Plenty with Kate Northrup

Changing directions in your company, especially when it's a 3-million-dollar home-manufacturing brand, takes guts (or ovaries, as the case may be). Following your heart and calling is not always the easy decision. But Sinclair Kennally has never tried to take the easy way out. Listen in to this special bonus episode of The Kate & Mike Show where we're going behind the scenes of this 2019 Origin Incubator member's business trajectory from manufacturing to e-commerce to wellness and detox for visionaries. You'll learn why every leader needs to be paying attention to their toxic burden if they want to function at their full potential, how we can all contribute to the greater good of the planet with our buying decisions, how to economy-proof your business, and what the critical ingredient for Sinclair was as she made these big leaps and changes this year (even in the face of great personal loss).

When Mike and I became parents, we experienced the most difficult year of our life up until that point due to a combination of the fact that becoming a parent is hard, I had a traumatic birth experience, I struggled with postpartum anxiety and insomnia, and we had a sick baby who would wake herself up throughout the night scratching herself so much from her severe eczema. It was not awesome on so many levels. However, the reason everything didn’t fall apart was because our business remained solid the whole time, despite the fact that both of us were working less than half the amount of time we’d worked previously. So how did we make our money that year? Digital courses that didn’t require us to trade hours for dollars (or be showered or coherent because we created them before having a kid). For us, having a thriving digital course business meant we kept it together (barely) during an incredibly grueling year and could be with each other and our baby without having to worry about how we were going to make money. For others, having a thriving digital course business means being able to homeschool their kids, travel to spend a month or more with family that lives far away, not needing to have as many (or any) 1:1 clients, being able to leave a job that feels soul-sucking, or being able to keep the doors open to the business that they love. What might having a thriving digital course business mean to you? There are a lot of misconceptions about what it takes to create and launch digital courses successfully. I don’t have anything special to teach. I don’t have a big enough (or any) audience. The digital course world is over-saturated. There’s no room for me. The tech is too complicated and I can barely navigate my email inbox! I wouldn’t even know where to begin.It’s too overwhelming. Turns out, creating a thriving digital course business is not necessarily what you think...and you CAN do it. Today we have a really special episode of The Kate & Mike Show featuring the QUEEN of digital courses, our dear friend and creator of Digital Course Academy, Amy Porterfield. In the episode she debunks the common myths about digital course businesses (including the ones listed above), and by the end of the episode you’re not only going to fully get that you can have the kind of freedom digital courses create in your business, you’ll also know how to get started. Here’s what you’ll learn: • How to get the 10% edge over the competition that makes all the difference • How one woman saved her business by selling 313 units of a $200 digital course on making caramel candied apples - and how you can use her story to inspire your successful course • 2 common mistakes that kill course creation success • What your #1 priority needs to be if you’re going to have a thriving digital course business • The counter-intuitive, but incredibly effective, strategy for deciding what to teach • How to determine which content to give away for free and what to charge people for (this is GOLD!) • How to stay ahead of the curve in the digital space And so much more! You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com.  Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

I'm so excited to kick off a special 8-week series of bonus episodes on The Kate & Mike Show, featuring a group of women I've been working with closely over the past 9 months to support in growing their businesses while doing less. This week I'm introducing you to Whitney Bishop who's a change agent working in the non-profit space. She came to me wanting to lean into her thought leadership and create more leverage in her business, as well as begin to reach an audience beyond her native Louisville, KY. Listen in to hear what she did to expand this year, including what made the difference for her getting the impressive result of besting her 2018 revenue by the end of August of 2019!

If you want to leverage your time so that you don’t have to trade hours for dollars anymore, a digital course is an excellent idea. However, firing up your laptop and recording your voice over slides or shooting some videos and then getting them up on a password protected site by no means guarantees you’re going to have a successful digital course that reaches the people who need it and gives you the income you deserve. I want you to have wild success with your digital course (or maybe even courses) but I don’t want you to slow yourself down unnecessarily by making the mistakes we see over and over again. So, Mike and I recorded a brand new episode of The Kate & Mike Show for you to give you a few ounces of prevention. Whether the idea of creating a digital course is brand new to you or you’ve already created and launched one, this episode is for you. If I’d had this information 6 years ago when we first launched The Money Love Course, or even 2 years ago, I would have saved our company so much time and we would have helped more people (plus had more profits.) Don’t head on your digital course creation journey without a map. This is one area where winging it will cost you a lot of time and money unnecessarily. Listen to the episode because it will get you started on the right path. You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com. Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

