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Rome Floyd Chamber Small Business Spotlight – Keith Ozment with Spartan Smoothies
Business Broker Ahmed Refai
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Ahmed Refai is a high-performing professional with deep expertise in scaling customer relationships generating revenue through customer-focused business development efforts.
He is a trusted advisor to clients with global expertise creating new business opportunities, producing significant expansion for existing customers, new clients, and business partners.
Ahmed engages with key decision-makers, sets strategic business development, and financial plans to penetrate target markets.
Connect with Ahmed on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me. Brought to you by the Business Radio X Ambassador Program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now here’s your host.
Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for such a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with BTI Group Ahmed Refai. How are you, man?
Ahmed Refai: [00:00:50] I’m very good. Very good. And thank you so much for having me.
Stone Payton: [00:00:53] Oh, man, we are so pleased to have you on the program. I got a ton of questions we won’t get to to all of them, but the place I’d like to start, though. Mission, purpose. How would you articulate what you’re really out there trying to do to serve people?
Ahmed Refai: [00:01:10] Yeah, sure. So first of all, I want to understand the buyers, the seller’s needs, what they’re looking for. Exactly. And each deal is different and unique. You have to understand the characteristics and the dreams and the objectives in the future and how to serve them in the future. And as I mentioned earlier, each deal is different and unique. And if you want to know what they’re looking for, some businesses have been around for ten years and some for 20 years and some for 30 years, and each one has different goal and objectives.
Stone Payton: [00:01:42] So how did you get into business brokerage when everyone else was playing cowboys and Indians? Were you playing business broker? I bet the path was different than that.
Ahmed Refai: [00:01:52] Yeah, it’s interesting. So in my previous position, I used to work for outsourced financial services firm. They provide a financial services and CFO consulting services, day to day transaction and accounting valuation services and taxes as well. And I was working closely with early stage venture backed companies and also I was partnering with VCs and Angels and lawyers. And in 2020, as you know, the pandemic hit and I got laid off among other employees. And I decided to focus in this space because I love numbers, I love finance, and I’m good at numbers. So I decided to focus on financial services industry and BTI Group reached out to me and I had a great conversation with my manager because he was so transparent and honest from the beginning. He talked to me about the pros and cons, about the industry and about the position, and he mentioned many negatives and cons in this space a lot. That’s why I like that he was so transparent. For instance, he told me that the survival rate in this industry is almost 5% because you won’t get paid until you sell a business. And here in the Bay Area, the cost of living is insane. So I have to be financially prepared for at least two years, sometimes more.
Ahmed Refai: [00:03:20] Also, it’s not easy to generate leads. You can generate leads, but it’s not easy to generate good leads. And the national average sale is between 8 to 12 months, sometimes more. So besides all the cons and the negatives, I saw this from different angles and I saw potential opportunity in this space because there is a shortage in online business brokers in the Bay Area. I don’t know what’s happening elsewhere nationwide, but in the Bay Area there is a huge shortage of business brokers. Also, I have financial and consulting background and I saw I can thrive in this space and more importantly, the impact that I provide to business owners and sellers. For instance, me and my manager, we were working on a deal last year and the lady had been operating the business for almost four decades and last year we helped her to sell the business. And she’s not from us. She came from Paris and after selling the business she used the proceeds of the sale and she went back to her home country, Paris, and she bought a new home and she started a new life and new chapter. So how cool is that? And these are the reasons why I decided to get into the business brokerage.
Stone Payton: [00:04:37] So you’ve been at it long enough now. I suspect you’ve probably built your own personal process framework methodology. Is that accurate? And if so, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Ahmed Refai: [00:04:50] Absolutely. And I’m glad you brought this up. So I’m going to answer this question this way. When I first started at BPI group, I didn’t sell a business before and I didn’t know the process. So for the first four or five months, I wanted to understand the ins and outs of the business, how the process looked like, and what type of questions to ask for the buyers and sellers. And I was shadowing my manager and other business brokers and people who have been in the market for 20 and 30 and 40 plus years to learn from them. And after four or five months, I created my own framework and has been working very well for me and I want to break down my framework into four stages. So stage number one is I have to have a consistent deal flow. This is very important and I generate leads through three sources. The first, I generate leads from the marketing department at the firm and I rely on them heavily, I would say 50%. I generate my leads from the marketing department and the other 50% are generate leads from LinkedIn. And through my network I know a bunch of lawyers and accountants and I get referrals from them all the time and once I get the lead, I have to qualify them and answer the. The right questions and then get the financials. It’s no easy task to get the financials from the client.
Ahmed Refai: [00:06:18] Sometimes it takes more than a year to get the financials. You heard me right. It’s a long time. It’s a long time. And I had four clients I got. I reached out to them last February in 2021, last year and in March. And I just got the financials this year. So it’s not easy to and you can imagine you have a business and someone asks you for the financials. It’s not easy. We never send in the financials right away. Right. And once I get the financials, I get I get to the stage number two, which is value the business. And I agree on the purchase price value of the business. It’s mix of art and science and it’s teachable. But to agree on the purchase price, it’s not easy. I became comfortable on agreeing on the purchase price with the seller after having ten or 15 conversations. I guess because most of the times we have valuation in the mind. For instance, there is a client he thought that his business valued at $10 million and after doing the valuation, the business is valued around 1.52 million maximum. So we are far away from 10 million. And I have to justify this number and I have to back up my numbers. So if we are far away that much, then respectfully I have to walk away from the after educating him. But if it’s if he thinks that it’s 10 million and my valuation is seven or eight, then it’s fine.
Ahmed Refai: [00:07:48] We can go from there. And this stage is very important and I had to focus on this one a lot because if you can convince the seller to agree on the purchase price, you will never have a listing. And once you agree on the purchase price, get to the third stage. And this stage is very critical. I start preparing the marketing materials such as the teaser. It’s one page or two, two pages, just the general information of the business to attract and read investors and just vague information. And if investors are interested, then we send them the NDA to send them. The book we call a CVR stands for a confidential business review and then lists all the potential buyers for this stage. Stage number three, I like to check the box for four points. First point is, I want to make sure that the seller is ethical and is truthful because truthfulness is contagious. If the seller lied to me from the beginning, then guess what? It would be lying down the road, especially when we get to the due diligence process. So I want to make sure that how ethical is the owner and he’s truthful or not. The second checkbox that I want to know is most businesses, they need to do some adjustments to enhance the business.
Ahmed Refai: [00:09:13] Some of them are minor and some of them are major adjustments. If it’s minor, it’s fine. But if it’s major, I have to have a hard conversation with the client and be honest with them. If you are going to sell the business at this situation, then you would never sell it at a premium. However, if you can do this adjustments, which is going to take one or two or maybe three years, you will sell the business at premium. And I have to be honest with them upfront from the beginning to set the right expectations. And the third checkbox is I want to see how motivation is the seller because because if he’s not motivated, then how on earth is going to work with me and with the buyer when we get to the due diligence process? So it’s very important to see how cooperative with me and how motivated he is. And the last piece is I want to make sure that I have all the documents at hand and be ready to expedite the process when we get to the process. And I want to extend to this point one of the things that I learned the hard way, I had a client and we prepared everything. We prepared all the paperwork and the documents, and we were ready to go out. And one, when I brought the buyer, he was sophisticated investor. He started to ask the owner a lot of questions and guess what? The owner couldn’t answer all these questions.
Ahmed Refai: [00:10:36] And if I were the investor, I would walk away and he walked away. And what I learned here is in the future, I have to make sure that the seller and the owner is equipped and prepared for this type of conversations because it’s under my responsibility. They haven’t sold the business before and it’s an emotional event and they don’t know what to say and what not to say. So I learned the lesson and I wrote down that in the future, when I encounter this, I have to make sure that the seller is equipped for this type of conversation. And finally, the stage number four is the business goes live and start reaching out to buyers. And when we agree with a potential buyer, we will start working on the process. And this makes or breaks the deal. But if you are prepared for the stage and the seller is prepared as well, you will go through it and you will sell the business and the seller will enjoy the benefits and we get the rewards. This framework works very well for me. This is the foundation I have to master each stage and I’m evolving this framework down the road because if I am not evolving this framework, I will never grow and I will never get to the next level.
Stone Payton: [00:11:53] Sounds to me like you have a very thorough process and one that provides the right kind of education and preparation for for buyer and seller alike. It sounds to me like you’ve invested a lot of energy in this process, this framework of yours.
Ahmed Refai: [00:12:11] Yeah, I read a lot of articles and saw many videos. I shadowed the many, many, many people. I talked to a lot of people. And this is how I become a professional, because I love the industry. I love the impact that I provide to business owners. And this is how you grow and this is how you get it done. Each thing you have to have the framework, but to have a framework that is workable, you have to test it many times and reflect and start again until you get it done. And this one has been working for me for a while. So yeah, it’s working now.
Stone Payton: [00:12:49] Have you found that some types of businesses are? I don’t. I hate to use the word easy, but are a little more marketable or the process comes together faster. I will go ahead and say it. Are they are some businesses easier to sell than others?
Ahmed Refai: [00:13:05] Yeah, of course. Somebody. So my question, my manager told me each business is different and each business is unique and you have to put your ego aside. If you sold five or ten or 20 or 30 businesses don’t think that you can sell any businesses in the future because again, each deal is different. Some businesses to answer the question, some businesses are easy, of course, and some of them are not. But from my experience, you need to do some work and adjustments. Remember when I told you I want to check the box to see that the business needs some adjustments? It could be minor or major. Most of the business owners, unfortunately, they are not prepared to get to this stage. Most of them, they break even. They have a good lifestyle. They send their children to very good schools. They have cars, they bought properties and their businesses are not sellable and they don’t have a management team. They are very good operators. They don’t know how to manage and create a management team. We don’t have sales team. They do everything and when you have this type of businesses, you can’t sell it at a premium.
Ahmed Refai: [00:14:13] You will never sell it at a premium and they are not prepared to have free cash flow, they are not prepared to have a great margins. And they always think about the revenue as a whole as as the whole revenue streams combined. And when I ask them to break down the revenue streams, I would say 95% of them, they don’t have the numbers, they don’t break even each revenue stream. And it takes a lot of work because I have to know each revenue stream, I have to know the margins, the gross profit and everything to see what works and what and what doesn’t work. Because I have to disclose it when I talk to investors and buyers because we talk financials a lot and I want to know what works and what doesn’t. And also, no one is perfect and each business has its own weaknesses and negatives. And I have to suss it out when I talk to investors, because investors wants to know everything about the business. And if you are honest and transparent upfront, it will expedite the process.
Stone Payton: [00:15:16] Well, what I like in what what I’m hearing or I think I’m hearing is if I’m preparing to sell my business, I come to you. We sort of work our way through this framework and we get to that part where we’ve got a valuation or we’re beginning to work on valuation, and then you identify some adjustments that could really move the needle on that valuation. It’s not game over if if I’ve got some of these challenges in my business right now as we sit here today, and if I’ll have an open mind and listen to some of your counsel, I can go back and clean up some things, do some things differently and then come back. I don’t know what the time frame is 18 months, two years, whatever it is. Then we’ve got something that’s very sellable. We don’t have to give up just because we hit that point the first time.
Ahmed Refai: [00:16:06] Right. Exactly. And I want to give you a. And a story that happened to me last year. There was a client came to me and he told me, I want to sell the business. He has been operating the business for almost three decades, 28 years. And he has a good lifestyle. And as I mentioned earlier, he sent his children to good schools, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara, and he has four or five cars and he has a very good lifestyle. And when I started to the various business and these financials, I was surprised. I was surprised. First of all, his financials were not clean. His margins were very bad. And I had a hard conversation with them. I told him, listen, to sell the business, you have to clean your financials and you have to do major adjustments, not minor adjustments. And if you are going to do these major adjustments, it’s going to take for you 2 to 3 years. So I want to know, are you in a hurry? You want to sell the business, you have something that is emergency. You need liquidity. You want to sell the business right now, or it’s fine to wait two or three years to make the business sellable and attractive to investors. And the answer was great. He told me, No, I can stay two, three years. It’s not good for me, of course, because I want to sell the business. I want to sell the business. But you have to be honest upfront because it’s my reputation and the company’s reputation and we we work for the interest. Remember when I told you one of the most important things that I like about this job is to have an impact. And I remember when I was me and my manager sold the company that I told you about earlier. She was super happy and I’m in touch with her from time to time, use that as a reference and she has a great life and we were the reason to have this life. And she bought a house and she started a new chapter. So it’s amazing.
Stone Payton: [00:18:06] Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about deal structure because it doesn’t necessarily have to be where you’re just writing a check and you’re done. There’s some creative ways that you can structure the buying of a business. Right.
Ahmed Refai: [00:18:23] Exactly. So I’m going to answer this question this way. I work for B.T. Group. It’s a subdivision of business team and business team. They they like to work as a team. When we structured and when we get to the process, we have to work as a team because each deal is different and each deal is unique. And the president wants to make sure that we want we will avoid all the pitfalls down the road. That’s why we have to work as a team, and that’s why the name of the company is business team. Each deal is different and we have to structure differently. And first of all, we have to understand the client’s needs. It’s going to be purchased sale or stock sale and what works for him and based on the tax consequences, because most of the buyers they like to have, they have the love to do asset sale. And because of liabilities and some of the business owners, they don’t understand what does SSA mean and what does stock sale mean. And I have to educate them. But in general rule and this is how it works for most of the deals, most of the times the buyer pays. I’m talking about financial buyers. Most of the financial buyers, they pay between 10 to 20% down payment, preferably more than 10%. The more the better. And the rest will be financed by the bank and 10% would be financed by the seller. The bank wants to make sure that the seller has skin in the game. They want to make sure that he will have a smooth transaction to the new buyer and smooth transaction to the employees is very important. And also want to make sure that the new buyer is he can afford to complete an acquisition. He can afford to pay ten or 15 or 20% for the down payment or not. And then we go from there. We have to be creative, but it’s not it’s not complicated. Again, we work as a team, my manager and other managing directors and VP and the president and we see what’s the best interest for for the seller.
Stone Payton: [00:20:35] Okay. Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with with a with a few pro tips buyers and sellers alike, just some actionable tips, some things they can begin doing, maybe reading, maybe be thinking about. I mean, the number one tip is reach out to refi. But, you know, short of that, what are some some pro tips that we could leave them with?
Ahmed Refai: [00:20:56] So I have tips for buyers and sellers that start with the buyers. First, the buyers should understand what does business brokers look for? Business brokers look for two important questions. For me. For me, for instance, I want to know that this buyer is capable to run the business or not. He’s qualified to run the business or not. He will be qualified by the bank or not. Second, I want to make sure that he can complete the acquisition. He can afford to complete the acquisition. And finally, for the buyer, as they have to have their own characteristics and their own thesis. Last last week, I had a conversation with sophisticated buyer. He told me, you know, refi. I’m looking for businesses that they have between 1 million to 3 million pre profit and should be in the Bay Area concise to the point and he knows what he’s doing. Other buyers, they don’t know what they’re doing and they’re all over the place. They’re looking for any business and it doesn’t work that way. They have to be concise and understand the characteristics regarding the sellers. They have to clean the financials. They have to have all the documents and the paperwork ready at hand to expedite the process when we get to the deed process.
Ahmed Refai: [00:22:10] Also, I always start with the sellers. They have to ask themselves what they’re going to do after selling the business. If they can’t answer this question, then I tell them, Please don’t proceed and don’t sell the business. This is very important. Also, they have to understand the working capital and the tax consequences for the sellers post acquisition. And this is the contentious that happens between the sellers and the buyers and the continuing involvement post-sale. They have to be prepared and willing to stay at least six months, maybe more. It depends on the business because each business that is to stay for at least six months to make sure that they have a smooth transaction and to increase the value of the company. The seller should have a management team to run the business and his or her absence and have a sales team and more importantly, to have a subscription model. This is very important to estimate the demand and predict the free cash flow, because if you can predict the free cash flow, then there is no business. Right?
Stone Payton: [00:23:16] Right.
Ahmed Refai: [00:23:18] If the seller can can have a strong and robust management team and can have sales team and can have a robust subscription model, the seller can buy the business sell the business at premium price.
Stone Payton: [00:23:32] Well, I’m glad I asked what a marvelous set of tips. Okay. So if someone would like to reach out, have a conversation with you or someone on your team, or just learn more about any of these topics, let’s make sure that they can get connected with you, whatever you feel like is appropriate. Email, phone, website, LinkedIn. I just want to make sure they can connect with you.
Ahmed Refai: [00:23:54] Sure. Like LinkedIn. And through my email. My email is a wi fi a r e f i at business dash. Time.com is a way I can reach out.
Stone Payton: [00:24:07] Well, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon refi. Thank you for making the time to do it.
Ahmed Refai: [00:24:15] Thank you so much, Stone. I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you so much for having me.
Stone Payton: [00:24:20] All right. This is Stone Payton for our guest today. Refi with BTI group and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on buy a business near me.
WBENC 2022: Zoe Oli with Beautiful Curly Me
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Zoe Oli, Beautiful Curly Me
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from the 2022 WBENC National Conference inside the GWBC booth, booth 1812, so come by and see us. So excited. Been waiting all day for this interview. Zoe Olie.
