19: The Naaman Creative Check In (w/ Josh Naaman)

Welcome or welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Josh Naaman, and this is The Naaman Creative Show.

Usually, we have a guest on the podcast, but right now, I felt like it would be a good time to check in and sort of calibrate.

I haven’t been able to really explain much about myself, my business, who Naaman Creative is, who I am, and I don’t know, we’re almost 20 episodes in, and it felt like it was time to just maybe take a step back, do a check in with y’all, and talk about some other things.

So my plan for this episode is to kind of free form it and be real with everybody, but I want to, number one, right out the gate, thank you, the listener.

We have an amazingly large group of people who continue to come back and listen to this podcast, which is wild to even think about.

And also to our guests, people who come on the podcast, and they have busy, busy lives.

They’re doing really cool things out in the community, and it’s wild to know that they take their time.

Usually our episodes are like an hour at least, and they come on and share their journey with us.

My team, from Jordan to our developers and designers, it’s amazing what we can accomplish together.

Even we have some advertisers, a handful of advertisers.

So from the supporters, you the listener, to everybody involved in this, I first right away wanted to thank everybody.

It’s really cool.

But throughout this episode, I’m gonna keep it short.

This will not be an hour long.

But I wanna go over The Naaman Creative Show and the guests that we’ve interviewed, just to kind of recap.

Like, what have we done?

Who have we talked to?

In case you’ve missed and you can get an idea of who we’ve talked to and maybe identify some episodes that you’d like to listen back on, but also maybe where we’re going.

I want to talk to you about Naaman Creative, the business behind The Naaman Creative Show, and kind of just let you know who we are and where we’re at and where we’re going with the business as well.

I want to talk about a leadership organization that I started.

And then I want to add some practical advice at the end.

So I want to talk about a marketing tip that you can take away.

I want to talk a little bit about some design news.

And there’s a musical artist that I wanted to mention because I always ask my guests, what’s your favorite album or artist?

And so I figured when I’m doing these check-ins, well, maybe I could just give you an artist to listen to that I’ve been digging lately.

And really, that’s all I have for you.

So let’s start with a recap of The Naaman Creative Show and where we’ve been.

So we started the podcast on August 1st, 2023.

And we’ve been doing it for almost a full year, where we’re getting close to that time, probably three quarters now.

And I want to start at the beginning of the podcast, where we started.

And then I’ll come all the way to the present.

So we started with my business coach, Eric Nutting, who is the growth coach of St.

Pete and also owner of the Sage Approach.

And I’ll tell you, this guy knows his stuff.

He has an unbelievable background and is just an incredible human being.

And by the way, I’m gonna try to keep each one of these as short as possible when I’m talking about each one of the guests.

But right out the gate, we started with someone who I interact with most every day of the week and am in collaboration in so many ways.

But he’s also now my business coach and helps me through a lot.

So I highly recommend listening to that one.

Also, it’s a great foundation of where we started.

Great conversation foundation, and you can learn a lot about Eric Nutting and his approach to coaching and life in general, which is a really wonderful breath of fresh air.

Moving right along, we have a community lawyer here in St.

Pete.

Episode two was with Doug Jackson with the law firm of Douglas G.

Jackson, who’s a client of ours and a partner of ours.

And that was amazing because we were able to talk not only about the law, which is, for me, fascinating, but we talked about how they’re building a community, the importance of friendships, marketing, what it’s like running a business, and how Doug runs his business in comparison to other law firms.

So there’s a lot to unpack there.

I highly recommend that.

And then we had Discord Theory on our first band, which was a really cool experience because we had them in a studio, not our studio now.

But Lou and Steven, two of the band members, the main members of that band, came on and talked to us about their band, their songwriting process, how they became a band.

We just got to know the business behind the music.

And what’s cool is I played music with Lou, the lead singer and guitarist of that band.

I played with him in several occasions on stage and shared the stage with him.

