Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Mooney.
Hi Kevin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Bred from scrappy stock, this little bastard popped into the world on March 1st, 1985, in Sacramento, California. Joe and Barb Mooney were the proud parents, and to my brother’s surprise, I turned out both adorable and a bit of a terror. Five years later, my little sister Kelsey arrived.
My childhood? A steady stream of Ghostbusters, little league, BMX bikes, strip malls, girls, curiosity, broken bones, and a relentless streak of going against the grain. All the classic ingredients for a kid who’d grow up to make his own way in the world.
I had my first girlfriend in preschool—Kelly Costello. Don’t ask me what became of her, but I’m sure she’s killing it. The next solid girlfriend came about 35 years later when I got married. In between, it was just me, my friends, and Rocklin, California—aka suburbia hell, though it wasn’t half bad back then. Safe streets, 90s vibes, and everything you’d expect from a kid growing up in middle America. Sports consumed me. I played year-round, learned to focus, and figured out how to work with a team. But being told what to do? Never really my thing.
When pro sports didn’t pan out, I had to find a backup plan. Right out of high school, I jumped into the working world. Construction, newspaper delivery—you name it, I probably did it. Money meant freedom, and I wanted as much of it as I could get. But eventually, the sameness of it all started to get to me.
At 20, I packed my bags and drove 500 miles north to Bend, Oregon. A fresh start in a town that felt like a time machine—no strip malls, no big-box stores, just something different. I did odd jobs, lived paycheck to paycheck, and eventually landed in the mill, where one wrong move could cost you a few fingers. That’s when it hit me: maybe college was worth a shot.
I spent a few years at OSU Cascades, with a four-month detour in Germany. Officially, I studied International Business, but really, I was mastering the art of beer drinking. It was the highlight of my 20s, but it didn’t exactly set me up for a career. Truthfully, nothing could have. I was always going to do things my way.
After college, I applied for 87 jobs in my first year. Two called me back. Mt. Bachelor, where my lack of snow-bro speak sealed my fate, and Live Superfoods, which offered me $9.50 an hour to sweep floors and sell organic powders. I took it. A year later, I was fired.
During my forced hiatus, I found myself running War Scooters, an e-commerce company owned by a colleague. I applied everything I’d learned at Live Superfoods and got my hands dirty with the ins and outs of running a business. But soon, I felt the pull to create something of my own. Enter Delta Pro Scooters—my first real shot at entrepreneurship.
I dove in headfirst, building the website, setting up payment gateways, designing a logo, sourcing scooter suppliers in China, and learning the ropes of shipping and customs. It was a wild ride. My first trip to China was an adventure—navigating language barriers, questionable food, and way too much Budweiser, all to fill a 40-foot container with scooters bound for Bend, Oregon.
Things were going well until they weren’t. On our third inventory run, I over-ordered, sinking the business with storage costs and mounting overhead. A few hits from Google’s algorithm changes and a lack of marketing savvy sealed the deal. Delta Pro Scooters folded, leaving me with lessons I couldn’t have learned any other way—and a few leftover scooters in the garage as reminders.
It wasn’t all bad. My office was next to Hound Creative, where I spent countless hours annoying Chris. Those conversations turned into a friendship, and eventually, a partnership. At Hound, I soaked up everything Chris could teach me. Over a decade, we grew the agency from logos and websites to six-figure brand strategy projects.
But all good things come to an end. Chris moved on to juggling baguettes and restaurant tables at Jackson’s Corner, and I found myself at a crossroads. Agency life wasn’t calling me back, and selling toilet paper wasn’t in the cards. Then it hit me: what if I built a brand around being 100% me? No fluff, no pretense, just Kevin Mooney.
And so, Kevin Mooney was reborn.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No. Smooth roads don’t teach you anything worth knowing.
Getting fired from my first real job was the first gut check. I thought I was doing fine. I wasn’t. That kind of rejection either breaks you or forces you to get honest about your gaps.
Delta Pro Scooters was the bigger lesson. I over-ordered inventory, buried the business in storage costs, and had no real marketing behind it. It folded. I lost money and time, but I learned how a business actually dies—not from one big mistake, but from a stack of small unclear decisions nobody caught in time. That lesson shows up in how I work with clients now. Most businesses don’t fail from a lack of effort. They fail from a lack of clarity, and nobody catches it until the damage is done.
Then there was the end of the agency partnership. Chris and I built something real over a decade, and when he moved on to something else, I had to decide what came next. Agency life wasn’t pulling me back in. I had to build something from scratch, on my own terms, with my name on it and nowhere to hide.
None of it was smooth. All of it was necessary. I don’t trust a “smooth road” story from anyone who’s actually built something.
As you know, we’re big fans of Kevin Mooney. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I usually describe myself as an atypical marketing guy, mostly because I have never found a cleaner label that fits.
I have spent most of my career somewhere between strategy, design, advertising, entrepreneurship, and making things up as I go. I help businesses figure out what they should say, how they should look, and how to turn all of that into something people actually notice and buy.
That can mean rebuilding a brand, designing a website, developing a campaign, fixing an offer, or helping an owner untangle ten competing ideas and decide which one is worth pursuing. The work changes. My role is usually the same. I come in when something feels off, unclear, or underperforming, and I figure out why.
I think what sets me apart is the range. I can sit in a room and work through the business strategy, then write the headline, direct the creative, build the website, and launch the marketing. I understand how all of those pieces affect each other because I have spent years doing all of them.
That probably comes from being an entrepreneur myself. I have started businesses, shut businesses down, built an agency, left the agency model behind, made expensive mistakes, and had to sell my own work to survive. I am not looking at someone’s business from the safety of a whiteboard. I understand what it feels like when the decisions are personal and the money is real.
I am most proud that I have built a career around how my brain naturally works. I am curious, obsessive, skeptical, and usually willing to say the thing everyone else in the room is politely avoiding. That has occasionally gotten me into trouble, but it has also produced some of my best work.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Honestly, it’s hard to beat riding bikes around town with my friends.
We’d leave the house with five bucks in our pockets, no cell phones, and no real plan. We’d ride for miles, stop at random stores, spend an hour looking at things we couldn’t afford, find somewhere to eat, and somehow always stumble into a little trouble before making it home around dinner.
There was a level of freedom that feels almost impossible now. Nobody knew where we were, nobody was tracking us, and every day felt like an adventure waiting to happen. We made our own fun because we had to.
I miss that. Not because I want to be a kid again, but because those days taught me that some of the best experiences come from curiosity, spontaneity, and seeing where the day takes you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kevinmooney.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrkevinmooney/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrkevinmooney
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mrkevinmooney
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PyLaJ8uH804buqKvbkXMH?si=24e91b826cc1411e&nd=1&dlsi=1ddfde6c38d34fb7
