Christopher Nesbit did web development from the tender age of seven. He's been an art teacher, a computer technician, a manager of retail stores, even a CNC technician. He's owned several businesses from web development to marketing. All of these experiences gave him a solid foundation for Industrial Marketing. Listen as he shares his NoDegree story with Jonaed.
Chris was very close to graduating college when his girlfriend at the time moved to Maine. He followed suit with the intent to finish college there. That never happened. [Timestamp 1:13]
Good work ethic, how did Chris get it?
Working from an early age cultivated this quality in him. He always dressed for the job he wanted. Being well trained played a key role in him knowing how to interview. [Timestamp 1:49]
His strategy for interviewing with no degree?
He was not deceptive about not having a degree but if they didn't bring it up, he didn't bring it up. [Timestamp 8:05]
One of the best industries to work without a degree?
Manufacturing since you can start out on the floor and end up becoming a manager or director of production.Benefits of a Tech school or STEM/STEAM programs? Apprenticeship programs are available that pay you to work with companies. [Timestamp 13:12]
How to get ahead without a degree?
Dedication and willingness to learn. [Timestamp 15:52]
Why some people don't get degrees?
People with no degrees crave knowledge, they education system just doesn't stimulate them enough. So they find their own way to learn what they want. [Timestamp 18:02]
Interested in starting your own business?
Start as soon as possible. Fail fast and fail often in order to figure out what worked and what didn't. [Timestamp 32:55]
What taught Chris everything he needed to know about business?
In spite of the college courses he took, it was owning and operating a business for five years. [Timestamp 33:25]
A mistake many people make?
Not setting high enough goals and going after them. Doing so changes your trajectory forever. [Timestamp 35:44]
Need marketing for your industrial company?
Get in touch with Christopher Nesbit .
Contact info:
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Remember, no degree? No problem!
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:00:00] Welcome to the 19th episode of the NoDegree Podcast. Here's your host Jonaed Iqbal, and today's guest is Christopher Nesbit, the founder of Nesbit Marketing, a firm specializing in industrial marketing. Chris has worked as a marketing executive for a large industrial company. He has also owned several of his own businesses and has worked with a master screen print technician for one of the world's largest print companies.
Chris was able to apply marketing concepts while running his own businesses. Listen to how Chris moved up and got to where he is today.
Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/nodegree. Every contribution is appreciated. The show is impossible without you. Let's get this show started.
Welcome to another episode of the no degree podcast, and today's guest is Christopher Nesbitt, a great friend of mine, and I'll let him introduce himself.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:00:55] Hello everyone. I'm Christopher Nesbit from Nesbit marketing. I'm really excited to be on the show.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:01:00] So let's go back to the beginning. You actually went to college, but you didn't finish. Take me through that.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:01:05] I actually went through a whole process all the way through high school and up through college of visual communications, psychology, and entrepreneurship.
I was very close to graduating. It was at the time, dating a girl. She decided to move out to Maine. I followed her thinking that I was going to end up in a college on the other end to finish my degree. That never happened due to some financing problems that came up, became very challenging to get additional financing for the school that I had chosen.
I just started working and year went by and two years went by and eventually, you know, I was in a career without necessarily a degree.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:01:41] When you got your first job, what'd you end up working at? And did the lack of degree ever caused an issue? Like how'd you sort of go about finding a job?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:01:49] I've worked from a very early age. As soon as I was allowed to legally work, I was working. And even before that I was working for my family's business. You know, his family, just doing odd jobs here and there. So I've always had a pretty strong work ethic. But after I left school. I would always show up in a suit. I'd always dress for the job that I wanted.
So that's a really good saying. That does hold true. I'd show up, I'd interview well, I'd been trained well to do that by my parents and my schools that I'd been through. And you have to play their game for sure. But you also have to be intelligent. You have to have a good track record. And so I really focused on my experience.
I really focused on the skill set that I knew I had from a leadership development angle. And a lot of the time I ended up in management roles.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:02:34] What were some earlier jobs you had? Let's talk about that and what skills did they get you.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:02:38] I did a few different things early on. Even before I was old enough to actually work, I was starting businesses. So I started a web development company doing websites for people way back in the 90s so I was probably six or seven doing that.
