107: Listening to the Desire to Try Something New + Taking Business Risks

Kate Kordsmeier 0:00

Have you been wanting to start an online business, but you just have no idea where to where to start, maybe you're completely overwhelmed. You feel like you have a million different passions and ideas and you're not sure which direction to go, you've heard that you should pick a niche, you don't really know what that means or how to do it. And you just want to feel confident and get some clarity that you can actually do this thing. Well, I have some exciting news. And this is actually something we have never done before. On January 5 2023, we're going to be kicking off a 30 day sprint with anybody who is ready to make 2023 your best year yet. And finally, launch your website and your first offer out into the world setting you up for Success with Soul. We're going to give you select access inside the incubator to do your 30 day sprint. So you will be getting certain modules that will help you complete the checklist for what you need to do. There's going to be tons of accountability and support to make sure that you actually do the work. We know how isolating and lonely it can be sometimes when you're in this trying to figure things out by yourself. And so this is our solution to best serve you. The best part is you'll have guided support from our amazing program coordinator, Rachel who will meet with you once a week. And there's more. You'll also have access to all of our coaching calls and support during this 30 day period. So you do not have to do this alone. Get all the details at Kate kordsmeier.com/sprint.

nearly 400 people have joined six FBI since I first launched it in 2019, many of whom have gone on to create crazy successful fulfilling blogs and online businesses. The impact has been amazing. And it's brought in hundreds of 1000s of dollars to my business. Why would I get rid of it? Well, to be honest, it's something I've been toying with for the entire year. This has been on my heart for a while and it's one of the reasons I launched the incubator. I want to go deeper with my clients not wider. I used to feel like my mission was to reach as many women as possible. But lately, I've been feeling more called to have a deeper impact. And I simply can't do that with the self study course. I want to know each of my clients personally, I want to deep dive into their businesses and hopes and dreams and work with them intimately to help them get there. I realized it's the only way I can truly revolutionize the way women live and work my ultimate why. And to be completely transparent. I needed to simplify my own business and life, selling three different programs was complicated. And in this season of my life, I'm more interested in easy and flow and following my intuition even when it's scary and unknown. And so yes, I'm making a bold decision to retire six FBA. I'm trusting my inner knowing on this that in doing so I will be giving up good for Great. All right, so that was an email that I sent out in November of 2021. In preparation for retiring the six figure blog Academy. I wanted to read it here today because we're going to be chatting more about the behind the scenes of why I would have done something like this, including something that I hadn't planned for, which is also retiring my other self study course 21 days to impact. So let's get into it.

Indira 3:28

Welcome, welcome to this week's episode of Success with Soul. I'm so excited. We're flipping the script today. And I will be interviewing. Hey, welcome, Kate.

Kate Kordsmeier 3:39

Thanks, Indira,

Indira 3:40

I am so excited to be discussing all about why would you retire your most profitable programs.

Kate Kordsmeier 3:49

I know we were just saying before we hit record that I wanted you specifically to do this interview. Because when you joined our team earlier this year, which was very soon after this decision had gone into effect, you were like, I don't understand why did we do this? So I thought it would be fun to show that there are you know, two sides to every story. And there's different reasons for doing things. And sometimes it makes sense. And sometimes it doesn't. And you know, I want I want there to be a little push back a little tension in the episode too because that's the truth of business. So I'm excited.

Indira 4:22

So the audience needs to know that I'm a questioner and right away when I found out that you had retired the program's I went back to everything that I had been taught when I became an online entrepreneur, you know, my business coach telling me like, you know, every online business should have three offers and entry level, a mid level high, you know, aside from your free content, and then here you are totally flipping the script for me, telling me like Nope, we're just gonna sell one high ticket offer and that was very, like, refreshing but it scary to. And it was exciting. And also like what? I don't understand. So key help us understand.

