Finding Joy (and Keeping It)
This piece was originally published in the April-July 2019 issue of our journal, Vol. 5, Issue 1: Women of West TN.
When was the last time you thought about what you wanted to do with your life—what you really wanted to do? When you thought about your dreams and wondered if it’s time to take a risk? Last summer, Beth Wilson and her husband, Lee, sat down to take an honest look at their lives and ask questions about where they wanted to be.
Through that conversation, a business was born.
Beth’s business, Wisdom House, launched on November 7, 2018. Through it, she sells distinctive and/or vintage home décor items, as well as offering home design styling and consulting.
Beth and Lee are no strangers to launching a business. Several years ago, the Wilsons (in partnership with another couple) opened Jackson Escape Rooms (JER), where groups must solve clues and puzzles inside a room to “escape” within a time limit.
“My role in the rooms has always been to find things,” Beth says. “So in terms of room design and clues, it’ll be like, ‘Beth, we need a metal box that’s big enough to hold a fake arm.’”
As she searched for older, more durable items that could withstand the life of an escape room, Beth kept coming across beautiful vintage pieces that she loved but were not in JER’s budget.
The Wilsons now have five escape room locations: one in Jackson, two in Nashville, one in Franklin, and one in Waco, Texas, their home state. While Beth loves what they have built, as a thirty-four-year-old mother of three (soon to be four) children, last fall she began to think about what she wanted to do long-term. Immediately her favorite pastime came to mind: decorating her house, enjoying it, and redecorating again.
“A lot of people appreciate good design; it’s just they either don’t have the time or they don’t have the resources to do it. But when they see it, they know it.”
She and Lee decided to take a risk. They set aside some savings and started a journey to launch Wisdom House.
Beth’s background is far from interior design; she has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a Masters of Business Administration. Despite her “amateur” status, she has a sharp eye for beautiful and functional pieces such as vintage rugs, furniture, home décor, and wall art, and Wisdom House was the perfect way to put those skills to profitable use.
Every other Wednesday at noon, Beth posts fifty items for sale in the Wisdom House Facebook group. Each item is carefully and purposefully displayed as a vignette to instill confidence in a buyer to see how they could style the piece in their own home.
“In order to sustain something long-term, you have to do the thing that makes you happy and brings you joy. And typically those are also things that you happen to be good at.”
“A lot of people appreciate good design; it’s just they either don’t have the time or they don’t have the resources to do it. But when they see it, they know it,” Beth says. “And so I wanted to bridge that gap of being somewhat affordable—like I’m not going to be Nashville prices. I wanted it to be accessible to a lot of people.”
So far, the main portion of Wisdom House’s business has been the biweekly sales via Facebook. However, Beth‘s goal is to offer more of the design consulting/styling portion of her business: either helping a customer design their space or simply rearranging what a customer already owns.
An unexpected third branch of Beth’s business has developed and “taken a life of its own.” She calls it “custom sourcing.” Wisdom House keeps very little inventory due to its sales model, but if Beth is working with a client who say, for example, wants a certain look or size of vintage rug within a specific budget, she will try to find that piece through the relationships she’s built with suppliers.
“You have to overcome imposter syndrome and realize that you do have something to offer.”
So what is Wisdom House’s style? Currently, Beth is into anything mid-century. What draws her to an item is what it’s made of, particularly enduring materials such as marble, solid wood, and brass—things she says she just “can’t stay away from.” But Beth never wants to feel “stuck in a box” stylistically. She has realized “there’s freedom to like what you like today,” and she’s content to change her mind about what she likes ten years from now.
In owning the escape rooms business and now starting Wisdom House, Beth has learned the important lesson of being intentional to not cut out the parts of work that you love.
“In order to sustain something long-term, you have to do the thing that makes you happy and brings you joy,” she says. “And typically those are also things that you happen to be good at.”
Beth’s passion for Wisdom House comes from her love of figuring out design “puzzles” and searching for unique items to sell. As she puts it, “It almost feels like you’re uncovering some sort of treasure.”
Although Beth has big dreams for where she wants to see her business go, she’s trying to stay practical and keep from burning out. And even in these beginner months, Wisdom House doesn’t always feel successful, she admits—when she carefully picks a piece she loves, styles it, photographs it, and not a single person wants to buy it.
“You can get really discouraged in those moments because you’re putting yourself out there—your tastes, your style,” she explains. “So there are hard days, but I think that that’s all part of it. You have to overcome imposter syndrome and realize that you do have something to offer. . . . I think that if it’s something that you generally enjoy, at the end of it, it will all work itself out.”
To shop Wisdom House’s unique home décor items, you can follow the Wisdom House Facebook page and request to join the public “Wisdom House Group,” where Beth posts the fifty items for sale every other Wednesday at noon (Central Time). Sales are determined by whoever comments “sold” on the item first, so pay close attention if you want to purchase a piece.
If you’re looking for specific design styling/consulting or want custom sourcing by Beth, send her a message on the Wisdom House Facebook page or direct message on Instagram.
Sarah Goff is a writer, photographer, and all-around communications nerd who graduated from Union University in 2011. After spending almost seven years in Virginia, the Goffs moved back to Jackson in 2018. Sarah and her husband, Scott, spend most of their free time chasing their two wild, wonderful toddler boys.
Photography by Beth Wilson.
