Today we’d like to introduce you to George McLaughlin.
Hi George, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story definitely wasn’t a straight line to entrepreneurship.
I grew up in Toronto, OH and moved to the Pittsburgh area in 2006. For most of my adult life, I followed a fairly traditional professional path. I spent more than three decades building a career in sales, marketing, technology, and business strategy. I worked with companies large and small, led teams, helped organizations tell their stories, launched products, solved problems, and learned a tremendous amount about what makes people, and businesses, stand out.
But creativity was always the thread running through everything I did.
I’ve always loved taking an idea and turning it into something people can actually see, hear, wear, or experience. Over the years that showed up in graphic design, marketing, websites, presentations, video, music, branding, and eventually apparel and merchandise.
Striking Tiger Media grew out of that creative side of me.
The name itself is personal. My Dad used to call me “Tiger,” and after losing him on Christmas Day in 2005, that word took on a completely different meaning for me. When I needed a name for something I was building myself, “Tiger” belonged in it. Striking Tiger became a way of carrying a little piece of him forward while also representing what I wanted the business to be – bold, memorable, and willing to make some noise.
For a while, Striking Tiger Media existed alongside my corporate career. Then life gave me the push I probably never would have given myself.
After losing my job, I found myself at a crossroads. I could immediately start chasing the next corporate position and try to recreate the career I had, or I could finally give myself permission to see what would happen if I put the same energy I had spent building things for other companies into building something of my own.
I chose the second option.
In 2026, I relaunched Striking Tiger Media and began turning it from a creative side business into a real production company. Today, we create custom apparel and merchandise, graphics and branding, websites and presentations, signs and promotional materials, and even custom music and video. What I love most is that there really isn’t a single type of customer. We might be helping a small business look more professional one day, creating something for a school or organization the next, and then making a completely personal one-of-a-kind piece for someone celebrating a milestone or remembering someone they love.
And I’ve learned that sometimes those smaller projects mean the most.
One of the biggest changes has been bringing more of the actual production in-house. Instead of simply designing something and sending it somewhere else to be made, I’ve invested in the equipment and learned the production side myself. There have been plenty of late nights, ruined prints, equipment problems, experiments, and moments when I’ve wondered what exactly I got myself into. But there is something incredibly satisfying about watching an idea go from a conversation, to a design on a screen, to something tangible that I’m holding in my hands.
Our philosophy at Striking Tiger Media is pretty simple: Make Them Look Twice.
There is plenty of ordinary stuff in the world already. I don’t want to make more of it.
At this point in my life, I’m less interested in following the path I’m “supposed” to follow and much more interested in building something I’m proud of. I’m taking everything I’ve learned over a 37-year career, the successes, the failures, the relationships, the creativity, and probably a little stubbornness, and putting it into something that is mine.
Striking Tiger Media is still growing, and I honestly don’t know exactly where the story ends.
That’s probably my favorite part.
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?
Absolutely not, and I think anyone who tells you entrepreneurship is a smooth road is probably leaving out a few chapters.
One of the biggest struggles was simply how Striking Tiger Media became my full-time focus. I didn’t leave a 37-year career with a perfectly developed business plan, a huge financial cushion, and a carefully orchestrated transition. I lost my job.
There is something incredibly unsettling about suddenly having the career you’ve spent most of your adult life building come to a stop. Your job becomes intertwined with your identity without you even realizing it. When it’s suddenly gone, you’re forced to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions: What now? What am I actually good at? Do I want to spend my energy trying to recreate what I had, or is this an opportunity to build something completely different?
I decided to bet on myself.
That sounds much more inspirational in hindsight than it sometimes feels while you’re actually doing it.
Building Striking Tiger Media has meant investing money before knowing exactly when it will come back. It has meant learning entirely new skills, buying equipment, troubleshooting that equipment, figuring out production, pricing, shipping, marketing, inventory, software, taxes, customer service, and occasionally discovering at midnight that the thing you thought you finally understood apparently has one more way to go wrong.
There have definitely been moments when I’ve thought, “What the hell am I doing?”
There is also a very different kind of pressure when it’s your name and your business attached to the finished product. I’ve always been a perfectionist, but when someone trusts me with their business logo, an important event, a fundraiser, a memorial piece, or something personally meaningful to them, I take that responsibility seriously. If something isn’t right, I don’t want to send it out simply because it’s “good enough.”
That’s where one of our internal rules came from: If it doesn’t perform, it doesn’t ship.
Another challenge has been learning that being good at making something and being good at running a business that makes that thing are two completely different skills. You can create something amazing and still have to figure out how to find customers, price it profitably, manage your time, control costs, and convince people who have never heard of you to take a chance on you.
And then there’s the mental side of starting over later in your career.
It’s humbling to go from having decades of experience in your field to being a beginner again. I’ve had to become comfortable saying, “I don’t know how to do that yet.” The important word is yet.
I’ve made mistakes. I’ve wasted materials. I’ve bought things I probably didn’t need. I’ve underestimated jobs. I’ve spent hours solving problems that probably had five-minute solutions. And I’ve had days when something I was convinced would sell received absolutely no attention whatsoever.
But I’ve also had customers send me pictures wearing something I made. I’ve watched a small business owner see their idea turned into something real. I’ve created pieces that made people laugh and others that made people cry. Those moments have a way of putting the difficult days into perspective.
