{cover photo by Starla Fortunato}

Christina Morassi is an alchemist and Personal Brand Expert who helps women entrepreneurs combine ALL their gifts together into ONE lucrative business.  Today people want to know how she built her business to nearly 7-figures in 3 years as a former hippie/healer/burningmangirl, and Christina knows it was on the strength of her unique personal brand.

Christina speaks on international stages, hosts her own live events, and coaches women in over 20 countries on how to Find Their Ecstatic Brand and attract high-paying clients!  Enjoy her exclusive Business Heroine interview…

BH: Your background began in New York working in fashion photography on high-end shoots with people like Heidi Klum, Britney Spears, and other celebrities. Then you spent 10 years on the West Coast leading workshops in the healing arts. These two career paths are so seemingly different. How did you bring your passions together to form your existing brand and business?

Christina: When I first found my way into the business world, I noticed the traditional thought is that you need to choose one thing and leave everything else out. You need to choose your niche.  It kind of made me shudder to think about it, and that limiting thought just wasn’t going to work for me.  It really made me feel like I was going to be amputating a limb of some kind, and I knew there must be another way.

I knew I had all these gifts but couldn’t quite figure out how they came together.  Some intuitive part of me thought that there must have been a reason I was house sitting for 3 years, a fashion photographer for 6 years, then was a healer for 10 years.

After I found the right mentor and program, I was able to really look at each skill.  As a healer I’m able to retrieve some essence in people so I thought, why not photograph clients after the healing process?  So I used those gifts to create a title that hadn’t existed before – Transformation Photographer.

I started photographing women entrepreneurs that captured the heart and soul of their brand.  They were lit up in these photographs, and these were the photos that attracted their high-paying clients.  This generated six figures in 15 months and multiple six figures by the second year!

I really think I was able to go from house sitting for $600 a month to this, because I created a career that had never existed.  I allowed myself to put all of my personality into my business.

That’s what I get to help other people do now, and it’s really fun.  When you’re unique, you stand out in the marketplace.   I like getting to break the rules in business.

BH: Why is it important for an entrepreneur to have a unique personal brand that embodies ALL of her?

Christina: Authenticity is so important, because that’s really where our life force and our personalities show up.  Business is all about relationships so we need to keep increasing our trust factor. If people feel like they know us, they’ll be more willing to invest with us.  If we let our weirdness totally come out then our people will find us.  That’s how to create a thriving business.

There is NOBODY else on the planet that has had the same work experience as you and the same life experiences as you.  So just the very fact of owning all parts of you means that you will have no competition whatsoever.  So if you’re ever feeling that compare-and-despair negativity, put all of yourself and your gifts into your business and it will help you stand out for sure.

It’s an evolving process.  We don’t start out with the absolute most perfect brand.  But when you reach that full evolution, it’s like you’ve found your little corner of the planet.  We have to really trust that our people are our people.  If I keep showing up in my full self, my people will recognize me.  And that’s why I’m me.  I want to be a beacon for this brand, a living example so that my people can find me.  I have to be ok and trust that some brands will attract other people and my brand will attract mine.

This is an abundant universe, there is no lack, and really, there are enough people to go around for everyone.

{photo by Starla Fortunato}

BH: So let’s get basic.  What is a brand?  What does “branding” actually mean?

Christina: When you look up the word brand, it means, “to mark or indelibly impress upon.” If you think about it, probably the first time we ever heard the word brand, it was a cattle prod into the side of a cow.  That’s certainly “impressing upon.”  Along the way, big corporations started to take on the concept of “brand,” and it had to do with their colors, logos and the experience you had when you interacted with their product.

Then somewhere in the last 10 years or so, the idea of a “personal brand” really came through.  That’s where people took their personality and started to build a whole business around it, with every aspect of their personality infused in the business.  It becomes how you mark or indelibly impress into the universe what you can share and what you’re about so that you become a beacon for the right people.

I like to start working with people’s inner brand first because you’ve got to know who YOU are.  You can get to the colors, logos and outer expressions of the brand later on.

I have this theory that if you believe that you’re here for a big mission on this planet, then every work and life experience you’ve had on this planet is preparing you for that mission.  I like to think of this as our Divine Curriculum – this assignment that we’re here for on the planet.

