Cristal Balk of Unstoppable Marketing Solutions wholeheartedly believes the success of business operations is found in a company’s roots: “Everybody has a story of why they started their business. There’s always a purpose.” Alumna Cristal Balk (18) is no different. Balk is a powerhouse who meets people where they are, celebrates community, walks in confidence, and guides with the principles of servant leadership.
In 2016, Balk moved from the East Coast to San Diego County with the intention to further her education in organizational management. Her rigorous schedule between Cuyamaca College and Point Loma Nazarene University’s adult degree completion program left little room for a fixed work schedule. To fund her college education, Balk completed freelance marketing. This stream of revenue permitted the flexible work schedule she needed and paralleled the industry knowledge her extended family had shared with her about the digital marketing and tech industry over the years. For Balk, the organizational leadership program confirmed the field and community she permanently wanted to be a part of, while subsequently challenging the “corporate world” mentality she had seen as such an industry standard.
PLNU’s organizational leadership courses challenged her to create everything from scratch under a new mentality. The systems and processes she would go on to create would be unique and individualistic to reflect and complement who she was as a business owner. Balk launched her digital marketing agency, Unstoppable Marketing Solutions, in her final year of undergraduate studies.
As Balk networked, she found most business owners placed marketing at the bottom of their priority list. This led Balk to a more transformative approach in her client consultations — Unstoppable Marketing Solutions would inventory the entirety of their client’s entity. “[Businesses] lose sight of the purpose and [their] roots when [they] dive deep into the admin and financial side,” Cristal explained. Today, Unstoppable Marketing Solutions fixes the root of a client’s problems with strategy that directly aligns with the client’s purpose and poignantly speaks to the audiences they serve. Their speciality resides in building marketing plans that guide the client into a strategic plan that will work specifically for them.
In 2019, Balk became a partner of IQ Podcast, taking on 100% responsibility of the corporation’s marketing efforts. This included launching her podcast, Your Business Reality With CB, where the success stories of business organizations are shared. On the show, Balk shares beneficial marketing strategies that set her guests up for success and build authentic human connection. The podcast connects global entrepreneurs and is bilingual, creating a forum for both English and Spanish speaking professionals to discuss innovative business strategies.
Like many other businesses, Unstoppable Marketing Solutions pivoted when the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns for local and small businesses. Balk recognized that shops accustomed to traditional business operations would find themselves obsolete as the industry hit a stop. From freelance marketing to business consulting to podcasting, Balk’s purpose has remained the same: to empower and support others as they fulfill the real purpose in their life. Recognizing this issue, Balk expanded her product offering to include business consultations where she inventories the operations of business management, and subsequently the overall marketing strategy. For Balk, marketing was not made to plug holes, rather it was meant to solve problems.
Unstoppable Marketing Solutions’ story continued to evolve as Balk expanded into the global market this past year. In 2020, Cristal was asked to be the San Diego chapter leader and global marketing strategist of the World Women Conference & Awards (WWCA), the foremost international gathering of women leaders designed to discuss and share experiences, strategies, and opportunities for women in areas of health, leadership, finance, and personal development. The WWCA sisterhood connects women across all seven continents of the world. The pandemic has also permitted more opportunities for WWCA chapters to connect through Zoom and other web-based platforms. Many of Balk’s global WWCA sisters have been featured on Your Business Reality with CB.
Through the WWCA, Balk has built her expertise in diverse marketing strategies. She gleans most of her research from first-hand conversations with women across multiple countries and continents, including Africa and South and Central America: “I can research all I want, but it’s not going to get me to the root of that situation or their needs” she said. The sisterhood prioritizes the WWCA mission to “change generations through education,” piquing Balk’s interest in collecting a series of business resources and stories to educate and empower females across the globe, as her website states: “filling in the gaps in the marketing world is what I do.”
Balk’s current team is made up of resilient women from across the world, all seeking greater opportunities to be the pebble stones of their next foundational business operations. Recognizing the transformative power of living confidently within your ambition, Balk has prioritized creating a community of sisterhood within her own operations: “If we can change the way women can provide for the family, then we can change the whole family and a whole generation.”
Everybody has a purpose and Cristal Balk has used hers to help others accomplish what they’re meant to do in this world: “Imagine if we were all doing what we were supposed to do in a genuine way how this world would look.” As Cristal continues business consulting, podcasting, and partnering with the WWCA sisterhood, she proceeds to build enriching relationships that strengthen one another’s personal mission in this world.
