Meet Tony Nguyen | Founder & CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tony Nguyen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tony, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
I think the most important factor behind the success of COTA Media is that we have been extremely open to taking risks and adjusting our game plan throughout the years. By being open to different strategies and unconventional methods, we went from growing 30% per year to a 92% growth in 2020. With that being said, we went all in with completely different marketing channels and ditched everything we have used up till this year. It sounds crazy, but the risk paid off and now we have positioned ourselves to grow exponentially in the years to come. I am a firm believer that sometimes even when things are going great, you need to clear some things out to make room for better things to come.

What should our readers know about your business?
My company’s name is COTA Media and I truly believe that what sets us apart from others is that everything we do is very contrarian to what our competitors are doing. By not paying attention to what our competitors are doing, its allowed us to be more open minded and flexible to our client’s needs and to adjust to them accordingly. Getting to this point (business-wise) has been quite the journey. I wouldn’t say it has been easy, but the most difficult part was trying to be mindful of who I was becoming as opposed to what I was accomplishing. What I mean by that is that when your company grows, it demands you to make a ton of adjustments to be able to keep up. For the first few years, I was very stubborn and was stuck in my own ways, so I had a very hard time acknowledging my shortcomings. This affected my health, my mood and really made me unhappy even though we were surpassing all of our financial goals. In addition to this, my work days were only 4-5 hours long so I couldn’t figure out why everything was so mentally straining. This experience made me realize that it was ME that was the problem and not the business or the stress. I never took the time to work on my self and my own insufficiencies. Since then I’ve learned to work on myself more than my business and once I grasped this concept, I was able to break-through. By focusing more on who I was becoming rather than what I was achieving has made the biggest difference in my life. If I could leave one bit of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, it would be to make sure you dont lose yourself to the “Hustle”. The hustle is the fuel that drives you, however if the vessel (you) are not right, everything that you worked for will eventually die down and level out. Make sure you work on yourself more than your business. Instead of chasing success, make yourself more attractive to it. Don’t listen to all the “Hustlers” you see on social media because you are only seeing what they want you to see. Business is not easy and not for the light hearted, but is the most rewarding experience even during the dark times. Life is like the seasons. You have to know when to take advantage of the spring and prepare for the winters. And the most important key is knowing that everything eventually passes and is not permanent, so you have to enjoy every aspect of the journey.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Unfortunately you have to have friends to be able to show them around so in this case I dont think it would pertain to me much LOL.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
First and foremost I would have to give thanks to God first because there have been, and continue to be, many difficult days. Sometimes you can lose yourself in the pursuit of happiness and unfortunately your family bears the brunt of the collateral damage. Luckily for me, my wife has been the biggest blessing in my life as she literally put aside all of her life goals so that we could grow this business together. Throughout the years, she has taken care of EVERY aspect of our personal lives so that I could soley concentrate on just running the business. Without her, we would have never been able to 2x our sales this year and be able to make the adjustments that we made.

Website: www.cota-media.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cota_media/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cota-media/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cotamedia/