And, I believe that there’s a seed inside of us of what that’s meant to look like.  It’s the ultimate integration of bringing our past, present, and everything in between all together into one giant expression.  THAT, to me, is our ecstatic brand – and our opportunity to become visionary leaders who can really create great change on the planet.

{photo by Starla Fortunato}

BH: What are some of the big mistakes women entrepreneurs make when creating their personal brands?

Christina: The biggest one I see is that they don’t bring all of themselves into their business – especially if they have a history in a past industry that was a little traumatic.  For example, women in the corporate world may reach a point where it didn’t feel good, so they shut the door on it and left everything behind.  They start again with something that’s a bit more heart-based, but they’ve shut the door on a rich experience that could be supporting them in this moment.

I challenge my clients to go back, heal what was traumatic for them and use those skills from that time period for good things.  It usually creates something much more unique in their current business.  And then it helps them to stand out.  It’s a deep process to own everything in that current moment, but I look at it as a business soul-retrieval.

BH: Share more about your thoughts on business as a tool for living out your purpose and changing the world.

Christina: I was never one of those entrepreneurs selling lemonade or Girl Scout cookies as a kid.  I actually did not like business at all.  My spiritual path and being a change agent was very important to me, though, and I finally understood that I needed to be responsible about being one of the ones with power and money so that I could really reach out to more people and create great change.

When I took on that responsibility and stepped into business, it was like, “This is the way to do it!”  I really do believe that it’s the women entrepreneurs who can create the world through business.  It’s through business and entrepreneurism that we are meant to achieve these purposes on our planet.

By the way, creating your own business is the best personal self-development program on the planet!  It’s the hardest spiritual work I’ve ever done – to start my own business.  We can create mission-based businesses where we are being of service, and it’s the fullest expression of our soul.  It’s absolutely possible.

{photo by Erica Parise}

BH: We’ve got to know… after shifting from the hippie/healer/burningmangirl, as you called it, to having a thriving business, how does it feel to actually have MONEY?

Christina: It’s kind of a trip!  I haven’t really sat down and said, “Oh my gosh, I did it!”  There are times where I still feel like that house sitter who was indifferent about business.  But at the same time, it’s amazing.  Recently I made the decision to be nomadic, so I’m doing a few months at a time in different locations.  It’s still similar to being a house sitter… but this time I have money.

If I hadn’t done what it took to get to where I am now, then my community might not have raised $25,000 to sponsor an African village for 5 years.  The money that comes in – I get to now disseminate in a really beautiful way and support other people to step into their own ecstatic wealth.

If we’re too focused on paying our rent for the month or our bills – if so much of our energy is focused on that, then we’re not actually being of very good use to the planet in those moments.  It’s only when your survival needs are taken care of that you can begin to really be of use on the planet.  It’s important that we all learn how to really open up that money channel for ourselves so we can stop wasting this time worrying about money.

BH: Can you give us one step that we can take starting today to begin creating our own ecstatic brand?

Christina: My favorite place for people to start is very simple.  Sit down, get a piece of paper and pen, and start detailing out ALL of your work experiences.  Go way back and really look at all the different things that you’ve done.  Look at the skills you got from each of those work experiences.  Then look at whether or not you’re using them in your current business.  If not, think about how you could.  Get into that place of wonder.  I also really recommend asking for an outside perspective as well.

What was your Divine Curriculum preparing you for?  Let those things you wrote down become a whole new pattern, like something you’ve never thought of before.

{photo by Starla Fortunato}

Special Gift from Christina Morassi

Because Christina believes YOU are a Business Heroine, she wants to support you on finding your own ecstatic brand that rocks your purpose and magnetizes YOUR peeps.

($197 value, FREE for you)

The Four Stages from Generic to SHAZAAM:
Stage 1: Get the confidence to come out of hiding
Stage 2: Find your Ecstatic Brand (a blended jambalaya stew of who you are)
Stage 3: Match your brand with a need in the marketplace
Stage 4: Create a package for your signature high-end program

Expect a TON of inner work and transformation.  Your mind will be blown open to new possibilities, and you will realize you have got A LOT (of awesomeness) goin’ on!  The training will take your vision and apply it to a lucrative business that’s authentically YOU.

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Cover Heroines, September 2013 Issue