Podcasting Secrets

In the last episode with Kate Toon, we discussed how to build a digital business from scratch by growing and leveraging a community. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some key principles from Kate’s book Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur and several ways we can provide value to our customers. 

Finding Our Superpowers

Part of our entrepreneurial journey should include discovering our superpowers. What are we the best at? If we want to provide value to our customers, we need to figure out what we are good at. What value can we offer? As we discover our superpowers, we will begin to resonate with our audience. 

“It's really good to identify what your individual superpowers are rather than trying to fit the mold of what society tells you have to be, the superpowers [you must have] to be a great business human,” Kate said.

As we search for our unique superpowers, we can look for help from the people close to us. We may not be the best judge of our own superpowers. Often, the way we perceive ourselves is different from the way others perceive us. Kate suggests we ask our friends and family how they would describe us in two or three words. This can help us discover talents and abilities we may not have realized we had. 

When we discover what we are good at, we will also have more knowledge about our weaknesses. “Sometimes our superpowers are also our kryptonite. They work both ways. My honesty is great, you're always going to get a straight answer from me, but sometimes my honesty can be a bit brutal, and people aren't going to like that. But it's who I am, and I have to own it,” Kate said. 

In my career, someone taught me that our strengths and weaknesses are like a stick. When we pick up a stick, we pick up both sides. One side of that stick is our superpower, it's our talent, it's the way we are going to change the world and make our greatest contribution. And the other side of the stick is our weakness. For example, we might have a salesperson that's really good at relationships and communicating, but on the other hand, they're just not as a detail orientated and we'd never have them manage the books. 

Every superpower has an associated weakness, just like Superman has his kryptonite. We as entrepreneurs may judge ourselves based upon our weaknesses. However, we should focus on our individual strengths and use them to our advantage. We can also find other people to help bring the skills and talents we lack. It takes a village to run a business. Sometimes we just need to find that business partner or employee who can have strengths to make up for our weaknesses.

Navigating the business world is difficult. The only real way we can successfully make it through is by building our confidence. We need to recognize our strengths and use them to add value, while also recognizing our weaknesses to improve them. As we focus on our strengths and get help with our weaknesses, our chances of success and monetization will increase. 

The Road Map

Kate doesn’t use a business plan. Instead, she creates micro goals and a rough roadmap of the direction she wants to go. 

We don’t need to create an entire business plan to have a successful business, but we do need to have the main goal. We need to determine who we are, what we stand for, what our values are, and how we can use our strengths to help others. Once we have our main goal and direction in mind, we can sketch a rough road map of where we want to be in a year, five years, or 10 years. However, we don’t need to plan out every single step of the way from the beginning.

Following this philosophy, major business plan competitions have switched to business model competitions.   

Once we know our goal, we can begin building our website. This should be a very strong foundation for our customers to always go back to when they have a problem or question. Then, our goals can lead to processing, pricing, branding, and eventually marketing. We can also start to bring in people to fill in the gaps of our weaknesses. 

We don’t need to have a set-in-stone plan. We need to be flexible, and if we have a strict business plan we are determined to follow, it may cause us to get stuck. Instead of a firm plan, we can create a road map with different possible routes and paths to take. When we are moving towards our main goal, it doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as we do. 

10 Ways to Provide Value to Our Customers 

In Kate’s book, she discusses her value ladder. The first step is for her customers to join her Facebook community. This is a very low barrier to entry as it requires no commitment or cost while providing the value of building a network and gaining access to content. All customers have to do is provide an email. Some of the content at the base of the ladder includes her podcast, blog posts, events, and content in Clubhouse. The goal of this content is to raise awareness about her business and expand her reach.

At the next step of the ladder, Kate offers additional free value through the customers’ emails. Customers can get access to free online courses, resources, and a workbook. Once her customers are enticed by the free value and continue to climb the value ladder, the value being offered increases with the cost. Kate can attach a price to her content since it is becoming more valuable to her customers. 

She begins with a low-cost online course on SEO that is about $87 and eventually leads to a master class for about $1500. These masterclasses can also lead to membership and coaching sessions which generate recurring revenue.

Here at 10 ways, Kate provides value to her customers:

1. Community
2. Blog posts
3. Podcast
4. Events
5. Clubhouse
6. Workbooks
7. Online courses
8. Reviews
9. Coaching
10. Memberships

At each step of the ladder, Kate provides new value. It starts with little to no cost or commitment and eventually moves to the content of higher value with a higher cost or time commitment such as a monthly subscription. The value ladder works like a funnel, with Kate’s ultimate end goal being to get people to sign up for the membership site so she can generate recurring revenue. 

