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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
We don't need to work as much. We don't need to work as hard, and it has saved us tremendous amounts of time and energy. We have simplified so that we can amplify and magnify our results and our impact. Welcome to Plenty. I'm your host Kate Northrup and together we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy.
Kate Northrup:And to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of hunting. Let's go fill our cups. Hello. We are bringing it home today.
Kate Northrup:This is episode seven in a seven part series that we've been doing about feeling good with money, being good with money, and doing good with money. So this whole series has been about expanding your capacity to feel peace, prosperity, and pleasure. What we know is that making good money alone does not make you good with money. But the lessons I've been sharing in this seven part series are part of that equation. They're an they're a critical part of that equation.
Kate Northrup:And today, we're bringing it on home with seven lessons that we learned from our highest revenue and highest profit year yet. And that was in this past year, 2024. We came in just shy of 3,000,000, which was our highest revenue year ever in business, and we came in at 31% profit, which was also one of our highest years in profit ever. I really want to say if you're a business owner and just if you're out here in the world paying attention to revenue numbers and like how many, you know, how much cash months people have, you know, people are like, I had a 30 k cash month. I had a 33 k cash day.
Kate Northrup:I had a whatever whatever. That's all wonderful. And like, I love a celebration of big money. However, the money that matters is what you keep. Revenue doesn't mean shit.
Kate Northrup:Okay? I know so many people who have multi 7 figure businesses who don't take anything home, where there's zero profits. Because making more money is not the whole picture. And certainly, the online money coaching world and the online entrepreneurship world reinstates and deepens the illusion that what matters is top line revenue, and it just doesn't. I would much rather have a $500,000 a year business or a $200,000 a year business with 50% revenue margins.
Kate Northrup:Right? Keeping 50%. So on a $500,000 a year business, that would be keeping 250 at the end of the year. Like, that's an amazing livelihood. Then having a million dollar a year business and parading that around where my revenue take home is only 10%, where my profit profit margin is only 10%.
Kate Northrup:Right? Because a 10% profit margin on a 7 figure business is a hundred grand versus a 50% margin on a 500 k business is 250 k. So for those of you who dissociate with math, don't worry about it. All I'm saying is what you keep matters more than what you than what comes in. So I wanted to share these seven lessons with you.
Kate Northrup:Whether you have a business or not, you can apply these to your life, money life or otherwise. So number one, we went last year from launching our signature program, Relaxed Money, which at the time of this episode going live, we are currently in enrollment for Relaxed Money. This is the one time a year when you can take this signature program and get my support, my coaching, and all of our frameworks and systems for healing your nervous system and creating the intuitive, easeful financial systems to grow your wealth, be confident and clear with your money, and really create a financial legacy that you are proud of, and to not only make good money, but also to be good with money. So that's happening right now. And you can go to RelaxMoney.com to find out more about that.
Kate Northrup:But in the past, we've done two Relax Money launches, and they're a big full court press endeavor. If you have been following along with the launch, you know there's a free live workshop. We have over a hundred affiliates. We're running paid ads. We're doing organic social.
Kate Northrup:There's email. It's like a whole song and dance, and it is a deep joy. I love doing it, and also I would be lying if I said it's not a lot of work. And so we used to do it twice a year. And we made a bold move in 2024, and we decided to only launch Relax Money one time.
Kate Northrup:Now it was a risk because we didn't know if we would make enough revenue from the launch until the cart closed, but we made the statement that it was the only time you could join the program that year during the launch before we had closed carts, so it was a risk. The good news is we brought in almost double, like at least 80%. We brought in 80% more revenue from launching one time than we did launching twice. So we did half the amount of work and brought in not a full twice as much revenue, but nearly twice as much. This is a law of the universe.
Kate Northrup:When we do less but focus on the right things, we get a bigger result. It just works. So ask yourself, what is really moving the needle in my life? If it's in your business, if it's in your career, what really matters? And double down and do more of that so you can do less of the other stuff.
Kate Northrup:Is there a way that you could increase the potency and give one thing your all as opposed to spreading your efforts over a lot of things. One of the things I noticed is because we were only doing the launch one time, I left it all on the dance floor like I went for it in a way I hadn't previously when we were doing two launches of the in the year because I think I was unconsciously holding back a little bit to save up energy for the second launch. But because I know knew that we're not launching again for an entire other year, I wasn't saving up anything. I gave it everything I had, and it was incredible. We had so much fun.
