We were lucky to catch up with Josh Norris recently and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

When I started Aftershock Enterprises in 2008, it was just me. I started out offering general marketing services such as graphic design, email marketing and marketing material printing. Over the course of the first three years I studied web design online, Google PPC Advertising, text marketing and overall marketing strategy and began to offer those services as well. I hired my first person in 2012 to offer social media management to our clients which was very new at the time. As my companies revenue began to grow I started to hire people to replace me doing all the production work in each area. Since I know the job and the technical skill required, it made hiring much easier. In interviews I was able to ask technical questions about the position and communication questions with customers that I knew were necessary to be successful at the position. By 2014 I was in a position to where all my production was being done by the team and I was just overseeing the quality of the work and spending the majority of my time growing our customer base and putting SOPs into the business to make it more efficient. I found that the best employees for us were referrals from current employees, generally ones already working in the industry or someone they graduated college with. Because of this, we were able to keep our average employee over three years at Aftershock Enterprises.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started in marketing when I was 18 years old doing lead boxes for Bally Total Fitness. I was then hired by a local fitness chain Pure Fitness to start and run their outside marketing program at 19. On the side I started an online wellness business that sold nutrition and beauty products and learned how to market them online and sell directly to consumers. In 2008 I started my own company Aftershock Enterprises (which would become Aftershock Digital) offering marketing services to other businesses. After bootstrapping the company for 4 years and learning the technical knowledge to do everything, I began hiring and growing the company. In 2022 I sold Aftershock Digital and was retained by the company who bought it for 6 months as the COO to help with the transition. In August of 2023 I went into the hospital for the second time in two years with heart failure, after medication would not help my heart ejection fraction improve I ended up getting a heart transplant on October 4th through a series of miracles. Through this process of getting a new start on life I decided to take my career in a different direction and became a Senior Partner at Arrive Financial to help them grow the company from a current 8 figure business to their goal of 9 figures in the next 4 years. Helping people protect their family with life insurance, retirement plans, estate plans and health insurance is very close to my heart after going through such a life changing health challenge and having three children and my wife of 17 years.

Through my time at Aftershock Digital, I helped multiple companies market themselves and grow from 0 to 8 figure companies. I always enjoyed being a part of their win. Today with Arrive Financial, I am excited to put not only my marketing skills, but my company operational skills to work helping Arrive Financial achieve their goals.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In the early days of Aftershock Enterprises 90% of all of the revenue we earned went right back into the business. Having a baby and a stay at home wife at that time made it very tough financially to stay in business and not get a job. After then applying for over 40 jobs in all walks of the market, not one company hired would hire me. With my previous job pedigree in the health club industry and success working for Gannett from 2006-2008, it shocked me that I couldn’t get hired. I took this as a sign and doubled down on making my company a success. By 2012 our financial situation had turned around and for the next 10 years the business provided our family a very nice living.

Had I got hired somewhere, who knows, I might not have had the many successes I had over the next ten years.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

There were many wins with Aftershock Enterprises. One of the earliest ones though, that was the beginning of getting over the hump, so to speak, was landing our first big account which was an 8 location Urgent Care chain called Advanced Urgent Care.

Originally I was asked to come into the company to discuss some of the ideas I had about creating a marketing edge over some of the competitors beginning to pop up in the industry. After sharing some ideas and strategies, I offered to look at the analytics for their current digital vendors that they were paying multiple six figures a year too. I broke down the cost per phone call and cost per visit to the website and shared with them that by bringing this in house and hiring our company to manage it, I could get the same amount of calls and visits for half the price. They agreed to let me do this and not only did I cut their budget in half but I doubled their calls and visits on half the money.

Although I believed heavily in my ability, this was the first time I got to see it impact a large business rather than most of the small companies I had been working with. I took a gamble on myself and it was a success!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://arrivefinancialservices.com
• Instagram: joshuacnorris
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshuacnorris/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuacnorris
• Youtube: @onemoreround2744
• Other: Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1952370/