131: Reinvent Your Business: Unlocking the Power of Minimalism

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp, and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. In this podcast, we go deep into product and marketing strategies for digital product creators. We cover everything from digital product creation, how to market and sell your digital products, and just as important, how to find your ideal customer. Let's jump right into our show.

And today my special guest is Karen Rozelle. Karen is the author of two business books and creator of the Happy Little Practice Method for Women in business. With over 20 years of online education and business coaching experience, she specializes in creating minimalist businesses that are simple to run in about 25 hours per week. Karen, thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to jump into this topic with you and we are going to be talking about think big, build small and how a happy little practice is big enough. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about you, how you help people and a little bit about your journey?

Well, great. I thank you for having me. I'm happy to share. I work primarily with women, although men are welcome and I help them either start a brand new business leveraging a passion, their experience, or I work with a lot of experienced business owners who are service providers and they want to keep things as minimalist as possible, as simple as possible, but yet still really want to earn well because they're responsible for things in their life and they have to earn well. And I started in business just probably like a lot of people, I followed the entrepreneurial track of kind of all right, let's go big, let's go all in. Let's crush our goals. And that worked really well until one day I was kind of done with it and it coincided with getting pregnant with our first kid and really realizing I am like, why am I working so hard? Why am I like that? Never enough feeling was always going through my business. I would hit a goal and then it would be the next thing. But when your body changes, as many of your audience can probably relate, when you have, you know, you are seven, eight months pregnant and you get really grounded really quick. And I had this moment where I was end of my day and I got in the warm bath and I just asked myself a few questions. I'm like, what am I working so hard for? Like, what's another 100,000? What am I going to do? Do I really want a mansion? Do I really want these fancy cars that all These entrepreneurs are saying, this is where we're supposed to be headed. Do I really want like a bunch of people to work for me and go bigger and bigger and have these huge, huge vents? It seems like that was the prescribed idea of success in my industry, which is coaching. And it occurred to me that I didn't really want it. And then that was a little bit of bad news to me because I didn't know what else to do. I'm like, what am. Like how else am I supposed to proceed? And so it was kind of like a clarity moment or a catalyzing moment where I was like, all right, there's got to be a way for me to still earn really well without having to kind of build this empire that I thought I needed and that I no longer wanted. And that began kind of a shift in my business where I started thinking, okay, let's stay small but still think big. I'm not going to throw away the big thinking that I learned from really a whole bunch of wonderful mentors and all the business magazines and business books that I've read and all the trainings and then figure out how I can do small. So then I really just narrowed my focus to like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And it turns out a lot of people wanted that too. And it's been a, you know, for the people that are a match for the way that I do business coaching and talk about marketing and mindset, they usually find it like a breath of fresh air and they're like, oh, okay, I can do it differently. And that's kind of like the synopsis of how I kind of made a little turnabout in my business.

Well, I love what you said when you said, I want to do something. Stay small, but think big. So did your goals change or what was, what was the shift there?

Well, first, I know this sounds rather rudimentary, but first I started doing some math. I'm like, wait a minute, do I really, like, I started, you know, I was chasing the million dollar business model and I occurred to me that I didn't really need or desire a million dollar lifestyle. This is kind of basic, but it was kind of a wake up call. And then I started working backwards to, all right, what would a multi six figure business look like? And where the goal isn't just to keep growing and growing and growing and growing. It was just to have my enough be defined where I could still feel like I have an impact and do really meaningful work, but make enough right? And to somebody Else, maybe it's small potatoes. But for most people who want to work perhaps during school hours or are doing something different in early retirement or wanting to make a job change, they don't really want to replicate corporate culture of working and working and working all the time. So the first thing I did was readjust my financial goals and create some relief. And then I started looking for business models that would allow me to do that. So that's the first thing that I did.

So was it a combination of the financial goals and how many hours you wanted to work each week? Was that. I love that. I love that. So let's talk a little bit more about the happy little practice method, your definition of it, and what are some essential components of it in this boutique business model that you have defined?

