Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Remington McFadden. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Remington thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
I hope my legacy is leaving the impact of “Spreading Love and Caring for one another no matter your race or story.” There’s a beautiful quote by Jimi Hendrix that says “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” I think a lot of people and young entrepreneurs confuse the premise of legacy and associate it with having “power.” I think when you really start to look at the “GOATS” of our lifetime you can make one clear distinction in their core values that separates them from the rest of the pack…and that is their unconditional will and admiration for giving back and spreading love or energy…good vibes if you will. And all of these different “Goats” do it in their own way! Which is adhering to YOUR own calling in this lifetime. The universe has a funny way of manifesting through those willing to be a “vessel” for its creation…and Me. I’m a vessel of Love. I turn hate into Love. I manifest it. My brand and everything we do is built around it. It’s the reason haters can’t penetrate the energy we emit. Love is enduring. So I hope my legacy reflects if anything, to spread love. Hate can’t win.
Remington, 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?
Urban Gorillas also known in short as UG, started back in 2010 when I was in college at East Carolina University. My friend, Clayton, actually came up with the name. We would always play the hit game Call of Duty and run it as a team. One day we were killin’ it and he just blurted out “We’re running this like a bunch of Urban Gorillas!” I was in the School of Business at ECU and I’ve always been a bit of an entrepreneur since I was little with my owning my own mowing and car wash business. But when I heard “Urban Gorillas” I knew immediately that it should be the name of a brand! So I started researching for a graphic designer that specialized in brand logos. I knew the first major thing a brand needs is a recognizable logo. So we paid a designer out of California $100 to do the logo; he said it would take five days but he sent it back in about 4 hours with a note about how much he loved the idea and vision we had for the brand. Urban Gorillas, the vision, is to spread love and peace. And the unique way we do this is by bringing together creative freelancers from all around the world and building a community of reliable trustworthy supporters. Urban Gorillas foundation is built on the principles you would likely see in a loving family. In fact, all of our creatives and anyone within our network should know by now that we call our community the “UG Family.”
After we got the logo drawn up, we went to a local print shop and had about 40 shirts printed up. In order to get the name out around town and the college scene we started to throw “UG Parties” where we would wear and sell the UG Shirts. I do want to note that a lot of our come-up days were also before the days of Instagram. However, we did join twitter in 2011. UG originally started out with five founders – Clayton, AJ, Edwin, Sean, and Myself. Collectively between us we knew a good number of friends and connections throughout ECU so we were able to bring together a decent number of people every time. We also aligned and networked with local musicians both in the area and back in my hometown of Fayetteville, NC. Over the years, we partnered with a local club/venue called Still Life that was more of an urban style club that fit our image as well. We would help market and promote pool parties or tailgate games around Greenville, NC at local apartment complexes. As IG came around we began to showcase the things we would do around the local community – whether it was just going out as a team, taking pictures, making music videos, or going out to support other creatives and networking events; we would always roll with a camera or cameraman so we could showcase our content and our family bond across social media.
Fast-forwarding a couple of years, I moved the base of operations to Raleigh, NC. This allowed for me to build more around the city atmosphere but still have a good local presence and UG vibe. In Raleigh, we were really looking to tap into the underground music scene of things and local businesses. Tapping into the music scene was pretty easy since we already had a couple of our own artist/musicians involved in the scene. From here, we basically just took it step by step and repeated the process that worked so well in Greenville — and that was to show genuine love and support for other local creatives. When entering a new city, we like to start of by watching the overall scene and locating the key players making moves in the underground scene. I like to look for key individuals that are really driving towards results and have a “bigger picture” in mind. Connecting and working with these types of creatives and individuals allows for a lot of good ideas to come forth that we can then convert into smaller realistic local goals.
