Inspiring Conversations with Javon Frazier of Maestro Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Javon Frazier. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Javon Frazier is a veteran digital strategist and serial entrepreneur with experience in nearly all divisions of the media and entertainment industry, including film, television, music, games, web, and mobile.

Javon is the founder and CEO of Maestro Media, a first-of-its-kind full-service strategic product and business development firm that works with creators and entrepreneurs to deliver experiences and products directly to consumers through engagement and positive brand sentiment. Javon is also a leader in the crowdfunding world, with previous crowdfunding projects amassing over $15 million in funding. In 2021 alone, he has driven over $6 million in crowd fundraising through Maestro Media.

Prior to founding Maestro Media, Javon spent a decade at Marvel Entertainment in multiple senior positions, including assisting in the launch of Marvel Studios’ Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk before moving on to run worldwide marketing for Marvel’s game division where he launched 40+ games for the company. Following Marvel, Javon joined Studio71, one of the leading global media companies for digital-first creators and brands, serving as the Chief Product Officer and President of the games divisions, where he spearheaded the launch of some of the most popular independent gaming franchises and brands, such as The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls and Half Truth. In addition, Javon has been a staple at UCLA for over six years as a Professor of Strategic Marketing.

Javon is a native of Los Angeles and a graduate of Brentwood School. Following Brentwood, he went on to receive his BA from the University of California at Berkeley and his MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?

Growth has been a tremendous blessing, but it’s also been one of the most difficult challenges to manage. Due to our recent exciting growth, we have had an abundance of opportunities, which is wonderful, but we have to be strategic and discerning about which opportunities to focus our efforts on. Our goal is to always be a quality over quantity company, trying to be the best at what we do, versus doing a bunch of things for the sake of churning out products. This is also related to digital products, not just physical products, which is where Maestro is headed in the future.

At Maestro, we really focus on Creators and IP first and foremost. It starts with the creator’s IP, which usually already has a baked-in fanbase, allowing us to branch out and create really amazing games and products for that already existing fanbase, as well as expose new people to the IP that may have not normally been interested. Turning something that, for example, starts originally as a video game, into a board game, then plushies, then t-shirts, and beyond, allows for multiple ways for fans, new and familiar, to engage and interact with the IP. With that kind of expansive opportunity, you have the challenge of ensuring you’re honing in on what makes the most sense for the IP and the community and making the absolute best possible product. We always want to ensure we make the best iterations of the IP that would make the Creator and their community proud and excited. All of this, albeit exciting, has been very challenging.

In addition, we’ve grown leaps and bounds in the number of Maestro team members, both domestically and internationally, which means managing different time zones across a global marketplace. The key challenges that have impacted our business the most tied to this include dealing with geopolitical issues and globalization which can be a major struggle. We’re developing games during an interesting time, when the supply chain has experienced collapse and revitalization very quickly, and it’s also constantly changing. One day might be very different than the next as it relates to global manufacturing and distribution of the type of products we make.

Also, one of my biggest personal priorities since launching Maestro has been how I show up as a CEO. I’m in a field where the external pressures tied to global manufacturing, geopolitical issues, and further, outweigh the internal pressures, so making sure that our company is a safe space for every team member to have fun and feel valued and included is very important to me – and I want them to feel that not only with their day to day work projects and activities, but also while interacting with me. I have an open-door policy and want to ensure my entire team feels confident coming to me with anything.

I also just have to continually ask myself “how do we keep doing it while breaking the mold?” Not just from a sales and numbers standpoint, but with all these external factors impacting this business, myself and my team have to really stay focused on continually answering that question and tuning out the external noise that makes you doubt what you’re doing or where you’re going. It’s been challenging and at the same time, I have two young daughters, so I also want to make them a part of the process. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be so easy to just get sucked into the business in a way that makes you miss out on these formative years, so it’s always top of mind to prioritize my family, and include them in every step of the growth and excitement we have going on at Maestro. My daughters have gotten so into it that they even like to develop their own board games and comic books – they love the space dad works in. It’s a struggle to make the business not a distraction from my number one priority – family – so I bring them into the experience and make it something that they can be a part of and is a shared experience for our family. I call it “work-life integration” versus “work-life balance.”

