It was a big few weeks for me – I had a fair bit to do to catch up with this podcast and finish off a few other things before I start my job.

So of course, I got sick 🤒

But I still managed to get the essentials done, including finishing the Beyond Productivity launch, doing a couple more Business Idea Reviews and producing two summit workshops.

While catching up this podcast, which was a little behind reality!

But I’m all ready to focus on my new job now for a few weeks. I’ll see you once I have that under control.

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Resources mentioned

I mention the following resources in this episode.

Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning I will receive a commission if you purchase via that link (thanks!) – see my disclosure here.

Beyond Productivity – yes, my low-key launch went well! I’ll keep layering more strategies on and working on it until I’m happy with the results.

Tara Reid – hosted the Freebie Fest, which is sadly over. BUT you can check out her awesome range of business freebies right here.

Bougie in a Backpack Summit – this has finished but there are some fantastic travel workshops in there – check it out if you’re interested in exploring.

Fearless Homeschool membership – my neurodiversity workshop, plus dozens of others from me and hundreds from other awesome homeschoolers. Seriously the best homeschooling resource you can get.

Transcript

Hey, I’m Kelly Kotanidis, and welcome to Online Business From Scratch, where I’m taking you behind the scenes as I build my new online business from scratch to a full-time income while making sure it’s a great fit for my traveling homeschooling life. I’ll be walking you through everything I do and why so you can follow along and build your own flexible online business quickly and efficiently.

This is the update for day 200 of my new online business, 22 days on from my last proper update. I’m recording this for the second time because when I was working this morning, I went to pull up a swipe file I’d saved on my laptop and realized that somehow yesterday, someone in my family deleted my entire Business in Your Backpack folder from my desktop. Because it’s a big folder, my computer would have said, “Hey, this is too big; I need to delete it permanently. Is that okay?” And they obviously clicked yes to that, and everything is all gone now. No one remembers doing this, but my husband did delete stuff yesterday, so we think it’s his fault. Now, I’m just considering buying a second laptop and banning everyone from my computer so this can’t happen again.

Luckily for me, I backed everything up a couple of weeks ago, so I didn’t lose much, but it could have been much, much worse. It was actually the first time I’ve backed it up all year, and if someone had deleted it all just a few weeks earlier, it would have been an absolute disaster and caused so much more stress and bother than just re-recording a few podcasts. So, please take this as your reminder to back up your stuff. Please go and do that while you listen if you can, or do it very soon because it is so easy to make a small mistake that has huge, painful consequences.

These last couple of weeks have been about tidying up all the loose ends so that I can go and try out my new job undistracted for a month or so. I know that, in reality, I’ll still be looking at my business, and I won’t be able to resist doing bits and pieces here and there, but I’m just trying to remove any “have to do” tasks before I go. That was made much more difficult by me catching the flu, which lingered for nearly two weeks and slowed me down a lot because I was really achy and fatigued. Luckily, I recorded a few episodes before my voice went because, for about a week there, my voice was croaky, and I was having coughing fits if I said more than a few sentences, so it was very unsuitable for recording.

I also had to do all of my onboarding stuff for my new job. I had to go and do a first aid course, do all the NDIS units online, which were quite a few days of work, and there was quite a bit of cost involved. I have to say that I’m always amazed by just how many hours of work need to go in before I even start a job. I think it’s something most people overlook because I could have created and launched a whole new course in the time that it has taken me to apply, interview, and fulfill all the pre-work requirements. It’s huge, but re-entering the matrix means I need to tick the boxes and comply, so I’ll just follow along.

I spent most of my business time catching up with this podcast. I had a difference of about two months between when I’d written down my progress to when I actually recorded it and released it as a podcast, and I was happy with it slowly catching up because my weekly episode usually covered between 10 to 14 days of progress. But I’ve closed the gap now, and I’m completely up to date, so when I come back, I’m not in some weird time warp talking about before I started my job or had the break because it would be really hard to do logically.

In terms of promo, the Freebie Fest finished, so that was the free business resources bundle I took part in, and I got 95 signups from that, which is a pretty good result. Two bought the tripwire offer for Beyond Productivity, which is a conversion rate of 2.1%. Now, that’s not really enough people going through the funnel to tell if it’s working, but I thought it was pretty good for a free bundle because I know with all that stuff, I don’t even look at the tripwires; I just sign up and get my freebie. So, I felt confident enough about the sales page that I polished it up, and I’ve just added it as a tripwire to all Business Idea Blitz signups.

I’ll have to see how that goes. I haven’t had many people sign up for the Business Idea Blitz and see it since I set it up, but I have had a few sales, and it’s currently at a 7% conversion rate. So, 7% of the people who see that after signing up for the free course then buy the paid course, which I think is pretty good, although it will obviously change as the numbers increase to more significant ones. Realistically, I need a few hundred people, at least through there, before I can really see how it’s going. But I will keep checking on that because I love these stats—I love the numbers, I love the hard data when it comes to seeing what actually works and what doesn’t work.

Talking about my Beyond Productivity course, I finished my very low-key, email list-only launch of the course, and I sold 27 just from that. I only ended up doing two emails in the end, so it was very low-key, very minimal, and not planned or organized at all. I have since sold a couple more at full price, so that’s really encouraging.