Right. Okay. So first, I decided that happy had to be part of a valid business strategy because we all have slightly different variations of what happy means to us, including slightly different variations of our financial goals, but also where we want to live, how we want to live. And that may take more or less income, depending on what's important to you. And if what I noticed was if you don't decide what success really looks like for you and also what it feels like for you, well, society will tell you what it's like, and then you'll see what that looks like. You'll see it on Instagram, you'll see it on TV and media, and it's just one version that's very glamorous and very wealthy. And so you have to define what happy is for you. And by that, I don't mean, like, you know, feeling like there's rainbows and unicorns going on in your life at every day and every moment. I mean, like, what is happy for you? And then start to make decisions based on that, and that starts to help you. Right. Size your business goals and your marketing strategies and all the things. So I start there because otherwise, like, most of us could be so, so happy, like working for somebody else. And so that's a valid business decision. And in happy little practice, we start with, what do you want? What makes you happy? And then we use the boutique business model, which is the little and happy little practice. Instead of building a business that is based on a large following, a large number of customers or clients, we go for a smaller following, a small number of clients every year that we serve supremely well, work very well with, and really delight them, and we charge a premium for that. So just like a nice boutique that you can imagine, but it's like that for a service business. And then the P in Happy Little practice is about giving yourself the grace to get really good at your marketing and the mindset that's required to pull this off and zigging where other people zag in your field or in your industry. So, so Happy is about choosing your vision of success and little is about leveraging the boutique business model. And P and Happy Little practice is really about getting good at the practice and the art form of delivering your service, but also the marketing and the skills that we have to learn to pull it off. That's it in a nutshell.

So I love that you really design it around the person because my what I need to be, you know, happy is going to be different than somebody else for sure. And I love how you kind of, you know, go in and define it in kind of create a business around whether it's the number of clients, the revenue, or, you know, even how you serve them. I love, I love that. So tell me, who does this model work best for? For we have a variety of maybe service providers, coaches, consultants that are listening to this podcast, doing different things. Would it work for one of them and not the others? Or what would you recommend?

Well, I think the way that I look at it is it's more of a temperament and values distinction versus type of provider. Like I personally work with service providers rather than product creators. And service providers may have courses and they may have books and products, but we look at their main bread and butter, which usually is their services. And so by temperament, I mean it's somebody who likes simplicity who is very much attracted to that less is more approach to things. I'm a bit introverted, but can show up extroverted when needed to. So introverts are welcome here. And so that's what I mean by temperament and values. Like, you just aren't really interested. You may be interested in making really good money, but you don't need to have an empire and a staff. So that's really the distinction. Like some people really want that. And in America, we're very much like conditioned that, you know, business means becoming a CEO or a manager. But there's a third alternative, which is also by temperament, is that I kind of see my clients as artists, even though they may be doing something very practical, working on websites, creating virtual assistant services, or coaching. It is a bit of an artist meets minimalists, even though we may not be minimalists in our personal lives, but in our business.

So somebody who likes simplicity less is more. Definitely sounds like something I would be interested in. Can you walk us through some client examples? Somebody who maybe, you know, was going after that. You know what I call some of those bro marketing things? The flashy cars, the, you know, the big teams and I'm spending all this money type thing. And you took somebody like that and it really wasn't serving them and help them kind of transform their business.

I will have to say that it's quite. Unless I'm working with a startup, it's not unusual. If I'm not working with a startup, my clients are either sometimes marketing and so it's inconsistent, or they're doing what you just described. They're doing six, seven different marketing strategies that they thought they really had to do to be successful, but none of them are done well enough to really work well. But it's exactly what the influencers are doing. And things that work for people who have a really large following. And most of us don't. Right? Most of us don't have the fame that a lot of these gurus are, you know, mega experts that, you know, you would see on TV or have a million followers or tens of thousands of followers. So they're doing social media, they're doing sometimes maybe some speaking, they're doing some emails, they're doing three or four other things. And when I look at the data and the actual results of those things, there's not one of those things that really is like the heavy hitter. And so what I like to do in that situation where, for example, one of my clients, she had all the front of the house things just perfectly looking great and had all these marketing strategies and we just kind of had to eliminate everything but two, to just work on getting those two things working well. And it is very unnerving because there's comfort in doing what everybody else is doing. Like, oh, everybody's doing this, so I'll do that too. But it takes courage to say, you know what? I'm going to do two things and I'm going to decide to get really good at them instead of diluting my efforts all over the place. So at first it takes a little bit of courage, but then in the end you realize you're much more efficient. That's what we did with this person that I was working with. She was a health coach and also medical provider and just had her focus on, okay, let's get those emails really working. Instead of trying to just post every day on social media, let's just do two presentations a month and work hard on that and get those going in this case, less was much more and got better results. And I guess that would be a really good example of that.

