Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to James “Shwill” Beamon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

James “Shwill”, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I grew up around music my whole life. I started out as a musician playing the drums for my church and in the band, but I always knew I didn’t want to be in the spotlight as an artist. This made me think about all the many ways you can get paid in the music industry. That’s when I started looking at other fields in the industry that I could get paid from. I was throwing parties in high school and that made me want to get into the event/concert business.

James “Shwill”, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started in the industry as an audio engineer/producer. I was a freshman in high school and started making beats on my phone and recording myself. That evolved into me recording a lot of artist from Arkansas when I went to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

I was throwing college parties as a promoter and was promoting parties in high school in Chicago. These 2 industries made me think about booking concerts. I ended up getting hired by Breakpoint Booking via a job search in my graduate program at Full Sail University.

What we do is we book concerts/tours for national and upcoming artist. What drew me towards the company was there aren’t a lot of Black owned Booking Agents or agencies in the industry and I already had a connection to a lot of artists. So all the pieces pretty much fell into place for me.

I wanted to grow with a company and I feel like we are growing at a rapid pace being the #1 searched boutique agency on google and we just started in 2018. I feel like we work with artist on a more personal level. I pride myself on if my artist don’t eat, then I won’t eat. So I always put my best foot forward so the artists will feel happy and will want to do more work with us in the future.

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

The thing that drives me is my pure will to be great. A lot of people like to have a backup plan for when things don’t go as planned. I look at a backup plan as you already giving up on your dreams. As a creative, yes we struggle with motivation, drive, all the things that help us create. I use that as motivation. I look at where I am in life and where I want to be and think, if I don’t put the work in now then I won’t see future rewards from my hard work. So the will not to fail is what pushes me everyday.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A thing that I had to learn was nothing is ever going to be perfect. You can plan things down to every detail but they will never fully go as planned. You will have obstacles. You will have times where things don’t go your way. The true test of greatness is how you bounce back from adversity. A piece of coal would never become a diamond with out time, heat and pressure. All those things mold you into the diamond you are becoming.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram.com/beammeup_shwilly
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-beamon-59b18a163?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F