UPCYCLING THE PAST, INSPIRING THE FUTURE

When Joe Valenti was told his lung cancer would kill him, he decided to take charge of his life. Almost thirty years later, he’s running one of the most thriving vintage shops in the state.

By: Brody Howell

Entrepreneurs of Columbus Editorial Staff

Follow Flower Child Vintage on Socials: Facebook | Instagram

So tell me a bit about Flower Child. How did you get the idea?

Flower Child basically started when I was in college. I collected mid-century modern furniture, had a whole apartment full of it, and it changed my life. 

I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I decided I wasn’t going to be a talent agent anymore, so I got a booth at a small antique mall and it made a couple thousand dollars in about a month. I thought, “this is something I enjoy doing.” So I started doing that more often and I talked to some friends about it. I said, “I’m thinking about opening my own house,” and they were all like, “I mean, if you’re doing it, I’m in.” Those people are still with me today, twenty eight years later. So that’s how it got started.

The name Flower Child came from the fact that it was born in San Francisco, California. I was four years old before my parents ever put clothing on me. I’m the most conservative thing they ever did. Flower Child is a place where most people come to forget their day or they want to remember something nice. We’re not a judge zone. This is a safe zone. So if you have somebody who’s transitioning or there’s a model or there’s a rock band in here, we treat everybody the same. We don’t give anybody anything more special than another person. If they have a question, we’re more than glad to help them.

We’ll load your stuff in the car, and most people won’t even do that anymore. We’re all about service. You get a bag, you get a bow, you get tissue paper because it is a used item. You want to feel good about what you bought. So I believe that most people are very surprised that it’s wrapped like a gift when they leave here.  Just like any department store.

How do you feel getting to be around so many cool, vintage items all the time?

You know, it’s fun. I don’t feel like it’s a job. It is a job, but I like going to work. You know, my last job was a talent agent, American Federation of Radio and Television and SAG, and I did that for a long time. I used to work with some of the most beautiful and interesting people, but I’d rather find furniture and nice clothing because it doesn’t talk back and it shows up on time. 

You mentioned growing up in San Francisco. What made you decide to move to Ohio? 

You know, it was my family. We moved to Ohio when I was nine. I lived in Chicago and New York as an adult, but it’s just easier to live in Ohio. I mean, a traffic jam here is like 20 minutes. A commute is like two hours to go to work in Los Angeles anymore. So I travel back and forth between Cleveland and Columbus. I’m here so many days a week and there so many days a week. I do the two and a half hours of travel, and it allows me to get a lot of work done. All my phone work is done at that point.

What made you want to move from Cleveland down to Columbus and settle here?

I was going to sign a lease in Chicago to do another shop, and I got rerouted for some truck fire or something. I ended up in the Short North during a Gallery Hop. 

My last job was marketing and I worked with a lot of things, so I played the bag game here and I watched everybody carrying around bags. I just looked at the demographic of the people and I saw a great mix of people. I immediately started looking into a location and just opened one. My family thought I was crazy to do that. They were like, you know, “you’ve already got this thing going on,” and I was just like, “you know what, I can do more.”

When did you realize it was time for you to expand your business?

I think it came out of the thing of being an over buyer. Cleveland’s a hard market. It’s one of the hardest markets to make money in. It’s very conservative. If you can make money there, you can make money anywhere.

Columbus being a test market, if you can make it for five years in Columbus, you’re gold. We test food here. We test product here. We test a lot of things here. It’s just a very natural fit. I thought, you know, it’s close enough. It’s still Ohio. It’s easy for taxes. Things like that. 

When did you first realize that you were successful?

Success is just something I don’t think you boast about. I’m really grateful for everything that happens. I put my head on a pillow every night and I sleep well. I make sure that everybody’s covered. I wouldn’t ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do. When I’m dealing with the customer base, I’ve been doing it for so long… 

I have seen people that have coupled up, divorced, bought their things back, then they recoupled and they come back in and buy more from me. So it’s just a thing about business where, you know, if you’re direct and you say, “look, it’s got this or this is a problem or this is how you should use this.” People want the guidance. 

Whatever they’re buying, they want to know as much history as possible. When I’m buying something for the store, I could be buying it from a school teacher who never had children. Nobody’s ever even eaten off half of the plates in her house.

