046: The 6 Pillars Every Online Business Needs to Thrive

Kate Kordsmeier 0:00

Welcome back to the Success with Soul podcast. I'm your host Kate Kordsmeier. And today it is just me We are doing a another solo episode. So I want to know before I even get into all this Do you guys like solo episodes? Do you prefer guest episodes, send me a DM on Instagram at Kate Kordsmeier. And let me know your preference so that I can continue creating content that you actually want to listen to. Okay, so, on that note,

today, we're

gonna be talking about the six things every online business owner needs. Now, I know it can be overwhelming to know what to focus on when you're running an online business. And between the gazillion emails in your inbox and all of the social media platforms and those compelling ads you see when you log into Instagram, and every shiny object under the sun. getting off track these days takes about only point two seconds would you say and it can just lead you down rabbit holes that end up costing you hours. So in this episode, I'm walking you through the six pillars I believe every online business owner needs to focus on in order to get the results you want, both with your impact and your income. So these are your guiding principles that you should think about on the regular This means setting goals, having a plan and being super intentional in all that you do so that you're both less stressed and more effective. So let's get into it. You're listening to the Success with Soul podcast with Kate Kordsmeier x journalists turned CEO of a multi six figure blog in online business. But it wasn't that long ago that Kate was a struggling entrepreneur who lacked confidence, clarity, and let's be honest money. But all those failures, experiments and lessons learned helped Kate create a thriving business that impacts 1000s and brings freedom, flexibility and fulfillment to her life. If you're ready to do the same and make something happen with holistic, soulful, step by step strategies from Kate and other experts, you're in the right place. here's your host, writer, educator, Mom, recovering perfectionist, bookworm and sushi connoisseur, Kate Kordsmeier. All right. So the first thing every online business owner needs is free weekly content.

Now, I don't care who you are and what you do. Creating weekly content is one of the most important things you need to do in your business. For years, people have been saying content is king. And that still applies today. Although of course, I would say content is queen. Content is where you provide free value. It's where you establish your authority and expertise. It's where you connect with your readers. It's how you build a following. It's how you get organic traffic to your website without spending hours on social media or tons of money on paid ads. Because without content, how are people going to find you trust you ever get to joining your email list and ultimately buying from you, you need to make yourself fundable. And in order to do that, you must have a website that has free valuable content on it content that people are actually searching for. Now, we'll get to that in a second. But I want to go back here a little bit. Let's rewind for a second and talk about examples of weekly content because I just said you need to have a website with content on it. But let me be clear that content could be in the form of a blog post, it could be in the form of a video, perhaps you even host that video on YouTube and then embed it onto your website itself. It could be a podcast. So you'll notice that if you go to Kate kordsmeier.com, we have show notes for all of our podcast episodes on the website. We actually approach shownotes a little bit differently for our website than most podcasters because we're treating them almost like a blog post. We're doing a lot of good SEO practices for content with our podcast, even though that's not traditionally the way that podcasters do the show notes because we want to make ourselves fundable. Now, there's also weekly content in the form of social media. That could be Instagram or Facebook Lives, for example, or whatever platform is the platform does your here's the thing about that. While I think it can be a great complement to what you are doing to build your business, you do not own Instagram or Facebook, you do not have control over the algorithm. It is not as searchable as say Google or Pinterest. And so I don't recommend focusing on putting your weekly content only on a social media platform. Now what you could do is create a Facebook Live from Example. And then download it and save it, and upload it to your website with captions and notes about what's covered in it. And that would be a good example of kind of taking a Facebook Live and making it searchable finable, and helping you get organic traffic back to your website. So with that caveat, these are all great options. And more important than anything is the need to be consistent with it. So pick the platform that feels easiest and most enjoyable to you. For example, if you love being on video, then maybe experiment with doing a YouTube channel and publish weekly onto your YouTube page. Likewise, if you're a great writer, go the blog post route. Or you can do a hybrid of things like I'm doing where I have a podcast, it's audio format, obviously. But then I'm doing these kind of extended show notes