Rick Crawford
I have had ample time to reflect during the COVID-19 quarantine, and to be completely honest, much of that time has been on how my company will survive. That got me thinking about why I started my business, and the events that lead to me jumping off a cliff to pursue my dream of marrying fly fishing and sustainability. Here’s my story….
2008: The Great Recession
Let’s just say I developed late and it took me seven years to graduate with a Liberal Arts degree from Armstrong Atlantic State University in my hometown of Savannah, GA. Granted, I took a couple of years off to work for my uncle at Daniel Lumber Co. as a Shipping Manager, but decided to go back to school to finish what I started. The only problem was I had no idea what I wanted to do, hence the Liberal Arts degree, but through that program, I ended up taking a lot of environmental sciences and became very interested in the subject.
That summer, I came across Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, which further peaked my interest in environmentalism and truly inspired me, so I decided I would try to go work for Patagonia, but in the meantime, the Great Recession was on. So, I took a chance by taking a job at a guest ranch in Encampment, WY called A Bar A Ranch. My roommate happened to be a fly fishing guide at the ranch, and my life was forever changed. I fell in love with fly fishing, the smell of sage brush, the rugged mountains, the the wide open Wyoming skies, not to mention the beautiful rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout that I somehow managed to fool with a fly rod (I also fell in love with another ranch employee and my now wife, Jodie!).
2009-2011: Sustainable Business
After the season ended, I applied for a position in Shipping/Receiving at Patagonia, but didn’t get the job. So, I decided to gain more experience by working at a retail store, and found a gig in sales/shipping/receiving in Steamboat, CO in a t-shirt shop. The Great Recession roared on, so I had a lot of idle time as folks weren’t taking their skiing vacations anymore, so I had an opportunity to read a ton. I couldn’t afford the internet, and as a result. I spent a lot of my free time in the public library. While browsing one day I happened to come across another book called Getting Green Done by Auden Schendler, which also greatly influenced me and I decided that I finally knew what I wanted to do! I wanted to pursue a career in sustainability, but wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. I spent more time researching at the library and came across an online MBA in Sustainable Business program at Marylhurst University and was accepted in the Summer of 2009. I was elated.
Meanwhile, Jodie, and a lot of our friends we met working at the Ranch, moved to Jackson Hole, so I made the move in the Fall of 2009 to start the MBA in Sustainable Business program, while also trout bumming around Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I got a job at the Teton County Rec Center and worked there during the fall/winter/springs for three years and worked as a solar panel intern/installer for Creative Energies in the summer of 2010 and an Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) Tech for Wyoming Game and Fish in the summer of 2011. I even had my own radio show called “Simply Sustainable” on KHOL, which was a 5-minute guide to living simpler and more sustainable lives. In hindsight, I was absolutely piecing together how to marry fly fishing and sustainability and figuring out how to turn my passion into a career. In fact, my former ranch roommate, fishing partner, and fellow AIS Tech, Benjy Duke, and I spent hours on the side of Wyoming highways inspecting boats for Zebra mussels, while also developing a prototype for a koozie made from recycled wading booties & fly line called the “Bootie Koozie.” Benjy made the prototype, but after deciding that used wader booties might wreak, we lost interest in the project, but I still continued to chew on how I could marry fly fishing and sustainability.
Well, as it turns out, you actually do have to pay the student loans back, so I had to get serious about finding a job in the sustainability field as I had just graduated with my MBA in Sustainable Business. After reaching out to everyone I knew, my cousin called because he was working for a biodiesel start-up in Savannah called Coastal Biofuels and they were hiring someone in Quality Assurance. I applied and accepted the position in the Fall of 2011, moved back to Savannah and asked Jodie to move with me. I now know that I should have proposed before we left, but at the time I was too busy to consider a marriage proposal as I was squeezing the last tasty morsels of being a trout bum in Wyoming before the move back South!
