Grow With Soul: Ep. 78 Transitioning & Simplifying My Business Model With Kayte Ferris
This month, on my blog and on Instagram, I’ve been sharing the experience of transitioning and simplifying my business model in response to my values and I how I want my business to support the life I want to live. I know that this is a perennial problem for many - the moment where you have out grown the old skin of your business but don’t know quite how to shed into and evolve into a new skin. It is a natural part of business, of life, but it is also one that is messy and feels, at times, insurmountable. I know that particularly this year many of you have been reflecting on how your business and life interact, so I felt that it was apt to share more of the step by step of my process here.Here's what I talk about in this episode:
Reconnecting with my business values
Transitioning from 1:1 to 1:many
How lockdown allowed me to simplify my business
Pivoting my products to answer bigger problems for my audience
The importance of business models
Links I mention:
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 78 of Grow With Soul. This month, on my blog and on Instagram, I’ve been sharing the experience of transitioning and simplifying my business model in response to my values and I how I want my business to support the life I want to live. I know that this is a perennial problem for many - the moment where you have out grown the old skin of your business but don’t know quite how to shed into and evolve into a new skin. It is a natural part of business, of life, but it is also one that is messy and feels, at times, insurmountable. I know that particularly this year many of you have been reflecting on how your business and life interact, so I felt that it was apt to share more of the step by step of my process here.
First, the context.
Long term listeners will know that moving my business away from being a one-to-one model and into a one-to-many model has been a focus of mine since the latter half of 2019, and was my main 2020 goal. The reason for this is that, while I loved and believed in each individual client, the shape of my life with one-to-one coaching in it felt very closed in. Although on each call I had a good time talking things through, outside of those hours I felt the weight of the looming appointments. It was never anything to do with the people themselves, more the weight of knowing I had be there and be the best I could be for them at that time slot. And what if I couldn’t turn it on that day? What if I didn’t meet their expectations? I began to dread this part of my work, because it was heavy with nerves and anxiety for me.
I’d always felt like this about one-to-one, only, at the start, I put it down to beginner’s nerves. But as time went on, it became clear that wasn’t the reason. When I looked at the parts of my work I most enjoyed, it was the elements where I had my own time to craft something - a blog post, a course, a workbook. Where I could sit in it and tease it out and develop it, rather than feel the pressure to have all the answers in one go. I also felt that this is where much of my best work was happening - I was communicating my thoughts so much better in writing than I was thinking on my feet on a call.
It took me a long time to come around to the idea that I might be allowed to change things. My fear always shows up by telling me I’m not allowed to do something, by just taking it off the table. But after a few months I got to the point where I accepted that if the work that made me happiest in myself and with the end product was one-to-many in nature, perhaps it was actually a good idea to do more of that. My three core values in my work are freedom, variety and truthfulness. By continuing to plug on with one-to-one I would be violating each of those values.
So, in the beginning of 2020 I was thinking a lot about how to transition out of 121 into 1 to many, and starting to set big goals and create the picture of what it was all going to look like.
Then, lockdown happened. I know I have already spoken about the reflections and changes I’d made in lockdown in episode 72, but it’s worth reiterating. Lockdown has, for many of us not on the front lines, been a period of intense reassessment. Personally, it acted like a truth serum. I was still working, technically not much had changed in my day to day, and I was still quite busy. But it was like a few drops of the serum had been applied to my eyes that meant I could see things for how they were, see where I’d made assumptions that were based on expectation rather than truth. For example, I had assumed that in order to live the calm and free every day that I dreamed of, I needed to first consistently make six figures in order to pay staff to do the work to maintain that six figure business. In lockdown I realised, well if I just don’t have a six figure business then I won’t need to do the work to maintain it and I won’t need to hire the staff to do that work. I can just do the work that feels calm and free, now.
All this to say, before lockdown I was set on transitioning the business model. After lockdown, I was adding simplicity to the mix too. Deconstructing all those assumptions and aiming to make this new business model as uncomplicated as possible. I knew I didn’t want to be on the treadmill of perpetual launching things, I knew I didn’t want that feeling of striving toward an arbitrary figure, I knew that I wanted to work for a few intense hours a day and spend the rest of it planting my seeds and pottering. I just wasn’t quite so clear on what exactly that would look like.
Which brings me to the first idea.
My first idea was to take all my courses and Kits, and package them into one bundle. This would solve the problem of not continually needing to launch things every month, because everything was available in that one package. You would be able to buy them individually, or you could buy them all at a discount where you might also get some more guidance. I started running with the idea, even though, as you may be able to tell from my voice, I wasn’t thrilled with it. It didn’t feel like enough, it didn’t feel exciting, it didn’t feel, in honesty, like something I would actually buy. But I’ve convinced myself so much that if you’re not taking action you’re wasting time, that I just started forging on with making plans with it.
Then, in April, I took a course with the Do Lectures and in one lesson about refining ideas David Hieatt said “what’s the bigger problem?”. And that was a genuine a-ha moment. I felt energy run flow down through body like an up-levelling video game character. This felt like the missing piece. I was focusing on the little problems that my courses solved; on the symptoms but not the cause. That’s why my bundle idea didn’t feel enough - because I was ignoring the bigger problem.
