Our story of how all this started:
Below is how our show got started BUT we are NOW an entertainment video interview show where we bring on artists, actors, athletes, authors & even CEO’s. We have come a long ways since the launch of this show.
Family Affair Media isn’t just something we thought of overnight. It’s actually the process of 6 years of thought and building and one thing leading to another.
The crazy part was we didn’t originally start with the New Country Buzz. Sandy always followed my dreams and took them on as her own because we feel we do everything together. So because of that I wanted to take on one of her childhood dreams of writing songs. We dont play instruments yet but we write lyrics.
Sandy is REALLY good at that. You can tell its in her blood and it’s her passion. She loves music especially country music that much. I told her lets write music together. We did and she LOVED that. We have written over 300 songs together.
I think it was 2013 when we started writing together which led to the other things.
Because of that I knew we needed to meet country artists for our future songs. I knew it would be almost impossible to meet the big artists. I read so many stories where an unknown songwriter got a break because an unknown artist took their song and both became big because of that.
Through the process of writing, I started adding artist friends and following them on twitter. I became a networking machine! We started developing true friends within the music industry.
That’s when another idea came to me. I thought well I can make websites, let build something for up & coming country artist and then New Country Buzz was born. Well another name before that but then Sandy came up with the idea of the name New Country Buzz.
We originally launched New Country Buzz back in 2014. For personal reasons we had to shut it down in 2015 but before we shut it down, we got to interview Kelsea Ballerini when her first single was only in the top 30.
Our site was taking off. We are starting to be talked about back then but in a good way. Even though we had no choice to shut everything down in 2015, the vision never left my mind. I dreamed about this all the time. I figured one day I may relaunch.In fact we let NewCountryBuzz.com go and every 3 months I would check to see if anyone bought the domain. No one ever did. Who knows if someone did, we may never relaunched and we would not be here today. We were that close. Thank God no one ever bought that domain after we let it go.
So over a year ago, I told Sandy I feel like I have to finish the vision we started. It was eating me alive. Tip here, dont let go of your vision until you know its over. It will eat you inside!
When we relaunched over a year ago, we had no idea where this would take us. We still had all the connections we had back in 2015 plus more. We are grateful that all these amazing connections not only trusted us with this relaunch but encouraged us to do it Many of them were excited to see us back in the game! That helped solidify our decision that we will never let this go like that again! Its in our blood.
The site again took off really fast to where now we have close to 200 artist profiles & over 200 artist news pages. Back in 2015 we did do some of the news but we didn’t create FREE profiles for artists. That was an added part to this. We also didn’t do a lot of the news where we basically partnered with PR companies so that we can share their artists news like we do today. So this was like New Country Buzz 2.0.
So over the last year, Sandy and I have brainstormed how we can make this better and create a business around it. Thats where New Country Media came about.
As we started seeing where God had most of our contacts, we noticed that the connection was Nashville. We feel like that was God saying I created the environment and connections there in Nashville, now go make it happen! So thats how the move idea to Nashville came about.
Now with our whole vision in place from a New Country Buzz to The Chris & Sandy Show, we are creating a media company from the ground up. 3 days until the launch of our online radio show! WOW
So as you see, this whole idea did NOT happen overnight. Its been years in the making and we are excited about that. 2020 is the year of the vision for us. Its all falling into place.
Just another chapter to our crazy 17 year marriage journey!
WOW so New Country Media actually started in 2013 without us even knowing. God was directing us the whole time without us knowing and here we are with a great vision for 2020! This is 6 years in the making! #2020Vision
So I will leave you with this, don’t go into 2020 thinking nothing matters. Everything in your past is connected. You just may not know yet. Keep moving forward until you find the things that you are supposed to do that start falling into place! Dream big, live today! Don’t let anyone steal your dream, not even yourself!
Our fanpages: New Country Buzz & The Chris & Sandy Show
Chris & Sandy Benton
The story of how my wife and I met:
Beginning of 2001, I (Chris) was going through a tough time with life in general. Nothing was going right from money, to love to friends. I have always loved motivational quotes so I was searching some inspirational sites and didn’t find much that I like. I thought to myself that I probably could build a better site than 95% of these that I looked at.
On April 15, 2001 I launched Inspiration 4 Everyone. It was only going to be maybe a 10 page site with nothing but quotes on it. As I started getting visitors to the site,a I started getting many people tell me to add this and add that so I started adding more sections. The site started to grow faster than I realized would happen.
Around September of 2001, I found this Christian Singles Site. They had a free 14 day trial so I thought I would try it for the free trial and drop it because I was really cheap back then. After the 14 days, I thought to myself that I really do like this but didn’t want to pay for it. I asked, mmmmm how can I get this for free? I always try and think outside the box. Well I saw that they had an affiliate program so I emailed them and asked if I became a part of their affiliate program will they throw in a free membership to their site? All they could say was yes or no. They emailed me back and said “They have never done that before but would consider depending on my sites traffic”. I let them know that the site was up less than 6 months and had over 35,000 visitors within that time. They told me to make the account and they would do that.
Well February 02, 2002, I was looking for someone to chat with. I found Sandy on that day. Here are 2 funny things that make this a thin line we met on. First, I only chatted with people who had pictures on their profiles, guess what? She didn’t. The other thing is, she was only on that site because she got an email saying she had a message on that site. She just deleted the message and was logging off as I messaged her (Thank God I caught her before she logged off).
We talked on the phone 2 days later on February 4th. We set a wedding date on February 18th (People thought we were crazy). We met in person on March 4th of 2002. Yes, we might have been a little crazy. Yes we set the wedding date before we met in person. Guess what? We did get married on the day we set which was October 5th, 2002 and still together today!
So our whole life together the internet has played a part!
As of Jan 11, 2012 our lil son Chris Benton Jr was born & Feb 27th, 2012 our daughter was born and what a Blessing they have been in our lives!
