Stories Sell Products with Christiane Schroeter: Marketing Wisdom from Academia to Entrepreneurship

Dr. Christiana shares her journey as both a full-time professor and successful entrepreneur, revealing how small, consistent actions lead to remarkable achievements through her trademarked "petite practice" method.

• Academic background as a marketing professor who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship
• Developed the "petite practice" method using small, digestible moments of learning
• Competition's Latin origin means "thrive together" - celebrating others' success instead of viewing them as threats
• People buy stories, not products - successful brands connect through authentic storytelling
• Gratitude practice of documenting three daily wins creates over 1,000 documented achievements annually
• Discovering your superpower: skills that come easily to you but are valuable to others
• What you got in trouble for as a child might point to your natural talents and future career path
• Building connections with others creates the most meaningful life experiences

Start small with just 10-15 minutes of daily practice, share your goals with accountability partners, and don't worry if you miss a day - just pick it back up tomorrow!

Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Dr. Christiana and Her Journey
• 3:05 The Petite Practice Method
• 6:50 Redefining Competition as "Thriving Together"
• 9:54 People Buy Stories, Not Products
• 13:20 The Power of Gratitude and Daily Wins
• 20:00 Discovering Your Superpowers
• 27:20 Final Tips and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited here to be here today with Christiane. So welcome and please tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm so excited to hear about your method, your book. Like you've got so much going on, so tell us a little bit about yourself, thanks so much for having me here, nicole.

Speaker 2: 0:24

My name is Dr Christiana and I am a business and wellness coach, an author, a podcaster, and my main job is actually I'm a professor. I teach marketing, innovation, entrepreneurship and I'm really passionate about helping people transform their dreams into viable business opportunities.

Speaker 1: 0:45

That is amazing. And you started, if I remember correctly from your bio, you started in academia and then you decided to make the leap to entrepreneurship and now you have, like you said, a globally ranked podcast. You have a book, so can you tell us a little bit about that journey?

Speaker 2: 1:03

Yeah, so I'm still a full-time professor, and the amazing thing is really, as a full-time professor, you see the students in the classroom being super passionate about things that they would love to do with their lives.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Right, there is just so much talent and potential and passion there and, at the same time, even sometimes a little bit of confusion or overwhelm, and what I really felt was that I have these little fires that I can really ignite in the classroom and really give them ideas to go after opportunities and trends and become the next business that helps to solve all these issues, right To kind of change their little corner of the world, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 1:49

And I felt the best way to do that was to continue teaching in person, but also make my voice heard through a podcast, through my YouTube channel, through my books, with others that maybe have graduated from my academic classes or can't take my academic classes because they're living on the other side of the globe, and so my podcast reaches people all over the world. My books have been sold in many parts of the globe and it's really been amazing to hear from these people back and hear how their lives and their businesses have transformed. So it's been exceptionally fulfilling and I'm really glad to have this opportunity to reach so many different people and to help them shape their dreams.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Oh, that is so amazing. That is incredible, and I love the example you set, you know, because when we are building our online businesses, when we're focused on the most important activities, on the big dominoes, we don't have to sacrifice the rest of our lives to make that business work. And so I think you're just such an awesome example of that. You're doing something that you love and you're also, at the same time, you're building your own thing and you're building out this legacy that you know like it's yours. It's yours forever, and so I love that so much. How you're mixing the two. Um. So tell me a little bit about how you overcame yourself to really take on the entrepreneur side of things, um, and like, what is it that you focus on daily that helps you build your business while you're still working as a professor?

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, it's a fabulous question actually. So in academics, after you graduate with your PhD, you typically get hired for what's called a tenure track position and then you go through a quite rigid review of publishing academic papers that are highly scientific, very research oriented. You teach, you do also service, and so there is a thing that's called tenure track to where you get evaluated by your peers, by peers at other universities, whether you fulfill all this criteria. So you basically need to be excellent in research, as a teacher, but also with regard to your service skills. And then, after you go through these different ranks and you are a full professor which I am now you continue to publish and at that point you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of maybe more reaching the global masses.

