Mettle - The Nix Company

Company: The Nix Company
Owners: Jordan Nix
Year Started: 2018
Employees: 11-25 (Intermediate)

On this episode we have Jordan Nix, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of The Nix Company – a social media and brand marketing agency based in Dallas, Texas.

Jordan has been an entrepreneur long before her name was on the governing documents. Following in her grandfather’s footsteps, one thing has remained constant – her strong work ethic.

You are sure to be inspired by Jordan’s failure is no option journey and how she has persevered against the odds.

Enjoy the Story.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.

Russel: 0:37

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I'm your host Russel. On this episode, we have Jordan Nix, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of The Nix Company, a social media and branding marketing agency based in Dallas, Texas. Jordan has been an entrepreneur long before her name was on the governing documents. Following in her grandfather's footsteps, one thing has remained constant, her strong work ethic. You're sure to be inspired by Jordan's"failure is no option" journey and how she has persevered against the odds. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today everyone. I have Jordan Nix with The Nix Company with us today. Thank you so much for being on the show, Jordan.

Jordan: 1:14

Thank you for having me.

Russel: 1:15

Certainly, my pleasure. If you don't mind, start us off with a quick overview. What does The Nix Company do and who do you do it for?

Jordan: 1:22

The Nix Company is a social media and brand marketing agency based in Dallas. We service clients such as retail centers, hospitality groups, and women owned businesses. Our forte is developing online brands and creating engaging and dynamic content to help bring brands to life.

Russel: 1:40

Sounds like you may have practiced that a time or two.

Jordan: 1:42

I tried.

Russel: 1:43

Yes, gotta have the elevator pitch in your back pocket. Let's go back in time for a little bit here. When you think about young Jordan did you ever anticipate being an agency owner or a business owner of any type? What did you think you were gonna do with your life when you were younger?

Jordan: 1:55

Yeah, high school Jordan, she was a fun girl that didn't know exactly what her future was going to hold. I always had a hardworking background. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. I started working for him at the age of 14. I started work at a young age and learned a lot from him. It wasn't the most fabulous job ever. He owned a autobody shop.

Russel: 2:19

Were you like fixing cars and stuff?

Jordan: 2:21

I ran that place, just the front office, not the back of it.

Russel: 2:24

Oh, okay, gotcha.

Jordan: 2:25

Helped write estimates and basically was like his office manager. I always love telling that story because I feel like I learned a lot from him. While I was in high school, I ended up becoming a teen mom. When I was a senior in high school, I had my son and ultimately graduated very quickly, jumped right into the workforce to give my son the lifestyle that he deserves and didn't look back from there.

Russel: 2:50

Yes, that sounds like a very significant part of your journey that I certainly want to dive into more. But before we get to all that, you had to start your career right out of high school. What were some of those early experiences and what were you learning through the early part of your career that would eventually shape your role as an owner?

Jordan: 3:04

I call it, my first big girl job was leasing apartments when I was 18. When I was 18 I found myself leasing apartments and then also creating and designing my own brochures and marketing collateral to give to my prospects, which is not something that anybody even asked me to do. But my ADD brain was like, I want to create something pretty to give to my prospects to help close the deal. From there I learned that marketing was the route that I wanted to go in and was able to build a marketing background through the multi-family industry over the next six or years or so. I had the opportunity to move from leasing apartments to working at a tech startup that served the multi-family industry. That part of my career is probably my favorite because it was scary. I actually took a slight pay cut to work for the startup, but the startup is definitely where I probably learned the most. I was their first hire and I got to work with engineers and guys that know how to build apps before there was this many apps that we have today. I think I had a Blackberry at the time, if that tells you anything. From there I was given the opportunity to go back and work for, she was my boss in the multi-family world. She's VP of marketing and she ended up starting her own agency, so jumped into the agency world from there where I was her first hire. We serviced clients of all backgrounds. We stayed in the multi-family industry, but also worked with consumer packaged goods, brands and architecture firms. You name it. It was truly all over the place. I worked with her for a couple of years and then she actually ended up starting a very popular brewery. It's all over the country now. It's called Manhattan Project Beer. They're at Whole Foods and they have a brewery here in Dallas. I was able to go out and start working for an international food brand company. This was a very unique part of my career journey. This company serves international food brands ranging from hot sauce, polenta, balsamic vinegar, truly all over the place with their different brands, but it was very fun because we were interacting with people in Italy, New Zealand, Sydney. They built out their social media department so that they could offer that as a service in addition to doing their US distribution. I was able to build that up from scratch. We created our own pitch decks, our social media strategies for the different brands and started everything from scratch under that company. Ultimately two years later, that company dissolved and I was able to do my own thing and acquired a few of their brands as my first clients.

Russel: 5:46

I'm noticing a theme here, either whether from your own ambition or the roles you were taking on, you were an entrepreneur before your name was on the governing documents. That was gonna be my next question is what actually led you to starting your own agency? It sounds like your role dissolved, but did you feel like you were ready to be an owner at that point? Tell us what was going through your mind at the time.

