#22 - 13 lessons from my 13-year bizaversary (part 1)

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Hey, hey guys, it is Kate McGivern here from HelloFunnels Co and welcome to episode 22 of the Doing It Online podcast. So this week, guys, it's a little bit of a celebration. It's actually my bizversary. And yes, that is a real thing. It has officially this week been. Well, when this goes live, will have been 13 years since I hit send on my first ever email newsletter way back in 2007 and my very first business, Drop Dead Gorgeous Daily, was born. And since then, it has become a little ritual for me every year to really sit back and reflect on the lessons that I've learned along the way. Some of those are big, some are small, some very painful, some kind of hilarious. But I hope that by sharing these with you today. Well, half of them, this is a two parter, otherwise it'd be damn long. There will be a nugget or two or three for each of you that will help you to move your business forward as well and help you to maybe skip over some of the ickier, more painful parts of these last 13 years. So let's, without further ado, let's dive right on in and start with number one. And number one is, it's a short and sweet one, but it is so important. And it's one of the things that actually really got my business going, and that is that public health declarations are the best ways to make sure you get things done. So I know a lot of people, whether it's about starting a business, creating and launching a new product, or course, you know, you have, you pause, right? You, you have this idea and you're excited about it and you want to do it, but it feels scary or it feels hard or, you know, you, you'd be overwhelmed with all the things that you have to do. So you sort of, you wait and you wait for the timing to be right and you put it off and you put it off and then, you know, it just doesn't happen. Or, you know, it happens years and years later or even months and months later. And it means that you end up starting behind where you could have been by that point if you just started sooner. Because the thing is, there is never a perfect time. There's always going to be stuff going on. Life doesn't get any less busy. I'm figuring this out more and more every year. So you just got to find a way to make yourself do it, make yourself start. And a public declaration for me, you know, what I did was I, you know, I don't even think Facebook was around when I started, if it was, it was very early days and there wasn't many people on it. But you know, I messaged everybody, I emailed everyone and I said, hey guys, I'm launching this business on this day. It's going to be an email newsletter about great things that you can buy online. If you want to get it, you know, let me know your email address and I'll add you to the list. And the first one is coming out on this day date. So I sent that around to everyone I knew. And then I had friends, family, you know, people who I knew, you know very well then sitting and waiting for this thing to happen and I had to make it happen. So that's how I sort of got the courage. And even though like the day that I was going to hit send, I was like, oh, should I do it? Should I not do it? You know, I was so anxious about the whole thing. You know, I hit publish and away I went. And by having that deadline as well, by putting that line in the sand, I was like, I have to figure out how to make this happen between now and then. Like, when I sent that around, I didn't have a website, I didn't know how to send an email newsletter. You know, I knew that to make give myself the kick out the but that I needed to make it happen, that I had to do something like that. And it's paid off. And I've done it, you know, every time. Anytime, something, you know, I'm creating something new, that public declaration really, really helps. You know, I even do it now when we are adding in new features or new modules into our ecosystem program or we're bringing on a new coach or something to make me sort of get it off my to do list and actually get it done. I go into our group and it's like, guys, we'll be this new thing is coming, you know, get excited and then I've told them and I have to go and do it. So still to this day, 13 years later, I use public declarations. It's really been useful for me.

