We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandon Stuart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brandon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Creating our baby product, the bökee, with my wife, Lauren, and friend, Andrew Doan was a meaningful journey. It was born out of our real parenting experiences being frustrated that baby bottles took two hands to make when you often don’t have two hands available. Creating a physical product to solve for this, with a thoughtful, modern design was so rewarding. Holding our first prototypes and seeing it work in real life was an emotional moment! I find it amazing that it’s now helping parents all over the world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been motivated and compelled by ideas. Whether ideating for a brand, a new product, or a story, ideas have been at the center of my professional life from the beginning. I started my journey in Marketing at DreamWorks Animation and E! Entertainment where I developed a deep appreciation for storytelling. I worked with incredible creative minds and tremendous architects of narrative, and had a blast. I spent the next two years with a foreign startup in the virtual world space where I learned a great deal about global marketing and product development. From there I moved over to the agency side and began working as Creative Director leading and building teams at three different agencies.

In 2018 I desired the opportunity to take on my own clients and incubate my own products and formed a creative studio called Authir (named after my twins’ bday on August third). This kickstarted and unpredictable ride of challenges and victories building my own business. These included a baby product called the bökee which was inspired by real experiences as a new dad, and a capacity management platform called RSVD. The bökee was licensed to global manufacturer Kids2 and RSVD is now part of the CLEAR platform, which is very exciting. These successful outcomes are rewarding and jam packed with incredible learnings about the complexities of being a founder.

Today I continue to do advertising, advising, and collaborate with interesting people doing interesting things. But ideas and storytelling remain my passions. I am at my best when those are at the center of my work.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Everyone was impacted by COVID and there are many personal stories of loss and difficulty that are more important than any business experience, but it definitely proved to be a time that required creative resilience. My startups each underwent an immediate overhaul to adapt. RSVD, the reservation platform we’d incubated quickly went from a way to eliminate lines for convenience to a critical way to manage human interaction safely. On other businesses we had to navigate supply chain issues, fundraising freezes and more. I spent many late nights navigating the waters of how to keep my startups and agency work going. It proved to be a time of great reflection and ultimately clarity. It reminded me how much is out of our control no matter what we do as entrepreneurs to pursue our vision.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative to me is bringing something into existence. Taking an idea and turning it into something you can experience in a sensory way is validating and fulfilling. Being a maker is something I treasure. I believe that some of my work, such as the film work and children’s stories may outlive me which is a rewarding notion as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: studio: www.authir.co portfolio: www.brandonstuart.com
• Instagram: @brandostu
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonstuart/

Image Credits
Screenshot from CLEAR website