Actually. I think it's perfect. Can I think was one that a lot of us can relate to. I know that in my business I don't, I don't do a lot of social media. I know it works for some people. I haven't found it to be extremely successful for me. But the email marketing is really where I try to put a lot of my focus. But I like what you said when you said focus on what's moving the needle. So really, and I'm assuming what you did to kind of drill down with these clients was really look at the data and see where the revenue was coming from or tell, tell us how you did that.

Well, here's what I did. I looked at all the metrics, you know, and I'm not super geeky about it all in terms of like, I'm not just data over everything. But I think that data does tell a story. In terms of like, okay, where was the most potential had an email list. I think it was a few thousand people on it and everything else was kind of half hearted. And the social media was like tons of work but wasn't really leading to anything. Oh, and she had a Facebook group and the Facebook group was really active and steadily always filling up. So let's just work on this Facebook group, giving them some presentations once or twice a month and work that email list and dive into the two places that we thought like there was actually people there ready and willing to hear what she had to say.

I love that. So Karen, before we wrap it up here, do you have any last minute tips for the audience today?

Yeah, like if we were to summarize it, like take a journal and sit down, give yourself a cup of tea or coffee or maybe a glass of wine and think about like what's really most important to you that would make you happy in your business and really think about how you want to feel day in and day out in your business. So that will make sure that whatever you choose actually will feel good. Sometimes we create goals on pieces of paper and they look right, but they don't feel right in reality. And my husband is also a coach. And one of our core values is whatever we do in our business, we have to look at the impact of how it is going to feel during the day. Like living our life with other humans, our children, the whole thing and taking that time to just like, okay, what is happy for me, like the metrics like the numbers, but also how you want to feel about it, then make decisions in your marketing that fit that. For example, of all the different marketing strategies you could do, which are the ones that will likely make you feel or generate feelings that are closest to your vision of happy in business? You know, for me, that's writing. So I do a lot of writing, you know, and I like to teach. So I just do teaching and I speak on podcasts or give classes. And that's all I do because that brings me to, you know, brings me closer to those sensations of, like, I love to teach and sharing what I know. And I also love to think and have some peace in my life and have space to do a lot of writing. So that's just a quick example of like, taking some ideas that we've talked about and just drilling them down and applying them to your own little business.

And I like that. I like that example. And as you were going through and talking about that, I was like, you know, there are things that I don't like to do that I used to do that I just don't do anymore. And one of them is the live webinars. I love podcasting, like what we're doing. I still love teaching, but I don't really enjoy. And it just doesn't fit well in my life to do the live webinars.

Right.

If anybody would like to get in touch with you to learn more and learn more about your HLP method that you have, where can they find you, Karen?

Well, they can go to my website, karenrozell.com that's Karen with an I. And there you'll find a signature presentation that will explain the whole happy little practice method, you know, and it goes deep for about an hour, so you can find that. And there is also a free book that I am sharing for your listeners. And that will be my book called Rock Stars of Wellness. And you know, 70, 80% of my clients come from the health and wellness field. And so you will share a link that I gave you in your show notes of how they can get a free copy of that too.

Yes, we will make sure all of these links are in the show notes so they can reach out and get in touch with you and sign up for your email list. And Karen, thank you so much for joining us. And, you know, just helping us see that there is another way we don't have to have this huge business where we're working not, you know, nine to nine at night and, you know, chasing after these multimillion dollar revenue years we just need to focus on what makes us good, you know, what makes what we need for our family and what makes us feel good.

Thank you. You said it.

Thanks so much.

Bye.

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