Today we’d like to introduce you to Ja Vaughn Graves
Ja Vaughn, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My wife, Maya Graves, and I started MAYVON Family, Inc. as a means for empowering faith-based influencers worldwide. Maya has been an influencer for almost 6 years now with a YouTube channel of over half a million subscribers. When we met I was running a management and production company for musicians in Ohio. I hadn’t yet really figured out how to integrate my itch for ministry into my career, because I hadn’t even fully integrated my faith into my lifestyle. It took my production studio being broken into and vandalized to make me realize God had other plans for my life, and the studio was in the way of those. It was a humbling experience that changed the trajectory of my life and kind of forced me to sit still and allow God to rearrange my priorities and the desires of my heart. In other words, my career––and the identity I’d associated with it––had become an idol and The Lord crushed it. I grew tired of the really high highs and extremely low lows that came with “the grind”. I needed to rest.
While in my waiting season I took on the challenge of managing Maya’s brand collaborations and administrative responsibilities so that she could focus more on her content. It was in that season that the seed for MAYVON was planted. After about two years of just learning, gaining experience in influencer marketing & management, and building my relationships with brands around the world the light bulb went off. We looked around and saw all these talented Christian creatives and a lack of Christian representation. The frustrations we felt interviewing different agencies, we learned, were being echoed throughout the industry. That’s when we decided to announce that we were launching MAYVON. To our surprise it received an overwhelming amount of support and interest from not just content creators who wanted to sign with us but people who wanted to work with us in supporting them.
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?
Challenges were expected from the beginning especially because we were doing something as niche as exclusively representing faith-based creators. Completely self-funding the company, we interviewed dozens of people and built a family of 10 members and signed 5 creators who we are extremely proud of and grateful for.
One of the biggest challenges was building out our systems and training our team to use them. Another challenge was/ is having patience and discipline to stay true to our core values regardless of what the market says. Some brands don’t necessarily want to alienate certain sectors of their customer base by aligning with Christian creators. Some creators don’t want to limit their opportunities by aligning with a Christian management company. However, thus far the grace our creators have shown us as we hit certain roadblocks and learning curves has been a blessing. Everyone (for the most part) sort of came into this thing with positive attitudes and faith that we’ll figure it out. I think the culture of this company being built on Christ definitely helps us navigate a fast-paced industry that puts a lot of pressure on creators to produce.
Every team in our company prays at the beginning of every meeting we have. It keeps us grounded, together, and spirit-filled in our work making each persons responsibility that much more meaningful and fulfilling.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
MAYVON is a marketing & management company for faith-based content creators. We help Christian creators connect with brands and vice versa. We officially launched less than 6 months ago and only take on 5 creators at a time. We’re actually reopening up our roster beginning in August and closing it in September until 2025. Beyond this piece of the company we do have a 6 month expansion plan that includes a mobile app we’re launching in January. We think this is going help so many people globally and extending the opportunity to own a piece of the tech to our creators.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I don’t really believe in luck so much as I do God’s hand on, and will for, my life. We make choices; some good, some bad, and there’s a season to sow, and a season to harvest. I’ve learned that when I trust Him things tend work out, and when I rely on my own understanding and try to “manifest” things into happening on my time, they tend not to work out the way I expected. That doesn’t mean they don’t materialize, but it does come either too soon, or later than I’d like… and there are some hard lessons learned in the process. Kind of like wandering around the wilderness for 40 years, complaining the whole time, just to realize the place you were trying to get to was like 2 miles away…
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mayvonfamilyinc.com
- Instagram: @mayvonfamilyinc
Image Credits
Gregory Castel / @greg.otos
