Meet Chris Wizner of Vivid Candi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Wizner.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up poor without knowing my own father until I was 7 and fully supported by my mother who was a waitress in Malibu. At age 8 I taught myself computers and bought my first 386 with the only $800 I had in the world at the time. I mastered computers and began charging $25/hr to my neighbors to fix computers. By age 12 I began coding HTML when the internet was pretty much brand new in the early 90’s. At age 16 I took a life-changing decision and opened my own advertising agency. By age 17 I had clients like Pepperdine University, Gotcha and Kinkos to name a few.

Around age 19 I met the founder and publisher of Malibu Magazine, Mia Dinelly. We became amazing friends and had amazing synergy in business. Malibu Magazine connected me with hundreds of businesses as clients and changed my life. It took a year until we decided to share offices together. These were my first physical offices outside of having a home office. Within a year both our businesses grew and we both got our own separate offices.

Now just a decade past that, our agency has grown to over 20 employees and dream clients. Our clientele consists of national brands, celebrities, famous musicians and even multiple billionaires. I pinch myself every day. I love what I do just as much as the day I began still now almost 20 years later.

Great, 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?
As most entrepreneurs know, business can be a roller coaster. We certainly had our ups and downs. Our wins and losses but despite all that, I always knew that every failure was an investment in our future success as long as we realized that immediately and adapted.

The toughest time we had in over 20 years of business was around 2009 when the economy crashed. We got left high and dry for nearly a quarter million in accounts receivables by some of the biggest national companies. This forced us to downsize from around 16 employees to 3 employees in a matter of months just to survive.

And survive we did, in fact, we thrived and we survived one of the most difficult economic situations a business could. We watched as many other agencies went out of business but by a miracle and hard work we continued to stay in business and later we grew again.

Vivid Candi – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Vivid Candi is a leading full-service digital agency providing a number of in-house services including marketing, website design, influencer marketing, social media marketing, photography, video and more. We are best known for marketing and advanced custom websites. We have built millions of dollars of websites and we currently handle many full-service marketing campaigns. As a company, we are most proud of our marketing work. We have been the creative minds behind some of the most amazing advertising campaigns and we have a ton of fun doing it.

What sets Vivid Candi apart from the rest is our passion for the work and team. We always say we’re never hiring but always looking and that’s true. We only hire the best most vetted creative talent that truly considers this work their passion and not just a job. We also continually seek out the underdogs who start humble and grow rapidly in our unique environment. The passion we have for our work shows in our results.

We also value client relationships greatly and many of our best clients are 10 to 20 year long relationships. These clients are so amazing that we actually become friends and go out often for drinks, hikes, surfing and more. We are equally selective with the clients we take on as the clients hiring us and at times we’ve even declined opportunities if we felt they weren’t a great fit. We seek to work with amazing brands with amazing products or services with an amazingly positive energy. This sets us apart from all the rest.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The proudest moment of my career so far was earlier this year when I aired on national TV for the Bravo Network’s show “Relative Success with Tabatha Coffey” as the expert marketing guru. We helped a failing business rebrand from scratch in 2 weeks including a new logo, new website and new video work.

Tabatha Coffey is also known well for making grown men cry. Working with an amazing business woman of that level on national TV and earning her respect was a fantastic feeling.

Pricing:

• For full-service marketing, we charge between $3,000 and $10,000+ per month.
• For custom web design, we charge between $10,000 and $100,000+ per website.

Contact Info:

• Address: 22601 Pacific Coast Highway Malibu, CA 90265
• Website: http://www.vividcandi.com
• Phone: 310-456-1784
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vividcandi/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Vivid-Candi-215712147641/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vividcandi

 

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