Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:00]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 099 with the amazing Kate Erickson.

Kate Erickson [0:00]
Hi, this is Kate Erickson and you’re listening to the Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:00]
Today it’s an immense pleasure to have the conversation with Kate Erickson. She is the integrator at Entrepreneur On Fire, an award winning podcast with John Lee Dumas, interviews inspiring entrepreneurs who are truly on fire. Kate is also the host of the podcast Kate’s Take, and the co-author of the podcast journey Idea to Lounge in 50 Days. I just love what Kate and John Lee Dumas are up to, in all of their work, I highly recommend you’re tuning into Entrepreneur On Fire, check them out. Hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/, find the podcast, tap and listen to our episodes right over there, including the show notes, the transcript, the resources, and all the links to connect with Kate, it’s just one click away. I just had the immense pleasure last year to spend the whole day with Kate and John in Berlin and to show them my favorite and secret places. We had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about them. Also, right afterwards, I decided to take that podcast course, because that was my little nudge, to take it to the next level and to actually put my idea of creating a podcast into true action. Kate and John and their work are a big part of the inspiration for me to run this show. Let’s tune right in and learn from Kate, how she went from crisis to Entrepreneur on Fire. Now traveling the world and creating a lifestyle they truly, truly love. I hope you enjoy this episode, make sure you subscribe, and let’s tune in. Well, I am so super excited to have you on the show today. Welcome, Kate.

Kate Erickson [2:17]
Thank you so much, Christine. I’m excited to be here.

Christine Schlonski [2:20]
Yes. I just love your success story. I had the honor to spend a little bit time with you and to get to know you better. I would love for you to fill us in a little bit of, how did you start entrepreneurship? Because before, you were long time very successful in the corporate world. I believe we both had this big challenge to let go of something that we knew it works, to go into entrepreneurship and that also means selling, getting the numbers right. If you could fill us in a little bit on your journey, that would be amazing.

Kate Erickson [3:01]
Yes, so as you stated, I’m very familiar with the comfort of the corporate world, and a paycheck, and health insurance, and all of these things that were included in this package. It’s funny, because I didn’t think about it until after I became an entrepreneur, but as an employee always felt like a safe space. If I were able to stay in the corporate world, that I would continue receiving that paycheck, that I continue receiving health care. Then for a period of time, the corporate job that I had, that I left to become an entrepreneur, my job was in the layoff department. It was a very tough position to be in, when people heard like the name of our department or anything like that, it was like, they didn’t want to have anything to do with us, which was like, kind of an interesting position to be in. It was kind of like a sixth sense of job security because at that time, it was like 2008, which at the time in the States, we were going through and in many other countries, a big financial crisis. I knew that they needed me to help in that area. So that showed me that there really is not a lot of safety in the corporate world, because you can be laid off from your job at any time and you don’t really know when that’s going to come. To add to that, I just felt very underappreciated at that position that I had been working in for like three and a half years. I worked my booty off, and I did everything that they told me to do. I feel like I far exceeded the expectations that were set for me. I thought that that was going to help me climb the corporate ladder, and that one day, I was going to be a manager, and then I get an upgrade in salary, and that I get this great job title. That’s what success was to me at the time. I’m so so glad that when an opportunity came about for me to receive a pay raise and like a higher position, it was actually given to somebody outside the company. It was really crushing for me at the time. But that’s what finally pushed me over the edge and made me realize that that was not how my life was going to go. I knew that there had to be something else out there. And at that time, I didn’t even really know what entrepreneurship was like, to me, it didn’t seem possible that you could create your own schedule, and that you could do what you wanted to do every day. That you were the one making the rules. I didn’t know that that existed. So it was kind of like this perfect storm of a really tough situation to be in, to lose that raise and that position that I thought was mine to somebody outside the company after I had served this company for many, many years. At the same time a blessing because it’s finally what pushed me over the edge. So I quit that job. I tried to start my own business called Kate’s Coffee . I worked on that for six months, and it failed. I want to say miserably but I learned so many lessons in that time that I look at it a lot, like in a lot better light now than I did at the time, of course. And that was my first jump into entrepreneurship.

Christine Schlonski [6:30]
Wow. That’s so amazing, because it still resonates with what you just said, I never had the idea of myself. Like, you know, being an entrepreneur. That sounded cool, but I didn’t really see it. It took such a long time to, to open my eyes for that and my heart. And then once that was done and was like, “Huh, wonder why I waited for so long?”

