Hello Nick. Can you tell us a little bit about your company?
Bangerbuddy is a college lifestyle brand with a 4 Million follower fanbase on instagram. The idea started as a failed iphone app startup. The iphone app failed due to lack of funding and knowledge about apps, but I converted the app instagram page into a college content page.
What is your backstory? Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Junior year of highschool I thought of an app that was basically a social media platform that revolved around parties and events. So, basically you would follow your friends and public figures to see what events and parties they were interested in and would be attending. The app failed miserably. All I was left with was a page on instagram (@bangerbuddy) with about 10,000 followers. At that point in time, people were not really making money off of social media, so I had no idea that I would ever be able to make money off an IG page, but I continued to run the page and post epic content. Months later it became a full time source of income for me and after one semester of attending university I decided to drop out and pursue my IG page full time.
What gave you that Entrepreneurship spark and drive when you started? Tell me about the day you decided to take this on as a full time venture.
After Highschool the page really took off. I had over 100k followers and was making solid money for an 18 year old student. What really changed my life and motivated me to pursue this full time was starting a shopify store. Sean Kelly from Jersey Champs invited me to his house during winter break between fall & spring semester and for almost a week straight taught me the ins and outs of shopify. With my knowledge of shopify, I managed to make more money in one month than I have ever made in a year from selling promotions on my page. After getting a taste of success I stopped attending classes for the spring semester and sat at starbucks every single day growing my website and brand.
How do you maintain or find new inspiration?
The social media industry is so competitive. The inspiration never dies down because it’s almost like a never ending race to have more followers than someone else, and sometimes you pass them and then they pass you and then i start ramping things up to pass them again.
What’s the most valuable advice you’ve received that contributed to your personal or professional success?
The most valuable advice I would say I ever received was to be smart with incoming money. Reinvesting a lot of your income back into growing your business is key, as well as putting as much away in savings as you possibly can for a rainy day. Especially in the social media industry, things are super volatile and you never know when the plug can be pulled on you or a simple algorithm change can shut your business down.
How do you prioritize your most important tasks?
This is a tough one. There is a lot of tasks that drop on my head every day and some of them get pushed to the side and others get instantly handled. Really depends on the value and compensation of each task. A high paying task for a highly valued client will get done way before a low paying task for someone that really does not bring much valuable to my table.
What have been the most important contributors to your success?
Consistency is definitely important. Once I found strategies that worked for me, i had to be consistent and scale them up until I could not scale them any higher. Just like the saying, ‘If it is not broken, do not fix it.’ If something is working amazingly for you then run it up, and do not stop until it does not work anymore.
Finally, What have you sacrificed for success?
I sacrificed a whole lot of free time & my college education for my success. Not that I regret leaving college so far, but it is obviously risky to not have a degree to fall back on.