Laura Kåmark
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves Podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I’m your host, Laura Kåmark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business mindset, productivity, and of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let’s go ahead and dive in to this week’s episode.

Laura Kåmark
Hello, and welcome to the show today. For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Laura Kåmark. I’m a website and tech integration specialist who works with women who love their work, but not their website. I am so incredibly excited to introduce you to my friend and colleague today, Courtney Ibinger, who is a Kajabi specialist who helps experts set up all the tech for their online course and membership with a VIP day service. Courtney is a former middle school teacher turned Freelancer with a huge passion for education. She loves that she gets to work with online course creators to help them reach and teach their audiences with all of their valuable knowledge. Courtney, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you just tell our listeners a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Courtney Ibinger
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Laura, for inviting me on. It’s such an honor to be here. Yeah, so I am a Kajabi specialist. And really, like education. The whole world of education is where I come from, like you said, I’m a former middle school teacher. And I decided to leave the classroom. Gosh, I think that was almost five years ago. Now it seems crazy that it’s been that long to pursue my own business. And I started out just as a virtual assistant doing literally any and all tasks possible. Pinterest management, email management, social media graphics, like anything that someone would pay me to do, I would do it. And I had a client that needed a core setup in Kajabi. And I had never heard of this platform called Kajabi before. But she’s like, I will hire you to research it, learn it and set it up for me. And I loved it. And so from there, that was about three and a half years ago now. So from there, I decided to niche down and only offer Kajabi services. And so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three plus years now is setting up online courses and memberships in Kajabi.

Laura Kåmark
I love that so much. And I also really love that you found yourself in a situation where you were able to get paid to learn something, I think that’s an amazing thing that we should all I mean, I’m a yes person here yes person. And instead of saying like, No, I don’t know how to do that. I think it just shows like something about us as entrepreneurs where someone says, Hey, can you do this? And we’re like, Yeah, I’m gonna figure it out. And I think that’s really incredible and amazing. And so you have we met originally in a day in the day right group with the wonderful Sarah Massey, who was on the show earlier this year, and you did a pivot into de rates. And then now you’ve actually we’re at the point where you are ready to scale. And I would love to talk a little more about how I’d love to know, How did you know it was time for you to scale your business?

Courtney Ibinger
Wow, that’s such a good question. So I feel like I’ve really gone through like two iterations of scaling in my business. And the first one was when I decided to stop offering just general virtual assistant services, and really wanted to create some, like higher packages where I could work with a client on a project. And that’s when I started doing the course and membership setups in Kajabi. That was because I was I felt like I was just constantly working like, all the time. And part of the reasons that I started my business with young kiddos now at home, too, was to have time with them. Like I feel like I’m constantly working. So made that change. I did the projects for clients in Kajabi. But also notice that those projects were kind of creeping on and that’s when I found Sara and her program and switched solely to VIP days and have not looked back. And so I feel like being able to really scale down the amount of time that I’m working but still bringing in the income that I want to bring in was like kind of phase one. And then that really opened up extra time that I never had before. I was like, Okay, I have clients that I’m working Without these days and these days, but now I actually can meet the needs of the people who can’t necessarily afford to hire me for a full VIP day. And I felt like I wasn’t offering anything to them, like they needed to learn how to set up their course or their membership in Kajabi. And they were so confused or overwhelmed, or just wanting someone to guide them step by step through how to do that. And so I was like, Okay, I actually have the time in my schedule now where I can build out this course, to help that group of people as well. So really, it came from a place of need of seeing that there’s a need for this, and I can help I can feel this need. And now I just need to sit down and carve out the time to actually create the program.