You know, programming, forraw HTML. So I did a couple websites that way. And then I also, as an art teacher, I had learned some very proprietary art techniques that I was teaching people in workshops. And then later on I ended up working for my dad as a computer technician over the summers. Uh, he used to work with the Travis city school system and that com computers would hire me to work technicall part time, but actually full time. Stripping down computers, testing, computer parts, sorting computer parts. And I did that for several summers. Through high school I worked at a sign shop making banners and building signage, and that was really the beginning of what I consider to be my career now because I was doing a lot of graphics work.
I was also attending a career focused school, which was visual communications technology. Or visual information technology. And I did that for two years, and then I ended up in college for another two years, local college, and then I was three years at a university, same programs, visual communication technology.
And then I ended up in management out in Maine after I left school. And that was managing five retail stores out there. Keyholder coat holder with a staff of between five and 10 people per store. Did that for two years and then I moved back and I worked for another company to more sign companies. One very large one that I worked for for a long time that was involved in high volume and high paying customer, high ticket customer. Sign making through digital printing as well as screen printing. And so I was a master press technician for them, lead press technician, and so I did that for five years and then I started my business, my first business. That actually did a lot. So I mean you got to define which businesses do a lot and which ones just kind of Peter out.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:04:45] What was that first business?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:04:47] One was a, a prototyping and product development company. And we used 3D printing and CAD design as like our core, to help companies take --and individuals-- take their ideas, for instance, a napkin all the way up through, uh, tooling and design for manufacturing as well as we assisted in a lot of the patent process. So we did a pretty broad range of services that supported people all the way from their idea to manufacturing.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:05:15] What were some other jobs that you sort of held after? So you had, you know, the managed retail stores, you had this business for some other things you did?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:05:22] All the way through. I was always pushing side hustles. I mean, I had a graphic design slash marketing company for many years. I also worked at wineries. I worked for Radio Shack right before they collapsed. That was interesting. But when you're in a business mindset and you watch some of the things that they were doing, you could see the writing on the wall before they ever announced anything.
So this was right between their first bankruptcy and their second bankruptcy. So I learned some interesting things, even by just doing retail. On the side for them is kind of a filler. I worked as a sommlier at a self pour tap house wine tap house. That was really interesting. I really had a high passion for wine. I don't know why. It's just always stuck and then I left--Trevor City shut down my business. We had kind of hit a spot where it was like, okay, we need to make a decision. Are we going to leave this smaller town and go to a bigger city and try something different, or are we going to try and stick it out here and maybe just continue living the way we are.
So we packed everything up. We sold the business, or you know, shut down the business. Then we came down to Grand Rapids without a job. My wife had a job that I didn't have a job. There were actually a lot of positions. So I mean, to tie it back into the not having the degree, there were a lot of positions that were available that I didn't have access to necessarily because they all required a bachelor's degree or higher.
So I applied for them anyways, and I had an excellent resume built up as far as how to structure things and overlap and gaps with the side hustles and things like that. So I never showed any gaps in my employment. I went in really hard and I, I pitched high. So one of my strategies for not having a degree, as I always ask for more than they're offering, always break the cap.
That kind of puts you in a position to leverage when you go in and start talking that way because it's like, well, what makes this guy think that he can ask for more money than we're offering? And it's like I provide the value and then obviously you prove it when you come in and do your interview.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:07:13] Did you ever lose an opportunity for not having a degree? Like let's say you got the interview and they say, "Hey, you know, do your lack of degree," or you just really made sure to sell yourself and really highlight your experiences.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:07:24] I think a little bit early in-- so when I worked for the large sign maker for five years, I was passed up for some internal positions. But I was still making significant advancement in the company and much faster than a lot of people were.
So I believe the reason that I didn't get put in the position that I was looking for wasn't necessarily due to my degree or my experience. I honestly believe that it was because I was too valuable or where I was at. And that happens sometimes too.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:07:51] That's an issue a lot of people face where they actually become so good at their job that they don't want you to leave. Okay, so that's pretty good. Did it ever come up in conversation? Did people ask about your degree or you were just so good at your job that you focus on that? It never really came up.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:08:05] One of my strategies in the interviews has always been, I don't bring it up. They don't bring it up. If they ask about college, I will talk about my experience in college.
