Episode 017
Suzie Hall
How do you go from a $1 million revenue mark to landing a single $15 million contract? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with Suzie Hall, CEO of Cornerstone Collective. Suzie reveals that her massive business breakthrough wasn’t just about hard work—it was about a personal transformation she calls “Blessed Disruption.”
Suzie shares the raw reality of navigating the “halftime” of her life, overcoming trauma, and shifting from a state of constant busyness to a “flow state” that attracts international opportunities. If you feel stuck in the “doing, doing, doing” cycle, Suzie’s journey will show you how to go inward to scale upward.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-How Suzie reached the $1M mark in 3–4 years while raising children.
-The “Divine Energy” of money and why Suzie puts hearts on her checks.
-The Ben Franklin-style journaling method for making high-stakes decisions.
-Why your biggest setbacks are often clearing space for your greatest contracts.
"To make intentional decisions moving forward, it's important to reflect on our journey."
[00:00:20] Alice Tang: Hello, Susie Hall, my new friend, which is a connection, from our wonderful in between friend ,Adi Klevit. Suzie Hall is the CEO and the founder of the Cornerstone Collective. I’m so happy to have Suzie with me. So Susie, tell us about yourself and your company.
[00:00:40] Suzie Hall: Yes, I am founder and CEO of four companies. Two of my companies, mainly design and furnish hotels. And we just celebrated 30 years in business in 2022. And then the third company is the Cornerstone Collective, and that’s the company that you see branded on our website, and that is a company that is just over two [00:01:00] years old. I brought in a partner at that time, another fellow EO member, and created a collective, a collaborative because I’ve always had a heart to help other creatives elevate their businesses and I’m sure we’ll talk more about that. And then my fourth company is new just within the last six months or so. And that’s my personal brand and it’s a personal transformation and lifestyle brand. And that was an outgrowth of some speaking I did this past year, specifically a few EO talks, and I’m also writing a book.
[00:01:35] Alice Tang: Wow, you got yourself really busy. Later on, we’ll get into time allocation and family if we have time.
[00:01:42] Suzie Hall: Yes.
[00:01:43] Alice Tang: So, many audience would know who is EO and what is EO. Would you just tell us a little bit so that we are tracking.
[00:01:50] Suzie Hall: Yes. So EO stands for Entrepreneurs Organization, a global organization.
I think we have around 16 to 17,000 members worldwide, and we’re [00:02:00] in over 150 countries or chapters. And I joined EO Idaho. I live in Idaho currently. I joined a little over 10 years ago. And the journey with EO has been part of my personal transformation as well as my business transformation journey.
I was blessed to serve as chapter president back in 2017, 18 timeframe. I was the first female president of our chapter, so I have some stories around how that all went. And to qualify for EO membership, there’s two qualifications. One, you need to be a founder or majority shareholder of your company, and two, you need to own a business or be the majority shareholder of that business that has at least $1 million or more US dollars annual revenue.
[00:02:47] Alice Tang: Well, That really started the journey of our conversation here. We are going to talk about your revenue your company income or revenue. So tell us about your first million, when you [00:03:00] first passed your million. What happened? Who helped you to get there or you did it by yourself, and then how did you feel after you landed or surpassed it?
[00:02:47] Alice Tang: Well, That really started the journey of our conversation here. We are going to talk about your revenue your company income or revenue. So tell us about your first million, when you [00:03:00] first passed your million. What happened? Who helped you to get there or you did it by yourself, and then how did you feel after you landed or surpassed it?
[00:03:12] Suzie Hall: Great question. So I consider myself somewhat of an unintentional million dollar entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is that I have been an entrepreneur my entire life. A lot of different entrepreneurial activities throughout my lifetime. When I left my corporate job in sales, I was getting to ready to start a family with my husband at the time, and I really wanted a lifestyle that allowed me to have the best of both worlds, being a mom, being available and around with my kids, but also enjoying the business that I had started, which was at that time designing and furnishing corporate office spaces.
So I didn’t set out to build a big business nor to achieve certain revenue thresholds because it was a lifestyle [00:04:00] journey for me. So when I say unintentional, when I got to the million dollar revenue mark and was able to qualify for EO, it was like I looked back and said, oh wow, that’s really great. I did it.
