Kristina Leigh Johnson has built one of West Texas’s most in-demand design-and-build companies, and the origin story starts with a health scare. After years of commuting several hours between West Texas and Houston to pursue her design career, the grueling schedule caught up with her and she ended up in the emergency room. Her husband urged her to find work closer to home, a moment that pushed her to launch her own business.
Filling a Gap in West Texas Design
Johnson, a Texas A&M graduate in environmental design, discovered that her home region lacked the kind of detailed, client-focused design services she’d come to specialize in. Within just one year of striking out on her own, she had built an eighteen-month waitlist entirely through word of mouth, with no formal marketing at all. The company, Cosee Home, distinguishes itself by managing every phase of a project under one roof, from initial vision through construction, interiors and landscaping, so clients deal with a single advocate instead of juggling separate builders, architects and designers.
Scaling Into a New Software Platform
As demand grew beyond what her team could handle one-on-one, Johnson launched Cosee Studio, a digital platform designed to bring order to the notoriously chaotic communication process of home construction. She describes leadership as an ongoing learning process, admitting that delegating and structured check-ins don’t always come naturally to her hands-on style. Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs in real estate and design: get real, on-the-ground experience in the trade first, even if it means working for free, before attempting to start a business of your own.