We were lucky to catch up with Nikki Cohn-Byrd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nikki, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I own multiple businesses. Our mission is critically important in each one.

Let’s hone in on the personal brand company…it’s Nashville anyway ;)

Earlier this year I was just kind of having fun – I created a TikTok about some of the country artists that I was listening to at the time. At that point, I wasn’t taking my personal social media very seriously, but this is the day that all changed. After posting this TikTok that wasn’t even 10 seconds long – it went viral to the tune of 1mil + views. I was astonished.

I took a minute to sit back and think about that for a while. What resonated with people? I’d grown up listening to country music and my personal preferences are mainly artists who are not played on country music radio locally. So the artists on the list in the video aren’t either.

I came upon the idea that while country music as a genre has recently been growing in popularity, what is considered ‘mainstream’ almost isolates and includes the traditional country music sound. AKA the classics. I understand that there’s a natural evolution of sound in every musical genre, but the evolution of country music has been quite profound.

After noodling on this a bit, I did some social research. I read my comments and looked at other social accounts where there are individuals who now have a distaste for the genre that they used to be so into. The ‘country radio isn’t country anymore’ phrase is something that sparked the idea for the concept…and mission…I try to invoke in my content.

We operate under the mission that “country music is more than what’s played on the radio, and we exist to shed light on the more left-of-center, underrepresented artists and music that is excluded from mainstream publicity today”. It’s something that while I’m not one that HATES current country music, it helps myself, and my followers, keep the traditional more classic sound alive and keeps the genre something we can listen to and love for years to come.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I always love this question even though it takes me a while to answer. So…my mom and my dad met in.. Ha jk, we won’t go that far back.

What you need to know is that I was one that did the whole traditional education thing. Bachelors degree, Masters degree, acronyms behind the name, training, education..etc etc on and on.

Until 4 years into my professional career, I realized something. I’m very much a corporate drop out. I have too many ideas and theories, I question the status quo constantly, ‘why are things done this way’? I transparently am not that great with corporate authority and I also like the idea of not being tied to 9-5, 5 days a week.

So I became an entrepreneur. I wish what comes after that statement is a clear, fun, and optimistic story of success, but that’s not the case. I actually struggled. For years. With finances, jobs, work, what I wanted to do, etc.

It was one of those things where my education taught me how to find a job but not how to make money. So I spent years self-educating. Trial and error learning. Throwing myself into the fire. And while it wasn’t all roses, learning how to become self-sufficient was the best thing I ever did for myself.

I started to get good with building landing pages, marketing offers online – and took that around and did odd contractor jobs for a few years in different industries, until luck struck and put me in the right place at the right time.

I started contracting for Codie Sanchez of Contrarian Thinking. I worked with her taking her personal media brand business from 0-7 figures and beyond for 2 years. And eventually, their team outgrew the need for contractors and started needing FT employees – so I took what I learned and what I did, and took on other clientele.

Now I help online creators and entrepreneurs develop, market, and scale their own online products to their audiences – developing a hierarchy of monetization that ultimately positions them as a micro-media company. Now the rest is history. That’s my main gig. And I enjoy it.

The country music media company was a passion project on the side, but I’m using what I do for others to turn this into a media company for myself. I’m highly passionate about both of these endeavors and we have some big things coming for both in the new year…including a marketing arm of the music media brand taking what we do for creators to artists and helping them market their music and monetize their own audience. More on that soon :)

How did you build your audience on social media?

This was by far one of the most interesting learning journeys I’ve ever been a part of. A lot of businesses (solo or bigger) still don’t think they need social. Well, you’re a bit behind these days if you still think so. Social doesn’t just have to be about selling, it’s all about TRUST AND AUTHORITY. In any niche. Just because people don’t buy from you on social, it’s the FIRST place people these days come to check you out. ‘Check you out’ meaning see what your presence is like, your personality, your style, message, etc and to see what others say about you.

You’re really building a community here and you’ll grow fast when you start treating it like that.

Outside of community building, here are a few things I learned on the personal music brand side:
1 – consistency. It’s harped on enough but I started posting 1-2x/day and as long as you’re also keeping the same style, messaging, topic, target market – you’ll grow.
2 – double down on what works. If you see something performing well, do multiple versions of that style. Overtime you’ll develop your ‘signature’ style based on feedback from your audience of what works and resonates.
3 – study storytelling. There’s so much noise out there that having just good visuals now won’t cut it. You also need to be a good storyteller. People resonate with stories. It does something in our brains. Study how to structure a compelling story, how to write hooks, and how to speak to your ideal customer.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

We’ll go with this one because I think there’s a lot of tactical marketing advice I can provide here. I was working multiple jobs when I started contracting.
And the music media is now technically a ‘side hustle’ but we’re working on making that full time as well using the same frame work.
But whilst I was coming up, here’s conceptually and tactically some things that happened:
1 – Conceptually, I learned everything I could from those I worked with and for. I also spent thousands of hours on self-education on the internet. These days, YouTube and online courses can be as valuable as a college degree (or more so).
2 – Study sales and marketing. Even though that’s eventually what I ended up working IN, I needed to learn how to market and sell MYSELF. That was a huge learning curve. But you gotta be able to sell what you can do for people and that is the most valuable money making skill.
3 – Tactically, I set up a CRM and communication platform. Everyone I talked to, was referred to etc ended up in my CRM. That way I could follow up with them anytime I needed to. If they didn’t need my services at the time, I always followed up weeks even months later to check in.
4 – Master the delivery aspect of your service. Tons of people get caught up in the ‘feast and famine’ cycle when working for themselves. It’s because they go hard on prospecting, sell a lot of clients, then they PAUSE the outbound reachouts to be able to actually fulfill their clients. Once the client contracts are up, you’re back to square one. Having a service or product that you can fulfill EASILY without a lof of your involvement will help mitigate this and is the only thing that allows for you to scale. Whether you accomplish this with standardization of offerings or hiring at the right time, this is a crucial component of what led me to be able to work for myself full-time.

Contact Info:

• Website: nikkicohnbyrd.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikkiinnashville/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/talknashtytome
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki-cohn-byrd-83416b40/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nikkiinnash
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkNashtytome
• Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nikkiinnashville

Image Credits
Logan Alexander – https://www.instagram.com/loganeppich/