So I do believe that it was valuable to have been in college. And I'll usually say, you know, I did five years in college slash university with these majors. I almost had never been asked if I graduated. And so I'm still able to say that truthfully, I'm not being deceptive. I've still got a lot of skills in that timeframe, but I don't necessarily have to tell them that I didn't get a degree.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:08:34] And you are good at your job, so at the end of the day, that doesn't matter. Let's go back to sort of the drafting. How'd you learn the drafting, the AutoCAD and all that stuff? Like how'd you get into 3D printing.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:08:44] It was kind of a weird connection because I took one class in high school. I really enjoyed it. Started out as a manual drafting class and quickly evolved into a CAD drafting class. Within the first couple of weeks, the teacher was pretty clear that I was flying through his material really fast, and so we ended up developing a project agreement with the teacher that basically went something like, if we do one big project for the whole semester, will you give us an A if we do it right. And so we went through the whole process of designing a submarine, a remote control submarine with a camera, and, and then we had to design the whole thing, build the whole thing, and then compete at state. That was the beginning of it. And then I didn't really touch on it for very long.
But what's interesting is that when you get into vector based graphic design, it's actually very similar to some of the CAD design stuff. I was able to transition pretty quickly. But the 3D printing stuff was kind of an interesting start. That happened probably 10 years after my high school class.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:09:43] What time was this? What year was this?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:09:45] It was right in the middle of the housing bubble recession, right after--
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:09:49] 2008, 2009
Christopher Nesbit: [00:09:50] Yeah, somewhere around there. 2009 I think.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:09:51] It's was still--That was still early for 3D printing. Right. Cause it's, especially in the Latin now, it's like you have home three D printers that you can buy. But that was really when it was not as common. Right. You didn't really have many.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:10:01] There was some, what I call hack bots out there where people were building them in their garage and maybe MakerBot was just kind of getting started, but wasn't well known. But the 3D printers that I initially had worked with, I contracted with a lot of the vendors that the big print houses that have farms of these giant industrial, 3D printers that do almost perfect resolution without any indication that it's a 3D printer. So I would contract their downtime and then I would go out and fill that for them. Initially, that's how I got started. And then by the time I was done, almost four or five years later, I had thirteen 3D printers at one given time. And there was one time where I was servicing and selling a whole bunch of 3D printers to the school system as well. We did a whole lot, but the CAD side of it kind of came as a necessity. Because as people came to me, they, I realized very quickly they didn't have the CAD and it quickly became the lifeblood of what I was doing with that particular company.
So we would design their product for them. And so we went from a free Tinkercad type program, which was a cloud based CAD design program to a Solid Works within about two or three years. And we became very, very proficient with Solid Works so ...
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:11:15] How'd you sort of self-teach yourself the Solid Works?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:11:19] Yeah. So again, it kind of comes back to, you know, these platforms are fairly similar, whether it's CAD or it's vector based graphic design. I just got in there and I started tinkering with it and I knew that I did a project for myself is what basically happened. So I wanted to design a custom cubby for my closet and I had one of those really cheap cube book cases. What I did was I designed all of the little niches inside the, uh, the cubbies inside so it would fit my lighter, put my sunglasses, or fit my colognes or whatever. And it was all perfect and it was flush, but you could see everything. So that was kind of like my first dive into it. And then I just started diving into customer products. There was some learning curve to it for sure. But I, I was able to get through.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:12:06] What opportunities are sort of available in manufacturing. Like what routes are there, cause you seem to know a lot about manufacturing and you know, that's where you have a lot of experience in.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:12:14] So there are a lot of opportunities in manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing is probably one of the few places that I think that people can get ahead without a degree. And that's one of the reasons that I focus, not one of the reasons that I focused on it, but I kind of landed in it. There are things where you can start out on the floor of a place and ended up becoming a manager, or you know a director of the production. There's also opportunities for, you know, running factories or lines and things like that down on the floor. But there's also opportunities to be in sales and technician roles that they'll train you up and through. So I do think that learning STEM, I mean what was it? Science--
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:12:51] Technology, Engineering, Math
Christopher Nesbit: [00:12:53] Exactly.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:12:54] Well, now it's STEAM. It's Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:12:58] They do run parallel, but they're looked at a little bit differently from the school system. The school system kind of decides which ones the priority STEM is usually the higher priority, but usually you can get involved in STEM programs without having to necessarily go to school.