Kate Kordsmeier 5:11

Yeah, I'm so glad that you said that because I had heard the same thing many times and many different courses and masterminds and things I've taken, everybody talks about how you have your office suite, and it's like this pyramid, and you start at the bottom with the low ticket entry level, exactly what you said. So my first thought to that is like, pardon my French, but fuck that. You can't tell me what to do. I can run my business. However, I damn well, please. And there are so many examples of people doing all different kinds of things. And what works for some people doesn't work. For other people, I had had three offers that were kind of similarly set up like that it wasn't quite like beginner, intermediate advanced, because you didn't need to take six FBA before you could join the incubator. However, people thought you did. So there was a lot of confusion around that. And basically, it wasn't really working in the way that I wanted it to. And so I just thought, Well, screw the status quo. It's my business, I'm going to try something. And I always try to approach everything in business as an experiment, like, I'm going to try this, it may completely blow up in my face, it could be a total failure, I could lose plenty of revenue, and and then what? And my response is you just like, and then I'll figure something else out, like, everything is figure out double. I always, I'm always going to be okay, I'm always going to figure it out. I'm committed to making this work no matter what. So why not just try it and follow what my gut is telling me to do.

Indira 6:48

But were there like feelings that came up? You considered like you're retiring your most profitable programs at the time you had a team, there's this revenue that could potentially be impacted? Not in the ways that you hope? So what was the work that like, I feel there's a lot of emotional and mindset work that needs to go to get to the place where you felt confident about your decision? So yes, what was that work?

Kate Kordsmeier 7:17

It was hard. And it was super scary, because there's no guarantee, like you said, like, this may not work. And I had something that was more or less working. What I'll say made it slightly easier is that for most of 2021, the two programs 21 days to impact in the six figure blog Academy for anyone who has, you know, is new around here at those were self study courses. So there was no coaching. There was no, you know, like, there was a Facebook group, but more or less, it was self paced, do it on your own, if you have questions come to the Facebook group, but you know, that's kind of it. And it was easy, right? It's super easy for me to deliver that. And I mean, I put my heart and soul into the pre recorded content and the program itself. And I knew that it was good. And for most of that year, we were bringing in $50,000 a month on autopilot with with our evergreen funnels, we sold both of these programs to Evergreen funnels. And it was great. And then the iOS updates came out around summer, I think. And things kind of started getting a little bit harder with ads, which we weren't exclusive to ads. In fact, almost 60 to 80% of our sales each month came from organic traffic. However, the other 20 to 40% did come from ads. And when those started breaking, we started making less money. And that's okay, like that's always going to happen. But when I thought about, okay, what's it going to take to fix this? Do I want to spend my energy fixing this offer are these offers when I had launched the incubator in March of 2021. And the more I worked in that group coaching program, the more I wanted my offers to look like that. And so it was like, why am I going to spend all this energy trying to get the revenue back up, when I don't even really want to deliver this program anymore. Like where my heart feels most fulfilled is working deeper with clients and meeting with them every single week and answering their questions and working through their own mindset and energy issues and things like that. So that made the like scariness of it a little bit easier to swallow because it wasn't working the way that it had been. And when I also just did sort of like the math on it. It felt like okay, I have to sell roughly 10 courses of six FBA to equal the same as one sale of the incubator. And so what if I instead of putting all my effort into selling 10 More six FBA coursesAs I put my effort into selling one more incubator, and then the revenue is the same, and I'm doing more of what I feel called to do. So that helped. And then one of the other things that was one of the other pieces that I feel like I had to work through too, was the complication of having multiple offers. And I think that if I had known that I was going to have these exact three offers, when I created all of them, I would have set it up a little differently. But I didn't like that's not how business works, I first launched 6FBA, then I turned that into two courses and took part of it as a starter course. And that was based on feedback I got from clients who were in the course. And if they didn't already have a website set up. They were like, I'm getting way too distracted with all the stuff that comes after you launch. And I just need to like focus on launching, and I'm getting, you know, overwhelmed. So I separated those two out. And then it came time to launch the incubator. So then I had this other offer again, people thought, Oh, I can't join the incubator until I've done six FBA, which was absolutely not true. The two are totally different offers business models, there is not like a progressive thing. And we there was just a lot of complication on the back end of because we did sell through funnels. And so we had, okay, people are in three different funnels, and how do we make sure that they're only in one funnel at a time and that they're in the right funnel for their stage of business. And we don't always know what everybody's stage of businesses, you know, we had like segmenting surveys and things where we would try to figure it out. But not everybody answers those. So this is a long winded way of saying it was becoming increasingly complicated to have three programs running on Evergreen. And it just didn't feel like that was the smart thing to do. I mean, I also had my second child during the pandemic. So I have had to under two, we had kind of been in and out of daycare with the pandemic as well. And so it's just like, like I said, in the intro, I was looking more for easy and not for complicated. And so it was like, this may not be what we do forever. But it's what I need to do right now.

