In the process, he not only transformed his company but emerged a stronger person. Hear his story about growing up in a small farming community in Montana from humble beginnings to having a thriving design company in Pasadena, where he and his team work on some of the coolest branding projects.
Facing Your Fears In Design w/ Farm Design Founder Aaron Atchison. When the economy tanked, and work dried up, what could you do to get work? Learn why making the extra effort on your presentation can dramatically impact your business.
Aaron Atchison
Farm Design
http://www.farmdesign.net
@farm_design IG
— [Transcription] —
@0:29
[Chris Do]: Welcome to the Futur! We are live today on Facebook and Youtube! Hello, beautiful people! What are we going to be talking about today? Well, before I tell you, I just want to let you guys know I miss ya and I hope you missed us, and here we are back on the livestream. But! Back by popular demand, today we are going to be talking to Aaron Atchinson, he’s the founder of Farm Design based in Pasadena, and he is one of–he’s a man who has come from humble roots. Humble beginnings, and that’s his description, not mine. Now often times when we look at successful graphic designers and successful businesses, we make the assumption that it was preordained. That everything lined up for them and that that path was inevitable. This was most definitely not the case, so you guys are gonna want to definitely stay tuned to this because we’re gonna have a conversation with Aaron. He grew up in a town of 300 people. Small town. Stick around! Roll the titles!
[RAW Titles]
@1:36
[C]: Alright, we’re back. Now you guys noticed I’m not in the black box. I’m sitting next to my good friend, and we are good friends. We’ve known each other for, I think somewhere close to 20 years if not longer.
[Aaron Atchinson]: Yes.
[C]: It’s been awhile. It’s been awhile, so, there’s a familiarity here, and I’ve been prodding and pulling and pushing and hoping and begging for Aaron to come on the show and do it live with us, and he finally agreed, so lots of things have changed in his life, but before we do that, let’s tell everybody who you are and let’s get back and rewind the tape if you will, let’s cut to my deck.
@2:08
[C]: This is Aaron Atchison, and he is the Founder of Farm Design. And if you guys want to look him up, what’s the web address?
[A]: FarmDesign.net
[C]: Man, you sound good in that mic. Dang! Alright, anyways, you grew up in a small town called “Geraldine, Montana.” Tell me about Geraldine. What do you remember growing up there?
[A]: Geraldine, Montana is in the central part of Montana, it’s a rural community, a farming community, a town (at that time, the population was 300–it’s actually, probably, maybe, far less than that now), but it was a lot of agriculture, um, built around community and the high school.
[C]: Yeah. So there are–we have a picture of you, your brother, and your dad, you sitting on a boat in a lake somewhere, you shoveling something. What is, what are you shoveling there?
[A]: That would be grain in a grain silo.
[C]: That’s how much I don’t know.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: A grain silo. Do you have any horror stories about the grain silo?
[A]: In the grain silo?
[C]: Yeah.
[A]: Normally when you hop in those things, there’s like a ton of mice running around in there and, and I don’t like mice, so, you know, so we normally let the dogs in first and the dogs sort of scare all of the mice out and then we hop in there. That’s my horror story.
[C]: Okay, so as I mentioned, you grew up in a town of 300 people, high school population of…?
[A]: The high school, 50 kids and my graduating class had 11 kids, but we had an exchange student, so, I would say, pretty much we had 10 from the time I moved there from when I was in 5th grade ‘till the time I graduated. So it was the same (basically), the same 10 students.
[C]: Okay, so, you go to high school and then you graduate. What did you study in school at Montana State?
[A]: I always wanted to be either a baker or an architect growing up. There was something–fascination I had with baking. I like baking pancakes in the morning, but I chose to become an architect so I went to Montana State University, which is in Bozeman, Montana, um, to study architecture initially.
[C]: And, how does one who studies architecture at Montana State wind up in California doing graphic design?
[A]: That’s interesting. I was actually born in Los Angeles.
[C]: Oh! You were?
[A]: So my brother, who’s a year older than myself, we were both born and raised in California. Uh, my mom was really young when she had two of us. Later I found out in life that she, she was 16 years old when she had two boys.
[C]: Wow.
[A]: So, we actually moved around quite a bit as kids ‘cause my mom was trying to figure out where her path was and trying to just survive, and trying to figure out how to raise two young boys. So we moved around a lot.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Um, we ultimately ended up (um, what I consider my hometown, which is in Montana). So we bounced around a lot, and we settled there when I was about ten years old.
[C]: Okay.
[A]: Yeah. So, um, she met a gentleman and they got married. His name is Larry Atchison, so I took on his last name.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Um, but yeah, I think a lot of my, sort of, experiences in life, I refer back to that time that I lived when I was in Montana.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Because I think I learned a lot of, like, discipline and a lot of the qualities that I sort of, I can attribute to growing up there.
@5:14
[C]: Uh-hm. It must have been tough for you growing up because you, your mom was like in her teens…
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: And I imagine that there wasn’t a lot of money. You’ve told me stories about you actually having to go outside to go to the bathroom in what is referred to as an “outhouse.”