Kate Northrup:And so we moved from a two launch a year model to a one launch a year model, and it really worked like a charm. It was also great for the team because we could all sort of, like, reserve our resources, and the whole second half of the year, we got to do all these other things, like I finished a book proposal, and hopefully by the time this episode is recorded or is, published, I have a new book deal. I'm just putting that out in the manifestation field, and we did all sorts of other fun things. So that was number one, do less. Number two, systems, structures, and boundaries equal freedom.
Kate Northrup:So my friend James Wedmore says the more structure you have in your business, the more freedom you have in your life. Stay tuned. If you're listening to this around the time it comes live, James has his business by design program launching very shortly, and he is the best at teaching those business structures for an online business for course creators, coaches, and healers, that sort of thing. So keep an eye out for that. But the more structure you have in your business, the more freedom you have in your life.
Kate Northrup:And I just have to tell you, it is true. This year, we tightened up so many things around our hiring practices, our internal systems, our operations procedures, our standard operating procedures, our scorecard, our metrics, our KPIs. We didn't, like, overly corporatize ourselves because quite frankly, that makes me wanna vomit. But we did create the amount of systems and structures necessary to hold our small but mighty crew so that we can fall back and relax on the structures and the systems to hold us very similarly to what I talk about with your financial systems. When we have strong intuitive systems in place, we don't have to think unnecessarily.
Kate Northrup:We can use our thinking power for creative expression, for really high level problem solving, for innovation. We don't have to be reinventing the wheel where it's like, oh, gosh. What is it that I do again to get a podcast out the door? What is it that we do again for our launch? No.
Kate Northrup:You create systems, standing operating procedures, so you can rinse and repeat and use your creative life force energy for things that really move the needle. Right? So that's number two, is systems, structures, and boundaries equal freedom. Number three is a quote from my friend Danielle LaPorte, and it is the following. Wide open heart, big fucking fence.
Kate Northrup:So in this past year, we had a couple of scenarios where relationships took a turn. And I will not go into details on those, but I just really learned the earlier something starts to feel off that I pay attention, the better. So in a couple of scenarios, things started to feel off. My big sign was I started to feel confused in interactions with these people. And I started to second guess myself and be like, was that okay?
Kate Northrup:Yeah. That was okay. That wasn't that big of a deal. And it was the confusion that was the sign for me, because I'm not a confused person in general. Like, I'm a very clear person.
Kate Northrup:I'm clear. I know what's going on. My instincts are strong. But it was as though I had, in these interactions, I had it's as though, like, I had taken my boat into the Bermuda Triangle, and my compass and my GPS were just, like, spinning fast in 360 degree circles. And I had lost sense of where was up, where was down, where was east, where was west.
Kate Northrup:And so that confusion now I'm taking forward is my sign that if I'm feeling confused in a relationship, there's something that needs to change. And so that was my lesson number three was wide open heart, big fucking fence. Thank you, Danielle LaPorte. My lesson number four is simplify to amplify. So in the past couple of years in our business, what's allowed us from to to take our business from the $1,000,000 mark to the nearly $3,000,000 mark while increasing our profit margins has been this, focusing in on one ideal customer, solving one core problem with one signature offer and one sales system.
Kate Northrup:Now I am sheepishly going to say, I watched some dear friends of mine follow that method for like the last decade. So, you know, I've known Marie Forleo since 02/2009. I will never forget being on the way to the beach with her. I was sitting in the back seat of her Prius, and she was like, hey, I had this idea. I think I'm gonna teach an online course for women about marketing.
Kate Northrup:What do you think? And I was like, yeah, sounds like a great idea. That was 02/2009. It is now 02/2025. She has been launching freaking b school for how many years is that?
Kate Northrup:Fourteen years? The same program every year, the same customer, the same sales system. There is a reason Marie is a legend. Right? Same thing with my friend Amy Porterfield.
Kate Northrup:I've known Amy for a hundred million years, probably since 02/2009, '2 thousand '10 as well, somewhere in there. Amy has been launching Digital Course Academy for years in the same way, the same program for the same customer with the same sales system solving the same problem. Now I watched these women for years, and I was like, their business model is so boring. I could never do that. But as a result, I ran around spraying my creative energy everywhere, coming up with a million different offers, using my creative energy in all of these different ways, and that is wonderful.
Kate Northrup:That's my path. I actually really have no regrets. However, I had the model standing right in front of me for simplicity. And so over the last couple of years, we've I finally built up the somatic capacity, the somatic body, the nervous system capacity and circuitry to withstand the level of stability and ease that comes from simplicity in a business. And this level of simplicity with one core offer, which is relaxed money, has allowed us to make that core offer freaking amazing, to over deliver to our customers, to serve them, to focus on them, to make it everything it needs to be, and also to improve our marketing so that more people can find us, we can serve more people, and we can serve them more effectively.