However, with memberships, we have to be careful to avoid overloading and overwhelming our customers with content. “Memberships are about transformation,” Kate said. “They're about results. People want to see that they're moving forward and making changes. And content actually overwhelms people, because they're like, ‘Wow, I'm not getting through all this content, therefore I'm not getting the value from this membership that I should, so I'm going to leave.’”

Instead of including limitless content in her memberships, Kate works with a “less is more” approach. They include a couple of master classes each month on topics groups vote for. Instead of having 100 master classes to look at in one month, customers are introduced to two or three new classes each month. She also provides training each month, reviews, and a one-hour coaching session. 

“[A membership program] is not about a lot of content, but it's trying to give people a personal experience as much as possible,” Kate said. “I think a good membership is about education, but it's really about support, community, . . . and coaching.” 

One of the main goals with Kate’s value ladder is to get customers to subscribe and provide her with recurring revenue streams. Recurring revenue is a security measure. While Kate makes a good amount of money from her online courses, it’s a one-time purchase. What happens if she launches a course that fails? 

“[Recurring revenue] is just about that security. It means I can make more intelligent decisions, I can afford to have a team, [and] I can make promises to my team about their work and how long they're going to be around for,” Kate said. “It means I can sleep at night.”

As we find our superpowers, sketch out a rough roadmap, and create a value ladder for our customers, we will begin to find success in our businesses.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kate for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We should seek to discover our superpowers. If we want to provide value to our customers, we need to figure out what we are really good at.
2. Every superpower has an associated weakness. Sometimes we may need to find a business partner or employee who has strengths to make up for our weaknesses.
3. We don’t need to create an entire business plan to have a successful business, but we do need to have the main goal or a business model.
4. We can create a value ladder with multiple different types of content to give our customers to guide them towards a purchase decision. 
5. Recurring revenue gives our business security. 

Connect with Kate

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kate or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at KateToon.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
4. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How do you provide value to your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at:

How can we turn our small idea into a successful business with a reliable income? In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to build a digital business from scratch through an online community.

Kate Toon is an award-winning businesswoman and SEO strategist who has helped more than 10,000 businesses demystify digital marketing, grapple with the Google beast, and grow their success. She was named the Business Woman of the Year at the National My Business Awards, and she is also the author of Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur and the host of the Kate Toon Podcast and the Hot Copy Podcast. While Kate’s digital business is very successful now, she had to start from scratch and build her way to success. In her journey, one of the first things she did was build an online community. 

Build a Community

One of the first steps we should take when starting a digital business is to build a community.

“My whole business has been built on creating what some people would call a tribe. I like to think of it as a Viking Horde—a big horde of people . . . who are there for you and who support you through your business journey. They'll be the first to listen to your podcast and the first to buy your products,” Kate said. “Community is really the foundation of everything I do.”

Before we start a podcast, create an online course, or launch a SaaS product, we should begin to build a following and community. That way, when we release a new product or service, we will already have a group of people who are willing to use it. We can begin by selecting a social platform to post frequent content on. From there, we can slowly build our brand and community on our own platform, such as our own email newsletter, before we offer any products or services. 

Kate began her career in advertising and eventually moved to digital marketing. When she got pregnant, she realized her current job wouldn’t be a good fit for her new lifestyle, so she gave up her job and started her own business in SEO. Near the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey, she spoke at an event in Australia: ProBlogger. They had 10-minute slots for audience members to get up and speak, so Kate gathered her courage, got up on stage, and spoke about SEO to about 600 people. 

When she got back home, she went online to a Facebook group for the ProBlogger community. She left a message saying that if anyone wanted to learn more about SEO, they could come and join the personal group she had created. That short, 10-minute speech became one of her greatest home runs because it gave her an opportunity to build her community. Her group now has 10,000 people in it.

“From that group, I started building all the courses and resources that I now have and the podcasts and everything. It came from that one little speaking opportunity that I was brave enough to do,” Kate said. 

Once we have a following, we can launch all of our products and services into that group, and then we will have an instant audience which can lead to instant sales. 

Build Engagement 

As we build our communities, we need to remember to constantly engage with our audience. 

