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

Hi Christina, thanks for joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

I’ve always had a passion for saving money and getting great deals. This particular piece of my journey started over 12 years ago when my son was born. I left full-time teaching in higher education to stay home with my newborn son for 1 year. During that time, because we went from two incomes to one, I started reading blogs about different ways to save money.

I started learning everything I could about different store’s savings programs, coupons and cashback programs. Once I started bringing home bags of groceries for pennies on the dollar, I knew I’d never shop the same way again. Many people told me I should start a blog of how I saved. Blogs were what was popular at that time. So, yes, I wish I had started sooner. I wish I had started when social media was just getting going. I think there would have been a better opportunity for rapid growth at that time. However, I started at a time where life was getting more expensive for most people; it certainly wasn’t a bad time to start.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Prior to starting my business, I was an educator. Well, technically I’m still an educator, but I used to teach in higher education.

In March of 2020, due to the pandemic, my son was completing school from home. In an attempt to connect with my son and his interests, he started to teach me more about YouTube. He and I decided to work together to start creating videos. While I would handle the educational content creation, he taught me about video editing (which is what he loves). To my surprise, the content I was sharing was starting to gain popularity.

As a result, I decided to create my channel “Saving with Christina” as a way to help others save money and find great deals on the things they want and need. From there I added Instagram and TikTok (@savewithchristina), a Facebook page (@saving with Christina) and a Facebook group (Money Saving and Coupon Deals). My platforms helps teach people various ways to save money in a step-by-step format and even provides printable shopping lists of all the best deals.

One thing I do is shop at different stores each week (Walmart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens) and show people the best deals happening at each of the stores. I show people exactly how to score some amazing savings, pay pennies on the dollar, and even get items completely free.

Additionally, I have full tutorials on a variety of cash-back apps. I teach people step-by-step how to use these apps to save money on the items they want and need.

I also focus on consumer education topics. I like to show people what I’ve done to save money and live debt-free. I share things like Money Saving Tips, How to Save on Your Electric Bill, How to Save on Groceries Without Coupons, Savings Challenges, How to Save on Gasoline, Tips to Make Your Produce Last Longer, etc.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Prior to starting my business, I rarely utilized social media. I merely used social media as a way to stay connected to friends and family. I always tell people that growing a presence on social media is much harder than it looks- unless you get really lucky. Building a social media following involves creating consistent, quality content that people want or need to consume. I’ve also found it extremely helpful to connect with other content creators. I found a small group of creators who support and help each other. There are so many things to learn when you are just starting out, but even almost three years later, I still feel like I learn something new every day. Having a support system of other creators allows you to share helpful tips and advice as you are learning. I consider myself to be an introvert, so I definitely had to step outside my comfort zone. Networking with local and national media is also helpful.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

My strategy is to help people. Anytime I start to feel overwhelmed or wonder what I should be prioritizing workwise, I always come back to one question “How can I help people save money?” If I focus on how to help people, it allows me to provide a useful service as well as stay motivated. Any opportunities that come my way, I ask myself “Will this be helpful to my audience? How so?” Many people want to save money, but what that looks like from one person to another is quite different. My audience has varying needs. Determining the right content to create to help a broad and varying audience isn’t always easy. So, the first question is “How can I help people save money?” The second question is “What are my followers responding to?” In other words, I listen to my followers. I watch for the content they seem to like and I create more of that type of content. There’s no magic; it’s been a lot of hard work, day in and day out, for almost three years now.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.savingwithchristina.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/savewithchristina
• Facebook: facebook.com/savingwithchristina
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/savingwithchristina
• Other: TikTok @savewithchristina

Image Credits
Christina H