Entrepreneur at 18

MacMedia was born when McKinnon Maddox responded to a Craigslist ad.

The ad was to create a video for a local artist, and rather than use his real name Maddox applied as “Mac.” After the video received local attention, Maddox’s digital marketing company took off. “Mac” was getting job referrals, and MacMedia became a full-time job for the now 18-year-old.

“That name grew before I could put a halt to it,” Maddox said. 

Maddox’s interest in digital marketing and videos started during his career as a professional gamer. While working in Major League Gaming as a teenager, Maddox saw partnerships develop between advertising companies and teams as well as a boom in social media.

“It turned into a big business, and I got more interested in the business of competing rather than competition,” Maddox said.

Maddox created an e-commerce website when he was 14, inviting gamers to buy, sell and trade their gaming equipment. After leaving the professional gaming circuit, he decided to take what he saw in the video game industry and apply it to companies in the Birmingham area. 

When he was 16 years old and MacMedia started gaining steam, Maddox decided to leave Oak Mountain High School. He was a sophomore at the time and chose to enroll in a home-schooling program, allowing more time to focus on the company. He got his degree the next year and started taking college classes but eventually decided to refrain from pursuing a college degree.

“It’s such a unique situation to be in,” Maddox said. “It was difficult to make the decision [to leave school], but since we did, it’s just been all looking forward. It’s been no looking back at all.”

The decision to put off college developed from a variety of sources, Maddox said. He was spending more and more time working on MacMedia and said clients would ask why he was going to school when he would inevitably graduate and jump back into his current job.

“They all said, ‘What’s the point? You’re going to get out and do this,’” Maddox said.

The near constant changes in computing and programming also made the idea of taking classes less appealing, Maddox said. He said he preferred to learn from the industry or videos on YouTube, which keep up with fluctuations and don’t run the risk of becoming obsolete after a semester.

“Being in the industry and getting the experience is most important because you are able to shift based on what’s working and what’s not working for the client,” he said. “It’s always a case-by-case scenario — there’s no one size fits all for everyone.”

Since his shift from student to entrepreneur, Maddox said the digital marketing world has grown even more. Many businesses put digital marketing as a high priority, shifting marketing budgets to cover social media and online markets. One appeal, Maddox said, is the cost-to-reward ratio.

“For a small business, cost effectiveness is vital,” Maddox said. “When you say to a business, you could put $250 in a marketing budget for Facebook and bring in 2,500 new people a month, it’s going to bring results.”

Maddox describes MacMedia as a hybrid digital marketing company, meaning it integrates several forms of digital marketing into one product. The “hybrid” title also expands to the company model, which employs team members on a contract basis and includes no home office. 

“Being a hybrid company allows us to be very versatile, and it allows us to customize for our customers,” Maddox said. 

Maddox’s goal is to help his customers get their message out to customers. While a lot of that comes through establishing a social media presence, Maddox said the next step is converting Facebook likes or Twitter followers to in-person customers.

“It’s about profit,” Maddox said. “It’s about increasing what’s coming in the door and solving the issue of we have somebody on our Facebook page, how do we get them in the front door? And that’s what we do.”

For more information about MacMedia, visit macmediamarketing.com.