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This tool is a game changer and something I wish someone had told me about so much sooner. Hey, what's up, I'm Bret Shuford, the creative life coach. And if you're new here, this channel is all about supporting you, and how to make money doing what you love. As a creative entrepreneur, I hope you'll consider subscribing down below, I give you so many tools here that are going to help change and shift the way you think and build your business. Now, I started my business 2015, I think was when I became a certified life coach. And I of course, just like so many of us was learning by listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, learning from other people even working with some coaches who had been in the industry for a long time. And by listening to a lot of what people said, I started using tools that they suggested. Now a lot of these were people who were leaps and bounds ahead in their business than I was at the time, I was just starting out, I had a very small email list a very small client base, and I was making money full time as an actor, which doesn't say a lot, especially living in New York City. So having high expenses and trying to build a business, which we all know is necessary, you're going to, in order to build a business, you got to spend a little money to make money. And I'm sure you've heard that before. I just didn't understand that, you know, you don't need to spend a lot of money. You don't need to spend a lot of money, you don't need to spend a lot of expenses, you don't need to learn a whole bunch of tools in order to have the business that you want. And I just wish someone had told me that sooner I had when I first started out, I had a website on WordPress. And then I hired someone to redesign that website and put it on Squarespace, which I'm not really sure why I did that, because I really liked my WordPress website, but I did it. It's done. What am I going to do about it at this point, then I had my email list on MailChimp, which is a great free service. If you're trying to start an email list and builds from scratch, right? Then I had an account with LeadPages, which I would use to build landing pages so that I could you know, get people enrolled in courses or if I was doing a webinar, and then let's see what other expenses that I have. Of course, I had coaching expenses, I had, you know, taking courses, like if, if you're, like me, I'm always learning and it's something I teach my clients and my credit visibility programme is like you should always be learning. So I was spending money on courses, I was also trying to figure out how to get people to pay. So I had scheduling software. And then I also paid for the pro level of that software, which I used acuity scheduling great system, if you want to be able to schedule people and get them to pay, right. But all in all, once I totaled my expenses, I was spending really around $600 a month in all of those expenses. And not only that, but I had to understand how each of them worked. And I didn't really understanding is I didn't really have time because like you I'm sure I do a lot of things, right, I'm coaching I was acting, I was in a show eight times a week, I have a husband and a family and travel a lot for content creation and work. And so it just was overwhelming. And I heard about a programme or a software called Kajabi. And of course, I didn't think Kajabi was for me, I think that's for people who are more advanced, all you would hear people talk about is if you're going to teach a course, use Kajabi. Well, I wasn't ready to build a course I didn't have time to record and write and schedule and do all of those things. So Kajabi just I somehow wrote it off. Like it was not a tool for me until I heard a coach that I really respect say, you know, if I was starting my business now, I would start using Kajabi. And that was some something I needed to hear. Because it got me to look into this software programme Kajabi was at the time, I think only offering a 14 day free trial. So if you're somebody who's curious about Kajabi, if you use my link that is in the show notes or the description down below, you'll get a 30 day free trial. So there's no risk. You can try it for 30 days and see what you think. And I promise you if you're somebody who's just starting out who's doesn't have a big list who even if you don't think you're going to teach courses if you're going to sell any sort of digital product or product, or you might want to have the option to teach courses down the line. This is the best software programme I promise you. Because when I moved everything over to Kajabi eventually I got my website completely moved over I hosted all in Kajabi which some like really advanced people suggest not to do only because you can't copy the website and move it to someplace else. I don't see that happening for me. And if I do see that happening for
I'll pay, I'll have enough money to pay somebody to make a new version. I like having everything all in one place. I believe that in order to be successful as a creative, especially if you want to create multiple streams of income, the simpler, the better, you got to simplify. And Kajabi allows us to do that Kajabi is an all in one platform. It is a place where you can build courses, you can do coaching programmes, you can host podcasts memberships at me, blog, there is so much more, you can do there. And now I eliminated my website, I eliminated my email list, I put it all on to Kajabi, I got rid of LeadPages. And what was spending expense wise, just on digital software tools, I was spending about $600 a month, it's now $140 a month for me, it cut my expenses down so much that I felt less pressure to try to get new clients to try to build a business that I loved, right. So I want to actually do if you're listening to this on the podcast, I suggest that you go to my YouTube channel when you're not driving. