#34 - Q&A - Ask kate anything

There is two things that I would say are probably the, you know, seem to work the best. They're tried and true and yeah, like I said, they're not sexy. There's no unicorn, sparkly, shiny silver bullet here.

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.

Hello. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 34 of the Doing It Online podcast. I am your host, Kate McKibben from HelloFunnels co. And today we are mixing things up a little bit and having a Ask Kate Anything session. So I popped up a story on Instagram the other day asking people if they've got any burning questions for me, and we had some really, really brilliant ones sent in. So today that is what we are going to be diving into. So let's get straight on into it. No need for any fancy introduction. I'm pretty sure you guys all get how this works. So first up, first question that we had, and this is a juicy one, particularly for anyone who is just getting started or thinking about starting their first online education or coaching business. And this question was, what is the fastest way to go from absolute zero to having paying clients? And I love this question because it really goes back to the basics, to the foundations, to the not so sexy stuff that I think a lot of people kind of want to skip past or a lot of people just forget about. Like, everyone started here, everyone had to do this step and it's not talked about all that much. So my advice is for anyone who is right here in this spot right now going, all right, I've, you know, I've got something I'm passionate about. I've got something I want to help people with. I want to get out there and serve, but damn it, I've got no one to serve. I've got no client list yet is twofold. There's two things that I would say are probably the, you know, seem to work the best. They're tried and true. And yeah, like I said, they're not sexy. There's no unicorn, sparkly, shiny silver bullet here, but they do work. So the first one is to work your networks. So to get out there to let absolutely everybody that you know, that you've ever met that you are doing this thing, like, get Them excited and say if there's anyone that you, that they know who, you know, who might be interested or might need some help with whatever it is you're going to be helping people with, you love it if they could pass along your details. So like that's just, you know, networking one on one. And I know a lot of people at this thing, they feel bad, they don't want to do the ask. But think about it like most people, as I said, most people started here. If these are truly people in your communities, in your network, in your family, friends, ex, you know, colleagues who care about you, you know, you obviously you want to measure out those asks and only use them, you know, when they're absolutely necessary. So you don't use them all up. But this is a point, this is the help you get that momentum, help you get that word out. Particularly when you're first starting. Absolutely. And if you maybe been, you aren't just starting out, you've sort of been, you know, trying to get this rolling for a little while, have give them something or a reason to share it. Like maybe do a special promotion, maybe do a say, hey, I'm, you know, I'm putting together a new package or I'm creating a new service or I'm doing a sale or something. Just give them, you know, that extra reason to be able to give them something to talk about, give them something to share. So the second thing I would do is start building your email list now. So that is to come up with some really cool like over, like when you're just getting started, you got to over deliver on the value later as you go along, people tend to deliver less. I'm kind of a fan of over delivering always. It's sort of up to you to find that balance as you sort of progress with your business. But at the start, don't try and be fancy. Don't try and do any sort of, you know, yes, I'm going to make it seem like I'm giving great value, but I'm not really, I'm just sort of painting the picture kind of thing. Actually give amazing value, actually over freaking deliver. So create a really killer, valuable downloadable resource. Whether it's a video training or an audio or some kind of great workbook or whatever it is. Don't spend forever on it. Like something that you can create in a couple of hours so that you can just get it up, get it done. You could also tie this in with step one if you want something to, you know, to give people something to talk about. Say, hey, I've created this amazing resource. It's really going to help people with this problem or, you know, with looking for this outcome. I just, you know, it'd mean the world to me if you could share it. If you know anyone who it might be relevant to, if you could share it, it's totally for free. Like, you pair those two together and, you know, it's gold. Step 2B is again, and you only do this when you're getting started. Every single person who opt in for that email that, you know, that freebie, I want you to be personally emailing them, like actually email them, say, hey, you know, wanted to know how you found it, wanted to make sure you checked it out. If you've got any questions, I'm here to help. If you want any further help with this, you know, I'd love to connect, love to talk to you. If you feel a bit icky about doing that, maybe sit down and, you know, script yourself out a couple of response templates so it's, you know, it's easier to do. But I want you to be personally reaching out and responding to people when they opt in. Just, just, just as you're getting started, you don't have to this forever. You won't be able to. But that personal connection, that personal response, it's, it's irreplaceable. And at the start, when you've probably got more, you know, time, not that anyone generally has a whole lot of spare time, but you've probably got more time than you have, you know, financial resources to be investing in these things. It's absolutely gold. And also the what they come back with and what those conversations that you have, even if they don't end up being a client, is also the, some of the best market research