Kate said her best monetization secret is to not waste any money on paid ads. She doesn’t spend any money on Facebook or Google ads. Instead, every marketing campaign she launches is through content marketing and organic SEO. 

“It's really about that top of funnel awareness, so having the podcasts and being very present on all social media,” Kate explained. “Be present and really work on engagement. . . . No comment gets left behind, that's actually part of my company mantra.” 

Instead of spending money on ads our customers likely won’t trust, we can engage with them directly in our communities. We should take the time to engage with everyone that comments on our posts. As we build those customer relationships, we help direct them through our marketing funnel and lead them to a purchase decision without ever having to launch paid advertisements. As we respond to our customers, they will be much more likely to comment again. 

One of the most important parts of building a business is building relationships. If we aren’t engaging with the community we have created, we aren’t getting to know our customers. And if we don’t have good relationships with our customers, we aren’t going to have a successful business. 

In Kate’s business, she personally responds to each comment her followers or group members make. She doesn’t have social media managers reply to comments for her because she wants her customers to feel like they have a personal relationship with her and her brand. She wants them to feel valued and cared for. 

“We all want to feel seen and heard and listened to. We want to feel valued and if you can give your customers that feeling, genuinely, then I think that's a beautiful thing and way better than spending money on Facebook ads,” Kate said. 

Be Unique

In our businesses, we need to focus on being unique and personal. We should strive to develop our own personal brand and create our own voice and personality. 

It can be hard to avoid comparing ourselves to our competition as we build our own digital business from scratch. Yet, we should remember what Theodore Roosevelt said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” If we constantly compare ourselves to competitors who are more successful than us, we’re going to feel like a failure. We shouldn’t compare our beginnings to someone else’s years of progress, and we shouldn’t obsess over trying to be exactly like them. 

The biggest failure Kate made in her journey was obsessing over her competition and comparing herself to them too much. When she did this, she felt inferior to them and it brought her a lot of self-doubts. 

“You really have to rely on your own skills. Not everybody's going to like you and that's okay. There's always going to be competition, and everyone is always going to have choices, and you just have to focus on why they're going to choose you, not worry about why they're choosing other people,” Kate said. 

Instead of focusing on our competition, we should focus on ourselves. We need to determine how we can offer a unique value to our audience that other competitors won’t have. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, we should focus on being ourselves. We should be personal and unique. 

Be Authentic

In our communities, we need to remember to be authentic. 

One of the biggest tectonic shifts Kate sees happening today is the increasing popularity of audio. “We are really craving community and connection in a way that we never have and that's partial because [of] this collective trauma we've all been through in 2020,” Kate said. “I think the future [is] trying to make smaller communities. I think we need that right now in the world.” 

She continued to explain that audio, such as podcasts or Clubhouse, is a great way to build community. Clubhouse is an audio-only communication platform. A host can open up a room and invite others to participate and have an audio-only discussion. 

In order to take full advantage of the opportunity Clubhouse provides, we need to take control. “You can't be a passenger, you have to drive your journey on Clubhouse so you can't sit in other people's room hoping they're going to bring you on stage and you might get two seconds talking to Grant Cardone. You need to be your own Grant Cardone,” Kate explained. “You need to set up your own rooms, bring across your personality, your knowledge, and speak to your people. Don't try to find lighthouses, be a lighthouse and have people come to you.” 

In audio platforms, it’s hard to hide. The real you will come out and hopefully, that will be a good thing. Personality and authenticity help us connect with others as we relate to them. People are tired of having to look and be a certain way. When we listen to a podcast or engage in a discussion on Clubhouse, we don’t have to care about looks, we only get to focus on ideas and conversation. It gives us a chance to talk and listen to real, authentic people, without being distracted by the worldly visual status cues we look for. 

“I have image fatigue—the Instagram perfection fatigue of just having to look a certain way, be a certain way, and being judged on your sex or your color. I think Clubhouse is the great leveler,” Kate said. “I can't see you. I have to take you not on face value, but on voice value. . . . I think it's a more intimate relationship and it feels more honest than some of the other channels like YouTube and Instagram. It feels less produced and more raw and more honest.”

