Betting on Franklin

“A rising tide lifts all the boats.” - JFK

We’ve heard this phrase a lot over the years, especially as it comes to the economy. However, it doesn’t always feel that way. There’s a growing disparity between the wealthy and the rest in the United States, and it’s important to recognize that Kennedy’s quote is not universally true.

However, I still believe it. I still choose to live my life and career largely by those words.

In the late 1980s, Seattle had a handful of clubs, a tiny independent record label, and a group of musicians who couldn't stop showing up for each other. They played in each other's bands, sometimes two or three at a time. Chris Cornell once said that what made the Seattle scene different from places like New York was that the bands weren't climbing over each other to get ahead. They were supporting each other. Learning from each other. Jamming together, talking about what they liked and hated about each other's music, and drinking a lot.

Matt Cameron drummed for Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Temple of the Dog. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard played in Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, and Pearl Jam. The members of Alice in Chains overlapped with Mad Season, which overlapped with Screaming Trees. It was all one web. And when Nirvana's Nevermind broke through in 1991, it didn't just put Nirvana on the map. It pulled the entire scene into the spotlight. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney. Seattle went from a city with shows that couldn't fill a room to the music capital of the world. Not because one band got lucky, but because a community had been building underneath them for years.

And then there's probably the most famous example. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, nearly every early employee walked out the door within a few years. But they stayed close. They invested in each other's next companies. They sat on each other's boards. They co-founded new ventures together. Peter Thiel became the first outside investor in Facebook. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen started YouTube. Reid Hoffman built LinkedIn. Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons created Yelp. Elon Musk went on to SpaceX and Tesla. The group became known as the PayPal Mafia, and collectively they've founded or funded at least seven companies valued at over a billion dollars.

The pattern here is hard to miss. A small group of people, working in close proximity, doing similar but not identical work, choosing to support rather than compete with each other. One person's breakthrough creates gravity that pulls the others forward. And the rising tide, once it starts, doesn't stop with the original group. It reshapes the entire landscape around them.

It's a pattern that repeats everywhere you look (The Inklings, Motown, Y Combinator), and the common thread is really proximity. People doing similar but not identical work, in the same space, at the same time, who chose to support each other rather than compete. The breakthrough came from a community that had been building trust, sharing context, and creating gravity long before anyone outside of it was paying attention.

I think about this a lot, probably more than most web designers should.

If you're a creative professional in 2026, the conventional wisdom is to niche by industry. Pick a lane. "I'm the web designer for dentists." "I'm the copywriter for SaaS companies." Go national. Build a personal brand online. Chase scale.

I went the other direction. I bet on Franklin.

Franklin sits in one of the wealthiest, fastest-growing counties in Tennessee. Over 6,000 employers call this area home, including the corporate headquarters of more than 40 companies. A third of the fastest-growing companies in the state are here. The median household income in Williamson County is over $131,000. And yet it still feels like a small town. People care about community here. They want to work with people they can meet, sit across from, and trust. 

When I tell someone I'm a Franklin-based web designer, that actually means something here. It's a small thing, but it builds trust fast. I'm not a faceless agency three time zones away. I'm the guy you might run into at The Factory or Kroger.

But don’t think it’s just about being local. Rather, it’s about being local with the right people.

For a while, I did the traditional networking thing. Showed up, shook hands, swapped cards. It wasn't useless, but it wasn't exactly moving the needle for me either. It felt transactional, because it was.

When I shifted my focus to connecting with other creatives, things changed almost immediately. Not business owners who might need a website someday, but the people doing work adjacent to mine. Some of them are technically competitors. But we have different styles, different niches, different personalities, and there’s more than enough work to go around.

That shift is what led me to the Franklin Creative Club. And while this wasn’t my goal going in, actual work started flowing for me from FCC. Not because anyone was obligated to refer me, but because when you actually know someone, when you've sat in a room and heard how they think and what they care about, it's a lot easier to recommend them. In the last year, I've landed multiple projects working alongside people in the club. 

Even some of my biggest wins so far trace back to the same principle. I spent months using automation tools to target local business owners. Almost nothing came of it. When I stopped automating and started actually connecting with other creative professionals, having real video calls and coffees, doors opened that I didn't even know existed. One of those connections, a guy I only met once over a video call but genuinely hit it off with, referred me to a colleague a few months later. That referral turned into a museum project for one of the most iconic artists in American history. Which has since turned into more and bigger projects that I hope to talk about soon.

None of that would have happened if I'd just been the "web designer for dentists" working remotely from anywhere.

I think there's a version of this available to every creative professional reading this, and most of us are leaving it on the table.

We live in a place that's growing. The economy here is real and strong. The people here have money to spend and work that needs to get done. And most of them would rather hire someone they know, or someone that someone they know recommended, than roll the dice on a stranger from the internet. The data backs this up too. Over half of small businesses say referrals are their primary source of new business. Word of mouth drives somewhere between 20 and 50 percent of all purchasing decisions, and referred clients are more loyal and more profitable than ones acquired any other way.

But referrals don't come from being online. They come from being known. And being known comes from showing up.

My goal is pretty simple. I want to be the person that comes to mind when anyone in this area says "I need a new website." Not the best web designer in America. Not even the best in Tennessee. Just the one that everyone in Franklin thinks of first. That might sound small. To me, it feels like one of the biggest, most achievable things I could aim for. Franklin is small enough to make a meaningful impact but large enough to sustain a great career. And I don't think I'm the only one here who could make that same bet.

If you're a photographer, a copywriter, a brand strategist, a videographer, an animator, whatever your craft is, there is room in this community to become the person people think of first. Not by outspending everyone or grinding out content for an algorithm. By being here. By really getting to know people. By doing good work for the people around you and letting the referrals compound.

A rising tide does lift all boats. But you have to be in the water.