Episode 6: Kerstin Martin
Squarespace Educator and Creator of the Calm Business Movement
SPEAKERS
Scott Robson, Kerstin Martin, Intro, Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Intro
Welcome to Less than Likely a podcast featuring honest behind the scenes stories of real entrepreneurs and thir less than likely journeys in creating successful businesses. Kate and Scott chat with founders from all industries and stages in business development to bring you the real, the brave and the messy of building something larger than yourself while being human.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
We are thrilled to welcome you here today and wanted to kick it off with what we ask all of our guests on the Less than Likely podcast, which is what is it about you or your business that makes you less than likely? So
Kerstin Martin
So I think I just tried to be myself, basically, I tried to ignore the noise and the hustle in so I'm very anti hustle, actually, and I'm all about being calm and intentional. You know, I believe that the internet has opened up so many opportunities for people. And it's really changing how we work and how we live. And I mean, I can just go by the feedback that I get, you know, I get a lot of really nice feedback from my students and peers. And they always say that I mean, authentic. I mean, authentic is such an overused word these days. But I think that they just appreciate that I'm always honest, I'm always open and try to do my best and basically just ignore the noise.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
It's interesting, Scott and I were just reflecting on both of our interactions with you prior to getting to know you, right. And I remember, I purchased your Squarespace Classroom, which teaches service providers how to build a course in their Squarespace site. And I was really struck by your energy, and the calmness and the clarity. And it was very, like, it's cool, we've got this, it wasn't like you were saying, This is really hard, which I think can be out there in the world about like, Oh, you got to push harder, you got to figure it out. And so there was this real anti hustle, as you say and it was almost a shock and a surprise in the most wonderful, refreshing way. It was really, really a different beautiful experience for me.
Kerstin Martin
I really appreciate that. I mean, that's kind of like the best feedback that I could get. I mean, people often say, you know, when I teach online, in my classes, it's kind of like, I'm sitting next to you, and just kind of showing you how to do it. Yeah. And being calm. And I mean, I'm just being me, basically, I'm generally a fairly chilled out person. So Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate that.
Scott Robson
Yeah, I'm actually really glad that you brought that up already. It's one of the things that I think really makes you stand out. It's the first thing that you see when you land on your website. And it's not something that you hear about very often, you know, being specifically and intentionally having a calm business being anti hustle. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what that actually looks like.
And that is another really, really good question, because I'm actually still evolving that framework. It started last November that I really kind of became aware of it when I actually took someone else's course. And she mentioned something in there about, I have a small business, because I like to feel calm. And that was like a lightbulb moment to me. I thought yes, that is exactly what it's all about. For me to... So, in this course we were talking about freebies, what freebies could we have, and all this, you know, and and I've historically, I've never been a big fan of freebies, because most of them are just like this fluffed up PDFs that just collect dust in your drawer basically. So I really wanted to think about what could I do that would really provide great value to someone. And that was it. Out of that came then the Calm Business Review. So I created this document out of a process that I do at the end of every year. I review my business, I look at my finances, I look at all my marketing efforts. How many blog posts have I done? So there's a whole series of things like, also values, you know, I look at what were my energy drainers what were my big challenges, how did I meet them? What can I do going forward? So I have to say I'm actually impressed myself. What I created there. It's a fairly comprehensive document. And but I put that together really quickly. I just flowed, it just flowed out of me. And it was all about being intentional, having the information about your business, because that all helps you feel calm, because when you're just all over the place and you never know what you're doing. What's coming in, what's going out. There's a financial component. And then people have said to me, I felt really scary to do do that, because I asked people look exactly at what came in, look at what your expenses are, what do you need every month and really look at this and analyze your data. But then so many people came back and said, Oh, my gosh, this was amazing. And it has actually made me feel calmer, because now I actually have information and data that I can use to make informed decisions. So out of that, I thought, Okay, I'm onto something here with a calm business review. And then the whole calm business, almost like, movement. So I'm still kind of working on formulating that. But for me, it's all about like being organized and have a simple setup. So you know, simplicity and organization. That's very much what it comes down for me. And I think as solo entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats, there are so many things that we actually do. And we're very good at our skill and our craft, the thing that made us become an entrepreneur. And then we realized, oh, there's so many other things we need to do. And then people either don't do them, because they feel very intimidated by it, or because they don't have time to do it. And then it becomes really hard to run a calm business, because you are all over the place. And one other thing that also feels very important to me with the whole calm business philosophy is... it's all about being in the moment and being present. And the hustle is all about grow, grow, grow, scale, scale, scale, money, money, money. Now calm business is not anti money. It's absolutely about earning money and having a good income. But it's also about how you run your business. So it's not just about how you grow your business. It's how you actually run your business the day to day, and feeling calm in that. And I feel, you know, it was a calmer approach to things that tries to be more intentional, more present. And that actually looks at how we do things, not just how we get somewhere. You know, that could really change a lot of things.