I pinch myself every day – I’ve always had the dream to build my own successful business, and I’m now accomplishing the things I’ve set out to accomplish my whole life. It’s truly surreal, and I’m so grateful for my team, family, and friends.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Maestro strives for quality and new innovative products. A lot of companies want to tackle the biggest IP or the biggest labels, but sometimes focusing on the unique IP with a passionate fanbase delivers the best results. My background working at Marvel in the early stages of their film and TV development has really helped me understand this aspect and apply it to my company. When Marvel first established its studio back in 2007, they made some really strong creative decisions, such as making Iron Man and Thor, that weren’t very popular when they were first announced. Many people were skeptical, but as we have all seen, Marvel proved them wrong and delivered high-quality products that had not been seen in the superhero genre before. Therefore, we’re really focused on bold creative choices, like The Binding of Isaac and Sally Face; interesting brands that differentiate our business from other companies. The Binding of Isaac is now the seventh largest Kickstarter of all time, and at the time we originally launched it, it was a niche brand. The choices made have been really radical and different, and they’ve turned out to be the best decisions we’ve made as a company.

Maestro focuses on talent. Talent with our Creators and fans, making them the focal point of any business decision or initiative to ensure we bring their vision to the marketplace. That approach is a slight shift from traditional product development, product design, and customer experience. We want to highlight and enhance the vision of our creators, which really sets our business apart. The creators we work with aren’t just a cog in the wheel; we’re here to support the creators and their vision because they know their fans and their business better than anyone. Our major strengths are in marketing, content development, game localization, and more of the business side of things, so we allow the creators to own and lead the creative and we help bring those ideas to market. For us, it starts with working with a great creator and great audience to really give them what they want. That’s the secret sauce and that’s what sets us apart from others.

We’ve actually had quite a few articles about myself and Maestro being ”industry disruptors” and I absolutely love being categorized as a disruptor. I’ve had people approach me with amazing opportunities because of these articles and being categorized that way. They want us involved in their event, publication, or project because they see that we’re approaching things very differently, and that’s a very cool feeling. The fact that people are congratulating or giving us accolades for trying to do something different is extremely special to me; it’s great to be part of this industry, but to know that we’re helping to push that industry forward is amazing. We don’t want to be just another board game company; we want to be a company that pushes the industry forward.

We’re fans first and foremost. I’m a genuine fan of what we’re making. I’m a fan of this industry – I worked at Marvel for a decade, I read comic books, and I play video games. I’m the customer, and that’s immensely important when you’re creating the type of games and products we make. In addition, everyone on the team is passionate about these types of things as well. Our staff meetings always start by talking about the latest trailer that dropped, or the board or video game that we’re playing. We’re all so passionate about this space, and bringing that passion to our products is what makes us so different. Our team has expertise across video games, television, films, board games, and more, and I think that’s what really helps ensure the products we put out are top-notch; the internal knowledge is unparalleled. We’re able to grow these brands based on our expertise in a lot of various areas.

For example, The Binding of Isaac went from 1 SKU to 150 SKUs because we’re strong in developing ideas and executing those ideas. We didn’t want to make the board game a one-off. We launched the first iteration and it was hugely successful, so we asked ourselves, where can we take it now? What other opportunities can we explore here? And we continued to expand all the variations of the game, all while keeping the fanbase involved. We don’t want to just do a one-off game and leave it at that, we want to work with creators to continue to build upon their ideas and IP in a meaningful way. It’s our fifth year working on The Binding of Isaac and we’re only getting started, even as a $6.7 million dollar Kickstarter. There’s still so much room for creative exploration around that IP. A great example of that is The Unboxing of Isaac, which is a monthly subscription program tied to the IP, which has sold out and been hugely successful. It’s another expansion, and we continue to explore new ways we can create new iterations.

We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
Regardless of whether you view yourself as a risk-taker or not, we’d love to hear your perspective on how you think about risk.

When I launched this business, I took out a loan against my house. I believed so deeply in what we were setting out to accomplish, I took out a loan on my house and was determined to get this thing done. It was highly risky and very scary. Thinking about the difficult conversations I’d have to have with my wife and mom, should things not have gone the way I had hoped, on top of the fact that there was a global pandemic happening, was extremely daunting. But we did it, the whole family was very supportive, and our first project, The Binding of Isaac, went on to raise $1 million in the first 90 minutes that the campaign was live.

It was a high risk, but I experienced firsthand how Marvel started their own studio with Iron Man being the first film on their slate, and that was a huge risk. Being surrounded by those visionaries for years and seeing how they pushed back when people were questioning the approach, and proving all of those doubters wrong, has stuck with me. Iron Man has since become one of the first, most successful superhero characters in film and really set the stage for all of the comic book film iterations after it. Superhero films are a massive part of the mainstream now, and I think Marvel’s “risky” approach has played a major part in that.

Being a part of that really taught me that in order to break through you have to push the limits, be a disruptor, and take risks. That’s what I’ve done ever since, and have experienced the reward tenfold. We put everything into our projects and the fans respond.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://maestromedia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaestroteam
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMaestroTeam
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/themaestroteam
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themaestroteam2436 

Image Credits
Maestro Media