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Harnessing Teamwork for Creative Success with Reggie Tidwell · Epic Entrepreneurs

• 0:29
  Bill Gilliland: Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.
• 0:31
  Bill Gilliland: Today we're talking to Reggie Tidwell of 40 Hearts.
• 0:34
  Bill Gilliland: So, Reggie, welcome and tell us a little bit about 40 Hearts and what it's all about.
• 0:42
  Reggie Tidwell: Thanks, bill, thanks for having me on the show.
• 0:43
  Reggie Tidwell: Really appreciate it.
• 0:44
  Reggie Tidwell: So yeah, 40 Hearts is a design and branding agency right here in Asheville, north Carolina.
• 0:51
  Reggie Tidwell: Forty Hearts is a design and branding agency right here in Asheville, north Carolina.
• 0:53
  Reggie Tidwell: It's made up of three partners, three founding partners, and we all have been in the industry for years.
• 1:00
  Reggie Tidwell: I ran a small design entity called Curve Theory for 23 years.
• 1:06
  Reggie Tidwell: My partner, tim Scroggs, ran a couple of different agencies.
• 1:14
  Reggie Tidwell: The most recent one was Futures Bright with his wife and a couple of designers for I think 16 years or so.
• 1:22
  Reggie Tidwell: And then Joao Barbosa, our other partner, was really big in ed tech.
• 1:28
  Reggie Tidwell: He was a VP of customer experience for renaissance learning, um, and you know we all really came together through this sort of ashville creative connection.
• 1:43
  Reggie Tidwell: But I'm the founding president of aiga ashville.
• 1:48
  Reggie Tidwell: Aiga is a national professional association of design and you know there's chapters in every state, many cities, and we all, at one point or another, served on our local Asheville, I think all.
• 2:08
  Reggie Tidwell: Tim was a founding board member, so he served with me for the three years that I served.
• 2:14
  Reggie Tidwell: Initially, joão came in sort of in the interim and we formed a friendship through that connection.
• 2:23
  Reggie Tidwell: I 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.
• 2:34
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 2:47
  Reggie Tidwell: 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 Asheville and go to Atlanta, new York, la, chicago, when we have so much talent right here in Asheville?
• 3:12
  Reggie Tidwell: And 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?
• 3:22
  Reggie Tidwell: And I think Tim and I had had.
• 3:25
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 3:42
  Reggie Tidwell: So, anyway, we all were sitting in the big auditorium at Pentagram, which is one of the, you know, undisputably one of the best, most well-known design and branding agencies in the world.
• 3:58
  Reggie Tidwell: We have some friends over there Michael Beyroud, emily Oberman just a really good group of people.
• 4:07
  Reggie Tidwell: Paula Scher, you know we consider these people to be sort of design heroes in the industry and all of them have, have been involved with aiga at some form of fashion.
• 4:18
  Reggie Tidwell: And I'm now on the national board for aiga which is kind of in the path of some of these wonderful humans.
• 4:25
  Reggie Tidwell: And they had the five partners of pentagram, the women partners, on stage, and they were, you know, I think, debbie Millman, who's become a dear friend of mine.
• 4:37
  Reggie Tidwell: She's a wonderful designer, brand brand steward.
• 4:42
  Reggie Tidwell: She's run a podcast called Design Matters for Eons.
• 4:53
  Reggie Tidwell: She asked the women partners a question from the audience and it was how do you become a partner at Pentagram?
• 4:55
  Reggie Tidwell: And I think it was.
• 4:56
  Reggie Tidwell: Paula Scherer answered first and she said you have to work hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard.
• 5:04
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 5:12
  Reggie Tidwell: And we kind of looked at each other, we kind of laughed, we're so like God, that sounds exhausting, like why can't we just spread the work around, and so that really was, honestly, the.
• 5:23
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 5:37
  Reggie Tidwell: Like we have families, we all love our families, we all love to travel with our families.
• 5:41
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 5:54
  Reggie Tidwell: 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, the, the tenure, we uh, and we have the talent and we're already doing amazing work and so, um, yeah.
• 6:24
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 6:45
  Bill Gilliland: Got it.
• 6:45
  Bill Gilliland: So say you've been doing this year and a half or so something like that not quite.
• 6:55
  Reggie Tidwell: Yeah, uh, really just last year we launched um and right out of the gate we landed a project.
