After an Hours-Long Commute Landed Her in the ER, She Started Her Own Local Business. It Now Has a Year-Long Wait List. Here’s How She Did It.

Kristina Leigh Johnson has spent her entire life obsessing over homes — and it has paid off. The founder of Cosee Home has built one of the most sought-after design-and-build operations in West Texas, with a wait list that quickly stretched past a year and now sits even longer as she rolls out a new platform to help others tame the chaos of construction.

The special sauce, Kristina told Entrepreneur, is the company’s fully integrated design approach. “We are with the client from the vision through all of the design, construction, interiors, accessorizing, landscape, the whole thing,” she says. “So we’re one-stop shopping for clients, and they have a constant advocate through the whole process.”

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Kristina shared how she successfully turned a passion into a business, scaled beyond a solo operation, and, like the rest of us, laughs at HGTV home renovation budgets that could only exist in an alternate universe.

When you say you have a “fully integrated” process for clients, what does that mean exactly? How is it different from other companies?
Normally, a homeowner is navigating multiple channels of everybody who’s in their lane. So you have a builder in their lane, you have an architect or architectural designer in their lane, you have an interior designer in their lane, you have a landscaper in their lane. It’s complex, confusing and stressful. That’s where we come in. We are the conduit through which all of that flows, and we are our client’s advocate.

What drew you to this?
I can’t actually remember a time when I wasn’t passionate about homes. Even when I babysat kids, I was like, “You want to play Legos?” I went to Texas A&M University and got a degree in environmental design. But before that, I was taking AutoCAD classes with the shop kids. They were so kind to me, took me under their wing, and taught me how to draft. And so by the time I was in Aggieland, I was full-on drafting.

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How did you decide to launch your own company?
Out of Texas A&M, I went to Houston and worked for a couple of incredible companies there. But then my husband got a job transfer back to West Texas, which was our roots. But I loved Houston design so much that for a year, I actually commuted from West Texas to Houston. It is a several-hour commute, and it became very, very difficult to keep up that pace. I ended up getting very sick and ended up in the ER. And my husband was like, “You need to try and be more local for the sake of your health.” That’s when I realized there was a lot of work and opportunity in West Texas and realized it was just time to step out on my own.

What were those early days like?
So what was incredible is that in West Texas, there was such a need for really detailed design that wasn’t being met. And so, within a year of starting my own business, I actually had a year-and-a-half waitlist. There was just that much of a desire for design that also included management and being a client advocate. There was no marketing—it was completely word-of-mouth. A client would go to a dinner club and they would start talking about their build and their friends would ask for my number. It was all completely organic.

Talk to me about your signature—how do people know that this is a Cosee home?
You know, I hope it’s by the quality. It’s not necessarily by a style, because one thing we pride ourselves on is that we’re not designing the house for us — we’re designing it for you. And I think that’s something that designers get wrong sometimes is that they have such a specific style, in a way they’re designing it over and over again for themselves. And everybody lives differently and likes different styles and different nuances to what they want. So for us it’s about getting to know the client.

What made you decide to launch your digital platform?
We realized that we can’t help everybody personally with their home, but we think this software is going to transform the building process for people. As I said, there are a lot of lanes of people involved, and it can be completely scattered. In the middle of construction, it’s horrendous because people are like, Wait, where was that sent? Why did we get this instead of that? That was back-ordered? Construction is inherently high-stress and relies on communication. So Cosee Studio just simplifies that and gives you one source of updated truth. Everybody co-sees it together.

As you’ve expanded your business, you have a lot of people working for you. Talk a little bit about your leadership style.
I try to lead by example, but I’ll tell you I was not a natural-born CEO. I love being on the site and I do feel like I’m in my element there. So to be honest, that’s something I still feel like I’m learning, and that is one of the hardest parts of the business for me. I could probably have more sit-downs with the team and talk about next steps instead of just saying, “Let’s jump into this and push forward and learn together.” So definitely still learning on that.

For people who are thinking about getting into the real estate game, what are some of the misconceptions about this industry?
You know, there’s no way to learn about it without getting into it. And so I would say if you have any interest at all, go get a job that is within it or at least closely related to it, so that you’re experiencing it. So if you want to be a builder, go work for a builder. I mean, there’s no kind of experience that you can gain the way that you can gain it when you’re actually doing the trade. You think you want to own an HVAC company? Go work for one. You want to work for a designer? Seek out working for one. And if they aren’t hiring, ask to shadow them. Ask what you can do at no charge so that you can make sure that you love it and start gaining that experience that would propel you forward.

Do you, like so many people, watch HGTV shows to like chill out? Or does that just give you anxiety?
I don’t watch very many because of the pricing they have on those shows. I can’t decide if it’s that I’m jealous because it’s so expensive in West Texas. I’m like, “How did you do that for that cost?”