@5:26
[A]: It’s still called an “outhouse.” Yes, but, we–I…one point we lived in a house where we didn’t have running water. And so, when you don’t have running water, you don’t have plumbing, and so we had an outhouse that you had to walk (I think it was maybe a hundred yards away). Which was terrible when it was snowing because then you always, like, in the middle of the night, you have to go to the bathroom. You have to go to the bathroom and then you throw on your sneakers and your hoodie and you run out through the snow but, yeah, it was–it was tough, but you know, when you’re a kid you don’t, you don’t think about those things. It’s just, it’s just the fact of life.
[C]: Do you have any horror stories?
[A]: Horror stories?
[C]: About going to the bathroom and there’s a raccoon?
[A]: Oh gosh, no. Nothing quite like that. I always feared there was something actually in the outhouse. Like, you know, but nothing. Nothing like that. So I–fortunately no horror stories.
[C]: Like there wasn’t a pennywise holding a red balloon in a hole and saying, “Come here!”
[A]: No.
[C]: No?
[A]: No. Not in the country. Yeah, clowns are smarter than that. They don’t move out in the country.
[C]: They only hang out in suburban neighborhoods under the city. Okay, luckily for you. What–I mean, I can’t even fathom this. Look, I grew up kind of poor, too, but just not even having running water…how do you wash your hands and what does it even, how does it even work?
@6:38
[A]: Yeah, wow. There was actually a creek, and the creek was maybe 300 yards away, and so part of growing up is my brother and I, we always had chores, and the first thing I had to do waking up in the morning was start the fire, ‘cause we didn’t have heating. We didn’t have centralized heating so, we had to like chop wood and we had to start the fire to heat the house up. So I had to wake up at (I think around) 6:30, start the fire, that was my responsibility, and then to get water, we had these um, buckets (and I think they were maybe like 3 or 4 pound buckets), and I at the time probably weighed 70 pounds soaking wet, so I was, I was tiny. And then we had to go out to the creek, then we’d have to–a little pull, and we’d pull it up, and we’d carry it back to the house so–
[C]: A lot of hard work!
[A]: Boil water and, um, if you’ve ever seen “Hee-Haw” (which I’m kind of dating myself), like, there are scenes in there where they would bathe and they were sitting there in like a big, um, stainless steel, um, bucket, and they’re bathing themselves with a ladle. That’s how we literally bathed. And we didn’t do it all the time because it was, it took a lot of effort, so, um, we, oftentimes we bathed once a week. It was very challenging! But it was, it was just the way of life! And it was like, you didn’t know any different. It was, it was actually pretty cool.
@7:55
[C]: It sounds a little bit like now from thinking about it, it sounds like camping. So for the first part of your life, you were just camping all the time.
[A]: We were, yeah. We were always camping.
[C] Was it fun?
[A]: It was a lot of fun! You know, it was uh, ‘cause there was a creek that ran out in front of a house that we lived in and we’d go out and we would go fishing and we’d bring the fish back in and that what we’d have for dinner. And we’d cook it right then and there. Um, so, yeah. And you were outside a lot and there’s animals, and I’m an animal person, so we had horses and cows and dogs and yeah, it was just, being outside and exploring. When you’re a kid, you’re just constantly, you’re curious and you’re exploring.
@8:31
[C]: Alright. Let’s get you to California. And we’re gonna speed up the timeline here a little bit because I really do want to get into some of the mindset stuff that we’re going to talk about.
[A]: Sure.
@8:38
[C]: You’re in California now, what brings you out to California?
@8:42
[A]: You know, okay, so, I went to Montana State University initially to study architecture. Um, I still had family here in California so, um, during the summers I would normally go and visit them and um, they would take us to like Disneyland and uh, then I was introduced to surfing, so, during the summers I would surf as much as possible. Um, but I really made the big transition when I discovered–at the time I didn’t know what it was called, but it was graphic design. Graphic design I had no idea what it was, I didn’t really know what a logo was, um, growing up in the country, they’re just, you’re not exposed to a lot of media.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Um, so when I was at the university, there was like these, some wacky kids, uh, at a department next to the architecture department, and they were doing some wacky stuff, and they were putting stuff on the walls, and I’d walk past their, um, their uh, studio space and I’d poke my head in and one day they were painting pizza boxes and it really piqued my interest. I’m like, “What are they painting pizza boxes for?” I walked in there and they were telling me they were designing logos and boxes, so I wanted to learn more, and it sparked my interest because I liked the simplicity and how impactful a logo and packaging could be. So that sort of led me to my next career path as um, or, in school rather is, I decided I’m going to move to California, change majors, mainly so I can surf in California, and then I, uh, I went to Cal State University, Northridge, uh, where I studied art with an emphasis in graphic design.
@10:17
[C]: Okay. Now, I’m going to spare you guys all the kind of details but, you started out in, in your home studio doing design and you’ve been doing that for quite some time. Now you and I met under kind of strange circumstances. I’m gonna let the guys know out in the audience here. We met through a mutual friend, a former employee of mine who said like, “I know you love to play Halo, Chris, so come and I’m gonna bring my buddy in. “And I know you’re a super competitive guy, I won’t get into all the juicy details, but we would all bring our X-Boxes together and, and do a LAN party and play Halo together. And that’s really how I got to know you. And I remember, there’s a couple times we wanted to play, so I would just grab my X-Box and go meet you up at your house and we’d plug the things in. I–we would go into one room and we’d have these LAN parties and just do battle for lunch and unplug and just run back to work.
