INTRODUCTION I decided since I am turning 30 in a few weeks that it would be kind of cool to reflect on my 20's. I am going to do the best I can to accurately remember each year, and I might mix up some things, but I think it'll be cool. I plan to be pretty personal as it gives a more accurate look at who I am today. I will try to keep it all positive, but I had some dark times. So here we go... CHAPTER 1: 20 Turning 20 started with me entering my sophomore year of college at the University of North Texas. Truth be told, I was already ready to drop out. I loved the friends that I had made, but I was battling a lot of personal things and I was almost positive I wasn't going to make it through the year. At this point, I was on and off with a girl that was 4 years older than me while still battling the pain from my "high school sweetheart," as you could refer to her, breaking my heart. It was my first "love" and a lot of firsts, including the first time I was cheated on. I went from a happy go lucky naive boy to a quickly depressed and bitter young man. As you can imagine, given where you know I'm at, it was mostly music that pulled me out of this rut. By my 20th birthday, I had been promoting shows for one year and 5 months. I already had one employee that was quickly becoming my best friend and spending all of his days at my dorm room / then my apartment, we had an office, and we had become friends with a graphic designer and web guy that would quickly also become part of our team and quest to beat the MySpace system. We channelled all our time and energy into building Third String Productions. We were only doing about one show a month, at The Plano Centre, but building up our brand online and on MySpace was a 24/7 thing. We weren't like all the other promoters, we were constantly connected to our audience and it was selling tickets like crazy. It was all a family, built through MySpace event invites and meeting in real life. We started staying up all night and I started skipping classes. I saw where life was going and I wanted to take full advantage of my surroundings while I was still in Denton. Our group consisted of myself, my best friend and essentially partner with the company Michael Henry, our friend Abiel who found every way to make automated bots and cool apps to build our fanbase, our friend Cody who designed all our art and would later go on to be a highly respected tattoo artist, and our friend Cameron who also helped market the shows and hang with us. It was pretty much just like any other start up. A bunch kids sitting around drinking, smoking, and talking about changing the world instead of going to our actual classes. As this went on, I made the decision to drop out of college, or as I so nicely put it for my parents, "take a semester off." I mean... I really did intend to go back if it didn't work out, but we were just on the cover of Business Week in a story called "The MySpace Generation" and things were rapidly changing for us. The Panic At The Disco lyrics "stop stalling make a name for yourself" were actually what pushed me over to take the step to drop out. So in late November of 2005, I got an apartment with Michael in North Dallas and started what would go on to be known as the "Frankford & Marsh" days. A local band that spent a lot of time at our apartment (as did every other band and friend) would later name a song after this. Out of our music scene group, we were probably some of the first to get an apartment so it began to always be a party at our place, but the laptops were always out and the ideas were always brewing in our heads. As January rolled around I started dating an amazing girl named Taryn who went to Texas A&M university. Having dropped out and been running my own business, I was able to leave and make the road trips to see her quite often. It was these long drives that my love for Anti-Flag, NoFX, and all the fast paced punk / pop-punk bands I loved was rekindled to keep me awake during the boring hours of the drive. She was a great person, but as you can tell by my current relationship status, not the one. And having said that, I feel like this whole reflection is going to be half how I grew in business and half the start of my own personal "how I met your mother" quest. Haha. Michael and I took a trip out to Pasadena, CA to speak at a conference about building your brand with social media, mostly, MySpace. It was an all expenses paid trip we took full advantage of and stayed longer to enjoy the beach and all California had to offer. This was the first time I realized I had a lot of traveling coming up in my life if I was going to keep working in music. Anyway, as 2006 went on, I was more in love with music than ever before. Plano Centre shows were starting to REALLY take off and we were starting to book and build bands like A Day To Remember and MyChildren MyBride. Also locals Memphis May Fire and Ivoryline. It was a great year of my life, but I couldn't have been prepared for the shit show that happens when you turn 21...
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