I knew, almost immediately, what that bigger problem was. My courses and Kits all solve the symptoms of not knowing what to do in business, but why is it that people don’t know what to do? What’s the reason behind the desire to learn more about marketing? A lack of self-trust. The bigger problem, is that the world is full of women who have unlearned their instincts and spend their days full of worry and uncertainty and pressure. The bigger problem is that they don’t trust themselves to run their business from the soul outwards.
I know that’s the bigger problem because it is the red thread that connects everyone I have worked with over the last three years, whether one-to-on for 6 months, as part of a course group or even just those who reply to Stories. It’s not that they’re not capable or creative or driven - it’s that they don’t trust that they are those things. I know that this is the bigger problem because this feels like the moment all my work has been leading up to.
So, I took the bigger problem and used it to elevate my ideas about transitioning the business model. If I took the concept of the product bundle, what would make it better answer the bigger problem. Well that, then, became easy; it would become more of a programme, a come-as-you-are offering with smaller elements to it to help people work on building their confidence in their capabilities, and then learn to trust those capabilities. There would need to be support and guidance through it, connections to be made; it would need to be manageable and not overwhelming.
I worked hard on defining who the customer was for this offering. I thought about how they are experiencing the bigger problem in their day to day. I thought about what they started their business for, what their dreams were, and how the bigger problem is getting in the way of those. I thought about how they might be experiencing their day to day of the business. I knew some of this from participants in my programme, I knew a lot of this from my own experience of being paralysed in mistrust of what to do, and a lot of it I just inherently knew was true. I wrote out a long sales page based on this, and framed what the programme would include too.
Then I, sent my email list the customer profile (and later put it on Instagram), and I asked that if anyone recognised themselves in that profile, would they be willing to give me feedback - and a handful did. They answered my pre-prepared questions to confirm some of my assumptions, to see which parts of the sales page particularly resonated, to make sure they understood the programme, and crucially to know whether it answered the bigger problem for them, and how it might do that better. I could then use this to again refine the sales page, emphasising the elements that were most resonant, deleting the bits that weren’t, and I could start to ground the programme in reality - take it out of my head and onto some paper plans.
This is what I meant, back in episode 72, about crafting.
If I hadn’t been prompted to think about the bigger problem I would have done this: carried on with the original bundle idea, written a sales page and put the first draft on my website, not gotten any feedback, launched it quietly and unsystematically because, not too deep down, I didn’t believe in it. I think there is value in being agile and putting things out there before they’re quite ready, but they have to be things you actually believe in. The ‘put it out there before you’re ready’ advice only works if the thing you’re putting out is soul-driven - and I didn’t really make that distinction before now.
I am writing and recording this episode three weeks before you’re listening to it. I have just been working on the launch plan for the new programme. Each blog post going out in June has a function as part of a pre-launch runway, setting the scene, bringing to light the bigger problem, building anticipation. That’s the intention anyway. You’ll have to tell me if I’ve succeeded! Then, at the end of this month, I’ll be announcing the programme. I’ll be publishing the sales page I expect I’ll have refined many times between now and then, and I’ll be inviting those of you experiencing the bigger problem, to see whether you feel I’ve created the solution.
But we started talking about business models, so let me circle back around to them. Because the new programme isn’t the new business model, but a part of it. My definition of a business model, the one that I teach in my courses, is that it’s the theoretical framework of how all the ways in which you make money work together. It’s not just a list of income streams but how those incomes streams interact - what the ratios are, how at Christmas your product-based stream takes over from your courses, how your time and energy is spent doing each one. This new programme is intended to make up around 50% of my business model going forward. It will be, if you like, the flagship offering, like my coaching used to be - it’s the place where you can come to get support and connection and my guidance. My courses and Kits will still be available to buy, making up around 10% of my business model (and, perhaps if I run a course like The Playbook one quarter, I will close sign ups for the new programme to make sure my energy isn’t being spread too thin). Then, the remaining 40% will be made up my a new, improved (and internationally-accessible) mastermind programme for those several years in who want a more intensive up-levelling (this will probably be in 2021 unless anyone wants to peer pressure me into doing it in the autumn).
Three main income streams. A low, middle and high offering. Clarity about what is right for whom. That’s simple, almost as simple as one-to-one. Just one, maybe two things to launch - so not having to sell a different course every month. And I’ve worked out that my necessary working hours per week leaves lots of time for pottering.
“How do you know it’s going to work?”
In my Immersion programme we’ve been talking about business models and this is something that’s come up - “how do I know this is realistic, how will I know it will happen like this?”. Well you don’t. I don’t know, for 100% certain, that this is going to happen. But it’s my job, as the owner of this business, to make it happen. To set goals and make plans with the sole intention of making this business model, to work hard on the actions it will take, to trouble shoot and fire fight and get it to a place where even if it’s not exactly what I’ve laid out here, it’s in the spirit of it. Maybe if the new programme ends up doing 10% less than I’d hoped, if it still enables me freedom and variety and time and space then it’s doing what I need it to.
So, that’s the whistle stop tour of the last few months of really getting to work on changing the business model. I hope it’s given you some food for thought, some in’s when it comes to changing or simplifying what you do. Do check out my blog for the posts I’ve been publishing this month, and make sure you’re signed up to my list if you want to hear about the new programme when it goes live - all the links are in the show notes.