so that the content is fundable by Google on my website. Obviously, I'm all about blogging, but not in the way that we've traditionally thought about blogging. If you missed the episode I did a couple weeks ago, go back and listen to Episode 44. All about why you think you don't need a blog. But you do. As a reminder, blogs are your home base. It's not like how it used to be where it's just a chronological, personal diary. Instead, if you have a website, and that website has content on it, it is a blog. All websites are blogs, and all businesses need one. It's how you attract people into your sphere. You don't have to be a blogger if the word influencer makes you cringe great doesn't need to be like that. You can be a coach or a consultant, you can have one on one clients, you can have a brick and mortar business you can have any type of business. And blogging can help you grow, create new income streams and automatically build your list. Less Do you think blogging is dead? Again, we talked about that in Episode 44. But I also debunk the myth that blogging is dead in Episode Two. So you can go to successwithsoul.co/2 learn more about why you should start a blog today. Of course, you can pick multiple platforms, and you can deliver content more than once per week. But if you're just getting started, I recommend pick one thing, get into a routine and master that before you add on more. All right. The second thing every online business owner needs is an email list. I could actually argue that this is the most important asset of your business as email is your route to communicate directly with your audience. My message always comes right to you. Unlike let's say in order to listen to this podcast episode, you may have to first find it in a podcast app. Maybe you clicked over from Instagram. But if I could send this message right into your inbox for you to open, my message is much more likely to get seen and grab your attention. That is powerful. Not only that, but you have much more control over your email list than you do social media. So many people spend most of their time on Instagram these days. But think about this at any moment. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even clubhouse could pull the plug change their rules or algorithm, whatever fan base you've grown on those platforms could disappear. In fact, this is exactly what happened to our podcast guest Shonda Nicole, when she lost her account of 25,000 followers, you can listen to her story at successwithsoul.co/27. And actually my friend Susie, who was on episode one of the podcast interviewing me, she's at girl gangrene. her Instagram account was hacked last year and held for ransom. And she had over 50,000 followers. Now what if she didn't also have her blog and have her content living somewhere else she would have lost all of her content, all of her followers, all of that hard work gone. But your email list is yours forever. And you get to control the content of what goes out to your subscribers. Plus, purely financially speaking, you're likely never going to grow a successful brand or business without an email list. When your audience becomes a subscriber, that's where the high engagement and money really start coming in. So a lot of people say the money's in the list, which I would have a slight caveat to of saying the money is really in the relationship to your list because you could have a list of 100,000 people and if you have no relationship or connection to them, you're not going to be able to make money from your list. Versus let's say you have a list of only 1000 people but you're super connected with all of them. You've been nurturing them, you've been giving them free, helpful, valuable content. Now you have something to sell. Bam, that's a big difference. But in case email marketing is totally new to you. Let me Kind of backup here and talk about how an email list actually equates to more money. So if you sell your own products, you can obviously market your products, your courses or services to your email list. If you're a blogger or you don't sell tangible products or services, you sure is a better plan to sell affiliate products. And using your email list to promote your affiliates is the number one way you can grow that revenue stream. More on that in a second I'm coming back. Thirdly, as a blogger, you can also drive your subscribers back to your blog and increase your page views there which will in turn increase your ad revenue if you run ads on your blog. Likewise, as a podcaster, I'm emailing my list every Thursday when a new episode drops and reminding them hey, don't forget a new episode just dropped today. Here's a teaser of what it's about. You can do this same thing. If you have a YouTube channel or whatever platform you've chosen, your blogger business will be more enticing to brands and people who want to collaborate with you as well when you have a bigger email list that you can utilize. So of course, money is just a byproduct of what our main intention is here, which is being of service. Like I said before, you want to nurture your relationship with your email list, get personal with them, have conversations with them and provide them with as much value as possible. Your email list is the best way to build trust and find ways to sustain interest in your emails. After all, what's the point of gaining a subscriber who loses