Indira 12:15

I love that you say that. It may not be what we're doing forever, but it is what felt right right now about trusting and knowing your intuition, which is something that I think we promote a lot inside of the incubator to like, really trust your intuition. And why would you say taking risks, and dealing with uncertainty is a vital part of business success.

Kate Kordsmeier 12:40

Yeah, if you are not willing to take risks, or if uncertainty is so uncomfortable for you. I mean, it's uncomfortable for me, trust me, this is like one of my biggest things I have to work through on a daily basis. But if you're not willing to sit in that discomfort, honestly, don't, don't become an entrepreneur, like don't start your own business. It is constant uncertainty, there are no guarantees or anything, everything you do is a risk. Even just starting the business, I just listened to the interview you did with Katie Kus, one of our incubator clients this morning, and she was talking about how when she moved back to the states, after living in Istanbul, she was like, I should get like a real job, you know, and something that is going to give me like a steady paycheck. And that is the easy thing to do right now. And that's the safe choice to make. But that's not what she wanted to do. And so ultimately, she didn't, and she decided to take the risk and bet on herself and go all in on her business. And like beautiful things have happened since then. But she had to be willing to take that risk and sit with the discomfort that this may not work out. And so there's a lot of things I could say like, you know, do XY and Z to help you get more comfortable and to work on your mindset and to feel your feelings about it. But if you're just unwilling to be uncomfortable, which honestly so many people are and I would tell you like if we were in a sales call right now and you were saying that I would say this isn't for you, then I honestly don't think that you should have your own business because this is all it is sitting in discomfort all the time.

Indira 14:23

So, did you have a plan B they all like as much as this is a risk and it's discomfort like did you have a plan B in place if the revenue had tanked? After you retired? The program's

Kate Kordsmeier 14:36

yes and no, I would say no, I did not have like okay, if by this date, we haven't done X then we're going to do Y I did not have like a full out thought, you know, thought through plan like that. My Plan B is always just like, we'll see what happens and then we'll adjust accordingly. And so, I had a plan B in saying to myself, nothing has to be forever. I am giving myself full permission to change my mind, which I even said in the emails that I sent out to people saying we're retiring six FBA, like, for now, I don't know if this will be forever, I need to see how it goes. So I think when I removed the permanence, and we talked about this all the time on the podcast to like, we always think that whatever decision you make has to be forever. And then so that, of course, like nobody can commit to anything forever, it's so scary. But if you just say, I'm just going to try this and give myself permission to change my mind. So we'll see what happens and adjust accordingly. And I just did that. So that was my plan B it just like, I know, I can figure it out. If it doesn't work. I love that giving yourself the permission to choose the direction that you want to go in.

Indira 15:48

I love that so much. So what advice would you give to people who want to like I want to retire my most profitable program, and I want to make this large change in my business revenue? Like, what is the advice that you would be giving that entrepreneur?

