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City where you\u2019re from: <\/b>Muncie, Indiana<\/span><\/p>\n Hobbies:<\/b> Graphic Design, Soccer, Speaking<\/span><\/p>\n Favorite quote: <\/b>\u201cDo. Or do not. There is no try.\u201d – Yoda<\/span><\/p>\n Twitter:<\/b> @DadBlox<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t really say there was a defining moment where I decided that I would take on the responsibilities of being an entrepreneur– it was more of a phase in life that I quickly adapted to. I never really had an interest in working for other people or have someone else giving me assignments, making money on my own seemed cooler.<\/span><\/p>\n My influences are fairly local, they\u2019ve been around. One being Ron Brumbarger, CEO of Bitwise Solutions, founder of Apprentice University, author of <\/span>You\u2019re Always Being Interviewe<\/span><\/i>d and a good friend of mine. He created something bigger than himself, something that\u2019ll last even after he\u2019s past– he promotes the values and traits needed for entrepreneurs and the need to be intentionally extraordinary. That alone really separates him from the majority of people.<\/span><\/p>\n I also look up to people like Gary Vee and Grant Cardone, that\u2019s a given; especially for us young entrepreneurs! Gary Vee shows me how the amount of work you put into something reflects the amount you\u2019ll get out of it. When in need of marketing advice and information I look to Grant Cardone, similar to Ron Brumbarger they\u2019ve both shown the importance of being resourceful as an entrepreneur.<\/span><\/p>\n The list is endless, there\u2019s something you can learn from everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n As of now my focus has been on a project I started officially December 1st 2015– that being \u2018<\/span>Them Magazines<\/span><\/a>\u2019 <\/span>a bi-monthly online publication with content dedicated towards inspiring and informing our future generations on important subjects like Game Development, Math in Code and Graphic Design. It doesn\u2019t stop there, we focus heavily on promoting upcoming \/ aspiring developers and designers with designated features within each issue and love to include influencers within the community.<\/span><\/p>\n The story really starts back in early 2014, when a friend and I had aspirations of becoming youtubers and creating videos for a living. Every channel needs a good name, so we combined the words \u201cvideo\u201d and \u201cphobic\u201d to create: \u201cVidaphobic\u201d obviously a lot of regret in that afterwards. About a year passes and we\u2019ve done nothing but procrastinate, produce about 1 \u00bd videos and maybe make 0.2$ off YouTube advertisements. Eventually my friend and I came to realize our aspirations were nothing but unrealistic at the time, so we backed off for a while. October 2015 rolls around and I decide to reboot the brand, this time with a different mission. I hop on photoshop designing new logos, banners, announcement graphics and more– I was hyped up. Around this time I got into this site called \u2018Roblox\u2019, an online gaming platform; I realized this could be our niche audience. So I got all the designs finished up and posted. One of which sparked the idea that\u2019ll change everything for me\u2026 Originally \u201cThem\u201d was supposed to be a freelance graphic design brand for myself, my followers thought otherwise. After posting a faux-magazine cover on my twitter I was bombarded with questions and suggestions on starting a Roblox related magazine– I literally thought to myself \u201cHey, that\u2019s not a bad idea\u201d I gathered a couple of my friends together in twitter direct messages and we started planning our first issue. We worked long and hard on it– with no experience in publications, writing, or design we successfully launched ‘issue 1’ December 1<\/span>st<\/span> 2015. This got us more attention than we’ve ever received, it was a hit. We gained the attention of Roblox itself, they shared our publication all over their social media and we went from there.<\/span><\/p>\n Overtime we built our team up to 4 authors, 1 translator, 1 web developer and myself. We built our relationship with Roblox and January 2016 they invited us to print a special edition of our magazine for their invite-only conference in San Jose California– this caught the attention of cereal giant Fruity Pebbles (POST) who contributed to the creation of the issue. Since creation we’ve released 8 issues so far, and are just about to release our 9<\/span>th<\/span>. No business is safe from drama, this journey hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for us– we’ve persevered through some tough times, but ultimately came out a better business both internally and externally. November 2016, I was awarded the Young Innovator of the Year award for my city, thanks to the magazine team and its partners. Our Web Developer won an Excellence in Design award for our website from Issuu, and authors nominated for Excellence in Writing awards.<\/span><\/p>\n There’s a few things that really set us apart from similar magazines… One is our mission to educate the future generation with coding and design tutorials, because knowing how to play games and use a computer just isn’t enough. Compare us to any other gaming magazine and all you’ll get is differences, we teach, they feature. If you we were to morph our entire magazine into a YouTube video– you’d come out smarter. Do the same with your typical gaming magazine and you’d maybe know how to craft a sword in minecraft. Our tagline is \u201cIt’s all about them\u201d and that really shows throughout our magazine and its contents. We focus on pointing the spotlight on aspiring developers by showing off their cool creations, we show you how to design a user-interface to best appeal to your player– it’s all about them.