Eps 134 Kayse Morris on Building a Multi-million Dollar Course Business

Casey Morris, welcome to her Empire Builder.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. And thanks for staying up late so the world can talk with you.

Regular listeners will be able to tell because I always record. My normal recording time is like 7 o' clock in the morning when, like before the day kind of starts and it's now quarter past 10 at night. So like my voice is got that like sexy, sultry low thing going on.

I love it. Well, I feel like I have swapped roles and I'm the opposite. I'm not a very good morning person, so I'm struggling this morning.

It's all right. Next week we're talking and we're the opposite. You're up in the night and I'm up in the morning.

That's right.

The joys of having friends on the opposite side of the world.

I hope we can be real friends in real life one day.

I know when the world opens back up again. Yes. Okay, so I'm not going to go back to the beginning of your story. Million Dollar Micro Business, which is my new book, which you are a featured success story in, because you're such a legend, has your whole origin story in there. But the one that I would love you to share is of your first online course launch. Because what I find is a lot of people build up to their launch and they're like, alright, this is it. This is what I'm my secret to success. I'm going to be a millionaire. Let's go. And you were going like, I want to play my Netflix. Bill, can you tell me the story of your first launch?

Sure. I had never really heard of launching before I launched my first program. It was all really, really new to me and I just wanted to create a course that could help people. And mostly people that asked me the question, can you help me one on one? And I was drowning trying to help as many people as I could. So I thought, well, I'll have a course. And then I found that there's this thing called launching. And so I said, you know, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. So I'm going to try my best to make this a success, but not with the hope to make a lot of money. I honestly, honestly thought, like big goals were anywhere between $5,000 and $25,000, which was so much money. It still is a whole lot of.

Money, you know, Great result for a first launch. You'd be stoked with that.

Heck yeah. So $5,000 was double what my teaching salary was each month. So if I could make $5,000, you know, we had made it. I was seven months pregnant with our fourth child at the time, and I was just. I was all in. And I was really excited. I couldn't sleep at night. I was reading all the books, taking all the courses. I wanted to do everything right, so if it didn't work out, I could go back and say, okay, well, what did I do here? What did I do here? So I wanted to follow, like, a really proven path so that it wasn't just me kind of shooting arrows in the dark, you know, I wanted to say, all right, if this doesn't work, then what could I do better? So I went all in. And it was the most amazing week of my life. I will never, ever forget it. I went into preterm labor from the excitement. I had to go to the hospital, and they had to stop my labor, which was. It's funny now looking back on it, but so much has changed since then. My life changed in a matter of probably 30 minutes when I opened up the doors to our first course. But you know that little goal of 5,000, $25,000 we made in 20 minutes. And it's the excitement still there, you know, that was two and a half years ago. And I can't believe that so much has happened in such a short amount of time.

It's such a moment. I think there's no better feeling than, like, surprising ourselves, which happens so rarely because we're such big dreamers that we rarely exceed our own expectations. But it was there and going, yeah, I love that. And what. Like, when that happened, what did you say to your husband? Like, what did he say? And how did that. Like, were you losing it?

Yeah, yeah. Losing it. To put it lightly, we have a routine, and when I'm pregnant, the routine is we take the kids to school. My husband doesn't have to be at work for about 45 minutes. He's a high school principal. And we go to one of our favorite little breakfast shops. So when I'm pregnant, we always get. I get a cookie. Like, I go all out. I get everything. And so I had had a good breakfast and a cookie. I had to be there early because we were opening cart about 8am so he had brought it all to me and gave me a kiss and was like, good luck. You know, look, if it doesn't work out, you know, the kind of thing that we. He's like, you've done a great job. You got to be Proud of that. Like, this is just the beginning, you know? And I was like, okay, okay, okay. And I said, well, I'll call you about lunchtime and just kind of keep you updated, but if I don't call you, don't call me because I'm probably stressing out. Okay? And he's like, okay. And I called him. He text me about 9:30 and he said, are you okay? And I was like, not okay at all. Call me right now. And I was crying hysterically. And so he thought something was drastically wrong. And I was like, you're never going to believe this. This is. This is. I can't even believe this is true. He's like, you need to breathe at this point. You know, we had already crossed like $30,000 in an hour and a half. And it was just. He's like, there's no way.

You're sitting there by yourself, heavily pregnant, with these students rolling in and going, oh, my gosh, I am amazing. I did this.

