Annie Meyers-Shyer turned a renovation project into a brand

Business of Home Podcast

Annie Meyers-Shyer, daughter of legendary filmmakers Nancy Meyers and the late Charles Shyer, shares her journey from documenting the renova

Key takeaways

• Annie discovered her passion for design and storytelling through the hands-on renovation of her family's historic home, reigniting a creative spark she hadn't felt since her early career in fashion.
• Her upbringing in a creatively driven household instilled in her a deep appreciation for craftsmanship, storytelling, and loving one's work—values that now define her brand.

Main topics

• The evolution of a personal home renovation project into a brand
• Influence of growing up in a creative family

Notable quotes

"Work is more fun than fun." – A family mantra that shaped Annie's understanding of passion-driven work.

Conclusion

Annie Meyers-Shyer's story illustrates how personal passion, rooted in family legacy

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week, I'll be speaking to leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Annie Myers Shire, the multi-hyphenate creator behind the popular Instagram account turned home brand, This Oak House. The daughter of legendary filmmakers Nancy Myers and the late Charles Shire, Annie grew up in a famously creative household. surrounded by the movies, interiors, and storytelling that have become part of our cultural vocabulary. After humble beginnings documenting the renovation of her historic family home in Los Angeles, Annie found a much larger audience and began building a brand of her own, culminating in a forthcoming book about the process and a new collection of home accessories with Target. I spoke with Annie about what it was like growing up with two celebrated filmmakers as parents, how she curates her social media account while trying to keep it authentic, and where she goes. from here. This podcast is sponsored by Lalloy. Just introduced at Las Vegas Market, four new map-protected Lalloy rug collections featuring 26 original designs to inspire beautiful spaces and new possibilities. Highlights include hand-woven stripes finished with contrast stitching, antique-inspired geometrics softened by sun-washed color, Traditional patterns with subtle shifts in tone and texture, and graphic chevrons in dimensional sumac weaves. The latest introductions join Lalloy's wide-ranging assortment of rugs, pillows, and wall art, giving interior designers and retailers even more ways to find the right product for every need. Explore the new collections and connect with your Lalloy sales representative at lalloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs.com. This podcast is sponsored by Resource Furniture. For more than 25 years, Resource has partnered with the design community to rethink what a room can do. Their Italian-made collection of multifunctional furniture is designed as an integrated system, allowing spaces to move seamlessly between working, gathering, hosting, and resting without compromising the overall design. With extensive customization and a consultative process from concept through installation, Resource brings together flexibility to thoughtfully resolved interiors. Visit their showrooms in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. Or join the trade program at resourcefurniture.com for trade pricing, rendering support, and dedicated project guidance. And now, on with the show. Speaker 1 (3:10) Annie, as I was just saying to you earlier, I want you to be the focus of this conversation. I don't want everyone to be distracted by, wait a sec, isn't she so-and-so's daughter? Yes, she is. She is. So let's just quickly tell the story. I understand you have a famous family that you come from, and I know your family has a lot of fans, so let's give them their due. We're going to give them two minutes. Here we go. Here's the two-minute version. Speaker 2 (3:39) Well, you know, it's interesting. So my parents, for the majority of my entire childhood, they were a team, right? So they would write movies together. My mom would produce them and my dad would direct them. The beauty of that is that writing takes a very long time. And so for many chunks of my childhood, my parents were home, home after school, in the backyard. We had an office and that's where they worked. And I have amazing memories of falling asleep in the little den off their office while they were typing and working. And for most of the films that were made during my childhood, they all shot in LA. Baby Boom shot in New York and Vermont. And so we went on location and I left school and all of that. But for the most part, the movies shot in LA, which was fun and wonderful. And I would get picked up from school and go to set. because that's where my parents were. And there was Speaker 1 (4:29) no one to Speaker 2 (4:29) be at home with me. And so, you know, I think if you grow up as the child of two dentists, you probably, by osmosis, learn a lot about dentistry. And I think that I'm sort of the same. And our Speaker 1 (4:41) sympathies go out to whoever grew up with two parents. Really. I mean, that's a group of support. We're here for you. Sorry about that, right? But Speaker 2 (4:50) as a child, I knew no different. And then after my parents split up when I was around 18, they went on to make movies of their own, which they both then wrote and then produced and directed on their own. My mom didn't direct her first movie until I was in high school, which was The Parent Trap. And so I think the thing that I take away from that time the most. Well, first of all, it's how much hard work making a movie is and that I never wanted to do it. And you thought, Speaker 1 (5:16) no, no thanks. Speaker 2 (5:18) My sister, who also makes films, I've said to her a million times, like, were you not paying attention to those crazy hours they were working? But really, it was the amount of hard work. And then there was sort of this family quote, which I actually think is a Cole Porter quote that they used to say, which is, work is more fun than fun. And that's what they felt about work. They loved it. It was the thing that was, you know, the topic of our family conversation. And so really more than anything, I think I got a feeling that you're supposed to love what you do. That was really what I learned. Yes, it was filmmaking, which I guess now looking back at it is interesting, but really it was just two people who were creative, who loved what they did. And that was a great way to grow up with parents who were passionate and in love with what they did. feel fortunate that