[A]: And I didn’t know you that well at the time. You were just that guy in the other room that I just wanted to kill. And so Halo is like one of those sports like–and you were probably equally as competitive. And so, I would come visit my friend and I would come to your office and you guys would actually print out sort of like…
[C]: Floorplans.
[A]: Floorplans of the maps of Halo and you guys were strategizing. You had like rulers and lines, like you’d go here and here. I’m like, “This guy is intense.”
[C]: Isn’t that how everybody plays Halo?
[A]: No, just you.
[C]: We weren’t going to lose, so that’s really how we got our start, but as our kind of casual friendship built up around gaming and just competing, and then I started to learn more about you and your design practice, and I’m gonna get you guys to 2008 a little bit right now. Okay? So let’s look at 2008. This is the studio in which you worked out of?
[A]: Yeah, I…
[C]: Talk to us about this.
@11: 56
[A]: Yeah, just, uh, after I graduated college, um, I got a job as a creative director at a small agency in Culver City, here in Los Angeles. So I worked there for 5 years. Um, I sort of cut my teeth sort of learning the principles of design, and working with clients, and, uh, working with vendors. I, I learned a lot. It was, it was uh, a fantastic experience in my life. In 2000 I decided I was gonna, I was gonna branch out and I was gonna do my own thing and so I had a spare bedroom in my apartment, um, and so I converted that spare bedroom into my studio, if you will, and really it was just a computer on a desk. Um, I, I was, I had enough confidence in my ability and skill level and I had some relationships and I had some small clients, so I’m like: “Okay, I’m going to take that leap of faith.” I had a little bit of money in the bank account (I think, uh, at that time, I had literally 9,000 dollars in my account), so I said–
[C]: That’s pretty good.
[A]: It was pretty good! I figured that I could live without any income coming in for three months and so I kind of had a time scale, like, “Okay, if this is going to happen, I, I gotta make it happen in three months.”
[C]: And how old are you at this point? Do you remember?
[A]: Yeah, I was exactly 30. It was on my 30th birthday, I’m like, “I’m leaving.”
[C]: Wow. Okay. And what year is this?
[A]: It was 2000.
[C]: Oh, 2000.
[A]: 2000.
[C]: Okay. Well, interesting. Alright, I’m trying to map your timeline, as to kind of, well…
[A]: I took the 7-year plan in, in college if you’re doing the math. But, yeah…
@13:23
[C]: Okay, let’s look at some of the work. So it makes sense to hear your story about your love of surfing and outdoors and just be, you’re kind of into sports and you’re an athlete and competition, and this is kind of…
[A] Yeah, that’s where my passion was.
[C]: Yeah, this is a time capsule into kind of the work that you were doing. And I remember talking to you at this point in time, and, I’m going to tell a little story you guys. So here’s my, here’s my story. I’m over at Aaron’s house and he’s showing me the work that he’s doing and he’s talking about doing work with new clients, and I remember you were showing me this very ornate packaging you were putting together. I remember this, and you were going to ship this to whatever, or self-promo pieces, and I had asked you at this time, “Aaron, why don’t you get an intern in here to do this? There’s somebody else that could be doing this while you do the high-level stuff.” And I remember your response. Do you remember it, or should I tell this part?
[A]: I, I didn’t listen to you much back then, so, you were my mortal enemy, so, no.
[C]: How am I your–?
[A]: Refresh my memory.
[C]: Hold on. How am I your mortal enemy?
[A]: I do remember you telling me I should do a lot of things to improve what I, my practice, right.
[C]: Basically it was me giving you valuable advice that just hit you like a rock and fell on the floor, at that time.
[A]: Pretty much.
@14:33
[C]: Your response to me was: “Hey, Chris. If I don’t do this, what else am I going to be doing? And, I don’t know, I’m just a simple guy, I just want to do the work, I see something that needs to get done and I just do it. Why would I hire anybody else to do this? What else am I gonna do?” And I remember telling you, “Well, you should be working on your business and not in your business. Be thinking about how to grow and scale.” And do you remember that now?
[A]: I do remember and I think a lot of those, um, the way I was brought up growing up on a farm is like you’d…work had to be done, you just rolled, rolled your sleeves up and you got out there and you did the work. And so, when I started my practice, I still had that sort of mindset where things had to be done (I knew how to do them), and so I just rolled my sleeves up and did it. You were always, you were always sort of, kind of like that uncle that always wanted to like give me advice and I, I think I was pretty stubborn back then (still a little stubborn).
[C]: Yeah.
[A]: And–
[C]: I just want to say for the record: A younger uncle, please.
[A]: Perhaps, perhaps.
[C]: Don’t paint me into that picture. Just a younger uncle. The younger, cooler uncle. Keep going.