I’ve grown to understand that you must work with people that are either as hungry as you or hungrier for success in order to make real traction in the entrepreneur world. So after a couple of years cultivating and growing both an online and in the community fan base, we started to target bigger organization and festivals/events that we could align with or market/promote via Urban Gorillas social media outlets and/or being on the scene in person to work the event. With the power of social media and our on-boarded Creatives, we’re able to participate in various events and networking opportunities even outside of Atlanta…even outside of the U.S….which is by far the craziest feeling to me. I still have a hard time digesting the fact that UG has essentially gone global without us (Owners) really leaving the eastern part of the U.S. A big part of us developing a global fan base came with the ability to tag pictures on Instagram and Twitter.
The “Photography Boom” of everyone looking for outlets and places to showcase their work drove a lot of online traffic our way. With this also came the boom of the use of hashtags. One of the other remarkable and unbelievable things to me is the fact that we have not one but two trending hashtags, #urbangorillas and #wearegorillas, that thousands of creatives and supporters are using to highlight their work and be included in our online community of threads. It’s wild to see an idea transcribe through social media. But as we’ve grown we’ve been able to land a couple of amazing opportunities; like this past year working with J.Cole’s Dreamvillefest and being a Dreamvillefest Ambassador is an indescribable feeling when you’re getting to work with and promote for not only one of the biggest Artist in the game but also someone I’ve looked up to over the years, especially since we’re from the same hometown of Fayetteville, NC. A good number of our creatives also regularly photograph artist and musicians that come to venues in their own local cities or towns.
Fast forwarding a little bit, we have now expanded into the fashion industry; Partnering alongside Bovtiqve (pronounced “boutique”) Fashion Week and the good people who founded it, Franck Mille and Angelo Diaz of Pretty Fly Society. With the gained exposure in this industry and marketplace, I’ve learned that you meet a bunch of people from all over the world with different backgrounds and the funny thing about it is we all have one thing in common, and that is that we all live on this Earth; So we are all going through things and that we all are in need of love! So it’s just beautiful to see Black people come together and build collaboratively! But it’s not just Black people, it’s White, Asian, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, you name it! It’s just so beautiful, it’s hard to describe it! You really have to see for yourself and immerse yourself in our community’s energy to fully understand it! It’s a warm feeling when you have a family of creatives all building towards a better future.
But, I guess really to wrap it all up, the funny thing is like I said, it always comes back to the foundation being built on love! You can’t move forward and you can’t build WITHOUT LOVE! It’s just a necessary ingredient for success!
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my co-founder Sean Rollins in probably one of the craziest ways possible. We both interviewed for an Enterprise Rent-a-Car Management Trainee position in which he actually ended up getting the job over me. After I got the call from Enterprise to inform me they no longer had any openings in Greenville, NC….I told them I was willing to commute to the next open position which was in Wilson, NC. During the management trainee job on-boarding program they send you and a co-worker to a workshop convention in Charlotte, NC. Since we were both going to be coming from the eastern part of NC they matched us together to go to the workshop. Greenville, NC is about 4 and a half hours away from Charlotte; So needless to say we were able to have some bonding time and both described our side businesses. At this time, I had already started UG and it was going into I believe it’s third year. But after speaking for a bit and understanding his passion and drive, I asked for his help in building UG. The rest is really history! But had it not been for my resilience to get the job, this story may have gone in a different direction.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The best advice I have for managing a team is to be a listener. Listening is a powerful tool. There’s no denying that everybody wants to be heard so having the ability to listen to your team often gives you a different and multiple perspectives. So as a leader that opens your scope to more possibilities; You are able to see from different vantage points. The second thing that comes with being a great listener, is also being an effective communicator. Communication is still key. I think the best way to maintain high morale and energy is to make sure you’re consistently giving kudos or accolades; for even the smallest achievements. A “pat” on the back still goes a long way. And also, to make sure you remind your team that they are in fact a part of a TEAM. “You’re only as strong as the weakest link in your chain.” So know your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Compliment each other’s attributes.
Contact Info:
- Website: WeAreGorillas.com
- Instagram: urbangorillas
- Twitter: urbangorillas