Scott Robson
I agree. And I feel like one of the things that the Calm Business Review - and I want to say that people can download this for free off of your website at KirstenMartin.com. I mean, everybody needs to download this, because it's an incredible tool that you're being so generous and in gifting people. For a lot of solopreneurs that can be quite confronting to go and look at a lot of their numbers and look at how they're spending their time and how they're not spending their time and how they're distracting themselves. So I feel like one of the things that the Calm Business Review really does is that it brings like you said this intentionality so people can really show up to their business. And what does it look like for you personally, to have a calm business.
As an example, I'll give an example. So I always used to really stress over my bookkeeping. When I started out, I just used spreadsheets, and that kind of worked fine. But as my business grew, it became more complex. And then I tried, like the software that came with my CRM that I used at the time 17 hats, which is a great system, but the bookkeeping part. It never quite could do what I needed it to do. So I just always was behind, I was always behind. And then at the beginning of 2020 I hadn't done any bookkeeping for all of 2019. I just totally procrastinated on it so I knew I had to do like a whole year now. And it was stressing me out like crazy. And the whole year was actually stressful because of that, because I knew I was procrastinating. So I looked at: okay, what can I do to simplify this? I tried working with bookkeepers I tried two bookkeepers. It didn't work out because they didn't understand my online business. So that was very stressful as well actually dealing with them. And then I sort of I've gotta get control of the situation. So I settled on QuickBooks, and then one of the extensions that works with Squarespace because I needed to get all my sales out of Squarespace into my bookkeeping, that was always the challenge. And it was also again, a nightmare learning it, I had to redo the whole year of 2019 three times in Quickbooks.
Scott Robson
Oh my gosh. Well, I
Well I re-entered all my stuff three times.
Scott Robson
I feel like every entrepreneur has been through some version of that story at some point.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
100%
Yeah, I'm glad I'm not the only one that oh my god. At the time, I just thought, I think it's also partly because of how I learned by doing I've always been that way so I basically just jump in and start doing and then of course there's still a lot of things I don't know yet. So that's how I ended up having to do it all again, because it just never tallied up at the end. But you know what, after the third time, everything was there. Every cent. And I had learned it. And now my bookkeeping, my bookkeeping used to take me out hours, and now takes me minutes. I mean, it's amazing in between that extension and QuickBooks. I spend literally like 10 minutes every Friday morning, just reconciling my transactions and looking at, and I can get reports, I get this at a glance reports now, the profit and loss statement. So I can actually see immediately at a glance what's coming in what's going out, you know, what are the trends? What do I need to watch out for, and it's made me feel so calm now. So I had to go through that period of stress in this case, but that is a really good example of how I'm using, for instance systems and technical tools to help me organize and simplify things. And then I just feel so calm about my bookkeeping now. It's amazing. Yeah, I've already done my taxes for this year, I've already got my return. My accountant uses QuickBooks. So it's really easy. And it's like, wow, I should have done this from the start. I could have saved myself a few years off of stress.
Scott Robson
And I think Kirsten, what you just went through, is exactly I think why people love you so much. How you're so generous in sharing the behind the scenes stories of how you run your business, because a lot of solopreneurs are dealing with a lot of the same issues. And they sort of don't know where to go. And I feel like you're so open about the struggles that you have, how you solve them, and then sharing the most efficient ways to solve those issues. And I think that's what first sort of attracted me to your business aas that sense of resourcefulness. And hey, guys, this doesn't need to be hard. Yeah. So I'm wondering if you can help us to get to know you a little bit better. Can you tell us what you learned about being an entrepreneur while you were growing up?