interest and doesn't actually interact with you. Now when it comes to your email service provider, I've gone through a few different companies in the past I started with ConvertKit, I ended up moving over to Active Campaign, which I absolutely loved. But today I'm using kartra. And it is by far the most robust platform I've ever used. And I could not love it more. The number three thing that every online business owner needs is traffic. Right? Traffic is typically one of the first things people think about when monetizing a blog or really any website or business because more traffic equals more people clicking on your ads buying your products or services purchasing from your affiliate links, joining your email list, more visibility, etc. So you've likely heard about the importance of SEO, which is search engine optimization for newbies out there, the better your site does at optimizing SEO means you'll show up more in organic searches, which in turn leads to higher traffic as people click through to your site. Organic searches are my number one traffic source, and is most bloggers number one or number two traffic source usually toggling with Pinterest. Now, even if you're not a traditional quote unquote, blogger, getting organic traffic is still super important. Because no matter what your business model is, you need people to see it in order to make any money, right. In order to make any impact, you have to actually reach people. And if you rely only on paid ads or social media, you could be setting yourself up for failure. So this also ties back into the number one thing that people need, which is free content. And one of the things that I love about combining free content with search engine optimization is that even just one post that ranks well can really change your business. So I've shared this story in the past, but it's worth repeating. I have a post on my blog, Rutan rebel, that consistently brings in over $5,000 a month in affiliate income just from that one post, all because it ranks on Google. I wrote the post over three years ago. And in fact, when the pandemic first hit, this post brought in over $42,000 in four months, and I was on maternity leave. So I wrote it three years ago. It's still earning crazy money right now. All because it is optimized for search engine. It is optimized for Google and search engines, and it is monetized with affiliate marketing. Now I'm gonna get to affiliate marketing in a minute. But I just want to plant that seed here. So remember that. Now back to SEO, how do you actually improve your SEO, there are literally people who dedicate their entire lives to this and their entire careers. It is a hugely complex technical subject and really it is its own language. Now I've learned some basics that I stick to while continuing to pick up new insights along the way to help with my own SEO, but I want to just share two of my top recommendations for getting started. So the first one is to optimize your keywords. I recommend you install the free browser extension for a tool that I love called Uber suggests again, this is a free tool there are plenty of paid tools out out there. But this is a great one to help you get started. Now I use this tool to see the search volume of different keywords and combinations I'm considering. And then I pick the one from my post that's best match based on the keyword searches, usually aiming for a search volume of about 2500 to 12,000 per month. When you're looking for a keyword, you want to balance the fact that people are a actually searching for it. So you need a search volume. Like I said, I look at that 2500 to 12,000 searches per month. More than that, and your competition gets crazy. So it's not that it's impossible to rank. But especially if you're new or you're a smaller site, it becomes increasingly difficult. So you're always trying to balance how many people are actually searching for this keyword per month with how easy would it be to rank and what is the competition like for this keyword. So I've started playing with aiming for a lower volume on certain posts to see if I can rank for keywords that may have less overall searches. But that would still deliver relevant and interesting content to route and rebel. And this way, there is way less competition. So for example, on the surface, if the keyword I'm considering has 100,000 searches per month, that might sound appealing because I'm thinking wow, 100,000 people are searching for this per month. And that would mean 100,000 people going to my website, except that's not exactly how it works, right? Because you're having you're not factoring in the competition. And based on the competition for something like that, again, if you're a newer or smaller website, you're probably not going to show up on the first couple pages of Google, which, if you're not on the first page, you may as well be on the last page is sort of the ethos that most SEO people would ascribe to. So while on the surface, it may sound less appealing to say, Oh, I'm going to do this keyword instead, which only has a search volume of 3000 per month. If the competition is lower, and you can actually rank on page one, that is actually more likely to bring closer to 3000 people to your website than if you were doing a keyword where the search volume was crazy competitive and hundreds of 1000s of searches per month. Hopefully that makes sense.