way. So Speaker 1 (6:06) it modeled, to your point, it modeled this notion of finding something that you love to do and then throw yourself into it. You quickly got the message, it sounds like, that filmmaking wasn't that for you. Not Speaker 2 (6:20) it for me. Not it for me. And the truth is, I started my career working in fashion and in magazines, and for a very long time, it was really fun. I was young. I was in New York City. It was the world of town cars and expense accounts and run-throughs and fashion closets and all kinds of fun, exciting things. But as I started to get a little bit older, I fell a little bit more out of love with that. And when I was finding what was going to be the thing that was more fun for me, if work is more fun than fun, I wasn't finding it in that world anymore. And honestly, it wasn't until this project. That I think maybe I've never really felt that feeling until now. Speaker 1 (7:03) Really? Speaker 2 (7:04) Yeah. That's the truth. Yeah. And I was fine. Sure. Speaker 1 (7:08) You wouldn't have said you were unhappy before. Not at Speaker 2 (7:11) all. I enjoyed those experiences. You know, I worked at Chanel for almost six years. I left there to really focus on my two kids who were young at the time. And then, of course, we had that thing called the pandemic and all of that happened. But I was very happy. I loved the life I was leading and I was content and happy. I didn't know that there was still a pilot light on inside of me. I just didn't know. Speaker 1 (7:33) Interesting. And so tell me how you discovered this pilot light was still burning and what happened? Speaker 2 (7:43) Well, through a series of a lot of conversations, you know, my mother-in-law had lived in this house here in LA for... decades. And at the beginning of the pandemic, we told her we thought it was a good idea for her to go to Montecito, which is where her weekend house was. And she decided to stay there. And so after conversations of, I don't want to sell the house in LA, but I don't want to live in LA, my husband came home and was like, well, what do you think she should do with the house? And I was like, well. Speaker 2 (8:10) I have an idea. I Speaker 1 (8:11) know someone who would be interested. I think Speaker 2 (8:14) I have a clue of someone who might be a good steward of that place. And, you know, the house was set up perfectly for her. She was a single woman, and that's how the house really worked. It had bedrooms that were not, you had to walk through one to get to another. It was a wonky layout, perfect for a single person. So I knew that it was going to take some work. I also know myself, and I also know that I like to deep dive on things and get really into it. I also know that doing a house is expensive. And when we were spending a lot of money, I wanted to make sure that I was doing my due diligence and learning as much as I could and working with the best professionals that we could afford at the time. And so I had a hunch that maybe this would be a fun thing, maybe, for some of my old co-workers in New York to follow along with. But there was absolutely no roadmap or game plan or foresight into what. could possibly be. I thought maybe some folks would want to help me pick some paint colors. You know, that was really, it all sort of just was a very kind of on a whim idea to start this account. Speaker 1 (9:19) So tell me about this notion of, oh, maybe I'll share some paint color ideas with some old colleagues and what you're going to jump on social media and say, hey, I'm fixing up this house. Here's what I'm doing. That Speaker 2 (9:31) really was what it was. I had, I had. really no game plan. I'm not saying that and being coy, that's the honest to God truth. There are a million house renovation accounts, right? Like a million people are doing this. So I didn't think that I was doing something revolutionary. I thought that it might be interesting. And I've always had a private account. I'm a pretty private person. So there really was just this whim of an idea to begin. And I think what started to happen was I was going through this process. It was very much like in the first person. I wasn't a professional. I'm not an interior designer. So it was really like, come with me to the marble yard. And why is everything so veiny? And why does it look this way? Or why is all the grout so gray? And trying to find, it was really very honest and authentic. And that has been the pillar of everything I've done is be authentic, share my experience, the good, the bad. And I think especially, in a world of interiors where traditionally there's been a lot of gatekeeping, a lot of this is to the trade and we don't tell our sources and all of this, which by the way, I have complete respect for. But I think when I then was out there sharing every paint color and talking about where I sourced something or taking people with me on a trip to Europe, I think that kind of opened doors and really brought people into the experience, maybe in a different way. Speaker 1 (11:00) So you start to share, as you just suggested, you started to share some of this process, and suddenly you found out that people were showing up and they were engaged and they were eager to hear and see. And to your point, there were all these other places that they could be going and looking for this kind of content, but somehow what you were doing was resonating with a lot of... people. And when did you start to meaningfully discover that? And how did you come to process that when you did? I Speaker 2 (11:30) think there were a few different times that I recognized it. I think the first and the biggest was when I told the story on my Instagram about the lands and sheets that my family discovered when we were on a vacation in the Hamptons. And I had never posted really an affiliate link before. I had to Google like how to post an affiliate link. And one of the wonderful things about affiliate links other than the affiliate commission, which it's its whole own subject, is that you can track clicks and you can see, is your story resonating with people? And I posted the story, told them that we discovered these sheets. We love them, posted the link, went to bed, woke up the next morning and woke my husband from a dead sleep and said, oh my God, there's something here. This is something more than I realized. I mean, to date, we've sold. Well over a half a million dollars worth of sheets of Land's End. Speaker 1 (12:21) Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's remarkable. Remarkable. That is remarkable. And that is, so that is part of what is so fun about this story