Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Krista Ripma. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Krista, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
Work ethic is so interesting and is something many people reflect back to me, “my work ethic is amazing”, “it’s people like you that make the world go round”, “it’s people like you that make capitalism happen”, and on and on. I do love how hard I work though, how much presence and focus I put into what I do. It shows and I think it makes me stand out as a business owner and coach too. I really go all in with everyone.
My dad definitely instilled a strong work ethic in me from a young age. He set a powerful example of what you can accomplish when you work really hard and his influence has always been a motivating factor in my work ethic.
When it really kicked in…
In college my dream was to be a television producer, and so I moved to LA out of college and through a lucky break earned a job as a set PA on a network TV show. As someone who had lived a pretty sheltered life up until this point, it was a huge slap in the face with reality, and cut throat, super talented people, everywhere.
That’s the thing about working in LA. If you are there it means you are obviously good at what you do. So it has to be more than what you do, like your energy, your work ethic, and that extra pizazz that will make someone remember you and hire you for the next gig.
Gig to gig was how I worked for my first year, and even though I was the greenest, I was always hired.
I know it was because of my attitude and my work ethic. After a 12 hour shoot day, I still had a great attitude and was happy and excited to be a part of the action.
And in LA, it really matters. If someone gave one of the producers an attitude, they would be replaced the next day, sometimes even after lunch. It is a revolving door of talented people hungry for their shot and everyone deserves it.
Even though Hollywood wasn’t for me, I kept my love for story telling and my humble work ethic as a reminder that many people will be able to do what I can do, but not many people will work as hard as me, and care as much as me, and I know that is something that contributes to my success today.
Now, no one else sees how I work other than me and this is funniest part because no one is going to be harder on me than me. So I have to remember to lighten up on myself sometimes, because the shadow side to a strong work ethic can often lead to overworking, burnout, hyper-productivity, finding our value only in our work, and on and on.
So like everything, I am working on finding that balance.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Wow. Ok, well first I will give a little background on myself and then I mostly want to share about Authentic Audience because that is what is most alive for me and my main focus right now.
I am a business strategist, specially marketing for serviced based business owners, and am just obsessed with business in general. I really love what I do, and it’s about helping people build real relationships with their customers, and feeling really excited about their marketing strategies, and feeling aligned in their business.
I spend my days coaching clients 1:1 through their online launches, and marketing advising as their scale their businesses from both a marketing and mindset standpoint.
I teach business classes each week in my Authentic Business Club – this is where I get to share all the tools we are using in the agency and really fuel my passion for business education and teaching. I love empowering people with both the mindset and the tools to succeed in their online business growth.
I also lead group programs, specifically now around authentic self-promotion because I find this to be a major pain point for my clients. They have an amazing offer, service, art, but the self-promotion is not there, and I find this is deeply rooted in both self-love & strategy so my program supports both.
I have a spiritual aspect to my business and have lead an annual Body Mind Business Retreat in Baja for 3 years. I curate workshops, and experiences for people to drop into themselves, with a huge emphasis on self love and relaxation, from there into mindset with hypnotherapy, astrology & energy work, with business workshops and it’s really just the culmination of all my work and is my favorite thing to do. I love to hold space for people in this way.
And then I run the agency ! This is most of my time! I get to connect with new leads, strategize and sell. I am making this really interesting transition from being the business, and wearing so many hats to being the business owner. I have a team of 5 and growing, so now it’s about time and team management. Thank goodness for my leadership training and mentors! I still get to focus on sales and strategy, but am also now wearing the hat of CEO, which means projections, and partnerships, and investors. We recently took on our first investors, and it is an incredible partnership and I am learning so much and feeling so supported after 7 years of growing this myself with no outside investment.
So now, Authentic Audience, we are a full service digital marketing agency. We specialize in paid advertising, creative meets data. Our clients see our ads and say “I want my ads to look like that!”. We are the ad specialists , and instead of feeling salesy, it feels authentic and professional. To be even more specific we specialize in an email list growth strategy through paid ads, which involves driving paid traffic to a winning entry offer (that we create with you).
