The Early Shift Series: Sean Tully of Forward Screen Printing Talks the Pursuit of Happiness and the Key to Success

For our second episode of The Early Shift, we spoke with Sean Tully, a Southern California local who has run his small business, Forward Screen Printing, for the last two decades. With California connections that run deep throughout the coast, Sean has cultivated a community teeming with all kinds of creatives and dedicated customers who keep coming back. 

By combining his passions with the work he does in his screen printing shop, making a deliberate effort to prioritize his hobbies, family, and goals, and constantly seeking out meaningful, creative experiences that inspire and fulfill the everyday moments of his life, Sean has demonstrated that living in pursuit of genuine happiness and truth is the single best piece of industry advice out there. Keeping a small business not just alive, but thriving, for two decades in Southern California is no small feat, yet Sean makes it look easy. Learn how he balances his varied interests while maintaining his values at the core of everything he does, and why he believes that very mindset determines his continued success.

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Q: Can you share a brief introduction as to what Forward screen printing is?

Sean: Forward screen printing is my screen printing shop. I've been running it since about 2002, 2003. I've always tried to focus on high-quality everything, so high-quality apparel, high-quality inks, printing processes, and try to give a real personal service to everybody that comes in here.

I can't believe it's already been 22, 23 years. It's still going.

Q: In the beginning, it wasn't always just you running the shop, right?

Sean: That's right. Nick Acores owned Thalia Surf Shop in Laguna Beach, and I met him through a mutual friend, Andy Davis. He connected us. At the time, I was just focusing on building surfboards, and I was also doing sales rep for Andy's company, Free and Bird, and Free Bird, all the different iterations of that.

I met Nick, and he said, "Hey, I'm printing shirts for my shop. If you want to help me out, come meet me here." And we grew it there. We had a lot of friends in the surf industry, and he knew people from the surf shop, so we slowly became the go-to shop for all the surf guys and ladies. So it was cool because it not only kept us coming to work every day, but it was also really enjoyable to be printing stuff that I loved and had a lot of vested interest in.

Q: You work with a lot of legendary shapers and artists in the surf world. How did all these connections come about?

Sean: Randall Rostoker. If anybody knows Stoker from up in Santa Barbara, he's a legendary character. I owe a lot to Randall, so thank you, Randall.

Randall is just a legendary surf guy who knows people all up and down the coast – Hawaii, all over the place. We lived in the same town, Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, when I was going to school there.

He was who introduced me to Andy Davis, Joel Tudor, and Thomas Campbell, and a lot of those guys, because they were friends. Randall's in Thomas Campbell's first movie, The Seedling. He's got a sweet wave at Scorpion Bay.

After meeting those guys through Randall, everything blossomed once I moved down to San Diego. It was his connection with those guys, and once we started printing and rolling, it was an easy ride-on. I'll do all your guys' stuff.

Really, it was just friends and word of mouth, and I got lucky being at the right place at the right time.

Q: You have an artistic background as well. How did you get into art?

Sean: I took a couple of art classes in school as a youngster. I used to do architectural drafting all through high school.

I took some drawing, art, and photography classes in college, but I never focused on art as a major. I got a business economics degree at UCSB, so I was focused on business at that time, and I wanted to get into a small business. When I moved down here and started getting into screen printing and using my contacts through surfing, it blended all those different passions of art, surf, and screen printing, and it molded into the business that it is now.

Q: How did those passions of surfing and art set the tone of Forward screen printing?

Sean: We all have to work to get through life, right? And so ideally, if you can try to find a passion that can also be a part of your career, it's a pretty special thing.

It can go the other way, too, and I actually protect my surfboard building and try not to make that a career intentionally, because I don't want that to be stressful.

Not that everything is going to be stress-free, but running the screen print shop, I've got employees that I need to take care of, and I've got bills that I need to pay, so it definitely can be stressful at times.

But combining the passions of surfing and art keeps me stoked on coming to work and wanting to keep doing this business as long as I can.

Q: What was it about screen printing that drew you to it exactly?

Sean: That's a good question. I never really did much screen printing before I came down to San Diego after leaving college in Santa Barbara.

One of my best friends, Wayne, we lived together in the little house that I live in now. He bought a little screen printing kit online, and we wanted to make our own T.Rex t-shirts. I love T.Rex. He's a rad rocker. So Wayne figured out how to make a film, and then I remember stacking a bunch of books up on our kitchen table underneath our kitchen light and trying to burn a screen, and then washing it out in our bathtub.