I went to an estate call here in Columbus and the woman had a hope chest and never got married. So I opened up the hope chest from her as a teenager and it was all these towels and really great things that you could just see where, you know, there was a time capsule there. I think of it like archaeology. I think it’s kind of like a dig. There’s an endorphin that goes off when you find the right piece, and then there’s also an endorphin that happens when the customer who’s coming in looking for it and you have it and and everything is just, it all aligns, all the stars align. 

How do you view yourself in comparison to modern clothing or furniture stores?

I mean, we’re upcyclers. You know, we hate fast fashion. We don’t like fast furniture. We believe that the Earth has got enough stuff in it. We don’t want to put more into the ground. We try to keep it out of the ground. That’s my job as a business person and somebody who cares about the Earth.

When I find something, I usually get it when the owner’s life is at their end, or the family is dealing with it. My job is to take that, bridge that gap and then find a new person for it. So my job is to basically take it from the person who loved it the first time and to find the person who will love it a second time.

I’m all about making sure that everybody’s happy. Sometimes people say to me, “I’m buying this.” I’ll say, “what are you going to do with it?” They’ll say, “well, I’m going to paint it,” and I’ll say, “oh, then we don’t want to sell you that.”

I relate to that a lot. I’m into vintage guitars, and I know how it feels to see a classic that’s been distastefully modified. Do you do anything else to prevent that?

You know, not everything is 100% saveable. When I bought this couch over here, the legs were like somebody decided to jump on them and break them. So we put a different set of legs on it. They’re going to be more conducive to what today’s living is. People back then were a lot smaller. They’re not as small today as they used to be. I think it’s because of what they put in McDonald’s food.

What would you say is your core demographic?

Our age range of shoppers anywhere from the age of like, 15 to 80. If you come in here during the weekend, we have a lot of 20 somethings that support us. They want to feel good about what they’re buying. They want things that are more their style and flavor. 

They don’t like things that are mass produced. When they go out they want to have their very individual look. T-shirts down to jeans down to shoes down to belts. They come in and they put together some great outfits. Every once in a while, they’ll put it on social media, and we share it again because we love the fact that they take the time to put it all together. Some of them are really amazing. Some of my customers are super smart.

What would you say the city of Columbus means to your business?

I sold talent here in the 90s, and it was always a market where the people spent the money but you didn’t know enough about it. It didn’t have a sports team other than Ohio State. There’s not a lake or anything like that. But I find that the people here are hardworking. I love Columbus because there are a lot of festivals. It’s a lot about community. 

A lot of small, atomic families, you know, two kids. I love the fact that I can get across town in 20 minutes whenever is necessary. It’s still affordable. Columbus has welcomed us like crazy. It’s really, really crazy. We’ve won awards for our front windows when we were in the Short North. Our Yelp reviews here are through the ceiling. People are really supportive. 

But we’re not going to make everybody happy. Some people call us a thrift store. We’re not a thrift store. We’re a department store of vintage. You know, if I could go to a thrift store and find this, I’d be in heaven.
How do you feel about people that want to view you as a thrift store and might disagree with your prices?

If you think you can find what we have for sale for $2, please tell me where I can find it for $2. With the internet now, the markets have opened up worldwide. And everybody can, in a matter of moments, take a picture of something and find out what it’s worth.

It’s easy to go to Crazy Town. I call the internet Crazy Town. People said to me, “well, I can go to IKEA and buy that same chair.” It’s not the same chair. It’s not the same chair at all. Nothing against IKEA, but I call it rent-a-furniture because every time you pull a drawer out of a dresser, eventually one day you’re going to be standing there holding the drawer face in your hand. The things that we have here are made to last. They’re real American made. They’re union-made. They’re Scandinavian-made, or Italian-made. These are people that were real craftsmen. There was no fast fashion back then.

The stuff in here didn’t come to us in a cardboard box. We bought it direct, cleaned it up, had it restored. There’s no garbage that leaves with the packing and the cardboard and all those things. We have one bag of garbage every three days in here. We’re very cognizant about what we put in our dumpster. We gather all of our plastics and all of that, and we send them all to recycling. We’re trying to do our part as a small company, just to show people what you can do.

What excites you most that comes in? What do you want to see?

