Meet Connie: Humanizing Brands

Connie is a bright soul that will invigorate any spaces with her love and positivity! Connie and I have built a friendship when we connected through Instagram- I love that social media can be a platform for lifting others up. Connie’s personable touch that she brings to each experience she creates with clients is so impactful not to mention, she has been okay with moving beyond several failed businesses in order to be where she is now with The Chi Group. Don’t miss joining us for this read below!

1. Can you share a little of your journey with us and who you are?

I am Connie- founder and CEO of The Chi Group, which is a global award winning marketing and branding agency.

I'm actually working on my fifth business. I've had three failed businesses in my lifetime. On top of that, I also am a speaker- Recently, I’ve just been invited to speak at TEDx, which is super exciting. We’re going to be talking about entrepreneur mental health. I'm going to be speaking from my perspective, and my personal experiences- what I've been through because we know the long hours are real. We launched in 2016- our goal is to humanize lifestyle brands. A lot of brands these days have a product specialist startup. They have a product and they're like, okay, we're putting it on Instagram and on the website and then hope somebody buy it. This is not the right approach- you need to create an experience that mimics a human personality because your customers are human beings. Our company does this for our clients!

2. Tell us about the mission of your brand. How does it empower women?

I think, in today's world, we are so busy living not just our life, but we also spend so much time looking at our mobile devices. What's really missing these days is that experience of really being present with other people. So that is the core of our belief and my belief as well. It's not enough to just be a business for a brand, you have to be able to bring something more to the table- we strive to create a business that is actually present with people- not a face over a screen or a swipe right or swipe left.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have to press through the female entrepreneur? And what are the steps you had to take to overcome?

As a female entrepreneur, sometimes you go to meetings where you take deals offered to you, and a lot of times when you're dealing with, let's say, men, they don't really take you seriously. It can come to a point where we as women now have to take on that almost alpha role to be taken seriously. That in turn changes the dynamics, and when we go home, we bring this alpha mode home with us into our relationships. As women, we're nurturers by nature, and for me personally, I don't want to be dominant 24/7. I want to be able to be a woman without feeling like I have to take on dominance to prove myself as a business woman. Unfortunately, that balance doesn’t yet exist in the real world. I have to self-talk mentally a lot to overcome that pressure to be dominant. When you come home to your significant other, to your man, your husband, your wife, your whomever, right, you have to really remind yourself and say to yourself, that you know what, this isn't a business, this is a relationship. This is emotion, that other person that you're talking to, has feelings, right? And you really need to just step back and just say to yourself, okay, in this relationship, if we look at it from a very simple perspective, men are built a certain way, in relationships, right? There's supposed to be the provider, the alpha, the protector. We, as women have a different role, if you will, we’re built differently, we're built to be the nurturer. So it's really harnessing that and know that once you set inside the door of your home, that nurturer needs to come out. Otherwise, your relationship becomes a business transaction, and you end up losing the passion and the fire.

4. What sets your brand apart from others?

I think a lot of brands and businesses are focusing on the social media impact of Instagram, Facebook, etc. and yes, that is critical to building a business. But for The Chi Group, I personally liked to focus on creating an experience. The experience speaks to us on a human level- it speaks into the emotion. I think this really sets us apart- we speak into the humanness in us all.

5. How do you collaborate with others working towards a better world?

I think it's very important these days, especially for us as female entrepreneurs, to have a community that can really support us from many different aspects of life, whether it's love life, relationships, business, like you name it. So when it comes to collaborating with other people and other brands, or businesses, I'm very careful who we work with, because we're not for every brand. And if the brands that wants to collaborate with us doesn’t understand the depth, significance and importance of creating this type of experience- evoking emotion and curiosity- then that might not be the brand for us. We want to build relationships with all of our clients. Those are the types of clients and collaboration that we're interested in. Personally, I also like to collaborate with brands that have a cause with a good story behind them.

6. What advice would you give to female entrepreneurs in the beginning stages of launching their brand or business?

I think the first piece of advice I would offer is to have the courage to step outside of your comfort zone. You know, too many times we as women, we say to ourselves, no, we're not good enough. Then we put ourselves in this box - as an entrepreneur,

Nothing's going to be perfect when you first roll it out- No matter what you do, how many books you read, how many people you follow on Instagram- you will always have growing to do as an entrepreneur!

The second thing I would say is, when it comes to building a business, there's no formula. It's a lot of tests and trial and error. Just because you failed per se with one strategy doesn't mean that your idea won’t work- there's always a solution no matter what. As women, I'm sure you've heard the saying that a mother would jump in front of a car to save her child. It's the same with your business to a degree- you have to be willing to get in the way of cars coming at your business trying to kill your idea.

Finally, I would say to make sure you love what you do because this is going to be a business that you spend a lot of time growing with. If there comes a time when no money is coming in, you have to still love the business that you’re building. If you keep getting no’s, maybe there's another opportunity. I had five failed businesses before this one. It will all work out.