You know, I never actually thought I would be an entrepreneur one day. To me, entrepreneurs were like the tech startups and you know, the bros and those type like the Elon Musk and Richard Branson's of the world. So I actually never really gave it much thought, to be honest. But looking back at my career, I can see I've actually always been an entrepreneur at heart. Because I had many jobs in my life. And because I changed jobs every like two to three years. And I can see now because I love starting things up. So I would go in, I would basically sort out whatever the job was, and I would organize it, I would make it better, more efficient. And then when I reached the point where I was kind of done with that, I thought, Okay, I'm kind of done so I'm ready enough for the next thing. So I've actually always been an entrepreneur at heart because I love starting up things and you know, making things more efficient. But I never thought I could do that as a business. I mean, I'm an accidental entrepreneur. So I purely by chance, stumbled into this in my early 50s.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Can you tell us a bit about how your business was born? How did it come to be? Accidental entrepreneur, which I love that term, it's so great.
Kerstin Martin
Well at the time, so I was 52 at the time, and we had just relocated from England to the US. So my husband and I had what we call our radical rethink. We lived in England, he had a really stressful job there. And we knew eventually, we wanted to come back to America and to the Pacific Northwest, specifically. Because he's from Massachusetts, you know, I'm from Germany. So New England was always for him. Europe was for me and the Pacific Northwest is kind of for us, you know, we both really love it here. And so we decided to quit our jobs, and to take the savings that we had and to relocate here to Bellingham. So we basically arrived here, we didn't have a home, we didn't have jobs. We were in our early 50s. And everyone thought we were crazy. So in that transition, a friend of mine asked me to redesign her website for her business. And I'd been dabbling with web design for years, been a blogger since 2005. I discovered Squarespace in 2008. I was always redesigning my blogs. I love that. Web design is like my creative outlet. And then when she asked me, I said, Yeah, okay, I can do that. But it has to be in Squarespace. But I did all that while we were transitioning. So we landed here in Bellingham, we launched her new website, and it was a huge success. It actually changed her business overnight. So the idea was originally that I will just find a new job again, you know, when I get here, but after we launched her website, I thought, well, maybe I should just become a Squarespace web designer. I mean, I love doing this. This was a big success. I can probably find other people and then actually someone else did approach me and asked me because I shared about this with my online friends and said Oh, can you do one for me. I rented an external office for the first 12 months because I felt it needed still a proper office, something that would make me feel like I still have a proper job. And that was the best decision I could have made, because it also plugged me into that local business community. And I became the go to web designer there.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
I'm so curious, was there a moment when you went from? I'm just doing this thing to, oh, I'm actually building a business, or did you feel from the very beginning Oh, I could have a business here?
Kerstin Martin
So the year before we relocated, we came down to Bellingham, we have friends here, and they were building a new office building, actually, in the historic part of our town. We met up with them. And they showed us around the building. We had to wear like the hard hats and everything. And I remember walking around that building, a lot of the offices had views of the water. I mean, it's beautiful. You know, it's such a nice part of town. And I remember walking around thinking, this would be neat to have a little office here in this building. How nice would that be? You know, but I don't know what it would be. I mean, what would that do to need an office here? But I distinctly remember that walking around thinking how wonderful it would be to have a little office there. So a year and a half later, I had an office in that building.
Scott Robson
Amazing.
Kerstin Martin
And I think a part of me, I mean, that's kind of how I am, I always think, Well, I'll try it. Just try it out. I actually thought, oh, my gosh, yeah, I am a business owner. I actually embraced that fairly early on, I became an LLC, right from the beginning. I went and talked to the Small Business Bureau here in town, while I Googled a lot of stuff like how much money should I put aside for taxes, and there's a lot of stuff to figure out. So actually, for me, there was really a sense of excitement, oh, my gosh, I could actually do this, I could actually be self employed and have my own business. And I was really in awe of that in the beginning.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
I mean, it's interesting, because you didn't consider yourself to be an entrepreneur, you're over 50. Right. So it's like you have all this career and life experience behind you as well. But none of them are like, I'm an entrepreneur. you weren't a web designer at this stage.
Kerstin Martin
Not professionally, no.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
And yet, here you are, however, many years later, and it's like you've built the perfect business for you, even though when you were starting it, none of those things were something that you necessarily identified with. Do you think that that's about you and your personality?
