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

Hi Jada , thanks for joining us today. Have you been 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? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I’ve been able to earn a full – time living from my creative work with my company The INDI Group LLC by focusing on my backend business structure and maintaining the same branding aesthetic and mission that I started with once the business model was created.

No it definitely was not like this from day one! Lol I can honestly say I didn’t start earning a “full time” income from my business until 2019. I started my company in 2014 with limited to zero knowledge about the art of business and how businesses are ran. Especially creative businesses with art based business models such as mine. When you’re the creator of the business and also a creative it’s very difficult to focus on both the business and art because you simply want to enjoy the creative process. But at the same time my trick to this has been to make my business the entire creative process by focusing our creativity and attention on building up the artist market of creatives looking to understand how to create business plans and products from their artistic ideas. I have fun in this model because I make sure that all aspects of how we assist the artist market are things that I personally enjoy doing such as creative event planning or artist development. Even our services in graphic design and social media marketing are things I genuinely loved to do before starting the brand and are the pillars of what INDI stands on today.

Some of the major steps and milestones that I think could have sped up the process is access to capital and resources that could have assisted my start up launch a bit quicker. But at the same time I feel like my personal journey had to involve me finding those avenues for myself so that I could know they exist and that I can also create them for myself.

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?

Definitely,

I got into the industry of creative arts and digital media by honestly just being a kid of the culture. I’m a 90’s baby so growing up in the 90’s and early 2000’s I was simply inspired by the art culture of music , media and fashion. I was obsessed with 90’s music videos, fashion styles , layers , patterns and colors and I was obsessed with the music genre of hip hop and r&b where I got to see my favorite idols such as Aaliyah, Missy Elliot , Bone Thugs-n- Harmony , Tupac , SWV , TLC , on tv doing what I thought was the coolest thing which was being themselves and looking so dope at doing it! I later became inspired by BET’s “Access Granted” where they would show the behind the scenes of the music videos so I would listen to albums and singles from artists and imagine what the music video would look like for my favorite songs and I would try to see if they would match with what they did on access granted lol so much creativity ran through me during those years. My love for fashion came from watching the culture in the streets of Cleveland which I feel was heavily influenced by the hip hop culture so growing up naturally I was introduced to the early classic 90’s brands of Nike , Reebok , Addidas, the GAP , Starter , Polo Sport and more just to name what I remember wearing. This inspired me to create my own fashion sense of style that ended up creating my comfort zone for fashion. In high school this relaxed fashion became embedded into my athletic lifestyle as I fused those classic brands into my basketball shoes, jogging suits and overall style. I think this style influenced my confidence behind starting my clothing brand which is similar to my style of dress as an athlete which was hoodies , joggers, & tshirts lol.

All of my marketing and branding endeavors came with experience as I grew into myself and my business. The model became more mature in the sense of creating a platform for marketing the local artist that wasn’t the normal approach. I spent time in Houston Texas around their creatives and in college spent time amongst several likeminded creatives and just knew that the market for artists was everlasting and that all artists need is that support and a platform that pushes to support their work no matter at what stage.

I figured out a way to master the art of working with the shy creative that doesn’t quite believe in themselves to also working with the ones who have an entire plan but just need funding assistance. So creating ways to work with artists on all different levels with our mentoring background strategies has assisted our brand tremendously in terms of our genuine client base.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Real Estate is something I wish I would have known more about while in high school. I feel that high school students understand the climate of their personal neighborhoods and should understand the value of the properties in those neighborhoods. I feel that school is where those base lines of education for real estate and financial literacy should have came into play for my personal generation. I think not having access to those subjects held us back as a generation to figure out those things on our own which doesn’t always help those that need more understanding or simply have a lack of education on finances and building generation wealth.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Now at 30 I feel the mission behind my business is to fulfill my legacy of my brand in order to create that generational wealth seed for my personal family. I feel that doing that on this journey will spark others like myself to do the same.

I would like to see my business provide wealth for my family and others creating more than just personal businesses but Artist infrastructure. I want to create an artist infrastructure starting in Cleveland , Ohio that involves artist real estate , artist businesses ran by artists themselves , all things generating income for the artists of today and the next generation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theindigroup.com/
• Instagram: @indi.media
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/uYFeiUtkQt8?si=3tdoPzykNQIuPOUl