I can't even. I can't even describe it. You know, I had stripe on one screen and PayPal on the other, and I was hitting refresh. And, you know, it was so much fun, but it only lasted for this long because then there was work to do. I could not let these people down, you know, And I think that was my downfall for a while was that I lived and breathed it so much that I wasn't doing it in a healthy way or a sustainable way. But we had CART open for seven days, and my program helps teachers, it helps educators make money online. And at that point, it was just a course, and the course was $397. And in seven days we made over $100,000, which on a teaching salary of $38,000 a year, you know, there was nothing. There is no moment that can compare to that. And for anyone listening, thinking, yeah, but that'll never be me. That. Why not you? I never thought it would be me either, but it's been. And now that I dream bigger dreams, you know, anything is possible.

Totally. And I do think it's important to say as well that you did come out and launch like that for your first launch, but you had spent a really long time serving that community.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you don't. I didn't realize the breadcrumbs and the hype that I was leaving for years prior. So it is important to know there is no such thing as an overnight success. And I was giving free value three years before on a consistent basis, just out of, like, service for Fun and for enjoyment. And I had a YouTube channel and I was helping as many people for free as I could. And I had no idea that the universe or whatever higher power you believe in was going to pay me back for all of those. All of those moments.

Yeah. Do you know what? I love that you just said that. One of my favorite mentors. Because when I started making good money, I had a moment, which I don't know if you resonate with this or not, but of feeling weird that I was making more money than what I was so used to working so hard for every dollar that I felt like I was missing something by the money coming and I wasn't working so hard and all. And he explained it to me going, no, Tina, it's back paying. Like, you're getting all of this back pay for everything that you've done. If you were actually, actually an employee, you worked for years, underpaid. And I was like, yeah, I like that.

Yeah. And I still really struggle with that. I really struggle with making money, the type of money that I make, because I know what my students make and I know that $49 a month is a lot of money for them. So I resonate with that so much, is I have to really work on myself and not feel guilty for making money for the services that I provide.

Yeah. I mentioned that to someone the other day and they're like, what? What are you talking about? How could that possibly be? I'm like, oh, I work on it all the time. Yeah. So I want to ask you about that now because you are in. I mean, it's crazy that that was only two and a half years ago and you are now very heavily pregnant with baby number five.

Very heavily pregnant. That's a great way to put it.

Which I'm going, like, at that time when I was as pregnant as you were, I was like. Like I was huge.

Same, same.

You're amazing. But so you're now going, like, when you did that first launch, it's not like you went, okay, well, I am having my fourth child and I'm really pregnant, so I'm going to just wait and do this later. Like, you haven't let that get in your way, but how have you adapted the business so that you can actually function as a human and take care of yourself and all the other humans that you're responsible for, as well as growing this business that serves people so beautifully?

I don't know the answer to that. Luckily, I don't have a 40 hour a week job. Plus I'm doing this, I was doing that. I was a teacher for eight years. So luckily this is my full time gig and I have a team of amazing educators that help me. And so learning how to delegate is really how I learned how to balance everything. But make no mistake, the last two and a half years have been very difficult and very hard to manage. And I've grown a lot as a person. And I don't think it was until I hit the million dollar mark that I truly changed the way that I thought. I wrote on a sticky Note Back in 2018, whatever got you to $100,000 won't get you to a million. And I heard so many people say that and I thought, you know, I don't really, I didn't understand it and I don't know if you can really capture what that means until you've walked a mile in those shoes. But I work less now and make more money than I had ever made. And I heard gurus say that the less I work, the more I make. And I thought, like, you're crazy. I will outwork you. I can do all of these things. You know, I'm a go getter. But it's just, that's not the way it is anymore. So it's been a lot of a mindset shift. And that's what allowed us to say we wanted another child, was like, okay, I have time and energy and happiness that I'm not just devoting to my business, but also to my life. And the more that I pull, the more that I find people that can help me grow and our business grow. And I stop thinking about me, me, me and start thinking about we and our company and the future of what this looks like for so many other humans. And when my business really began to flourish and to take off. So I am so thrilled to take almost two whole months off. My husband is two for this baby and know without a doubt that my business won't suffer, but it's just going to grow. And that is a feeling that I hope every mom gets to feel. Because I have never had a maternity leave with all of my kids. I took three days off with my first, three days off with my second because I was in college. So to be able to say that I'm going to the beach, we are going to the beach for two months. I'm going to sit in a rocking chair and I'm going to nurse my baby and no one's going to, like, mess with me is the best feeling in the entire world. And that's My hope for every teacher in the world that they get to do what they want to do, whether that's a family or travel or whatever it is, but not be limited by money. But just know that you get to live this life with the best that life has to offer without stressing whatever that looks like to you.

