Show Notes
Welcome to the young+creatives podcast. We’re happy you’re here!
Revision Marketing Group is comprised of four young men and women in their 20’s. We’ve made it our mission to create meaningful, fresh, and authentic marketing strategies for small businesses & entrepreneurs. As a part of our mission, we’ve created a brand new podcast, young+creatives.
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Transcript
Marley Walters 00:00
Welcome to the young creatives podcast brought to you by revision marketing group, young creatives podcast will serve as a platform to promote, discuss and give advice on Millennial creatives coexisting in the traditional job market. Okay, hi, everyone. And thank you for joining us on The Young creatives podcast. We are obviously kind of new to this. This is our first episode, and we just kind of want to introduce ourselves. So I am Morley. And I am joined with two of my friends and co workers, and I’m so blessed to call them that Mikayla Michael. You want to yourself a little tidbit?
Mikayla Anderson 00:40
My name is Michaela. I’m the website and graphic designer. And yeah, so this is young creatives. That’s about all I got Michael.
Michael McCrary 00:51
I’m Michael. I am the IT guy. I usually run the sound but I’m also on the show sometimes. And today is one of those times. Yeah, so we pulled
Marley Walters 01:03
Michael out of his it hole to get on the get on the podcast. Yeah.
Mikayla Anderson 01:09
Okay. Um, well, I just have a question for you guys. So what was the biggest thing that kind of made young creatives? Like what is it? Why are we doing it? Like, anything?
Marley Walters 01:23
I feel like we kind of all so I think something I would like to talk about with each of us is like, what are we What’s our like, area of creativity, because obviously, we’re all young, I’m 23. And my area of creativity is definitely going to be graphic design, that freedom of text content and writing with social media marketing, and then all my spare time I do like photography and like collage art. So that’s where my creativity lies, and young creatives. Okay.
Mikayla Anderson 01:55
Yeah, I mean, you nailed it on the head, I think the biggest thing is not only working at a marketing company, yeah, um, but also trying to channel your creativity within your certain role at revision. So with website design, a lot of people think that it’s just point blank, and it’s just a website. But I think there’s a lot that can go into it that can correlate like who you are as a brand and really focuses on you with your personal brand, rather than just okay, here’s your basic website. Yeah, good. Um, but yeah,
Marley Walters 02:38
your websites are fantastic, though, visually, I didn’t know that that many elements went into having a website. But as I have worked here, and gotten to work beside Michaela, I have realized that there’s a lot of thought that goes into a website, and the design of it, and it’s like, You’re a wizard at it. It’s insane. Thank you. And then Michael, the same in that sense with it. I don’t know how he does half of the things that he does and makes possible on the back end of our websites, but you do. So why is he wizard back there, too? We’re just the whole team of wizards.
Michael McCrary 03:17
would be a wizard, if I could, yeah. Good time.
Mikayla Anderson 03:21
So I guess my goal, the biggest thing is people see some something like it just very point blank. So where do you find, like, creative ways to, like, get solutions like automations? Like, where does that kind of?