So no, it hasn’t been a smooth road.
But I’m not sure I’d want it to have been.
Every mistake has taught me something, and every problem I’ve figured out has made me more confident about the next one. At 57, I’m building, learning, screwing things up, figuring them out, and getting better every day.
For me, that’s a pretty exciting place to be.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Striking Tiger Media is a creative studio and production company built around one simple idea: Make Them Look Twice.
We help individuals, small businesses, organizations, schools, teams, nonprofits, and anyone with an idea turn that idea into something people notice and remember.
That can take a lot of different forms. We design and produce custom apparel and merchandise, create logos and graphics, develop marketing materials, signs and banners, build websites and presentations, and produce custom music and video. Sometimes a customer comes to us knowing exactly what they need. Other times they come to us with, “I have this crazy idea…” Those are usually some of my favorite conversations.
What ties everything together isn’t the product. It’s the creativity behind it.
I don’t want Striking Tiger Media to be the place where you pick Design #17 from a catalog, change the name, and call it custom. There are plenty of companies that do that very well. I want us to be the place you come when you want something that feels like you.
That’s also why I’m intentionally building STM to bridge both design and production. A customer can come to us with nothing more than an idea, and we can help develop the concept, create the artwork, figure out what it belongs on, produce it, package it, and get it into their hands. Having more of that process under one roof gives us creative freedom and allows me to obsess over details that probably drive everyone around me crazy.
One thing that sets us apart is that we’re comfortable with small.
A small business that needs six shirts matters to me. The person who needs one meaningful gift matters. The organization trying to raise money without ordering hundreds of pieces matters. Not every good idea needs a 100-piece minimum order before someone is willing to help bring it to life.
And while we work quickly, our average turnaround is around 48 hours when the project allows it, I never want speed to become an excuse for sending out something I wouldn’t be proud to put my own name on.
Our rule is: If it doesn’t perform, it doesn’t ship.
I’m probably most proud of the personality the Striking Tiger brand has developed. It’s bold. It’s a little irreverent. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. But underneath that personality is a business that genuinely cares about the people we’re creating for.
Some of the work I’m proudest of isn’t necessarily the biggest or most profitable. It’s the memorial piece that means something to a family. It’s helping a new business look established and confident. It’s creating something for a nonprofit or fundraiser that helps them raise money. It’s getting a message from someone saying, “This is exactly what I pictured,” or, even better, “This is better than what I pictured.”
Those moments remind me that we’re not really in the T-shirt business, the graphic design business, or the marketing business.
We’re in the idea business.
If you can describe it, sketch it on a napkin, send me a terrible screenshot, or start a conversation with “I don’t even know if this is possible…” there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to want to figure out how to make it happen.
And when we’re finished, I want somebody to see it, stop for a second, and look again.
Make Them Look Twice.
That’s Striking Tiger Media.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
There are a lot of people who deserve credit, although I don’t know that I can point to one traditional mentor and say, “That’s the person who taught me how to do this.”
In many ways, my mentors have been collected over 37 years.
I’ve had bosses who taught me how I wanted to lead and a few who taught me how I definitely didn’t want to lead. I’ve worked alongside incredibly talented salespeople, marketers, designers, technologists, executives, and entrepreneurs. I’ve taken pieces from all of those experiences, the good ones and the difficult ones, and they have absolutely influenced how I’m building Striking Tiger Media today.
My family deserves a tremendous amount of credit, especially my husband, Tim. Starting a business is difficult and impacts your entire family. When I decided to really pursue Striking Tiger Media, it meant equipment arriving at the house, boxes everywhere, late nights, weekends spent working, money being invested back into the business, and conversations that somehow turn into discussions about T-shirts, printers, websites, or some idea I had five minutes ago.
Having someone beside you who says, “Go for it,” especially when you’re not entirely sure yourself, is a pretty powerful thing.
My kids have been cheerleaders too. They’re also occasionally an unsolicited focus group, which I probably appreciate more than I admit.
And then there are my customers.
The people who trusted Striking Tiger Media early on deserve more credit than they probably realize. When you’re building a young business, every person who places an order, refers a friend, shares a post, comes back for another project, or simply tells someone, “You should call George,” is helping you build something.
Some customers have also challenged me with projects I wasn’t entirely sure I knew how to do when they first asked. Those projects forced me to learn, experiment, and expand what Striking Tiger Media could offer. In that sense, my customers have helped shape the company just as much as I have.
I’ve also been fortunate to have friends and people in my network who share our work, recommend the business, offer advice, or send someone my way. When you’re starting something from scratch, those small acts of support don’t feel small at all.
And although he isn’t here to see any of this, I have to give some credit to my Dad.
He gave me the nickname “Tiger,” so in a way, his fingerprints are on the business before you ever get past the name.
At the end of the day, Striking Tiger Media may be my company, but it’s being built with a whole lot of people standing behind it.
I don’t take that for granted.
Pricing:
- Low minimums, small orders welcome
- Custom quotes based on each project
- Volume pricing available for larger orders
- Fundraiser and organization programs available
- No-cost initial project conversation
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.strikingtigermedia.biz/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strikingtigermedia/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrikingTigerMedia
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/strikingtiger
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe1M5GNDlvkG2ry68nlfe2A
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/striking-tiger-media-canonsburg