Laura Kåmark
How long would it say I’m like, so fascinated by all of this, because I am right now, the time of this recording mid the launch of my first digital product where I saw very same thing, like I saw a need, I created the DIY Website Launch Kit, which is basically like a one click Website install. And it was for the people who came to me and they weren’t ready for my services yet, because I work with clients who are established, their offers are validated, they know what they’re bringing, to the world. And sometimes people are coming to me, and they’re just starting out. And they, I want them to have a beautiful website they love but I also don’t want them spending a whole bunch of money on a custom website with me when they’re not ready for that their business is going to change. I mean, look what you just said, like you started out you were doing virtual assistant doing all the things like, I know I did virtual assistants, too. And just all the different iterations of my business. It’s not the time when you’re first starting out to invest in getting a full on custom website, you need something that is more simple, and can get you just through the gate and hit the ground running where you can just feel confident to go get clients and I feel like it’s probably the same with you. And like the course is like when you the first iteration of the course, if you haven’t validated it yet, but you know, there’s a need for it, the best way to do that is to just kind of DIY it. And so filling that need is amazing, because it’s also what you’re an expert at. So I love all that so much. I kind of forgot where I was going with all.

Courtney Ibinger
You know, you’re so right that, you know, especially people that are brand new to Kajabi. And they’re like, Okay, I know that I want to use this platform, but they haven’t, you know, had all those years of experience of building up this big audience or marketing or knowing, you know, it doesn’t make sense for them to invest 1000s of dollars in setting something up knowing if they’re not going to get the return back on it. Like I had to be that way in my business when I was first starting out. And I really prioritize what I was outsourcing and spending money on. And so there’s just a time and place for everything. And just like you said, you kind of have to figure out okay, what needs they have that time in place? And how can I help them?

Laura Kåmark
Yeah, oh, I love that. I love that you created something that really fills that gap. Because I mean, I I bought Kajabi years ago, and it sat there. And I paid for it every month for over a year. And I don’t even know if I ever logged into it. Because I was so overwhelmed with like, for me what I need, because I’ve seen your course now. I have it and it’s amazing. And I’ve been on the back end and I’m like this is so well laid out like this is what I needed back then to help you like guide people through because a lot of us need hand holding I know I need a lot of hand holding i That’s why I work with so many coaches. So many accountability partners, like I need a lot of hand holding, I like to talk things out. And so it’s helpful for me to like see how you really broke down the process of here’s how you go through and create everything. And so I just think that’s amazing that you have created this and launched it out into the world. Oh, thank you. I would love to hear more about just your whole experience with launching because again, as I said, I’m mid launch like right now it’s been amazing. I’ve been, you know, my first email that I sent out of like, okay, it’s ready doors are open, go get it and I immediately get an email back from someone and they’re like, there’s no link and now it’s like okay, I could do this. I’m like it wouldn’t be a launch without and I tell my clients this all the time like the first your first launch is not about getting the people it’s about getting all the tech Gremlins and the cobwebs cleared out and just like getting your systems and processes the emails written then everything just ironed out and there’s still going to be issues with every launch but that was that’s so far has been one of my experience. I had another something that came Oh, I had one of my tags was not even correct. I have to do a launch debrief because I had like If you don’t want to hear about much anymore, click here and I’ll add a tag. And then when I duplicate that email, I didn’t realize it wasn’t, I had to go in and reconfigure it to add the tag. And I didn’t realize that and so I was like, Oh, these people sorry, guys are still getting these emails. And we weren’t supposed to I apologize tech. Anyway, that’s about me and my lunch, tell me I want to hear all about like your experience with your launch.

Courtney Ibinger
You are spot on with that, though. Because seriously, I was like, if one person signs up or purchases, this course, I’m going to be like, so happy because I just needed to get everything set up and in place, and go through that process. For myself, you know, and I think there’s always going to be those like little tech issues that pop up things that happen. And it’s just part of the process, and you get to roll with it. And so I really had the mindset of do it messy in my brain, which is something that Sarah Massey has said to us over and over again, I was like, I really have been thinking about doing this for such a long time. And it actually it just needs to happen to like, put a hard deadline in my calendar. And it helped, that there were several bundles that were coming up that I was going to contribute this course to. And so that really, actually made it a hard deadline, because I was then accountable to other people to have this setup and ready to go. And I think that was honestly the biggest thing that brought me past the finish line was having that external accountability. There were definitely some late nights that I was like recording videos, finishing things up to get it done in time. But I just really needed that. So I would say, I went into it with the mentality of there is so much that I could do, but I’m not going to overwhelm myself. And I’m also going to remember that I have two little kids at home. Like that’s just the season of life I’m in. And if I was launching this, and my kids were like, I don’t know, older or whatever. And I had more time, I feel like I could have done a lot more for the launch. But I was like, I’m really gonna focus on the basics. I’m gonna get my emails set up, which Nicole capex awesome email copy helped save the day with that. I’m getting my emails, all my tech set up, make some social media graphics, and just put it out there to the world. But the offer out there into the world and see what happens. So that was really it, my mentality was very much more low key, trying to keep it low stress. And knowing that after I launched this first time, that I could do so much more with it in the future.

