Rising Stars: Meet Jesse Bodine of Columbia

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jesse Bodine.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
I started my career as a neonatal nurse back in 2002. Although a nurse, I always had a passion for interior design. Shortly after having my second child in 2010, I started a blog named Scout & Nimble as a creative outlet where I could share a bit of my family life with friends and family and various design projects I would work on in my home. By 2011, the blog began to experience a large spike in traffic. After doing some research, I discovered that many of the projects I had worked on were gaining quite a bit of traction on Pinterest, which at the time had been one of the top sources of inspiration for interior design. As the blog’s popularity grew, I began receiving requests from individuals wanting my assistance with their design projects. Having little experience in the interior design world, I struggled to gain access to certain designer brands at trade pricing, as well as gain access to various design resources to help grow my newly found design business. At the time, I had become friends with several other large design bloggers, all experiencing the same pain points as me. Coming from a nursing background, I’ve always wanted to help others. Knowing that I wasn’t the only one experiencing these issues was somewhat bothersome, so I began discussing these issues with my husband, Sam Bodine. We began exploring various ways to solve the problems I and many others were experiencing.

One morning, we discussed transforming the blog into something bigger while preparing for work. An e-commerce site that would both offer interior designers an outlet to feature themselves and their work and to help them grow and scale their businesses, as well as provide a unique shopping experience for consumers that would give them access to the same amazing mid to high-end designer furniture brands that designers have the luxury of work with every day. Once we developed the business model, we began to take all the steps in building and growing a business. Although we wanted to build this amazing business, it took a lot of work, as we needed to gain knowledge of web development and be more experienced in the furnishings or shipping industries. However, we were both very stubborn and determined to learn, so we began digging in. From market and data research to being resourceful to cold calling furniture brands and attending various furniture markets, my husband and I dedicated those next three years to building what would become one of the top shopping destinations in the US for luxury home decor and furniture. We are currently a team of 30 outstanding individuals who service customers nationwide.

To this day, many people ask how I came up with the name Scout & Nimble. The name is a nod to my grandmother, Yai Yai, who was such a fantastic woman. She faced many challenges in her life and was just an inspiration. At birth, she was abandoned on the doorstep of a Dr in New York. She was then adopted by a loving family who moved out west. She ended up getting married and having 4 children while residing in Kentucky. One day, she decided to head out west with just her 4 children due to complications with her marriage. She ultimately landed in Springfield, MO, where she took all her money and purchased a large tract of land. With no knowledge of the farming industry, she decided that she was going to be a cattle farmer. She ultimately became one of the most successful cattle farmers in that area, even though it was an industry that men dominated. I grew up in a house opposite the farm and would often visit my Yai Yai. I would see which car was in the driveway to determine where she was. I knew she was feeding cattle in the fields if her powder blue International “Scout” was gone. If her Buick Riviera, with its “Nimble” inscribed license plate, was gone, I knew she was running errands in town. If both vehicles were there, it would be my lucky day, and I would go inside and hang out with my Yai Yai.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a business always has its risks and challenges. Some of the challenges we faced were related to our need for more knowledge of web development and its associated costs. When we began interviewing developers about the project, we were told everything from: “What you are trying to do can’t be done” to “This is going to cost you a million dollars to build.” In the end, we settled on using a local developer who felt they could build it within a 3-6-month timeframe for a reasonable fee. However, a year and a half later, with diminished funds and a non-functioning website, we had to make some hard decisions and ultimately changed our development team.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
With the creation of Scout & Nimble, we addressed many of the problems interior designers faced at that time. However, that part of the business was e-commerce and retail-related, and I was still taking on interior design projects that were now separate from that business. What I ended up deciding to do was create a separate arm of the business, called Bodine White, that strictly did interior design projects. That side of the business includes a large team of interior designers and project managers who do large-scale, high-end interior design projects nationwide. I have a team of several highly skilled in-house designers, as well as a handful of remote designers, who are located all across the US. We perform everything from ground-up residential design builds to single-room furnishing projects. We have some fantastic clients and have become a go-to design firm for professional athletes and coaches around the US. With our company’s vast knowledge in logistics and network of freight carriers and receivers, we have excelled at handling projects all over the US. What sets our design team apart from the many others out there is that we have first-hand knowledge of the various designer furniture brands available, as we sell most of them through Scout & Nimble. We carry multiple pieces from many of our brands in our warehouse here in Columbia, and our team gets to touch, feel, and interact with the products daily. We also see the data from our e-commerce company that shows us which items are the least durable, making it easier for us to pull items that we know will be lasting pieces in our customers’ homes. Although we always design homes based on our customer’s tastes and esthetic, we consider ourselves to be one of the leading design firms that specialize in organic modern design, which is a type of design that is more prevalent on the East & West coasts and not easily found in the midwest.

Who else deserves credit for your story?
So many people behind the scenes have helped me grow this business. First and foremost, my husband Sam had a background in running businesses and a finance degree. I am the President and Creative Director of the company, but Sam is the CEO, and we are both the company’s founders. As we began to grow the company, we decided that we needed a lot of help, so we brought on a good friend of ours, James Roberts, who specializes in data science. He became one of our co-founders and has been our COO. When starting any business, staying lean and being resourceful is extremely important. We made many fantastic relationships while going through the business’s early building and growth phases. We sought assistance from our city and worked out of REDI, our local incubator in Columbia, MO, for a while. We also work with the local colleges and the University of Missouri in our area and have a fantastic internship program. We’ve had many mentors along the way, none more important than a family friend, Jack Stack, out of Springfield, MO, who owns and operates an SRC holding company. He helped us stay focused on growing the business slowly to avoid the need for significant investments, and he introduced us to a method of managing our business that, to this day, we still utilize. Jack wrote the book, “The Great Game of Business,” we utilize his open-book management strategy, which helps our employees understand the inner workings and operations of all aspects of the business and creates buy-in from our employees.

Contact Info:

• Website: for the e-commerce business, www.scoutandnimble.com For the interior design business, www.bodinewhite.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scoutandnimble/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scoutandnimble/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/scoutandnimble/