Meet Sam Minneti of Design Rangers in Colorado Springs

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Minneti.

Sam, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I was a girl who loved to read. Books as big as my head. Books that transported me to another world. Books that were assigned and books I just couldn’t put down. In first grade, I remember my gold star being the very highest on Mrs. Young’s reading chart. One day she asked me to tutor some of the kids that were a grade below me. I was thrilled that my recess time would be spent reading and helping my friends to read.

I was the girl who read every label, sign and package at the grocery store – soaking in every word I could find. As I got older, I read books that whisked me away to moors filled with passionate love, castles spilling with magic and mischief, and enchanted forests concealing everlasting life.

I think it was my love for reading that lead me to copywriting. I believe language allows us to connect to each other in our most human form. It offers the chance to walk in another’s footsteps, express immeasurable joy, and feel immense sorrow. It’s through language that we’re able to create stories to explain our own world and the world around us.

So of course, someone who loves reading would become an English major. But like any good college student, I changed majors (four times, to be exact). One semester I was bound to be a great writer. The next, a pediatrician. Then I had it in my mind that I would start my own business.

After my freshman year of college at Florida State University, I followed my (then) husband to Colorado Springs where he was stationed at Fort Carson. I was determined to be a great wife. If you know anything about the enneagram type 3 (The Achiever), you know we’re determined to be great at whatever it is we set our minds to. I remember waking up early each morning to pack his lunch and kiss him goodbye.

I took a year off from college, just 19 and married – and desperately trying to figure out what I wanted to be “when I grew up.” After a year of ruining pot roasts, burning pre-made cookie dough and washing the whites with a red towel, I thought I had finally mastered the art of being a wife and was ready to go back to school.

I enrolled at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs and started taking business classes. I took accounting, economics, business management and more. But it was my “Marketing for Business” class I became obsessed with. It was then that I decided to change my major to Organizational & Strategic Communications – the closest degree my college had to marketing. Comm majors just “got” each other. I think we had a sort of understanding that, while our major was a broad one, any job we took after college would require a thoughtful understanding of effective communication.

Non- communication majors felt a little differently. I remember a student in one of my remaining business classes asking me, “What do you do – just practice talking?” But in a sense, he was right.
What does a Comm major do? There were so many options: PR, television, broadcasting, marketing strategy, project management, news reporting and editorial work.

I took my first internship at a PR agency in downtown Colorado Springs. I learned to self-manage, write press releases, rally team members, and, most importantly, that I never wanted to do PR again.

The next job I took, now a Junior at UCCS, was a paid internship at a tourism marketing organization. In this position, I tracked and analyzed analytics for our 25 tourism partners in and around Colorado Springs, managed social channels and a blog reaching 50K followers and worked directly with the Executive Director to plot the strategic marketing plan for the future of the organization.

I loved this job and the work I got to do for the tourism industry in Colorado Springs. How many people can say they rafted the Arkansas River on Monday, presented at a board meeting on Tuesday and then fed giraffes at the zoo on Wednesday? But I hadn’t quite found my tribe yet.

In the fall of 2014, I was going to school full time and just a few months away from finishing my degree. I was working 25-30 hours at my internship and still recovering from my mother’s death. She passed away from breast cancer in April of 2014. I was 22 years old. At a time where I desperately needed family, I didn’t realize I had found mine in Design Rangers.

September 2nd, 2014 marked the first day of my favorite adventure. I began working for Chris and Jenny Schell, co-owners of Design Rangers – a strategic design and marketing agency located in downtown Colorado Springs. This was the job every Comm major dreamed of: a beer tap in the wall, a ping pong table in the conference room and a refurbished machine shop re-imagined into a millennial’s co-working fantasy.

I was hired to be the firm’s project manager, a job I had never done in my life. Somehow Chris and Jenny saw potential in me. They trusted me with their business, their clients and their reputation. They encouraged me and challenged me – and even demanded that I try new things and fail. So after a few years honing my role as the project manager, when I asked them if I could try copywriting – they didn’t hesitate.

Since joining the Design Rangers team, I’ve copywritten award-winning campaigns for the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, Visit Colorado Springs, Palmer Land Trust and more. I’ve been honored to receive the Colorado Springs Advertising Federation’s Copywriter of the Year award in 2016 and 2018. And I’ve had the privilege of speaking at nearly a dozen conferences, events and speaker series about the art of using language to tell a great story.

I, like any Achiever, love a good trophy. But I can’t say the trophies make me get up in the morning when I’m exhausted. They don’t make me want to work through lunch or scribble ideas on a notepad while I’m waiting at the doctor’s office. I still believe that language and stories connect us to each other’s unique experiences of being human. And isn’t that really what we all want in life? To feel connected and to belong.

Has it been a smooth road?
Everything worthwhile in life usually takes a road less traveled. I’ve always felt like I found myself in just the right jobs at just the right time. I’ve been blessed in the career I’ve created and the community of creatives I’m so grateful to be surrounded by.

You could say my personal life – particularly in my 20’s – has taken more twists and turns than my professional life. In just five years, my mom passed away from breast cancer, my high school sweetheart and I called it quits after seven years of marriage, and my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The family and friends I’ve found myself a part of here in the Springs have been my fiercest companions, my gentlest encouragers and my most faithful rocks. I consider myself truly lucky.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Design Rangers is a strategic design and marketing agency located in a refurbished machine shop in downtown Colorado Springs. We design and develop websites, marketing campaigns and brands with a single focus: authentic storytelling. We believe in doing good work for good people – and this focus on extracting authentic brands is what keeps us fueled and fired up about design. Well, that and daily Dutch Bros runs.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I’m enamored with Colorado Springs and the ways I’ve gotten to see it grow in the last eight years. But placemaking doesn’t just happen – great restaurants, breweries, hotels and gathering places don’t just happen. The people in this community have invested their brains and their hearts into making Colorado Springs a place we all love to live, work, and play. I’m inspired by this city every time I attend an event, visit a new restaurant or just take a book and read in one of the parks downtown.

If you haven’t been to Colorado Springs in the last year, take the drive down and we’ll introduce you to a whole new city.

Contact Info:

• Address: 4 S. Wahsatch Ave. Suite 120 Colorado Springs, CO
• Website: https://designrangers.com/
• Phone: 719.387.0905
• Email: sam@designrangers.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/designrangers

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