I've actually got the screen somewhere here in the shop, and it still has the T.Rex image. You can still kind of see it on there. But that was my intro to screen printing. I really didn't know anything about it, besides that. We made our own stuff, a couple funky T-shirts.

Getting into it with Nick, and actually having a press and customers wanting us to print their stuff – that's where I had to step it up and really learn more about it. But I never had any interest before. It just worked out that way.

Q: What was the process like from starting in your kitchen to where you are now with a multi-press? 

Sean: I don't know how it happened, but it did. It was really just natural growth. I never wanted to push the business.

I have a lot of clients who come in and have me print their stuff, but they're also looking for business advice, and I've always given the same advice – try to grow slowly.

The people who haven't been able to pull it off are the ones who tried to grow too fast. They got a bunch of equipment all at the same time, or they printed way too many designs, or they bit off more than they could chew in the beginning, and then it was harder to make it successful in the long run. So for me, I've only grown when I needed to.

We saved up, bought our first press, and then once that press was paid off, we felt, "Okay, now we need to get another one because we're kind of falling behind." I would take out another business loan and get that press, and slowly built it up over the 20-plus years. Nothing was super fast. Every time we got one more little piece of equipment that helped make things easier, it was a party.

 It was like, "Sweet! Now we don't have to do that anymore!"

Just going from manual printing to an automatic was a huge jump. Because in the beginning, there were plenty of days when I was the only guy at the shop if Nick was busy, and I'd be printing the shirts, loading them, dropping them onto the dryer, running to the other side, catching them, running back around, printing another one, and it was crazy. So those were the early days.

Q: Nick eventually left Forward to work at Thalia Surf. How was that split?

Sean: It was great. It was just because his business was growing too, and so was Forward, and we both recognized that the way we had it wasn't going to be sustainable. He really had to be at Thalia to focus on growing, and I needed to be at the screen print shop to keep that going. So we mutually went our separate ways, and I said, "We're all good. We're going to take care of each other as we grow." There's no ill will or bad feeling, so there was no split because of that. It was really just for the benefit of us trying to take care of our businesses.

Q: How's it been fostering relationships with the iconic shapers and surfers, and do you find most of your business from that word of mouth as you’ve grown slowly?

Sean: Yeah, definitely.

I've always loved the craft of building surfboards. That's why I got into it when I was young, and by being in a place like Southern California with amazing board builders. There's a lot of the best in the world located here. So I was able to order a couple of boards from people that I admired in the past, like Donald Takiyama when he was around, and Josh and Terry Martin were really my biggest influences.

Josh Martin worked with my dad back in the day, so that's how I met him. He made custom boards for me in high school, and even younger. I'd be able to go over to his house, his dad Terry's house, and they'd shape boards. He'd let me videotape it, and I've got old VHS cassettes somewhere of him shaping my old boards. But through that, I just started meeting a bunch of surfboard shapers, and everybody wanted shirts, so I guess they came to me to make that happen.

Q: You've always been focusing on high-quality and environmentally friendly print methods. How has that shaped your path forward as a screen printer?

Sean: We all want the earth to be as healthy as possible. We're surfers, we're in the ocean, and we see the effects when there's pollution, and anything I can do to try to better that is my goal. I'm not perfect. I still drive a car that needs gasoline, so I'm not a perfect human as far as being 100% eco-friendly, but I want to do as much as I can with my business. Focusing on water-based inks, all-natural cleaning supplies that we need, recycling all of our paper to dry up old ink – there's a bunch of little things that we do.

But besides that, I think water-based inks are the best quality ink for screen printing. It's super soft, it's not the thick, plasticine ink that cracks over time.

So not only is it eco-friendly, it's also the best quality, so it's a no-brainer for me.

And there are a lot of shops that don't want to do water-based, to be honest. They can be harder to print with, and so we have a lot of people that come to us from all over the U.S. and internationally looking for somebody to do water-based printing.

So I'm stoked that we're in that call.

Q: In a quote online from an interview you did in the past, you said, "Focus on making your business the best it can be by building the business for yourself, not what you think others will like." How do you think that outlook has driven your path forward in this business?