But I know a lot of other women and people that do set goals to get to certain revenue levels, and I have since done that. After I achieved the million dollars. So I kinda have that under my belt. Now, I will say I do have a business degree. I have a business management degree. Although I’m a professional interior designer, so I describe myself as a perfect split down the middle of left brain and right brain. And a lot of creatives in my experience are challenged with the business side. So I tell everyone I meet, take at least one business class. You’ll be glad that you did.
I had so many people help me along the way, especially those early clients who trusted and believed in me as I stepped away from the security of that [00:05:00] corporate sales job into entrepreneurship. And I’m still friends with some of those early clients, even though they’ve since retired. And so that’s just a little snippet of my journey and what I mean by unintentional million dollars.
[00:05:13] Alice Tang: You are very humble by saying unintentional million dollars, and what I pick up on what you share was that you started with, you want to make sure that your family is taken care of. So you make a decision, a very intentional decision to leave the corporate job and continue to, nourish and build on what you know and your passion, which is interior design you just said. So that I think is really, can relate to a lot of women. Because life, you only have this 24 hours. And when you have multiple things happening in your life, it’s really the power of attention, what you want to attend to, intentionally you give up the corporate job and here you are.
[00:05:56] Suzie Hall: Yes, Yes.
[00:05:57] Alice Tang: Feeding the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 [00:06:00] companies. We are very impressed.
[00:06:03] Suzie Hall: Oh, thank you.
[00:06:03] Alice Tang: And the journey to your success. I know a lot of women and men with say it’s a journey, right? There’s no destination. I’m still in the make of, but on your journey to pass that million and continue to double it and double it would you tell us what is the biggest bias you run into and how did you resolve that? Or take care of it, or you dealing with it still?
[00:06:26] Suzie Hall: Yes. So as we know and we’ve talked about, there is, and still will be, I think gender bias, right? So again, as I mentioned, I was the first woman president of the EO Idaho chapter, and I declared at the first board meeting that it wasn’t gonna be a fraternity anymore.
And, I’m very direct and fairly outspoken, so I think that shook people up a little bit. But in my specific profession, the main bias that I’ve encountered is people, clients wanting to see me as a decorator and not as a certified interior [00:07:00] designer. And there are is a place for both. So decorators are more like you see on HGTV that are doing flipping houses and doing all of that, and they’re touching, the surfaces.
We get into the interior architecture and lighting design and biophilia which is the connection to nature and bringing the outdoors in. So I consider myself an interior architect. We do AutoCAD and Revit and very technical program so that we can both create and convey our design packages. And as I mentioned now we’re designing hotels.
I’m currently working on a boutique hotel renovation project, and the purchasing portion of that project is a little over $2 million. So that’s one deal and that’s an example of our deal sizes increasing over the years. So my entrepreneurial journey has been like most of us, right? Up and down in big peaks, some valleys, it’s not a straight incline, but our average deal size used to be [00:08:00] $10,000.
And so now having average deal size be about a million dollars. To me, that’s tremendous growth and it’s evidence that the work that I’ve put in my team around me, which I pour into them, we have the confidence and the skillset to be able to do deals at this size. And we are pitching a $25 million hotel renovation.
I’ll be in LA next week for that one. And so now, I always advise designers, creative. Decide if you’re gonna be a decorator or a professional designer. Again, there’s room for both, and then go down that path and become the best that you can be in that space. So I have always been one to read and educate myself and get all the certifications and the project experience along the way.
I’ve even tutored architects on lead, which is a environment friendly and efficient [00:09:00] design process. So I think that passion for the thirst for learning, which is one of eos core values and the confidence that comes through, because I do know my craft, now are attracting our ideal clients to us, which is who we want to be working with.
[00:09:20] Alice Tang: Beautiful. I just heard that from $10,000 average deal size to a million and beyond that. Okay. 10,000 is 1% of a million.
[00:09:31] Suzie Hall: Wow.
[00:09:33] Alice Tang: Can you tell us what mindset have you changed to get there?
[00:09:41] Suzie Hall: Yes.
[00:09:41] Alice Tang: I’m sure people who’s looking at you, who can relate to you who’s looking for that insight tip, skill, or even a change?