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of a tour, I'm gonna do my best to describe what I'm doing so that you can hear it on the podcast. But I want you to see just what I mean by how useful Kajabi is, and how easy it is for anybody no matter what level you're at, okay, I don't want a bunch of fancy bells and whistles. I think eventually, I'll probably get there in my business where everything's automated. And there's triggers and all of those things. And you can do a lot of that in Kajabi. And that's one of the things I really literally love about Kajabi is that their community is incredible. It's so easy. You don't need any coding experience. They have a community of people that on a Facebook group, but also within their Kajabi university that teaches you anything and everything you need to know and such a detailed way, I've never really felt the need to hire somebody to help me get my Kajabi going right. I do have a graphic designer that helped clean up what I started, but I did it myself, for the most part, okay, you can create beautiful, professional looking websites without having to hire a designer. And if you go into I'm going to share my screen here currently, so you can see. But if you go into Kajabi is back end, I'm just showing you in the partner dashboard, they sectioned it off with like a menu on the left side where you can build out different parts of your business. So you'll see there's a website button, there's a product buttons, and this would be digital products, courses, memberships, anything like that. Sales is where they record all your sales. So you can have people purchase directly in your website, your coaching, whether their individual coaching sessions or group coaching sessions, they can purchase your products, if you're doing digital products, like downloads or courses or mini courses or anything like that, then there's marketing. This is where you can actually do your email marketing, you can upload your whole list, you can create forums that are offering you know, if you take into create a visibility course like you can create your freebies. And you can have this all set up and Kajabi. So that it's so easy, you don't have to think about it. It's just totally automated. You build your list, then this there's another category for people to this is where you'll see all the people that work. And honestly, you can kind of track the progress of people. If they're on your email list. And they become a customer, you can go in there and see what have they purchased in the past? What email lists are they subscribe to what downloads do they have, you can kind of manage your audience that way you can also segment and clean your list that way. And then analytics now, we'll start with analytics because I think analytics are something most people don't really feel like they have to look at yet because maybe they haven't built a business. But analytics are so important, because they tell you what's working, what's not working. And for me when I like to look at in my analytics and let's see, I'm gonna actually go to my page and show you my analytics. So you can kind of see here, it's going to tell you your revenue, right? It's going to tell you who's purchased but then what I love is you can see opt in so I can see where people are clicking the most what freebies are working the most. How do I get those freebies to like clearly people like the influencer map and what to post right so I can take that information and say, I need to promote that more people are clicking people are liking it. And I can also see like Who then is dropping off I can also see who's subscribing to my email list. Because your email list if you don't know this, if you've not worked with me is Probably the most important currency in your business. And so you can also see people who subscribe to your membership if you have one, right. So analytics are super important. Now let's go to people. This is where again, you can look and see who is on your list, I can kind of check in and then see like, what assessments where I can create assessments here, where people fill them out. And I can look at the analytics and the answers of that. So that's something I think is super important. quizzing your audience, asking them questions, getting information from them, because they'll always tell you where to go next. And you can do all of that within Kajabi, you don't need type form, or Google Forms, you can actually do it within the website itself. Marketing, right, super important to be able to do your email list, right. So here's where I can create sequences. If you're on my email list, you've probably seen, you can get on my evergreen email, which is, every week, I send out an email, and this is an evergreen email list, I can trigger it by different things, I have all these different sequences that I sent out, depending on how you found me. My 14 Day creative mindset reset is something that you can is a free download. And you can see here, I've created a sequence and it's triggered whenever someone opens, that they're gonna get sent these 14 Day emails. And then from there, they'll be subscribed to this email list. And it's so easy to just go in here and say, okay, which, which email list do I want to subscribe into? Boom, done. Cool. So marketing, sales, of course, I'm going to try to blur out some of these numbers and see them. But what's really cool is you can actually go ahead and create your programmes and your offers, you can create coupons. So if you want to give out coupons to free for free, if you there's people who you want to be able to, you know, maybe you're speaking at an event, and you want to offer a discount. What's really cool too, is you can offer people affiliates to sign up. And they can actually earn a commission for referring your programme, right. So lastly, you'll see here, your products, this is all the products I offer. So