It's all the same work

It’s been a really interesting 3 years for me.

When I started Unqueue in 2020, I did it because I thought it would be a cool thing to do. Not because of the value proposition, or the money, or because I liked technology (I’m still not massively convinced that I do even now). I did it because it was cool. Retrospectively, not the smartest reason to start a company, but a good story.

Almost 3 years later, Unqueue’s become a business that supports 200+ small business owners realise their entrepreneurial dreams, connecting them with a network of over 37,000 shoppers (as of last year). It’s not tiny shit.

And it wasn’t the only thing we had going on. By 2021, I’d stepped away from working in type as publicly as I was (more on that eventually), started working full-time on Unqueue, and launched a new design firm with the same team: the so-called Unqueue Studio, a spin-off service business taking the learnings we used to make Unqueue an award-winning platform to create tech, processes, and design for other companies.

This studio is now 10 ADDYs deep, and I’m sometimes proud to be a business owner supporting 17 people of colour who are making world-class work from the comfort of their bedrooms. It’s a good thing, all in all, and for as much as it wasn’t easy, it’s where we are now. I’m not sure that I care what our company valuation is: for as long as we’re profitable and making work we care about, we’re good.

All this considered, the question I’m getting a lot these days is: why aren’t we hearing more about it? And the answer is an easy one: it’s been a lot. I run essentially two fast-paced businesses in Trinidad in addition to managing two active typeface publishing deals and working my way through design and proofing. I’m not sure that I know whether I’m a CEO or a designer, or an entrepreneur, or an ideas guy who needs a team.

It’s an answer that sometimes changes more than once for the day, and it’s really frustrating. It’s a maddening tempo, and I’m not sure that I can expect it to go in the direction of me taking three-day weekends anytime soon, but when I find moments of peace to sit and reflect, I realise that, yes, I’m happy.

At the core of everything I work on, I’m getting to make work that helps people. And, I think if I let myself think about it enough, I’m really focusing on trying to help people like me. Sometimes, that will look like making type to support underrepresented indigenous nations, or it’ll be creating a tech product in a country with 1.4 million people—and going to all the requisite meetings and ass-kiss sessions that being a CEO come with—or it’ll be trying to make good design more accessible for people who don’t think they deserve it. It’s all the same work.

It’s taken a long time to settle into this, and I’m hoping that I keep coming to terms with what it means, and that it may not be so much a scattered career as expressing an earnest, focused desire to make the best of the resources I have, while I have them. And sometimes, that means stirring a few pots. And maybe that’s okay.

So, I’m going to try to use this Substack as a place to let you know how it’s going. There’s a lot to talk about at Unqueue, and I have an upcoming talk in Paris that I’m really excited to give, and heading to Mexico in a few days for my first no-contact vacation since 2020.

So, stick around—if not for the gossip, for the gore.