Business Profile: GFDA
It has taken a while to share anything about our experience this summer shooting Good Fucking Design Advice's Brian Buirge and Jason Bacher in their respective offices/homes of Kent, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York. It was a meaningful experience, especially because of the great connection we share in Brian and Jason's relationship as close friends and business partners.
If you don't know GFDA, they are — in a nutshell — "a company that trades in the commodity of inspiration."
Their online store includes posters, mugs, sketchbooks — all printed with bold, provocative messages that indeed inspire me to get off my ass and do something. Their intellectual content includes features and interviews with hardworking, stimulating individuals.
Brian and Jason embody their message of tenacity. One of my favorite things that they say is: "Fail, fail, and fucking fail again." It is this embraced vulnerability that makes them so powerful as individuals and as a team.
Their friend, Jason Richburg, wrote this article about the current evolutions at GFDA — namely, the recent physical separation between Brian and Jason. This summer, Jason moved to Brooklyn to open a new location, and Brian remains at work at the GFDA headquarters in Kent, Ohio. Richburg says, "Until very recently, their lives have so closely mirrored each other as to often make them indiscernible as individuals to the outside world. Despite that perception, they're very different in how they find personal success."
What I've been learning this year is the importance of leaning into the fear of allowing each other the space to grow and evolve as individuals. This letting go of certainty is creating space for a deeper connection both as friends and business partners.
If you'd like to read the whole article, "The Tao of GFDA," you can do that here.
Their online store includes posters, mugs, sketchbooks — all printed with bold, provocative messages that indeed inspire me to get off my ass and do something. Their intellectual content includes features and interviews with hardworking, stimulating individuals.
Brian and Jason embody their message of tenacity. One of my favorite things that they say is: "Fail, fail, and fucking fail again." It is this embraced vulnerability that makes them so powerful as individuals and as a team.
Their friend, Jason Richburg, wrote this article about the current evolutions at GFDA — namely, the recent physical separation between Brian and Jason. This summer, Jason moved to Brooklyn to open a new location, and Brian remains at work at the GFDA headquarters in Kent, Ohio. Richburg says, "Until very recently, their lives have so closely mirrored each other as to often make them indiscernible as individuals to the outside world. Despite that perception, they're very different in how they find personal success."
As Bonnie and I continue to develop our new lifestyles in Austin, I notice this more and more in our relationship — the wonderful and dramatic differences between us. Like Brian and Jason, our lives in Brooklyn were also very closely-mirrored, and having uprooted and replanted ourselves at age 30, I find the challenges we face to be difficult and rewarding on a much greater scale. We are friends first, and business partners second. But when our individual personal successes come into play, the question of how to develop and nurture these interrelated relationships is often confusing for me.
What I've been learning this year is the importance of leaning into the fear of allowing each other the space to grow and evolve as individuals. This letting go of certainty is creating space for a deeper connection both as friends and business partners.
I love to see these similarities in such amazing and accomplished guys as Brian and Jason, and I'm excited to see what they do in 2015.
If you'd like to read the whole article, "The Tao of GFDA," you can do that here.