Harnessing Teamwork for Creative Success with Reggie Tidwell

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs today we're talking to reggie tidwell of 40 hearts so reggie welcome and tell us a little bit about 40 hearts and what it's all about thanks bill thanks for having me on the show really appreciate it uh so yeah 40 hearts is a design and branding agency uh right here in ashville north carolina um we it's made up of three partners, three founding partners, and we all have been in the industry for years. I ran a design, small design entity called Curve Theory for 23 years. My partner, Tim Scroggs, ran a couple of different agencies. The most recent one was Futures Bright with his wife and a couple of designers for I think 16 years or so.

1:30And then Chuala Barbosa, our other partner, was really big in ed tech. He was a VP of customer experience for Renaissance Learning. And, you know, we all really came together through this sort of Asheville creative connection, but I'm the founding president of AIGA Asheville. AIGA is a national professional association of design. And there's chapters in every state, many cities. And we all at one point or another served on our local Asheville. I think Tim was a founding board member. So he served with me for the three years that I served initially. Joao came in sort of in the interim. And we formed a friendship through that connection.

2:31I think Tim and I had been kind of cultivating a friendship for years, but it was through that where we were able to consistently kind of see each other and build a relationship. But to take it back a little bit, we were all, I guess this was in 20, at the end of 2023, we were all in New York for the AIGA National Design Conference. and we had been sort of tim and i had been talking about you know how do we how do we get these bigger projects you know and how do we keep these big projects that seem to escape ashville and go to atlanta new york la chicago when we have so much talent right here in Asheville.

3:22And so that, you know, that sort of started us, you know, ideating on what that looks like and is this something that we could accomplish. And I think Tim and I had had, we actually had had conversations about collaborating, joining forces, doing a collaborative agency or something for, you know, a few years now. And that, I think that conversation was coming to a head where we were like, you know, we have to do something. um so anyway we we all were sitting in uh the the big auditorium and pentagram which is one of the you know undisputably one of the best most uh known well-known design and branding agencies in the world uh we have some friends over there michael beirut uh emily oberman just a really good group of people, Paula Sher.

4:17We consider these people to be sort of design heroes in the industry. And all of them have been involved with AIGA at some form or fashion. And I'm now on the national board for AIGA, which is kind of in the path of some of these wonderful humans. And they had the five partners of Pentagram, the women partners on stage. and they were you know i think uh debbie millman who's become a dear friend of mine she's a wonderful designer brand brand steward uh she's running a podcast called design matters for eons she asked the women partners a question from the audience and it was how do you become a partner at pentagram and i think it was paula share answered first and she said you have to work hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard and and then emily oberman i think took over and said well you know once you become a partner you then have to work hard hard hard hard and we kind of looked at each other we kind of laughed we're so like god that sounds exhausting you know like why can't we just spread the the work around and so that really was honestly the at that point we decided we were going to try to create an agency that took on sort of a new form where we work hard, but not to the point where design is our only mission in life.

5:45Like we have families. We all love our families. We all love to travel with our families. We love, you know, our friendships. And what we wanted to do was cultivate a business where we can have enough revenue to work with. So we're talking $500 ,000 and up projects that not only we will retain here because we have an agency that has the capacity to do the work, but also we become attractive to other markets because we're sort of fresh and new. We have the tenure and we have the talent and we're already doing amazing work. And so, yeah, so ultimately our model is to do projects large enough that we can do really impactful work while not having to stay in that sort of hustle mentality where we constantly looking for the next project so we can, you know, keep money coming in.

6:52Got it.

6:57so so you've been doing this year and a half or so something like that not quite yeah really just last year we launched um and right out of the gate we landed a project purely just by happenstance we were we were at a thing that some friends of mine put on called a fun day sunday or sunday fun day and we were uh we were at this event uh where basically it's a bunch of parents with their kids it's the opportunity to build community you know parents get to know each other it's pretty awesome uh and there was a ceo there we didn't know anything about him at the time but his his name was tim and uh super awesome guy uh we all just started talking i had invited both of the partners there with their families and so we were there we met him we all just kind of talking about what we were doing and tim sort of perked up as he heard us talking about 40 hearts he's like wow that's that sounds amazing he's like can i invite you guys out for a drink next week and we were like sure so tim and i met him for a drink my tim tim scroggs um we sat down and we had this great conversation with Tim.

8:09Tim Mitrovich is his name. And he said, you know, you guys, whatever you're doing sounds amazing. And my tech company, it's an 85 person tech company, not a small tech company, big international. They're doing really amazing things in the world of AI and cloud tech. And he said, you know, I don't want to shop this around. I need a full rebrand and website and you guys are it and so he gave us this big job we were able to build out our team with two two um developers who are now permanently our developers and we brought in two other designers to work with us and we were able to feed some friends obviously and also do a really amazing job for this company.

