Hey, I'm Chad, co-founder of this Agency that started with a strong belief: we can create a better human connection through visuals and stories. To prove my point, I've decided to share parts of my own story over the past 10 years. With these little glimpses into my life, my intention is to show you how positive thinking inspired the change, growth and creativity that led me to starting this agency. Thanks for reading, I'm excited to tell you more.
In 2012 I left a toxic relationship and thought I lost everyone. You know in your late teens when you think everything would be fine and you are naive enough to believe everyone around you? I did that for at least 3 years, until I realized how much of my life got lost being in that relationship. I left with literally nothing, and that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Don't let a relationship dictate your life, your friendships, your work or your family.
Being 20 I was traveling 2 and half hours to school and work every day back and forth, and I had 20$ to my name. Okay maybe it wasn’t only 20$, I was actually in debt and somehow managed to go to school to educate myself, and work, but I definitely wasn’t ballin out. Sometimes I couldn’t afford the Skytrain so I had to sneak on. I got 3 fines for doing so, and let me tell you that shit isn’t cheap! it ended up costing me $1000 that I definitely didn’t have… but I learnt that if I wanted to keep my license I had to pay it, and I did.
When I was 21, I thought that year was going to get better, but my sister overdosed and passed away a week after my birthday. My life took a real turn when she passed away. Death does change people, it made me want to do better in my life for me and for her. The best thing that happened to me was being able to at least say “I love you” the last time I talked to her.
When I was 22 I took the plunge and moved to downtown Vancouver, into a tiny bedroom not knowing how I could afford rent the next month. Spending the last two years still travelling 2 hours to and from work, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to be closer to work. Thank god a friend of mine I worked with was looking for a roommate and I could take the room over. Somehow I did it, still not knowing whether I had the money. I swore that I would never travel that much for work again, especially on a bus.
When I was 25 I became a business owner and began building my own future.
They say it takes 5 years to become a sole proprietor when growing your business that industry. It took me 2.5 years. If you don’t think you can do it, keep your head down, push yourself, and make it work. The more you work on yourself, market, learn and build experience within your craft, you can achieve it.
I made my first 6 figure year at age 26. The crazy thing was: I changed my work schedule to only work 4 days a week. I still worked up to 10 hours on those days but it changed my whole mindset. I saw that I could expand and grow even faster being able to take some time for myself as well.
Take care of the people that are around you or in your business, you never know what’s going on with them or how they might help you in the future.
I learned how to market through my clients and kept sticking to my standards of business. This set the base of my way of creating businesses. I now implement those standards into helping other entrepreneurs and companies to grow.
My drive through life has been: you’ll never see me not creating.
Even though I had a successful business that allowed me to meet people from so many different walks of life and I learnt so much from all of them, I kept having that itch in my heart telling me I could do more and I could support people in different ways.
One way of letting my creativity flow was at 27 when I started to create an apparel brand that donated a portion of the proceeds to mental health, this was all inspired by my sister who struggled with having schizophrenia and addiction. I wanted to create something to make this world a little bit better especially with the huge problem here in Vancouver.
This was my first step in trying to figure out things, not only vendors, providers, supply chain and a bit of marketing, but also I learnt what designing and creating really looked like. It might have been a small apparel shop but it was something that I kept close to my heart. I wasn’t expecting this to take off or get huge, but I was so inspired by everyone that was able to help me learn and grow as a human.
When I turned 28 I decided to leave those businesses and start a creative agency with my partner.
Well, that took a turn, didn’t it? Here’s how it happened: COVID really hit hard and I lost a lot. It really showed me how an office job or client based office job really can be affected if something crazy goes sideways. I mean I’m sure most of you know that, we all went through it.
Not being able to work for months really changed me. I started learning more about marketing and studying business development, but deep in me I knew I wanted to design and grow creatively in so many other ways, while also being that person than can inspire and others to grow.
Being in lockdown somehow let me able to have a clear headspace for a minute (or it might have been the wine) but having my career from 8 years shut down in an instant somehow pushed me to start learning more about graphic design, illustration, web design and marketing.
COVID was not what inspired me to create the agency, but it gave me the mindspace and circumstances to take this decision that was cooking in my brain for so long. This spark of inspiration and happiness actually came a few years earlier, I just never thought of it until lockdown.
One of my past clients went to school for graphic design and showed me all of what she had done. It was beautiful and so inspiring (her name is Hilary Ann). I just had no idea how it was inspiring me until I woke up in the middle of the night on one of those loooong lockdown days and bought our website domain.
That was the spark, that was the fire, and that is what made me create the agency and start to build a better future, not only for myself but wanting to build a better future for creatives, and honestly everyone I come in contact with.
So all in all, I left my career of 8 years, the one I held on to so dearly and loved so much. but you know, I feel like this was just the beginning. If anything all of this taught me that it is ok to take risks, follow your gut and make life changing decisions. When you have the right intentions, life will put the right people in your path to help you build the future you want for yourself.
My intention to tell you all of this is to show you that no matter where you are in life, or what happens, you can change it. You can take control and start over. The best thing you can do is keep moving forward and following your path.
Follow along for more stories from myself, our agency and our team.
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