Branding Your Experience w/ Christina Marie Noel | Ep. 146

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast David and Gary chat with Raleigh alum and serial founder, Christina Marie Noel. They talk about the art of gift giving, corporate sustainability and all the other buzzwords that people think are neat.

Links: 

Christina's LinkedIn

better Made Easy on LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Christina: Let's be real. Like time is money. Time is time.

[00:00:04] David: Nice. Well said. Very, very profound.

[00:00:09] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. I'm joined per usual by Gary Voigt. Hello, Gary. How are you?

[00:00:18] Gary: Hey, what's going on? 

[00:00:20] David: More importantly. I'm joined by Christina Marie Noel, who is the founder of Better Made Easy.

Hello,

[00:00:28] Christina: Hello. 

[00:00:29] David: welcome to our little bit of show. Now I should say, I know Christina, we run into each other pretty regularly all over the area. So this is a little different than a lot of our episodes where I don't know the person, but I do know Christina. We talk pretty regularly. So I am excited to talk to you cause you're fun to talk to.

Let's start off easy. I'm gonna give you a softball. Tell me about Better Made Easy. 

[00:00:50] Christina: Okay. So better made easy. We're a sustainability focused gifting company, really gifting startup. And we're on a mission to make gifting better easy. It's truly in the name. Life is hard. Gifting thoughtfully is really hard. And it's a pain point I've experienced. It's a pain point after six plus years of building a consultancy I've seen in the marketplace. I think that gifting is one of the most like underutilized marketing channels and business development channels. And then it's also fun. Who doesn't want to get a great gift that's really thoughtful that feels like human and caring. And also save time doing it because let's real. Let's be real. Like time is money. Time is time.

[00:01:35] David: Nice. Said. Very profound. So tell me what, go a little deeper. What does gifting mean? Am I buying gifts for my kids? I don't think so. This is corporate gifting. Is that right?

[00:01:46] Christina: Yeah. So we do have an online store, but yes, our first and best customers are corporate. We're really like finding that's the best way to like our mission at the end of the day is to help drive sustainable growth for mission driven organizations and the best way we can help brands that are growing or brands that might be like. lesser known to grow is to really be like that connector between the brands and corporate.

[00:02:11] David: So are these, so we use big pixel uses a thing called thanks. Have you heard of thanks?

[00:02:17] Christina: Ooh, haven't heard of that one

[00:02:19] David: T H N K S. So take all the vowels out. And that's how we gift. If that's the right word internally. So if someone is birthday, I'll send them cookies or Gary, I probably given him like a used towel or something. 

[00:02:36] Gary: Wait, no, hold on. Just to set the record straight. You're actually a very good gift giver. 

[00:02:41] David: But I usually no, that's fair. I, no, I have, I bought Gary some crazy things over the years when he was a contractor, especially cause I couldn't give him bonuses like, normally cause he was just a contractor at the time. And so I've given him some crazy gifts anyway. Okay. But we use thanks, which is a great thing, but it's really, it's meant internal.

It's meant to give it. Like you could use it externally, but that's not really it's shtick. Or what do you, where do you guys land? What are you, what kind of gifts?

[00:03:06] Christina: Yes. We definitely think that the holiday season, that's when we launched in the last year, and we definitely expect that to be our busiest time of the year. That being said, we are seeing the need for internal gifting. We're definitely working to be like that one stop shop for corporate gifting needs. Really with the goal though of becoming like a brand partner. So when we're working with clients, we're working to figure out if they want branded gifts that really reflect their values, like we can make that happen and we can be that resource year after

[00:03:40] Gary: If you can crack the code of creating like a swag bag of five to six promo items that are actually unique and cool without having to purchase, a thousand of them to get the price down, like then. Yeah, you'll be a Bazillionaire

[00:03:55] David: I have been amazed. So I go to chamber events pretty regularly and they're always sponsored by a bank of some sort. That's almost always who's doing it. And so I'll be at this big conference room, right? And there's probably 20 tables. And every single one in each table might have eight or 10 people, right?

And each one of those spots has little notebooks and pens and just swag. And I'm looking around going, that's a thousand ish dollars just sitting out there and they're just thrown, no one ever takes them like they're just there and I'm like, Man, you're because swag is something like internally when people like, Hey, you want to there's 14 of us, right?

