I was nineteen in 2002 when I walked into a classroom for Computer Graphics and Animation. That’s where I fell hard for Photoshop—and my creative journey began. During the MySpace boom, I made custom pages for friends, eventually working on celebrity profiles. Then life shifted—I became a dad in 2003 and 2005—and my creative hustle went on pause.
In 2016, my cousin asked for a logo design. Word spread, and I was suddenly freelancing logos without realizing it. By 2017, clients wanted websites too. I didn’t know where to start and was afraid of losing income—I’d already been homeless once. So, I searched for passive income ideas and stumbled onto podcasts. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income became my virtual mentor.
I launched The Tech 50, reviewing gadgets under $50, hoping affiliate marketing would work. It didn’t. But podcasting stuck. I started The James Shannon Show and Blare Radio, bought theblaregroup.com, and in 2018 made it official with an EIN. I learned marketing, built websites, got my first paying clients in 2019, and burned out managing everything—podcasts, ads, lists, and design projects.
2020 tested me harder: a failed e-commerce attempt, Stripe disputes, losing big clients, my father’s death from COVID, an ended relationship, and homelessness again. In 2021, I tried adding social media services but couldn’t focus. Clients drifted away, podcasts stopped, and I questioned whether business was even for me.
In 2022, I pulled back completely. My twin brother and I built a personal system to bring order to chaos—four personas for life: Dizzie (personal), Sinema (private), Houdini (professional), and Messha (public). Together, we formed Pleqs (short for “complex,” pronounced plexs) because everything we built felt like an intricate web. That same year, I created the name Messha from my name (MES + SHA), not yet knowing exactly how big it would become.
By 2023, we co-founded Virsie to help beginners start businesses, but creative differences ended that. Meanwhile, I began organizing ventures under Messha: websites through Blare, logos through what was then Trayce, document help with Dox, sports pick’em with PXPX. Most fizzled, but the idea stuck.
In 2024, the spark reignited. My kids’ mother needed a website and social media help, then a friend’s wife needed one for her nonprofit. I dusted off SuiteDash, realizing I hated juggling dozens of tools—hosting here, scheduling posts there, CRM elsewhere. That’s when it clicked: what if everything was unified?
In 2025, I made it official. Messha LLC became the holding company with four divisions—Blare (websites & hosting), Clarity (branding & design), Signal (social media), and Voices (podcasting & audio). Together, they form Nava Solutions, built to help entrepreneurs navigate their digital presence.
The end goal? A true self-service platform where anyone can build and manage their digital footprint without tech headaches—but with the option for human help when needed.
From custom MySpace pages to Messha LLC and Nava Solutions, it wasn’t a straight line. It was failure, reinvention, tragedy, and a relentless pull to build something meaningful. But every twist made the vision clearer:
Messha isn’t just a company—it’s the platform I wish I had when I was trying to start mine.