Speaker 2: 4:25

And I think that's really what happened for me. Once I reached the professor ring, I thought, okay, so what's next? And I looked at my students and I realized that their learning had really changed, that, instead of reading a textbook and assigning 30 pages in a chapter in a marketing textbook, that they really needed much smaller chunks of knowledge. And that's really how they consume information, because when they scroll through social media, it's just like fast information that basically goes through their brain, and I noticed that they are not really set out to read like the next Harry Potter novel, which is, you know, 500 pages, but more something that's like three to five pages.

Speaker 2: 5:10

And at that point I decided that the way that I had been teaching my classes was really old fashioned and that I need to change it and really chunk it down. And I came up with the concept that is my trademarked petite practice, to where I use small, digestible moments of learning, one page worksheets to really teach a concept very hands-on, very applied, and also to the fact where the students feel they can do it, they can try it and they're okay if they don't do it correct the first time. So it really teaches this moment of failure as a celebration instead of something that is like horrible. So they basically do the worksheet, they even use their pencils and they sometimes erase their answer and then they go ahead and try again. And so the petite practice that's why the word practice is there is really teaching you we're taking small steps to achieve something, teaches us that learning happens through the good moments and through the moments where we maybe didn't quite take that right path.

Speaker 1: 6:32

That is amazing. I love that and that echoes what I talk about in my book. You know, in establishing those small, tiny baby steps and then just doing a small thing every day, right, just being 1% better. You just have to be a little bit better than you were yesterday and you make amazing progress. Right, like recording one podcast episode a day. If you do that 30 minutes, you record an episode. At the end of the year, you have over 300 episodes and that's more than, like, 90% of people start with a podcast. Right, because, yeah, they're focused on, like, growing the audience instead of focusing on what you can control, which is creating the content. So I love that so much.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, and actually the amazing thing is that sometimes we tend to look too much at what other people are doing.

Speaker 2: 7:24

We look at others nearly as competition, and in my classes I teach my students that the word competition, when you look at the Latin origin of that word, actually means thrive together.

Speaker 2: 7:39

Thrive together meaning that we are building ourselves as a team and we are not pushing others down to make ourselves look better. And I think that sometimes in competition we really need to think about this as being more like I celebrate your success, and by celebrating your success, actually I thrive. So there is enough for us to go around and to share with everybody. But by really changing your perspective from oh no, I need to be better than you, you're actually really changing the wiring in your brain in terms of like, if you are finding uniquely what you do and who you are, then you're really going to succeed, and it's not by making others look worse or anything like that. So I think that my students really learned that in the classroom. I'm really pushing that concept of unique value proposition who are you and what do you have to offer to the world? It's different from everybody else, but we can all thrive together, just like what the word competition is really going for.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Yes, and you know what it makes you think, like, even if you lose the World Series, the World Cup, the World Series, the Super Bowl, like even if you lose that big game, you played in that game, you were good enough to make it there, right?

Speaker 1: 9:03

And so just the fact that you're playing that game, whatever it is, you know, whatever arena it is that you're in, like we got to be grateful that we get to play the game and you're playing at such a level that sometimes we forget, right, that that it's like it's taken so much to get here, and just the fact that you're here, regardless of whether you win or not, you made it here, and like there's, there's value in that, there's credit in that, there is, there is worth in that right, so I love that so much. That's amazing. So I wanted to ask you, since you are a professor of marketing and this is, you know, this is what you teach your students a professor of marketing and this is, you know, this is what you teach your students Can you give us a tiny lesson on marketing? Like what is it that you're, you know, like the biggest aha that your students get in one of your lessons.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Oh yeah, brilliant. Actually, we just talked about that yesterday and I talked about the fact that people buy stories. They don't buy products. That people buy stories, they don't buy products, right? So the most successful brands in marketing are the ones that really share authentically who they are.

Speaker 2: 10:13

So you never really look for, oh, I want to buy this particular product. It's more that you are all of a sudden connecting with the brand because of the story, because of the owner that shares their personal background and why they created this brand. And then all of a sudden, you're starting to connect to the brand because you see a little bit of yourself in it. So the most successful marketing concept really is you have to think a little bit of people will come to you not because of who you are, but because you make them feel that they see themselves in you and I think that is the most important piece. Nobody cares about you, but they really want to see that you reflect what your problem was and that they see oh, this is a problem I'm struggling with myself and let's see how she solved that problem and then you're really going to succeed.