And so we had a great time with that.

And what’s even cooler is they played two songs live for us, an acoustic version, at the end of that episode.

So highly recommend checking that out if you’re into music and wanna know a little bit about behind the scenes, if you wanna discover a new band, that’s perfect.

Moving right along, episode four was with a long time friend of mine who used to be my instructor.

So back in undergrad, he was my professor, and then we became colleagues, and now we’re best of friends.

And so he came on, talked about teaching, and education, and personal growth.

And we talked about SIGGRAPH, the organization that we’re both involved in very highly.

And work-life balance, and technology, and the power of networking, and lots of other stuff.

So a lot of cool things for that one, if you’re interested in education, teaching, networking, and technology.

Episode four is gonna be right on track for you.

That’s with Zeb Wood.

And he’s from Indiana, so that was our first remote interview as well.

Episode five, we were able to get Jacqueline Lindsay, who’s the founder of kindness.org.

And this was an important one, because we want to support nonprofits and museums and educational institutions and people who are doing good in the world.

And this was a prime example of that.

Essentially kindness.org is using science in a way to encourage people and figure out how to have people choose kindness and spread love and all of that throughout the world and in organizations and in schools.

They’ve got really cool programs and a really unique model for their organization.

But we also talk about what it’s like to run a nonprofit and transforming businesses and education with kindness.

So check out episode five and dive into kindness with us.

And episode six, moving right along, we’re back to music land and we had a radio host, a local radio host here in Tampa, Ken Apperson, who is a really upstanding fellow.

He’s a musician, so we talk about his journey, the musician’s journey, what he’s experienced hosting his live radio show, where he has on musicians and artists, and they perform live, and he interviews them through this really cool format.

And guess what?

I’ve been on that show, and so that’s how I got to know him, but we got to know each other much better in this.

And so we talked about, you know, what it’s like to interview bands like Alt J he had on, and the life of a musician, essentially.

Episode 7 was super cool.

We had our first live, in-person recording that was with an audience of like 25 people showed up, and this was with a local band, PM Tiger, and Jordan, our audio director, is in that band.

And so they talked about what it’s like to be in a band, to be touring musicians behind the music, and then they performed four songs for us live in front of that audience, and it was super special.

Bonus, you hear my daughter in the background squeaking and making noise.

It’s not distracting, but it’s cute.

So anyways, that’s episode 7.

Episode 8, we talked to a makeup artist who’s been in Hollywood for a long time working on films like Black Adam and The Haunted Mansion from Disney.

She worked on American Horror Story, and we talk about makeup, but we talk about the movie making process and successful collaboration and what it’s like to work on a big team like she does, and what it’s like to work on feature films and popular TV shows and being so close to actors.

And we really start to peel back the onion of all of that, and it was super fascinating.

So that’s with Carrie Herta, and she’s actually a client of ours.

We did their website for Bespoke Pro Designs, so really cool to be able to learn more about her and what she does in that.

Episode 9, the Museum of Motherhood, we had on Joy Rose, the director of the Museum of Motherhood, the only and first Museum of Motherhood in the world, and it’s here in St.

Pete.

And how cool is that?

So what are they doing?

They’re uplifting mothers and preserving herstory, as they put it.

And we talked about feminism and the power of women, and we talked about Joy’s, how she got there, and she used to be a rock and roller, and organized a music festival.

So really cool journey there, and we support the Museum of Motherhood in many ways and work with them ongoing.

So kind of one of the pillars of Naaman Creative to do good with our talents.

And so we’re able to support that organization quite a bit ongoing.

Episode 10 is super cool.

We talk to Pixar.

Frank Tai, someone I’ve known since undergrad in Indiana, he is a technical director and supervisor at Pixar, and we talk about what it’s like working there.

