Dropping Keys

You know how the usual story goes. Overpaid, spoiled professional athletes play for a while, then retire and either go sit on a beach, start a Chevy dealership, or end up broke and sleeping in their car under the overpass.

Or there’s the other version that we hear all the time: NFL player retires and then becomes a Wordpress theme designer.

Wait, what?

I’m always interested in stories of people who change paths in the middle of their career and go off to do something completely different.

The story doesn’t get much better than The last 3 years by Drew Strojny, formerly of the St. Louis Rams and now founder of The Theme Foundry.

During my football career technology and design were my hobbies. I even designed my first theme in 2006, it was called Mint Chocolate Chip. OK, you can stop laughing now. I did it under my full name, Andrew Strojny, to keep it separate from my football life.

There is so much I love about this story I don’t even know where to start, but here are a few personal highlights:

It’s hard to give up what defines you

When you are known as “the guy” in a certain area, it’s hard both for other people to see you differently, and it’s hard to lose such a big piece of yourself.

There is a “now what?” feeling that many people struggle with.

Making a conscious choice where to live

Drew and his wife could have just stayed wherever they were when his football career ended, but they specifically chose a place to live that matched the lifestyle that they wanted first, and worried about income second.

I love this and am a big believer in it (despite the fact that I am living in one of the most expensive cities in the world housing-wise…).

Asking customers “Is there anything else you need?”

I once worked for a company that got its start because the founders asked one of their existing customers “is there anything else you need?”. It turns out this customer was having a problem in a specific financial area, and the founders saw it as an opportunity and built a business.

Drew did the same by listening to his table-top ad customers when they were asking about websites.

Giving the customers what they need, not going for quick money

As a web designer, I am sure it was tempting to steer his clients away from using a Content Management System. After all, then they wouldn’t need to pay him for most future updates.

Instead, he put their needs first and set them up with Wordpress. I am sure he got a lot of repeat customers and referrals out of that move.

Doubling down on what is winning

I am sure the table-top ad business was fine, but when he saw the web stuff taking off, he doubled down on it and phased out the old business. Smart move.

Passion + scale = win

When Drew found himself loving the theme business more than the web design business, that was a pretty big sign which way he should lean.

The fact that creating themes is infinitely more scaleable than project-based web design is an even bigger sign.

The combination of the two is a no-brainer, although I am sure it didn’t seem that way at the time.

Experimenting with new pricing and memberships

Instead of setting prices and forgetting it, the company did quite a bit of experimenting with different packages, pricing, etc. Even though some of the changes were risky, they did it anyways to see what would happen.

Not screwing existing customers

When Theme Foundry changed their packages, they made sure that existing users were grandfathered instead of looking for some loophole or focussing only on getting new business.

So, as you can tell, Drew’s story is an inspiring one to me. I hope everything works out well with the Theme Foundry. It’ll be interesting to watch how it develops.

Photo: Duke Yearlook