Nate Disarro figures he profits at least three times when he tells the success stories of Arkansas’ captains of business. That’s a big part of his job running Content Titan of Little Rock.
When you watch one of those video tributes to Arkansas civic, business and nonprofit leaders featured at hall of fame inductions, awards ceremonies and the like, chances are good you’re watching a Content Titan production.
Disarro gets paid for the video jobs, of course, but he often finds a bigger payoff by simply listening to peak-success Arkansans and applying their wisdom. Finally, he gathers subjects for his Titans of Industry podcast, which dovetails nicely with the name of his firm.
“I’ve just had the opportunity to tell the stories of a lot of people who win awards or get inducted into hallowed halls of fame,” Disarro told Arkansas Business last week. “It’s been something that’s impacted me and certainly impacted the way I view life and business and everything else.”
Disarro, born in Little Rock but schooled in Texas, returned to what he always considered his home about eight years ago and was senior vice president for operations and development for Bespoke Media Group before founding Content Titan exactly two years ago.
“Over the years, I’ve interviewed over 100 inductees for halls like the University of Arkansas’ Arkansas Business Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, Women’s Hall of Fame, Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame, you name it, so I feel kinda like the luckiest person in the world — to get to sit down with Warren Stephens or Johnelle Hunt, the heavy hitters, and tell the stories of their lives and work.”
Many Arkansans would treasure five minutes to pick business leaders’ brains, Disarro said. “I get to spend an hour or sometimes two with some of the most successful people to ever grace Arkansas or beyond, and that’s challenged me to be a better business leader.”
The next step, beyond telling the stories, is to take the leaders’ ideas and put them into practice.
“If I wasn’t applying this information, then I’d be wasting not only my opportunity to learn from these people, but also wasting my team’s opportunity to work for a company that is taking these conversations and making use of them.”
Disclosure: Arkansas Business Publisher Mitch Bettis, also known as my boss, was one of Disarro’s podcast guests early in the COVID-19 pandemic, which turned out to be a game-changer for Content Titan as video became vital to all kinds of businesses.
Disarro, who founded the firm with a mindset to do things differently, has three full-time employees, a core of about four or five contract workers to call on and a regular succession of interns, he said. The agency’s studios and offices are on Cross Street in Little Rock.
“It’s a digital content creation and strategy business, so 2020 was a test for all of us,” Disarro said. What stood out starkly was “how very quickly everybody pivoted to virtual and digital. I saw a lot of small businesses that were having a tough time figuring out what to say, how to communicate to their customers that they were still there, still open.”
Those businesses needed help, and Disarro offered a lot of it pro bono.
“We wanted to help as many people as possible, and if that meant getting paid for it, great, but if not, we’re all able to support each other and use our skill sets to keep business moving forward. And that’s where we landed as a company.”
The approach turned out to be good for the bottom line, as well. Business was up 300% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. To help with the assignments, Disarro turned to longtime events production partner CWP Productions, owned by Chris Pritchard.
“Throughout the year, as people started figuring out their strategies, we started doing all these virtual events,” Disarro said. “There were a lot of people having to pivot, and they needed high-end video production to make that work. It was quite an increase for us.”
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