I picked his brain about a lot, but from talking about working on some of the most iconic films that you’ve ever seen in the animation realm, but also what the power of dedication is and how he stays inspired, talking about support systems and friendship, how he achieved his dreams, and how to keep going to achieve your dreams, and ultimately what it takes to keep a 15-year career at Pixar.

So that one was incredible.

Moving right along to episode 11, we were in the holidays, so we had on Santa Claus.

Niall Nichol is a very…

What’s the word?

He does so many different things.

He’s a jack of all trades, and one of his trades is he’s Santa Claus, and he’s been Santa Claus for so many years.

I think he mentioned it in the episode, but he does a lot with other companies too, from being a general contractor and much more in the entrepreneurial realm.

But we talk a lot about what it’s like being Santa and the power that actually goes behind that suit, and it actually was extremely eye-opening on what that’s like, and we themed it to be holiday themed.

So it’s really fun, uplifting, heartwarming, and quite inspiring.

So I highly recommend that.

If you’re listening to this during the holiday season, then that’s even more perfect, but really good for any time.

Episode 12, we had a great friend of mine on, Augustin Valenzuela, and he has his own podcast.

It’s called…

I’m not good at Spanish, but Curiosidad Científica.

And he essentially talks to all sorts of scientists and people who are in the scientific realm.

And he’s doing a lot in that realm, not only in the science realm, but in Spanish, which is much needed.

And so we talk about what his journey has been as a podcaster, and he has a huge following, and he’s interviewed people like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

So it doesn’t get much better than that within that realm.

We talk about our friendship.

We talk about science.

We geek out on astronomy and the cosmos.

And that one is just really cool all around, highly recommended, especially if you’re into science and space and the cosmos and podcasting as well.

Number 13 holds a special place in my heart because I was able to have my grandmother on the podcast.

She was in town, and I was like, let’s interview you, Nana.

And it was the most special podcast I’ve recorded.

She’s my last living grandparent, and so I was thinking I’d like to document some of her stories and what her thoughts on things.

And so we talk about her life and lessons on family, on kindness and peace, because she’s very, very peace-oriented.

She’s a peaceful person, and family is everything for her.

And so we just talked about love and celebrating family and her travels and talked about all sorts of things related to our family and the importance of family.

And so that one’s a super heartwarming one.

I highly recommend that.

I’m a little biased, though.

Number 14 is extremely practical.

My financial advisor, Dan Westfall, with Client Focus Financial, came on and talked about financial freedom and growth mindset and what it’s like running a business, effective networking, friendship, talking about how you can save for retirement, some long-term planning advice, and some seriously practical tips on gaining financial freedom.

So that one’s a great one.

It’s super practical, and we really dive into the financial realm on that one.

Okay, episode 15 was super cool because we had a former police officer on and talked about all these wild stories of what it’s like to be a police officer and the law and just the life of an officer.

And then his transition into business and becoming a loan officer in the mortgage realm.

So that’s with Nick Harper, and we just dive into a lot about law enforcement, being a police officer.

We talk about some of his chases that he was on and his wildest stories, but also about personal growth.

And what’s cool is we dive into the skill overlap from when he was a police officer to now working on a business within mortgages and what overlap there is and how that helps him in business.

So that one was really neat.

All right, we’re getting to the end here, because we’re on 16 and there’s only 18 episodes published.

Well, this one’s 19.

But number 16 was cool.

One of our clients is the Children’s Museum here in St.

Pete.

It’s called Great Explorations.

And so we had the CEO and the Chief Administrative Officer on at the same time.

So Laurel Jinn and Angelina Howell.

And that was really neat because we uncovered a lot more.

I work with them pretty much daily on their website.

And I didn’t even know half the things that we talked about.

That museum’s impact on children and adults and families within the community here is incredible.

I just didn’t realize how much they do.

And so we talk about their dedication to a museum and to children and what that’s like.

And we talk about what the museum does in the community.

We talk about their mascot, Morris the Explorosaurus, and just what it’s like running a successful children’s museum.

