How I Got Started With Entrepreneurship
I came from a military background. I moved around a lot but the one thing that I always brought with me was my passion for basketball. Most people know me as a basketball player, but I would like to be known as a businessman, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist.
The dream sparked in high school when I was roaming the halls selling electronics and candy bars. Once I got to college, I realized business was what I wanted to pursue. I didn’t want to wait until I graduated to start making money or begin a business. Around my sophomore year in college a good friend of mine Matt Knox, now CEO at Headline Sports introduced me to social media marketing.
He was working out of Miami, Florida with a great startup social media marketing company called IComeUp Marketing. It was just crossing $10,000 a month with employing a group of young kids aging 17-24. I was excited when he asked me to join the team and flew out as soon as I could to stay in Miami for a whole summer. My co-workers were like-minded, motivated, and creative. From when I started in January to the time I left in August we went from $10,000 a month to just under $150,000 a month. The company ended up generating over a million dollars in 2017. A very rewarding accomplishment.
Once the summer was over, I headed back home to New Hampshire and completed my Junior year of college. I was writing a paper for one of my classes and in it, I mentioned how I wanted to create my own million-dollar marketing company. I was so proud of my aspirations and determined that this was an achievable goal, that I thought my professor would feel the same. He gave me feedback that was disappointing. My dreams weren’t realistic. I decided to prove him wrong and started a company called Beast Media with my brother Joseph Bell.
What is Beast Media?
Beast Media is a Branding, Marketing & PR Agency. We work with professional athletes, music artists, small businesses, and entrepreneurs that want to make an impact on the world and get their message out through video production, social media marketing, PR, web design etc. Our focus is to help build brands they can leverage in order to gain sponsors, endorsements and brand deals. We realized people need help with building a real audience in their specific niche and now we solve that problem for our clients by helping them first look good on social media, and second, reach their target audience.
3 Things Anyone Who Wants to Take the Leap into Entrepreneurship Should Know
Be patient. Businesses are not built overnight.
- A lot of people want to get rich quick or make a lot of money but don’t want to put in the time it takes to reach that point. People can come up with great ideas for a product or service but when it comes down to taking action, people get hit with paralysis by analysis. The best way you handle this is by reverse engineering anything you want to get. Write down on a piece of paper what your end goal is. Then the exact steps it would take for you to get there. Once that’s all done you can then start doing what you need to get done in order to reach that end goal.
Enjoy the journey. You will have wins and losses.
- Just like life, you’re going to have ups and downs. It’s to be expected, but how you respond to these ups and downs will determine your success. If you like challenges and problem solving, you should love the process it takes to build a business.
Build relationships.
- This is the most important piece of advice, coming from me. You will never be able to build a business all by yourself. It’s just impossible to do everything and be everyone in your business. The more relationship you can build, the more money you can make.
What would you say to college students who want to start a business but feel like they aren’t ready?
Anyone who’s interested in running a business, start with an idea. Don’t overthink it. Start by thinking of something you would like to turn into a business, create a name and get an LLC. Take it day by day. It takes time but as long as you progress 1% everyday…you’ll be 360% better at the end of the year.