When I met Vicente Numpaque back around 2021, Innk was at the peak with clients such as Apple and the likes. It’s not just his or my studios that were peaking. The entire industry was blooming in the post-COVID boom like no others. Little did we know about what was coming.
Around the turn of 2021/2022 Innk crashed beautifully. We met with Vicente to talk about this experience, the scars and the lessons.
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When you work in a creative industry, especially running your own studio, you’re likely quite attached to it. And that means troubles when things go wrong.
Serious troubles.
Because while Silicon Valley startup culture normalized failure with “fail fast” ethos, on the creative side, crashing your studio often means a personal failure.
Especially with today’s social media culture, struggling to keep the business afloat or failing to do so is not normalized. It’s often connected with a sense of shame and personal failure.
It’s absolutely not necessary.
The battles we fought and the scars we have, are invaluable. And so are the lessons from them. Unfortunately, too often they are swept under the rug.
Time to change it.
“Scorched Wings” is my attempt to do so, unearthing the stories of studio and agency owners that closed, crashed or sunsetted their business amid the current tumultuous times.
It’s an effort to reframe personal failure into lessons of resilience, life chapters or whatever that is for you.
Here’s my ask.
This is a labor of love, and has a deep sense of a mission. I would appreciate you for doing two things:
❇️ Please do reach out to me whether by email, in comments, or on LinkedIn, to share your thoughts, or even if just to say hello.
❇️ Please do share it on your fav socials or with a person that may benefit from this.
Thank you!
Enjoy the episode.
Patrick
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