Starting Is Easy. Growing Is the Hard Part.

A founder series on building Chasing Creative, finding your blueprint, and why entrepreneurship is closer to a necessity than a prize.

Two years ago I was laid off from a job I loved.

It was not planned. It was not expected. One day I was fully invested in the work, and the next I was figuring out what came next. I had spent years growing marketing businesses for other people. I understood the mechanics of sales, media, and brand building. But there is a real difference between doing that inside someone else's company and running your own thing.

So I started Chasing Creative.

Fundamentally, starting a business is not very difficult. You pick an idea, a product or a service, and you build a plan to go to market. Who you are going to sell to, for how much, over what time frame, and what the outcome or offer is. Setting up the business itself is as simple as registering an LLC with your state or getting an EIN federally here in the United States. That is the premise. Anyone can get started. Anyone can do it. The costs are nominal for most people who are already proficient in one area of their life or another, whether that means holding down a great job and saving to launch, or crowdfunding from friends and family to get going.

Growing a business is the hardest part. It is the thing I have built my career on: helping people market and sell, and helping them articulate or showcase, through media, the value their business creates. Even with my own company, a marketing agency that has served a wide range of brands, the focus has narrowed over time to infrastructure, prop tech, and other technology-driven businesses. There are a few reasons for that:

1. We gained access quickly through great clients who refer us.
2. We genuinely enjoy these topics and love learning about them.
3. We have worked with several brands on an ongoing basis, which gives us credibility in the marketplace and lets us keep propelling the flywheel by showcasing the work as we complete it.

This does not just advocate for our own brand, Chasing Creative. It also props up the brands we do marketing for by showing how we are building in public alongside them, at least for the ones we are able to share about openly.

So why am I sharing this? Because I think nearly everyone should take part in a business. If it feels right to you, you should strive to launch your own thing and be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship on its own is not something to be prized. For people like me, it is closer to a necessity. I embrace work as a lifestyle, not just something that generates money, but something that creates value for me, my family, and my friends in one way or another.

Two years in, I am still figuring it out. That is the truth no one tells you. You do not reach a point where you have it all solved. You just get better at navigating the uncertainty.

Most recently I was able to head to Hawaii for the second time this year, working on business projects. We partnered with a top infrastructure organization that has been growing rapidly, helping with their media, driving attention, and supporting their internal marketing team. It is incredibly rewarding. Beyond the work itself, we always try to network, meet more people, and collaborate while we are out there. The whole theory is that if everything we do amplifies the business or my personal brand in some way, we keep the flywheel turning:

• Awareness drives attention.
• Attention drives sales.
• Sales drive deliverables.
• Deliverables drive reviews.
• Reviews drive referrals.

And on it goes.

When I brought my family with me to Hawaii, it was not a slam dunk, easy resort experience. We travel hacked as best we could to stay longer. We skipped eating every meal out at the hot spots. And there were stretches when Dad was not much fun because he wanted to be on the computer. My wife tells me I do a great job blending the two, but I know better. There is always a sacrifice. On the plus side, my kids get a front-row seat to what it looks like to work and enjoy life at the same time. To me, that is the ultimate reward for them down the road.

I also think our clients enjoy investing in a business that operates with this philosophy. We are not trying to systematize everything. We approach every project with the attention it deserves. Where systems make sense, we add them. Everywhere else, we adopt growth and scale as we need to.

Working remote has been a big part of this lately, and it has given me a lot of space to think clearly about what I am actually doing. It is also opened a door I did not expect. When we are not on top of a client every single day, we give them room too. Less frequency, more thinking on the projects we are working on together. That space leads to more thoughtful production and stronger completion across the board. I have watched it happen with multiple clients now. Taking a step away actually helps them finish more work, not less.

We even increased sales last month by following up diligently but patiently, instead of defaulting to our usual fast-paced East Coast mentality. Working remote also opens up chances to network with people you would never otherwise cross paths with. We have met dozens of new people just while traveling, and it changes the way you approach the work. It makes it feel more meaningful. On our end, we have relaunched our project management systems and we keep building on new ideas, all while realizing something simple. We can move fast when we need to, but being thoughtful is smooth, and smooth is fast. The two were never really in conflict.

There is a lot else in motion right now too. We recently filed a formal utility patent that we are now waiting on, for a lighting device we genuinely believe is a game changer. We are also working through a trademark for one of our unique brands. And we keep refining the three to four different apps we are building independently, all while running the agency. We are not doing that because we have to. We are doing it because we think we have something to offer, and that it can ultimately help other people, our clients included, be more effective.

All of this is happening while we lean into the world of AI, building our own systems and agents that actually deliver. Our clients are growing in their own right and reworking their own systems, and ours have to adapt and scale right alongside them. Sometimes that means updating the services we offer. Sometimes it means adding new ones. It is ongoing, and that is the point.

If you have read this far, you can see I am really talking about a blueprint. What does your life look like when you start your business? Is the end goal money? Time? Skill? Something else entirely? Once you know that, you can steward it forward wisely and reverse engineer your blueprint so you actually reach the goal.

One of the most important things I have learned while growing a business is this. I felt I found success fairly quickly compared to how others have grown year over year, but that is misleading. Keep in mind I had been in the industry a long time growing marketing businesses before I started Chasing Creative. There is a real difference between doing that and running your own thing. Two years in, I am still learning where that difference shows up.

When your blueprint is not being met, or you are not moving as fast as you thought you would, or your valleys feel deep while they look like mountaintops to everyone else, do not stop innovating, learning, and adjusting.

Recently I was listening to Tony Robbins, someone who has been a great encourager since I started my business through his online classes and live events, many of them free. He made the point that there are many ways to reach your destination, the thing you ultimately want. That is a philosophical root I think most people forget. We fixate on the thing we believe will make us happy, instead of the deeper question of why we think we need it and how we actually get there.

Having a blueprint is essential for measuring outcomes and staying on track. But when you do get off track, do not let that blueprint push you into judging yourself in a way that is not healthy or supportive. I do this all the time. I do it with clients, with projects, with family, with nearly everything. I am my own biggest critic. It is made me successful in a lot of ways, but it also gives you very high highs and very low lows.

Not many people in the world of entrepreneurship can relate, because they only see the fruits of your labor. They do not see the hours behind the keyboard, the client feedback that does not feel great, or the day-to-day unpredictability. So here is what I will leave you with. Starting a business is easy. Finding clients and growing is hard, but it can happen. And building your blueprint while you are already in motion is a bit like sewing the parachute after you have jumped out of the plane.

You have probably heard that line before. Just remember, as you are gliding down, that there are many places to land and many paths to get there. Do not feel like you have to do what everyone else has done. Stop measuring your life against how other people are living theirs, and keep working on yourself.

That is the point of this blog. And it is the reason I am writing here more and more.

This is the first post in a founder series on building Chasing Creative. If you want to follow along, I will be writing about the systems we are building, the clients we are learning from, and the mistakes that teach us more than the wins. You can subscribe below or check back for the next installment.

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P.S. Sunrise Coffee in Kauai is the location we remote worked and Jasmine Wisz captured these images.