Michael McCrary 03:41
Well, um, in terms of, you know, creative, digital solutions like that, I think it really is just about applying practicality and efficiency. That’s what I try and do. I like to structure things in a way where, you know, where it rides that line of, you know, being just as much as it needs to be, but also being thorough, you know, and then it’s a very hard thing to find balance in, you know, I think for anybody, but I think, with the way that the world is going in terms of how, you know, it’s, you know, it’s not even just every year, it’s every week, every month, you know, there’s new technology, new things coming out new stuff being automated, you know, with the wealth of knowledge that we have at this point, because, you know, we’ve been kind of going on this digital curve for, you know, a few, at least half a decade now, you know, late 60s 70s around there. So it’s just, like I said, just kind of getting what you got and making the best of it, I think, I think. Yeah, I don’t know, it’s kind of a big question. So I’m struggling to think of a lot of stuff. But yeah, I just think computers are important. I mean, they’re kind of in everything. Do now and, you know, trying to get them to perform, you know, in the best way possible as quickly as possible as thoroughly as possible, as you know, kind of you know why they’re there? Yeah. Yeah, I feel
Marley Walters 05:15
absolutely. Okay. So yeah, go ahead. So I think like I think in we can kind of like all kind of bounce off each other on this. But I feel like that podcast, we started it because here we are, we’re all in our 20s we are all have some sort of creativity in some form, which I believe that everybody does kind of have their own sense of creativity in some form. And so like, I feel like this podcast can appeal to everyone because I know I would love I’m a huge podcast listener until I listen to too many murder podcasts. And I get paranoid and I have to stop for a little bit. But I’ve always wanted to listen to a podcast that I could just really relate with these people with and even kind of, in a sense, get inspiration for my current job. So I feel like whether you’re in marketing, or you’re just a young person who is out here, you know, trying to make way for yourself and your future self, and build this sense of, of life, which is like building your career. And, you know, not necessarily building a family. But if that’s what you’re going to do, it’s what you’re going to do, but just kind of like I in a way, being an adult. I know that sounds crazy. It’s like we’re birthing into adults. And like, if I had some, I would want to listen to people who had this similar situation and similar idea. So I guess what I’m hoping for with this podcast is that our listeners find some sort of comfort, and feel good that hey, I’m in my 20s, too, and like, really trying to figure out exactly what I am doing with my job and how I can excel in that, you know,
Mikayla Anderson 07:01
right? And I think what that like the more you can think about with young creatives, the biggest thing that I want to touch on so I did half of my bachelor’s online one. So like with that, I think there’s like this stigma after you get out of college, like you have everything said, I think,
Marley Walters 07:25
like you feel like when you graduate college is like, okay, there’s definitely gonna be like four people knocking on my door. Yeah, job.
Mikayla Anderson 07:30
Absolutely. And I think that’s definitely not the case. And so even like graduating in a pandemic, you have to get creative with separating yourself outside of the recent college grad crowd, especially because there was just so many of us that were just like, okay, now what? Like, um, I think that’s the biggest thing for myself, it was just trying to figure out a creative space that I can actually love what I’m doing. Yeah. And not go to work every day and hate my life. And I think the biggest part of it is just finding something you’re super passionate about, and making things happen because you’re passionate about it. Yeah. So like, I don’t want to bash like anybody in my family, but most of them are in healthcare. Yeah. And right now is not an amazing time to go healthcare or to be in health care. No, like, kudos to all of you guys who are in healthcare. Yeah.
Marley Walters 08:37
Anyone who’s a listener and had to be in healthcare or start out any sort of healthcare job in the middle of 2020. Or even people who were established and had to work through 2020. You guys. Yeah, I mean, a huge pat on the back hugs, I will kiss your feet. Like this is true that it is a pandemic. Oh, this is true. So that’s my goal, always thinking
Mikayla Anderson 09:00
ahead. And I think the biggest thing is just trying to find fulfilment in something that you feel like you’re really feeling like you’re doing something. And I think you can find that in a lot of things, even if it isn’t your job. Yeah. So whether it be like with an Etsy shop, or like being a local artist, like your boyfriend’s in a band, he’s a band manager, like your wife makes glasses, glasses change. So there’s like a lot of different things that you can channel that into. Yeah. And I think the biggest thing is like I want to touch on it with you, Marlene has that you did say that. Like I feel like everybody has some form of creativity. And I think that’s like 110% right? Because even if my creative flow is The same as yours. I might not recognize it as creative yeah so like right off the bat when I started working at revision marketing Cindy was talking to me about all these animal like automations like all this CRM stuff, right I had no idea what to say yes. And so just figuring out how he can really focus on okay this makes sense to do this because and I never would have thought about that because that’s just not my thing.
