Welcome to our new show, Talking Shizzle! In our very first episode of the Talking Shizzle podcast, we sat down with the President and Founder of Nexus Marketing, Rafi Norberg to talk about going NICHE with your business and choosing a niche target market.
Here's the shizzle highlight reel from what Rafi and Taylor talked about on this episode:
Learn more about Nexus Marketing on their website, and reach out to Rafi Norberg on LinkedIn.
Welcome to our new show, Talking Shizzle! In our very first episode of the Talking Shizzle podcast, we sat down with the President and Founder of Nexus Marketing, Rafi Norberg to talk about going NICHE with your business and choosing a niche target market.
Here's the shizzle highlight reel from what Rafi and Taylor talked about on this episode:
Learn more about Nexus Marketing on their website, and reach out to Rafi Norberg on LinkedIn.
Hey, hey, all you lovely people out there. You've got a lot going on in your day with big dreams and big goals for your world. Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from leading entrepreneurs, changemakers coaches and overall interesting people who like to shake things up. I'm your host Taylor Shanklin, CEO and founder of creative shizzle. And I am stoked to bring you a fresh episode of talking shizzle today, this show is all about helping you think differently so that you can grow. Talking chisel is brought to you by our team at Creative shizzle where we help businesses, entrepreneurs, and social good innovators make amazing marketing shizzle happen. Check us out on the web at Creative shizzle.com. Now, let's talk some shizzle All right, all right, friends, we are back with another episode of talking shizzle where we are going to get deep into some entrepreneur stories. today. I'm really excited to talk to Rafi Norberg on the line today. What's up Rafi?
Rafi Norberg:Hey, Taylor, how's it going? Excited to be here and to join the podcast?
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, it's fun to have you here. We're it's a Monday morning and we're recording early. Well, I guess it's not morning anymore. So I'm 15 If I'm looking at the clock, but we've got good energy here on this Monday. And I'm excited to learn from you because you're someone who I've really admired as a business owner, and also someone who works in the same sector as me for a long time. So let's get right into it. Tell us a little bit about you. Who is Rafi? What are you about? Give us some insights on your hobbies, you know, anything that you want to share?
Rafi Norberg:Yeah, well, thank you for the kind words and wonderful introduction just to talk a little bit about myself. So professionally, I'm the president of an agency called Nexus marketing that I started eight years ago, what we specialize in is doing inbound marketing specifically with an emphasis on organic search engine optimization for businesses that sell into mission driven markets. So businesses that sell into nonprofits, faith based associations, education, and then personally, I live in Atlanta, Georgia, got two cats. I am recently married, which Taylor you and I got the chance to catch up about pre wedding just a few months ago. And in my spare time, I'm an avid runner. I'm training for my third marathon right now. And I make jerky in my spare time. I don't know if we've ever talked about that. But I'm a big jerky maker. Oh, no,
Taylor Shanklin:I didn't know this about you. Do you have a specialty in terms of your jerky? Is it all kinds of meat?
Rafi Norberg:What a good question. And really, these are the questions I want to be answering on the podcast. In terms of the jerky The reason I got into it is because we ordered half a cow last year. And when you order half a cow, they send you an enormous amount of ground beef like more ground beef than than you've ever seen in one place. And how many times can you have burgers or chili so the jerky was a good way to use some of the ground beef because you can make ground beef into jerky pretty easily. And then we have not deviated too much from the ground beef jerky yet. I've tried some ground pork jerky at did not work out as well. But ground beef is where we're at. But I would still say like in the in my jerky making journey. I'm still in like v1 Maybe v2 So it's early.
Taylor Shanklin:Well, interesting. Okay, so let's take a step back. You're when you have heard about this. I've had friends tell me just buy a whole cow order a whole cow. And I've thought about it and I'm like, Well, I don't have one of those big freezers. I'd have to get a big old freezer. So you did you ordered half a cow. Do that. And was it? Is it really amazing. Beef. Let's, let's before we get into business, I gotta learn more about this cow thing.
Rafi Norberg:Yeah. So let's see the background of it. It was a multi year journey to acquiring half a cow. So originally Natalie's family, they live on a farm and Natalie is my wife and they raised cattle for a period of time. And one time when we were visiting them, they gave us some of the the cattle that had been raised on the farm and it was fantastic. Very high quality, really tasty. So from that point on it had gotten in my mind that would be cool to get into. And we are based in Atlanta, Georgia, and there is a ton of farmland around Atlanta, Georgia. So you have your pick of grass fed cows that are nearby. So this was something that we did in October we decided to pull the trigger and see what it was like and it's been great. It's been a fun little journey to to learn how to cook all the pieces of meat.