Zoe Olie: [00:00:18] Olie.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Olie. Close, close. 50/50 chance. Sorry, I screwed it up. Zoe Olie with Beautiful Curly Me. Welcome, Zoe.
Zoe Olie: [00:00:42] Thank you for having me.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] So excited. For our listeners who can’t see, Zoe is a little younger than some of the folks we have had here and I haven’t asked anybody their age, but I’m going to ask you yours. How old are you, Zoe?
Zoe Olie: [00:00:54] I am 10.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:56] Ten years old, and you are a certified women-owned business.
Zoe Olie: [00:01:00] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Congratulations on that.
Zoe Olie: [00:01:02] Thank you.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] What made you get certified?
Zoe Olie: [00:01:07] Because I own—I am the CEO and co-founder with my mom, Ivana, of Beautiful Curly Me, which is my company. And Beautiful Curly Me is a brand on a mission to instill and inspire confidence in young Black and Brown girls through toys and empowering content. And we are also a social impact brand, so for every dollar that’s bought on our website, beautifulcurlyme.com, we give one to a young girl in need.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] Very nice. So, now, what was—how did the idea come about?
Zoe Olie: [00:01:40] So, when I was six years old, I did not-
Lee Kantor: [00:01:42] Way back then.
Zoe Olie: [00:01:43] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:43] That was four years ago. That was forever.
Zoe Olie: [00:01:47] So, when I was six, I did not like my hair and I wished it was straight, like my classmates. And so, my mom did everything she could to help me, including getting me a Black doll. And I really like that doll, but she did not have hair that looked like mine, and I still did not feel good about myself because of that. And so, when my mom went back to the stores and came up short, I decided I wanted to start my own business and do something about this.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:12] And the business is dolls with curly hair?
Zoe Olie: [00:02:15] Yes. So, we have a line of dolls, Layla and Mika, with curls and braids, and we also sell the books that I have written, as well as puzzles and haircare accessories.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:26] So, having an idea, and then having a doll are two different things. So, what did that first doll—how did you kind of create that first doll?
Zoe Olie: [00:02:36] Well, we did a lot of research, because my mom did not know anything about the doll or toy manufacturing.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:41] What about you? You’re the doll person. Your mom probably doesn’t have a lot of dolls, I would guess.
Zoe Olie: [00:02:47] No, not really.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] I bet you have more.
Zoe Olie: [00:02:50] Yes, I did.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] I want to know about your dolls. How did you say I want the doll to look like this, I want it to have this kind of dress, I want it to have this kind of a face? How did that happen?
Zoe Olie: [00:03:01] Well, I knew that I wanted a doll with curly and relatable hair, so we first decided the texture of hair we wanted. We decided the skin color as well. And then, we decided about the outfit, which we were all about affirmations and being proud of who you are. So, we chose curly and confident as like our kind of statement.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:25] That’s your catchphrase?
Zoe Olie: [00:03:25] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:26] Curly and confident.
Zoe Olie: [00:03:27] And so, that’s actually on the doll’s t-shirt.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:29] Do you have t-shirts that I can buy that say curly and confident? My hair gets very curly. It doesn’t look curly now, but it will get curly.
Zoe Olie: [00:03:38] We actually do have women’s t-shirts on sale on our website, beautifulcurlyme.com.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] Alright. Beautifulcurlyme.com. We’ll get a shirt hopefully in my size at some point. So, when you’re doing this kind of work, and you think about, oh, I’d like to have a doll, and you design the doll, did you look at—how did you tell the person to make it? Like did your mom make the first doll or did you make it? Did you sew a doll like or do you go and get—where do you go to get dolls?
Zoe Olie: [00:04:10] Well, we looked online for a supplier in China who currently helps us make and manufacture the dolls to us. And then, we also found someone to get our boxes, as well as all the other things that the doll comes with.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:26] But isn’t that the fun part, saying, picking, I like that, I don’t like this? Did you have fun doing that?
Zoe Olie: [00:04:31] Yes, I actually did have fun. We had a lot of trial and error.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:35] Did you have your friends help? Did you all get together, and go, okay, do you like this? I don’t know, I like this one better.
Zoe Olie: [00:04:41] Well, it was mostly me and my mom. We had a lot of conversations of what we liked about the dolls, and we continued to have a lot of strategy.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:50] Yeah, your way or did she get her way?
Zoe Olie: [00:04:54] I think we both compromised, and we also—our customers send us a lot of feedback, so we use that as well to continue to grow our business.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:05] So, what’s your favorite part?
Zoe Olie: [00:05:07] My favorite part is probably the reviews that we get and the customers saying they love our products.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:12] Not the money?
Zoe Olie: [00:05:15] Well, most of the money we get goes back into the business, but I do enjoy seeing the fruits of my labor and all the revenue that we receive.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:24] You don’t have to be embarrassed about it. There’s nothing wrong with, when that money comes in, you’re like, oh, I can buy more dolls, I can help more people, right?
Zoe Olie: [00:05:33] Yeah.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:33] The more money that comes in, the more people you can help and get more dolls to more folks.
Zoe Olie: [00:05:37] Exactly.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:38] So, what was it like when you gave that first doll to a child in need? How did you feel?
Zoe Olie: [00:05:45] I felt very empowered and I just like to see all that other little kids look up to me who want to start a business, and looking at this doll, really, a mark of confidence to them is just really empowering.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:03] So, has some kid come up to you, and saw you like a celebrity, asked for your autograph? Does that happen?
Zoe Olie: [00:06:09] Actually, no.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:10] Not yet?
Zoe Olie: [00:06:11] Not yet.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:12] So, I’ll be the first person to ask for your autograph?
Zoe Olie: [00:06:14] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:15] Okay. Good to know. So, now, what advice would you give other kids that are going to start a business? And they have dreams, a lot of kids have dreams, oh, I wish I had this, I wish this could happen, wishing and doing are different things.
Zoe Olie: [00:06:29] I would say, number 1, don’t be afraid to fail up. And again, there are always people that are there to help you along the way, your parents, teachers, counselors, and there are always people that are willing to help you and support you along your journey. Yeah.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:48] So, with the right team, you could do anything, right?
Zoe Olie: [00:06:51] Exactly.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:52] And you feel like you got a good team?
Zoe Olie: [00:06:54] Yes. And one more thing, always don’t be afraid to get started. I like to say don’t wait for the perfect wave, just swim. So, don’t be afraid, if you’re waiting for the perfect time, just get started.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:09] So, is that coming on a t-shirt soon?
Zoe Olie: [00:07:12] Maybe.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:12] Maybe.
Zoe Olie: [00:07:13] I’ll keep you posted.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] Keep me posted. And the website one more time?
Zoe Olie: [00:07:17] Beautifulcurlyme.com. And we also have Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter @beautifulcurlyme.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:26] Alright. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, Zoe.
Zoe Olie: [00:07:29] Thank you for having me.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] Alright. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Zoe Olie: [00:07:33] Yes. Thank you.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:34] Alright. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you in a few at the WBENC National Conference 2022 inside the boot of GWBC.
About WBENC
The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping women-owned businesses thrive.
We believe diversity promotes innovation, opens doors, and creates partnerships that fuel the economy. That’s why we not only provide the most relied upon certification standard for women-owned businesses, but we also offer the tools to help them succeed.
About GWBC
The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. 
GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
BRX Pro Tip: Create an Objection Collection
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Cristiana Dudash with Soft Serenity Candle Company
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Soft Serenity Candle Company focuses on sustainability and clean living. Our candles are hand-made with 100% soy wax, cotton wicks, and high-quality oils. We are non-toxic, paraffin-free, vegan, and dye-free.
Each candle is handmade in small batches and tested to guarantee burn quality and longevity. Our mission is to continuously offer the highest standard in home fragrance while never sacrificing a clean and sustainable lifestyle.
Cristiana Dudash is the owner of Soft Serenity Candle Company. She hand pours 100% natural soy wax candles in small batches in Woodstock, GA.
Her passion is to provide a safe and healthy option for you and your home.
She loves to provide nontoxic alternatives for you to cozy up to.
Andrew Larevitzear, Business Partner, Soft Serenity Candle Company
Follow Soft Serenity Candle Company on Facebook and Instagram.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:10] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Sharon Cline: [00:00:25] And welcome to a random Tuesday edition of Fearless Formula on Cherokee Radio X, where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and we offer words of wisdom for small business owners and to have business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline, and our guest in the studio today is a small business owner here in Woodstock, and she has been in her industry for about three years now. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest and all all the socials out there. And she is the owner of Soft Serenity Candles. Welcome,Cristiana Dudash, to the show.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:01:01] Thank you for having us today. We’re so excited to be here.
Sharon Cline: [00:01:05] So glad you came in. And we’re about to have a major thunderstorm, so we’re going to enjoy our little chat in here while it storms outside.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:01:12] Definitely.
Sharon Cline: [00:01:13] Well, I want to talk to you a bit about your small business. What I love about your story is that really this is kind of from the ground up for you. So can you tell me what got you interested in in making your own candle business?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:01:25] Yeah, well, it kind of started during a crazy time. I started it right when we shut down for COVID, really, which was a crazy time to even start a small business. But I was out of work. I was like, okay, well, I need to make ends meet. And a lot of my friends own small businesses, so they were like, All right, well, you know what? This is the time to. Go running. So I did and started in my kitchen, which is crazy now because he built me out. Andrew I say, he built me out a great workspace down in the basement to grow, and without his support, really, it wouldn’t be where it is right now.
Sharon Cline: [00:02:02] So when you look into how you start a candle business, it’s kind of like the basic ingredients, right? Like you have to find wax and the different scents. And was it just a lot of experimenting to get the things that you really like?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:02:15] Yeah, it was a lot of trial and error for sure, and I wanted something that was nontoxic. Like, Yeah, that was my biggest thing is I would burn bath and body works candles all the time and I noticed that there was like black residue on the walls and I was like, oh, does this from from like the the soot, the black smoke and all that. And I was like, okay, well, this can’t be good for you. And after I was looking into it, they used paraffin. And the more I read about paraffin, I found out that it’s cancer causing. So when you’re burning these type of candles, you’re breathing in these carcinogens, which is crazy.
Sharon Cline: [00:02:49] Because they’re they’re allowed to sell them, obviously. I mean, they do. I have them.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:02:53] Yeah. So not just bath and body works, but any, you know, big name stories. A lot of them have soy blends that also contain paraffin.
Sharon Cline: [00:03:02] It’s not just strictly soy then. Right? Oh, interesting.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:03:05] So that was kind of my biggest thing, I guess, to focus on. So I made all my candles 100% soy wax and I found oils as well that don’t contain any toxins so that when they burn the soy and the oils that I was using, they paired well together without anyone having to worry about, you know, burning these toxin toxic candles in their environment, in homes.
Sharon Cline: [00:03:27] It’s interesting because I didn’t know I don’t know very much about candles, which is what I really love about talking to you, especially full time, because I am like a candle aholic and I just love all the fall scents and for some reason it just fills my soul with happiness. And so I load up on wherever I get a bunch of candles. And I really didn’t consider at all the aspect of, Oh no, because of course I don’t want that. I don’t want anything bad happening to me or around pets where, you know, if you have dogs or cats or whatever, they’re probably especially sensitive to those things.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:03:59] Right? And even like small children, like I’ve had a lot of customers also say that before they bought from me, they were like, I have all these allergies when I burn candles, I don’t know what it’s from. And then they buy mine and they burn them and like, I.
Sharon Cline: [00:04:13] Know.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:04:13] Allergies. Yeah. I don’t get affected by them. I can burn them all the time. I hear, you know, the sensor light. My husband can stay in them, you know, so. I guess, you know, that has something to say for it as well, using these clean ingredients rather than burning, you know.
Sharon Cline: [00:04:30] What are your favorite sense that you have now that you just love?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:04:33] Oh, okay. Well, we just launched the fall collection so that all season the pumpkin chai is my absolute favorite. Everyone loves pumpkin. I’m trying to think like some of the most popular ones would be the oak, moss and Amber. It’s more like musk and like, masculine kind of smells like a lot of people have told me. Like Abercrombie and Fitch, like the adult. Interesting. Okay, that one’s really good. The lighter scents, maybe like limoncello and brown sugar and fig. Those are, like, all year.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:06] So you put these together? Yeah. So do you get these essential oils? Is that how it works? And then you melt everything down. I guess I’m trying to picture it the process in my head, but I’ve seen some of your Instagram videos, which is so nice because you get a little glimpse in the behind the scenes.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:05:20] Yeah, so it took a while. I was for a long time melting everything on our stovetop and I was like, This is taking way too long. And then he found me like an industrial melter. So now I can make about about 200.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:35] At the time.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:05:35] Oh yeah. So I melt all that down, I mix all the oils into it and center the wicks and pour, and it takes about 48 hours for everything to cure and then fully about a week to two weeks for it to be good to burn.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:50] What I wanted to ask you, too, about the pandemic. Obviously, you started in the pandemic. Yeah, but what’s kind of cool is that this this business does not relying on person to person interaction like you’ve been able to do a lot of this on your own, on your website, is that right?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:06:04] Yeah. And it’s kind of hard to and crazy like people will buy these scents without even smelling them. Yeah. So I have to write like really descriptive like, I guess descriptions of each scent on the website for people to read so they know what they’re buying. And I do the pop up events and I am in local shops that people can go in and out and smell.
Sharon Cline: [00:06:24] So now that we’ve been able to open up a bit, you’ve I know that you’ve gone to some of the former farmers markets. So how is that been for you? What is it.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:06:32] Like? So fun. And I love meeting all my customers because there’s people that were buying during the shutdown, obviously never met them, and they would come and be like, Oh yeah, I bought, you know, this scent and I love it all the time. I bring it whenever and like seeing them face to face. I don’t know. You build new connections and repeat customers really after you make that connection with them.
Sharon Cline: [00:06:52] One of the aspects about business I talk about on the show a lot is relationships because you are obviously you’re running a business and it’s about money and profit and loss and all of that. But there’s the relationship aspect. We’re all humans just chit chatting and enjoying candles together, you know? But how nice it is that as well as through social media, you can really build a following and have a relationship with people, even if you don’t see them face to face. How nice they come to see you. Yeah, at your places.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:07:18] I know. It makes it feel so special. I’m like, okay, you will you follow me on social media? You see myself all the time and they come to meet me and actually, like, smell the candles in person. I don’t know. It’s a really cool, cool feeling.
Intro: [00:07:30] Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:07:30] So you feel like what is what is the most fun and satisfying part about it? Is it meeting the people like that or.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:07:37] I would say that and then like actually hearing people’s feedback about the sense I get a lot of good feedback. And then I also started like my ambassador program.
Sharon Cline: [00:07:45] What is your ambassador program?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:07:47] So I have on Instagram all these like micro-influencers influencers that are like helping me promote my candles and they are so great about giving me feedback on what’s coming out, like what I should do to improve the new scents, or what should I do to even just improve my social media in general.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:05] I just spoke to someone about this on Friday about what how people use the Internet to advertise so much. And I’m like, I follow I hate to say this, but I follow TikTok and I do get influenced by the.
Intro: [00:08:18] Things that I see.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:20] But it’s it’s fascinating how much you really can get real time feedback and and that can change the direction of where you’re going with something that you want to make it. It’s like it takes a little bit of a village. Everyone’s kind of helping each other, which is like a win all around, you know, because you’re making a better product and right.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:08:36] And it helps these influencers to, like, grow their business. So it’s just it’s a win win. You’re doing both.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:42] I can’t imagine how hard it would be to have your own candle company and not have something like social media or Facebook.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:08:48] It’s the only reason why I really like without social media. Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:54] I can’t imagine. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know there are people do it and have done it, but it’s so nice, especially because you’re a younger sort of entrepreneur. So I imagine your way to look at it, it’s always includes social media or ambassadors, whereas for me I’m like, Wait, what? What is that like? I’m supposed to take videos. Right now I have two of us in the studio and like promote. Have I done.
Intro: [00:09:13] That? It’s sold out and.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:09:14] Like, no, it’s hard to like to come up with the content, come up with new ideas, and I try to put him in all the time. Seems like I don’t know what to do.
Sharon Cline: [00:09:23] Like, it’s just to be. You mean to be, like, original and and.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:09:27] And so hard. So hard to come up with new things. And, like what? Like, what are people going to like? You know, what’s going to keep people interested and watching these reels of how they respond to things.
Sharon Cline: [00:09:39] That’s something I didn’t think about as well is how you it’s almost a competition between other people who are doing their own campaigns, I guess, or even candle campaigns. It’s not just campaigns in general. Right? So what was it like for you to create your LLC or whatever it is, or DBA or how did you go about creating your company?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:09:58] Well, the LLC was something that my brother was like pushing me to do. He’s like, You got to do this, you know?
Sharon Cline: [00:10:04] Why did he say it was so important? Because I have an LLC as well.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:10:07] Yeah, he’s just like, cause you want something to make it look like you’re. You’re legit.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:12] Yeah. And you’re into protected, right. Which is great, actually.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:10:15] The candles. I’m going to need that protection.