My kick is when I come in to work, I love to watch the first time when somebody comes to that front door and they stand there and their mouth drops open and they don’t know what they’re going to expect. They come in and it’s really in your face. 

That to me is my kick because it means that I did something right. People spend like between, I’d say, half an hour to about an hour and a half in the store. Most people run through… you can run through any other store like Target or those type of stores and you run through and you know what you want to get there. Everything is so individual here. There’s not ten of them, so you really have to look at each thing and go appreciate what it is.

And then at the end when we wrap it all up and we hand them a bag and a bow and they say, I had a great time here.

How do you drive those new faces to your store?

We’re word of mouth here, we do zero advertising. A little Instagram work. And you know, that’s pretty much it.

Do you feel like the experience of shopping here is just as important as the items themselves? 

You know what? I feel the experience is really great because you know, we’re educated. We have children that come in here that don’t know a dial phone. 

They’ve never seen a typewriter in person, and the parents have to explain to them. Then they’ll grab the cord of the phone and go, “what is this? What does it do? “

They have no idea that a phone plugged into the wall. There’s some very cute things that happen in here. Everybody’s learning. I don’t know everything. I learn every day. If I didn’t learn something today, I did not do my job.

You’ve been in business for 28 years. Have you noticed a shift in demographics for decades or eras that people are looking for?

Oh, you know, it’s all over the board. Like now, Y2K is hot and then, you know, it’ll drop off because there’s a new movie coming out called Bike Riders or something and it’s going to be all a lot of coats. 

When the last Tom Cruise movie came out, everybody was looking for bomber jackets. Some of it I don’t understand. I don’t try to understand it. You’ll take this really beautiful young lady and she’ll put this very huge sloppy jacket on, and she’s just like a head in this big coat. But then, you know, it makes you happy.

I don’t let people leave here in something that doesn’t fit them. I will tell them it doesn’t fit them. I will tell them when it does fit them. It’s fashion fate when it does fit them. It’s meant to be.

If someone walked up to you and said, “hey, you’re the owner, I’ve never been here, show me around,” where would you take them?

You know, I generally would just take them upstairs to the second level and have them stand over the balcony for a minute. You know, if you’re going to take a picture in here, it’s a cheap picture. The stairway. People love the stairway. You know, it’s everything from people going through the records and going, “do you remember this song? I didn’t know what the person looked like and I’d been hearing the music for years.” It’s a little bit of everything, I think. I couldn’t narrow it down to one thing about the place. There’re a lot of things about it. It’d be like picking your favorite child and I couldn’t do that.

Say, someone’s visiting the city for the first time. What places do you show them? 

So here, when people say to me, “look, I’m in town and I’m here for two days,” I always recommend the Book Loft. Big Fun. Budd Dairy. Do you know Budd Dairy? It’s an adult food hall. There’s a bunch of restaurants and this bar in the middle. They have games on the second floor and there’s a rooftop patio. It’s a lot of fun.

Seventh Sun Brewery if you’re into micro-brews. If you’re staying here at night, we recommend the Go-Go. It’s a disco down the street. We decorated it.

Do you do a lot of decorating?

We also decorate restaurants throughout the city. Local Cantina. I do all of those. I’ve been doing those for 14 years. I started out with them. First restaurant. 

I just did Liberty Tavern, South Village Grille, and Johnny Sushi. Bendi. So I’m constantly doing that type of stuff. My mind is always going, you know, it’s nice to take a break and actually go back to the commercial. Working with electricians and all that. I like to keep my mind going.

Note: If you need help wit decorating, check out our list on the Top 6 Interior Designers in Columbus!

What made you want to venture out into decorating restaurants?

You know, this customer came in. They were doing a 70s bar, and he started going for something that was totally inappropriate. I said, “that’s wrong. That won’t work. I recommend this, this, this, and this.” So he was just like,” you get me.” He grabbed me by the shirt, walked me from my store down a block to his location that he was opening, and he said, “can you do this?” And I said, “yeah, I can do this.” From that point on, we’ve been friends. He trusts my opinion.

I can tell you what’s going to happen in a space. I know how people are going to stand. I know bump zones. I know soft zones. I know where it’s going to get bottlenecked. I’ve learned a lot just doing retail. I’m on trend because I work with a lot of young people. I see what they’re buying.

