Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #95
Phoebe Sherman interview with Caitlin Bacher

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

Hello. Hello. Hey, creatives. Phoebe here and we are back from our summer break. We took a little summer break, and it was really nice to focus on the sunshine and get our ducks in the order. Ducks in a row, ducks in order. We're moving into the light quarter four holiday time. We are going to continue taking a summer break from the podcast and probably take a winter break too. It is nice to take a break, but it is also nice to be back. And, at this time of recording this intro, I'm about to go on my honeymoon, so by the time you hear this, I will have already gone on my honeymoon. And it's so excited we're going to Italy and I'm really feeling good about the decision to go on a honeymoon a year after our wedding. I literally cannot imagine, like the folks who go on their honeymoon, like the day after. Holy smokes, you all are wild. I needed like a full year to recover from the wedding. I know I keep on promising you all. More wedding content like a blog. I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen. I feel like the wedding was this lovely, perfect day and it's just so hard to produce art about it or produce info about it when there's just so many other creative projects I have my hands on. Anyways, moving into first of all, election season. It's wild. We've obviously been leaning into election stuff here at GDC HQ. We are super in line with Kamala Harris. We are pushing for registering to vote. We are aligning our apparel continuously with abortion advocacy movements. And yeah, we are excited, hopeful and crossing our fingers for the election. Let's see this weekend it's Halloween season already here in Salem, Massachusetts, so I'll be a haunted happening this Sunday, October 6th. I want to say it's 10 to 5. I think it's 10 to 5. It's mostly the whole day all. If you didn't know, October in Salem is wild, wild, wild. I call it Witch Vegas. Hence are Witch City totes and are stickers that are Vegas oriented. It is wild. We get a million visitors in the month of October in Salem, Massachusetts and we are a small town. I think we have like 40,000 folks, but like the town infrastructure where all these visitors come is small. My advice to you is don't drive. If you're trying to come in here, take the train. The train is super, super lovely and easy. You get off right downtown. I highly suggest it. Where comfy shoes don't wear cute little boots with heels. You will regret it. Do you dress up? It's really fun here in October and be respectful to all the people working in October. That's my little base. Will be haunted happenings twice October 6th and then I think it's October 19th which is a Saturday, so come visit. There is lots of like events happening. There's like haunted houses, there's food, there's drinks, there's like markets throughout town. So lots of small businesses to support. Okay, let's see, that's October moving into holiday season. We've got our craft fairs on. Our first one is Sacramento November 16th and then it's Salem November 23rd. I'm not going to do all the dates right now. Oh okay. Maybe I well Providence and Oakland are both December 7th and then Malden is December 14th. These dates are etched in my brain at this point, but if you are close to any of these events, please come on by. If you're a vendor, you can still apply. There might be a waitlist for some of these events, but it doesn't hurt to get in there. And then oh yeah, our holiday gift guide is up right now. So if you're not close to any of these events or you want to add on some digital exposure to small business lovers, our holiday gift guide, we've done it for the past. I think this might be our fourth year since the pandemic. It must be. Yeah, it's really great to have this shoppable gift guide of small businesses that you can support this holiday season. And yeah, more information is on our site at girlgangcraft.com/giftguide. And maybe it's apply dash gift guide. You can apply there. And there's different opt ins different levels of visibility. Like you can just have a newsletter shout out or it can have your picture. And we're also offering podcast shout outs too. So that's really huge this year. You can get your business on the podcast with a little bit of a sentence and a link. So if you're interested in any of that, you can go to our site, sign up for the Holiday Gift guide, and let's hop into the episode after that rant. Okay, so today we have Caitlin Bacher on the podcast as the CEO of Scale with Success.

Caitlin Bacher is dedicated to teaching coaches and course creators how to transform their online courses into a seven figure business without launching. Caitlin believes there's more than one right way to build a business, and if launching isn't your cup of tea, you don't have to do it. She learned this lesson the hard way for her launches meant inconsistent revenue and sleepless nights and stress. After Caitlin pivoted from launching to selling, she unlocked consistent revenue, scaled, and made her first million in only nine months. She now teaches this method to course creators all over the world.