All right. The second tip that I like to use when it comes to optimizing for SEO is a free plugin called Yoast SEO. So you can search for it and WordPress under the plugins section. And this plugin. Again, it's called Yoast SEO, we'll link to everything in the show notes. This plugin allows you to insert your keyword from step number one into your post and then tells you how to improve your SEO. So it's basically a checklist that will remind you to make sure that you're including your keyword and your alt text and headlines at the top of your post and your meta description. It's a really helpful reminder of all the key points to try to hit with every single post to improve your ranking. Now let's talk about another huge traffic driver that is related to organic search traffic. That is Pinterest. I've mentioned this before. Again, another thing worth repeating Pinterest is not a social media platform. It is a search engine. It is my number two traffic source after organic search. Pinterest is a must for any blogger regardless of your niche. And again, I'd argue that anyone with a website can benefit from Pinterest. Don't think it's just a bunch of DIY recipes. Some of the most important tips for Pinterest because Pinterest is essentially a search engine is to make sure that you have keywords in your pin description. What might people be searching for that your post would answer? You can even try a few pins with different keywords to see which one is most popular and then continue repinning moving forward with whichever one seems to work best. Again, being consistent is key. So a tool like tailwind helps you so you can schedule out pins far in advance and in batches at a time. We generally spend like 30 minutes a week at the start of the week scheduling out our pins and tailwind and then we don't have to think about it again. You can even budget a month in advance many months in advance whatever cadence works for you. But tailwind is a great tool to help you batch and schedule. We actually have a free trial and you can get a $30 credit with our link. If you go to successwithsoul.co/tailwind. You need to keep repinning so be sure to keep your top viewed traffic drivers on rotation and start pinning seasonal content about two to three months in advance. So for example, start pinning holiday stuff in September and October for 10 more weeks, ways on how to increase your traffic go to successwithsoul.co/trafficchecklist. All right, zooming right along here. We are up to the Number four thing every online business owner needs. This one is probably my favorite. This one is passive income with an evergreen funnel and affiliate marketing. So we've mentioned affiliate marketing a bit so far. So let's dive into that one first and see how it can benefit your business. First, what is affiliate marketing? So affiliate marketing is when you receive a commission for promoting someone else's product service or program, you promote that thing to your audience with a special tracking link. And anytime someone clicks on your link and proceeds to buy, you get paid either a percentage or a flat rate for the sale, it's really a win win win for all involved, which is why I love affiliate marketing so much. So let's take a look at it. When for the person in your audience who buys the product service or program because they're exposed to something helpful or beneficial that they likely would not have known about otherwise. Now remember, your audience is coming to you for recommendations, they're coming to you for advice they're coming to you for content, using affiliates, is not doing them a disservice. In fact, it would be a disservice not to recommend certain products or tools or people who have helped you along your own journey. So you might as well get paid while you're recommending those things and use an affiliate link. Now it's also a win for the brand or a person who has the product or service or program that's getting extra sales that they probably wouldn't have reached on their own. So they're ultimately making more money and more impact, thus happy to give away a cut of their profits to you. Now you as the affiliate, get the ultimate win because you get to share helpful information and resources with your audience that will improve their lives all while earning more income. Whoo.

