160 Jumpstart Your Business: Entrepreneur Katrina Sawa on Sales, Marketing and How To Make The Price Right

Katrina Sawa is known as the “Jumpstart Your Marketing” coach, teaching entrepreneurs how to create converting funnels, get the sale and price their products and services correctly. She shares on this episode how she created a global business that allows her to live a life of freedom and balance, and she shares practical hacks you won’t want to miss.

Melinda Wittstock:         Katrina, welcome to Wings.

Katrina Sawa:                    Thanks Melinda. I’m happy to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am happy to have you, too, and I’m so interested in your own jumpstart. Where did you jumpstart your own business?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right? So I was in a couple corporate jobs, mostly sales and marketing positions, and then one of the last jobs I had was in advertising sales, and I realized pretty quickly in that position that so many small business owners just really didn’t know what they were doing, because I’d try to sell them an ad and they just didn’t know what they … They’d say, “Okay,” and then they wouldn’t know what to put in the ad and then they wouldn’t know how to get clients from the ad, et cetera, and it was crazy. Then I took one other job after that, and that last job is kind of like the thing that made me click, because the boss that I had was so say one thing and do the other, and I actually, on my last day of work, I told him to you know what.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’ll jumpstart having to start your own business.

Katrina Sawa:                    Right? And I never, ever looked back. I was so annoyed at that job and that he wouldn’t give us support and he said he would, and I did it in front of his … He deserved it, man, let me tell you. But yeah, I never looked back. I said, “No plan B, I’m going to go do this business,” and because I’d already worked with a bunch of entrepreneurs, I knew that I had what it took and I had seen a business coach just briefly before I left the job, so I was relatively confident that I would be okay.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s kind of cool. Because often taking the entrepreneurial leap starts with something like this, “Oh gosh, how hard could that be?” And then along the way, there are challenges and things. What have some of the challenges been for you?

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, it’s been 16 years, I’ve had quite a few challenges, but one of them is our own head trash. So the doubt, the first five years there was probably a little bit of doubt here and there, and when you don’t have a full book of business and clients already to serve, and you don’t know what you’re doing during the day, right? That’s what a lot of startups struggle with this is, if they don’t have clients, what do they do? Do they go on social media, do they post stuff? Do they go to a networking event? But there’s just nothing to fill the entire day with usually. So I would sit sometimes on the couch watching Oprah and eating ice cream, going, “Oh, woe is me. I need a client.”

But then, snap, as soon as I filled my calendar with clients, the TV became a … then I wouldn’t even do the laundry or do anything during the day. I was just focused in the business. So once you can get enough clients going and get the right things on your calendar, then you can stop doing all those time waster things that distract us.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, yeah. That’s a killer. I love the phrase you used, head trash, because often that’s at the root of any kind of problem that we have or challenge we have in our business. If we can clear a lot of the head trash, take that out to the curbside, we have much more of a chance of succeeding.

Katrina Sawa:                    Oh, yeah. Yeah, there’s fears, there’s self doubt, there’s self worth issues. People aren’t charging enough, they’re not asking for the sale. They think, “Who’s going to buy my stuff? Who wants to hear me speak?” It’s all that negative chatter, and you frankly, the faster you can get through and beyond some of that stuff and let it go, the better you’re going to be and the more money you’re going to make, because that is what’s going to slow you down.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh, it’s so true. So how often does that come up with your clients as you’re jumpstarting their businesses? Is that an increasing part of the curriculum, I guess?

Katrina Sawa:                    Oh yeah. Every month I think a client has something. I still have coaches, because I’ve got stuff, too. It never really goes away, it’s just how you manage it moving forward. If you can learn to become aware … A lot of people will say, “Well, I can’t afford it.” Well, instead of saying I can’t afford something, whatever it is, you say, “How can I afford this?” You just have to change and tweak to say the positive of whatever the negative is in your head, or “I’m not good enough.” It’s like, “Up until today, I didn’t believe I was good enough, but moving forward, I believe fully that I have some great gifts to share and people need what I have.”

So you just change the wording, and you have to sometimes write it down and read it to yourself, because you won’t always remember, but if you don’t start practicing that stuff, then you’ll continue saying, “I can’t afford it,” and “I’m not good enough, nobody wants to hear me,” or you’ll be saying it to yourself in your head, and that’s even worse.

Melinda Wittstock:         The “I can’t afford it” is a really interesting one for women who tend to be more reticent to invest in themselves, and yet, I have never met a successful entrepreneur who hasn’t spent kind of relatively a small fortune on masterminds and courses and coaches and all that kind of stuff, because we need it. So it’s sort of like we can’t afford not to. Why do you think women are so afraid to spend the money to invest in themselves?