• 7:01
  Reggie Tidwell: 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, this event where basically it's a bunch of parents with their kids.
• 7:17
  Reggie Tidwell: It's an opportunity to build community.
• 7:19
  Reggie Tidwell: Parents get to know each other while their kids play.
• 7:22
  Bill Gilliland: It's pretty awesome.
• 7:23
  Reggie Tidwell: And there was a CEO there.
• 7:25
  Reggie Tidwell: We didn't know anything about him at the time, but his name was Tim and super awesome guy.
• 7:31
  Reggie Tidwell: We all just started talking.
• 7:33
  Reggie Tidwell: I had invited both of the partners there with their families and so we were there, we met Tim, 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 and he's like, wow, that sounds amazing.
• 7:47
  Bill Gilliland: He's like can I invite you guys out?
• 7:48
  Reggie Tidwell: for a drink next week and we were like sure.
• 7:51
  Reggie Tidwell: So Tim and I met him for a drink next week.
• 7:54
  Reggie Tidwell: And we were like sure.
• 7:55
  Reggie Tidwell: So Tim and I met him for a drink my Tim Tim Scroggs.
• 7:56
  Reggie Tidwell: We sat down and we had this great conversation with Tim Tim Mitrovich is his name and he said you know, you guys, whatever you're doing sounds amazing.
• 8:09
  Reggie Tidwell: And my tech company it's an 85 person tech company, not a small tech company, big international.
• 8:17
  Reggie Tidwell: They're doing really amazing things in the world of AI and cloud tech.
• 8:27
  Reggie Tidwell: And he said you know, I don't want to shop this around.
• 8:29
  Reggie Tidwell: I need a full rebrand and website.
• 8:31
  Reggie Tidwell: and you guys, are it, and so he gave us this big job.
• 8:36
  Reggie Tidwell: We were able to build out our team with two 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, so much that he you know, 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 them.
• 9:08
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah well, congratulations.
• 9:09
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, obviously y'all have got a lot of experience in the industry and collaborating.
• 9:14
  Bill Gilliland: So what have you noticed?
• 9:17
  Bill Gilliland: I mean it's interesting.
• 9:18
  Bill Gilliland: It sounds like you've had three paths.
• 9:20
  Bill Gilliland: It may have been two entrepreneurs and now you're all entrepreneurs, or maybe it was three entrepreneurs and now you're throwing in together.
• 9:30
  Bill Gilliland: What kind of challenges has that presented?
• 9:34
  Bill Gilliland: Or opportunities, I guess would be the positive way to look at it.
• 9:37
  Reggie Tidwell: Yeah, you know, I think, address challenges and opportunities, and I think, honestly, even the biggest challenges so far for us have been totally manageable.
• 9:51
  Reggie Tidwell: The biggest one was that we hadn't even actually had a chance to launch like we didn't.
• 9:56
  Reggie Tidwell: 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, uh, 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've a lot of conversations around it, but nothing on paper yet.
• 10:22
  Reggie Tidwell: And so now we find ourselves in this place where that job is launched.
• 10:28
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 10:41
  Reggie Tidwell: What does that look like?
• 10:42
  Reggie Tidwell: 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?
• 10:53
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 11:04
  Reggie Tidwell: 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 They'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.
• 11:40
  Reggie Tidwell: 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 kind of see how we can stretch the modern days of, of, of working um together.
• 11:57
  Reggie Tidwell: You know, having somebody that's fully remote and being able to leverage that while also having clients in the mix.
• 12:04
  Reggie Tidwell: So far it's been absolutely smooth.
• 12:06
  Reggie Tidwell: You know, you wouldn't even have to know Tim was, you know, thousands of miles away.
• 12:13
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
• 12:14
  Bill Gilliland: We, um, you know, our firm is virtual.
• 12:18
  Bill Gilliland: I was.
• 12:18
  Bill Gilliland: I was actually looking for an office before COVID and you know that was smart.
• 12:26
  Bill Gilliland: I was glad I didn't buy an office right before, right before COVID.
• 12:30
  Bill Gilliland: But yeah, and since then we've been 100 percent remote and that's that's.
• 12:35
  Bill Gilliland: That's worked great.
• 12:35
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, it's not, it's, it's an interesting that does present different challenges.
• 12:40
  Bill Gilliland: So that's great, that's fantastic that that's worked out and you know.
• 12:45
  Bill Gilliland: 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.