I honestly didn’t realize it until last week when Mike and I sat down to record this week’s Kate & Mike Show episode, but there’s something I’ve committed to since the very beginning of my business that I think has been the single biggest contributor to feeling like, despite the ups and downs, my business is wildly successful and I’m a thriving entrepreneur: Circling up with a group of fellow entrepreneurs who are also committed to upleveling with a set structure and container to encourage all of you to grow. There’s actually a word for this very thing. That word is mastermind. It’s based on the idea that we’re more powerful together, that 1 + 1 = 3 (not 2), and that when you get a group of people together who are an energetic match, everyone accelerates in a way they couldn’t possibly if they were going it alone. I’ve participated in all kinds of masterminds over the past 11 years, and regardless of their structure, cost, or length, all of them have had one thing in common: They’ve caused me and my business to grow exponentially in relationship to the time I invested. A mastermind is like kiln-dried firewood and perfectly crumpled newspaper for your growth. Your ideas are the matches or sparks or that clicker thing where you have to hold one part with your thumb while you pull the trigger with your finger to get fire to come out of it, which can sometimes take a few tries to coordinate. No newspaper and dry firewood? All the sparks in the world won’t catch. They need something to ignite them and let them grow and burn. You may have never heard the word mastermind before, or you might have been considering joining or starting one. Either way, if you want to take your business to the next level in a Do Less way, a mastermind is a must and this week we’re giving you: • 6 reasons to join a mastermind • how to find the right one for you • how to start your own Once you’ve listened we’d love to know: What’s your experience been with masterminds? What additional questions, if any, do you have? You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

Want to know what the #1 indicator of a woman’s success in her career is? A tight-knit group of female friends. Yep. It’s true! This is exciting but here’s the problem: After the age of 25 our friendships start to suffer, and our social circles contract. Why? Because our culture tells us to be focused on getting married and having kids and getting ahead in our careers! So we ditch or stop prioritizing the very thing that would contribute to said success on a deep level: Our friends! When I recently asked you what you wanted to learn more about, tons of you came back and said you wanted to learn about how to make friends as an adult, and, more importantly, how to form and maintain super connected friendships. Like the ones that feel like the family you get to choose. We’re giving you 7 things to keep in mind when it comes to forming close friendships that will contribute not only to your career success, but also to your immunity, mental health, and overall joy (which, for the record, is my highest priority these days. If it’s not bringing me joy or I can’t figure out how to do it joyfully, I’m not doing it!) If you struggle with making friends, if you’ve had your heartbroken by a friendship ending, if you love your friends but find it hard to prioritize them, if you’re feeling lonely, if you don’t know where to find your people, or if you just want to know how to feel even more connected to the friends you already have, this episode is for you! After you’ve listened, we’d love to hear which of the 7 tips we gave resonated with you the most and also if you have any other friendship-building stories or insights to share! You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast 

"If I want to make more money, I have to work more." This belief has rung in the ears of entrepreneurs for long enough. I believed if I wanted more success, I needed to work more until I’d been in business for nearly 15 years. You know what finally proved me wrong? Getting pregnant. You may be wondering: What the heck does pregnancy have to do with growing my business? Stay with me. Mike and I had the goal of hitting 7 figures in revenue in one year for years before we hit it. Believe it or not, it was pregnancy knocking my old ways of working (pushing harder and hustling) right out of me, plus a first year of parenthood that was one of the darkest times of my life, and figuring out how to run our business...and be profitable...at the same time that shook the belief that in order to make more money I have to put in more hours out of me. Mike and I finally hit 7 figures when we started working less because we’d become parents and we simply didn’t have the time (or bandwidth) we used to have. How exactly did that work? Well, I’d love to tell you...and we recorded a whole podcast episode for you in order to do just that. This week’s episode of The Kate & Mike Show is the second installment of our August Podcast Listening Adventure designed to help you upgrade your business and your life, and in it we’re sharing: • The 4 shifts we made to finally hit our goal of 7 figures in revenue within one year • Why waiting to learn how to manage your money well until after you’ve started making more money is a terrible idea • The very scary thing we did that helped us grow our business by over $400K in one year • The single most important thing you can do to improve your business or your life (and it has nothing to do with putting in more time) Once you’ve listened, we want to hear from you: Which of the 4 shifts resonated the most with you? How will you put it into action in your own business? You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

When I recently asked our community what their biggest business challenge is I got floods of: Getting enough clients or customers. Is making sales something that’s a sticky wicket for you? If so, you’re in the right place. I got a text last weekend from the guy who organized a fundraiser for our girl’s co-op daycare telling me that my husband Mike was hands down the MVP when it came to making sales for the weekend. Unlike many people in our community, Mike LOVES to sell. While I don’t love it as much as Mike, believe it or not, I kind of love it, too! We’re kicking off our August Podcast Listening Adventure with an episode that’s going to help you make more sales, whether you’re brand-new in business and feel like sales is a dirty word or you’re well-established but would love to up your conversion rates. In this episode of The Kate & Mike Show we covered: • The specific strategy Mike used to be the MVP of sales at our recent daycare fundraiser and how you can use it to up your sales in your business • Why I was secretly excited when Mike told me he used to sell drugs (yep - for real!) • 3 specific ways to get more people to buy what you’re selling (trust me - even if you don’t like to sell, you’re going to LOVE trying these out) Once you’ve listened, we want to know which one of the 3 tips we gave was the most useful and how you’re going to apply it to your business. Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week for the next installment of the Podcast Listening Adventure! You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

