The Pink Couch Was Never About Decor. It Was About Mindy. And Eventually It Became My Framework.

Eight years ago I was sitting across from a couple in an interview for a job I really wanted.

The husband wanted a man for the role.

The wife chose me.

Her name was Mindy. And I did not know it yet, but that choice was going to change the entire trajectory of my life.

A few months into working with them, I found out Mindy had cancer. It was one of the devastations I had a front row seat to. A truly fabulous woman, high fashion, classy AF. Loved by so many. Her personality, her style, her vision, and her absolute refusal to be anything other than spectacular in every room she walked into.

Mindy had a salon in her home. Not a hair salon. A room. The kind of room that tells you . everything you need to know about a person the moment you walk into it. Hookah. Cigars. Scotch. Bourbon. And on the wall, a hand painted portrait of her, done by a talented artist friend, that looked exactly like her because it captured not just her face but her sophisticated energy.

During my time working for her she was on a mission. She had seen a pink couch in an antique shop somewhere in Denver and she wanted it for that room. She asked me to help her find one.

I looked for weeks.

About three weeks before she passed, her husband called it off. He said to me, what am I going to do with a pink couch? She is not going to be here.

He was not wrong. He was grieving before she was even gone. I understood it. But I also understood Mindy. And Mindy would have won that argument.

She passed away about fifteen months after I started working with them. And at the one year mark of her death, I was asked to plan her memorial service.

I planned it the way she would have planned it for herself.

Pink carpet and step and repeat covered in her favorite fashion designers. A spectacular lunch. Charter buses to the mountain funeral so no one had to navigate grief and driving at the same time. And when everyone came back and the space cleared out, we flipped it into a jazz lounge. Her favorite musician, Gerald Albright, played. It took two full days to set up. It was the kind of experience she would have been proud to attend. That was the entire point.

And I wanted her there.

Not in spirit in the background. Front and center. The way she always was.

So I called a fabricator and had a pink couch built. Custom. Fabricated specifically for this memorial. I placed it front and center in that room as if Mindy had simply sat down and decided to stay most likely because the stilettos that she wore that day were 2” too tall and were meant for sitting and being fabulously photographed in.

I designed the pink couch purely from my heart. I had no strategy behind it. I was not thinking about frameworks or emotional design or what would resonate with the room. There was no deep seeded why behind it. I was just thinking about he and exactly what she would want.

And then something happened.

The day of the event, Everyone wanted their picture on the pink couch. It was the star of the show. Even more so than the grammy award winning saxophone player on stage that day.

Her friends. Her family. People who had known her for decades. They lined up. They laughed. They cried. They sat down on that pink couch and felt close to her for just a moment. And that is not something you can manufacture without intention. Even when you do not realize the intention is there.

What I did not know in that moment, standing in a room full of people responding to a single piece of furniture, was that I had just done something I would spend the next eight years trying to learn how to do on purpose.

I designed for emotion.

I did not have that language yet. I did not have a framework. I did not have a certification or a methodology or a name for what I had just created. I just knew that I wanted people to feel Mindy's presence in that room and I made a decision that produced exactly that feeling in every single person who walked through the door.

That is experiential strategy. I just did not know it yet.

Joe, the fabricator of this whimsical beauty, ended up giving me the couch. We had spent two days producing the experience together so he knew the story. He knew what it meant and he understood the emotion behind what started as a silly little gesture. Because if I am being honest, part of me placed that pink couch front and center to say to her husband, look honey, Mindy won the couch argument from above. And I think Joe knew that too. That couch was always hers. It was just waiting for the right home.

That couch has been with me ever since. It is in my brand photos. It is on the cover of my entertaining book Entertianing with Prupose. It is in my office. It sits next to me when I record. It is front and center in everything I build because Mindy is the perso who gave me the opportunity to build Occasionally Fabulous Events. She chose me. And I will never foget that small fact with every stage I take, every red carpet I walk.

Here is what I know now that I did not know then. Every experience produces an emotion whether you planned it or not. The pink couch produced grief and joy and belonging and presence all at once because I designed it with one person in mind and one feeling as the goal. I wanted people to feel like Mindy was still in the room. And they did.There was actually a psychic there and she said Minday was in the room but thas a story fro another day.

Every detail of that experience was designed with her in mind. That part I knew. What I did not know yet was that I was also building the methodology I would spend the next eight years refining into a framework.

We created a world map and placed a pin on every location a guest had traveled from to be there. Guests would walk up to it and light up. They were proud. They felt seen. They felt like their presence mattered enough to be recognized and documented. It became one of the most talked about moments of the entire day because it made people feel something specific. It made them feel like they belonged there and that coming from far away was worth it.

The swag bags had champagne with Mindy's logo on it. Because she loved champagne. She would drink it on a Tuesday because she was that fabulous. Every person who picked up that bag felt her. Not her absence. Her presence. Her personality. Her unapologetic joy.

I was not thinking about strategy back then. I was thinking about Mindy. But every single decision I made that day was in service of one emotional goal. I wanted everyone in that room to feel like she was still there.

That is the framework. Purpose. Behavior. Emotion. Activation. Outcome.

I did not have those words at Mindy's memorial. But I was living and designing events using every single one of them.

When you learn to do that on purpose, when you stop leaving emotion to chance and start designing for it intentionally, everything changes. The experiences become measurable. The outcomes become repeatable. The people in the room do not just have a good time. They do something different because they were there.

I would not have started my agency without her. I would not have gone this direction in my career without her. She gave me the opportunity and I do not take that lightly. The people who open doors for you deserve to be remembered not just privately but loudly and with intention.

Right now I have people around me who are in cancer treatment. Warriors who are showing up every single day and doing the hardest thing a person can do. I think about Mindy when I think about them. I think about how she never once led with her illness. She led with who she was.

Pink is not just a color in my brand. It is a symbol of power. Of presence. Of the women who chose me before anyone else did and the women who are fighting right now with everything they have.

I am cheering for every single one of you from the pink couch.

Because Mindy would have been too.