[00:09:51] Suzie Hall: Great question. So the intentional decision that I made as my kids were getting older and I was now a single mom looking forward. [00:10:00] How did I want to be spending my time and being an entrepreneur, working and creating and building my lifestyle, and having worked in the commercial office, medical, government, luxury, residential, and multifamily sectors, I really took the time.
This is important to reflect back on our journey. I really took the time to reflect back on the projects and the clients and the revenue over the years, and this was after I’d been in business about twenty-five. And I said, I want to be in the hotel industry. We had not designed a hotel yet, so I started attending hotel design conferences and hotel investment conferences and setting up meetings with architects and owners and general contractors who were in the hotel and hospitality space.
And lo and behold, we landed our first hotel design contract and that contract size, because of the market I chose [00:11:00] by default, their budgets are bigger because the buildings are bigger. There are lots and lots of guest rooms in a hotel. So if you think about, and maybe compare a hotel guest room to a master suite in a home.
Almost as much care and time and attention goes into designing each. But the hotel rooms, it’s multiplied by a hundred, 200, 300 fold. So I strategically chose hotels because I saw the volume opportunity. So instead of trying to add more and more residential projects or commercial projects, the design budget might be between 10 and $25,000, and the procurement budget might be between 50 and a hundred thousand.
I chose hotels where again, it’s at least five x of those numbers. So it was a very intentional decision that again parallel and combined with the lifestyle how I want it to live, [00:12:00] and I’m loving it.
[00:12:01] Alice Tang: Oh, great. As you talk about it, I have goose bumps. First time when I hear $10,000 to a million, the second time is multiply.
So I also have mentor in my life and I can tell you that I was beating my head against the wall because my case size in my financial world, it’s very small, so I have to pedal a lot.
[00:12:23] Suzie Hall: Yes.
[00:12:24] Alice Tang: So one time I asked for 15 minutes from a not even mentor, somebody who’s really successful. You can’t ask for too much time.
I just want their secret sauce. They tell me two things, and one of the two things is add a zero at the end of your case size. Think about that.
[00:12:40] Suzie Hall: Yes. Exactly, yes.
[00:12:43] Alice Tang: Put me and you in a different place, and thank you for sharing that. Now on your way of building all your success and collaborating with wonderful people, I’m sure that you have very big [00:13:00] decision you need to make when the stakes are very high, what you do, how do you make those decision?
[00:13:07] Suzie Hall: Yes. So for me it’s a process and you know that I’m a big believer in how our personal state, our individual state, and our mindset and our way of being affects our business life. And I ground myself every morning and what I call my morning groove that gets my mind and my body clear so that the important thoughts and items that need my attention. They really just float up, is the best way I can describe it. And it’s become a very organic process. I used to write lots of, to-do lists and prioritize them and put ’em in different categories and that was good for a little while I was building my business.
Now that I’m at this level and the deal sizes are so much bigger, it’s really a lot of relationship building. Understanding and attracting what will be [00:14:00] important to that project and taking the time to both reflect and intend or visualize. So for me, it’s a combination of all of that. If I just jump in and go, which used to be my way of being and doing, I would still be on that hamster wheel. It wouldn’t be very strategic.
Now when I push the pause button and if I have a big pitch or a big presentation like I did with this $2 million deal that we landed and I had to wait three months before getting the approval, and patience isn’t one of my biggest virtues. I needed to sit in that space of, okay, I’ve done everything I can control I’ve done. And then I’m a Christian, I pray and I leave it up to God, and then I look at the next best thing so I don’t get all wrapped up around [00:15:00] one deal. I’ve learned to, and I’ve always been this way in my business, have more than one market or one area that you’re serving. Diversify in your business. One of the reasons, I have four businesses now as well.
So for me it’s really that combination of centering, clearing, and allowing the best thoughts come into my mind. Visualizing and controlling what I can control and doing my very best, and then surrendering to whatever happens, there’s gonna be failures along the way. I’m a big believer that we fail forward.
Seth Golden, the author says, if I fail more times than you, I win. So I think about that quote a lot, and I consider a lot of things practice. So I spoke at an event locally last week that I probably wouldn’t normally have said yes to, but I looked at it as practice and it ended up being a really powerful, meaningful experience for both me and some of the [00:16:00] attendees.
