Storie Titus: 0:22

Today we have on the show a very special guest, Mr. Gueston Smith, the owner and founder of Guest Creative. Welcome, Geston.

Guess: 0:31

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Storie Titus: 0:33

So we talked a little bit before the show. How did you come to create Guest Creative and kind of what's your background? Tell us a little bit about how you manifested this industry and this business.

Guess: 0:46

That's pretty um pretty deep. So it's a loaded question, huh? Yeah, and um there's a lot of alignment at play. But uh it started out with my initial curiosity for creativity, drawing, um, art, things like that. I've had very artistic parents and on artistic and entrepreneurial parents. They uh chased their own freedom, they chased their own opportunities, and so that's something I kept in mind as I continued to uh grow. Uh I had a a younger sister, and her name was Talia Vase, and uh she had cerebral palsy, she had special needs. And uh we would always look for uh homes to accommodate for our special needs when I was younger, but my mom had trouble finding like 88 accessible homes at that time.

Storie Titus: 1:31

Wow.

Guess: 1:32

And so jokingly, when I was around 12 years old, my mom suggested to me that I should become an architect one day to design a home for your sister. And uh I kept that uh at heart. And uh as I started to, as I grew and went through my high school career and I was making the decision of where I wanted to go to school and things like that, that idea popped back into my head based on a lot of um things I had done as a kid. Arts, I uh my mom had bought a uh home design program when I was younger, so I was able to design homes and see how space was uh created and manipulated. I could I could draw like a a square on the ground and extrude it up and now it's a volume. Now I'm understanding how space is if I extrude it to a certain height.

Storie Titus: 2:16

So go mom.

Guess: 2:18

That it was really, really um a powerful uh tool that she gave me. And so then I started applying to colleges and I ended up going to USC for architecture. Uh that was a blessing. And so I went to Los Angeles, studied architecture, and uh that got me into designing structures and buildings and things like that. And uh uh a few a long journey in between that got me into creating movable space. So it's uh architecture like as freedom, pretty much. So I I combined the brick and mortar fixed uh concept that we all know and love and experience and uh try to create a a new opportunity for people to have access, uh, which goes back to uh why I started designing in the first place of accessibility for uh my sisters. So I want to create accessible spaces for others that give them access to whatever it is that can empower them to become the best version of themselves or uh for their business, getting that profit and getting that growth, getting that exposure.

Storie Titus: 3:22

Yeah, that's amazing. You did not talk with me about that on our previous call. That's really inspiring. And it's it's good for us to realize that everyone in this world, especially in this community, I mean, they need to have that ADA compliance, right? And for you to take it and just run with it is amazing. So can you tell the audience a little bit more about exactly what type of spaces and on what level you're doing these spaces and what they're for?

Guess: 3:53

So what we create right now is uh like we like I said, we're reimagining how spaces utilized. So we take trailers and modify them to be uh useful spaces depending on whatever the business uh practice or service may be. Um for example, like a landscaping business may have find benefit in having a mobile tool shed or a command center where they have uh, you know, like a whiteboard where they can plan out their projects for the day, maybe uh the hydration area so they make sure they stay um, you know, hydrated and uh floodlights all around to make sure that they can work either in day or night. So just giving them flexibility so they can take you know their operation mobile and not just throw everything in the back of a truck or in the back of an industrial trailer where they just have tools. So just giving them more uh opportunity and flexibility with their business to help make everything more efficient and with their operation.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Absolutely.

Guess: 4:50

So that's one example. Then another is like uh retail. So obviously, you know, people love to uh shop, but you you can't replace the experience of a brand. You know, you can you can buy things online, most people do, but when you want to really connect with the brand and the brand really wants to connect to their consumer, they have to have a space that allows people to remember their brand, to connect with their brand.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Yes.

Guess: 5:15

Um this gives the opportunity for them to not only go to their community with the brand instead of having to have a a brick and mortar space that may not be the best location for what they're selling at that time for their market, it gives them more of an opportunity to to test it out, test out the water, see where what kind of customers really resonate with who they are, and then from there they can scale and they can replicate that same space and do it in a different market. Or they can understand where their market is best fit and then build that traditional uh brick and mortar space as their hub and use these trailers as like a a scout ant that goes out and feels out where the next market Man I I mean I didn't even think about that when I was looking.