• 12:55
  Bill Gilliland: So I think, once you figure that out, I mean I just think that's helpful actually.
• 13:00
  Reggie Tidwell: Yeah, I think so you.
• 13:01
  Reggie Tidwell: Once you figure that out, I mean I just think that's helpful actually.
• 13:04
  Reggie Tidwell: Yeah, I think so too, and honestly, I think one of the silver linings of COVID having a global pandemic was, I think companies learn just how easy it is to have remote oh, I think yeah.
• 13:15
  Bill Gilliland: I think, yeah, I think it's awesome.
• 13:16
  Bill Gilliland: So, um, the I mean you're putting three people together.
• 13:22
  Bill Gilliland: Do you have?
• 13:23
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, is there a division of labor?
• 13:25
  Bill Gilliland: Is are you guys all do the same thing?
• 13:27
  Bill Gilliland: What, what?
• 13:28
  Bill Gilliland: How's it working?
• 13:29
  Reggie Tidwell: That's a great question, bill.
• 13:30
  Reggie Tidwell: So so my strengths are branding I'm also a commercial photographer.
• 13:37
  Reggie Tidwell: I do a lot of have have done in the past a lot of stuff for explore, ashville, mountain biz works, some great local, local agencies, um entities.
• 13:50
  Reggie Tidwell: I you have a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design, tim.
• 13:57
  Reggie Tidwell: Also also branding thought leadership, which is thought partnership, which is actually one of the services that I think is one of our strengths.
• 14:08
  Reggie Tidwell: Tim and I do what we call brand story development and brand story mapping, where we actually articulate what a company does, but also, 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, but they don't think about the problems that their audience, that their customers, need to solve.
• 14:40
  Reggie Tidwell: But they don't think about the problems that their audience, that their customers, need to solve.
• 14:45
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 15:01
  Reggie Tidwell: João is a completely different beast.
• 15:04
  Reggie Tidwell: He comes from the user experience world and he is what I would call a multifaceted technologist.
• 15:14
  Reggie Tidwell: Maybe he knows all the software.
• 15:16
  Reggie Tidwell: He can tell you what software you need to do a certain thing.
• 15:20
  Reggie Tidwell: He'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.
• 15:48
  Reggie Tidwell: He is that and that's such a huge part of our business, and so he's a massive asset.
• 15:53
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, that is cool.
• 15:54
  Bill Gilliland: It seems like y'all are you kind of worked it out.
• 15:56
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, how to 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?
• 16:11
  Bill Gilliland: But at the top level, it seems like you got it covered.
• 16:14
  Reggie Tidwell: Yeah, part of two bills, cause part of 40 hearts is actually bringing in those other, those other people.
• 16:23
  Reggie Tidwell: Like we don't we don't want to be the ones doing it all.
• 16:26
  Reggie Tidwell: Like we have such a vibrant, amazing creative community and, uh, 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.
• 16:39
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 17:01
  Reggie Tidwell: And 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.
• 17:16
  Reggie Tidwell: 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, one of the things that we did for Artisan was we had this whole different sort of design direction, 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.
• 17:52
  Reggie Tidwell: It's very specific style.
• 17:53
  Reggie Tidwell: There's a guy in town named Dan Greta who we know very well and we know that that is his like thing.
• 17:59
  Reggie Tidwell: Like he can develop logos in that style like no one else, and so that was an immediately an opportunity to bring someone else in to do a few concepts that we were able to then take and expand upon.
• 18:15
  Reggie Tidwell: Um, 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 all have their own teams built out, that have different specialties that they're able to.
• 18:34
  Reggie Tidwell: Actually, you know, we're able to have multiple projects going on at once, projects that have come in from all over the world, and be able to keep a lot of people busy.
• 19:01
  Bill Gilliland: Man, I love that.
• 19:02
  Bill Gilliland: I really love that.
• 19:05
  Bill Gilliland: You know, in marketing, branding, advertising, there's so many disciplines and so many talented people I don't you know.
• 19:14
  Bill Gilliland: It's one of the industries that you know.
• 19:16
  Bill Gilliland: 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.
• 19:23
  Bill Gilliland: You have to.
• 19:24
  Bill Gilliland: You just can't do this stuff by yourself.
• 19:27
  Reggie Tidwell: So it's super cool.
• 19:29
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it's super cool.