This episode is great, Caitlin tells me to focus on one class, which I think is really helpful and has sort of. Since we did this interview a while ago, I sort of shaped my projects for the rest of the year. We talk about the difference between launching and having an evergreen course and talking about the myth of do you need a launch first? And there's good stuff in here. I felt really inspired after this interview, so I hope you enjoy listening to her wisdom as well. And with that, let's get into it.

Phoebe
Hello, Caitlin, welcome to the podcast.

Caitlin
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Phoebe
So excited to have you. Can you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Caitlin
Yeah, sure. So I'm Caitlin Batchelor and I help course creators sell their courses without launching. Over the years we've developed an online program called scale with success. And in that program, we have a step by step method that really walks course creators through the process of creating an automated sales process so they can sell their course on autopilot and really reap all the rewards of selling their course consistently.

Phoebe
Amazing. And how on earth did you get into this specific line of work?

Caitlin
Okay, so probably like some of your listeners, it was a long and windy road, but I will shorten it for the purposes of this podcast. I initially started out as a social media manager. I was the person that was responsible for creating the content, the graphics, the copy, everything. I was responsible for scheduling it, all of that. And after I did that for a while, I kind of felt a little bit restless, and I was tired of being the person who was actually implementing for the business, and I wanted to be the person that was focused more on strategy. I decided to shift more into consulting so that I could meet with business owners and really help them develop a strategy for their social media marketing that then they could implement for themselves. And after I did that for a while, I kind of realized that I was answering the same questions on every single call, no matter what the business was. That came through. They had the same problems, and I had very similar solutions. And what I decided to do was to package what I knew package kind of the method that I would take people through, and I would package it into an online course. And so my very first course was all about social media marketing. I made every mistake in the book. The course was like had way too much information. It was so big. I tried to cover everything, but people loved it and I really enjoyed creating it. And I enjoyed the process of delivering it as well. And over time, I noticed that the one section that people were most interested in, that giant social media marketing course was Instagram. And so I thought, maybe I should create a course that is only focused on Instagram. So I did that, and while I was selling that Instagram course, I started my own free Facebook group and I began selling that Instagram course inside of the free Facebook group. Then I was like, you know what? I'm tired of Instagram. I'm going to create a course about free Facebook groups. So I created a course about free Facebook groups. And while I was selling the course about free Facebook groups, I was still doing the launch model. So I was still launching and it was when I was able to make the switch from launching to selling on autopilot that I had my very first million dollars a year, and it was from selling that free Facebook group course. And it was the process that I had developed over time to sell my course on autopilot. Then I was like, I got to make a course about this. So then I ended up making a course about that. It's called Scale of Success, and we've been selling it for around seven years. That's kind of the short version of how it all began.

Phoebe
Okay, that's so amazing. And I love that you have sort of followed what works for you and what you see working in your community and what you see and need for. I would love to sort of talk about your Facebook group strategy first, if you don't mind.
Caitlin
We can totally talk about that. But what I will say is that I don't use or recommend free Facebook groups right now.

Phoebe
It's important information, right?

Caitlin
I feel it's totally fine, like if people already have them. But our method, our process doesn't utilize that at all.

Phoebe
And so it used to and then you decided that wasn't for you.

Caitlin
The scale was success method. It never included anything about free Facebook groups.

Phoebe
Okay, okay. Sorry. No, that's totally great. Because yeah, I think there's a lot of pros and cons to the Facebook group World.

Caitlin
Yeah. And it's not like they're bad. It's just our program. It doesn't require it doesn't require you to have any of that.

Phoebe
Okay. I guess I would like to learn from you why launching don't work for you and why you wanted to create, sustainable growth on animatic instead of launching programs.