You can go to a tech school, which is a great way to get STEM education. There's apprenticeship programs out there for high school students and people in that kind of range. Early college age, and. In high school where you can apprentice, they'll pay you to work through these companies and they pay you pretty well, and they'll also pay for your schooling as well.
So where are you training to be more specific and then you come out with a certification in something like Mechatronics and that pays very well. That's programming robots and designing automation lines.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:13:42] In your experience, what does it take to succeed in manufacturing? Like right, there's so many. Who do you see succeed in manufacturing versus, you know, people who sort of get stuck.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:13:51] I think you, you do have to be relatively intelligent, at least depending on where you end up for sure. I think a lot of people who are intelligent are gravitate towards manufacturing, at least on some level, but also it's not just intelligence, right? It's ambition. So you kind of need to be willing to learn new things and try different things and process driven mindset.
If you learn how to do something well, and you can either document that or replicate that in some form. Then that's really useful and valuable for companies, and they remember that.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:14:23] Who doesn't seem to do well in manufacturing or what type of personalities? You know, you--they kinda go in--
Christopher Nesbit: [00:14:28] That's probably a little bit better of a question. So personality wise, I think that you do have to have a little bit of a thick skin. There's all different types. A lot of these places are corporations. And if they're not corporations, then the small mom and pop shops, you know, there's going to be some ribbon going on. And I think that the culture is typically a little bit of an older style culture where it's, you know, you get here at this time and you leave at this time, expect to work overtime, those types of things.
If you're able to manage that and you're able to process that mentally and emotionally, you're going to be fine. But if somebody has to have their weekends off because they're not flexible and working overtime, that may not be a good fit for them.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:15:08] That's very good to know. What are some other ways to sort of succeed in manufacturing? Right? So you need to understand the culture. Who are the types of people that you really see succeed? But it really depends on the type of manufacturing,
Christopher Nesbit: [00:15:20] Cause there are lots of different types of manufacturing, right? And there are lots of different roles. So you could do marketing and manufacturing, you can do sales and manufacturing, and you could do the labor, or you could also be a production leads.
And then there's different types. Are they the screen printer that's pounding out 10,000 hits on signage and hour or a day, the shift. Or are they manufacturing injection molding? So they all have different skill sets and all the different personality requirements. I think a lot of it really boils down to a couple of different things.
One is dedication. My old boss used to say, you have to eat Crow for a little while. That means you got to learn from the old timers that have been there for a long time, and they may not be the nicest people and they may not want to teach you, so you just have to put up with that. But a lot of those guys have a ton of valuable information and resources and understanding experience in the process, and they'll be able to teach you a ton of tricks and hacks and um, ways to, to run things. And then on the other side of it too, you know, and again, you have to be willing to do above and beyond what you might've been hired to do from a degree standpoint. That is one of the things that's gotten me ahead is like, I'm willing to, to learn every single aspect of a shop.
And by usually the one or two year mark, I can run the shop by myself. Any machine, any process in the shop. As long as it's a one person job, I can do all of it. And if it's a two person job, I can take somebody who doesn't know how to do it at all and I can do that task with that person.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:16:51] What's some advice that you'd give to someone in high school? Cause for other industries you can sort of go on YouTube, learn online, right? So how does someone learn more about the manufacturing industry? Like what's the way to start to get their feet wet?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:17:03] Well, I know that a lot of the schools right now, like I mentioned before, have STEM pipelines that they're building in, at least in the areas that I was in, that we were, we were developing STEM talent pipelines, and we started very early on, you know, we were trying to introduce the 3D printing to kids as young as six and seven.
And then, you know, we were trying to develop them as a potential opportunity down the road. But there's also a lot of really interesting tech programs in high school. I think vocational training is not the right word for it anymore. There's different levels of vocational training. We had a program, I believe it was called M-Tech, and it was through the college, but it was a high school program.
It was kind of like an advanced program. And all that they focused on was things that were really kind of leaning very strongly towards things like robotics and manufacturing, other tech industries. They taught at a very high level. I think that a lot of the time with with degrees, especially, people don't tend to get them because they need to be stimulated.
