StartUp Journal recently spoke with Tina Wells, 27, chief executive officer of Buzz Marketing, a youth-marketing services company, about trend watching and getting started as a young entrepreneur.
Q: Where did you get the idea for Buzz Marketing?
A: In high school, I was working as a reporter writing product reviews for the New Girl Times. One of the companies that I covered told me that they actually paid companies thousands for the type of reports that I was writing. When I started college, I took my work with me and found some professors who helped me take the company to the next level.
Q: What factors contributed to its growth?
A: The success of our company has been a result of our ability to write the most interesting recommendations and analysis for our clients. The trend-watching industry is an industry in its own right and it’s a growth industry.
I initially grew my company by hiring friends. I started with 10 friends on my email list. It grew because everyone seemed to know someone else who thought what I did was pretty cool. In 2000, CosmoGIRL! put a ‘Cool Job Alert’ on its entrepreneurial page. Then after CosmoGIRL! ran an article on my company in 2000, I received 15,000 applications for the trend-writing position in 90 days. Today, we have a network of over 9,000 young trend writers or buzzSpotters that are paid when retained by our clients for projects.
Q: What advice can you give young entrepreneurs for getting others to take them seriously?
A: There are no shortcuts. I’ve been working at this since I was 16. After 11 years, I finally feel I’m at the place I need to be. I also worked for free as much as I could. I wanted experience, and that was the best way to get it. By doing great work and learning everything I could about my field and the demographic that I was covering, my age never mattered.
Photo by Inc..
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