Not a ton. And so I'm like, I want to buy some swag. And they're like, Oh, you need to buy an order of 400. I'm like, what? No, I have 14 people. I don't, for small companies, this is really hard, right? Gifting just in general is really hard. Are you focused on companies like mine, or do I need to have 500 people for you to care? 

[00:04:52] Christina: Oh, no, we definitely, at least for now, we care about every size company, but you're hitting on an interesting conversation because this is one of the things that we're trying to sort through, even as we build our service is the idea of branded merch versus, gifting and where they align and where they differ.

Actually one of my dearest and closest mentors who I look up to so much runs brand fuel and they're an amazing brand of merch company. They do such cool, creative, mission driven swag. Or they really like the word brand and March. And merch has its place for sure. And also sometimes it doesn't have its place, if that makes sense.

So like. Employee onboarding. Yes. Get them some branded merch. Let them be empowered to represent your company. Holiday gifting, depending upon what you're sending. Absolutely. However depending upon what the purpose is if someone had a new baby, yeah, maybe I want a onesie with the logo on it. But what about everything else?

What are we packaging? Yeah. And what we're finding is there's so many companies and the funny thing is, It's often high, like high up women, especially in like high growth startups that are going out and like buying a bunch of stuff for 10 thoughtful gifts to put with the onesie.

And I'm like no. Let us do that. Send us your merch. If you need advice on great merch partners, we'll help you. Will we eventually sell merch? Maybe. But I care most about solving really personalized gifting and then branding the experience, right? Let's make sure we have a branded card.

Let's make sure we have branded tape around the gift box. But does everything in it need your brand?

[00:06:39] David: So there's F Last Christmas, for some reason, so I buy everybody a gift, but some of my employees will give me a gift, which is very sweet. And for some reason I, unless they all talked and I don't know about it. For some reason last year, everyone decided I needed everything to say big pixel on it.

And so I, cause I had just bought it. Was it, did I just buy the sweatshirts? No, that was t shirts only. Yeah. Cause that was this year.

[00:07:05] Gary: Yeah. I think it was just coming off the second round of T-shirts.

[00:07:09] David: So I gave out t shirts to everybody, who's working here. And that's like the quintessential branded thing. So I have a picture of me. This is no joke. I'm wearing a big pixel t shirt. I have a Yeti, a water bottle, big pixel. I have a dog bowl from Yeti, big pixel. I have, I'm trying to, there was something else too.

It was. I had to, I think I did have the sweater cause I had two things. It was I have an Ember mug that I actually did for the present branded, which 

[00:07:39] Christina: that. That's 

[00:07:40] David: Yeah, that one 

[00:07:41] Christina: awesome. 

[00:07:41] David: cool. Here's a funny story on that. I went to go to Ember directly and I said, I need Ember mugs. And they're like, you need to buy at least 25.

I'm like, no. So I went to another company. Who said you can buy as few as, I think five up to couple hundred. And it was cheaper than Ember to, but it was engraved. Like I didn't understand how any of this worked. It was cheaper than Ember doing it themselves, and I didn't have to buy the big, so I was like, someone's.

Really off here. Anyway, so it was just nuts. How much brand is stuff? Cause does everything need to be branded? No, but I like the idea of branding the experience. I think that's very cool. But I 

[00:08:21] Christina: and handwritten notes,

whatever, handwritten 

[00:08:25] David: do, you do the hand? Actually, are someone writing it or are you doing the, there's a cool thing nowadays that you can upload like your picture, your,

[00:08:33] Gary: was just going to say, David's got a branded handwritten business card.

[00:08:37] David: That is true. I actually paid a company to do my signature and everyone makes fun of me, but I have the coolest signature on the planet. Every time I 

[00:08:48] Christina: oh, yeah, I hear this. 

[00:08:48] David: or something, it is so awesome.

[00:08:50] Gary: Yeah, that's because you had to go through six rounds of revisions.

[00:08:54] David: Oh what was really cool, man, that's so bad, but it, what is really cool is they said, give me your signature. So I drew my actual signature, it's chicken scratch. And but they took what I actually, my real signature and they just made it like someone like Gary actually did it. So it's legible.

But it still looks like mine. It's so cool. I'm sorry. I know it's vain as all get out, but I do love my little fake signature. So I want to change gears pretty dramatically because I think your story is very interesting because not only do you run better made easy, but you have your own consulting group, which is marketing focused, correct?

