Today we’d like to introduce you to John Payne.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I want to start at the University of Florida, because that is where everything really begins.
I studied music, which tells you something about how I think. Music is about feeling first and structure second. You learn the rules so you can eventually trust your instincts. That has been the through line of my whole life, whether I knew it or not at the time.
While I was at UF, I started a small kombucha brewery. It was not a grand business plan. It was curiosity and passion and a desire to create something with my hands that was also genuinely good for people. My boyfriend at the time saw something in it, and in me, that I was not yet ready to see in myself. He encouraged me to apply for the Gator Hatcher Program, UF’s entrepreneurship incubator that was just getting off the ground. I applied mostly because he believed I should. I got in. And without that push, without that one person seeing potential I had not yet claimed, I am genuinely not sure I ever find my way into marketing. I went back to school after graduation with intentions of finishing a master’s in entrepreneurship. Life moved faster than the degree did, and I ultimately did not finish. The kombucha business dissolved around that time too. But the seed had been planted. The idea that I could build something, that I had the instincts for it, never fully left me.
What came next was Atlanta.
I loved that city in a way that is hard to fully explain. The energy, the culture, the creative community. I built eight years of my career there, moving through radio and cable television as the industry was mid-transition into the digital world, then into digital marketing for major players in electronics and appliances, then sporting apparel, then beverage. These were not small accounts. These were some of the biggest names in their categories. I was good at the work. I advanced. I learned the machinery of large-scale marketing from the inside.
But somewhere in those eight years, a question started forming that I could not shake loose. I would sit in meetings or look at campaigns we were running and find myself wondering: does any of this actually make people’s lives better? Is anyone becoming healthier, more connected, more fulfilled because of this product or this message? Some of those brands genuinely tried to do good. I want to be fair about that. But the dominant culture in that world was about the dollar, the metric, the account. People were a demographic. Communities were a target. I started to feel the distance between what marketing could be and what it too often was, and that distance became harder and harder to live inside comfortably.
It was also in those years that I started building something of my own on the side.
Properly Soap Co. was born out of the mindfulness-forward lifestyle I had been developing personally. Everything was vegan, intentionally made to combat waste and unnecessary chemicals, rooted in holistic wellness. I was also building a real presence as an influencer, and the soap company grew alongside that. For about three years it ran well. It covered my rent in a good part of Atlanta on top of my salary. More than the money, it gave me something I had not felt in the agency world: the feeling of being genuinely useful. People would come to me for advice. I was making real connections, building collaborations, doing work that felt like an extension of my actual values. Netflix reached out at one point about a show they were developing and asked me to audition. I never got many details about the project and it did not move forward, but the fact that I had gotten noticed at that level told me I was building something real. I was proud of what I was creating. I was proud of who I was becoming.
Then COVID arrived, and with it, a kind of unraveling I could not have prepared for.
My work during those years had shifted into social data analysis for a major corporation. I was studying social conversation at scale, consuming the full volume of what people were saying to each other online, in real time, during a global pandemic layered on top of one of the most politically charged and divisive periods any of us had ever lived through. I was absorbing hatred and fear and misinformation as a professional function, day after day. It did a number on me that I am still untangling. My anxiety deepened. My depression found new floors.
And while I was drowning in all of that noise, my personal life began to fall apart in ways I had no framework to process.
I lost my brother. My grandfather. My uncle. My dog.
And then I lost my business in a way I was not prepared for. The people I trusted most, members of my own family, used my identity as a gay man as a weapon. They broke into my accounts, went through my files, dismantled years of digital work I had built. When I confronted it, they convinced me I was wrong. And I believed them, because that is what you do when someone is supposed to love you. You trust them with the parts of yourself you do not yet fully trust yourself. The loss of those accounts, that following, those years of work was not just financial. It was the erasure of an identity I had been carefully and quietly building.
Going numb was not a choice I made consciously. It was more like the only door left open. Substances became part of how I managed to get through the days, because if I could get numb enough, I could function. I could get up. I could keep moving. If I actually felt the full weight of what was happening, I was not sure I would be able to. So I did not feel it. Numb was survival. For a while, that was enough.
Eventually, I had to go home.