Jordan: 6:03

It was a perfect storm, to be honest, with them hiring me at that last job to build everything out for their company. I basically did the same exact thing for my own company. It obviously was a little scary in the beginning because I didn't know for sure if I would be able to acquire those clients in the beginning, and I definitely had to prove myself. But once I got my first client, an Australian licorice brand and a Columbian hot sauce brand. Once I had those two secured, I felt pretty confident that, okay, let's go ahead and get this LC going, let's make this a thing.

Russel: 6:38

Were you nervous? Or maybe as you said, once you got those couple of clients, you're like, all right, I've got enough to feed the family kind of thing, building confidence obviously along the way?

Jordan: 6:46

I was nervous for probably the first two years, to be honest. It's almost like it was too good to be true, is this going to crash at any point? If one client pulls out, are they gonna pull the rug out from underneath me? But ultimately I was able to pick up different tidbits from different clients and identify what areas were truly my strong points and gain more clients from there. I started as just marketing consulting, and then I realized, okay, social media is where it's at and what people are asking for right now. Let's hone in on social media and also influencer marketing, and that's where new clients started coming in. Truly through word of mouth, it's crazy how small the world is, but it works out in the entrepreneur space because as long as you have a good network you can usually grow a business.

Russel: 7:35

Going back to what you mentioned earlier, what compelled you to jumpstart your career in terms of becoming a mother at a young age, how has that impacted your journey? What were some of the obstacles you had to overcome?

Jordan: 7:45

I definitely didn't take the most common path, becoming a mom at a young age, but I do feel like it did in the long run set me up for success. You stay humble when you're a teen mom and only parent, and your priorities are so much different. Truly, failure wasn't an option for me. I needed to be successful to be able to give my son, my family the lifestyle that I had when I was a kid. It's truly that grit mentality where, yes, I will do the job because I need the work, and I'm going to put my all in it because I want it to be successful. I want the partnership to be successful. I want the client to be successful. Then of course, if those two things are successful, then in the long run I'll be successful. I think that's something that can sometimes be different where you just say yes and figure it out later. The figuring it out part is actually sometimes easier than it sounds. You can pretty much figure out anything at the end of the day.

Russel: 8:40

Very inspirational. I love the power of a good have to. What can be more important of a have to than that? I appreciate you sharing that part of your story. Not too long after you ended up starting the business, the pandemic hit. A lot of times that comes up in the conversation on the podcast stories, but sounds like there was a silver lining that came out of that for you. How did the pandemic affect your business and then how'd you get well on the other side of it?

Jordan: 9:02

The pandemic of course, was a crazy and wild time for everyone. I think it was maybe month one of Covid. I was still pretty much in denial that Covid was a thing at this point. My largest account was an international account and they had to make a very important decision to ultimately shut down their US marketing department. There was just so much unknown at the time with borders being shut down and nobody knew what the future was going to look like for anyone. Especially for two different countries having to work together through a pandemic. That was my first account to lose through the pandemic, and again, it was my largest. This client I had worked with them for a long time, for a little over four years, and I've built such a close relationship with them where he talked to me and was just like, hey Jordan, I just wanna let you know, as a friend, this is a real thing. You should start preparing now to start losing a lot of your accounts and a lot of your clients, I feel like I need to tell you that. I was like geez. Thanks. Way to lay it on me.

Russel: 10:01

Happy Monday to you too, sir.

Jordan: 10:02

For 24 hours I was in shock like, okay, truly what is the next year plus gonna look like for me? I think it was maybe two weeks later, I got a phone call from someone in a completely different business, but it's back in the retail space. They were like, hey, we need to bring you on. We need social media for these three retail centers in Dallas. I was like, okay, let's do this, and I've had that account for three years now, and that account has, I think, doubled in size since then. It was that moment that I was like, okay, social media truly isn't going anywhere and social media is vital in a marketing strategy as a whole especially when the world is shutting down. That's how you have to stay in touch with your customers and drive awareness, sales and conversion. Proving the importance in a moment where people are having to make those difficult decisions. It was a very eyeopening conversation that was like, okay, social media isn't going anywhere.

Russel: 10:58

We thought MySpace might be around forever, and then we saw where that went, but It seems like the platforms that are popular today have lasted a very long time. It sounds like retail has been a big focus for you. Has that been something you've naturally gravitated towards because of a certain desire or passion? Or was it more serendipitous? What's the good, bad and ugly of being focused on the retail world?

Jordan: 11:18

My first retail client was definitely serendipitous. It was another referral and it started with a different retail center in Dallas. They're one of my longest standing clients. I've had them for a little over five years, and it started with one retail center and we now have, I think eight, maybe nine retail centers across the country for this one account. It's grown a lot. The partnership itself has grown to where the first retail center we were solely doing social media marketing and now we're doing content, influencer campaigns, launching TikTok. It was serendipitous, but also building that relationship with the client, improving our value has become a big driver in that success. With the retail space, of course, when people hear retail, especially after talking about Covid, what is the future of retail? It's always a conversation, what is going to happen in the next five years? Are we going to go strictly e-com or will brick and mortar stay strong? There are stats out there, I pulled two for this call, physical stores still account for 87% of all sales, and retail annual growth rate increased from 5% to 19% from 2010 to 2021. Significant growth, and with the need for curbside pickup, brick and mortar stores being able to offer that, retail is going to stay strong.