[00:09:30] Christina: correct.

[00:09:31] David: And that is the heartbeat. I. e money of that's allowing better made easy to function, right? That's, is that's safe to say. 

[00:09:41] Christina: For now. 

[00:09:41] David: So how, yeah sure. So I am sure the reason I want to zero in on that is because I think there's a lot of people who have ideas like that. Cause I was just, was it last week that I brought up Alex Ramosi and he said not to do this?

I think that was just last week. I'm asking Gary. He's looking at me funny. Maybe I'm crazy. Was that last week? It doesn't matter.

[00:09:58] Gary: Yeah, it was last week.

[00:10:00] David: So I'm going to bring it up again because it's apropos again. He says, if you own a gizmo such as your consultancy and you want to start something new, the only way to make this something new work is to completely kill the consultancy and go whole hog into the thing.

And the guy last week disagreed with that. And clearly you do too. So it's interesting. What are your thoughts on that? Like, how does that work? Cause you got to support yourself, right? So that's your consultancy and then better made easy. Is like, how does that work in a practical sense?

Like, how could you even if you thought Alex was right, how does that even work,

[00:10:37] Christina: Yeah, 100%. Cause if I was going to go all in, and I think it depends on what you're working on. So I don't think there's one right answer. I think it all depends. And so I spent last year, the last six years working often with like high growth companies on go to market strategy. So I've actually studied this at like I spent six years helping other companies Determine how they wanted to go to market and then coming up with their strategy, figuring out their marketing budget and helping them allocate it.

And then serving as a fractional leader, as long as it made sense until we could hire someone else full time, or at least they could steer the ship without me. Which is, it was so much fun. I feel like it was six years of like market research, meaningful work. And it depends, right? So I, and looking at really successful startups, Amazon, it was winner takes all.

So if I was trying to literally start Amazon back when Amazon was started, And I wanted to dominate the whole market, take it over. Like timing was everything. That's why Amazon was so aggressive and, had the strategy that they had. But today I'm working to build a gifting company and it's a massive market. The merch industry is massive. Like I am coming after something that's huge. So even if we just carve a niche in this massive market, there's some space, I think, to be one of many players. And I also think that it's one of the massive markets that like the merch companies are killing it, but actually no one's solving the, quite the problem that we're setting out to solve, which is how do you get thoughtfully, In new ways every year, and and there's even different business models we're playing with and actually thoughtfully branding that versus first worrying about putting brands on things truly like branding the products because that's been the traditional corporate gifting way.

It's either branded merch or here and David 

[00:12:32] David: man? I've done that. I fell in right into that trap. Harry and David's my buddy. 

[00:12:37] Christina: And so and sure there's flowers. I've heard one company that's okay, every time something happens with our employee, we give them flowers, we would love to send thoughtful local gifts. That feels a lot better. And maybe if you can even toss in one thing that's unique to them. So if they have a dog, send them really thoughtful dog treats made by people with disabilities or cute dog socks.

So you show them that you've seen them and that you've heard them and you know them. That like that, those little things, like it's really like a, the made easy is what we're really obsessed with and to do that, we've got to figure out the business model and we've got to figure out the solution and it's going to be manual.

We're going to do things that aren't scalable at first. And so IE, it's not going to be profitable or it's going to, it might be profitable, but it's not going to get the scale quickly. I would rather like slow as smooth and smooth as fast. Like I'd rather spend the next year really understanding the problem, really onboarding our first few customers and getting it right.

Like really, I don't know. There's so much startup obsession with get to 10 X from the beginning to the end, but I've seen so many examples of the opposite where I've worked with startups that were killing it and it found product market fit and it was epic. And I've done this. So there's one out of South Carolina that was amazing.

They like hacked Facebook marketing for nonprofits. It was so cool. They were like, they were working with the largest nonprofits in the world and some of the work they were doing had broken Facebook for a day. They were just killing it. They were growing so fast and amazing. And, then I found out like in one of the last meetings with a client, they were telling a story to their team before we trained the team on the new, mark messaging and positioning to help set them up for success in the future. And they were like, Oh yeah, this all really started when we tried to build like a better email marketing product for nonprofits, seven years ago. And then it completely failed. And then we had to fire everyone. And then we, but we knew that there was a real problem to be solved.

