Well, where to begin? We all have dreams that we shoot for from an early age—be it being a garbage man, professional athlete, race car driver, or a famous musician. With that said, I have tried to follow my dreams as faithfully as I could. I’ve never been afraid to chase a dream. I’ve had careers in music, entertainment, and sales and advertising; eventually starting my own marketing agency. While running my agency and experiencing great growth, my partner and son, Zack and I tried to go the next level by growing the company even more. Well, we made several mistakes (learning moments) that caused us to have to make some tough choices, downsizing at the office as well as in our personal lives. I felt like I hit the lowest point in my life. Everything that I had built since my divorce was crumbling before my eyes. Knowing my son had been part of this business since it started, I felt like I let him down. I felt like I let my employees down and lost my business partner because he had to make a decision to go. Everyone that worked with us had put their heart and soul in to the company and gave of themselves, and this downsizing caused so much pain. Of course the selfish feelings of letting this failure happen came as well, surfacing while walking into the office everyday by myself. This office always had so much noise happening with music playing in the background, competitive arguing between me and my son, phone calls, conferences and meetings. Now there was complete silence.
During that time we had to cut so many things and we were floating paying bills, indeed a very stressful time. Making decisions on what to cut we decided since it was late spring we would cut the gas off at the house to cut the bleeding, because we didn’t need to heat the house. Even though we didn’t need to heat the house, the gas is what supplied heat for the water. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Even though it was a little inconvenient we developed a way to make taking a shower workable for us. That month a friend and designer, Jason Duffield called to say that he was coming into town to meet with a client and asked if he could stay with us. I said sure and explained that showering was a lot like camping. He laughed and said no problem man, that was cool with him. Jason had been dealing with adverse living conditions at that time as well, living in a small attic apartment where the indoor temperatures would reach into the low 90s making sleeping unbearable. Jason had found respite sleeping in the relatively cooler parking lot in the back of his Chevy Tahoe. So “roughing it” with a camp-like shower was no sweat to Jason.
The first morning that he was here, I showed him how the process worked. A dish pan was put in the floor of the shower filled half way up with cold water. Then, a large cooking pot would be filled with water and heated on the stove, which when combined with the water in the dish pan it was the perfect temperature.
I had an abundance of these Big Yellow Cups ( a 32oz fountain drink cup from a chain BBQ restaurant) that was used to pour water over the body. After getting Jason set up with this ingenious design, I went to the kitchen to start coffee. While in the kitchen I hear Jason talking to himself. He yelled out through the door, “hey Frame, I’m gonna need a bigger dish pan.” I’m thinking what could be wrong, so I said back, “why?” Jason responded back with “it’s not big enough for my dick!” I just laughed and felt relieved that a stressful and somewhat embarrassing time could be laughed off. This of course began a long line of “My Dick” references for the rest of the time that Jason was in town as well as after he was gone.
A few months had passed but the My Dick jokes never stopped. I had another call from Jason saying that he was coming back to town to work on web development project that I was helping him with. He asked do you have my Big Yellow Cup, I had to laugh again as I said you won’t have to use that this time. While he was here the My Dick jokes revived and had a lot of good laughs. Working late one night as we were talking about the My Dick jokes I asked Jason if he had seen the recently released infamous Randy Travis arrest video after running naked on the highway, where he made a reference to My Dick while handcuffed. Of course we laughed or asses off watching. I made a comment to Jason that I had thought about designing some T-shirts months ago when this tough time of the business happened, so why don’t we do something with the My Dick idea. After we talked about it, laughed a lot and the brainstorming began but more of just making jokes about it.
The next morning while talking about it more I said something to Jason that I was going to ask our buddy Slater what he thought about and if he would help with some funny My Dick quotes. Slater thought it was a brilliant idea, that was enough of a confidence builder to truly move on this idea. We started working on brainstorming ideas and sketches and after a few months we refined it to the design of the My Dick brand.
The brand represent so much in our lives and has become an inspiration to how to live life. I know that there are so many that have experiences where they felt that they have hit one of the lowest points in their lives. I’m pretty sure that everyone has had those kinds of situations in their lives—unless they have been living in a bubble! Our goal is to give everyone a platform to tell their story. You know its OK to have ups and downs, it’s part of living. This life we are living is our chance to not give in during the lows and break through to the next level. We feel that by telling our story and giving others the platform to celebrate their story, that we will then be able to inspire others to not give up. Its a collective energy that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to; as well as giving a little help to our friends through encouragement.
If you would like to tell your story, we would like to hear from you. Just send a request for details to mystory@mydickapparel.com with My Story in the subject line. We will send you details of what we need from you. In this day and time where we see the pressures of life has lead people to live in such a dark place. Play your part in inspiring others to achieve their goals. Never Give Up!