We recently connected with Elizabeth Roberts and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Elizabeth , thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

When I started Arait Justice Media Group in 2019, I wasn’t sure if I was going to sink or swim. I grew up the child of a New York Times bestselling author and I knew if I went into the book publishing business, I was going to have big shoes to fill. I told myself growing up that I was going to do something different than my mother, so I pursued law in college but after graduation I realized that being in this business was in my blood. I remember the day when I decided to start my company. I called my male best friend (Braedon Jenkins), who is also a business owner, and told him my idea. The first thing he asked me was “Am I sure I am ready?.” When he asked me this question, I paused because I thought about the possibilities of me failing and the struggles I may face but I decided that nothing in life comes without a risk. Within the next few days, I opened a business account, registered for my EIN, and started up all my social media accounts. After a week, I inquired a popular celebrity as my first client and the week after that, we were in New Orleans at Essence Festival. I was so happy to have my own booth where thousands of people could check out my new company. After posting about Essence on my social media, I started hearing from other authors. The first one who reached out to me was an author named Shawn-taye. We ended up doing her book called “Not Mine to Keep.” I am still grateful to this day that Shawn-taye took a chance with a brand new company that she had never even heard of. Meanwhile, I was keeping Braedon updated on how everything was going and he came up with an idea to start doing book trailers for the books I publish. He is a videographer, so he stated he would film and edit them for me. This showed me that having true friends around you who can help you succeed is a huge plus in business because it truly does take a team to make a dream come true.

Braedon lived in Maryland and I was in Atlanta, so in order to do this, we had to make some sacrifices. I also did not have a budget, so I started doing book trailers for clients for free starting out to show them what I could do. I reached out to Shawn-taye and she agreed to let me do “Not Mine to Keep” as a trailer so Braedon came down to Atlanta and we got to work. We shot the trailer in a Extended Stay Hotel with two of my friends as the actors, one of which has never acted before but she is another best friend of mine and did it for me with no hesitation. After releasing “Not Mine to Keep”, I started having other authors reach out to me wanting trailers as well. So I went on to writing, casting and directing two more trailers for two other authors that I picked up. Although it was tough getting actors and crew to work for free, we worked hard and got the trailers done with promises that one day these trailers would blow up and they did. Trailers then turned into me doing my very first short film called “A Father’s Plight.” I ended up shooting this film twice due to technical difficulties and other issues due to this being the first time I was doing a short film. We shot the first time for 7 hours and I decided to re-shoot the entire film, even though the difficulties could be fixed. The second time around, I made sure to not make the same mistake twice and once it dropped, I decided to put it in some film festivals even though I was not confident going up against seasoned filmmakers. In addition, others were telling me I was not ready for the film festival world and that I needed to gain more experience before I entered my first film. Two weeks after entering the festival, I received an email that I won best short film. This scaled my company tremendously because it proved that I had what it takes to be successful in the book and film industry.

Since this win, I have shot about 15 more films including features, short films, and web series. My films are now available on Roku and Tubi. Furthermore, I have now published over 100 books by other authors and I have four books out myself. My most popular book, which was recognized by the Harvey foundation for young girls is my book called “Rules of Girl Code.” I designed this book to teach young girls how they should treat each other in society. This book is also filled with positive poems and affirmations. I wrote this book to help inspire young girls to know they can do whatever they put their mind to and no matter how hard it gets, they need to keep going. There was many days where I cried myself to sleep because I wanted to quit. There were months where I went with not picking up any clients and I questioned was I good enough. There were weeks where I applied for jobs and said I should just go work for someone else for eight hours instead of putting eight hours into my business but in the end I never gave up.

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.

Arait Justice Media Group is a Literary Media and Production Company. Not only do I publish books, but I make them come to life on the TV screen. Since my startup in 2019, my business has been extremely successful. So far in its lifetime, I have had one of my books featured on “The Real”, I have worked with numerous of celebrities in the Book and film industry and I have done 15 films. My book trailers/short films are now available on Roku. I have had the pleasure of writing a two-hour feature film which will be coming to theaters soon and I have now helped over 45 authors get published with their books being distributed via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart & More! Some of my popular titles are Pure Thoughts 1 & 2 by Myself and my co-author Shaina Little, Not Mine to Keep by Shawn-Taye, Consensual Deviance by Jabal Black, Sidechickology by Zane, and The Devil’s Stones by Alexxis Jaye and J. Alexander, but that is just to name a few. In addition, I publish all genres including Contemporary Romance, erotica, mystery, poetry books, children’s books & more. Furthermore, I do visual book trailers and short films to go along with the books so that the books stand out against the rest. We are visual beings and when people have the written and visual aspect of a book, it makes the overall experience so much better.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think I built my reputation through networking. I have always been told that your network is your networth. I began to start going on sites like Eventbrite to find networking events for other entrepreneurs like me. I used to be really shy but I realized if I was going to build a reputation in the entertainment industry, I needed to open my mind and my mouth and promote my business because if I couldn’t do it, no one else would. I realized that In order to build your reputation, you have to be a walking billboard for your company. Furthermore, I built rapport with all my clients and became their friends as well. This encouraged them to spread the word about my company which helped me build up more reputation. Lastly, I made sure I kept a lasting impression. I made sure to put my company name in every single booked I worked on and to go after every task I was given even if I had never done it before like writing a two-hour feature film.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

A time when I had to pivot in my business what when covid hit in 2020. I was publishing books under my company but when the pandemic hit, bookstores began to close and everything started to pivot to online. I started to help authors self-publish because I was getting a lot of inquiries about doing books since people were in the house more and had more time. My business actually scaled during the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://etr0830.wixsite.com/araitjustice
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq5S6EpgPBx/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/saHXHN-KYLs