Meet JD Prevost of Sun Squared Media in East LA/Claremont

Today we’d like to introduce you to JD Prevost.

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I like to say that my career in video production began with a series of miscalculated slips, falls, and failures. Before all of this, I was in no way a model student, a model employee, or even a model human for that matter. My life was riddled with failures, which if you take a microscope to anyone that statement could be true for most people, but I was too naive at the time to realize that those failures were crucial ingredients to my eventual success. Let me explain.

My first time in college was in Tallahassee, Florida which through a series of typical major changes we all go through (naturally the first being psychology…because I was 18 and thought I knew everything therefor knowing everything about everyone else. Cue eye roll). Ultimately I settled on Marketing and ended up with a job in that for a few years. Looking back, it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing as I was only pursuing Marketing because the girl I was dating at the time said “hey, you’d be good at Marketing!” So, changed my whole life direction, because…you know…19 and dumb, and did that. Fast forward a few years to roughly around the time that relationship had ended, so did my relationship with Marketing. It wasn’t for me. This was the failure.

Next phase was aimlessly wandering through life, talking a big game saying I’m going to go back to school to be a journalist. I was obsessed with wanting to write for a, now dead and gone, gaming magazine called EGM. Electronic Gaming Magazine. I had the whole wannabe journalist starter kit. A computer, an internet connection, a blog, and no shortage of awful opinions. I had no sense of writing ability what-so-ever and everyone else knew it except for me, but I didn’t care. It was a creative outlet and gave me an internal satisfaction that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid when I completed a huge LEGO or K’Nex build. I was hooked. I wrote religiously on this blog daily for about six months but that too ended with me giving it up. The pressure from family and friends to make money and a career from this “passion project”, as it was called, forced me to shy away from this creative dream. At the time, I wasn’t strong enough to stay float with the weight of the social pressures coming down on me and ended up falling prey to those pressures. This was the fall.

Having convinced myself and everyone else that going away from journalism was 100% my idea and that I felt good about it (lies), I focused on finding a career that would not only make others proud but also myself (and by myself, I actually mean others again). I’ve always had an innate interest in science, primarily space. I had a telescope, spent spare time listening to science and astronomy based podcasts, and always had a curious and inquisitive mind. So of course I did what any sane person would do. Go back to school for Physics with the goal of wanting to become an Astrophysicist…all starting at the spry age of 28 (cue second eye roll). Despite not being all that great at math, I decided to do it anyway. To my surprise, math was no different than a foreign language. With practice and dedication pretty much anyone can excel at higher-level mathematics. During this time, I had moved down to Orlando, Florida to attend UCF for their Physics department with hopes of making it into NASA or SpaceX. Elon Musk was a personal hero at the time and figured getting a job at Space X was a pretty good way to meet him. Also during all of this, I was dating, my now wife, Victoria whom I had known from high school and reconnected with. She too was also living in Orlando then and the stars seemed to be literally aligning for the perfect phase in my life. Everything was going great and would continue to, just not in the way I had originally intended.

Some time goes by, student loans accrue, more gray hair sprouts, but everything is still going great. Especially with Victoria. I knew I wanted to marry her. I wanted to make sure I could set myself up to be in a better financial position coming out of college so we can start our lives with a better foot forward. Coming from marketing, I knew about terms like passive income. Basically, there’s active income, where you make money only during the times you’re actively working, and there’s passive income where you make money regardless whether you’re actively working or not. I needed to create some passive income to help pay down on student loans early, save up for a nice ring, and start saving for our future. I came across a YouTube video talking about how making tech YouTube videos is a great way to create passive income through affiliate marketing (making commissions off of items others purchase online through your specific links). I thought that was perfect. I was already a tech nerd, had a good voice for presentation, and thought it would be a great creative outlet for me. So I began a tech YouTube channel called JDTechTV in hope of making lots of money off of making tech reviews. Well…come to find out it’s a lot harder making money on YouTube starting out than those motivational ‘YouTube Guru” videos make it out to be. But to my surprise, the lack of income from the channel in no way deterred me from making video after video after video. I produced at least one video a week for two years, each one becoming better and less cringe. Eventually, I became known for specific series’ on my channel, the subscriber number was going up quickly, the positive feedback from the experience became the drug. In a completely unexpected turn, my need to create some sort of passive income had accidentally turned into a passion. I didn’t intend for it, but I’d accidentally slipped into finding a career I actually wanted to do. Video production. This was the slip.