Intro: [00:10:19] So true.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:21] No one’s afraid of my voice except me. But candles has something, you know, a liability, I imagine. I never thought about that.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:10:27] Yeah. So that was his biggest thing, but. And it’s been really nice being able to, like, step back from the restaurant industry because I was in like full time working my life away at the restaurant and I was like, okay, well, I need something that I can potentially turn into my career. So that was a huge. Like, what’s the word I’m looking for? Just like motivation, I guess.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:49] Yeah, absolutely. Do you think about where you want to go?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:10:54] Like, oh, I would love this to be my full time.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:57] On Shark Tank. I should go chicken shark.
Intro: [00:10:59] People tell me that all the time. I’m like.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:11:01] For? I don’t know. It’s a candle.
Intro: [00:11:03] I know it’s hard, but.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:04] They’re unique to you, though. I don’t know.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:11:07] They are.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:08] Wouldn’t that be cool? That would be really cool.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:11:10] I had a friend that was on Shark Tank and got her first.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:13] No kidding. Yeah, but you know what? It’s even just the exposure on Shark, even if they’re like, Yeah, I pass or whatever they say or I’m out, they say I’m out. That’s still a B. Well, who knows what life will bring? I mean, really, it seems like you’re doing like you’re really enjoying this process and you’re.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:11:28] It’s so.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:28] Fun putting your heart into it. So are there any things that you’ve learned along the way that you wish you could have told yourself in the very beginning?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:11:36] Yeah, not to always think it’s going to be successful. Like that was my biggest thing. Like when I started, it was great because it was new. So whatever success I was making, you know, was good. But now like that, I’m growing. If I have a launch that doesn’t do well, I got to keep telling myself it’s fine. Like, keep going, keep going.
Intro: [00:11:59] You know?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:12:00] That was my biggest.
Sharon Cline: [00:12:02] Yes. You assume that it’s all going to work out just fine and that your plan, that’s my story. Like I always assume it’s all going to be great. And when it’s not, I just like, put my hands up, like, wait a minute. But I did all the right things. You know, I wish I could control, you know, control outcomes of of everything. But I imagine, too, I mean, you’re making the product the best way you can, so you’re just hoping that other people will appreciate it, too. But you said that that you’ve changed a little bit from the very beginning. What have you done differently?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:12:29] Yeah, it’s been a lot of trial and error, like the beginning, really. I was kind of winging it like I didn’t know what I was doing. And now that I’ve been in it for almost three years now, I know it works. What doesn’t work? I’m still learning what doesn’t work and what works. But as far as like the candles themselves, my formula has changed and making them, they’re stronger now. They don’t burn as quickly now. And I’m expanding to like I have the soaps and the room sprays. Tell me tell.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:02] Me about this. This is a whole other side of your business. I’m excited to hear about this.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:13:06] Yeah. So the soaps, one of my really good friends, started making them, and a lot of people have asked me, they’re like, Do you do the soaps, too? And I guess maybe because soaps and candles, they just they go.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:16] Together.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:13:16] Right? So I was like, no, I don’t make them. But that just seem like a whole new task to start doing. So I was like, Well, I may find someone that makes natural soaps that are good for your skin. And I found someone and she only uses natural ingredients. So I was like, This is perfect. This aligns perfectly with what I want. So I started buying wholesale from her. So now I sell them on my website and they’re great. They’ve been selling out nonstop. Yeah.
Intro: [00:13:42] Yeah.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:13:42] So we’re actually bringing in some new scents and a couple of weeks to to bring the fall.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:49] That’s so exciting. What I love, too, is that you’re able to collaborate with people who have the same kind of vision as you. Yeah. Who would have ever thought, right?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:13:55] Yeah. It’s so fun. Like supporting other women, woman owned businesses as well.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:00] What is an inspiration or do you have inspiration for the different scents? Like, do you ever go somewhere and smell something? And you’re just like, What is that scent? I must have this. You know.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:14:09] There’s a lot of sense to that. I have ordered for the candles that remind me of like childhood.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:15] Like what reminds me of childhood. Like I just.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:14:17] Ordered a tobacco scent and it reminds me of my poppy. Oh, he used to smoke cigars all the time. And that’s like the scent, I guess you think?
Sharon Cline: [00:14:25] Oh, yeah. Gosh, that’s really clever. Yeah, I haven’t thought. I’m sure they have them, but I just have never seen one.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:14:30] But so that one is recent. I mean, the pumpkin chai is just. It’s fall and cozy and warm probably.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:38] It’s kind of spicy. And I know scents are hard to describe, aren’t they? Are you like do you like thesaurus of different things?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:14:45] Yeah. It’s so hard to come up with descriptions for them. I’m like, It just smells like pumpkin.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:53] So what are some of the different ways that you do your your marketing? I mean, have you had to invest money into marketing or are you more strictly online?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:15:01] Yeah, I’m more so online. I have paid for ads through Facebook and Instagram, but I don’t feel like for me any way that the ads don’t work as well as me getting face to face, like talking on stories, connecting with customers that way. But I feel like social media is a full time job in itself. Like I’m constantly having to engage with my customers on social media.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:25] I read somewhere and I’m I don’t. So this is so vague as far as a real statistic. But I read somewhere that you have to be posting like five or six times a day, some, some crazy number in order for you to really see return on the investment of time and energy. Is that do you find that to be true? I don’t know. Is that a.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:15:46] I think so, yeah. Even if it’s just posting like on your story, not necessarily like a post daily, you know what I mean? But I mean, I try to post at least once a day like all my feet and then everything else is just on my story. And then tick tock, I’m learning tick tock. It’s really hard to get into. It’s kind of cringing. I’m trying, but yeah, Facebook and Instagram for sure. And then Pinterest, I’ll like post my pictures and it like turns into ads there so people can actually pin my pictures to their boards, which is cool.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:18] So you’ve had to learn a whole not just candles and how to make them, but you’ve had to learn a whole aspect of marketing yourself in using the Internet in a way that effectively allows you to market yourself and have higher sales, I guess. Yeah. What’s the most effective way, do you think, for you?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:16:34] So on my actual website I have like a text club, so people will put in their phone numbers and if I send out a text to my customers, that’s pretty much how I get a lot of my sales and I’ll communicate that way. It’s like my VIP club.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:48] Oh, I got you. It’s funny because the woman that was here on she’s the social media marketing guru, and she was saying that that’s one of the best ways as well. I don’t know. She said it on the air or afterwards. But I remember thinking that’s why I get the text that. A sale is going on or something more interesting.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:05] And on the text it brings you or it gives you the link to just click on it.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:09] She said It’s a very high return of investment or time, I suppose.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:13] Yeah. Email. I don’t do the emails as much just with my generation. I guess we don’t really do emails.
Intro: [00:17:20] The text messages? Yeah.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:23] Text messages for sure. Great.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:25] Well, if you’re just joining us, we are speaking with Christiana Dudas. She is owner of Soft Serenity Candles. I also wanted to ask you, what are some of the surprises that you’ve kind of come across, like things you didn’t expect to happen as you’ve created your business?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:40] Yeah, I guess like I said before, just growing as much as I have. Like I would have never thought I’d be where I am now to the point where I can basically really quit my full time job.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:51] So the success was a surprise.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:53] Yeah, because it was just something at that time when I started it to make ends meet.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:57] Because.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:17:58] I wasn’t able to work as much because of COVID. And I was like, okay, well, I need something. So just taking.
Intro: [00:18:05] Off.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:06] Right. Well, I mean, it’s funny because you can you can, like I was saying, do all of the right things and then have it not work. And then there’s also. Oh, no.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:18:14] Yeah, I know. And that’s kind of where we’re at now. Like I’m trying to figure out. Really. I’m at a spot now where I need to, like, move into a bigger space to grow more, which is great. So now.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:25] It’s like a problem, but a good problem, but still it’s a.
Intro: [00:18:27] Problem. Yeah.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:18:28] So hopefully soon we can figure that out because.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:32] Well, so I also wanted to ask you, what do you think is the most challenging thing about being an entrepreneur, whether it’s your age or whether it’s the amount of time that it takes or how many? I would think it’s the amount of time because you really your product really is contingent upon the amount of time you put in it.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:18:49] I would say time and balance, like work balance, because it is hard for me to like step back at night. Like I’ll be I’ll be on my phone for 24 seven, like connecting with people and talking. Yeah, talking to business owners because I have a lot of business owners that will like, which makes sense will message me like after their work hours to do wholesale with them in their shop. So I’m like constantly like going back and forth with that. I’ll get off work at like 8:00 at night and then I’ll go downstairs and make candles till midnight or 1 a.m.. I’m like, okay, I need a healthy work balance. I would say that’s probably my biggest challenge right now, is finding that healthy work.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:26] I imagine it feels like if you don’t respond to losing a sale like the whole point of being, it’s I imagine it’s like being a realtor. If you don’t answer, you know, someone’s going to move on to a different. Yeah, but at the same time, how do you create a balance? Where do you put the the boundaries around it? Right. I don’t have a boundary.
Intro: [00:19:45] You know.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:46] Anyone that says something to me, I’m like, what? Yes. Just because. But how do you do it?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:19:51] I’m still trying to figure that out. I’m still trying to figure it out. Yeah. So that’s my biggest struggle and challenge at the current moment.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:59] So what’s it like to go into a store and see your products on the show?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:20:03] It’s awesome. And I love seeing other people like kind of watching them without them knowing like, Oh, that’s mine. Oh, smelling it and like hearing their feedback. I’m like.
Intro: [00:20:10] This is cool.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:12] It must be very satisfying.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:20:13] Yeah. And I love going in to shops and like weekly, you know, twice, twice a month or whatever and see the candle like stock go down like, okay, this is great because people are obviously buying them.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:24] What is your number one seller? Do you have a number or is it seasonal?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:20:27] Seasonal?
Sharon Cline: [00:20:27] Oh, I got you.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:20:28] And say it’s seasonal limoncello for spring and summer for sure. And then the pumpkin, the pumpkin.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:33] Everything. Pumpkin. I saw pumpkin recently. What was it, pumpkin? Was it Oreos? I just remember thinking it’s everywhere. Yeah, I was kind of excited, but like more of. I do. Yeah. So what do you think is like one of the biggest misconceptions of your industry? Do you think that people just kind of feel like they understand it, but they if there’s something you could tell them, like you’re telling me now, like and we have a minute to actually focus on it, what would you want them to know?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:20:57] I hear a lot like at pop ups, people, like I was saying earlier, people are like, oh, I can’t buy these. I have allergies. If they like. If they knew what was actually going into like my candles, I think it’d be a little bit different. A lot of people have a bad misconception. Misconception anyway about the paraffin candles and they think it’s all one.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:16] Well, I didn’t know. I haven’t really looked into it myself, so I didn’t actually know that there was such a difference. Yeah.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:21:21] So I think recently, like a lot of a lot more people are trying to change their lifestyles into like more healthy lifestyles. So when they see candles, they’re like, Oh, well, that can’t be healthy. It can’t be good to breathe in.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:33] Right. Do you do you promote that a tremendous amount to that you’re.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:21:37] Yeah, I really try.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:38] To different or whatever. Well no, I mean that’s a huge thing. I had no idea. And I’m I’m sure there are ways legally around carcinogen things I really don’t know. But my life as always, I’ve always got candles going or some kind of scent in my house. And now definitely I mean, I’ve had your candles in the past and they’re so great. So I’m excited to have a different one, a new one. So when you’re getting ready for like the the holidays obviously coming, what is it like for you to prepare? Like do you have to kind of stock up on all your stuff now?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:22:10] Yeah, even with the fall candles, I was starting all these fall candles in June.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:15] It’s probably feels.
Intro: [00:22:16] Weird, right? Yeah.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:22:17] Have to, because fall and winter are my biggest, biggest seasons. And holiday season last year was insane because I wasn’t ready.
Intro: [00:22:25] So this year, did.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:27] You run out? Is that what it was like?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:22:29] I ran out like the first couple of weeks of launching. I was done.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:32] No way.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:22:33] Yeah.
Intro: [00:22:34] So now a good problem. Yeah, it.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:22:36] Is a really good problem. But now I know like, okay, this is what I need to make and make sure I’m ready because even all these shows, like all these holiday pop up shows that I go to, I’ll sell out and I’m like, okay, well, now I’m in a scramble because I have to make all these before Christmas because people want them for Christmas.
Intro: [00:22:50] So I do. I want them.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:53] So if you were to kind of think about the things that, you know, the show is obviously called Fearless Formula. So are there some things that you just are have been afraid of or, like concerned about and now you’re not anymore?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:23:06] I would say just getting my face out there. Like in the beginning I would not show up on stories. And that’s like what people want to see. They’re like building a relationship and trust with seeing you on there, talking about your product. And I’ve I feel like I’ve hopefully anyway, I feel like I’ve been showing up more because people want to see the, you know, behind the scenes and not just here’s the Kindle or whatever the room sprays the soaps.
Sharon Cline: [00:23:33] It’s such an interesting notion because I’m so resistant to it. Like I don’t want anything to be like about me, me, me so much. I mean, I’m fine doing like a show and chatting, but like, I don’t want to be on camera and talking about me. For some reason, I have just such an aversion. I’d rather it be about the work I’m doing or.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:23:51] Yeah, and I would too. But I feel like people would remember faces better than. I mean, a candle. Like you see candles all the time. So I’m like, if I put my face out there, like, Oh, that’s the candle maker and Woodstock.
Intro: [00:24:03] But it’s a very.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:03] Good point because, well, it’s a it’s probably a generational thing, too, because everyone’s on there. And I do see that if I can associate a face with someone, it’s not just the product that it’s the person. It’s like there’s a person behind the product, which is partly why I wanted to do this show is because I feel like for even you to come on, you’re not just soft, serenity, candles, the brand name, there’s a whole story behind. You’re like, I always consider it the American Idol story where when.
Intro: [00:24:30] You.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:30] When you’re watching some guys come on with his guitar and you’re like, Who’s this guy? Right, or whatever. I don’t like him just immediately. But then you see like his story about his grandpa and it’s like farm and like, all of a sudden, you’re so.
Intro: [00:24:41] Invested that you.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:42] Care, you know, that’s kind of the whole the whole goal goal of the show is to have that feeling of there are so many people and lessons to be learned for everyone who’s in business. You’re all want the same things, right? So do you. Where else do you go? Do you go to farmers markets?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:24:58] Yeah, I do my pop up shows. I organize a big vendor market down in ball ground about once, I guess twice or twice.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:09] What I’m trying to do is it twice a year? Twice a season?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:25:11] Yeah, I guess twice a season. But that for sure, because I am walking around, you know, talking to all the vendors and I’m able to communicate with people that way.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:21] So you get to make relationships, build relationships with other people that are in the same exact spaces.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:25:26] You Yeah. That And then I’m in a lot of local shops here. I have one in downtown Woodstock, then I’m in two in Canton, one in Blue Ridge, and then out of state too. So I’m trying to get around.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:37] Where do you find the stores? Do you how do you do it?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:25:40] A lot of them come to me, surprisingly, they find.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:43] Yeah, it’s amazing.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:25:43] They they find me on social media. They reach out, they want my wholesale packet and I’ll send them my information over.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:49] And so you don’t have to sell yourself to people because I was thinking, do you just go to a store? This is how I would do if, you know, I would be like knocking, please let me sell my gift in your store. But you don’t have to do that.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:01] I come to you. When I first started out, I went to Andre’s, which is in downtown Woodstock, and that’s kind of where I grew. I gave them my wholesale information, and from there people were going in, buying my candles. And I guess the other local shops saw like, okay, well, her candles are selling.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:19] Well, let me get down on this.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:20] Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:21] So it must be so satisfying to know that something that you kind of came up with on your own, you know, now is an actual product out there affecting people’s lives. I mean, it’s so cool.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:30] It is really cool and it’s crazy. Like, I can’t believe where it has, you know, as far as it’s come.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:36] And your soaps and you have something else you.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:38] Said the room sprays.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:39] Sprays. Tell me about the.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:41] Those are room sprays that can be used on linens and they’re also disinfectant.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:46] So what that’s amazing in the post COVID or still COVID times.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:26:51] Yeah. And they smell good. It’s not the bleach smell that.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:54] That’s a good point or Lysol or whatever it is. Right. So you can spray it on a surface and it’s disinfectant. How did you come up with this formula?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:03] And you and my my helper.
Intro: [00:27:05] Yeah, that’s.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:06] Awesome. Someone that helped me out for sure with that one because they would not be a thing if he didn’t.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:10] Do you have to get this these like EPA approved something, anything like that. How does that work? Did you have to. Just a little bit.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:16] Yeah. Got you. Yeah. The alcohol had to be, you know, a certain percentage and then the oils and everything had to be.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:24] You’ve got your three products. Yep. Do you have any more you would like to come up with or good with the three. Oh you really you’ve got some.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:30] I would really like to start bringing in like more home goods into the storefront. I would like to do that before Christmas. So it’s all like a one stop shop, right? It’s still kind of in the works.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:41] So do you consider a physical store or is it not necessary in life?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:44] I would love to have a physical store just to keep home and work separate because right now everything’s at the house.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:50] Sure. Oh, that’s such a good point.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:27:52] Yeah. So it’d be nice to have somewhere else to move to. And that’s what I was saying earlier. Like, I would like to, you know, grow more and be somewhere else because right now I’m kind of at a standstill because I can only produce so much right now being at the house.
