TJ Pitre is the Founder and CEO of Southleft, LLC, a front-end application design and development agency based in New Orleans. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, he has grown Southleft into a multimillion-dollar agency, partnering with global brands such as IBM, Google, Caterpillar, and PetSmart, as well as community-driven organizations—all without relying on traditional sales or marketing methods. Before founding Southleft, TJ held prominent roles, including Director of Internet Front-End Development for Martha Stewart Living and web developer for Emeril Lagasse’s restaurant group.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:39] TJ Pitre shares his challenging upbringing, raised by a single mother and grandmother in poverty
- [6:13] TJ’s distant relationship with his father and the complexity of reconciling later in life
- [9:27] How art and illustration became TJ’s childhood escape and creative outlet
- [14:23] Early entrepreneurship: selling custom drawings and discovering graphic design
- [19:01] A pivotal moment: Building a professional website from scratch with zero coding knowledge
- [24:02] How Hurricane Katrina disrupted TJ’s senior year of college and led to relocation
- [32:18] What challenges and personal growth came from marrying into a wealthier family?
- [38:42] TJ’s experience working with Emeril’s team
- [40:00] Lessons learned while working with Martha Stewart Living Ominimedia
- [48:52] Why did TJ decide to return home and launch Southleft?
- [57:30] Growing Southleft by leveraging former colleagues and expanding into digital publication industries
In this episode…
Growing up in poverty can shape a person’s outlook in profound ways. For some, it creates limiting beliefs; for others, it becomes fuel for ambition. But how does one break free from generational cycles of hardship to build a thriving business in the competitive world of technology?
TJ Pitre found his escape in art, which led him down a winding path of freelance graphic design, web development, and ultimately entrepreneurship. Along the way, he worked with some of the biggest names in media, including Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart, honing his skills in front-end development. With encouragement from mentors and family, TJ launched Southleft, building an agency that bridges the gap between design and development while serving high-profile clients.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews TJ Pitre, Founder and CEO of Southleft, LLC, about his inspiring rise from poverty to business ownership. TJ discusses his early creative pursuits, his career working for Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse, and the leap of faith that launched Southleft. He also touches on growing up without financial stability, the pivotal role of mentors, and how he built long-term client relationships.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I never want to be in a position where I have to ask myself if I can make rent.”
- “Drawing was my escape, my flow state; I lost myself in it for hours.”
- “The opportunity with Emeril’s team came out of Katrina — I was just trying to help.”
- “My father-in-law took a risk on me, trusting me to handle digital for a celebrity brand.”
- “Martha was brilliant: thoughtful, sharp, and direct about driving business results.”
Action Steps:
- Lean into your creative passions early: Discovering hobbies like art can help build valuable skills and future career paths. TJ Pitre’s early love for drawing led directly to his career in design and development.
- Turn obstacles into opportunities: Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina disrupted TJ’s life but also opened doors for professional growth. Staying flexible during hardship can lead to unexpected career pivots.
- Build strong mentor relationships: Trusted mentors like TJ’s father-in-law and manager at Martha Stewart played crucial roles in his career. Surrounding yourself with experienced advisors accelerates learning and opens doors.
- Start small and iterate: TJ’s first projects involved simple stationery packages and small websites. By taking on manageable early projects, you gain confidence, credibility, and essential experience.
- Balance passion and pragmatism: TJ combined his love for design with the growing tech industry to create Southleft. Pursuing your passion within an expanding industry helps ensure long-term business viability.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today, we’re talking with a guest who clawed his way up from a childhood experiencing abject poverty to founding a business that has been thriving and successful and endured many setbacks along the way, and has even worked for some of our most iconic business leaders. His name is TJ Pitre. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:25
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:42
Hey everyone, John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show and you know, every week we have great leaders, great CEOs, great executives, entrepreneurs. We’ve had folks from Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, check out the archives. Lots of great episodes that you can check out there. And before we get into this, this episode is brought to you by our company Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do three things the strategy we do, the accountability and full execution of equal importance between the three of those. In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot. You can learn all about this by going to our website. It’s Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right. And my guest here today is TJ Pitre.
He’s the Founder and CEO of Southleft. It is a front end application design and development agency. He’s got over 20 years of experience in the tech industry. He’s really an expert in front end design and development, which is one that has changed and evolved a lot in that period of time. So we’re going to talk all about that.
And before that, he actually worked as Director of Internet Front-End Development for Martha Stewart Living, which is interesting. So we’re going to talk about his background there. And before that worked I think it’s pronounced Emeril. Emeril. I’m saying it wrong. Emeril, Emeril, Emeril. Celebrity celebrity chef guy has written a bunch of books, been on TV, all kinds of stuff worked there as well. And so we’ll talk about that story as well. And then starting with your upbringing. So TJ, pleasure to have you here today. And tell me a little bit about what life was like for you as a kid when you were growing up. You didn’t have a lot of opportunity, welfare, or food stamps. Growing up, your mom didn’t have a lot of money. Single mom, one brother, what was that like?
TJ Pitre: 02:39
Yeah, we’ll get right into it. First off, thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me on your podcast. That was rough. As you can imagine.
My mom, so my mom and dad got divorced and I don’t even remember. I’m pretty sure it was either a baby or or hadn’t been born yet. I have a brother two years older than me. We live with my mom and my grandma, and they were the ones who were responsible for bringing us, for raising us up. Much respect to both of them.
My mom worked two jobs trying to make ends meet. Grocery store. She worked in the bank, at a grocery store. And then she managed a concession stand in a high rise building. And she did that for a while.
