JP Maroney

JP Maroney, is an American entrepreneur and CEO of Marocom Group, a collection of companies and joint ventures involved in publishing, media, training, consulting and internet commerce. Self-described as a serial business-builder, JP Maroney started his first venture at age 19, when he created a t-shirt company called Cool Alternative.

JP Maroney also formed his first joint-venture, teaming up with a large screen printing company that produced shirts for MTV, Clint Black and other superstars. Soon after marrying, JP Maroney and his wife, Tonya, launched an advertising and marketing agency that created print media and eventually ventured into radio marketing campaigns. The fledging venture initially churned out creative promotions for local and regional companies, but eventually broke into larger opportunities when he landed an account with a local company that had recently become a publicly traded company.

At age 22, JP Maroney and Tonya Maroney created their first magazine, a travel-oriented publication called Escape Magazine, which they eventually published in Texas and Louisiana. That success and JP Maroney's growing interest in publishing eventually lead him to buy a weekly classifieds marketing newspaper called PennyWise.

JP Maroney jokingly calls this his insanity period when he was spread out between too many projects without the business acumen and infrastructure to manage it all. Everything came crashing down on him when a large advertising client fired its marketing director - his lifeline to the company, and his agency lost the account.

At age 25, JP Maroney lost everything and went bankrupt, and had to scramble to survive, working as a waiter, shoe salesman and pizza deliveryman. But, his fortune changed when a friend suggested another magazine he thought JP Maroney should publish. Over the next three and a half years, with JP Maroney as publisher and Tonya heading up content as Executive Editor, the pair built the company, eventually publishing editions in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. In 1999 they sold the company to another publisher. After a few months off, JP Maroney launched yet another business as a speaker, author and publisher of training programs. He served as Executive Producer and Host of People Builders, a continuous performance improvement system used worldwide by companies and individuals for human development. Today, as