to drive the right kind of clientele our way. There you go. Well, stay on the good side of your sister. You're killing it for those who aren't familiar with you. Your studio that's on TikTok, you've got almost half a million followers, 4.4 million likes uh on instagram you're uh 135 000 followers and your videos are fun they're interesting they're energetic uh you know i don't know how much coffee you're drinking but i need to subscribe to

whatever that is but there you you have a lot of fun and what i love is you really you really kind of uh tear some people you don't tear people up but you tear up some fashion designs that people are using their houses yeah absolutely absolutely yeah um so what do you find what do you think is is the thing that makes you resonate with people because not everyone uh i you know i don't know maybe maybe people need to develop their personalities better. What, what things, what do you think makes you resonate so much? Honestly, I think it, it is the fact that I am not trying to put on a persona. I'm not trying to, you know, behave of, of what you would think a normal designer is. I'm not trying to be,

you know, uppity and like, I, I, you know, I'm better than everybody else. It's not that it's, I'm a real person. I'm a real 23 year old. I'm figuring it out just than everybody else. It's not that. It's I'm a real person. I'm a real 23-year-old. I'm figuring it out just like everybody else. And I'm going to give you my very heavily weighted opinion about everything that you do in your house. And I think people have just really grown to connect with me in that way because they see me as a real person.

They don't see me as somebody who's on a pedestal compared to them. And I think that that's been the best thing for us. That's a great point. You know, authenticity, especially in social media, because there's so much fakeness that goes on, you know, people paying 60 bucks to go sit in a private jet and you can see like all the work you're doing, you know, you're, you're, and you just have like all this fun, like it's a fun channel to watch. And so now you've got your design studio in your gallery. Tell us about that, what you're doing with that, and maybe how people can work

with you if they're interested in using your services. Absolutely. So Bilal Rahman Studio is the interior design studio side of my business, which is where we take on, you know, the full blown commercial residential projects. And that is, you know, something that we, that is the foundation of the company. That's where it all started. And so I love this part. We're expanding our team rapidly. This brand new office that we're sitting in isn't even open to the public yet. And so, yeah, this is the foundation of the company where you can come and we can really work on your entire house or your entire restaurant or whatever project you have going on. Balarahman Gallery, on the other hand,

that is our retail side of the business and that's completely new. So that is an in-person gallery that is located in Houston, but is also shoppable online on balarahmanstudio.com. And basically it is a huge platform for us to support local artists and small artists from around the world with only unique pieces that are very affordable.

I don't have $10,000 vases in the gallery. It's not that because normal people cannot afford that. So I wanted to be able to give a piece of the studio and a piece of the aesthetic while simultaneously supporting small artists at an affordable price. That was the vision for the gallery. And so the gallery is going to open within the next few weeks. It's going to be a soft opening and it is just, you know, a free for all. Everybody can come take a look, shop. Everything that is in the gallery is online. So it's shoppable no matter where you are, but it's a, it's a very good outlet. And I am loving that I'm able to use my platform to support small artists because small artists are so important to the projects that we do as a studio. Yeah, because not everyone can afford that $10,000 vase.

Exactly. I just write checks for them when they come in. So I used to have friends back in the day who were into shabby chic. Are you familiar with that? Unfortunately, yes. Do you have some hate you can help me espouse on the shabby chic are you familiar with that uh unfortunately yes do you have some hate you can help me espouse on this shabby chic there is nothing chic about a shabby chic space i can tell you that for damn sure okay just burn it down and start over there you have it there you have it

folks my friends are like this is really popular in california and i'm like you guys don't have dogs do you because i have huskies and uh yeah everything white is like a really bad idea yeah now i see in your i see the people on the podcast are listening to listen the audio i see in your background you're in some sort of studio and you've got some different outfits behind you tell us about what's going on there so we can encourage people to watch the youtube totally totally uh so this is the new studio space that we've been building. And this is actually our materials library. So this is where we have all of the fabrics and tiles and glass pieces and metal pieces and lighting samples and different things that we use within our projects that we pull from.