Number two, and this one took me a while to figure out. I didn't definitely didn't get this one right off the bat. Is test before you invest. This is now one of my philosophies for just everything in my business. And this includes everything from, you know, whether you're beta testing a new course or offering. And so what I mean by that is if you have, you know, you've got an idea for a new program before you go and spend your weeks or months or hundreds of dollars or whatever it is to create the damn thing. You actually make sure you test it. You make sure people want to buy it. You actually send some sales emails and get some sales, get people to vote with their credit cards, opinions, you know, you can't take them to the bank. So, you know, get. Test before you invest, test that the market wants it, that this offer is going to work before you invest the time and the money into creating it. Same goes with funnels, you know, or, you know, even portions of your launch. And this is again, something that's so much into the philosophy of what we do at hello Funnels, but we always, always about getting people to test things first before they then go and invest in Facebook ads or, you know, then go in and put a whole bunch of time and effort into creating or building out this complicated thing. You want to test each element first, make sure it works. Have the added benefit of getting the extra sales right up front rather than waiting till later. And then, you know, and it's kind of in its own way, it's a bit of a public declaration, too, particularly around if it's creating something new because you've just gone out there and said, hey, guys, I've got this new product. You want to buy it, people have bought it, you got to go create it. That's a pretty good public declaration right there. But, yeah, it works for not just creating new courses or launching new businesses. It works for so many other pieces of your business. Or, you know, test first and preferably test with free traffic or people already on your list or people in your communities and networks before you go investing a bunch of time, bunch of money. It just really helps to. It helps. It helps take a lot of the risk away from things. That definitely helps you. Stops you from wasting time and wasting money. And I know that no one, particularly as you're starting and you're growing your business, most people don't have a lot of either to waste.

So number three is a bit of a juicy one. And I wasn't actually sure if I was even going to talk about it, but then that kind of goes against exactly what this lesson is. So I kind of feel like I have to.

So anyway, buckle up. But this one is, and I haven't come up with like a sexy way of saying it, but basically is you need to. To know your values and you need to make sure that your audience knows them as well. So this one really came up for me after I was accused of something really awful and really untrue earlier this year by someone I'd never met, someone who didn't know me. And I realized that I'd been hiding behind that whole old, you know, you don't mix politics and business kind of adage. And that was actually total bs and it wasn't serving me, it wasn't serving my community, and it definitely wasn't allowing me to show up and, you know, know, make the kind of. Build the kind of business I wanted, make the kind of impact I want to be, the kind of human that I wanted to be. Because the thing is, is there's absolutely no way that anyone who knew me, knew my values, knew what I was passionate about, about the, you know, what I stood for, what I believed in, the things that I was actually out there actively, you know, doing work on and pursuing and supporting. There's no way that anyone who knew any of those things about me would ever accuse me of that thing. And. But the thing is that behind that, how would they know that? How would they know that about me? Because if you looked on Instagram or anywhere else in my emails and things like that, you know, it's the fun, cute, funny stuff, you know, sharing silly memes and talking about nerdy things and, you know, that fun stuff. But how would anyone know much else about me beyond that? Because I wasn't sharing it publicly. I wasn't taking a stand publicly about what my values really were, about the things I really truly believed in. And I realized that the mistake here was on me because I had been trying to keep my beliefs and my business separate. And that is actually a problem. And it's one that is becoming more and more apparent, especially right now. And I think as we, you know, as we go forward, it's only going to be more apparent. And I think it's. It's important for all businesses to get really super clear on their values and to make sure that, you know, they are being public with them and they are sharing them in a real and, you know, unmissable way. I also realized that after this incident that something I never even thought of. And again, this is just me being, you know, privileged and oblivious and sitting behind my computer and just, you know, doing my thing. But that I didn't realize that there are people that were watching me and waiting to see what I would do around certain moments in time and certain things that happened on the news and that they were. That what I did was then going to shape the actions they took. Because I was quite Often sitting and waiting to see what other people would do. And it becomes this almost like massive, you know, butterflies flapping their wings in the Amazon kind of moment. If everyone's sitting and waiting, like someone needs to step forward, someone needs to take that action and then the ripple effects from that can be massive. But everyone pauses, no one takes action and you're, then nothing happens, nothing changes and that's. And then, yeah, there's no good can come from that, guys, I think as we've all seen, so what we have committed to internally, what we've been working on as a team these last few months and what you'll start to see more and more from us over the next months, years as we sort of fully integrate this properly. Because this isn't, there's no quick fixes with this kind of stuff, guys. It is a long and continual process is that you're going to start seeing more of our values as humans as a company, company more of. And they're going to be more clear and hopefully that that will inspire other people to do the same. So it's, I think it's really, really important even if you are a business of one. I know for me this was a big wake up call and it took a pretty aggressive slap across the face for it to happen. But I think that, you know, even though I was sitting here quietly and even my team, you know, like we had values that we talked about behind that. We used to make our decisions in our business but we weren't being public about them. And that now is the time to speak up and to be public and that the olden days, particularly when you're a small business, particularly actually no, take that away. All business.

