IAM2340 – Leader and Consultant Helps Re-position Businesses Within Their Specialized Areas

John Davydov transitioned from a career as an FAA Air Traffic Controller to founding multiple businesses, including Wedding Stub and Photography and Style.

His love for technology, websites, and marketing led him to develop Wedding Stub, an online daily deal site that helped local brides and grooms find great deals for their wedding day.

In 2005, John became the proud owner of Photography In Style, a wedding media firm created for brides who want to laugh, play, and shine on their wedding day.

In 2013, John decided to lend his experience to other businesses by creating a media marketing company called Fine Touch Marketing.

John discusses the importance of staying ahead in the marketing world and constantly seeking new opportunities to help clients.

John recommends using analytics tools to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

He advises slowing down and ensuring new ventures align with personal goals and values.

Furthermore, John emphasizes that entrepreneurship offers a chance to create a lifestyle of freedom while making an impact through business ventures.

Website: Fine Touch Marketing

Another site: Photography In Style

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Transcription:

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John Davydov Teaser 00:00

So we basically help clients to get new clients. We service small to medium sized businesses and we do it through different ways.

So one of the ways is AdWords, Facebook ads, SEO, it all depends on what the client needs. And we try to not only help them with getting clients, but also delivering the right message for them.

A lot of websites, they're beautifully designed, but the messaging is just not there. So we kind of try to consult them in a way as well.

Intro 00:29

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.

Gresham Harkless 00:55

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have John Davydov of Fine Touch Marketing. John, it's awesome to have you on.

John Davydov 01:04

Thank you for having me. I'm very, very excited. I'm very excited to be a part of this community.

Gresham Harkless 01:09

Yeah, I'm definitely excited to have you on and I think there's going to be a lot of great value for everybody that's listening.

And what I wanted to do just to kick everything off is just to read a little bit more about John so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And after graduating college and successfully completing Air Traffic Control Academy in Oklahoma, John was recruited by the FAA to work as an air traffic controller in the Oakland in Oakland, California.

Working in this field, he quickly realized that photography, design and marketing were really his passion.

His love for technology, websites and marketing led him to develop a Wedding Stub. Wedding Stub was an online daily deal site that helped local brides and grooms find great deals for their wedding day.

In 2005, John became the proud owner of Photography and Style, a wedding media firm created for brides who want to laugh, play and shine on their wedding day.

In 2013, John made the decision to lend his experience to other businesses by creating a media marketing company known as Fine Touch Marketing.

Today, John helps business owners with web design, SEO, Facebook ads, Google Ads and consulting services to clients and doctors. John, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

John Davydov 02:15

Yeah, definitely. Fire it up.

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Gresham Harkless 02:17

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

John Davydov 02:24

Yeah, so definitely, it was always kind of an entrepreneur. Even as a kid, like shoveling snow outside, I was always looking for opportunities to kind of make money.

And, came from an immigrant family that was kind of led to believe you gotta go to college and get a degree.

So, even though I did that, I still, on the weekends when I was going to college, I was actually shooting weddings as a professional photographer and kind of making money that way, talking to people and networking.

So I just like the sense of freedom. But yet, at the same time, I went to college for air traffic control to kind of make sure that I have some sort of security.

And I thought, that's the way to go. So in a nutshell, that was kind of the CEO type of journey. And as I saw more and more opportunities and technology and what's going on in the world, I just figured, you know what, maybe the air traffic control path wasn't really for me.

And that is where I just decided to go all in and to create other ventures for myself.

Gresham Harkless 03:24

Nice, nice, nice. It sounds like you've done a phenomenal job. And air traffic controlling takes so much kind of attention to detail because you have to really take control of so many different things that are going on at the same time. Is that correct?

John Davydov 03:37

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's a really, really a challenge because not only that you have to, like, graduate college and get a degree and also get into the program.

But when you do go to Oklahoma, to the Academy, they give you, the first week, I remember, they give you a map.

Just picture a subway map. Subway, New York City subway map something like that. And they tell you, okay, you got one week to learn it, to learn the whole map.

And what we're going to do is you have to, like, name all the intersections and stops, even though it's the airways where you can't really see anything in the sky, but there are like different routes up there that the air traffic controllers and the FAA uses.

And they tell you, okay, here's the map. In a week, we're going to give you the same type of map, but it's going to be totally blank.

And you have to memorize, draw it and name each stop. So that alone just scares you. But thank God the passing grade was 85 for the whole class.

And we all kind of went to Staples and got the markers and made a blank piece of paper and start memorizing and drawing and nonstop just learning and learning. It was pretty amazing that. I can't believe I did it.

Gresham Harkless 04:52

Yeah, more power to you. It's funny, I went to bartending school and we had to remember how to make, I think it was seven drinks in about 10 minutes.

We can only make three mistakes or you didn't pass. And needless to say, I am doing podcasts and websites. I did not pass. And that is not my gift. I don't have the greatest memory.

So more power to you for being able to remember all that stuff. So I wanted to ask you a little bit more about your digital marketing company.

Could you tell us a little bit more about that and what you feel is kind of like your secret sauce and what makes you unique?

John Davydov 05:20

Yeah, definitely. So the digital marketing company was actually designed out of necessity because I kind of got clients for myself through doing photograph and I got it through the Internet basically doing online marketing for myself.

And eventually more and more people started to ask me, like, hey, look, you're in this niche community, the Jewish community.

You're getting all these clients, but they're not really Jewish. They're, kind of Italian, Greeks, Spanish.

