Meet Rustin Coburn of Jack Spades in Union Station

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rustin Coburn.

Rustin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up in the mountains of Colorado, with a family that loves to travel, adventure, and build entrepreneurial ideas. At a young age, my parents divorced, creating a very diverse and challenging environment for my brother and I. Our father’s house was adventurous, exciting, and erratic. Our mother’s house was calm, nurturing, and focused.

Since then, I have spent my life traveling the world in order to better understand myself and to better understand other humans — Asking questions and exploring reasons for what my aspirations and goals are, and how it is both similar and different to other people. I have been a creative from day one, motivated to make a difference through hard work that improves the lives of others and builds community.

Driven by a curious and creative spirit, I have been highly motivated and focused for the past 12 years towards developing innovative strategies for brands, places, and passionate leaders. My motivation is purely driven by solving problems that collectively improve our community and our planet. With any new project, I infuse my diverse and extensive experience; ranging from leading the marketing and brand teams of a San Francisco technology and culture company to founding a fashion design incubator, launching new technologies, and creating a global clothing brand.

Currently, I am a partner at Jack Spades Studio, A human-centered agency that specializes in sustainable growth through storytelling, lead generation, and experience design. I also spend time mentoring for programs like Unreasonable, Watson University, and Uncharted. Outside of work, I love to spend time outdoors with my wife and our Husky mix. I also still spend a significant amount of time traveling to surf, snowboard, and mountaineer.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We all go through difficult times, and my struggles are no better or worse than anybody else’s. But they have certainly played a significant role in my life and shaped who I am, and how I approach the world.

When I was born, I was deaf, but it was not discovered or identified until I was three. I had to get surgery on my ears when I was about four years old. After that, I could finally hear, and everything was transformed! This significantly changed the development of my mind and the development of my verbal communication. Partly because of this, I have a very strong ability to focus on one thing at a time. This has been a huge benefit to my ability to be successful in work, sports, and relationships.

The downside to this is that I’m often not aware of things in my surrounding environment. This has led to unneeded arguments, failed businesses (I filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy on my clothing company in 2011), a very bad car accident when I was 19, and several broken bones. As a matter of fact, I am currently healing from a broken arm. This happened on a deep powder day snowboarding in the backcountry. The positive to these hard moments is that it has forced me to slow down and learn more about myself. During these times in my life, I have probably gone through the largest leaps in personal growth and development.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
For the past 15 years, myself and my business partner, Antoine have independently witnessed the tendency of lead generation to fall flat without user experience, and vice-versa. Antoine spent his career obsessing over the details of providing an incredible experience for every customer and fixing the leaky funnel. Myself, on the other hand, became an expert in building and scaling high-quality lead generation and authentic brand awareness. Along with my teams, I built several multi-million dollar brands. But we both continued to see great ideas and talented teams fall short of reaching their full potential. Upon working with each other on the same project, we found our match. With intention and speed, Jack Spades was born.

When you think of it, it’s not that hard to convince a human to purchase an item once. It’s no surprise that agencies have gotten pretty good at developing high producing conversion funnels. The hard part, however, is to get that same person to stick around for another year, to purchase again, to feel a sense of community with the brand & to become a loyal customer. While it’s harder, it’s not impossible and we believe that it’s worth the effort. We unleash the power of compound interest by focusing on bringing the right customer onboard—not only right now but also—a year from now.

We bring the expertise and proven processes of a skilled employee, we bring the loyalty and transparency of a partner, and we bring the commitment to success and results of an advisor. We’re not doing agency work. Rather, we’re jumping in as partners on the project—making it so that there is no incentive to cover up poor work. People need high performing lead generation and human-centered user experiences to succeed in this day in age. This is a future worth working for. Currently, we manage the marketing and growth initiatives for global companies like; SurfAir, LocalLogic, and SmartJobBoard. We also have a few exciting new projects, but I am not able to share the details with you yet.

What were you like growing up?
I was pretty shy growing up, but I always had very close and very solid friends in my life. I was really lucky in this regard. The kind of humans that have a great moral and ethical foundation, but also think for themselves and want to experience everything in the world. They believe in treating people with love and respect but are not necessarily rule followers.

I realized at a very early age that I was not the smartest or the most talented person in the room. But that I could work harder and maintain a steady and positive outlook on everything. I was very organized and disciplined with my school work. I was also pretty mischievous and stubborn, which led me into a lot of adventures that we’re not always 100% legal… nothing serious, more of the lighthearted mischievous adventures that kids like to get into. But it did get me into trouble and arrested a few times.

I was always an artist and spent a lot of time drawing, painting, and designing. This was the foundation for the types of businesses I would start later in life. I also loved individual outdoor sports. So from a very early age, I was into hiking, climbing, and skateboarding. When I was a little older, I got very into snowboarding and surfing. These activities are still what I love today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jackspades.studio/
• Email: rustin@jackspades.studio

Image Credit:
Antoine Meunier, Kenny Luo, Wade Austin

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