What happens outside the walls
This spring, PILLAR founder Eddie Kaufholz spent six nights on stage with New York Times bestselling author Annie F. Downs, and PILLAR is better for it. The same goes for everyone who does PILLAR's work, because what people bring in from the rest of their lives makes the work stronger.
For Eddie, much of that comes from podcasting. Since 2016, he has been a regular guest on Annie's shows, That Sounds Fun and Annie and Eddie Keep Talking. Their conversation went on the road in May and June as the Buddies Tour, which ran from Keller, Texas, to Nashville. He has also hosted The New Activist and Doing the Best We Can, and his podcast work has earned distinctions from The Webby Awards and The New York Festivals Radio Awards.
All of it comes back to PILLAR, because years behind a microphone teach a person to listen for the question underneath the question and to find the plainest words for a big idea. A live room teaches the same lessons faster, since it tells you within seconds whether a sentence landed. PILLAR brings those instincts to every message it writes and every leader it prepares for a high-stakes stage.
PILLAR has a name for the vetted professionals who do its work. They are the bench, ready to take the field the moment they're needed (Eddie likes baseball). Many of them also hold other jobs or run their own businesses. Among them are designers who have art directed for major national retailers, writers who have run content for global consumer brands and national magazines, project leaders who work deep in the tech industry, and people who have started nonprofits. PILLAR itself began as a side hustle that grew faster than its founder expected.
You might wonder whether someone with another job can give your work their full attention. In PILLAR's experience, the other job is part of what you get. A designer who works inside a major national retailer's brand standards knows how a visual system holds up at scale, whether the next piece is a nonprofit's annual report, a product launch, or a public agency's campaign. A project leader who ships software for a living runs a PILLAR timeline with the same discipline. People are better at any one job when the rest of their life is well rounded.
PILLAR encourages this on purpose. Its application asks every applicant about the rest of their working life, from full-time roles elsewhere to their own consultancies, and treats the answer as context. Each team is then built from everything its people bring.
Every night on stage and every other job ends up in the work, and the people PILLAR gets to work with get the best of it.