I knew going back to my mother’s house was not going to be a safe space. I had always known who she was. She is a deeply religious woman who had become convinced, in part through my time as an influencer and my work in data, that I was somehow an extension of evil. What people do not understand, they fear. What they fear, they find ways to condemn. Going home meant going into that. I knew it going in.
What I did not expect was my grandmother.
She was there, in that house, in the final years of her life. And while everything around us was difficult, while the environment was often volatile and painful, she and I found each other. I took care of her. She took care of me in the way only a grandmother can. She would talk me through the grief of my former life while helping me imagine a new one. I would try to create a small, stable, peaceful space for her inside a home that was not always those things. During the days I freelanced my marketing skills when I could, building slowly, holding on. We were, in many ways, keeping each other alive.
She passed on Christmas Eve, 2023.
I left on Easter weekend, 2024.
I was tired of being told I was worthless. Tired of being punished for what I had lost as though loss were a moral failure. Tired of love being measured by income and success by accumulation. I did not know exactly what came next. I only knew that being homeless, whatever that looked like, would be less painful than staying in a place where I was being slowly diminished.
I ended up in Mayport.
Mayport is a small, quiet community just outside Jacksonville, known mostly for its shrimping industry. It sits on the water. My father had worked on the boats that docked there when he was alive. He died when I was eleven years old, and my mother had spent years painting him as someone terrible. I had grown up believing that story because it was the only one I had access to.
In Mayport, I started looking for another version of it.
I reached out to people in the community who had known him. I would sit with them and record their stories. What I heard, over and over, was that my father was deeply loved. That he was kind. That he cared about people. That he was a good man. I had been lied to my entire life about who he was, and somewhere in the grief of learning the truth, I found something unexpected: myself. So much of who I am traces back to him. His warmth. His care for others. His ability to make people feel seen. I think he died of a broken heart, and I made a quiet promise to myself that my life would not end the same way.
My dog was with me the whole time. She and I slept under the overhang of a community center balcony. Locals brought food, and whatever I received I split half with her. I learned to accept generosity from strangers without suspicion, which was harder than it sounds for someone who had been taught that love always came with conditions. I learned that there is far more good in the world than bad. I learned to be grateful for everything because I had nothing, and nothing turned out to be lighter than I expected.
I could think again. For the first time in years, my thoughts were fully my own.
What came next was rehab. And I say that without shame, because rehab was not the end of something. It was the beginning of everything. It brought me to Fort Lauderdale. It gave me access to real, sustained therapy for the first time. It gave me structure, space, and the support to start building something intentional instead of just surviving whatever came next. I had goals again. I had clarity again. I had, slowly and carefully, myself again.
I fell in love with Fort Lauderdale in a way I genuinely did not see coming. After everything Atlanta had meant to me, I was not sure any city could ever feel like home again. But this one does. The people here are warm in a way that feels earned rather than performed. The community runs deep. The diversity is not just visible, it is celebrated, woven into the culture of the place in a way that makes you feel like there is room for all of it, room for all of you. I found belonging here. Real belonging, the kind you do not have to shrink yourself to fit into.
I started Rainbow Flamingo Marketing. I also started volunteering with Sea Turtle Oversight Protection, where I now lead the marketing, creative, and website work. Our volunteers go out to the beaches at night to protect disoriented hatchlings from human interference and artificial lighting that pulls them away from the ocean instead of toward it. When a hatchling heads in the wrong direction, we guide her gently back toward the water. We help them find their way home.
I think about that a lot.
Sea turtles travel thousands of miles across open ocean and when it is time, they return to the exact beach where they were born. Every time. The vastness of that journey and the certainty of that return puts something into perspective that I cannot fully put into words but have come to deeply feel. Life is enormous and we are small inside of it. Letting go of the need to control every current is not giving up. It is how you survive. It is how you find your way back.
Rainbow Flamingo was built on that principle and on everything I had witnessed inside those eight agency years, watching marketing be used as a tool to serve corporations rather than communities. I wanted to build the opposite of that. A boutique agency rooted right here in South Florida that serves local businesses, the ones contributing to a stronger neighborhood, a more connected city, a healthier world. Not the ones chasing quarterly numbers at the expense of everything else. The ones building something real. Something that matters.