So we just kept. Solving it and digging deeper. And they consulted for a while, get it like there's that consulting phase where they went out in the market and really tried to understand it better. Then they realized Facebook marketing was the opportunity. And I feel like that is so similar to our journey with. Working with mission driven organizations. I've been in this space for 10 years. I've been obsessed with how to use business as a force for good. What works, what doesn't business models key. And then your go to market strategy is key, but I know the more, the longer I keep control and by building this in a way that like really aligns with our values and is done thoughtfully, if you're going to say that you're a mission driven company. Really have to think carefully about how do we price this? How do we price it sustainably? But then also we are competing against Harry and David and Amazon. Like we're competing

in an 

[00:15:27] David: pairs are really good. 

[00:15:29] Christina: You're really good Thank you. I 

[00:15:31] David: If you can't match those pairs, you just get out. That's all I can say. 

[00:15:34] Christina: to try to balance it all. So I'm

like, I do 

[00:15:39] David: try Harry and David Pierce. 

[00:15:40] Christina: think where I've heard work is, I have heard of examples. There was a really great panel recently at a local conference on going from services to startup, like to software. And there was one person who put someone else in charge of the consultancy. So I do. I am trying to think about that, like how do I balance my attention to the consultancy versus the gifting company, but

[00:16:04] David: There's a local company, their competitors are technically, but we've, there's so many of those. I don't think they'd be embarrassed for me to say their name is Lithios. They're local here. Deshawn is their founder. He's an amazing human. He started his own spinoff technology related and he did exactly what you're talking about.

He has another guy, Kyle. Who I'm friends with who runs lithios and he is running his spinoff called co works. And that's he still owns both, right? Like you're talking about, but he does not run lithios anymore. The Kyle does and And that's worked really well for him. I believe, I obviously don't know the insights of it, but they're both around for many years.

So I'm going to go with yay. But they are, but he's following that same sort of thing. So right now, practically speaking for you, are you 80, 20 Noel and company, or are you 50, 50? Where are you in your journey? 

[00:16:55] Christina: 70 30 right now, but then it'll definitely become, it might flip to 60 40 come November, December,

but we're going to see, and I'm going to try to hire. So it can be like 50 50 

[00:17:07] David: is that purely a revenue decision? I need to make X dollars. And once I make that, however I make that, then I can devote more time to business too. How does that work for you?

[00:17:21] Christina: I do think, yeah, revenue and profit margin is going to matter a lot here. Like where can we find the right talent to run Noelle and co and, or can we find the right talent and strategy to help better made easy run Noelle and co? In a much more powerful way. Cause to be quite honest, I'm really great at marketing. Am I the best at managing gift fulfillment? Absolutely not.

[00:17:49] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:18:18] David: Is there a potential then that Better Made Easy is growing, doing well, and you decide to hire, not to like I was saying, Deshaun did with Lithios. He hired someone to take over Lithios and he went the other, you could just continue to run Noel and company and hire someone to run Better Made Easy. 

[00:18:38] Christina: I've wondered that.

[00:18:39] David: that make you sad or would you be okay with that? 

[00:18:42] Christina: I think I'd be okay with that

because I do. It's interesting. Like one of the things I've been called out on is I've always been, advisors have always been like, are you focused enough? But the interesting thing is. I've ever worked on whether it's been group programs or consulting, it's all been in the marketing sphere.

And so even gifting feels so similar to it, we've been treating better made easy so far as a client of Noelle

Co. I do know that like fulfillment and ops needs to come off my plate. As soon as the can with better made easy. And if that's our core competency, like it actually does make sense that the real vision is, do I run better made easy from like a CEO strategy, marketing standpoint, and then someone else takes over and sits in the op seat. I think that's a win

[00:19:30] David: But based on what you were saying earlier doesn't better made easy have a consulting side or no 

[00:19:35] Christina: some ways. It does feel like the question is, are, is there an agency side to the branding of the gifting? And I think there is.

Which is 

[00:19:43] David: I could totally see a company like mine saying I don't want to buy famous amos cookies Cause that's what Gary likes. You can't see him rolling his eyes, but that is good stuff. Anyway, any kind of, I could dig Gary's a good day. But I don't want to do the normal thing, right? I want, but I don't have time as a CEO.