You know, that whole thing, don't miss business and politics like life is politics, like you can't get around it. And if you're wanting to show up and contribute and help and serve, you know that's going to be part of it. And we have to be, I think more purposeful about that, more deliberate about that. And we have to, you know, make it a priority to make sure that we are, you know, we're showing up and being vocal and being heard. Not, not just because we want people to know that, you know, that we're not assholes, but because, you know, it's important to it change. It's important to set the scene and to allow other people to see how it can be done. And then it becomes the norm and then, you know, then that becomes the world becomes a very different place. When all businesses are sort of working and acting from a place of value. So yeah, I said slightly juicier one, guys will step it back now. But it was this year really defined so much of this year for me. So I really had to include it. And you know, if you guys want to DM me anything, if you've had any similar moments, happy to share. If you've had any similar ahas. I think this has been a real year of stripping things back and, you know.

Having eyes ripped wide open and.

Yeah, and it doesn't stop now. There's still lots and lots of work to be done. Okay, guys, so lesson number four is it's okay to let go of things that don't serve you anymore, even if they make you money. So I have shut down and a lot of you would have heard this before, so I'll get brief. But you know, over the last 13 years I have this. I'm on to business number three and I've actually shut down two multi, six bigger businesses, one of which was on track to hit seven figures the following year. And I shut them down because they didn't make me happy. They actually made me miserable. And seriously, is best thing that I ever have ever done because it allowed me to reset and to create a business that was based around my goals as based around the lifestyle. It was based around how I wanted to serve, who, who I want to serve, how I want to live my life. I want to be able to show up outside of my business. And it's made such huge difference. And I think particularly with your first business, it's so easy. You just to jump in and just do what you think you should be doing and just do whatever you think is going to pay the bills and that's fine. That's what you have to do because you have to be able to pay the bills. And I know it is a real luxury to, you know, to be at business number three and to have gone through this process. But it wasn't an easy one, guys. It did take a lot of time and that's why I love to share this lesson whenever I can. Because if I can help people to be able to sort of realize this sooner. You know, the. I think the choices that you start to make, the things you start to say yes and no to the products you create, the way that you decide to deliver. And things like these can be small, subtle changes over time, but they're going to get you more towards a place that's going to make you happy, that's going to keep you Feeling really fulfilled versus, you know, going the other direction where if you're just, you know, you don't sort of have that vision, you don't realize that you can be purposeful and you can be deliberate in the kind of business that you're creating. And then you will end up with, you know, a Frankenstein business that is just sucking the life out of you. And maybe it should be vampire business, you know, and, you know, I know. And nobody, nobody wants that. No one wants to have to have that moment of burning it down. Because even though, you know, I can look back on it years later and go, it was such a great thing to do at the time, I can tell you. It definitely didn't feel like a great thing to do. It felt scary and awful and horrid and um, you know, and there was many, many, many tears and sleepless nights. But we came out the other side. I came out stronger and better and with a much, much better business. So I'm very glad for that lesson.

