We were lucky to catch up with Aqua Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.

Aqua, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

In 2o2o Covid forced a lot of people to be stuck at home, isolated from their normal everyday life. Due to companies closing and laying off employees, my wife,Candace, and I began thinking about going full time in a business venture they had began 2 years prior, which interestingly enough was actually a graphic design & event planning business, by October of 2020 they were both laid off from their full time jobs and forced to work their side business. Unfortunately the graphic design & event planning business was a fail. However, along the way they began doing weekly live shows on facebook as a way to share their journey of life during covid and to connect with other women. Over a year’s time, this weekly show began to grow into a network by gaining a following, providing a platform for other women and business owners to promote and advocate for themselves. The MTS Network was born. Our network is a black, woman, lgbtqia+ owned women focused online broadcasting network. It’s something like if Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and Facebook had a wild party and a baby was born but it had a little of everybody’s make up. What does that even mean? It means that we offer a platform( our website www.themtsnetwork.com) that allows you do interact in a social space such as Facebook and also upload and share their own content but it’s created, owned, and managed by women. Our online streaming site (www.strimm.com/themtsnetwork) similar to live tv on Hulu streams all of our productions

and projects live daily from 24 hours a day. There are various channels that stream content created for that particular niche such as a lifestyle channel, an educational channel, a political channel, and come soon music, and comedy. Local businesses are able to run advertisements via in a live streamed project, a pre recorded project, and/or as a commercial between shows. Content can consist of projects like (video podcasts, prerecorded and edited shows, films, music videos, etc) that is created by other women or created by the Network that targets a women audience. In the future we will be adding a video on demand app on streaming platforms like roku and apple tv where our audience will be able to watch any show on any given day as many times as they wish.

The idea for the shift came about as social media began to become heavily policed by men who seemingly wanted to silence women. We are in a time were women are still fighting for rights and equality for themselves. Most, if not all of the popular social media platforms used every single day are owned and operated by men. Men are making laws that govern how women live their lives, Men are making the determinations on how much pay a well qualified woman is paid, Men are trying to keep their power over women by exerting fear and withholding knowledge. We felt our platform would be a great way to bring women together to advocate for themselves. It’s an amazing feeling to know that we are helping fight back by giving a voice those who have been silenced for so long. It’s even more amazing to see how we as women are coming together to fight back and create change for ourself. Our network shows women in their most authentic form, it educates on topics that matter for women in any walk of life, it is a reminder that no matter what race or where a women is from we are all fighting for the same things, it is an esteem booster to empower women to keep fighting and making waves, It is a symbol of sisterhood. We are unique in the fact that we represent every one. From the guests down to the materials and projects we produce we strive to provide accurate representation of who women really are and not what mainstream media says we should be. We are every woman.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

The MTS Network was founded in September 2020. Our network is a black, woman, lgbtqia owned women focused online broadcasting network. It’s something like if Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and Facebook had a wild party and a baby was born but it had a little of everybody’s make up. What does that even mean? It means that we offer a platform( our website www.themtsnetwork.com) that allows you do interact in a social space such as Facebook and also upload and share their own content but it’s created, owned, and managed by women. Our online streaming site (www.strimm.com/themtsnetwork) similar to live tv on Hulu streams all of our productions and projects live daily from 24 hours a day. There are various channels that stream content created for that particular niche such as a lifestyle channel, an educational channel, a political channel, and come soon music, and comedy. Local businesses are able to run advertisements via in a live streamed project, a pre recorded project, and/or as a commercial between shows. Content can consist of projects like (video podcasts, prerecorded and edited shows, films, music videos, etc) that is created by other women or created by the Network that targets a women audience. The idea for the shift came about as social media began to become heavily policed by men who seemingly wanted to silence women. We are in a time were women are still fighting for rights and equality for themselves. Most, if not all of the popular social media platforms used every single day are owned and operated by men. Men are making laws that govern how women live their lives, Men are making the determinations on how much pay a well qualified woman is paid, Men are trying to keep their power over women by exerting fear and withholding knowledge. We felt our platform would be a great way to bring women together to advocate for themselves. It’s an amazing feeling to know that we are helping fight back by giving a voice those who have been silenced for so long. It’s even more amazing to see how we as women are coming together to fight back and create change for ourself. Our network shows women in their most authentic form, it educates on topics that matter for women in any walk of life, it is a reminder that no matter what race or where a women is from we are all fighting for the same things, it is an esteem booster to empower women to keep fighting and making waves, It is a symbol of sisterhood. We are unique in the fact that we represent every one. From the guests down to the materials and projects we produce we strive to provide accurate representation of who women really are and not what mainstream media says we should be. We are every woman.

We are most proud of being able to highlight and promote other women owned businesses. We are a very inclusive brand and we want to tear down the stigma that women are out to be competition with one another. By working with other women owned businesses we show that it is possible to work together and be successful. We want every woman to know that our network is more than just a brand, it’s a movement. We really are striving to make waves in not just our community but the world. We are big on giving back, sticking together, and holding each other accountable. We hope to impact the way women view each other. We are better together.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In October 2021, my wife and I were full time entrepreneurs not really bringing in alot of income, struggling to bounce back from the sudden finance shift, emotional turmoil that had negatively impacted our marriage, and balancing our home life when our landlord illegally evicted us from our home. As a result we ended up losing 90% of our belongings in the sudden move. We ended up living in a storage unit we used for an office space for 6 months. Sometimes we didn’t shower unless we could afford to get a hotel room for the night, some times we didn’t eat if we couldn’t afford it. There were so many things going wrong at that time it felt like. We had been applying for job after job and running into the issue of not enough pay or in my case not even being given a chance despite my well qualified resume just because of my “urban” name. There really became a point were we didn’t have a dime to our name, no food, no clean clothes, no home, and no car, but we had each other and we still had our dreams and goals. No matter what was going on we always found a way to do our weekly show even if it was a quick one just to get on and say hi to our audience. We were transparent about everything we were going through and before long we were being reached out to by others who were going through or had gone through some of the same things. Knowing that we weren’t alone made us realize just how important our network had become to other women and that is reason it was created. With the encouragement from all those women we kept going and finally moved into a place in April 2022. This new start has lit a fire under us to grow our brand to be able to help any woman who may find themself in a hard place in the future.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building an audience on social media is a struggle we face every day. Since we began our journey in 2020, we have been organically growing our audience by connecting with other women and they invite others to our platform, promoting across fb by sharing information and content. We actually have never did paid advertisement yet. We are trying to see how big we can grow our brand on our own. We rely heavily on word of mouth and having our guests share their show with their audience. It is a slow process but it’s great for retaining those who are meant to be apart of our brand. Our current facebook reach alone is over 9k.

The best advice I can give is talk about your business. You should always be mentioning your business, posting some kind of content, or any other way to get your brand out there.

Also network with others in the community. Sometimes you have to give away something to get something. Money is important but sometimes you have to give in order to see the growth. Maybe you can try collaborating with another local entrepreneur to do a giveaway of some kind.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.themtsnetwork.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/themtsnetwork
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/themtsnetwork
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/themtsnetwork
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/themtsnetwork
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdpeG1IXbW6eMMOABy1D2tg
• Other: www.strimm.com/themtsnetwork