Speaker 1: 11:14

That is awesome. I was reading an article the other day. You just reminded me of Nespresso and how their patent they were losing the patent for the pod system and a lot of companies will not survive losing, you know, like the patent going away. What they did is they leaned into the story and they leaned into creating a, an experience for their customer. They created a club and they got the, the spokesperson, they got Clooney, who exudes the sophistication and all of the elements that they wanted to bring that they wanted that brand to emphasize. And not only did they not go under, they thrived, they became, you know, a brand. So, even though all these other brands were are distributing knockoffs right, because now the patent is available for everyone it solidified them as the go-to brand.

Speaker 1: 12:13

This is like the high-end brand, um and like, as a matter of fact, I was reading that that they brought down the price on the machine, so they were taking, they weren't making as much on the machines, but they were able to increase the price on the pods and it was billions of dollars in revenue that they generated the year that their patent went away. And so that's I thought. I just thought I read that story the other day. I just thought. I read that story the other day and that just made me think of that, how you create that story around your brand and and then you can really, you can really thrive, right, and they became leaders in the market. So what do you think about that?

Speaker 2: 12:48

Yeah, and I think that sometimes we kind of look at a company as something especially successful companies.

Speaker 2: 12:57

They have always been successful, but I would always encourage you to really scroll back down in their social media feeds, because they all started from zero. So it sometimes seems especially for my students in the classroom so intimidating to think, oh, I could be the next thing, because it seems like it's so far away. But in reality, everybody started with zero followers, everybody started with a campaign that had zero dollar funding and that's just the momentum, the petite practice that you have to keep going step by step and really share your story authentically and then eventually people will start connecting with you and because they trust you, it's this know and trust factor that they really built and overall the recognition like, oh yeah, she's somebody that I would really love to do business with, and I think at that point, really, that breakout happens. So it's not really like you come up with this amazing thing. Everybody wants to buy it. This is really not how it works anymore, especially not nowadays where, I say, the attention is so short.

Speaker 1: 14:05

We really need to think a little bit of what sets us apart, and that's really sharing who uniquely, who we are yes, um, okay, I just thought of another story, of course, but the Stanley Cup craze that we experienced just a few years ago, that started a company that had been around for hundreds of years I think Stanley's been around for a really long time and their ideal market before was rugged men. There were workers, they were, you know, the out of the line men that were out, they were out in the mines because they needed a strong cup. And then a girl's car caught on fire and when she went, she was, you know, when she was able to go back inside, she was like, oh my God, you guys, my Stanley cup was in my car that was on fire and it was OK and there's still ice in here. And that's what started the entire everybody's like oh my god, I gotta go get a stanley. And that company went from having, like, like you know, this amount, 10 times the revenue in a year.

Speaker 1: 15:06

That completely changed their ideal market and they had a huge boom and they've been around for hundreds of years, you know. And so, yes, like a story can come out like this and it can change everything for your company and they did a good job of leaning into that momentum right and using those opportunities, like if someone you know mentions your product and they're like it's amazing. I'm sure they sent her cups and they sent her all kinds of stuff. I think they bought her a new car and everything Like a company bought her a car for sharing that story. And so you know, you never know what could come up from a good story, right? That is amazing. I love it.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, and I think that's really a good marketer, is really a good storyteller to kind of like think a little bit about, you know, connecting the brand with something that also creates emotion, especially nowadays when we use so much AI that people underestimate that we can frequently pick up. Is this written by AI or is this written by a human? Because the AI is not able to immediately put the emotion into it. So I would always encourage us to use AI and automate things, and I heavily teach it in the classroom. But really taking a look and thinking, is that really the voice I would use? Is this really creating some emotion, to where I'm feeling I'm starting to connect with this product or with this service? When I read this, or does it sound like it's written by a machine?