I don't want to pass off gifting to somebody else, right? That seems weird. So I, I could see working in a consulting way now, depending on, of course, how expensive that is, I can't spend 1, 000 talking to you before I can even buy a gift. That would annoy me. So I'd rather buy famous Amos cookies, but it's a weird thing, but I could see a consulting side to that.

You're like, Hey, I got this. You just hand this to me, we're just going to add five dollars. I'm making this up on top of every gift you buy to pay for me, but I'm going to make sure you have amazing gifts. 

[00:20:30] Christina: 100%. And then can we almost, there's, it's almost a stitch model. As we get more sophisticated, can we start serving up those gift recommendations? Or is it truly productized where it's like, These are the thought this is the cool, one thing we might toss is this is a really cool collab bankers, insurance companies, service providers of this year. Do you want to interview one out?

[00:20:54] David: but they all get the same gift. Everybody's so

[00:20:57] Christina: won't, but their clients will. And then the next year we need to come up back with a new one. That's the question. Maybe, we'll see, or is it truly that we brand you? And then once that happens, we can be gifting as a service. 

[00:21:09] David: Many fun things, but I can 

[00:21:10] Christina: CBD. 

[00:21:12] David: Yeah, sure. Sure. I love it. 

[00:21:14] Christina: I was smooth as fast as we figure that out. Cause I, I do want to make sure that the more we can avoid, there's something to be said about like limiting inventory risk. And if we can get bigger orders, that's why merch has preferred volume. It's an easier business model. 

[00:21:28] David: but then you have to farm all that out and you don't make any money. 

[00:21:31] Christina: Yeah, I know.

I don't. Yeah. So we'll see.

[00:21:34] David: man. That's tricky, but that is fun though. At least you're dealing with fun stuff. I have always, this is just, Internal thing, but I've always wanted to give cool anniversary gifts. My, have you ever, do you know who blizzard is?

They're a gaming company. They've been around for, I think almost 30 years. They make games like Warcraft and Starcraft and all that. They're a big company. They're now owned by Blizzard. Activision, but anyway, or Microsoft now, any who won, they're famous for their internal gifts at five years, you get a sword because again, think Warcraft, you get a sword and it's a different sword for every year.

And then at 10 years, you get a shield that matches and they connect together. Now, I don't want to give everybody a sword at my company, but I want something that cool, right? I'll tell you, I got a cool gift over here.

[00:22:21] Gary: You did. You did give Carl a 60 pound glass square.

[00:22:25] David: I did, IG we made a pixel. It was a cube of glass, and it was orange on the back, so the whole thing looked orange and it had his stuff on, and it was okay. It was good. It was good, but it wasn't the sword. Cool.

[00:22:38] Christina: It wasn't, yeah, a 

Pretty

hard to beat. 

[00:22:41] David: I

[00:22:41] Gary: you were talking about weapons. I figured it could be a weapon at that

[00:22:44] David: It could be that is it is

[00:22:45] Gary: and sharp.

[00:22:47] David: It is so heavy. It's a solid piece it's a four by four cube of glass.

I mean it is like what eight pounds. It's crazy I did get an amazing gift. So we gave money. We support the symphony And North Carolina Symphony, and they gave gifts to thank their people and they gave me a violin. I have, it's right here. I have a violin that says, has a little plaque on it says, thank you on it.

I went nuts. And I'm like, that's what I want my gift to do. Cause seriously, I pulled it out. And I had the YouTube, this true story. I D I have no idea what, how violins work. So I just, I wanted to play one note. So I pull out the bow. It comes with the bow and I pull up the little thing. I have a video of this and I went, and it does nothing.

And I'm like, I don't understand. It's I should be able to play a note, right? I don't have to know what I'm doing. Apparently you do. You have to smear the bow with rozen. I didn't know this. There's rozen in the case, so I'm just like all, so I'm YouTubing all of this. I'm rozen this bow, I it's literally right here.

It's right off camera. And then I finally got my note. It was horrible, right? But it was, I was so elated and that's what I want a gift to do, right? That someone opens it and they're just. They just light up and I'm, that was cool. So anyway, sorry,

[00:24:02] Gary: Dodo ma 

[00:24:04] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[00:24:05] David: get out. No,

[00:24:06] Christina: Delightful personalized in some way

[00:24:10] David: no, that's incredibly over the top. Obviously I can't imagine what that cost

[00:24:15] Gary: I was gonna say so i'm expecting a grand piano now for christmas bonus.

