People who make should be able to make a living

We both learned the business the hard way.

Nobody sat either of us down and explained pricing. Or positioning. Or what to do when a client goes quiet on an invoice.

We learned it the way most creatives do. Badly, expensively, and by trial and error.

And because we didn't want other people to face that same struggle, we started helping other creatives build their businesses. We built tools, created content, designed courses, and had deep conversations with our peers.

Then we started noticing the same things popping up, over and over.

After a decade of these conversations, patterns appear. Across creative disciplines, industries, and experience levels, creatives seemed to struggle with the same set of problems. Pricing their work. Building a portfolio that represented them. Bringing in clients. Diversifying their revenue streams. Building a business.

Creatives weren't stuck because they lacked talent. They were stuck because nobody had ever shown them the other half of the job.

So we built what we wished we’d had.

We took the patterns from those hundreds of one-on-one sessions and the things that had actually worked in our own studios, and turned them into a program.

We called it Accelerator, and we ran it as a part of The Futur.

And it was never designed to be a long term commitment. We hoped that folks would come in, get what they need to grow, then leave with a thriving creative business.

That was the whole plan.

And it worked.

A designer who had gone twelve months without a client landing three paid projects. A brand strategist closing $40,000+ in work with another member. Somebody’s first hundred dollar invoice, which mattered exactly as much.

But then... people stayed.

That part wasn't in the plan. They stayed for the calls. They stayed for the feedback.

But mostly, they stayed for each other.

They started referring each other work. Hiring each other. Answering a portfolio posted at eleven at night before morning. What we had built as a course had quietly become a vibrant, close-knit community, and the community turned out to be the part that changed people's businesses.

So we followed it. We went deeper instead of wider. As we put it at the time, it had "grown in depth beyond its original vision."

We needed our own place.

The Futur's mission is enormous and intentionally broad, to help a billion people make a living doing what they love. Our program went the opposite way. Narrow, deep, one room of creatives who know each other by name.

Both are good work. They're just different jobs, and doing both well from the same building was getting hard.

So in January 2025, Accelerator became Maker Division. The whole handover was collaborative from the first conversation to the last, nearly 400 members came with us without missing a coaching call or a billing cycle. We still consider ourselves part of that extended family.

Since then? We’ve been busy.

In 2025 we took the community offline for the first time. Maker Vegas was two days of workshops on income streams and scaling a team, plus axe throwing, a sword fight in a medieval steakhouse, and a night at the Punk Rock Museum. (Ben got to play Matt Skiba's guitar. He still calls it an out-of-body moment.)

Then we went back in Spring 2026, this time to walk the floor of one of the biggest licensing expos in the world together.

We built workshops like Project: Branding and Rock Your Brand. We started Off-Season, a summer sprint for members who want to use the slow months instead of just surviving them. We’ve sent more than thirty issues of The Dispatch, and started a podcast so you can hear us talk shop.

The best part hasn't changed, though. People still finish the course, build their studios, share their incredible work... and stay.

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