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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.
Welcome back to our 7 part series where I am giving you the steps to take your relationship with money to the next level. So today's episode is about the secrets behind our 1st multiple seven figure year. Last year, we had our 1st year where we went into an income, a revenue level that we hadn't been before. And when I look back at what made the difference, there were a couple of key things that I wanna pass along to you that are going to help make a difference no matter what income or revenue level you are at. Welcome to Plenti.
Kate Northrup: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, 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.
Disclaimer:Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrup or anyone who works within the Kate Northrup brand.
Kate Northrup:So the first one was a big one. At the beginning of the year, Mike and I so every year, we sit down, between Christmas and New Year's, and we do a weekend where we do year end review and annual planning. We go into a whole process and there's a journal, and there's calendaring, and we do a whole thing. And as we were mapping out 2023, I was looking at the calendar and I was looking at the dates and there was a final thing that we hadn't put the dates on the calendar for yet, and it was the mastermind retreat. So at the time, I was running a mastermind for a high level businesswomen, high 6 figure, 7 figure, and multiple 7 figure earners.
Kate Northrup:And it was an incredible group of women. There were 8 of them. It was not hard to sell. It was very high ticket. And yet when I looked at the calendar, it felt really tight.
Kate Northrup:And I said to Mike, you know, if we didn't need this revenue, I wouldn't run this program. And he said, we literally never need the revenue for you to do something you don't wanna do, which obviously is how we roll and I just, you know, had a momentary lapse in that moment. So he reminded me that we never do anything in our company just for the money. And the previous years, I had not been running the mastermind for just the money at all. In fact, quite frankly, profitability wise, running that high level of a program with high hard cost is actually not the most profitable thing I could have been doing.
Kate Northrup:And so I really looked at getting rid of that offer. So that was number 1. And then the second piece of that was there was a second offer, and that was our membership. So my membership had been running since 2017. It was a high 6 figure revenue stream for our business, and it had been running very successfully for 6 years.
Kate Northrup:But sometimes, you know what they say, you have to give up good in order to have great. And so there were these two offers, the mastermind that I'd been running for 4 years and this membership that I'd been running for 6 years, and I just felt like it was time for both of them to go. Now, collectively, the membership and the mastermind collectively accounted for 7 figures of revenue in our business, and I didn't have the exact plan to replace them, but I also knew that when in the past I've been willing to trust and let go of something that doesn't feel like a 100% hell yes anymore, it leaves space for the next right thing. So I didn't run the mastermind last year. We closed down the membership in May of 2023, and I know for sure that simplifying and closing down and giving up good to have great was essential for us having our biggest year to date revenue wise.
Kate Northrup:So number 2, and this is related, is simplicity. Because we minimized how many things we were offering, it was just so much easier to run our business, which meant that we could streamline our operations. We could double down on our marketing efforts for our main offer, which is relaxed money, and we were able to take all the bandwidth that was running around delivering our offers, running the mastermind, choosing the retreat locations, booking all the things, all that stuff that we were doing. We were able to harness it and put it largely towards our signature offer. And that saved us so much energy, so much bandwidth, and the level of simplicity also has made it much easier for our customers to know what it is that we offer and where they can get help, like, what they're coming for and how they're going to get results.
Kate Northrup:As opposed to, here's 35 ways that we can help you. There's a main path to healing your relationship with money. And while relax money isn't our only offer, it is the flagship offer. It is the focus. So it's allowed our social media to get all organized around that.
Kate Northrup:It's allowed our email marketing to all get organized. It's allowed us to really hone in and clarify our messaging publicly because we have the one main offer. It also has allowed us to take summers off and really just, like, have some serious downtime, which we've always done, but it felt easier to do with just the one main offer. So that's item number 2 was simplicity and offering less. So we were able to offer less and make more.
Kate Northrup:Number 3 is really focusing on customer retention. So what we know is that it is far easier and less expensive to have an existing customer spend money with us again as opposed to getting a new customer. It's much more expensive, both from a time and money perspective to woo a new customer than it is to just have, an existing customer buy again. And so one of the things that we really focus on and we're doubling down on it even more this year is our customer experience. Because what we know is that when our customers have had a wonderful experience with us, when they have felt cared for, when they have felt safe, when they have felt valued, and when they've really gotten results, they will stick around.