• 19:30
  Bill Gilliland: Well, this I think we could talk for hours.
• 19:35
  Bill Gilliland: So I get why this.
• 19:37
  Bill Gilliland: Your first client, Tim, wanted to sit down and have a beer with you because I would love to do that too.
• 19:44
  Bill Gilliland: So, yeah, I think we need to do that because I think and I'm going to need to have you back we're a little short, but you know this is sort of running up against our time here.
• 19:55
  Bill Gilliland: Let me ask you one last question, and the question is what do you wish you had known?
• 20:01
  Bill Gilliland: Hmm, so, in other words, you know about all this, or about your whole journey, or about creativeness, or anything.
• 20:08
  Bill Gilliland: What do you wish somebody had told you years ago?
• 20:12
  Reggie Tidwell: You know it's.
• 20:12
  Reggie Tidwell: That's a great question.
• 20:14
  Reggie Tidwell: Thanks, bill.
• 20:14
  Reggie Tidwell: I think it's funny because I think I've known it for a long time.
• 20:21
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 20:37
  Reggie Tidwell: I've always known that collaboration is key, diversifies your offerings, but also, you know I love people.
• 20:48
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 21:08
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 21:39
  Reggie Tidwell: You're making okay money, but you're not having the best quality of life.
• 21:48
  Reggie Tidwell: You're just working, working, working, and so one of the things that's been really enjoyable now 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.
• 22:05
  Reggie Tidwell: I don't feel this anxiety of like as soon as I'm done with this.
• 22:09
  Reggie Tidwell: I got to jump over that.
• 22:10
  Reggie Tidwell: As soon as I'm done with that, I got to jump over this.
• 22:12
  Reggie Tidwell: So it's, it's already increased our my quality of life, I think for all of the partners.
• 22:18
  Reggie Tidwell: 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.
• 22:23
  Reggie Tidwell: I 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.
• 22:33
  Reggie Tidwell: And so, yeah, it would have been nice to have done it, but better late than never, they say.
• 22:40
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:41
  Bill Gilliland: No, I think it's great that you finally pulled the trigger.
• 22:44
  Bill Gilliland: I can tell you're really a people person and that's why, yeah, you finally pulled the trigger.
• 22:47
  Bill Gilliland: 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.
• 22:51
  Bill Gilliland: I'm sure you collaborated, but you wish you had gone into business with some of your friends earlier.
• 22:55
  Bill Gilliland: So that's, that's awesome.
• 22:57
  Bill Gilliland: Well, listen, it's been a great conversation.
• 22:59
  Bill Gilliland: Thanks for being on.
• 23:02
  Bill Gilliland: If people want to get ahold of you, what's the best way?
• 23:10
  Reggie Tidwell: on.
• 23:10
  Reggie Tidwell: If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way?
• 23:11
  Reggie Tidwell: Uh, well, uh, we are.
• 23:12
  Reggie Tidwell: Uh.
• 23:12
  Reggie Tidwell: 40 hearts is our tag on instagram it's brand new, so not a whole lot of content up there and our website is 40heartscom.
• 23:18
  Reggie Tidwell: Uh, you'll see a landing page up there.
• 23:21
  Reggie Tidwell: But, as you know, asi mentioned, we are now in that uh sort of selfbranding phase and so you'll see that evolve out over the next few weeks.
• 23:30
  Reggie Tidwell: But definitely, you know we're around and we're super excited to be a part of Asheville's economy.
• 23:38
  Reggie Tidwell: It's creative for us and I don't think this will be the last you'll hear of us.
• 23:43
  Bill Gilliland: No, no, no, I think the runway is long and skies are blue.
• 23:49
  Bill Gilliland: I think that's amazing.
• 23:52
  Bill Gilliland: One of the things I love is that you guys just got to work.
• 23:56
  Bill Gilliland: You didn't worry about trying to make your website perfect.
• 23:59
  Bill Gilliland: You're trying to make all this other stuff perfect, even though that's your business, but y'all got to work because you had clients to take care of.
• 24:04
  Bill Gilliland: So congratulations on that.
• 24:06
  Bill Gilliland: Appreciate you being on here and, yeah, I look forward to having you back on, because we got a lot more to talk about.
• 24:15
  Reggie Tidwell: Thanks, so much, Bill.
• 24:16
  Bill Gilliland: It's been a wonderful time have a wonderful day, yeah, and until next time, all the best.