Taylor Shanklin:Hey, cool, very cool. I don't eat a lot of beef myself anymore. Mostly because of I have a weird weird health issue that's causing me to have to get real strict with what I eat. But I love ground beef. I love tacos. I'm one of those people that loves the ground beef from Taco Bell. And that's really gross to admit. And that's probably not even ground beef. But my bet tastes a lot better even than that.
Rafi Norberg:I still like the ground beef from Taco Bell, too. So no shame in admitting that you're.
Taylor Shanklin:It's racist. Well, that's interesting that I learned that fact about you. I didn't know about the jerky. And I actually would be interested in learning a little bit more about how you make it someday. But that's another topic. Let's talk about a topic that you and I have discussed before, together when we've been sitting down, you know, at a conference together having a cup of coffee, and it is the idea of going niche in your business. So you're a digital agency, a common thing that digital agencies fall into is this whole, like, we're going to try to be all things for all people, we're going to try to do all digital marketing services for all people, because digital marketing is big and fast. But you haven't done that. And you've had a very successful time growing your business in the last eight years. Tell me a little bit about what made you go niche. I think you went niche in terms of kind of like product, and market, right target audience. So tell me a little bit about what went into figuring that
Rafi Norberg:out? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think the what brought us to where we are as far as our target market, and the services we offer is that I guess to back up a second, I think a big reason why we are niche is just based on the type of agency that we are. So we focus a lot on organic SEO. And one of the critical factors to being really successful in that medium is really understanding a target market, both in terms of what people are searching for, but also having relationships in that sector that you can leverage on your clients behalf to help them with different types of cross marketing or online brand building. So one of the interesting things that happened with us is we got our first client, which was a business called donor search. And they're a prospect research company within the the nonprofit sector. And just by nature of their business, they had a lot of relationships within the sector, they had some reseller relationships, they had some integration relationships. And in order to really make them successful, we had to step in and help them figure out how they took all these relationships that they had, and use them for digital marketing purposes to help them build their brand online. So when we started doing that, I don't think we had envisioned that we were just going to work with businesses that sold to nonprofit organizations. But as we got into it, we realized just how big the space is, you know, there are over a million nonprofit organizations. And there are a lot of different problems that they have. And to solve those problems a bunch of awesome businesses have cropped up, you know, product is this is software service businesses. So very quickly, what we realized was that this space was really big enough to where we could sell a lot of clients in it. And then every relationship that we built could be used across multiple clients, which was very exciting to us. And we felt like this was a differentiator. And then as far as it relates to search, what's so funny is that we've talked about it so many times at the agency of do you do other things? Do you branch out into other things, and to some extent, we're doing that with a couple services that we're offering. But I think the reason most clients still work with us at the end of the day is our search capabilities. And what I have found through different conversations, and the reason we've stuck to search so heavily is that there are a couple things I really like about it. It's highly trackable in terms of return on investment. So as a marketer, I've always struggled to really tell the story of client retention, if you don't have data to put around that. I think that when your client likes you, that's great. But I think there are a lot of tough times that happened with every business and having great data to back up the results is really helpful as far as a retention tool. And then as far as search is concerned, there's so much that can be done with a client's digital brand that for a lot of our clients, we've ended up working with them for multiple years. So just given the fact that we can tie it to data. It's a service where you can work with clients for multiple years and still continue to grow what you're doing for them. It really just has stuck for us. And I think there's been so many areas within it that we can just keep getting better at that. It has led to us going deeper and deeper deeper into search with a couple things added on top versus going out to a bunch of different services and approaching them from a more shallow way. So so both are things that developed as a result of actually delivering the service and just seeing how much more we could do within the market that we serve but also the marketing medium that we provide versus an intention on the front end of saying this is what we want to do. I don't think I would have I would have formulated the agency like it is today when I was first start I think it I think it was a journey that we're still on. But that has gotten us to this point where we're just so focused.
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, I like that. I actually think that's how most good things happen. You know, like, I think a lot of times you end up trying a thing, and then that thing works. And then you're like, Oh, this is our thing. You know, I actually think a lot of agencies probably find their way. And that methodology or that process, you know, which is actually a lack of process sometimes. But just being creative and trying something. And so I liked that you took that first client, and then got really creative with them about their business. And that helped you sort out where you're going to take your business. So that's a pretty interesting story. I didn't actually know that part of the background from Yeah. Was there something along the way, or a time along the way where you tried to expand and then decided, you know, what, no, this is a bad idea. We're going back to what we're really good at?
