💁🏻‍♀️FIELD GUIDE 39: A jack of all trades

The women of Streamline Jacks

Jordan walked into a bar…

There’s no punchline. That’s how I met Jordan. One Friday evening, I was tending bar at a beach restaurant and she bellied up. The rest is history. Instant friends. Her parents & Sarah, too (hi mom, dad & Sarah!).

Jordan is a multitude of things. The main trait that comes to mind is badass. She and the four other badass ladies at Streamline Jacks bring the Milwaukee area a hardworking design firm that will bring businesses what they’re missing at any stage. From business concepts to full-blown, successful, well-known business, Streamline Jacks can help!

This week, Jordan and I both ask you to embrace the people in your circle. The ones that have been there no matter the time between seeing or talking to one another. They’re the ones that keep you upright in a world that can turn you upside down.

Name

Jordan Philbrook

Habitat

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Occupation

Creative Director

Soundtrack

“Im going to leave you with the song that started it all back in the grey human corral at that ‘cushy’ corporate job. Sometimes the right answer is to just smash expectations and go from there.”

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When someone asks the origin story of Streamline Jacks we jump straight to the catalyst: three colleagues in a corporate job – specifically a company that skirted the legal edge of hiring out contractors (us) rather than paying out benefits. We were all stuffed to the brim of a cramped grey cubicle, and said company told us we weren't allowed the “free coffee” any longer, being mere contractor peons.

But I would guess our true origin story started with 3 little girls whose mothers showed them they could dream big.

I'm just lucky to be one of them. 

I can't remember a time that art wasn't "my thing." I guarantee that I was that kid who brought home handfuls of paper back to my parents. And I can absolutely guarantee I was the one personally offended by the thought of not keeping every single one of my masterpieces. Then, that quintessential moment all of us creatives face happened: I learned money was a necessity for living. So my art transformed into a more “career-friendly” CAD and architecture-focus throughout high school. I can do art and be rich! (I'm so sorry 16-year old me, that's not how it works.)

A few years later in college, I found myself at the top of my architecture class - crying my eyes out every day. I think that may have been the first tiny rock in the landslide that would eventually lead to making my own choices. I refused to go any further down a path that felt this heavy. I quickly changed my degree. Hello graphic design! With copious amounts of credits in physics, earth sciences – and holy cats – the mathematics, I can honestly say I entered my era of constantly, annoyingly, telling everyone, "Oh, I'm just as great of a right-brain and a left-brain." (Did you not learn at 16? No, ok carry on.)

The next pebble in the proverbial landslide came as I convinced my alma mater to allow me to take four years of graphic design classes in just two. And they allowed it. I traded a traditional college experience for huge workloads, a full-time job, and endless all-nighters so that I could finally make my way from a stressful, weird hybrid design/retail job to a crappy print-shop job, to a steady full-time corporate job with all the beneficial bells and whistles.

I provide you with this detailed account of my work history because it both prepared and led me to the biggest change of my adult life.

Spinning around in the corporate wheel, I figured, man, my parents would be proud, my family would be more secure, I'd really get to understand a different facet of my industry. But these realities slowly dissolved into disillusionment (you read that we weren't allowed coffee any longer, right?). What started probably as yet another vent session after another day of being stuffed six deep in a cubicle corral quickly turned into "what if…?" A new idea, with new imaginations and dreams started taking form with my two cohorts.

And that's where Streamline Jacks started — where Lindsay, Jen, and myself thought we could do this design thing our way, build projects and client bases the way we wanted, all while being ourselves.

We've all heard the stat that businesses typically fail within their first 5 years so we promised each other to give it our everything for 5 years. In hindsight I realize no one can promise that, but by some stroke of kismet, three incredibly determined, hard-headed, won't-back-down women did more just that.

So what'd you say you do here?

If you were a new client for Streamline Jacks we'd respond with "We work with you to create visual experiences that will stop your audience in their tracks. From brand design to digital platforms to event spaces, we tackle everything you need to capture their attention and keep them there." Elevator pitch, done.