Storie Titus: 5:57

The quality of what you're talking about when you go to your website is amazing. I would have never expected it. It's kinda reminds me of the similarity and the mini homes that they really expanded with in Austin. They're just really nice quality, but you're on a whole nother scale, more of an executive quality scale, would you say?

Guess: 6:17

Yes, yeah.

Storie Titus: 6:18

That's amazing, especially for the construction industry or I mean lawn service as well, but construction, you've got executives showing up on site and suits and ties sometimes checking things out. They need a focus point. And if you know anything about construction, it's terrible to drive to and drive from. So you're really optimizing these business owners' times and availability. Right. Um, there's so many places. You're local to Arlington, right? Yes. There's so many places in Arlington to your point about clothes and and buying them online. I have to go to a lot of different events. So I can't just opt for buying online. I have to make sure that it fits. You know, I it maximizing my time, I'll just go in and get what I want. And there's so many places that either don't have dressing rooms or can't utilize them, but for them to have a mobile availability to go to different places, kind of like a food truck, would you say?

Guess: 7:11

Exactly.

Storie Titus: 7:12

Okay. All right.

Guess: 7:13

So I use that kind of as a um I looked at some of when you when you want to understand like a creative way of doing things, you kind of look at how people do things when they don't have as much resources as others. So like when you look at some of the smaller businesses, they did that out of necessity. They didn't have the the funds to create an entire restaurant or to build an entire restaurant. So they created food trucks so they can be more mobile and have lower over overhead, and they can uh take go to wherever their uh customers may be and find the foot traffic. So you see that with food trucks, you see that with barbershops, mobile barbershops, you see that with nail salons, things like that. Um and a few like mobile practitioners, like uh, you know, pet grooming, uh, things like that. So those are like the first adopters of of this kind of idea and this and and this way of thinking. And so I saw that and I said, okay, if that can be a I see what people without resources can do. So what what happens if I offer this solution to people with resources as well? What can they do with it? And how can that affect the the way our whole like ecosystem is set because now you have movable spaces that can uh empower communities in some way, you know, or uh just overall just connect with their people on a on a face-to-face level and not just oh, we have the store over here, but oh, we're gonna be at this park at this time or at this, you know, this mall at this time, or anything like that. They could find locations that create exclusivity, create hype, create um all those things where it's like we're excited to go and see what uh experience they have today.

Storie Titus: 8:56

Yeah. So how do you um you you you said you went to Los Angeles and then came back here. So where are you located now? Where are you trying to really plant your your seed with the with your business bringing it from LA to here? It's a totally different demographic. Have you run into any hurdles or ran into any variables that are drastically different from Los Angeles to here?

Guess: 9:22

So Guest Creative has grown with me as I've grown uh as an individual and as a business owner. So when I started Guest Creative, it started as a logo design and brand, branding company for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It was a side hustle for me to be able to um find my own freedom and and get out of the nine to five situation that I was in. I wasn't um I felt stifled creatively. And so I used the skill sets that I garnered through USC uh of learning uh you know graphic design software and things like that, and I self-taught myself on how um to properly create logos and and brand identities that express the true nature of the person that is running the business. And so I would create like questionnaires for my for my clients so that I could truly understand who they were on a deeper level, what they're looking for and uh what their uh what their desires were. And so in doing that, um that's how I started to uh create that freedom for myself out in Los Angeles. But as these ideas started to come up of um creating a movable space and modular space, I uh I ended up working for a uh shipping container home design company out there and I was the head of design there as a startup. That was the flow from my nine to five, that was my next move. I ended up finding a company that um designed homes out of like modular homes out of shipping containers. It was very unique, and I I had found my interest in that from um combining uh the graphic design and modular spaces. I had saw that they were doing pop-up shops out of shipping containers around the world. And it it was uh really interesting to me.

