On November 14th Phil Tadros, co-founder of Doejo and Kelsey Kreiling, Doejo’s Social Media Director, spoke at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. To kick off the talk Phil spoke about the community building skills he developed as a coffee shop owner. It was during this time, he says, that he fell in love with creating communities and building out interior spaces. 

Owning these coffee shops provided Phil the opportunity to meet many talented freelance creatives. After connecting countless designers with clients and developers with designers, he was inspired to start an agency. Things really began to take off after Phil met Darren Marshall, a young designer who became the co-founder of Doejo.

Doejo was growing quickly. Soon the team was taking over entire rooms of Phil’s coffee shops and the little agency needed its own office. After talking about the original Doejo office space (now the home of Bow Truss Coffee Roasters), Phil shared insights into the early days of our agency, including stories behind the work for clients like Umbra, Homeless Cop and Greater > Than. 

Phil explained that from the beginning Doejo has never had a sales team – we’ve always connected to our clients by word of mouth referrals or by simply putting ourselves out there. Sometimes this means creating the product before the client even knows our name. Homeless Cop is a good example of this tactic: just for fun, we created a commercial bump for the Adult Swim network and sent it over. Lucky for us, Adult Swim’s execs liked it so much they ordered 11 more to feature in between programming.

To point out how the work process has changed over time, Kelsey and Phil shared the story of more recent client work like the Chicago Athletic Clubs, Mouthee and Contract Magazine. They also touched on viral internal projects like Map of the Dead, client partner projects we’ve supported over the years like the The Leap Year Project and the companies we have equity in.

The talk wrapped up with our plans for the future including the expansion of Bow Truss Coffee Roasters and the opening of Strange Pelican Brewery.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Apple Store! We really appreciate the enthusiastic audience questions, especially the shout-outs to the events we hosted recently and our weekly newsletter. Keep your eyes on this space for exciting updates about the future of Doejo and the projects we are helping bring to life.