About
Hi, I’m Lindsey.
My career has never fit neatly into one category. I studied interior design, trained as a chef, became a certified health coach and spent a decade building a consumer wellness brand. lew studio is where those pieces come together, including what I learned the hard way.
Where it started
One stockpot in Venice.
My mom’s breast cancer diagnosis in 2010 sent me deep into food and nutrition. I was dealing with my own digestive issues, and bone broth became the center of how I ate, but every broth I could find had onion or garlic in it. So I made my own, with ginger, turmeric and a lot of herbs.
I started making extra for friends. One day I posted a few leftover quarts in a local Facebook group; six hundred comments and a hundred orders later, OWL Venice became a business. That was 2016.
Growth
Past $5 million, and more expensive than it looked.
OWL grew from my kitchen into a flagship on Abbot Kinney, nationwide shipping and more than 100 wholesale accounts. In 2023 we did over $5 million in revenue.
That year we hired everyone. Agencies for SEO, email and marketing, designers, contractors, more staff: at our peak, a team of 36. Each one made sense on its own. Together, the cost of managing all those people, and of running the operations around them, grew faster than the business did. I didn’t see clearly enough how much of our margin was going to coordination instead of customers. It was the beginning of the hardest chapter I’ve had.
A new chapter
Kauai, and a house that paid for itself.
As OWL got harder, I took on consulting work with Seatopia and moved to Kauai. That meant doing something with my house in Los Angeles, so I put it on Airbnb.
I designed it with what I studied in college and what a decade in wellness taught me: natural, low-VOC materials, a calm and beautiful space, and the kind of details that attract guests who take care of a home. It became a five-star Superhost listing and a Guest Favorite, covering the mortgage and then some: over $119,000 in bookings in its most recent 12 months.
The hard part
Bankruptcy, and still here.
Three years after our best year, OWL filed for Subchapter V bankruptcy. We kept the business operating through it and came out with a confirmed reorganization plan. We went from a team of 36 to a team of 4.
I write about all of it openly, including the costs and the mistakes, because so many founders told me they thought they were the only one.
What I built
An AI team to keep a real company running.
With four people, the work didn’t shrink. So I built an operating team of specialized AI roles: a Chief of Staff coordinating more than 16 roles across brand, customer experience, SEO, email, social, partnerships and finance. Each one has its own instructions, recurring work and reporting, and a person approves anything that goes live.
It didn’t replace the people I lost. It let a small team run a real company again, at a fraction of what the agencies cost.
What I learned
AI only sounds like a machine when there’s no vision behind it.
The roles that work are the ones built on a clear brand, real customers and a founder who knows what good looks like. That’s the part I bring, and it’s why everything at lew studio starts with strategy, taste and judgment, not software.
The rest of me
Designer, chef, coach, operator, mom.
BFA in Interior Design
Professional culinary training; private chef for families, events and retreats
IIN-certified health coach
Designer and host of a five-star, Guest Favorite short-term rental in Los Angeles
Brand and growth consultant to founder-led companies, including Seatopia
Mom of two
Well With L.E.W. · free on Substack
The honest version, in my own words.
I share what I’m learning about building, losing and rebuilding a business, plus food, home and the systems I actually use. Most of it is free.