Sharon Cline: [00:28:07] It’s such a good point, but it’s such like it’s so interesting because I always think of problems as being problems, but they’re great problems. They’re like something to be happy about, but there’s still a problem to solve. Yeah. So when you go to your vendors and you’re chatting with all the other people that are kind of doing their same businesses or whatever business they do, they give you advice to like to kind of grab on to some of their words of wisdom.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:28:30] We bounce off of each other a lot, which is great because there’s such a good small business community right here. A lot of my friends and small businesses and we just we help each other with content ideas and marketing ideas all all the things.
Sharon Cline: [00:28:44] Well, if someone out there is listening and wants to start their own businesses, they’re like something we could tell. You could tell them.
Intro: [00:28:50] Not me.
Sharon Cline: [00:28:51] No, that’s why you’re here. What would you be able to. What kind of advice could you give them?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:28:56] I would say just go for it. Like that’s what I have two really good friends that were doing their small business before I did, and they were constantly telling me like, Just do it, just do it because you don’t know where you’re going to go. And that’s kind of where I’m at now. Like, this is crazy, like where I’m at. Like, I can basically almost quit my full time job to work.
Sharon Cline: [00:29:13] To do something you love.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:29:15] Right? Yeah. It’s my passion. It’s not really working. I mean, yes, it’s work, but I don’t feel like I’m working. That’s awesome.
Sharon Cline: [00:29:23] It’s kind of the American dream. It is. I’m getting that girl.
Intro: [00:29:26] I mean, I’m excited.
Sharon Cline: [00:29:27] It’s exciting and inspiring to see someone who is brave enough because a lot of people have ideas and they don’t really think, well, it’s too much or it’s overwhelming. Yeah. Like, really, a lot of the Internet has been a big resource for you, even just with logos or LLC or all of those things. I mean, it’s kind of great, you know?
Cristiana Dudash: [00:29:46] It is, yeah. Without social media, like I want to have found my team. I say team, I have my photographer that I found through social media, the girl that does all my graphics, she did my logos, my branding, everything through Instagram and then my ambassadors, like, they’re my coworkers too. Like, I need them. And it’s all through social media. It’s.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:06] It’s the way it is.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:07] Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:08] Oh, I’m so excited for you. Well, can you please tell me where people can find your information if they’d like to look you up? Not cyber stock. Just look up.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:16] So I’m on Instagram at Serenity Candle Co and then my website is Soft Serenity Candles dot com and then Tik Tok is also Soft Serenity Candle Co and then Facebook Street Candle Company. So and Pinterest.
Intro: [00:30:30] And Snapchat and.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:32] All the social.
Intro: [00:30:33] Media.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:33] But that is a full time job in itself. Just talking about it.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:36] Really is.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:36] All the different angles. Do you have them all linked together? So like if you do Facebook, it’ll show up on.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:41] Instagram and Facebook are linked and then my website is linked through Instagram and then Tiktok’s kind of on its own.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:47] Well, I’m so excited to see where you go. And I just can tell you from personal experience that the candles are wonderful and they just make, especially for me in fall, they just make my house seem so nice.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:30:57] It’s so cozy.
Intro: [00:30:58] Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:31:01] Well, I really want to thank you for coming on the show. And again, this is Sharon Klein, and you’ve been listening to Fearless Formula. And this is to remind you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Thanks so much.
Cristiana Dudash: [00:31:14] Thank you for having me.
Sharon Cline: [00:31:15] Sharon five.
BRX Pro Tip: Do You Know Your Ideal Client?
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BRX Pro Tip: Do You Know Your Ideal Client?
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, the question of the day, do you know your ideal client?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] Right. We said this over and over again, niches bring riches. You have to have clarity when it comes to your ideal client. And when you are starting out, it’s important to identify and serve the people you have the best chance of delivering unbelievable success to.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] So, especially when you’re starting out, you’ve got to know, okay, I am great at over delivering value to this type of person and the clearer I can get on what that ideal client looks like, then that’ll help me kind of build that reputation in the industry that I am great at serving this type of client. I will, over time, have a deeper and deeper knowledge of the industry and I will become that go-to service provider for that niche.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] So, the clearer you can get and the more precise you can get when it comes to identifying and serving these people and delivering that unbelievable service to, in order for them to get that unbelievable success, then you are going to win over time. But remember you have to over-deliver value to your ideal client that will help you get more clients that look like that client. And you get that kind of deeper understanding, you become the more expert, you become the go-to person. And then at that point, you will have eliminated all your competition because you are the go-to resource for that niche.
Brian Pruett with B’s Charitable Pursuits, Cristina Patten with Aces Youth Home and Chad Blake with Angel Auctions and Experiences Foundation
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Sponsored by Business RadioX ® Main Street Warriors
Aces and Experiences Foundation Golf Tournament
Date – Friday, September 16th
Location – Fairways of Canton, 400 Laurel Canyon Pkwy, Canton, GA 30114
B’s Charitable Pursuits and Resources is a Christian husband-and-wife team who want to help charities raise money for their organizations, but at the same time get the community involved to raise awareness for the different charities in the area and have fun in the process.
Brian Pruett holds two degrees from Kennesaw State University: Communications and Sports Management and a Master’s in Business from St Leo University. Brian has 28 years of experience in sales, marketing, and fundraising.
He has served as a sports reporter, a sports information director, and a director of sales for a sports marketing/media company. Brian has organized many fundraising events, sports promotions and sponsorships for organizations such as Nobis Works, Atlanta Spirit, Bowlero – formerly US Play, The Ovarian Cancer Society, Lance Corporal Skip Wells Scholarship Fund, Kennesaw State University, Marietta Adventist Church, CLStrong Foundation, Tranquility House and more!
Brian also has an extensive background in sports and trivia. He has a passion for helping others and running events where not only the participants have fun but brings awareness about the client to the public. Brian believes that the most important thing is to build and establish relationships, teamwork and communication.
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn.
The Mission of ACES Youth Home is to provide temporary and long-term residential placement and care for youths, both boys and girls, ages 12-18. We provide a safe, secure, and nurturing home for youths who have been victims of abuse or neglect. 
We help children discover their strengths and learn to cope with the crises in their lives. We strive to recognize the value and dignity of each individual we serve.
Cristina Patten is the Director of Business Development at ACES Youth Home. She is a focused leader and advocate with a record of success cultivating strong relationships with key decision makers and an attention to detail. Ability to leverage a diverse background and adapt to changes in any environment.
Strong social foundation and excellent communication skills combined with creative innovation of sales/marketing and human resources. Lead and influenced peers and direct reports to support overall business goals. Worked with diverse and cross function teams to achieve operation excellence for maximum productivity.
Connect with Cristina on LinkedIn.
Angel Auctions was founded to help Non-Profit and Charity Organizations raise funds and awareness in their communities. We started by specializing in Sports Memorabilia, but offer a wide variety of Framed Prints, Jewelry, and other items for your next auction.
We make it our goal to help your next fundraiser look bigger and better, while raising needed donations that otherwise might not occur. And the best part is we are 100% FREE to your organization! We work with any: Non-Profits, Charities, Schools, Government Programs, Churches, and any and all Community Organizations.
Chad Blake started Angel Auctions and Experiences Foundation because he has a passion to help others. Plus, he gets to incorporate his passion for sports and memorabilia, while giving back to his community.
Chad holds a BA in Management with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship/Small Business from Georgia Southern University. Although he continued to do a lot of charity work in college, his middle and high school years are where his charity and non-profit work truly started.
Chad started by working with many different charities, such as: Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), Special Olympics Atlanta, Retirement and Assisted Living Facilities, and his local church. He understood the importance of fundraising and immediately took charge to raise funds and equipment for his football, volleyball, and baseball teams.
Using his contacts and ideas from his many years of experience in: Management, Real Estate, Insurance, and Charity Work helped form what Angel Auctions is today.
Connect with Chad on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio Stone Payton here with you this morning. What a fantastic set of conversations this is going to be. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with B’s charitable pursuits. Mr. Brian Pruitt. How are you, man?
Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] I’m doing good. Thanks for having me back.
Stone Payton: [00:00:47] Yeah, delighted to have you. So get us caught up. What’s going on over there with your outfit? Have you accomplished anything since I talked to you last?
Brian Pruett: [00:00:55] Well, you know, last time I was here, I was with Lake City branding, so we actually shut that down and I started being charitable pursuits, doing fundraising events. I’m very passionate about helping people and having fun. So what better way to do that than putting on some fundraising events and getting the community together? So that’s what I’m doing.
Stone Payton: [00:01:11] Fun stuff. So what’s coming up soon?
Brian Pruett: [00:01:13] So funny you should ask. September 16th we’ve got the first inaugural Aces and Experiences Foundation Golf Tournament at Fairways of Canada.
Stone Payton: [00:01:22] Mm hmm.
Brian Pruett: [00:01:23] So it’s two great organizations, and we’ll be talking to both of them here in just a little bit.
Stone Payton: [00:01:28] So timing, is it too late to get involved by a sponsorship?
Brian Pruett: [00:01:32] Not at all. We’ve got some sponsorships available for hole sponsors. We do need it pretty quick, though, because we’ve got to get the science printed and that’s deadline is next Friday for that. But we also have some openings for golfers. And if people want to donate just some items for the raffle or silent auction or just donate cash in general, you can do that as well.
Stone Payton: [00:01:49] So I know you’re having a good time with this. What are you enjoying the most, man? What’s the most rewarding about doing what you guys do?
Brian Pruett: [00:01:56] Just seeing the the look on the faces of folks when we’re able to hand them either however little or as big as much money as we can. And just, you know, they’re not expecting really much of anything, but just being able to help them and see the reaction.
Stone Payton: [00:02:09] Yeah, I’ll bet. And you brought a couple of folks with you. I did. From from your world team up for who did you bring with you this morning?
Brian Pruett: [00:02:16] So first I’ve got Christina Patton, who was the Aces Youth Home and she’ll tell you all about them. But she’s a friend of mine as well. And then also Chad Blake with Experience Foundation, another good friend of mine. He can explain what they do, but they both very good organizations and they work a lot with youth in the area. But yeah, so two great organizations.
Stone Payton: [00:02:37] Fantastic. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention today’s episode is brought to you in part by the Main Street Warriors program. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors dot org. All right, let’s get this thing going. Please join me in welcoming to the show with Aces Youth Home. Miss Cristina Patton. How are you doing this morning?
Cristina Patten: [00:02:57] Hey, good. How are.
Stone Payton: [00:02:57] You? I am doing well. Okay, let’s start with mission purpose. How would you articulate what you’re out there trying to do for folks?
Cristina Patten: [00:03:05] Yeah. So Aces Youth Home is a place that provides care and shelter for kids and foster care. So any kids that are around, like 11 to 17 that have been taken into care, we provide we provide help and placement for those kids while the parents are trying to work a case plan. So, yeah, we also what we do most and I feel like something special about us is we have a home that allows the boys and girls to be in the same home. So the reason that’s really important is when these children are removed from homes, they’re sometimes removed from all their siblings too. A lot of places are boys only or girls only, and our purpose is to try to keep those families, the siblings together. A lot of times there’s difficulties and troubles with like transportation. So with us we just keep them together and it helps them flourish. It helps them in so many different ways, just kind of maintaining that family feel so yeah.
Stone Payton: [00:04:18] So there’s been a trend on Instagram lately that has me inspired and it’s either I don’t know if they do it audio or written, but it’s what do you wish people understood about blah blah blah? What do you wish more people understood about your arena, about the foster care system and that kind of thing?
Cristina Patten: [00:04:37] Oh, my gosh.
Stone Payton: [00:04:39] There’s it’s just going to be the Christmas show. She looked at her watch when I asked her that. So sorry, Chad. You have to come back another time. That’s all right.
Cristina Patten: [00:04:45] Yeah, it’s it’s a lot. It really is a lot. I wish that, you know, everybody understood kind of the the ugly process of, you know, removals and all the difficulties that the children are going through. Because what we do is actually, even though it seems kind of grimy and still not so pretty, it really is like the other side of the rainbow. Like once these kids get into the group home, they’re in a safe place. So you immediately start to see them flourish. We provide medical help, therapeutic will help, lots of educational help. And we’re located up in Jasper. So we have like a small town group feel that, you know, all these people come together through the community and they help so much with our kids that it’s it’s really awesome to see them grow.
Stone Payton: [00:05:44] Oh, so what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this kind of work?
Cristina Patten: [00:05:49] I started working in foster care in 2013 with Cherokee County artifacts. I went to volunteer and. It was so crazy. I just wanted to volunteer. That’s all I wanted to do. I just didn’t leave. I was like, I can’t. I can’t leave. Like, I grew up in Cherokee County and some of the cases that I was seeing, I was just. I felt like I grew up in a bubble. Yeah, there’s so many things going on that I. I felt like I couldn’t step away. I was so my heart was so passionate about just helping and working with kids. And as soon as I had, like a few cases that I got on that I worked with, I was like, okay, sign me up. I’m, I’m going to do this. But my background is psychology. I went to Valdosta State for major in psychology and a minor in religious studies. And then I went and got my international business degree, my MBA and London. So everybody was like, Why aren’t you using that? The cool thing about ACS was after I worked at Goshen, after I worked at Defects, I worked for another nonprofit called Goshen Valley Boys Ranch. Yeah, I was a case manager there. And then I was given the opportunity to kind of from aces be able to go over and help kind of restructure a program. So I was using not only my case management skills at that point. I was also using, you know, my MBA.
Stone Payton: [00:07:28] So so tell us a little bit like the day the day in the life of Cristina, like what will you do on a monday and a Tuesday? What are you. What’s your activity?
Cristina Patten: [00:07:41] Well, you just have to be very.
Stone Payton: [00:07:44] Flexible.
Cristina Patten: [00:07:45] Because you never know. You really never know. I mean, there could be there could anything could happen. So I don’t do the case management side of it anymore. I do more so fundraising and marketing. But yeah, as a case manager, you just have to kind of be up and ready for anything on a monday or Tuesday.
Stone Payton: [00:08:06] All right. So let’s talk about marketing, fundraising. Tell us a little bit about that world. Where does the money come from? How do you go get it? And we’ll also want to know how we can help.
Cristina Patten: [00:08:16] We are funded 50% from the state. So the kids that we care for, we have that. And then the other 50% we have to raise. So we do fundraising events. We have. We have we have one or two and then we have lots of donations. So we’re kind of trying to get our name out there and do more fundraising. This will be our first annual event for the golf tournament in September. We’re really excited about it and so excited to be working with experienced foundations. We’ve had them in the past work with the kids and they came in for what was it, Cinco de Mayo came in for Cinco de Mayo, and the kids were like, Don’t leave, have so much fun. Ended up playing basketball all night with them. And then Chad was like, I love these kids. How can how can we have another event together? So then he took them to the baseball game. The kids just absolutely love it. They love having a good, solid mentor figure to look up to and somebody who just wants to spend time with them. So it’s been fantastic. And then we’ve decided to kind of partner up and start doing fundraisers together. So we’ve done a few in the past, and then this will be our first one for the golf tournament.
Stone Payton: [00:09:35] Oh, fun. So we’ll get Ted’s take on this in a minute, too. But speak more to this idea of collaboration. I had a similar conversation as recently as this morning. Someone else who has a media property does podcasting, does video interviewing. And he and I, we are exploring all kinds of different ways that we can go to market together. And we just we feel like there’s plenty of opportunity out there. And together we each have strengths. We each have resources. Yes. And it sounds like you and Chad are of the same of the same mind.
Cristina Patten: [00:10:03] You’ve definitely.
Stone Payton: [00:10:05] Yeah. So tell us more about what was the catalyst for the collaboration and what you’ve what you’ve learned from working together like that?
Cristina Patten: [00:10:11] Oh, I mean, from the get go, I think we’re both very life minded. And the fact that, you know, we’re doing this for the kids, this isn’t a competition. You know, our business, our organization is all about the kids we’re not worried about, really. I mean, there I just have to say, there’s no competition like we we work better as a team and we work stronger together. So him and I are able to use the people that he’s worked with in the past, the people that I’ve worked with in the past, and kind of collaborate all that together. And it’s it’s awesome to see it come together because everything’s bigger, everything’s better, everything’s stronger. I don’t know really much about golf, so me putting it together might look more like a fashion show then.
Stone Payton: [00:11:06] That’s okay. Chad may not know a whole heck of a lot about fashion shows.
Cristina Patten: [00:11:08] I don’t know.
Brian Pruett: [00:11:09] I mean, I would not be models for that. So, you know.
Cristina Patten: [00:11:12] Probably could serve a drink. But I don’t know about anything else. I can I can do some pretty signs, but so it’s been really great. He’s got his strengths to this golf tournament, whereas like, you know, I really appreciate that part of it. I didn’t even know. Like, this is embarrassing. I don’t know. Like a foursome. What is this? I don’t know. I’ve never heard that. Like, okay, sure. Well, that’s what you call it. But there’s so many different things that I just I needed to be. I needed to partner with somebody. And so Chad’s experience and background doing this and helping me through it has been awesome as well. And then as far as like sponsors and working with people, I love going out and socializing and you know, on that side of it, I’ve, I feel strong about that too. So us going together to meetings and it’s just been fantastic. We work well.