Kate Kordsmeier 16:08

The advice would be, it's your business, you can do whatever you want, your business can look, however you want it to look, there are no universal rules to business, like you must have three offers at these different entry points, right, like, that is not true. One of my inspirations for doing this was Denise Duffield Thomas, who only has one offer the money bootcamp or whatever it's called. I've never actually taken it. But when I was talking to Kelly, our CFO about this idea, she was like, I love this. This is just like Denise and Denise is all about like being the lazy entrepreneur or something. I guess she calls it something like that I can I'm totally spacing and what the funny name she has for it is but chill printer. That's what it is that she'll printer. So she's like, I don't want to deal with having 20 different offers. Like I just want one thing, we sell one thing, this is how you work with us. That's it. And she has a seven figure business. And so it was like, she can do it. I could do it too. And so what I would say to somebody who's considering it is first you have permission to do whatever you want. Fuck the rules. Do you write your own rules to why? Why do you want to do this, and they think you need to get really clear with yourself on what your goal and your intention is with changing your offers. And it may not be that you're like retiring your most profitable program, it may just be that you have some offer that you're not loving, and you want to do something different. And you just want to take a pivot in some way. So even if it's just a small pivot, or it's a huge decision, I just think it's really important to sit with what your actual goal and intention is for that decision. And is this possibly going to get you the result that you're looking for? So like, my goal was to simplify my business, I was like, Okay, well, this will definitely simplify my business. My goal was to go deeper with my clients, which I can do inside the incubator, and I couldn't do inside the other programs. And I mean, we went through ideas, it was like, Oh, well, maybe we should add poaching to those programs, like, well, if we add coaching those programs, I'm going to have to increase the price, because that's time. And then I'm going to have to hire more people on the team to help me deliver this because I'm one person and I can't do everything. And then it's not really going to be that different from the incubator, like, again, just more confusion, and I think, don't try to fix a program that your heart's not in anymore. Just move to the next thing and like, follow that instinct. But if your why is like, oh, it's not selling, okay, is retiring it going to help it sell is like is retiring it or I think we often go to like, I need to burn everything down if it's not selling the way that I want it to. And oftentimes, it's not about the offer. It's about your belief about the offer and what your thoughts are about the offer. And, you know, Stacy Bateman talks about how there's kind of the belief triad, and it's like the belief in your offer the belief in yourself and the belief in your clients, and that you need all three of those things to sell. And if so, maybe you're missing one of those things, maybe there's something in the messaging, you're not conveying the value of the offer to your audience. And if you just rewrote your emails, with more belief in those three things, then things would start selling differently. So I think just being clear on why you're doing it and not just making a rash decision, because things aren't going the way you want them to.

So you're thinking that 30 Day sprint may be right for you, but you're just not 100% Sure. Listen to what our client Rebecca had to say. Hi, it's Rebecca Huff with that organic mom and

Rebecca Huff 20:00

Before I joined the incubator and had my 30 Day sprint with que en Rachel, I was feeling really disconnected from my business and just not really sure what direction I wanted to go in. But I put in so much time that I wasn't willing to give up on my project either. But after my 30 Day sprint, I came away with a clear plan and clear goals for my future. I had tips and strategies for regaining that connection. So I could get back on track and figure out where I wanted to take my business and become profitable. We discussed things like my email marketing plan, my content plan, and how I would make money with my business. We clarified a lot of things, we nailed a lot of stuff down. And I felt like I really had a concrete strategy for getting where I needed to go with my business. And it's been a really fun ride, and I can't recommend it enough. There you have it. If you're ready to get results, like Rebecca, then join us live in January as we kick off our 30 Day sprint, get all the details at Kate kordsmeier.com/sprint.

Indira 21:16

I think my key takeaway from everything that you just said is like, don't try to fix an offer that your heart isn't in to begin with, you know, to invest all that time and energy. So what does it look like now for you? So you've, we are coming up to a year? Yes. So this has been an entire year of solely the incubator. And so now, this is a year later, looking back, what, what does it look like for you?