Sean: I think if you're trying to focus on the end goal and build something that either somebody's going to like or want to buy, you need to approach it from what you want to do, and try to make that the best it can be. And if it's liked by others or received well by others, then that's just icing on the cake.

What I meant by that is, I want to make this business the way I want it to be, combining the passions and loves I have in my life. If I can include taking care of other customers at the same time, then that's my goal. I'm not trying to make a business that I'm hoping is going to be successful, or cool, or trendy, so people will want to come here and buy something because it's cool for that moment. I'm looking at the long goal, trying to do it for myself and do it the way I think is best. And hopefully, that reflects what customers see, and they're stoked.

Q: Do you remember how you got introduced to surfing in those very early days of learning?

Sean: Just a kid growing up in the 80s in Southern California, I was always drawn to the surf mags and surfing.

My uncle surfed, and so he was the kind of guy who had several boards, and that's what he did in his free time. As I grew up, I'd always bug him to take me out and teach me, and he did. He got my feet wet, literally and figuratively.

As a young kid, I'd steal his – he had a little pulled in nose – small faces board at Newport Beach, a thruster, and would take me to Newport. Then later he'd be taking me on a longboard to San Onofre. That was really the early days of getting introduced to it, and after that, it was an easy hook. Just like anybody else who surfs and falls in love with it early, it becomes all you're thinking about.

I played a ton of sports as a kid, pretty much every sport under the sun, but surfing was always the best for me. I'm not super competitive, even though I like sports. I was never the guy who wanted to go and win or beat everybody. I like playing and being active, and surfing was just me in the ocean, so it was the best. You couldn't beat that and the beauty of being in nature.

Q: How would you say surfing has impacted your mood and mindset, especially as a business owner and as a dad, when life gets busy, hectic, and stressful? How has surfing affected your well-being overall?

Sean: Well, it's our therapy, right? When we can get out, if it's flat or it's cranking, just having that time to turn off your brain for a little bit and float, get some waves, don't get some waves, paddle, whatever it may be, that is the therapy for me and I know it is for a lot of other people too.

I also get a very similar therapy with music.

All the guys in our band, we all surf, and we call our music playing “night surfing’ because we're usually playing at night. That therapy of music and surfing is something I couldn't beat. I'm sure other people get their therapy from other interests they have, but there's nothing like surfing.

I was never really into crazy, high-performance surfing. I loved it, it was cool, but it wasn't what I was stuck on. I've always been into traditional longboarding and the more soulful old-school side of surfing.

To me, surfing was more of an art form; it was more of a dance. That's how I've always looked at it. I know there's a bunch of shredders that look at it more like a sport, and that's awesome, and I'm stoked that they're pushing the sport and making it as progressive as possible because I think that's really good and healthy.

I've just never had those desires to fall into that surfing category. Just the traditional longboarding or single fin surfing or old school twinies, those were just much prettier and more about dancing the wave, and that's what I like.

Q: How did you get into surfboard shaping? What was your first introduction to that, and how did you learn that process?

Sean: Again, I think it started with just Josh and Terry Martin letting me come over and watch them shape. That really set the hook. Seeing somebody do it right there in front of you, and he explained a lot – he wasn't giving me full lessons – but he would let me ask him questions about what's going on during the shaping process, and Josh is a pro and so is his dad, Terry. He's one of the best that ever lived, so those guys can crank out boards really quickly. I could go over to his house for a couple of hours, and the board would be finished from start to finish. I learned a lot watching them. But it wasn't until my college years up at Santa Barbara, a couple of my roommates bought me a blank for my birthday one year, that I cranked out my first board. It's hanging up on the wall in the back right now, and it worked and looked good, and I did it all start to finish, shaping, glassing, the whole thing. It's just if anybody's ever made themselves a board and been successful with it, it's just like surfing – it's a hook. It's like, “Okay, now I'm making another one.” Then once your friends find out, “Oh, you can do that?” you start making it for your friends, and so it snowballed like that. I'm definitely not pro, I'm a hobby, amateur guy, but I've been making boards for 20-plus years, from start to finish, and I love doing it. But we are surrounded by some of the best board builders in the world.

Q: I get the sense that with your screen printing skills, you're so open to teaching, and you teach at Palomar College, right?