They crave knowledge, but they just don't-- aren't happy with the knowledge that they're getting from the education system, and so they find a way to educate themselves. And these tech programs are an amazing way to get both best of both worlds.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:18:23] Yeah. You mentioned that you really learned a lot from just the people who are in the programs who are in the jobs, right? They have so much knowledge. And you said they're kind of old school. What's a good way to sort of break their shell to kind of become friends with them? Because I learned so much from other people. So what's the proper way? How do you get them to open up?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:18:43] I've always approached it from a mentor/apprenti kind of position, right. So whenever I come into a new job, I identify the tasks that I want to learn. But in particular, for me, it was always the biggest machine in the room was going to be mine within two to three months. I always hit that timeline when I did whatever I had to do to get next to those people and start learning from them.
And so sometimes it's, it means just watching what they do. And a lot of the time they're not going to like that. But you got to tell them, "Hey look, it's, it's what I do. I need to learn this one way or another. And you look like you're the best at it." So you kind of. Try to soften the blow a little bit by letting them know you're here to learn from them.
The other side of it too is kind of get close to the boss, whoever the manager is that's running the floor, or you know, even higher up if you're in the offices and things like that, get close with the boss. And I'm not saying like overdo it where you don't ever give them two seconds of peace, but make sure they know who you are.
So you're having regular conversations with them that they're aware of the goals that you want to accomplish. That's a big one, is you need to make sure that the people that have the ability to influence the direction that you're going to take, and that company is aware of the direction that you want to take in that company. And depending on the boss, you usually can get a lot of value out of that.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:20:00] You brought up a great point that you kind of have to let them know what you want to do. So would you say that when you go in that it really depends on what you make of it and you really have flexibility or it's like, "Hey, if you come in as a labor, you're kind of stuck in that line."
Christopher Nesbit: [00:20:15] I don't think so at all. I mean, I think you, you have to be realistic. You know, you're not going to necessarily go from running a labor on the floor to CEO in two years. And I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the goal that you should present to your boss, but if you're on labor and making boxes for deliveries that are going out that month and you're doing 10,000 of those or whatever it is, and then you want to be running, maybe the CNC or the--the giant screen press in the other room. Just as an example of my experience, make that statement say, "I'd like to end up there. That's kind of my end goal. I'm willing to go through whatever process you need me to go through now" and a lot of the time and then tell them, look, I'm happy to be cross trained and that's a good, valuable resist for you because if you ever have a gap open up, I can jump right in.
Right? So being trained and available before you're needed. Is a great way to get yourself into those positions.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:21:07] What are some misconceptions people have about manufacturing?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:21:10] One of the big ones for me, and I'm guilty of it too, because when I started looking for jobs and went into manufacturing, I thought that manufacturing was a very dirty job. And the almost 15 or so years that I've been involved in manufacturing now, I've seen a big shift where facilities are starting to get a lot brighter, starting to focus a lot more on air quality, employee safety, organization. Going lean makes a big difference for these companies, and a lot of them are taking that very seriously.
So they're changing and they're no longer necessarily very dirty jobs. A lot of them are becoming more technologically advanced, clean facilities that are focused on efficiency.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:21:50] And I think I'll share some of the videos you have. Yeah. You showed me the factory. It was like very well lit. It was like super high tech clean. It was cleaner than most corporate offices. It was like they really take care of the stuff in terms of the environment and all that. So you have like the sales you have. What are some jobs that people don't necessarily think of when they think of manufacturing? Sales is very important. What else?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:22:13] The company in my eyes, breaks down to a couple of key areas. You've got sales, typically you have some form of service or maintenance, and then you also, I mean, I'm speaking mostly from CNC manufacturers. That's some of my experience, but you end up having sales. You've got marketing, you've got the service angle, you've got the maintenance angle, you've got a lot of the executive roles like accountant, CEO, president, whatever it happens to be.
