Fast 15: David Baker

“There’s a lot you can learn from working hard.” That is David Baker’s advice to younger people eager to dive into entrepreneurship. “There’s nothing wrong with paying your dues,” he said.

Although he has started three businesses, Baker doesn’t consider himself an entrepreneur at heart. By nature, he is not definitively a risk-taker. He’s a thinker. He’s intentional, and likes to know the odds and to analyze from all the angles.

Most of all, he wants to be the best at whatever he does, “or at least really good at it,” he said. “That applies to whatever I’m doing and whatever season of life I’m in, whether it’s working to build brands or being a dad.”

As senior product owner at RevUnit, Baker taps into his greatest professional passion, brand development. He enjoys being able to mold the consumer experience from beginning to end.

Baker also generally has a side project going, although he tries — albeit it sometimes unsuccessfully — to take them one by one, so he can spend as much time as possible with his 2-year-old son and his wife, who is expecting baby No. 2.

In 2014, he co-founded Launch Retreat LLC, a company that produces weekend-long, intensive mentoring programs for businesses.

Baker earned his graphics design degree from John Brown University in Siloam Springs in 2009, and worked for a couple of years in the field before co-founding design firm Moxy Ox in 2011, and then Creatives United, a company that hosts events for those in creative industries, in 2012. 

Baker quit as chief branding officer at Moxy Ox early in 2014 and joined RevUnit two months later.

He loves Northwest Arkansas and the fact that, as he realized after college, “I could have the best of both worlds. I didn’t need to be in Austin or Seattle or New York or LA to have exciting work opportunities, and I could enjoy a low cost of living and a great lifestyle,” he said.

Baker had a multinational upbringing. His father and German mother were missionaries, and he was born in the Ivory Coast in West Africa, speaking French before he learned English.

In his free time, Baker is into technology and gaming, and he produces electronic dance music for Addictive Vibe Records in Denver.

He also enjoys cooking. Although he has the chops to execute classical French technique, he’s been focused on barbecue lately. Baker said the art of smoking meat is deceivingly difficult and nuanced.