We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ricky Shoebio. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ricky below.

Ricky, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Taking risks is where our Agency is rooted. When we launched we walked away from the stability we were accustomed to for the uncertainty of launching a new endeavor.

While this was never and aimless leap, and there were plenty of calculated aspects to make sure we were successful, but nevertheless still a risk. Launching in Q4 of 2018 none of us could imagine the what would occur in 2020, and as we used our knowhow and remained disciplined in our process. We managed to thrive and scale as an agency when many people in the world were impacted by the unknown.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My journey started in journalism. I was a uncredited contributor to some publications initially. From there I found myself working at a medium size Couture Publication owned by a contact of mine. I spent four years at the publication moving from contributor to, journalist, to editor, to executive editor. During that time I cut my teeth in the industry. Building relationships, attending brand and partner events, activations, and initiative based moments.

After leaving in 2018 I launched a Consulting Agency and spent time doing 1 to 1 work with some of the brands and partners that I had established relationships with. In that time I also started front facing work as a personality.

In 2020 we scaled the agency to Full Lift and I started to explore visual storytelling more as individual. From there I used photography as a medium and my experience as a Creative and Art Director to have captured some of the most coveted moments and create campaigns for many world renowned brands.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

One of the greatest and largest goals of our agency is to make sure as a Black Owned Agency “We” are involved in telling our stories.

It’s not what we are limited to, but being able to offer authentic and rooted perspectives to the things that are either intended to reach or involve our people is critical to us.

One other important initiative to us is creating spaces for budding minority creatives to have opportunities to learn what goes into productions and hire them for roles they excel in. We realize in many moments these people can’t get the experience because they lack the experience, and that’s a chicken or the egg moment. Most sets won’t hire people that haven’t already had the years of experience. So with programs and workshops we created as accelerators for these people. It allows us to make a small percentage of our team for any given production someone who is newer to the industry, and that’s something we cherish.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Our partners have a unique story. So as mentioned I founded our agency in 2018. And from 2018 to 2020 we were doing 1 to 1 consulting. However from 2018 to 2019 this was primarily myself as a consultant, coming in and giving my insights.

When I launched in 2018, I asked a council of friends whom I’ve had prior business relationships with what they thought on the direction I felt. We met as a group of 6 and had said conversation. That night 5 of us felt like this was the direction to go in. From 2018 to 2019 those 4 that supported endlessly and I felt so indebted that on the one year anniversary of the company. I relinquished equity of the company splitting the 50% of the company between them.

From there we all came together as a collective to grow and scale the Agency you see and know now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bigkyds.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacecampfresh/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricky-shoebio-a9b828170