Design talent knows no age when it comes to starting a career

My recent birthday irked me more than others, perhaps because of the Medicare implications that I have to consider along with all those other realizations about a degenerating spine, creaky knees and never-ending heartburn.

The thought of someday sitting on the couch and measuring my life in old "Gunsmoke" reruns is depressing, to say the least.

But how do you snap out of it?

It only took a walk down the street to get an answer.

Eagle Trace's Kay Eyermann is a ball of energy and passion, and she, indeed, is older than I am.

At an age where many people are putting together a bucket list, she is writing out career goals.

Her current adventure is her Serene Coastal Living interior decorating business, which she has owned and operated for the past five years. What makes Serene Coastal Living an anomaly is that she started the business when she turned 70.

Eyermann is rather matter-of-fact when explaining why she is chasing a new career late in life. She fires off her answer — "Because I am good at it" — and talks about the 24 clients she has served the past five years, transforming their homes.

Her feedback has been so positive that a stream of word-of-mouth customers has lined up to see what magic she can perform for them. That demand has allowed her to concentrate on total home transformations as opposed to piecework designs.

Sitting in the home she shares with her husband, Lou, and her daughter, Lauren, Kay Eyermann talked about a recent project where her clients were a Longboat Key couple who were moving from a 3,500-square-foot home to a 1,900-square-foot home.

Eyermann designed the transformation so well that she was told by the clients that they liked the smaller space more than the previous one.

Besides her artistic eye, Eyermann said she has a talent for determining spatial limitations or possibilities. Lauren, who helps her with some of the nuts and bolts of the design, said her mom's ability is uncanny in that regard.

For instance, Lauren said her mom can look at an empty room, then at a storage locker full of furniture, and know immediately how much of that furniture can appropriately fit into the space.

"I help my mom," Lauren said. "But I can't do what she can do."

Although she didn't pursue interior decorating when she went off to college the first time, Eyermann said she always has had artistic talent. She grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and as a teen, sang for a madrigal group, which competed all over the state.

She said her love of music "jumped" her to a love and appreciation of art, and eventually to a love of design.

But life took over and by the time she was 25, she was living in New Haven, Connecticut and teaching elementary school. That career eventually gave way to more moves and a 25-year career with the technology company ROLM. She moved to Orlando to begin her work as a company trainer at 36 years old.

Another 25 years later, she and Lou moved to Huntsville, Alabama, and they dabbled a bit in selling antiques. She also began helping her friends design their homes.

Instead of drifting off into retirement, Eyermann, at 68, enrolled in an interior design and architectural design course at the University of Alabama. She was confident in her skills to be a designer, but she said she wanted to learn more about the use of color.

Her time in the program only convinced her more that she would be a first-class designer. She would look around at the young students surrounding her.

"I was at the top of my class," she said.

Students in the design class were required to give three major presentations. Her fellow classmates didn't like when she went first because she raised the bar so high.

By the time she was 70, she was living in Florida and running her interior design, space planning, home staging and home organization business.

She joined the BNI networking organization to help her gain referrals. BNI is the world's biggest business referral organization with more than 300,000 member businesses in 75 countries worldwide.

Eyermann said it wasn't long before the regular presentations she made as a BNI member landed her a first client for Serene Coastal Living.

"My first big client was on Longboat Key," she said. "I was giving these 30-second presentations every week (at BNI) and that helped me to build credibility and visibility. But at that point, I really was selling trust. That was it in a nutshell."

She did have anxiety over whether she would meet their expectations, and she did.

Each client she landed made it easier to get another. It snowballed to the point where she had to be more selective taking jobs. Those who are interested can connect with her by calling 407-619-0593 or by emailing her at [email protected].

"I am an honest designer who loves to get to know her clients and what their life preferences are," she said. "What a designer does is balance things. It is all about balance."

She doesn't worry about the competition in the region because she said "the market is so big."

Through five years, it hasn't felt like work.

"That's the key, that I don't have to do this," she said. "I love to do this. It's energizing."

It's the kind of energy many of us "seniors" would love to have. She is, indeed, inspiring.

"I probably will do this the next couple of years," she said.

And then it will be on to the next career.