By removing the visual aspect of our content, we may be a little less pretentious and more authentic. We don’t want to create a performance whenever we interact with our audience and community. We want to be real and authentic. When we are, our audience will really start to connect with us. As we build our communities, we want to remember to engage with them, provide unique value, and stay authentic. As we do this, our small startup will start to gain traction on the path to success. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kate for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. One of the first steps we should take when starting a digital business is to build a community.
2. Once we have a following, we can launch our products and services into that instant audience, which can lead to instant sales. 
3. Instead of spending money on ads our customers likely won’t trust, we can reach them through SEO and content marketing and then engage with them directly in our communities.
4. In our businesses, we need to focus on being unique and personal. We should strive to develop our own personal brand and personality instead of trying to be like our competitors.
5. We want to be real and authentic. When we are, our audience is much more likely to connect with us. 

Connect with Kate

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kate or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at KateToon.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine and get a free Passion Marketing ebook.
2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
4. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Have you built an online community? If so, what secrets, stories, and strategies can you share about growing a community? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/153-to-build-a-digital-business-start-by-building-a-community/ 

Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation. In our last episode with Kelly Roach, we discussed strategies to successfully run live product launches, Kelly’s entrepreneurial journey, and the power of collaboration. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing nine principles for success from Kelly’s book Unstoppable.

It’s Never Too Late

Before we dive into these principles, Kelly talked about another topic in her book that really resonated with me: it’s never too late to start to dream big and achieve amazing success. Kelly shares several examples of people who didn’t achieve success until a little later in their lives. 

Julia Child was 39 before she published her first cookbook. After working in advertising and media, her TV debut came at the age of 51. Ray Kroc bought McDonald's in 1954 at the age of 52. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 before she published the first of the Little House books. Colonel Sanders franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 62 and sold it for $2 million 12 years later. The first true Walmart opened when Sam Walton was 44. Henry Ford didn't launch the Ford Motor Company until he was 40.

We often think if we aren’t successful by a certain age then we never will be. For most of us, our greatest success is going to come in our 40s and 50s. When we are that age, we’re actually in a better position to find success because we’re more mature and we have more life experience.

“Wherever you are, do not let your life be wasted. It's never too late. It's not about how old or young you are, it's about the amount of tenacity, determination, and perseverance that you have.” - Kelly Roach

• Stop Resenting the 1% and Join Them

Kelly has seen many people who have a negative attitude toward people who are wealthy, yet in the next breath, they’re saying they wish they were that wealthy. If we have a goal to become wealthy we can’t resent people who have achieved that goal. Kelly said, “You're not going to achieve something that you resent, you're going to repel that. You're telling the universe ‘I don't want that. I don't like that.’”

While some of the 1% had previous advantages in their lives, many of them are self-made. They worked hard to get to where they are today. Instead of resenting them, we can learn from them. They have given us an example as they’ve carved their paths to success, and if we learn from their experiences we may find success too.

• Cultivate the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Most of us have had 18 years of programming telling us that failure is bad. In our culture, it is very important to get good grades or do well in athletics or music, or other extracurricular activities. This can set us up for success in many ways, but it can also make us afraid of failure.

When Kelly was first starting as an entrepreneur, she was so afraid of failure. She was used to being in the corporate world where if you make a mistake, you can get fired. In entrepreneurship, however, we have to make mistakes in order to learn how to execute. Mistakes and risks are part of the job, and it can be hard to shift our mindset to realize that mistakes are okay.

“If you only play it safe and you stay in the box of what you already know how to do, you're not going anywhere,” Kelly said.

• Act Like a CEO if You Want to Earn Like a CEO

Everybody wants success. Everybody wants a big house, expensive vacations, and their dream car. People who have those things live their lives in a specific way. They have discipline and perseverance, they’ve made sacrifices, they make investments in themselves, and they hold themselves to a certain standard all because they see themselves as a CEO.

Kelly has seen many people who think, “Once I’m successful, I’ll do the work.” They’re trying to put the cart before the horse. We can’t start working hard after we get the promotion. We have to work hard to get the promotion in the first place. We can’t say, “I’ll build a team once I hit six figures,” because we’re not going to get there without a team. And we can’t wait to take risks until we see the payoffs.

Entrepreneurship requires us to dive in and give it everything we’ve got. It’s not something we can just dip our toes in and find success. Success is much more likely when we start acting like a CEO, putting in the hard work, and making the hard decisions.

• Act like a Leader

Along with acting like CEOs, we also need to act as leaders. Kelly said. “You have to see yourself as a leader. You have to conduct yourself as a leader. You have to be a leader in all things: word and deed. If you want to go far and go high in life—and it doesn't matter what that is; that could be at home with your children, in your relationship with your spouse, in your community, in your church, in your business and your career—you have to conduct yourself at that level if you want the rewards of life that come at that level.”