Caitlin
Yeah. So there were basically three core problems that I had with launching and that I see a lot of other people have as well. The first is that feeling of being crunched for time. As a small business owner. Our time is a limited resource. We don't have unlimited investments coming in and giant like 50 people, teams or anything like that. So we are tasked with creating products, promoting those products, closing deals, delivering a solid experience for our customers. And that's a lot. The number one way to really expand our time, which is a limited resource, is to build momentum. And it's very difficult to build momentum with the start and stop cycle of launching. Here's what I mean when you're launching. Launching basically requires 2 or 3 months of intense list building and content distribution, which is leading up to what's called an open cart. Right. And during that open cart period is when you're allowing people to enroll in your course and that open cart period can last anywhere between 5 or 7 days. And then after that, nobody can buy until the next launch rolls around, which is maybe four months or a year later.

Caitlin
And what many course creators find is when their launch ends, so does all of the momentum that they've been working so hard to generate. So it's basically a radio silence for your business until the launch cycle begins all over again, as opposed to creating a business that's really fueled by momentum and the way that I kind of like to visually describe it is it's kind of like a snowball when you're first like building up the snowball, it takes your personal effort to get things rolling. But after that, it's rolling on its own and it's growing on its own. And that's what we really want for your business. So number one is crunched for time. Number two is you really want to increase not just revenue but profit in your business. I know because I've done it myself. Big launches are a huge expense and nobody really talks about that.
To make matters worse, if that launch doesn't go well, you're stuck with kind of your hands in your pockets until the next launch rolls around. And I get so many DMs every day from people who are smack dab in the middle of a launch. Everything's going wrong now. These are capable, smart, resourceful course creators. But the launch model isn't suited to a business of their size.
Small business owners really need to find ways to reduce risk, not to increase it. And when you're selling on autopilot, you're enrolling new students into your programs every single day, not just a couple times a year. It really puts you in this position where you can sustainably grow over time, week by week. Your sales and your marketing skills are improving.
You're beginning to create messages that resonate more with your audience, and that's because you have more opportunities to really practice and get better. And the third reason that I would say a lot of people figure out that they just want to shift from launching to selling on autopilot is just because they don't like it. And the truth is, some people love launching and that is great for them.
If you love launching, if it's working for you, awesome. The thing that I don't want people to do is I don't want anyone to fall into the trap of believing that there's only one right way to do something. There are so many different ways, and if you don't like launching, you do not have to do it. Period. And the thing is that a lot of what we hear about is these big, fancy launching strategies.
But just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean that you have to do it also, and there's also a whole other group of people out there that are quietly selling their course on autopilot and reaping the rewards of that.

Phoebe
I took a couple notes here, but one of the things that you said is like that you keep on getting better at your messaging, and I totally can understand that, especially when you're in launch mode and you're like, crunched for time. Sometimes your brain doesn't work the best in that time to go. So like you miss out on maybe some key elements or some key observations, and I can totally see how that messaging can get better. And I also think that this could be better for your nervous system too. And when your nervous system is more calm, some of these ideas can come to you easier. And there's a lot of better things like nervous system is conquered when launching can be really hard. Not only is it expensive and time consuming, it's like brain cancer. You mean you are checking your stats? You are checking all your engagement, you are reloading your thrive card or whatever platform you use. And that's exhausting.

00;17;12;17 - 00;17;27;14
Caitlin
Yeah. And the reason you have to do that is because you have such a limited time to make those sales. It's not like it's something ongoing. It's like it is urgent, and you do have to get in there and make it work. And if it doesn't, you're kind of left there hanging.

Phoebe
Yeah. Are you not of the belief that you need to like live launch first and then you can turn it evergreen?

Caitlin
I love that question because I think one of the biggest myths out there is that you have to live launch before you switch to evergreen. And what I tell people is that the content strategy, meaning what you're putting in your live webinar, what you're putting in the emails that come before the live webinar or after the live webinar or the live challenge or whatever it is that you're doing for your live launch.

