Unlike many of his other friends within the Irvine community, Rishi Padmanabhan loves to make devices work. For as long as he can remember, Rishi Padmanabhan’s been prone to taking things apart and making them function again for no other purpose than to get the experience of fixing them. 

As an incoming high school junior at Irvine High, Rishi Padmanabhan still pursues the exact same interest. The rush of understanding how things work still holds the value that it did when he was six years old.

Now, however, he’s channeled the passion differently, creating The Irvine Repair Consortium. Rishi Padmanabhan, founder, and president of The Irvine Repair Consortium has overseen technological literacy training, hands-on repair and restoration campaigns for businesses and locals in his area, and the facilitation of a functioning nonprofit organization.

The Irvine Repair Consortium teaches to anyone who wants to learn the basics of returning devices to working functionality. 

Rishi Padmanabhan’s goal is to share his love for technology with as many people as he can. 

First, he and his team take their new students through training, teaching them how to recognize certain flaws in devices, get the parts to remedy them, and complete the restoration in a timely manner. They provide practice materials and old devices to work on as examples.

Then, the consortium finds broken devices on a variety of online forums and local outlets, fixes them, and sells them again through similar channels. To date, they’ve restored and flipped thousands of dollars in devices.

After, though, the profits don’t go back to Rishi and his team. All proceeds are donated to local Orange County charities.

Rishi Padmanabhan has noted:

“Our mission isn’t about profit. It’s about education. We’re frequently innovating new lectures, programs, and activities for our members to learn from. I think that being able to fix a broken thing is extremely important, especially as we’re seeing technology become a bigger part of our normal lives.”

The Irvine Repair Consortium works on a large array of devices. Basically, anything with a screen. Still, however, Rishi Padmanabhan finds his favorite devices to be the ones that built his passions in the first place: the Ipads and Iphones that he’s been fixing since the age of nine.

Rishi Padmanabhan hopes to continue working with The Irvine Repair Consortium as he finishes high school.

The Irvine Repair Consortium’s work can be found on their website and Instagram page. Rishi Padmanabhan’s Instagram is also linked here.

If you’re on Instagram often, you likely follow niche pages. Behind many of them, Joey Hickson. He owns a plethora of pages that scale to a boggling 30,000,000 followers. You heard that right, 30 MILLION FOLLOWERS! Insane, right? A few of these pages include: @Lmao, @RandomVideos, and @Singers. Aside from that, his own personal account @Joey has over 4,000,000. Today, we’ll share Joey Hickson’s story and how he’s revolutionizing social media with his marketing tactics. 

Unlike many niche page owners, Hickson has done a phenomenal job of leveraging his pages to build a living for himself. Alongside his other personal stints, including modeling and traveling, Hickson founded Break media, helping aspiring brands build a following online.

Offering promotional campaigns, consultancy servicing, and other unique approaches to branding, Hickson uses out-of-the-box thinking to build names for other people. 

Boasting an impressive client list, Hickson has previously collaborated with Flo Rida, Empire Records, Capitol Records, and more. Besides that, he’s also worked with Gary Vee, Dwyane Wade, Adidas, Andre Drummond, Burger King, Fashion Nova, and Jason Vedadi.

When we asked Hickson how he could gain millions of followers at such a consistent rate, he responded with:

“As an early Instagram adopter (since 2010), I learned to network with people and consistently engage with other posts. We’d build groups that would work to get each other onto the explore page. It was a massive engagement train. We would gain thousands of followers every day; I would repeat this and average a few hundred thousand followers a month. Engaging with others is always key.”

If you’ve previously been interested in working online, Hickson’s model is one to follow. As of today, his marketable network expands to over 300 million, even larger than his personal network. If there ever was a number that could dwarf his 30 million followers, he’s already reached it. 

In conclusion, Hickson builds his following on multiple social media platforms while building his own personal brand. Joey Hickson’s work has even received recognition in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and many others. If you’d like to stay updated with his journey, @Joey on Instagram is the place to go.

Over the past year, apps like TikTok have revolutionized what it means to be an “influencer.” No longer confined to the type of stardom found in TV and movies, teens across the country instantly found themselves a new dream, to become “TikTok famous.” Khalil Yatim, better known as “Ozikoy,” is becoming a success story to all aspiring creators at just 16 years old. With a whopping 4,000,000 fans on his TikTok page, he’s risen to stardom over the past few months. Recently, we got the chance to dive into the mind of Yatim, and see what he thinks about his journey thus far. 

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into social media? 

A: My name is Khalil Yatim A.K.A OZIKOY… I have many hobbies that I practice and have a lot of fun doing, such as sleight of hand (magic tricks), Beatboxing, and Soccer. I started my youtube channel when I was around ten years old. I was determined to create some dope content but never really was consistent. I have always had a passion for being a creator, but I just didn’t know how to gain an audience 

Q: What’re some of the coolest things that you’ve done with your online presence?

A: Honestly, I love to make people laugh and smile… The ability to put a smile on someone’s face means so much to me. You never know what that person may be struggling with. 

Q: What’re you ultimately trying to achieve with all that you’re doing online?

A:  I’ve always been thinking to myself, how long will these pranks on TikTok last? There are so many factors to this, and planning beforehand is much easier than stressing about it last minute. I’ve been trying to achieve making people happy; I’ve always dreamt of having an audience and now that I have it, it really shows that nothing is impossible 

Q: What advice would you give to the younger people who want to do what you do? 

A: To everyone that wants to do what I do, I have a BIG TIP for you all, so listen up! Try different things… switch up your content and make sure to ALWAYS think of what your potential TikTok audience would like to see in their feed. 

Q: How were you able to grow such a large following on social media? 

A: I wouldn’t really say I have a large following, there is still so much in the works, and this is only the beginning. I was able to grow my following because I love what I do. When you love doing something, nothing is stopping you! 

Q: Any additional comments you’d like to share?

A: Please promise me that y’all are going never to stop grinding; I don’t care the number of followers you have, I don’t care about the views you average, I don’t care if you even take a few breaks here and there.. but what I do care about though is if you quit… because all this time/hard work working for your dreams to just fade away is not something anyone should take lightly. Start believing yourself and keep grinding – KOY  

Ozikoy embodies perseverance, grit, hard work, and heart. As his accounts continue to grow, he sets his goals towards the sky. If you’re interested in keeping up with him, you can check out his TikTok or Instagram, both titled @Ozikoy.