Erin Thomas-Wong's Life-Friendly Business Journey with Kajabi

SUMMARY

entrepreneurship. Learn how Kajabi became the game-changer, empowering her to build successful, life-friendly businesses. Explore the transformative power of an all-in-one platform in this insightful blog. Key takeaways are:

• Erin's journey highlights the challenge of balancing motherhood with a career. Her decision to leave her TV production career and explore entrepreneurship demonstrates the importance of finding a balance that aligns with personal values.
• Erin's positive experience with Kajabi emphasizes the value of an all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs. Kajabi's features, including membership creation, online course development, podcast hosting, and integrated email marketing, provide efficiency and organization in managing a business.
• Erin's approach to scaling her business focuses on individual and outsourced efforts rather than managing a team. This perspective challenges the traditional notion of business growth, emphasizing personal freedom and stress reduction over team management complexities.

TRANSCRIPT

In the world of TV production, Erin thrived until she had her first child. This pivotal moment led her to leave her career behind and embark on a journey to combine raising kids with having a business. Today, Erin is a passionate advocate for life-friendly businesses, and along the way, she has discovered Kajabi and attributes much of her success to this all-in-one platform.

I'm a small business mentor and podcast host, and I help women build successful and impactful businesses around family life. So, it's about being able to build the business that you want without sacrificing time with your family or to the detriment of your own well-being.

Did you ever see yourself as being a mother, stable mom, or in a career? How did you see yourself before?

So, I was always focused on working in the media. From when I was a teenager, I did free work experience in radio and TV. I pursued a degree in media at University and went straight into a television job in London as a production manager organizing shoots. I loved it, but I always wondered how I would balance it with having children. Being on call for shoots and late-night sessions didn't align with the desire to be home for bedtime with kids. When I got pregnant at 29, I realized the challenges. Many women in TV had difficulty getting home for bedtime, and the cost of childcare made it financially impractical even with a good salary. So, when I had my first son 15 years ago, I decided to take time off and be a stay-at-home mom. However, I found it incredibly hard, feeling anxious and lonely. Within a few months, I realized I needed something more to maintain my identity. That's when I started thinking about starting my own business.

Before Kajabi, you were in several businesses. Could you describe this, please?

My first business was a franchise of a jewelry company specializing in children's fingerprints in silver and hand and footprints. I ran it for five years while also setting up a mums in business network and venues for baby and toddler classes in London. Teaching myself the tech side of things, I used platforms like Wix and self-taught social media. In 2015, we moved to Abu Dhabi for a year, and feeling isolated, I realized I needed a purely online business. Before Kajabi, I tried different platforms, starting with Wix and then using Joomla, but I couldn't make changes myself. That's when I discovered Kajabi, about four years ago, and it has been amazing. I can't imagine ever moving.

Is it correct that you came across Kajabi while you were in Abu Dhabi?

Yes, I launched my business in Abu Dhabi and so it was like through the development of that that I started looking for a better alternative. And that's when I found Kajabi.

So it's like you were into different platforms and then you found Kajabi?

I mean the very first website that I had was Wix, and then when the membership started to grow, I invested in getting some people to do it for me. They were using Joomla, but when we were using Joomla, I wasn't able to make changes myself. I had to wait for them to do things, and I was getting really frustrated because I wanted to get things done. Um, and that's when, I can't remember, I think some people that I would follow on social media talked about Kajabi. And that's when I started finding out about it and all the benefits of it being like an all-in-one platform, but also that I could easily instigate changes myself, rather than pay and wait for someone else to do it for me.

That's great! It's like you could manage everything by your own, on your own. And actually, with all the new features that Kajabi is putting up in Creator Studio, they really have a philosophy of really making sure that it's an all-in-one platform. You can manage everything. Of course, some things could be outsourced. Just to tell my audience, if they get to be overwhelmed with the tech, even though you have a good start, that you really wanted to like, really learn the tech of it of the business.

Yeah, yeah, and outsourcing definitely has a place. And I have an online business manager, so um, she, you know, she like writes some of the emails for me, she can set things up. Um, but in terms of you know, being able to create a new offer and a new sales page or an opt-in page, I mean, I can literally do that in a couple of hours with Kajabi. And for me, that's, it means that I can be dynamic and I can be creating things without all these delays that I had when I was waiting on a website designer.

What are the standard features that are really most valuable to you when it comes to using Kajabi?

So the membership is amazing. The um, ability to create online courses, whether they're you know, a full massive online course or a short mini course. I use the podcast um feature as well. I host at the moment, I'm hosting my podcast on Spotify, but I then upload it to Kajabi so it's there as well. Um, but also you know, the blog post feature, the fact that the email marketing is all linked in, so I've got all of my customers tagged. So I know, you know, um, what form they've come through, if they're interested in something, what stage of the business they're at. So all of those things help me you know, have everything all in one place and to be able to see very easily, but also you know, yeah, keep keep it all really organized and make sure that I'm tracking you know, who's using what and where they've come from your business, yes and yes, and that for me is you know, when I think about scaling, I want to see how much money I can make with just me, obviously my online business manager as well, but you know, I think our potential to grow a really successful business on our own, create you know, with just with outsourcing help, that to me is what scaling is about. Like I'm not interested in managing a team. And I think you know, several of my clients have gone down the route of starting uh, having a team and maybe creating an agency. And really interestingly, many of them after time, have decided to scale back down to scale that down, because the stress that it created for them, um, trying to manage all these people, did not outweigh the the income side of things. And they realized that they could earn the same money without having the stress of a team. So it's a, it's a different way to look at things.

Yeah, so actually, it's like you went to the online business to get time and money freedom, and then managing on entire team actually turned out to be stressful and a 24-hour job really trying to attend to many of people issues, right?

Yes.

If you're ready to take the first step in your entrepreneurial journey and experience the transformative power of Kajabi, I have an exclusive offer for you. I can give you a 30-day free trial. Just click the link in the description below. Don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity to start your own life-friendly business. See you in the next one!