Steve and Mark now have an expert handle on their profitability by client and by project. They have implemented efficient tools, like Harvest for time tracking and have been able to pare down their client offerings and pricing structure to support more profitability and have better use of their team.
After learning just how inefficient and unprofitable their previous business model was, they implemented a new sales-based revenue strategy that allows clients to pay NNM based on sales of tickets, and minimizes up front costs.
The company is growing rapidly and has seen a bump in clients from 18 to 47 in just two years since they tweaked their pricing structure. They are projected to gain another 20 next year.
Noise New Media launched back in 2008, when MySpace ruled the social media scene and iTunes and old school record stores coexisted. Talented musician and marketing whizz, Mark O'Shea and IT tech pro Steve Richo decided to enter the world of musician marketing and the Nashville based company was born. Almost fifteen years later, they have changed their business focus and pricing model, added a new location, survived and thrived through the economic slump of 2008, a pandemic, and are entering a world of growth and profitability. We chatted with Team Noise New, and learned how outsourced accounting and a new take on their numbers helped them fine tune their business. Let's learn more about this cool media team and see how the lessons learned made them the thriving business they are today.
Noise New Media has successfully combined innovative social media strategy with digital applications development and campaigns. Their low-fi guerilla approach to event marketing has helped clients increase ticket sales while engaging with their target audiences through the use of proven targeting technologies. Founded by Steve Richo and Mark O'Shea, Noise New Media is based on Music Row in Nashville, TN. Their clients include some of the largest events on the planet.
Originally from Connecticut, Steve co-founded Nashville, TN-based Noise New Media in 2008. Steve first accessed the Internet through Yale’s VAX/VMS in 1995 at 1200bps, long before the advent of the modern World Wide Web. As a network engineer in the Y2K era, he deployed multi-state wide area networks and long-haul wireless connectivity for companies large and small.
Today, Steve’s strengths include connecting the dots between social campaigns and ticketing providers; a key contributing factor in proving Noise’s impact on ticket sales for over a decade.
Known for his patient, zero-buzzword approach to helping clients understand social trends, Steve is a vital resource for promoters and organizations across the country.
While Mark is not busy turning the wheels of commerce with Noise New Media, he's out playing rockstars as one half of the award winning musical duo O'SHEA. His wife, Jay makes up the other, much better looking half.
His unique artist perspective on digital marketing gives Noise the ability to take a more well rounded approach to New Media. How many other companies do you know that can say that the boss has opened for Keith Urban?
Steve and Mark’s “we can do it all/ we won’t say no” approach and the hands-on client support was becoming unsustainable for the founder duo. It really clicked for Steve after he attended a Tony Robbins seminar, that they needed to have a more CFO-like approach to their business and get out of the reactive and into the proactive side of things. Their original model of using a part time bookkeeper every three months was not giving them the strategic insight they needed.
Steve and Mark appreciated the flexible and supportive model Accountfully offered and knew we had experience with digital agencies. Accountfully's proprietary Digital Agency Workbook gave them have a central document to work from when planning out profitability and hiring scenarios.
Steve and Mark now have an expert handle on their profitability by client and by project. They have implemented efficient tools, like Harvest for time tracking and have been able to pare down their client offerings and pricing structure to support more profitability and have better use of their team.
Just understanding the basics of what an hour of your time is worth is a huge help according to Steve.
“You get all this data together and you get some really simple key metrics out of it. It helps us establish what our hourly rate should be, our hourly billing, and we never knew that before. That is just like one of the most important things you could have in a business- what is an hour of my time worth, and then you can basically apply that to just any other section of your reporting, and you have a lot of answers revealed.”
In addition to mastering profitability and utilization, Accountfully has been sounding board for Noise New with a lot of things; from bonus calculations for integral employees, to entity structure.
The company is growing rapidly and has seen a bump in clients from 18 to 47 in just two years since they have tweaked their pricing structure. They are projected to gain another 20 next year. As Mark puts it,
“It's exciting times over here at Noise New Media and we just keep on rockin' and rollin'.”
Both Steve and Mark agree that over the years, the city of Nashville has slowly become a much bigger, and generally more artsy place. It is less pigeon-holed as a solely country and western town. Mark still thinks it's important to be physically connected to the town’s companies and stakeholders in the music industry.
“A lot of the talent that we end up marketing, like, your Tim McGraws, or whatever, our hub is here and their management companies are here. So having those relationships, and working with folks here in town is valuable, I think.”
Steve says, “Try to smash through that unlimited upside, the best you can, and really it's about driving client appreciation, like as Mark said, when you're sitting at the same side of the table as the client and you're performing marketing functions for them, when it's all working, it's a wonderful synergy.”
Noise New Media’s unique pricing strategy of taking a portion of ticket sales over the older retainer fee concept has allowed them to align themselves with their client’s success in a better way. The more tickets sold, the more successful the company that their client is.
Mark shared some insight into the stress and desperation they once had when prioritizing getting money in the door over a good fit in a client.
“I would walk over hot coals doing whatever they needed to keep the money coming through the door, and I think that was probably doing us a disservice, it probably inhibited us more [than it helped].”
In short, more expansion and more events! The company is set to take on the latest event on the east coast, The Big E. This is a fair that encompasses the six New England states and offers tons of amazing entertainment and craft brewery enjoyment.
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