That content strategy is totally different than the content that you would put inside of an evergreen webinar, inside of an automated webinar. I do not advise anyone, one, to try to simply repurpose that live webinar into an automated funnel. And the reason why is because the buying experience for the prospect is completely different, and there are things that you can do inside of a live launch, inside of that live webinar to kind of really pique curious, to kind of almost be like a little bit vague on certain parts because you want people to ask the question because you're alive.

So if they ask the question, then you're answering it and getting into more details when you are selling an inside of an automated funnel, if you were to put a webinar that was designed to sell live into an automated funnel, it tanks, and it's because your presentation is not designed in a way that people who are watching it in that automated funnel and don't have the ability to ask you questions right away, they're confused.

And I think that what I see a lot of people do is they'll do some live webinars and they'll be like, oh, this one works. Okay. Now I'm going to put it in an automated funnel. And they do that and they might get a few sales initially. And then it just like it totally flatlines. And in their head they're making that mean that maybe launching just doesn't work for them.

Maybe my audience will only buy in a live launch. I guess this means my audience just won't buy in an automated funnel. The problem is not your audience. The problem is the content that you're putting inside of the funnel and being able to make things crystal clear for your audience in terms of what's inside of your offer, what problems does your course help people solve?

It has to be so clear that when people are watching, they're able to make a decision without needing to interact a bunch with you or ask you a bunch of questions.
Phoebe
What are some key elements that you need to have an evergreen launch?

Caitlin
Yeah, if you're selling evergreen, it basically means that new people are entering your sales cycle every day. You have traffic, you have people coming in, whether that is from people. Maybe they're sharing a link to your evergreen funnel. Maybe you are promoting your link organically. Maybe you're doing it with paid traffic. However it is that you're doing it.
You're sending people to your sales mechanism, which is if it's automated, it takes those people that are coming in and it takes them through a journey that helps them make a decision that's right for them. When you're launching, everyone is consuming the exact same content at the exact same time. But when you have an automated or an evergreen funnel set up, people are coming in and they're shown how content based on decisions that they're making inside of your funnel.
So if they click here, they might see this. If they don't click here, they may not be ready to receive that next email. It may be a waiting period. And then they get this. And so the really great thing about automation is that we're able to craft these funnels that are based on consent and permission. It's almost like people are choosing their own adventure, and they're getting a sales experience that makes them feel good and complete and not like they're being shoved down this path along kind of like herding cattle or something.
I would say. Of course, the main pieces of the funnel are you have to get traffic to the sales mechanism. Then you have the sales mechanism itself, which is in our case, we show people how to do an automated webinar, and then it's getting people to enroll and then have a great experience inside of your program.

Phoebe
For me, one of my big hang ups is.

Caitlin
Oh yeah.

Phoebe
Even though I am probably a lot more comfy with some of these tech things than other listeners too, it's always like the first thing that really is scary to me, especially with funnels and like we have some funnels. I understand funnels, but when you said the if then statements like if they click and then get another option like that makes my brain explode.

Caitlin
Yeah.

Phoebe
Do you have any, I don't know, advice for people who sort of like start to feel confident to make these decisions and to do the thing.

Caitlin
Yeah. What I would say is that if you're going to embark on the journey to build out a funnel of any sort, it's really important that you're not just kind of making it up on the fly, because if you do, I guarantee you will overcomplicate it to the point where your funnel is like the most complex, seemingly fancy thing that ever existed.

One thing I always tell my clients is simple scales and complex fails. And what that means is if you create something simple and strong and effective, you're going to be able to scale that much higher, to make more revenue, to bring in more people, to impact more lives than you ever will. If you get into the complexities. And I think that what happens for a lot of people is that they begin to have this idea in their head where they're thinking they need to add more.

