Today we’d like to introduce you to Jada Renee.
Jada, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am originally from Cleveland, Ohio. I came to Houston back in 2015 for what started out to be a summer but turned into several years. My business is titled “The INDI Group, LLC” – INDI stands for Individuality and my company is a media, marketing agency that works to create platforms for local artists, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations to enhance brand awareness and artist development in the sectors of art, visual media, and fashion.
My story started back in 2014 when I was awarded the opportunity to visit South Africa, Johannesburg and Botswana for a business humanitarian trip for the youth during my sophomore year of college at Kent State University. I had no interest in owning a business and had little to no knowledge of how to run a business and in June 2014, I was selected by a nonprofit organization called “The Keno Foundation”, based out of Atlanta, Georgia which stands for “Kid entrepreneurs need opportunities” to embark on a journey to Africa to learn about Business Development and the Economy of Africa. During this trip, I was invited with a group of other creatives to engage in several business building workshops and those workshops inspired me to create my own business model that would inspire other inner city creatives like me to invest in business.
Once I got back to the states, I started to think of ways to turn my hobbies into profit. My initial hobbies before college involved the arts, media and fashion and after being around several business owners and mentors on my trip to Africa, I was inspired to open my mind when it came to how my hobbies could make money under one umbrella. This instantly sparked the creativity behind how I later used my college campus as my ultimate marketing strategy to build and brand my business.
Since I attended Kent State University (which is number three in the world for its fashion design school) and I was also majoring in Applied Communications, which had several intro to media elective courses – It seemed as if God had put the basis of information that I would need to market my business right in my basic college courses. I instantly started to take what I was learning in all of my communication classes and applied them to my business and started to create my marketing strategy for my business. My strategy would include creating a clothing line to be the first official release of the INDI brand to introduce the students on campus starting with my initial friend group.
My first step was creating the classic INDI logo, after creating the logo I created a few proofs in photoshop of how the logo would look on clothing and started to share the photos with a few of my college friends via text. If I got good responses based on the designs, I would post them to Instagram (before the analytic features) and I would count the likes of every person that liked my design and save their Instagram names for when I would release the official product line. This way, I could directly send my products to people who have liked it and shown interest without marketing to a blind audience.
My second step was getting my shirts printed with the classic INDI Logo. The first batch of merchandise included classic INDI t-shirts and Hoodies. I had used a combination of money saved from selling some of my favorite sneakers and my playstation to buy my first batch of merchandise. I sold out of that first batch of merchandise within the first month from promoting the merchandise anywhere from on campus to online, professors, store associates, local community members to family members back home and eventually our merchandise ended up getting in the hands of Syd the Kid from The Internet Band and Tyler the Creators “Odd Future”. After Syd was seen wearing our classic black INDI hoodie on The Internet Bands first tour titled “Ego Death” after their first album, momentum started to buzz behind the INDI brand as it related to the street fashion portion of our brand. We instantly went from selling merchandise on campus to inside of my 1 bedroom apartment by throwing weekly house parties or art events at local bars and galleries around the Kent State campus area.
My third step after gaining momentum via social media and on campus was to leave my comfort zone and push my marketing strategy in a new location. That summer, I was invited by my godmother to visit her cupcake company in Houston to assist with the marketing. After spending the first few weeks in the heights of Houston, I was inspired to find and network with the creative individuals that would connect with the INDI brand, so along with assisting my aunt in marketing her cupcake company, I also went to find cool Texas friends, visited several Houston art galleries and artist hubs in the Montrose area and started to creep my way into the media and music sectors of the city in order to begin branding INDI with Houston musicians, blogs and videographers. After gaining momentum with our brand I snagged an internship at a local clothing store titled “Exclusive Taste” where I served as a videographer and photographer for the stores new clothing releases, I was also in charge of creating concepts for photoshoots to promote the clothing.
During one of our photoshoots, we set up a collaboration shoot with Houston rapper ” Slim Thug” and did the promo shoot for his new clothing line at the time titled “Boss Life”. When Slim Thug pulled up to the shoot he had a trunk full of his “Boss Life” merchandise and this showed me that if I wanted to get the attention of Houston that I had to find a creative way to “pop my trunk” and make sure I that stayed honest and confident in the process…meaning that Houston didn’t need to know that I was new to this whole business thing, all they needed to see was that my brand was cool and that it sells. After that day, I started saving money from my internship to get another batch of merchandise to start to sell at local artist concerts in downtown Houston – this created my connection to the underground music scene of Houston. After becoming acquainted with the city of Houston and its culture, I was sold and knew I wanted to spend more time in the city to build my brand. I chose to switch to doing college courses online still enrolled at Kent State University, in order to allow myself the freedom to expand my horizons with how far my branding could go.
After staying in Houston for what turned into 3-4 years back and forth before and after college graduation, I learned the art of networking, connecting and building with others and most importantly, I learned the art of hustle. Coming from starting a business in college where 85% of everyone knew me and trusted my brand to moving to a city where literally zero people knew about my brand gave me a culture shock of what it means to be a business owner, and that’s to learn how to hustle. By allowing myself to have more time to develop my brand in Houston, I met more creative individuals that became genuine supporters and buyers of our merchandise along with loyal attendees to our local music and art events. This inspired me to pull the complete concept of INDI together to now push the mission of helping to create a platform for these local artists, musicians and entrepreneurs looking for an outlet to express themselves. I made sure to do my research on owning an LLC and looked for guidance from successful business owners in the Houston area in order to make sure my marketing strategies could make sense to non- college students. This all helped to build my confidence as a business owner and created trust between myself and fellow Houstonians that I met along the way.