Kate Erickson [6:56]
Yes, absolutely. It’s such a huge mindset shift. When you’re not brought up with that around you, maybe some people their parents are entrepreneurs or like they grew up in an environment where that was something that they saw and that they understood, but when you don’t grow up understanding what that is, it’s a really big leap to take to wrap your mind around, that like that can actually work.

Christine Schlonski [7:26]
Yeah, so Kate’s Coffee sounds amazing. It sounds like it should have been like a big success, right?

Kate Erickson [7:33]
That’s what I thought.

Kate Erickson [7:35]
But I thought copy, right? I remember writing my first blog that took me like over two hours, I was frustrated. I thought like, how can I do this? Like more often? Like, I cannot sit down two hours or more? And then being afraid to, you know, click Publish? Yes. So I totally see the the value. So what was one of the challenges was it may be like finding clients or selling or what do you think when you look back was was one of the biggest well issues why it didn’t work out.

Kate Erickson [8:08]
So I mean, the biggest issue really encompass all of those things. But the root cause of it all was that I didn’t know how to communicate or offer service that a specific person needed or wanted. And so Christine, like you just said, that’s a perfect example of like, you were so frustrated because it took you two hours to write this blog post and like you just wanted to hit publish already. If I want to come out with Kate’s Coffee, and would have gotten on or how to chat with you and said, Christine, I can write your blog post for you. And you can still have full editorial control, you can still make it your voice, but we’ll have a chat and I’ll help you craft that. All you have to do is give me like a short download, and I’m going to create it for you, you probably would have been like, “Awesome, I want that.”

Christine Schlonski [8:58]
Yeah.

Kate Erickson [8:58]
My problem was that I said, “Hey, I’m Kate from Kates’s Coffee, and I can write copy for your website, I can help you with your SEO, I can create email newsletters for you. I didn’t have a niche, I didn’t have a specific offering that served a specific need for a specific person, and therefore had nothing. I was trying to talk to everyone. I would go to networking events and sit down at meetings, trying to just like desperately get somebody to say yes to me, not realizing that nobody could ever say yes, when I couldn’t even explain or communicate what it was that I was offering. In addition, like you said, I mean, I was a terrible salesperson. In all my corporate jobs, I worked in Excel, and organized office documents and made sure that my boss was where she was supposed to be. I didn’t have any experience with selling or how to you put together an offer, or any of that, what to charge people. I remember sitting down on a one on one with a pretty big hotel chain that had expressed interest in my services. We sat down and they’re like, “So what’s the package?”, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh”, I have no idea what the package. I don’t know what to charge for this. Not to mention how uncomfortable it was, to be sitting across the table and not have an answer to any of those questions. I mean, it was just a big, it was a big learning experience, because I knew absolutely nothing

Christine Schlonski [10:35]
We should have met years ago. I feel that whatever you’re doing my coffee, I’m helping you with sales.

Kate Erickson [10:43]
Yeah, a great value exchange.

Christine Schlonski [10:47]
I see that over and over again, especially with entrepreneurs who are like starting or maybe in there, maybe they make some money, but they want to go to the next level, that there’s really like, how niche down and I know that you from your amazing podcast course that you really put an emphasis on niche down, being specific. If you feel like you can’t niche down, niche down evenmore. I remember that because I was going through it, trying to figure out how to set up my podcast. I was like, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” I’m even more niche with the podcast, than I’m with my ideal client. I just observed that and was like, “Okay, well, they know definitely what they’re talking about.” So I had to follow the advice to make it work. Then once you get that momentum, well, obviously people can always get to your episodes or download. But I think that having that clarity is really super, super important and lots of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs either go way from it, once they had it. They get distracted with other opportunities coming their way, but don’t really know how to say no to them. Or they have never, ever had that clarity, which makes it really difficult to them make the offer and also to package because they don’t know what to put in it.

Kate Erickson [12:17]
Yeah, absolutely. I see that all the time. Now. I mean, back then that was me. Even still putting offers and packages together, it takes time, it takes a lot of brainstorming, it takes a very deep understanding and knowledge of who your avatar is, who your ideal client is, and what it is that they want, what their goals are. So yeah, it’s definitely an intensive process.

Christine Schlonski [12:45]
Yeah, it does need some research, some market research. I think taking that time, understanding your avatar is really important, because it’s going to set you up for for the future, for who you want to work with, how you enjoy the sales process. Because if it’s not your ideal client, you might not even want to talk to them.

