Mila Thomas left corporate work at Apple to become an interior designer after a trip to Israel clarified her lifelong passion for design. She credits an Apple mentor's lesson on accountability and Oscar Wilde's "Be yourself; everyone else is taken" as guides to finding purpose.
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All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today I have Myla Thomas with us. She's a former leader and corporate trainer for the world's most successful company, turned space guru and business development extraordinaire, turned interior designer. So welcome to the show.
Hi, good to be here.
Great to have you on. So Myla, the first one that we ask on this show is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Okay, so I would say a couple, like maybe a year and a half ago, I was sort of in this like kind of question mark phase in my life, kind of wondering what my purpose was, what I wanted to do. And so I pulled a classic Eat, Pray, Love move and I went to Israel for a month. And during that time I just set an intention when I was over there that like I really want to discover what I was like kind of made to do. And at the time I was working for a consulting firm, I was doing business development, writing proposals, really kind of facilitating a lot and kind of getting people into our space for corporate meetings. And just felt like I was starting to get a little like antsy about my life and that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. And so I took this trip to Israel, had the time of my life. And it's interesting because when I was over there, I felt like interior design was popping out the entire time. I met so many people over there who were architects and designers. And the funny thing about it is So I live in Richmond and I moved to Richmond about 13 years ago to pursue design. And I wanted to learn how to build and design furniture specifically. And life took a bunch of detours. So I worked for Apple for many, many years and then I worked at a consulting firm. And so I think an underlying valuable message is a lot of times if we have these questions around like what we were meant to do, and it's so funny because A lot of times, like, those things are always within us. And I even reflect back on my childhood and our family routine for Sundays was we would go to church, then we go to brunch, and then we'd walk around like newly developed neighborhoods because we lived in Northern Virginia. So it was booming at the time. New houses were always popping up and we'd walk around homes together as a family and just like look at the floor plan and just kind of think about like what we would do differently with our house. I think it's kind of illegal, but it was all like, good, good fun. And so it's just interesting to see how design has always been with me. And like I said, life takes detours. So for anyone who's listening, who's just trying to figure out what's next or what they were meant to do, what kind of brings them a lot of joy, I would say the answer is a lot of times not very far from you. And it won't be surprising.
And then, so, you know, you've definitely, you've got a lot of areas of expertise. So what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within one of your areas of expertise?
Oh man. I would say, I'm gonna pull back from my time when I was at Apple. So I was a leader there and a corporate trainer. And one of my bosses, his name is Khalil, He's fantastic. He's no longer at Apple, but I remember when I took my first leadership position ever there, and I was talking to him about it, and he was a mentor, then later on in my time there, my direct boss. And one of the things he told me when I got my leadership position is he said, "Okay, let's just pause really quick, and I want you to know that in this leadership role, this is not about a title, this is not about pay. When you take on a leadership position, it's higher accountability to yourself and to your team. And so when anything breaks down on your team, the first finger you point at is at yourself, and then the process or the infrastructure around you, and the last is actually, you know, the people that you're leading. And I say that because, you know, working at a consulting firm and just being, having a lot of experiences, you know, our basic instinct is human survival. And so a lot of times when something breaks, it is in our human nature to like want to blame somebody else. And I would say that piece of information, whether that be, you know, in a business setting, in a group setting, in a family setting, to say, how do I pull back for a second and say, did this thing break because of my lack of communication? Was I unclear about something? Could I have done something differently? It really grew me as a leader, opposed to not having that thought process. A lot of times I feel like It's backwards. People want to point and figure out themselves, or I'm sorry, their colleagues, and then maybe the process, and then maybe they'll get to themselves. But I'm glad that I got that information early on.
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
It goes kind of to the favorite quote. It's by Oscar Wilde. I would just say to myself, be yourself. Oscar Wilde says, "Be yourself, everyone else is taken." And just knowing that there will never be another Myla over the course of human history. So from the beginning of time to the end of time, there's not another me, not another you, not another person who's listening to this that exists in this timeframe with this context, with this experience. And so I think we live in a time where we're constantly, we see other people's lives on display. And not playing a game of comparison, which is very dangerous, but really doing the hard work in figuring out our unique offering and how that can show up in the context in which we're living.
And then in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Okay. I would say I want to be really transparent. So I'm a Christian and a lot of my joy, not necessarily happiness, I feel like happiness sometimes can be circumstantial, but a lot of the joy that I experience comes from being known and loved by a wider friend group and within my faith, and then also knowing that I was designed for a specific reason.
And then what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Yeah. Okay. So I don't know if you've heard of it. It's a book called Essentialism. It's by Greg McKeown, and he essentially talks a lot about in a busy time, how do you focus on the vital few over the trivial many? And so we— our lives can be full and they can be robust, and we feel like sometimes we're spinning our wheels and we're doing a bunch of things and it's accomplishing nothing. And so how do you really say, let's get down to the core essentials of what I want to be doing and essentially kind of designing your life and designing your life and saying, here's who I want to be. Where I want to go and how do I weed everything else out that is not kind of going towards that or bringing that thing to life. And so kind of getting lean on commitments and getting lean on the way that we busy ourselves and really kind of focusing on the things that drive us to where we want to go.
And then you may have already said it, but if you want to repeat it for us, your favorite quote and why.
Yeah, it's the Oscar Wilde quote. It says, "Be yourself. Everyone else is taken." And that's just encouraging everyone that's listening to this, that you are an original, you're absolutely unique, and there'll never be another you over the course of time. And so like I said, just do the hard work of figuring you out. And because you bring something so unique that no one else will bring over the course of human history. So that's why I love that quote.
Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I have for you before we let you go is where can our audience best find you online?
Um, so right now it's on LinkedIn. So just Myla Thomas. Um, but I'm working on my website. Um, that'll be heavily geared towards interior design and it's just mylatomas.com.