So why do I think this is one of the six pillars for any business? Today in my business for all of 2020 I earned over $175,000, just from affiliate marketing. This is over 40% of my total income. Even when I was a smaller business, I was still making good money with affiliate marketing. This is definitely not just for people with big followings, but a great way to diversify your revenue streams and bring in additional income. Now, to be crystal clear, I only recommend promoting brands and services that you truly love trust and have personally tried. For me, the affiliate that I partner with must be in alignment with my philosophy and mission. And so I've had to turn down plenty of brands or opportunities because it simply wasn't. So while I hope this could go without saying the takeaway here is that it's of utmost importance to run your business with integrity and not do anything solely quote for the money. Also, it's my top priority to ensure I'm delivering valuable and interesting content on my site and to my email subscribers, regardless of whether anybody is going to buy from my links. So of course, I want to make an income from my site as it's a business and my full time job, but nothing Trump's my readers and subscribers experience. So my number one priority is to naturally weave in affiliates into my content and be super authentic and transparent in everything I promote. So let's quickly look at how this can work in your business because there's almost infinite potential here. So here's a couple examples and ways you could use affiliate marketing in your business. Let's say you want to partner with other align business owners who have courses or memberships or services, most of those offer around a 50% Commission. So for example, I was an affiliate of Amy Porterfield digital course Academy last year. And since I've personally gone through that course and gotten amazing results, I naturally wanted to share that with my audience. So I became an affiliate, and we earned over $25,000, simply by promoting her course to my audience. Now the beauty of this is that I didn't have to do anything for the delivery of the course. So while Yes, I could make more money potentially by focusing on my own products, that also requires a lot more work on my part. I could partner with an affiliate and simply do do the promotion and kind of help them with their marketing and then my job is done. So I find it's important to give yourself a good balance of focusing on your own initiatives and partnering with affiliates for things like this. Now, most companies also have affiliate programs these days. So whether you're a fashion blogger or a dietician or a chef or a coach or whatever, you can find companies you love, recommend them and get a commission. We've partnered with meat delivery companies supplements food products. kitchen appliances, clothing stores booksellers, I mean, the options are limitless. Now, Amazon affiliates is one of the easiest ways to get started, because obviously, who doesn't use Amazon these days, and you can link to books or whatever else relates to your audience that you can get on Amazon. But I have to say that I have found, I mean, Amazon commissions are pretty pathetic, you're getting like 3% of a sale. I like partnering directly with the companies themselves, rather than going through Amazon, because there's so much more opportunity, and you can build a relationship with that company and really get to know them and, you know, nurture that connection. So I do recommend going directly to a brand rather than only putting Amazon links on your site. Now Important to note also is when you link to an affiliate on your blog, you must disclose your relationship and use a nofollow link. I can't reiterate enough just how important this is both for SEO and your own integrity. So when I say disclose that means when you share an affiliate link, you need to say, I'm an affiliate for this program or for this product. on my blog. For example, we have disclosures at the end of every blog post that says this blog post contains affiliate links and explains, you know, explains the process. Same thing if I'm doing it in an email. Now, according to Google, if you create sponsored content for companies use affiliate links and review free products, you also need to apply a nofollow attribute to External links. So if you're linking out to a sponsor company's website or an affiliate link, for example, you must mark that link as nofollow. If you don't, you can get penalized from Google and it's insanely hard to recover. Simply check nofollow when you add the link in WordPress, and if you have more questions about all of this, or you're interested in like, Whoa, how are you making over $15,000 a month from affiliate marketing, definitely check out the six figure blog Academy because this is where I teach all of those juicy tips. And one of the coolest things about affiliate marketing is again, this ties back into number one and two. If you set up your emails and your free content to include affiliate links, you can set it up once and then earn on it for years to come. So unlike say sponsored content, or partnering with brands, it's extra scalable, because you are not just trading time for dollars, it is something that you can earn on over and over and over again, as long as you keep getting traffic put into either your emails or to your content, you can keep earning from your affiliates. And this brings me to the second piece of