Rafi Norberg:The short answer is yes. And we continue to do so. So I'd say that the the idea of expansion, we've been fortunate enough to find something that really works as far as kind of a core offering of what our agency does. And we continue to sell new clients on that offering and retain existing ones. But the desire of how or the idea of how we continue to provide more value to our current clients, or to new clients with a different mix of services, or with broader services has always been something that we want to do and continue to try. So we've had numerous successes and numerous failures in that department. I think, a good example that I'll toss out because it's relevant is at one point, we've sold both Pay Per Click offerings at different times to clients. And we've also sold managed social media at different points. And with both of those we formulated an offering, we sold a few of them. And then we sunset it within about a year of starting it. And in both cases, what we found was that, I think either it required a level of investment that we weren't as excited about as continuing to invest in our SEO Services, or with the social the one we really struggled with was this idea around metrics, how do you tie it to data that you can go to the client and say you're spending x dollars with us, and you're getting two to 3x, that, and we love that part so much about search. And we just couldn't figure out a way that we liked to do with social that it didn't click quite as well. So those are two failures. But we've also had a lot of really interesting successes. So I would say one of the areas where we have had some recent success is our services have always been traditionally very upmarket. So that limits us in terms of the types of businesses we can work with and how we can work with them. But in the last year or so we rolled out kind of like a small business version of our services, which we've seen a lot of interest in that we think is really exciting for a bunch of different reasons. And then the other one is webinars. So we've always tried to help connect people to webinars that would be good guests for or webinars that they're looking for guests for. And we've recently launched our own webinar series focused within the mission driven space. And that's been really exciting. And we've been able to get a lot of really good traction doing that. So I think it's been this process of just continuing to try things and being open to the fact that you may spend 100 hours on something, and it may be a failure, but even just trying that failure will get you closer to the inevitable success. So that's what it's been like for us, I think I'm happy that we have found kind of a core service that allows us to even experiment, but we failed multiple times. And we continue to experiment and try to find more successes as ways of expanding our offerings and making ourselves more valuable to clients.
Taylor Shanklin:I feel a lot of that, you know, I I've experienced similar things since founding my agency as well. You know, where you go out, you think, Oh, this is gonna be the thing. And then you try it. And then you're like, yeah, no, you know, you have to really figure out what can I scale? What's repeatable, it's easy to train staff on what scalable right versus? Well, if we try all these different things, I think it's really great to hear that you just said most of them, we sunset after a year, we decided that wasn't the thing for us. We're gonna go back to what we're really good at. I'm experiencing some of that too, right now with my agency where I'm realizing there are some things where I was like, Yeah, I could do them, we could do them. But we probably shouldn't. And we should probably focus on, you know, three specific areas only and that's kind of what I'm shifting back to and I am going to be sunsetting some things as well, you know, from when new business prospects come along, and we're gonna say no, we don't really do that anymore. This is what we do. And I have figured out out that now what we do? Yeah, it's really kind of about I like how you talked about SEO, it's really measurable, you kind of cracked the nut on it, and just decided to go all in on that. And it's a hard thing. I mean, just doing SEO is hard. Just social media is hard. Trust me. I know, because that's most of what we do now. That's now the majority of our business is doing the social media stuff. But like, it's a whole thing. And you got to get good at that thing.
Rafi Norberg:Yeah, I agree. I think the other piece and I feel this when I talk to clients is that it's hard to claim that we are experts in a wide variety of different marketing mediums, when I don't actually feel like we are experts in all of them. And I agree with what you said, and skeptical of the idea of agencies that are really small, but claim to do everything, or even agencies that are really large claim to do everything, because each piece of it's so difficult. So where I found us is really giving a lot of work away or sending work to other folks who are better suited to it. So all the time, we're getting inquiries and people who ask us, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do that? And I've actually found it to be much more helpful for even the relationship with them to say, No, we don't do that. Let me send you to someone else who's actually better to service. And if you have this other problem, we can help there. So I'd much rather have that conversation with folks and disappoint people in the short term, but excite them in the long term with the fact that we will say no to things, then try to do it all and go for the quick win in terms of revenue, because every quick win terms of revenue, if you can't support it oftentimes ends up being like a long hangover in terms of work delivery.
