Christine Westbury is the CEO and Founder of Blackjet Social, a marketing agency specializing in AI-driven marketing and automation for B2B companies. With over 18 years of marketing and business ownership experience, she has a proven track record of entrepreneurial success, having launched and scaled ventures such as a clean food manufacturing business and an innovative dance school. Christine is dedicated to enhancing the online presence of professional services firms through high-quality content and strategic social media campaigns, focusing on solving audience problems rather than merely promoting services. In addition to leading Blackjet Social, she is the Director of The Space Wellington, a flexible workspace in a prime central location for individuals and businesses.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [02:26] Christine Westbury shares how growing up in a family of entrepreneurs influenced her career choices
- [06:56] How Christine turned a setback into success with a dance school
- [09:40] Lessons learned from founding and scaling a clean food manufacturing business
- [12:59] Pivoting from freelancing to building Blackjet Social
- [14:26] Why Christine chose service-based businesses over product-based ones
- [16:01] How ChatGPT redefined content creation and business model evolution
- [23:09] Inception of Blackjet Autopilot and the promise of guaranteed ROI in marketing
- [31:53] Addressing challenges in implementing AI and adapting to match new business demands
- [35:57] The importance of having a strong position and compelling offer for clients
- [37:59] How is AI redefining the future of work?
In this episode…
The fast-paced marketing world presents unique challenges for businesses striving to connect with their target audience. Professionals often grapple with maintaining a consistent online presence, navigating the complexities of lead generation, and standing out in an increasingly competitive digital landscape. Adding to this pressure, the rapid rise of AI technologies has introduced both opportunities and uncertainties, leaving many wondering how to harness these tools effectively.
Christine Westbury shares her expertise in addressing these challenges through strategic social media management and AI-driven solutions. She emphasizes the importance of solving real audience problems rather than simply promoting services, focusing on crafting high-quality content that builds trust and authority. Christine reveals how she created Blackjet Autopilot, a lead generation system with a bold promise of guaranteed ROI, blending innovative AI tools with proven marketing methodologies to help businesses streamline operations and achieve measurable success. Her journey showcases resilience, adaptability, and the creative use of technology to overcome business hurdles.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Christine Westbury, Founder and CEO of Blackjet Social, about revolutionizing B2B marketing with AI-driven strategies. Christine discusses the significance of strategic thinking, the real-world implications of a guaranteed ROI promise, how AI avatars may soon handle aspects of client interaction, and how to craft compelling offers in a crowded marketplace.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Related episode(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I remember spending a lot of time in the car with my family as my dad would be driving through the country, setting up his business.”
- “We did it by showing up on social media every day, sharing the journey, and showing how we were making the product.”
- “I got off that flight just thinking, oh my gosh, I am completely brain-fried. I have just rewired my brain.”
- “I think social media is only flawed as a service. You know, we’re getting all these leads, but we’re not able to convert them.”
- “It’s wild to me the amount of businesses that aren’t on social media, and you go and check them out, and they haven’t posted.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace AI tools: Start by exploring AI tools like ChatGPT to understand their capabilities and potential applications in your business. This step can significantly enhance productivity and streamline processes, turning time-consuming tasks into more efficient ones.
- Develop a flexible mindset: Encourage a culture of adaptability within your team to better cope with technological changes. This approach helps in managing transitions smoothly, reducing anxiety among employees, and preparing them for future innovations.
- Focus on building unique value propositions: Work on creating a compelling and unique offer that sets your business apart in a competitive market. A distinctive value proposition addresses the challenge of standing out in a commoditized market, making your business more attractive to potential customers.
- Leverage social media for authority and trust: Update your social media presence regularly to maintain credibility and authority in your industry. An active online presence can enhance trust among clients and prospects, ensuring they perceive your business as thriving and reliable.
- Invest in strategic partnerships: Collaborate with other businesses or experts to enhance your offerings and reach. Strategic partnerships can bring in fresh ideas and expertise, addressing potential gaps in your business and opening up new growth opportunities.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
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We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create a copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how one company embraced the revolution in AI in order to reinvent and reignite their business. My guest today is Christine Westbury. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:14
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:31
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, if you’ve listened before that every week I get to talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
We’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, LendingTree. Lots of great episodes in the archives. So go check those out. And of course, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25, and our company product podcast Copilot, where we help B2B businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with Done-For-You podcast and content marketing. You can learn more at our website Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right. I want to give a quick shout out to Ben Ridler of the growth shop, The Growth Shop.com. He was a guest on this podcast. I always ask my guests, who are good people that I should be having in the show, and he introduced me to today’s guest and 18 months of following up with her later.