We are always at the podium as entrepreneurs. Everything we say and do is on display. So we must be ready to act as leaders at all times. 

• Develop Business Mastery

Growing a business has a lot of moving pieces: sales, marketing, infrastructure, systems, team building, leadership, HR, legal, etc. There are a lot of moving pieces to build a company, but often entrepreneurship is simplified down to acquiring clients.

Someone can secure the huge investor and still lose everything, going right back to where they started. Someone can get the big win on the front end with clients, but they don't have the backend systems to support it so they lose them all.

“Business mastery,” Kelly said, “is really about investing in committing to learning the components of building and running a successful business and creating mastery of your own skillset in being the leader. . . . Really think about the energy and effort that you're putting into developing your own skills as a CEO and as a business owner and [make] sure that the way you're investing in mastering these different fundamentals of business aligns with how high and how far you want to go. Your business can't grow beyond your growth.”

• Invest in Ourselves

Let’s face it, none of us know it all. None of us have achieved what we’re trying to achieve before. But there are people who have achieved our goals before or have experience in the things we’re trying to do. 

In order to reach our goals, we need to be investing in ourselves. “Get the mentorship, the information, education, support, the resources that you need in order to achieve the outcomes that you want.,” Kelly said. “Your best investment is always going to be in your worth because you touch on everything else that you come in contact with.”

We should be investing in ourselves every day, even if we only have time for something small like listening to an informational podcast. We can't fill up the gas tank in our car once a year. It's something we've constantly got to keep up.

• Don’t Avoid Sales

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners almost have this phobia of sales. They don't want to spend time on it, they don't have a sales system, strategy, or salesperson in their company or on their team.

The problem with this is that everything in life from landing clients to getting kids to do their chores is sales. Everything is sales; everything involves a negotiation. “This is something that the vast majority of people really avoid. They have this negative perception, but it's really helping someone to do what's in their own best interest by showing them what's in it for them,” Kelly said. One of the most important skills that an entrepreneur can learn is how to be a great salesperson because everything is sales.

• Be Disciplined 

We often look at successful people and say, “Wow. They’re so talented.” Talent does play a role in success, but it isn’t the most important thing. What is the most important thing? Discipline. 

Discipline is available to anyone. We choose to be persistent. We choose to be disciplined enough to work through challenges, to do what we don't feel like doing because it's the right thing to do, and to be a good leader even when we're exhausted and don't want to get back on the phone with someone one more time for the day.

“Discipline is the price that you pay to achieve greatness in every area of life, and almost always the answer to why you don't have what you want in your life is discipline,” Kelly said.

When I went to college, I received the largest private scholarship the university offered, but I was nowhere near the smartest kid there. What I had in my favor is I could outwork anybody. A lot of the time the biggest scholarships, best grades and GPAs, and the best business opportunities don't go to the smartest person, but they go to the person who's willing to discipline themselves and outwork everybody.

• Focus on Something Bigger 

If our goal is just to pay the bills, we’re only going to get so far. Paying the bills, making money, and buying a house are all great goals but they are only going to bring us so much fulfillment. Focusing on something bigger than ourselves is the thing that is going to propel us to achieve our goals and dreams and bring fulfillment, joy, and a spark to our lives.

It will also help us during hard times. We’ll be able to put things in perspective, deal with challenges, and work through hardships. Kelly said, “When I'm having a really big challenge when I'm struggling, I really try to put things in perspective and remember the why and remember that picture because I know that will help me recharge and refocus and get my mindset back on track to keep moving forward.”

Life is really about something bigger than us. The whole purpose and meaning are about doing good and making the world a better place. That’s where we’ll find true fulfillment. 

Thinking about the big picture can be easier than thinking about the small. When we think small, not only do we think small in our solutions, but it’s also hard to get people excited and motivated. It takes just as much effort to do things small. Kelly said, “When you're solving small problems, you box yourself into small solutions. When you are solving the 10x problem, you're opening up your whole world, and you're paving a path for yourself to succeed at that next level.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kelly for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. It’s never too late to find success. Success doesn’t have to happen at a certain age.
2. If we resent what we want to become, we will never become it.
3. Don’t be afraid of failure. As an entrepreneur, it is part of the job.
4. We have to put in the hard work if we want success.
5. We must see and conduct ourselves as leaders.
6. We should be striving to learn about every aspect of our business, not just getting clients.
7. We should invest in ourselves daily to help our business grow with us.
8. Everything involves sales. We shouldn’t try to avoid it.
9. Discipline will get us to where we want to be in life.
10. Focusing on something bigger will give us fulfillment and allow us to think of big solutions.