Kerstin Martin
I think it is. Because I've always been someone, I've never been afraid to try things. And I've always been someone I've seen opportunity for something, I think, wow, okay, that could be interesting. And, yeah, why not try that? I mean, it's very much I live by trial and error, really. Because I always think, well, if it doesn't work out, then I can do something else. So I think at the beginning, it didn't really know what was involved in all of that. But I think also, in many ways, because of the experience that I had, because I have had a long career already where I have learned so many things. It's almost like all of that came together now in running my own business. It's like all these different threads are now coming together. So everything I've learned, all the skills I've acquired over the last few decades, it's all been helping me in my business. And I think that's how, in some ways, I managed to actually start it up fairly quickly. jump right into the deep end if you want and swim. But I think you're right. I think it's partly my personality. Because, yes, I have fears, of course, and I have doubts, a lot of self doubts, but part of me just ...It's what I call I put on my business blinders. And I basically ignore the voices inside and ignore the voices outside, you know?
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Did you identify as an educator?
Kerstin Martin
Not initially.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
You're such a teacher.
Scott Robson
You're such a natural.
Kerstin Martin
Again, I have done some of this in my corporate career. So I have actually given workshops, both technical and customer service. I remember once like many, many years ago, I was...when there is the entrepreneur, again I guess. I was going through a breakup, and I read this book, this amazing book, which really helped me get over that get through that. And I thought, wow, I should teach this to people. It was a German book. So I translated the book, created a workshop out of that, and then advertised that in London where lived at the time. This was way at the very beginning of things, so I had flyers. I had a friend helped me with the flyers. We put flyers everywhere in cafes, and toilets and all this and people signed up, you know, I was teaching them how to get over a broken heart.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
You know, what I love about that is I just get the sense that you're like, yeah, why not? Why not? Why wouldn't I do that?
Scott Robson
There is a fearlessness there, isn't there?
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
There is, whereas I feel like a lot of people, and we talk with a lot of entrepreneurs in our line of work, you know, have all of the reasons why not? Right? There's all of the reasons why oh, it could be really complicated. And there's just a real simplicity, and curiosity and spirit of let's see what happens here.
Scott Robson
Absolutely. I just feel I mean, I have fears too, you know, I have fears of failure, fears of success. And I think one thing that's important is you need to have some sense of a safety net. So when I did this little workshop on how to get over a broken heart, I mean, I had a job, you know, I also and actually it's funny, I've I haven't thought about this in a long time, I used to run an online dating website.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
You've had a million careers.
Kerstin Martin
Yes, I did that was a friend of mine. And again, we were heavily entrenched into the online dating world at the time. And I thought, you know, we could do this better. These websites, a lot of these websites are just not very good. And we found a developer. And so we did it. Because at the time, we were not that business savvy, we both had full time jobs. So it was more like a side hustle. Before we even knew what a side hustle was. And we weren't all that business savvy, to be honest. We were there at the right time, at the beginning of the whole online dating explosion, but we just didn't have the business acumen to really take it to that next level. And that's fine. We sold the business actually. So we basically broke even. But we had like over 5000 members, we got some people married, a couple of babies, you know?
Scott Robson
It's incredible.
Kerstin Martin
Yes, but like I said, so the safety net, I think is a little bit important. You know, when a lot of people are afraid to do something, think about what your safety net is. So in that case, it was having a job, but it was also a bit of a hindrance to be honest, because then time is split across different things. When we moved here, we had a little bit of savings to pay for the rent. And I have my husband, who luckily found a job as well. So I think I always feel in a way, I mean, I can take risks, because there is a safety net there. But even I think without all of that, I think also what, partly what my safety net is this belief that I can do something else. If this doesn't work out, there's something else I can do. I always genuinely believe I have options and choices.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Yeah, you are your ultimate safety net.
Kerstin Martin
Exactly, exactly. That's what I was trying to say.
Scott Robson
Yeah, there's something just so improvisational about all of your stories. There's this sense of, let's try this. Let's try this. Let's try this. And so it's funny, because you call yourself the accidental entrepreneur but from the outside perspective, I feel like it's like you're the inevitable entrepreneur, because you've got so many ideas, and you're so willing to experiment with that. But that idea of being the accidental entrepreneur, how do you think that changes the experience and perspective of being a business owner versus someone who really intentionally set out to do this?
