We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joey Roppo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Joey, thanks for joining us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?
In my previous job I worked for my Uncle’s marketing company that sold promotional products and offered other marketing services to businesses. Even though I knew this wouldn’t be my long term career I took away multiple lessons from this job that have carried with me to my current career as an influencer/entertainer. For context, this was a small family run marketing company that my uncle had started with his brother about 20 years ago. I worked very closely with my uncle (the CEO of the company) and learned so much from him about running a successful business namely: Problem solving, delegating/empowering your employees, customer service, and work life balance.
As a creative/self employed entrepreneur all of these skills are extremely helpful. Firstly, a big part of my job now is to make as much quality social media content as possible. Constantly being able to adapt to new trends and come up with creative solutions to my content is very important. Furthermore, in the social media influencer game there are a lot of moving parts from responding to emails, negotiating brand deals, creating the content, editing, etc. Being able to delegate as much of that to a trusted personal assistant/manager will help free up time in your schedule to get more work done. This can be easier said then done considering that you will have your own vision for all of these aspects of your work. But ultimately, if you don’t learn to delegate and trust other people, then you won’t be able to get everything done. Lastly, work life balance; as your own boss it can be easy to get wrapped up in working 24/7 if you love what you do. But being able to separate yourself from that to make sure you enjoy the process, taking necessary breaks so you can recharge and come back stronger is important.
As I mentioned before, I knew this job wouldn’t be my long term career. But looking back at it now, I know that me taking pride in my job back then and learning as much as I could from my uncle has played a huge part of my success today.
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 have known for a long time now that I wanted to work in entertainment. Whether as an influencer, musician, actor, model, or a little bit of all of it. But to get into this industry it can take a bit of a risk considering that a lot of the time you will not be making much money early on in your career. Knowing this I worked a couple other jobs for a few years after I got out of college to get some experience but mainly to save up money to get myself in a position to go for my goals in entertainment.
This took a great deal of dedication to stay focused on the big picture of what I was working for. I had a few different jobs after college, some which I enjoyed, others I did not. But I knew they were necessary if I wanted to take the risk that I wanted to take to pursue my passion.
During this time while working and saving up money I also had to develop the skills that I would need for when I did start my career in entertainment. Hitting the gym hard, playing guitar, dancing, creating and editing videos. Looking back at this time now, it is probably one of the things I am most proud of. Making these sacrifices for years in my early 20s with the vision of going for it in my later 20s took a lot of perseverance and courage.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding thing about being a creative is that I get to do what I love everyday. That can bring its own stresses because I’m not working a 9 to 5 job where I have a set schedule everyday and a paycheck every 2 weeks. But I have learned to enjoy this process of being “uncomfortable” doing what I love instead of being “comfortable” doing something I don’t love.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Being a Netflix reality show (Dated & Related) definitely helped me in building my social media platforms to what they are now. But even before that, I got found for the show through social media before I had a big following. Posting consistently is by far the biggest key. It can be very discouraging to be putting in the work day in and day out to post consistently and not getting the results you desire. But the exciting part about social media is that all it takes is 1 video. Anything can go viral at anytime that can give your platform the boost that it needs to increase your audience. Reminding yourself of that can be encouraging to help you persevere through the slower times.
Contact Info:
- Website: joeyroppo.com
- Instagram: joeyroppo
- Twitter: joeyroppo
- Youtube: The Roppos
- Other: Tik Tok: Joeyroppo
Image Credits
IG: Photostuartphotography Garrison Irwin Antwane Sonneveldt