We recently connected with Sly Roque and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

It’s interesting how Popmantra started. We originally launched The Clever Group which is a creative branding agency, where did creative branding and marketing for artists, talent and small businesses with entertainment industry as our focus. We needed to open our services to different industries to survive because entertainment is hard. I started hearing quite a bit about web 3. People we’re beginning to asking me my thoughts on how music was going to be affected by the new tech. Before I knew it was on panels and speaking on twitter spaces about web 3. The original idea of Popmantra came to me randomly and I wrote the idea down in a notebook not really thinking I would come back to it but I did. One night I stayed up all night and wrote the entire business proposal for it because it came to me at once. I definitely think us pivoting into web 3 tech was divine ordered. God definitely put us in the right the position to learn and put the correct people in place for our team to learn from. Studying the web 3 space and finding out whats lacking has definitely put us in positions to win. Studying our audience and teaching our audience is a main thing for us so we’ve been following that mission. It has definitely been carrying us well. I can’t even believe it still to this day how heavy into web 3 we are and how we just started and we are succeeding. I think I can speak for the team when I say we can’t to see this unfold as we take a ride on this journey of introducing this current generation to web 3 technology.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Sly Roque (@SlytheClever) originally from Houston, Texas but Atlanta Based. I am a creative director, Brand Therapist and CEO of The Clever Group. Years ago, I started out as a graphic designer, and promoter. My clever designs and marketing campaigns lead me to work with major musical artists & talent from labels & music groups such as Warner, OVO, No Limit, Jet Life and The Chopstars. I have also branded artists and done creative work for many such as De’Wayne & NLE Choppa, and others that have gone on to collaborate with Dizzy Wright & Masego, and rock major tours with Jessie J & Alternative band, Chase Atlantic.

In more recent years, my journey brought me to Atlanta, GA where I spend time between there and often revisiting my hometown of Houston. My passion for branding guided me into creating The Clever Group where we create unique branding for artists, talent and small businesses and we build brands. The Clever Group also specializes in Brand Therapy™ a practice that helps clients understand what their branding is and helps guide them to their own goals of success. I currently serve on the board of the global organization of Women in Music, the ATL chapter as Assistant Vice Chair of Communications.

I am also currently the founder of Web 3 community, Popmantra. Popmantra is an informative & inclusive Web3 community that aims to bring the current generation into a new era of technology with ease. It provides guidance on understanding NFTs & all things Web 3 through tutorials, events, NFT projects and other resources. We’re doing this for the people & brands who want into the NFT community. If you’re new to the space as a consumer or business, definitely tap in with us. We’ll walk you through this.

Entrepreneur, Brand Therapist, Creative Director, I am using my passion for branding to help others promote, and seek out their own passion and dreams.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

One of our biggest marketing successes is our NFTs & Tequila event. Our backs were against the wall on officially launching our company, Popmantra. At that point, we had revised our launch and business plans quite a bit. I can’t remember exactly how we came up with that concept (I’ll give that divine credit as well) but we knew we need to reach our audience in a way that no one else was doing. We knew we needed something appealing to reach our target audience, which is regular everyday people who might be curious about web 3 tech. We also knew that we had to make them comfortable in feel like they were really learning. Thus our unique concept of NFTs & Tequila was born. It’s a networking event that allows newbies to walk up and talk to an knowledgable representative on NFTs one on one, instead of a seminar where you might have been embarrassed to stand up in front of crowd and ask your questions. We created something where people can learn and also be comfortable. We found out that education is lacking in that space. People love the idea so its safe to say we’re closer and more connected to our audience because of it. We are now looking to take that event to 12 more cities throughout the rest of the year. We are excited for how well that campaign is going! Stay tuned!

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We quickly found out that literally touching our audience was the key to building that trust with them. Literally talking to our audience and asking them what they are looking for and what they would like to see. Listening to your audience helps big time. Rather than using the standard, Discord, to stay in touch regularly, we use email blasts to keep our audience updated for now. We are currently working on building our own app that will support our audience directly with the things that we are doing and plan to do. We are excited for this and can’t wait to introduce everyone to it.

Contact Info:

• Website: popmantra.io/subscribe
• Instagram: @wearepopmantra
• Facebook: faceboook.com/wearepopmantra
• Linkedin: The Clever Group
• Twitter: @wearepopmantra
• Other: https://linktr.ee/wearepopmantra