Jason “Deuce” Brandt’s Bio
Hello my name is Jason Robert Brandt the purpose of this article is to
let you get to know a little more about me.
I was born and raised right here in Fabulous Las Vegas in the summer
of 1982. Both of my parents worked in the casino and hospitality
industries.
My father was a veteran in the Korean War he later worked with NASA
developing rocket technology and later in his career he was an
engineer for the El Rancho and Thunderbird casinos.
My mother has made a classic career and living working for tips as a
waitress and bartender at the same time a full time mother of three
boys.
I graduated from Silverado High School in 2000 I was an excited
young man full of ambition and thirst for opportunity with a decision to
learn more about my roots I caught a Grey Hound bus to Crawfordville
Florida where I lived with my grandmother and uncle for one year.
During this time I found that Crawfordville Florida is not the place for
opportunity. My only job while in Florida was as a Winn-Dixie
employee. I did everything from gathering cars from the parking lot,
stocking shelfs, cashiered, and even mopped floors and cleaned
bathrooms.
In October of 2001 I returned to Las Vegas and moved around the city
with friends and family doing some odd jobs such as a driver for the
Greater Las Vegas Auto Auction.
At the auto auction I was responsible for moving vehicles and placing
then in order in the correct spot on the lot. I also worked at Home
Depot as a inventory specialist (fancy way of saying stock boy).
In 2003 my desire to grow and become successful led me to consider
college to learn new skills. I choose ITT Tech for the Drafting and
Design Multi Media program and became a full time student. With the
support of my mother I was able to complete my degree in 2 years. I
remember the spring of 2005 being filled with a high level of optimism
and faith that the future was going to be bright and exciting! Later that
summer I had completed my capstone class and was ready to get that
diploma.
Shortly after graduation I was approached by my long time best friend
Tim Woodmansee to go into business with him. Tim was in merchant
credit card processing industry and he knew my multi media
background and thought it was a good fit. This partnership was the
birth of Green Apple Resolutions a strategic partnership consulting
company. He was sales and marketing and I was an HTML code writing
machine.
Working for myself was a strange and exciting feeling. I learned many
hard lessons from bad business deals and out of ignorance on how to
run a successful business. If you were to ask me knowing what I know
now if I could would I change things?
Simply NO the time we spent failing was like a college education in the
school of hard knocks. I know that it is through the experience of all
the ups and downs have made me the person I am today right or
wrong it is what it is.
I still never gave up on my goals for success, I went out and looked for
examples of people who have the things that I wanted the passion,
incomes, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding that would teach me
what they know. I found a small group of business leaders who taught
a class on Wednesday nights at the International Church of Las Vegas
(ICLV) called the business mans cadre’. Here I met my long time
mentors Tom Craig and Elijah Apkin. These men explained many
fundamental truths to me about how to not only be a Christian man
but also become honorable in business. They helped me with some
basic business concepts like the the importance of contracts and how
to negotiate fairly.
In 2005 Tom’s business Opulence Studios had a website that he was
not really happy about and wanted to take his internet presence in a
new direction his vision was a liquid photo gallery that would have
many different animation transitions and high quality images.
He also was concerned with people right clicking and stealing his
Images. I was able to accomplish all of the needs for
OpulenceStudios.com with a combination of Flash, HTML, and
Photoshop (and countless hours of hand coding). I came up with some
animations for the different galleries and Tom really liked the end
product. This website remained active until 2008 when again Tom
wanted to move in another direction and I assisted Tom’s new
webmaster with moving over to an online photo portfolio software
called SmugMug that allows for image galleries.
This was exciting because the backbone design for the current
OpulenceStudios.com website consists of some of the original code I
wrote before Elevate Web Designs took over the project and
redesigned the front end with a fresh new design and beautiful
opening image slideshow.
In 2006 Tom introduced me to Tim Mathias the VP of HyLoft LLC. The
inventor of the ceiling storage industry. HyLoft.com needed a
webmaster for several of HyLoft branded websites (HyLoftUSA.com,
HyLoftDirect.com, HyLoft.com, and HyLoftStorage.com).
In 2009 HyLoft llc. Was not too thrilled with the website they had and
asked me to come up with some concepts on how to make it better. I
explained that the information on the website was good but the layout
and design wasn't good for sales. There was resistance for about a
year with only minor updates to HyLoft.com.
In 2010 HyLoft LLc. became Diamond Storage Concepts LLC. and the
new website I pitched was needed. Working as a team I lead in
preparing the strategy that has become HyLoft.com today.
After some research into data-base driven website technology I knew
that HyLoft.com was built using the Mamba software and that Mamba
was at the end of its life cycle and becoming abandoned.
This is ok because other open source content management systems
were being born. Two of these are Joomla and Drupal. I decided to
explore Joomla for the backbone of HyLoftStorage.com because it
contained all the elements required for success.
Mainly we set out to accomplish:
1. Ease of use for our customers.
2. Seamless connection with the shopping cart.
3. Easy to manage maintain and update.
4. Use of multiple medias (Images, Flash, PDF’s, Missing Parts forms, and Videos.)
5. Show measurable increases in sales and website traffic.
With the sites goals in mind I drew up a contract where everyone gets
a fair deal and wins presented it to the owner and CEO of HyLoft and
our partnership was born. Every year since I have been the webmaster
for the HyLoft product line the internet sales have increased, and
website traffic increased as much as 40%. Unfortunately for HyLoft in
2009 the housing crisis effected sales greatly and the company
ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The owner and a small group of loyal
people revived the company by creating a new company that bought
all the patent and all intellectual property rights of HyLoft LLC. to
Diamond Storage Concepts LLC. Who now operates the HyLoft brand
of products.
I was challenged to design a new website completely from the ground
up and after a short time I had HyLoftStorage.com up and running on
the Joomla Database Driven CMS.
HyLoft.com is a combination of retail and dealer shopping carts,
retailer and dealer promotion center, Data-Base driven Content
Management System, advertising outlet, and support channel for the
entire HyLoft brand of products.
Everything was created from scratch and custom formed to define the
corporate brand. The design and color scheme revolves around a
simple Red, Blue, Orange, and Stainless Silver/Grey.
In 2011 Diamond Storage Concepts began a partnership with Advise
Media Group to promote HyLoft.com with greater SEO and Pay Per
Click marketing. I assisted with updates that has increased sales and
traffic to HyLoft.com.
I have gained many new skills with this project.
Project planning: From the beginning concept drawings to the layout
of content this project was a massive undertaking with thousands of
lines of code, files, images, PDF’s, and Videos. I was responsible for
displaying all of them in balance.
Image manipulation: Using Photoshop CS4 the challenge became
how to display these images with the least file size without quality loss
for fast loading and display.
Flash Design / Animation: Using Flash CS4 I was able to recreate
some earlier animations that the company liked but had outdated
information and images. I also used Flash to create new animations
and an enhanced image gallery.
XHTML, PHP, and CSS coding: Using Dreamweaver CS4 I reviewed,
wrote, and changed various code to custom form what the website is
today. The best way of describing this process is like a potter molding
a lump of clay into a beautiful vase.
Social Networking & Promotion: Promoting the HyLoft brand has
led me to Facebook, YouTube, email marketing, and Blogs. With so
many new technologies we had to experiment with with several to find
the right mix to increase sales.
What does the future hold?
I cannot be completely sure as technologies advance we will continue
to develop new tools to help our customers have the greatest
experience possible while still maintaining acceptable profits. I can see
the overall design and look of HyLoft.com changing but the underlining
backbone will stay the same. We have always tried to provide the best
information in plain English.