Storie Titus: 11:16

Yeah, that's honestly the creativity that you bring to that space of them redesigning the shipping containers is you can tell there's a lot of quality and care in it. It seems like you're really passionate about underpromising and overdelivering, maybe. That's right. Because when we had the conversation about what what is this business, I could think of so many things in my mind, but going to your website and seeing the quality of work that you do, it's just unimaginable. So what are your what are your plans for guests creative in the next three, five years? Are you guys planning on growing? What are your thoughts on your goals in the next few years?

Guess: 11:57

First is to continue to do um opportunities like this to be able to shift people's mindsets on what's possible with space. Uh, understanding that space can be movable, it's it's it's defined in four walls, but you can take it wherever you need it to be. And so uh first starting to frame that mindset on what's possible and getting people's minds um going. Uh getting a a few more projects uh per month to help out, you know, customers and clients to expand their businesses in the right way. And then once we start to uh become more of a uh greased oil machine of getting the these projects out, we want to create our own fleet of uh movable spaces so that people can rent it out that don't have the resources to buy it. And so giving them the opportunity to utilize that as well. And then um after that I'm thinking community infrastructure, how we create movable spaces that go and touch areas that don't are don't have as much resources and teaching them maybe a financial literacy trailer, maybe a um wellness trailer where we have healing uh of um higher types like red light therapy or um you know vibration vibrational therapy, things like that.

Storie Titus: 13:14

PMF therapy, things like that. Yes, yes. That's incredible. And to to that point, um I hadn't thought about the the mobile classrooms. You I seeing here that you won two international awards and one was in particular was a for a mobile classroom. Yes, yes Can you tell me more about that?

Guess: 13:34

Yeah, that was really exciting. That happened in uh 2024. I uh applied for an international design competition for um and I applied using one of the designs that's just been uh that that came to me a long time ago, maybe in 2018, and I was uh thinking about education and how currently the the classrooms, at least that I've experienced definitely growing up and what I've seen a little bit later aren't really you know creatively inspiring.

Storie Titus: 14:10

They they I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you.

Guess: 14:14

I agree with you very much so yeah, they they have a very dreary look and they all look around the same. So each individual is unique and they have their own uh things that they're drawn to that inspire them. And so I was thinking, what could a educational space look like that allowed um you know students to be able to think deeper about who who they are, what they want to do, and uh where they want to go in life. And so I created a mobile learning center that I called the magic school box instead of busy.

unknown: 14:49

Ms.

Storie Titus: 14:49

Frizzles, my favorite magic school box. Um, I'll have to go look that up. So, what did that consist of and how did it work?

Guess: 14:59

So I designed it during COVID. Um, so it it it had um uh a seating down the middle which gave space in between for each student, but it had a space for the laptops and they had a and uh interactive screens on both sides of the the trailer. And so the idea was that um and and then on the edge they had uh a green screen area. Uh and the idea was that uh each mobile learning center could be a satellite for for another space so that the teacher that's teaching would be in front of the green screen and and students that are watching from uh other places would be able to see the teacher and learn, but also the students that are there are interacting with one another and interacting with the uh interactive screen so they're learning uh uh visually on hand.

Storie Titus: 15:53

Wow.

Guess: 15:53

And so um that was the concept of the the magic school box, and that's what got the uh the award. So I got to go to Milan for that, which was amazing.

Storie Titus: 16:02

Wow, how's Milan?

Guess: 16:04

It was beautiful. It was yeah, I got to see uh one of my bucket lists for sure. Da Vinci's forest portraits out there. So I he's one of my um one of the people I definitely studied and admired is Leonardo da Vinci. Wow. I love um multidisciplinary polymaths. That's those are the type of individuals that I studied as I continue to figure out what my direction may be. So I use that them as inspiration and I stand on the shoulders of giants such as that.

Storie Titus: 16:31

Wow. Would you say you have other not he they aren't mentors to you, but would you say being a business owner, do you have a lot of mentors that kind of help guide you and and walk you through this this journey of owning a business?