Kerstin Martin
I think either way, I don't really think it matters that much how you get there, whether it's by accident, or whether it is completely the intention, because maybe you want to change your lifestyle, maybe you want to have more flexibility, maybe you're just fed up with your job, you know, and having other people to report to and to ask for permission. Or maybe you are very intentional. I think you know, how you get there almost doesn't matter. What matters is this what you do when you get there, you know.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Can you tell us a little bit about the trajectory of your business, and specifically your business model? You're very generous in sharing the ways that your business works in your blogs in your writing. You're a writer too. I mean, that's clearly such a part of what you do as well, right? What has guided your decision making because you're very niche. It's very clear what you do. You serve people in a very specific and powerful way. How did you get from here to there and what guided your decisions.
Kerstin Martin
So I think, again, it's kind of a combination of let's try this. But it's also driven by my passion for design, by my passion for sharing my knowledge and ultimately teaching. So I've always had that in me. And remember, I've been a blogger since 2005. So I've actually been like writing online for a long time, and sharing and I've always been pretty open with everything I share. So when I started out as a web designer that was clearly all about my passion, about design, about making the world a more beautiful place. And and I think Scott, you can probably relate to that very much, you know, and, and then Squarespace of course made it easier as well, because I'm not a developer. I'm not a coder. I know just enough code to do what I want to do. But I'm a designer, and that's why I love Squarespace, because it allows me to do that without being a developer. I don't think I would do what I do now, if I was doing WordPress, for instance, Squarespace was actually very instrumental in the trajectory of my business. Then again, I took a course by someone about doing online courses, and I thought, oh, you know, it would be kind of neat to maybe teach some stuff online. And people often asked me, you know, how do you do this in Squarespace? How do you do that? So again, I thought, Well, why don't I create a web design course and show people how to do this in Squarespace. So I launched my first course, had a very small audience. But I was also, again, as I had kind of my safety net, because I was still designing. My main income was still the web design at that point. I'm very driven by what I enjoy doing. I'm never driven by I want to make a million dollars. I mean, it's nice, I wouldn't mind. But it just doesn't drive me. And so I've always been driven by what I enjoy doing. And I realized I enjoy creating the courses. And I also enjoy the teaching. And I have a group of courses dealing it was people there because I still liked the people element, because I love relationships. I love people. So then I added more courses because people kept asking, Oh, what about this? What about that, and then I kept adding more courses. And then eventually, I was doing both one on one, but design and courses. And that became too much for one person, you know, so I was burning out actually. And so that was the end of 2018. And I thought, well, you know what, again, experiment, I experiment a lot in my business. So I thought for the next twelve months, I'm going to 100% focus on my courses and see if I can grow that part. And I'm not going to do any web design. And it was a little risky, because my web design at that point was making more money than my courses did. So I wasn't even sure if I would be able to replace my web design income. I said, Well, if it all fails, I can always go back to web design. And it worked out. I mean, I actually made more money than I ever did as a web designer.
Scott Robson
Incredible. Now you've got six different courses on your site. Is that right?
Kerstin Martin
Well, I've got five right now. And I'm working on a sixth one. Yes.
Scott Robson
Okay, what's so this is great. I would love to talk about what courses you have available for those that are looking to do a little bit of work in the Squarespace web design space. So you've got Biz Box.
Kerstin Martin
Yeah Biz Box is a business course, you know, for web designers. Because again, often people ask me, Well, how did you build your business? And how do you do this? So I tell you, I put my whole heart into that course, everything I learned as a designer, and it's all about setting yourself up legally finances, how to do a budget and how to, you know, workflows, onboarding with clients. So there's time management, I mean, there's like, how should I price my packages, so there's a lot in there. So that's my business course, for people who want to become Squarespace web designers. Then I have my Express course, which teaches you how to build a website in two days, if you wanted to so it in two days, most people actually don't do it in two days. But you can if you want to. Most people take a little longer than that. But it's okay, they're all self paced, all the courses are self paced, so you can access them and do them as quick or as slow as you want. Then I have the classroom course that Kate took, which teaches member areas, but it actually teaches the whole lifecycle of creating an online course that is hosted on Squarespace, starting out with like a pre sales page, a teaser page, so how to create your content, how to think about your content, and the modules and all of that, and then how to technically implement that in member areas. And then how to promote your course once you launch it.
