Finding creative direction

In 2016, I partnered with a cannabis accessories startup in its earliest days. At that point, my professional identity was tied to hands-on craft. For Green Jay, I was creating 3D product renderings to support the industrial design team, while my agency co-founder handled the graphic design.

But early on, I found myself naturally gravitating toward the story. I offered feedback on deck structure, narrative flow, and how we were positioning the product to investors. This helped me develop a great relationship with leadership and my voice started to be heard.

After all of our work helped the startup secure funding, the startup brought in a larger creative agency to establish the brand strategy and core messaging platform. They did incredible work, and we partnered with them at a deep level to help translate those high-level directives into tangible execution. As we proved we could take strategic foundation and run with it, the founders began relying on our team for a much broader scope. Our agency ended up handling website build, digital experience, sales collaterals and a full launch campaign.

The evolution of the project created a unique balancing act for me as a third-party agency partner. I had to navigate a delicate dual role: building a deep strategic partnership with the founders to push their business forward, while simultaneously managing the agency relationship to protect my own team and business interests.

With the trust of both the founders and my team, I stepped fully into that gap. I sat in on leadership calls, navigated business realities, and turned those insights into clear creative direction our team could execute against.

Looking back a decade later, I see this as the exact moment I stumbled into creative leadership. It taught me that real creative direction is about earning enough trust with stakeholders to connect the business story directly to the execution, giving the team the room they need to thrive.

I will always be grateful to that 2016 team for giving me the space to figure that out.