passive income, which is evergreen funnels. Now this applies to both your own products and even affiliate links. So you can set up autoresponder series for affiliate products, which is what I recommend inside the six figure blog Academy. So we teach things like how to create a welcome series that includes affiliate links so that you are earning from those links on autopilot. Again, this is something where Yes, it takes some time upfront to create these emails and put all of them together into your evergreen funnel system. But once it's done, you can kick back and watch, watch the magic happen. Like when people talk about making money while they sleep. This is what they're talking about. The same goes for your own products. So let's say you sell a course. This is obviously one of my business models and one of my revenue streams. So for my course, I have it set up on an evergreen funnel, which means that it's not available all the time, but I also am not live launching it. Now in Episode 43 john hopkins and I talk all about passive income automation and evergreen funnels. So I'm not going to deep dive into what it looks like here since we just covered it. But if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend going back and doing so. One of the reasons I love evergreen funnels though is because it completely eliminates that feast or famine cycle. If you have launched your course of doing a big live launch only to then have months where you're earning nothing. You know what I'm talking about? This is crazy stressful and also live launching is very exhausting. It takes a huge amount of work and energy and it's very stressful. So I have found that I can make just as much if not more money with an evergreen funnel than I could doing the live launch model. In fact, I had $100,000 launch in January of 2020 and in April I turned on my evergreen funnel. This was the first time I had ever used an evergreen funnel in my business and from April through December of 2020, we brought in over $150,000 in revenue from my course using an evergreen funnel, which meant I set it up in March. And then I did nothing else for the rest of the year. And we brought in over $150,000. Now, because evergreen funnels do require some testing and tweaking and figuring out what works best. Last fall, I decided that I wanted to see if I could improve my funnel and scale it even more. So I did a lot of new techniques, many of which we talked about in that podcast episode with Jacques. And in January of 2021, the first month that we had our funnels really running and operating at full speed, we brought in over $60,000 in one month without live launching. So this is the power of evergreen funnels. And if you're into passive income, and working less, you definitely need to consider this method.

All right, moving on to number five, the fifth thing every online business owner needs is a team. Yep, that's right, let me just right out of the gate, ease your mind because nobody can do this all by themselves. And your team doesn't have to be some giant corporation a full time employees, right? Your team can be a few different part time contractors to start, you can start small. But this is a key piece of the puzzle that I know can be scary, but you cannot scale without support. As someone who is clear that my blog was a business from day one, and I wanted to grow as quickly as I could, I felt like there was some smart investments I can make so that I could get where I wanted to go fast. At the same time, I'm all about keeping things simple and sustainable. So learning how to outsource and delegate has been one of the biggest areas I've focused on these last couple of years to grow in a way that works for me. Because what's the point of building a business that you can't keep up with and adds a major stress to your life, having a business should be empowering and allow you to create the life you dream about not be your next slave driver. So keep in mind, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I'm sure you're very competent and skilled at many things. But perhaps you don't enjoy those tasks, that work isn't what lights you up and fulfills you in a deep way. If that's the case, maybe you shouldn't be spending your time and energy on those tasks. If you really want to get to the next level, whether that means having more free time making more money and, or more of an impact or all of the above, then I highly recommend focusing on your areas of joy and genius and outsourcing the rest as you're able to. Now one of the best books that I've read about this is called the big leap by gay Hendricks he defines your zone of genius as those things there is no one else that can do exactly what you are doing in the way you are doing it. It's where you feel in the flow and excited and energized. It's where you utilize not just your skills, but the full spectrum of your gifts. If you can get to a place where you're living and working in your zone of genius, the majority of the time, you'll not only enjoy your life more, but your business is going to operate better and thrive when you have the right people in the right places. So for me, my zone of genius is in business development, I feel most fulfilled and energized and successful when I'm thinking of new ways of doing things coming up with new business ideas and marketing strategies and analyzing what's working and what isn't. I also feel in my zone of genius when I'm writing and creating content on topics that