Spencer Bailey

And I think we largely succeeded in that mission in a lot of different ways.

Even though I was there for eight years, editor-in-chief for five of those years, I feel like I did what I wanted to do there and

I mean, the only cover that got away that I tried and we were close was Michelle Obama.

I thought that would have been just so interesting, having Michelle on the cover of this design magazine.

Why didn't it happen?

What happened?

They were leaving the White House.

They replied and there was interest initially.

But short of getting her on the cover, it kind of did everything I wanted to there.

You spent eight years at Surface, but began feeling exhausted by constantly running after the next thing.

What had become unsustainable for you?

I mean, the pace of that life was, you know, when I started, it was a low seven-figure company, maybe a staff of five.

When I left, you know, we had grown the revenue almost six or sevenfold.

We had quadrupled the size of the staff.

I mean, we had almost 40 people on staff.

We had a whole events business.

We had a little agency model doing brand work within that.

It had grown so exponentially.

And all of that was super exciting.

I just felt like I wanted to explore something more connected to slowness.