brandwinnie

For as long as I can remember (probably since the age of 2) I’ve been playing in the creek behind our family cabin in Teton Valley, Idaho.

I’m 41 years old now, so that’s nearly 40 years of forming an incredible relationship with this special little zone of happiness that starts below a sharp drop-off of an open mountain meadow and down into a pine-laden forest with pines towering above you and the creek below. The Teton Mountain Range and Grand Targhee ski resort rise above the mountain valley floor above.

It’s probably been a solid 28 to 30 years from the time my Grandma Winnie showed me what tree pruners were and how I could cut down dead and obnoxious trees along the banks of this little irrigation creek to beautify it to become a place where we could hang out a lot more.

Ever since those first pruner snips on those trees, I was totally hooked. It then turned into getting larger pruners and eventually a chain saw.

The cabin creek was filled with fallen timbers and tree overgrowth. To the point where you could barely see there was an actual creek running through. Not only did I want to spend more time playing in the creek when I was young and into my teenage years, but as I grew older, I could start to imagine my own children and grand children playing there for many generations to come.

Bridge addition in 2019

In 2019, I was tired of getting my feet wet to cross the creek, so I built a bridge. It’s not the world’s best bridge but it does it’s job. The inspiration for it came when I was thinking about building a bridge but was contemplating going to the lumberyard to purchase some 2x10s to build this. The next morning I woke up and there was a fallen pine almost exactly where I wanted the bridge to go. So it didn’t take much work to roll it over.

I found some stumps along the bank of the creek and tried to create a somewhat level surface beneath them with flat rocks but it’s questionable. In all honesty this is probably going to need to be replaced in the fall when the water is no longer running.

I also bought some 2x6s and cut them for the treads. Then just hammered them on. Turns out it works pretty great and gets the job done for now! Just wanted a quick and cheap solution. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Future additions and updates

I think the future of the creek at the cabin looks very promising. Here are some of the future additions and updates I plan to make:
– Sandy beach
– Turn the cold plunge area into 6′ to 8′ deep swimming hole
– A deck/jump platform
– Removing all sharp rocks from the creek
– Removing all dead fall and dead trees from around the creek area
– Removing all dead timber on the hill above the creek
– Solar lighting
– A way to heat the water so it’s comfortable for swimming
– Trout for fly fishing
– Cowboy hot tubs

What I’ve learned:

Reviewing other explainer videos
As part of the rebrand process for GrowthHackers, I was tasked with creating an explainer video for the collaborative SAAS product we built for teams, called Projects.

Really loved Sandwich video and their work
As I started to do some research on video production companies that had the type of style I was after, I fell in love with the work of Sandwich. Sandwich is based in LA and if you’re a tech head you may remember the video they made for Square when they launched. It was genius at the time. [show example]

Wanted to create something similar but for half the cost.
If I remember correctly, I had contacted Sandwich and received a general ballpark for the video and it was around $300k. Once I communicated that back to the CEO, he thought we should spend a lot, but maybe only be around half that amount if possible but ensure that the exact same quality for the video was

Found a group in LA that had done good work. Worked with them to craft the script.

Two day shoot in LA
Once the script was dialed in, it was time for __ to start casting. They sent me little clips of some of the auditions for the roles and I gave feedback and we selected the cast. It was a super cool process.

Video goes live. Amazing success.

Reviews/comments of video.

What I learned

During my time at GrowthHackers, I was mainly tasked with executing a rebrand for the growth hacking community as we set out to build a SAAS product for helping teams collaboratively focus on growth.

GrowthHackers Founder and CEO, Sean Ellis, had told me the story about how he used to work for Dropbox and other Silicon Valley tech startups and that in the early days, he had a system of growth for these companies.

I was intrigued about this sort of a system and given my design and branding background, I wondered if it would be possible to systematize design in the same way.
After talking to Sean about it more in-depth, it definitely sounded like something that was possible to accomplish. And in fact, that’s what I wanted to see to fruition while at GrowthHackers.

You could imagine a system of design as a set of guidelines for a brand that changes and morphs over time as the brand carves out it’s specific niche, or as it becomes more refined through gaining product/market fit and it has to pivot into new models or products to keep the attention of it’s customer base.

Created the Brand Codex
After nearly two years at GrowthHackers and I had felt like I had achieved everything I wanted to achieve there, I took

Finding Cafe X
To find prospective brands to propose by brand codex concept to, I wanted to find innovative startups that were in their infancy but also had capital to pay me for my work. So I used a site called Crunchbase to find newly funded startups that essentially had really crappy websites and logos.

After communicating with the Founder and coming to an agreement, we moved forward with the project.

The work
Show examples of the work and try to describe in detail.

Cafe X today

What I learned