Leaving ORCA after 10 years; saving two businesses and a lifelong friendship

In late 2020 I left my role as Creative Director at ORCA to focus solely on Briefbox; our side-project that became bigger than we had initially expected.

After pretty much a decade of building the agencies reputation in the city with my Co-founder and oldest friend; James Ewin, leaving ORCA was one of the toughest decisions I've ever had to make.

This is an honest story of why we created a second businesses, the ups and downs we faced and how the decision to go our separate ways has only made us closer.

How it all started

I remember it being quite surreal, It was a big day for our agency; Orca (the agency my best friend James and I had setup 4 years previously). We had an important pitch up in sunny-old Grimsby and we’d spent about 18 hours straight in the studio the night previously, tweaking our pitch deck. It would become one of our biggest contracts yet. On that same morning an email had popped up on my phone from Creative Bloq, an online magazine for designers with over 100k followers at the time. They wanted to do a feature on Briefbox; a side project I’d created for fun and recently shared around a few design forums. It started as a free blog with practice briefs for designers based on the types of projects we were getting from our clients and it was being received really well across the design industry.

I was feeling overwhelmed, my instincts were telling me this might become something successful but I couldn’t keep it alive on my own, and wasn’t sure whether to even suggest to James about taking it further as we were already swamped.

But, as always James had supported my side project ideas, and when hearing about the recent success of Briefbox was 100% up for bringing it into ORCA to start supporting the next generation of designers through education and to see what this could become. 

I did the Creative Bloq feature and with their massive following, it led to even more growth of our free, helpful design tool. Within a year we had grown to something like crazy like 7,000 designers using our free tool.

Bonus; that old feature is still live over here :)

In those early days, I don’t think either of us quite realised the workload we’d just added to the next 5 years of our lives and our rollercoaster of running multiple businesses at the same time began. I had essentially set James and I up to offer a free brief, every week for the rest of our lives whilst running an agency alongside it.

The elephant in the room

5 years later we had somehow managed to keep both the agency and Briefbox alive and kicking but things we’re getting challenging. 

We had managed to monetise Briefbox after around year 3 by producing higher quality, more detailed briefs with step-by-step examples of how our design team would tackle the project, but the business still relied on us creating awesome free content.

Known as the ‘freemium model’, this was essentially our growth tactic for Briefbox in the early days. Provide as much high quality awesome resources and content for designers, grow our community and then generate revenue from the 3-5% or so users who would upgrade.

When you're already working at least 60 hour weeks running the agency, it can be hard to prioritise free content that doesn’t have a direct value attached to it. Anything that doesn’t pay your bills there and then, when last week's bills still need to be paid ends up getting put to the side. 

In our case, both believing in Briefbox and hoping it could become something bigger we put the time in around client work, working evenings and weekends to keep it alive. Mentally, it was wearing us down, too stubborn to let it go, we did everything we could to keep it going but it was taking its toll.

Saving both businesses and a life-long friendship

In the wake of the pandemic, grabbing a final beer together before we went into Lockdown round 1 we came to the decision to part ways; with James solely focused on ORCA and me on Briefbox. Although we both knew it was the right thing to do, for me it wasn’t a decision I came-to lightly. It's not easy to step away from a business you had spent a decade building with your best mate, that was such an integral part of my life and my routine, but it was absolutely the best decision we could have made.

We knew we had to separate the businesses for each to flourish, but most importantly that It would save our life-long friendship. We’d spent 13yrs working solidly together every week day, and plenty of evenings and weekends, keeping the two businesses alive, so to say our friendship had been tested would be an understatement. 

Sure, things were tough at times, but what has made us even closer throughout this last year, is that we know we’re not separating because we can’t work together, far from it. We’re separating because we wanted different things out of life, our careers and that we knew it was best for each business.

Design education and working alongside the next generation of creatives is what excites me and I was starting to realise this was becoming a deep rooted passion of mine alongside the creative outlet that branding and design had, and always will provide for me.

For James, his natural ability to grow and manage a loyal team whilst somehow having the ability to act as Creative Director, Managing Director and Mr Motivator at the studio was becoming clearer everyday. As the studio grew, so did his skills.

Now, to see a new lease-of-life at the agency I'll always call my baby and to watch it flourish with James leading it and taking further than we’d ever got previously is a truly great feeling. 

Friendship wise, we’re tighter than ever, we’re now able to hang out and mess around like we used to without the pressures of keeping two businesses alive and it’s refreshing to gain that back after so many years.

Taking my mental health seriously and doing what I have to do.

From a mental health point of view, I've also had a groundbreaking year. Making the decision to exit ORCA led me to start addressing other areas of my life that either weren't aligned with my true values or that I had just been avoiding dealing with for so many years. 

It was clear that being agency owner and Creative Director alongside trying to do everything I could to keep Briefbox alive was affecting my anxiety and stress levels and putting a massive strain on me mentally. I needed to step away and re-evaluate what I actually wanted out of life which was to slow down a notch, focus on design education and to have some creative freedom again without the added pressures that can come with agency life.

Personally, I’m getting back on my illustration work and pursuing other side projects and fun tools for the design community. It’s relieving to have the extra head-space I’ve gained from releasing some of the burdens in my life that were weighing me down and my mental health is the best it’s ever been.

The future for ORCA, Briefbox and us.

For Briefbox I’m loving the additional time I have to focus on 1-2-1 sessions with the Briefbox students. Becoming closer with a community built over 5 years, but that I had never truly been able to connect with due to resources, is so rewarding. 

I’ve met so many different designers, of different skill levels all across the world (thanks zoom) over the last year and that has been pretty game changing for me as I’ve been able to build real relationships with the students we are actively helping in the industry.

For ORCA and Briefbox our working relationship is about 100 times more effective and practical than it had ever been. After Briefbox doubled in size since last August, it became clear that we needed to bring in an agency to give our brand and digital strategy a shake up. 

Appointing ORCA for the job was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.

Now, we’re letting ORCA’s challenger mindset lead our brand and overall positioning as we put a focus on working with the next generation of designers who are up for taking risks with their work and doing things differently in the industry.

It’s been a crazy ride with one of my oldest friends and the fact we’ve stayed this close throughout everything, for me, is a better accomplishment than any business success could ever provide.

To friendship.