We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Josh Taylor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

As we all know life is about taking risks! It’s a funny thing to narrow down to just one example but here we go. My dream since I was a teenager was to move out to California and live the lifestyle that comes with it. A lot of people share this dreams and they flock to Los Angeles to give it a shot. With this dream I ended up finally moving to Los Angeles at the age of 28. I personally have never been a big fan of Wisconsin winters so I planned to finally move in October 2019. I had maybe $500 to my name which obviously isn’t much money to move especially to Los Angeles, but I was determined. I had a friend drop me off at the airport in the twin cities and off to LAX I was. I landed and took an uber to Santa Monica where I set up an interview for a vans retail store later that afternoon. As you could imagine I was excited and with my past retail experience I figured vans would be an easy sell. After a $50 uber ride I decided to walk the Santa Monica pier and just take it all in before my interview. I showed up to my interview and was a little surprised to find out it was group interview with 4 of us. The interview went well we all took turns speaking and was told to wait to hear back. I ended up following up with them a week later and they said if the position was available it wouldn’t be needed till Black Friday which at this point was more then a month away so clearly not going to work. It’s funny because for a minute there I thought I was going to get a job the very first day! As life likes to remind us just because you want something that doesn’t mean you are going to get it. Since I was on a very low budget I ended up staying at a more longer term hostile in south central. I found myself living with a lot of people and in a not nice neighborhood. I also found myself thankful that I made it to California and now I have proper motivation to make something out of myself. I spent the next year doing odd and end jobs and containing to market myself. With my entrepreneur background I spent most of my time networking and seeing what kind of social media services I could provide to potential clients. I ended up with lots of ups and downs on this journey. I lived a pretty broke lifestyle while doing my best to meet new people. I also had big moments of meeting celebrities and eventually landing my first new social media consulting client. The dream ended up being put on hold due to the world wide pandemic and I ended up moving back to Wisconsin. The reason I chose this story is because it allowed me to grow so much as a person and I am able to live the rest of my life knowing that I achieved something from nothing. Most of us don’t take risks out of fear ion the unknowing, but the truth is fortune does favour the bold.

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 been entrepreneurial ever since I can remember. The funny thing is growing up entrepreneur wasn’t looked at as such a cool thing like it is nowadays. Being an entrepreneur really comes down to working twice the amount hours without any success guaranteed. I found myself taking jobs in my life that all had to do with offering a product or services to others. I ended up getting good at speaking with people and helping to add value. I eventually started giving that same customer service underneath my own umbrella. How my business path really got started was with photography. Usually the way it works with photography is pick up a camera and just take photos of everything and anything until you find your interests. For me after a couple years of taking pictures of everything from dogs, cars, people and nature I ended up leaning more towards portraits. I began taking portraits of my friends for fun and then naturally it turned into a small business with a few clients. After I enjoyed the process for a good year or so I decided I was going to focus on one of my friends for main subject. I have been seeing the rise of social media put out a plan to use that to get eye balls to my photos. My main goal was to get my photos noticed and hopefully get my friend noticed as a male model. We ended up working on that for about another year and that lead me into social media marketing. I spent most of my time sharing, editing, and creating content for the world to see. With my business mind I decided to take on clients to also help them produce content along with marketing it. I have down more then that but those are the main focuses that I still do till this day.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Most of them are worthless. The technology itself will be very rewarding when it’s used with the right outlets. The block chain is a good idea and with it there will be some issues that nfts will be very cool and fun.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I like to keep a good mix of books from Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone. I also recommend books from Tony Robbins and to read auto biographies on people from the past. I personally have read these and consume a lot of content online from the various people I listed and more. Not only has the information helped me with my mental health but has helped with business.    

Contact Info:

• Instagram: joshtaylor2492
• Youtube: joshtaylorshorts