Hey everyone, Russell here, host of an agency story podcast and business coach for agency leaders. The end of the year is right around the corner and this is your moment to get intentional. Don't let another year rush by without taking the time to step back, reset and decide what you really want your agency to look like in 2026. Even one day, a half a day can completely change your perspective. And here is the truth. You don't need a dozen goals or metrics. You need one bold strategy aimed at the biggest obstacle or opportunity in front of you. Focus there and everything else starts moving. If you're ready for that kind of clarity and momentum and would like some help, this is exactly what I do with agency owners in my one-to-one coaching programs. Together we pinpoint your biggest challenges, build the strategy to overcome them and create the accountability to actually make it happen. You don't have to do this alone. I've got three coaching spots available for 2026 and once they're gone, they're gone. If you've ever thought about having a partner in your corner, helping you build the agency you truly want, head over to an agencystory.com and hit Let's Talk. Let's find out what's really possible for you. This is your year. Let's make it count. Welcome to an agency story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world from the excitement of starting on the first big sale. Passion, doubt, fever, freedom and the emotional roller coaster of growth. Hear it all on an agency story podcast. An agency story podcast is hosted by Russell Dupree, successful agency owner with an eight-figure exit turned business coach and judge the next agency store. Hello, welcome to another episode of an agency story podcast. I'm your host Russell. Today's guest on the show is Christina Alvino with Fine View Marketing, a full-service marketing agency focused on the self-storage and commercial real estate industry based in Austin, Texas. Christina has leveraged the power of her niche by becoming a highly regarded expert within her particular space. On top of running a successful agency, she has a strong desire to serve as a role model for female entrepreneurs in addition to creating wealth opportunities for entire team. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show, everyone. Today I have Christina Alvino with Fine View Marketing. Thank you for being on the show today, Christina. Thanks so much for having me. So, start us off. Tell us what is Fine View. What do you do and who do you do it for? Fine View Marketing is a full-service marketing agency and we specialize in website development and creating marketing strategies for owner operators in the self-storage and commercial real estate spaces. Very succinct to the point. You've got your elevator pitch down. I've worked on that a lot over the years. Practice is paid off. So, was it your dream when you were young to start a marketing agency for the self-storage and real estate industry? It was most definitely not my dream to start an agency and/or be in the self-storage industry. So, that would be a no. Okay. What did you think you weren't going to do when you started your career or maybe going back to when you're young? What did Christina want to be when she grew up? So, if you asked like young teenage me or seventh grade me, I was probably going to be a marine biologist because I loved dolphins. Nice. And then I learned what you had to do as a marine biologist and, you know, that went out the window. What was so bad? I don't know enough about that. It's like having to give animals medication and different, like, it just, you know, not just pet dolphins all day. Okay. Yeah, then for a long time, I wanted to be a professional dancer. I don't have the height for that. The audience out there can't see me, but I am only five feet tall. So, I do not have the height to be a professional dancer. Yeah, height doesn't show up across zoom, I can tell you that. Right. College, I actually majored in interior design. I wanted to work for an architecture firm and do the interior design thing. One of those moments were like, you're like, I should have listened to my parents. My dad always said to me that I'd love marketing because he knew I loved creative side of things. And so that was how I ended up in interior design. And he was like, oh, you should really double major in marketing. I think you'd really like it. And I was like, what are my parents know? They don't know anything. And so after I graduated with my bachelor's degree, six months later, I went back and got a master's degree in marketing. Well, this is why it pays to listen to your parents the first time around. Always listen to mom and dad. Yeah. So when I was younger, no, I really didn't think I would be in marketing. Didn't really know much about it, even when I went to college, didn't think about it much. And here I am years later. So yeah, we've definitely established being an agency owner. Wasn't the initial plan, but it ended up you had a pretty natural transition from what you were doing in your career to entrepreneurship and having your agency. When and where did you decide to get started? Before starting the agency, I ran marketing and operations for a number of self storage owner operators. And they were larger companies with locations across the US in multiple states. And so really kind of fell in love with the industry itself moved around to a couple of different places. I'm originally from Pittsburgh. And I was working for a company there and decided that I needed to make a change and was offered a position with a company in Texas. And they said, you can move to Austin or Houston, whichever one you want. I picked Austin, worked for them for a while, transitioned to another company. And at that point, I was like, I need to do something different. I need to do something for myself kind of was done