One creative career path: How Jen Gotch went from pre-law student to co-founding ban.do

Our series “How I became a …” digs into the stories of accomplished and influential people, finding out how they got to where they are in their careers.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Jen Gotch is equal parts moxie, glitter, and feelings – and she's not afraid to talk about any of it.

From a degree that she originally intended to get her into law school to jobs as a house cleaner, personal assistant, copywriter and food stylist, Gotch found her niche in the creative space. As the co-founder and chief creative officer of ban.do, a gift, tech, stationery and accessories shop, Gotch spends her days doing everything from championing mental health awareness to helping design and cultivate the imaginative, playful inventory for which ban.do is known.

USA TODAY caught up with Gotch to talk about everything from jumping on trampolines and food styling to being appreciative of failure and understanding the importance of strengthening your emotional intelligence.

Question: What is your coffee order?

Gotch: I drink Bulletproof coffee.

Q: What is the last book you read?

Gotch: I’m toggling between “Out on a Limb” by Shirley MacLaine and a book about emotional intelligence.

Q: What are your favorite go-to songs for a busy day?

Gotch: When I’m driving to work and I want to get pumped up, I listen to “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton.

Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?

Gotch: I had a therapist for a really long time. She was my first meaningful mentor, because she did a lot more than just "talk about your feelings." She showed me how to be a grown-up and a functioning adult, to take care of myself, nutrition, all that kind of stuff.

I worked for a woman named Ursula Brookbank, who was an art director for Nordstrom. I was a stylist before I started ban.do, so she was a big creative mentor for me and taught me a lot about creative problem-solving and where you could push your creativity.

Todd Ferrier, who owns ban.do – he’s one half of the couple that we sold the company to – was my first and most impactful business mentor. He taught me a lot about what to worry about and what not to get all stressed about, how business works.

Q: What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

Gotch: Creating ban.do.

Q: What does your career path look like up until now?

Gotch: I was pre-law in college. I decided in my last semester of college that I really didn’t want to be a lawyer, so I graduated with a degree in literature and philosophy. And (then I) spent the next eight years trying to figure out what I could and should do.

During that time, I went back to school a couple times. I did a lot of random jobs – worked at a restaurant, worked at the mall, did personal assisting, cleaned some houses, did personal shopping, did some copywriting – I was all over the place. The first time I did something where I was like, this is kind of cool, was when I was an on-set dresser for B-movies. There used to be a movie studio (in Los Angeles), so if you wanted to get into Hollywood on the behind-the-scenes side, you would go and work for free. If you did a good job they would hire you for like $2 a day or something… it was not a lot of money. The on-set dresser works with the set design team to reset everything in the set every take they do, so you’re (the) boots on the ground. And then I eventually became a set decorator – I did Eminem’s first music video.

What I quickly realized is it’s such a grind working in moving pictures, and I would look at the men and women that had been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years, and they just looked so worn down, and I thought … that’s probably not where I want to be. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, so I pivoted into photo styling.

I mostly did food styling and prop styling. I had a love for photography and the pace of it was great. That really was the first thing that set the tone for building ban.do, because it gave me the opportunity to create a personal aesthetic and understand models and photography and lighting.

I did that for a decade, and then I ended up doing set design. I did the Nordstrom catalog for many, many years under the guidance of Ursula Brookbank, and then I started to move into commercial photography. I shot a cover for Real Simple magazine – I got some really great jobs out of the gate, and I actually didn’t totally know what I was doing. I realized photographers make so much more money than the stylists, but I was contributing a lot to the process and I loved photography, so I felt like if I could learn it, I could have a better career.

At the same time, I started ban.do, which was really just a side project. It wasn’t meant to be what it became, so I was kind of doing photography, ban.do and a little bit of styling still for the first couple of years that we had the company.

My friend who I started the company with used to work as my assistant on photo shoots. We had been on a couple shoots where we had been asked to make flower crowns, and it seeped into each of our creative consciousness. I made this flower crown for myself because I was renewing my wedding vows, and we both sort of made the same thing without discussing it, and I thought, maybe I want to have an Etsy shop and sell these on the side, because it was a fun, different, creative endeavor. She was like, "I kinda had the same idea," so we were like… should we just do it together?