She grew up in a tiny town in Tennessee and fell in love with track and field, practicing high jump using an old sewer pipe that her coach would hold, falling onto an old mattress that they’d found and put in a sand pit. She got herself a full scholarship to college because of her athletic and academic achievements, but a sharp pain in her back one day that caused her to fall to the ground took her out for the season, leaving her wondering if her dreams of being an Olympian were ever going to come to fruition. A counselor told her to try yoga, and even though her Southern Baptist roots made her fearful that doing yoga meant worshipping the Buddha, she gave it a go because she was promised it was "just stretching." This woman’s story of healing injury, coming back to her athletic ambitions, going for it again, becoming injured again, going for it again, burning out again, and then coming back in a whole new way is one of overcoming tremendous obstacles and ultimately, finding wellness and joy in unexpected places. Koya Webb did not go on to compete in the Olympics as she’d dreamed of her whole youth. Instead, she let her first dream die so she could live the true dream: making a difference in the lives of people all over the world. As an internationally recognized yoga teacher, personal trainer, holistic health and wellness coach, motivational speaker, model, and author of Let Your Fears Make You Fierce, Koya is a force of love in the world. This week we have Koya on The Kate & Mike Show and, like a total dork, at the end of the podcast I blurted out, "I just really like you!" This woman is delightful and her joy is infectious. I’m so excited to share her with you today. If you’ve ever pushed yourself so hard that you got injured, this episode is for you. If you’ve been wondering how to grow your influence using social media to get the word out there about what you love, this episode is for you. (Koya has 1M followers, and the strategy she shares on the episode is simple and powerful.) If you’ve ever been afraid of being the first in your family or peer group to go to college, surpass a certain income level, change your diet, prioritize your health, move far away, or have a happy relationship, this episode is for you. If you’ve ever needed to let one dream die in order for another one to live, this episode is for you. You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.

The number one thing I’ve heard since making the rounds on all the podcasts and launching Do Less is that people’s minds are blown by the information about cyclical living and how we have this inner blueprint for productivity that no one has ever taught you...until now. It’s pretty straightforward if you have a normal, healthy, regular 28-day menstrual cycle, but there are so many reasons that may not be the case. Pregnancy. Menopause. Being a man. Bleeding on the full moon. Hormonal birth control. An IUD. Breast cancer treatment. Nursing. Irregular cycles that vary between 17-43 days. PCOS. Perimenopause. Working in a corporate setting that doesn’t support this whole cyclical living thing. Since Do Less came out, my DM’s and our inbox have been filling up with your questions about your period, the moon, and how this whole cyclical living and planning thing works for your specific situation. So, Mike and I recorded a brand-new, incredibly meaty episode of The Kate & Mike Show to answer all of your cyclical living and planning questions. (Well, mostly I answered your questions and then Mike asked me more.) Here’s what we covered: • How do you plan for your cycle if you’re pregnant, nursing, in perimenopause, or are past menopause? • The cyclical macrocosm of pregnancy and how the trimesters align with the phases of the moon/menstrual cycle/seasons and how that may impact your creativity and productivity. • How does this work if you’re on hormonal birth control or have an IUD? • How do men’s cycles work? How can we support the cycles of the men in our lives? (We really got into this one and answered it a way you probably wouldn’t expect.) • My personal, very efficient period, new moon, and full moon rituals. • What to do when you bleed on the full moon vs. the new moon. • How to change the timing of your cycle if you desire. • Best practices for the luteal phase when you’re feeling prickly and low-energy. • How do you marry your own menstrual cycle with the lunar cycle and what do you do with that information? • And so much more! If you’ve had questions about how your energy cycles, productivity cycles, and creativity cycles work, I’m 99% sure we covered it in this episode. Plus, even if you don’t think you have a cyclical living question, I guarantee we’ll answer a question in this episode you didn’t even know you had. Once you’ve listened, we want to know: What was your biggest insight from today’s episode? Do you have more questions that we didn’t cover? How will you use what you learned in your business and life? Leave us a comment and let us know! You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com! Would you, or a company you know, be a good fit to sponsor The Kate & Mike Show? If so, let’s talk! You can email mike@mikejwatts.com regarding current sponsorship opportunities. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.