We’ve got her on the show, but we’ll explain why it took a little while to get that one scheduled. There’s a few changes and pivots that happened in that time, which is always the fun stuff we like to hear about. But Christine Westbury, she’s the CEO and founder of Blackjet Social, which is a marketing agency specializing in AI and automation for B2B companies. And we’re going to hear about her new product called Blackjet Autopilot, which is a lead generation system. Christine, so great to have you here today.
And you have a winding path of entrepreneurship, and I love to hear those stories. But first of all, you grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. You’re actually we met through the EO community, and you come from a family of entrepreneurs. You’ve got four members of your family who are in EO, including your father who is an entrepreneur. What was it like as a kid growing up in a family of entrepreneurs?
Was that something that was interesting to you? Did you know at a young age that you would want to go into founding your own company?
Christine Westbury: 02:26
Yeah. I don’t love being here. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs is really interesting. When I was growing up, I remember spending a lot of time in the car with my family as my dad would be driving the country, setting up his business. So I feel that I got to see a lot of the effort that he put into developing that business in the early stages.
And then I also ended up going and working for my dad for seven years after graduating at university and having some agency time. So I got to work alongside my father and his business, which was a really good experience. What was his?
John Corcoran: 03:13
Business? What did he do?
Christine Westbury: 03:15
His business was home tech. And they had the New Zealand franchise for the solar tube skylight, which is a product which comes out of the US. And he brought that down to New Zealand in 1992, set up a franchise network across New Zealand. And then was he actually sold that to a publicly listed company, also in Iowa? Later on in his journey.
So I think that was about seven years ago that he sold the business and exited.
John Corcoran: 03:46
Wow. Very cool. And what was it like working for your father in the family business?
Christine Westbury: 03:53
We had a lot of fun. I guess he could. We actually used to speak a lot about the dynamics. So he had a very entrepreneurial vision. And then I would often be the one who would say, hey, you know what, if we did it like this, or if we slowed it down a little bit, or how could we put some systems and processes around it. So we had quite a nice balance.
And yeah, we got to do some really great trips as well. So you know, traveling the US and traveling to New Zealand. And what was it like working with my dad? Also he would just tell me how it was, which is very much a trend of our father daughter relationship, you know. So even now I’ll, I’ll still I might ask him for a little bit of experience, share around an experience, share around something that I might be struggling with. And yeah, sometimes he’ll just tell me to get on with it.
John Corcoran: 04:55
And did you know at a young age that you would one day want to start your own company? Was that something that you saw in your future?
Christine Westbury: 05:03
Absolutely, yes. I definitely wanted to start my own company. And
John Corcoran: 05:08
And you actually, you had gone to a private school and explained this to me. You’d go to a private school that said that you couldn’t go to study business. Was that just sexism or what was the explanation behind that?
Christine Westbury: 05:22
Look, I might get myself in a little bit of trouble for this. If anyone from my school is listening to this again. But. Oh, we.
John Corcoran: 05:28
We have a big listenership from your school so I should you should know I don’t know if anyone will be listening to this.
Christine Westbury: 05:34
No, but I was, you know, I struggled a bit with school. I found that it was very restrictive. And at the time, I think I was about three years out from graduating. And I said to the school, look, I actually really want to go to university and study business and marketing. And they said, well, you can’t.
And I said, well, are you sure? Because I feel that if I don’t want to do my final year of university or of school, sorry, and I just want to go straight to university, surely that’s an option. So I went out and found out how I was going to get a university entrance. I put my head down for a year and got the grades that I needed to get. I finally applied myself at school, which all my teachers had been told, telling me that I needed to do and got the university entrance, went to university, loved university, graduated at 21 and and.
John Corcoran: 06:31
You actually had started a dance school while you were in university. We had 150 kids coming to school and that even tells me, tell me the story, because I guess you had a dance partner. You were taking this very seriously, training 40 hours a week. But that dance partner decided to go off on their own. And so you decided to start the dance school because of it?
