We recently connected with Eric Thomas and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate it if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

In 2015, I had the idea of starting my own platform after working at a magazine when I moved to New York. I wanted to focus on Black men because I felt that there was no outlet talking to me as a Black man. No outlet that really focused on the positive aspect of being a Black man in America. No one was talking about our success stories. No one was showing us how to grow. How to move in this country and when police brutality began to be filmed, all we saw in the headlines was Black men being murdered. I wanted something different. I wanted to show the Black man’s success. I wanted to show his luxurious taste. I wanted the platform to be aspirational.

So, I started The Quintessential Gentleman as a media platform that only focused on the success stories and positive attributes of being a Black man. I went on to create everything on my own. I created a website and social media channels and on February 29, 2016, The Quintessential Gentleman went live.

During the first year, I was really trying to figure out what I was doing. I was reaching out to anyone that I knew that would allow me to interview them. I previously worked in radio so I had some connections and many people loved what I was doing and offered to help in allowing their clients to be interviewed by the publication. I would reach out to publicists, look for Facebook groups and go to events to spread the word about the new platform.

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 marketer at heart although it wasn’t until later in life that I realized it was my true passion. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but grew up in South Jersey. I wanted to be a lawyer so I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Lynchburg College, now known as the University of Lynchburg. After graduating, I wasn’t ready to invest in law school after realizing how much it would cost, so I stopped pursuing law school and moved to Miami, Florida. While working at an online school as an academic advisor, I got an internship at Power 96, a local Miami radio station. It was there that I got my introduction to the entertainment industry. After my internship, I was hired as a promotional assistant. After doing that for over a year, I was hired as a full-time sales representative at Cox Media Group, which included 99 Jamz and Hot 105 radio stations. In this role, I would sell radio advertising and digital capabilities to local businesses looking to drive sales. It was here that I learned about advertising, digital marketing and how to create strategic campaigns. I really enjoyed it. I would go on to work in radio sales in Atlanta until I moved to New York where I would end my corporate career as a marketer for law firms.

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

Social media has been vital to the growth of The Quintessential Gentleman.

When starting the platform, I was intentional about not wanting to replicate any other brand. I wasn’t trying to be like any fashion brand or any other media platform. I wanted to create content that I was interested in. In doing this, I was able to create a community that had the same interests that I had. I knew there were enough people in the world that shared my interest in seeing positive and successful Black men that I could make a living.

I started out by writing stories that I didn’t see make it to bigger platforms. I also started reposting a lot of content that was centered on Black men. I was consistent and frequent with social media postings. Right now, we post about 5x a day, Monday-Friday.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I had a lot of support from people who believed in The Quintessential Gentleman and agreed that we needed a platform that spoke directly to Black men. There were a lot of people along the way who helped move the platform forward by either introducing me to people who could assist, publicists who pushed their clients to do interviews with us as a small platform, and the audience we built continued to support us with each new endeavor.

Contact Info:

• Website: theqgentleman.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/theqgentleman
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheQuintessentialG/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-quintessential-gentleman/
• Twitter: twitter.com/theqgentleman
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnMksH2s8vogewj87AdLkYA

Image Credits
Photo Credit for headshot and magazine cover: J. Monroe of Monroe Media Photo Credit for Bel-Air cast: Digital By Dash