Oh, Casey, I'm so happy for you.

You're so sweet.

Now, I want to ask you about that transition, though, because everybody that I know who has gone past a million dollar business has been on the tools at the start. So a lot of the time, you know, you mentioned what the gurus say before, and a lot of the time we hear like, outsource, outsource, outsource, outsource. And I think that's good at a certain level. But every, literally every single person that I know did it all themselves at the beginning. They knew ins and outs, how everything works, like it was their responsibility to understand how it all worked. And then once they got to the level, started handing things off. But then the hard part is, is changing that mindset around. No one can do it as quickly, as efficiently as well as what I can. How did you do that?

Oh, man, you hit the nail on the head, though. Everything you said is exactly how I would describe it. And I tell my students because they'll be in our communities, and they're like, okay, I need to hire this, this, this, this, and this out because I don't want to do it and I don't feel like learning it. And I'm the first person to jump on that question. And I'm like, tell me why you don't want to learn how to do it. And they said, well, I don't have time. And, you know, that's a very common thing that we have. But I believe without a doubt that the reason why our my business has flourished is because I learned how to do all of those things first, and I did them all myself. I don't believe you can truly hire people to do a good job unless you know the job that they're supposed to be doing. Because people, you need to inspect what you expect. And if you don't know what you expect out of a job or a service, it is impossible to know if someone is doing it right. I think Facebook ads is a prime example. People charge crazy money for Facebook advertising from 5,000 to $10,000 a month. Not to ment, not even including ad spend. Plus they'll take 10% of your ad spend. You're giving someone thousands of dollars a month. But you don't know how to run them yourself. There's, you know, there's zero way to check up to see if your money is being spent. Well, now, there's, there's a caveat to that, right? There's I can freak out and micromanage everyone because I know what they're supposed to be doing. Been that boss. Okay. Or there is a. I've hired competent people. They know my expectations and I'm going strategically check in. And then we're going to talk about where we are and where we could be. And I'm going to let them be creative and shine, you know, So I was the boss who gave the 100 steps, and you do all of these exactly this way. And if you don't, then I'm on step 67 and you're only on 64 and you need to be here. I've been that boss. I've hired those people who were just taking marching orders. And that was the hardest year and a half, probably for me as a person. I hated managing people. My team was not. We weren't in a good, like, headspace. It was just all around bad. There was a lot of bad energy. And I could easily say it was them, you know, oh, they were negative Nancy's and all of this. And, you know, there may be some truth into that, but I wasn't giving them the opportunity that they deserved to shine. And I was micromanaging. So I had like a wake up call and some of my team, we decided to clean house. And I know, I think I've chatted with you about that before. And I said, I never want to be that boss again. I'm starting fresh. I'm having a clean slate. And that has been the biggest difference is, yes, I've learned how to do everything that my team members are doing, but now hire people that I give the creative space. It's not, you work 10 hours and I give you 10 hours worth of work to do. It is you work 10 hours. I gave you five hours of work to do, and then you can take the other five hours and show me what you can bring to the table. We love initiative. That's a big thing for us. And they're so proud. And I'm over here, mouth open. Oh, my gosh, you're 50 steps ahead of me. And that has been the biggest, best thing is that giving people their own space to grow and to shine, they can outwork me, outperform me, and they can do it better than I ever could have done it because I've given them that freedom and that space to feel like what they do matters. And I would never, ever trade that. It's taken a while to learn it, but we're getting there.

It's such a beautiful feeling because otherwise, I think. I think it is what stops growth more than anything else, because when you're trying to micromanage everything, it's kind of like, well, if I grow more, that's just more people that I have to manage and look after, and I can't do that. So you've totally nailed it.

