Each month, we'll meet a new member of the cohort. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Megan Rajner, owner of Emerald House Studio, to learn more about her background, company, and the beginning of the Access experience.
 

Florence MacGregor: So, first off, how many years have you been in business and what inspired you to start your business?

Megan Rajner: Well, I was happy to schedule this interview for this afternoon, because our LLC is officially 1-year-old today! (Note: we conducted our interview on March 27, 24)

Congratulations!

Thank you. I've actually been working on small residential projects as a side job since 2018, and decided to make Emerald House Studio a full-time business about a year ago.

As for what inspired me to start my business: I'm a very passionate person and something in me always knew that I wanted to build something meaningful. I didn't really know what that meant initially, but there's a quote that I really love and it goes: “never beg for a seat at the table when you can build your own.” That's always stuck with me. Over the years I’ve started to put the pieces together in terms of what that looks like. Right now, it looks like building a team of equally motivated and trustworthy people that want to create something meaningful too. It looks like a lot of hard work, dedication to our clients, and taking any opportunity we can to get people on board with making more climate friendly decisions.

And will you remind me, how many businesses do you run?

I personally own one, which is Emerald House Studio. My partner Zach owns Downing Construction, Inc. which does residential and commercial construction. Together, our businesses offer a design-build relationship for our clients.

Zach and I also share ownership in another business called Vibe by Emerald. It's actually a dance studio, and our involvement stemmed from an investment opportunity. We did a lot of the work to get the business operations up and running and renovate the new space since last summer, but our third business partner is responsible for the day-to-day operations.

There probably aren’t a lot of small architecture firms who also partially own a dance studio.

We hope EHS and DC can share an overlapping network with Vibe - that the families who have kids in dance are the same families who are looking for house renovations!

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, to answer your original question more fully, when I started the lease in Leominster for Emerald House Studio a year ago, it was more space than we needed for just me starting full time. So I actually set up two of the rooms as a staged photo studio for photographers to come in and lease by the hour. It's technically not a separate business, but it was a fun passion project on the side to help Emerald House Studio to earn a little bit of extra income over the last year while we were building up the space. We called this “Emerald Composure.”

You seem very good at finding opportunity and being able to seize upon it - finding or building “your chair at the table.”

That's a good way to put it. Thank you.

Let’s shift back to Emerald House Studio specifically. Can you give us the short version of your company pitch?

Emerald House Studio is a woman-owned architecture and interiors firm where architecture meets sustainability and design meets purpose. We primarily work with residential clients to create custom renovations, additions, and new builds. We also provide commercial architectural services and have recently worked on a church, restaurant, and dance studio. We are passionate about fostering close relationships with our clients and we take a psychological approach to providing designs that will fill and fuel their lives. Our team works closely with Downing Construction, who we have partnered with on many construction projects, to offer an integrated design/build delivery method. We currently share a collaborative office space in Leominster, Massachusetts. For us, this creates a smoother transition from design into construction. It also encourages a more lively and creative workspace for our small but growing teams.

What's a project or initiative that you're particularly proud of?

Well, from the initiative standpoint… I recently attended the BuildingEnergy Boston conference, and it really motivated me to sign up for the Phius CPHC training, which I'm very excited about. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while.

I think BuildingEnergy Boston was a good mental refresh for me on that front. Obviously, our schedules are a little bit hectic right now. We've got a lot of work and it's only two of us, Leo [an EHS employee] and myself. We're a small company to be producing for the workload that we have. But I'm really excited to work toward the CPHC accreditation!

You started to touch on it, but will you tell us a bit more about where you want to take your company in the future?

I think that my answer for this question really ties in with the last one because both of our teams are growing, on both the Emerald House Studio side and the Downing Construction side. And as we have more people on the team and more brain space to tackle the growth on both ends, we're trying to squeeze in time to learn more about BEAM, which I have learned a lot about last week [at the conference] as well. We’re also looking to integrate different energy modeling softwares so that we can be more aware of material carbon impacts and energy efficiency on our projects moving forward.

Another recent goal that we talked about is investing in a blower door testing kit by the end of the year so that we can start tracking our own air leakage in-house and do that testing at multiple phases of the project. After July, 2024, it's going to be a requirement for residential jobs to have a HERS rating done at the end of the project anyway, so we're trying to get ahead of that.

Long term, how many people do you want to work for you at Emerald Studio?

That's a great question. I feel like an ideal number for me is probably somewhere between like 15 and 30.

Previously, I worked at a company that had architecture, land surveying, civil and structural, all in house. They were a 30-ish person firm, and I really liked that number. I've also worked at companies that maybe have two or three people, and then a company that had over a hundred people. And so for me, that sweet spot was right in the middle; having enough people to feel like a little family but, you know, not too big that you can't keep track of everybody anymore.

That brings us to our final question: what part of NESEA’s programming or community are you most excited to be involved in?

All of it! (laugh) Because I think all of it is great. The BuildingEnergy Access program, in particular, offers a really valuable opportunity to engage with other local businesses that have similar goals and equally passionate people, which is really exciting for me personally to be around. I just happen to be very passionate about a lot of the things that I do and I'm finding the same thing with all of the other members of this cohort.

People often say that in order to grow you can't be the smartest person in the room, and I think that's so true. Confining my growth to the experience I would have just within my own little Emerald House Studio and Downing Construction bubble would be doing such a disservice to our businesses, teams and clients. We need to expand and we need to be around other people and other communities. So feeling like a small fish in this larger NESEA community has already been eye-opening for me. It's like a breath of fresh air and it makes me feel like I have more to contribute to make sure that the businesses I'm building will thrive. So I think it's all been great- from the BuildingEnergy Access program and Bottom Lines, to the BuildingEnergy Boston conference.

As I said earlier, I always wanted to work for myself. I don't regret that decision at all. But now, by signing up for different groups and organizations, I’ve found new ways to keep myself motivated. I'm a member of NESEA now, I'm also on the board for AIA Central Mass. I try to sign up for other things as they come up. For example, we recently signed up to be a member of BRAGB, which also gives you membership for NAHB, but I really haven't gotten too involved with those last two quite yet.

Thank you very much for your time and for introducing your company to the wider NESEA community.

Thank you! It’s been a pleasure getting to know you and the NESEA community. I’m so grateful that EHS has the opportunity to be a part of it!