Four years ago, I was sitting on the back bumper of my family's car in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Behind me were nine suitcases packed tightly into the back. In front of me was Chicago. I was excited to leave.

I had spent my entire life in Omaha. I had dreams much larger than what I knew how to do with, and if I am being fair to the person I was then, I was incredibly naïve. At the time, I thought my future was in the modeling industry. I was signed with an agency in Omaha and had plans to pursue representation once I got to Chicago.

I knew I wanted something more. I just didn't know what more was yet.

My family flew to Chicago with me and those nine suitcases to help me move into my apartment-style dorm. The night before move-in, my mom and I sat together in the apartment my parents had rented for the week and watched the final episode of Ted Lasso Season 3.

There was something fitting about it. One chapter was ending. Another was about to begin.

At the time, I thought that was what launching meant. Starting something new.

Launching into University

I moved to Chicago wanting the university experience without necessarily wanting the traditional university experience.

I wanted community. I wanted an excellent education. I wanted to be challenged.

More than anything, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

During my first semester, I once boarded the wrong train while trying to get to the airport for Thanksgiving.

But by the end of that first semester, something had changed. I understood the trains. I understood how the city moved. I could find my way around.

Chicago started becoming my city.

And when I went back to Omaha for longer periods of time, I found myself getting bored.

I had changed.

The place I had launched from was no longer the place I was trying to return to.

Launching into the industry

University also began changing faster than I expected.

During the second semester of my freshman year, I found myself in a senior-level practicum course taught by Tom Eslinger, the former Global Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Tom became one of the first people with significant industry experience who looked at what I was capable of and made sure I knew he saw something there.

That mattered.

Sometimes another person's belief in you arrives before your own confidence has caught up.

From my sophomore year forward, I intentionally filled my schedule with junior- and senior-level courses because I wanted to be pushed harder.

But eventually, something strange happened.

My education and my career began moving at different speeds.

Then, during the summer going into my senior year, EGG! changed everything.

I joined the Studio as a Creative Direction Intern and, for the first time, found myself doing professionally what I had spent years imagining I might someday get to do.

Design, Video, Creative direction, Business, Operations, Project management, and Client work.

Not as an assignment… Not as a hypothetical…. Not because a professor told me to… It was real.

Suddenly, school became more frustrating.

I was learning more through doing than I could through studying what doing might eventually look like.

That doesn't mean university stopped having value. Some of its greatest gifts were the people it introduced me to—the relationships and connections that stretched into different industries and different parts of the world. Relationships I would eventually bring with me into building EGG!.

But by senior year, I was ready.

Eighteen credit hours each semester. Nearly forty hours a week at EGG!.

Classes, Clients, Projects, and Deadlines.

Graduation didn't feel like the beginning of my professional life. It felt like I was being released into something greater!

Then EGG! became something different

I saw the potential in EGG! early because I saw something in Robert early. He was an incredible mentor, but more importantly, he cared about people. That has always come first.

After my internship ended, I stayed. And the work changed.

I wasn't simply getting experience anymore. I was helping develop structures the company would operate on. I was pushing business development forward. I was helping establish what would eventually become the standard for people who had not even joined EGG! yet.

At some point, I stopped feeling like I was participating in somebody else's company. I was helping build it.

I remember one particular conversation.

Robert was driving me back to my old apartment after a long day at the office. I was talking about rebuilding my personal portfolio and thinking about what I might eventually create for myself.

He told me something remarkably simple:

If you want to build something, build it through EGG!.

That conversation changed the way I thought about my future.

For most young creatives, ambition means eventually leaving. Get the experience, build the portfolio, find the next agency, get the better title, go somewhere bigger, or start your own thing.

But what happens when you find a place large enough to hold the things you haven't even dreamed of yet?

Building on nothing

Getting EGG! to this point has not been glamorous. The hardest part of moving from early EGG! to public EGG! has been building on nothing.

When you don't have endless resources, you get creative. When there isn't a road, you make one. There have been periods without income. There have been late nights. There have been client briefs and RFPs finished during hours when reasonable people are sleeping.

There has been a lot of caffeine… Lots of caffeine.

There has been a lot of faith.

Faith in myself. Faith in this team. And, for me, faith in God that this was the path I was supposed to keep walking.

I don't romanticize the uncertainty. But I also don't believe job security exists in the way we sometimes pretend it does.

If uncertainty exists everywhere, I would rather accept it while building something I believe in with people I believe in.

That realization gave me a surprising thought:

EGG! might be the last job I ever have.

And that doesn't scare me. It excites me.

The last job doesn't mean the last chapter

When I say "the last job I will ever have," I don't mean I want to sit in the same chair, doing the same work, carrying the same responsibilities for the next forty years—Quite the opposite.

EGG! feels big enough that I could spend a lifetime becoming different things inside of it. I want to build businesses. I want to make films. I want to design. I want to lead people. I want to serve communities.

I want to build another EGG! office somewhere in Europe one day—Prague has occupied more than a few conversations in my head.

I want freedom. Financial freedom. Relational freedom. The freedom to be present.

And I want to build a career where success doesn't require sacrificing one of those things to achieve another.

At EGG!, I have found an environment where I can imagine that being possible. There is remarkably little ego here. The point isn't protecting your territory. The point is making the work better.

That matters to me.

Because I love the people I work with. I love our clients. I love what I get to create. And I love knowing that the things we build can have an impact beyond ourselves.

So, what is a launch?

For most of my life, I thought launching meant the start of something new.

Chicago was a launch. University was a launch. Entering the industry was a launch. Graduation was a launch. But EGG! has made me reconsider the word. 

Because the EGG! people see publicly today did not begin today. It was built before anyone was watching. It was built during long days. It was built through uncertainty. It was built through conversations in cars after work.

Through ideas that sat in documents waiting until we finally had the time and resources to bring them into the world. Through all-nighters. Through mistakes. Through relationships. Through failures. Through learning how to fail forward and fail fast enough that failure becomes information instead of identity. Through people continuing to believe in something before there was much evidence that they should.

That's why I don't think a launch is simply a beginning anymore.

A launch is a declaration.

A declaration of the work that happened when nobody was watching.

A declaration of the grit required to continue when the outcome wasn't guaranteed.

A declaration that whatever you have been quietly building is finally ready to meet the world.

Four years ago, I left Omaha with nine suitcases and more ambition than understanding. If I could talk to that version of myself sitting on the bumper of that car, I would tell him to keep doing everything he could to stand out.

Run toward the things that scare you when you know, somewhere underneath the fear, that you're supposed to do them.

Let people recommend the traditional path. Let people doubt you. Keep walking. Keep failing forward. Keep walking next to God. The mountain is rarely as high as it looks from the bottom. The gap is rarely as wide as it feels before you jump.

And sometimes you have to get far outside your comfort zone before you discover just how capable you actually are.

Today, EGG! has officially launched.

But for those of us who have been building it, this isn't Day One. It's the moment we finally opened the doors. We have spent years building the runway. Now it's public.

Welcome to EGG!
Wow, it feels good to say that.