Kate Kordsmeier 21:48

What I can say is, it did not go as I expected. And I'm so glad that I did this. And I don't know that it will be what I do forever, it did help me simplify our business significantly. And especially in the first six months of the year, we made more money, selling less things. And our profit margin was significantly higher. And because we were only focused on one thing, I could also focus on operationalizing our business and training the team fully and getting our systems in place, and cutting expenses back. And so financially, it was way less stressful. And this is why I'll say there's a caveat here for the first six months of the year, because things were selling fairly well. The second six months of the year have been a little bit different. And so it has been more stressful when it's felt like shit, like we only sell one thing. So if it doesn't sell, we're not making money. And thank God for payment plans and recurring revenue and clients who have renewed with us, which is amazing. But it has then felt like a lot of pressure on one thing. And I think especially because the incubator is a high ticket program. And so it's not going to be for everybody, not everybody can afford to spend 10 $15,000 on coaching. So it has you know, it's made me question like, should we have an entry level offer? Should we do a self study version of things, but I always I sit with things for a long time, I have a very slow decision maker, as I'm sure you have seen now being on the team, because I really want to make sure that I'm not making decisions out of fear and scarcity. And that I am making decisions like if the incubator was selling exact, like if it was exceeding our expectations, would I still be questioning whether or not we should change our offer or add something new to the mix? And a lot of times I'm like, I don't think so I think I would be riding this wave. And there's a quote that, oh, Adrienne Brown, I'm totally spacing on what her name is. Now again, I have to look it up. She says birds Coast when they can. And I always think about that, like when things are going well. Sometimes we have like upper limit issues. And then we start like being like, Oh God, the other shoe is gonna drop any day now. Like, I gotta figure it out. And instead just being like birds Coast when they can just chill for a bit. You want it easy and simple. And so if things were going well, I think I would be coasting and I wouldn't be questioning what we're, you know what we're gonna do. But it's all an experiment. And so I think I really am just kind of like, we're still testing this out. We're seeing what is it like to sell one high ticket offer when there's a talk of recession happening and it's TBD.

Indira 24:57

You know, okay, you bring that up, and I was also listening to Stacey Boehman's podcast about how to recession proof your business. You saying that and she said, My business is recession proof because I don't have recession thoughts. Right? Yeah. And so I know a lot of it is, you know, going back to your thoughts create your reality. And so, I wonder, as people are trying to make these decisions, what your advice would be around the mindset work and the thought process? And if the logic should maybe outweigh the intuition, or should it be balanced? We always talk about I know, Rachel loves the line, you know, soul with strategy or strategy with soul. So what is that strategy with soul?

