We recently connected with Antoinne Duane Jones and have shared our conversation below.

Antoinne Duane, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I was doing event photography, my main entrepreneurial journey, at an awards gala by Queen Aftan Williams when I heard one of the awards recipients, Faheem Ali, talk about how anyone could own their own bottled water brand. It instantly clicked the I should be in that number. To make it even more clear, he owns the only natural springs water plant in the state of Georgia. So the problem is, that as a community, black and brown people simply do not consume enough water on a daily basis. I knew then there were two main issues that I could settle by starting this business: 1) begin to create generational wealth by placing the business in the hands of my children as a family business and 2) bringing a product to people that might otherwise not buy into the necessity of that product. Our approach is to make drinking water and getting those health benefits as a fun thing to do.

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?

I am a career photographer. I started out in fashion photography and that career, over the last 18 years, has blossomed into just about every genre of. photography and birth several other side businesses. With a degree in marketing, being able to have a visually appealing brand and the desire to see others have the same has helped me to be in the rooms with so many outstanding people from start up companies all the way up to celebrities. As I inch closer to putting down the camera forever, my focus is shifting to my kids, helping other brands shine and building community bonds through service. At this moment, the pride of starting a business in which my children are the high level executives and I’m just a worker by far is the more thrilling and prideful accomplishment to date.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I fervently believe that I built my social media audience brick by brick. I actually don’t like social media. I can be rather quiet and when I first started in business, everything was word of mouth. I built a business that was decent by simply treating people right and doing the best I could do with my photography work. I was very reluctant to join social media. I lived in North Carolina and had about 2,000 followers but I moved to Atlanta, Georgia. I was told that if you wanted to thrive in this market that your social media had to be Poppin so I dove into social media: Instagram and Facebook specifically. I put out the cleanest, best content I could regularly. That small following is now 17,500+ on IG and near 10,000 on Facebook. The key to me is clean work and consistency.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The main lesson I’ve learned and am still learning is no one owes you anything and aren’t required to pay it forward. I’ve had the thought that if you just help, help, help that one day when you are in need that there will be folks that will be there to help you. To me, there very well may be people that help you but there shouldn’t be an expectation of that. My goal these days are to build sturdy foundations based on solid, equally equitable relationships and never take my foot off the gas. To me, as soon as you feel like you’ve arrived and get complacent, that is when disaster happens. COVID-19 was the best time for my business as a photographer. Everyone was stuck inside and needed to pivot so entrepreneurship was at an all-time high thus my photography business was as well. I got use to that period and didn’t plan properly for that rush to fade away. I thought that all the business and seeds sowed in that time would be there when I needed it so I relaxed. Now, I’m back in the drivers seat with the pedal to the metal.

Contact Info:

• Website: adjmedia.co adjmsports.com runnethwaterco.com majoritygreek.com
• Instagram: @antoinneduanejones @adjmsports @runnethwaterco @majoritygreek
• Facebook: Antoinne Duane Jones Media ADJ Media Sports Runneth Water Co. Majority Greek Magazine

Image Credits
Photographer: Antoinne Duane Jones