Connect with Kelly

If you want to learn more about Kelly or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at UnstoppableEntrepreneur.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How are you investing in yourself to get where you want to be? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/152-9-principles-for-unstoppable-success/ 

Kelly Roach is an expert at successfully launching new products. She is the creator of the Live Launch Method and the best-selling author of the book Unstoppable. Kelly has been featured in some of the world's leading publications including Inc. and Forbes. She also hosts the podcast The Unstoppable Entrepreneur Show. 

Kelly is a business strategist who transforms overworked entrepreneurs into seven-figure CEOs by teaching them how to leverage timeless business principles employed by billion-dollar corporations. Kelly's current multimillion-dollar company, The Unstoppable Entrepreneur, is the fastest-growing coaching program on the market. 

The Live Launch

Kelly had tried it all when it came to launches. She’d done courses, webinars, email sequences, and funnels, but none of them ever resonated with her. After multiple failed launches she decided to try something different.

They scrapped the automation, landing pages, email sequences—everything. Kelly realized most launch strategies were created before there was live streaming. They were created when emails were all the rage, but nowadays texting and live streaming is very popular. 

The live launch centers around live streaming. They are focused on cultivating human connection. “[The live launch is] really focused on making deposits in the reciprocity bank, so that when you extend an invitation to someone to join your paid opportunity, they feel like they have received so much from you, and they actually have experienced more value from you for free than the last thing that they paid for,” Kelly said.

The framework consists of nine days, streaming at the same time every day. The first four days are focused on four pillars. The four pillars are centered on our methodology. When preparing for the launch we identify what our core methodology is that we want to be known for. What is our brand? What is the specific element of our space or industry? What is our certain way of doing things that no one else does? The live launch is about formalizing and crystallizing that methodology, and then breaking it into four pillars we believe are the most core essentials to someone having success.

On the fourth day, we pivot into the invitation, and then days five through nine are focused on diving deep and exploring people’s experiences from working with us. Over these five days, we're implementing the usual buying triggers that are part of the sales psychology that leads people to make an investment, but the difference is it's life and focused on the reciprocity mindset. As people go through this, the actions we teach them are giving them momentum and generating results for free. 

By the time we extend the invitation, the first law of motion comes into play: an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. The people are so excited about the breakthroughs and results they’ve gotten for free that when we ask if they’d like to extend the journey, they can’t help but say yes.

Kelly called this the simplest method on the planet for making millions online because it's so dumbed down. Many people struggle with a lot of the other launch mechanisms because there is so much complexity with the technology and moving pieces.

Kelly has seen this method work for many people, even a land flipping business. There was one woman whose business was only making about $1,000 a month. After working with Kelly for a year doing live launches, she made enough cash to buy the house of her dreams which she had spent years saving for. 

Kelly’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Kelly’s entrepreneurial journey started when she was in college. She was working three, sometimes four, jobs to put herself through her education without debt. One of her jobs was as a cocktail waitress at a bar. She noticed there was a big difference between nights when she hustled and put everything into serving more drinks and nights when she let herself relax and didn’t care how hard she was working. On the nights she worked hard, she could make $250-350 in tips versus about $50 in tips when she didn’t.

“I really learned that the amount of work that you put into something and having a strategy around how you do it really pays off. . . . You decide the value of your time. You decide what you're going to extract from any opportunity in life,” Kelly said. When we work hard, we can get so much more value out of our time.

After college, Kelly joined a Fortune 500 firm because she wanted the opportunity to be in a large company where she could learn business, gain upward mobility, demonstrate her work ethic and contributions, grow her income, and take advantage of opportunities. 

“I was the first one in and I was the last one out every single day,” she said. “What I learned was contribution in, value out. It doesn't necessarily come down to time. We have this perception sometimes that things could take a really long time. I ended up managing people my parents' age who've been in the industry for 20-25 years as a 23-year-old kid, and it was because I was doing the work. I was showing up; I was commanding that respect because of the contribution I was making.”

Sometimes we think we have to do our time before we go after things like this, but if we do the work and earn the respect, there’s no reason why we can’t accomplish our goals. Sometimes the only thing holding us back is our mindset. If we can overcome that mindset, we can get to where we want to be.