Lesson number five, guys, is higher help as soon as you can and systemize even sooner. And this is one thing that, you know, I'm still your team is one of my focuses on the next 12 months and really, you know, being able to elevate their team and bring in some leaders and really help that. Because I know the team is so important for my business to get to that next level of where I want it to be and for us to be able to show up and serve the people how I want to serve them. But it doesn't have to be this, you know, this big org chart kind of scary thing with your people to manage and your annual check ins and all of that kind of jazz. It can literally be as simple as sitting down and going, okay, well I've got a budget of $30 a week or something. What can I take off my plate for $30 a week? And finding someone on fiverr or upwork to do a couple of those tasks that are going to free you up for a couple of hours and that you can just start from there. And the second part of this lesson is it's not just about hiring, but about like systemizing and making sure that there's processes so that when you do hire or when you hire a new.

It'S. You're not having to be teaching them from scratch over and over again. Like anything that you do more than once, you should have a. They call it an SOP or a standard operating procedure for. And the easiest way to do that, guys, is to just get Next time you do whatever that task is, grab something like Loom. Although I know they've just gone to a paid version, but you know, pay for the next month or so or subscribe. It's crazy good value and it's so useful. But you know to just next time you do that task, just video yourself doing it and just talk through, explain what it is you're doing and why and then just save a library of those videos somewhere so that whenever you have you do bring someone on, you'd be like, okay, can you do this, this and this? And you just send them the links and then you know, they can watch that and you're basically training them without having to do it again. So that's my little bonus tip there for how to start systemizing. And if you just do this with all of your, if you sat down and made a list of all of the repeatable tasks or repetitive tasks that you do and then just, you know, try to do a couple a week of, you know, going through and doing that process, you'd be amazed at how quickly you build up this massive library which is like the guidebook for your business.

All right, guys, so now number six is keep your tech simple and third party where possible. I told you these are a bit of a mixed bag, but that doesn't make any of them more or less important or impactful. So people often come to me and ask me what my recommended tech stack is or what goes with this or what software they need. And I think they're always surprised that my motto is really around. Coming back to, well, what do you have that works for you and that you like? Changing software is a pain and it takes a lot of time and doing it more than once is often just self sabotage. So if you have something and it works for you and you like it, there's no just because there might be something out there. People saying better and not saying you need to change to it.

You don't try and have as few moving parts as possible where you can. So look where you can find tools. I'm not saying you need to go and get an all in one. I personally don't love those, but I know some people do love things like Kartra and Kajabi for everything. But it does make life easier if you can, you know, combine sort of functions into one thing. But the, the main, I think the really big lesson for me was to that looking for tools that are third party tools and using them wherever possible. Like I used to be use WordPress for my websites, for our online courses, for everything, for our checkout for membership site, for hosting our webinars. Even at one point we did everything in WordPress and everything was DIY and it was all sticky taped together in the back end with a thousand different conflicting plugins and, you know, a theme that broke every time there was an update. And the amount of time and money and stress and the number of, you know, customer service emails we had to respond because people could access this thing and not that thing. Or the password didn't work anymore and the password reset button didn't work anymore. My gosh, it was just so stressful and it was all because I just thought that WordPress was the best and I had to be able to use WordPress because it was so customizable. And you can do everything because it's all of these plugins. And I didn't realize that actually it was just a massive pain and it was. So the first thing we moved off of WordPress was we moved our courseware and we moved it onto Kajabi and it was just like, oh, wow. Like all of a sudden the number of customer service emails we had was like at 1 10th because everything was easy to find and easy to access and it just worked most of the time. Still not perfect. And you know, and then the same when we moved our website away from WordPress. Yes, we still have the blog on WordPress because we have show plus WordPress, but because we don't need, you know, we only like three plugins now and the theme is part of ShowIt so we don't have to worry about theme updates and things like that. It's just that in itself again, was another big wake up call because keeping the tech simple, realizing that the important thing, what's important with tech is that it works and that it's reliable and that it gives a good experience for your users and that it's easy for you to be able to do what you need to do. Like that is the really important part of tech and trying to base whatever your decisions around what you invest in and the pieces that you add off that rather than what looks the prettiest or, you know, what the, you know, people on Instagram are saying is the coolest thing with the coolest new features, that is just a total game changer in itself as well.

