Today we’d like to introduce you to Nic Albright.
Hi Nic, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
As a teenager, I had my sights set on pursuing a career as a marine scientist. I didn’t quite know what part of the water I would be studying, but I knew I would be there in some fashion. Throughout high school, the vision was always stayed the same—graduate high school, attend UNC Wilmington for marine biology, and live happily ever after studying all things aquatic. Unfortunately, I found myself subject to a few difficult circumstances after graduation and was not able to attend university as I had intended. After naively assuming my linear plan to success was bulletproof, I was scrambling to find other options when it wasn’t. I began browsing for jobs, career paths, bootcamp programs, pay-to-play courses, and everything in between in an effort to rewrite my life plan.
A month or so into my search, I came across an entry-level role with a car dealership that piqued my interest. “Automotive Photographer – No Experience Needed.” A few weeks later, I was handed an laptop, Nikon camera, and shown to a room full of car keys. Visit any car dealership website and click “Inventory”. All of that content—the descriptions, the photos, the walkarounds, the spec sheets, the ads… I was the guy making it happen. I stayed in that role for a couple of years honing my craft before the inevitable happened: I started to want more. Building content was great, but I wanted to know what moved the needle. I wanted numbers, analytics, and data. I wanted to understand, not just contribute.
As my interest grew, I began to look deeper into the world of digital marketing to see where it could take me. After three years, I left my role in automotive to pursue a more advanced marketing role in the grocery industry. From there, I continued to rise through the ranks, taking on leadership roles in growth marketing, social media, events, recruitment marketing, and product marketing across multiple industries including SaaS, video games, CPG, biotech, and specialty coffee. In what seemed like a flash, I was a successful career marketer.
After 12 years in digital marketing, the ever-intrusive dreams of self employment finally won. I was confident that I could build something of my own and find success in it, so I spent the 2023 holiday season researching, writing, planning, and having conversations. In January 2024, Ristretto Media was born.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The journey has not been without bumps. A large contributing factor to diving into self employment was layoffs. Not one, not two, but THREE consecutive layoffs nearly dragged my family to rock bottom before I launched Ristretto. At one point, I was ready to throw in the towel on marketing and pursue a career in Radiology. I had the timeline mapped out, was communicating with an academic advisor, and had already requested my high school transcript for enrollment before coming to my senses that it wasn’t what I wanted. No matter how well you plan, nothing prepares you for the financial and mental impact of an unexpected layoff, especially as a parent. It’s stressful, to say the least.
Before going live with Ristretto, I had completed roughly 350 job applications over the course of six months with no offers, despite being a top performer in my roles leading up to that point. I’d spent weeks networking with recruiting teams, reaching out to hiring managers, writing action plans, building portfolio content, attending online career fairs, and everything in between, but nothing was panning out. My inbox was regularly filling up with rejections—”You’re too qualified.” “We’re hiring internally.” “We’re not hiring after all.” “We’re putting this on hold.” “You don’t have a degree in X.” It was incredibly frustrating and made me question if this line of work was even worth continuing. I still question it at times, if I’m being honest. It’s hard not to after weathering the layoff storm three different times.
Despite the bumps, the end result has been 100% worth it. Building my own business has allowed my family the freedom to travel, meet new people, prioritize interests, volunteer more, and even begin homeschooling.
We’ve been impressed with Ristretto Media, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’m the Founder & Managing Director of Ristretto Media in Winston-Salem, NC. We help small businesses, non-profits, and entrepreneurs grow online through end-to-end social media management services. Social media providers are dime a dozen these days, so we productized our services to deliver as more of a complete package, rather than a pay-as-you-go service. Each package we offer includes end-to-end content creation & management, paid ads, profile optimization, monthly analytics, competitor research, community engagement, PR & crisis support, and more. Currently, the bulk of our customer base is in healthcare, but we’re happy to support anyone who needs it. Food, retail, healthcare, automotive, you name it!
When I built Ristretto, I wanted to make sure that our target audience could actually USE our services. During the planning stage, I did more than research—I sought out my intended audience and had hard 1:1 conversations with them. I asked about their frustrations, their uncertainties, their bottlenecks, and their pain points. I used that negative feedback to reverse engineer building the company. Positives are for celebrating, negatives are for learning.
Ristretto exists to remove the friction that keeps businesses from growing. Too many great ideas and useful resources are held back because the key players are forced to spend time and energy managing digital presence instead of building what actually matters. We handle the social and online fundamentals so those ideas can blossom, be seen, and compete. At the core, Ristretto is about shining a light on the impactful businesses, services, and organizations already doing meaningful work within their communities—and giving them a clear, affordable path to show up professionally online.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Intentional communication. Something we pride ourselves on is being incredibly easy to work with—it’s a recurring statement that we LOVE hearing, and it all comes back to the way we communicate. We make every effort to inform, educate, and simplify while still delivering value. It makes little sense to build a business around returning efficiency to clients only to bog them down with to-do lists.
Pricing:
- Package I (Starter) $1000.00/month — 48 posts per month across four platforms, paid ads, monthly analytics reporting, competitor research, profile optimization, 24/7 customer support, and daily engagement.
- Package II (Growth) $1300.00/month — 64 posts per month across four platforms, paid ads, monthly analytics reporting, competitor research, profile optimization, 24/7 customer support, and daily engagement.
- Package III (Pro) $1600.00/month — 80 posts per month across four platforms, paid ads, monthly analytics reporting, competitor research, profile optimization, 24/7 customer support, and daily engagement.
- Lean Websites (4-5 Pages) $1000.00/once — A keyword-optimized 4-page interactive website complete with real-time traffic analytics and data collection
Contact Info:
- Website: ristrettomedia.com
- Instagram: @ristrettomedia
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/ristrettomediaco
