College and NFL Mascot turned-Agency Creative and Award-Winning Photographer, Eric Aaberg was recently interviewed by VoyageDallas for his recent successes with Eric Aaberg Photography and TGR Creative.
VoyageDallas: As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Eric Aaberg: I am a social media strategist, content creator, and creative. I love exploring new mediums to engage with others around the world. My motto is trying to change the standard, break the stigma, and do things in a way that may seem crazy to others – because that’s the point of where modern-day marketing has gotten.
I’d say I’m known by my friends for the crazy passion and work ambition I have. I’m known from my employees by being a very hard-driven team leader (and the one who is always blabbing about the latest TikTok’s on my for-you page), and I’m known from by close friends and family as someone loving and caring for the others around them. Genuinely, in my professional and social lives, I always want to be there for others to help them in any way that I can.
Some of the things I’m most proud of was working on large online gaming communities back in high school over Minecraft for large influencers and YouTubers, that really helped me jump-start my career early.
VoyageDallas: What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Eric Aaberg: Out of anything I do for work or personal, the biggest quality and characteristic I would focus on is authenticity. Anything that I do, I want it to be authentic, meaningful, and ethical. Too much of the advertising and marketing industry is done through unethical, misleading, and misinformation practices that do no good to society.
Instead, combining the idea of disrupting traditional media with a form of ethos has become my mantra in any business vertical that I work on. The constant idea of “What can we do to make this badass but also for the better?” is a question our team asks ourselves as we’re working on any project.
If our work isn’t authentic, then we’re not being authentic to ourselves.
Eric Aaberg, Social Media Strategist & Content Creator
VoyageDallas: Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Eric Aaberg: Absolutely not. I think I definitely have been one who typically picks roads that haven’t been paved yet or explored yet by others, but I enjoy it. I always found myself at any workplace, company, or team trying to solve problems that don’t even exist or are on our “immediate” list; I found myself wanting to make things more efficient or simply, best put, doing something new.
But that “entrepreneurship” road is never smooth. It takes 10 failures to make 1 success, the most important lesson you’ll learn is that a failure really isn’t a failure but instead a step forward and a learning moment. Once you remove the fear of failing, you can accomplish whatever you put your mind towards.