My clients are not just accounts. They are part of the community I live in. Their success is not separate from the health of this place I now call home. That is what drives every strategy, every campaign, every conversation I have with a client. I got into this work because I believe marketing can do more than sell things. It can connect people. It can build trust. It can strengthen the kind of community where everyone has a shot at something better.
That has always been the dream. For a better tomorrow for all.
I started with nothing. Again. But this time I knew exactly who I was, what I believed, and who I was building for.
I spent most of my life making myself small so that the people around me could feel comfortable. Learning to love this version of myself, the full version, the proud and out and unashamed version, has been the most important work I have ever done. Everything else, the agency, the clients, the sea turtles, the community, has grown from that foundation.
Fort Lauderdale did not save me. I did that work. But this city gave me the space to do it. And I plan to spend a long time giving that back.
I am just getting started.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth is not a word I would use for any part of this.
But I think that is actually the point. The road being hard is not the story. How you decide to keep walking it is.
The most honest answer I can give is that the biggest obstacle in building Rainbow Flamingo Marketing has not been the market, the competition, or the economy. It has been me. More specifically, it has been learning to get out of my own way. When you have spent years having your confidence systematically stripped away, when you have been told over and over that you will not amount to anything, those voices do not just disappear because you decide to start a business. They follow you in. They sit across from you when you are building a proposal. They whisper when you are on a call with a new client. Turning the “I can’t” back into “I can” is real work, and it does not happen all at once. It happens in small moments, one stepping stone at a time.
Building connections, landing new clients, showing up and being received well — each of those things has handed me back a small piece of who I was before everything fell apart. I have come to understand that rebuilding yourself after real loss is not about reconstructing the original. You cannot do that, and honestly you should not try. What you can do is take those broken pieces, stay curious about what they could become, and build something new from them. Something better. That shift in thinking, from trying to recover what was to exploring what could be, has been one of the most important things I have learned through this process.
On the practical side, pricing has been a genuine challenge. I care deeply about serving small businesses and making my services accessible to the people who actually need them most. But accessible pricing and sustainable revenue are not always easy to reconcile, especially when you are doing everything yourself. Learning to value my own expertise while also staying true to why I started this in the first place has required a lot of trial and error and a lot of honest self-reflection. I think I have finally found the balance, but it took time and it took humility.
What helped more than anything was StartUp FTL.
StartUp FTL is a program run by the City of Fort Lauderdale’s economic development team. It provides entrepreneurship education, connects small business owners with each other, and pairs you with mentors who have actually done the work. I cannot overstate what that program did for me at exactly the right moment. It gave me structure when I was still figuring out how to organize myself and my business. It gave me a community of people who understood what it felt like to build something from nothing. And it reminded me, consistently, that being an expert does not mean having all the answers. It means being committed enough to keep finding them.
There is also the mental health piece, and I think it is important to be honest about that.
The anxiety and self-doubt still show up sometimes. Not as often as they used to, and they do not hit the same way anymore. A hard day now looks very different from what a hard day used to look like. Before, a hard day meant going numb. It meant reaching for something to take the edge off just enough to keep functioning. Now a hard day means I go outside. I play sports. I let myself be creative. I sit with whatever I am feeling and I actually let myself feel it, because one of the most important things I have learned through therapy and recovery is that emotions, even the deeply intense ones, need to be experienced to heal. You cannot shortcut your way through them. Covering them up only delays the cost.
I do not go numb anymore. I do not need to.
I am openly in recovery and I talk about it without shame because I think it is important for people to understand that rehabilitation is only the surface of what I have come through. Behind it is a story of survival that I am genuinely proud of. Transparency builds trust. In business, in relationships, in life. People do not need you to be perfect. They need you to be real.
On being openly gay in a professional setting, I spent the better part of my life editing myself for other people’s comfort. Shrinking. Hiding. Seeking approval from people who wanted me to be less than I was. I do not do that anymore. My skills and my expertise are what I am being hired for, and they are considerable. If who I am outside of that work is ever someone’s issue, I would genuinely rather know sooner than later, because in my experience, people who have a problem with who you are tend not to be very good people to work with in the first place. I would rather build my business around clients who believe in the same things I do. Community. Authenticity. People over profit.