Marley Walters 10:34
I can very much relate with that. Sydney Cindy is our boss and also our our pleasure to be our coworker too. And he is really really good at marketing and so when I came in which at this point was like almost three months ago which was crazy to think when I came in I was like I was coming out of real estate marketing and that’s all I knew was how to market houses and so I came in and still sometimes I’ll be like so these are the creative This is like the kind of basis that I want and the the flow of design and I’m like sometimes I’m like um I don’t know what to do like yesterday he was like, we need to have a section of downloadables and so like the whole time I’m telling myself right now but the whole time I was thinking all of these graphics are downloadable. But then I understood he meant banners for websites so it’s just like we’re all getting some sort of like learning curve you know, and like we’re still on the come up even though we are blessed enough to be working at a marketing firm in our 20s Yes, but like it’s crazy. So in case anyone else is out there and they too had a problem with downloadables You’re not alone
Mikayla Anderson 11:48
Wow, okay, so as far as I guess I just want to start with Michael so with you being an IT How did you or why were you drawn to like the marketing side of the realm?
Michael McCrary 12:05
That’s actually an interesting question. So um, so I knew I wanted to do something with computers I just didn’t really know what I’d been going on computers and like my dad, when I was young was really into computer games and really love Linux like as it was kind of becoming a new thing. And I was just around that a lot you know, like we we didn’t have a whole lot growing up but we did always manage to have internet like that was one thing that we kind of had and I got a lot of exposure to that very early on. And as the years went on, I just found myself at some point or another being interested in like the idea of marketing like learning like what goes behind these advertisements what’s the what’s the motivation how, you know, how does it work right. And when I was in college, I was I had gone to get my degree for computer science and I ended up getting an internship at a digital marketing company and when I got in there and was able to see a lot of what goes into that you know, the website design the data manipulation, the automation the the you know, the customer side of it, how to tailor things you know, just a real transformative digital space for that kind of stuff that really really interested me and then I graduated in 2020 in May of 2020. And I you know, I kind of just absolutely especially with computer science because a lot of people are going into it now and you know, being a fresh graduate it is kind of an oversaturated situation where you really have to stick out from the crowd because you know, there’s so many different jobs in different companies and all the big ones they want you to stick out they want you to already have you know, few years experience for an entry level position. So, you know, I got out of college and I definitely struggled with that, you know, I worked some in between jobs, and I you know, I didn’t think it was gonna be easy, but it was definitely harder than I thought it was gonna be. And I moved out of state to New Mexico for a while with my wife. And things just really weren’t working out there anyways, so one day, we decided to move back and at that point, I had been online looking for jobs for months, you know, I had applied for at least 100 jobs just on the internet. But you know, like I had been looking for a job and tree for for about a week and saw a posting for this job and it said marketing and I was like, Oh, I could do that. So yeah, I think it’s just kind of something that I’ve always been drawn to both of them separately and then when I mash them together, I was like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, it’s very fulfilling i think i think i think technology has a big part to play in marketing and how we, as consumers exist, you know, every bought everybody buys everything online. Now every everything Everything is, is online. So in the pandemic
Marley Walters 14:59
really pushed that to me. I mean, we really learned what the power of marketing and the power of the internet can do. Like
Michael McCrary 15:10
if I mean, I was saying it, and it’s actually funny. So what am I, one of my creative outlets as I write? Yeah, and I went back recently and found something that I had written, like a GI, like, like in April or May of last year, like about what I was feeling in the moment. Yeah, like about the world. And it was really interesting to go back and read that. And, you know, to see back then, and even now, it’s like, you know, with without the internet, if, you know, there’s some alternate timeline where we’re still right here, but the internet just doesn’t happen to exist. You know, there would be we’d be crumbling right now. Yeah. Oh, my God, like things would just like people wouldn’t be able to communicate. Yeah,
Marley Walters 15:46
people would be so many failed businesses. Yeah,
Michael McCrary 15:49
it would just be like people, you know, without the ability to communicate or just being second type people just, you know, they lose it. Yeah, yeah. And it’s just really, I think it’s humbling more than anything else. Or at least it was for me to be able to step back and be like, this one thing. That’s one thing that had, you know, had to have so many other things happen before, was to have it in the way that we have it now is like, the hair that is holding that is holding everything together. Yeah, you know, somehow in the end, we will go tomorrow on the internet just died. The Internet wasn’t around anymore, like, we will not compute. Exactly, yeah. So I think, you know, in terms of that, I just think, you know, it’s important at this point, and it’s just kind of necessary to really at least have some tau in the technological field just because, you know, that’s the best way to do it, you know, half of it is information. And, you know, I find, at least in my experiences, just again, in between college, I did a little bit of freelance work out in New Mexico. And something that I noticed really, really heavily was just how many people had, like, no knowledge of technology, you know, they didn’t know how to set up a router for Wi Fi, they didn’t know how to, you know, run antivirus software, right? Um, and, you know, one, you know, one could sit there and be like, Oh, you know, like, they just don’t know anything but, you know, when you look at the circumstances behind that, and think, you know, like, they’ve never had to, they never learned you know, these are people who are older than us, you know, people who write like, they have, they have had full established lives and now you’re throwing technology into the thing and being like, hey, learn how to do this stuff to to get in there. So it’s just like they’re such a, sometimes can be such a big separation from just everything, you know, just just because of a lack of that exposure to technology. So I think it’s important to to give people that exposure and that knowledge and like a healthy conducive way and to let them you know, like make their own decisions about it because like I said earlier, it’s technology’s not going anywhere we might as well get used to it Yeah.