Laura Kåmark
I love it so much. I feel like that’s the exact same path that I’m on right now. I’m like, let me see how I can make this as low key and low stress. I was at the week of launch, I was gone out of town on a retreat. And I had two thoughts on this. It was either this is not the smartest thing to do, because I’m not able to be present. Or this is brilliant. Because if I get in my head, and something goes weird, I have nine other women surrounding me that can help me with any of the mindset junk that comes up with it. And they like we’re like send the emails and the emails like Okay, send and shut down the computer. And they got that went back. And they all just went I was like, Oh, look, there’s no links at all. Sales page at all. They just loved and it was I didn’t freak out. It was like, oh, maybe this was actually brilliant on my part. Time. But you know, I got behind on like, the emails I wanted to send out and some of the I didn’t post in all the social places that I wanted to. And I’m like, It’s fine. It’s fine. We’re doing it messy. That’s, you know, we probably should all go get a little duet messy Sara tattoos on us as Yes. Reminders. I love that. No, it does it. That’s one of the things that I feel like she really drilled into us and it has stuck and it’s a blessing that it did because that’s so important in business that we do it messy because it is messy. It’s never going to be this like picture perfect Instagram. That’s not what life is. That’s not what businesses it’s, it’s messy. And it’s kind of like a roller coaster. So I’d love to know, was there anything that surprised you during your launch?

Courtney Ibinger
Who Yeah, I would say the most surprising thing was when people would respond to emails, we were just talking about this for half time. And I was always it’s just so fun to get to connect with people via email, and especially people that I’m like, I don’t actually know who you are and you’re taking the time to sit and email me and ask me your question or tell me how awesome this is. And I think just that like validation from other people Oh, that you’re not just like talking to nobody, because sometimes they can feel that way. When you are running an online business, you’re, you know, sending all these emails or social media posts. And it’s like, who am I actually talking to who’s actually listening to me. And so to get those, like, messages back is just so fun and surprising. I

Laura Kåmark
love that. And I agree, I love when people reply to emails. So if you’re on my email list, and you’re listening, and something resonates with you, please hit reply. And let me know that seriously makes my day if I can just change someone’s like, change their mood, change their life, change something about the way they’re thinking, in one email, and like something about what I said, maybe not changing their whole life. But you know, if I say something in my email, and it resonates, I would love to hear how that like impacted your day, because that impacts my day, and just lights me up. Because it’s exactly what you said, it is very lonely. And you’re kind of like, who am I talking to here? When if I know people are reading, I know they’re consuming. I know, I consume a lot of things I don’t I rarely hit reply. Maybe I should challenge myself to reply a little more, because I know how much it lights me up when I do. Or when I get those replies back. So yeah, absolutely. What would you say were some of the like, mindset, challenges you had to overcome in launching?

Courtney Ibinger
So many? So I just every time that I do something new in my business, it always comes back these thoughts about like, Who are you to be doing this like, especially when you get caught in that comparison trap. And and I think as entrepreneurs, we often do get immersed in this world of other people that offer services similar to us. Or for whatever reason, are targeting the same audience. And maybe they’ve been in business, like 10 years versus the five years that you’ve been in business, or maybe they’re brand new, or whatever it is, it’s so easy to forget that there is still space for your unique voice and what you have to offer, that’s going to be different than what anyone else has to offer, even if they have something similar that they are selling or a similar service. Think just that comparison and trying to really like reassure yourself almost, yes, people do want this Yes, I have proven my knowledge, my skills, I know that I can do this, I know that I have something to share. And you don’t have to know everything. And I think that’s the biggest thing that can trip me up is I’m constantly learning and I love learning. And but sometimes it feels like you should know this already. Like why don’t you know how to do this certain thing in Kajabi? Oh, because they updated this or changed this. It’s constantly changing. And so just staying humble with the fact that I do not know everything, but also realizing that I do have valuable expertise to share with other people.