[A]: But when you said, uh, back when I first started my practice and you saw me sort of doing all these little, little tasks when you said, “You need, you should outsource that, or you should get someone to help you.” Uh, for me, I was not afraid of hard work, so I kinda didn’t understand your principles. I also was always concerned that I would be giving away something…um, I always wanted to be close to my craft, and I always, I love designing and having my hands on things and working, so, for me it’s like it didn’t feel like work so it didn’t feel like I was, I needed to give away anything. I wasn’t that busy all the time anyway, and I think that to your point is, so, it’s like, “Well I have the extra time and if I didn’t have extra time, I would just stay up later.
[C]: Yeah.
[A]: So that was always just, that was my mentality.
[C]: Yeah, so some people are guessing correctly how old Aaron is. I’m not going to tell you, but you can do the math. Now, I remember also talking to you because you would work really hard, and I’m, I would never accuse you of not working hard, but maybe I would accuse you of not working as smart as you need to.
[A]: Absolutely.
[C]: And I remember then, for periods of time you would just disappear. You would disappear and go surfing in Costa Rica, and you’d go on these epic adventures, meanwhile I was toiling away kind of in the factory, if you will. I remember saying this to you one time, I was like: “Aaron, I think you suffer from ‘Peter Pan’ syndrome. Like, you never want to grow up. You’re still doing projects–” (now, we’re in our 40s at this point, I think).
[A]: No, we’re in our late thirties.
[C]: Late thirties?
[A]: Careful, we were in our thirties.
[C]: We’re in our late thirties, and I was telling you, “Like, you work on projects that I think 18, 19, 22-year-old kids would love to work on.” Uh, action, sports-oriented things and brands, and I remember you working on certain events that was kind of like–
[A]: Like X-Games type of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
[C]: And, the other part to it was not only just reflected in the clients that you were working with and the things that connected and resonated with you, but, this idea that you would work and then you would disappear. You would just plan these trips and you would just disappear, and, and, and you liked the idea that you could pick up and go wherever you wanted, kind of in this more “transitory-transient” lifestyle.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: And, I said to you, “One day, when you want to focus on your business, your life will change and it will change for the better.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: And what was your thought?
[A]: I think that my thought process during those, those years–I think–and it was right around from 2000 and 2008 was when I was a solo, solo designer.
[C]: “Solopreneur.”
@18:02
[A]: “Solopreneur,” sort of working out my, my, my practice out of my home. My, my philosophy at the time was: I have skill and I’m willing to work hard, and, I had a certain level of success early on. I had certain clients and I would look at the bank account and I’d see the money coming in and, and it was pretty decent. You know? It was anywhere between 50 thousand to 90 thousand–was probably one of my best years. So that’s where the range was, and for me that was really good. And so I had this philosophy: I’m gonna–as long as I’m hitting a certain number, then whatever time I have leftover, I’m gonna experience things in life. So I would travel, um, so yeah. It was very much sort of a, sort of a “fixed” mindset. I wasn’t looking at [the] “big picture,” I was sort of “living in the now,” and I would look at your career and I saw you working so hard, like, always working, and I was the antithesis of that. I’m like, “Chris, why aren’t you enjoying life? Have you ever traveled out of the country?” And you were like, “There will be a time for that.” And I thought you were crazy. I’m like, “I’m not gonna be young for the rest of my life. I want to experience these things while I can still move.” And, so that was my philosophy. So–and it worked for me for a while, you know? I was like, I was getting clients, the money was okay, I was able to support myself. Um…
[C]: But before we get into that, I want to dwell on this for a little bit because the reason why–and some of you guys that are tuning in or watching this later will realize really quickly–the reason why I brought Aaron on the show was because he can speak to and relate to so many things that you guys think. So here we are: We’re two contrasting personalities. You, you come–we’re both, we, we came out of the world kinda poor, and we worked our way out of it, but you came from a really small town, some financial hardships, and some, some family life that was less than ideal, but you worked through all that stuff, right? You made it work, and–but there was this idea of you just wanting to be (this is where we differ) this “solopreneur,” doing the work yourself and doing it all by yourself, and having great pride in being able to do it, and then saying, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you want to enjoy your life and I can’t see that. You’re like probably just grinding away at the, in the salt mine, kind of in the cubicle, if you will,” even though I didn’t work in a cubicle. And on the flipside, I’m over here thinking, “This guy has so much potential. He could do so many things but he just needs to learn to grow up at some point in his life.” And I’m just using it in the broadest sense, like, you’re a mature person, but I was just thinking: “Why doesn’t your work evolve? Like, my work doesn’t look the same as it did just a few years ago, let alone when I was in my 20s. I needed to do work that was going to be appealing to companies that could afford to pay me what I wanted to be paid.” I just want to get a little bit of your mindset. How you viewed yourself versus me and just, this is your opportunity to just dog on me if you want (at that point in time).
