Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Albrecht.
Hi Jake, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in a tiny farm town called Minersville. I grew up feral and it was awesome! I was working on the farm and ranch with my dad and brothers from an early age and that taught me the value of an honest days work.
After returning home from my LDS mission I attended Dixie State College pursuing a degree in visual technologies. Before graduating college I started my career as a Graphic Designer at a local print shop called Design To Print in 2005. I had a wife and child by this time and the demands on my time were too great so I dropped out of colllege about a year into working there full time. After a few years of hard work I was promoted to Design lead and was in charge of a growing team of about 6 designers. I did this for another year until early 2008.
My friend and Coworker, Matt, kept telling me we should start a design agency together. I really had no interest in that, and I was pretty happy where I was at DTP. This all changed when I had a disagreement with the owner about the direction for the design team. Soon afterward Matt and I founded Flitch Creative, Inc. on Feb 15, 2008 with two clients and a whole lot of optimism.
We were primarily a creative shop with an emphasis on brand identity and print design. We struggled through the early years until about 3 1/2 years in when I bought out my partner and became the sole owner of Flitch. At this point the company was on life support and wasn’t making enough to pay both of us, so something needed to change.
After a few months working solo I hired a designer. Later I hired a web developer. Clients began requesting more and more services that at first we refused to offer. Eventually we obliged. You need photography? Cool, I’ll go buy a Canon consumer bundle T2i with a kit lens and call myself a photographer. You need video production? I’ll figure it out with the help of YouTube University and a lot of trial and error.
Eventually we outgrew the tiny space we were in and moved into a nice professional office park where we still are today. My crew ebbed and flowed in size from 5-9 people. Today Flitch is composed of 7 skilled creators in various disciplines. It’s a team made up of branding and creative specialists.
Around 2020 I finished developing a brand strategy framework I called Only Brand™. Today Only Brand is the foundational framework that drives all of the branding work we do for our clients. We’ve been able to grow several emerging brands from 5 and 6 figures to 7 and 8 figures. We offer our services to anyone that qualifies, but we are especially positioned to help emerging product companies exponentially grow.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road to success wasn’t a smooth one. The day I quit my job at Design to Print I was the primary provider for my young family. My wife had just given birth to my second child a month prior and was not working. We had just closed on our second home about 4 months prior and had a mortgage larger than our previous condo. I had two solid clients and had to figure out a way to find enough business quickly in order to feed not only my family, but my business partner’s family as well. It was very stressful and we lived on the bare minimum. The early years getting established were filled with long, lonely hours by myself late at night in our tiny office. In hindsight, what was I thinking!
I learned pretty quickly that I was a good designer, but I was NOT a good business owner. I’d never done it before and I didn’t know who to ask for help! I made lots of mistakes (and still do, frankly). I nearly lost my home and nearly went bankrupt several times. I finally got smart and hired a business consultant that worked with me for about 4 years. He taught me how to build processes, SOP’s, and how to read a financial spreadsheet among other things. This was invaluable for my growth as an entrepreneur. Thank you David!
In 2015 I decided to purchase a book of business composed of website clients from a local web agency that was shutting down. I saw this as an opportunity to double the size of my agency overnight! In the end, this proved to be a poor decision on my part and we suffered as a company. Our attrition rate was high, and the support these clients needed during the transition almost bankrupted Flitch. We hired new employees that exclusively worked on transitioning and helping the new customers. This did NOT make us money, but instead drained our cash and moral. Not to mention, I now had a six figure load to pay off over the next 5 years. That was a particularly harsh lesson and a tough time in Flitch’s history.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I founded Flitch Creative in early 2008. What started as a small two man creative firm specializing in brand identity and print design work has grown into a full service brand agency. We are a boutique agency that currently employs 7. All of them are rock stars in their discipline. We have designers, video production, photographers, web programmers, and strategists. We are most known for brand strategy on the front end and for creating high end graphic design, video, and photographic deliverables to support the strategy.
Flitch’s purpose is to position companies for exponential growth through branding. Flitch is the only branding agency helping emerging premium product brands disrupt markets using our proprietary Only Brand™ framework.
Only Brand™ is a complete branding system that aligns 4 facets of your business that are required for creating a high-performance brand – focus, differentiation, trends, and communication. It’s based upon a simple concept that when everyone else ZIGs, you ZAG. We call this ZAG your Only Brand. Though the concept is simple, the application of this principle takes creativity, introspective thought, and courage.
It’s a 17 step process where we help design our clients Only Brand.
The thing we are most proud of is the hockey stick growth we’ve been able to help many of our clients achieve. Take Buttermints for example. They came to us nearly 5 years ago with low sales volume in the 5 figure range. Within the first year of working together we were able to cross the 6 figure revenue range. Now at 5 years in, we have achieved 7 figures and on track for 8 figure revenue next year! Their story isn’t a one-off and we’ve proven the process is repeatable by following our proprietary Only Brand framework.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I’m not sure if I believe in luck or not. I see it the way author and entrepreneur MJ Demarco does. I believe we can make our own luck and we can vastly improve our chance to be “lucky”. Waiting around for something to happen gives you very few chances to be lucky. Conversely, putting yourself out there by actively networking with other business professionals, working hard at your craft, opening your mouth to talk to strangers, and being impeccable with your word will net you many more opportunities for luck.
MJ uses the analogy of a gumball machine where gumballs represent the types of opportunities that can be afforded to you. In other words, how much “luck” potential you have. Some are minor and small, and some could be life-changing. Every time you do the things I mentioned above (and many others), you add another gumball to the machine. After a while you begin to stack the odds into your favor that you will receive a big opportunity gumball from the machine.
Hard work was ingrained into me from a young age. However, what I learned as an entrepreneur is that hard work alone isn’t enough. You have to work smart and you have to connect with high value people along the way to get to where you want to go. No man is an island. Today I value my business and personal relationships above almost everything in my work life. So many people deserve huge thanks from me for helping me along the way to get to where I am. So, thank you! You know who you are.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://flitchcreative.com
- Instagram: @flitchcreative
- Facebook: @jakesbranding
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakealbrecht
- Youtube: @flitchcreative5288