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, failure is what drives an entrepreneurship and innovation. Ron Brumbarger (JumpStart \/ Apprentice University) teaches a lot about failure and how much of an impact is has on you. Personally I believe that you learn more from your failures than you do from your success.<\/span><\/p>\n Back in the early days of Them Magazines we had no internal structure, threats where issued, publications were taken down, it was chaos. I have no background in business whatsoever, I didn’t know there was such a thing was internal structure let alone how to create and manage it. I worked with my team and we eventually got everything back into order and things figure out. Consent forums and contracts are extremely helpful if you ever find yourself in a legal situation by the way!<\/span><\/p>\n My advice for entrepreneurs would be to find your audience. A big portion of the entrepreneurs I see nowadays are marketing to everyone, that’s not going to generate web traffic or sales for you. What’s your product? Who would be interested in this? How old are they? How do they think? Do they like to spend money? Be resourceful, use the analytics available to you on social media to figure out who your organic audience is and figure out how you can market specifically to them. For example, if you’re running a podcast about movie reviews, do you really think a die-hard bookworm is going to be interested in it? Probably not. Circle in on your audience and go crazy. Facebook ads and twitter ads all allow you to heavily target your campaign– use that to your advantage.<\/span><\/p>\n A few things I’ve noticed while learning social media marketing–<\/span><\/p>\n I really believe in the concept of the compound effect– one action leads to another more significant. I start my day off usually making my bed– for the reason that is the compound effect– it really gets me hyped up and ready to work on something.<\/span><\/p>\n That all depends on the person you’re talking too– in a general sense I believe an entrepreneur when it comes to startups and business should be focused on the macro. What I mean by that is, there’s no rush. You’re not going to make $10,000,000 overnight, take it slow and provide the best quality product or service you’re humanly able to. Don’t go jumping from idea to idea, you’re not Elon Musk and you likely don’t have billions of dollars to waste. Stick with your idea till the end, you never know what’ll happen.<\/span><\/p>\n Step one:<\/b> I developed my idea, I put it into perspective and I saw where I wanted it in a year. Figured out how I was going to get it there and what I needed to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n Step two:<\/b> We put together our resources and created a willing and able team that’ll allow us to complete our task that is to release an issue every two months.<\/span><\/p>\n Step three:<\/b> We had to figure out exactly what content we’d have in the magazine, who would be interested in reading it– and how we could stand out.<\/span><\/p>\n Step Four: <\/b>Create. We had the plan all put together, our target audience in place– everything was set. Now all we had to do was put that plan into action. We started by the end of October and completed it early November. Throughout that process we were also testing out our market with different types of social media content, posts, ect.<\/span><\/p>\n Step Five: <\/b>Now that we have content published, our audience engaged and things working out– We have to figure out how exactly we’re going to get our brand to the next level.<\/span><\/p>\n Step Six: <\/b>Generate Revenue. Now that we have our fan-base, a good readership, and quality content– we gotta figure out how we’re going to make money from this. There’s a few ways we figured ; one, we could sell ad space within the magazine, sell print copies, or open up sponsorship opportunities. We’re at this point now.<\/span><\/p>\nWhy did you decide to become an entrepreneur?<\/b><\/h3>\n
Who were your biggest influences? Was there a defining moment in your life?<\/b><\/h3>\n
What are you working on?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
How did you come up with this idea?<\/h3>\n
How is <\/span>Them\u00a0<\/em>Magazines<\/i><\/span>\u00a0different and unique? What has been your favorite moment with it? What\u2019s the vision?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Did you experience failure along the way? What did you learn from it?<\/h3>\n
Value-add questions<\/b><\/h3>\n
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.<\/span><\/h3>\n
Teach us something about\u00a0social media marketing!<\/span><\/h3>\n
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What daily habits do you have that allow you to perform at your peak?<\/span><\/h3>\n
What should an entrepreneur focus on?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Walk us step-by-step through the process that you had to go through to get from the early stages to where you are today.<\/span><\/h3>\n
What are some of your favorite books?<\/span><\/h3>\n