They're like, well, my prospects need more nurturing, so I'm going to have them sign up for a lead magnet, and then they're going to go to a thank you page and see this. And then they're going to get this email sequence and then this. And then this. I was talking to a woman recently in my DMs, and she was really struggling to sell her course.

And I was like, how are you selling it right now? She had eight different funnels for the same course, and this was a business owner who was making less than six figures a year. She didn't have a big team. She's doing everything herself, working herself into the ground. I was like, I was like, why do you have eight different funnels?

She's like, well, I know this other person does. I'm like, how much money is that person making? She's like, well, she's making millions a year. And so I said, you know what? Why don't you wait until you're making millions a year before you could embark upon that journey to create eight different funnels? Like, I don't even have eight different funnels and I'm making millions a year.

The online space is so tricky because sometimes we see other people do things and we're thinking, oh, you know what? That looks really cool. I'm going to go try that. But that's not what that person did to get to where they are now. I tell people all the time I have within my evergreen business, I do a lot of different things.

I have live events now that I didn't have when I was working towards my first million per year, and that's because now I have a big team, I have a big ad budget, I have a big budget for tech. I have all these things, and that's not what I'm helping people do. I'm helping people get to their first million.

And I always tell people like, after that, call me like, I'll tell you everything that I'm doing, you know, all that kind of stuff. But it's like the online space can be very distracting, having something that you're following step by step so that you're not getting in over your head and just making things way harder than they need to be.

Phoebe
Yeah, that's me for sure.

Caitlin
That was me, too. Totally.

Phoebe
That is me. Maybe we can get into my nitty gritty a little bit.

Caitlin
Yeah, sure.





00;28;12;21 - 00;28;30;15
Phoebe
I guess one of my simple questions, maybe it's like, can my welcome sequence that's attached to a freebie, should it exist as just a welcome sequence, or should it lead to the courses? Or is it too complicated to try and have it serve both things?

Caitlin
Here's what I would say a couple different things. First, just a pull back. Selling for different courses is complex. That's hard to do. And I can tell you that the people that I've helped make over a million per year, they come to me and they have a product suite that is okay, but they don't have the current resources to put the needed attention into, like maintaining it and making sure the marketing is right on all of that.
The first thing that I would do is figure out how we can simplify that. If you think about focus, if you're focusing your time and energy on a wider variety of things, each one becomes less effective. And if you're able to kind of narrow that focus and put your time, your energy into resources, into nailing that one funnel, then after that, you can be like, you know what?

Okay, now that I have this $200 offer or I don't know if you're going to raise the price 300, 500,000, whatever it is, once I have this up and running and it's selling on autopilot, then I can think about, oh, should I have another smaller offer that I can insert here to perhaps offset the cost of ads or whatever?

I'm a big fan of focusing on the main thing first, and part of that means that you have one main funnel. So when people are coming to you, the free thing, the lead magnet or whatever that they're signing up for, that is something that is just designed to give them tremendous value. But you're also pitching at the end if you have that 200 or 300,000, whatever it is offer, then you're sending traffic to that.

That's what you're advertising for free. You're saying, hey, sign up for this free thing. They're coming in, they're enrolling. And then after that, after they become a customer, then maybe you have some other higher ticket things that you offer them later on, like maybe if they want to work more closely with you or they're ready for a next level or something like that, it is difficult if you're selling for products and it's difficult if you have two that are at the same price and another two that aren't the same price, because psychologically people get confused.

They're like, oh, well, I bought that $57 one. You're like, well, I have to. They're like, what?

00;30;51;17 - 00;30;52;16
Phoebe
Yes.

Caitlin
But what do you think about when I say that? What comes up for you?

Phoebe
What comes out for me? This is a coaching therapy session. Yeah. I mean, that's not all I do. We also throw like ten events all over the AWS. We do a lot. What comes out for me is I immediately know which class I would like to focus on. That comes up for me I think another pain point for me and I know a lot of listeners is this thing about pricing.

