“Hellbrook” has been the early working name for a couple of the businesses that Mike and I have started, including Battery621, the shared office space that is the home for our three other businesses, The Public Works, Supple Collection and Cirque Distribution – and a home we share with 26 or so of our best friends’ companies. Hellbrook was the name of our favorite out of bounds, side country snowboard run back in Stowe, Vermont where Mike and I met and forged our friendship while we worked together at Burton Snowboards. Hellbrook is the world in which we began inspiring one another to find the courage to face our fears and to actualize our dreams. We sessioned this powder run too many times to count, and it became one of the best places for us to have the deep conversations that became the foundation for all that we’ve done since.
And so it was that Hellbrook became our inspiration and the foundation for everything we believe in. We wrote these words below twenty or so years ago during the conceptualization of our entrepreneurial journey.
Hellbrook is a shared philosophy, a dream, a friendship. It’s about challenges, and the failures that lead to a desire to become better – to become our best. It’s about further development of our philosophy, about new dreams, and new friendships.
For us, life is about getting up earlier than the next person, hiking harder than is comfortable and enjoying the feel of burning muscles and dripping sweat. For us living is about the excitement within the fear of the adventure, and it is about facing up to the fear of mediocrity and failure. It is also about finding that sometimes after all the hard work involved in making it to the top, the conditions are shitty up there. For us, that’s just a part of life – and often is a big part of our life. Living is all about getting up earlier again the next day, hiking harder still, and once again getting to the top first to meet the epic day that awaits us.
We are constantly demolishing the idea that walls of any kind can contain Hellbrook. Our journey is contained only by the relationships we engender. Our founding principal is 1+1=3. This describes parties coming together to output something much greater than what they bring individually. It is a dynamic concept, fluid, changing with the growth we experience, and with the ebb and flow of the different experiences of the partnerships we are involved in. Hellbrook is infused top to bottom, inside and out with this energy.
Relationships, between individuals or businesses, thrive only when both sides are inspired by each other. There must be an understanding of what the other needs along with some significant shared energy to reach an objective. Hellbrook is constantly seeking out these relationships. We understand that businesses which share our values are few and far between – it takes some searching to find them. We also understand that it is always worth that extra effort. It is only with these partners that we will be able to continue to manage projects that speak to us – and clients who share our unique perspective on life.
Hellbrook is about life and what we want out of it. It is our dream for the future, and like a dream, Hellbrook is different for everyone. Our goal is to create an environment that helps everyone find his or her own “Hellbrook”.
If Hellbrook is the same experience each time one arrives at the top of the hike with us, we will have failed. Hellbrook cannot be static. Many wait for someone else to come down to tell you it sucks out there today, but we know that with this attitude we would never hit the major score. So we get up earlier than all the rest, hike harder and once in a while find ourselves dropping into that uncut field of deep fresh snow first – and we find ourselves alive.
Welcome to Hellbrook!