When I decided to open Dino Jiu Jitsu, it was the first time in years I’d launched something totally new from the ground up. No roadmap. No brand. Just an idea, a name, and a gut feeling that we were building something different.
And then came the logo.
Now, this wasn’t 2010 where you sketch something on a napkin and pay a designer to run with it. This was post-AI explosion. The dawn of Midjourney, DALL·E, Canva’s AI tools — you name it. And I dove in headfirst.
What happened next?
I created over 1,000 logos.
Yes. One. Thousand.
Every style. Every font. Dinosaurs doing jiu-jitsu, grappling skeletons, BJJ belts wrapped around T-Rexes. Some were hilarious. Some were absolutely awful. And some were so close it made the decision even harder.
It felt like having too many good options was somehow worse than having none.
I’d never felt decision fatigue like that in my life.
One night I looked up and realized I had 47 tabs open, each with some slight variation of a raptor or a triangle or a gi-wearing dino — all competing for the front of a t-shirt, a sign, a website, a dream.
It was exciting. It was overwhelming. It was completely nuts.
But looking back, that moment — buried in a flood of designs — was proof that this thing was real. We weren’t just talking about a gym anymore. We were building it.
Eventually, I shut the tabs, picked a direction, and moved forward. Was it the perfect logo? I don’t even know. But it was ours. And that’s what mattered.
If you’re starting something new and you feel buried by choices — just know, that’s normal. You’re not crazy. The chaos is part of it.
But at some point, you’ve gotta stop generating and start deciding.
That’s how you make progress