Kate Kordsmeier 25:45

Yeah, I love this question. And I think as you were saying that so I had listened to this podcast this week, I sent it to the team, and then we all have been kind of talking about it. And what just came to me when you were speaking is that to recession proof your business to me does not mean that your business is unaffected by recessions, it means that you are not going to shut down because of a recession that you are going to do whatever it takes to keep going, even if there are external circumstances outside of our control. So I don't think that any business can ever be truly, quote unquote, recession proof meaning like, unaffected. But I think the people who adapt like Stacey uses example, in the episode, I think it was hard because we also listened to Brooke Castillo episode. So it may have been Brooke, the example of the pandemic and restaurants. And we've talked my husband, I talked about this all the time, and 2020, it was like, so many restaurants were shutting down. And it was so devastating, and especially as a former food writer, and a restaurant addict, and like I was, you know, I felt so bad for them. And then we saw these other restaurants that were like, We're figuring out how to do takeout. And we're creating these cool takeout meals that people can come and get, and they're themed, and they're fun. And we have a cool window now. And we've like, added a patio to our restaurant where we didn't use to have outdoor seating, and they were thriving. And it was like, so they're not recession proof. They, you know, they were still affected by the pandemic, but they've figured it out and they adapt it. And so I think to me, it's always this balance of doing the mindset work to say, like, I can weather the storm, there are still people willing to spend money, like I think always looking for evidence of what you want, our brains naturally look for the evidence of what we don't want. And there's a lot of confirmation bias where you go like, man, our sales are down, or your sales down to Oh, yep, see, everybody's sales are down. I'm so guilty of this. I've been doing this for the last few months. And then it's like, Well, wait, what if I actually started looking for evidence of people who aren't. So this week, I sent a text to my mastermind, Boxer group, I said, I need to hear stories of who's killing it right now who just had a great month. And dozens of messages came in, we made 250k. Last month, we made 120k. During our last launch last month, like we did this, we did that. And then it was like, people are still spending money, there's always going to be people who are still spending money, who still need help, who still want to do the thing. And so if I can get my mind to start focusing on that instead of on the lack, and then balancing all of that with adapting to what we need to so if our customers are coming to us and saying like, I would have joined yesterday, but there is no way I can put that kind of money into my business right now. Okay, you know, of course, we're going to challenge like, is that really true? But then if it is really true, do we need to have a different kind of offer that we can help people at a different level? And so maybe we will adapt? And maybe we won't, I mean, not that we won't adapt, maybe we'll just continue doing what we're doing, and working on our thoughts and our beliefs about things and see what happens. I don't know, again, TBD. We're still kind of like in this. And I said to endear before we hit record, to interesting timing to record this episode. Because we retired. The program's obviously in the end of last year. And now we're coming up at the end of this year, it maybe would have made more sense to do this episode in some ways, six months ago. And I would probably have had very different thoughts on how it went how this experiment went. But I'm kind of glad that we're actually doing it now. Because we're seeing more of the full picture and we're seeing how a business model like this does work when there's volatility in the market and the economy and the world.

Indira 27:15

Wow. That's a lot and incredibly helpful and something that you said really stood out to me. And that's we are constantly looking for confirmation bias, right? That's where the reticular activating system comes into play. You buy a red card, all you see are the red cars. And so I love that you bring that up. Because I think so often we forget that we are constantly seeking for evidence that our thoughts are true. So we get to choose our thoughts. And I love that. Any last words, Kate, I think the main thing that's coming to me and what I feel like kind of the theme of this episode was for me is going back to like, it is your business and everything works, if it works for you. And so if you're listening to this, and you're like, I could never do a one offer business or that sounds like it was a total disaster, or that sounds like it's great. And now I need to have just one offer. No, you don't. None of that is true. You just need to figure out like what works for you. There are no rules, everything works. Figure out what works for you. And give yourself permission to change your mind because what works in 2020 is not working in 2021 and is changing and 2022 and so on. So, permission to evolve. I love that permission to choose. I love that. Thank you so much. This was a great episode. Thank you so much for letting me interview UK. Oh, it was my honor and pleasure. Thanks for doing this and Dara. Okay, thanks, everyone. Bye.

Kate Kordsmeier 31:35

So for a long time, the internet marketing world has been full of consultants, ie mentors telling you what to do and how to do it. So when myself and others started talking about coaching, you may have been left wondering what that really means. Is it therapy? Is it strategy? Is it mentorship? Well wonder no more because we are peeling back the curtain to show you exactly what it's like inside our group coaching program the Success with Soul incubator and addition to this podcast Success with Soul. We recently released a four part private podcast called inside the incubator which you can get exclusive access to at Kate kordsmeier.com/inside. You'll get to listen to real clients get real coaching and support as they work through roadblocks and take inspired action in their businesses. It's been on my heart to share this with you because I know there are so many of you out there doing this alone. And I want to show you what it's like to have a team behind you. I remember the frustration of struggling by myself. I had no tools no one to talk to. And now no matter how difficult things may seem. I have a fellowship and a way of life that helps me cope. I no longer feel alone and neither do the women in the incubator. All it takes is one coaching call to get you unstuck. That's what it's like to have a community that you can count on. So head over to Kate kordsmeier.com/inside to get the real real on what coaching is all about and the amazing transformation you can expect when you join us inside the incubator. That's Kate kordsmeier.com/inside

Transcribed by https://otter.ai