We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Austin Schulenburg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Austin below.
Austin, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
Pen & Mug began as a moniker that I used to take on freelance work as a college student. I was studying graphic design and business at the time, and the people I admired most in the design industry were (and still are) all small teams of creative pros at independent agencies who get to work with the biggest/coolest brand names you can think of.
From the very beginning that’s what I wanted to create – a small team of hyper-talented people. That’s part of why I used the name Pen & Mug instead of my own name (admittedly, Schulenburg being long and difficult to spell was also a factor). So, I started the way many service-based businesses start: I took on all the work I could find for friends and family, I invented a few projects for myself, and I started sharing it all online. I got in a lot of reps with lower-stakes projects, and I’ve kept solving problems and figuring it out as I go ever since!
My first experiments with building a team also began as baby-steps. I didn’t seek out investors or hire anyone full-time – I asked friends with similar skills and interests to collaborate with me on this or that. One of those friends was Jeremy, a developer I met at my day job. We built a website together for a freelance client, and then another, and then a third. In addition to client work, Jeremy agreed to teach me more about web development and started doing some work (free of charge) for the Pen & Mug brand as well. Our partnership grew organically, and before long we acknowledged what was already true: Jeremy was a part of Pen & Mug.
We were more like a garage band at the time: we didn’t have a formal contract or an equity agreement or anything like that, but we knew that we were in this together, and we started describing Pen & Mug as a two-person duo. (Jump ahead to today: Jeremy is my official co-owner of the business, complete with actual paperwork.)
Today we’re a team of four, and our two other team members have both joined the team in a similar way. We partnered up with Morgan and Kyle each for a one-time project, then maybe another or two more after that, and then we talked longer-term and reached an agreement to upgrade from favorite “one-gig-at-a-time” collaborators to official team members. This has been a good way for us all to feel out our working relationships together before making any long-term commitments. Finding team members who are willing and able to take this slow-growth approach with us has enabled us to grow our team steadily without fundraising or investor backing.
Austin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Pen & Mug is a caffeine-fueled creative studio cooking up engaging brand identities and silky-smooth websites for businesses on the rise, particularly in the hospitality space.
If you take that one layer deeper, we are service providers who help businesses communicate clearly, build legitimacy, and turn crazy ideas into tangible realities. We’re a team of detail-obsessed creative craftspeople who embrace collaboration and believe that delivering a great client experience is just as important as great results (and we have the positive reviews to prove it! https://clutch.co/profile/pen-
Currently our core team of 4 are all based in Nashville, TN. We work remotely and partner with clients and collaborators all over the country (and hopefully soon international as well!)
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
My first job out of college was on an in-house creative team at a large corporate company. It wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind, but it ended up being the perfect place for me to land. I got to meet and learn from awesome people and super talented designers, and I was a part of a team working on larger projects that I would have ever landed on my own at that time. The fact that it was an in-house team also meant that it was totally kosher for me to take on a few of my own freelance clients as a side-hustle.
I grew so much in my 5 years on that team. My teammates taught me SO many new skills and so much about the business world, and the stability of that job allowed me to fearlessly chase the dream of Pen & Mug. I was never anxious about finding work, and the slow seasons didn’t put me at risk of starving or missing rent. And on the days when this stability felt a little boring, my freelance projects would provide the challenges and variety that I craved.
It was a great situation, so I stuck with that job longer than others I know who’ve taken a similar path from side-hustle to full-time, but I never got too comfortable – my heart was always set on making the jump. I continued to take on all the design work I could manage (and sometimes a little more than that…), and I took a business course that taught me a whole new level of pricing / pitching / growth strategy. In my last year at the day job Pen & Mug had grown to a six-figure business, and that was as clear a sign as I could hope for that it was time to make the switch.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Word of mouth, hands down.
Our team’s steady growth can be credited completely to our incredible clients, collaborators and supporters. I’d estimate 80-90% of our business has come from referrals and repeat clients, and a large majority of the proposals we’ve sent out have been accepted as a result. Typically we aren’t “competing” for jobs in a typical sense – brands and businesses are coming to us already confident that we’re the partner they want to work with. It is the most awesome and most humbling measure of success we have to brag about.
If I didn’t already believe in prioritizing client experience and putting in the work to hit every project out of the park, this is a VERY compelling reason to do so.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://penandmug.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/penandmug
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/penandmug/
Image Credits
These can all be credited to our team.