So that one’s really neat and quite meaningful.

Number 17 is pretty cool because we were introduced to a high school, and I was invited to speak at a high school.

And I got to form pretty good relationship with the media students.

And so two of them came on the podcast.

Actually, they recorded me.

They had me at the school.

They recorded.

They produced that episode.

So episode 17 is with Elijah and Josiah, who are students at a high school here in St.

Pete, Lakewood High School.

And then Keegan edited that podcast.

So it’s really cool.

But we talked to them about their art.

They’re both artists.

And what it’s like to be a student in 2024 in high school, about their experiences balancing life and school and art.

We talk about how they keep inspiration and art in general.

And just their perspective.

It was refreshing to kind of hear what they’re like and what they’re going through and their perspective on things.

I’ll tell you, as an adult and as an entrepreneur, their advice was completely sound.

So I recommend anybody listen to that one.

And our last episode before this one was published is a guy, Nick, who is running for circuit court judge here in Florida.

And it was just really neat peeling back all of this unknown territory that I’ve never really thought about.

And I imagine most people haven’t, where it’s like, what is it like running for a judge?

What are the rules?

And why would someone want to do that?

And the importance of it.

So we talk about his qualifications and the fascinating process behind what it takes to become a judge.

And talk about law and order and the justice system and being a lawyer and an attorney.

Because he’s also a critical incident attorney, which is fascinating in itself too.

So that’s where we left off.

And now here we are in episode 19, which is wild.

So I feel like it took a long time to just go through all the episodes that we’ve recorded so far, but it was worth it because now we have so much to look forward to as well.

But to reel back, you know, I want to talk a little bit about Naaman Creative and give you an update that we’ve got, you know, a great momentum here.

We have so many clients.

It’s like it’s over 55 clients, I think, at this point.

I’m really starting to lose track, but ultimately grateful for every single one of them, you know, from the Children’s Museum, we do the St.

Pete Farmers Market.

It’s called the Saturday Morning Market.

We work with an aerospace company that we’ve been working with for years.

We work with an EV charging company that we produce their podcast, actually.

I work with, helped out Jack Horner, who’s essentially a paleontologist who worked on all the Jurassic Park films.

We work with makeup artists and health care researchers and augmented reality training, financial advisors, developers, technology companies, cybersecurity companies, photography, reality capital, lawyers, payment processors, mediators, let’s see, accountants, bookkeepers, we got an engineer, debt reduction, we have a wellness and self-improvement company, and we even are starting to work with a company who helps bring businesses from the UK to the US, and many more on the horizon.

And that’s, I know I left some out, but I’m just riffing off the top of my head on who we’ve been working with.

But just to give you an idea of like who Naaman Creative is working with, it’s a pretty cool range, and all these people do really cool work within their realms.

So I’m very proud of the websites and the brands and the designs that we’ve been building for these people and helping them with their marketing strategies and ultimately growing their businesses because that’s what it’s all about.

Another cool thing that happened in 2023 is I started a leadership organization called Sun Leaders, and I, you know, would be remissed if I didn’t talk about it a little in this.

So I’m gonna probably put the theme music somewhere in here once I edit it here afterwards.

It’s like 1:45 a.m.

where I’m at.

But anyways, I wanted to talk about Sun Leaders because I, you know, it’s, there’s a lot of networking organizations out there, and there was like something missing in them.

And I thought, well, maybe like a focus of leadership and education and uplifting each other to go out in the community and be better leaders would be a cool premise for a group.

And this thing has taken off.

We have our 14th meeting this Friday, and, you know, 30 people came to our last meeting, which is incredible.

Essentially, we’re getting people together, and we’re uplifting the community, you know, helping with collaboration and community engagement and business strategies and leadership development.

So we have featured speakers every meeting that we host.

We’ve done a field trip to the Museum of Motherhood and are going to do more field trips.

We’re planning a summit each year.