Kate Northrup:And so when we closed our membership, it was the origin membership, we, at the same time, gave people a whole a 90 day runway where we told them exactly what was gonna happen next, and we gave them an opportunity to come into relaxed money, which was our 2nd cohort of relaxed money. So we allowed them to essentially make a lateral transfer into another program if they wanted to stay around for this new opportunity. It worked. We had a really high percentage of people do that because we had put our attention and energy on our customer experience. When we have high retention, we save money as a company, we save energy, and we're able to increase dramatically the lifetime value of a customer.
Kate Northrup:So rather than needing to have millions and millions and millions of customers, we can have a smaller number of customers while increasing our revenue and increasing the amount that is earned per customer, and then also just building a longer term relationship with those humans. So going deeper instead of wider. So that was number 3, is focusing on retention. Number 4 is more of an energetic, more of an inner work piece, and that is nervous system regulation and feeling safe to expand. So if you've been around a little bit, you already know this, but it's review.
Kate Northrup:And for those of you who are new, this is really important to understand. Our behavior is largely mitigated by our nervous system. Our nervous system thermostat, our nervous system set points create our emotional experience, which create our thoughts and beliefs, which create our behavior. Most folks are just trying to get results through changing behavior, but it doesn't work because it's not going far far enough upstream. Our nervous system registers anything that is unfamiliar as unsafe because it's wired for survival.
Kate Northrup:And evolutionarily speaking, the way our bodies work and the way our neurology works is that that which is unfamiliar is often immediately clocked as a threat. That's great if you're being chased or if there actually is a physical threat. It's not so great, though, when the new experience is actually something you desire, like new opportunities, like an increase in income, like an influx of new business, like a speaking gig, like, you know, bigger coaching clients, things like that. So what happens is we have these positive stressors come in in the form of all kinds of different expansion in our lives, and our body clocks it as a threat, and it will go into anxiety or sabotage because our nervous system is just trying to keep us safe. It's not trying to keep us thriving.
Kate Northrup:And so what I noticed, and Mike and I do this together, we notice when we're up against our edge of expanding, and then at that time, we have our own practices that allow us to signal to our bodies that we are safe right at that edge of expansion. So for example, our second launch of Relax Money last spring was our biggest launch by far that we had ever done. And as the enrollments were coming in, I could feel energetically getting up at an edge of my capacity. Like, it was almost feeling like this is really good. This is what I want.
Kate Northrup:Uh-oh. Is the other shoe gonna drop? And we do this thing, I think, Brene Brown calls it foreboding joy, where when something really good happens, we can automatically go into this feeling of, I should be anxious. I should start worrying. Something else bad is gonna happen.
Kate Northrup:And that's our wiring for survival, but I would notice getting up to the edge of an expansion, And then instead of allowing myself to go into anxiety or contraction, I knew that it was time to signal safety to my nervous system. So I would either call a friend so I could co regulate and celebrate with someone who had mirror neurons, who was able to witness that celebration and expand it. I would go for a walk. I would do a breathing practice. I would do one of the multiple nervous system healing drills that I do, whatever it was.
Kate Northrup:But nervous system healing and signaling safety up at that edge of expansion was really, really important. So that was number 4. Number 5 is related, and it is parts work. So you may or may not have heard of Internal Family Systems, but Internal old family systems is a school of therapy healing work where the idea is that we have all of these parts inside of us, and these parts behave in different ways. So you have protector parts, you have all these different kinds of parts.
Kate Northrup:And the way the parts work is that they will get activated by certain things happening in our lives. So 9 times out of 10, for example, when I'm having when I'm in a disagreement with my husband, Mike, I know that it's actually one of my parts that's being activated, and it usually doesn't have to do specifically with the content of the current moment, but actually something that is getting triggered from my past. So our parts are very similar to our inner child, but it's like at different ages and different parts of us. So I love to do I don't really love it. It's actually uncomfortable every time.
Kate Northrup:But I focus on and practice parts work so that when I get activated, I can go inside and check-in. We call it checking in with our crew. Our therapist, David Coats, calls it that. And I go inside and I see where in my body am I feeling a sensation. So oftentimes, it'll show up, like, as a tightness in my solar plexus or as an activation like a like a tightness over my chest or over my heart or maybe like a tightness in my throat.
