#286 - 4 Ways I Simplified My Business (And Made More Money )

I'm the kind of person who loves playing with new strategies, new tech, new tools. I'm always optimizing, always testing, always coming up with new ways to do things bigger and better. And that's great until it's not. Because if you're like me, what ends up happening is you layer on more and more stuff and eventually you look up and realize you're doing a lot of busy work just for the sake of busy work. You're not focused, you're not creative, your calendar is overflowing, and you're definitely not working on the things that actually matter. So every six to 12 months, I sit down and I do this process where I look at everything we're doing, I analyze what's actually working and I strip out what's not. I simplify, I cut, I get back to basics. Because that's when my business works best and that's when I work best. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Hey there, I'm Kate McKibben from HelloFunnels Co and welcome to the Doing it online podcast. Today I'm walking you through the four things that we simplified in our business at the end of last year and why those changes had freed up space. Space allowed us to focus and honestly have helped us to have our best months ever while still working part time hours. Because here's the thing, simplifying isn't just about cutting things. It's about making room for what actually moves the needle and for the next new things that came along. So let's dive in. All right, so before I get into the four things we simplified, I want to quickly talk about the process I use to figure out what stays and what goes. I call it the traffic light process. And I actually took our Funnel club members through this at the end of last year. Here's how it works. You look at the different parts of your business, your marketing, your sales, your offers, and you assign each one the color of a traffic light. Green means it's working. You want to do more of that. Double down. Red means it is not working, cut it, get rid of it. And orange means it needs a tweak or an optimization. And if it can't earn its keep after that is probably going to get cut too. It's a really simple visual process, but it forces you to be honest about what's actually working and what's just taking up space. And that's what I did the end of last year. And from that, here's what we changed all Right. So the first thing we simplified was we actually brought our ads management back in house. Now, a lot of people think that's not simplifying. They think that's adding more work. But for us, it was actually the opposite. And if you've been listening to our last couple of episodes, you know that the process for running and managing ads right now is so much simpler than it used to be. The AI updates in Facebook Ads Manager have changed everything. The stuff that takes time and work. Now it's actually creating the ad creatives, and that's a job that's usually best done in house anyway. So we brought it all back in house, and here's what that meant. It means less people to manage. We didn't have to go back and forth with an agency or a contractor, didn't have to explain what we wanted, wait for them to create it, give feedback, wait for revisions. All of that gone. We can move quicker. We want to test something new or pivot a campaign, we can do it immediately. We're not waiting on anyone else's schedule. And the results, we've scaled up faster and more profitably than we've been able to do in years. So that was simplification number one. The second thing we simplified was social media. Now we already have our content creation down to a pretty refined system. If you've listened to our last episode on this, you know, I sit down once a month, I go through an AI process. I call the monthly editorial meeting. We plan out everything, make sure everything is structured to work together, to build towards whatever we're promoting that month. Then we have a weekly process where it's really simple and fast for me to actually create the content takes about 20, 25 minutes a week, and it's done. Having said that, though, I still feel like we weren't getting enough bang for our buck with the actual social content, specifically Instagram. Things there just weren't great and were on a downward trend. So I had to make a decision. Option one was go all in, spend a ton of time trying to get it to work. But I've been doing this for years, and I didn't want to keep throwing energy at something that wasn't giving us a return. Option two, keep doing what we're doing, but posting at a high frequency when things aren't quite enough, and that didn't feel right either. And option three, pull it back really deep, dive on the role that social media plays for our business and just to create the kind of content that works for that strategy. And here's what I realized. Social media is not a top of funnel channel for us. It's not how people discover us. We don't need to go viral, we don't need a lot of likes, we don't need a lot of comments. For us, it's mid funnel. People maybe click on an ad and then they come over to Instagram to find out who we are or people who are considering working with us and they're doing a little bit of a social media stalk. They want more information, they want to see recent results, recent wins, recent client stories. So I decided to pull back on everything in between and just post the three things that someone would need to know each week if they were thinking about working with us. That might be a face to camera yap style post a