Life & Work with John Russell of Los Angeles County

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Russell.

Hi John , can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Los Angeles and spent the beginning years of my childhood here. I then moved to the Chicago Southland and spent the rest of my adolescence there. I came back to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California (USC). I graduated from USC in Spring 2024 with an Undergraduate Degree in Business Administration. USC was a pivotal chapter in my life, because college introduced me to many fields that I currently do professional work in. Right now, at the age of 23, I work in the fields of marketing, community engagement, college admissions, and event hosting & management. In the future, I would like to create my own feature length film.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have a strong support system with my Mother and Father that prevent me from experiencing some financial and mental struggles. I seek guidance from my parents whenever I need help with any of the businesses that I’m working on.

Having patience has been something that I struggled with and still struggle with to this day. I have many things that I’m trying to do, and I’m waiting to see which one of these things will provide me with the outcome that I’m looking for. At 23 years old, I have a high sense or urgency to work to get as much accomplished as I can while I’m young, so I can try to spend the majority of my life enjoying the fruits of my labor.
My Parents are good at reassuring me that the more things I try and more work that I put in on developing myself that one of the things is bound to give me the success that I’m looking for.

I tried maybe 10 other professional endeavors and paths before finding the industries that I’m now finding success in. I met so many different people, many who helped me get to the places where I’m at now and others who strung me along, took from me, or did not help me. Finding people of substance and value that you work with professionally or develop relationships with has been the hardest thing.

There have been many struggles to set each one of my current entities:

It was hard for me to find clients at first for my marketing business. In the span of 3 months, I spoke to over 100 businesses trying to pitch them my marketing services and how it could help them with their business. I was met with “No’s” or “I’ll follow up with you”, that did not amount to anything. Throughout the time, I had to end my professional relationship with some previous clients as well. In the past year, I just started having noticeable momentum and have 5 solid clients that I work with.

A struggle with the community engagement events is sometimes your audience may not be receptive to your presentation and not listening. That can be discouraging at times, but you need to keep going until you get to the presentation with the group that will listen and appreciate the information that you’re sharing with them.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
While I was at USC, I started my own marketing business, called Servio Marketing Services.
Coming off of the Covid-19 Outbreak in the USA in 2020-2021, I saw the effect that the pandemic had on businesses and how some weren’t really able to recover their clientele or know how to. I thought that marketing would be a good business, because if I can help businesses attract customers, then I’ll always have business coming in. I currently have 5 active clients that I do multiple marketing services for. My clients are in various industries including a barbershop, curling iron manufacturing, hair and skin care products, shoe manufacturing, and handyman services. I also work as a creative consultant for an actor who is the lead in a TV series on Paramount+ and stars in a feature length film with A-List actors.

While at USC, I was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Alpha Delta Chapter and President of the USC National Pan-Hellenic Council. We threw social events for the two organizations that would fund our community service projects and I would host financial wellness workshops on campus. Hosting my own events in these orgs taught me many aspects of event management and gave me the confidence to promote, organize, and lead events of any size. I now started my own event group, Parlayment Events, and I will be hosting my 1st mixer event called Higher Places. Higher Places, is a Young Adult Social and Networking Mixer series with the 1st event taking place Thursday, July 24th from 6 – 8:30 pm at The Gathering Spot-Los Angeles. I came up with this idea because I saw the lack of places and events in Los Angeles for young adults to congregate professionally at, outside of parties. I believe these recurring mixers will fill that social void and be a good solution for young adults in LA county to meet and connect. I would like to host many other events in the future.

While at USC during my senior year, I served as the Community Engagement Head for my fraternity chapter. I saw the lack of community engagement from campus orgs for Black American communities in the South Central Los Angeles region and across L.A County. To try and solve this problem, I organized and led 14 high school visits across LA County. I would tell the students the ins-and-outs of college life and give them college application advice. I presented to over 500 Black American high school students and won my fraternity chapter an Outstanding Community Service Recognition award by the Los Angeles 8th District Council. I wanted to continue making an impact in this area for students, and I currently work in Admissions at The University of Southern California. I also wanted to continue helping adolescents develop and attain higher things in life, so I decided to create my own organization, called EndDependence. EndDependence is an organization that works to teach middle school and high school students across LA County service based skills that they can use to earn income. In the upcoming school year, I will be running 1 hour workshops where students will learn different marketing services that they can use to start their own businesses and earn income. My hope from these workshops is that they help to reduce poverty and crime rates amongst LA adolescents by teaching them skills that they can use to make money for themselves.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Tickets for the Higher Places-Young Adult Mixer are still for sale at our Posh account https://posh.vip/f/310d3
and you can check out our Instagram and TikTok @parlaymentevents for more event updates. Please reach out to the email address [email protected] or send a direct message on instagram at @parlaymentevents, if you have questions about the event mixer, if you would like to be a sponsor for the event, or if you would like to collaborate on any other events in the future!

For my EndDependence program, you can email [email protected] for more information about our initiative or if you would like to schedule/book our organization to come in and help teach your group about different service based skills they can obtain.