Transcript of Interview with Joshua Adams
Joshua Adams, the Head Honcho of Rock Paper Simple, lives and breathes entrepreneurship, branding, and marketing. Joshua started programming at 11 years old and began his freelance web career at 14. As a result of working with over 700 clients, he has become an expert in the fields of web development, digital marketing, and branding. Joshua founded Rock Paper Simple in 2011 with the vision of empowering businesses who are awesome at what they do by developing their brand and digital presence. He is never satisfied with the status quo and is always working hard to find the simplest, but most effective ways to create results for his clients and ventures. You will frequently hear him say “Ever Forward!”, as he believes the best option is always, always to move forward. He lives to empower talented people and dedicates his work in every endeavor to the glory of God. Amongst other accomplishments, he was named a finalist of LEAD Brevard’s “4 under 40” award in 2016 and again in 2017
Rock Paper Simple http://rockpapersimple.com/hugh
Hugh: Hey, it’s Hugh Ballou. I have a guest who is a fairly new friend, but a couple years. We have connected, and over the couple years, we have had significant conversations. This is Joshua Adams. I’ve seen him and his team do amazing work. I wanted to share some information today with all our listeners about branding. We want to do a website. We’ve given no thought to what it looks like, what representation it is for who we are and what we stand for. Joshua, hello.
Joshua: Hello, how are you?
Hugh: I’m awesome. Tell people a little bit about you. What’s your background that has brought you to this really good place of branding, marketing, and web design?
Joshua: Absolutely. I actually got in the industry more on the web programming side of things. When I was 11 years old, my dad handed me a programming book and said, “Here, learn this.” I remember picking up the book and going, This is bigger than the Bible. At that time, the Bible was the biggest book on the planet in my mind, so this was a big deal. I dug into it, loved it, and dove into programming. My friends were playing games, and I was at home programming, clockin’ away, making games and applications. As I got older, I got into web and focused on that. When I was 14, I started freelancing. When I was 18, I started my own web design company in my parents’ garage. I had three desks all lined up and said, “I’m doing it.” It took off. I loved business. I loved entrepreneurism. It was natural.
A couple years into doing that, I merged with a marketing agency. This is where my mindset shifted because I went from a programming mind, that engineering, tell me what to build and I’ll build it—as you call them, propeller-heads—to thinking more along the lines of, How can I build it? How can I make this cool? I realized that these marketing clients don’t care how cool this is. They want it to make the money. They want it to have results, to have a purpose. I learned what marketing was, what branding was, and that influenced me.
A month into this new partnership, my partner decided to disappear for an extended period of time. I went, Great. Here I am, a programmer, running a marketing agency. During the day, I’d be on phone calls; they’d want printing, design, or logos. I’d go, “Absolutely, great,” and I’d hang up and go, Crap. Google is my friend. I searched online courses and had to learn this on the fly. Here we were, developing for big clients in the area, and I had to figure this out. That was trial by fire. A few years into that, I had to part ways with my partner for more reasons than just going our separate ways. I brought all that marketing and branding knowledge with me and said, I want to develop a company that takes all the complexities away, all these over-the-top things that we were doing in the previous agency. I want to simplify it and build websites that are marketing-focused. At the time, my passion