Kate Northrup:And what that's resulted in it is we don't need to work as much, we don't need to work as hard, and it has saved us tremendous amounts of time and energy. So that we have simplified so that we can amplify and magnify our results and our impact, and that has been huge in the last couple of years. Number five, lesson. Relationships are everything. I've always known this, I'm always going to know this, I have to say this is a sweet spot in my life.
Kate Northrup:I have always felt like a billionaire when it comes to relationships. People I can call when I'm having a hard time, people I can call to have a party, people I can call with good news, with bad news. I feel mega, mega, mega supported when it comes to relationships, and this is an area of strength. And it hasn't always occurred to me that it's an asset from a business perspective. Like previously, I've witnessed colleagues having much more strict boundaries around like, oh, I can't meet this person, or oh, I'm doing this thing so I can't get together, and and I and I blamed myself for like, I I thought I was less professional, or like less of a baller, right, because I would go to cities and see a bunch of people, or I would make space to see someone when they were in town even if I was doing something else.
Kate Northrup:And it doesn't mean that, you know, I'm a pushover or I don't have good boundaries, but I just I make the space for the people who matter in my life. I do. And I love that. And it fills me up personally. But what I realized over the last last couple of years, and especially last year, is that one of the things that's really has moved the needle for us is our affiliate program.
Kate Northrup:We have a world class affiliate program, and one of our affiliates who's been part of many of the major affiliate launches in the online marketing industry for the past fifteen years told me that our affiliate experience was the most top level pleasurable, easy experience that she has had in fifteen years. And I am so incredibly proud of that. Now the thing is that our affiliates bring in 51% of our Relaxed Money sales. So 51% of our Relaxed Money sales in the last year have come through affiliates. Relaxed Money accounts for 80% of our company's revenue.
Kate Northrup:So because I know my numbers, and and this is this is part of the medicine of Relaxed Money and my entire philosophy, is financial clarity, like knowing our numbers because our numbers tell a story. Our numbers point us in the direction of what we need to do more of and where we can taper off, what we need to do less of. And what our numbers tell me is that 50% of 80% of our revenue, so a huge chunk, comes from treasured relationships with affiliates. And so I know moving forward that I can double down on my innate gift of being relational. Right?
Kate Northrup:And tending to those friendships. Not of course, not all of my friends are affiliates. Somebody doesn't need to be my friend to be an affiliate. They don't need to be an affiliate to be my friend. However, there does happen to be some overlap between those two circles, and I also believe that when we operate in reciprocity in the world, when we participate in a reciprocal economy where we are giving from an open heart, where we are giving from overflow, we do end up receiving.
Kate Northrup:It doesn't mean transactionally from that same person, but it does mean we end up receiving that abundance elsewhere, and I really trust in that greater web of flow. So relationships are everything. And number six. Number six lesson is my theme of this year is to wear my crown. Now what does that mean?
Kate Northrup:Well, I've been at this for a long time. You know, I published my first book in 2013. I'm not new. And one of the things that is super sweet about me that I love about myself is I have a real strong beginner's mind. If I go to a conference out there in the front row with my notebook, learning, taking notes, I always can learn something from everything, and I I never assume that I know everything.
Kate Northrup:I never assume I'm beyond learning from anyone or anything, and I just I'm a lifelong learner, and I love that. However, every every light spot has a shadow, and the shadow of that is sometimes I can forget that actually I am incredibly established, that actually I've been in this industry for a long freaking time. I grew up here, and I know what I'm doing. And I have, in the past, missed opportunities and wasted energy because I'm operating out of more of a scrambling energy of newness as opposed to the rooted taking my seat energy of I've been here. It's actually my turn to take up space and to receive these opportunities.
Kate Northrup:And so over the last year, I honed in really on an energy of not you know, I I had said to one of my girlfriends at the turn of the New Year, I was like, you know, in 2025, I'm just going to act more like a big deal. And I was like, I like that energy, but it's not quite right because it has a bit of a I don't know, like saying I, you know, I need to act like a big deal has a sense of hierarchy in it, and I don't really love that. So I worked with my coach on coming up with the invitation for myself to wear my crown. Because what she was sharing with me, which I love, is a reflection that sometimes in the past I've been like, oh, you know, I have this crown, it's beautiful, but like, do you want to wear it? Do you want to take a turn with my crown?