So. Okay, last for today, guys, I told you this is a two parter and I don't want to make this podcast episode like 52 minutes long or something. I know you guys will got things to do so last but not so last but not least for today is to commit to mastery and not perfection. Perfectionism is not something that I personally suffer from. Anyone who's found a typo in one of my emails will probably know. But you know, I think I have a slightly different take on it, that it's not about trying to make things perfect. Like not, you know, I would I call pixel perfect. Like, you know, doesn't have to be your emails don't have to be the best emails in the world and your website doesn't have to be beautiful and you know, the best website or the newest designs and your, your videos don't have to have every single almond art cut out of them and you're following photos on social media don't have to be taken by a professional photographer and you know, professionally edited. There's, you know, all that stuff I think people get can get wrapped up in it and it takes so much time and it takes you away from what's important. Instead. I think what is important rather than try and focus on perfectionism is to actually try and focus on mastery. And that is being as good as you can be at the really the most important parts of your business. And this applies to so many different parts of your business, but from everything from your marketing strategies to your offers. And I would say actually the very first place that it really is important is your offers, your products and how you sell them. Like if you are trying to spending all your time trying to get perfect social media or perfect website or whatever and you haven't yet mastered your offer, like an offer that is easy to sell, that delivers a great result and experience and you haven't yet mastered at least one way to reliably and sell that offer, you know, time and time again. Then I'd say you need to switch your priorities up and, and you know, come and spend some time again, not on perfectionism here.

On actually going, okay, how can I commit to making this as good as I can commit to going, all right, this is the product that I'm going to sell. So I'm going to keep testing and tweaking small bits and trying to constantly improve and make it better and better, you know, not, you know, putting it out in the world because it's not perfect, putting it out there, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't and putting it out there again. They're very different mindsets. And I know that I've sort of got stuck in this trap as well. Guys of you know, where I see this kind of coming up when I know that people aren't, you know, they haven't made that switch over to focusing on mastery is when I see people, you know, trying to fix an offer that isn't working by just, you know, throwing every single shiny new marketing tactic they can find at it and then wondering why none of them were an instant success. Like, that's what perfectionism versus mastery really comes in. When people try something and it wasn't, the results weren't perfect, so they quit or they, I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to try something else versus someone with a mastery mindset who's like, okay, well what did work? Let's do that bit again and let's, you know, add it, try something else. Let's try and, you know, let's update this other thing or tweak this other thing and see if we can make next time make it better, 10% better, 15% better, 50% better even. But, you know, it's not that. Okay, that wasn't perfect. That didn't give me a six figure launch first time I launched it. So therefore it's terrible and I'm never going to do it again. And.

And the thing is, guys, that, you know, mastery takes time and takes practice and I know that currently if you are stuck in that trap of going, well, I've got this offer and it's just not selling and I'm trying all of the things and I don't know what else I can. And you want to really make that switch over to mastery, to focusing on mastery, to ditching perfection, then this is why I have created my free three day challenge, guys, I've created just for you. So you can spend just three days, like not even doing a real deep dive on your offer on one of the most important pieces of your business, on looking at what does and doesn't work, learning the simple tweaks that can make it sell better than ever for some people, two, five, ten times better, even adjust their next launch after going through this challenge. It is really that powerful. It's called the sold out success challenge and it all starts very soon. December 8th, Aussie time, which is December 7th, pretty much everywhere else. So head to Kate's challenge now. You can grab the link from the show notes and make sure you save your seat. And I can't wait to overhaul your offer with you. So that's it, guys for this week. Come back next week for part two where I have another six, possibly a few bonus ones, extra lessons for you after my 13 years, biz adversary. I can't wait to share them with you. I can't wait to see you in the challenge. And until then, guys, keep doing what you do, and I will see you next week. Bye.