"The invitation wasn't to drag my family along. It was to make space for them. I missed that distinction for twenty years."
Michael of the Dad Designer Podcast and I sat down as friends first and recorded it second. Two agency guys who happen to be dads, talking about the difference between providing and being present, the specificity of my wife Julie's songwriting, and a distinction I missed for most of my kids' childhoods. Full conversation below, lightly edited for flow.
What you'll take from this one
- The original invitation to start Legacy Creative and the line inside it I missed for years
- Why Julie Clark is, honestly, a psalmist
- Fathering adult kids — and grandkids — with more presence than I ever gave the younger versions
- Why systems and AI are just tools in the toolbelt of stewarding someone else's vision
Resources
- Julie Clark's music: juliesusanneclark.com
- KC on Instagram: @kcclark.online
- Legacy Creative: legacycreative.co
Full Transcript
Michael: Welcome back to the Dad Designer Podcast. Not everyone on the show has been a friend first — but Casey is. If this episode runs long, it's because it's two guys catching up. Casey, welcome.
KC: Thanks for having me, man.
Michael: Tell people where you are, who you are, your family, and what you do.
KC: I'm Casey Clark, originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, and recently moved to Asheboro. Dad, husband, business owner. Long history in art and creativity. I have three daughters, all married to their first loves, which is just a win. Twin granddaughters with my second daughter. My son is eighteen and lives with us. Honestly, I'm loving life as a dad with my son in a way that's not even adjacent to how I was raised. It feels like I'm getting to live the dream version of the dad stuff.
My wife Julie is a singer-songwriter. We met through music. Our first unofficial date was me inviting myself — or her inviting me, that part always gets twisted — to her house for a pot of coffee and a song share. I left that night and said, God, can I have this woman, please? She's a dream. Twenty-five years this February.
We spent most of that time writing and traveling. I had a season as a worship pastor, then more writing and traveling. Now she's leading the creative edge of the music and I get to play encourager, underwriter, bounce-board, cheerleader on the sideline. I get to see the best parts of her creative process. Different season of life, and I'm loving it.
Michael: If you haven't heard Julie's music, it's some of the most heart, depth, and lyricism I've come across. Put on Julie's music if you want to feel things.
KC: If you've never read the Psalms, I tell Julie she's a psalmist. Not in the modern sense — not "she's a worship leader." I mean it literally. She covers the full range of human emotion. She has this capacity to paint a visual memory with specificity, and somehow it pulls something out of me even though I was there for most of it. She'll bring nostalgia and wonder and let the train wreck your heart. I don't know how she does it.
Michael: And on your end, you're an agency owner.
KC: Yeah. I didn't start the agency to start a business. I started it because it was an invitation. It was very clear: Start this company. Call it Legacy Creative. Make space for your kids. I was in the music world at the time, so my early clients were musicians and artists. Friends became clients. Those clients referred others. It grew.
I've always been efficiency-oriented, so I became a systems-and-processes junkie, even as a designer. As AI has come online, I'm learning not to draw hard lines between those tools. It's just another thing in the toolbelt to steward someone else's vision. Everything I've learned over twenty-five years in design and illustration — my degree is in illustration from SCAD — has morphed into bringing ideas into reality and telling stories. The agency was a natural progression. I felt I was being invited into it.
Michael: You mentioned the call to bring your family into Legacy. How has that actually looked?
KC: Hindsight being 20/20, I realized I missed a distinction for a long time. I spent the greater part of my parenting journey as the sole provider. Here's an idea. Let's go. I didn't take into account that the original invitation wasn't to start something and drag my family along. It was to make space for my kids inside what I was building.
I've been in a dad's group recently working through Chip Dodd's Parenting with Heart. One of the first things they said was that parenting is a baby giraffe on ice skates. It's clumsy. You can't nail it. That brought a lot of freedom.
This season is about going back and saying, it's never too late to make space for your kids. I have adult children from eighteen to thirty, and grandkids. One of the first things I did was establish dates. Specific days, specific times to hop on a call, FaceTime, connect. I turned what I do for my clients toward my own kids — holding space, asking what they're dreaming about, asking how I can encourage them.
I was a provider. I wasn't always present. The gift of this season is that I'm doing more than I ever have, but I'm prioritizing being present with them.
Michael: How much of that intentionality could a twenty-five or thirty-year-old Casey have really given?
KC: There are levels. Unconscious incompetence — you don't know what you don't know. I'm closer to conscious competence now. Wisdom teaches us in reverse. Experience and knowledge become wisdom.
In those earlier years, I didn't have the capacity to understand what I needed to do in the moment. I don't beat myself up too much about it. There are still feelings. I still think, man, I botched that. But it's just a feeling. And when I have the conversation with my kids now — we never really addressed this, and now we are — that's awesome.
I'm learning to lean on wisdom and humility and being willing to be stretched. That's why coaching and consulting matter to me now. I didn't invest in myself for a long time. I just kept going. As a parent, I'm realizing you can't be a locomotive running through life hoping everyone catches up. Parenting is a constant work in progress. Just like the work we do as creatives.
The point
The invitation you were given might not be what you thought it was. Read it again. Slow down. Sometimes what God said was one word longer than what you heard.
Go Deeper
You weren't called to build a business. You were called to build a legacy — and the brand is the receipt.
If this stirred something, two next steps:
- Take the Brand Discipleship Assessment — see where your identity, clarity, and legacy stand right now. Start the assessment →
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Built on purpose. Rooted in faith.