Fort Lauderdale has made that easier than I ever expected.
I arrived here knowing almost no one. One familiar face, a college friend who had walked a similar road and had already come out the other side. He came to see me a couple of times while I was in rehab, brought lunch, showed up. That meant more than I can say. But beyond those few visits, I was building from zero in a brand new city.
So I inserted myself. Community sports. Local events. New places, new conversations, new experiences, all while still figuring out who this new version of me actually was. What I found here is something I did not fully expect. People in Fort Lauderdale understand, in a way that feels almost cultural, that circumstances do not define a person. What defines you is how you rise from them. I felt that from early on. I felt welcomed not despite my story but because of it.
This city gave me the room to become who I had always been trying to be. And I do not take that lightly for a single day.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Rainbow Flamingo Marketing is a boutique digital marketing agency based right here in Fort Lauderdale, and everything about it, from the name to the mission to the way I work with clients, was built with intention.
The name itself says everything I want to say about how I approach this work. A rainbow flamingo stands out. It is different by nature. And the things that make us most different, the traits that feel the most specific to who we are, are almost always the same things that help us connect most deeply with the people we are trying to reach. That is the philosophy behind every strategy I build. I take time to understand what makes a business genuinely unique, not the generic version of their pitch, but the real, specific, human thing that sets them apart. And then I use that to build something that actually resonates with the right audience. The flamingo also nods to my deep love for South Florida, this place that gave me a second chance and a community I am proud to be part of.
What I specialize in is helping small and local businesses build a real digital presence through social media strategy and management, content creation, website development, email marketing, branding, and data analytics. My packages are built to be accessible to the businesses that need this work most but are often priced out of getting it done well. A boutique retainer model means my clients get consistent, personalized attention, not a rotating door of account managers who do not know their story.
But the services are honestly only part of what I am offering.
What I am really building is a network. When I take on a client, I am not just providing marketing services. I am forming a partnership. I connect my clients to each other where it makes sense. I look for ways that helping one small business grow can lift the ones around it. I believe genuinely, not as a tagline but as something I have lived, that small businesses are the foundation of healthy communities. When they grow, the neighborhood grows. When they tell their stories, culture gets preserved and shared. When they succeed, the people who work for them and buy from them and live near them all feel it.
That is the kind of work I am most drawn to. The mom and pop shop that has been serving their corner of Fort Lauderdale for twenty years and finally wants to reach the next generation of customers. The campaign that celebrates diversity and brings people together around something real. The organization with a mission that matters and a story worth telling to a much wider audience. I want to help those businesses figure out not just how to grow their reach but how to make that growth sustainable and profitable. Dreams are great. I am also here to help make them work financially.
One of the projects I am most proud of is the digital identity work I have done with Sea Turtle Oversight Protection. Building out their online presence in a way that genuinely informs, educates, and advances their mission of protecting sea turtles and their critical habitats has been some of the most meaningful work I have done professionally. It is an example of what I believe marketing can do when it is pointed at something that actually matters.
What sets me apart from the larger agencies is something I can speak to from the inside, because I spent eight years inside them. Those agencies are built around big accounts and bottom lines. The work is good but the client is often a number. I built Rainbow Flamingo to be the opposite of that. I do not turn away from challenges or unconventional ideas. I actively seek out the clients who think differently, who are building something outside the box, who have been told their vision is too niche or too specific or too bold. Those are exactly the clients I want to work with, because in my experience, bold and specific and different is exactly what cuts through the noise.
If you are a South Florida small business owner reading this and something in your gut is telling you that your marketing is not doing justice to what you have actually built, I want to talk to you. Not as a vendor. As a partner.
And if I am being honest about where I want this to go, my dream is to one day hold a retainer with a human rights organization. Because at the end of everything, the thread that runs through all of this, through the soap company and the agency years and the recovery and the sea turtles and Rainbow Flamingo, is the same one. I want to contribute to a better tomorrow for all. Not just the few. Not just the ones who can afford it. All of us.