For further promo of that course, I have added it to my site menu now so that everyone who visits the site can see that it’s there. I also added an email relating to productivity in my evergreen sequence that mentions the course in a pretty natural, non-pushy way at the end of the email, and that has gone out to the first lot of people in that sequence, and I sold two more courses from that. So all this layering of the tripwires, the evergreen email list, and adding it to more places—it’s all working. As I add it to more places, more people are seeing it automatically, and more people are buying it, so that’s really encouraging.

I really love this method of thinking, “Hey, I can do this thing for more evergreen promotion,” and then spending an hour or so doing that and then seeing more sales come in regularly. Even if it’s only one a week from that action, it all adds up, and it makes the return on that hour pretty good over time. I hadn’t really thought of it before because it’s just a method that I’ve developed over time. It’s a way of launching that keeps everything low-stress and fits with me being busy and also needing that outside accountability to keep me going.

But I think I have a method here—it’s something that I can break down and teach people that will take the whole scariness out of launching, and it provides a way for us busy parents to get our stuff out there in a way we can manage because huge launches are so much work. I used to do them for the summits because they were necessary. I had to make sure that everyone heard about it in a short time because it was a live event, but man, they were absolutely exhausting. If 200 people bought in a day, which happened pretty regularly, then there were all the login issues and other work to do around that at a time when I was already busy. It was always really full-on, and although I was getting paid really very well for it, I would not want to do it for every single product. So, the staged launches are a really good alternative option.

What do you think? Is this something you’d love to learn? It would be all about how to launch in a pretty low-key, not scary, staged way, where you can do one method, get it out there, add on another, get it out there to more people, etc., over time. Please let me know in the Spotify or blog comments, or drop me an email, because if I know people are interested, I will make it a higher priority.

All right, so let’s think about what else I have done. I did two more Business Idea Reviews—they seem to come in pairs—and they both went really well. I have another couple of glowing reviews about how wonderful I am at providing ideas and getting people unstuck. It’s all very confidence-boosting, and it’s just good to see that I’m on the right track with my business. I enjoy it, people who pay think my service is great, and it’s just really nice to be enjoying using my knowledge and experience to help people and see them go on and either launch this business they’ve been thinking about for ages or make changes to really improve their existing business.

I’m not offering any more reviews right now because I have this job to settle into, but if I do offer them again, I’ll be raising the price because the process has been tested pretty thoroughly now, and it works, so it’s time to get paid properly for my time and the usefulness of the help that I’m providing.

I also wrote and edited a workshop for a travel summit about earning online while traveling, and I’ve recorded that and sent it in, so I’m all ready for that. Check out the link in the blog post to see the summit. I’ve been really impressed with their organization so far, so I have high hopes for the actual summit. After a sneak peek at the other presenters and topics, it looks pretty good, so if you’re a world schooler or traveler, check it out—the link will be in the show notes.

I’ve also committed to doing a workshop for Micarle, who is now the owner of Fearless Homeschool, which is my old business. She is doing awesome things now, and it’s actually really, really good to see her take it over and run with it. She’s doing so much that I wanted to do but couldn’t find the enthusiasm for in the end.

This Neurodiversity Homeschooling Summit is a fantastic idea because it is so needed. There are so many neurodivergent kids—kids with stuff like autism, ADHD, PDA, dyslexia, and all the “neuro-spicy” things—and so many have been pulled out of school over the last five years or so because school just doesn’t fit them. It doesn’t meet their needs, and it often harms them quite severely, which makes me really angry. We have this mandatory system set up only for this mythical ‘average’ child, and it expects every other child to cram themselves into that box and then has the audacity to victim-blame when these kids are broken, exhausted, and traumatized after years of putting up with environments, schedules, and treatment that are horrific to them. Then, very logically and bravely, they refuse to go back there.

Anyway, don’t let me get started on that topic because we’ll be here all day. But I will be talking at the Neurodiverse Homeschooling Summit, and my topic is “Expectations Versus Reality: How to Embrace Your Child Just as They Are.” So, I’ve been writing that workshop, and you can access it in the Fearless Homeschool membership. Check out the show notes for the link. There are hundreds of really awesome workshops in there from all the summits Mcari and I have run, and probably ten or more are from me. So if this podcast is not enough of me for you, you can listen to me ramble on even more over there, all about homeschooling and related stuff.

I’ve also applied to do a few more summits and similar opportunities, but honestly, I can’t even remember what they are. I do have my submission details in my inbox, so if I get accepted, I’ll just go back and look over them. I’ll probably get a few surprises over the next month or two when I think, “Oh, okay, I got accepted for this summit? Did I apply for that?” and swear I’ve never heard of it before.

Okay, so that’s my wrap-up for now. I’m off to pretend to be a normal adult with a normal job for a month or so while I get a handle on my new routine. Then I will return here, and I’ll let you know how that’s all going. In the meantime, you’re very welcome to go and do my free Business Idea Blitz course or my Beyond Productivity course. It all runs very smoothly without me micromanaging it, and I will still be replying to emails and stuff like that, so feel free to message me about your business or whatever other random stuff you feel like writing.

Alrighty, I’m off for now, but I will be back as soon as I can to my absolute favourite thing of all time, online business, and I will see you then.

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