We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lawrence Ross. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lawrence below.
Lawrence, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
Our 1st client was a result of being visible within the community and being able to address the marketing needs of the restaurant. This restaurant would regularly have live events however the giant marketing group they originally hired was too large to visit them to notice practical things that could be done to improve these events not only from a customer experience point of view but also for the business and workers that have to navigate through these special event days. We so happen to be in the area searching for places to shoot a podcast when we stopped into a Jamaican restaurant to get out of the heat and go through some of the photos and videos we had captured and move on. We happen to be within ear shot of the manager while we were at the bar and the manager continued to circle by multiple times until she asked how our day was and what brought us into the area. Proceeded to tell her we were a Marketing & Media Production company that believes in being actively present at the restaurant/ events to watch first hand how new processes may be harming or helping the customers and employees alike. We also put a heavy focus on “cutting the fat off” the marketing budget and only leaving in things that are proven to generate the results we need.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is LJ Ross and the company we launched back in 2018 is called On1Tone Studios. We provide a range of services from Marketing & Business plans to Graphic Design for Motion banners, logos and flyers to Photography and Video Production. The mission behind the services and how we deliver them is to provide a solution oriented service that will maximize the value of the business down the line. We aim to make evergreen Media pieces that can exist on multiple platforms and while effectively communicating the values and offerings of the business. In our journey to always provide additional value we have stepped into the Event production as well as the Merchandising and Apparel space. With all the services we offer we specialize in solution based services meaning we will not allow you to pay for a service or product that you can’t understand, work or find value in simply to make a sale. We have worked with Restaurants, Health & Wellness stores, Clothing & Shoe Stores and Several Non-Profits along the way. Through those various projects and relationships we have built a reputation of doing amazing work with great communication/ attitude and high quality delivery. That is the business of change that we aim to empower by being an demonstration of that change we wish to see.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Being present, Being dependable, Over communicating on client needs and concerns to provide as much clarity on the processes and solutions we will be providing. We’ve always focused on solution based services instead of pricing based services that way the value of the product or service is truly understood and appreciated by the client.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
We definitely started up as a side hustle, while working a traditional 9-5 situation I launched this company as a way to provide services to non-profits and mom& pop businesses that might be struggling to find these services at a good value point. We worked with 3 non-profits on 5 different projects shortly after we launched that placed our business and services in a different space and showed glimpses of the diverse customer base and a range of project styles that we could service at a high level. From there I’ve began to slowly transition out of the traditional workforce as the business began to thrive. From there we picked up several restaurants, shoe stores, clothing stores, health and wellness as well as a fitness gym contract. We made strategic investments into high quality equipment that would allow us to provide these products and services at a speed and quality that simply can’t be matched because most companies don’t invest in the areas we invest. That has helped our company to maintain and grow that competitive advantage.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://on1tonestudios.wixsite.com/on1t1
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/on1tone/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/On1Tone
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lj-ross-jr-62175611b/