We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Germarius Major. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Germarius below.

Germarius, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I am blessed to earn a full-time living from my creative work. It all began with having a vision and goal and then making an intentional decision to invest in that goal every chance I could. It wasn’t like this from day 1 but I put the time and effort in to be able to live this life everyday. I continued to work my 9-5 everyday job and squeezing in my creative work and passion either after work hours, on the weekends, or even holidays. My first objective was to eliminate as much debt as I could to allow myself some breathing room if I decided to peruse my passion full time. Once I eliminated debt I used my regular job to invest into my passion. Consistency has always been key for me wether it was blocking out days I could work on things after the regular work day, following up with possible clients, or even just paying my bills when they were due to make sure I wasn’t back tracking. Once I knew my goal, I didn’t allow anything or anyone to distract me from the vision. I was willing to miss out on certain opportunities of “fun” or going on certain trips because I knew something bigger was ahead. Also giving up some of the smaller things I wanted like shoes, clothes, or a new cell phone allowed me to keep focus on the ultimate goal of making my creative work my full-time living.

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?

My name is Germarius Major. I am a 32 year old entrepreneur born and raised in Flint, Michigan. Before pursuing a career of Entrepreneurship full-time I worked for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for 9 years, while obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Health Science from University of Michigan. I am very grateful for my time at ERAC as it taught me many skills and values that I use in my company and molded me to the professional I am today. I currently own and operate a full event production company providing all audio, video, and lighting services in many different capacities. This includes proving full production for festivals, concerts, award shows, renting the equipment, permanent installations in churches, auditoriums, event spaces, and so much more. That’s a small overview of what I do but the work that I offer has extended past basic audio and visual services. I grew up as a musician playing the piano and bass guitar and my passion as a musician sparked a desire for me and all other fellow musicians to be heard and I wanted to make sure the work we put into our craft wasn’t presented in an inadequate way. This lead me to pursue knowledge on how to improve the audio quality in different situations and I was able to surround myself with other knowledgeable people within different environments an eventually I was being referred to help out others. After so many referrals and calls I realized I had the skill set and experience to really pursue audio production. After some time I recognized that I shouldn’t limit myself and I could offer lighting and video services as well.
When it comes to putting together events I know there is so much that go into it from planning, to pulling permits, security, licensing, and so much more so I like to give my clients peace when it comes to organization and execution of their events from a production stand point that way they can focus on all the other pieces that matter. Even from an installation stand point I want my clients to be secure in knowing they have the best option for their situation and they have the tools to present quality shows and events over and over. Aside from the quality work I produce my attention to detail, drive to fully complete projects, and skill set to peacefully problem solve set me apart from others and allows me to keep gaining new clientele and retain those who I have worked with before. Also I get a lot of feedback on how easy I am to work with and the integrity I have behind my work and this is what keeps me striving for greatness. My goal is to continue building a brand and team who carry these same values and characteristics whether I am present or not.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

While working my normal 9-5 job, I always knew there was something bigger for me and I knew I wanted to be tied to music in some sort of capacity. Although I was pursuing a bachelors degree in health science I wasn’t sure if I wanted that to be my career path, but I was close to completing the degree and my job at the time came with a nice pay bump once I achieved that bachelors degree. During this time frame I also had an extra stream of income being a musician whether it was playing at my local church or doing band gigs on the weekend. So between the musician pay and the extra disposable income I now had once I graduated it allowed me to attack some of the debt I owed. This was the most challenging piece because I wanted to do fun things with my money and upscale my way of living but I had to remain disciplined to reach my goals of eliminating debt. In the mean time I started doing my audio/video side jobs after work hours during the week and on my free weekends. Once debt was minimized I could then save money from each source of income that could potentially fund something else in my life. Now seeing how driven and goal oriented I’ve always been, once I realized I could potentially build a business I decided to push all extra funds toward building that initial capital. I always had the normal expenses like rent, car note, insurance, and so forth but challenges did arise from time to time like car repairs, student loan payments, and more; but I refused to let those things stop me from building what would soon become my full time entrepreneurial venture. Also I didn’t wait until I saved a certain amount of money to really invest into my business, but I would buy little things here and there, and money I made from small jobs I would turn around and put that money right back into the company rather than feeding one of my other obsessions like tennis shoes. To sum it all up it was my determination, drive, and resilience that allowed me to see a vision, set goals to manifest the vision I saw, and stay on track even if there were obstacles that prolonged the process.

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

One of my biggest goals in life has always been to do right by people. When you do right by others it comes back to you. I carry a lot of characteristics that allow me to easily interact and work with others and that draw people to me. People can tell when you love what you do, when you’ve put the necessary work into perfecting your craft, and they desire to have you around and don’t mind supporting you and your dreams. I’ve always understood that people have options and chose to give me an opportunity to be apart of their projects, events, or whatever line of work bring us together. With that mindset I treat my customers and partners with respect and really focus on bringing their visions alive. This allows people to trust me to work freely and they have a sound mind knowing everything will be executed with the pursuit of perfection. Making sure I stand on those principles people can’t wait to share their experiences with others and even plan out the next event or project with me and my team. Positive word of mouth has definitely helped build my reputation and being consistent and authentic makes it easy to meet the expectations of those who seek out to have me apart of their visions.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @soundmind_productions
• Facebook: Sound Mind Productions
• Youtube: SoundMindProductions1