Zack and Kim Hix: A Young Man’s Creativity Not Only Helps his Health, it’s Entrepreneurial Spirit at its Finest.
Kim, you’re the business side, where do you see? What’s your vision?
KIM: My vision is Zack’s vision. I envision us being rivals to Life Is Good. For us to be their biggest competition and for Good Boy Roy to be on anything and everything we can put his characters on. We’ve got them on mugs and some cinch sacks but mainly t-shirt right now. That’s the biggest thing. I’d love to have it to be a big enough company so that we can employ other people with disabilities and give them the opportunity to be independent and do things that give themselves pride, as well. Because the goal for this when we started, or my thoughts were, that perhaps we could make a go of this and this can be how Zack supports himself after school — feeling that things for him…he’s probably not going to be able to have a nine to five job and work for somebody at a regimented time. He’s going to have to be able to work when he’s capable of working. And physically and mentally capable of working and something like this where he’s doing what he loves to do which is create and draw, he could work for himself and work when he’s capable of working. So I just envision something grand. I have big dreams and Zack just being able to draw and have fun and just be happy and bring smiles to other people, which is what he loves to do. When people see his characters, to smile and laugh and say, “That’s like my son” or “That’s like my nephew” or “That looks just like so-and-so.” People relate to the characters because most of the characters have their own personality and a lot of them are pieces of Zack’s personality. When he draws them, I think maybe he draws some of them with the intention of them being a part of him. Like “Rocker Rick” was the rocker dude, the character in Zack drew at the time he was taking drum lessons. And then “Z-Man” is the character that’s Zack’s own character – his nickname has always been Z-Man.
ZACK: Alter ego.
KIM: Alter ego. He likes sports so one of those Z-Man designs is “Decisions. Decisions.” where he’s got a golf club and a football and a soccer ball and that kind of thing.
ZACK: A baseball bat.
KIM: A baseball bat. Like I said. Hippie Heather. He just thinks of names and he likes the first two letters of the names to be the same so there’s Hippie Heather, Handsome Hen, Rocker Rick…
ZACK: Laughin’ Lizzie.
KIM: Laughin’ Lizzie. Everybody’s got a friend who just laughs and giggles all the time. I know I do.
ZACK: The thing about the names, I want them to be catchy. They’re fun and they’re catchy.
You want people to remember them.
ZACK: Yeah.
KIM: And the name Good Boy Roy, Zack, as he was growing up and his illnesses were kind of at their highest and most severe, he often, often had uncontrollable rages. And after the rages, he would settle back down and realize what had been going one because a lot of times, he wouldn’t remember what had happened. There was often destruction around. Things had been broken and such. He’d say, “I really am a good boy, I don’t mean to do these things. I can’t help it but my head’s on fire, but I’m a good boy.” Like I said, the first character he drew after he handed me the stack of papers was Roy that got put on a t-shirt. And he wore it for days. People liked it and said, “If you print any more, I want one.” So the wheels started turning and we talked about it and when we were thinking of a business name we just sort of put the two, Good Boy, which is something Zack always said and Roy, the name of the first character thinking it would be catchy and something people could remember. He’s got stacks and stacks of characters just waiting to get put on shirts. We’ve been kind of passive the first two years because I’m not a business person, so I don’t know how to go about marketing and everything so I’m just kind of been learning as I go. Not really been out actively trying to get placement in retailers such as that. We’ve just sort of been doing carnivals…
That was going to be my next question.
KIM: Festivals and that kind of thing. A lot of social media, a lot of Twitter, which has been a huge success as far as getting people to support him and encourage him through Twitter and Facebook and that kind of thing. Just a little bit of word by mouth. Just slowly and surely, it’s starting to build but this year we’re wanting to focus on getting some retailers to carry his whole line or piece of the line or whatever. I’m working with a girl that’s going to help us do sales and get some product placement and see if we can build it, see what happens.
That’s fantastic.
KIM: So we’ll see what happens.
Now, I read that the illustrations kind of helped you calm down and kind of get back in your head and find yourself.
ZACK: Yes sir.
With the way that Zack’s rages were, I would assume that helped you as a parent, as well, one he found that love to get back in his own head.
KIM: He’s always, even as a toddler, would always draw and I’ve got pages of, after these episodes, he’d often would draw pictures as a way of apologizing to us. He’d draw a picture and you know, “I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. I’m a good boy. I don’t mean to,” and that kind of thing so, as he would start to get agitated, sometimes he would sit down and start to draw characters and that’s when “Angry Allen” came out one time. Just trying to get his feelings and express them out on paper.
Also, one of his teachers was really smart enough to realize that, in the classroom, as he was getting agitated and aggravated, she would let him get up and draw on the whiteboard. It would help to decrease his anxiety and agitation so she started using that as a tool in the classroom, as well, to help him calm down so he could maybe sit back down and complete some work, too. But I just think it’s been a wonder way of self-expression for him and, not only that, the people that we’ve met through the last two years has been incredible. The people have been so kind in wanting to help him and kids coming up to him and saying “That’s cool” or “You’re cool” or “I want to meet Good Boy Roy” or “You’re talented.” So, for a kid that’s used to getting more into trouble than not, to finally start to get some positive feedback has just been wonderful to help him with his self-esteem.