We’ll have like a full day of education.

We have a book club called Sun Leaders, which is kind of funny, but we highlight and read books from local authors in that and then talk about those books.

Right now, we’re reading The Healing Sutras, which is a cool book, and we just started to dive in from that.

But long term, you know, I want to make this an incubator to help businesses.

Through, you know, our various members who just really know their stuff and eventually have our own building, and we can host events there, have our meetings there.

We can almost make it a co-working space.

So we’re working really hard.

We’ve got a great leadership team, and that’s been a real pleasure starting that leadership organization.

And like I said, it’s got this wild momentum that I didn’t really realize what I’d started when I started it, but people really seem to take to it.

And all these local professionals from all sorts of industries come to, you know, connect with each other, to learn, to grow, to uplift each other.

And that’s what it’s all about.

So if you’re interested, we also produce the Sun Leaders podcast.

And that’s really cool because essentially any member in that organization can be a host of the podcast.

So essentially they have their own episode one time per month, so 12 per year.

And essentially they can either go solo or they can have a guest on.

And so it’s this collaborative podcast, which we call a sharecast.

And we’ve proven this model here at Naaman Creative through the Sun Leaders Podcast.

So you can check that out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Podbean, wherever you want to listen to podcasts.

But I highly recommend checking out all the diverse hosts and their guests that they have on, talking about all sorts of different things.

Again, that’s the Sun Leaders Podcast.

You can just go to sunleaderspodcast.com.

Alright, another segment of this episode is I want to make this practical for you as a listener.

I think this could be helpful for anybody listening.

It’s a marketing tip.

And this marketing tip is how about you make your website fully accessible to the entire world.

So what does that mean?

Well, do you know if a blind person can use your website and fully access it?

Or someone with a cognitive disability?

Well, there are tools for that.

So we implement one, we implement an accessibility tool that makes any website essentially fully functional for anybody with a visual impairment, cognitive disability, or even if they’re blind.

Number one, how cool is that?

That that’s a thing now.

But ultimately, if you compare it to a physical storefront, if you don’t have this, it’s equivalent to not having a handicap parking space or a ramp to access the door to enter your facility.

So the same as with websites now.

There are public spaces, so it’s kind of expected that they’re accessible to all.

But this also, if you have an accessibility tool integrated into your website, it ultimately enhances so much from inclusion, of course, making sure that anybody who visited your website is able to use it.

So right there, you’re increasing customer loyalty and trust and including anybody.

But you’re ADA compliant, you’re WCAG compliant.

But all of this helps with SEO.

And that’s wild, huh?

Well, how does it help with SEO?

Well first off, Google just awards you if you have an accessible website, so right off the bat.

But also, if you have an accessible website, and someone has a visual impairment, and you didn’t have that accessibility tool, they would normally come to your website and bounce.

They would leave because they go, oh, I can’t use this website.

So Google dings you for that.

So instead, if you have an accessibility tool, they stay on your website.

And therefore, your bounce rate is decreased, and that’s good for SEO, you know?

And also, you’re increasing your reach, you’re increasing your audience, you’re increasing the positive brand image that you have, even the adaptability to diverse devices.

So all these things help with your search engine optimization and the optimization over all of your website, and then therefore helping sell the things that you’re selling on your website, or getting the message across that you’re trying to get across on your website, or whatever it is, sell your services, so anybody can access that.

So lastly, you’re reducing legal risk.

Some people are small fish, and that’s okay, but, you know, a business like a museum or an organization that’s bringing in a lot of people, well, they’re bigger targets, and they are more prone to lawsuits, and if you have an accessibility tool, then you have a certificate that essentially says, no, we’re compliant, and we have this tool for anybody to access.

And so you’re covering your bases all around and doing good.

And so that’s kind of, you know, what we’re about.

So we always encourage our clients to, when we finish a build or when we’re building it, we go, you know, hey, we highly recommend that you integrate the accessibility tool that we can build into your website.