Sean: San Dieguito High School has a screen printing class, and I've helped out a couple of times with them. I've talked and done a little advising with Palomar College, too. I love to give back. The people who have given to me, to allow me to get here, were the best type of humans. They're not gatekeeping any secrets, and they want to share their love – whatever it may be – so I'm happy to do the same thing. It just seems better for everything involved. I'm not going to be the only screen printer around here in Southern California, so if there are kids who are super stoked on it and want to get into it, I'll teach them anything they want to know. It's just spreading love.

Q: Music is a big part of your life. Can you tell me how you got into music?

Sean: We all love music to some degree, but it's been another passion since I was a little kid. 

My parents had a great record collection that I've since inherited, and I grew up around oldies.

All my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, just played great music, and we'd always have “name that tune” stuff going on in the car, and everybody was super on it, so music was a big thing for my whole family, even though not too many of them were musicians.

My great-grandfather was from Mexico City, and he sang and played harmonica. We have an old recording of him somewhere that's amazing.

My mom plays a little piano, my brothers play music, but besides that, it was just something I started to get into, and I just couldn't put it down. Mainly guitar, that's what I started with. I don't play piano or a lot of other instruments, but it turned into another thing to soothe the soul. Just like surfing, pick up the guitar, and it takes you off into a different world.

Q: So you've got the hobbies of surfboard shaping, surfing, music, you run a business, and you're also a dad. Is there one you enjoy more than the other? How do you balance all those different passions that you have?

Sean: I do get asked that every now and then from people, because they see that I do a few things, and I don't really know how I try to balance it. I have always been a busybody, ever since I was a kid, and I can't sit still.

I hate sitting on the couch.

My family tries to take me to movies in the daytime, I’m like, “Not if it's sunny out, I've got stuff to do”. I look at life – there are so many awesome things, and we only have so long while we're here on the planet. 

So I'm lucky to have a lot of that now still.

My health is pretty good, and I have the ability, so I just want to eat that up as much as I can.

I also see the downside, because I don't look at myself as being especially good at many of the things that I do. So sometimes I think, “Man, if I really focused on one thing, I wonder if I could be really good at that one thing.” But then I'd miss doing the other things. So I'm happy with being an average surfer, musician, businessman, shaper. If I get to do all those things, it makes me happy.

And it's similar to my personality. Even with surfing, I love a bunch of different boards.

I can go maybe two or three surf sessions on a board, and then I'm ready to change it out. And it's the same with my instruments and my guitars. I'll maybe have a couple of practices or gigs with a certain instrument, and then boom, I’m switching it out with another one. I think it's just in me to constantly be doing fresh new stuff instead of doing the same thing all the time.

And that's just how I roll, I guess. So I'm happy with it. I get a lot done and have a lot of fun. So I don't know how I balance it all. It just kind of goes.

Q: How do you feel surfing and all these passions fuel one another and make you a better surfer, make you a better business owner, make you a better father?

Sean: That's a great way to put it. When we're healthy and we're happy, it allows us to give that back to our family, friends, business, and passions. So if you're not in a mentally good space, I can imagine it being a hard way to operate in life with the people you love and the things you need to get done during the day. Having those hobbies and passions lightens the load and makes me a healthier person overall. And then that allows me to be a better human to everyone else in my life. So yeah, I follow you there.

Q: You've been running this business for 22 years. You've got two daughters – how do you hope they see that dedication, and what do you hope they take from it for their personal lives and their careers as they move into those one day?

Sean: That's definitely one of my goals with my family. I want to show my kids that things are possible. If you have dreams and you want to work really hard at them, you can accomplish those dreams. And that's what I'm trying to do. At least try to set the example that going to work every day, working really hard, not giving up, that commitment to something that you really want to make happen goes a long way.

Some things come easily to some people, but for most of us, we've got to work pretty hard to make the things we want happen. I think I do a pretty good job at showing my kids how you can achieve things in life, and I want to be an influence to them in that manner. 

Q: It seems like the screen printing business ebbs and flows – there's high demand days and low demand days. I'm sure over the 22 years, you've seen some harder times. How have you kept that focus, dedication, and drive to keep going?

Sean: Yeah, it can be really tough. Definitely, over the years, it's been up and down, but that's going to be any small business.