I'm truly passionate about subjects that I feel are important and will really help my readers with a problem they're struggling with. And that includes not just blog posts, but obviously podcast episodes. So these are things that I feel will really make a deep impact on others lives. These are the things that only I can do. Only I can show up and host my own podcast, I can't outsource that though. I can outsource the editing and a lot of the other tasks that go into it, which I do, because I want to be able to just show up and my zone of genius and do the thing only I can do and basically then outsource the rest. So what's not in my zone of genius, social media, photography, mindless admin tasks, bookkeeping, tech, heavy website issues and design. And so you know what, since I'm not good at those things, or I hate doing them, I outsource them all. If you're not sure where to start, I recommend hiring a virtual assistant virtual assistant or a VA is also sometimes called a freelancer. It basically just means you operate as an independent contractor and you help small or online businesses grow. They might have a specialized skill set like graphic design or social media marketing or copywriting or maybe they even offer virtual admin support. If you're looking to hire support for your business. Starting with a VA is perfect, and it's absolutely the way that I started. You can set how many hours you want. And it can be as little as like two hours a week to start, you can outsource what projects you need support in and empower yourself to take the process as fast or as slow as you want. So there's actually never been a better time to hire a VA because more people than ever before are wanting to work virtually from home so you'll have an even bigger, more qualified candidate pool to pull from. The first step is getting clear on what is it that you really need. This will pave the way for you to write a job description outlining what areas of your business your new hire will help you with. Think about what areas feel overwhelming to you. Where do you waste your time? And where is your time best spent? Which tasks are you good at but maybe not great at or what really moves the needle for your business? Which tasks can only you do? You want more help and step by step guidance on how to hire, we've got a great post on 10 tips for hiring your first virtual assistant at successwithsoul.co/VA. All right, we are at the end we are on number six. The sixth thing every online business owner needs. You knew it was coming. It's your soul. There is so much talk these days about hustle, everyone's got a side hustle we hear so many messages about hustling. It's what the quote unquote successful people do. If you want to be successful, they say you got to work harder than everyone else and at the expense of everything else sacrifice long hours hard work, those are the only ways to achieve success. The truth is, I don't believe in hustle, there is a huge difference between working from a place of stress, speed and scarcity aka hustle versus a place of rest and alignment and abundance and success is possible even more so with the latter. Now this is no surprise for anybody who's been listening because we've talked about how to incorporate more soul into your business and what Success with Soul really means in just about every episode, but there's a few where we really focus on the hustle piece. And so I want to recommend you go back to episodes three and four. For the full dish on this. You just go to successwithsoul.co/3, or successwithsoul.co/4. For the quick and dirty here though let's just talk about the hustle mentality for a minute. Hustle instills a belief that we will only be successful if we work our asses off 24 seven, otherwise you're just destined to fail. Hustle has us comparing ourselves to everyone else, which never leads to good outcomes and often means it steers us away from being true to ourselves. Hustle insinuates that of our businesses aren't where we want to be the answer must be to just work a little

harder, right? Wrong. That is very rarely the solution. Just because you work 90 hours per week doesn't mean you're going to be successful. And in fact, that is exactly what's going to lead to things like burnout and health consequences, depression, anxiety, negative impacts on your relationships, and loss of passion, drive and energy for your business. Now, I say all of this with the caveat that they say you teach what you most need to learn yourself. And I have struggled with the belief that I need to prove myself achieve and constantly be doing in order to be worthy and loved. But the truth is, we are all inherently worthy regardless of our success. We are all born with value no matter what we do or don't do. Hustle perpetuates the belief that we have to prove ourselves which is simply not true. So if hustle isn't the answer to a successful business, then what is? Well, this is exactly what we talked about on this podcast. And in my brand new program the Success with Soul incubator. So one of the key pieces of what we cover inside of the incubator is how to incorporate more feminine energy and holistic systems into your business because the masculine model is broken. And for decades, entrepreneurs have had no other choice but to follow this flawed masculine model of doing business. physical strength made you king of the jungle hustle and grinding was the only way and busy is worn like a badge of honor. But has Dr. Angela