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Jason Keath is Founder and CEO of Social Fresh, a social media education company. He is a social media analyst and speaker.

He graduated from the UNC Charlotte in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design and Photography. He has worked in leadership consulting and as a creative lead for various advertising and digital agencies before becoming an independent consultant in 2008.

Since then Jason has worked full time on building Social Fresh, a company that offers insights, training, and education resources to companies that range from the Fortune 50 to small businesses.

Most passionate about

• Obviously, there have been changes in the world today, but at the root of our business, we are an advent company in many ways. We teach people social media marketing, we teach them how to improve their businesses using social media, we produce in-person conferences, we train some of the big companies, and we do consulting.
• Recently, obviously, we have been doing much more consulting with medium to large businesses because we can\\u2019t do physical events. We pivoted to helping people virtually the best we can. We\\u2019ve done virtual events and we\\u2019re having a lot of fun with our customers. We\\u2019re also doing much more virtual consulting.
• We help people improve their social media at the highest level. We\\u2019ve been doing social media conferences since 2008, and we\\u2019ve done more than 25 of them in the US. We are now doing them annually, usually in Florida.

Jason\\u2019s career and story

• I was working in agencies as a creative lead\\u2014I was an artist-designer and photographer. I was always writing as well; however, I\\u2019ve loved most of the creative parts of marketing. I enjoyed working with the agencies, and when social media came on board I was very interested. I experimented a lot with social media, so I started to be more of a strategist in that field.
• When social media started, people had a \\u2018trust gap\\u2019. Many companies were really interested in social media and started to ask their agencies, \\u201cHow should it work for us?\\u201d, \\u201cWhat should we do?\\u201d, and \\u201cWhere should we be present on social media?\\u201d
• Eventually, I started my own small social agency. Then I sold it and started consulting because I noticed a need for an advent that focused on results for businesses. So, I decided to do it. Originally, the events were meant to drive more business and to help me find more customers for social media consulting. However, that first event ended up more successful and more rewarding than consulting, so I ended up focusing on the events.
• I\\u2019ve done events my whole life. I\\u2019ve always helped to produce events, so I felt very comfortable with the medium. I wanted to create an event that I would want to attend, something intimate and practical. I would bring the smartest people I knew from all over the social media industry to get very practical and hands-on, on one stage, one track, having community discussions.
• This year, we\\u2019ve done our first virtual event - Social Fresh X. We focused on how to understand, to adopt, to pivot in response to the pandemic. We had great response there. We had four or five times the number of people who used to attend our in-person conferences, from 90 countries and states. It\\u2019s a great way for us to get to more people and we\\u2019ll be doing another one at the end of the year.

John\\u2019s best advice for entrepreneurs

• Talking to your customers in many ways and getting to the root of their problem. That\\u2019s what was the \\u2018pre success\\u2019 of many successful entrepreneurs, and it was \\u2018pre successful\\u2019 for me early on. It has been the main way that we adjust and adapt our product.
• You need to talk with a few potential customers. Even talking with five people will allow you to see and understand patterns.

Biggest failure with customers...'