I got an education in business in college. They give you a foundation. A lot of it was geared toward big business, which I never really wanted to get into. But some of the big takeaways that I learned are that no matter what you're in, there's going to be ups and downs. There's going to be ebbs and flows. So if you're not ready to play those ups and downs, then you're probably not set for being a business owner. If you just want a steady paycheck and don't have to worry about that, then go work for somebody else. But if you want to run your own show and try to work for yourself, you've got to be ready to deal with those ups and downs. The older Forward screen printing has gotten, the easier it's been to absorb some of those ups and downs. In the very beginning, as soon as we had a slow day or week or month, I would think, “I guess we're out of business. That's it. It's done.” And then, we’d get a job. So I would think, “I guess we're back in business now, because we've got to be in business now because we've got another call or another order.”

It was cutthroat in the beginning. It's hard when you're building and you don't have a strong customer base and you don't know if you're going to exist the next month or the next year.

After 22 years of printing, I have a decent customer base. So even though this particular year, we're having a slow year compared to years past, I have the confidence that I can keep my crew busy to a certain degree. Even if we have to run less people or maybe less shifts, we're going to stay in business. I try not to stress as much. There's still definitely ups and downs, but I've been saving for a long time with the business and trying to be the smart business person and prepare us for those downtimes so that we can still pay rent if we're not getting jobs. And I've worked hard to try to do that because I've seen other screen printers that weren't prepared for that, and they went out of business. They're no longer here. So at least the way that I've tried to run it has been able to keep us around for a little while.

Q: 22 years – it's a long time to be doing one thing. How do you keep finding the inspiration and what you're doing?

Sean: Well, it's working with guys like you. And that's not a joke, because there's been plenty of times when maybe you get a customer or a job that is really just a drag, and it's really stressful, and it affects your mental health, and it really makes you think, “Why am I even doing this?”

But then you go and work with somebody awesome, and you're like, that's why I'm doing this, because of this connection. We connect over surfing or music, or just making awesome apparel or artwork, and help somebody, and connecting with them on that just makes it awesome. So it changes the whole game. That's exactly why I'm here doing this.

It's teamwork. It starts with you and your vision and your ideas. And so if you want to come, and if you would like me to help you, I’d be stoked to do that. But it's teamwork. It's not just me, and it's probably not just you. It's us coming together and putting our minds together, and just doing the best we can. I think that's what makes it successful. 

Q: Looking towards the next 10, 20 years, what do you see for screen printing going into the future? And do you have any goals as you grow?

Sean: Yeah, it's tough. Sometimes, I can be bad at looking into the far future. But I want to keep doing what we're doing. Existing as a small business in Southern California gets harder and harder every year. It gets more expensive. Rent has gone crazy for just these warehouse spaces. It's tripled in not that long of time for me and my rent.

 So, really, if we can exist another 10 or 20 years, it would be amazing.

I'm not looking to get rich. If I were in this for the money, I would have been gone a long time ago, so it's really about just trying to keep the stoke, and having great customers that want to work with me, and having fun with it while I can. As long as I can keep that going, I'm going to be here. Sometimes industry changes are unforeseeable. And we've been really lucky that, for some reason, our old school screen printing machines are still industry standard. Technology advances so quickly. For some reason, screen printing hasn't changed that much. There's digital stuff that has come in that we've jumped on, and we have digital capabilities.

But the old school octopus, octagon circle presses that have been around forever, are still the best in the industry. I purchased M&R equipment from day one because that was the best equipment out there for screen printing. And it was with the intention of, “Okay, you spend more money, you get the best equipment that you can, and that's going to allow you to be successful for decades.”

And it's paid off.

Q: That leads into my final question as we wrap-up. How do you define success at this point?

Sean: Happiness. And that's not just me, but it's my family, it's my friends, it's the people that I get to work with. If we're all happy and we're stoked on what we're doing, that's a win right there. It's nothing about bank accounts or anything else, possessions, all that stuff. To me, if you can live a happy life doing something that you love with your friends and family, I don't know how you could beat that. It's pretty good.

Q: Do you think that's always been your outlook, or have you realized that as you've gone through life?

Sean: Yeah, I kind of have. I've been a little bit selfish, but I've been really focused on trying to put happiness in the forefront rather than finances or owning a home or a lot of other things that maybe people put on their plate. I've been so fortunate living where I do. I live in Cardiff by the sea, and can walk to the beach. We have a little rental house, but it's paradise for us. The happiness of living where we live and getting to do what we do is worth everything to me and my family.

I think that helps me to be a better human, coming to work and taking care of my customers and my friends.

When we're all stoked, it's just a better world.