you'll ever do. So that's step number two and then step number three. And again, you're gonna have put on your big girl pants for this one, big boy pants. If for the guys listening is, I want you to start holding some free, again, really, really valuable training sessions. So again, this could be virtual, if that makes sense for you and for your market. Or they could be in person and you can go old school, like print up some flyers, stick them up at your local library, ask at local cafes, things like that. Like, that's how people kind of get the word out in the olden days when, you know, when you're not ready to start spending money on Facebook ads, go old school, that stuff still works. Do a letterbox drop in your area saying hey, I'm doing this free workshop on X. You know, come along and you know, make sure that people, you know, you have a web address or something for them to register for their ticket so that, you know, it's simple form for them to pop in their details and then they're going to be on your email list. You're going to obviously create, you know, deliver amazing value at this training and then, you know, follow up with them afterwards. And as you know, if you just did those three things on repeat, you know, you're going to have clients very, very, very quickly. And I know some people might go, oh, that seems like a lot. Maybe it's, you know, this is going to press some triggers, some, you know, bring up some fears for some people. But this is what you got to do. You got to get out there and hustle at the start. I mean, you got, you always got to kind of hustle, but you can sort of, it's more, it's more selective hustle as your business grows. But at the start you just got to, you know, get your head down. So that would be my, my advice for someone looking to sort of get their first clients, get that initial momentum and that additional cashflow in their business. And this isn't like a, okay, I can do this in one week and I'm ready to roll kind of thing. Like if you do each of these three things you're going to, and maybe you say every month you're going to do a free training and it's going to be one of the ways that you grow your list and grow your client base going forward. Some people do that forever and maybe that free training later on turns into a low price paid training as you sort of have a bigger list. And you know, there's obviously, oh my gosh, I could dive into this in so much detail. I won't overwhelm you. But yeah, three things to get started. So second question before I end up dedicating this entire episode to just that one thing is how do you price a beta launch? Again, love this question. Much simpler answer for people. So it must be short and sweet. So usually with a beta launch, and for those of you listening going, what the hell is a beta launch? A beta launch is the first time you are launching your online program and usually we are launching it with the presumption that it's not actually complete yet because it's kind of, it's my motto that you always test before you invest. And that includes investing the time and actually going and creating a program Like I want you to make, go out there and test it, make sure people actually want it. Not just they can tell you they want it. They got to vote with their actual credit cards because you know, people will say that they, oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea. But you don't really know for sure until they actually purchase it. So you need to make sure that this idea that you had for a program, for an offer, that it actually sells before you then go spend weeks and weeks creating the content. So that's what a beta launch is. So to be able to go out there and you know, sell something to people that is going to be like, hey, this has been created as we go, you know, or this is, this is going to be the first round of it. So it's sort of, it's giving people that framing of hey, this isn't going to be perfect. But that's okay because you guys are going to amazing price and you're still going to get great value. And I'm going to be in there and super engaged because this is my first time doing it and I want all your amazing feedback and I want to make sure you guys get great results. So you know, it's, it's kind of a win win kind of scenario. So that's what we call a beta launch. First time you're launching it and it's usually at a really big discount to make up for the fact that it's not going to be as polished as your final product will be. Now some people don't like the term beta. They prefer foundation or, you know, foundation members or some other fancy term. It all means the same thing. It's the first time you're launching something. So pricing guide is I would for this usually. And when you're launching anything or promoting anything is lots of different marketing tools that are at your disposal. And some of them require obviously a lot more effort, a lot more time than others. And I think when you're at this stage of creating a new program, there's already a lot of things you gotta kind of be doing and setting up and whatever even just to have it so people can just some purchase and can actually go in and have a welcome video even if the rest of it's not done. So I don't normally recommend people get too fancy and try to do all these fancy things like webinars and stuff necessarily unless they want to with their beta launch. So you need a marketing tool that is going to do most of the heavy lifting for you without you having to spend all your time like I said creating all this other stuff like three part video sequences and webinars and all of that jazz. And that's where a discount comes in. It's one of the only times I really recommend people use a discount. I usually encourage people to price like to do a permanent price like this is what it always is but in a beta launch as I said because we're setting that frame that no it's not going to be perfect. So this is why it's such a great deal. So the recommendation for your pricing for that would be usually 50% off. Some people aren't quite prepared to make that much of a discount. So between 30 and 50% I'd say would be your the range to go to go for so a 30 to 50% discount. So