Laura Kåmark
I love that. I heard someone say once on a podcast that being an expert doesn’t mean you know everything, it means you’re willing to find the answer. Hmm. And that’s a thing that really stuck with me of like, and that’s true. I mean, especially working in tech, it’s constantly changing websites, applications, they are a living, breathing, beasts

Courtney Ibinger
constantly changing.

Laura Kåmark
And so for us, I mean, and there’s also just different regulations are always changing. And so it’s, yeah, absolutely, things are always changing. And I think that might be I never thought of this before. But this might actually be one things I enjoyed about it so much is because I like you, I love to learn. I’m a lifelong learner. And that’s probably why the tech side of things is so exciting because it is constantly changing. You’re having to learn new things, and new iterations of it. So that’s fascinating. hadn’t pulled back that layer yet. What would you say is something that you’re doing that’s being bold in the industry, something a little different from a lot of the other people not to like, bring on any comparison things, but just something that you find that you’re doing that it’s being bold?

Courtney Ibinger
Yeah, I would say really, the biggest thing for me is being able to meet clients where they’re at, because I feel like especially with something like technology and courses memberships, every single client’s needs are so different. Like they might have a course that they’re launching or a membership that they’re launching. But their goals for that launch can vary so greatly and so I feel like really you taking the time to get to know my clients, we do whatever I do a VIP day with them, we do a 60 minute blueprint call ahead of time to really map everything out. And as much as you would think like it’s a pretty standard process for setting up a course or a membership, really like varies greatly from client to client. And so you have to kind of modify things, tweak things, you still kind of got the overall framework, but it’s really meeting their needs of what it is that they want to do with their course or membership. And oftentimes, they come to me with ideas of things that I had never even thought about. And I’m like, Oh, I’ve never had a client do that yet. But that sounds awesome. Let’s do it. I think it’s having like, a clear framework of this is typically how the process goes. But being really willing to be flexible to meet the client’s needs.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, I love that. What if someone is wanting to scale their business create a course? What would you say are some of the first steps that they should take?

Courtney Ibinger
So definitely, first steps are just doing some market research? Like, is there a need for this? Who what type of person would take this course? What what problem are you solving? And I think the hardest thing that a lot of people who want to get into the online course space struggle with is that oftentimes they do have so much knowledge to share, that it can almost be hard to narrow it down to like, what is the one transformation that you want your ideal customer to get by taking your course? Like, what is it that they’re really what’s the one big outcome because so often I think courses can be like stuffed so full of so much information, that it gets overwhelming. I know I’m that way, like if something that I purchased is just way too overwhelming. I’m just gonna like shut down and not do it at all. So I think the first steps really are doing that market research and just getting really, really clear on what is the one thing that this course is going to provide and start there. And know that you can make more courses, more programs to hit the you know, other outcomes that you want to hit. But focus on one thing first.

Laura Kåmark
I love that. And I think that is so important, because I agree with you like I’ve purchased courses and you get in you’re like, This is so much and so overwhelming. Like, it just it feels like a lot. And then I have some I got recently was in a bundle. And there was some courses in there that I got. And I went in and knocked it out in like, a couple hours. And it was done. I was like, Oh, that felt so good. Right? Yeah. And it was really simple. And I was like this was amazing. So it’s sometimes less is better. Absolutely. I love that. What would you say were you are most proud of when it comes to your business. I’m really big on celebrating and celebrating wins. So I would love to know something that you’re really proud of yourself for accomplishing.

Courtney Ibinger
I honestly, the thing that I’m the most proud of right now at this time in my life is that I had been able to scale my business, I make more money than I did working as a teacher, but I work way less than I did when I was teaching. And that is something to me, like, I’ve always been a type of person that has a great work ethic and takes pride in my work. But that’s not my whole life. And it can’t be my whole life. Like I really want to prioritize my family, my husband and my kids and actually have time to do things with them and enjoy the weekends or sit down and have dinner together at night. And I think it can be so easy to let work creep into every single minute of your life if you’re not careful, and you don’t like put those boundaries in place. And so being able to actually achieve that, like balance per se, I feel like I don’t love that word. But like being able to, yeah, have that balance of work life, family life. That’s when I honestly most proud of right now in my business. And I know that it’s going to change a lot and look a lot different as my kids get older, and I have more time to work on my business, but just celebrating the small wins as we go as I as I encounter them well, not kind of giving up time with my family. I love that.