From here we get them into your world and through a really intentional, authentic (and very strategic) email marketing strategy, we begin to up-sell them into your offerings and take them deeper into your world. This winning strategy has allowed us to scale! You don’t own your followers, you own your list! And growing your list with quality, targeting leads is the best 401k plan for your biz. So when it comes to paid ads, we love this strategy. We also focus on helping our clients grow their membership communities and online sales. We are creative first, data-driven, marketing obsessed power house women all with a specific focus and together we offer an incredible, high touch, marketing strategy + execution and mindset / support.
Through Authentic Audience we offer paid advertising, email marketing, conversion focused design, and some amazing resources, templates and courses to help you grow your audience, sell to them, and continue to sell to them so they become loyal and raving fans.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Communication 2. Empathy
3. Storytelling
People buy from people, not brands. So focus on that human relationship.
I think communication is the strength that is the most important to understand because our work can be totally amazing but it’s how we deliver our message and communicate about our work to our audiences that really makes the difference. Learning how to communicate about hard things, about yourself, I mean communication is it, and strong communication skills will get you along way. For this I suggest therapy! All things personal development.
Empathy wow. Level with people. Meet them where they are at. You can make someone feel seen, build a bridge, create resonance and from this place of compassion and understanding, it is so much easier to earn the trust and connect with our customers and clients. I think this is so important as a business owner, as a leader and as someone who wants to manage big teams, or work closely with people on big projects. It’s vulnerable. It can be high stakes for people. And being able to meet people where they are, and be more empathetic, when it hasn’t always been so natural, but the more compassion I have found for myself, the more I have found for other people, and business is intense, and can feel personal, so this skill feels so important to understand. This is what makes us feel human. & that is important to the people hiring us!
Storytelling. Marketing to me = good storytelling. I have really honed my ability through writing and speaking, to tell captivating stories, that are personal, relatable, educational, and honest. Honest storytelling has gotten me a lot of recognition on social media and on the podcast. It’s not surprise my more personal, most honest episodes are some of my top downloaded episodes of all time. Tell me a story. Tell me what feels important. Tell me what feels honest. This ability to make me feel something, and take me along for the ride, so I feel connected to the story, is an amazing feeling. I love when someone is a great storyteller. It is THE best quality & it is something I am always refining and practicing through speaking workshops, and writing classes. Especially with AI and all that is coming, our humanity, and authentic stories are what will really make us stand out no matter what industry we find ourselves in.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
This is such an interesting time because the past 12 months have thrown me into so many new growth edges. The discomfort and overwhelm is real. Since partnering with investors and really making the transition to CEO the biggest growth edge has got to be the finances. This for me is not the area I want to focus on. Cue money wound, self worth, the saga and list go on. But it’s me and me, and there is not one that is going to care more about this than I am. And now I have investors, and a team and people counting on me to understand this to a certain degree. That’s the thing about entrepreneurs, we don’t typically have business degrees, and reach a level where we need to invest in our own business education and financial literacy. So that is what I have been doing. Consolidating, organizing, spreadsheets, so much data, migrating, and forecasting. It’s all brand new and it is all a huge, uncomfortable growth edge that I am tackling one day at a time. Tangible things I have also done to support this growth edge is switch bookkeepers, and hire someone I really trust who sends me visual graphs and makes it easy to understand my numbers. I am super on top of the credit cards now, and moved all my business and personal accounts to the same bank, and got a handle on so many things, and by doing this have actually saved money, and maybe even made more because of how close I am paying attention. This has been big for me and affected my mental health, my confidence in the business, and in myself. So if it is something that makes you cringe just reading this, you are not alone and we are in this together. I am currently taking a Forecasting Series and just typing that makes my palms clamy. But at the same time, I love a growth edge and a challenge because I know the next level of my business is requiring me to up-level in this way, so I am committed to that and then helping others to do the same.
Contact Info:
- Website: authenticaudience.co
- Instagram: @kristaripma @authenticaudience
Image Credits
all images are: Abbey Jo Photos https://www.abbeyjophotos.com/