Stone Payton: [00:12:05] Together. Oh, bet. So have you found that the business community, people who run small businesses and own businesses, is that a place to go and build relationships and get funding and connections?
Cristina Patten: [00:12:18] Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think as much as, you know, they see the need that we have in our small community for, you know, the kids like giving back to an organization like us. You see the effects. I mean, you see these kids are at the ballpark. They’re they’re in people’s homes. They’re your next door neighbor. So it helps everybody as a community. And it goes back to, you know, all the small business owners that, you know, when the kids are walking in, they’re talking about how awesome it is, or they got a free ice cream from somebody the other day or they got a special trip somewhere and they remember those moments and they talk about it. So it’s good for everybody.
Stone Payton: [00:13:03] Oh, bet. So how did Brian and his organization come into your circle?
Cristina Patten: [00:13:08] We met Brian last year or the last golf tournament, and he was super helpful with, you know, just the marketing side of everything. And he’s been been fantastic just to work with, team up, partner with, and now he’s got his for profit organization that helps nonprofits. So yeah, great.
Stone Payton: [00:13:29] I’ll bet. So you’ve done a lot of golf tournaments, Brian, that’s like one of your.
Brian Pruett: [00:13:34] Well, no, not I mean, only really three or four. I did one in college, helped with one in college. And that’s not a strong point of mind. I don’t think I want to I want to be more of the community type fields, but I know enough to be dangerous. So.
Stone Payton: [00:13:51] All right. So the next thing you have coming up that that we ought to let our listeners know about, is this golf tournament, is that the next big event? Yes. All right. So let’s make sure that we leave those leave our listeners with that. And they can get involved. They can still sign up to to play. They can donate in a small business, can sponsor in some way, sponsor a hole or whatever.
Cristina Patten: [00:14:13] Yeah, yeah. There’s whole opportunities. There’s sponsorships, even if you just want to donate a basket, something that we can raffle off, there’s many different ways to give back. I’ve had people even help with advertising. We got a billboard up, so. Fantastic, awesome stuff. Yeah, really good. So if anybody has any questions, they can just reach out or reach out through or, you know, email, aces, Youth Home or Experience Foundation for extra questions. If anybody wants to volunteer, we need all the help.
Stone Payton: [00:14:48] So yeah. So do you guys have a website or is there a LinkedIn profile or anything that you want to make sure that our I want them to be able to connect with you if they want to continue this conversation.
Cristina Patten: [00:14:58] Yeah. Thank you. We have a Facebook page. It’s the first annual golf tournament for Aces and Experiences and then Aces has their website Aces dot org. I’m also on Facebook and I’m connected with the Aces Facebook. So we. Usually get a lot of questions and just.
Speaker4: [00:15:23] Also if you have other experiences with the Nest Foundation dot org, there’s a link on their.
Stone Payton: [00:15:29] Okay.
Speaker4: [00:15:29] To charity today, which is a golf link that Dickson Golf donated to us. So that’s got all the information they can pay for sponsorships, golfers send questions so that maybe one of the easier ways to do it.
Stone Payton: [00:15:44] Yes.
Cristina Patten: [00:15:44] Well, he said.
Stone Payton: [00:15:47] All right, fantastic. So don’t go anywhere. Stay with us. We’re going to visit with Chad a little bit Chad. All right, Chad, tell us a little bit about your organization.
Chad Blake: [00:15:56] Well, before I do it, I do want to say something about aces and kind of how we got started with them. She was right. It was Cinco de Mayo had an absolutely just wonderful time up there. They’ve always had such great kids up there. And it was something that part of our experience is foundation is a Braves Buddies program where we take groups, we’ve done special needs and Power Cherokee, a bunch of different groups, obviously the foster care and brought them to the Braves game. And if I had two or three more bedrooms at the time, we would have adopted the three kids in particular that were brother and sister. Fortunately, in all honesty, they did get adopted, stayed pretty close, so it was awesome. But it was. You just fall in love with these kids when you’re out there. And I mean, one of them came up again. It was, I think, yogurt. We stopped afterwards. He came up and gave me a hug and I was almost in tears. So it’s just, you know, sometimes just that powerful ness of that. And Brian, we’ve besides COVID, we worked we obviously had a little bit of lull there, but our first couple of golf tournaments where a lot of success had some celebrities out there, a lot of athletes. We got that again this year, which I’ll touch on later. But Brian’s always had a passion and he’s always really done something similar to charitable pursuits. And, you know, he’s finally able to do something to passion. And obviously what happened with the COVID kind of hurt some of his other stuff, but he’s always had a passion for that giving back. And whether it’s through the magazine or himself, you know, his family. Same thing with Christina. I’ve known her for quite a few years. And just, you know, our friends and family have gotten close and everything. And it just it really is kind of like a family organization. So.
Stone Payton: [00:17:42] Yeah. So tell us about experiences.
Chad Blake: [00:17:45] We are what I like to call kind of like Mini Make-A-Wish meets Big Brothers, Big Sisters. And now obviously we don’t have the deep pockets that Make-A-Wish does and they do an awesome job. I don’t want to ever take anything away. I will say they have maybe more extreme cases than we do, but my goal was always to maybe somebody just going through a rough time. Maybe, you know, we find out a kid’s lost a parent or a divorce. We’ve had young people going through cancer treatments, brought them out to Braves game, done some fun things, movies, whatever, just something that experience to take their mind kind of off all the bad stuff that’s potentially going on in their lives. But I also love the volunteer aspect. You know, I do love to get out there. Sometimes I probably get more out of it than a lot of people we try and bring in. Our volunteers are trying to instill it in all my kids. You know, it really is about giving back. In fact, my daughter always she sees somebody, you know, potentially somebody on the side of the road asking for money. Well, let’s give them something. What do we have to give? And if I don’t have anything, she, you know, she’s like, oh, well, maybe we come back later. So it’s at least it’s probably at least working their minds with what we’re doing.
Stone Payton: [00:19:01] Yeah.
Chad Blake: [00:19:03] Excuse me. But, you know, it’s just one of those things I, I run a for profit charity auction company called Angel Auctions, and I’ve been doing that now about 20 years. We are our biggest client, so to speak, is the Brady Foundation. We do about 40 events, silent auctions with Gwinnett Stripers, the Rome Braves and a bunch of other nonprofits in between. So we do we do a lot with sports memorabilia and jewelry and relics and all that stuff and never charged the organization. They get a percentage of whatever auctions. And one of the things working with all these organizations, I notice not that they didn’t do a good job with their mission, but I was like, you know, there’s so many opportunities maybe to take a family somewhere or help out. And so we’ve worked a lot of those good relationships and that’s really what kind of spawned experience is foundation. We started officially with the 501c3 in 2018 after a couple of things that happened, primarily my wife’s family with some tragedies and then also a young man that was was battling cancer ended up passing. And it was just everything we were able to do for him and his family just meant so much. And we didn’t really realize the impact till later.
Brian Pruett: [00:20:19] You need to tell him what that was. That was just because it was pretty cool.
Chad Blake: [00:20:21] Yeah, it was. He was a young man, I say young. He was late twenties, I guess, when he was diagnosed. And he ended up huge praise fan from Augusta, a blue collar worker with the job that he was working they think probably gave him cancer. So ultimately he ended up at Emory and there was another charity that was housing him there that we were involved with. And so we took him out. We kind of befriended him and my wife and I and we went out there, took them to Braves game, got him a hat because unfortunately he lost all his hair. So we wore it all the time. Yeah. In fact, we and it was some of the things we take for granted. I remember walking just through the parking lot, not very far into the movie theater later on, too. And he explained to me how he felt like his skin was on fire because everything he was going through, all all the medicines and everything. So it just again, you just don’t realize that stuff. He wasn’t a guy who spoke a whole lot about it. You know, he had a lot of pains and aches and they actually sent him home in remission. And three days later, he collapsed. Unfortunately, they brought him back to Emory. And one of the things my wife and I at the time lived in Smyrna, so we were pretty close to there. His parents were going to drive back because they didn’t have money to stay at a hotel.
Chad Blake: [00:21:37] And my wife said, absolutely not. So she went and checked him. And fortunately, unfortunately, I guess in some manners he passed the next day. Yeah. With his children on top of him. He still had the Braves hat on that we gave him, but fortunately he was there. His parents were able to see him and say their final goodbyes and it was just something, again, talking to the wife later, we still follow the children. They just graduated, which makes me feel super old. But but it’s just, you know, again, that that impact we had was really just a couple of things we did. Sometimes there’s just a matter to sit there and talk. You know, we always kind of joke like we can do Braves games. You know, we’ve done a cool United thing where the young man was the first one ever again. It just happened to be a cancer thing. Brain cancer in remission. He’s doing well. He actually local here in Cherokee, but he was the first non referee to flip the coin on the field so and that was something we were able to hook up with them. We were on the field and yeah, it was just it was an awesome experience. And again, we still stay in touch with the mom. You know, the young man’s doing well. He just graduated.
Stone Payton: [00:22:46] High school too, so.
Chad Blake: [00:22:49] But yeah, and those are just a few of the stories that, you know, stuff we’ve done. But it’s, you know, if anybody wants, you know, to do anything, I mean, I’ll go fishing with them, you know, whatever it is, if that’s a small thing, if they have a passion for, you know, one of the things to we, you know, we’ve done over their experiences, I’m sorry, at ACS, just bring them dinner sometimes. Just sit there and talk with them, see what’s going on, because sometimes they get new kids. And, you know, I wish I could spend a little bit more time. I got three of my own, which keep me quite busy. But, you know, it’s just one of them, you know, it’s the passion, I think, that all three of us and I think that’s where that synergy definitely comes from for all of us to work together and, you know, again, make experience as foundation in this golf tournament. You know, what it’s becoming? We’re almost I’d say we probably got about 30 out of 120 left as far as golfers go. Yeah. So a few foursomes in there. It’s only $400 for the foursome, 125 for an individual. We do have Mark Wohlers coming out closer in the 95 Atlanta Braves. We got Terrance Mathis coming out. Besides Julio and Roddy, he holds all the records and he did till they came. Also have.
Brian Pruett: [00:24:01] Chris Hammond.
Chad Blake: [00:24:02] Chris Hammond, former brave.
Brian Pruett: [00:24:04] We have Chaz Lytle, who is a holds the current record of steals and triples for the UGA Bulldogs as well. He played in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. And then the next guy nobody’s probably ever going to heard of. The name is Tim Farr. He’s a rodeo guy and you never consider rodeo and golf together. But let me tell you what, he’s a pretty good golfer. I never after being thrown off bulls, you would think that he couldn’t swing the golf club.
Stone Payton: [00:24:27] But he can really and most importantly, Brian Pruitt be there on tour. Right. That’s got to be a draw.
Chad Blake: [00:24:33] Sign for you. Autographs. All right.
Stone Payton: [00:24:35] Well, first of all, yes, the passion, all three of you, it comes through. I can see it in your eyes. I know our listeners can hear it in your in your voice. But one of the things that is coming to light for me in this in this conversation, it doesn’t have to be this great, big, heroic effort just interacting with these folks. So just yeah, I mean, these small things, they’re not small. Right? Right. But having dinner, having a conversation, taking a kid, fishing, you know, just I love to fish. So, you know, that would be a lot of fun to take a kid over to Debris Park or over to Altoona and drown a worm, you know, and just have a good time for an afternoon. Just it might seem little to us, but it’s not little, is it?
Chad Blake: [00:25:18] No, not at all. Yeah, I actually. Last night was. We had some stuff we’re going to donate and a Facebook friend, which I don’t know where that will. We just have a lot of mutual friends. She’s a little bit younger than me. She just moved into a brand new house and I said, Hey, I got some pots and pans and some other stuff. We’re getting ready to donate. Do you need anything? And she’s like, Yeah, you know, I could use this and this. And she wasn’t being selfish by any means. You know, again, I was the one who offered it and she said, Can I ask you a question? I said, Of course. She goes, Why would you help somebody that you don’t know? And I just I said, You know, it’s just something I love to do. I think, you know, if you have that ability to help somebody, you know, our mission is kind of to make a wish. But I always say to if we can help somebody, we have the money for it, we will. I mean, we do a Santa for seniors where we bring stockings and different things. We do donate and casa and all that stuff. It’s, you know, sometimes it’s more about getting stuff. And I’ll say this about Aces, their partners, especially up there in Jasper, when you see maybe a kid didn’t really get anything at Christmas or nothing at all to see what they get and they get everything on their wish lists usually. Yeah. Just is unbelievable. So it’s that joy sometimes just giving.
Stone Payton: [00:26:35] Them.
Cristina Patten: [00:26:35] We sometimes go a little overboard. But I mean, we’ve had kids come in. It’s like, you know, I never had a Christmas tree. So we’re putting up the Christmas tree and you’re just like, wow.
Brian Pruett: [00:26:46] Chad’s even taking some of this, though, out of the country, right? Twice.
Chad Blake: [00:26:50] Well, actually, four times we every time now I’m very fortunate, blessed. I’m going to be the first say that that my wife Cheryl has done awesome brownie points and is one of the top sales people with one digital insurance. And they’re actually our major sponsor here. So and always get great support with the Brooklyn family more brownie points and but she she’s always one of the top salespeople. And we go on different trips that she’s won through her company and earned. And we’ve gone to Mexico. We went one time and we’re in Dominican cap, kind of we’re able to actually get with the school and give away a bunch of learning supplies, a lot of baseball stuff, try to make sure that and it was just the coolest experience to see the kids come up. Appreciate it. Take pictures, just sometimes taking the pictures, especially with the teenagers, you know, five classes is all in Cap Khana from kindergarten to high school. 12th grade is what they had. So to see them all come out, it was just unbelievable. And they were so appreciative. And again, I’m sure I got more out of her. We got more out of it than anybody. But, you know, it’s just and again, anything I can do, I always get yelled at because they don’t want me going off site. But I always say, if that’s my end, that’s a good way to go and I’ll be okay.
Stone Payton: [00:28:15] Another thing that I just have to believe happens, particularly when you’re working with youth, but probably with other adults, is this ongoing legacy, right? So a kid comes through aces or they have these experiences and you’ve modeled for them this behavior. And I bet you’ve started to see some of those folks turn around and act in the same way and help others.
Cristina Patten: [00:28:41] Yeah, right. Yeah, we have I’ve had a few kids that have actually left aces and then reach back out and say, Can I help you guys volunteer? So that’s pretty cool.
Chad Blake: [00:28:49] I’ve had a couple of donations from the Aces. Kids do that. Have you really? Yeah. Once they aged out. Right. So, I mean, they, you know, they still want to be involved in to do things. And that’s again, that’s I think what she does, Christina does and then her whole team up there to just awesome any time I ever have a question or anything if we can do anything, we definitely try and help too.
Stone Payton: [00:29:10] So I got to ask about the auction business because to me, it’s just fascinating. You know, we love Holly and I going to the you know, to the galas for different fundraising events and and to watch the there’s the silent auction. We enjoy that. And we always spend more than we plan to. And we’re fine with it because it does feel good. We know it’s for a good cause and we’re very blessed and I love watching the live auction stuff. To How long have you been doing the auction thing?
Chad Blake: [00:29:36] Man I’ve been doing it 20 years of my my my first time doing an auction was with the Rome Braves at their hot stove. And it’s just that’s just turned into a great relationship. And I’ve seen so many gems come and go and different people. So but it’s been a lot of fun. I mean, I have my own little I call it my Romi family out there. So every time I get out them, I get hugs. It’ll get all the time. It’s like seeing, you know, family and friends come through because I’ve been out there for so long, I’ve seen the kids grow, too. But yeah, I just it’s something I had a passion for. I’m actually from real estate construction. Still hold my license, but you know the rest of it. After the second turn, I just kind of saw the writing on the door. I was like, I. Know, something a little bit more stable. And I was actually asked we were doing some work by one of the Falcons at the time. His wife asked if she goes, I know you love sports. Do you have anything to maybe help us with the auction? I said, yeah, I could probably do some stuff. And then I started looking and there were some memorabilia dealers who just kind of weird and almost shady the way they did. It wasn’t about fundraising. And I said, You know what? There’s something here, and I’ve changed it up kind of the way I do it.
Chad Blake: [00:30:47] But but again, we’ve raised I just wrote to the Braves Foundation, one check from a weekend was almost $5,000. So in any time I like doing those because that means, again, it’s enough to take care of me and my family, you know, as well as to give back to the community. People love it. You know, I see adults go crazy with, oh my gosh, this is my favorite player. And I hear all these stories and it’s that part is always fun, you know, especially in the galas and stuff. That’s definitely our sweet spot because everybody, you know, they focus on it. Yeah. You know, besides maybe the dinner or whatever the case is, do a little bit of live. I do not speak 100 miles an hour, but, you know, other than that, you know, we just we just help however we can. And it’s something again, I mean, sports memorabilia, relics, whether it’s fossils, civil war bullets, that type stuff, just always joke. It’s stuff you can’t find just walking into Mart, you know? And it’s a lot of unique stuff. People buy Christmas presents for their kids. Yeah, obviously with the Atlanta Braves and Georgia Bulldogs doing so well, that stuff goes crazy. We got replica rings, we do large canvases, just something for everybody. So it’s it’s been a lot of fun, especially this past year with with all the success of our local teams.
