IAM842- Co-founder Creates Custom Digital Marketing Solutions

Taylor Cacciola is one of the co-founders at Namra Consulting Group – a Boston-based digital marketing company that specializes in social media management, marketing, and advertising. At its core – NCG is a marketing consulting firm, first. That means creating custom marketing solutions based on each one of their client's unique problems, needs, and goals.

• CEO Hack: Google task manager on Google account
• CEO Nugget: Do the right thing and let that guide you
• CEO Defined: Getting stuff done and taking control

Website: http://namraconsulting.com/

Facebook: facebook.com/namraconsulting
Instagram: @TaylorCacciola

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Full Interview:

Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless:

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Taylor Caciola of Nomura Consulting. Taylor, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:38 – Taylor Cacciola:

Hey, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. What's going on?

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. Before we jump in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Taylor so you can hear about all these awesome things that he's doing. Taylor is one of the co-founders of Nomad Consulting Group, a Boston-based digital marketing company that specializes in social media management, marketing, and advertising. At its core, NCG is a marketing consulting firm first. That means creating custom marketing solutions based on each one of their client's unique problems, needs, and goals. Taylor, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:11 – Taylor Cacciola:

Yeah, man, I'm excited, Gresham. Let's do it.

01:14 – Gresham Harkless:

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through your story and what led you to get started with all the awesome things you're working on?

01:24 – Taylor Cacciola:

Yeah, absolutely. So it actually started back in college about 5 years ago when I was friends with 1 of my partners now it's my two partners at Nomura. And we all went to UMass Darwin. So I had a family business. So that was my thing. I was going to college to play baseball, you know, get a marketing degree. And then that was there was going to take over the family biz. Turns out my parents ended up selling that business so I was like oh shit what do I do? So you know honestly it's like fate man I met my 2 partners they had already started Nomrah on paper they were to work on it they asked me if I was interested and just for some reason man it felt like the right thing to do. I was in kind of a, you know, I was looking for something and I found it and go head first.

And, you know, we start, we started Nomad and it's basically helping local businesses with their social media management, because we wanted to leave college with something more than, you know, just like a little piece of paper and that's what we did. So that's kind of a backstory and 5 years later here we are.

02:22 -Gresham Harkless:

Nice, that's absolutely awesome. Was your parents' business, was it a social media marketing agency too? I'm guessing it wasn't.

02:29 – Taylor Cacciola
Oh, no way, no. Boar's Head Deli Meat Distributors. Okay,

02:33 – Gresham Harkless:

That's kinda close.

02:37 – Taylor Cacciola:

Slinging hands and slinging to Twitter, so same thing.

02:39 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. No, I love that. And you know it's so funny, and I don't know if you have this same experience. I always say I used to play basketball, That was my thing. And I always felt like there's a synergy between or kind of alignment between running a business and working the business as it is being a really good athlete. I didn't make it to the NBA or anything. So I can't say I was that good, but you know, you try to break it home in business. I don't know if you find that it overlaps.

03:02 – Taylor Cacciola

Totally. Well, you might not be that great at basketball or sports, but I think in the back of your mind, you always know like, well, I could be if I could find me, but maybe I'm too lazy and I want to like, you know, same exact things through with being, you know, owning a business, you know, the right things to do and doing the right thing, you know, quote-unquote, works, whether you're playing sports business, you know, so I think you nailed on.

03:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You start to find a lot of that repetition and things the consistency show up for better or worse sometimes. For me playing basketball wasn't as great, but definitely showed up. His business has been great. So I know you touched on it a little bit and what you all are doing for clients. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving your clients? What exactly does that process look like?

03:45 – Taylor Cacciola

Yeah, so what we do is we're a digital marketing company that focuses specifically on social media management, marketing, and advertising. Right now we're hyper-local to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. So what that looks like essentially is sitting down with our clients and potential prospects to develop a full-blown marketing strategy for their social media. Because it's a core, core part of business marketing. Sometimes that's all they do for marketing is social media. So we work with them on the marketing side of things. And then how can we best execute on social media?

We're not just posting cat gifts and we're not just posting like who wants to buy a house? Who wants it? So we are taking a marketing strategy, and applying it to social media. And then we're handling the day-to-day content creation, making posts, handling those posts, and running paid advertisements. And then for our clients in New England, we're actually creating a ton of video production stuff. We're doing everything from parody videos to sit-down, talking, head interview-style videos. So that's really what we do.

04:48 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, absolutely. You know, love and appreciate that. And it kind of sounds like, as you said, not just posting the cat videos or the dog videos. It sounds like it's based on what the client's trying to accomplish. And I think so many times, and I don't know if you experienced this when you talk with clients, it just kind of jumps in and just like, oh, this person has done x, y, and z, they look like they got a lot of likes a lot of comments. So let me do the exact same thing, not thinking about what I'm trying to accomplish from my business standpoint.

