Earl Alston is a radio personalityon the newly launched Baton Rouge radio station, 94.9 The Underground, but thatis only one of the few trades he has mastered.
Alston is one of the owners of theFocused Design company, which produces a large range of advertising andmarketing tools.
They create designs for T-shirts,business cards, posters, brochures, flyers, banners, signs, stationary,letterheads and do photography.
”Photography and businesscards are the bread winners right now because these are the things weadvertised really hard,” Alston said.
“We marketed that so hard — thatis where most of our business comes from.”
This semester Focused Designs willpromote the photography aspect even more and has plans to take senior picturesand photograph more events.
“It seems like every time we thinkthat we are growing fast, things just speed up and new doors are opened andthings just keep getting better,” he said.
Alston is a senior masscommunication major at Southern University.
He said several of his friendsturned a pastime quickly into a business.
“We were throwing parties andevents like that and designing our own flyers. We thought ‘why not design flyersfor other people and start getting paid to do it,'” Alston said.
Focused Designs has grown sorapidly, they are now located at 1623 Main St. in Baton Rouge.
“People have dreams and they neverreally put those dreams into action,” said Travis Senegal who is also a part ofFocused Design. “We took a dream and actually turned it into a reality.”
Focused Design is what led Alstonto 94.9.
“We saw a sign that said freeadvertising and we were going to get them to do their signs through FocusedDesigns,” Alston said.
He worked radio for two years inShreveport at FM station 99.7 James.
“I had never heard him on theradio, but because of his drive and come over I wanted to give him a shot,” MoeP, program director for 94.9 said.
In Shreveport Alston createdadvertisements and co-hosted the Fox Rich show and was a disc jockey at a teenclub.
According to Alston you can’tcomplain if you don’t try to do what you want.
”Don’t just talk about whatyou want to do — actually just go out there and make efforts toward doing it,”he said.