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, part of it could be because they’ve spent money and it wasn’t on the right thing and they didn’t get what they need, so then they think, “Oh, I already spent money. I should figure out how to make more money from that first, before I can go and spend more money and invest more money,” there’s that. There’s also the significant other factor. If you have a significant other and you may have spent money on something already, a lot of non-entrepreneurs, it’s the employee mindset versus the entrepreneur mindset.

The employee mindset spouse is going to say, “Well, you invested that. You need to make that money back first before you can invest more on yourself,” and that’s not a logical concept. That’s kind of like saying, “Well, let’s go to year one of law school and then but you have to go make money as an attorney before you can go to year two and three to law school.” That is illogical. It’s the same thing with nursing school, with any other craft, and people think, especially the non-entrepreneurs, think that we can just make money on a whim. Well, I’m sorry, but you still need to go to business school or entrepreneur school to learn how to run a successful, money-making business as an entrepreneur.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, entrepreneur school is really about failing, and … No, it is, actually, it’s about failing and failing gracefully, failing in such a way, fast, hopefully, where you’re taking that and learning from it because it’s making your product or your service better. All it really means to me is that you’re talking to your customers and you’re getting feedback. So say you offer them something, it doesn’t really work, and so you ask them, “Well, what would make it work?” And you just keep going like that basically until you get it right.

Katrina Sawa:                    Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s like the good old product market fit. But you’ve got to be resilient and persistent and learn, again, this is another head trash thing, I guess, learn how not to make failure a comment on yourself, how not to take it personally.

Katrina Sawa:                    Right. Well, and frankly, I’d rather fail less than more.

Melinda Wittstock:         Of course.

Katrina Sawa:                    So that’s why we hire people. I was just talking to a client, and it was a brand-new client and she wants to know which technology to use for her systems and stuff, because you can get sold into the wrong technology that’s not going to be the right fit for you. So literally, most of the time I save people thousands of dollars and months of time by not doing something that they were going to do because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. It’s that kind of … Sometimes it’s just those decisions.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh gosh, I love that. The stuff you don’t know that you don’t know. It’s interesting, you could almost draw a four square, and like, “Okay, stuff that I know that I know, stuff that I know that I don’t know,” and then the unknown unknowns are always vexing, because there always are going to be those, right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         For any entrepreneur, and so with things like technology, for people who are doing, particularly, a lot of your clients are coaches, right, or coaching businesses? Or are they all sorts?

Katrina Sawa:                    I do have a lot of coaching clients, but I also have healers and home improvement companies and spas and salons. I love a variety of different clients, because I come from the offline marketing world and the advertising world. I have experience with all those types of businesses, so I don’t need to just do coaches and online businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, so your expertise spans then online and offline marketing, which I think is awesome and I think increasingly, it’s good to be able to be dangerous at both. But when it comes to, say … Okay, so your clients who are in the online marketing space where they have to do that and they’ll be sold some sort of technology or some sort of process that they need, how do you help them work out what is the right tech stack, what is the best combo?

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah, what I look at is what they’re selling. It really goes back to what are you selling, what do you need to efficiently run your business, what systems do you need? Email marketing, do you need autoresponders, do you need a direct mail system, do you need phone calling systems, do you need a calendar system, a scheduling system, all these different things, but there are some that are easier than others, and there’s a lot of tech virtual assistants or web people out there who love … Those people love techy tools, but as an entrepreneur, if you’re not techy, you don’t want 14 techy tools. You want one or two things that you have to manage, because your learning curve is going to be very high and it’s too many things to manage. But the techy people in your life will tell you, “Oh, use this for that and use this for that and use this,” because that’s what they do, but it’s a nightmare when you’re a not-so-techy entrepreneur person. You just want to focus on your coaching or your business. You don’t want to have to deal with all these apps and plugins and this and that and this tool and that tool, because-

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, god. Yeah. It becomes-

Katrina Sawa:                    So I’m the bridge that says what you need and what you don’t need, what’s an add-on that you could have if you like stuff like that, and if you don’t, then stay away and don’t listen to the techy people.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, exactly. In a way, as an entrepreneur, when you’re building a team, right, as long as your team, if you have the right people in the right seats for what they’re supposed to be doing and let them figure out the how, they can use those tools. Right?