@21:01
[A]: Yeah. I, I think…I, I think a lot of my motivation was: “I’m just gonna work hard.” And that’s where it came from my childhood and growing up on a farm, it was like, “That’s gonna get me through tough times. It’s like, just the solution is just to work really hard.” And, and I did–I wasn’t looking very, sort of, proactively, like, “What’s gonna happen long-term?” Uh, because I had a certain level of success early on, um, branching out as a solopreneur, I thought that was it, like, it was just things were gonna happen and materialize and it was just gonna happen. I was just a lot of–a lot of things were very reactive, um, where the clients came in, um, and how I adjusted with those clients, but, it wasn’t until, you know, I fell on some hardships where it made me sort of reanalyze who I was as a person, uh, especially at that time in my life where, uh, now I’m in my late 30s, I, I expected a, you know, a certain level of success and, and comfort, and, you know, having stability and um, finances, stability in sort of my relationships and really, I started to uncover that I didn’t have a lot of these things.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: And that’s when there was that, that “oh crap” moment, and um, that sort of come-to-Jesus, like, “Uh, maybe I do need to grow up.”
@22:14
[C]: Well let’s talk about that. So this is where I think we wanted to kind of pivot and we can circle back, you guys, if you want to ask those question on Facebook and on YouTube that we have two guys in the other room, along with Erica, Emmanuel, and Sam (two interns joining us here). So they’ll be monitoring your comments and you guys lets me know if you hear a really good question, okay? Feel free, feel free to interrupt us. Let’s talk about this point of, of change in your life. What happened here? So, I think if you guys were paying attention, if you were alive during this time in 2008, basically the, the bottom of the universe opened up as far as it’s concerned with the financial market. People were committing suicide, stocks (like Apple stock was like at 18 dollars a share), everybody thought the total economy was going to collapse and it impacted so many businesses (ours, too). And so let’s, let’s talk a little bit about 2018, uh 2008.
@23:02
[A]: Yeah, so I think my, my business and myself was really just kind of on cruise-control, and things were fine, you know, there was money in the bank and, um, I was living the life I wanted to live. I had a lifestyle that I enjoyed, and then I think it was around 2007 is when the, the housing market sort of burst and the stock market went kind of, kind of went bonkers.
[C]: The subprime…
[A]: Right? And what happened is, clients, the phone stopped ringing, and that was when, um, I saw the bank account starting to dwindle.
[C]: How much was in the bank account at this point in time?
[A]: You know, I, I think I was always right around anywhere from 5 to 20 thousand dollars?
[C]: Okay.
[A]: And–but that was fine when money was continually coming through, but then once the phone stopped ringing, uh, I had to re-evaluate what was happening. Um, I think a lot of my clients, uh, they would keep the work in-house now because their marketing budgets were a lot tighter.
[C]: Right.
[A]: Uh, companies or start-ups who were thinking about bringing something to market, they didn’t have that luxury anymore.
[C]: They didn’t have financing.
[A]: It was terrible.
[C]: Banks didn’t loan any money.
[A]: Yeah, and so there was just, absolutely nothing.
[C]: Yeah, money dried up all over the place and I think I remember, too, two of your bigger clients in the action-sports space, they had problems financially, too, right?
[A]: Yeah, I think, uh, in the action-sports industry, I did a lot of, um, lifestyle brands, um, action-sports and their sponsors stopped sponsoring the events, and so, those events just, they just disappeared. Another big client I had at the time I had a retainer with (Honda motorcycles), and so retainer is they, they had a one-year contract and I would get paid monthly, so it was kinda like a salary, so it was that stability. Um, they stopped having work because they then tightened-up their budget and kept everything in-house, and so then that was that moment where I needed to figure out what to do next.
@25:01
[C]: Well this kind of stuff doesn’t happen overnight. There’s a slow progression or, it might feel like it happens overnight, but–
[A]: It felt like it happened overnight.
[C]: Right. Like, one client calls you and says, “Aaron, it’s been great working with you, but we can’t do this anymore.” There goes Honda. The action sports guys say, “We can’t do the next event this year, all our sponsors pulled out.” And, slowly but surely you start to see that 20 thousand become 18, becomes 12, becomes 8…
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: And so talk to me. When did it hit rock bottom for you?
[A]: It, it was pretty quick. Um, I knew that (I mean), I probably started living beyond my means (‘cause I had a nice car)–
[C]: Mm-hmm.
@25:37
[A]: And I, I was more concerned about status and what people thought of me, so I, I kind of was–had a certain lifestyle that I was used to living. Eating out, dressing a certain way, um, and so when I couldn’t afford to do those things, and the money wasn’t coming in, that’s when I’m like: “Okay, what do I do now? Do I, do I actually brush off my résumé and look for another job?” And I had a lot of pride because I sort of had a certain level of success with Farm Design and, um, I’d built something. To feel like I had to let that go and, you know, suck up my pride and go on interviews again, it was really tough. And I actually did that. I had to.
[C]: You, you put together your resume.
[A]: I put together my portfolio, I put–uh, I rewrote my résumé, um, this is my late 30s now and I was going to, I went to a couple job interviews and I never got the work. I’m like, “Wait, wait a minute. I thought my stuff was pretty good.” But, they weren’t hiring.
[C]: Why do you think that was?
[A]: I think everyone was starving. Everyone was hungry, everyone was looking for work. Uh, they had to be über selective about who they picked because, you know, they probably had limited resources as well and maybe I just didn’t fit. I think also maybe my portfolio was very one-dimensional, but that worked for me in terms of my business model. I focused heavily on, uh, an action-sports sort of “youth-lifestyle” sort of. That’s who I appealed to, those are the type of clients I appealed to.