So the entire design team, you know, goes through this space every time we work on a project to kind of pull fabrics and samples to show our clients. And as you can see, it's half empty right now on the bottom row because we're waiting on a huge shipment of samples to come in. And as soon as it comes in, that will be completely full, and I'm sure it's going to be busting at the seams, I'm sure. Now, if you need me to mail you any of my socks and flipongs, socks and flip-flops stuff, or my black shorts. I'm good.

Wow. My feelings are hurt. Wow. I don't have any feelings. I can't feel my legs. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting. So now I've got just burn it all down is the thing I've got. So there's lots of things going on.

You've basically rocketed to stardom and become a CEO of your own company over four years. What's that like going through that? You've got to really learn fast and develop yourself as a leader to be a CEO of your company and working with people, hiring with people, all that sort of stuff. What's that been like for you and trying to master that as you go. Yeah, the I mean, the amazing thing is that I always grew up with this kind of entrepreneurial behavior around me, my dad and my mom are both entrepreneurs, they both own their own businesses. I always kind of had that in my system, you know, just growing up. And so it is completely different, though, you know, running my own company, especially being 23. A lot of people, it's weird because I'm hiring people who are double my age and I'm sitting here negotiating salaries and negotiating this stuff and it's crazy but honestly I think it's such a breath

of fresh air for everybody who works at the studio and we have so much fun. The studio is such a fun place to work because we're talking shit all day and we're making fun of everybody's work and when somebody comes in in an ugly outfit it's like the funniest thing that happens everybody's like bullying them but like in the nicest way possible it's just it's like it's just a mess but i love the team we we really have turned into such a i hate saying this because

the corporate world has ruined this but we've turned into such a family and it's like the best you know the best environment to possibly be in and it's like the best you know the best environment to possibly be in and it's such a blessing at 23 to be able to you know not be a kardashian but still be a ceo at this age like i love it there you go have you interacted with the kardashians or what do you have any thoughts on that i wish i wish if this show gets me to the kardashians i will send you the biggest thank you present. I'm pretty sure they don't watch. I have a weird feeling about it. But it's interesting, like you say, I remember my first company started when I was 18. And I think it was 22 when we hit with our first big successful company. And I never went to college either. So I remember

hiring people, like you say, that I'm giving them a salary that's probably a penance of what i was making yeah and then you just come out of college in four years and i'm just like this is the weirdest fucking thing like i'm just giving really it's so fucking weird it sounds like you guys have a lot of fun in your office and you can tell with your video so you're doing that now you're launching something new i believe it's an e-commerce site. Yes. So it's below Rahman gallery, but the online store. And so that is all of the inventory from the gallery is going to be up on there. So you can shop it no matter where you are. Um, and it's also a great resource for other designers who may want a really unique piece from a small artist, but don't know where to find it or,

you know, whatever the case may be. Um, and the great part about it, honestly, is the price point. Everything. My number one goal was to make sure that everything was affordable. So there's nothing on there that is like a break the bank, which is so important because in this recession, we can't. We can't do the $10,000 basis. I'm so sorry. That's true true but now you serve both types of clients right you serve the high end and the in the middle and and yes maybe you can come redesign my shabby chic home oh my god if it's shabby chic we're just a match to it i'm sorry sorry it's just it has to go might be a great tiktok video uh yeah i'll ask you. There's just no way. But I think, I mean, definitely.

So are you big with designers? Do you have favorite designers? Are you pretty much all over the place with different designers, depending on what you like or what you're trying to fit into someone's home? Yeah, I'm all over the place. I find inspiration in other designers or in travel or in fashion or, you know, whatever the case may be. Their inspiration comes kind of from all over, but other designers, definitely. The only thing is like, there's no other designer who I've ever come across who is

like my age or my ethnicity or anything like that.