working for somebody else. And got really lucky that over the years, I had built some relationships with other people in the industry who in the storage industry, I should say, that had gone off on their own to start their own companies, just looking and learning for them of what they were able to do for themselves, kind of started thinking about what could I do for myself? And so I started marketing consulting, freelancing on the side, doing little things here and there for different people that I knew needed help. And so that's when it really was, oh, well, I could maybe create a job for myself doing marketing consulting. That's how it started. But then through conversations with my now business partners was where it really came to fruition that I could start my own marketing agency with this niche focus of commercial real estate. And so when my partners had started their company, they were getting to the point that they needed to bring on and marketing on their team. They knew they couldn't afford the level of person that they really wanted. I had done some work for them just as they were getting up and running. And so they approached me and said, would you want to maybe go off and create something of your own and your own company? And we'll back you on it. We'll help you finance as your first client, essentially, to help you start this agency. I kind of always thought about it, but hadn't really thought about being an entrepreneur and doing anything for myself. You grow up thinking, oh, W2 job, you know, make money, have a 401k, retire, and that's your life. And so that was really an aha moment for me that I was like, oh, I can create something for myself instead of working for someone else. You'd mentioned in our previous conversation that having those partners and that having them give you that jumping off point was pretty fortuitous for getting started in the business. Do you think if you hadn't had that going that's, you know, maybe just your risk tolerance or something like that, that you maybe wouldn't have even started the business or looking back, how do you view that for yourself? That's a great question. I think I probably still would have tried to figure out a way to do something for myself, but I don't know if it would have springboarded as quickly as it did without having that support from my partners, right? So I think it's a lot harder to go out and do something on your own without having that circle of trust and that circle of support to be there for you when you have the hard days or, you know, cheer you on when things are going really well. It's hard to do that. Be that mental stability for yourself sometimes, especially when you're starting something from scratch and starting something new and taking that risk, like you said, you have to be willing to take some risks. There were certain things I was not willing to take risks on or was very concerned about taking risks on. And those are things that I negotiated with them to help me through, like making sure that I could pay my rent, making sure that I could pay my car payment, making sure I had health insurance. That was a huge one for me, you know, as a as a small business owner, you don't really think about how do I have a health insurance? Like how do I have these things? And so they helped me through a lot of that that overcame the risk adverse pieces that I had a concern about. So I think it helped me get there a lot faster. So when you started, did you jump right into the niche of the storage space or what were those early days like? What were you doing from a client work standpoint? So yes, jumped straight into the storage side of things mostly because I had been in the storage industry at that point for eight-ish years. And so had a lot of contacts there had been beaking at some of the national conferences on and off. And so it was a very easy transition for me to go out and talk to these people that I've known for a long time and had relationships with and tell them that I was going out on my own. And it really started more as the consulting side of things more than anything else. So I was helping these different companies with their marketing strategies, making suggestions for them, sometimes taking on a monthly contract to help with certain pieces of their business. And so that was really the early days. It was me sitting at my dining room table in my apartment by myself just grinding away at whatever projects came my way. And I was saying yes to everything whether it was something I really wanted to do or not because at that point you need money, right? So you just say yes to everything. So I'm even curious about that because a lot of folks talk to you and have on the show say something similar when you first open your doors. It's coming everyone and come all. And then you start to figure out that's maybe not the best strategy over time. Looking back always asked folks you wish you would have just gone with the risk of less clients, but more in what made sense for you or do you think that was the right pass just to get up and running? So honestly no, I don't think I would have changed anything. And the reason I say that is because even the hardships that we had and even some of the frustrations and issues that were there, they were such great learning experiences for you to then put different measures in place so that you don't do it again. And without those experiences, you don't have the ability to put different processes and metrics and different things and facts and all of that without knowing some of those pain points and living them. That's a great perspective. So not terribly long into the business, a rather large world event hit to the other pandemic. How did that affect what you were doing? So luckily for us and I think in general marketing, there was a lot of money out there for marketing, but especially for the