[00:24:20] David: You get a grampian. I'm going to get you one of those little mouth harmonicas. That's what it is. That's a

[00:24:24] Gary: kazoos 

[00:24:25] David: I said, this is so unrelated to anything. So I came to my office. I told everybody about this. I came to my office, drive up, walk in and there is this lady. Nice older lady. I don't know how old, but she was sitting, I don't know if she was homeless.

I don't know anything about this lady, but she was sitting right outside of my office on the curb. Playing the harmonica them in wake forest. This isn't New York city where people have buskers, right? It was so random, but this lady, she's just playing the harmonica to herself. She wasn't playing it loudly.

We bring up harmonica. It's what comes up, comes to mind anyway. How much time are we at? This will be edited out. Sorry. This won't be right. I just don't want to go over and take it up. Gary. Did you have any questions that I've been so rude? But I'm

[00:25:03] Gary: No, I just, you always, you ask me if I have questions, like right after you ask the question that was in my head, 

[00:25:09] David: That's my goal. It's all

[00:25:10] Gary: I literally was going to ask how the marketing and branding like between from the marketing company to the gifting company works and she's explaining it. You're asking questions. So I'm just sitting here listening. 

[00:25:21] David: mean, it is interesting. Cause I think there's a lot of people in your shoes that want, that have built at least moderately successful consultancy of some sort. It's enough to support themselves and they have a choice. Do get asked all the time, what is my side gig? Cause almost everyone in my position who owns a technical firm they build an app.

And then that becomes their, cause they get tired of clients and whatever. I have zero interest in doing that. So I enjoy working with clients, so I, but they always ask, what is your app? Obviously you have one. I don't, this is what I do. Cause I invested just like mentally. I was like, this is what I love to do is the agency consulting thing.

This is what I love to do. So this is what we do. And we invest in that, but a lot of people take that side road. So those people who have that idea, like you're doing, it's like you get your agencies. to the point where it's paying you, you're doing well and you have a choice. You have a fork. Do you continue?

And it becomes a bigger company. You start to be 5, 10, 20 employees more. Or do you say, no, I really, this is fine. It pays the bills, but whatevs. I want to do something else and many go your route, right? Let's do something else. Ironically, I think you're the first person I've seen who built the something else and might go back to the original thing.

[00:26:34] Christina: It'll all depend. I'm leaving space, right? Because when I started it, I was like, oh, I could totally obsessively focus on gifting all day, every day, if and when it makes sense. It's just. Will that make sense anytime, like in the next year or two? Probably not. I don't think unless for some reason we managed to go corporate viral, but I don't know.

I've always seen it's 10 years to overnight success. So like I'm six years into a consultancy. I love doing this work and I do want to productize and I do want better made easy to eventually be scalable. So it's also in my mind, can I get the consultant stage where it's like able to be managed by someone else?

It's a limited use of my time, but it can still create like solid employment for people and then better made easy becomes the main focus until it's, grown and become scalable or is it just going to be, I don't

know. Yeah.

[00:27:31] David: the other side of it, right? It's

[00:27:33] Christina: I think it would be more than that. That's just it. Like I want to build a scalable company.

I'm just. There's something to be said about being a marketer. It's if you're so good at it, why not do it? 

[00:27:43] David: fair.

[00:27:44] Christina: The key question is, can we get it scalable enough to when it makes sense for me to step away from New Ellen code? And I think we will. It's just in the meantime, I'm fine both.

[00:27:54] David: A Noel and co without Noel. 

[00:27:56] Christina: Yeah, we'll see.

[00:27:58] David: Nice. All right, Gary, ask our famous question. 

[00:28:02] Gary: It has come time. So you have. Worked with startups and now this is your second startup, that you're actually working in. So what would your top three pieces of advice be for any new startup or entrepreneur? 

[00:28:16] Christina: Yes. Okay. Let's do this. Number one, pace yourself and really take time to find product market fit. I know I've already said this a few times, I'm like, it's okay to have 10 years to overnight success. There's something to be said about that unless your VC funding and time it is of essence. But I do think if we, like by taking time to go your own pace, to figure out like the unique pain points you can solve and how you're really going to differentiate. I think that's game changing. And I do think it's worth taking the time to be intentional. That's number one. And then number two, find community. Entrepreneurship is a lonely road at times, but if you can find fellow founders that you can lean on throughout of it, throughout it, like it, it's life changing. Some of my best friends are founders and right now I'm closest with a lot of them that have young kids like I do. And so it's really helpful to talk through all of those challenges together. Actually I really need to go grab a, I hope. Sean and I plan to have coffee to talk about all of these, questions in the air. Do you do two things at once? Can I put someone in charge of the other thing to be able to manage it all? That's going to be key, right? Be part of a community.