There's also typically project management. That's also, from my experience, I've seen a lot of people without degrees be able to get into that and make good money. And it's very rewarding work. You know, you know what you've done in the world. Those are kind of the big ones.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:22:55] What are some the rewarding aspects of working in manufacturing? Cause I know it's very cool to like see something star and you create this amazing thing, right? To see something being 3D printed. What are some highlights? What are some things to look forward to at a manufacturing job?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:23:11] I think for me it was always that I was able to see and touch a lot of the things in the real world that I had made or helped make or had a part that was made by me or by my, you know, my company. When I was in the sign company industry, we printed all of the printed, built and installed all of the signs for United Airlines. Same thing with Wells Fargo. These are big companies that we had touched in my own personal company. I worked with Harley Davidson and a few other companies, at least things that I had worked on ended up in products that they made.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:23:42] Okay. That's pretty cool. So you mentioned you worked for a CNC manufacturer. What is a CNC manufacturer?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:23:47] Well, CNC is computer numerical control. Basically what that means is that it's a cutting device designed to cut up metal. Whether it's carving metal or it's just routing out, not all or any material really.
It doesn't have to be metal, but in the manufacturing sector, metal and plastic are the two big ones really, and carbon fiber is another one. Sometimes wood. Wood's a very big sector, but they're very accurate machines. They're technically a robotic machine, but they've been around for a fair amount of time and they've had a lot of development done on them.
If you think of 3D printing is building something up from material layer by layer, a CNC does it in reverse. But it takes away a little pieces of material at a time with a spinning, cutting head. Basically a backwards built drill bit, if you will, and it spends a very high RPMs and it will cut away material out of a block or a cylinder.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:24:39] You sort of fell into the marketing aspect of manufacturing. How'd you get into that and where did you learn the marketing? How'd you get good at it?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:24:47] The marketing has been the back and forth between signage, sales, marketing and manufacturing. When I moved down to Grand Rapids, I, I don't even remember applying for this job. I think I was scouted for it. But I had kind of all the above. I'd already made signage and they wanted somebody to do trade shows. And I had done marketing for my own company and I had owned a marketing company and a graphic design company and a web design company. So I had done all these things. And then I had the background in manufacturing and I had ran CNCs and I had programmed 3D printers.
So I understood a lot of the core. Functions of the company. And I came in and I, I identified that there were some flaws. And so I went to work on fixing those flaws from the trade showing angle. Cause I was originally hired as a technical sales assistant, which was a fancy way of saying, you set up our trade shows and tear them down.
And so, uh, I took a very personal approach to it and I-- I basically gutted that program and started from scratch and built them whole new structures from scratch, very large structures. We started scaling their boot capacity. We started doing more interesting and targeted branding and, and prep work leading up to the trade shows, and then we had new management come in.
Shortly after. I had started there about six months and I went straight to him on the first day that I met him, honestly, and I said to him, we have problems. We need to be working on our marketing, and we're not doing it because they had stopped marketing other than trade shows and some PaperClick stuff back in 2008 and after speaking with a lot of the salespeople, they were having some issues out there that they wanted to address.
And so I took it upon myself. I said, I will help you do this. Let's set a budget. We'll set a plan and we'll go out there and do it. Uh, without divulging too many of the specifics, which I'm not all not allowed to do, but we totally revamped the marketing program over the next two years with some very aggressive goals. And, uh, we were on track to hitting those goals from a revenue standpoint.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:26:48] So how does marketing in this sector differ from other sectors? Like what are some key differences? Cause. It's a totally different industry, right? I don't ever hear people saying, I do marketing and I want to learn marketing to and to do it for manufacturing company. Right? You always think of e-commerce, regular, traditional company. So how does marketing differ?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:27:07] It's more multi-pronged, that's for sure. The sales cycle is much longer. So I would say that our strategies follow something very similar to high ticket sale items. You know, you could look at things like super cars or houses and things like that, that, that are going to take a long time to close the sale.
Um, people may need to know about your company for a long time before they ever consider contacting you. That's definitely a few of the ways that my manufacturing operates too, and the average value of a CNC. There are certainly lower value CNCS out there, but the ones that we were selling between around $500,000 to $700,000 all the way up past 2000- or $2 million and the sales cycle could be anywhere from six months to two years.
When you start looking at that, your discovery cycle has to take place long before any of that takes place as well. And that discovery cycle could be up to a year as well. We had these massive long timelines, and so we have to find a way to keep that audience engaged in a way that is useful and interesting to them and be able to continue to talk to them for that period of time.
