#119 - 3 things I stopped caring about this year (that helped grow my business)

We are different. That's your unique selling point right above and beyond your experiences and how your products might be good or bad or better or whatever. The thing that kind of really helps you to connect and helps you stand out is you being you.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online, but better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey. Hey, guys, it's Kate here from hellofunnels Co. And welcome to episode number 19 of the Doing It Online podcast. This week's episode is a quick and dirty one. I'm going to be taking you behind the scenes and sharing you a couple of things, probably a couple more sort of like personal things, but that have really some changes I've made this year in the business and how they've actually unintentionally really helped our business grow as well. So number one, I'm going to go dive in straight into it today. The very first thing I want to talk about this thing that I've stopped caring about this year that has really helped us grow is that I've stopped caring about sharing my. My opinions and about trying to be sit comfortably on the fence at all times and trying to keep those opinions and values out of my business. I've always felt really torn about this. I am a very vocal person privately in my, in my personal life about any sort of injustices I see, about things that I don't think are fair, things where I think people are trying to take advantage of other people. It really, really pisses me off. Sorry. I hope there's no kiddies in the car and. But I've always felt like, where does this fit in a business like we teach marketing. How the heck do you sort of, how do you make that fit in in a way that makes sense and it doesn't just seem like marketing. Marketing tip. Marketing tip. Marketing tip. Kate having a rant. Marketing tip. Marketing. Like, how do we make this happen? And you know what? I've just decided kind of not to care because I think it is really important that people do know that, you know, the values that my business is built on and that I personally truly believe in and do know that I am not here just to sort of smile and nod as terrible things happen in the world. And again, it's always going to be Finding the balance. I'm sure I'm going to get this very wrong, but I would rather mess up by trying this out and making sure that people know that I do give a shit and that I do have opinions and I do have a voice here. And the other thing is that, you know, always in the past been really hesitant about stirring up the Internet ants nest, right? Like, I just don't want to have to deal with that. People coming at you, getting mad, getting annoyed about what you've said. But thing is, even if you go about your life trying to be super nice all the time, trying to please everybody all the time, that you're still going to annoy people. So we've just decided to stop caring about. We are going to be sharing more and more of and not just our opinions, but our values and the things which are really important to us in both life and business. And the way that I've seen already and I didn't do this with the intention of it growing our business or anything like that. I did it because I'm a human who cares about these things and I couldn't not. But the fact that it has helped us have more meaningful conversations with our clients, with our followers, I think is, is fantastic. It's great. It's helped us to connect because once again we are adding another layer to how we are us, we are different. That's your, your unique selling point right above and beyond your experiences and how your products might be good or bad or better or whatever. The thing that kind of really helps you to connect and helps you stand out is you being you. You've got to bring the good, the bad. You got to bring the opinions. You've got to get up on your soapbox every now and then. The second one, and this one is even though I've, I've given up caring about it from the okay, we're just doing it anyway kind of sense, it does kill me on the inside, I will let you know. But we have given up on having a pretty looking face feed on social media. And like it's something that I've kept going, oh yeah, it doesn't matter. And then I keep coming back again, again and deleting posts that don't fit in. And like I've been so, it's been so ingrained in me that I have to look at my feed and it has to be this perfect looking checkerboard kind of grid with the right balance of text and white space and images and all of that stuff. And it's almost More for my own. Like it's almost like a calming effect to scroll through it and see everything is nicely ordered. I think that's my type A personality through. But at the end of the day it doesn't actually help anybody. Like it doesn't improve conversions, it doesn't improve likes, it doesn't improve conversations, it doesn't improve engagement. It just makes me feel better when I scroll through it. And it also starts to impose really more limiting things which aren't good around creating the content because you're like, oh, this one has to be this. Because that's going to make it look nice and sometimes you don't want it to be that. Sometimes you've got a really great idea for a reel and you want to go in and do it live and then you can't because it's going to mess up the pretty feed or so I feel like being able to release this requirement that the feed has to look pretty, it all has to be a certain way in a certain order, has just given us a lot more creative freedom and has allowed us to play and experiment a lot more. And again, that has been really helpful, not just from a workflow kind of perspective, but also because we have been able to sort of test out some different types of content and play and experiment and in doing that have stumbled across some things that just work really well that we wouldn't have done before. So yes, as much as it, I can't bear to look at the actual whole grid anymore.