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, hangover is a great way to describe it, it's bad, it's bad for the team, it's bad for the client, it's bad for you, as the business owner, it's not really good in the long term. I think one of the best things you can do for your clients is say no to them, when no is the right thing to say, right, because that's what actually builds trust, people come back to you, if they're not ready to buy SEO, they'll come back when they are. And at least you didn't do them a disservice or your team a disservice by selling something that wasn't really the right thing to sell. So I admire that a lot. Now, let's switch gears a little bit. I want to hear from you. You've built your business, you've started your company pretty young, hungry, hungry for jerky, hungry for success, I suppose. Tell us a little bit about like, what are some, you know, startup lessons learned or entrepreneur lessons learned that you would pass along to others who are considering starting their own company? Oh,
Rafi Norberg:that's a good question. We could probably this podcast here for eight hours talking about things that I would do differently or things that I liked that I did. I'll give you maybe two that jumped into my mind as you ask the question. I think the first piece is that entrepreneurship of any type takes significant sacrifice. And I don't think I totally conceptualized like the idea of sacrifice and what that would mean, in my own life, especially at the time when I was starting it, which was fairly early in my career, where a lot of my peers were enjoying themselves. And we're not as focused on on this element of, you know, their professional lives, I think, and it looks different for each person. But just to create an organization and create something where other people are willing to come buy from you is hard. And even if you're smart, and even if you have a good idea, and even if you have a great work ethic, it's going to be hard, and it's going to take something away from you that you're going to value that you don't know what it is. So I just remember when I was starting Nexus that I would go to Dunkin Donuts every single night, and worked there for like six hours. And it was really hard because I would be there Friday nights and Saturdays and Sundays, and really got to know the people don't get done. It's quite well. But it was hard being there every single day. And there are a lot of things that I chose not to participate in that my friends were doing, and things that I chose not to do, because I was focused on getting the business from zero to one, I don't think I would change anything about that. I think it was a necessary journey to get where we are today. But I do think that I didn't conceptualize the sacrifice that would be needed in order to actually do this. So what I would say to people who are starting their own business is be comfortable with the idea of you're going to lose something and that when times are hard. And know that that is by design and part of the journey and there's no way to avoid them. So that would probably be the one thing the one sort of difficult part of starting a business that I would tell someone to think about if they wanted to the other one that I think is smaller or not smaller, but but more more maybe uplifting, is that I wish I had thought about the values that I want to instill at the organization earlier in the organization's lifecycle. So values are something that if you read every business book, they say make sure your organization has values. But I think I had seen so many corporate values that I didn't feel like lived up to anything significant. Like they didn't actually mean anything in the day to day operate. Mission of the business. So I discounted the role that values could play in shaping a team's perspective on the work that we're doing in the clients that we serve. And in the last two years, we've rolled out values that the organization that now we talk about every week, in the context of giving each other kudos for things, you call it a Bravo board, where people get a Bravo for something they did, and it's tied to a company value. So we're talking about the values every single week. And I think what's really interesting is, as the team has grown, it's really shaped people's behavior, in terms of taking risks, where maybe they wouldn't have taken risks, or thinking about how we want to serve our clients. So what I had wished I had done is taken a path at what I thought our values were maybe early on in the organization, and rolled them out basically, as soon as I started hiring people versus waiting for multiple years and having people who work here without the values because I think our organization with our values clearly stated and incorporated into our day to day work versus our organization that didn't do that our organization now is so much stronger as a result of that.
Taylor Shanklin:What are your organizational values?
Rafi Norberg:That's a really good question. Yeah, I could share them. I'll start with I'll give you a couple that I think are the ones that we talked about the most, and I think had been the most important, probably the single most important one is this idea of indecision is the only wrong decision, if you've got a reasonable shot at making the right call take action. And that one came from growing up where I worked at a summer camp where we would drive the buses with the with the kids in them. And at one point, we were driving down this really narrow road, and we couldn't turn around. So we had to make a left or right. And someone, I would think I was the junior counselor in this group. And I was not driving the bus. But the the woman who was driving, she said, Indecision is the only wrong decision, she took a left and it was fine. But that has been etched into my mind ever since. And rolling it out as an organization has been so powerful, because it's really given team members the license to say the value of the organization is to make decisions and to move forward knowing that like they won't always be right. And it has been such a big sea change of people being willing to take risks and make decisions. And I think we've gotten more done as a result of that. The other one that I would say has been super powerful for us is the status quo is unacceptable. So this idea of the way we are today, even though we're so much better than we used to be is not where we want to go. And we want to keep pushing ourselves both individually and as an organization to get better. And I think it creates a mindset of being willing to again, do things that are hard and stretch ourselves in ways that are uncomfortable and have conversations that can be uncomfortable around things regarding the organization and what we're doing. And that has been really useful just because I think we are able to be self critical in a way that allows us to identify challenges, figure out what potential solutions are and move forward on them, versus an organization where people are afraid to criticize the status quo. And I've been in organizations like that. And I think it's just it's hard to be in an organization where you're afraid to say what's wrong, or you're afraid leadership, if you point out what's wrong, we'll be upset with you like that's not the way we want to run, because I think that would prohibit us from growing. So those are two values that I think we talked about all the time.