[C]: How did that make you feel?
@27:13
[A]: Uh, pretty inferior, actually. Um, it, it, it made me think and it kept me up late at night, uh, just wondering like okay, what did I do wrong? Um, you know. The fear of, “Can I make my car payment? Can I, can I pay for rent? What is my girlfriend gonna think?” It’s, it’s those sort of things, like, it can emasculate you, so, yeah. I think, you know, I–that was the time when I like, really hit rock bottom. It wasn’t fun. It was scary.
[C]: I can, I can only imagine. I mean, even the act of putting together your résumé, not as a design exercise, but because you actually have to go out and get work, that just must have been hard to say, like, “Okay, it was a good run. It’s been 8 or so years and it’s been great, and now I have to change and everything is changing and…did you start to regret some of the decisions that you made prior to that point? Because sometimes when you’re in that dark place–
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: –you ask, “Why did I buy that expensive car? What, why did I not take that opportunity, or there was that one client that I could have done something different from but I walked away ‘cause I was too or what. I don’t know what it was. I’m just…
[A]: I, I don’t think I regretted the decisions I made with my business. I, I look back at it as a learning experience, like, “Okay, I probably should have done something different. Um, I, I certainly (I think with a lot of people) lived beyond my means.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Um, having a nice car and living a certain way, and at the end of the day, what does that all really mean? It’s, it’s superficial. And it took sort of hitting that rock-bottom to start to see those things, and re-evaluate and, um, assess who I was and, and if I needed to change my mindset to sort of right the ship because everything was, like, the business, the accounting, the–my relationships, it was like, it all kind of like came to a head.
[C]: Did it cause friction in your relationship?
[A]: It certainly didn’t help. Yeah. Um, because we split all of the–at the time, I was in a long relationship as well, and I think I wasn’t–probably it was a 15-year relationship
[C]: Right.
[A]: And so, why didn’t I commit to that person, so I think there was a lot of things I didn’t want to grow up.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: So, you know, that whole “Peter Pan” syndrome thing. It, it affected everything.
[C]: If the label fits you well. I know you resented me even throwing that at you.
[A]: I didn’t even know what that meant when you brought it up.
[C]: I made it up.
[A]: Yeah, okay.
[C]: Peter Pan. Peter Pan never grows up!
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: Right?
[A]: That was me.
[C]: Okay. Wow, okay, so if you guys want to get the razor blades out, now would be a good time to actually put them away ‘cause we’re gonna, we’re gonna pivot. There’s a reason why Aaron is here. I wanted him, and I’ve encouraged him to just kind of open his heart and share some of the pain points there because what happens next, I think we can learn a lot from. Now if we had a commercial break, this is when I would cut to a commercial break, but we don’t, so we’re gonna keep going!
[A]: Okay.
[C]: That’s how we roll. Okay, so I’m gonna bring up this slide here, and I remember you doing this (I have my thoughts and opinions on this as well), but you started another business.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: Let me, let me just set the stage and then you, you take it from there. So, so here you are, you can’t get clients because you actually didn’t build a sales pipeline or sales or marketing strategy and all the things that you had done in the past, are no longer applicable because there are too many buyers and too few sellers. Oh, I’m sorry, let me say that the opposite: There are too few buyers and too many sellers of work, and so, you went out and tried to get a job. You did the whole resume dog-and-pony show and you weren’t able to get the work either, so now it’s like, what does a person do? And you got pushed into a pretty tight corner. This is when you started a company called “Mugo,” a portable MP3 music player–
[A]: Yep.
[C]: –that was kind of tapping into a big trend, and the trend was custom-vinyl-artwork, built around artists that have a following. Right?
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: Take it away from there.
@31:03
[A]: Yeah, I, I think when I, when I was at that place in my career, I…I, I had to make a decision: Do I just bury my head in the sand and just, you know, did I fail or do I try to learn from my mistakes and do something with it? And when the opportunities weren’t knocking, they say to build a door and so because no one else was calling me, that I felt like I needed to create my own opportunities. Um, I took a lot of the lessons, uh, I realized I learned a lot, design, doing branding for my clients in helping them build something. Seeing their vision come to fruition. Um, so I’m like, “Well I need to take the lessons that I have, the skills that I have, the foundation and do that for myself.” So I was very passionate about music and collecting vinyl toys, which, you know, I think I probably got a lot from you because you collect a lot of vinyl toys as well and I think I got that inspiration and I, I created this thing called a “Mugo” and what my goal was to bring a product to market. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was all just by the seat of my pants. Um, literally, uh, designed something, um, try to figure out how to find, uh, vendors and manufacturers. I knew that I needed to go to China because looking for local vendors, it was too expensive and the price-point wasn’t right, so like, how do I find vendors in Asia? And then, so a lot of this stuff was incredibly reactive, but I had a goal, like I needed to create another sort of income source. I’m gonna create my own business, separate from branding. And that’s what Mugo was. Um, and that was probably a two-year “labor of love,” getting that thing. Trying to get it off the ground.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
[A]: Um, and then, sort of, in the middle, there’s occasionally those small little projects that might come in, but I was, I was–that whole time–I was, everything was running on fumes.