So how are you doing it? And I said, look, I'm just I build a beautiful website. I'm just doing it online.

And I took those skills and acquired it into the marketing company that we have today. So we basically help clients to get new clients.

We service small to medium sized businesses and we do it through different ways. So one of the ways is AdWords, Facebook ads, SEO, it all depends on what the client needs.

And we try to not only help them with getting clients, but also delivering the right message for them.

A lot of websites, they're beautifully designed, but the messaging is just not there. So we kind of try to consult them in a way as well.

Gresham Harkless 06:28

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And it's definitely, obviously in this day and age, it kind of sounds like you were ahead of the competition because you saw something and people saw value in it.

And you're like, why don't you do that for other businesses? And all of a sudden you start seeing that there's a great opportunity there it sounds like.

John Davydov 06:42

Yeah, yeah, definitely I think, as far as the secret nugget, like you said, the special sauce is just that we're always persistent on finding new things and finding what's the next thing out there.

Listening to different inspiring podcasts, inspiring people to kind of see the vision, and we try to see, okay, where would technology be in five, 10 years from now?

And everybody's talking about AI right now. So we're trying to see, okay, how can we use AI for ourselves and for our clients.

Gresham Harkless 07:10

Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

John Davydov 07:21

Yeah. So we like to use a lot of analytics. When we do a survey of a website or when we try to do an analytics of the different campaigns that people are running.

So one of them will be WordStream. We love using WordStream. SpyFu is another one. It just kind of definitely gives us an overview of exactly what the company is doing and how we can implement our own strategies onto helping them get more and more leads and clients.

Gresham Harkless 07:51

Absolutely. And correct me if I'm wrong, analytics is kind of the name of the game because it kind of gives you eyes in the back of, like, your website or whatever campaign you might be running.

So it's not just a shot in the dark, but you can actually see what's working, what's not, make adjustments and go from there.

John Davydov 08:04

Yeah, definitely. And I think with today, like having trackers on everything Facebook tracker, Google tracker, it just really, you can really dive in and kind of do if this, then that type of approaches as well.

So that when people do log in, they see a certain page, then we, we can retarget them and actually see, okay, what's working, what's not working. So there's definitely a lot of technology out there. Is today out there?

Gresham Harkless 08:30

Yeah. And that's a great hack because you have the opportunity to have eyes and ears literally everywhere. So take advantage of all the analytics tools that are out there that you can.

And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. If you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

John Davydov 08:49

I just think as entrepreneurs, we have a lot of ideas and a lot of things that we just want to do. One of the phrases that actually my wife uses for me all the time, she goes, don't be trigger happy. You know her, always trigger happy. Like, oh, my God, this idea.

Let me go find out and do this and do that. So I would definitely tell myself, like, look, if you're going to do something, just make sure that it kind of aligns with your goals and values.

Make sure that first you kind of answer like four or five different simple questions that I have for myself.

So number one is, is it going to make you a profit? So is it going to provide any type of need or service to other people? Is it going to make a difference in the world?

Are you going to make sure that this is something that everybody can use? And then only then, okay, then you can start kind of putting together a business plan and start investing money into it.

So, yeah, definitely don't be trigger happy, even though we get inspired, like every minute. But try to kind of calm yourself down and start doing the research first and kind of then dive in with those three.

Gresham Harkless 09:57

Yeah, that definitely makes perfect sense. And a lot of times when you're entrepreneurial or you have that entrepreneurial kind of itch, you can start to see opportunities literally everywhere.

You're kind of like a beautiful mind where you see all this stuff everywhere. There's opportunity here.

But it's great that you have that checklist and kind of that framework where you say, okay, I have this idea.

But does it hit on all these different questions that I have and you can take it through that thorough kind of framework so you can understand that. Okay, okay, I'm going to move forward with it or I'm going to maybe just keep it as an idea.

John Davydov 10:24

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It definitely does help a lot.

Gresham Harkless 10:28

Yeah, that makes sense. And now I wanted to ask you for my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And we're all hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners on this show. So I wanted to ask you, John, what does being a CEO mean to you?

John Davydov 10:42

Definitely a sense of freedom, but not only that, it's just that you can always create a lifestyle that you want for yourself, and I think that's really great.

And being as an air traffic controller, I would come in to a room and, look at different monitors and it was that moment where you see all these airplanes are going left, right, and different directions, and you are there and just stuck sitting, basically controlling them.

But at the same time, as a CEO, you just stuck there. So, being CEO is just a sense of freedom that you can just go and actually be on that airplane and go to Fiji or whatnot and make different decisions that will inspire others and get you to the next level that you want to be at.

Gresham Harkless 11:23

Yeah, I absolutely love that kind of metaphor. With your experience just being able to be on an airplane, you're directing it wherever you wanted to go, whether it be to Fiji or D.C. or New York or wherever you want to go.

It's a great thing to kind of keep in mind and remind us as CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners. So John, I truly appreciate your time.

What I wanted to do is pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you.

 John Davydov 11:49

Thank you so much. And again, thank you to the whole community for having me. It's really a treat and an honor.

I think if anybody wants to connect they could always email me john@finetouchmarketing.com or they can always check out different links. I'm sure you're going to have it in the show notes. They need a photographer. They can always find us at photographyinstyle.com as well.

Gresham Harkless 12:12

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yes. And we will definitely have those links in the show notes so that they can see all the awesome work that you're doing. John, I truly appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

John Davydov 12:21

Me too. Thank you so much and thank you for having me.

Outro 12:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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