So if you haven’t thought about that and you have your own website, I highly recommend looking into accessibility, looking to the tools out there.

Obviously, Naaman Creative can help if you need help with that.

Moving right along, there’s some, there’s a lot of news.

I wanted to do a news segment and essentially just talk about something related to design or technology.

And obviously, AI is enormous right now.

It’s exploding.

It’s like the new internet and it’s fantastic.

I likely the software that I’m using right now as I speak are somehow implementing AI and utilizing AI.

And a lot of people now are nervous and rightfully so about deep fakes and fake news.

And I just wanted to mention something that’s close to me that I know on how that is being mitigated or how the world is trying to combat that ahead of time.

So essentially, I have a friend who works at Intel.

She is in a research area that essentially helps to identify deep fakes and identify what has been used by AI and not.

So on top of technologies that are using AI and making AI, there’s also people who are researching and putting in tools in place and implementing technologies that identify factors and indicators and can flag something that is a deep fake or generated by AI.

So I kind of wanted to use this as like an uplifting news that, yeah, like AI is a very powerful tool and it can be used for positivity and people can use it for negative stuff.

For instance, like making fake news articles or making some political figure look like they’ve done something when that is just pulled material and then generated as a deep fake.

Ultimately, though, any technology can be used for good or bad when it’s a large technology.

And so what I wanted to do is shed light on that.

People in research facilities within Intel, and I know that there are other facilities out there and entities that are businesses that are researching and helping to identify and combat these new technologies in a positive way.

And so I just wanted to remind you that there’s the good side of things too within these technologies.

All right, I also mentioned that there’s a musical artist that I’ve really come to like.

Since I always ask my guests, you know, in the rapid fire, what’s your favorite artist or album?

And that’s like an impossible question.

You know, we all go through phases.

It depends on the mood that you’re in, likely, you know, people have their go-to artists and things like that.

And so I thought, oh, well, I’ll put myself on the spot.

And an answer that question and also hopefully suggest a band that maybe not a lot of you have listened to or heard about.

And hopefully we’ll enjoy because I think it’s, you know, a nice middle of the road band that a lot of people could connect with.

Anyways, that band is called Half Moon Run.

Check them out.

Highly recommend them.

You can put them on just about any time.

And they’ll hit a sweet spot.

Let me know what you think.

Check them out.

And yeah, you can thank me later.

And I’m kind of at the end.

I don’t want this to go on too long.

And so I want to thank you.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re a true listener.

You’re a fan.

And I know who some of you are.

And I appreciate you.

I appreciate anybody who’s gotten this far.

And I wanted to thank you for your support.

I want to also encourage you that if you’re looking for other ways to support the podcast, well, make sure to try to like an episode.

That’s simple.

Or share it.

Just share this.

Go and share this.

Or don’t share this episode probably, but share one of the 18 that we’ve published since then, or the future ones coming out.

You could comment on an episode or comment on the social.

A big one is if you rate.

So go on Apple Podcast.

That’s the most important one.

And if you can give us a five-star rating, that’s enormous.

If you could just take a minute to do that, I’d highly, I’d highly appreciate it.

So thanks for just listening.

And extra thanks if you do any of those things that I just mentioned.

And as always, I’m completely open to feedback.

We’d love to hear if you have ideas for segments or if you have an idea for a guest, if you know someone that you’d like to have on the podcast, to hear them, hear us interview them, let us know.

You can send anything to info at naamancreative.com, and we’ll get back to you.

So again, my name is Josh Naaman.

I’m the host of The Naaman Creative Show.

I appreciate all of you.

I look forward to what’s to come.

I hope you enjoyed this check-in.

Let me know if you didn’t like it, and maybe I’ll do less of them, maybe I’ll do more of them, but it’s worth a shot.

And in podcasts, you can do whatever you want, so here we are.

But you take care, do some good out there, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.