By letting this go, by stopping sort of having this rigid really like 3 years ago kind of mentality about how our social media feed needs to look. It really has been helping us with our engagement and all of those things which are actually the point. Right. The third thing that I've decided to stop caring about this year and again that is making a big difference in our business is launches. Because guys, I don't like them, I never liked them. And it's one of those things that we were doing and doing more and more of them and doing bigger ones and it was all because I felt like we should. And that's crazy because we are a business that is all about funnels and our funnels have always been what has worked best for us. But I'm always been like, oh, we're missing out on this opportunity by not doing these massive launches and we should, that magic word at this point in business be doing multiple six figure launches, which we were. But the problem was we're sort of chasing after this sort of model that Works for other people sometimes. Personally, I think launches tend to get be more harm than good for most businesses as they're growing was that we were kind of weren't focusing on the stuff that was what made us us and that was really important to us. And that is our funnels, that is our automations. And when I actually stepped back and said, you know, what is the purpose really of a launch for us? Like what do we need a launch to do and what do we not need it to do? And the big list of knots was really long. Like we need it not to take up all of our time. We need it not to be super stressful. We need it not to be diverting sort of attention and energy away from our funnels and from making the updates that we want to be making with our programs. Like we've just by sort of kicking launches to the curb, we've now been able to do this amazing massive update of our Ecourse Empire program, which I'm so proud of. And it's been on my list for so long and we just didn't have the capacity for it before. And we've been able to really dial in our funnels and just looking at the stats like our funnels have always outperformed our launches. Why were we spending so much time and energy on our launches when we could just be using that time and energy to make our program better, to make our funnels better and to just remove some of the stress. Bye bye launches. Well, when I say bye bye launches, I don't mean we're never ever going to do anything live again. Because my cake caveat here is it is still important to do live elements throughout the year and do them strategically. Particularly because funnels are really for new subscribers, right? So the people who come in for the first like 30 or so days, they go through your funnel and then everybody else is on your email list. So you need to still be doing things to be engaging with those people, to be giving them a live touch point of some sort. But you can do it in an almost evergreen kind of way. We've kind of flicked the switch away from big loud live launches to what we're calling evergreen launches, which is a much more low stress, which is a much more low stress, low time commitment, low resource commitment way of launching. And it still does what we need it to do. Like that's why we ask that question, like what do we need our launches to do? We need our launches to give us some livelike touch points with the people on our list to give us a chance to reconnect with people on our list, to give the people on our list another opportunity to join us if that timing is working better for them. But it doesn't mean we need to spend six months planning and prepping and hundreds of thousands of dollars on spending on ads and all kinds of crazy stuff to do it. We can do it in a lower risk, lower cost way. And far as I said, we're only sort of a couple months into this experiment, but the result so far is it works just as well. So tick, tick tick, Bye bye launches, Bye bye pretty looking feedback, little insert tear emoji and bye bye caring about potentially annoying the odd person on the Internet when I share what I actually care about and my actual opinions on things. So those have been the three things I have stopped caring about this year that have helped me to grow my business. I'd love to know if any of those things are something you felt as well, or you felt pulled to, or you've experimented with, or you've just decided to maybe there's something else that you have decided to just give up on caring about this year and you've seen a big impact. If so, let us know. DM us tag us in a story over on Instagram hellofunnels. We'd love to hear it. And otherwise guys, I will see you next week. Next week is a good one. Make sure you don't miss it. I'm very excited for it. I will see you then. Well, it's a. You'll hear me. Until then guys, have an amazing week. Keep doing what you do and I'll see you online.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel. Let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.