Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brenda Torres. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brenda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses

We are a family owned, mother-son business. We both come from military backgrounds, and a desire to have control and ownership of our deliverables and time.

Interestingly, my son is a balance to all that we do, in the sense that he can focus more on tasks when his time is fluid (often at 3am!) While I am more structured and adhere to a more of a 9-5 schedule, I love being able to count on him for times when I am networking, shaking hands, and collaborating with local groups and non-profits. I am more of the social butterfly of our brand, while he is the fluid creative who can discern a client’s vision thoroughly.

We still meet on Mondays to go over on-going, new and pending projects, but can easily have fun talking about our next cruise to the Caribbean as a family unit. We know to have work/life boundaries as warranted, however, are easily comfortable catching up about a client at any time. Another huge benefit is, we know each other’s personality and way of thinking, eliminating the adaptation to workflow by a mile!

Brenda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We are an Orlando local mom-son team. My name is Brenda Torres and I am the Wizard of Wants & Storytelling for Nik of Time Marketing Co. I create WOWS! My son is Nick Santelises, and is our master graphics designer and luxury travel contentproject manager. I am a Dr. Phillips High School graduate, and have lived here for over 40 years. Nick was born in Orlando, and just got out of the US Air Force and joined me at Nik of Time in mid 2022.

Our mission is to offer budget-friendly creative visibility for small businesses in our community.

For the majority of my professional career, I had worked in the corporate marketing space, until COVID. I started my own media LLC in 2020, with our first creative project being a direct-to-mailbox luxury magazine. During that time, while meeting small businesses in our community as advertising partners, I would often be asked for help with ads graphic design, social media tips, or their social media management. I learned two things: social media felt overwhelming for the average small community business, and that the average customized, client specific, branded content management proposition was grossly outside of the small business owner’s budget scope.

After 14 issues of our luxury magazine, I found myself spending more time helping our advertising clients with limited said requests, in exchange for the magazine ads’ commitment. But wait! Although limited and basic, I was doing BOTH for the price of one, and at the same time, the costs of running the magazine business were increasing. It was time to pivot! While the luxury magazine model still exists in our market, and is a beautiful one, I felt far more compelled to offer a more customized approach to client’s social media management and graphics design, at a very affordable budget. I took time to listen to our client’s needs at the moment, and turned our 100% focus on saving our clients 4 hours a week as well as eliminating the creative block, by providing budget-friendly creative content that serves their business with purpose.

I am most proud of how many clients we have helped grow! We have identified growth potential for our company, and in efforts to provide a more rounded list of marketing needs to them, we joined a collaborative in late 2022; expanding our portfolio of offerings to branding photography, in-studio headshots, videography and social video strategy! Why do it all yourself when you can join a group of professional creatives to help your mission? With that, it has afforded us time to contribute and donate to non-profits in our community.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We strongly believe in the power of givers gain. When getting out into the market, we were responsible in edifying the hard work of those small business friends already around us. Reaching out to our small and intimate circle was important, and asking them what we could help them with FIRST. We sought to understand their business model and their pain points, so that we could offer solutions through the power of our personal friends network. If we could not help, we always promised we would connect them with someone who could. We met our promises!

From the onset, we sought opportunities to GIFT our talent. We volunteered our time for military golf tournaments, for heroes galas, and generously gave away our services to raise funds! For those efforts, in a very short time, we have been recognized with awards.

We have been consistent in that mentality, givers gain. Not just a temporary display of kindness, but an ever present and available disposition to our community. Our clients and business friends know it!  We are proud to have been asked into the Feed & Fortify Board of Directors, leadership within BNI (Business Network International,) and Founding member of the Orlando Women for Good.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Two things are the most rewarding for us as creatives.

One – the great voluntary testimonials we get from our clients.

Two – seeing how proudly our clients display our creative work! Whether it is a business window wrap, a retractable banner, a business card, or social media post, we love seeing our work filling up walls!

Contact Info:

• Website: nikoftimemktg.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/nikoftimemktgco
• Facebook: facebook.com/nikoftimemktgco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nik-of-time-mktg-co/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=40je3Cklo7JYc1dLm7JqQQ
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nicksantelises
• Other: All of our print magazine work – https://citylifestyle.com/southorlando/issues

Image Credits
Bozanich Photography for all headshots