We recently connected with Diamond Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Diamond thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?
I have always been a person with many ideas. I remember being a kid and using my imagination to “build” a cleaning robot, and all of the ideas for inventions and businesses I would come up with and let flow out of my brain into nothingness. I had the idea for MadCollab based on a different idea I had a while back and decided to look into the process of creating an app. After falling into a rabbit hole of searches and asking around, I found a company that would develop apps for others if the idea seemed as if it would be worth the effort. I sent the information for MadCollab there and got a quote for the initial phase.
Once I got this quote, I contacted my parents about my idea and asked for help paying the company to start working on it. They were more than happy to help. As I continued to go through the phases with the development company, I hit a wall for a bit where I needed a larger chunk of money to move forward and finish the final stage of the app. I remember thinking that I had friends who could help if they were willing to, but I was anxious about it because it was a large sum of money. It took me a while to ask if they would be interested in investing in my brainchild. Luckily, they were excited to invest after I explained MadCollab to them and showed them what was already in the works. Those friends are my business partners now.
What was the most interesting to me during this process was that long before I met my friends and now business partners, I visited a psychic. Many people are on the fence about psychics and whether they are real or not. I specifically remember going to a psychic sometime after beginning the creation of MadCollab with the app company. She told me she saw me being hesitant to ask a woman for help with a project but that once we began working together, it would be successful and a great partnership. One day this clicked for me, and I told one of my business partners that it must have been meant to be.
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 grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I have always been interested in the arts. My cousins and I would make dance routines to our favorite songs, and I would write songs that we would sing. I can’t say I was particularly good at these things, but they always held a place in my heart. When I got older, I got into writing for a bit.
I’d always been surrounded by people in the arts. My dad is one of those people who has too many talents. He can sing, he was in a group and did the choreography for them, he can write songs, he can draw, you name it. He wasn’t the only one like that either. I have multiple cousins who create music, model, and do hair and make-up. I’ve done some modeling for a cousin who is a fashion designer. So between the talents of my family and the friends I made over the years, I was never too far from the art world. I realized that artists are always looking for more artists. The musician is looking for a videographer for their video. The fashion designer needs models, hair, make-up, and so on. So from what I could see, they needed an easy way to find the people to collaborate with for their projects. With MadCollab, I created that.
My favorite thing about MadCollab is that it helps people. The shy artist has a way to get involved with their local art community. People have a way of finding others and creating beautiful things. That is the goal of MadCollab.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think the most rewarding aspect of being creative is being able to see my vision become an entity outside of my mind. I get to share my brainchild with others. MadCollab came from my brain and is now in the app stores for others to see and use. Once you put something out there, people will see whether it is two or 200 people. But having them see what was once in my imagination is a fantastic thing.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn my impatience. I can often be an “I want it, so I’m going to make it happen now” kind of person. My first lesson with this was when I was trying to get my first loan for MadCollab. I didn’t have a lot of credit history or a solid business plan, but I was trying to make it happen. It was something I had to go through the process for and wait until I was able to make it a thing. This happened a lot with MadCollab. An app takes a long time to create and can take a lot of money. I had to learn to be patient with the process of creating MadCollab from start to end. Once it was created, I had to be, and still have to be, patient about attracting users. It is all a process.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mad-collab/id1514373609
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madcollabapp/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mad-Collab-1763963380374546
- Other: https://mobile.madcollabapp.com/
Image Credits
Photo Shoot image credits: TSX Design House