9:04So much that he said we absolutely knocked it out of the park and wants us to be his sort of design partners as we continue on doing work with him. Yeah, well, congratulations. I mean, obviously, y 'all have got a lot of experience in the industry and collaborating. So what have you noticed? I mean, it's interesting. It sounds like you've had three sort of three paths. It may have been two entrepreneurs and now you're all entrepreneurs. So maybe this was three entrepreneurs and now you're throwing in together. What kind of challenges is that presented or opportunities, I guess, would be the positive way to look at it?

9:45Yeah. You know, I think I'll address challenges and opportunities. And I think, honestly, even the biggest challenges so far for us have been totally manageable. The biggest one was that we hadn't even actually had a chance to launch. We hadn't even had a chance to do our branding or anything when we landed the job with Artisan Studios. And so we were instantly thrown into this really great project that took all of our skills and leadership. And we, you know, hadn't really had a chance to think about who we are as an agency. And we have a lot of conversations around it, but nothing on paper yet.

10:30And so now we find ourselves in this place where that job is launched. We're waiting for the next projects here to start later this month. And we are now trying to understand exactly what our path is, exactly what our offerings are. What does that look like? We have a general idea of how that breaks down. But how do we articulate that to the world so they know that what we have is what they need? And so that's the phase that we're in now. while one of our partners, Tim, and his family are actually traveling around the world for this 10-month, I'd say almost like a cultural journey, they sold their house and are going to do sort of an Asheville 2.0 after they're done traveling towards the end of the summer.

11:26They've been to Ropa de Papa. They were in Luka for a while, then Croatia. And so having a partner that's remote, even though he's full time, he's still, you know, we see him and communicate every day. We don't get to have that in-person time. So I say it's not really a challenge as much as it is an opportunity to decide, kind of see how we can stretch the modern days of working together, you know, having somebody that's fully remote and being able to leverage that while also having clients in the mix. So far, it's been absolutely smooth. You know, you wouldn't even have to know Tim was, you know, thousands of miles away.

12:20Yeah, it's interesting. Our firm is virtual. I was actually looking for an office before COVID. That was smart. I was glad I didn't buy an office right before COVID. But yeah, and since then, we've been 100 % remote and that's worked great. I mean, it's an interesting, it does present different challenges. So that's great. That's fantastic that that's worked out. So you guys are coming together as a partnership, trying to figure out who you are as a company. And you got one of them who's remote. So I think once you figure that out, I mean, I just think that's helpful, actually. Yeah, I think so, too.

13:09And honestly, I think one of the silver linings of COVID, having a global pandemic, was I think companies learned just how easy it is to have remote. Oh, I think, yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's awesome. So, y 'all, I mean, you're putting three people together. Do you have, I mean, is there a division of labor? Are you guys all do the same thing? How's it working? that's a great question bill so so my strengths are um branding i'm also a commercial photographer i do a lot of uh have done in the past a lot of stuff for uh explore ashville mountain biz works some great uh local local agencies um entities i um you have a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design tim also branding thought leadership which is thought partnership which is actually one of the services that i think is one of our strengths uh tim and i do what we call brand story development and brand story mapping where we actually articulate what a company does but also So as it is relative to the audience that they seek out, I think a lot of companies have a problem conveying that because they constantly want to talk about what's exciting to them about their offerings to their audience.

14:43But they don't think about the problems that their audience, that their customers need to solve. And so if you switch that around and approach it from your client's perspective, like what are their pain points? What is it that they want? And how is it that we can convey that we have the thing that they want that creates that through line? And Tim and I do that work. Joao is a completely different beast. He comes from the user experience world, and he is what I would call a multifaceted technologist, maybe. He knows all the software. He can tell you what software you need to do a certain thing.

15:28He's really amazing with creating user journey maps and customer experience maps, UX maps, anything that gives us intel. on the sort of big picture thinking of a company and how it works and what they're doing and how it connects to their user base. He is that, and that's such a huge part of our business. And so he's a massive asset. Yeah, that is cool. It seems like y 'all are, you kind of worked it out. Yeah, yeah. How do you use strengths? And I've always said strengthen strengths and then defend against weaknesses. So you can always, you know, outsource or, or hire whatever other, what other help you might need to fill in, fill in the gaps.

16:18But at the top level, it seems like you got it covered. Yeah. Part of two bills, because part of 40 hearts is actually bringing in those other, those other people. Like we don't, we don't want to be the ones doing it all. Like we have such a vibrant, amazing creative community and And when you have the kinds of budgets that we'll have to work with, that's an opportunity to change a lot of people's lives. And as someone who really loves this community and has seen our creative community strive and thrive and sometimes barely survive, it has always been on my heart to figure out a way to be able to impact a lot of people at once.

