Chapter Four
Never too late to start over.
I’m 46 years old, and starting over.
I started my career out as a bit of a designer, web guy, illustrator, photographer, copywriter… whatever was needed. I had small business clients in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Darcie and I had just gotten married, and bought a little house off Snelling Avenue. I spent a few years at a micro agency before going out on my own just before the bottom fell out of the economy.
From there I made some friends in California and joined up to build something bigger. We spent the next 20 years building an agency and digital products business. Seems silly to refer to it as a “chapter” as it feels like a novel in and of itself. It was a truly special thing, and I’ll be forever proud of it. I spent the first 15 years making stuff. Client sites, internal stuff, goofy tshirts for our team, new products, and all matter of things. In addition to that, we were building a company. As we grew more successful, I made less and less. Now, that’s both because we had more talented folks - but mostly because there were more pressing things to do. This idea of “highest and best use” meant running sales, and contracts, and financial shit was how I’d spend most of my time.
For a slew of reasons, our run at Modern Tribe came to end and we sold the business. Chapter three saw me spending 4 years running digital projects and marketing and a bigger tech firm. While I met some wonderful folks there, it was far the fulfilling work of previous chapters.
So here we are. Chapter four. Back to making stuff - taking photos, drawing a lot, and working with wood. Back to working solo. Back to doing a little bit of a lot of different things. Maybe I’ll write more about what it means to make stuff - but for now, lets just say I’m pretty excited.