I use that knowledge when I’m doing a restaurant, color, music. The MALT, it’s called. Music, Attitude, Lighting, and Temperature.

All of those things are really important. In retail, it has to be lit well so that people can see the color. They want to make sure things aren’t stained. I try to give them all the opportunity so that when they make that decision, they feel good about that decision.

What would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting a business?

Tell your story. Tell your story of what you want to do. The thing about it is you and I can have this conversation and now that I know that you buy guitars, somebody can call me next week and say, “I have a bunch of classic guitars.” I’d say, “I don’t do that, but I know this other person that does do that.” It’s all about connecting people together.

Be true to yourself. Don’t overextend yourself financially. Make sure you’re comfortable about what you’re doing. 

You’re going to eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly before you get to chicken and steak. Nothing is guaranteed. Brick and mortar is a dying format. If you have something really special, people will support special. But if you have something that is really common and everybody’s doing it, anything that your customers can get on the internet, they’re not going to make a point of driving half an hour when they can just click a button and it’ll be delivered to their door. I think my customers, when they come in here, they want the advice. 

I think that when you’re going into business, just be as direct as you can be with everybody, from the people who are buying from you to your suppliers and your customer. Just say, look, “I don’t have it right now. I have a wish book. Write down what your wish is, and we go through it every week. I have 40 people and eventually we’ll find it for you. It may not be today, it may not be next week, it could be a year from now, but at least you’ve got a lot of sets of eyes looking for you.” You know, that’s pretty much our job. I mean, we make a little bit of scratch. Everybody eats. We laugh a lot.

And the other thing about it is that if it’s miserable, that’s not for you. I will drive all day and come up with an ashtray, and that’ll be the best ashtray of the day. When you throw out your line for a fish, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You might get the big catch one day and then another you’re going to get the minnow. You don’t know what you’re going to get.

How important would you say community is to you?

Community to me is just everything because without it, your village is nothing. We’re all a village. You might have a young couple who is just starting out and, you know, they’re nesting. I’m hoping that I can give them the guidance of things that are going to be heirlooms so when they have children there’s something they give. I’m working this Friday. We’re doing a whole community thing. All the businesses are coming together and we’re doing Friday Fourth. Every fourth Friday of the month we all come together. I’ve got a 1966 Airstream. I’m pulling it in front of Budd Dairy. And we’re going to fill it full of a bunch of stuff, 50% off. Doesn’t matter what it is, 50% off. And every business is participating in that. That’s community to me. 

If there’s trouble, there’s somebody that’s stealing from here or being a problem over there, we call each other. We say, “there’s a problem coming your way,” or, “if you see this person call somebody.” It’s Italian Village. We’re a neighborhood. These are all adults that own homes and they all care.

I go out and I pick up my own paper every single day. I don’t wait for somebody to come by with a stick and pick it up. I plant my own flowers and I keep up my house and everybody else does the same thing, and they all care. That to me is community. 

That’s what it’s all about is caring, you know, laughing and being proud of where you’re at. If somebody would have told me that I was going to be in Columbus, Ohio doing this a long time ago, I would have said you’re crazy. You land at places that you don’t know where you’re going to land.

We all go get on the road. We take a road map and the road is great and you’re seeing things and then you get off at a rest stop and you say, “I really like the way this pie tastes.” And you stay. I think a lot of people like to move around, but for me, I’m just very happy with my pie.

What are some things that make you unhappy? What are some of the bigger challenges running the day to day? 

The day to day. Gosh, not enough parking. Parking is one of our biggest issues. And people thinking we’re a thrift store, you know, they come in here and go, “this is the most expensive first store I’ve ever been in.” That’s my challenge. We’re not a thrift store. 

That would be my biggest challenge. Yeah, that’s it. I mean, everything else is either fixable or you can make understanding of it. But sometimes people say things and I don’t think they filter what they’re saying. Sometimes I don’t think they realize it’s hurtful. And then there are days where I can just, like a duck, it just washes right off my back. And then there are other days where I have to walk away going, “do I really say what I’m thinking?” 

Do you feel like you do take a lot of it personally? Does the way people see your business reflect on you?

The thing about it is that it does. It is my shingle. I put it out every day and I open the door. Not everybody’s going to understand it. Not everybody’s going to understand what I’m doing, but you know what? That’s why we’re all different. 

