For the 167th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Avidity Creative and Creative Director, Adam Feller. An Iowa based branding and design company specialized in packaged food and beverage products. Their proven track record is centered around helping business owners and sales staff to get products performing better on the shelf. This is achieved by helping customers define their market and audience, perfecting their brand and packaging materials, and understanding customer shopping behaviors.
"Together Talks" feature # 167: Avidity Creative presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
I started as a professional designer out of college in 2011. I went through various graphic designer full-time jobs and had done freelance design work along the way. Around 2017, I got to a point where I was making more money on the side, doing freelance work than I was at full-time job. It was always a goal of mine to start a company. I knew branding, graphic design, advertising, marketing. Something related was going to be the end result. In 2017, I went full-time on my own as a designer with aspirations of building the company. We are doing that slow and steady.
Avidity Creative is a branding and design company. We focus specifically on food and beverage CPG products. We do everything from brand strategy, identity, logo design, packaging design, some content creation, Shopify websites, and Amazon's storefronts. Anything that's really on the creative side of things for those companies. Now we are at a point where I don't really do any design work anymore. I have other people who do the design, I am more of a creative director within the company.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Not knowing what I don't know. This being the first company that I've grown and tried to scale up. There's a lot of hurdles along the way of things that no one really teaches you. I didn't go business school, but I went to went to a four-year university. I had a major in graphic design and then a minor in business The basic parts of business I understood, supply and demand and economics. But the things along the way like taxes or payroll, what your your business entity is responsible for when it comes to IRS and just government legal things, all of that was a learning experience for me.
The cost associated with all these different things is a learning experience. For example, how to plan for when we will need rent space as we all work remotely now. That's another hurdle that I will eventually encounter. It's all this stuff that you don't think about until you are put in the situation where you have to start thinking about it. Those have been the biggest hurdles for me.
We are fortunate that we do get a lot of word of mouth referrals from previous clients.. It's been beneficial, but the other hard part, is that you have to continually bring in new business and you can't rely on word of mouth. Figuring out how you generate those leads, how you get in front of the right people, that sort of thing. That's a hurdle that everyone kind of goes through, I think. And it's hard.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
Revenue-wise, I want to increase our revenue by 30% over last year. Our staff is at four plus an intern, I want to be able to add a couple more. Hopefully, get to the part where we have enough work, where we're adding one or two more positions. Honestly, I think just working with bigger companies is our goal. On the creative side of things, at least for branding, there's not a lot of continuous work. We create a brand, or we do a rebranding campaign project with a client, once you've gotten through that, no matter how big a project, eventually it stops. You're not going to continually rebrand the client. a company every year. We need to figure out either how we can do more continuing work with clients and as they grow. It gets easier with those bigger clients because they need more stuff frequently, whether it's creative work for ad campaigns or other marketing pieces.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
I think personal confidence or having faith in yourself to do it. Anyone making that big of a jump to be working for yourself, has doubt. Like you said, going from a steady paycheck that's reliable to being responsible for my own income can be scary. That was a mental shift I needed to make. While I was getting a secure paycheck, I was also limited what I was going to make with that company. But working for yourself, there's a risk that you won't make as much money as you did in the previous job, but there's also no limit to what you can make.
It's all depending upon your drive and determination. We also at the same time, my wife was pregnant with our first child. We had made the decision around the same time because she knew it was my goal to start a company. We had talked through and we had planned how much do we need to save up for us to be able to confidently make this jump and give it a try? We set a number of bout 10 months of what would have been my monthly income, saved up. We decided I was young enough that if I was going to do it, it's a lot easier to make this switch and try this now versus when we have a child that's five years old, maybe we have a second one on one the way, which we ended up having. It would have been a lot harder to then quit my job and do something on my own.
At the time, it was the best moment for us to make that decision. That helped to mentally get over it, but we also planned everything. We set a start date. It was when my wife went back to work from maternity leave and we decided that I would quit my job and go full time with Avidity.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
How to manage stress is a big one. Also, how to lead a team, for sure. That was something that I was never really responsible for in my previous jobs. My most recent one, I worked with another team of designers, and I was the most senior one there, but it wasn't necessarily the supervisor role. When you are the owner of the company, everyone is under you, you are the leader. I had to learn how to motivate and maintain a good culture. On occasion you have to be the disciplinarian or find a way to get things back on track. That is the tough part because I'm not a confrontational person. Learning how to tackle those things, has allowed me to grow. I've been lucky, I've always learned or heard to hire slow and fire fast. I do believe in that, but I've been lucky so far that our hires have not required me to have to fire fast.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
Despite what I told you at the beginning it is probably the time, the freedom, the flexibility. Although I am constantly being scheduled for introduction meetings, it is very rewarding to have that level of demand based on our work. At events or trade shows, being front facing and giving our brand exposure, that part of our job is rewarding. That's probably not the case for any designer or any creative person, but for me, particularly in this job, that's been always something that's been motivating.
What is your why?
Being able to leave some kind of legacy, some kind of imprint on the world. That includes on the people that work for me, family, friends, and our clients. That to me is, it's a big motivator, a big driving factor. My kids being able to see me build something successful from the ground up means a lot to me. It's no disrespect to people who work a typical nine to five job, those jobs can be rewarding in their own way. But I think I take pride in being able to to build something from the ground up and see it become successful.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Every time that we get our next biggest client to me is the most rewarding thing, because it's not only a reflection of my own hard work, but I can't sell bad work to future clients. When our team performs, it is easy for me to convince the next bigger client to trust us and our work. While we make our way up the ladder of a client level or prestige, that to me is a sign we are doing something good. That part gives a really cool sense of accomplishment to be able to keep pushing and reach the next level of this game of owning a business, really.
Piece of Advice
I suppose this is maybe nothing that's new. but I would say when it comes to hiring people or working with outside partners with your business, trust. Do your research, find the right people, and then allow them to do what they're hired to do. Step aside. That has been a hard part for me being a creative person. I want to be very involved in the design and I have ideas. But besides giving the strategic direction and just general feedback direction of what they are working for this creative direction should be, I can't micromanage and tell them exactly what to do with every design. Even the non-creative people that work with us and partners that we hire, vendors that we hire, we've chosen them for a reason. I think, advice for anyone, any entrepreneur is don't try to manage every piece of your business. Hire people who are good at what they do and let them do what you hired them for.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Avidity Creative and Creative Director, Adam Feller, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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