Guess: 16:46

Yes. Uh all my mentors are usually on YouTube University.

Storie Titus: 16:51

Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Accessibility is everything, right?

Guess: 16:55

Earl Nightingale, Never Neville Goddard, um, you know, Leonardo da Vinci, Cola Tesla, like people that are had really made some changes in the world. Those are the people that I I look at their their work and try to understand who they are and what they did and how they did it.

Storie Titus: 17:14

You seem very intentional about everything that you create, which is amazing. Um, because some people are out there do well, we're all out there making money, right? But you're you're very intentional and you come from a good place. Um so how did this transition did this company help your sister in any way? Or it kind of helped that the community? Is that what you're aspiring to develop?

Guess: 17:43

Yes, it helped her in spirit. She passed away when I was 14. So I'm sorry. Thank you. She um yeah, she gave me the drive and the um and the emotional fortitude to not quit. Uh and that's something I hold with me dear. Uh, and that's how I continue to just fall into alignment. When something doesn't work out, I just kind of scale out. So I say, when in doubt, zoom out.

Storie Titus: 18:10

I like that. The rhyming hook is amazing.

Guess: 18:13

Thank you.

Storie Titus: 18:15

When in doubt, zoom out.

Guess: 18:16

And I and I I zoom out and I look at what the overall trajectory is, and I find my alignment by um you know just sitting with God and and thinking, like, okay, what am I doing here? What's next? Uh, what feels right for me? And I continue to just put one foot in front of the other, and that got me here uh in a multidisciplinary path. So I yeah, definitely wasn't planning this journey out when you say intentional, it wasn't planning it out from the beginning, kind of just molded and manifested itself.

Storie Titus: 18:43

Yeah, so you you um architecture is your passion though, at the core of everything. That's right. You truly love developing and creating, right? That's right. So um can you tell me? Because we work off of Adventure Trinity, the build launch grow scale methodology. So how would your process look with with your owners? Um, because you're you're working with owners of small businesses, meet mid-size or large, right? Um so how does how do you take your customers through that journey?

Guess: 19:14

So we have a an assessment tool on our website that it's a very comprehensive uh questionnaire that allows uh the owner to think through their business and how they could be used uh mobily, but also to help us understand what their real goals are and what their um the limitations and their budget is. And so we reverse engineered from there. And so we say, okay, uh, you have this budget, you have this concept that you like to have, and you'd like to do this with your business. And then so we look for solutions that can fit all those criteria. Uh and so that's why I have that's why I work with multiple fabrication partners around the US that I've um curated and and been to their factory and understand how they work and and uh build good relationships with the people on their team so that I'll I'll and then I'll look for the trailer that best fits their uh use case. So like a learning center and maybe a 40 foot trailer, but if you just have a mobile boutique, maybe you only need 16 foot. And so it's like I'm looking at all of those things and and finding a good solution for you to make sure that it doesn't break your bank, but also making sure that you own your space. Yeah. And you can build on your own terms.

Storie Titus: 20:28

Wow. That that's incredible, it really is. Um, so you're national, um, you can really help any business owner, not just here in the Grand Prairie Arlington area. That's right. Because this is a very tactile, you have to be kind of on site, but with those partnerships, I mean, that's gotta leverage a lot in the different areas. So how do you um how do you scale that? How do you reach those business owners in in your local area and outside of your local area? What's your process right now?

Guess: 21:00

Right now it's just authenticity and getting uh the message out and in the most organic way that I can. Uh, because I at times I thought about doing uh a certain kind of marketing, but I hadn't figured out how I wanted to articulate the message yet.

Storie Titus: 21:20

Yeah, create the foundation, right?

Guess: 21:21

And so I was working to create the foundation and make sure that the whole base is strong, the concept is strong, and the the direction is strong and the vision. And so how I scale that is going to be to continue to get the the word out and uh still to take on uh really interesting projects at the time that I can showcase and then you know start to put on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and all that kind of stuff, uh just so that people can get in the right places and uh in the meantime, between time, uh a lot of cold calling, a lot of uh uh LinkedIn Networking, right? Networking, things like that, just connecting with um decision makers to put it in front of their face, like, oh, this is a possibility.

