Ask Christina First

In this episode of Ask Christina 1st we get into the topic of branding. In reality branding is the totality of who you are. How you handle each element of business is an overall result of you, which is your brand. In the elements of business, each aspect is a vital source for the functionality of your company. How do you treat your customers? How much time and attention do you give into marketing, networking and advertising? All of it boils down to who you are as a person and how much energy you put into each thing. From there you can decide if you are a luxury, high end or low end brand? For homework, write down next to each element of business, how you operate in this field. If you're a high end business, you should include things that help explain why this is so. If you are low end, luxury, etc… do the same. Everything that creates your company is your brand, from color to customer service to how you dress. All of these elements create the overall look and feel of your brand. So, what do you do that creates your brand? Is this what you want your brand to be and what are ways you can improve?

In this episode you will learn:

1. The elements of business and how they affect your brand.

2. How to understand the tone and overall feel of your company

3. Ways to help you improve your brand’s impact.

Again, branding is the totality of who you are and the energy you put into it. The way in which people find you, meet and are introduced to you, sets the tone for how they will react to your brand and business. The first steps into improving your brand, is to identify where you are now and where you want to go.

In this episode of Ask Christina 1st, we dig into how to differentiate yourself from your market. The three main suggestions are you are already doing it, your nature and your own bias and lastly company culture. All three of these embody the totality of who you are which create your business. When you first created your company and vision, what were the things that made you different? It’s important to understand that you are already what makes it different. A way to make this process make sense is to do your due diligence. Christina suggests you begin by first finding 10 businesses in your market and area that are similar to yours. Find out what their price points are, what type of company it is and find out the overall culture of the business. The culture of a business boils down to everything you've chosen to include in how your business looks and how it is operated. What is the culture of your company? This is what will set you apart and be the underlying atmosphere of your branding and marketing.

In this episode you will learn:

1. What is company culture and how it affects your branding?

2. Why it’s important to understand the competition in your area.

3. How to fine tune your business so clients will find you amongst others in your field.

Going back to understand your vision is a big part of understanding how to differentiate yourself from your market. Doing this can help you elevate to the next level by simply creating a platform that serves the unique qualities you bring to your market and expertise. Knowing you are already what makes your business different is key, use what makes you different to your advantage.

In this episode of Ask Christina 1st, we dive into the meaning of grass roots networking and why this is a major part in becoming a trusted expert in your field. Networking and marketing can be distributed in many forms like social media and advertising, however there are other ways to truly connect with your community that don’t require you to be in front of a computer. Investing in yourself so that you become a trusted and chosen expert in your field is the meat and bones of grass root networking. It's when you go out and introduce yourself to your community while also investing in becoming an expert in your field. One example Christina focuses on is going to in person meetings. She challenges you to find a meeting in your field of work and attend 4 meetings for a month. You can use sources like meetup.com, eventbrite.com, facebook.com and community calendar. In order for you to be chosen, you have to be an active member in your community. Finding out authentically what people need is another true aspect to grassroots networking. It’s not about selling something, it's about filling some of the holes in a person's life. Ask questions and inquire deeply into if someone could genuinely benefit from having you in their lives.

In this episode you will learn:

1. What is grass root networking and how you can benefit from it.

2. Ways in which you can become a trusted expert in your field and within your community.

3. Why it’s important to be authentic and caring when people are potentially looking for your services.

What do you do for marketing your business? What materials do you invest in that help you get the word out? In this episode of Ask Christina First, we again focus on marketing as marketing is a necessity if you want to continue running your business. There are different ways that you can market your business/product and that can depend on what you price your product at. Some lower priced products for example, can benefit tremendously from using a platform like yelp, while higher priced products can rely heavily on referrals. Either way, the marketing material you use is essential in being found. Some marketing tactics require you to physically be present. Christna believes that for her, networking is one of the best forms of marketing. This can be attending events, speaking on panels, etc… Becoming recognized as an expert in your field is another great way to market your business. This can be done by contributing your work to magazines, blogs and those of the like. Not being afraid to share with the world how you can help people is key.

In this episode you will learn:

Various types of marketing materials that can help you get the word out.
How to transform one form of marketing into another.
Understand the significance of in person marketing.

As Christina continues to focus on marketing, you will see the importance of making what you do known to the public. If you are someone that doesn't agree with one form of marketing, it’s okay to try another. What will work for someone else may not work for you. The key is to find what is right for you so that replacing your clients and maintaining cash flow has a positive impact on your business.

Are you a small business owner that shies away from marketing? Do you feel like marketing to any capacity is salesy? This mindset can actually negatively affect your business. Of the 4 cornerstones to running a business, marketing is one of the most important. The term marketing gets a bad rap because it was easily associated with a salesman whose primary job is to sell you something you probably didn't need. Now as an existing small business owner, this concept can leave a bad taste in your mouth, making marketing one of the more difficult parts of running a business. In this episode, Christina breaks down why good hearted business marketing is key to keeping your business successful. Once you take away the old concept of forcing people to buy things, you will soon realize how important it is to market your business in a way that suits you and your needs as an entrepreneur. Christina helps us understand what true marketing is and ways in which you can do this without the worry and judgement you may feel when it comes to marketing. You can do this kind of marketing by going to events, signing up to your local chamber of commerce, or even creating meaningful products to pass out to people. There are tons of ways to do marketing that don’t require you to feel ashamed or embarrassed.

In this episode you will learn:

Ways to market that aren't salesy?
Why marketing is a crucial aspect to any business.
How to let go of the negative concept that marketing is bad.

Christina gives some amazing advice on how to change the way we think about marketing. The goal for starting a business is for it to be successful, but without marketing your chances of that happening are slim. Marketing can be a fun and positive way to keep you heading in the right direction.