For those who get me, that’s great. For those that don’t, eventually some day they’ll sit there and they’ll be planning a party and they’ll go, “we’re doing a disco party,” and they’re going to be like, “oh I know a place that has a ton of that.” You know, then they get it.

I do think that every business and every business owner has a flaw. What would you say is the biggest flaw with Flower Child and the biggest flaw with yourself? 

I want to save everybody…

I want to say the biggest flaw with Flower Child is just trying to keep the line. I have a lot of vendors here that think they’re in gray areas and I’m constantly pulling them back going, “we don’t do that.” Just trying to keep us at the quality point. You can go out and you can buy crap, but I want to keep it at a quality point. And I think that’s my biggest fault is that I want to keep it there. 

I’m super picky, and that’s the problem. I think that’s our biggest issue here is we’re too picky. We’re too picky about what we bring in, but it’s better for my consumer because I want them to have the best stuff.

Tell me a bit more about the business model here. How does the vendor system work?

We’re like a co-op. We’re like 16 people in this store. I only took on 16 vendors because I want everybody to make money. Each one of them does something special. 

One does clothing, one does jewelry, one does paper. I don’t bring in people that overlap with each other. I want everybody to eat. I want everybody to walk away and feel like this is special. The minute somebody says, like, “I’m going to have a child,” or whatever and they say, “I’m going to take a break,” we don’t have to go outside and find somebody to fill that gap.

Within our own walls, they will take more space. They know the opportunities that are here. It’s just marketing. It’s just all the way it’s marketed. We don’t sell with steak, we sell with sizzle. We sell the idea.

IKEA does the same thing to you. They run you around in little rooms and that type of stuff. IKEA actually shops here. Their visual department comes in and looks around here. Nordstrom‘s visual department walks through here. Victoria’s Secret‘s people come in and look at lace and bras and girdles, the old stuff because everybody needs a pop of inspiration.

Note: Looking for marketing advice for your own business? Our list of the Top 10 Marketing Agencies in Columbus will help you find the right team for your needs.

Do you feel like your store is a big source of inspiration for other retailers?

I’m not saying we’re the end all be all, but remember, our stuff is more cultivated. It’s more personal. We don’t Garanimal it together. Do you know Garanimals? When you were a kid, if you couldn’t put together an outfit, they did it for you with coordinated tags. The lion clothes go with the lion clothes, and the giraffe goes with the giraffe, and so on. That’s how you would wear your clothes as a kid.

We kind of put it together in a way that when somebody walks in they say, “I want to buy the whole thing,” because it’s a non-think. They might look at a furniture setup we have and can buy the whole thing.

We have a lot of parents when they’re dropping off their children at school or their first apartment here and they’ll come through and they’ll be like, “I’ve been driving around forever, all we want is a dresser, a nightstand and this.” I’ll be like, “this and this,” and the father will say, “okay, great,” and they take it.

What does it mean to you to be an entrepreneur?

You have to have big balls to be an entrepreneur. You have to be able to not take it real seriously. You have to be able to know where your line is. You’ve got to make sure that everybody else gets paid before you do. 

Make sure that the lights are on and that there’s air conditioning and comfort. I still scrub the toilet here. I mean, I do everything.

I don’t ask anybody to do something that I wouldn’t do. An entrepreneur is somebody that knows their talent, knows their customer and is always learning because, you know, if you become that one thing, you become very stagnant. You always have to be pivoting and I tell people, “you can go into the same room every single day, but go to another corner and sit there and look at your room a different way.” And I do that. The two hours that I’m driving, I think it’s like, you know, “should I put marketing here or should I be talking more on the Cleveland story this week because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or, you know, there’s the NFL draft. So it should be more sports oriented this week.” Those types of things. When Quarter Horse is here, we put out all the boots. We know when the Goodguys Show is coming in that all the tiki shirts have to be out.

What do you think makes most businesses fail?

I think listening. Listening and knowing when to stop. Some people will throw money at a problem and you have to look at what the problem is before you go to solve it.

You got to say to yourself, “okay, if I did this and I changed this, or if I lessen the hours here or increase the hours here…” Most businesses today when they see a flat line, they up their prices. They think that’s where the solution will be, but it’s not that. You got to look at the national and where you’re at. I may have a couch that’s worth $10,000 in LA or Chicago or New York, but in Columbus, Ohio, I’m going to get $3,000. You got to look at what your customer base is and what they’re willing to pay. I’d rather just have my customer here enjoy it. Most of it’s bought in Ohio, so it should stay in Ohio. I know that sounds weird.