like I said, nice and easy one to answer. Next question is another easy one. Which pop up software do you recommend? So I've got two recommendations for you. We actually use both although we only use one for pop ups. The other one we use more for just inserting forms around in our blog. But convert box is the pop up software that we use. The reason that we use that one plus this other one is because we use Showit as our page builder. We needed a non WordPress based one for our, you know and this allows us to have pop ups also on things like checkout pages if we wanted to have an abandoned cart kind of pop up. So super easy to use. It's really smart. There's a few like extra features I'm hoping they'll add shortly. Other thing I love about convert box is that at the moment it's a lifetime license price. So I love a lifetime license. The less monthly repayments I'm making on things the better. The other one that we use which is currently I believe WordPress only is one called Thrive Leads and that one does pop ups as well but obviously only on WordPress pages. But it also has other cool things like being able to insert shortcodes and stuff into like inside content like it that this one is crazy smart. It's a little bit more fiddly to actually set up than a convert box is but it has more options and that one also is a one time price. It's a bargain. I think it's like $67 or it was last time I checked. So depending if you are WordPress or not, those would be my two recommendations. All right onto question number four. How do I create a chilled out business like yours? Hashtag goals. I love this and I also Love that you think I have a chilled out business. I think the best answer I can give for this is intentionally, like, the what? The reason that my business is the way that it is now is because I intentionally created it to be this way. And you know, like, I didn't do this with my very first. This is business technically like 3.2, you know, and I had to, you know, create and try and fail at some other different types of business models and business setups and things along the way to realize that actually you can be intentional with how you create your business. And that it is really important to be intentional, to actually take the time to go, okay, well what do I want this business really to look like? What do I want it to feel like in my business? What work do I want to be doing, how often? All of that kind of stuff. And now that's not to say I don't have periods of hustle, I absolutely do. But I have been really strategic and intentional about trying to make sure that, you know, the work that I do, the business model that I have. And as this is all around funnels, guys, like it's. Your intention would be, would be step one and then figuring out how you can automate and systemize the really important parts of your business would be step two. So once you sat down and done that exercise, and we do it with all of our clients around, like, okay, what do you want your business to actually look like once you've sat down, really nutted that out, go super deep, visualized it like almost like stepped into it, embodied it. Once you've kind of got that, then you can go, okay, well, to be able to, you know, create, have a business that is like that, you know, you generally have to change some things, you generally have to streamline some things, you generally have to possibly tweak how your products are delivered and you usually have to tweak also how they're sold, marketed as well. That's where funnels come in. So that's why I'm so passionate about what I do. It's because I get to help people to create businesses like this. Because I know I've, you know, I've lived the different types of businesses. I've lived the non automated, non systemized, non chill business. And it was awful. You know, obviously had its fun moments as well, but it was really bloody stressful. And that's, you know, peace is one of my highest values. Like anything that is going that costs me, peace is too expensive. So I absolutely have, you know, set up my Business. And whenever we're doing planning and goal setting, it always comes back to this, like, how can we make sure things are streamlined? How can we make sure things are, where appropriate, automated? Like we don't want to be fully hands off. We still like to have, you know, personal touches and to be actually in their, you know, sleeves rolled up and helping our clients as much as possible. But what can we, what kind of are the things that can be taken away from the, you know, the in person style delivery that can be automated, that through automation can actually mean better services delivered and that frees up the time so that when we are working in our business, we're doing the stuff that really counts. The stuff that's really important to not just us, but to our clients as well. The stuff that really helps them get results. The stuff that I just really freaking love doing. So yeah, that would be my two part piece of advice. Number one is it's intention. You gotta do it on purpose and you are actually able to do it on purpose even if you sit down right now and you went, okay, this is the business I want and holy shit, the business I have is nothing like that. That's totally okay. You're just course correcting right now and you can just piece by piece start to make changes and it will get there. Like this business, how I have set up right now, we've looked, we're roughly about two and a half years into, I believe it was 2018 that I made the switch over to being all about funnels. So yeah, two and about two and a half years. And I'd say it took just a little under 12 months to get us, you know, started in this kind of flow and then to start scaling from there. And I did have a baby roundabout there as well and a newborn. So there was a bit of a pause that kind of happened in the business. And then, you know, now I've come back and we're able to sort of, you know, continue on. But I've kind of completely lost my train of thought. But yeah, anyway, those two things, intention and automation. So, okay, final question is, says I'm really, really overwhelmed right now. How do I know what to do next?