Christine Westbury: 06:56
Yeah, I was a competitive ballroom and Latin dancer throughout my high school, and we were competing across Australasia. We’d be traveling across New Zealand to get training, and so yeah, we were spending a lot of time together. And then sadly, that partnership ended. We weren’t romantically involved, but we were very, very close and I wanted to continue dancing. So I decided to start a Latin dance school.
And this was Pre-social media at the time. So I walked the streets with mailbox drops, just saying that there would be a new six week subscription, which is interesting when we think about the business that I’m in now, a subscription based dance school where you would pay up front for your six weeks, you would bring your partner and you would learn how to do ballroom dancing. And over that period. So we had about 150 students a week coming, and I employed a few of my friends and my sister to help me teach. And yeah, that was a really fun time until I graduated university and decided I needed to go and get a full time, proper marketing job, which I went and did after that.
John Corcoran: 08:10
Do you regret that you didn’t stick with the dance school?
Christine Westbury: 08:14
It wasn’t conducive to the part. At the time of my life, I was engaged at that point about to be married. We had just bought our first house. I didn’t really want to work until 10 p.m. in the evenings. I wanted to spend time with my soon to be husband.
John Corcoran: 08:32
And it’s funny how those lifestyle issues really make a big difference. Like, we have a family friend here who she teaches piano lessons. And when do you teach piano lessons? She has a young kid. When do you teach piano lessons?
After school, when your kid is home from school and on the weekends, you know. And that’s it can be tough on, you know, on the lifestyle with the, you know, having family time. You ended up also starting a maternity activewear business after having, I believe after having your first child. Is that right?
Christine Westbury: 09:04
Yes. That’s right. And that didn’t go very well. I didn’t really try that hard. I just imported some products to New Zealand and tried to sell it on social media and it didn’t work.
John Corcoran: 09:17
You. So that’s interesting because then later you end up starting a food manufacturing business. This is a clean mix. And social media was kind of the secret sauce behind that. So at what point did you kind of crack the code or how did you figure out how to sell the food business in a way that you hadn’t figured out how to sell the activewear business?
Christine Westbury: 09:40
So this was in 2017 that I started the food manufacturing business, and what it was, was for the listeners, a pre-mix to make bliss balls or muffins, which was all gluten free, dairy free and refined sugar free. And I had seen this trending overseas as a product, but nobody was really doing it very well in New Zealand, and they’d been selling a lot of them with social media. So I thought, well, I’m not necessarily I’m not from the food business, but I know marketing. So I’m going to manufacture this product and I’m going to sell it on social media. And within four months we were using third party manufacturing, and within nine months we were using third party logistics to distribute the product.
We got our first supermarket store within five months. And to answer your question about how we did it, we did it by showing up on social media every day, sharing the journey, showing how we were making the product. Yeah, the highs and lows of and a lot of really good quality content as well. And we got content creators to create recipes for us. And we were very consistent with our email marketing as well back then.
John Corcoran: 10:54
It’s also interesting because there’s kind of a common thread here, because your father had started a business after looking at trends, something that had been popular in other countries, bringing it to New Zealand. And it’s kind of the same thing you did as well, looking, seeing the trend, what was popular elsewhere and then bringing it in.
Christine Westbury: 11:12
True. I hadn’t really realized that, but there is a trend.
John Corcoran: 11:16
That’s what I’m here for. That’s what I’m here for. And so you do that for a few years, and then you actually sell that business right before Covid hits in November 2019. So you must have seen something coming. So is it just coincidental timing?
Christine Westbury: 11:32
Coincidental?
John Corcoran: 11:33
Yeah, yeah. Do you regret it or do you think that? Are you glad that that worked out that way?
Christine Westbury: 11:40
That business taught me a lot. I had highlighted that there were some things that that business needed that I wasn’t going to be able to offer. And at the time, I also had a very young family, A23 year old and maybe five, six years old. So it was a busy time of our life. My husband also was an EOA in his own right, so he has his own recruitment business.
That was really busy too. He started that when our firstborn was three months old. So yeah, it was a busy time of our life. It really wasn’t the time for me to be traveling the country trying to drive this business harder. And so when Covid came, we were in a beautiful position where I was able to just enjoy the time with my family because I wasn’t working.
And yeah.