How did that make you feel when people started coming up to you and recognizing all the hard work and creativity that you put into it?
ZACK: It made me feel really good. Proud of myself.
Put a smile on your face?
ZACK: Yes sir.
KIM: I know we’ve done the big Brookwood (Church) Holiday Fair the past two years and one lady came in and she said, “We heard that you were going to be here” because I guess they send out a flyer or email to all their members to let them know what vendors were going to be at the Holiday Christmas Fair to sell stuff. And she said “We came looking for you because we saw one of the magazine articles written on you.” She said, “My son saw it and he used to draw and he quit drawing but we read your article and it inspired him to start drawing again, so we wanted to come just to meet you.” So things like that have been just really great for him.
He was asked to come speak to the kids that are at John de la Howe School in McCormick, which is a school for at-risk youth because of lot of them have the same issues that Zack has. Some of the neurological challenges and things that they struggle with every day, the same way that he does. And they saw one of his interviews and asked him to come speak to them about trying to overcome and trying to find good in whatever you’re trying to deal with. You just have to believe in yourself and do what you love to do. There’s been a lot a lot of really great things.
With the expression of your illustrations, you almost get that feeling of “Finally, everybody understands me.”
ZACK: Uh-huh, yes sir.
What do you want to say to kids who have a dream, who have an idea that they might want to turn into a business?
Zack with Rico Rodriguez -- Manny from ABC's "Modern Family"
ZACK: Just never give up and just keep on pushing and pushing until you get that power to make it come true.
That’s great advice. Now, are y’all going to relocate the business outside of the house into a production facility.
KIM: I sure hope to have that dilemma someday. Right now, we don’t have need for that. Recently, I feel like we are like starting over. We got hooked up, unfortunately, with some scammers and some guys running some fraudulent business activity and we thought that they were going to be the management. They were supposed to be the full in-house firm that could do everything…do the marketing…do the focus groups…do…you know, going to produce the shirts, get retailers, going to do all of that. And I thought I had researched them well enough to know that they were on the up-and-up but I did not. They’re not local so…but after discovering that they are not honest people and that they told Zack they were going to do a lot of things for his company that they were not doing and could not do. It’s been…other than us losing money to them, it’s been a really good leaning lesson for me. Not to trust…I shouldn’t say not to trust anybody because it hasn’t made me not trust people, but to be much more careful with who I do trust his future and his dreams with.
Absolutely.
KIM: Not to feel bad about saying “I’m getting ready to check you out.” Because I do anything, I’m going to check you out really, really good.
If they’re on the up-and-up, they’ll say “Fine, that’s OK, I invite you to do it.”
KIM: Right, they won’t care. But it’s kind of lit a fire back under me to do things now that I probably should have done two years ago when we first started this because I tend to get excited and just do something then go back and probably do it the way I should have done it.
ZACK: She’s impulsive like me.
KIM: Like, you know, they were supposed to be taking care of the trademark and copyright. They didn’t do that so now, I do have an attorney that I have met with that is doing that. And a business attorney that I have talked to and sat down who will, from now on, look over all documents and everything that come in to us. And going to the Small Business Development Center and looking at resources there. And talking to other people that I probably should have talked to two years ago. Like I said, the first two years were just kind of doing and figuring this out, getting his characters on shirts because he just kept coming up with new designs or new characters and saying, “Can we put him on a shirt next?” So, I’m kind of backtracking some but I feel better, I mean I feel more confident with the direction we’re going now with this business.
How far along are you on trademarking the images?
KIM: We’ve just started. Because this was recent, like the beginning of February that we realized this company was fraudulent.
Really?
KIM: Yeah, so it’s been a couple of weeks of me just trying to, first of all, protect all of this stuff. They were going to redo the web site so going back in and changing the password to everything, just that kind of stuff. Getting attorneys to talk to and telling them what had happened. Also trying to see about what I could do as far as maybe pressing charges against them.
I was going to ask…
KIM: They’re in Georgia, so I contacted the DA’s office there, the police department there and contacted a lot of other current clients they had finding out they’d done the same thing to them. They’d all been scammed and swindled so we’ve been working together to get the police department as much information as we could to try to shut these people down.
I hope you can.
KIM: I do too. I do too. Because they’re taking a lot of people dreams and just playing with them. That’s not nice. So the last three or four weeks, it’s just been me trying to re-do things, undo some things, re-do some things and do some things better, safer, I guess.
Is mom doing a good job?
ZACK: Yes. I don’t think I could ask for any better business partner.
KIM: So, we’ll just see…we have big plans and big dreams for it and we’ll just have to see what happens.
Stay tuned for Part 1, Click HERE.