Kelly did her time in the corporate world and learned so much, but she got to the point where she thought, “I want to own my own life. I want to be in charge of my destiny. I want to have a family. I want to be charting my own course.” 

She decided she wanted to start her own business helping small business owners and changing their lives. She started her business on the side while still continuing her corporate job to have more financial security and show herself that she could make as much money in her business as in her executive job.

For several years, Kelly worked on the side during lunch breaks or in the evenings. Eventually, she was able to focus solely on the business, and now she does that along with partnering on three other businesses.

The Power of Collaboration

Kelly said the greatest home run of her career was having a great mentor. She said he taught her everything she knows about business. “I knew I had the tenacity, and I had the perseverance, and I had the work ethic, but he had the knowledge,” she said.

The best piece of advice he gave her was when she was in sales. Kelly was selling and loving it. She was doing her own thing, flying at the speed of light, and making a lot of money. Kelly’s mentor wanted her to go into management, but she didn’t want to because of all the success she was having. But he told her, “It does not matter in life or in business how much you can do alone, it doesn't matter if you're the best salesperson in the world, it is never going to scratch the surface of what you can do when you learn to get results through others.”

We can accomplish so much more when we work with others. There is so much power in collaboration. This is why it is important to have teams and support systems. They can help us achieve things that were never possible by ourselves.

Kelly said one of the biggest mistakes in her career was competing with all of her peers. “I would go back to the younger Kelly and say, ‘Be bold [and] don't feel like you're in competition with others. Someone's success doesn't mean that you can’t achieve that level.’”

When we compete with others, it can either intimidate us, causing us to play small, or it can drive us to only think about the competition, causing us to ruin those relationships.

Now, almost everything Kelly does is a collaboration with someone else. “You move from this mindset of thinking [about] your competition to a mindset of having collaborative partners, and it's much more fun that way.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kelly for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. The Live Launch focuses on cultivating human connection. Doing it live allows us to interact with our audience and make personal connections.
2. Live launches should focus on our core methodology, the things we specialize in that no one else does.
3. Utilizing the first law of motion is a great way to run launches because people will naturally want to take the next step.
4. We can decide the value of our time and how much we’re going to get from our experiences.
5. We can accomplish so much more when we stop focusing on competition and start focusing on collaboration.

Connect with Kelly

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kelly or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at UnstoppableEntrepreneur.com. 

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, an Independence Day episode of Monetization Nation. Today is the 4th of July, which is America’s independence day, and a day when we celebrate freedom. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five essential rights and freedoms we need as entrepreneurs. 

Freedom to Choose

One of the greatest gifts we have been given is the gift to choose for ourselves. God gave us the gift and freedom of agency. 

As entrepreneurs, it is essential we have the ability to make our own choices and pursue our own paths. An entrepreneur starts with an idea and organizes a business through financial risk and hard work. Creating our own business wouldn’t be possible if we weren’t given the right to agency. 

Dieter Uchtdorf, a religious leader, said, “You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay for the consequences of your choices.”

With the ability to make our own choices comes responsibility for our actions. We will receive the consequences, whether good or bad, that come from our choices. However, when we do make mistakes we can remember that Jesus Christ has given us freedom from sin if we repent and turn to Him. 

Freedom from Sin

Jesus Christ sacrificed his life for the spiritual freedom of mankind. He gave His life on the cross so we could overcome death, and he suffered in Gethsemane so we could overcome sin and live again. 

In the Bible, it says, “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (KJV Romans 8:22-23)

As humans, and especially as entrepreneurs, we are bound to make mistakes. We may mistreat our employees, make a business decision that compromises our ethics, or let stress damage our family relationships. However, no mistake or sin is too great to be forgiven. Jesus Christ gave us the freedom to be forgiven of our mistakes. 

Though God gave us the right to agency and worship, government and leaders have taken these freedoms away from men throughout history for control and power. In 1776, the United States of America took action to protect these rights. 

The Declaration of Independence

After years of war and sacrifice, the United States broke free from its allegiance to the British Crown and became independent. On July 4, 1776, the United States formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, giving Americans rights and freedoms for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  

The declaration was America’s first formal statement of independence and the right to choose their own government. American colonists and British soldiers began conflict in 1775—the Americans fighting for freedom and the British fighting to retain control. The Revolutionary War grew and in mid-June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, wrote the Declaration of Independence Congress adopted (Source: History.com). 