Like you get to define what that means, but lean into it. And then the last thing is know when to get help too. Everything is simple, but it's not easy. And in building a consultancy, like I know that I can pull off doing a lot of things myself, but as I look to better made easy, I think one of the reasons why I'm making space to even manage two companies is well, if I plan on hiring really awesome people who like really get this similar mission of helping drive sustainable growth, that creates amazing jobs and Empower small businesses.

Like it's going to take a team. Like I, there's no way I can achieve this by myself. And so if the weight of two companies isn't on my shoulders alone I think that's going to be the key to success. And so that part of my entrepreneurial journey, I'm like really excited about as I lean into finding the right partners for this and finding and developing the talent that we need to bring this all to scale. 

[00:30:30] David: Sustainable business. I hear that word a lot and I don't know what it means, but I'm going to do a first just to find it.

And then I have a question. That's a, that's

[00:30:41] Christina: Oh, my gosh, I'm obsessed with that question. And I, I even meant to say yes, what do we mean by sustainable or sustainability focused? And I've studied that. So long story short, if you've never heard of what a B Corp is, a B stands for benefit. So I've been part of this movement. of B Corps. So these are business leaders obsessed with how to use business as a force for good. And there's different ways of defining what sustainability is. So in the B Corp movement, the way they define it is instead of maximizing shareholder value, so just like true profit and loss, maximizing profit for shareholders, the B Corp movement is about stakeholder. So how do you do, how do you optimize your business for employees and the environment and the community and in terms of your governance. So you really are accountable to thinking about your business holistically. So I think that's a really helpful framework. And then the way we've applied that to gifting is we've defined it in three ways. So number one, And I've hinted at this, but I think that, but I haven't said it the most sustainable gift in my in our better, maybe easy is like definition is one that someone wants. So there's a reason that we're so obsessed with personalization and customization and. Trying to think through what is the gift assortment that people actually want?

Is it a bunch of merch or is it maybe one piece of merch and then some delightful food that if they're not going to eat, they'll at least re gift easily because that matters, right? We don't need to create more waste. The number 2 is the materials that we use. So we have obsessed about the different materials that we use for our boxes. I've gone down deep rabbit holes on, should it be recyclable or compostable? Fun fact, recyclable is the most dependable because it all depends on where you live and whether you have a commercial composting facility. And FYI, like my nightmare is like being accused of greenwashing because like we were really trying to work against that.

[00:32:44] David: an interesting nightmare, but all right.

[00:32:46] Christina: Oh my gosh, it's totally a nightmare. And then even when we send like gift boxes, we have a cute little sticker that says please recycle me. Cause at the end of the day, even if it's ideally recycled and recyclable, if you don't put it in recycling, it doesn't really matter if it was recyclable. So we're working on that part. And then the last but not least is like Sustainable in how we purchase. So are we working with local businesses? Are we working with mission driven businesses? Are we supporting, like uplifting everyone by uplifting businesses that are operating in a really powerful way.

And so it's like really neat to be able to like, start measuring how much money have we spent with B Corps and how much money have we spent with local businesses and, I can't wait to see those numbers grow because, as a consultancy, you have to pay a fee to work with us. Whereas with gifting, we actually get to pay you. And if you've built the right product and, if we're able to package it in a unique way, like we just get to drive your growth and we make the margins on top of that, right? Like it's the win. And it's the way to achieve that broader vision of I'm obsessed with how do we grow other companies, right?

Especially ones that are doing good for the world. Being able to purchase wholesale from them is a powerful way and to be able to better market for them and help them tell their stories, right? Like, it's what gets me up in the morning 

[00:34:05] Gary: It's not just a buzzword, 

[00:34:06] David: Not it's not to her, 

[00:34:08] Christina: me, 

[00:34:08] David: people, it definitely is. So what, here's what I, and this is my cynical hat. I'm gonna put my little cynical hat on here for a second.