So again, if your whole process takes three years. Then you have to be continually working on different ways to touch your customer. We did everything from pay-per-click to content marketing, to trade shows to so many different things...sponsorships.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:28:28] So trade shows seem to be a big part of the sales. Can you expand more on that?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:28:34] Yeah, so a traditionally and for a very long time in manufacturing, especially in the OEM sector, uh, trade shows were kind of the, I believe it's like Original Equipment Manufacturer, I think. But basically OEM is like direct from manufacturer, essentially. Equipment typically has OEM. Basically that was like their main form of marketing and advertising for a long time and it's incredibly expensive, especially for machinery or manufacturers.
And a lot of the time you're taking your machine to the show and you're taking a whole bunch of people with you and it's very, very expensive. So companies are starting to ask now, like, how do we mitigate those costs because we can't have a necessarily direct ROI on some of those leads that are coming in.
There are good lead sources, and so that's why they keep doing them, but they're getting some diminishing returns and the cost continues to go up. Companies are getting creative now, they're being forced to go out and try different firms marketing to try and reduce that cost.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:29:31] So what are some new forms of marketing that the manufacturer in sector is adopting?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:29:36] You know, a lot of the digital stuff, email marketing. It's been involved for a while, but I think that people are starting to step up their list grows. I'm thinking that they are already starting to develop better pay-per-click strategies, funnels a lot of the things that some of the other industries are doing as well, but there's also new technology things like geo-fencing that's really effective and efficient.
I mean, to the point that it's scary how strategic some moves that you can make in manufacturing are to go out and capture market share.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:30:06] What is geo-fencing?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:30:08] Geo-fencing is you basically identify through an ad campaign, like a PaperClick or a banner ad campaign. You set up a fence, a digital fence around, or like a geospatial plot.
In the area that say for instance, is your competitor or your trade show booth, and anybody who enters into that space is displayed ads going forward. They're given a cookie on their phone and they carry that cookie around with them for like a month or so, and then the search engine or whoever's providing the geo fencing will then display banner ads to them based on that location.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:30:45] You sort of ventured off onto your own. It's always tough venturing out on your own. Where are some issues you face when you went out on your own?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:30:52] I was kind of prepared for it from a an experience standpoint, but I think that. It's always a mental battle or an emotional battle when you first start a company, when you think, I got my website up and running, why don't I have anybody there? It's a psychological, subconscious thing that's like, "well, I have a business now. I'm just going to have customers," and it's not the case. That never is the case. You have to put in the time to go out and find the customers, talk to the customers, start engaging with the customers. So sales is one of the trickier things in a startup because you have no awareness. A lot of companies that have been around for 10 or 15 years have had social proof more than a mile. They also have had exposure through advertising or just their brand existing and selling, whereas the startup has none of that. And typically it's done on a shoestring budget too. So you have to get very creative on how to market yourself with low capital. But it's possible.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:31:46] Have you sort of leveraged your experience in the industry in terms of contacts? Like are you reaching out to old people that you work with or has that really made it a lot easier or has all peer new contacts that you're sort of reaching out to?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:31:58] I would say that a majority of the contacts that I had were supportive. So I didn't have a lot of contacts in the industry necessarily that I could sell to when I came out of that role into this role. But one thing that I did have was supportive roles, and I understood how organizations work. So I knew where the magazine publishers were, and I knew where the trade show booth builders were, and I knew how to access those types of companies and talk to them and negotiate with them.
