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

Tinamarie, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The Josie Music Awards was created from a need to ensure that independent music artists were celebrated for their talents and bodies of work. The Josie Music Awards came after our network had several brands already in operation and we wanted to celebrate all those that we have worked with over the years and across all of our different entertainment brands. The idea of the Josie Music Awards was created to further offer opportunities through that brand as we do with all our brands while giving those in the independent music industry a night of their own where they all come together as one big, united music family to be celebrated as major label artists get celebrated.

Tinamarie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My daughter Josie Passantino-Boone and I found this line of work in the entertainment field by accident. I was a business manager most of my life and my daughter Josie was still in school at the age of 14 years old when this all started. Josie had an online radio show she started for fun at an early age, from there she started booking legendary artists as guests to interview on her talk show and with her school schedule it started to become a lot of work as she grew listeners very quickly. So, I left my job as a district manager for a large company and started helping my daughter follow her passion and she was taken out of public school and enrolled in a school that works with young children while they work towards their career. She just flourished both professionally and personally in that great school setting. Over the last almost 15 years we have built fourteen brands together. We are a great working team with Josie handling creativity and me having a Bachelor of Science in Business Management I manage the business side of things. This has worked extremely well for us.

I think the things that set us apart from all the others are our hearts and focus on what is important. We have been taught in countless business courses and have heard the saying “business is business” and that is no place for decisions made with your heart. I think Josie and I have proven that just is not true. We are immensely proud of what we have built and how it is helping thousands around the globe in different areas of their career paths.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I would say longevity (which is not easy in the entertainment field), honesty, and always doing what is right even if it is not popular. It is important to us to ensure we manage every aspect of our business with the highest level of moral and ethical standards. Regardless of what the situation is, everyone knowing they are going to be treated fairly is extremely important to us. Every decision we make is carefully thought out to ensure it is the fairest way to oversee any given business matter.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our company calls this building our music family. We are most proud of the independent music family we have built that is supportive of each other, collaborate, help each other like a real family does. This amazing family is large, strong, positive, united, loving, and incredibly talented. We can honestly say this family was created by word of mouth and those seeing what we do and wanting to be a part of this supportive music family.

After starting up and managing many businesses over the years, I can tell you the music family that we have created is extremely rare and not like anything else I have ever been a part of in the past and not like anything else I have seen created since.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.josiemusicawards.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josiemusicawards/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thejosiemusicawards
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/josiemusicaward
• Other: www.josieshow.com, www.JMA Fest.com, www.thejosienetwork.com

Image Credits
Janet Reynolds