[00:16:01] Alice Tang: Well, I say that your way of running your life every day actually is a determination of how successful you are today, Suzie, so applause. Because without reflecting and grounding ourself at the beginning, we start, looking at the phone. How many of us start the date? This is the alarm clock. Alarmed. I just checked right? Who needs me? So they hijacked our time and our. You didn’t even have a time using your word here, borrowing it, to pause. And being a hurry and think about what we need to think about. Think about what we need to think about.
[00:16:40] Suzie Hall: It’s so well said. Everything starts with our thoughts.
And a lot of people ask me, how do you do it all? How do you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say, it’s just integrated. What I don’t consider it as, like you mentioned at the beginning, we all have the same amount of time in the day. And look at everything, who people are, what [00:17:00] people have achieved. For each of us, it’s a different journey.
And once I learned what my genius zone was and that I didn’t need to control everything and I couldn’t control everything that was that was really free.
[00:17:14] Alice Tang: Yeah. My dad is a very successful entrepreneur. Not even graduated from junior high school, he said. You must face reality.
Once you face reality, knowing things that you can’t control, basically who is trying to tell me? You become very creative because if you’re still in the dream or the denial of this is not happening, it is not me, it’s somebody else, you can’t really problem solve. So thank you for saying that. We love it.
So, I’m sure in the last 30 years there are times that it’s super tough, whether it’s financially or business or client. You have a very tough time and you might thought about, God, I can’t [00:18:00] do this. So when you want to quit, what kept you going?
[00:18:05] Suzie Hall: So So one of my favorite quotes is by Martin Luther King Jr. And he says that you don’t need to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step in faith. And faith is believing and trusting in the unseen. So that’s my entrepreneurial journey. There have been many days that ended up not the way I intended or anticipated that they would go some better, some, much worse.
And through it all my Christian faith has definitely been a grounding space for me and realizing that, there’s more of an eternal perspective than just in the day to day. And also that at the end of the day, people are more important than the deal or the money. And my dad taught me that.
My dad was a major college football coach. So growing up that way I can see now how really unique that was. [00:19:00] And it instilled in me a lot of confidence, also being able to take big risks. So when you’re playing in the Orange Bowl or the Rose Bowl for the national championship in college football, there’s a lot riding on those games.
And I’ve been on the sidelines of the Orange Bowl, and I was exposed to a lot of that when I was younger. And my dad always demonstrated the fact that people were more important than the wins or the losses. So that’s also stayed with me.
[00:19:27] Alice Tang: Very, Very wonderfully said. Now we are winding down with the questions here. What is the one thing that you would do differently if you were to start again?
[00:19:37] Suzie Hall: Yes, and there’s actually a couple. One I would hire what we call it who Not how. So I would hire who’s, people to do things that aren’t in my genius zone, in my wheelhouse. It’s not a great use of time for me to do my books, for instance. Now I did it early on. A lot of entrepreneurs do because if you’re in your business and you’re [00:20:00] building it. I wish I would’ve brought in who’s for, accounting and marketing and that sort of thing earlier on, website development than I did because I thought I needed to do it all. So that’s a biggie.
I would have more who’s, and even if I didn’t have a big budget, parse a little bit out and build that over time. And then the second thing is really focusing on ideal clients and vetting them versus saying yes to every deal opportunity that appeared.
[00:20:32] Alice Tang: Amen on that. Amen.
[00:20:33] Suzie Hall: Right, right. And again, early on when you’re building your business, you feel like you need to accept all business no matter what. And again, I’ve learned over time that it might not be as good as it seems, and it also might not be worth the struggle or the challenge with certain clients. So in the residential area, now, I only say yes to luxury residential projects. If I either know the client I’ve worked with [00:21:00] them before, they come highly recommended by somebody I know.
[00:21:03] Alice Tang: Very, very beautifully said, oh my goodness, I have goosebumps, all the way through.
What is the best advice or the worst advice you have ever received in your life?
