""You get all this data together and you get some really simple key metrics out of it. It helps us establish what our hourly rate should be, our hourly billing, and we never knew that before.""
— Steve Richo, Co-Founder
The Challenge
Steve Richo and Mark O'Shea founded Noise New Media in Nashville in 2008, combining social media strategy, digital campaigns, and event marketing for some of the largest live events in the country. For years, the founders ran the business on a "we can do it all, we won't say no" philosophy, staying hands-on with every client themselves. That approach eventually became unsustainable.
Their accounting reflected the same reactive mindset. Noise New Media relied on a part-time bookkeeper who came in only once every three months, leaving Steve and Mark without the strategic financial insight they needed to run the business well.
After attending a Tony Robbins seminar, it clicked for Steve that Noise needed a more CFO-like approach, one built on proactive financial thinking instead of playing catch-up every quarter.
The Solution
Steve and Mark brought on BELAY for a more flexible, supportive accounting model, one with real experience supporting digital agencies like theirs. With BELAY managing the books consistently instead of quarterly, Noise New Media finally got a clear picture of profitability by client and by project.
The team implemented tools like Harvest for time tracking and used the resulting data to answer a question they'd never had solid numbers for before: what an hour of their time was actually worth.
"That is just like one of the most important things you could have in a business," Steve said. "What is an hour of my time worth, and then you can basically apply that to just any other section of your reporting, and you have a lot of answers revealed."
With that insight in hand, Noise New Media reworked its pricing structure, moving away from a flat retainer model toward a fee tied to ticket sales, aligning the company's success directly with its clients' success.
Beyond the numbers, BELAY became a sounding board for bigger business decisions, from bonus calculations for key employees to entity structure.
The Impact
The financial clarity paid off fast. After tweaking its pricing structure, Noise New Media grew from 18 clients to 47 in just two years, with another 20 projected the following year.
"It's exciting times over here at Noise New Media, and we just keep on rockin' and rollin'," Mark said.
That growth came from doing less, not more. Steve and Mark used their new visibility into profitability to pare down client offerings and focus on the work that actually made sense for the business.
Their advice to other founders: build a fee model around something measurable, and don't be afraid to walk away from a client that isn't the right fit.
Mark mentioned the tension before working alongside BELAY.
"I would walk over hot coals doing whatever they needed to keep the money coming through the door, and I think that was probably doing us a disservice."