2012-2016: Stay the Course
Fast forward to the Fall of 2012 and I am told that I need to go to the unemployment office to file for unemployment because Coastal Biofuels was going under. That was a tough day, but I decided to forego taking a hand out and got a job at Russo’s Seafood, a locally operated seafood wholesaler in Savannah during the holiday season so that I could buy my fiance (yes, I proposed to Jodie once we moved to Savannah!) a Christmas present and figure out my next move.
The next move was working part-time for a local general contractor doing LEED consulting and also looking into their operations to see where we could cut costs while improving their environmental performance and found they could save thousands of dollars by recycling their construction waste instead of sending it to the landfill. Anyways, they weren’t hiring full-time, so I found a job working at a green building software start-up company in Charleston, SC called Green Wizard. I worked as a sustainability consultant and in sales as we sold our software to general contractors and architects looking to achieve LEED certification and our software streamlined the process. I eventually moved into a role selling ads and consulting with commercial building product manufacturers on how to communicate and message their sustainable attributes to a targeted audience of architects and general contractors. Unfortunately, Green Wizard went out of business in 2015. So, still always thinking about marrying fly fishing and sustainability, I got a part-time job in shipping/receiving at The Charleston Angler over the holidays while looking for a full-time job, which led me to another green building start-up called Sustainable Minds, where I was a Sales & Marketing Manager selling a marketing solution for building product manufacturers looking to communicate their sustainability achievements, but left the company in 2016. After several failed start-ups, but stilll a passion for sustainability, I finally mustered the courage to marry my passion for fly fishing and sustainability and founded Emerger Strategies in June 2016.
2016 to Present: Emerger Strategies
So, why did I start Emerger Strategies? Well, it might make sense to explain why I chose to name my company Emerger Strategies first. Businesses, like people, should always strive to become the best version of themselves and by taking a triple bottom line (social, environmental & economic) approach, businesses can evolve and emerge into the best version of themselves, just like a mayfly. But perhaps, the most critical part in the lifecycle of a mayfly is after it has ensured that the next generation will survive by laying its eggs, the mayfly falls as a spinner to give back to the river from where it came and also provide nutrients for hungry trout. The lifecycle of a mayfly is a truly closed-loop system that benefits nature, which is how I believe businesses should also view themselves. To become the best version of themselves, consider future generations and give more than they take.
So, back to why I started my company…I initially wanted to protect what I love, which was all the wild fish and beautiful places I’ve had the opportunity to experience, and also give back to the sport that had given so much to me by working with businesses in the fly fishing industry to solve the climate crisis by improving their social, environmental and economic performance. Now, having a 19-month old daughter who means the world to me, I am fighting for her future. Since starting Emerger Strategies, some pretty amazing things have happened, such as getting to interview Yvon Chouinard, Auden Schendler, who both inspired me to pursue a career in sustainability, as well as many other amazing guests for my podcast, The Sustainable Angler. I have also had the great pleasure of travelling and getting to work with fly fishing lodges like Abaco and Bair’s Lodge as well as the opportunity educate by moderating a few sustainable business panel discussions at International Fly Tackle Dealer (IFTD) trade show over the years, and I am so grateful for all of these wonderful experiences and opportunities.
Emerger Strategies will be four years old next month and I am proud to say that we have been 1% for the Planet members since our inception, have recently gone Carbon Neutral and in an effort to go Carbon Negative, we are planting 10 trees for every new client brought on in 2020 and beyond. I am extremely proud to work with some of the most amazing clients in the fly fishing industry and am delighted to be able to help my clients achieve Zero Waste, Carbon Neutral and more! Stay tuned as we have a series of Sustainable Business Workshops at fly fishing lodges around the US and Caribbean as well as other new sustainability products and services!
Well, if you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my story. Like a mayfly, it’s continuously evolving and I am so grateful to be living my dream marrying fly fishing and sustainability. I sincerely thank everyone who has made my dream come true…Cheers!