Oh totally. I know for our community or like my stickiness in our community is like, well they're all becoming business owners or makers and we want to make sure that they have access to this information at an affordable price rate. I'm doing my best to start to deal with that and what that looks like. That's a major one, I think.

00;31;46;24 - 00;31;47;25
Phoebe
Yeah, I don't know.

00;31;47;27 - 00;32;08;25
Caitlin
And here's what I would say about that, because the pricing thing is so real, and I don't like it when people just kind of glaze over that and they're like, well, you should just charge what you're worth or do this or that or just raise your prices. That's not always the answer. And what I will say is the thing that because anyone that knows me knows I'm very emotional and very intuitive.

00;32;08;27 - 00;32;45;24
Caitlin
I am all of that. And the thing that helps me the most is to, when it comes to business, is to really look at the data over drama, look at facts over feelings, not in a way where I'm like suppressing my emotions or not following my interest. I'm very much doing that. But here's the harsh reality you can 100% if you want to make a $200 course and sell that, that's totally fine, but you have to crunch the numbers and see profit wise.

00;32;45;26 - 00;33;15;27
Caitlin
If it scales, can you continue to offer everything you're offering at that price point? And I'm saying that as someone who like my very first course, I think my very first course I sold for my first course was 197. It came with lifetime access to a community I was doing called. I was doing well with lifetime access. It was I was putting everything into it and the more I sold like it wasn't sustainable, I couldn't afford to keep doing that.

00;33;15;29 - 00;33;35;04
Caitlin
It's kind of like you want to put as much as you can into your course, but like every plant needs water to grow, every business needs revenue to thrive. And if you don't have that money, your business can't continue to operate. You can't hire more people. You can't make the program better. You can't do all those things. So it's hard.

00;33;35;07 - 00;34;01;02
Phoebe
Yeah, I think it's also particularly hard because we already have a built in audience that's very specific. We have to our doing our shows. We've already sort of established ourselves to offer events to smaller businesses, to sort of elevate that audience to folks who can invest even like $500 in a course. It's tricky.

00;34;01;07 - 00;34;21;20
Caitlin
Yeah, it's tricky. And here's what I will tell you. Number one, I had one client, she was a housekeeper. And the more houses she cleaned, the more money she would make. So she got really, really fast. And she got fast because she kind of, like, developed this method for herself in order to clean a house top to bottom.

00;34;21;26 - 00;34;45;08
Caitlin
So she was eventually able to hire other people to help her clean the houses, like all of that, like scaling business. And what she decided to do is package what she knew into a course, and what she knew about cleaning a house quickly. And she packaged it into a course that was marketed to busy parents of young kids, because who wants to clean a house fast more than a busy parent of young kids?

00;34;45;11 - 00;35;16;04
Caitlin
She sold that course for $197, and her business grew to over 500 K in revenue each year. The reason why I mention that is because there are so many different ways to grow $1 million business, a six figure business, a $10 million business, whatever it is, the most important thing to really think about is a like, what is the kind of experience that I want to deliver to my customers?

00;35;16;08 - 00;35;39;08
Caitlin
Do I want to go all in with this offer, whether it's priced at $500, maybe you have a payment plan or whether it's 200 or 300 or whatever. I will tell you that I've seen literally know the difference between 200 and like 497. I've seen no difference in conversion rate from any of my clients. Like there is a difference from 200 to 9 nine seven, but from 200 to 4 nine it's like.

00;35;39;10 - 00;36;06;23
Caitlin
But what that does is it's giving the business money to then put back into the course. Whether that means you're able to update the content, you're able to hire help to help you answer more questions or whatever. Pricing is a very personal decision. But the thing that's always worked for me so that I don't get too kind of lost in like, like all my different feelings about it or whatever is really like running the numbers, like, what would it look like if we did this?

00;36;06;23 - 00;36;20;25
Caitlin
Wow. If we did this, I could actually afford to create even better free content. So those people that couldn't afford the 497 course, they were actually better served for free. They don't even have to buy the $200 course. You know what I mean?

