After high school, it was time for us to move back to Ft. Worth. My parents wanted more opportunities for their children outside of their small Pennsylvania town, and so we moved back to Ft. Worth.
I became the first in the family to go to college. I didn’t want to pursue entrepreneurship or business like my dad. Instead, I chose pre-med and then switched to biochemistry. After graduation, I had two job opportunities to choose from — a crime lab in Ft. Worth, or the chemistry lab at Alcon. CSI wasn’t a thing back then or I might’ve gotten into the crime lab. I chose Alcon. I loved the research and analytical side of working in the lab alongside really brilliant people. Four years into my career, I got the itch to try something new and enrolled in law school. I kept working full time while in school. The first summer after law school I started on a path that would lead me in a drastically different direction, away from the lab and the law.
My friend gave me a promotional product catalog to review the pricing for some custom embroidered shirts. I noticed the profit margins right away and a germ of an idea started to grow. Around the same time, my lab was switching to a more casual dress code, and I knew they would be purchasing golf shirts with an embroidered logo, like the ones I had seen in the product catalog. I sensed opportunity and consulted with my dad, who was a successful salesman at a printing company by that time, about buying embroidery equipment. “Why embroidery?” was his first reaction, but after consideration and scoping out the field, Jack was on board and encouraged me to buy equipment.
That was how I started an embroidery and promotional products business, my first venture into Marketing. I didn’t have room to store the equipment anywhere else, so I ran the business out of my parents’ backyard, in what we called the Dog Shed.
Working in the lab during the day, fulfilling embroidery orders during every spare minute of the day and night, I was once again a team with mom and dad in the family business. Janett, the brains of the family, kept the accounting side of the business in order. Jack was my best unpaid salesman, drumming up new business left and right. Eventually, we landed a large account for Michael’s craft store, making all of the embroidered aprons for their employees to wear across the country.
The business in the Dog Shed was booming. We did $100,000 in sales the first six months. We expanded, bought more equipment, hired people to help my parents (who spent their evenings finishing aprons in front of the TV). And yes, we moved out of the Dog Shed.
From that very humble beginning, making custom embroidery casual wear and expanding into promotional products, I got a passion for the business owner life. Years later, I changed course once again, from a product-driven business to a service focused business, and launched Mojo Media Labs. I felt compelled to pursue deeper relationships with our people and our clients, and one way to do that was by taking care of their broader marketing needs as a service agency. This was at a time when digital marketing and web services were in their infancy. It was obvious that this was the next right move.
Fast forward a decade, now Mojo Media Labs is a full-service marketing agency with offices in Dallas, and Indianapolis. My #1 concern as a business owner is for our people. Happy People = Happy Clients. Our official vision statement for the company is to Enrich Lives. I often reflect on my mom, my dad, and my grandparents, who taught me those values and how to care for people. It’s a better inheritance than a trust fund or business lessons could ever have been.
My hope is that every person who comes into contact with Mojo will have their lives enriched in some way— to feel the love that travels generations back to warm family gatherings around a table in Pennsylvania, where we celebrate life together and we create meaning that extends beyond just doing business.
