Dan is the founder and creative director of Metro Nova Creative, a design shop based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Metro Nova Creative's mission is to inspire business owners to Love Your Brand. Dan has been in the design industry for nearly two decades and running his branding business full-time for 5 years. His passion is to help small business owners learn, grow, and succeed while supporting the community.

• CEO Hack: Get a bookkeeper when you start getting revenue in your business
• CEO Nugget: A hustle mentality is important to have but is not sustainable so work hard
• CEO Defined: Leading from behind and supporting your team

Website: https://www.metronovacreative.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroNovaCreative
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroNovaCrtv
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mncbrands/

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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00:18 – 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.

00:43 – 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 Dan Craddock of Metro Nova Creative. Dan, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:54 – Dan Craddock

Thanks, Gresh, really good to see you. I appreciate having a moment to talk a little bit more. It's always nice to catch up.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely nice to get the opportunity to hear more about you. And before we hopped in, I want to read a little bit more about Dan. So you can hear about all these awesome things he and his team are working on. And Dan is the founder and creative director of Metro Nova Creative, a design shop based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Metro Nova Creative's mission is to inspire business owners to love your brand. And Dan has been in the design industry for nearly 2 decades and running his branding business full time for 5 years. His passion is to help small business owners learn, grow and succeed while supporting community. Dan, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:36 – Dan Craddock

Absolutely.

01:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story, well, that you get started with the business.

01:49 – Dan Craddock:

Yeah, so I've always, from a young age, been a creative guy in third grade instead of studying for the TOS tests in Texas for our Texas people. I was working on comic books and things like that And really fast forward through high school, just kind of trying to find my place creatively, stumbled into the graphic design field and kind of get rolling with it and I did freelance design and worked as a production designer in print shops and sign shops and just did the whole thing for years and years and years. And it started a family. My wife and I, we had just gotten married, which is our first child.

And you know, I started working with a print shop. And after 3 years, I took the guy from a 1500 square foot space to like a 4000 square foot warehouse space doing craft design and vehicle wraps and websites and, and all this stuff. And the career was just going nowhere and wasn't really a good fit, just not a positive atmosphere. And we had just had our second child and she was a month old and I quit. And we just started, I just jumped in.

I was very fortunate that I had that decade or so of freelance clients that were like finally you're available 9 to 5 all right let's do this you know and so I was very fortunate to have that opportunity to start on a good pace leaving a career and starting a business when you've got 2 kids and we were broke. I mean, my wife and I, we didn't have savings or money and I think that the majority of people that start businesses are just, we can't get any lower So we might as well take a bet on ourselves and just get going. And that's what we did.

03:34 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, definitely appreciate you for doing that. And just like your clients being able to kind of finally have you available to be able to provide all those great services that you do to your clients. I think so many times that when we're in, you know, whatever position we might be in, we're really great at our craft and really great at what we do. But so many times there's like a cap or maybe that's not a great environment or something that just doesn't kind of create that opportunity. And I think so many people don't make that bet on themselves. So I appreciate you for doing that obviously and reminding us of how important it is to sometimes, ante up on yourself to kind of see your talents come to fruition.

04:12 – Dan Craddock

Yeah, and you can always say, well, it was hard work or I got lucky. And I think it's kind of a dismal aggravation of a number of different things. I was privileged enough to be in a position where you know we had family close so we had you know childcare available and just kind of the stars aligned but you know and I think a big part of starting a business, it's kind of this give and take of being a little, arrogant, narcissistic, like you gotta be, I'm the number one guy. But there's a level of humility that you have to bring with it too. And I think there's a lot of struggle to say like, well, I mean, I was just so lucky and so fortunate when realistically, I mean, it's hard work.

And you have to be ready. I did the 15, 16 hours, 17-hour days, 6 days a week for a year and a half. You know, I mean, you have to be prepared to jump in and really do that. And you have to have a family structure. And I was fortunate enough to have my wife was amazing. And, my family was amazing just to be there to back you up. And when you're exhausted and you're angry and you're short tempered, because you just haven't slept in a week, to have those pieces behind you are just phenomenal.

05:27 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it's absolutely huge. And I think so many times, when we talk about business, we talk about starting a business, we sometimes zoom over that, that human aspect, the family aspect, oftentimes, and I think that having that structure is, of course, being able to have financing or being able to have the team members and things like that, but also being able to have that support by those you love and care about is so huge in terms of increasing the likelihood of you being successful because it definitely, it can be a grind and it can be a lot of work and blood, sweat and tears for lack of a better term that you put into the business.

05:59 – Dan Craddock

Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely something that I wish I had known, you know, upfront was that hashtag hustle, mentality is, is important to have, but it's not sustainable. So you have to work hard and then put the pieces in place, like you said, building the team and stuff like that has to be part of it, or you don't get to do that for very long.

06:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Burnout is very real, especially when you're starting a business. So you have to make sure that you're paying attention to that. And so I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about Metro Nova Creative. Can you take us through exactly what you do for your clients and how you serve them?

06:44 – Dan Craddock

Yeah. So, you know, we're a design shop, but really, we're kind of like a branding firm. And in my experience, through the last 15 plus years or so, everyone's got their idea of what branding is, right? Like everyone's got like branding or these 6 things. I really just kind of narrowed it down and said, the brand is developed in my eyes of 2 elements and that's the visual and the voice, and the visual are those, the logo design. So we do logo design and website graph design, we'll design your print and marketing materials for you. So the visual is, are those visual cue elements with the logos and colors and type and consistent look and everything.

