ONO Agency + Magazine

I didn’t start ONO Agency with a business plan. I started it with a realization. After transitioning out of the military in 2020, I found myself in a space that felt unfamiliar in a different way than anything I had experienced before. The structure was gone. The mission was gone. And for the first time, I had to decide who I was without being told. What I didn’t expect was what surfaced in that silence. Creativity. Not the kind that fits neatly into a job description or a title, but something deeper. A way of seeing. A way of connecting people, places, and energy. Something that I realized had always been there, but had never been fully given space to exist in the environments I had been a part of. Returning to Austin, the city I grew up around, I saw it differently. Not just as a place, but as a living, breathing ecosystem of culture. There was talent everywhere, artists, designers, musicians, builders, thinkers, but there was a disconnect. Creativity was present, but it wasn’t being fully respected, structured, or elevated in the way it deserved. I didn’t want to just participate in that culture. I wanted to shape it. ONO Agency was born out of that tension, the gap between what existed and what I knew was possible. At its core, ONO was never just about events or content. It was about creating moments that mattered. Building experiences that gave creatives a platform, not just visibility. Developing a system where culture wasn’t an afterthought, but the foundation. Over time, what started as small, intentional gatherings turned into something bigger. A network. A movement. A standard. We hosted events that brought people together in ways they weren’t used to. We told stories that weren’t being told. We created space for creatives to be seen not just as contributors, but as leaders. And in doing that, something shifted. I began to realize that my role wasn’t just to create, it was to lead. To challenge the city to think bigger about what creativity actually means. To push past surface-level aesthetics and into something more intentional, more global, more impactful. Austin has always had the raw ingredients. What it needed was alignment. Vision. Pressure. ONO became that pressure. But it didn’t stop at Austin. As the agency grew, so did the perspective. The goal became clear: bridge Austin with the rest of the world. Connect it to cities like New York, London, and beyond, not by copying them, but by contributing to a larger global conversation. To position Austin not just as a “cool city,” but as a serious creative hub with influence that extends far beyond Texas. That’s what ONO is building. A platform. A network. A standard. Something that brings together culture, hospitality, media, and creativity into one ecosystem, and uses it to elevate both the city and the people within it. Looking back, the transition out of the military wasn’t an ending. It was an unlock. It gave me the space to discover what I was actually built to do. And ONO Agency is the result of that discovery, a reflection of what happens when creativity is no longer confined, but given direction, intention, and a mission of its own.

No updates posted yet.