Today we’d like to introduce you to Alyson Black
Hi Alyson , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I went to school in San Marcos back when it was Southwest Texas State University…and I fell into a group of artsy/party animal/dj’s/rave promoting super smart computer hacking geniuses who introduced me to the Internet and the web in the very early 1990s. This group of people eventually ended up in Austin and we opened up the first internet service provider in town…we were BOOMING! We not only helped Austin connect to the Internet via snazzy 14.4 modems (which was the height of tech back then) — but we also built — via hand code – horribly awful clunky websites which were blowing people’s minds. We thought we were SO COOL and cutting edge back then. I learned so much during these revolutionary times. Then everyone across the U.S. started to catch on to the internet and web development — and dot coms started sprouting up all over the country. I moved to Los Angeles to work for Artist Direct Network — which was like MTV for the internet. We built websites and sold merch for almost every big music act you can think of. Every day was an adventure going to work with hipster on every floor of our highrise on wilshire blvd. A typical Friday would have some big name like Beck playing an acoustic set in the breakroom while we employees helped ourselves to free food. the dot com heyday! I continued to rack up a ton of clients not only in the music industry, but any business that needed a website or branding….
I met my current partner in work and life (Duncan, a band dude who also happened to be an excellent programmer and videogrpher, which paid the bills while he pursued his musician habit) while I was living in LA and we merged our talents to form Black New Media in 1999.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth roads are boring. I tend to off-road, and plow over shrubbery backwards when other people my age are driving straight down the road to fat retirement accounts, big mansions and life insurance. life as a busiess owner has never been easy but it’s always been interesting.
I got laid off from Artist Direct like everyone else at the company. Those dot-com days were weird. My fellow designers @ AD would drink vodka out of their Fiji water bottles all day, nervous about getting ‘the call’ from their supervisors, which inevitably happened. it was just a matter of time til all these hipsters and their viable skills were slinking out of the door onto wilshire blvd with their box of action figures and knickknacks. When that door closed, I started my own business — and since 1999 I haven’t looked back. the freedom of owning our own businesses has given me the gift of time to be able to be home with our kids, take them to school and volunteer at their schools.
Another struggle with owning our own business means that every day is monday and every day is also saturday… we’re never “off the clock” — so being a workaholic people-pleaser, I tend to work every day. I find that tracking my time helps. But finding balance is my biggest struggle.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Black New Media is a full-service creative production agency that develops everything from websites to print collateral to videos and packaging/product. Everyone working here has decades of experience in web development, graphic design for print and digital, video production/editing and marketing. Our principals were best known for web development since the early 1990’s; they were some of the first web developers in the US, creating content for tons of huge clients in LA, NY, Austin, Chicago and Dallas. We’re different from other firms because we’ve been creating successful multimedia projects since the early 1990s!! and we are a small, no-frills boutique firm that doesn’t carry a lot of overhead and thus we dont believe in sending 50-page proposals and assigning cllents with 3 project managers and all that jazz. we keep it simple @ BNM – we get the job done for a fraction of the cost of bigger agencies…that’s why we’ve kept many of our same clients for decades. I’m most proud that everyone @ BNM are super good likeable people and we like to have a lot of fun and laugh everyday — even if we’re burning the midnight oil. We’re a hardworking nice group of people who’ve ‘been there, done that’ and just wanna create bulletproof work without any fuss or horn tooting.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Black New Media BOOMED during the Covid-19 crises as our clients were pivoting to new models of doing business…and we helped them reinvent themselves, add new systems, and we all helped eachother survive and become stronger through it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://blacknewmedia.com/