[C]: I remember.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: I remember. So sometimes…a wise friend could come in and offer you advice, and you would ignore it because of our competitive spirit.
[A]: Mm-hmm.
@33:07
[C]: And then, sometimes life sends you another message, knocking at your door, and pulls the rug out from underneath you, and you can’t attribute these…the “global forces at work,” if you will–this whole “subprime market,” it just “bottomed-out” as something that is a consequence of your action, things just do happen, but then it’s in those moments you learn that, “Oh, we didn’t prepare that emergency earthquake kit. Oh, snap! Now we gotta go do something about it.” And you tried one thing after the other, and, where is it in this part of your journey is it that you start to make these kind of fundamental changes that lead you to kinda where we’re gonna take this conversation in a little bit. What happened? Can you, can you remember? What were the triggers and how did your mindset change? Because so much of what we try to teach on this show is about “mindset.”
@33:57
[A]: Yeah. I, I think one thing that I took from my childhood, and my, my growing up on a farm and an agricultural community is, uh, my father always taught us to, sort of, “feed the soil and not the plant.” And it was a very literal uh, um, lesson that he was trying to teach us. And what that, what that meant was, in, in order for the crop to thrive is you really need to put your focus on the soil. And, so, he taught us how to fertilize the soil, how to do crop rotation, so all of these things it was, was putting the focus on, on a foundation.
[C]: Mm-hmm.
@34:35
[A]: And, and if you focus on the foundation, then that crop will thrive and you’ll be sustainable. If you, if you lose focus on that foundation or the soil in this metaphor, um that’s, that plant will eventually wither and die. So, when I was going through this transition, I, I was–uh–reminded of that lesson and, and used it as a metaphor that I think what I had spent so much of my time focusing on was, like myself and what I thought other people, um, wha–the importance of what they thought of me, the type of car I drove, the type of clothes I wore–and I focus more I guess on the plant, and I didn’t focus on the foundation. So, I shifted, needed to shift in my mindset to, um, thinking in a belief system that is more long-term and more foundational. So by developing something like creating my own product as something that, um, I can put a lot of the, the work into creating it. But then that would have sort of long-term effects in terms of sales, and the lessons that I learned from that I can parlay that into other opportunities. Um, and I think that’s what truly happened when I, when I started to do that–is that other opportunities came out through this experience. Uh, opportunities that I didn’t even foresee, but um, but then I sort of grasped those opportunities, and I think that’s when things started to happen. The big shift was, in conjunction with Mugo ‘cause I had to fund that and I had to just survive, is I needed to decide like, “How am I going to grow my business?” if that’s what I wanted to do. And I was reminded of, of what you always told me is like, I think there was, there was someone you met. There was a kid you met at a portfolio review and you called me up and you said, “Hey, there’s this kid, you know, he’s, he’s okay. I, I liked his energy. Give him a call. Um, try him out as an intern. Just give him one day a week.” And, you know, at that point, it’s like, I have nothing to lose. And so, I actually listened to you that time.
[C]: The one time.
[A]: The one time–or maybe the first time.
[C]: Okay, the first time.
@36:44
[A]: It was the first time. And so, uh, I called him, he came in and I interviewed him, and his portfolio was, you know, it was average, but I, I did like his energy, and so I said, “Okay, I’m gonna take this leap of faith, I don’t know how I’m gonna pay for this kid, you know, it was 10 dollars an hour, and so I said, “Well, what if I, if I fed you lunch everyday, too, would, does that sound appealing?” And he said–he was as hungry as I was. So I, I hired him, and I said, “Let’s come in, let’s try two days a week.” And he didn’t have a vehicle, and he drove a bus, it took him 2 to 2 and a half hours just to get to my place, so I knew that he was really passionate and hungry as well. So what I started to see is this, what I thought as like, maybe this kid can help me with small little tasks and errands, is what it did is it really sort of lit a fire and it re-sort of, um, brought the passion back and the energy for my craft as a designer because, uh, he would come in and I would give him tasks and I would teach him certain things and I could see the look on his face when I would teach him these things, and, and that sort of, sort of fueled my fire, and then, surprisingly what I did not expect, is he taught me a lot of things–’cause I had way too much pride. I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew everything. But he taught me a lot of things, and that’s when I sort of had a really big pivot point in my career and my life and um, looking at myself like, you know, maybe I don’t know everything. Maybe I need to re-look at this.
@38:15
[A]: I-I look at my career when I was a, a solopreneur, and I look at it as, as I was a–really a small plant in a small pot. I was this one guy in my apartment, working in this little room, wake up and I’d go to the room and I’d do my work. I was a plant in a small pot, and what I needed to do was focus on that foundation and, and grow that foundation, so I needed to get a bigger pot, so I could allow sort of my roots to grow. So, I got another computer, um, I got another workstation, I got the intern and we started doing stuff and things started happening. I didn’t know what it was, but I just knew something was different.