Taylor Shanklin:And love those ones. Those ones are great. All right, we're gonna wrap it up, I'm going to ask you, we have some questions, we like to ask our guests that make you think a little differently, oh, boy, and share something about yourself that you might not be used to sharing. So I'm going to ask you, Rafi, what is the best compliment you've ever gotten? How did it make you feel and make you want to grow more from there?
Rafi Norberg:That's a really good question. So the best compliment, I've probably, I would sort of split it into two categories. Actually, I'm gonna give you two compliments because they're different. I'm going to slightly change the prompt, I think the best compliments that I get today, for me are the ones where people are not complimenting me, but complimenting the team. I think that, especially as our agency grows, most of our clients are dealing with another member of my team at this point. And that will only hopefully continue to be the case. So I think when someone pulls me aside or sends me an email that's unprompted or response to a LinkedIn message and says, Hey, so and so your organization is excellent. I just want you to know that, that really makes me feel good. And it's always something that I pass along to the individual because it tells me that we made good decisions and hiring, we made good decisions and training. And we're providing a really good experience for people who interact with us and that feels really special. I think the the other compliment that people will give us that always makes me feel good. And it's more like a compliment for me. The bat like the organization is that like, oh, this the way you guys approach things is really smart or this idea of going so nice, just super smart. Because I think for a long time, there was a lot of doubt as to whether this was a good idea, especially early on. People asked all the time. Is the market big enough for what you guys wanted to like? Can you build a business only working have companies that serve nonprofits. And for a long time, I really doubted that you could. And I said to myself, this is something that I'm going to do for six months. And then I'm going to quit and do something else and go back to business school, or I'm going to quit and go get another job. So like, for the first four years of the business, maybe five years of the business, it was like, this is the next six months, and then it's over, or this is the next year, and then it's over, it didn't feel like something that I was going to be doing for a long time. And it's because of that doubt that was in my mind. So people always talk about like, how you can't doubt your business at all, if you want to be successful. I don't really agree with that. It's like I was filled with doubt the whole time up until we hit a certain scale. And I'm still filled with doubt today about things but bit less so than I was when we first started. So when people look at the business model, and they say, Wow, this works, this is smart. This was something that like clearly has been a really good decision that you made that feels very validating, given the amount of doubt that I felt early on.
Taylor Shanklin:Love it. Hey, use doubt as an opportunity. There's a great book by our friend, you know, I'm sure Mark Pittman, the surprising gift of doubt. And it's a it's a great read, I recommend it. Well, Rafi, this has been really good. I appreciate all of your insights today. I you know, once again, I'm reminded of why I admire you so much, and why we enjoy each other. So thank you for your time. If people want to get to know you find a Nexus online, learn more about how you might be able to help them, please let us know what's the best way to reach you?
Rafi Norberg:Yeah, absolutely. Let me let me just say, Taylor, that the admiration goes both ways. I remember back in the day, when we met in Atlanta in the conference hall, you know, many, many moons ago for you professionally, and I remember the conversation around you being like, I think I might start my own agency. And I admire you quite a bit for I think just taking the plunge and seeing a lot of success from that and continuing to innovate and what you guys are doing. So I appreciate the fact that we've been able to know each other over these multiple years and excited to see where things go and how we can partner. But if people want to find me or Nexus, we are fairly niche in our social media, so connect with us on LinkedIn, or shoot us a note via our website. Those are the only two ways.
Taylor Shanklin:Hey, that's okay. You know, I got a tic tac account last week, because people keep telling me, You got to learn it. And I've been on it twice. And every time I'm on it, I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna have to get someone else on the team to do this. Because I just can't. I went on my LinkedIn girl. That's about it.
Rafi Norberg:Yeah, you know, LinkedIn has been good to us. And I think kind of like what you're saying. It's like, I don't know if we could do them all well, but but please connect with us on LinkedIn. We love to hear from folks. And you know, we'd love to just increase the number of folks we're working with. So please reach out to us if you're interested in learning more about Nexus.
Taylor Shanklin:Awesome. Well, I can vouch they are some of the best in the mission space. So thank you, Rafi. It's been really great having you here today on talking shizzle when we talk some niche fizzle. And I hope you all enjoyed and learned something from Rafi today. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time, folks. Well, hey there. That was fun. I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don't miss a beat of the talking shizzle podcast. And if you're listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from my listeners so that we can bring you all the good juicy Business Growth shizzle that you would like to hear about. Get in touch with us and follow along at Creative shizzle.com or email us at podcast at Creative shizzle.com Until next time, keep making your shizzle happen