Well, I don't know about nailing it, but it's definitely. Honestly, I want to give all the credit to one of the employees that picked up the pieces when everything fell apart. She is. She sent straight from above. I don't know how else to put it, but she has more grace and integrity of any other human I've ever met before. And oftentimes as a teen, it's really easy to jump on a call and complain about all of the things that have gone wrong. And we were in that space where we jump on, and the first 30 minutes would be like, tell me all the problems. What's going wrong in the inbox? What's going wrong in the communities? And that set the stage for how we performed. And she was the person that said, no, let's don't do that. Let's talk about all the things we need to do this week first. And. And then she would allow me to vent but would never comment on it. And I think that that was so powerful because I've always been a positive person. But as you hang out with people and you start to become negative, you know how it is. It's just this whole pool. And she would listen and let me vent, and then she would never dwell on any one thing. It would be on to the next, on to the next. And over the last year, March has been a year since she's been full time with us. We don't complain about anything negative. Email in the inbox. Speed bump. Let me take over. Let's. Let's talk it out. I'm going to send her a video message and make sure everything's good. Negative post about us in a group. No big deal. Her motto is hurt people, hurt people. And so we're going to reach out and make sure that they're okay and see if there's anything we can do. And, you know, it's funny that all of the things we were focused on were growing and they were getting bigger and bigger and Bigger. And now I feel like everything that we do is 99% positive and those things that used to bother us don't even exist anymore. And I don't know if it's because we don't pay attention to them or if it's because we just truly feel like we're stepping into our purpose, but it's been the best.

Yeah. And so with online programs as well, finding team, I often find that it's really hard to find the skill set that we have and need with the different software programs and all of that sort of thing. As you've grown the team, have you got people based on that personality and integrity and trained them up or how have you done that as you've grown?

Yeah, both. We've had both. And I think that everyone on our team is very specialized in what they do, minus our full time employees. So we have two current full time employees and one that's about to transition to full time. So she'll be our third. And everyone else is, quote unquote, a contractor, you know, or a freelancer that is very smart, specialized in their knowledge base. And I used to try to find all of these people myself. And I would go, upwork is amazing. And I would interview like 10 or 15 people looking for a specific. I had a list of things that they had to answer, you know, very. But it paid off. And it's been a. It's been amazing. And so they may not all interact with each other, but they all have a specific purpose and things that they do. But we really like when people are very niched down and specific in their field. But now I do believe that people come into our lives when they're supposed to. So I ask all of the people on our team. Our copywriter is amazing and our Facebook ad strategist. And if I'm meeting someone, currently we're looking for a search engine optimization expert. So every time I want to call before I leave, hey, do you know anybody that's really good at SEO that you could give me a recommendation for? And that's been the best. I was looking for a podcast producer. So every person on the team. Do you know anybody that's good at podcasting? Could you ask your friends and let me know? And it's like those people have been the best people to hire ever because someone recommended them to us.

And good people know good people.

Yes.

Yeah.

Our podcast producer. Oh my gosh. And a lot of these people I've never even met in real life, but I just want to hug them and Tell them how much they mean to us. Because it's just been so wonderful this last year to work with all of these people. Virtually so good.

And so what else have you found has been the biggest difference? Since you've gone past that million, now you're on the pathway to kind of 5 million. What have you had to change in the business?

Me doing everything. Some days I don't feel worthy because I don't feel like I do as much as I used to. But in the books, what's your day.

To day look like now?

Yeah, sure. So I used to have a list of things to do from the time I got to work at 7:30am, 7:45 until 2, when I picked my kids up from school. So it revolved around checking the inbox and getting into Asana and then literally taking all the tasks that are in Asana, updating this Kajabi page and updating this email and responding to this person and getting in the communities and going live. And my day was booked for eight hours. I would take a break for a walk and lunch. And now a lot of days I have no tasks assigned to me. None, none, zero. I get to work and the inbox, I was, I left, I was off for spring break and I got back to work and I was like, man, this inbox is going to take me forever. I set aside two hours. I had four emails.

Yes.

And I was like, I called the team. I was like, I love you guys.

I only had four emails.

And they said, well, we tried to manage everything that was manageable. And that is like, that's the best feeling in the world. But you feel guilty. Almost like I've been gone for a week and it took me three minutes to respond to these four emails. So now my day to day is focused on content creation and something that I'm super passionate about. So we think about the business as a pyramid. And in order to make myself feel worthy and happy, I still have to be creating content for my students and it helps every person in the business. So I create our core piece of content for the week and every person on the team of our 16 members takes that and then we repurpose it in a different way. So our all roads lead back to the podcast. That's kind of our core piece of content. And I write every single podcast episode from start to finish. So our blog post for the week revolves around that, our Instagram posts, our copywriter takes that and turns it into our newsletter and then uses that for some of our launch copy and stuff. Like that. So our podcast director just takes my notes and creates the show notes. So it's been really cool to think of it as that pyramid and to see everyone working in their own way because it really just allows me to focus on what I'm super passionate about, and that's teaching. So I get to write a lesson plan for the week, basically. And everyone else is like, they're the students that are helping make that a reality. Yeah.