Well, I was able to go out and set up my network to backfill any gaps that a customer may have very easily and very quickly. And you know, we are able to coordinate all that and they're all vetted. I've used them all. That was something that I did that was leveraging my network. But beyond that, yeah, it's been a lot of new people. I've been networking like crazy for the last six months, seven months.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:32:45] When you're back in high school, you're a senior in high school, what route would you do today? Cause it's a different time, right? 10 years ago there so many different opportunities. What would you be more interested in?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:32:55] I would say that if you're interested in owning and operating your own business and or being an entrepreneur, I would start starting businesses as soon as possible. Fail fast, fail often with young people. I mean, don't give up on things necessarily, but definitely, you know, run a few companies into the ground and try and figure out what made them work or didn't work. And then you'll learn a lot more about business than you may by going to school a lot of the time. I mean, I bear in mind, I took a lot of business courses when I was in school and it was me running and operating that 3D printing business for five years, that taught me everything I needed to know about owning and operating a business.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:33:35] No great advice. And a lot of people have this misconception that a company is this large thing with a lot of employees. Companies typically start small. It's like you may offer one service, you can do it part time, you can do it while having a job, and then as you learn and as you get more experience. So now let me get a little more specific with that question. If you were trying to enter into manufacturing, you're entering manufacturing, what route would you sort of take today? Like knowing that you, you know, knowing the skill--
Christopher Nesbit: [00:34:01] As a job or as a startup?
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:34:03] No, as a job, or you could say start up too.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:34:05] Yeah, so as a job, I would say that people would be wise to get involved in those mentors slash apprenticeship programs through the school system. Try and figure out how to get that apprenticeship because those are the types of companies that are going to value you longterm. They're making an investment in you early. It's paid all these different things, so that would probably be my number one advice for somebody trying to get involved from an early, young age.
Then the other thing, from a startup angle, I probably wouldn't recommend somebody doing startup in manufacturing until they've spent some time in this space. So go work in the industry.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:34:42] Because it's expensive, right? I assume it's not just-- Because if your sales cycle is like one to three years, right? It may be three years before you're even making money. What you want to do
Christopher Nesbit: [00:34:53] You want to build up capital on your own, you know, in your savings account, essentially their startup capital for yourself to survive that initial onslaught of startup, you know, you're going to need some terminology understanding. You're going to need some process understanding.
You're going to need to understand how the organizations themselves are organized. And how to speak to them, and if you haven't done that part of it, then you need to go back and get some of that experience before you jump in. But broader than that, you know, if you were doing a regular startup where you, you know, you're just doing, say, graphic design and you know that well and you're very good at it, that kind of thing I would just jump in and start doing it.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:35:29] So what are some mistakes you've made or things you would have probably done differently had you? Or what are some mistakes that you see a lot of people doing that you're like, "Hey, you really shouldn't go about it that way. Right. In terms of relationships with their coworkers or industries"
Christopher Nesbit: [00:35:44] I would say that a lot of people don't set their own bar high enough. They get comfortable, they get a paycheck, they get comfortable, and they just. Stick with what they know how to do, and they may pick up a little bit along the way, but for the most part, they're just not shooting very high. And if I could see more people setting higher goals for themselves and going after them, then I think that that is incredibly valuable and it will change their trajectory forever.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:36:11] Cool. I mean, let's slowly start to wrap up. I mean, I really want to thank you for your time. Any sort of last words for the audience?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:36:18] Choose early. I'm not saying that you can't change your industry, your sector, even your career throughout your life or your career path. But, um, do try to decide. From a big picture where you want to end up, are you going to be a business owner or are you going to just be an entrepreneur working to get to that CEO level? Are you just content with being at a certain level, but you know, maybe a management level. And all of those are okay, but if you know early on what that looks like for you, you can set your goals accordingly.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:36:48] How would someone sort of get in contact, you know, sort of follow you? What's the best way to reach out if someone has some questions for you or is interested in your services?
Christopher Nesbit: [00:36:56] It's Nesbit Marketing. Just about every platform it's @NesbitMarketing. I'm also. On LinkedIn for my personal account, I'm almost every day I'm there. So that's Christopher Nesbit, and then a website is www.nesbitmarketing.com I'll throw my phone number out there. It's (231) 360-0179
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:37:16] So we'll have that in the show notes and everything. So I just really want to thank you for your time. It's been amazing. And you know, Chris and I have known each other for some time or. Involved in a lot of interesting projects. So you'll see us together doing some things, and you'll see him as a regular guest on the. You know, LinkedIn live shows that I do, so feel free to reach out to him. Thank you so much. You have a great day. Looking forward to working together with you.
Christopher Nesbit: [00:37:40] Thank you.
Jonaed Iqbal: [00:37:43] Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information is valuable and you learned a lot. Stay tuned. For the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. NoDegree wants to remain free from influence so that you can talk about this topic without bias.
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