Team RMG 18:03
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Marley Walters 18:47
I’m in agreement on that. That was beautiful. So very moved about the internet now. Yeah.
Mikayla Anderson 18:55
So in addition to that, I’m Marley as far as your passion was social media When did it start? How did you begin your journey at the real estate company all like give me all
Marley Walters 19:13
so I haven’t really crazy story about how I fell into marketing because sometimes in life I have this fortunate thing where I fall upwards is what we call it and so um, I fell into a job I work I started working at a bank I I’m from Arkansas, by the way, if there’s anyone on here from Arkansas shout out. But I’m from Arkansas. So I moved to a very, very small town in southern Arkansas when I was 18. And I got a job at a bank there. That was a very small bank, just in that area of Arkansas. And so I had the privilege because it was a small town bank. I had the privilege of being able to do a lot of jobs that other people wouldn’t have an opportunity to do. So I started out as a teller, and I really got my foot in the door there. And then I moved into new accounts. And eventually, before I knew it, I was at another bank in town, and they were asking me if I could do marketing. And I was 19 or 20 at the time. And I had never done anything except post about myself on my personal social media. So I had no idea what they were really asking me to do. And so I was like, of course, because that’s what we do. And it sounded like something I would love to do, because they had it was a lot of, you have a lot of creative freedom. When you’re marketing and I was like, this is great, you know, I would love to do something like this. And so I literally just googled everything I possibly could before I started this venture with the bank. And so then I just took off like I did marketing, I became very familiar with Canva. I love Canva. And then from there, I relocated to Shreveport when I was 21. And I have been here for almost two and a half, almost three years. And so when I moved to Shreveport, I continued my venture with a bank. So I’m when I moved jobs, I got a job at another bank. But I wasn’t marketing, I was actually doing lending. So I was in lending. And I was doing that job, which was great pay. But anyone who is in lending, you guys are angels, because it’s not it was not the job for me. I just didn’t feel fulfilled with that job. I didn’t excel at it, because it wasn’t something that I was really that interested in. And so I moved on to the local real estate company here. And the way that I fell into that job, once again was my real estate agent. When I bought a house when I moved here to Shreveport, they remembered me and they liked my personality. So they called me when this job came available. And they were like, Hey, I thought you were really funny. And just this like big personality, I think you would do good at this job, which was originally a front desk position. And then when I started there, they handed me all of the marketing. And so once again, I fell upwards into marketing. And so I just started marketing these houses, and I started doing really, really well. And then I started picking up other like freelance clients who were realtors and just needed someone to like manage their social media or manage their Facebook for him. And so then I kind of got burnt out with real estate and I found revision marketing, they were looking for a social media coordinator. And I felt like I had done enough social media and I had done enough marketing at that point. Because it had been about two years, I’d been at my real estate company. And I felt like I was ready to have a job where it was just that like it was a marketing firm. It was something that was focused and like somewhere I could really learn and Excel. And so I applied here and fortunately enough I got the job and now here I am. And so I really fell upwards into marketing. And it’s been amazing, like it is the job for me, I don’t have any question about if I’m in the right field, or if you know, this is what I want to do, definitely is and so I encourage people to just like, try it, like try your hand out and apply for these jobs. If this is something that you think you can do, like put you in anything you put your mind to, I really feel like you can accomplish and so here I am, I have the creative freedom with my clients and with revision to kind of make my own designs and you know, I work of course with everybody here on text content and going over Hey, does this design look good? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent Michaela design and been like, hey, look at this. Um, so you know, I love my job and, and that’s how I got into it. So it’s been It was a crazy story, but here I am.
