We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Blonde Jon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Blonde, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
As a kid I knew deep down in my heart that I was always supposed to do something huge, I wasn’t the smartest in class neither was I the best student. I wasn’t good at school, tests or any of that. I barely passed my classes and I would always be up in the office for something I did or didn’t do. School for me was the last place I ever wanted to be. Throughout my school years I would get made fun of because of my hearing and the way I talked. I would get questions like ” why do you talk like that ” – ” I don’t understand what your saying “. Many people didn’t know that when I was born I wasn’t able to hear for the first 4 years of life. had to get 4 surgeries on my ears to be able to hear again, my final surgery was in 7th grade. I had to attend 4 years of speech class where I would better learn how to speak and formulate sentences. From the moment I was born to the age of 12 years old, this was one of the main reasons I did not like going to school. In highschool was when I started to use my hearing flaw as an advantage and I would end up making jokes about myself so people couldn’t because it was an on going battle. Doing this allowed me to create more and more friends, eventually I was pretty much friends with every highschool group you can think of. Circling back to me always knowing I was put on this planet to do something huge, I always had a burning fire internally- a voice that always reminded me. ” one day you will be someone that a lot of people look up to “. I never lost track of that inner voice, I used this to start posting on youtube. Freshman year to my junior year I posted on youtube and I gained around 6,000 subscribers. At this point I felt like giving up because I wasn’t gaining as much attention as I wanted. Those 3 years of posting on youtube did create a lot of confidence for myself. I wasn’t satisfied at all, so I started to slowly give up on my social media career. At this point I din’t even want to attend school anymore, I wanted to give up on everything. My senior year I had totally dropped out of public highschool and enrolled myself in homeschooling. Where I would only go to school once every seven days sometimes once every two weeks. I didn’t like going to school but it was better than going 5 days a week. Fast forward my second semester of senior year, I decided to enroll back into a public highschool. My parents told me that I need to go to college because If I finished I would be the only child of theirs that had gotten a degree. Going to college was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Luckily for me tiktok had just started to become a thing, there was about 3 people that I personally knew at my school that had a tiktok account. I told myself, Im going to use this app to skip out on attending college. I started posting on the app as much as I can. At first it was tough because a lot of people at my school would make jokes about me posting on tiktok and talk about how my videos are ” NOT IT “. I didn’t care what they were saying because I had one goal and one goal only- tiktok will allow me to pursue social media so I don’t have to go to college. Fast forward to our graduation, I graduated highschool with 20,000 followers. I had told my parents that I wanted to pursue this career and they told me it’s not happening. I ended up attending college at grand canyon university in arizona. Im not sure how I got into the school because I applied 2 weeks before moving in but somehow they accepted me in the school. One of the biggest risks I ever had to make was betting on myself. I knew that non one can create the path that I want except myself. No one would ever understood the sacrifices I needed to make to make my dreams into reality . I had finally finished my first year of college where I was living in a dorm room with 5 people. I proved to myself that I can make it big because I had gained nearly 1.5 Million followers on tiktok that first year of college. I told myself that I can always go back if things don’t play out how they are supposed too, but deep down I knew that wasn’t going to happen. So I decided to drop out of college without telling my parents or any of my family members, at the time I was still living in Arizona. I finally started to create friendships in the social media world. I would drive down to LA twice a week from Arizona – 6 hour drive. I wold create content with other social media stars as much as i could before heading back to Arizona. When I visited Los Angeles, I knew that this was the place I needed to be at. The last LA trip I had ever made I ended up meeting the owners of Swaggy Wolfdog- Celebrity do. I had no clue who they were at the time. I just knew that their dog had a combined following of 8 Million followers throughout all social media platforms. The owners had asked me if I lived in LA, I told them I don’t. I ended up telling the owners that I only live 2 hrs away instead of 6hrs because I didn’t want to mess up any opportunities that may come my way. They let my cousin and myself sleep on their couch for 2 months, those two months I would go back and forth from sleeping in my car and his couch. After these two months I finally had enough money to rent an apartment for 6 months. At this point and time my parents still think i’m in Arizona living it up. I decided to finally go back to Arizona one last time, this time I brought everything I had and moved to the city of los Angeles. This decision changed my life forever, I was able to create so many great connections and do things I had always dreamed of doing as a kid. To this day I’ve been in rooms with some of the biggest artists in the game like Lizzo, G Eazy, Gunna and created content with creators like King Bach, Logan Paul and many more.
Blonde, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I started my journey like any other person. I was a kid with big dreams and I knew that one day I will be able to showcase my talents around the world. Aside from social media, I’ve been blessed to have a successful talent agency called TBS Talents along with being a founder of a NFT project that had sold out in December of 2021. One thing I always liked about my brand is that I’ve been Blonde for about 5 years now, many people ask me ” what happens if you don’t have blonde hair “. unfortunately I don’t ever seeing that happening. I have been able to build my brand around my favorite color yellow and my hair. I have a following of 6 million followers combined on all platforms, I have been partnered with snapchat for nearly 2 years which has been such a great experience. The music industry/film industry is my ultimate goal, I have been creating for some time now. I think its finally time to show the world the secret talents I have up my sleeve.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think the most rewarding aspect of being a creator is having the ability to network with others and being able to use my audience to influence the youth. Over the past years of being an entertainer I’ve learned the biggest thing most people forget about is people. I think connecting with people on a deeper level is something a lot of the world is missing. It’s very easy for us to get consumed in social media as is. If you can use your following and influence to connect with others on a deeper level and try and nurture those relationships then you will succeed in any industry. We meet so many people on a day to day basis, sometimes we can forget that each person has a unique trait. It’s up to all of us to bring that unique trait out of that individual or enhance their trait. The only way you can do this is by following up with the people you meet and making sure they know that you are there to help them. So to sum it all up the most rewarding part about the position I am in is being able to meet great people all around the world.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
One thing I didn’t realize when first becoming an influencer was that I was under the impression that creating videos was super easy and it would be one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. Overtime I ended up moving to LA and I realized that everyone is out here in the city of LA trying to make it big. Once I realized this my creative direction switched up entirely. I started to make videos that would convert higher than any other creator. I knew that all of us all have something in common, that was ” we like to be entertained by the same things “. The route I started to take with content creation was very strategic, I would plan all my videos out days and weeks ahead of time to make sure all my videos blow up. I struggled at first because since creating content is my occupation. This means I need to create videos that will perform good so I can have brands that want to work with me, I can get invited to more events and so on. Their were many occasions where It was hard for me to come up with videos that would perform well. Once I figured out what worked with my personal tiktok page and social media as a whole, I made sure I was consistent with those concepts and I would switch it up every so often. So realizing that you need to stand out when joining the entertainment industry is very important. The more you standout and make it known that you are doing things differently than any other creator.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://blondejon.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblondejon/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theblondejon/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Theblondejon
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDcI23FCJoDZm6FGuVusQmg
- Other: https://www.snapchat.com/add/theblondesquads
Image Credits
Google