Q&A with the Founders
Hi B180 Friends and Family!
Since Building 180 was founded in 2016, the company has experienced tremendous growth with its passionate co-founders--Shannon Riley and Meredith Winner--at the helm. Committed to serving artists and producing exceptional work, the duo shares their story about how it all started and their hopes for the future.
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What is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned since starting your business?
Shannon: Oh wow, so many lessons and they are unending -- maybe that’s it, be open to never knowing everything and just when you think you know, you don’t. Hire professionals when you need to. If you don’t believe in yourself,
no one else will. And every moment is an opportunity to learn, grow, change, meet someone new etc.
It’s always been hard for me to take myself seriously or even more, my ideas, especially when they’ve never been done before. I also hate promoting myself or my ideas which, if you read, “The Artists Way,” you can probably relate to that
and it may be why I chose to manage and promote other artists instead of dig deep into my own art. But I have to say that giving yourself credit when it's due is important, championing yourself is important. Knowing that you will be learning
something new everyday is imperative and to be open to making all kinds of mistakes. New ideas and opportunities are hard to accomplish but that’s why many people don’t do the things that haven’t been done - it’s okay to screw up, just remember
to be kind to yourself.
As a final note, a mentor of mine shared something important to me right when the Pandemic started. He shared that when the 2008 housing crisis hit and businesses were closing he launched his new company. He shared that when things are going good no one wants to see things or do things differently, no one is open to hearing about a new business or idea, “why fix something that’s not broken.” He went on to say, when something breaks, all the cracks open and this is where new ideas happen. I was stressed about our businesses surviving and his perspective was that this was the time to start something new. That really motivated me to think about how I could be in a position to help people and during this time, and then we created Paint the Void. In a time of despair we needed change. So with that, I would say a huge lesson learned is that there is opportunity in every thing, be positive and stress less (because even if it all falls apart the stress doesn’t help anyways)!
What is the story behind Building 180?
Meredith: Building 180 has both a history as a physical space and as a company. The name pays homage to a former artist warehouse on Treasure Island in San Francisco. The workspace was home to many incredible artists that we still work with today. I worked under Marco Cochrane there after seeing Truth Is Beauty at Burning Man as a volunteer. I couldn’t believe how much art was packed into the space and the amazing community of people that I found there all working together for a common goal: to make monumental sculptures that would surely captivate the imagination of thousands of people.
I also couldn’t believe that so many of the sculptures that had inspired so much awe were now disassembled and tucked away into the dusty corners of the space. All I wanted was for more people to see these works and to feel the same way I had felt. So I committed myself to helping these artists however I could. It was around this time that I met Shannon who had had a strikingly similar experience and who’d been building a business built on this trajectory and had been managing artist’s within the building's work such as Peter Hudson and Katy Boynton.
We were linked up by Katy Boynton who knew we shared a similar vision. Shannon and I put our heads together and decided to form what is now officially known as Building 180, the company, today. We were well positioned both having unique skill sets and passion and ran with the name. Building 180 the space was torn down in 2017.