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What’s your backstory?
At the age of 21 I found myself as a college dropout and bankrupt. Literally, bankrupt. My car was in the process of being repossessed and I was advised to file bankruptcy and that’s exactly what I did. I remember thinking “how in the world am I going to pay my bills and what on earth could I possibly do without a college degree”. Luckily, I ended up meeting someone while working a minimum wage job who would become my mentor and he saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself at that time. You know, I was young and lacked direction. In fact, as I look back on that now I was pretty ignorant to business, success and life. So, what ended up happening was I quit my job and did exactly what my mentor advised. I didn’t sway away from what he said, I did it to the “T”.
Then the success became inverted meaning, I reached multiple six figures within months and of course because I had not experienced that level before I spent money on things that I look back at today and know that had I invested versus buy I would have millions of dollars in an investment account today. But, you can’t dwell on the past, you can only learn from it. Then something happened that, the market tanked and so did my business. I had my own Magazine, I built a book of business that allowed me to have massive leverage and within months of the market shifting I lost it all.
I lost the home, the car, the loft and ended up living with my parents. But I didn’t allow that to stop me from making my next big career move. You see, I was strategic. I needed to find someone to pay me for my passions while I elevated my life. I looked at it as bridge income. Income that would allow me flexibility but also something that would be a stepping stone to my next big move. So, what I did was during the time that I saw things tanking,
I was in constant communication (and my follow-up on this was more than likely annoying because I was relentless) with the local newspaper editor. I knew I had writing skills and in fact, writing is one of my passions so I sent off several pieces to him and he finally gave me the chance to be a paid weekly columnist. Now, the income wasn’t that good, but I had little bills and it was enough to allow me to get by.
From there, the rest is history. I focused on Social Media, psychology, building my community and collaborating with people like Trent Shelton and Les Brown. You fast forward a few short years later, I am partnered with the largest Social Media platform in history and running not only my own brand but my company called District Media Press which is on track to a 7 figure income.
Can you tell me the story of your prior successes, challenges, and major responsibilities?
I’ve had an inverted journey. Because I left the minimum wage job I had and went all in to learn the basic fundamental principles that my new mentor was teaching me, I had success rather quickly. Within the first few months under his guidance I had amassed a multiple six figure income. Now, this is where things got interesting. During the time of my faster than normal success, was right around the time that the market had taken a dive into what the world would consider one of the most challenging times in US history. So, my journey went from up to down really quickly.
I remember, losing my loft I was living in, my 100k car, pawning off my jewelry and moving back in with my parents. To be honest, that was less than 7 years ago. So for me, I felt like I had to re-learn what I knew about success, business and I had to spend time figuring out what my next move was going to be because, going back and working a 9 to 5 wasn’t an option. The biggest challenge was figuring out what business I was going to build next and what did that actually look like. To my surprise it didn’t take too long. I had been planting seeds prior to the loss of my loft and one of those seeds was with the editor of the local newspaper. I’ve always been passionate about writing but I also felt like going to school to become a journalist was my only option in the pursuant of that career option.
Thankfully, the editor read one of my blog pieces and I was hired on the spot to become a published weekly columnist. Honestly, from there the rest is history. I ended up quitting that writing job because it wasn’t beneficial from a financial standpoint but that was the start of it all. The start of my brand, my partnership with one of the biggest platforms in the world and the start of my current company which is called District Media Press.
Can you tell me about a time when you almost gave up, how you felt about that, and what you did instead of giving up?
This question always stumps me a bit because there were so many times that I felt like giving up, honestly more times than I can count. I think every entrepreneur has felt this way more times than one can count. In my experience it is a part of the process. Sometimes, it is caused because we lack the visual progress and/or things become so financially challenging that keeping things afloat become too much to bare. The one thing that has kept me on the right track was believing that things would pivot for me as long as I kept moving because a moving target is hard to hit.
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