I have my course my membership, my community, all different types of products. But what's really cool in Kajabi is everything's templated. So I don't have to start from scratch, they have all of these different options. To help you build that out. You can also host your podcasts here, which I do my credit visibility podcast is hosted on Kajabi. I upload it here, and it actually automatically through the RSS feed link will then send it out to Apple will send it out to Spotify. So you can see here in the analytics, my podcast where people are actually listening the most. Now this podcast is brand new, and I only really promote it to my audience. So it's not a huge download. But it's an amazing amount of engagement. And I'm super excited to continue to grow this. So you'll see here, number one top 10 episodes, I can see what's doing great here, Michelle Bruckner. So I can see which ones are performing best. And I can take that information and say, let's say okay, clearly my audience likes this. Let's build this out more. And then lastly, another product I offer, of course, is my coaching. So I can actually host my clients and keep track of their notes and everything within the coaching product here. And then the top level here of the is the website. Again, so easy because they have templates are what they call themes, right? I can go click on themes, and I can choose a theme that works for my brand. Right? So there's all they're constantly updating. Kajabi is kind of amazing at how quickly they listen to their audience and constantly update what it is that they're offering. And so a lot of these templates are new from listening to their audience over the last few years. And they're completely customizable. So once I've said picked a theme, I can go in here, and there's the basic streamlined ages where I can sort of manage those things and rename the theme blah, blah. But then I can actually go down here to pages. And this is where I can create lead pages or additional pages, landing pages for my website. What's really, really cool for anyone who's sort of new and building out things. They have something called pipelines, which are templated email sequences, right. So if I want to have a sales page, a confirmation page, a restaurant registration page, I can just click on new pipeline I'm, and I can say, okay, am I doing a freebie? Am I doing a free book? Right? These are all based on Brendon Burchard, who helped build a lot of these things out for them. I love Brendon Burchard. He's a great teacher a bit overwhelming at times, I think that's on purpose to get you to buy his stuff. But these really are great templates, if you're just starting out, like there's a coaching campaign, and they give you a video tutorial on how to use that pipeline. And once that pipeline is built,
it can flow you can share that right. And I love that about, about what they offer here. So it goes even further, you can do blogging, you can if you're doing video, you can upload your video to a blog post, and then that lives on your website. Let's just take a look at my website. So you can see, this is all done on Kajabi. I even have this pop up to join my email list. done on Kajabi. If I just scroll down, you'll see that there's a bunch of other options here. These are really I'm telling you right now, this has been a game changer. If you hadn't been to my website, I've got my podcasts listed there, welcome to my resources, I've got a free resources page for you. So there's lots of free tools for you, if you're trying to build including the link here to try out Kajabi for 30 days and test it out. I'm telling you, if you're somebody who, regardless of where you're at in your business, who plans on building out a business that offers coaching, whether it's performance coaching, or whether you're even selling products, Kajabi can be the best place for you to grow and spend a little less money, because those expenses, you want to keep expenses down to increase your profit margin, right. And I mean this when I tell you all of this, this has changed my life. So I want you to if you haven't checked it out just just to play around with Kajabi. Go click on the link in the show notes here below and try it out for 30 days. See if you like it, if you're somebody who's like been trying to spin your wheels doing so many things, I promise, this will simplify everything. I've not had a single client who's used Kajabi that has been disappointed in what it has to offer. Because I think this is the perfect platform for us for creatives. Now, is it the perfect platform for every entrepreneur, maybe not like maybe you're much more advanced in your entrepreneurship, maybe you have seven people on your team, maybe you have somebody completely dedicated to website building. If you're if that's true, and you have like a stat like they're going to be much more happy with something like WordPress much more customizable, much more, you know, they have more control over what they can do on that platform. But if you're a solopreneur, like if you're manning the ship by yourself, maybe with one or two people on your team, I promise you, you will not be disappointed and checking out Kajabi these are all the reasons why I love it. Hopefully you've gotten a lot out of listening to this. Try it before you buy it. It's constantly updated, constantly being improved upon and for anyone in my community. Reach out to me, let me know what you love about Kajabi. I'd love to know in the comments even down below, if there's another platform that you think is just as good if not better. I know people talked about other platforms like podia but for me Kajabi because of their customer service and the care that they put into their product, it takes the cake. So I hope you found this really, really helpful this quick little tip to help you build your business. I'm super excited to have you here and I'll talk to you in the next steps.