Stone Payton: [00:32:05] So and you’ve done it long enough. Now you’ve got the machinery in place, right? You’ve got the methodology, the discipline, the process. So if ABC non profit calls or whatever says, Hey, we want to raise some money, they reach out to you, you well, walk us through that process. What does that what does that look like? If they want to set something up and they want to start working with you? Yeah.
Chad Blake: [00:32:26] Yeah. I mean, I’m very, very simple. I’m very old school minded with kind of a handshake. I always get asked about contracts. To me, it’s not worth it. Yeah, because I stay so busy that honestly, I turn down sometimes more than I can take on. I do have a couple of people that help me out, you know, and I really appreciate that when they can do it. But, you know, it’s one of those things. It’s definitely my baby and I know how to do it. I mean, when I’m at going at a room, I mean, I’m walking on, you know, concrete for four straight hours, this back and forth, asking people they need help. Right. So, you know, it’s not necessary for everybody to do that kind of stuff. But I love it. You know, it’s the first thing, you know, I do. I introduce myself, talk to people the whole time. But, you know, somebody wants to get involved with an auction. All you to do is give me a call, tell me the date. We’ll check it out again. I’ll bring out all the items. And if they do have anything that they want to add to it, always 100% free. My goal is to really take that aspect of it off. So, you know, and they’ll get 100% of that, you know, it just adds to it. So and personally, we, you know, besides like the golf tournament and stuff for our nonprofits, I stay away from gift certificates stays somewhere because I always say they and I always try and help the nonprofits if they’re, you know, kind of ways to make extra money and really, you know, talk to that. That’s more about who, you know. You know, if you got a restaurant a bunch of times just asking for a gift card, you’re helping them out. Let them help you out. Right. And, you know, it’s again, it’s fundraising. I don’t have an online store. I don’t do anything like that. I’ll help people maybe with gifts occasionally. But, you know, it’s you know, it’s something if you saw my garage and basement. Oh, yeah.
Stone Payton: [00:34:08] So but it’s it’s zero risk, right? I mean, first of all, you know what you’re doing, but it’s also you’re going to bring all this stuff, we’re going to get our cause is going to get a percentage of what you do. And if I’ve got a cousin with a condo in Savannah, that’s we can put that out on the table too. And we keep all that.
Chad Blake: [00:34:25] Yep. Love it. Yeah. And it’s, you know, again, no setup fee, nothing. The only thing I ask for is tables and tablecloths and people, and I’ll literally do the rest. So we even take payments. We clean up at the end. Well, you’ll get a spreadsheet seeing exactly what went, how much, and we write a check within a couple of days. And I always love writing that check because that means, you know, we did well out there for everybody.
Stone Payton: [00:34:48] Sure.
Chad Blake: [00:34:49] You know, and it’s I mean, it’s a nice write offs at the end. I’m not going to lie.
Stone Payton: [00:34:52] But yeah, well, maybe you can coach people through that process a little bit too, or put them in touch with someone that has that experience and expertise. Because a lot of us, while we might have a heart for this kind of thing, we don’t know this world. The Business RadioX Main Street Warriors program. It’s it’s a relatively new thing. And we you know, we’re just kind of we’ve got a good heart and we’ve got some marvelous resources available to us to kind of make it work. But there’s just so much we don’t know. Right. And so that is fantastic. All right, let’s make sure that our listeners can reach out and connect with you on the experiences and or the the auction work, whatever you think is appropriate email, phone, website, that kind of stuff.
Chad Blake: [00:35:32] Yeah, definitely. First angel auctions, if you just go to WW dot my angel auctions dot com. That just showed my age because you probably don’t need the WW. It’s a world wide web for all you kids.
Stone Payton: [00:35:45] And Christina is on Tik Tok. No, no.
Cristina Patten: [00:35:49] Okay. I might have it on my phone.
Stone Payton: [00:35:51] I don’t actively post anything.
Chad Blake: [00:35:55] I’m still on Facebook. I’m the old man. That’s what my kids tell me.
Brian Pruett: [00:35:57] I’m still on MySpace we’re talking about.
Chad Blake: [00:36:00] But you got good music on there. But you know also. And then experiences. Foundation dot org. You know you can again check out the golf tournament, see a bunch of our work on there. They are just informational pages. So you’ll see a lot of different events. I mean, we work at Georgia, Georgia Tech, Braves, all sorts of different nonprofits. You can see them on there. I think to count it’s over 300 at this point that we’ve helped over than 20 years. Yeah. Do some kind of event charity auction something to those extents and. Yeah. I’m just. I don’t know, I’m so excited about, like, what we’ve accomplished. And I had the pro reach out to me today and said, Where are you at? And I told him and I think he was shocked because he’s like, Well, okay, y’all really are heading toward your goal. And when you have three like minded people, you know, you know, you’re going to hit that. And we’re we’ve been blessed. We’ve gotten a lot of the higher end. I do want to add this to a lot of the higher end sponsors are taken. We’ll still take more money if we need to and we’ll take care of you however we need to. We’ll be doing shout outs the whole time. We do have, I would say probably I think last count was about eight whole sponsors left. All of us are really big on networking, giving back. You can come out, set up at a whole hand out swag, talk to the golfers. You’re going to have at least probably 150 people total out there. Put stuff in our swag bags. You’re going to get a yard sign lunch for two and it’s only $150. Holy cow. So it’s a great way to get your business name out there, talk to a lot of people and meet some celebrities.
Brian Pruett: [00:37:40] Me, you get to meet me.
Stone Payton: [00:37:41] Get to meet Brian. Yeah.
Chad Blake: [00:37:44] We’re. We’re trying to get people out there. Oh, sorry. But it’s yeah, I mean, honestly, it’s, you know, it’s sometimes and we just did our cornhole tournament. And one of the things I’ll say real quick, we’re talking to one of the young men that was actually playing in it. And they were one of the, I think, top Final Four. The young man came up to me and he was he was talking to me. He actually came through foster care himself. So it was just the matter, you know? I mean, sometimes you just touch on people. And he was just so ecstatic. And, you know, he was gave me his information. He’s like, if I do anything. So, you know, a lot of people do appreciate it and pay it forward, you know, in every aspect they can to.
Stone Payton: [00:38:20] So, yeah. Brian, it just must be a delight working with these folks.
Brian Pruett: [00:38:26] Oh, yeah. Well, especially since Chad and I have known each other, what, 2000 and 2009, something like that. So it’s a long time. But you know, when you. Yeah. When you said when you get three like minded people that just have that passion to give them back and working together in community, I mean, this world is so much negative right now. Let’s get all the positive we can. Yeah, that’s another reason I’m doing charitable pursuits.
Stone Payton: [00:38:46] Yeah. All right, so I want to make sure we leave our listeners with contact coordinates for charitable pursuits as well. What’s the best way for them to reach.
Brian Pruett: [00:38:52] Out to you? All right. So yeah, so the the website is on the W WW. It’s BS like the bumblebee. The Web doesn’t like the apostrophe, so I couldn’t do B apostrophe. So it’s BS. So B’s charitable pursuits dot com that’s the best way to get to me.
Stone Payton: [00:39:10] Well, this has been a lot of fun. It’s been informative. It’s been inspiring. Thank you all for coming in and visiting with us this morning. You’re doing such important work and thank you.
Cristina Patten: [00:39:20] Thanks for having.
Stone Payton: [00:39:21] Us. Yeah, we really sincerely appreciate you and Business RadioX in general and the Main Street Warriors program. We’re going to see if we can’t find some ways to work and play together and and tap into to some folks like you that know what you’re doing. Awesome.
Chad Blake: [00:39:37] Thank you. Thank you. Till you make it. I mean.
Stone Payton: [00:39:38] Yes, absolutely. All right. This is Stone Payton for our guest today and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business Radio.
WBENC 2022: Michelle Murdock with Core Green Technologies
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Michelle Murdock, Core Green Technologies
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from the 2022 WBENC National Conference at the Georgia World Congress Center, inside the GWBC Booth, Booth 1812, if you want to come by and see us. I’m so excited to be interviewing Michelle Murdock with Core Air Solutions. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Murdock: [00:00:35] Hi. Thanks for having us.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] Well, tell us a little bit about Core Air Solutions. How are you serving folks?
Michelle Murdock: [00:00:40] Okay. So, we actually offer a holistic way of cleaning the air, it’s called Ionization Technology. And we have wearable technology that you can take with you anywhere you go. And it cleans the air in a three foot radius using ionization technology, which is what you get outside at the beach, you get lots of negative ions. So, negative ions also improve your mood, increase your cognizant ability, and improves your energy levels. So, it’s actually a really good technology and it also repels dust, dander, and pollen. So, it kind of helps protect you when you’re out and about. And, also, it’s great for people with allergies, which is me.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] And me. And how about the show? How has the show been working for you? Are you exhibiting or are you here wandering around?
Michelle Murdock: [00:01:23] We’re exhibiting. And it’s very amazing. Honestly, it’s so much to learn and do. So, this is really fascinating for us.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So, now, you decide to do it because the event is here in Atlanta, you’re in Atlanta, so you said, “Hey. There’s a bunch of women-owned businesses. Let me -”
Michelle Murdock: [00:01:39] Right. It’s like learning from other women. It’s amazing. So, there’s so many people, and not just the women, but the corporate people here are telling you so much that you just don’t know. So, this is something new for us. We’ve never really done a product. And I found this technology a couple of years ago and it’s amazing. Two years, not a single sinus infection, or a single antibiotic, or a single puff of an inhaler. And so, I just want to take that technology to everybody, because if I can feel good, anybody can feel good.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:07] So, now, when you’re working a show like this, you’re in your booth, you have a booth, how are you kind of letting the corporates know about the booth and getting them to kind of learn more about the product?
Michelle Murdock: [00:02:18] We have tutus on.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:21] Tutus. You’re the only people with tutus, I believe, here.
Michelle Murdock: [00:02:24] Yes. We are always the only people with our costumes on and they’re just way of life for us. You know, we like to be different. We understand there’s a billion people here, so you have to do something that sets yourself apart a little bit. And what more fun than tutus.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:42] That’s part of the brand?
Michelle Murdock: [00:02:43] Well, it’s just our fun way of, you know –
Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] Well, the quirkiness and fun is part of the brand, right? That’s the culture of the company.
Michelle Murdock: [00:02:49] Yes. Our culture is very, very hands-on, fun. And, you know, we’re a green company, green technology. And then, our other side is a service organization that actually does green, we refurbish signage. So, we’re superheroes and it kind of bleeds over into our green technology side, where we’re also saving lives by saving them air. Breathing clean air is the first step to being healthy.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:14] Now, with the organization, did you get certified right away? Like, how did the certification come about?
Michelle Murdock: [00:03:21] So, we certified a little over a year ago – no. Oh, my gosh – almost two years ago, so right before or right after COVID, I think. I can’t remember. So, yeah, we got certified. We’re certified WSP as well. Really, this is awesome. I’ve done a lot of trade shows in my 26 years of being in commercial, and I’ve never had one that was just this kind of neat and different and, you know, full of women supporting other women, and even the guys supporting the women. So, it’s really neat to see.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] And it’s something that you can really feel it, right? It’s a different vibe inside here. I, too, have been to lots of trade show and this one feels different. You can feel the level of collaboration and people rooting for each other and wanting everybody to succeed.
Michelle Murdock: [00:04:08] Yes. I mean, I just had one of the guys from Target who’s amazing. I, you know, was not expecting, he was helping me understand how to really kind of put the product out there. And it was amazing because I’ve talked to quite a few people in the past before the show and it was just really hard to kind of understand what you needed to do and he was amazing. So, everybody has been, though. Everybody we talked to has just been very encouraging.
Michelle Murdock: [00:04:35] We do have a technology that’s really more of a science. And it’s interesting but it’s a health benefit, and nobody’s really heard of it, which is sad, because it’s actually a really good way to help yourself be healthy.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:49] And so, education has to be part of the product, right? Because you have to explain it. It’s not kind of intuitive. They see it and they’re like, “Oh, I want one of those.”
Michelle Murdock: [00:04:57] They’re like, “That’s so pretty. It lights up. What does that do?” And I’m like, “Oh, my God. It cleans the air.” Actually, also, yes, it does like the bacteria and viruses and mold, but also repels dust, dander, and pollen, which is what caused most of us to have our asthma attacks or allergies and sinus infections. And a lady just walked up because she doesn’t have a voice because she said her hotel is full of dust, and so she woke up without a voice this morning. I was like, “Oh. This is helpful.”
Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Right. There’s a technology that might be able to help you.
Michelle Murdock: [00:05:26] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:28] So, here at the show, have you been doing any of the panels? Have you been doing any of the education? Or you’re just trying to stay above water with all the people that are probably flooding to your booth trying to check out one of those?
Michelle Murdock: [00:05:41] Well, we’re in a weird position because we’re not really in our category because we have two companies that are kind of both green. So, they kind of put us in the sustainability, which is awesome. But, you know, we’re a little different, so we’ve been really busy. Every time I try to leave the booth, somebody walks up. And, really, this is my passion, so I just really need to help people understand it.
Michelle Murdock: [00:06:08] So, it’s been great. I haven’t been able to go to the meetings or to sit down. But I’ve had so many people who are doing those that I’ve gotten to talk to that are, like, telling me things and helping because they see that I can’t even leave the booth most of time.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:21] Well, we appreciate you coming here. If somebody wants to learn more, is there a website to get more information?
Michelle Murdock: [00:06:26] Yes, coreairpurification.com.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:30] And coreair.green and core.green.
Michelle Murdock: [00:06:34] Yes. There’s lots of ways to find us.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:35] There’s lots of ways to get a hold of you. And Core Air is kind of the heart of the brand, right?
Michelle Murdock: [00:06:39] Yes. So, our green technology kind of pivoted back during COVID based on my senior living communities actually having a really big need, and so, I covered this technology. We were originally doing EV charging stations and things like that, and LED retrofits and things. But this, I mean, it changed my life. So, if it changed my life, it can change other people’s lives.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:02] Right. You got to get the word out to more people.
Michelle Murdock: [00:07:03] I got to get the word out. Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:05] Well, Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Michelle Murdock: [00:07:09] Thank you for having us.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:11] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few at the WBENC National Conference 2022.
About WBENC
The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping women-owned businesses thrive.
We believe diversity promotes innovation, opens doors, and creates partnerships that fuel the economy. That’s why we not only provide the most relied upon certification standard for women-owned businesses, but we also offer the tools to help them succeed.
About GWBC
The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business.
GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Celeste Simmons with Big Social Marketing
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Celeste Simmons started in marketing almost 20 years ago. She majored in Technical writing and English in college, and is a published author. She later attended “google university” to get certified in google ads.
She began her business, Big Social Marketing, 9 years ago. She plays an active role in all of the marketing campaigns. She and her staff create focused campaigns for clients on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Business, YouTube, Twitter, Tic Tok and more.
Follow Big Social Marketing on LinkedIn and Facebook.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:10] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Sharon Cline: [00:00:26] And welcome. It’s Friday at three, which means it is time to listen to Fearless Formula on Cherokee Radio X, where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline, and our guest in the studio today started in marketing almost 20 years ago, and she is a published author. She attended Google University to get certified in Google ads and she began her business big social marketing nine years ago. She and her staff create focused campaigns for clients on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, business, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, all the things. Please welcome Celeste Simmons to the show. Hello. Hello. Nice to meet.
Celeste Simmons : [00:01:08] You. Thank you for having me.
Sharon Cline: [00:01:09] You’re welcome. I appreciate you coming in. I didn’t know you could get certified. This is how little I know about marketing. You can get certified in Google ads. Can you tell me something about that?
Celeste Simmons : [00:01:19] So years ago when I first started, Google seminars came through Atlanta, and that was when I went. That was when I first went to their classes. But of course, now, like everything, it’s all online and you don’t even need to have much of a background in like website design and things like that. You can get Google certified. That class is very deep. The last time I took the test it was 150 questions on. It’s timed and they’re really difficult.
Intro: [00:01:47] You know, it’s.
Celeste Simmons : [00:01:48] It’s, it’s kind of a hard test but yeah that’s how you get certified. It’s it’s an online test. Do they have study guides on Google but it’s all about Google ads. It’s YouTube ads, it’s listing ads, things like that. All of the little Google products and especially now it’s changing because Google is changing. Google is changing all the time. It does updates all the time. So it’s it changes the questions year to year.
Sharon Cline: [00:02:13] Oh, my gosh. Do you remember a question? I mean, are we talking like metrics and things? There’s so much I don’t know.
Celeste Simmons : [00:02:19] Yes. A lot of metrics, a lot of analytics and try and it’s questions like how to determine if your campaigns are successful and then how to determine how to set up a campaign the right way, how to set up the budget correctly. So it’s it touches on all of those areas. It’s a lot of it’s a lot of analytics and tracking and things like that.
Sharon Cline: [00:02:41] Everyone think if I’m thinking Google, I’m just like, well, I need a plumber, you know? But I’m not thinking so much about how much behind the scenes is happening.
Celeste Simmons : [00:02:49] And yeah, are so many options now. And Google also updates, Google ads, the AdWords platform. So it’s it’s important. It’s an industry where I have to constantly stay up to date because nothing is the same. Even on Google AdWords from when I started almost ten years ago, the platform to design ads and to set up ads looks totally different than it did ten years ago.