Russel: 12:35

We need somewhere to go now that we've been sitting in our homes all day in our pajamas for all those that work remotely now. We can't stay in our homes a hundred percent of the time. Business ups and downs, obviously had the pandemic in an early phase in your business. Have you reached a turning point yet, or is it still in front of you where you feel like, I've got this. I'm not as stressed, I'm not as nervous anymore. I'm confident in what we're doing and how we're getting clients. Where is that in the journey for you so far?

Jordan: 12:58

I had that moment probably about a year ago, where I felt like, okay, we're good. I feel great about this. I don't feel like I am as much of a startup and more of an actual agency that's a fully serviced agency. I've been able to build out an incredible team of smart and creative women. We're a female team and that's been a big part of our journey and growth. Obviously it started with me just being a one woman show and now I have five full-time employees and then content creators as well. Being able to, from day one figure out, what is our core service? Is it going to be web design and PR influencers, or is it going to be social media and brand marketing? Identifying that is truly our strong suit and that's always gonna be our cores. Knowing that's our core, we have our processes in place, we can onboard a client very quickly, turn things around and coast from there. We're not in the phase anymore where it's okay, let's Google this. How do we get this type of verbiage in a contract or whatever stat we need to land the plane and get the client. It's less of the figuring it out and now just the execution.

Russel: 14:08

I imagine that's gotta feel good, right? To finally be in that place from the 2018 version of Jordan.

Jordan: 14:13

Yes, it's definitely a 180. Thank goodness.

Russel: 14:17

What are you most excited about going forward? What gets you outta bed in the morning?

Jordan: 14:20

I'm truly excited about the team that we have in our clientele. Our clients are amazing and we have such strong relationships with them, they make our job fun. Then also we're working with clients in Austin now, and Southern California and San Francisco. Being able to spread our wings outside of Dallas has been motivating. We're able to fine tune our processes for those out-of-state clients, which opens up the door for more opportunity. We've also recently launched TikTok services. That's been something that we're excited about and something that we see growing a bit over the next year, especially.

Russel: 14:58

I love TikTok maybe too much. I think it's amazing.

Jordan: 15:01

It's addicting for sure.

Russel: 15:03

And I don't care who has my information because I'm on TikTok. I'm still doing TikTok. I know that's always been shying people away from it or whatever, but I don't care. You can have it. When you look at long term business goals, five, ten years from now, maybe more, what are those goals? What do you hope The Nix Company will look like then?

Jordan: 15:18

Five to ten years I see ourselves being strongly rooted in Dallas with national reach. Being a leader in the retail marketing and hospitality space, and then evolving our services as the state of social media evolves.

Russel: 15:33

Wonderful. Look forward to seeing that. Last big question for you, Jordan. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Jordan: 15:39

Yes. I love this question and I love that everyone has different but very good answers to this question. My take on it is, you can have people that are born an entrepreneur and everyone can be made an entrepreneur. However, I think there is certain personalities that thrive as an entrepreneur, and the people that thrive as an entrepreneur are the people that are fueled by the downfalls, the hurdles, and the rejection, and that's their motivation to grow and evolve from there. I think that's been a big part of my success is the downfalls, the rejection, not getting this client. Let's prove the Australian brand that social media is important, making that big Covid rejection our motivation.

Russel: 16:23

I love that answer. I equate it to even my own journey of, if I'm being honest about it, a little bit of a chip on my shoulder in terms of, I'll show you kind of thing. I'm gonna get this right, I'm going to be successful. I don't know if that's how you'd equate it as well, but that's what that reminded me of.

Jordan: 16:35

Yeah, absolutely.

Russel: 16:36

If people wanna know more about The Nix Company, where can they go?

Jordan: 16:39

You can find us on, maybe start at TikTok. We're TheNixCo on TikTok. The Nix Company on Instagram and our website is theNixcompany.co.

Russel: 16:49

I know the next TikTok channel I'm gonna go look for when I pull out my phone when we're done with this. Wonderful story, so inspiring on so many levels. Thank you so much for your time and for being on the show.

Jordan: 16:58

Thank you so much for having me.

17:03

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.

Jordan: 17:37

We were in Carlsbad and I'm trying to find a dinner spot. I'm driving, I have a photographer next to me and two social media managers in the backseat, and we're trying to figure out where to go. We see the Carlsbad sign that kind of arches over the street, and I look over and one social media manager is leaning over the next. Everybody's heads are out the windows trying to capture content of this Carlsbad sign. There's traffic looking at us like, who are these people? There's always a joke that whenever we're traveling together, or even at our clients, we look like we're not from here because we're always creating content. We're only missing like the selfie stick. If only we had the selfie stick and a fanny pack. We wouldn't look like we're just social media managers or an agency trying to create content.

Russel: 18:23

Maybe, companies out there looking to pick their next social media agency, your social media people should look like tourists everywhere they go is maybe what I'm reading in between the lines there.