[00:21:17] Suzie Hall: Yes. And I’m like you, I’m a constant learner. I’m constantly taking input. But one of the recent things that I, looking back again, reflecting back that it, it’s so prevalent to my journey, is that 80% of our time, and this comes from Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who’s a thought leader, I follow. 80% of our time should be spent on improving our thinking and strategizing and visualizing, and only 20% on the mechanics. And I used to spend so much time on the checklist and doing all the things and micromanaging and getting in the weeds. And again, as my thinking has [00:22:00] evolved and expanded, that has allowed these bigger deals and relationships to naturally appear and everything begins with our mind.
So that’s the biggest piece of advice I wish I would have received and been open to, instead of feeling like I needed to just do all of those years.
[00:22:23] Alice Tang: Of course, doing it I think has instant gratification because we check the box, right? We have a list of 10 things or 10,000 things. I don’t know about your list of one, but you know, checking a box is very satisfying.
The question, I think, where you want to post is checking this box, using that five minutes, 10 minutes, or an hour to finish that, does it help you to move forward? Or kept you where you were at. That’s, I think that’s where you were telling us or implying the $10,000 deal and the [00:23:00] million dollar deal. Of course there is different care, different things we need to put in, but it’s not a hundred times more effort.
[00:23:10] Suzie Hall: Exactly. It’s beautifully said. And a quick example that comes to mind is my email inbox. So I get about 500 emails a day. Probably 20% are junk, but I still need to go through them to see, if something is valid or needs my attention.
I’ve used VAs in the past and assistance to help me navigate it, but now I am in a more evolved place where I can quickly scan my junk emails, delete. Quickly scan my email inbox just a couple times a day. I’m not tied to my emails and I tell people that if you need me, text me and then I don’t feel a need to respond to and file every single email.
I set up rules or I just let them sit there and I didn’t used to be able to do that [00:24:00] and now it’s, my mind knows that, hey, the information’s there if I need it, but I don’t need to fill my mind with that right now.
[00:24:07] Alice Tang: Very, very good. I love it. We could talk about productivity every day. Mm-hmm. Since this is a million dollar conversation for women here, I have to ask this question, what’s your value of money?
[00:24:19] Suzie Hall: So, my value of money is that it gives me freedom. Freedom of time. It affords me lifestyle. It also creates abundance for everybody involved in my world, and that is one of our core values at Cornerstone, is abundance and a deep core value of mine. I love creating abundance for everybody, not just myself and the growth mindset around money.
I can always make more money. There’s plenty to go around. There’s a lot to go around. And my ideal clients have that same mindset where at the end of the day, it’s about the people and the [00:25:00] experiences and the money will follow.
[00:25:03] Alice Tang: Beautiful. What are you grateful for before we close?
[00:25:06] Suzie Hall: Oh, grateful for so many things. Every morning I write down in my oak journal, o a k, read things that I’m grateful for, and then at the end of the day I reflect back. So sometimes in the morning it’s a certain person or my family is usually right at the top. My relationship with God, my businesses, my health so many things I, it’s hard to even list them all, it’s a constant state of gratitude is really important to me.
[00:25:33] Alice Tang: Thank you so very much Suzie you have given us a lot to learn from the tips of success. I don’t say this likely however, I just feel that leaders like yourself, you’re not only helping your own companies, but your ripple effect is to your community, like EO, like people in Idaho, people who have done business with you, Suzie.
You’ve impacted life because you are holding who you [00:26:00] are and you have a way to run your life and to honor your belief, which we are both believers. Thank you so very much.
[00:26:10] Suzie Hall: Oh, thank you, Alice. It’s been such a pleasure.
[00:26:13] Alice Tang: Thank you.
Suzie Hall, ASID, LEED AP ID+C, WELL AP, is a celebrated industry expert, CEO, and Founder of four companies, specializing in design, procurement, sustainability, and modular development. Over her 33-year career, Suzie has leveraged a unique blend of creative vision and business strategy to lead teams to numerous award-winning results across the design and construction fields. A recognized thought leader, she contributes columns to Hotel News Now Magazine and currently serves on the MBI Owner Developer Council and the MBI Design Professionals Council. Suzie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from the University of Puget Sound, giving her a strategic, owner-centric view of development. She is also a sought-after speaker, sharing her journey of personal and business transformation.