Laura Kåmark
I think that’s so important is finding that balance or the Juggle. I always call the juggle between you know, spending more time with your family but also like working on your business and building these amazing businesses where we can help so many people really make an impact and like I know I love what I do and I know you Love what you do as well. And it’s so inspiring to, you know, be surrounded in these communities that we’ve created with other women who are building these businesses. And we just we don’t, we don’t have as many limitations as we used to incorporate, you know, we can go build whatever we want and do what ever we want to do. And it’s, it’s really inspiring.

Courtney Ibinger
So many opportunities.

Laura Kåmark
All right, and you have baby number three along the way coming in the bun is in the oven. Yeah. What are you? What are your plans for maternity leave?

Courtney Ibinger
Yeah, so I am due in mid February. And I’m planning on taking off a full month from everything business related. So all client work all of that. And then I’ll probably ease back in to the like, VIP day side of things and just open up a couple slots, that first month that I’m back to work and just slowly increase how many days I have open. So I am very, very lucky in that my mom watches my older two kids, two days a week. And so she will most likely continue to do that even after the baby’s born so that I can hopefully make it through that first month. But it makes it really easy to be able to kind of fit that work back in at my own pace. So it’s kind of flexible, which is the nice thing too, about VIP days, and doing courses, online courses, things like that is it’s really flexible. So if I’m like, Oh, my goodness, this is so rough, I need extra time off. And I will just block off my calendar and take more time off if I need to. And if I’m feeling really good, and I’m like, I want to start working, then I’ll open up some days sooner. So that’s kind of my general plan. I’ve been slowly, just saving money. Everyone’s towards like a maternity leave fund, so that I still have money for all my business expenses to pay myself. So it won’t feel any different to me not working that little bit of time. And then kind of see where it goes from there.

Laura Kåmark
I love that.

Courtney Ibinger
And do you have a team. So it’s just me. And then I have one virtual assistant, my sister actually. So I’m, I love that I get to work with her. So she does about 15 hours a month of virtual assistant work for me. So she’ll also great because I can schedule ahead some like social media posts, and she drafts out my emails that I send out and everything like that. So having her help, will also be so nice.

Laura Kåmark
I love that. At what point in your business, did you realize that it was time for you to hire some help?

Courtney Ibinger
Yeah, so at the point where I was like, Okay, I’m spending a lot of time doing these smaller tasks, or there’s some other things that I just wasn’t doing. Like I wasn’t emailing my email list at all. I should probably be doing that. So I think when I realized that there were certain things that I wanted to do, but I just either didn’t have time to do or just didn’t have the desire to actually like, sit down and do those tasks. I was like, Okay, I’m gonna hire and that was it just happened to work out that was right at the same time that my sister was exploring kind of the virtual assistant world and starting her own business. So it was a great fit. I think it’s been maybe like six months now that she’s been helping me. So

Laura Kåmark
I love that. Um, yeah, I just have for my team is I have subcontractors that I work with. I have a gal Lizzie who was on earlier in this on an earlier episode. And Lizzie does all my social media for Instagram. And then I have a designer that I work with when I’m on big projects. But yeah, other than that, like I’m, I will get to the point. Because I also hired Jackie Mani, who was again on the podcast earlier. And she came in helped set up some my back end airtable stuff to help just really systematize a lot of things on the back end. So everything flows together. So I have all my data in one place. And when people schedule things, it all goes in one place. And that’s really been helpful in keeping myself organized because I know I can get very all over the place with things like come off like

Courtney Ibinger
oh, yeah, always so much going on that organization is so helpful.

Laura Kåmark
Exactly. I love that. So when I would love to hear, can you just kind of tell our audience a little more about the clients kind of where they’re at when they come and work with you your perfect fit clients?