Speaker 2: 16:38

And I think that's really where the flip really happens, right? So when you're feeling, you're reading something and it's creating that emotion and it's creating that connection, that's really when you are getting something much bigger, something that where your unique voice sounds through, maybe words that you use maybe um little idiosyncrasies, right, like, for instance, I use a lot of european things because I'm born in europe. So I always say I have this european flair and I think that my students are expecting this now, or like little words that I use, and that's something. As soon as you start sharing this and building your brand, that's really when the magic happens.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I love that. I love that so much. Now in my book we've already talked a little bit about habits, but one of the foundations of my book is gratitude and practicing gratitude. So, in your professional wisdom, can you talk to us a little bit about what part gratitude plays in this journey of the tiny practices?

Speaker 2: 17:47

Yeah, so I have actually three different books that I wrote. I have a petite practice planner which is really heavily leaning on using every day as a celebration and for me, gratitude really happens at the end of the day. You can use your petite practice planner and write down three wins that happened on that day. Practice planner and write down three wins that happened on that day and there's science that really shows, by kind of reflecting on this gratitude at the end of the day, writing down those three wins, it will actually subconsciously help you when you wake up on the next morning and picking up those thoughts and continuing it, because your mind is celebrating this moment as you go to sleep, as you end your day on this positive note, as, like, these are three wins that I really accomplished today.

Speaker 2: 18:38

When you wake up in the morning, I would love for you to look back at these three wins that happened on the previous day and then kind of think about this man that was an amazing day yesterday. How can I continue on this path of celebration? So that's how I celebrate gratitude I always think of, like the day, as, like you know, the book ends. You start your day, you look at your three wins. You look at three things you want to get done on that day. At the end of the day you celebrate the three wins that happened and you write those down. Because if you think about this at the end of a year right in my planner it's an annual planner you have essentially a whole year times three wins. So that's an enormous amount of wins that you can celebrate on that basis. And they're all small things but at the same time it's really a moment to celebrate. There's over 1000 wins.

Speaker 1: 19:35

I know that's a lot of wins. I love that so, so much. That is amazing, um, so talk to us that I want to mention the last part of my book is seeing the superpower in what you thought was your weakness. So, um, have you ever found in you know, like in, in, in what you're teaching and things, um, that what someone considers their weakness might actually be their superpower? What do you think about that?

Speaker 2: 20:04

This is immense how much we have in common, because one of my books is called discover your superpower. I love it, I know yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:14

So one of my books is called discover your superpower I didn't know that like I read through your stuff, but I just want to mention for everyone listening that was a coincidence, I wasn't aware, so I love that it's really nice, because this is the beauty of podcasting.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Yes, um, when I initially asked my students in the classroom what is your superpower, I have to say the very first thing that they said was like oh, maybe I wish I could fly or do, make myself invisible. And I was like no, you already have superpowers. I'm not talking like superhero things. I'm talking about things that you do that are easy to you, but work for somebody else. And they're like oh, and then they would have to think and I said this is a hard question. And I said, well, good, I would like that you actually reflect on that, because the more you bring up that particular skill, the more you tap into something. As I say, that's easy for you, but work for others that you're passionate about and you can share that with the world. Because if you don't make that superpower stand out, you really, in a certain way, you're kind of like this diamond in the rough that never really gets to its full potential, and that's really how I teach it.

Speaker 2: 21:35

So in my classroom I always tell my students when you introduce yourself, you say your name, but I would really love that you start thinking a little bit about like nearly like a mini elevator pitch. When you introduce yourself, you don't just say I am xyz and I'm a student, because guess what we are, they're all students, right? I would like, if you say your name and you maybe add a unique skill, that could be your superpower afterwards, because immediately people will be like, oh, what did she just say? Did she just say she's like this and that? And it will spark a conversation with somebody and that person, who knows what, might be hiring you, might be connecting, you might just become your next best friend because you shared that superpower and, of course, by saying it out loud, it also also makes it more you know conscious for you. I love that.

Speaker 1: 22:33

And I ask sometimes, when we're talking about this, when I'm talking with my clients, I ask them what did you used to get in trouble for when you were a kid? Because that's something that comes very naturally to you that maybe you know. Our parents were, like you know for me, for example, like to make it make sense. I got I used to get in trouble for talking in school, right, like I was too talkative, like you're talking, you're talking, you're getting in trouble, you're not listening. Um, and now I get paid to talk. Now I have my podcast and I do all these things and I get paid to talk, and so I turned that superpower, I learned to use it for good.