[C]: Mm. Okay. Let’s hold that thought for a second here. I want to que up Emmanuel and Sam and, and Erica. If you guys have any questions, get your questions ready. I just want to read some comments from the livechat. People are saying: (This is Akman Raw–I don’t know how to say your name, but he’s like) “I’ve learned so much within the last 30 minutes.” So thank you for saying that. People are saying, “This is amazing.” Uh, “Salut.” “Teach and learn, Farm Design.” Uhh, “Amazing, you guys.” “Check it out.” “Mind blown.” So some good energy coming in. I wanted to share that with you so you could feel some of the audience feedback. Uh, uh I have tons of thoughts and ideas and questions to kind of dive in, but I’mma kick it out to the new dream team. New dream team, you got any questions or comments about this?
[Emmanuel] We have a question from Lallitz Gallery, umm, he’s asking, “How does a solopreneur handle his/her company during a recession?”
[C]: I think you’re hearing it right now.
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: I believe you’re exactly hearing the story of how a solopreneur handles their company during a recession. And we’re gonna talk a little bit more about that so let’s okay, that’s a good question. Anything else? Anything? You guys can ask your own question, you guys. As you’re listening to the story, both of you guys are graphic designers. Emmanuel, raise your hand so people know who you are. So Emmanuel’s from, from, from Italy. From Milan?
[E]: Yeah.
[C]: Okay, so, it’s ironic that you’re here and I’ll be going to Milan in a couple of weeks. That’s kind of weird. You come and I–
[E]: I’ve been waiting for you for ages.
[C]: I’m sorry. And then Sam. Sam’s from Art Center, right? You’re studying graphic design. What, what term and major are you?
[Sam]: Um, I’m about 8th term at Art Center.
[C]: Oh! You’re about to graduate.
[S]: Yeah. So, haha. Yeah.
[C]: Okay, any questions so far, you guys? As you’re hearing Aaron just pour his heart out here, just on the table and the floor! You got anything for us? Erica, I, I hear, I hear you smiling and laughing in the background, so, what’s, what’s resonating and what’s connecting with you?
[Erica]: Uh, well mostly I’m focusing on the edit…
[C]: Okay.
[E]: But, it is really great to hear a story, um, of how someone got started and the troubles they went through, and how they realized their mindset, and I’m looking forward to, to more of it, even though half of my attention is mostly on the edit.
[C]: Okay, okay. But I, I hear your smiling and laughing at the key moments. Uh, when I make my little jokes and insert the jabs, so I, I know you’re paying attention. Okay. Anyways, people are wondering what happened to Aaron and Molly. Are they gone forever? And yes, they are gone forever. Or have they been shipped off to another country? No, they’re in the other room, working very hard, you guys. Just relax. We’re bringing in lots of different kinds of people, different energy for the topics that are relevant to them and what they’re passionate about. So let’s talk a little bit about this, so, before we kind of just broke away for a moment from the story.
@41:39
[C]: You’re kind of in this dark place. You don’t know what else to do. So you wind up bringing in somebody to help you. And I have to imagine, because I think we had these conversations before, and this is gonna touch upon a lot of what our audience is gonna feel. So when you’re not successful, you feel like, “Well who am I to take on people and to mentor? Like, I’m not even worthy of doing that. And, I’m barely making it as it is, financially. How can I afford to bring in another person? What are they gonna do for me? I don’t have any work to do, what the heck are they gonna do?”
[A]: Yeah.
[C]: Right? Does that sound about fair?
[A]: It’s pretty fair.
[C]: Okay, now so despite all that, you finally, finally let some words of wisdom trickle into the thick skull. And you actually do bring in a kid. You bring in a kid.
[A]: Yup.
@42:22
[C]: And it was very generous of you, actually, because a lot of people do unpaid internships, and for you even to say, “Look, I, I, I’ll pay you hourly and then I’ll buy your lunch,” because you’re a good guy. So if you have a loaf of bread, I think you’re the type of guy who doesn’t just cut half and give it to his employee. You cut whatever you think the employee needs and you eat the crumbs that are leftover. So kudos to you, you’re a good, you’re a good man, Charlie Brown. You are. Okay? So you bring in a guy and you start to learn how to delegate. You learn how to collaborate. You learn how to manage.
[A]: Absolutely.
@42:55
[C]: And most importantly, you’re, you’re teaching and you’re sharing what you know. And this is what they, they always say (like, teachers say this and it’s a cliché, but it’s totally true): “You learn more from the student than they will ever learn from you.” And, and I wanna explain that a little bit, but I don’t want to explain it. I want you to do it. Like, what do you mean when you say that, like, you didn’t realize you would learn so much by actually having somebody that you were gonna teach?
@43:21
[A]: I think it’s interesting…um, teaching someone things that you know. First of all, I really didn’t think I knew that much. I think I had certain levels of skill, but I say, “If you’ve been paying attention in life, you should’ve, you should learn something.” And so, having someone there where you can bounce ideas off and, and share information you realize, um, how much you actually do know. And then it starts a conversation. And that conversation stimulates and challenges each other, and I think that’s what it, it–one of the challenges of working by yourself is, “Who’s there to challenge yourself?” It’s like, do you have that intern–, that internal sort of voice that, that can do it for you?
