I’ve had the pleasure of having quite a few conversations with Hayes Potter of 9miles Media. He is a bright individual and I decided he would be a unique interview so since we are from the same great state he granted me an interview.

Hello Hayes, so why don’t we start with a little about yourself and what you do.

Well, I’m like any other average 14 year old kid except every knows I’m a geek, yet they still talk to me, haha. After I get back from either playing soccer or killing aliens I open up my Mac and get right to work! I call myself a the Design Ninja. I design just about anything from a logo to a coffee cup. I also love diving into some hardcore CSS or jQuery. I also have a strong passion for photography, iconography, and typography.

Q.At such a young age how in the world did you get into web design/development?

A. I grew up around technology and I just loved it, in fact my parents have a picture of me on an old Gateway tower that was running Windows 95 when I was two years old. Big influences came from my grand father who is a computer engineer and has worked for IBM for over 10 years doing experimental work. I started out making websites on “Make your Own Website!” type sites, then moved on up from there. I was given a book to learn HTML when I was ten years old and I still use it today as a cheat sheet.

Q.How did you meet your crew at 9miles Media and while still being in school how do you guys handle clients?

A. 9miles Media started with just me, back then it was called Milkshake Designs. After that I joined up with a close friend of mine Ben Armstrong. From then on I started scouring the web and twitter for other teenagers who were just like us. We stayed on the east coast of the United States for a while but then went on to the U.K. and Australia, ending up at 9 members. Getting good grades in school and keeping the clients happy takes a lot of responsibility and time management.  I found myself filling up iCal and using invoicing programs such as Billings. I think I speak for all of 9miles when I say after a while balancing the two became easy and fluent.

Q. How did you become so popular/known in the web industry(Hayes has some 3,500+ Twitter followers)?

A. In all honesty I do not know. I suppose it’s the fact that I am so young but like everything in life you have to network well and know popular people. When I first got my website up I quickly found my name popping up in random blog posts across the web, which started to give my blog about 1,600 views a month. Which has gradually risen across the past year or so, my main traffic source from Twitter. I do however know that I am loving all publicity.

Q. Any advice you want to leave our readers with?

A. Never let your age change your views on anything, and make sure if you want to get well known you have good content and a wonderful portfolio. Also always network with other people in your field.

You can find Hayes on twitter or his website.

Follow Us – @savagemic @mdswebstudios

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