As this continued for the remainder of the year and going into the second year on YouTube, I was still nearing the end of my Physics degree but I realized that my time spent on YouTube was giving me far FAR more joy than the highest points of my Physics experience so far. So I made the very unpopular decision to everyone around me to put my degree on hold to dedicate more time to this whole YouTube thing to see if I could make a career out of it. I started putting out more and better videos and doubled my subscriber numbers in half the time. All of my previous experience in Marketing helped me gain brand deals that were typically reserved for higher subscriber number tiers than where I was currently sitting. My Physics training helped me analyze the performance of my videos as well as reverse engineer others videos to see where lessons of their success could be applied to my own channel. I pushed and continued to get better. Granted, I wasn’t great, but I was improving with every video. Then one day while looking on Twitter I saw one of my favorite tech YouTubers, Jonathan Morrison, send out a tweet saying he was looking to hire an editor and to send in examples of your work if you were interested. Immediately I sent in what I thought were my five best videos. I didn’t think anything would come from it but I figured I’d give it a shot. Later that day, I got a message from Jonathan asking if I’d be willing to fly out to California to meet their Sun Squared Media team.

Cut to today, a little over a year after being hired on as a Producer and Video Creator at Sun Squared Media and happier than I have ever been. My wife was so understanding of my passion for production and moved out to California with me without a thought so I could pursue this dream. Luckiest guy alive not only because I have the woman of my dreams but because I have the job of my dreams. Finally! I found my true passion; something that’s for me. I get to work and create every single day with the most genuine and kind people I have had the pleasure of knowing at Sun Squared Media and now at the age of 35, I finally have enough life experience to understand that I am here not despite my slips, falls, and failures…I am here because of them.

The coolest part about the whole story is that even though I intended to meet Elon Musk through getting a job at Space X, my first month working at Sun Squared Media we went to the Tesla factory in northern California to make a production about Tesla and touring the factory. The tour was hosted by none other than the man himself, Elon Musk. I got to meet my hero.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Absolutely not. Like I mentioned before in FAR too much detail, the road seemed like it was paved for everyone else and I was the only one hitting potholes along the way. When you’re younger the instinct is to blame others, the road workers and the city for not doing a better job paving the road for you. But now in my 30’s I have enough sense to understand that the fault actually fell on me. I was supposed to swerve around the potholes. I was just too concentrated in my own journey to look up and see that everyone else passing me was actively swerving around those same potholes.

The majority of the struggles came from lack of self-confidence. A pretty common issue for most people. Social pressures of having to have the “American Dream” with graduating high school, going to college, get your dream career right out of college, get married and have 2.5 kids, and have barbecues with your neighbors every Sunday. While some of that sounded great, it was never what my ideal daily dream looked like. College is important and necessary for certain people but it wasn’t for me. I wanted to create my own career on my own terms instead of gaining one through an assembly line. All these things that society and family pressures you to be, it simply wasn’t for me. It wasn’t until I got into my 30’s that I had enough confidence to say what I really wanted out of life. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.

Alright – so let’s talk business.  What else should we know about you and your career so far?
My company, JDTechTV, is a tech driven YouTube channel that specializes in helping you make better tech purchase decisions. I review tech products and give my opinions on what’s best in the tech world right now that’s the easiest on your wallet. I don’t upload to that channel as much anymore due to focusing on working at Sun Squared Media with Jonathan Morrison and the team, but the channel is far from dead. More content is being produced for it in the near future.

What I’m most proud of is the connections I have made with the community. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about the YouTube platform, but I have sort of an altruistic view of it. To me, it’s one of the last spaces on the internet that you can try to do good for others. It’s about making someone’s day better by watching your content. That’s where I feel like I was different from others in the tech community. I was able to add a little bit of humor and genuine positivity in my videos along with valuable information for the viewer. If I could get someone to smile AND get the exact information they needed from the video, that was a win for me.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Adversity makes you better and that’s exactly what I went through.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.youtube.com/jdtechtv

Image Credit:
Jonathan Morrison, owner of Sun Squared Media and the Jonathan Morrison YouTube channel is other person in photos

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