[00:34:14] Christina: Oh, please do. 

[00:34:15] David: find that sustainable and generosity slash giving, they're not the same. They don't mean the same, but they often fall in the same bucket.

Meaning there's a lot of companies who say they want to be generous, but then when you actually find out that they give 1 percent of a percent, you know what I'm saying? And that's it. And. It's almost the whitewashing greenwashing. I don't know what the sustainability version of Washington is, but we're washing something where most companies say they're generous or they want to be generous or whatever.

And if you do the math, they don't give hardly at all. And that's fine. That's a choice. I'm not saying everybody has to be generous, but is it. If you had to choose and I'm not saying you've had to do this, but if you're a sustainable company and that means taking good care of your employees, how many CEOs will take less money to give to their employees?

It's very small. I know the answer to that. It's very small, but that's what that means. It's to me, it's like sustainability easy to put up or shut up. Either you're going to take care of your employee. I like, I know some good people who I know their businesses, but I also know that they complain about paying their people more than 12 an hour.

You know what I'm saying? It's like these are good people who say that they want, they believe this, they do that, whatever. But when it comes down to it, they still want to pay their people as little as they possibly can get away with. I knew one guy who this really bothered me, but I knew he was taking millions out of the company.

And I knew his warehouse had no air conditioning. Like I knew these two things were true. And I was like, dude, that's not okay. And that's what I mean is like, how much of this is lip service? And this is me a bit on soapbox and I'm sorry, but I hear, and I know it's true for you. I can feel that passion coming 

[00:35:58] Christina: Yeah, 

[00:35:59] David: there's so many people who use those words and that means they get away with things.

And I'm just, I don't know if there's not even a question there. I think I just rant. I'm sorry, 

[00:36:09] Christina: No, there's There's definitely a movie I highly recommend you check out. It's called Uncharitable, but it's based on the Dan Pallotta book, or TED Talk that went pretty viral a while ago about charity versus the theory of social change and the role of non profits in that. Because, as a B Corp, one of the ways we do that is we give away 5 percent of profits, but even that can be manipulated.

I've been in this role for 10 years and you can manipulate anything. Stressful. And I think, my theory of change is also business model really matters. That's also why I'm not like grow baby grow. I'm like, we're going to take a few years. We will consult and we will figure out this business model first to make sure the numbers are there to be able to pay people.

And or are we going to And I really want to drive growth to small businesses, but are we going to need the white label to be able to make the profit margin we need to pay our people better? Like these are all questions like we have to ask, right? Like it's sustainable growth. For our entity as well these are the things I think what really is driving sustainable growth and we don't pay our people well.

And so I I want to take the time needed to answer those questions because you're right. I've worked with mission driven companies where I've gotten paid less and then it's been harder to pay my people because of, how much we've

[00:37:28] David: it rolls downhill. 

[00:37:29] Christina: organizations we serve. Yeah.

And is that right? And it's if it's someone early in their career and they got really great exposure and we can get them back

[00:37:37] David: I hate that word. Exposure. Oh,

[00:37:40] Gary: word,

[00:37:41] Christina: Yeah, I know. But you still like to pay great people for really good work. So 

[00:37:44] David: we could have a whole nother podcast on this. I'm pretty sure. 

[00:37:48] Gary: If people want to learn more about your businesses, how could they reach out? Where did they find you?

[00:37:52] Christina: Yes. So for our gifting business, you can check out www.bettermadeeasy.com. It's better Made easy, three words. And then Noel and Co. It's www dot NOEL, and c dot IO. Input. Output, which is very nerdy and

[00:38:11] David: Did you

[00:38:11] Gary: We'll put the links in the show

[00:38:13] David: that 

[00:38:13] Christina: no. 

[00:38:14] David: Oh 

[00:38:15] Christina: But I just, I know, 

[00:38:17] David: so I

[00:38:17] Gary: I was going to say coming from the. net guy

[00:38:20] David: Yeah, I, man, I

[00:38:21] Gary: missed opportunity there

[00:38:22] David: 11 years to get that. It's just a squatter.

[00:38:25] Christina: didn't like that, I

[00:38:26] David: What would it even be? No and. co that's horrible. Like it doesn't work.

[00:38:31] Gary: yeah. 

[00:38:33] Christina: So I was just like, we're going to just signal the IO, dot IO. Like it's very techie.

[00:38:38] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.