Storie Titus: 22:04

Right. I would have never thought of it until we had that conversation and and going to your website, the visual is so much more impactful um than talking about it because people can talk about mobile anything all day long. But the quality, I'm thinking about just getting one and traveling around the world in it freelance professional, right?

Guess: 22:27

Mobile podcast studio, there you go.

Storie Titus: 22:29

I like that actually. Okay, we're gonna talk to the CEO after this. Um so funding and partnerships. Um, are you working with wanting to work with nonprofits? Are you wanting to how are you scaling your business in terms of partnerships? Or are you right now?

Guess: 22:50

Right now we're not, but uh going forward, uh like I said, we're looking to scale to different uh markets around the US to be able to have those opportunities for other cities. Um but you know, Dallas Fort Worth is my my base hub because my family's here and I want to come here to build with my family. And uh we actually have a um a uh outdoor venue space in Fort Worth. Uh it's called Vase Rendezvous, it's named after my sister for uh, you know, if you have any wedding venues or events or corporate events that you'd like to throw as as a family business of mine, and that's uh another core reason why we moved out here, why why I moved back here. And there's a lot of opportunity for me to set mobile spaces on because it's a 10-acre piece of land right off of Lake Arlington.

Storie Titus: 23:38

Man.

Guess: 23:38

And so it it'll be a really amazing space to have mobile spaces there, food trucks and have festivals and all those kind of things as well. So there's a lot of uh moving parts and so just find the alignment and creating this.

Storie Titus: 23:53

Yeah, that's amazing. Thinking about it, I've been a bridesmaid I don't know how many times, but taking those pictures in huge areas to have a mobile anything to kind of with the photographer so that you could take pictures inside and you have my brain just stirring that there's so many capabilities that you can really create. So how do you hone that in as a business owner? How do you hone in and really stay aligned with your your strategy and your process that you've created? Do you have struggles with staying in that alignment? What what have you overcome as a business owner that you can help other business owners with?

Guess: 24:34

You know, you have to let the market tell you um about your business as well. So right now I have a lot of ideas and I my mind runs everywhere. So I more so just want to put it in front of people and allow the market to tell me what they really need and what they really want after proposing what's possible. And so as I continue to show visuals of all the things that can be done as I start to get more projects of uh built projects where they should see it in activation, um, more minds are gonna shift, more uh brains are gonna start going down that creative route. Oh, we can do this too, or we can do this too. So uh I'm kind of moving along that lane and trying to stay in alignment, just continuing to refine the vision and keep taking steps forward, making the right connections, uh, crossing my T's and dotting my I's along the along the way.

Storie Titus: 25:28

Yeah, so you're you're really in the launch phase kind of of your business, really spreading that brand awareness and letting people know your capabilities, which which is amazing. So, what is the um time frame of beginning to end for you when you start working with a new client to develop one of these mobile, say mobile office or mobile podcast room like this one?

Guess: 25:50

Uh so that depends on the level of finishes you want in there and the type of finishes, but uh this this mobile basketball um this company that I did a mobile basketball retail trailer with, they are I got that done in about a month. So that's pretty quickly, but they don't need all of the storage and the cabinetry and and uh wiring for TVs and things like that, so it's a little bit faster. So it it just depends on the the build out, but it could go anywhere from a month to six months.

Storie Titus: 26:24

Wow, depending on the the quality and the capability at the time and and what's in there and and what's in the fabricator's queue, uh things like that.

Guess: 26:33

But we're very open, we're very communicative about uh all all that's going in, so we'll let you know uh uh individually on what the specific restraints are with your project, with your design, and we and then we keep it going from there.