00;36;20;27 - 00;36;42;11
Phoebe
I do, and I wrote down data over drama. Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna get that tattooed on my body somewhere because it's tricky, right? It's so hard. As emotional humans, we get bad feedback all the time for things. That's just the cost of doing business. And you can't help everyone but me and it gets you sometimes. That really.

00;36;42;11 - 00;36;44;07
Caitlin
Does. Yeah, yeah.

00;36;44;13 - 00;36;49;17
Phoebe
How are ways that you sort of handle trolls or bullying or just bad. Yeah.

00;36;49;20 - 00;37;14;03
Caitlin
So I would say one of the best things I did. So my first year of business, even before we were making six figures a year, I hired a contractor to help me with customer service. And that's because there's lots of different people. And some people, they just don't take it personally and they're like, like, whatever. But I'm in there sending an endless amount of emails trying to like, coach this person through the problem.

00;37;14;03 - 00;37;35;24
Caitlin
And it was just like, no, like, this is not it. I can't read my business if I'm getting kind of stuck in this. And so the best thing that I ever did was and it was a cost to hire this person for like ten hours a week, would come in for two hours every day and just like, take care of the customers and the customers liked it because they were like, oh, okay, well, this is helping me do this or that faster.

00;37;35;24 - 00;37;56;00
Caitlin
And I don't have to be on a like a 20 email back and forth thing with Kaitlin where she's coaching me through my home center and when I just need log in access or something like that. You know what I mean? It's like one of the most important things that you can do as a business owner is really protect your confidence and protect your energy.

00;37;56;02 - 00;38;16;08
Caitlin
And nobody else is going to do that for you. And in fact, when you take the steps to do it, some people are not going to like that. It's up to you. You are like the core center nucleus of everything. So if you're not good, nothing else is going to be good. And we're not taught to do that as women to like, really prioritize that, to really protect us in that way.

00;38;16;09 - 00;38;32;29
Caitlin
It's always like, oh, I can do this too. Okay, sure, I'll do this all too. It's like for business. It's well, for life in general, but for especially for business, it's a no. Because as your energy dips and your motivation falters, your confidence falters. You're not able to show up and serve at your highest level.

00;38;33;01 - 00;38;47;06
Phoebe
Yeah, 100%. And mixed in with ideas of productivity and capitalistic tendency. Sure. And even like I've gotten stuck with, like having to feel like I need to work extra hard to show my team that I'm working.

00;38;47;08 - 00;38;49;12
Caitlin
Yeah, yeah. And Mike's like me.

00;38;49;13 - 00;39;04;24
Phoebe
Like like, we got this. Take a break. You don't have to show up here. It's so, so tricky when we've been taught that productivity is connected to our worth and our money, maybe taking care of ourselves is a better use of our time.

00;39;04;26 - 00;39;31;24
Caitlin
Yeah, and that is so common. The thing about people feeling like they have to work hard to show their team to be like, hey, like I'm busy too. But the reality is your team knows that you play a different role than them, and they know if you're not able to show up with that energy, to be able to serve, to market to the audience, to deliver for the customers, then nothing's working.

00;39;31;26 - 00;39;51;05
Caitlin
So it definitely is like a mindset shift, right? Because nobody wants to be so many of us. I feel like we're that kid in the group projects, like in elementary school, who are the ones doing like all the work? And we're like, oh, I never want anyone to feel like they're doing all the work on my team. But the reality is that you really have to protect your energy.

00;39;51;07 - 00;40;13;24
Phoebe
I guess sort of back to core stuff a little bit, because I guess my question too is like, so let's say everything's automated, everything's evergreen. You're not live launching. What is your day to day content look like? Are you still producing day to day content and are you still sending out quote unquote general emails? What does that look like while your systems are working for you?