Sharon Cline: [00:03:12] It’s like something I wanted to ask you about is like, what? What are the how has the industry changed? I mean, I’m sure it’s changing every minute. Like we were just talking a second ago before we went on air about tick tock and how how huge that is in terms of ads, too.
Celeste Simmons : [00:03:25] Yeah, tick tock is really shaking things up.
Intro: [00:03:27] That’s that’s a whole.
Celeste Simmons : [00:03:29] Nother subject with Google, for instance. So you YouTube is owned by Google and it purchased it years ago. But that’s one of the things like say that you want to do you want your product videos to appear on YouTube so that someone who’s searching for that widget or whatever, that the cooking product that you sell, that you want to put it on YouTube, you have to go through Google ads to set that up. So even if you do produce a video, you can tag it with keywords. But if you want it to be seen by people that are likely to buy your product, you have to you’re going to have to do a YouTube ad. And you you set that up through Google AdWords.
Sharon Cline: [00:04:06] So I was reading a little bit about this and how there are ways that you can do this apparently free, but it feels like if you’re really serious about your business, you need to invest a little bit, at least not even it’s not thousands of dollars, but I think you were even talking about hundreds of dollars in order to encourage these keywords to bring up your your business. How does that work?
Celeste Simmons : [00:04:29] Right. So there’s that’s kind of almost a difficult question to answer. So it determines it’s based on the fact it’s based on what do you sell and who your market is, that that’s the first determining factor of where do you need to be? If what you sell is a consumer product and it’s under $300, you might want to do Facebook and Instagram and maybe TOK ads that might be your niche and that might really work. But if what you sell is in the higher price point, you probably might want to focus on YouTube and Google ads, and you can also do Microsoft ads. But if what you sell is a higher price point, you have to cast a wider net and you’re going to have to put a little bit more dollars on it. You know, if what you sell is $1,500 or more, you’re going to you’re going to have to spend some money to advertise it, because you’re going to have to you’re going to have to find the people that have that kind of money to spend on the product. So it’s now there’s so many settings in Google. There’s so many, so many. I mean, you can do an ad for as little as 300. Dollars a month. People get scared about Google ads because the Google ads of ten years ago, that was when people would spend thousands accidentally because they didn’t know how to do it.
Celeste Simmons : [00:05:36] But you don’t have to do that anymore. When we set up Google ads, I can I can adjust it. Like if you just wanted your ads to show between two and 4 p.m. between Monday and Thursday, I can do it. No kidding. You just wanted, like, just certain phrases and keywords to be tagged according to your product of what you sell. Those are the keywords that you turned on. And then that way you can track what people are clicking on, and you can also track how many of those clicks are coming into a purchase. And that becomes analytics. There’s ads, but then you also get analytics, which is the tracking, and it kind of tells more about the buyer. I have one client who is he owns a body shop. And for him, his ads are his ads are on Google. But he wanted to do a very tight radius, as you can imagine, because if you’re in a body shop, that means you’re probably were just in an accident. Right? Right. So you probably don’t want to go with that without five miles of your home. So we had to set up a really tight radius and then we we tightened it up even more. We made it just within his business hours.
Celeste Simmons : [00:06:41] And then we went down again and he said, okay, I don’t want to spend more than 2000 months. So we set that budget up no more than 2000 a month. And then he also wanted to make sure that it was just specific phrases that people would click on. Now also, one of the funny things is I can track, I can set up the device. So with his ads, as you can imagine, people were finding him 99%. We found out we’re clicking on a mobile device. So we just didn’t even put any money on desktop units. We put we put it all on a mobile device. So his ads only show up within a five mile radius of a shop and on a mobile device. And because that’s where everybody was clicking, that was the highest conversion rate for him. So so things like that, it gets so specific. I mean, I can we can write the text, of course, we can pick the terms that people want to advertise on the time of day, the dollar amount. I mean, it just gets so deep. You Google will make you money based on how much you spend. It’s I always tell people the rule of thumb, it should return back to you about four times what you put in.
Sharon Cline: [00:07:49] Wow, that’s a lot.
Celeste Simmons : [00:07:51] Yeah. And Facebook ads is good, like I mentioned, for consumer ad products. But with Facebook ads now, Facebook ads cost less, but they’re also going to get a a smaller conversion rate. But they let’s say that you only have $100 to spend and you do have a consumer product. Well, you can put that $100 on Facebook ads and you’ll probably get you may get as much as 5 to $1000 back from your $100 spent.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:19] Do they have the same kind of analytics? Facebook?
Celeste Simmons : [00:08:24] Not really. Some of them are similar to what Google gives you. Facebook is is always it’s always riding Google’s coattails, in my opinion. I mean, Google Google just started earlier. They’re leaps and bounds ahead of Facebook. But Facebook is pretty good for the person that just wants to spend a little bit. If you just want to put your ads on Facebook and Instagram, which now you can join them together because of Facebook and meta Facebook meta put Instagram and Facebook business pages together. So now you can do kind of like two for one and you can get a wider audience cast out that way. But yeah, you can definitely limit your where you advertise to. You can limit to the types of people. If you’re if you’re a business owner and you’re trying to determine where should I put my money? The biggest determining factor of if you should do Facebook and Instagram ads or YouTube and Google is based on who is going to see your product. But the other thing about Google is that Facebook ads are run based on who is likely to purchase from you, who they’re on their behaviors, their purchasing behaviors and what they’ve looked at in the past. So in other words, they may not be looking right now. It’s just something that they’re likely to do. That’s how Facebook ads work. But Facebook ads are much cheaper. But Google ads, that person is currently on their phone. They’re currently in front of their computer. And they have just typed in that particular phrase that this person set up in their account. So Google ads will convert higher. That means they’re going to click to your website or they’re going to call more often, but it’s also going to be four times the price.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:03] Do you feel like there are people out there who, okay, let’s just take me because I have the smallest business on the planet. A voiceover business. Okay, let’s say I wanted to just do it myself. Like what are the mistakes that people tend to make? Like, I imagine I would want to come to you and say, I don’t know enough about human behavior and if people are looking for voiceover artists at two in the morning or whatever. So. How how what could how would you help me?
Celeste Simmons : [00:10:29] So I would even even as the smallest.
Intro: [00:10:32] Business in America, as you said.
Celeste Simmons : [00:10:35] I would tell you to not just only focus on social media. So social media is great. It’s a great springboard for when you’re just getting started and you don’t have much of a budget because, I mean, social media is free. You could be on all of them. Tik Tok, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook. You can go across the board, which is great because the more social media sites are on, the higher likelihood that someone will find you. And then you have more opportunity to spread the word because people, you know, you have people that don’t like Facebook and they might be on LinkedIn. So you want to be on LinkedIn too, or they might be on Twitter because they think Facebook is annoying or whatever. So you want to make sure you’re on all of them. So that’s the number one tip is don’t just don’t just concentrate on just like Facebook and Instagram only make sure you spread out and other and now remember that that’s all organic. But remember that when it comes to be, to be and like for you, for instance, I would definitely say to be on LinkedIn and to focus some of what you do on LinkedIn, because that’s where the business owners are going to find you and that’s who your market is. And so I would really focus on B2B.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:41] Thank you.
Intro: [00:11:42] You’re welcome. It’s a free tip. Thanks for coming in.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:46] So what are some of the low cost marketing options for someone who’s a small business owner?
Celeste Simmons : [00:11:52] So they’re actually there’s a good bit of low cost, so you can still make free videos. So don’t forget about YouTube. To set up a YouTube channel is totally free. Now if you don’t want to have your face in a video and I know a lot of business owners are like, Oh, I don’t look good on camera. I don’t want to be on there because we hear that all the time. You can you can buy like stock video footage and you can make a stock video footage out of your product or service. You don’t have to be in the video. So remember that YouTube is free. The other free opportunities are like newsletters. If you have a newsletter list, just go through your email list, go through your list of connections on LinkedIn and then turn that into an email list and then use MailChimp or constant contact email. A newsletter list can be like $100 a month. I mean, and that, you know, that you can turn that into several sales per month every time you turn into a newsletter or you send it out. And then the other thing is also text messaging ads. Text messaging ads are really affordable. They’re very popular now. But if you have phone numbers, let’s say you don’t have a good list of emails that you’re confident in, but you do have client phone numbers from past appointments. You can use that phone number list. Let’s say you came up with 300 phone numbers and you want appointments for meetings or appointments for, let’s say, your massage therapist or something like that. You can send out a text alert and that’s only a few hundred dollars. The text messaging campaign is really, really affordable and it goes direct to people’s phones. So think about it. Those text messaging campaigns has a 96% open rate. Wow. Right. So, I mean, those get really good conversions. I really like text messaging campaigns for saving money as well as just getting appointments. It’s it’s a call to action ad every time because it’s it goes right to their phone.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:40] Wow. It’s it’s interesting to you. There’s this the aspect of it is human behavior, right? So I don’t think I’m learning right. And I’m like a baby in terms of marketing. I have not done much marketing of my own. Like I said, I always just hope people hire me and I’m so happy when they do. But the notion of looking at trends of how people behave, like you were saying, with people who would potentially have had a car accident, they’re on their phones immediately, probably next to their car. You know, how do I but it’s so smart to think this way. And so there’s such a human aspect to to business. Can you talk a little bit about what that’s like?
Celeste Simmons : [00:14:19] So we do try to consider like when somebody comes in and gives us a call, we do we always consider what type of business they’re in as well as what who their customer is, what age their customer is, and what kind of things where do they where does this customer shop? What are their activities? You know, if you are if you sell to the upper 5% income level, you have to go in places or market to places where those those type of people with that kind of income hang out. And so that’s a little bit tricky, like with Facebook ads, but that’s how it determines it’s based on their habits and their interests. So if they’re at the golf course, well, then that’s the one of the interests or the behaviors that you target if you’re trying to find maybe people with more income because what you sell is more expensive. If you’re trying let’s say you’re a consultant and your your perfect client is another business owner. Well, you would want to type that in like Facebook ads. You would want to make sure and pick that interest that they are interested in. Be to be and they have. They have their own business or they have a small business. Those are key words that you can find as far as picking Facebook ads. But based on, you know, we have a we have a like a questionnaire that we give all of our potential clients and we have them fill out the questionnaire so that we can figure out who is your perfect client, who is your perfect buyer. That way we can find out where they are because we don’t we don’t want to waste money either. And I know they don’t.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:51] Of course. Sure. Has there ever been a sort of a campaign that’s kind of surprised you, how well it’s done or how well it hasn’t done? I know that’s kind of an out of left field question, but I don’t assume I know answers anymore.
Intro: [00:16:05] Where.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:05] I can’t predict what I think is going to happen. Like I’m a lawyer and I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to give me the answer. I think I know. I mean, I’ve been so surprised even just doing this show and having people answer in a way I just did not expect. So I’ve kind of opened my mind into just believing that I, I have just a very little bit of knowledge. I’ll do the best I can with where I’m putting my money, but I cannot predict how something can turn out great or not great. There’s only so much I can contrive, if that makes sense.
Celeste Simmons : [00:16:37] So I guess I have two examples of that. One, I had a customer one time that had her own line of cosmetics, and she specifically wanted to do Facebook ads. And it was it wasn’t it wasn’t an inexpensive cosmetic. It was it was a little upper price. So it was it ended up not being that great of a Facebook campaign because she picked her interest. Now, when we said, you know what, let’s try one more time, let us let us set up an Instagram ad for you and let me pick different cities, because she chose she was Internet based so she could go anywhere in the US, she could sell anywhere. So we chose the cities, we picked the interests. But that one surprised me. The Instagram ad did better for her on that particular face serum that she was selling. It was upper price, but she allowed us to help her rather than the customer coming in and saying, This is my client, this is where I want to go and this is what they like. I think her net was just too broad the first time. And so the second time when we did the Instagram ad, we spent less money, but we were very particular in what we chose to try to find that particular client for her. And the second one worked better.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:49] That’s so interesting.
Celeste Simmons : [00:17:50] Yeah. And that was a good lesson, I guess.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:53] How many clients come to you assuming they know how it goes, how it should go?
Celeste Simmons : [00:17:58] Most of them really ask for help. But this particular woman, she wasn’t new in business and she had done a Facebook ad in the past that did work. But the problem was she was comparing a Facebook ad that she she did for a $25 item. So when it came to doing a Facebook ad for the $300 item, that was different. That’s a different audience. And so that same audience that’s going to buy the $25 thing versus the $300 thing, that’s not necessarily the same people and they’re not necessarily in the same area. So we had to kind of fix that audience and those interests just because this was a higher price point, this was not going to be. She tried to use that same list that she did the first time so that those same people would buy again. But, you know, that doesn’t necessarily fit their budget because the people that she chose just didn’t line up with the $300 product. So we try to be particular with where we set it up and and how we set it up.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:55] Well, if you’re just joining us, I’m speaking with Celeste Simmons. She is owner of Big Social Marketing.
Intro: [00:19:00] How much? How? How?
Sharon Cline: [00:19:04] Gosh. Okay, here’s what I want to say. I get ads on Facebook and Instagram where I swear to you, I was just thinking about something I’m not and it has not gotten out of my mouth yet. And I hear comes in at how does that work? It just is the trends of the things that I like. If I’m a new homeowner, it’s going to assume I may need a new water heater at some point.
Intro: [00:19:28] No.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:28] How does it know I’m serious, though? Because I promise you I will not have spoken about anything. And all of a sudden something pops up where I’m like, Oh, my God, I was just going to look into this.
Intro: [00:19:37] Right.
Celeste Simmons : [00:19:38] So you have a lot of cookies on your computer as well as your phone, and there are these little tracking things. So even if you did click on a house and you’re not even looking for a house, it may show you that realtor ad next just because you clicked on a house. And so it tries, you know, Facebook gets paid big money for figuring out these interests. But again, it goes on interested things. Now, that’s where Facebook ads can be, can be a winner, but they also might be a loser. Let’s say that you were interested in like a piece of exercise equipment and but you were looking last week. And so now it comes up on your feed today. Well, you already ordered one last week, so Facebook doesn’t necessarily know when you’re done and you’ve already completed that purchase. Gotcha. So it just might keep showing you exercise equipment ads just because that’s what you were looking at a week ago.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:28] So, yeah, it’s funny. Amazon does that to me. I’ll buy like a blender and then they’re constantly asking me if I want another plant, but I just. Okay, thanks.
Celeste Simmons : [00:20:37] Sometimes they don’t know when to quit. Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:40] What do you think? I wanted to ask you, what do you think some of the biggest what is something that you are challenged by in in your in your business specifically? I guess I was trying to find a better way to say it, but like, what is the biggest challenge you experience?
Intro: [00:21:00] I guess I wasn’t even prepared for that question. Oh, no, that’s okay.
Celeste Simmons : [00:21:06] I guess the biggest challenge is to let’s say that we run a really good campaign for somebody, and it’s the first time they’ve ever used us. And then we just knock it out of the park and it’s great. And then they go, All right, that’s really great. Let’s do.
Intro: [00:21:22] It again.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:25] That would be terrifying for me.
Celeste Simmons : [00:21:28] Yeah, sometimes it is because I’m like, Man, they’re got.
Intro: [00:21:31] Really great results. How can I do this? How can I replicate it exactly.
Celeste Simmons : [00:21:35] So that becomes it. I guess that’s our constant strive here is just if we have something and we get great results, well, we want to do it again. So what we try to do is let’s say that we ran a great Instagram ad and we got really good results. Well, we might navigate over to Facebook so that we can try a different platform and get other results. Or we might go over to maybe YouTube ads and try to get those results there just from a different angle. But to try to mimic those results again, just to try to reach a different audience, but with the same kind of sales results.
Intro: [00:22:11] Wow.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:12] That must be an enormously daunting I mean, you can’t force someone to buy some something. But I also think I mean, there has to be you’ve got metrics behind the decisions that you’re making so you can back up why you’re doing what you’re doing. And I would imagine a client would understand why. I mean, that’s why they’re hiring you to do this.
Celeste Simmons : [00:22:33] Right? We always go through the metrics after the ad has run. And and of course, we have a long discussion before the we even set up ads to make sure that we get the interest right and the audience right. We we really try, you know, we don’t want to make any mistakes. Again, I don’t want to waste their money. And then, you know, Facebook also, they want their ads to work. So we just try to be we do. We set up as many specific things as we can. I’ll tell you one thing that we found recently. So I really am a good proponent of Google ads. I know that they work because I get tracking, I get analytics. But one of the things that I saw recently, we started doing Microsoft ads. Now Google has a little button on when you when you set up Google AdWords and it says, do you want to be on partner networks? And it’s just like a little switch. You turned it on and one of those partner networks would be being in Microsoft ads. But we never we always allowed Google to be on partner networks, but we never controlled it until just about six months ago where we started just doing Microsoft ads as well. Wow. Microsoft is still about 17 to 20% of the Internet search. And it’s still important to put a little bit of your budget. If you’re going to do Google ads, you should totally do Microsoft being ads as well. The platform is very similar, even if you think, well, I’m only getting 17 to 20% of that audience, but you’re getting it for a 10th of the price, 1/10 of the price. Wow. So that’s about the same cost as Facebook ads. But Microsoft also offers those tracking. So rather than just being on Google, I would say throw a little bit of the budget towards Microsoft also because it does offer that same tracking and it is getting customers over to those websites. We’re seeing that happen and it’s so much cheaper.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:22] Are you finding most people are using their phones? How how does that work statistically? Are they desktop or mobile phones mostly?
