It’s no surprise that Galey Alix’s role model is Martha Stewart. She was a home influencer before influencers were a thing. “We all wanted to serve dinners and host parties the way Martha did. We wanted our gardens to look like Martha’s. And she is still relevant today, decades later. It’s so impressive. It’s so anti-patriarchy,” Alix says, “because she was one of the first female billionaires.”
But this is where the script starts to flip. One morning last summer, Alix woke up to find that Stewart was following her on Instagram. “I finally felt like maybe I’ve made it.... She became such a role model in how she built her career, handled herself under pressure and lived her life.... I take a page out of the Martha playbook every chance I can,” she says.
But that follow is just one in a long line of follows Alix has racked up since she accidentally became a household name. Quickly gaining popularity, she walked away from her investment banking job in 2023. “Goldman Sachs was feeding my mortgage but not my soul”—she was eager to be creative in a new way. She only had about 800 Instagram followers when she started giving her Connecticut home her now-signature surprise makeover by teaching herself to DIY everything when she could find contractors to help on weekends when she was available. And she posted videos through it all.
Then, life happened, and she logged out of Instagram to take a mental health break.
“Two months later, I opened up Instagram again, and I had hundreds of thousands of [followers] and messages,” she says. She had people from Australia, Germany and all across America asking her to give their homes the same treatment. “It was a groundswell,” she says.
She finally said yes to a family in Boynton Beach, Florida. But there were some ground rules: She will not consult with you, she only works weekends, and she only comes when you’re not home. “I moved into their house for the weekend, and I just started renovating, renovated,” she says. “I did their dining room, foyer, living room, entertainment room, kitchen and breakfast nook. When they [came] back from Disney World 72 hours later, I filmed their reaction.” She shared that, along with videos she took of herself doing the actual work, and 30 million people watched it. Next thing Alix knew, she had more than 5 million followers on Instagram and Facebook; a TV show on HBO; her own brand; and celebrity clients like Elle Macpherson, Alyssa Milano, Tyler Cameron and more.
Here’s what that life looks like in one typical day.
6:30 A.M. | Make the Bed
First, Alix wakes up naturally with no alarm. “I like going at my own pace,” she says. “The very first thing I do is make my bed. I read that it is important to start your day with something productive because it sets up the rest of your day to be productive.” After that small task, she has the big task of walking her two boxers.
7:30 A.M. | Start Strong
After the dogs have had their walk, Alix has her own time for exercise. “I either go for a 6-to-8-mile run or I go to a Pilates class,” she says, even though her day ahead will include more physical exertion than most people endure in a week.
9 A.M. | The Zoom Hours
Alix likes to stack her Zoom calls one after another in the morning, before she gets into the manual labor of her day. “I’m either looking at samples, talking with my factory in Georgia or going over the launch of my wallpaper in Home Depot,” she says. “I always have my Good Culture cottage cheese on those calls. It’s high protein, and I do some strawberry preserves in it because I have a sweet tooth.”
11 A.M. | The Runaround
This is when Alix’s physical work really gets going. She might run over to a lumberyard to check out a custom table or pop out to get her hands on the wood that we’re selecting,” she says. “I don’t trust pictures. I want to see the grain and the color because this is going to be determining everything else I build in that room based on this table.” Or she’ll head to a another home where she’s using a jute flooring line on the ceiling. “I trifurcate the planks into three strips, and I use those as ceiling planks,” she explains as an example of how she’s covering up a popcorn ceiling and making it look way more high-end.
3 P.M. | Go Live
The afternoon is when you might find Alix doing something for her brands. One recent day—for the revered Prime Day—she did an Amazon Live shoot at her home. She still hasn’t stopped for lunch, because she doesn’t like to sit down when she’s in work mode. “I’m very much an intuitive eater, so if I’m hungry, I’ll eat,” she says. “I’m not going to eat just because it’s noon on the dot.” She’s more likely to listen to her hunger cues around 5 p.m., which she considers her lunch.
6 P.M. | More Movement
Just because she comes home doesn’t mean she’ll stay home. Alix continues her design work well into the evening. One time, she ordered a flush-mount black light for a home office, but when it looked cheap. “So I used Rub ‘n Buff to turn it into an antique-looking finish, which turned it into this really elevated, sophisticated office light,” she says. “Sometimes, I panic before an install. I get these ideas, and I just need to try them out.”
8 P.M. | Tidy Her Tech
This is about the time that Alix will sit down to dinner or go on a dinner date. What comes next is clearing out her inbox and text messages before she starts her day all over again. “I cannot go to sleep unless I feel like everybody has been responded to, and they know I think their time is valuable, and they deserve a response. I never leave anybody unread,” she shares.
1 A.M. | Sleep and Dream
“I usually have worked so hard that whole day, and I have literally not sat down except for dinner or on my drives. Those are the only times I’m actually sitting,” Alix says. “So, by the time my head hits the pillow, my eyes are already closed, and I’m out. When I’m asleep after a day where I’ve been creative, I have the most insane dreams. It’s like M. Night Shyamalan on drugs,” she laughs. “I wake up thinking, Am I losing my mind? How did I even come up with that scenario?"
Featured image ©Surya Rugs/Kenny Martin/Courtesy of Livabliss
This article was first published in the March/April 2026 issue of SUCCESS Magazine. Get your copy here.