And I think, like, just growing up, it’s one of those things where, like, as a kid, you probably compare yourself to other kids and try to understand, like, why? Why aren’t I going on beach vacations or why, why, why aren’t we going to Disney World or anything like that while all my friends are? And it’s not until you start to grow up to where you start to connect those dots and put things together and you’re like, oh, we’re poor. We’re not like, we can’t do those things. Yeah.
And then and then you start to see like, patterns and and I said, my mom worked two jobs, so she would go do her day job at the concession stand, and then she would come home, change, and then she’d go to the grocery store and, and then do her, her banking over there, and then she’d come home, sleep. And then just that was just cyclical every day all the time. So I rarely got to see her in my childhood. So it was mainly my grandma that raised me and my brother. So I am just a wonderful lady.
Like, like everything about her was just like she was a saint in my eyes. Sadly, she passed away about eight years ago, but she was a wonderful woman. Anyway, I think a lot of that and just kind of gearing towards the entrepreneurial part of the conversation, there were a lot of like what not to do situations that I think I learned from, and what were some.
John Corcoran: 04:41
Examples of that?
TJ Pitre: 04:43
It was just when, like as a kid, it’s hard to understand, like financial situations, like I remember, like lots of conversations happening about whether or not we’re going to make rent, and I didn’t really know what that was when I was a kid. Like, I didn’t even I didn’t really know what rent was. I just knew it was the thing that allowed us to live in the apartment that we were living in and in, in the severity of those conversations don’t really sink in until you’re a little bit older, because then you’re like, okay, I get it. They were trying to figure out if we have enough money to be able to, to, to, to make this rent. And I just, I remember looking back and saying, I never want to be in a position where I have to ask myself that question, like, am I going to be able to provide for my children?
Am I going to be able to make rent? Or are we going to continuously have a roof over our heads? Because those were deep problems like those are heavy problems. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 05:43
And what’s the hierarchy of needs? Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, like food and shelter rights, are some of the most basic ones.
TJ Pitre: 05:52
And it’s just a in a. I have a great relationship with my mom and she’s doing much better now. Got out of poverty and now she owns her home. She lives in Picayune, Mississippi. She’s widowed. But she’s enjoying her retirement years. Much deserved.
John Corcoran: 06:10
It sounds like your father wasn’t in the picture.
TJ Pitre: 06:13
No, no, no, I didn’t really get to know my dad until I was probably 26, 27. We backed out. It was an interesting relationship. He was around every now and then because of this. I guess there was some sort of arrangement with a divorce where there was a little bit of custody where we would be with him, but it was few and far between.
He was he’s alcoholic and like it was, it was all the things that you can imagine in that situation. So he wasn’t around very often in our lives. But every once in a while he would check in and he would be kind of one of those dads who would check in with a gift of something like, I haven’t seen you in two years, but I brought you whatever. And as a kid, it was like, that’s that’s a that’s great. You know?
Cool. I don’t know why I’m not seeing you very often, but it’s cool that you brought me this thing. But then that kind of started to drift. And every once in a while we’ll get phone calls. But then the average time that we would go without talking was over 2 or 3 years.
He ended up moving to New York and lived in Queens for a while. And we didn’t grow up with cable. We didn’t have cable TV. And he did it, he was living with his girlfriend in Queens, but he would send us VHS tapes of MTV so we could watch Beavis and Butt-Head, because Beavis and I were like, that’s pretty cool. Like my dad’s, you know, he’s extending an olive branch, I guess, of some sort.
But communication was still pretty fragile throughout all of my teens and early adult years. And it wasn’t until like there was he had several encounters with the law for like eight, 7 or 8 DWI. And he had an ultimatum. It was like either go to jail or put this breathalyzer thing on your truck in order to start it. And that’s when he started coming around.
My wife and I, when we were going to college, we lived uptown, New Orleans, on Camp Street. And that empty lot next to the apartment complex that we lived in or the. It was just a house that was turned into three apartments. And it was just sometimes it would get overgrown with grass. And then this is pretty cool of them.
The way that he tried to rekindle the relationship was he would come over and then just cut that grass. So he would do all that. That was his side gig. That’s how he made money. He always worked long hours.
So he would come over and sometimes he wouldn’t even contact us. He would just come over, cut the grass just because he knew he just wanted to be near us and like. And it’s a good business tactic too, because he was just providing value without trying to sell us anything. And it wasn’t until that moment when we really started to, like, rekindle our relationship and like it was 44. Now it took years to shed that feeling. Yeah. Animosity. And like I know there’s like guilt in there. Just like it’s hard to describe all the things that were packaged together.
John Corcoran: 09:07
So you mentioned poverty. You mentioned alcoholism. You mentioned kind of like, you know, problems with the law. How did you consciously or unconsciously, you know, seek to get away from that cycle as you’re growing up, as you’re getting older?
TJ Pitre: 09:27
I sunk myself into hobbies, my biggest hobby was drawing, illustrating, every gift giving occasion I would always ask for. I always had sketchbooks, little watercolor. Carry kits. I had pencil cases and pen cases that I would keep all my materials in. I had the kneaded erasers that stretch and pop and put back together.
I had a really nice time. I remember a Christmas when I got a really nice drafting table that went like the ones that go up and down. Yeah, yeah. It came with the stool and everything. And then over time like Christmas and birthdays and whatnot, I would get like a lamp that would go over it that I could put over and.
Yeah, like, look at my drawings. Yeah. So I just kept every opportunity that I had to put more into that and like, foster that talent or skill or whatever, whatever you want to call it. That’s where I zoned out. That was my area of focus.
John Corcoran: 10:32
Like.
TJ Pitre: 10:32
An.
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