Kate Northrup:And I'll go, I'll close my eyes, and I'll focus my attention on that physical sensation and ask what's happening there. And I'll ask, is there an age and I'll see if there's actually a part of me that needs my attention. And I'll go in there and I'll witness that part. I'll spend a little time in there. Usually, you know, because I've had practice, it just takes a couple of minutes.
Kate Northrup:And very frequently, I will be shown, this is essentially by my psyche, I'll be shown a memory or an experience. I'll be told something that I need to know, and it gives me an opportunity in real time to essentially go back in time and heal something from the past, close an emotional stress loop, heal an imprint in my nervous system so that I can come back and be fully present in the present moment as my full adult self because I don't want my hurt 5 year old to be running my company. I want my wise woman adult self to be making those decisions. But a lot of times, if we're not handling our parts, our past self is running the show. My theory is that our nervous system is a collection of all these stuck parts of ourselves that never really got the support, the it didn't have the strategies, didn't have the resources to metabolize emotionally the things that were stressful that happened to us, you know, whether they were big t traumas, little t traumas, whatever was happening, and that our nervous system is stuck at these different points in our life.
Kate Northrup:But when we actually go inside to see which part of ourselves is activated and we listen to that part, and we witness that part, and we can be with that part. The cool thing is our bodies have no sense of time. We know this with like elite athletes when they do visualizations like to win an Olympic gold medal or to win their different events. They perform really well, a, obviously, because of their training. But, b, visualization works incredibly well because all of the firing neurologically happens in the same way whether we're visualizing something or whether it is actually are happening.
Kate Northrup:Our bodies and our brains don't know the difference. So the really cool thing is that all time can be now, and we can go in and witness and be with those parts of ourselves that never got what they needed. But as our adult selves, as our regulated selves, we can go in, be with those parts, help heal those parts, and then show up with much fuller capacity in the present moment, running our businesses running our lives. So that was number 5. And then number 6, we're going back to practical.
Kate Northrup:And that is this. Really look at what you are doing in your daily life in your business and look at, is this a $10 an hour task, a $100 an hour task, a $1,000 an hour task, a $10,000 an hour task, what is it? And then the things that you're doing that you could hire somebody to do, you need to free up your time to be able to do the $1,000 an hour tasks and the $10,000 an hour tasks and allow someone else to come in and do those $10,100 an hour tasks, etcetera. The sooner we are able to release, control, and delegate the 80% of tasks that are only bringing in the 20% of results and double down and focus on the 20% of tasks that get us the 80% of the results, the sooner our income will grow. So one of the things that we did is we brought in more highly skilled people.
Kate Northrup:We delegated. We up leveled from a team perspective, and that absolutely helped our revenue grow because we were able to release the tasks that were not in our highest and best use of our time, and instead bring in other people who are, in many cases, smarter and more highly skilled than we are in those areas so they can do an even better job than we were. So in summary, the six things that we did to have our 1st multiple 7 figure year were as follows. Number 1, we gave up good for great, and we closed out 2 of our most successful offers. Number 2, we simplified.
Kate Northrup:So we focused the vast majority of our marketing and logistical efforts on one key offer, relax money. Number 3, we really focused on retention and taking exquisite care of the customers we already have so that we can continue to get them results and also increase the lifetime value of a customer. Number 4, we both focused on nervous system regulation and feeling safe as we were expanding. Number 5 is doing parts work, which is very related to number 4, So that nervous system healing that inner work to help us feel safe as we expand. And then number 6, really letting go of the tasks that are not in our highest and best use, and allowing those to be taken on by other team members so we can all expand together.
Kate Northrup:That's what I've got for you. No matter what your income level is that you're going for, I hope that these tips help you to get there. Woo hoo. You've made it to the end of an episode of Plenty. Don't you feel expanded already?
Kate Northrup:So if you liked this episode, go ahead and leave us a review. Subscribe to the podcast, text a friend and let them know they need to listen in. That helps us spread the word so more people can experience plenty together. And if you wanna ease your path to creating wealth, I created a money breakthrough guide for you where I interviewed over 20 of my high earning women friends, and I asked them what their biggest money breakthrough guide was. And the responses were so mind blowing and helpful.
Kate Northrup:I knew I needed to pass them along to you. This is the kind of thing that is often only shared behind closed doors, but now you can access it totally for free. So head over to katenorthrup.comforward/ breakthroughs and get the guide. Again, that's katenorthrup.comforward/breakthroughs. And I'll see you next time for plenty.