Scott Robson
I remember, Kate, when you bought that.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
It changed everything. Well, you know, what it did was it re-directed me into a far simpler, straightforward way, because I've had clients come to me too, and say, I want to start doing courses. And I need this and I need this. And I need this. And I need this. And you know, the way that things are interconnected or not interconnected at all in some ways is you have to buy and it feels like everything needs to work together in exactly the right way in order for it to feel effective. And if you're not a tech person, you are just completely overwhelmed with all the moving parts. So what I loved about that course was it was like I already have the tool. Yeah, I'm already using the tool. How can I use it in a whole new way that brings everybody to my site. It was perfect. It was great.
Kerstin Martin
And I think that's exactly what I love about Squarespace. I mean Squarespace has also evolved a lot the last few years. So they used to just be a website builder and now you can do email marketing through them. You can host online courses or have memberships through them. You can do scheduling through them. So there's a whole range of products that they now have, which are all managed through one and the same platform. And I love that. Is it always perfect? No. I mean, there are sometimes features that I wish they had. And all they're working on it. But to me it always again, it comes back to the calm philosophy. Ultimately, I want things to be simple. And then I have actually mini course on how to get clients. And I'm working on a course now for the email marketing tool that Squarespace provides for campaigns. So that's going to complete the courses.
Scott Robson
That's actually something that I'm really curious about, you started off with just a few courses, and now your courses have grown over time considerably. And you've really focused on this as one of the primary elements of your business. How have you had to accommodate and manage having a business that is growing as a solopreneur?
Kerstin Martin
That's a really good question. And that's something I have struggled with, where do you go from here? How do you grow for instance. You know, because, in a way, growth is almost inevitable. If you are fairly successful at what you do, there will be that element. And you know, so how do you manage all of that? Most of my courses, I don't actually have to touch which is great. I mean, I do every now and then go in there and update things, but not as regular as the Express course, for instance. So I had to mentally accept that about this particular course, which is also one of my best sellers, so I didn't want to just ditch it. So I had to rethink how I do things, but also get help. Then I hired Shanua and who you know,.
Scott Robson
I know Shauna, yeah, she's fantastic.
Kerstin Martin
She became my VA and my strategy person, and yeah, she's amazing, that really helps. I also have a CSS expert who helps in my group. So in my group, when people have questions, anything technical, he handles, and I love that because it totally gives me now freedom and peace of mind to focus on the things that I like to do. One of the challenges that I have at the moment and I haven't quite figured it out yet, is that I don't want to scale in a way that everyone says you have to scale. And then you have to hire a big team and to do ads and all of that. And I have no interest in that. I don't want to manage a big team. I did that in my corporate career, and I never enjoyed it. So all of that doesn't feel all that great to me. But audience growth is actually where it's at, for me at this point, trying to grow my audience and getting more eyes onto what I do. Because once they kind of find me, then my conversion is actually pretty good. So my audience is still quite small, my mailing list is still very modest, and you can only resell to the same audience so many times. So some people do what I have done, they create new products...every time I launch something new, my existing audience will buy it. And that's worked really well. So I've done a lot of cross selling. I sell a lot of bundles, too. Bundles actually that's my main income source now. It's my bundles. But I have to think about that. Now I'm trying to figure out now how do I grow my audience without becoming a hustler? But I know that I don't want to grow where I have a huge team, you know, and so if that means I never get to the seven figures, well, then so be it, that's fine. I mean, I have a really good income right now. So if I kind of stay where I'm at now, I'll be actually pretty happy as well.
Scott Robson
Just you saying that and also, you mentioned just being anti-hustle. How that lands for me is you're building a business and, I think that this is true for a lot of the smaller solo entrepreneurs that we know, you're building a business that suits your life. You want it to reflect what your needs are. And it's almost as if being anti hustle is almost being pro human, in a way. Right?