Gosh, that is so good. And so are you like, batched in super far in advance to have the baby now?

I feel like I'm such a big girl to say this, but I am. We are completely done through August and it's now what's today May.

That's the best feeling ever.

It is now when you're in the thick of it. It is intense. But we are batched for the all for August through August for the podcast. And then of course, we have other things, like I'm a coach weekly for our students, but we also are bringing in coaches to help. So that's another weekly task that I need to do to be creative is to coach people. And I'm also creating a lot of content in our programs. So in addition to that, I'm teaching and re updating constantly. And, you know, it's just one of those things where we live in the world that's ever changing, so we have to constantly, like, keep up and update. So I'm always working on different ways to make the program better too.

Yeah. Which I think is the thing, the thing that you should be working on. Like, that's what it is. But you touched on something just real quick there that I was like, oh, that's something that's changed as you've grown, is you've brought in other coaches. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to know how you went with that and I want to know how the communication with the students went with that.

Super nerve wracking. And I don't want to like, it wasn't a home run the first couple times I tried to hire people on the team to help. And there was definitely a difference. I felt like people weren't feeling valued. And so there was. There was a difference between hiring coaches that stuck and resonated with our audience and hiring coaches that I just hired to do. To do's, you know, so the employee I was mentioning before, she. Our community loves her. They love her. And so I said, you know, Allie, what if you came in and you just did one coaching call a month and it was our basic. It's basically our most basic call that we do. And we just see how it goes. And I'll come in there with you. And we kind of just would have a conversation as we introduced them to her. And that was how it all started. And people would begin asking her questions as they. Because they started to realize how valuable she was. And I was constantly saying, look, guys, I didn't do that. Because a lot of times they would say, casey, we want your exact process on how you did this, this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, she did it. Yeah, she did it. Ask her. You know, I don't know how she did it. So as I started to give her that power and authority, our community just said, wow, Allie does know all of these things.

Yeah.

And so she takes over. She does two coaching calls for us a month. And while I'm on maternity leave, our other full time employee has been in and we've been doing the same thing with her. She's taking over Ali's calls and Ali's gonna take mine. And then our big goal for next year is we're creating a certification program so that our students can make money teaching our programs, which is why I'm doing what I'm not doing what I do to make myself money. I'm doing what I do to make my students money. So how can I give them our programs so that they can make a million dollars, too?

That's so good.

I hope it works.

Yeah. You know, that was going to be. My next question was like. Like, what are the goals? Like, where are you heading to next? And that's where it's going.

Yeah. So we've been preparing. We slowed down this year so that we can speed up next year. And we've been preparing.

I love you. Say we slowed down this year. Yeah, not really.

But we're not chasing all the shiny objects. We got really, really simplified on what we offer, and that has been amazing. We only offer two things now. Which is the best feeling in the entire world because we had like 54 offers at one point.

Oh, yeah. But I think we all do that. Like, I had, by the end of my first year, I think had 27 offers that I was doing, and now I have three.

Yeah. And it makes it so much easier to manage mentally, doesn't it?

Yeah. And for customers to know what you do as well.

Yes.

Yeah. My thing was, every time someone would ask me something, I'd go, yeah, yeah, I can create that. And so I create it and package it and sell it, and then, oh, yeah, we do it.

We do. But if you can, like, start just pumping that into your flagship program. Yes, that is the key. And whenever I interview people on the show and I love to hear their, like, ping pong ball, because they've got all of these different things that they're doing. And I'm like, at the end of the show, I'm like, okay, let's package it all into, like, one or two products.

Yes. Yes.

That'll be so much easier.

It's so much easier for life. And you've. You've really worked it out. I love it. Alrighty. I'm gonna let you go. I could talk to you all day long. Follow Casey on Instagram, let her know, and hopefully when this comes out, actually, what date is the baby due?

June 10th.

You will have the baby. She will be in the world. So you can go and see Casey's.

Baby.

And you can read all about Casey's story in Million Dollar Micro business as well, which I'm so excited. Excited we'll come out. Casey, thank you so much. You're always just such a bundle of joy. Well, you're gonna have a bundle of joy. Like you're a bundle of joy with a bundle of joy. And so clever. And it's just gonna be massive what you create. I mean, what you've done with five children, Millie, in two and a half years is so inspirational.

Well, thank you, Tina. This was so much fun. I appreciate you.

Thank you.