Mikayla Anderson 24:12
And it’s pretty crazy. Yeah. falling off word.
Marley Walters 24:16
Yeah, I’m very good at that. But what about you? I want to know, I want to know how you got in this how you got in this game? Yeah. This is a pretty crazy story. Yeah. Okay. So, um, okay, so I senior year high school.
Mikayla Anderson 24:35
Growing up at a healthcare family, they wanted me to go into health care, right? And I said, No. I chose business. Because I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do. And business always is the safe choice. put it that way. Like it’s kind of like Well, you’re trying Yeah, yeah. But with that, I think When I went into college, I had like a midlife major crisis. Because I felt like the only way I could help other people was if I was a psychiatrists. And so understand that feeling, what I did is I wrote all the paperwork out only to be like, thrown out. And I move forward with my business degree. And what happened was, I was granted a senior project on making an impact in my community. And so what I did is I started researching because there wasn’t a lot you could do during COVID. Because you can put on these events or like, you can’t do any of that in COVID. And so what I was doing, I was just looking more on, okay, so people need digital stuff. Now they need to know about what’s going on. And so my friend from high school Maddie, she just married her now husband, Brandon, and he started his own videography company. And so he was looking for somebody to do his website. And me making one website ever on Wix, which is like the most basic Yeah, you could do it on. I made it my blog on there. And so I was like, Oh, I can do that, or whatever. And so I made his site and then things kind of blew up from there. His friend, Justin Coleman. He actually just texted me today. Yeah. He basically fell in love with my work. And since then, he’s given me like, seven clients. And I was like, maybe I could do this. And so, um, what happened is I applied for like, again, like 100 jobs like you, Michael in Shreveport. Before I moved down here with Trevor, um, my husband at Barksdale, um, basically what happened is, me and Sidney, connected on LinkedIn. And I just remember thinking, I have no idea who this person is. And so I remember messaging him and just being like, Hey, I’m looking for, like, different networking opportunities in the area. I’ve been trying to find a job, and I have no idea what’s going on kind of thing. And he was like, Okay, yeah, like, we’ll figure something out. And he started telling me about revision, and I was like, that’s awesome. And, again, started applying for jobs. Um, and he messages me one day, he’s like, are you still interested in the revision, marketing job, and I had no idea that I even applied because it applied to like, so many jobs, and I immediately text back I was like, Yes, absolutely. And so we had an interview, and he was like, how do you feel about website design? I was like, Yeah, sure. At this point, I’ve done like, 10 websites in my entire life. And yeah, I’ve been here ever since. So it’s pretty crazy. Oh, really is? Yeah. So that was a crazy moment of my life. But I think the biggest thing is, is, um, Sydney really does challenge the traditional job market. Yeah. Because he hired me knowing that I had little to no experience in website design, but still had trust in me. And I think that’s the biggest thing with traditional versus modern market. Yeah, jobs. And so I guess my next like, question for you guys would be is, how do you feel about just like, the traditional workplace that’s portrayed on young people versus the more modern workplace that we work at? And the more like laid back, okay, we’re going to be honest with each other, like, um, how, how do you think it affects us mentally, and just being stable and all that stuff? Well, it’s actually a cool question.