Kate Erickson [13:07]
Yeah and to your point, when you know the answers to those questions, it makes your yeses and your nose so cut and dry. Like when you know what your niches, what you have to offer, what your services or your products are, and you know exactly who you want to offer them to, makes it really easy to find the exact clients that you want to work for and it makes it really easy to say no to opportunities that aren’t aligned with that. As you said, it’s such a struggle for people as a shiny object syndrome. This sounds like a great opportunity. I should probably take it all the while like maybe it’s a great opportunity. But maybe it’s not right for right now. Because all it’s doing is derailing you taking off course from what it is that you are meant to be doing right now.

Christine Schlonski [13:52]
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. How did your entrepreneurial journey change after you did not proceed with Kate’s Coffee?

Kate Erickson [14:06]
At the time, my significant other, John Lee Dumas and myself were living together in Maine, I was trying to start that business and he was working in commercial real estate. I remember having a chat with him one night about how frustrated I was because I felt like I was spinning my wheels, like literally the hamster on the wheel feeling of like, every single day, I feel like I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing and this isn’t working. He was like, fully support you, whatever you choose to do. But I think you either need to find your niche, great advice. You need to keep going at this hundred a 110% or maybe you just maybe it’s time to look for another job that’s going to kind of get you to that next thing, whatever that might be. I was feeling very stuck, very frustrated, very let down. I decided to find a job. So I actually got a dream job at an advertising and marketing agency, I was working as an account manager for one of the agency’s largest clients, which was such a huge learning experience. Again, it was a job that I hadn’t wanted for probably five, six years at the time that was kind of like, seemed the ultimate of like, everything. I was really happy to make that transition, knowing that, that wasn’t for life and knowing that it was going to be a great experience and knowing that it was going to help me discover what I was meant to be doing. In the time that I was working at that advertising and marketing agency, is when John came up with the idea to launch a daily podcast, interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs. Hhe left his job and launched the podcast and within six months, invited me to join him on the team.

Christine Schlonski [16:03]
Oh, awesome. How did you feel about that?

Kate Erickson [16:07]
I did not feel great about it at first. I felt great about him, leaving his job and starting the podcast, I could tell he was incredibly passionate about it. He was very driven and very motivated. I knew about him like as a person, that he would be relentless in pursuing this goal. I knew that he would start the podcast, I knew that he would be meeting amazing people as a result, like I knew that he was going to do this. I felt amazing about that. But when he asked me if I wanted to join the team, I was really nervous about what that would do to our personal relationship. I was really nervous about potentially becoming kind of like a secretary for the business, I didn’t want to do that. I just didn’t know what it would be like to work with the person that I’m with all the time. I didn’t know what it would be like to be partners in business and in life. So it was a really, really scary leap to take. But we took our time with it at something that we talked about for several months before I finally did decide to leave my job and join the Entrepreneurs on Fire team. Luckily, it’s been, you know, the best decision I ever could have made, even though it was one of the toughest at the time.

Christine Schlonski [17:31]
Yeah, well, I totally can see and feel that. That’s a huge step, especially, was having in mind that you starting that dream job to prepare for your next endeavor.

Kate Erickson [17:44]
Yes, yeah.

Christine Schlonski [17:45]
Launching your, your next company. And then all of a sudden, there’s, there’s an opportunity, which is kind of difficult to get a wrap your head around what it would look like. But now you are like the strategic person as well. You do so many things behind the scenes. Obviously, John is like the face or the voice, but you have your your own podcast as well. You built this wonderful, amazing business that allows you to travel the world, to follow your hearts, to move to a beautiful place with lots of sunshine all the time. So how do you feel about, or maybe you can give us a little bit of a background like what you do? What’s your strategic setup? How has this to do with the selling part as well? How did that change from your first business then to this one?