05:12 – Taylor Cacciola

Correct. And that's where we talked about, like, if you ever heard of vanity metrics, we're not so concerned with like the number of likes or impressions on the page. More so, you know, I'd rather have 4 quarters than 110. So that's kind of a term we use, where if I can get 4 likes from people in my sphere of influence, people who might potentially be qualified, you know, buyers, fans, people are going to make moves on our business, then I would rather have 4 of those than 100 people who are just going to like to make me feel good and give me that little hit of dopamine. That's kind of our motto.

05:45 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice. Absolutely love that. I might borrow that from you for 4 quarters instead of a thousand pennies because yeah. Yeah, I spoke to someone I like remember? There you go. I don't know. I didn't hear from anybody else. So you're the author of my book. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you personally, or the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:07 – Taylor Cacciola:

Yeah, so what really sets us apart is I think just one, we're just like going against the grain whenever we see that it's necessary. So we're a digital marketing company, but we're hyper-local, and we don't want to work with clients all over the place, because we feel that is what's going to provide them with the best service. You know, we don't just focus on posting and having clickbait things on social media, we focus on marketing first, and then social media, we're only on social media, because it works for marketing. That's like, and I think that's what our secret sauce is. We are a marketing company at our core first and then social media.

If the VR headsets and like the VR contact lenses come out tomorrow, we'll be marketing there as opposed to social media or whatever that that's that's I think really where we kind of separate ourselves from other companies and what is like our secret sauce. I don't know if that's a good answer to that.

06:59 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense, I think, but I want to just throw it back to you to make sure I fully understand and everybody else does too. I think that one of the bonuses and one of the benefits of social media is that so many people are there and they're engaging. And from you saying that you're a marketing company first, it kind of sounds like you're going to be where it is for the clients to be successful. And if it is as it is now social media, it's a great place. Or as you mentioned, the VR, if that becomes the wave in the next 10 years or whatever, you're going to make sure that you're putting your marketing first and not say, oh, you have to do this because we're a social media company.

07:32 – Taylor Cacciola

Exactly. We have no vested interest in the actual companies or mediums themselves. If all of a sudden there's a better opportunity, we'll be there, we'll figure it out and we'll take our clients there. That's why you're exactly right.

07:43 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely love that. So many times I talk a lot about, I call like the different waging and market your company like ingredients like you're going to the restaurant to the grocery store, try to figure out what you're going to put into your dish. And so many times we get so obsessed with ingredients. Oh, I have to do TikTok because everybody's on TikTok, but not doing that marketing work first. So that's why I love it. That's the core of what you all are doing.

08:05 – Taylor Cacciola:

Yeah, it's a great point. And that's a big that's one of the number one questions I get asked. It's like, do I need to be on TikTok? Should I be on Snapchat? And it's like, hold on, there's no yet it's not it's there's no simple answers if you want the right answer, unfortunately. It's a multivariate analysis of figuring out the problem solution. So you got it. And you nailed it.

08:24 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And I think so many people understand and hopefully hear that you have to do that marketing work versus great that you take your clients through that exercise and that clear clarity, I guess you can say so that you make sure that you're in the right place at the right time for the right people. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:51 – Taylor Cacciola

Well, I guess because I'm in the car a lot, you know, the easy ones like audible that I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts and stuff like that. But actually, my partner showed me 1 last night. That's awesome. I'm where I'm all about efficiency, trying to really focus on narrowing down tasks. How can I have 2 different journals going at every time I have, you know, writing? So for me, efficiency is important. The 1 app I have is if you go into Gmail, there's a Google tasks manager. And it's like, awesome, it's real, it's easy to reorganize everything. It's so much easier than writing it down on a piece of paper. It's better than putting it in my notes on my phone. So I think that the task, the task manager, it has an app, it's right built into your Google, Google accounts. So I really love that. That's kind of my hack today, I guess.

09:37 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And it's so funny because I haven't looked at the task manager within Google, but it's so funny. I always tell people that I use my email a lot of times like a task manager. So it's only natural that it should have one. So I have to check that out and see.

09:52 – Taylor Cacciola

Yeah, now I highly suggest it. I have that on the right. I have my Google calendar right there. I have my HubSpot CRM and then I have all my emails. It's like, I could just stare at a screen for even longer. Now it's great.

10:04 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And when you don't stare at a screen when you're driving, you have the audible too. So I love being able to kind of take in that information because I often say that a lot of people you spend time around and a lot of things you take in are kind of who you are and what will be your future essentially. So it's so important to kind of always sharpen that saw.

