We recently connected with Christina Chao and have shared our conversation below.

Christina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Life is about taking risks, and if we don’t take the risk, we live in fear and regret. I lived most of my life being risk adverse, taking a bunch of cautionary steps to avoid failure as a symptom of my perfectionism. However, when the pandemic hit, this was a turning point for me in my risk-taking efforts. I was working a full time commercial real estate job, and was completely burnt out, in addition to ignoring my health. My solace has always been in yoga and community, but when the pandemic took that away as studios shut down and my community moved to Miami, I knew I had to travel to Miami to recenter myself and my community again. Here, I met my cofounder and we decided to build a wellness community of brand founders, influencers, and investors to network through exclusive activations and partnerships. We provide our community with access to unique experiences, brands, products, and connections. The business has become a wellness PR consultancy, where we advise brands on strategic growth opportunities through exclusive event activations, content, partnerships, introductions, and PR/marketing strategies. As someone who has always been coined a “master connector,” I felt this was my calling to build a business to help accelerate brands and people I care about. The risk of leaving my comfortable commercial real estate job to pursue this full time has been one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken in my life, but one I know will be rewarding as I’m doing what I love and living with purpose and intention. Today, we are currently working with a select group of clients and have over 2K subscribers to our newsletter, and continue to grow.

Christina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Christina Chao and I am CEO and cofounder of Auraswell Collective, a wellness PR consultancy for select brands. We are also an invite-only community of brand founders, influencers, investors, wellness enthusiasts who come together to increase support in each other’s businesses. I got into this industry as someone who has been tremendously burnt out in work, previously working at JPMorgan Chase, Conde Nast, and more recently, in commercial real estate. Throughout my experiences, I’ve been pushed to my limits, with my soul always yearning for balance and solace — which I found through yoga, meditation, and surfing, but also through networking. Auraswell was created as a solution during the pandemic to bring together like-minded individuals who are passionate about accelerating wellness brands, products, services with a select community, in addition to highlighting wellness practices and practitioners. We are a wellness specific growth consultancy firm and accelerator, which sets us apart from others because we help make direct intros to strategic partners in the wellness space anywhere from real estate to media, and we have established a strong network of strategic partnerships that not a lot of others have. Our portfolio consists of a range of select wellness clients who have the ability to scale, but need additional support which we can provide through VIP events, growth consulting whether in real estate or fundraising, PR, partnerships/business development, community building, and marketing. To date, we are most proud of securing an international client who has contracted with us multiple series of events in different cities.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Building a reputation comes with establishing trust and credibility over time, but also building genuine relationships that become partnerships. The fundamental rule of business is that you give and take, and that good business comes from a place of giving as much as you’re taking as a measure of good faith. In dating, it is also a saying that actions speak louder than words, and that is also true of business — make sure your actions align with your words…and the contracts. You can also go above and beyond for your clients, to help them hit revenue goals, and/or secure opportunities, but know when enough is too much. For me, I’ve spent over a decade going above and beyond for my clients and helping them think about the bigger picture, with tactical steps and strategies, and I’ve always tried to nurture relationships. When you build a company or a brand, you have to start small, and think big. I’ve done this for my employers, mapping out plans that can help move the needle, and also help execute on these plans. In any industry, people talk and the higher you go up, the more they talk. Therefore, your reputation is very important and building a reputation comes with putting yourself out there, producing good work, having advocates vouch for you and your work, establishing genuine relationships, being honest and trustworthy, working smart, and knowing that your reputation is one of the most important assets you can have in your life and your business.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Referrals or word of mouth. The strongest type of business comes from friends of friends due to hearing about the success and the outcome of the deliverables. Since we don’t heavily advertise our services due to building an exclusive community, we have our community ambassadors market the business for us, especially from our VIP clients. Community building is a key ingredient of generating new clients as we are always top of mind within the community we created. Our community already feels like they are already a part of something that adds value to their life, and if anything were to come up business-wise, we know we can rely on our community and vice versa. Word of mouth is a layer of this strategy, but building a genuine and dedicated community is the foundation of the word of mouth strategy because once you have a cohort of ambassadors who love you and your brand, they will organically advertise for you. You should also always honor the contract and put in 110% of the work for any clients that you work with so that they can provide you with testimonials, and keep you top of mind to work with you again, and/or refer you to other clients or brands.    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.auraswellcollective.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auraswell
• Other: https://auraswell.substack.com/