Meet Brent Blossom | Creative Director & Founder of Helm & Oar

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

Hi Brent, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I had spent 14 years branding the dreams of other people and it was time to finally brand mine. Ever since I was a kid I dreamt of owning my own business and selling products that people would experience in a profound way. After a while, I started to ask myself something foundational: “When will I start demanding the best for myself?” (borrowed from an ancient stoic Epictitus). Sunday scary, after Sunday scary this question began to reverberate in my bones until I woke up one day and decided to run after this. I haven’t looked back since.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My passion for design sparked when I was a missionary, I was 22 yrs old. In October of 2019, I was staying in a hostile just outside a small town in the Tibetan region of China, completely shooketh by what I just did that day. My team and I had bathed and held a medical clinic for a village of 90 lepers who had been outcast from their cities.

They were sent there to die.

While writing my next newsletter to my supporters, I found myself so moved by what I was experiencing yet so frustrated with Microsoft Word and Times New Roman. This feeling grew inside of me that I MUST find a way to paint a more meaningful picture of what I was experiencing; because I knew that my readers would find it just as moving. Around that time, a friend of mine mailed me an old beat up copy of Photoshop CS 1, it was then that everything changed for me. A world of possibilities opened up and I found myself up late every single night taking tutorials and trying new things out. It wasn’t long after that I started designing newsletters for other missionaries, then other missionary bases and eventually starting an agency within the organization as a whole.

After 7 years as a missionary, I knew it was time for me to retire and start a career in graphic design. I went to college at Full Sail University in Orlando Florida and was interning my face off while making coffee at Starbucks. That’s a season I’d rather not relive. haha I was quickly hired out of school and never looked back. I founded two successful agencies, one of which is still in business and thriving.

The most important lesson I’ve learned so far in my career is that if you aren’t doing something you can actually give a shit about, something that actually means something to you, you’re wasting valuable time. Life is too short to stay on the hamster wheel. Work is no longer work when you care about the mission. As a creative, my heart and brain is naturally and uncontrollably intertwined. I fail to separate “meaning” from “bussiness”. In my mind, they are not mutually exclusive. I think at the core, that is why I founded Helm & Oar. I deeply believe that hopelessness is the deadliest disease known to man and that beauty is the cure.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well this question came at the perfect time as my best friend Landon is coming to visit me here soon. The last time he came I took him to the best spots in Laguna. The Deck, Helens, Marine Room, Hotel Laguna’s “Larsons”, and we paddle boarded in the Newport Harbor.

This next trip out we will most likely do many of the same things but most importantly, I snagged us some John Mayer tickets!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Big shoutout to my family and friends who believed in me even during seasons where I struggled to believe in myself. I believe that I have the best team in the industry behind me, running my campaigns and finding the right audiences to target. And I always want to give my daughter Liv Wild a shout because she truly is my biggest inspiration to give this all I’ve got. Love you honey-bear.

Website: www.helmandoar.com

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

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helm-oar/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helmandoar/