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

Nick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I took the risk of starting this business amidst absolute chaos. The story can be a long one, so I’ll do my best to abbreviate:

Back in March of 2019, I left my full-time Sales job in the Home Remodeling space with absolutely no idea what was next for me. I had nothing lined up, I just knew I was extremely unhappy with my current job and the quality of life it created for me and my now-wife, Chelsea. She worked full-time during the day, and I worked completely random hours depending on when sales appointments were assigned to me. We hardly saw each other, and I believe life is too short to allow work to make you miserable. So, I left.

A few months later, I ended up being presented with an opportunity to work a remote sales/account management job, with some opportunity for graphic design, which is where my passion had always been. That was the whole reason I majored in graphic design, but in the 5+ years since I had graduated college, not one job I had was in the design field, so I thought this was a cool opportunity that allowed me to be more present at home. Long story short, this only lasted for a few months before I was laid off due to the company shutting down. Did I mention that at the same time, I was experiencing life-threatening health issues?

This is where the story gets really wild. In September of 2019, I was hospitalized after going into 3rd-degree heart block, which was basically causing my heart to stop beating at random times, causing me to get super dizzy and pass out. Luckily, I always came back. I had a pacemaker/ICD implanted in my chest, but the doctors still didn’t know what was wrong with me. They just knew my heart would stop without it. I was 27. But at the same time I was undergoing all of the loads of tests, procedures, and surgeries to address my condition, I was delivered the news that I was being laid off. I was literally waiting in the hospital go undergo a procedure, and I was told I no longer had a job. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Update: In case you care to know the very short version of that story, I’ll skip right to the end. After a few months of frequent visits to the care team at Johns Hopkins, it was discovered that I had a condition called Sarcoidosis, and it had been attacking my heart, lungs, and lymph nodes. The heart is the rarest place that Sarcoidosis is usually found, but that’s where I had it the worst. It attacked my heart so badly that it left scarring on the muscle tissue, but luckily, it was caught early enough that it doesn’t effect functionality too much. I’m thankful to be able to say it has been almost 4 years since then, and things have been seemingly improving on the health front.

I officially started this company in 2017, I just never did anything with it. After some serious soul searching, and consulting with my loved ones, I decided it was time to give Duke Design Co the chance it deserves. If I didn’t, chances are I’d just wind up in another non-design-related job that I wasn’t happy with, and this cycle would continue. I took the leap.

Chelsea was so incredibly supportive. Here we were, not even married yet, and I have quit my job, got life-threateningly sick, got laid off, and then decided it was time to give this pipe dream a change and see if I could somehow make something of it. She never wavered, and I wouldn’t be here today without her support. She believed in me, and wanted to see me succeed in my dream, even if that meant putting herself at risk too.

I officially launched DDC full-time in February of 2020. I knew I could have failed. But I also knew that if I didn’t try at that moment, I probably never would have. I would have lived my entire life never knowing what could have been, and looking back, I am so glad things worked out the way they did. Seriously. If everything hadn’t gone like this, maybe I would have still been in the same rut and I would have never seen this opportunity. So in a really strange way, I’m thankful for it all. Here I am, now happily married with a beautiful 16-month old daughter and another baby on the way, living in a beautiful historic home in an area we love, working for myself and living out my dream of being a graphic designer while being able to be present for my family. And while I’m not sleeping on mattresses made up of stacks of hundred dollar bills, I’m happy. That’s worth all the money in the world. And I don’t know that I could still say that if this insane path of life didn’t twist and turn the way it did.

Risk is risky. That’s where it gets its name. But if you don’t take risks, you may never find the happiness you’re looking for. You may never truly live.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce your brand and the work and services you provide?

I’ve always loved art. I used to draw all the time as a kid. On long car rides, in school when I should have been paying more attention (though, oddly enough, I somehow feel that I listen better when I’m drawing, otherwise I can zone out if I’m not feeling particularly inspired by the topic of conversation)… you get the idea. I loved to draw. And I always knew I wanted to turn it into a career so I could work while doing what I love.

I applied to graphic design jobs left and right when I was fresh out of college. I found an opportunity to get some experience working for a branding company, mostly printing t-shirts for a few bucks an hour, but also getting the opportunity to try out some of my newfound design skills I picked up in college. Long days and weeks of being hunched over a silk screen printing press turned into a year and a half of no upward mobility to take my “career” to new heights (and a whole lot of spinal problems came with that job), so it was time to look elsewhere. I applied to more design jobs. More denials. I was a little discouraged at that point, considering I spent 4 years learning to become a real designer, and I couldn’t land a gig anywhere, even for minimal pay. I decided to take what I could get, and ended up in a software sales job, then working on proposals for a parking company (I used to valet park cars for back in high school/college), and then the home remodeling sales job I mentioned before.

So, skipping ahead of the journey of how I got here, here’s a little about who we are/what we do:

Duke Design Co got its start as a graphic design company. We do all things graphic design: logo creation, digital illustration, apparel design (we design all of the tournament t-shirts for Ripken Baseball!), menu design, flyer design, business cards… the list goes on. But then we ventured into the vinyl market, and it’s flourished beautifully. We’ve found a nice little niche for ourselves by focusing primarily on creating unique, custom boat names for our customers. It’s easy for someone to purchase the equipment to create vinyl graphics and learn how to use them. It’s NOT so easy to actually know how to create strong designs to send to said vinyl cutters for creation. That’s not a knock on anyone else in the industry, either. There is plenty of work to go around, and every single customer has different taste. Some like the simpler stuff and don’t feel the need to go the custom route. Others want bright, loud, intriguing graphics that make their boat stand out from all the others. We position ourselves as a company that can do it all. Duke Design Co provides professional graphic design services that can be converted into tangible graphics, which we then install for the customer. So from design, to the vinyl graphic output, to installation, we handle it all. It’s easy, and we hope from the customer’s perspective, it’s fun as hell to work with us to design the perfect boat name they’re looking for.

We pride ourselves on providing a unique, fun experience, paired with high-quality work and products, all delivered with top-notch customer service. And we strive to make sure each and every customer feels that we delivered exactly that!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

I feel so proud of this answer. The best source of new clients is – by far – word of mouth. The customers we work with oftentimes feel they have had such a positive experience, that they are happy to share our name when they come across someone looking for something that Duke Design Co can help with. It feels so rewarding to know that we have not sunken any money into paid ads or marketing – we just stick with social media to showcase our work, and by focusing on delivering top-notch service and products, the rest takes care of itself.

And this is not being said in a boastful way, either. It’s just a point of pride for us that so many people are willing to personally recommend us to others. We feel it speaks volumes about who we are and what we do!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

This story is pretty cool as well. I really didn’t put much money into this business upfront. I started very small. Chelsea’s parents, Ira and Michele, were generous enough to invest in a Macbook and a vinyl cutter for DDC to get started (apparently they believed in me too). It’s been awhile, but I think I put about $500 in upfront otherwise, and I focused on keeping overhead low. After all, I had no idea if this thing was even going to work. And being in a position where Chelsea was basically supporting both of us (I didn’t have much savings back then) I was not really in a position to put us in any more risk than we were already in. So, that was it. Funding the business came from a measly $500, an incredibly generous investment from my in-laws. The rest came from good old-fashioned hard work!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dukedesignco.com
• Instagram: @dukedesignco
• Facebook: @dukedesignco
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/dukedesignco