But…

What we truly do here is connect with the types of clients who trip a trigger for us. That may be a product or service in which we believe also brings high-value to its users, or the story of their product hits close to home, or (a fav around here) women who want to take over the world in any industry. [Business 101 Reality Check: owning a design studio isn’t just about passion projects — you do, after all, have to pay the bills and your employees.]

Our drive and hard work have taken us along for a wild ride this past decade. We’ve worked with start-ups that have their product ready for market and start-ups still defining their product offering. We’ve built brands from the ground up, and we’ve breathed new life into existing brands. The amount of motorcycles we have launched across North America would shock you and the block parties we threw to do it would awe you. We’ve seen bakeries, boudoirs, and beauticians build beautiful businesses. And we’ve got to be a tiny piece of it all.

Admittedly, it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. we’ve crashed and burned on creative offerings, pulled all-nighters to people-please, been taken for a ride with money, had to deal with lawyers, and just straight-out had people not impressed by us. We’ve surfed the low waves – feeling like a failed creative, an unmotivated business owner, and the self-imposed pressure to be bigger, better, bolder. To find our voice and motivation and to ride the learning curve of hard mistakes is all part of our DNA though. We can’t have the high-highs without the low-lows. The one thing that keeps us chugging along is at the core of Streamline Jacks: the power of our partners. When we feel lost or overwhelmed, our solid relationships are always right there waiting for us (once we have a little cry-fest and get over the problem, of course!)

That was now a decade ago (Happy 10 Years Streamline Jacks!) and there are still moments where we stop and wonder who keeps letting us do this. Our biggest jump-meets-plunge lately is when we made the big decision in 2021 to hire employees for the first time ever. A scary first for any company, but boy was it easy when we thought of the perfect candidate who might just embody the same Jacks Design DNA.

We knew we needed another creative plus big brains to handle all of us creatives. So we went back to the beginning, to that grey cubicle hellscape. If we could handpick anyone we’d want on this journey with us, it was Katie. This woman is a heavy-hitter. She has “entrepreneur” written on her soul as she shares a photography business, The Flash Nites, with her husband. Plus, she had freelanced as her own design company for five years at that point. So when we saw an opening we struck! She brings nuance and new angles to our projects. She’s the perfect devil’s advocate and an absolute closer (I wish you could have witnessed the creative pitch that I just had with her).  

We still needed one more piece, though. Another employee meant more business, and the struggle was absolutely real that we could no longer balance both the creative and the project management. Enter: Sarah. It was actually Sarah and I together when we first met Skyler so this all feels very cosmically-aligned. Once we identified our need to get a better handle on project flow and alleviate the stress of trying to design, communicate, plan, and execute, I knew I had an ace up my sleeve with Sarah. She’s the methodical map to our twisty trails.  

I think that's the secret, the big secret no one tells you about “How To Own Your Own Business”. Sure, it can be hours of research, pep talks, webinars, motivational videos, but honestly, most of the time it's just figuring it out as it comes. And after all these years, we’ve learned that’s more than ok.

In this past decade one of my biggest lessons as a Jack is how crucial it is to embrace your cheerleaders — the people who light up when they get to mention your name and sing your praises. Oh and also this: While it's easy to get heads-down lost in your individual curiosity and passion, you absolutely must keep yourself open to your fellow humans who will support you when you're too afraid to ask for guidance.

Fun fact: only the best of the best get the real story behind our actual name Streamline Jacks. So drop us a line and maybe we'll let you in on it. Maybe. 

**As an important aside – I met our FIELD GUIDE guide, Skyler, in 2012-ish, while on vacation (and pining for that illustrious corporate career). We live states apart, have probably only been in each other's company a total of 7 days, but every tiny text, no matter the time between, is always returned joyfully. When I saw she was involved with FFOREST, I enthusiastically followed along and more tiny texts started popping up. My reflection here today makes all of this feel very full circle as if the universe truly is looking out for my humans.**