So those are important. And the reason they're important is because they're identifiers for the second aspect of branding, which is the voice. And the voice is just the, the almost kind of human emotional spirit of the product of the service the marketing materials, the content, the videos, the blog posts, like all those things that develop kind of the feel that your customer should get from utilizing your product or services. That's a big aspect of branding. And so that's why at NitoriNova, like we kind of have these 2 avenues of service.

We want to be there for, whether it's a brand new business or somebody that's been running for 5 years and is ready for that refresh. So, we're able to do a logo design and you know we have an identity package that's really popular words. You're getting 3 logo concepts you'll pick 1 3 rounds of revisions will get all your social media graphics so your profile and cover photos set for you. So you get that representation, consistent representation. And then you can actually pick 4 deliverables. So business cards, brochures, postcards, pop-up banners, whatever, we'll design all that stuff for you.

So it's all kind of an inclusive, one-stop shop and done package. So we, coming from being in that print and, you know, sign shop world and really dealing with a lot of small businesses that didn't have branding at all and going, okay, well, there has to be something that's available for them. So I really built the business around putting together this kind of easy consumable package that makes sense for the market. Now, obviously, we have clients that don't need a package, and we certainly put stuff together for them that that makes sense for what their needs are.

But the bulk of the business is we're going to prepare packages that make sense for your business, both, you know, short term, long term respecting equity, all those things that are important. And then once we're done with all those visual elements, we can take a client on and we'll write blog posts for the website we just built we'll manage your social media, help you with Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is.

We do Facebook ads and we kind of put a lot of different things together. MailChimp email newsletters have been really big lately. We're seeing some pretty decent numbers coming back from them, especially in the retail environment. People are home and they're shopping online. So, that's kind of how we've built the businesses is we want to be able to take a client from start to finish and, and, and handle all those things so that we make sure that we have that consistency.

09:47 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kind of sets you or your business apart and makes it unique. Is it that approach to doing good, to being part and building that community and the empathetic marketing that you talked about as well?

10:02 – Dan Craddock:

100%. And it's for me it's even if a business owner says we, hey, we need a proposal for a website, right? And we put something together for them. And they come back and say, hey we found somebody else that was a little cheaper or whatever. And I think we're gonna go with them. I never looked at that scenario as a loss. I look at that scenario as an opportunity and just say, hey I totally understand, but you have my email address. So if at any point you feel uncomfortable, or hey, they send you something and you're not sure what it means, feel free to reach out to me.

10:35 – Gresham Harkless:

Absolutely appreciate that. That secret sauce. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:49 – Dan Craddock

I think to get a bookkeeper, get a CPA, get a banker that you trust. If you don't have a personal relationship with your business banker, you're doing it wrong. It makes a tremendous amount of difference. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

11:02 – Gresham Harkless

So now I want to ask you 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 hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:10 – Dan Craddock

Just being a decent person it's substantial in your ability to kind of grow your business and be able to sleep better at night. And I realized that early on with the first 6 months or so of starting metronome creative full time the whole empathetic marketing thing was around that time. Cause I'd be like, all right, everyone buy a logo from me. And no one did and I was like, well I'm on Facebook and I'm telling everyone to buy logos. So I don't know why I'm not getting logos. But then it occurred to me, like, I didn't want to buy everyone's stuff that they were, you know, all their MLMs and everyone wants you to buy a Lularoe thing back then.

And I'm like, well, heck, if I don't want to buy stuff on Facebook, cause I'm like overwhelmed with the amount of people pushing stuff, then I can't imagine anybody else does either. And so, you know, that's where empathy comes in. I started putting myself in their shoes and be like, well, they're a business owner. What do they actually want? What they want to know is how to not have a sucky business. And so I just started writing I just started doing videos and just writing articles and blog posts and doing as much as I could to just give people advice and, you know, help them out and point them in the right direction.

12:09 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to now ask you my absolute favorite question, which 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 Dan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:20 – Dan Craddock

Being a leader I think I'm a big believer in leading from behind, you know, so I'm not out front pulling the group. I'm behind them kind of pushing from behind and helping them up the hill. I think being the face of the company has a lot of obligations that don't even really materialized in the business itself. As far as operations go, I mean, it's a lot of making sure that you're there to support your team and make sure that you're there to support your community, which is a really big part of my job now is utilizing our platform to support others and to help our city.

12:58 – Gresham Harkless

Dan, 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 out of view and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

13:12 – Dan Craddock

If you're interested in seeing some of the services that we have, you can go to metronovacreative.com. There's a packages tab, so if you wanna see some stuff that we've put together, a couple of the specials that we got going on that really people are really focused on right now is the startup special. So you get a logo and a 3 page WordPress website and your Facebook graphics for you know one flat price and we're doing landing pages and logos so that was a new service. You can find all that there plus there are just a ton of articles so if you go to the articles section We have a lot of stuff in January, we'll have a bunch of articles about starting a new year's resolution for your business.

And so we're gonna put together some checklists that I think will be really beneficial that you can print out actually and like follow along like here are the things that we should be doing to start the new year. So those are a lot of great resources on there. You can look us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, we're kind of all over the place. And yeah, I just if you have, if you're starting a business or you've got a business that you've been running for a long time and you just you know have some questions we're always there and we're always available I do offer some consulting so if you're not there to you know to hire us on for a marketing package or something like that.

14:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely And we'll definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. But just like you said it's so important to keep these, you know, small to medium sized businesses as close to being able to succeed as possible. And I appreciate you for providing resources, providing resources today, but also on the site and all the awesome services you and your team provide to be able to make that happen. So appreciate you again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

14:55 – 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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