Courtney Ibinger
Yeah, absolutely. So my perfect fit clients, our clients that are already established business owners. So typically they are offering like one to one services or maybe coaching like group coaching type services, something where it is take getting, you know, they have a set amount of time for the services that they are offering. And they want to scale with a course or membership. So they’ve already kind of got that like monthly revenue coming in, they’ve got their business established, they’ve got their branding established, and they’re just kind of adding on a course or a membership as another piece to their business. So they’re like, Okay, yes, I’m all in, I’m ready to go, they have already decided on their course, or membership content. So if they like, sometimes I’ll have clients that come to me, they’re like, Oh, I’m still deciding if I’m going to do a course or a membership, what’s going to be included. So then I send them out to some instructional designers that I know I’m like, Okay, go meet with this person, first get, figure out, you know, get a plan, have everything organized, and then come back to me. So they’ve got that done, they’ve got their branding done. And really, they’re at the point where it just doesn’t make sense timewise for them to set everything up in Kajabi, or they just don’t have the desire to like, spend the time themselves learning all of the ins and outs of how to set it up. And so, at that point in time, they’re like, alright, they hand me over, basically, all of their building blocks all of their videos, branding, copy, and then I take all of that and set it up in a day for them in Kajabi, and then teach them how to use it through their videos. Because even if they don’t want to learn all the ins and outs, I feel really strongly that they need to know how to actually get into the platform, if they need to, you know, send an email to a student, or they need to grant free access to their course to someone, like, have all these little tutorial videos that show them exactly what to do so that they don’t feel completely lost when they log into their account.

Laura Kåmark
I love that I do those videos as well, because I’m a big believer that my client should be empowered to be able to go in and make changes. There’s too many times where I’ve had someone come to me and someone you know, the developer built their site, and they can’t touch the back end of it. It’s so locked down. It’s all like custom coded, hard coded and like making changes, it shouldn’t be this difficult, like let’s simplify your website and make it so that it does it’s not something that causes you stress or anxiety to log into the backend of your site to make a change. Like it shouldn’t, it can be easy. And I loved him, how are my clients for it to feel easy. If they so choose to go in and make those changes? I also have similar like, I don’t want to touch it. It’s fine. Exactly. But like it’s there in case you or your team want to go know how to do all these things. Here’s all the videos on how to do all the things. So I love that you do that as well. I think that’s amazing. Courtney, I have we are almost at a time today. But I do have a one question that I asked everyone who comes on. And that is what is one piece of advice you would give someone when they’re first starting out in their business to help them be bolder, be louder and make waves in their business.

Courtney Ibinger
I love that. I would say that one piece of advice would be to

Unknown Speaker
really

Courtney Ibinger
not fall into that comparison trap. Like, it’s so hard to do. It’s so hard not to compare yourself to other people, other business owners, especially when you’re starting out and you feel like oh my gosh, I have such a long ways to go like how am I ever going to get there? So really focusing on okay, what is the next right thing for me to do in my business? Because there are a million different pathways that you could take there. I still like encounter that every single day my business, I couldn’t be doing this or I could be doing this. And so just try not to compare yourself to everyone else. Learn from other people. But at the end of the day, you have to make the best decision for what makes sense for you and your business because you are the only you that’s out there and you’re the only one that truly knows what is going to be good for you and your business.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, I love that so much. I think that’s great advice. Courtney, where can everyone find find you online? Or they can they come hang out with you tell our listeners where they can go?

Courtney Ibinger
Yeah, so come hang out with me on Instagram at Courtney Iyengar. That’s the main place that you’ll find me right now. My website is just Courtney iving or.com that has everything about my VIP days and the Kajabi course kickstart if you’re wanting to DIY your course membership setup in Kajabi. Yeah, those are the two main places I would say to head to first.

Laura Kåmark
Awesome. I will link all those up in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today. Courtney, I really had so much fun chatting with you.

Courtney Ibinger
Oh, thank you so much, Laura. I love to be done.

Laura Kåmark
Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at Laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you’re ready to grow and scale your business, and your current website is outdated and doesn’t reflect the magic you bring and the results you get for your clients. Go to Laurakamark.com To find out how I can help bring your vision to life. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. By now!