Meet Justin Rissmiller | Small Business Owner, Touring Musician & Publisher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Justin Rissmiller and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Justin, what matters most to you?
The value of ‘pursuing’ is what matters most to me. Throughout my life and like many others out there in the world, I have wanted to accomplish a lot. These include items that I can easily achieve, ones that will require work and ones that seem impossible. Throughout my own life however, I have come to realize that many things are possible, even things that you think aren’t, however it is a matter of pursuing what you want most in life that determines whether you achieve it or not. I have come to see that many things in life aren’t impossible, rather they are actually possible, but it is the drive to pursue that really opens the doors.

Having that mentality to pursue my dreams has led me to who I am today. Not to say that this road was easily taken and accomplished. I have encountered many obstacles that most people would take as a sign to give up, but instead I used them as a sign to continue on. I have always tried to look at these things in the ‘you only live once’ type of mentality and so far, it has paid off in more ways than one.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I originally worked in higher education as an office sustainability officer after completing college at Wright State University and while I was employed there, I freelanced as well. I knew that I always wanted to work with people and to help them in any way possible achieve success, although during that period, I did not know exactly how I wanted to help people and help them achieve what exactly.

While in my third year working at the university, I took on a freelance project that was rather difficult and out of my normal area of expertise. Throughout the course of time working on this project, I became hooked and to be more specific about the work, the project was providing business branding and identity and then incorporating that with design and SEO. Before this, I originally just did some basic graphic design work and never worked with actual web design or the data side of business branding.

From that point forward, I recognized that not only was this something that I was good at, but it was something that I loved and something that I could use to help contribute to the ever-growing world of the internet. We live in a world today where digital is everything and it is essential to have a digital footprint to survive and thrive, both as a business and in many ways as a person as well.

Since that point in time, I made it my ultimate goal to be able to turn my freelancing career into a full time career, which after almost 10 years of blood, sweat and tears, I have now been able to have a stable agency or shall I call it, a social enterprise. With all of that said, my goal here as a business and agency owner isn’t to gather up as much money as possible. Greed is certainly not on my bucket list and I am not a material person. What is on my list however is being a person and also a business that others can turn to and a one stop shop for all their marketing and online growth needs.

The conception of my agency was in 2014 and we opened with great success. Besides being a business owner now, I also was showing a great interest in music and playing instruments, so by 2015, I expanded my original business (T&R Solutions) and opened up an additional part of my business (T&R Recordings) where the goal was the same thing, but this time it was working with musicians and artists rather than B2B companies. While operating these two businesses, I also started up my own band and used my band as the testing grounds so to speak for enhancing T&R Recordings. In doing all this, I began to expand my offerings to now assisting with overall artist and catalog management, tour booking and publishing. This all has now led to T&R Recordings now representing 11 current artists and overall 15 artists in total since its development.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I am a simple guy and I enjoy the outdoors. Call me odd, but I really enjoy the cemeteries and parks around here. There is a lot of history within them and I enjoy how peaceful they are. They are definitely my go to places. Other than that, I am usually working and traveling/touring with my band outside the area.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The support of my wife and son, as well as the members of my team within my business have all contributed to the success that I have today and I would like to thank them all for the continued love and support, even during the toughest of times.

Website: https://www.tandrrecordings.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j_rizzle_yo

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/t&r-solutions-define-design-progress-

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tandrsolutions

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tandrddp

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/t-and-r-solutions-define-design-progress-fairborn

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TandrUsTRddp