10:23 -Taylor Cacciola

That's right. I mean, don't pollute yourself with bad stuff. That's it. You can do it in a lot of different ways.

10:28 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

10:42 – Taylor Cacciola:

So I'm very big on, I don't know, maybe this is too cliche, but we're really big on personal responsibility. So do the right thing, you know, I think 99% of the time, we know, we might not know what the right thing to do is, but we know when we're doing the wrong thing. And like, let that guide you. I think a lot of times when I first started my company, I was doing what I thought everyone else was doing, or I did what like was cool, or maybe what I felt as though a CEO would just be supposed to be doing or what a company was supposed to be doing.

And a lot of times that went against like my instinct to naturally question stuff and be like, why is everyone doing that? That's stupid. Like, listen to that internal game. And that's saying like, don't do that. Do this. And I think that's the biggest thing, whether it's, you know, some people have a hard time getting out of bed early, some people have a hard time organizing your life, just really pay attention to yourself, pay attention to like what your body's telling you and listen to that more than not, I found good results come from it.

11:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. And this is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Taylor, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:56 – Taylor Cacciola:

Yeah, absolutely. So this is the one question I was thinking about because I listened to the podcast. We talked about this a little bit and I'm not technically a CEO, right? I handle the sales side of things. So, you know, CSO, whatever you wanna call it. But we kind of talked a little bit about this. And I think that like real meaning of a CEO is getting stuff done and taking control of whether it's your life or business. So for me, it's being the person who's like that type A or you know, just getting things done the right way every single time, whether it's in your life, your work, your family, your health, doing everything right, contributes to the end goal.

And I think that's what being a CEO means. So if I can kind of like try and clarify that, I guess, the way you do one thing is the way you'll do everything. So if you want to crush it in business, you can't, your health can't suffer. And you should be working on keeping your family in order. So if you can just put everything in your life in order, I think that's kind of the epitome of being a CEO or kind of what we're all looking to strive for. I know that's kind of simple, But I really think it's almost overlooked, you know?

13:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it's huge. It's so funny. I always feel like a lot of times we're looking for advice on how to do certain things. And a lot of times the advice itself is simple, the execution not so much. So I love what you talked about because I was envisioning kind of like a car where you know you have your business will go and you have your maybe personal development will go in but your relationship is like bought in or it's flat and it doesn't allow the car to go and I think so many times if we forget about all those different aspects and remembering like the way we do one thing is the way we do all things, then often it's not only to our detriment but to the detriment of those around us.

13:38 – Taylor Cacciola

Correct. And I think that's so important. So I actually, I have a quick question for you. And when you've talked to a lot of people about this, and when I was like a little kid, when I've heard CEO, and I think this is like what most people think when they're little, it's like make a lot of money, do like big business stuff. Has that ever been an answer? And maybe people don't wanna say that, but I feel like it's never been about making the most money or anything like that because a lot of times the CEO doesn't early on, but have you ever experienced that? Has anyone ever said that?

14:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, a lot of times people say that they don't necessarily feel like they are a CEO largely because of that. And that's one of the reasons I enjoy asking this question because I think if you take ownership, as you talked about, of your life, of your business, of your role, whatever the title may be, then you really can be the CEO, which I think if we drill down, it's talking about taking control, getting stuff done, as you said so well. And I think so many times if we ask ourselves the things that we sometimes associate with words or have as a definition may not be what it is, but we never ever ask that question. So I hear it sometimes, but I think when people get on the show and they hear the question, they're like, I never really thought about it, but now that you mention it, maybe I think it's X, Y, and Z instead of A, B, and C.

14:48 – Taylor Cacciola

Yeah, I think that's perfect. I think that's perfect. Yeah, embody the CEO, and then the payment, the money will come later or whatever it might be.

14:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And people define success according to how they wanna define success. So it might be money, it might be influence, it might be a number of likes, or whatever that way is, but you get to chart that path for yourself. Cool. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Taylor, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you to find out all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:24 – Taylor Cacciola

Yeah totally so if you're looking to work with me or Nomad Consulting Group or just want to learn more check out our website nomadconsulting.com We just revamped it We worked hard on it so that it's super clear and super transparent. Like if you have any questions on, you know, any 1 of our services, it walks you right down. So check that out. If you do have a question, submit a form or my contact information, my cell phone email is all over the place. So NAMRA Consulting, N-A-M-R-A, consulting.com. That would be awesome.

15:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I definitely appreciate that. Again, Taylor, we will have the links and information in the show notes, but I truly appreciate, you know, all the work that you do the reminder to us about how the way we show up whether that be digitally or online is the way we show up for so many things. So helping so many businesses and organizations in your area, be able to get their name out is so important. So I appreciate you for doing that. Appreciate your time, of course. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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