That is what this brand is built on. That is what I show up for every single day.
What are your plans for the future?
The honest answer is that my plans for the future look nothing like what I once thought they would, and I mean that in the best possible way.
For Rainbow Flamingo Marketing, the immediate focus is right here in South Florida. Building my client base, deepening the relationships I have already started, and continuing to show up consistently for the businesses and organizations I am partnering with. Growth for me is not about scaling fast or chasing a number. It is about doing the work well and watching the people I work with actually get somewhere. The moment I am really working toward, the one that would feel like truly arriving, is the moment I see someone who started from nothing turn their idea into something people are raving about. Knowing I had even a small part in that is the whole point. That is what I am building toward.
Longer term, I have this dream that has been sitting with me for a while. I want to get an RV and do the digital nomad thing for a stretch. Travel through Florida, find the businesses and people who have something real to offer the world but have not yet figured out how to make it accessible digitally, and bring Rainbow Flamingo to them. Eventually I want to build out a small team of people who share the same vision, people who believe that marketing should do more than sell things, people who want to use their skills to actually build something better. I do not want a massive agency. I want the right people working on the right projects with the right mission behind them.
And mission matters to me more than almost anything else in how I choose who I work with. Rainbow Flamingo was built on the idea that small businesses and community-driven organizations deserve the same quality of strategic thinking and creative execution that big corporations pay enormous amounts of money for. Mission-driven clients, the ones building something that contributes to a stronger, more connected, more equitable community, are the ones I am most drawn to. That is not a niche I fell into. It is the whole reason this agency exists.
A retainer with a human rights organization is still the dream. Not something I am actively chasing right now, but a north star I am keeping in view. Because at the end of everything, the work I want to be most known for is the work that actually moves things forward for people who need it.
On the personal side, Fort Lauderdale is home now. I want to plant real roots here. I want to get married, start a family, and be the kind of partner and parent that I never had growing up. A few years ago I genuinely could not picture that life for myself. I could not imagine feeling stable or safe or loved enough to build something like that. Now I can. Now it is one of the things I look forward to most.
I also hope that by sharing my story, I am sparking something in someone out there who finds themselves in circumstances that feel impossible to escape. Because that is what this whole journey has really taught me. Life does not change when you stay in situations that are keeping you from being authentically yourself. It changes when you decide to go. No matter how scary, no matter how uncertain, no matter how little you have in your hands when you walk out the door. The other side is worth it. I promise you that.
I am building a business, a community, a family, and a life that I am genuinely proud of. And I am doing it as exactly who I am, without apology, without shrinking, without hiding.
For a better tomorrow for all. That has always been the dream. I am just finally living it.
Pricing:
- Flamingo Lite — $597/month: The entry point for small businesses ready to show up consistently online. Includes social media management across 2 platforms, 12 branded posts per month with custom graphics, captions, hashtag strategy, community management, and a monthly performance report. Perfect for businesses that need a real presence without the overwhelm.
- Flamingo Pro — $1,197/month: Full-service social media across 3 platforms, 20 branded posts per month, 4 short-form videos or Reels, blog articles or email campaigns, a brand voice guide, bi-weekly strategy calls, and full monthly analytics. Built for businesses ready to grow beyond the feed.
- Flamingo Fierce — $2,197/month: The full flock. Everything in Pro plus 4 platforms, 28 posts and 8 Reels per month, paid social ad management, website copy optimization, influencer and partnership outreach, weekly strategy calls, and a quarterly brand audit. For businesses ready to dominate their market.
- Flamingo Data — $397/month: Stop guessing, start deciding. A complete monthly marketing intelligence report covering social analytics, website traffic, email performance, brand mentions, and competitor benchmarking across up to 3 competitors. Can be added to any package or used as a standalone service.
- A la carte options start at $297: Not ready for a retainer? One-time services include a full Launch Campaign ($897), Website Copy Package with SEO optimization ($597), and Email Campaign Setup ($297). Every engagement starts with a free discovery call at rainbowflamingomarketing.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rainbowflamingomarketing.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/rainbowflamingomarketing/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/rainbowflamingomarketing
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/rainbowflamingomarketing/
