I’m a Bangor, Maine graphic designer, brand designer, and artist.
I was raised by two self-employed, creative people in Eddington, Maine. My mother is an artisan jewelrymaker and my father was a carpenter and inventor.
I grew up around entrepreneurship, so I had a real appreciation of the struggle and innovation that goes into building businesses, right from the beginning.
I saw my dad build his kitchen equipment business from scratch— salvaging, repairing and reselling whatever he could find.
Over the years, my dad built on those humble foundations to create a small business that supported our family.
My mother was, and still is, an artist and craftsperson who carved out a flexible work life. She was able to stay home with me as I grew up, something I’m incredibly grateful for. For many years, she painted lobster buoys with scenes of Maine lighthouses, which were sold in shops on the Maine coast.
Given this strong family history of self-employment, it’s surprising that I didn’t see it as a viable path for me. But my parents and I both expected that I’d go to college, get a degree and work for someone else. A “real job.”
I eventually did try to take this path. I worked a variety of short-lived jobs in lots of industries, and I studied ecology at the University of Maine.
I did love nature, but it turns out that I wasn’t as science-oriented as I’d hoped. I was struggling badly to memorize all those trees, rocks, and chemical formulas. I loved my classes that were more humanities oriented, and dreaded the ones I was required to take for my degree.
I wasn’t happy, and I had no idea what to do about it except just… keep going.
Worse, I was slowly getting sick.
At age 25, I had a moment where I got so fatigued while on campus that I couldn’t walk back to my car in the parking lot. I was terrified. I was sick and didn’t know why or how to get better. I just knew I couldn’t keep going.
Later, it would be confirmed that I had ME/CFS, a severe, multisystem chronic illness that flared up in response to exertion of any kind.
I slowly became totally bedbound, hypersensitive to light and sound, and unable to even sit up for more than five minutes. I withdrew from school and stopped working.
My future — as I had known it — was totally over.
For years, I would spend time in and out of bed, but mostly in.
The positive thing was that this period would give me a lot of time. I spent a lot of it doing the things that I actually was drawn to, like art, web design, and illustration. I stopped making things so hard for myself.
I found that I’d been heading down a path I wasn’t interested in, just because I thought I was supposed to.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs I work with can actually relate to this realization very well.
But now my life as I had known it was gone.
I needed to forge my own path, since all the traditional ones were closed to me.
When traditional employment and school became impossible, the only thing left was to become an entrepreneur - to do it my own way.
Eventually I went back to college — online, this time — to study art history, communication and graphic design.
And I started designing and illustrating, building my business BoyPilot Goods, a retail and wholesale brand focused on stickers, shirts, and other printed products. In the beginning, I designed products on my laptop and shipped them right from a table that rolled over my bed containing all my shipping supplies.
In 2020, I graduated summa cum laude from Southern New Hampshire University.
In 2021, BoyPilot Goods became a top 1% Etsy shop generating a full-time income and I began wholesaling nationwide.
In 2022, it became a top 0.1% shop.
And I bought my beloved house in Bangor, Maine!
In college, I had taken a class in branding and logo design and absolutely loved it. I used the skills from that class and others to land my first real-world branding client.
I found that I absolutely loved helping my clients create polished, exciting, beautiful brand identities. I believed in their missions and the good they were doing for their communities. I wanted them to look their best and have all the tools they needed to succeed.