17:08And so you've got a million dollar project and you can bring in, you know, 10 other people or more on this project to help, you know, expand your capabilities. It gives you the possibility to not only feed those people, but enhance the offerings because you're now, I'll give you a perfect case in point. one of the projects the one of the things that we did for artisan was we had this whole different sort of design direction and because of my work with AIGA and knowing the the sort of disciplines of so many of the designers here and illustrators here we had this idea of this sort of drop cap logo design is very specific style there's a guy in town named Dan Greta who we know very well and And we know that that is his thing.

18:07He can develop logos in that style like no one else. And so that was immediately an opportunity to bring someone else in to do a few concepts that we were able to then take and expand upon. But there's going to be so many opportunities like that. And ideally, while we will always be the three founding partners, our hope is to grow with profit-sharing partners that actually have their own teams so that we will essentially be like a super agency. So you may have, I mean, wishful thinking up to 40 partners, which matches the name, that all have their own teams built out that have different specialties that they're able to actually, you know, we're able to have multiple projects going on at once.

19:03Projects that have come in from all over the world and be able to keep a lot of people busy. Man, I love that. I really love that. In marketing, branding, advertising, there's so many disciplines and so many talented people. It's one of the industries that as I was learning business and being in business for a long time, I've noticed that you just can't do it all by yourself. You just can't do this stuff by yourself. So it's super cool. It's super cool. Well, this, I think we could talk for hours. So I get why your first client, Tim, wanted to sit down and have a beer with you, because I would love to do that too.

19:52So, yeah, I think we need to do that, and I'm going to need to have you back. We're a little short, but we're sort of running up against our time here. Let me ask you one last question. And the question is, what do you wish you had known? So in other words, you know, about all this or about your whole journey or about creativeness or anything, what do you wish somebody had told you years ago? You know, it's that's a great question. Thanks, Bill. I think it's funny because I think I've known it for a long time, but I think part of this industry and certainly being in an area where you see a lot of the fun and bigger projects going to other markets, I've always known that I couldn't do this alone or I shouldn't be doing this alone.

20:45I've always known that collaboration is key, diversifies your offerings, but it also, you know, I love people, you know, I love people, I love this community. And the more opportunities I get to collaborate with others, the better I feel. And so what I wish is that years ago, I started what I'm doing now. Now, granted, I've got 23 years of expertise and notoriety. But I think the journey of a designer that is doing the solopreneur thing can be really, really challenging. And primarily, it's because you can only do so much. you can only go up to your bandwidth and oftentimes we are beyond our bandwidth and that's not a good place to be you know you're you know you're you're making okay money you're but you're not having the best quality of life you're just working working working and so one of the things that's been really enjoyable now with the with the agency is having two really amazing partners that I know are working on different things and I'm working on my thing and I'm not feeling like I have to do it all.

22:13I don't feel this anxiety of like, as soon as I'm done with this, I got to jump over that. As soon as I'm done with that, I got to jump over this. So it's already increased my quality of life, I think, for all of the partners. I mean, I don't think Tim would be able to do what he's doing right now if we hadn't started our agency. I think that's a think that was at least one of the things that freed him up to be able to do that in terms of traveling around the world with his family for 10 months and so yeah it would have been nice to have done it but you know better late than never they say yeah yeah yeah no I think it's great that you've yeah you finally pulled the trigger I can tell you're really a people person and that's why that's a great thing that you know you wish you had collaborated I'm sure you collaborated, but you wish you had gone into business with some of your friends earlier.

23:03So that's awesome. Well, listen, it's been a great conversation. Thanks for being on. If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way? Well, we are 40hearts is our tag on Instagram. It's brand new, so not a whole lot of content up there. And our website is 40hearts.com. You'll see a landing page up there, but as you know, as I mentioned, we are now in that sort of self-branding phase, and so you'll see that evolve out over the next few weeks, but definitely, you know, we're around, and we're super excited to be a part of Asheville's economy, its creative force, and I don't think this will be the last you'll hear of us.

23:51No, no, no. I think the runway's long, and And skies are blue. I think that's amazing. One of the things I love is that you guys just got to work. You didn't worry about trying to make your website perfect. You're trying to make all this other stuff perfect, even though that's your business. But you all got to work because you had clients to take care of. So congratulations on that. Appreciate you being on here. And yeah, I look forward to having you back on because we got a lot more to talk about. Thanks so much, Bill. Have a wonderful day. Yeah. And until next time, all the best.

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