We had the good fortune of connecting with Austin Schulenburg and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Austin, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
Experimenting with my ideal work / life balance is something I’m currently in the middle of working through, and probably the sort of thing that I will always need to keep adjusting here and there over time.

As a small business owner, especially in a service-based business, my work / life balance can ebb and flow quite a bit. It helps me to look at this balance from a wider perspective. Instead of thinking of the work / life balance of each day or each week, I look at it from a month-to-month the perspective, or even quarter to quarter. Some months are crazy, and we typically know that going into them. Then we wrap up a big project or add a new team member, and things start to mellow back out.

We’ve grown our bootstrapped business and our headcount by carefully managing this balance of new projects + new team members. If I’m honest, the adrenaline lover part of me lives for the variety. In most cases the busy seasons are a positive sign of growth and an opportunity for our team to rally together around a clear goal. They can be awesome, *AS LONG AS* we keep a handle on the workload and make sure those busy seasons don’t last forever. They’re much more bearable, even exciting, when there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And when we reach the end of said tunnel, our more flexible weeks have a satisfying feeling of accomplishment to them, rather than the anxiety that sometimes comes with slower times.

This mindset helps me embrace the process, whatever type of season we’re in!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Pen & Mug is a caffeine-fueled creative studio cooking up engaging brand identities and silky-smooth websites for the world of hospitality & events. We’re a team of detail-obsessed creative craftspeople who believe that great service is just as important as great results.

That second sentence is really our secret sauce. We’re confident in delivering top-quality creative solutions, but the tight-knit and collaborative partnerships we build with our clients and our team members sets us apart more than any particular style or technical ability. These trusted partnerships and positive experiences are also our best form of marketing – we owe ~90% of our business to word-of-mouth referrals and repeat clients.

That’s been one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned along the way: treating people well and taking the time to give each project our best, even the smaller scopes / budgets, always has a way of coming back around and paying off down the road.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Nashville has an incredible and ever-expanding food/beverage scene, and there are SO MANY great restaurants / cocktail bars / coffee shops to explore. Even as a local it feels impossible to try them all, but if you’re visiting downtown Nashville with me as your guide, you’d better believe we’ll still give it a shot!

Here are just a few favorites in my neck of the woods that we’ll pay a visit to:

The NashVilla: this private bed & breakfast is 100% where we’re staying – it’s the coolest house in town, and based in a central location for all our other adventures.

FatBelly Pretzel & Deli: for breakfast sandwiches or lunch, you truly cannot go wrong at this local treasure’s new permanent location in East Nashville.

Monday Night Brewing: One of the coolest environments to enjoy a drink with friends, ESPECIALLY in their outdoor patio area

Golden Pony: A gorgeous and relatively-new cocktail bar in Highland Yards, perfect for a casual hang or a private events.

House Show: We’re capping it off with unplugged live music in the NashVilla’s backyard – truly one of the things Nashville as a city can deliver better than anywhere else in the world.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’ve had some amazing mentors, role models and collaborators along the journey… way too many to list out here. For this interview, I’ll just share one mentor who came along at a key point in my journey: Jacques Bastien, creator of the Creative Cookout. (https://www.creativecookout.com/)

When I joined the course it was called “Creative Freedom,” and the promise of Jacques’ coaching was to teach creative professionals how to evolve from a solo freelancer into a real-deal agency.

Jacques was incredibly encouraging and transparent with sharing his own successes and failures, and helped me open my eyes to new levels of knowledge and confidence that have been key to growing Pen & Mug to where we are today – a real-deal creative agency with an awesome team (as promised!) and roughly doubling our opportunities and our annual revenue each year for the past three years in a row!

THANK YOU JACQUES!!

Website: https://penandmug.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/penandmug/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/penandmug

Other: Clutch: https://clutch.co/profile/pen-mug#summary

Image Credits
All images shot or created by Pen & Mug

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