niche that were in self storage is a recession resistant industry. So when the economy is doing great, storage is doing great. When the economy is in the tank, storage still does great. For us, we really had rapid growth through that whole time. We were able to take a step back and work on some things that we had been wanting to work on. I had started out more in that consulting side of it, but slowly we started building out a website and marketing platform specifically for storage facility operators. And so we were able to build out some proprietary integrations with the different softwares for online rentals and for some different things. The storage space has always historically been very behind the times in technology and the pandemic really accelerated all of that. There was a lot of rapid growth in the space and with the clients that we were working with from an implementation of technology. So that really helped us be able to implement some things that we've been trying to do for a while. There was that accelerated growth. How do you pick up most of your clients and how has that evolved from maybe when you first started the business to where you're at today? Some of it's still very much the same in that it's a very relationship driven for us. As I mentioned earlier, I speak at a lot of national conferences and a lot of the state association conferences as well. And so that really helps to bring those clients in just to being out there networking. I'm very much the believer in selling through education versus through selling through telling somebody, you know, what they're doing wrong and what we can do for them. For us, it's really been great for me to be able to get out there and speak. And I have a lot of support in the industry. I've built a lot of great relationships with people who want to support us and who ask me to come out and and help with with different educational conferences and events. That piece has not changed at all pre pandemic. I think in 2019, I went to at least 15 conferences. Oh, that's busy. And then 2020, everything transitioned to digital now that everything's back up in full swing. I think this year, I've probably been to at least 15 conferences again. That piece really has just continued to grow for us. And then in the last two months, I've now hired a business development manager who will be helping to grow that piece of the business. And she's now responsible for any additional marketing that we want to do through email marketing, social media marketing, helping with some different marketing audits to show clients, potential clients where they can improve their marketing strategies. And so she's been on board with us since the beginning of September. Now I can take a step back and let her drive the business development side of things. Very cool. A lot of folks talk about wanting to use something like speaking as a way to develop business. And I've heard mixed reviews on folks that get a lot of leads in business out of that. And it was that don't it sounds like you've been able to make that a really effective tool for you. Any tips for the folks at home on how to maximize that as a lead generation source for businesses? So honestly, I think for us, it's been that we've stayed in the same niche space the whole time, right? So you're kind of in front of the same people over and over again. It's definitely not a quick turn of getting clients. So if it's something that need to go get a client tomorrow, it's probably not the best option for you. If you're looking for the long term of building relationships with somebody and you can put the time in and have the time for a sales cycle to take six, seven, eight months, that's really where the networking and speaking piece can come into play. But it's really been the being able to be in front of a lot of the same people multiple times has really been the biggest benefit from that. Good takeaway, sir. Thank you for that. What does success look like for you? What's the big game plan for all this? Financial independence. I think a lot of people started, I may be speaking out of turn. It's just what I've seen as a lot of people start advertising and marketing agencies to create a job for themselves because it's something that they think they can do. And I didn't really create this to create a job for myself. I created it more so that I knew in 10 years I might sell it to somebody else and be able to use that money for my retirement. Being in the commercial real estate space, there's so many other things that I've learned over the last eight years about how money works and how you can then take that money and have it work for you and live off of the residuals of your investments. And so that really that financial independence piece and then honestly helping my team and others achieve that same goal. I'm a big believer in helping those around us that have helped us get to where we are. For me, that's also a big piece of it. And if I ever was to sell the agency, my team all gets a small piece of that pie of whatever is made off of it. That for me would be a huge success in this process. Given that you arrived at a niche rather quickly in your business, do you have any recommendations to help people assert themselves as experts and their particular niche or especially as it relates to conferences? One thing that I did was involve myself. So if they needed volunteers for something, volunteer to go help board members, you know, whatever it might be. So I actually volunteered at a number of the conferences to help with random things that they needed help with like registration. Because then you meet everybody at the same time, right? You meet all of these potential clients, but then you're also helping the board and the organization. So then they'll recommend you when somebody out because they become the go-to for people in the industry to