In this episode of Ask Christina 1st, Christina focuses on being the good hearted business owner and how it affects your customer service. Sometimes in being a good hearted business owner, pricing your product properly to include time spent on customer service may be overlooked. Determining if you’re a high or low priced product should be the first step. This will help you figure out how much customer service is necessary for each product you offer. Christina shares an example about a time where she was on a phone call with a client at 8:30 at night while her family just arrived at their hotel room while traveling. Christina’s husband asked her why, and she replied that it's because that particular client pays for a higher priced product which gains them more access to her customer service. Differently priced products provide different levels of customer service.

In this episode you will learn:

1. How to determine where you should price your product?

2. The level of customer service that should be included in each of those products.

3. How much does it cost you to service this product?

A product is also a service. If you can spend the time determining all the points made above, you will have a better understanding of where your customer service should go. It doesn't mean that a lower priced product deserves less customer service, however it does play a role in how much of your time and money you are spending.

In this episode of Ask Christina First, we learn how to deal with customer emergencies and why adding time into your daily schedule is necessary in order to handle these emergencies as they come in. A major first step is understanding and accepting that emergencies happen and will happen on a daily basis. Preparing for these emergencies using your existing systems will create a space where you can handle the urgency and move forward. How much time you allocate for emergencies depends on the level of customer service you’ve promised your customers. For example, if you are a luxury business, your high level of customer service is going to have to be incorporated into your current system. Being a high level luxury business requires a high level of attention to your customers and their needs. The space needed to handle emergencies needs to be prioritized in your time management system. Another way to add in emergencies is during your daily dump. Here you can add slots of times where an urgency can be handled or where it will make sense to allow allocated time to handle this particular problem. This creates a space where your customer urgencies aren't hijacking your time. How you handle these emergencies plays a major role in the atmosphere of your business which includes your overall values. Are you a business that runs off of fight or flight or does your business hold values that require and allow you to focus on what's important and getting it done?

In this episode you will learn:

1. Why adding customer urgencies to your daily schedule will save you time and headaches.

2. Discover what level of customer service you’ve promised your customers in the beginning.

3. How to determine if your business is ran on fear or instincts.

Customer emergencies are a big part of running a business, but if you do not make space for these emergencies to be handled your business could begin to feel the pressures of it. Making time for emergencies is a great way to keep you, your employee’s and your customers happy.

In this episode of Ask Christina first, we explore both the pros and cons of being a good hearted business owner and how that can affect your systemic systems. The past few episodes have been on systems, but Christina focuses more on why as a good hearted business owner, those systems are overextended. A trend Christina recognizes with good hearted business owners, is the tendency to deliver high grade customer service for a product or service that doesn't equate in compensation or time. Christina’s goal is for people to see the true value beyond just delivering exceptional service and products. You have to take into consideration the many systems that need tending that must be factored in. Delivering exceptional service and not being paid the same for its value, can over time cause your business to fail. The goal is to run and grow a successful business and good hearted business owners seem to take the short end of the stick on this matter in particular. Over delivering.

In this episode you will learn:

1. How to decipher if you are one of these good hearted business owners.

2. Understand how your systemic systems create the ton for your business and how it all matters.

3. Why systemic systems will help support the success of your business now and in the future.

The reason Christina is so passionate about the good hearted business owner, is because she is aware that your purpose lies very deep in why you started the business in the first place. Helping the world become a better place probably holds significant impact in your business and your life. However that doesn't mean that your services and products shouldn’t include all that is necessary for the overall functionality of your business and the success of your business.

In this episode, Christina continues with Systemic Systems giving us the background on Peter Senege who was responsible for bringing the concept of systemic systems to the forefront in his book “The 5th Discipline” published in 1990. The core design of systemic systems boils down to culture and the culture related to how you run your business. When you walk into a store, let’s say a pet store or a gym, it’s the feeling that creates the culture which is a derivative of the systems that are in place. Christina takes us from the history of where the concept came from to how this affects your employee’s and how they function within the system you’ve created whether you know it or not. If you’ve developed your business on survival learning, that will eventually create the culture in which you and your employee’s move forward. Culturally, people who become employee’s aren't taught to create their own projects within the business. Employees are usually trained to rely on their boss or manager for direction and if you, the owner or manager developed the business on survival learning, this is what your employees will follow.

In this episode you will learn:

1. Who Peter Senge is and his influence on systemic systems.

2. How culture plays a huge role in systemic systems.

3. Why your systems create the foundation for your employees and why that can be a good or bad thing.

As you can tell Christina is a huge believer in systems and their benefit to your business. The culture you imply will be what your customers and employees feel. It’s your overall presence as a whole and this will be determined by how well you implement and manage your systems.

In this episode of Ask Christina 1st, we dive into the importance of Urgent vs Important. As we know all successful business have a good handle on what we call time management. However things arise daily that may through a wrench in that well thought out daily schedule that may require our immediate attention. This leaves us no choice, but to step away from that well prepared task list. Christina helps us understand the difference between urgent and important. Urgent usually comes about in the moment for example something urgent can be, a client panicking, a misplaced invoice, missing inventory, etc… Urgent matters require immediate attention and cannot be held off. Things that are important for your business are inventory, bookkeeping, social media, marketing, upkeep, etc… Important matters are required to maintain your business, but are not urgent.

In this episode you will be able to:

1. Decipher urgent from important

2. Learn the quadrants of urgent vs important

3. Ways to maintain and handle those matters as they arrive

4. When it becomes necessary to delegate

Christina has been digging deep into time management and Urgent vs. Important is vital because it relates to our everyday life that we cannot control. It helps tremendously to know what is considered urgent and what’s considered important.

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