client, win a behind the scenes look at what we're working on. And already it just feels better because even though it's just a trickle of content and a trickle of engagement, it's still converting to sales. And that's the whole point, right? So that was simplification number two. All right, Number three, we ditched video podcasting. So up until the end of last year, we were doing video podcasts. I was trying to do a two for one, you know, so if I'm going to sit down and record this thing anyway, I thought I may as well do video and then it can go on YouTube as well. So the problem creating video is infinitely more work. You have to do it at a certain time of day when the lighting is good and no one's around. You can't get interrupted in the middle by crazy dogs or Amazon deliveries because it just looks weird if things get, you know, chopped about too much. Whereas if it's audio, it's fine. You also have to change outfits, do your hair. All that stuff just takes time. And then it actually has to get properly edited and then reviewed, which again takes time and makes you need to be much more organized. So you need longer lead times. You need to be recording things four weeks in advance versus audio, where even if you are getting something edited, we've got an amazing editor that we found on Fiverr and he can turn things around overnight. And cost wise it's about a tenth of the price. So I looked at the numbers and here's what I found. People were listening to the podcast. I wanted to keep it, we could see that. But the video side of things, not so much. It definitely wasn't worth the exponential extra amount of energy, time, resources and money. So we got rid of video, went back to audio only. And now it's just so much easier. Things could be faster, more nimble, less stressful. Wonderful. That was simplification number three. All right. The final thing we simplified was was our offer suite. So we retired a bunch of stuff over the holidays and we actually even renamed some of our offers to make it more clear what they were and who they were for for example, our really long running Empire program which been running since 2019 has now been renamed to the Funnel Club which definitely says more of what it actually is and does. And we retired most of our other programs. So now here's what we have. We've got a handful of low ticket offers that we're able to create, adapt and promote based on what's working best right now. These give people a taste test, a way to experience our methodology, see how we teach before they make a bigger investment. But our core programs are just three things. First, we have our 100k funnel formula. This is our step by step, get it done self paced program for people who want to get in there and build out their own hundred k funnel system. It's everything you need to design, create and install a six figure funnel in your business in just eight weeks. Second, we have the Funnel club. This is where things get really exciting. So as well as getting access to everything people unlock inside the 100k funnel formula, people are also able to unlock our amazing support and incredible community. Live online events plus access to all the other pieces of the puzzle that make a successful online coaching business. That's things like creating your health yes Offer and offer suite. That's evergreen launching strategies, that's Facebook ads. This is really the heart and soul of what we do where we help online coaches and course creators to design, create and install their six figure funnels for their businesses with all the support community they need to actually make it happen. And then third, we have leverage and co. My new favorite. This is our VIP mentorship where a very small intimate group of working very closely with myself and my team. It's high touch, it's personalized support and strategy as people are scaling their businesses. That's it. Clean, simple, easy to understand. And that clarity has made everything easier. It's easier to market, it's easier to plan, it's easier to explain, it's easier to deliver. And honestly, it's opened up so much space in my calendar it's allowed us to start dreaming big again and to plan things out properly. I and we've got some really exciting things coming next month. I can't wait to share. And that's all because we took the time to simplify. All right, so here's the thing. Simplifying isn't just about cutting things for the sake of cutting things. It's about freeing up space. Space to focus, space to be creative, and space for the next new things that come along. Because if you're constantly running at capacity, constantly doing busy work, constantly managing all these things, all these moving pieces, you. You just don't have time to think. You don't have room to grow. And the funny thing is, when we simplified all of these things, our business didn't shrink. It grew a lot. We're back to having our best months ever. And I'm still working part time around my family. I'm still planning amazing holidays and trips, and I'm spending most of my time actually serving my clients, not doing endless admin people, management meetings, or content creation tasks. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling like you're doing a lot but not seeing the results you want, maybe it's time to sit down and do your own traffic light process. What's green, what's red, what's orange? And then get ruthless and cut. Because less really can be more. All right, that's it for today, guys. I'll see you all next week with some very exciting news.