We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Derek Jefferson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Derek below.
Alright, Derek thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
This is a good common question. I would obviously state that everything is divine timing but to be more specific, everyone would like to think starting something sooner would mean you would be further now but without the experience I learned from mistakes, failed attempts, missteps and even the glorified moments. I would think then I would have never matured enough to achieve success in my field. I doubt a doctor would regret all of the time he spent just learning how to become their best version of a doctor they could be, you can apply that to anything. In short, everything happens how it’s supposed to, so I started when I was destined to start.
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
I am a comic book creator and activist and I’ve always been creative. I started with making music at the age of 16 and most of my life was working warehouse and restaurants jobs while putting music together with my group “da Hooligans”. As I got older I got serious with myself and came to the fact that music has always just been my go to for therapy but I never looked at it like a career. That’s when I started writing stories just fooling around and using some of my friend’s personalities as the base of my characters while creating original stories. I was familiar with the creative parts from.doing music and my stories just keep coming to mind. What makes me stand out from a lot of creators is that my content isn’t “cookie cutter” (a new version of Superman, Batman etc.,), it’s all ideas from my thoughts that’s based on what I see and how I would think our culture would react to having superpowers. My character is called Homeless Homeboy and I am the real life embodiment of the character, so I suit up as him and selly books at events, talk to the kids at school and feed the homeless in the community amongst or activism efforts. You can follow me on
Instagram @TheHomelessHomeboy
TikTok HomelessHomeboy
YouTube Homeless Homeboy TV
Website HoldThatDownBruh.com
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I would say credit is very important in building a business because after you are in a position where you can pinpoint what to invest in that will take your business to the next level financially then loans and credit card will help you tremendously. It takes a lot of focus, awareness and discipline when accessing these resources because of you aren’t responsible you will fall into debt.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I don’t have a huge following yet but I am looking into ad marketing, influencer marketing and other resources but so far I got most of my followers from in person interactions. I sell my own comic book in person and online but 97% in person as of now. When someone either buys my comic or don’t I still get them to follow me, I ask them to follow me right then and after I give them a flyer or something with my info on it. Business cards are cool but from my experience, people just put them in their pocket and they may or may not follow you later because they forget. People’s attention spans are very short so you have to notice that you have a small window to plant a seed. When they follow you and they get to see what your brand is about them they may come back later and purchase or share etc.
Contact Info:
- Website: HoldThatDownBruh.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/TheHomelessHomeboy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077714600357
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCkA8YTUOTf2a7MYCO7wxE9A
- Other: