He Kept His Client List Small on Purpose

Brent Kirby wanted to be a pilot. His grandfather built gas-powered model planes, the kind you take out to a field and fly, and Brent went along for all of it. He inherited two of them when his grandfather died and has never flown them, because he couldn't stand to crash something that took that much work. What he did instead was take things apart. Transformers, remote control cars, anything with a mechanism, just to see how it moved. He was the art kid, completely right-brained, and math was torture, so he got his high school math credits by taking a programming class. He's been building software for over twenty years without ever getting comfortable with the math. In this episode he tells DeVanté why he talks clients out of work he could have billed for, what it cost to keep his company small while everyone told him to scale, how loading FedEx trucks in college taught him to turn anything into a game, and what changed about his work when his mother started losing her sight. He founded Kurb Media in 2009 on a principle that sounds like bad business: be honest with people, even when it costs you. Seventeen years later he still works with some of the same clients. Brent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentkirby/ Kurb Media: https://kurbmedia.com/ Brent's mother, Judy Kirby, wrote a book. Blurred Vision collects a decade of her poems, writing and photographs, every photo her own, and asks whether blurred vision is only a physical condition. She was diagnosed with Stargardt's macular degeneration at twenty. Blurred Vision: https://blurredvisionbooks.com/ CTRL SHIFT is an interview podcast about the shifts people make in their careers and lives, and the shortcuts they pick up along the way. Hosted by DeVanté Pickering, Founder and President at Pick 2 Solutions. Follow to receive new episodes every other Thursday.