Kerstin Martin
I love that. I love that. Yes, that is so true pro human and pro life, pro living, because it's not just about again, I mean, having money is great because it gives you freedom in some ways, but also having just time freedom. And it's about the lifestyle too, but also about enjoying what you do. And I for instance all this talk about oh, passive income and to make money in your sleep and to sit on the beach and all that and I think that's all bullshit. I mean, it works for some people, and that's fine. But I again, it comes also back to the con business... I want to enjoy what I do. I want to genuinely enjoy what I do. I, actually, these days — I base a lot of my business decisions around does this feel calm? And if it doesn't, well, will it make me feel calm, eventually? Do I just have to go through a little time of friction and then it'll feel calm, then that's fine too.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
What I love about this movement and this idea is you really are redefining the experience of being an entrepreneur and my hope is that anyone listening to this can hear that you know actually can be a calm experience that you can give yourself that. That it doesn't need to be the hustle and the move and everything like that, which we're bought into in this culture in so many different ways. So just you staking that claim and saying, No, it doesn't have to be this way. And in fact, you can have a really calm and robust and nourishing and flourishing business is so great. The other thing that's fantastic is I really feel just as I was saying, with my experience of, of taking your courses, and every time I talk to you, that the tools and the conversation and the support you provide, also helps anybody who's a part of your world to redefine their experience of being an entrepreneur as well. So anyone listening, this is available to them, and you're a great model for it. And you have the tools for them, too.
Kerstin Martin
That's a really nice summary of this.
Scott Robson
Yeah, and Kristin, one thing I'd love to talk about before we let you go is your Eule Planner, this planner is not only beautifully designed by Kirsten...
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
It is great.
Scott Robson
It's really gorgeous. But it's what I love about it is how it's so built for a solo entrepreneur who needs a little bit of intentionality around what they're bringing to their business. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Kerstin Martin
So again, that was another one of my ideas. I've been using planners for years, and I just never quite had the right combination of notes, pages and charts and tables. So I thought, again, oh, why don't I design my own. So I did, I found a printer here in the US, because I didn't want to print in China. So everything kind of fell into place for that. I only do small print runs. Because I'm not a retail business. And that's actually what I learned. Initially, I thought, oh, maybe I'll have lots of planners and I'll build this out and create this kind of amazing planner business. But I very quickly realized retail is a totally different beast, to providing services or even online courses, you know, and I quickly realized, no, you need a huge audience for retail to to work, actually, and I just didn't want to stress about that. But that's okay, you know, so I have a fairly dedicated fan base now. So I just, you know, as long as people want to buy it, I will make it. And it really was about being specific for online entrepreneurs. I have an area for statistics where I track all of my social, my following, followers and all of that, where I track my income, my expenses, my running balance. I have a page where you list your blog posts or your list your newsletters, your opening rates. So you have a like an at a glance view of things. And it's almost like, I always call it like it's my business brain. So the planner, it's my business brain. And I mean, I love using digital tools, I have nothing against those. But having an analog system with also a lot of notes pages, I wanted to have a weekly overview, and three notes pages afterwards. So one for to dos, and then two blank pages after every week. And that's been like such a game changer actually for just running my business. So it is where a lot of my courses are born inside my planner. It's where everything gets captured.
Scott Robson
So what you're saying is if we want to be like Kirsten, everybody should be using the Eule planner.
Kerstin Martin
Oh, absolutely. (laughter)
Scott Robson
I'm certainly bought into that. Kirsten, thank you so much for for being on Less than Likely, we really appreciate your time. And we really appreciate just the way that you run your business and that example that you're setting for all of us, which is to decouple from hustle culture and be a little bit more calm in our businesses. So thank you so much.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Thank you.
Kerstin Martin
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed this.
Scott Robson
So, that was so nice. Yeah, she's wonderful.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
I really do want to hang out with her all the time. I mean, I might say that about everybody that we talked to, which means that we're just bringing amazing people in, right? But she's She really is just such great energy. So genuine.
Scott Robson
So genuine, I feel like what I appreciated about this conversation was talking specifically about what it means to have a calm business, have an anti hustle business, have a business that and we talked about this a little bit with Kirsten after we ended. Having a calm business also really means having a business that's boundaried, boundaried does to what your time looks like, what your time off looks like how you're spending that time when you are working. And I think that that is such a rich conversation, especially for solo entrepreneurs running a business, whether it's online or in person.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that it's not the default state for most of us as entrepreneurs and business owners and maybe even as humans, like I consider myself to default into calm. There's some music in the background. I don't know if you can hear it, but
Scott Robson
I can't hear it. You're good. You're fine.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Oh that's great. Ben's like strumming out downstairs. Yeah,
Scott Robson
Yeah Ben, play your guitar!
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
It's awesome.
Scott Robson
Can he play us off? Is that cool? Less than Likely theme song like, Less than Likely, like little jazz riffs?
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Okay. All right.
Scott Robson
You're like, calm down. We're not doing that.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Calm down.