00;40;13;27 - 00;40;39;22
Caitlin
What I would say is that when you are selling an evergreen course and when you have an automated funnel set up for it, because I'm not involved in the sales process because that's automated, I have more time and space to think about visibility and to think about how do I want to show up for the greater good? What kind of content do I need to be creating?

00;40;39;24 - 00;41;04;16
Caitlin
And this might be a little bit controversial, because I know so much advice out there is like, you have to outsource everything, and like the bigger your team, the better you are. And like all this stuff, right? And what I will say is that a lot, of course, creators that do not have an automated way to make sales, they're stretched between sales and marketing and delivery.

00;41;04;18 - 00;41;27;23
Caitlin
They try to kind of outsource the marketing. And when I say outsource the marketing, I don't mean outsource like the scheduling or like the posting of it, but I mean, they're outsourcing the core thing that they really need to be focused on because it's your voice that's coming through. One of the things that I do is I just like batch create content.

00;41;27;25 - 00;41;51;05
Caitlin
We are sharing on social media every day, and I'm not creating a new video each day. Every two weeks. I just batch create content and then I send it to someone else for like the editing and the scheduling and whatever, all of that. But I'm the idea source, like I'm the person coming in that's creating the message and figuring out how I want to share that.

00;41;51;07 - 00;42;12;18
Caitlin
And I have the energy to do that because my sales process is automated, because over time I built a team and things like that. But I wouldn't be able to do that if I was in the nitty gritty of sales and marketing and delivery. Although, you know what? I do a live Q&A call for my clients twice a week.

00;42;12;18 - 00;42;33;21
Caitlin
So I do that and I absolutely love it. So I host live office hours inside of the community twice per week. It's not a coach, it's me. And I love answering their questions and doing things like that again. I'm able to do that because I'm not in these live launches that are just a few times a year and all of that.

00;42;33;27 - 00;42;59;23
Caitlin
I'm able to put on live events now because I have a team that is helping me do everything, and I literally just have to show up and that's all I have to do. But if I was working towards my first million in revenue, I wouldn't have all of that. I think it's really important that people get real about what they can and can't do, and you don't have the energy to focus on sales, marketing, deliver like content, create all of that.

00;42;59;25 - 00;43;06;16
Caitlin
And if you're able to really automate your sales process, that opens up your time to then focus on visibility.

00;43;06;19 - 00;43;30;00
Phoebe
Yes, I think the major thing I'm getting from this phone call or from his comfort zone or whatever it is that we're doing, is simplify. That is tricky for me specifically and probably for a lot of creative multi-hyphenate listening, because we like doing a lot of things and we're good at a lot of things, and we want to do it all.

00;43;30;02 - 00;43;50;11
Phoebe
And I mean, that's probably the theme of my entire life. But yeah, I appreciate the repeated messaging about simplifying. Yeah, okay. We're running out of time. I'm sure we could talk for two more hours. Probably. So Will you won't tell us about where we can find you and how we can sign up for your course?

00;43;50;13 - 00;44;11;09
Caitlin
Yeah, sure. So if you go to my website, Caitlin batchelor.com. There you'll find I have a free masterclass. It's called how to generate launch sites revenue without launching. That is the best place to start because it's going to kind of unpack my method. And so you're going to have a better idea of what it might look like if we work together.

00;44;11;11 - 00;44;29;23
Caitlin
The other thing that I have on my website is a free podcast. I do solo episodes usually it's once every other week. Sometimes I'm able to do once a week. Usually it's once every other week and it's just me chatting about a specific topic for ten minutes or so. So they're very short and sweet episodes, but Caitlin batchelor.com is the best place to go.

00;44;29;25 - 00;44;33;10
Phoebe
Okay well thank you so much Caitlin. This has been an absolute dream.

00;44;33;12 - 00;44;34;11
Caitlin
Thank you.

00;44;34;13 - 00;44;44;16
Phoebe
Thank you so much for listening to the Growing Craft podcast. Head to Girl Game craft.com/podcast for Shownotes and more. See you next time.