All right, so I have again two pieces of advice for you. First of all, if you are really overwhelmed, you gotta go get some self care. You gotta take a break. I know it seems counterintuitive because you're like, you're overwhelmed because you've got so much to do, but oh, you actually, it's almost impossible to be productive Right now when you're in that overwhelmed state, like you would know it, like when you're overwhelmed, that's when you end up like having a thousand tabs open and kind of sort of doing a whole bunch of stuff and not doing any of it well. And where you end up having these days you're like, I feel like I did so much work, but I never actually got anything done. When you're in that stage, you gotta step away and just, you know, feel better knowing that, hey, that time that you pro, that you've stepped away for, you probably weren't being all that productive anyway because you were overwhelmed. So you gotta go recharge, you gotta go get a massage, you've gotta go get your nails done, you know, binge some stuff on Netflix, go for a walk, whatever that is for you. Just in the short term, just try and get quality even like a weekend. Just get off your devices, get off your computer, just and do as much sort of cup filling stuff as you can. When you then do hit your desk again and are ready to sort of dive back in with, I mean you'll probably have all these new ideas and this new energy because you've had some time off, which is great. Also semi counterproductive because the new ideas can add to the overwhelm. The second thing I would do is sit down and do a massive brain dump of all of these things that you're keeping in your head right now that are adding to the overwhelm. So just list them all out, whether. And I normally like to break it up into sections so it's like stuff that, like little stuff I need to get done in my business now bigger ideas I want to do later. Personal things like go to the dentist, like have a hair book a haircut, remember to, you know, buy a gift for the lady at daycare. Like, you know, just all that, just get it all down, spend you know, 30 minutes or whatever, just like regurgitating it onto a page and then go through it and actually start putting it into your calendar. Like if you've got a something like asana or ClickUp or trello, just start making them tasks and popping a couple of ones into each week and just get them all scheduled so you don't have to be trying to remember all these things anymore. They're written down, they're gonna get done, you know, spread them out over a couple of weeks so you're not trying to do them all at once. And that should help you feel like a couple of tons lighter. And then the Third thing that I would do, Sorry, I said this was two parts, but there's really three. The third thing I would do is go and look at some of those tasks, and I want you to try and find three to five hours worth of stuff that you do that you can outsource to a VA and then go get that va. Because if you can free up for yourself just starting with that, you know, three to five hours a week of your time to a VA, who maybe you're going to pay $15 an hour or $10 an hour or, you know, whatever it's going to be, depending on where they are and what kind of skills they have, that is going to pay itself back a hundred times over. And just the fact that you're going to have that extra time, you're going to have that extra support, you know, in those three and three to five extra hours, which they'll probably get done a lot quicker than that, by the way. Like, usually those tasks are things that are not in your zone of genius, so you're not necessarily doing them as quickly as you can.

Once you've got that person doing that stuff for you, then all of a sudden that gives you more time to start doing the bigger tasks, the more important tasks, the stuff that's going to move you forward. But you're not going to be able to do any of that stuff if you are right now in that state of overwhelm. And if you're staying in there for a long time, that's where people get burnt out. That's when people give up. And I don't really. I really, really don't want that for you. So three things. Number one, take a break. Number two, brain dump everything. And number three is find just as a three to five hours of stuff that you can outsource. You know, it's. Even if it's just two hours to start with and you find someone who's maybe $15 an hour who can do it, like that's 30 bucks a week to give you back two hours of quality time. Tell me that is not worth it every day of the week. So those would be. Those are my questions, guys. Well, sorry, those are your questions and my answers. If you've got any other questions for me, make sure you hit me up over at hellofunnels on Instagram DM Us. And, you know, we'll. We'll be probably doing another one of these episodes because this is so much fun. I hope you really liked it. Let me know in as a tag me on Instagram @hellofunnels. Let me know what your biggest aha was or takeaway was and if you loved this episode, make sure you share it as much as possible. Help us get the word out because it is my mission to help as many women and entrepreneurs as possible to create their own chilled version of online business. Because it is possible. And the more people who can hear our message and hear our tips like this, the more the easier and the faster we'll be able to do that. So thank you so much guys for hanging out with me this week. I hope it's been super valuable. I hope you loved it. Until next week guys. Keep doing what you do and I will 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 exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.