Scott Robson
I got really excited.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
You did! Oh, yes, no, but it's not the default. And, you know, I think I talk a lot about, you know, being centered in our business. And I think that's so much the same thing. Like, it's so similar, right? That it's not the default. And in fact, we think we need to be doing more, being more, you know, moving faster, growing larger, all of these different things in order to consider ourselves in some ways, like legitimate or in some ways able to play.
Scott Robson
I think you've nailed it. When I think of it, I think of hustle culture doesn't exist without other people in your own industry that you're comparing yourself against, because it's really about am I doing as well as I can be doing? And it seems so much easier for everybody else, and I need to be making more money? And am I meeting the minimum that I that I could be making from this? It's a lot of negative self talk. And so I just think that she just does such a elegant job of claiming her space and not feeling like she really needs to participate in comparison games with other businesses. And I think that that's something that we can all take away.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's real value to be had. This is not just about staking a claim, this is what works for me, there's real value to be had in choosing a calm business, I know that it would probably keep me from overworking, which I love to do. It would probably make me a better coach. In some instances, if my like non calm part is overly triggered outside of my coaching sessions. I feel like I'm pretty calm person generally, when I'm coaching.
Scott Robson
Yeah, yeah.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
But I'm human, too. So if I'm worried all the time about, am I marketing in the right way? Or am I reaching enough people? Or am I, you know, are my systems, right? And I'm just constantly frantic. It doesn't matter how centered I am, that's going to seep in some way or another. Am I wrong?
Scott Robson
No, you're not wrong at all. And I feel one of the things that Kristin did a great job of explaining is, and this I think also reflects a lot in conversations that you and I have had, specifically around a lot of the work that you're that you do it, which is understanding your business really gives space to you being able to show up in a much more conscious way. And I think that when we don't do that one of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation is the small questions and anxieties that hang over us that go unaddressed really end up taking a huge amount of the bandwidth in our day to day lives. And so there's real value to understanding what your business looks like.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
It's true. And also, we didn't get into this in the conversation. But I wanted to add to it like not only do you understand your business better when you're able to see everything right when you have that overview, and you have the data and the organization that Kerstin was talking about. But also you are able to capture what's going well, you're able to capture what is working and where you really feel great. I mean, there have been times in my business, some more recent than others, where I wonder like, what is even working here? Yeah. And when I'm able to slow down and calm down, I'm able to then see and really analyze the information that my business is trying to share with me. And so in being frantic, or the opposite of calm, whatever it might mean for you, I think you could look a lot of different ways for a lot of different people. You are taking away the opportunity for you to really give yourself credit in some ways too, right?
Scott Robson
You don't even know what's working well and what you're killing at.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Exactly.
Scott Robson
So you're missing opportunities to be building your business in a much better way. And so there's so many reasons to follow Kerstin's lead. Yeah, it's pretty inspiring.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
And I really do want everyone to know about her services and her courses because I feel like it does offer this entry place particularly for those solopreneurs who are trying to do it all, who want to take on that website design or SEO or put a course in their website and just take it to the next level but not overcomplicate things. She's really such a incredible asset to have in this solopreneur world, honestly.
Scott Robson
She really is the other thing that I also took away. And it was funny because she was the one who put this, the words to this and so glad that she did, how experimental she is. And there's this sort of lightness about how she just tries things out, sees how they go. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And she even spoke about sometimes you're like, I didn't really work out that well. You know, I don't I don't really want to go into retail, I thought I'd give it a go. Turns out, not something that I really want to do. But even in her explaining that, there's this sense of Yeah, no big deal. And I think that we sometimes as entrepreneurs feel like we're putting it all on the line. We look for our businesses to hold too much. And to have this lightness around just being experimental, trying something out seeing if it works, and if it doesn't, like no big deal on to the next thing. She's built a whole business that way.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
100%. Can we please have an episode on no big deal? First of all. I think that needs to happen. Yeah, that's such a huge part of how I try and think to it's like a real mantra for me, right? How do we make this no big deal? Because ultimately, in the grand scope of your business, in the end, when you look back, you're like, Yeah, that was no big deal. But in the moment, like this means everything!
Scott Robson
It's so serious.
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
So we should bookmark that
Scott Robson
Bookmark that
Kate Jaeger-Thomas
But Kerstin's absolutely just showing us how it's done, I think.