What do you think has been your biggest mistake as a business owner?

My biggest mistake was the trust I placed in some people that have worked with me. I think that happens in all business, nothing’s new. So, you know, that’s that. Everything else has been great. Looking back at it, I mean, I wouldn’t change anything. 

Whenever you do have frustrations, is there anyone you look to for guidance, or even just to vent?

I am really self-contained. I’ve been on my own since I was 15. I left home when I was 15. You know, a lot of people have problems. My problems are nothing compared to what other people have. There are people who are living outside. There are people who are in wars. There are people who can’t eat. There are people who can’t get out of bed. My problems are very small. I’m capable. I can fix my own things. You gotta tell your people the story of what needs to happen for you. Eventually you realize that sometimes, just saying your problems out loud is okay.

Who would you say are your biggest resources in Columbus?

I have to say my customers. Word of mouth. We have great Google reviews. 

What makes your customers appreciate you so much?

It’s about having a rapport with them. I’ve been doing it for so long… You deal with somebody who’s lost their parent and then their other parent will pass away, so then you go to the house again. Then maybe their aunt passes away. They know that you’re going to be professional. You come in, you take your shoes off. You treat them, and you treat everything of theirs, with dignity. You don’t say anything is crap because you have to understand these are their loved ones’ belongings. These are things they grew up with.

Are there any other entrepreneurs you admire?

I look up to the guy who started Local Cantina because he started with $5,000. He put a lot of very good people around him. So I look up to him.

I look up to Jason Williams. When he first came here, I pretty much found him his location. He was going somewhere else. I’m like, “you don’t want to be there.” His last business partner was in Cleveland. He was my next door neighbor. We were on the same press junket. Him, myself, and a guy by the name of Daffy Dan who sold T-shirts. We were all in that retro, recycle kind of thing.

What’s the next big thing that you’re excited about with Flower Child?

I got a couple interior design jobs for restaurants. Doing one in Grove City, and I’m doing one in New Albany. It’s funny because every neighborhood has its own flavor. But, you know, day to day, we pick up the phone, and things could change in a matter of seconds. 

Where did you see Flower Child ten years from now?

I feel that we’re going to be here, but I think we’re going to be bigger in this market. I believe in Cleveland, we’re going to be bigger. I’m not afraid of anything at this point. I don’t know the word failure. I’m one of those people where I grab my nose and I fall backwards. It’s a total trust thing. I know what I’m capable of. I know what some of the people around me are capable of doing. You better put the right people in your boat that have your best interests in mind. I have their backs, they have mine.

There are a lot of people that are negative. Negativity doesn’t wear well with me. Negativity can draw you down. You could take that same energy and be upbeat. I know we all have bad days. I take a bad day and I just get my car and I drive. I just sit there and say, “you know what? It’s not that bad. It’s really not that bad. Nobody died today. You know nobody got hurt. Everybody’s okay. You put the money in the drawer and then we take care of everything else.” That’s what I say to everybody. “Take the money and make sure the customer’s happy. And then we’ll take care of everybody.” If it’s got to be delivered, or it’s got to be repaired, we’ll get those things done. But you have to start somewhere. One step follows the other.

What do you think is the end goal for Flower Child? 

Well, I’m 60 years old now. I gotta find the next person to eventually take it over. You know, my financial planner just looked at me and goes, “you know, you have to look at your longevity.” I think I’m going to go forever. That’s a big problem of mine. I never stop. 

Somebody told me 28 years ago I was going to be dead, to go home and die. I just said no. I can do that with just about anything.

Don’t ever take the first no as a no. There’s always a workaround. There’s a lot of people out there that are just going to give you a crack. You have to take total charge of that crack and find your way in. If somebody shuts the door in my face, I’m going to go through a window.

As Flower Child approaches its third decade, Joe Valenti faces life with the same enthusiasm that has always defined his entrepreneurial journey. From curating unique vintage pieces to decorating restaurants and inspiring others, Valenti has created more than just a store – he’s built a space where ideas can flourish and community can thrive.