Storie Titus: 26:47

Like wow, you really kind of hit a sweet spot in the market that a lot of people haven't even gotten close to touching. So brand awareness is really important to you right now in and building that relationship. We're very big about building relationships here, not just it's not sales at all. If you call me a salesperson, by the way, I'll be very upset. Um, but that relationship's important because people buy from people they know like and trust. And the key word of market or marketing is market. So to your point, I mean, listening to what the people in the area or in any any area need and you being present and those creating those relationships is invaluable, I would say. Um, I've got like five people to introduce you to myself now. I'm excited to meet them. Yes, and other podcasts as well. We we want to help grow the community, right? And I feel like we partnering with people that own businesses like yours is really gonna help amplify that. And at the end of the day, I think that's our goals, everyone's goal, hopefully. So, um, can you tell us any other things that you find Cindy cut that? Um that you find your spare time. What am I trying to say, Cindy? What do you do in your spare time? How do you relax? How do you got you? Okay.

Guess: 28:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I so my spare time, I I do a lot of things, but what I have gotten into in the past five years is martial arts. It's been helping me uh connect my mind to my body and also just find a certain uh level of peace and um watching progression, the progression of something I put my uh genuine intention and and effort into. And so that is my body, because we only have uh one body, so we have to take care of it. And when I so I I practice Jeet Kund Do, which is uh interesting, I've haven't heard of that. That's uh Bruce Lee's philosophy, so that's what he uh he they call him the godfather of MMA, so he basically come he was the f one of the first to combine multiple martial arts disciplines together to create his own. And uh and basically that's what Jeet Kundo is, is an expression of self in combat form by understanding all of the the variations of combat. So I I I got really into deep into the philosophical part of that as well as the practical actual part of it. So I I I train it a lot. I I play basketball, I I hang out with um you know family.

Storie Titus: 29:25

I like to think that's important as a business owner.

Guess: 29:29

Yeah, you need balance. You need balance with everyone does protecting your your mind, body, and spirit, making sure you're growing all of those things. Uh that way you can show up fully to your business and not feel drained because you're still giving to yourself in other ways.

Storie Titus: 29:45

Absolutely. I think we we all get kind of caught in that rat race. So really honing back in on that and having someone kind of bring it to light again is really helpful. A mobile relaxation unit. That's right. I've got some I think I'm gonna End up working for you too on this one. So or is is there any other um kind of insights you want to give us? I like to ask at the end of every podcast, um, if you could give b other business owners any advice, what's one hurdle you overcame or a lesson you learned that you'd like to give advice to business owners that are just starting out as well?

Guess: 30:27

I think to truly master your business because there's so many different ways of creating value to this world, you have to figure out what that value is in yourself and you have to really take the time to reflect and figure out where um you need to put in work or where your strengths are. Just understanding where those are so that you can show up in your business authentically and not show up um with a facade of trying to do something that you can't sustain. And so I I feel like finding that that resonance and that peace within yourself and then you're gonna your business is going to flow because you're putting in genuine effort, you're putting in alignment, you're making good better decisions, not decisions based off of survival or or uh based off ego or based off of um trying to project something that you're not really doing.

Storie Titus: 31:21

And so people feel that, right? I mean peop people can feel when you're not authentic.

Guess: 31:26

Yes.

Storie Titus: 31:27

And so to your point, I I love that advice for myself even because um if you're not enjoying what you do, you're not gonna be good at it, right? Right. Would you say 100% at the end of the day? How do our our listeners get in contact with you? What platforms are you on? What's your website? Can you give us a little more info on that?

Guess: 31:48

You can fit visit guestcreative.com, ww.g-u-e-s-s-c-r-e-a-t-i-v-e.com. I'm also on LinkedIn, Gaston Smith. You can find me there. Uh if you want to see some of my martial arts or anything like on my personal level, my uh Instagram is GestonCordet. Uh G-U-E-S-T-O-N-C-O-R-D-A-E. And uh my company Instagram is guestcreative at guestcreative. So it's very simple.

Storie Titus: 32:19

Wow. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I encourage everyone to go and look at these. It's inspiring. Thank you for coming on the show today, and I can't wait to have you back on in six months to see where you are. Thank you, Storm. Thank you. And to all of our listeners out there, if you'd like to go visit Guest Honor, just set up a meeting with him. Please go to his website or contact me directly. And until next time.