Kate Northrup:Oh, maybe I should put it down for a little while. Are you going to is somebody going to feel weird if I'm wearing my crown and they forgot their crown? Or whatever it was. And I was just like, that is so accurate. So instead, we came up with together my theme for the year of wearing my crown.
Kate Northrup:And there's such a rooted stability in that, and and she gave me the analogy in more of a tribal culture, in a smaller society, in in more of a rooted culture where people used to live more in like groups of about a 50 people, there would be a time where someone had come along through the process of development where it was simply their turn to lead. And it wasn't a matter of like, you're better than someone or you're worse than someone. It was just like after you've been around for a while, you've just gathered the wisdom that it's your turn. And I was sharing with her that I have this problem with hierarchy, and I was like, oh, I don't know. It feels weird.
Kate Northrup:And she was like, well, you're just going to have to get over that because you get to now settle in that you've been here. You've been doing the work. You've been showing up consistently. I started a blog in 2010, so I've been showing up consistently since 2015. I mean, since 2010, for fifteen years.
Kate Northrup:And she said, if you are if it is your turn and someone has handed you your crown to put on and you're handing it back to them, and you're saying like, oh, no. Not me. Da da da da. She said it's like handing a miracle back to God of divine energy that wants to come through. And I really got it.
Kate Northrup:I really got it. And so this year is either even further stepping into wearing my crown, but last year was a real develop edge around that, and it and it felt really good. It felt really good and edgy. Okay. And then number seven, again, our numbers tell a story.
Kate Northrup:So when we looked at our launch metrics, and this is true whether you're looking at your family's expenses, whether you're looking at your earnings, your your investment portfolio, whatever. The numbers tell a story. And if you don't look at the numbers, you miss the story, and you miss out on all this critical intel that's gonna tell you where to go next. And so we looked at the numbers, and a stat that was very interesting in our launch debrief after our Relax Money launch, the one we did, was that 76% of our buyers, so 70 per 6% of the people who joined Relax Money last year had been on our email list for less than six months. Now that's really interesting because previously, I had thought that the success of our launches of Relaxed Money, the success of this program, I thought it was based on my longevity in the industry.
Kate Northrup:I thought it was because I've just been around for a long time. And while I'm sure that doesn't hurt, it was so exciting to know that three quarters of the people who raised their hand to say yes to Relax Money last year had been on our email list for less than six months, which means they are new to our community, which also means anything is possible at any time. So it may very well be that you listening to this right now just learned about our company and this work and the work we do last month or last week. Like, you might be new, and if that's the case, welcome. Right?
Kate Northrup:There's always, for all of us, anything is possible at any time. Our past need not determine our present or our future. At any point, we can interrupt the pattern, interrupt the unconscious habits, and create and write a new financial story for ourselves, a new love story for ourselves, a new health story for ourselves, a new family story for ourselves. We get to choose. But the way we allow ourselves, the way we tap into our ability and our power of choice is to heal our nervous system so that we can access our range of resonance and steward our resources as opposed to trying to control them or feeling controlled by them.
Kate Northrup:So in summary, my seven lessons of our highest revenue and highest profit year were do less, systems, structure that was number one. Number two is systems, structures, and boundaries equal freedom. Number three, wide open heart, big effing fence. Number four, simplify to amplify. Number five, relationships are everything.
Kate Northrup:Number six, wear my crown. And number seven, anything is possible at any time. So on that note, I want to congratulate you for making it through this series. If you've listened to all seven episodes, woo hoo. Go you.
Kate Northrup:I am so proud of you. I know you are changed. You cannot engage with information like this without it shifting something inside of you. And if you are ready for the next step, the next step is relax money. That is a year long container where I am going to give you the absolute best when it comes to healing your relationship with money with a neuroscience backed approach that includes community, strategy, support, accountability, and a deep taproot for lasting change.
Kate Northrup:All of that information is available at RelaxedMoney.com. Thank you so much for being on the journey with this series, and I will see you next time. Once a year, I teach a money workshop that is an absolute game changer for ambitious humans who are ready to not only make good money, which they may already do, but also to feel good with money, be good with money, and do good with money. So if that's you, if you are ready to heal your relationship with money, if you're ready to have rock solid financial systems that allow you to feel held and receptive and inflow, And if you are ready to unlock the abundance that really wants to pour into your life, join me for good with money. This only happens once a year, and you can reserve your spot over at katenorthrup.com/good.
Kate Northrup:This is your time. Your financial power and ease await. Join us at katenorthrup.com/good. Hi.