say, you know, who would you use for XYZ? Who would you use for marketing? Who would you use for? And so then you become one of those top of mind. So that was one thing that I did was get involved. You have to give of your time instead of knowing that there's going to be a financial reward on the other side. When you do get the opportunity to speak, make it educational. Don't try to sell yourself. And that's one of the reasons that I get asked back to speak over and over is because I make it very educational and I try very hard not to talk about what we do as a company. If you could go back in time to young Christina at any point and give yourself some advice, do you know when and where you'd go back to and what is that advice? I don't know when I would go back to. That's a good question. But I think the biggest piece of advice would be don't feel like you have to get stuck in the social norms of what society tells you of having to have that nine to five job and work for somebody else. There are so many other ways for you to be creative and how you can create a living for yourself and create a life for yourself outside of just work. I don't know if I'd ever would have listened to myself to be completely honest. But that for me and really understanding how money works and how to build wealth for myself outside of that W29 to five job. You can take this podcast now back to young Christina and say like I'm not just saying this to you. I'm saying this to everybody. We'll make sure that happens when we invent the time machine, which is hopefully soon. I think I want teleportation first. Oh, okay. All right. We were talking about that in the office the other day and I was like, oh, it would be great. If I had to go to like I was invited to a conference in North Dakota had to decline because it overlapped with another conference. And I was like, man, if I could have teleported, I could have been there. That would have been easy. Yeah. All right. Well, you see, that's very practicing. I'm a history major. I got to go see the dinosaurs and I got a whole slew of events. I got to go back and take a look at. All right. All you scientists out in the world. I need you to get on this. The teleportation for Christina and a time machine for me, please. Thank you. Christmas is just around the corner. So I guess with that, I got to launch this before Christmas now or else that'll fall flat. There you go. There's motivation. The question I ask everybody are entrepreneurs born or are they made? Tell us your answer Christina. If I had to pick one, I would say made, but I think there's a little mixture of both and that I think you're born with some of the internal factors that translate really well into entrepreneurship like natural charisma or creativity or that not being afraid of taking risks. I mean, entrepreneurs have to have some type of ability to take risks and some of those traits or things that you are you're innately born with. But you also have to learn how to channel them and use them to become a really successful entrepreneur. There's that journey and the trial and error and learning over time. So you can't just say that at least to me, you can't just say that an entrepreneur is born. They're really made with those trial and errors and that journey over time. And disagree with that on any front of people want to know more about fine view. Where can they go? You can go to our website, which is just fineviewmarketing.com, which is probably very boring, although we do have a lot of blogs us on social media, so LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and we've we've been saying for months now we were going to start a TikTok, but we haven't done it yet. So maybe this will be the motivation to get us started. You put it out to the universe now. So I think they're there. Everybody's going to expect it. So there you go. I love TikTok. It's such a great app. I've always spent too much time on it. But well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Christine is absolutely pleasure to get to hear your story and best of luck to you towards your dreams and goals and that teleportation machine. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and that was fine and I hope you also get your time machine. Thank you. I appreciate that. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of an agency story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to
[email protected]. An agency story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to five million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com. So we were working on a branding project for a client. We're redoing their logo and their website and we were coming up with a new color palette for them. And so we had the whole team looking at it and telling us what they thought and making sure that like visually it would work. Well, we found out that one of the individuals on our team is red green color blind and he didn't know until we did this project and we had him take a test because he was giving us all this weird feedback and we were like, those aren't the colors we're using. Like, what are you talking about? So he's 27 years old and did not know he was red green color. So then we went to a conference recently and they had a charity poker tournament and he was like, I really hope that the, what are they that they give you the tokens that they give you? He was like, I really hope the chips aren't red and green. Next thing you know, he sends the team a picture red and green and I just replied the red ones are on the left. I imagine a lot of people would like to argue that a lot of clients are color blind at times but that's good that you guys found that out for him. Yeah, so he's no longer allowed to create any designs or social media like the design side of it. It makes sense. That is funny. Thank you for sharing that.
PodcastTranscript AI