From Houston, I went on to market my business in NYC, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Atlanta, to my hometown in Cleveland with curated art events, fashion shows, pop up shops and music showcases for artists Our classic INDI merchandise has been seen on writer and director Lena Waithe, rapper Nipsey Hussle, several artists from the Rostrum Records -Record Label and Madeintyo’s Private Club Records- Record Label. Starting in 2017, we expanded our brand initiative by adding social media marketing and branding services for local nonprofits in the Houston. Los Angeles and Cleveland area and we now do yearly underground artist events for SXSW keeping our Texas connection alive and thriving.
Fast forward to today The INDI Group, is an official platform for media marketing relations in terms of artist development and management for musicians, social media management and branding for nonprofit organizations based in the Ohio, Texas and Los Angeles area and a street fashion house for our inspiring messages to be promoted on our clothing. Our business has also integrated itself into schools and colleges teaching students about emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship basics through art and media.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Building a business can be draining on your self-confidence when coming from a situation where you lack the knowledge of how to run a business. Like most millennial entrepreneurs today, we learn from the internet or from doing our own research from books or mentors. With that, our family, friends and associates can sometimes be the last group of individuals to understand the creative route to entrepreneurship if that is not their ideal career path. This can sometimes hinder your confidence as a developing entrepreneur by lacking the support you may feel is necessary at the time of building your brand.
The main struggle comes when you start to look at these obstacles as struggles. One main way that I make sure that I always see the positive perspective in things is to see them from a birds eye view. If I can take my feelings and emotions out of how I THINK certain things should go or how I THINK certain people should react to my brand then I am taking away my belief in a higher source that I know is working to make those hard things easier for me accomplish. You should always search to find your why so that you can always push yourself to have a smooth road even when the road gets bumpy.
The INDI Group, LLC – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My company The INDI Group, LLC is a company created to inspire the uninspired artist to invest in themselves with business and entrepreneurship. Our business serves as a platform for creative individuals to express themselves int the arts as it relates to event planning, artist development, artist promotion and artist bookings. We also have a number of creative social media marketing strategies for local nonprofit organizations looking to enhance their marketing in terms of social media management, website management, event planning and overall brand promotion.
Our company is most known for our classic INDI merchandise and our underground artist events. A moment for our brand that I am most proud of it is a very special moment in 2018 with the late great Nipsey Hussle, as he came to visit my home town in Cleveland, Ohio for a voting event that I had collaborated on with a few organizations back home to discuss the topics of criminal justice reform and voting for the 2018 election. During this time we gifted Nipsey an INDI care package with two classic INDI hoodies and he was later captured by TMZ wearing our merchandise in the LAX airport.
This experience showed me the power of the law of attraction and manifestation. I personally am a huge fan of Nipsey Hussle and his wisdom as it relates to music and business and prior to this time I had been looking for knowledge on how to open and operate your first retail store, I came across a Nipsey documentary that gave the full story behind his Crenshaw clothing line and this inspired me to dive in more to his perspective in business. This sent me down a rabbit hole of Nipsey Hussle Interviews where I learned his perspective on things like cryptocurrency, business model concepts, marketing strategies that focused on the community and his education initiatives. This and replaying several Nipsey albums back to back for months inspired me to strengthen several aspects of my business model to create more solid cash flow. I had all of the intentions while watching those interviews and listening to those albums to actually meet Nipsey Hussle one day…I just never knew when or if it would ever happen.
This is what I feel separates our brand from the rest because we work to show the people and our supporters that anything is possible if you simply believe in yourself. Our slogan for INDI is “inspire the uninspired” and it serves as a mantra to genuinely inspire anyone who feels that they lack the spiritual energy or talent to manifest their dreams into reality. My entire business is a form of manifestation of ideas and concepts that I created in my mind. This is why the mind is powerful when you believe you can truly achieve.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I define success as what makes you spiritually fulfilled. I feel like your success is tied to your soul’s purpose on this planet and once you unlock your purpose at whichever age, you can work to find success in your purpose.
My criteria for success is being honest with myself and limiting any distractions that will deter me from completing any goal I may have big or small. By being honest with myself I can learn my likes and dislikes in terms of my personality and work to better myself in terms of having self-confidence, defeating my procrastination, defeating my mental anxiety and anything else that creeps into my mind evoking negative energy. I do these things by giving myself time, rest, and energy when necessary to conquer my goals.
Seeking success can also come with a lot of self-judgment and comparison to others and these are key things that I try to stay away from because in order for me to maintain the focus on my personal success, I have to cheer myself on and count my wins. Instead of judging my losses when I encounter them, I look at them as lessons and instantly look at what to learn from the loss before the emotion of self-doubt and comparison starts to kick in.
I’ve learned from this journey of being a self-made business owner that while on this road to success, you truly have to find what works for you along with having faith and discipline. Having a specific goal works as well so that one can have a full roadmap to follow in order to reach their end goal. Once that goal is reached, you’ll start to build your recipe for success from there.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.indishop.co
- Email: theindigroup@gmail.com
Image Credit:
Main photo is taken by Stacee Starr
Chloe Thompson – Photographer, Ashton Blaak – Photographer, Shooting Without Bullets, Cleveland Votes
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