Michael McCrary 29:33
Yeah, no question. So I just Well, I mean, in that way, you have to identify what tradition is in terms of the workhorse and I mean, I’d say really corporate? No, no, I mean, yeah, there’s like for me, you know, you go, where does the corporate you know, you go back, like what? industrial revolution? Yeah, kind of the restructuring of the American working right. Yeah. You know, and then through the years, you know, as you see capitalism and grow in America, as you See how it has you know you get more factories you get these big large scale projects and then of course you know at a certain point you know like back in you know the 40s in the 50s you know it was you know that traditional work environment that go and you know the the hierarchy of chain of command and you know, work hard and you know, save your pennies and dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah right? Um, but I think you know, as time goes on and you know, things people change technology evolved you know, social people as people evolve we evolved kind of as a country and as a society and of course, to tie into my stuff use technology in there to a certain point Yeah, um, so not only are you having new ways for businesses to grow, for people to grow, it’s just you have access to stuff you know, and you know, there was more of early pregnancies but like income like the 80s in the 90s when you’ve got more home access to the internet, you know, this is a point where, regardless of where you’re from, and like even like now in 2021 regardless of where you’re from, of what part of the world you live in, you know, you can pick up a phone if you get a phone or computer anything with internet and you spend enough time you can you know, expose yourself to worlds and worlds and I just it’s so crazy to me that I mean even me, it’s so hard for any human to really favourably comprehend how much information is out there and that is digitally recorded.
Marley Walters 31:31
Yeah, you can find out how to do anything on the internet. Exactly.
Michael McCrary 31:34
Exactly. And when you have I think the opportunity for each individual to say in to subject themselves to that kind of information without having to go through that traditional business that traditional learning hierarchy kind of as it were. I think it just kind of just throws a loop in it you know it just like it’s like whoa but it’s so different you know like you know, in all those years ago before the internet was really a home staple you know, you weren’t having people who you know like the pool the employees in the hierarchy weren’t able to go home and Google like how you know like find more information about how they should be treated like within a freshman things like that they couldn’t inform themselves with as many resources like you would have to go to a library or right to travel somewhere getting your you know car and drive somewhere but now Google your phone or if somebody does something wrong to you, or you know you want to see something so you can be like hey this happened boom you got it you got a camera on your phone. Yeah, yeah, that freedom. Like I imagine what would have happened in the 1950s if people had camera phones and they were just able to video each other just doing bad stuff?
Marley Walters 32:41
Like we’d have a lot more progression I see what you’re saying
Michael McCrary 32:45
yeah different Yeah,
Marley Walters 32:46
we’re definitely more woke in a sense now well I mean in a way well I
Michael McCrary 32:50
mean it comes with that and in better and worse you know, with the flip side of the goodness of that that provides you’re always going to have people who are going to take that power and use it to build up informational walls to isolate themselves in kind of a vacuum of information Yeah, where they kind of curate information in a technological environment wherein the stuff that they’re being exposed to is nothing that’s gonna disagree with them they they’re like they’re only showing themselves what they know they’re gonna agree with because it’s out there and they can Yeah, and there’s you know, but then it gets into a whole nother conversation but I think tendon tendon and aside I think that really you know, because of it but in that but in all that being said as well you know, at the same time you have the ability to be more human with people with Yeah you do like again kind of going back you know 5060 years ago you couldn’t just you know, like my like my for example my dad when he was deployed we would talk almost every day over Facebook over over messenger I couldn’t have done that if it was like if he was in like Vietnam
Marley Walters 33:55
like the 70s letter Yeah, I’d
Michael McCrary 33:58
be writing letters But no, it’s Yeah, he’s like sending me pictures of the mountains that he’s sleeping next to Afghanistan like so with that you know, I think you bring that into an environment a work environment with the technology and everything and you know, it’s it kind of I feel like the default now the default is you can’t work well unless you are well as you Yeah, you have to come in here and sacrifice and work and hope that it’s worth something or that you deserve it at the end of the day because you’ve you know you’ve you’ve put in your time you’ve done your hustle so now you get to be the guy on top and you get to look at everyone else beneath you. Yeah, no, it’s much more decentralized I think And guys, it kind of has no other no other option because again with the internet it’s kind of a level playing field right now you know if you have it you have it and you know t