Kate Erickson [18:52]
Yeah, so I mean, John did so much foundational work for this business before I ever became a part of the team. So that clear vision and mission was absolutely critical for the business and the fact that, that was totally aligned, and I could jump fully on board with that was, of course very important. Today, we’ve now been doing this, the podcast launch September 2012. So we’ve been at it for several years now. I think what’s great about both myself and John is that we’re constant learners. We never reach a point and think like, “Oh, we made it like. Now we can just coast. Now it’s time to sit back and relax”, and we do, of course, now have a business that allows us a lot of time and financial freedom, lifestyle freedom, to do what we would like with our time but not at the expense of continuing to innovate, and always be trying to be ahead of that curve and John’s just really fantastic at that. My position in the business specifically, I’m kind of like the back end. As you said, in a strategic way, really, if you look at it, like John’s kind of the visionary, the one that comes up with all these bigger than life ideas, and I’m kind of the one that tries to break them down and figure out how we can actually make that work. I can’t tell you how many of those ideas have never come to fruition. Whether it be, whatever the block may be for. I mean, John just has endless ideas. But we’re very lucky to have launched a lot of those ideas and they’ve become very successful, online courses, journals. We run am online mastermind and an in person mastermind. To be honest, that John’s a way better like sales person than I am in the respect that he carries a confidence that I’ve struggled with, and that I’ve really been focusing on and working on over the past several years. Because it became very evident to me when I tried to start my first business, had so many fears and doubts around whether I was cut out to be an entrepreneur. I literally didn’t know if I could make it work or not, I doubted my ability to be strong enough and confident enough and have that fearlessness, or not necessarily fearlessness, but the ability to embrace that fear and allow it to fuel me versus shut me down. Following this new path, and being a partner in the business today, I’ve learned so much and feel like I continue to grow every single day when it comes to you know, that sort of stuff. I’ve had many moments in the business where I have kind of like, launched, my own thing. I remember one day, we were doing a live webinar for one of our online courses, and John was traveling and he messaged me, and he said, I’m not going to be able to, my internet isn’t strong enough, I can’t run this webinar I need you to run it. I’ve never been so freaked out. I mean, I was so nervous and I literally didn’t know if I could do it or not. But, I was just like, in the moment, I’ve got to step up and do this, we can not do this webinar, we’re going to be letting so many people down. There’s a lot of people who are signed up for it, who were counting on that content. I got on that webinar and I did the pitch and we had like 30 people join our community that day. It was like one of those moments where I proved to myself that like all of these limiting beliefs that I had about like selling and about what people would think of me and like whether or not I was capable of doing that, like I just, you know, busted through all of those in that one moment in a moment that was so unplanned and a moment where I did it despite like the fear and and everything that was telling me that like I wasn’t cut out for that. It’s having those experiences over and over and over and being willing to step outside of your comfort zone and do those things that like maybe other time you’re like, “I don’t know if I can do this”, to proving to yourself that you can and then being able to take one step further the next time.

Christine Schlonski [23:51]
I love that and I love that you talk so so openly about it, because I know that so many entrepreneurs are in the situation. Some times you just need to step up to experience that they are cut out for it. Then the success afterwards the feeling of having done it a such a strong, wonderful feeling. It helps you to support more people in your amazing community. Time always flies, we are already at the end of this episode. Let us know where people can find you. Because you have so many wonderful courses of free and paid. The journals are amazing. Where can people get your hands on your work?

Kate Erickson [24:39]
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And everything that we do is over at https://www.eofire.com/. So there you’ll find our free courses, the content that we produce on the podcast, on the blog, and links to the products and services that we offer.

Christine Schlonski [24:54]
Yeah, amazing. And I highly encourage everybody who plays with the idea to have a podcast, or who needs a little bit more guidance to their personal freedom to really hop over and check out your products because I have the journals in my bookshelf, and I’ve taken the course. I can highly recommend your teachings, not only fun, it really makes a difference. So thank you for your wonderful work. I’m looking forward to connect for the second episode soon.

Kate Erickson [25:27]
Thank you so much, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [25:29]
Thank you, Kate. I just love this conversatio with Kate. I think it’s so amazing that, failing forward, trying something that didn’t work, not giving up, taking new opportunities coming your way. That is all what entrepreneurship is basically about. You try, you tweak, you make things better, and you keep moving forward. If you have a look at https://www.eofire.com/, you see how far Kate and John have come, how many people they have inspire. I think at the moment, they have over 1.3 million listeners a month, and look at the impact and the inspiration. So hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ make sure you are checking out these episodes and get connected to Kate. I have put all the links into the show notes. You have the transcript, their resources, so you can really, really get inspired and motivated to take your steps to your next level. Thank you so much for listening to Heart Sells! Podcast. This was Episode 099 and the next episode is Episode 100 where we have the amazing Kate Erickson back on the show. I’m so so excited. Make sure you are tuning in. Also, make sure you are checking out the very special gift that comes up at the next episode, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/, find the podcast tab. Once you’re there, choose to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, I Heart Radio wherever you want to tune into from and yeah, just sending you a lots of sunshine from Germany to wherever you are in this beautiful world and saying bye for now.