Celeste Simmons : [00:24:29] So it changes based on the business. Like if it’s a B2B based business, then it’s very desktop oriented. Then it’s it’s more like, let’s say 60% desktop if it’s a B to B business, like a professional item that they would have in an office or office building. If it is a consumer item, then it’s very it’s like 80% mobile devices. No way. And I have seen that change over the years. You know, when when mobile devices just became an everybody’s hand. I mean, I could I could almost log in every month and I would see the ratios going up and up and up. It’s almost I mean, 80% to 89%. It’s it’s really high. So Google allows you to gauge the money based on whatever device. If I just wanted the ad on a tablet, I could put it on a tab.
Intro: [00:25:15] I know. That’s amazing. I can’t believe that’s even an option, but it is.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:20] But I imagine that market is kind of smaller. Right.
Celeste Simmons : [00:25:23] And then people really and you know how I iPads were such the rage when they came out. Now people are just using their phones so much more. A tablet is just a blip on the radar. It’s just it’s in there. As far as your analytics of how many people are looking at your ads on a tablet versus a desktop versus versus a phone? But yeah, the phone is higher across the board, almost in every business, the mobile phones.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:49] What was it like prior to having Google or having that become such a huge part of marketing? What was it like? Before that. What were the main ways that you would mark it with people?
Celeste Simmons : [00:26:01] Oh, that’s a really good question. Blogs were the thing. If you remember in our industry, it was the big phrase content is king, and that came from blogs. It was all organic. With blogs. With blogs, that was a way that you could put in certain phrases that you wanted to be Google for. Now, blogs are still a thing. I’m not knocking blogs. We do them and we upload them for clients. But it’s not as important as just having your having all of your things spread out across the Web. That’s one thing. One big tip I would give business owners in particular is to not forget. You really do have to scatter the web with what you do. You want to be on all those social media platforms. You do want to blog. You do want to do Google ads or Microsoft ads just like you would diversify your financial portfolio. Think of that as what you would want to do for marketing. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket if you’re a business owner that really likes Facebook. So you love putting things on Facebook about, you know, like let’s say you have a t shirt shop and you put pictures of what you sell. That’s great. But don’t forget to put them also on Twitter and put them on LinkedIn and to put them on Tik Tok, because all of those things collectively help drive traffic to your website. Just don’t get stuck on just one or two platforms. You’ve got to scatter it across the web because Google sees that and Google, it’s almost like a point value that Google gives you for every social media site or every organic marketing like a blog, it gives you like a little point in your direction so it can give you more opportunities to bring the audience to your website. The more places that you’re on the web.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:43] The more you spend. Let’s say I do a search for a microphone, the more I spend. Does that does that bring up someone else’s ad above mine if they spent more money? So did I ask that correctly?
Celeste Simmons : [00:27:57] You did. So in other words, let’s say that somebody spends $500 on an ad and then your competition is spending $1,500. So the $500 ad is still going to show when the person with the $15 ad what they do. What Google does is it rotates spots. So it still gives the guy with the $500 budget an opportunity, but he may only have two chances a day where the guy who spent 4500 might have five chances a day. So that’s how it works. It just means that the $500 ads budget will run out, and that means his ad will be shown less.
Intro: [00:28:36] Got it.
Sharon Cline: [00:28:37] Did was your business affected by the pandemic at all?
Celeste Simmons : [00:28:42] It was. We did have some clients that just couldn’t afford to market anymore. Most of them just said, hey, you know, I don’t want to spend this much on Google anymore. Can you dial it back? Which that’s instantaneous. If you don’t want to spend whatever dollar amount you’re spending, you can turn it off, you can pause it or you can just dial back the numbers. That’s that can be done the minute you call. So most of them most of them said, I don’t want to cut it off. I just want to dial it back. Because if you just all of a sudden stop marketing, I mean, your your place on the web will fall if you just stop. Your voice has to be heard. It has to be put out on the Internet. Otherwise you will lose your place on the web. It will just kind of disappear. It’ll get covered up by other people.
Sharon Cline: [00:29:25] So it was financial?
Celeste Simmons : [00:29:26] Yeah, most of them were financial because they just couldn’t afford the big Google AdWords budgets. Or if they have consistent Facebook ads running, then they just said, Hey, you know what? Can we just pause this for a little while? And that’s true. I feel like everybody’s back. Almost everybody called us back. I had two people that closed. One of them was a restaurant they hated to lose. But, you know, restaurants had a particularly hard time. Yeah, but yeah, one of the benefits from the pandemic for us was that people were okay with letting us work from home. And whereas before we were we were we tried to go to the office 3 to 5 days a week so that we were there for people if they called. But now they’re okay with us working from home. Which, which I appreciate.
Intro: [00:30:13] I know.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:14] I had to, like, get dressed.
Intro: [00:30:15] Today. Right. I’m all spoiled.
Sharon Cline: [00:30:18] What do you think about the impact of advertising that’s on tick tock? Like people will say, oh, I just went to I did a whole at the makeup store and these are the things that I like and not like. Do you do you track any of that kind of impact?
Celeste Simmons : [00:30:32] So I really.
Intro: [00:30:33] I like to talk.
Celeste Simmons : [00:30:34] I think it’s crazy how that came out. You know, it was just that was also something that came out in the pandemic, you know, because we’re all home. Tick tock, tick tock just became crazy popular because we’re all on our.
Intro: [00:30:46] Phones because everybody nobody was working. No one wanted to talk to each other. Right.
Celeste Simmons : [00:30:51] So it just came it just became crazy popular. But yeah, that was something that I kind of hesitated to go, a market that I hesitated to go into. But we do have several clients on with tick tock campaigns. It’s affordable. I can say that it works based on what you sell, based on the price. Once again, I would you know, it’s one of the platforms that we might suggest, like I’ve got one client, they’re on tick tock, but they don’t sell their they have a very strict market because of what they sell is like they have to own the market in certain states. So I can’t advertise for them nationally. So we don’t put money on their TikTok videos and yet they’re still on TikTok. So there’s still ways around it. Like based on your your sales area, if you can’t be on TikTok, then you can still do it the freeway. You can still just get your name and they just put some videos out there and just see what happens. Yeah, they offer tracking also.
Sharon Cline: [00:31:49] They do. It feels like such a young market.
Celeste Simmons : [00:31:52] Tick tock. It is.
Sharon Cline: [00:31:54] Yeah. Although I see lots of people. Like some lady showed up on the TikTok that I don’t really officially have. It’s like the Facebook.
Intro: [00:32:00] Version of TikTok because I tried to.
Sharon Cline: [00:32:02] Get away from it and I loved it too much. So she talks about real estate and but but it’s kind of interesting because it’s like a the the notion is that I’m going to just give you a little snippet of what my life is and what I experienced today. And I can’t believe how much that influences the way I think, you know?
Celeste Simmons : [00:32:21] Yeah, yeah. Tick tock. I like hearing people’s opinions and people’s experiences from those different areas of work and from the different careers. I think it’s really interesting because it’s, you know, it’s like a day in the life.
Sharon Cline: [00:32:35] Yes, a day in the life. There is somebody that I just saw talking about the day in their life as being a trucker. And I was like, what is your life like? And the next thing you know, it’s been like minutes.
Intro: [00:32:43] It’s just one time. It pulls.
Celeste Simmons : [00:32:45] You in.
Sharon Cline: [00:32:46] It does. But it’s interesting, I think. And you do kind of see, like you said, a snippet of humanity a little bit. I know it’s kind of a you know, it’s not exactly. It’s like almost a little ad for what their life is like. Not everybody’s going to show every single aspect of their life, but I was wondering how important, like I saw a TikTok about a woman who was comparing different makeups, like the premium brand and then the kind that she got at Target or whatever. And I thought, Man, this is so powerful because people are really going to listen to this woman who doesn’t have a dog in this fight. She’s just curious. And then she’ll do either side of her face. Obviously, that’s what’s on my TikTok, right? It’s like makeup.
Intro: [00:33:22] Stuff.
Sharon Cline: [00:33:24] But, you know, those that’s like nothing that they’re not this company is not saying, please promote my my business, my product. They’re just she’s just genuinely going out. But I’m sure there are people who will promote a brand or something, right?
Celeste Simmons : [00:33:39] There are. And what gets me the most on TikTok is the ones that really are advertising. But you don’t know it first.
Sharon Cline: [00:33:46] Oh, I’m sure I’ve swallowed that whole thing whole like, oh, she’s not she doesn’t have a dog in the fight, but secretly she’s got like a huge bank account. I don’t know.
Celeste Simmons : [00:33:54] One that was circling and it was what’s the biggest scam on the Internet right now? And then it cuts to its insurance companies and this lady talks about car insurance. But if you look at the bottom and you look at who the account is, and then it was like auto brokers and you’re like, no.
Intro: [00:34:11] It’s a commercial.
Sharon Cline: [00:34:13] They’re sneaking it in.
Intro: [00:34:14] Exactly. So you have to.
Celeste Simmons : [00:34:16] Kind of look for who is doing it, because if it’s like a company, then, you know, I’m not saying it’s not authentic, but if you’re looking for the real, true, unbiased opinion, you always have to look at who who did the video.
Sharon Cline: [00:34:28] That’s interesting. I don’t do that. I just take everything.
Intro: [00:34:31] Fake like.
Sharon Cline: [00:34:32] My TikTok is going to blow up at this point with everything. So what do you think if someone out there is listening and they’ve really not considered doing using a marketing company to really help them with their social media? What would you recommend they do?
Celeste Simmons : [00:34:49] So I would say if you have I guess my rule of thumb is let’s say that you’ve got $500 a month to spend on marketing and you just don’t know what to do with it. I would say that’s room enough in your budget to find us a small business focused marketing company. Like you.
Intro: [00:35:07] Yeah, like.
Celeste Simmons : [00:35:08] You. Big social marketing could possibly.
Intro: [00:35:11] Yeah.
Celeste Simmons : [00:35:12] Shameless plug. So if you are if even even on a $500 budget, things can be done. It just. We just have to determine what’s best for you and your audience and what’s best for your budget. But if you’re firm on whatever dollar amount you want to spend, it can still be done. I mentioned the free stuff. Let’s say that you want to be on all the social media sites, but you just don’t have time to create that presents. Well, that’s where people can come in. That can help you. If you just hate posting on Facebook and you don’t even want to open it, you still need to be there and you still need a business presence. Let’s say that you did do those Google ads and you did bring in that audience. They’re likely going to check you out on social media to social media. May not. Influence them to purchase, but it may influence them to purchase later. So think about it like that. They’re just they’re going to do their background checks. If you look at the percentage of people that are looking at Google reviews and then how much that influences the purchase, it’s like 75%. What? Yeah, that’s.
Sharon Cline: [00:36:12] A huge percentage. So I can see how if you have a bad Google review, how impactful that could be as well.
Celeste Simmons : [00:36:18] Yeah, and I know that the bad reviews really make business owners mad. Sometimes there’s things that you can do about it and get it taken down. It just depends on what was said. But that’s also another almost ignored avenue of a free one that business owners can do is Google business. Your Google business page is tied to your Google Maps and that is tied to your reviews. So it’s very important for you to manage it because if you don’t, this stuff is just out there about you. You have to look at it and you need to be responding. You can also post on Google Business just like you do Facebook and it goes up on your Google Maps. People can see it. It’s on the web. So if you don’t post, then there’s nothing there. It’s just your map and your reviews. But if you fill that space in with, Here’s what we’re doing and here’s our latest sale, or here’s our latest update, then that little square will appear. If you don’t post there, then nothing is there.
Sharon Cline: [00:37:13] Interesting. It feels overwhelming when I think about it, but I know that that’s why you’re an expert with a with a Google Degree. Did they send you a certificate? I’m just.
Intro: [00:37:23] Curious. I have not done it for 2022. But yeah, they do send you a certificate like a graduation diploma.
Celeste Simmons : [00:37:33] Yes, they do. They they make those questions worth it.
Intro: [00:37:36] Well, it.
Sharon Cline: [00:37:37] Feels like, though, I would want an expert in my corner helping me. I wouldn’t want to waste my. I mean, every dollar I get, like, just such a gift.
Intro: [00:37:45] Right?
Celeste Simmons : [00:37:45] You know, and it is overwhelming because there’s so many marketing options. I mean, I’ll I will definitely agree. It’s hard to know what to do, but like some of them, certain business owners don’t need to bother with. Like if you don’t have if you’re not selling like retail consumer oriented products, you don’t you probably don’t need to be on Pinterest. If you’re a like if you’re a consultant, you don’t have to be on Pinterest, but you might want to be on LinkedIn probably. So. So and the same thing with Twitter. If you don’t really have anything that you feel like you can offer or you feel like you can’t say something of value within that short amount of spaces, because Twitter, you know, it’s just a couple of sentences and you have to you’re done. So if you can’t say anything of value in that short amount of space, well then go to Facebook and go to Instagram, go to LinkedIn. But yeah, and if you’re comfortable with videos, then you want to go to YouTube and Tik Tok and then of course Facebook and Instagram do videos too. Now all the networks are doing videos. So but that should also kind of speak volumes of how important video is. It’s just this beast is not going away. It’s just growing and growing. So even if you’re a business owner that hates being on video, you need to find a way to to get videos made.
Sharon Cline: [00:38:58] It’s interesting. I am supposed to be doing more like I even got a what is it, a little tripod that I can use with my phone and a selfie stick, which I never thought I would own for one second. And I mean, that was a goal of mine is even before this show to be able to do a little video and put it out there. But do I do it? That would be no, I don’t know what it is about it. It just feels so me. Look at me. And I don’t I don’t know why that bothers me so much, but because I’m not going to be able to compete.
Intro: [00:39:23] If you don’t look at me, I get it. I totally.
Celeste Simmons : [00:39:27] Get it. And, you know, maybe it’s just the mentality of we feel like it’s self centered and it’s self serving. So again, if you can’t do it, then make a video of images of you and then do a voiceover that’s.
Sharon Cline: [00:39:42] Okay.
Celeste Simmons : [00:39:43] For you. That way you don’t have to have an actual video, but if you have moving images or scrolling images, you sync it up with music and you sync it up with a voiceover. Nobody’s going to fuss about that. That’s excellent. So same thing for other business owners. If you just really don’t want to be on camera or you’re like, Gosh, I hate video of me, how about just this picture? Well, then you can use like a slideshow video, or you can take video footage of whatever you sell, or you can use stock video footage and then put it maybe with the last screen of you as the picture sitting at your desk with your logo or whatever.
Sharon Cline: [00:40:15] All photoshopped. Beautiful, right?
Celeste Simmons : [00:40:19] Yeah. You are in control of video, so you think of it that way rather than just going, Oh, I’m never going to do it. Never, never, never. Well, think about it in a different way. Think about what would it take to get you to do it.
Sharon Cline: [00:40:31] But you know what? I really appreciate these tips because it is a different world for marketing, especially for someone like me who’s older, who, you know, this is not my natural thought process is to take a picture of what I’m eating and talk about everything lots of people do, and that’s fine. It’s just not how my brain works. So I think I’m like really slow on the uptake of how to get myself. Thinking this way. So I really appreciate your coming in and giving serious tips on the best things for people to do to to help their businesses grow the way they want. And if people wanted to reach out to you and find more information about you, where can they go.
Celeste Simmons : [00:41:06] So you can email me directly? It is Celeste. Celeste at Big Social Marketing. Or feel free to check us out on the web at Big Social Marketing.
Intro: [00:41:19] Yay, Celeste.
Sharon Cline: [00:41:20] Thank you. I know we didn’t talk so much about fear today, but I’m afraid of social.
Intro: [00:41:24] Marketing, so that’s.
Sharon Cline: [00:41:26] The best thing I can.
Intro: [00:41:27] Come up with today.
Sharon Cline: [00:41:28] But you make me feel less afraid. So I really do appreciate your coming in and giving me some.
Intro: [00:41:33] I hope so.
Sharon Cline: [00:41:34] I hope lots of people out here listen to to just your wisdom. I mean, in your experience, it’s very valuable in this world.
Celeste Simmons : [00:41:41] Thank you. I appreciate.
Intro: [00:41:42] That. Sure.
Celeste Simmons : [00:41:43] And don’t be afraid of social media. There are no there’s really no rules. If it’s your channel, own it own what you want to say. And if you don’t want your picture on it, then just put other just put other things. Like you can make a picture out of a testimonial. You can make it just a really good product picture. There’s so many other options if you just don’t want to show your face, but it is important to be there and some capacity.
Intro: [00:42:09] All right.
Sharon Cline: [00:42:11] You’ve convinced me, at least for this minute.
Intro: [00:42:15] No, I.
Sharon Cline: [00:42:16] Really appreciate it. Thank you again for coming in. And thank you again for joining us on Fearless Formula. And this again, is Sharon Klein reminding you with knowledge and understanding, you and all of us can have a fearless formula. Have a great day. And we’re.
Intro: [00:42:41] All right. How was it?