And that’s what we did.

ban.do, when it started, was vintage, one-of-a-kind hair accessories: big, bold, sort-of fashion statements. We had a lot of brides buying stuff. It was literally like, should we sell these? And then it was like, should we go on Etsy? My brother knew how to build websites so we were like, maybe we should just make our own website. And then it somehow went from there to here.

That wasn’t planned – I can’t take any credit for being the kind of entrepreneur that actually plans things. That’s a different kind of entrepreneur.

Q: What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on?

Gotch: I’ve had so many cool opportunities. The first thing that comes to my mind is more recent – I partnered with Iconery on mental health necklaces. That sticks out because it was one of those ideas that just pops in your head, and you know it’s come from your intuition. I have such a vivid memory of how that idea came in, and the fact that it came to fruition so quickly and the response that it had, even though initially it had a positive/negative response, to be able to create that sort of energy based off a thought and actually affect change in people’s lives was very overwhelming for me. So much of my career has been having ideas and having them come to fruition, and having had so many of those over time, this was the one that meant something deeper than "I came up with the phrase on our best-selling yoga mat!" which was cool, too. But not the same.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

Gotch: Just me crying at my computer all day (laughs). Not really.

It changes a lot, but right now I’m up against a hard deadline for the memoir I’m writing. More days than not, I’m waking up, having my Bulletproof coffee, (and) I go to this workout called Lekfit where I jump on trampolines for the better part of an hour. I’m not a huge workout person but when I find something I think is fun, I can do it. So, that’s a big part of my day because it feels good to sweat that stuff out and get your brain going. And, then honestly, it’s a bunch of sitting quietly in my house, reflecting on my life and writing about it.

On the flip side, there’s a couple days a week where I’ll do the same morning routine and come into ban.do, which normally means back-to-back meetings where I try to accomplish in a day what I would normally do in a week, and stay on top of things. Right now my role is really about brand vision and overarching creative direction – I’m not boots on the ground like I used to be because, thankfully, there are people younger and smarter than me who are doing it now and doing a much better job than I used to.

Q: What do you do to stay creative?

Gotch: I have a lot of friends who went to art school, who had more formal creative training, and I feel like because I didn’t, I just took my creativity granted for a long time. I didn’t have a process – I just would call upon it, and it was there. Creating creativity for commerce is different, which is the higher percentage of what I do at this point. And so I think it’s finding visual inspiration and, more than anything else with creativity, understanding when you work best, identifying when you hit your breaking point and not trying to push yourself through that.

I feel like my creativity has more to do with trying to avoid creative blocks, and then also understanding that when they happen, it’s OK. It’s an unlimited resource – creativity – it’s not going to just vanish and not be there tomorrow. But, it sometimes kinds of runs out around 4 p.m. when I’ve made too many decisions that day and I can’t pick a shade of blue.

My ideas always come to me when I’m driving. Any time I just need to think I get in the car, and it’s like I’ve opened some door that’s not unlockable when I’m sitting still.

Q: What has been your biggest career high and your biggest career low?

Gotch: I don’t feel like I’m good at identifying either. I try not to invest too much into big success because I feel like life is so cyclical that big success is usually indicative of a big failure, and that’s OK. I will say that eight years or so where I really was in career limbo, was a low, was a real low. It was just like, oh my gosh. What if I don’t ever figure it out? I specifically remember that being a really hard time and not having an identity and not understanding how to figure out what to do. Outside of that, I’ve been really lucky. I’m pretty resilient, so I just feel like I take it all in stride.

Q: What’s been your biggest lesson learned?

Gotch: I learned that failure is a gift and should be viewed that way. Sometimes it takes a little time and distance to be able to do that, but when I look back and look at things that from most people’s standpoints would be viewed as a “failure,” I feel like they’ve always given me something that’s really valuable. We’re just trained to think of failure to be something to be really afraid of, but I wouldn’t be where I am if everything had just worked out. On the flip side, success does not come quickly. It does not come without patience and hard work and big sacrifices, personally and professionally.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Gotch: Gaining self-awareness, to me, is the key to personal and professional success. If you understand (emotional intelligence), then that’s just amazing, because you understand people and situations and yourself. That has been my biggest tool. Having (emotional intelligence) and being resilient just allowed me to get knocked down, pick myself back up. I wanted to just be and feel like I’m going in the right direction, or if I’m not, feeling like I can course correct. It’s like building that foundation and from that, there’s a hundred thousand ways to follow in my footsteps.