We recently connected with Josh Levin and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

At Marquette, we treat our social media differently than many other programs. The main emphasis on our accounts is culture. Culture is king! Everything we do, we want to tie it back to the way the program is run and our values. Many teams approach their accounts simply from the perspective of what will get the most engagement. So for us, it has been a fun and interesting challenge to figure out how we can achieve both of those things simultaneously.

Josh, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I went to undergrad for architecture and graduated in 2016. From there, I spent two years working at an architecture firm in the Chicago suburbs, which is where I learned photography. Photography quickly became more than a hobby as it felt like the creative outlet I was meant to have all my life. In 2018 I moved to Milwaukee to pursue my master’s degree in architecture while simultaneously learning videography and continuing to do freelance photo work. When I made the venture into sports creative, I was fortunate enough to quickly be presented with an opportunity to work with Major League Baseball and decided to drop out of my master’s program. The next few years were spent working four days a week in a local architecture firm while spending my nights and weekends covering sporting events before I was finally able to make the jump full-time with my current role in 2021.

Any advice for managing a team?

My philosophy is to treat people the way I would want to be treated. If I don’t treat the people who work for me well, why would they want to put in the required effort? A big piece of that is allowing them to have ownership not just over their own work, but everything we produce. No project is too big or too small to include everyone. This is essential to developing a healthy work environment. Additionally, I think it’s important to have fun. I make sure that every day, no matter how stressful is still FUN. We are fortunate enough to work in a field that is supposed to be fun, so we need to try and remember that.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A big lesson that I had to unlearn was that social media strategy shouldn’t just be loose and fun. I came into my role thinking that everything had to be cutting edge, top-notch editing, funny, etc. The truth is, we can be authentic and engaging while being serious and thoughtful. It took some time to learn how to strategically blend culture with social media engagement, but over time, we have developed a successful formula that has created major results.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.joshlevinphotography.com
• Instagram: joshlevin7
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-levin-89127956/
• Twitter: levinjosh7