Lauria says these bros from the pre information age have erectile dysfunction and their masculine systems are collapsing. Good riddance, I say. It is high time women not only get a seat at the table, but are also able to build a wildly profitable business without selling our soul using cutthroat bro marketing tactics without pimping ourselves out as an influencer and spending hours on social media and tons of money on paid ads. And most importantly, without sacrificing what's really important. our families, our bodies, our health and our spirituality. So if this is resonating with you, I'd love to to just tell you a little bit more about the incubator, which is a group coaching program for all women and anyone wanting to harness the power of the divine feminine. So just as women are creators and give birth to life, the incubator will help you bring new life into your business creating a sustainable, profitable business aligned with your soul's purpose, a business that makes a positive impact in people's lives. And in your bank account, you can have both. Now the incubator is truly where soul meets strategy. So let's quickly just go over the strategy piece, which we've been talking a lot about here already. To me, one of the best ways to build a soulful and sustainable online business is by focusing on content marketing, and evergreen funnels. So within that, we're talking about weekly content, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and selling your products and services on autopilot. Now, the soul piece is really the undercurrent of the entire program. And some, some of the key components to this mentality is to bring more feminine energy into your business, and to work with that energy rather than against it. Because here's the thing, unless you learn to manage your energy, you will unknowingly undercut your productivity and progress every single time. It's not just about the physical work and time management tips and techniques, which of course we get into, but it's also about the energy alignment. And so we're talking about how to work with the phases of the moon and your menstrual cycle and what's happening in the universe and your body to achieve more while working less. It's also about working with intention and mindfulness creating mindful practices helps me shift into an abundant mindset where I'm able to do my most deep focused and meaningful work and ultimately, create Success with Soul. Now, just like the phases of the moon and our menstrual cycles and life, the incubator is cyclical rather than linear. So throughout the six month container, you will cycle through our four season success path multiple times, each time gaining more confidence and clarity as you continue to grow and evolve. I don't want to give too much away. But it is one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on. And I am so excited to announce that it is finally open for enrollment. So you can go Apply now at successwithsoul.co/apply to learn more.

All right, and there we have it. The six things every online business owner needs. What did you think? Let me know either leave a comment or a view on your podcast app, or send me a DM on Instagram @KateKordsmeier and share with me. Did I hit everything? Did I leave anything out? Do you agree? Do you disagree? I would love to hear from you and start a conversation. So just as a reminder, to sum it up the six things every online business owner needs is one free weekly content to an email list. Three traffic for passive income five, a team and six salt. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Success with Soul. I'll see you next week. Same place same time. Wait a minute. I know I know you're eager to get back to your life. But before you turn off this episode, I want to share something super quick with you. I know you're probably sick of hearing other podcasters ask you to leave reviews. But here's the deal. If you like a podcast, and you want them to be able to continue delivering you free episodes every week, we need your support. If you subscribe on the apple podcast, Google podcast, app, Spotify, or wherever you listen, it makes it possible for me to continue to provide free helpful content and bring you amazing guests. And if you take it one step further by giving us a rating and review with your honest feedback, we can improve better serve you in the future. And you could even be featured on a future episode during our listener spotlights. Because if we don't get the reviews, we don't get the rankings. And it makes it a lot harder to continue justifying the cost and time expense of producing a podcast every week and convincing amazing guests to come on the show. And of course your reviews are super helpful and motivating to me personally and I love hearing from you. So on that note we're going to end this episode with another listener spotlight. Here we go. This review comes from Hannah Plaxico Hannah says I just recently stumbled across Kate's Instagram and started listening to her podcast because I was so intrigued by the information she was sharing. Better than that though Kate's podcasts aren't just informative. They are encouraging the tips that she and her guests offer are easily applicable and help you feel like success isn't so far out of reach. For a new blogger like myself, the information is great, but the encouragement is easy. been better. Thanks so much Hannah. I am rooting for you always.

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