The second sentence of the declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Source: archives.gov)

July 4th has since been declared a national holiday in America, known as Independence Day. Families and friends get together to celebrate our rights and freedoms as Americans. As entrepreneurs, these freedoms are essential as they give us the right to create our own businesses, pursue our dreams, and create the life we choose. 

Freedom of Life

The Declaration of Independence protects our freedom to choose the life we want. We can choose to pursue business ventures and take risks or we can choose a career working for someone else. One of the biggest benefits of entrepreneurship is that it allows us to take control of our lives and take advantage of our freedom of life. We can choose to declare independence for ourselves in our careers and gain financial freedom.

Instead of working a 9 to 5 job under someone else, we seize the opportunity to choose our own hours and choose our own work. When we become entrepreneurs and create a successful business, we gain some amazing freedoms in our lives. 

When Steve Jobs was 21, he and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer from a garage. They both had a vision of a life they wanted to create for themselves and to do this, required some risk and hard work. 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” Jobs said. 

With the freedom of entrepreneurship comes hard work. If we want to be successful as an entrepreneur, especially at the beginning we may have to work even harder than we would in a regular job as an employee. We need to be willing to put in the time and resources to successfully execute our vision if we want to succeed. They are willing to invest and work hard now for their freedom down the road. 

In order to gain freedom of life, we often need to sacrifice time and resources. While Steve Jobs had to put in hours of work at the start, those hours of hard work led him to live a life he chose, not a life someone else chose for him. 

Freedom of Liberty

The right to liberty allows us to be free from oppressive restrictions imposed on our way of life. It also requires us to be aware of the rights of others, and not oppose them. 

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Liberty requires us to take responsibility and use the freedoms we have been given under the rule of law. We can’t use our freedoms to oppress someone else’s freedoms. 

As entrepreneurs, we not only have the opportunity to make our own lives better, but we can also shape the lives of others by respecting their freedoms. 

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wrote, “If people have the freedom to do what they want—whether that's taking a chance on a new idea or building their community—the inherent creativity and goodness in people will help different parts of society flourish. But the rule of law, strong economies, and community health are all related. When we impose unfair systems, it is easy to get in the way and push everything out of balance.”

He explained that we should strive to “give people the dignity and confidence to be entrepreneurial rather than making them feel helpless and dependent.” 

For example, Defy Ventures focuses on helping people with criminal histories become successful entrepreneurs. The founder, Catherine Hoke, came up with an entrepreneurship training program to help others (Source: Forbes). As entrepreneurs, part of our responsibility with our freedom is to help others. And, as we gain financial freedom for ourselves we will probably have the ability and desire to then help others gain their freedom. 

Freedom to be Happy

The Declaration of Independence protects our right to pursue happiness and our dreams. As we take control of our lives and use our freedom responsibly, we also need to remember that we have the freedom to be happy. If we are choosing a life in which we frequently feel upset, oppressed, angry, or sad, we have the freedom to change that. 

Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet, and writer said, “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

As entrepreneurs, it can be easy to get lost in the end goal. We get so focused on the tasks and projects we need to do that we forget to enjoy the process. If we aren’t happy, we have lost the true spirit of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship isn’t only about creating a life of freedom, but also a life we love that brings us and people around us joy. That’s what we’re trying to create.  

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. God gave us the gift and freedom of agency. We have the ability to make choices for ourselves, and we are accountable for our actions. 
2. Jesus Christ already paid the price so we can overcome death and sin. He gave us freedom from our mistakes, freedom to be forgiven of our sins.
3. For Americans, the Declaration of Independence protects our freedom to choose the course of our life. And, citizens of many other countries have the same protections for their freedom. Entrepreneurship allows us to take control of our lives and take full advantage of our freedom to live the life we choose. 
4. With the freedom of entrepreneurship comes hard work. We need to be willing to put in the time and resources to execute our vision if we want to succeed.
5. The right to liberty allows us to be free from oppressive restrictions imposed on our way of life.
6. As entrepreneurs, we not only have the opportunity to make our own lives better, but we can also shape the lives of others by respecting their freedoms. As we achieve freedom ourselves, we will naturally want to help others achieve that same freedom. 
7. The Declaration of Independence (or possibly a similar document in your other country) protects our right to pursue happiness and our dreams. 

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/150-5-rights-and-freedoms-essential-to-entrepreneurs/