Speaker 1: 23:07

That's another thing I talk about in my book is, if we just let our superpowers run rampant. I have the gift of gab, but I watch a lot of reality TV and I'm gossiping about people and I'm just talking about the wrong things. I'm using my superpower not for good, but because I spend a lot of time reading, I hang out with awesome people like you, I'm on my podcast, I'm blogging, I'm doing all my things. The things that I talk about are I'm using them for good, hopefully right, and I talk about gratitude and I talk about events and I talk about what's coming next. What are the goals, what are the intentions, what is you know? What am I grateful for? What you know, what is the good and you know? And using those superpowers for good. So I love that. I loved how aligned we are, and I'm definitely gonna have to check out your books, of course.

Speaker 2: 23:55

This is awesome yeah, this is again like to me, it might be nearly like a superpower in itself that we kind of aligned this way, and I think you know like sometimes when you connect with people, not even knowing where you are in the world, but just discovering things through collaborating, through communicating, you're building that connection really.

Speaker 2: 24:20

And, of course, this is something that is another superpower that I never disregard the power of connecting with people and building that network. The power of connecting with people and building that network, because in reality, really, when you look back at you know people at the end of their life, the main regret that they have is maybe that they didn't build enough connections with friends, with neighbors, with family, with acquaintances. They would never say, oh, I wish I would have worked more. They will always say, oh, I wish I wouldn't have, I wish I would have connected more. So, to all of you that are listening to this right now, how amazing it was when we connected through the books. But I would also encourage you, of course, to go out and connect with some others and share your superpower with them.

Speaker 1: 25:05

Yeah, and you know what that's beautiful Like the fact that you have your book with them, yeah, and you know what that's beautiful, like the fact that you have your book, you have your website, you have your podcast, like those are all different ways of connecting. You know, I know that a lot of my mentors, a lot of coaches and things that I couldn't just jump into their programs, but I was able to hang out with them in their books, I was able to listen to their podcasts, I was able to learn from them and spend time with them, and you know that's what we do when we're creating content like this. So that's amazing. All right, now I do know that you had mentioned a gift for the audience, so can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 25:40

Yeah, so I'm going to share with you a little gift, and it's actually just a little teaser, so to speak, of my petite practice plan that I'm going to share with you so you can start planning a little bit, you can start jotting some of those ideas down that maybe we sparked during the podcast episode, and I would love for you to try this out and then, if you become curious from the little appetizer teaser, you can get my whole petite practice planner or look into my other books.

Speaker 1: 26:10

I would, of course, love to answer any questions you might have awesome and that link will be available down in the com, in the show notes, in the comments, depending on where you're watching this, and then, before we sign off, um final tip like what's your one final tip for the audience after today's episode?

Speaker 2: 26:27

Yeah, start small and share that with everybody. Make them your accountability buddies. Just say you know what, from today on, I'm just going to go 10 minutes for a walk. From today on, I'm going to read 10 minutes in a book. From today on, I'm going to maybe spend 10 minutes stretching Anything that you want to do 10, 15 minutes. Don't say I'm going to do every day an hour because that's a long time. Just start small, petite practice and just keep building. And if one day you don't do it, that's okay, Pick it up on the next day, right? We are human, we are not machines. And the amazing thing is that if you share that with somebody else, you might actually create a little bit of momentum there.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Love that. That is amazing. Thank you so much. And then, before we sign off, of course, let us know how can we stay in touch with you.

Speaker 2: 27:22

Check out my website, hellohappynestcom. I would love for you to tune into my podcast that's called Happy, healthy Hustle and, of course, check out my books on Amazon. They are available there my Master your Goals book, my Petite Practice Planner and the Discover your Superpower book, and I'm actually going to do a big launch at the end of March. 323 marks the two-year anniversary of my Top 1% podcast and I'm going to have a lot of big specials coming up during that time with my books, and I can't wait to celebrate that two-year anniversary with you.

Speaker 1: 28:04

It sounds amazing. Yay, thank you so much. This has been incredible and thank you, guys for joining us. We will see you next time on the next episode of Overcoming Yourself, the podcast. Bye.