My Story: A Happy Accident

My name is Kyle Rogers and I am a local maker in Raleigh, NC. I stumbled into my trade a few years ago. The house I was renting flooded during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. However, I was very fortunate compared to others who were majorly impacted. I was living in a basement with my roommate Greg at the time. When the storm hit we noticed the basement started to take on water in a few different places. Luckily Greg and I spotted it in time and were able to save mostly everything.

Curious to what we were doing at the time? Great question. It was a Saturday and we had some friends visiting from out of town. We had planned on tailgating at the State game but half of us decided we didn't want to stand in the rain and wind while consuming adult beverages. We decided to take a short walk to our next door neighbors. At some point I returned to our basement to snag some more beers and quickly noticed that our kitchen (where the sub pump was) was not working and water was creeping in. I swam back to the neighbors and told Greg that our basement was flooding. We got what we could off the ground and unplugged things from the wall and then finished our beers. At that point there really wasn't more we could do. We couldn't stay there, so my fiancé (girlfriend at the time) who was the accounting manager at a hotel downtown, was able to snag us a room for the night...so that was kind of cool.

The next day we went back to asses the damage. Other than my mattress and some small pieces of furniture, I didn't lose much. Majority of the basement was carpet, so you can imagine it smelled like paradise when we returned. After that, I moved back in with my parents for a bit to figure out where I was going to live. And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t terribly upset because free rent was hard to come by in your mid twenties.

I soon found myself messing around in my dad’s workshop out behind their house. My dad has always been blue collar so he always kept a variety of tools around and eventually turned his garage into a small worskhop. I’m sure his thinking was "you never know when your son will need to move back in and start using them to make a living". It’s probably not the most popular tool in the shop, but I picked up a jigsaw and my life changed very quickly. Before I had moved in, I had this graphic I came up with. It was a simple design of the outline of North Carolina with the skyline of Raleigh on the inside. I decided to cut that design out of wood using my dad’s 1980 something craftsman jigsaw. It was like cutting wood with a 15 pound steak knife. I posted the cutout for sale on Instagram and Facebook that following November to make some extra cash for Christmas.

The original Raleigh Skyline Cutout. Still have it and it's proudly on a shelf in my closest. I need to hang it.

At the time I was working for a company, Live Green, where I would go around to new construction homes and test air ducts to make sure they met state code. I remember vividly the day I posted the first Raleigh cutout. I was on a job site walking through these houses when my phone kept making notification sounds. I got back to the van and checked my phone to find out I was getting requests, for not only the Raleigh skyline, but other states and their city skylines. I started to realize that I might have something here and I should run with it.

I think most of us can fantasize and dream about going out on our own and starting your own company. For me, I never had something I was super passionate about that I knew I was going to turn into a business. I dreamed a lot and just figured it would be cool to have something of my own at some point, just not sure what that would be. I guess I was open to whatever it was when it came. Well, that “whatever” came quick after that holiday season. It got to the point where I was working with Live Green during the day and coming back to the shop to fill the orders at night. Since the first cutout I posted, I had built a pretty decent backlog.

Me and my selfie stick!!

It was big enough to crunch some numbers and see if I could actually pursue this new found passion full-time. Fortunately, I had some things in my favor and decided to take the ultimate leap of faith. It was sometime in February when my mom sent me a video of the Steve Harvey show. He was talking about his book “Jump”. I watched that video and decided the next day I was going to jump myself!

The Road Trip Idea:

Taking the leap of faith has been one of the craziest roller coasters, but I wouldn’t change a thing. To go in depth about the beginning of my journey is a whole another blog. Since falling into this “maker world” and using Instagram as my main platform to promote Wordsky, I had met some amazing people, makers and artists. A lot of them I started to build relationships with; the only thing was I had never met these people face to face. I just knew them from the short messages we had and the pictures and videos they posted. At some point I got the idea that it would be cool to take a road trip across the country and meet some of these people. I thought it would be cool to see the cities they live in, work with them in their shops, learn from them and hear their stories. I had my own story, but I knew I wasn’t the only one out there with their own unique story and style of making things. This idea eventually developed over time into a plan. I contacted a few of the makers that I had been following for a while and who I was interested in meeting along the way. All of these makers had also been following and supporting me along my journey.

I reached out to 3 makers and shared with them my idea of taking a road trip and coming to see them and their families. I also told them I had planned on bringing some camera equipment in attempt to document everything. Luckily for me they all agreed to this spontaneous idea and didn’t think it was weird at all that this dude they met on Instagram was about to roll up into their house with a camera and film them….or at least that’s what they told me.

So, from this unfortunate event (a hurricane)….an amazing opportunity was created. On September 1st 2018…I took another leap and took a trip of a lifetime. Not having a clue what I was doing, I rented a car, some camera equipment and attempted to document my journey.

Does this look like a filmmaker to you?? What you see is what I had to document this journey with. A GoPro, the rental camera in my hand and my iPhone that was being used to take this picture.

My ultimate goal was to piece together some kind of documentary or even possibly a show concept. With that said, I want whoever is reading this to know, I absolutely had/have no experience in any kind of filmmaking. I just thought it would be an awesome thing to try. So, I did just that.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read about my story. Follow me on all my social media pages @wordskydesigns. Stay tuned as I'll be releasing what makers I visited and the final collaboration piece we created. I'll also be releasing my recap video of my trip.

If you have enjoyed this so far and would like to help in anyway, I would love your help in sharing my story and this project. Also, feel free to leave me any comments or feedback. Thanks and stay tuned.

#wordskydesigns #lifeasamaker