Katrina Sawa:                    [inaudible 00:11:44] though, because if you have … I’ve been hiring assistants for the last 12 years, and a lot of them will come to the table with a favorite software or system that you have to pay for on a monthly basis, anywhere from $10 to $50 or more a month, right? Well, they say you need it. Well, if you don’t need it, your expenses could get up to … Mine at one time were up to over $1000 a month on just little tools and monthly stuff.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, god. It’s so easy to do that.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         If you start, once you add in your ClickFunnels and your Infusionsoft and it’s, “Oh, you need Typeform, you need Zapier, you need your Dropbox-

Katrina Sawa:                    You don’t need it. But you don’t need any of that. You honestly don’t need any of that, and so many, especially if you’re in the first three to five years of your business, don’t do any of the things you just mentioned. Do not. That’s my opinion.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so what do you do for things like autoresponders? Some of them are more expensive-

Katrina Sawa:                    You do a shopping cart. You do one shopping cart. One shopping cart and WordPress is all you need. It’s like $69 a month plus your $10 hosting or less per month, and you’re running your business. People make it too expensive, too complicated, and you don’t need it. You can have these other systems, but then you’re going to need a team to manage them, right?

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh god, yeah. Right.

Katrina Sawa:                    And you still need a team for a lot of things, and I’m all about delegating and stuff, but you also have to be able to understand how things work, at least in the big picture and the overview of them, so that you know how to tell somebody to manage a new process or come up with and implement a new strategy. You have to understand, as the entrepreneur, the big picture and how your software works, even if you don’t know how to use it technically, physically, but you have to understand how it works so that your strategies then will be implemented correctly.

Melinda Wittstock:         What are the biggest single mistakes that you see a lot of people making at the kind of relatively early stages of this, apart from, we’ve talked about the software thing, getting kind of overwhelmed, right, by all these different solutions and thinking they need things that they don’t. What are some of the other ones, where it comes to finding their customers or really creating a unique value proposition? What are some of the issues that you see women in particular struggling with the most?

Katrina Sawa:                    One of the biggest things is they’re not clear on what they’re selling, and when I say what they’re selling is, what you’re selling is not a coaching call. You’re not selling a one-hour session. You’re not selling a group program for 12 weeks and a Facebook group. You’re selling the transformation and the outcome [inaudible 00:14:28] when somebody works with you in those instances, what they’re going to walk away with, how they’re going to feel, what the solution is they’re going to receive, what the ROI could be. You’re selling the transformation and the outcome. So that’s the wording and stuff that they’re going to use in what they’re selling, and they don’t tend to talk like that, first of all, and so it doesn’t necessarily land with prospects with what they want, because they’re not hitting the hot buttons.

But the other thing around what you’re selling is they’re not clear on a package or a signature system. They haven’t packaged their expertise into something that makes it juicy and makes people want that. So they say, “Oh, you can do initial session with me and then I’ve got a package of 3 sessions or 12 sessions, which one do you want?” It’s like, “Boring, I don’t want any of them. If anything, I’m going to take the one, because I don’t want to sign up for the 12 unless you make a compelling argument that I need the 12.” You know what I mean?

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Katrina Sawa:                    So you want to figure out what’s the path to least resistance in your selling, and you don’t want to have to sell people every week into the next thing. You want to sell them into one package, so it’s just as easy to sell somebody into a two or five thousand or ten thousand dollar program or package than it is to sell them one by one calls for 100 or 150 bucks.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, that’s a really interesting thing that’s lost on a lot of people. I think women in particular have a tendency to under-price and over-deliver, as well.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yes. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Talk to me a little bit about pricing and how you come up with the right price.

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, first of all, the first thing that you do is you figure out what your hourly is based on, and then … Okay, there’s a couple different ways to price. You can do based on your hourly and create a package and show the value. You can also do value pricing, which is pretty much just figuring out what the person needs and then coming up with a dollar figure and saying the dollar figure, whatever you feel valued in delivering what it is they need in the time that they need it, and whatever that dollar figure is that will make you feel good and not want to come to the calls and be resentful of the price that you charged them, that’s value pricing. So it could be different for different people depending on the scope of work, and I do that in my Live Big Mastermind price. My program is value pricing, but how I usually teach people to start pricing is based on your hourly.

So first you have to figure out, okay, what’s the highest possible rate you can think of and say out loud without stuttering that you’re going to charge per hour. When I say that to people, it makes them think, “Okay, I can say $100.” “Are you sure you can’t $125?” “Let me see, $125. I could say $125,” and then … So they go into this [crosstalk 00:17:24] it’s kind of like an auction, right, what’s the highest possible rate you can say per hour without stuttering, and then that’s where we start, because no one’s going to buy your services if you stutter around the prices.

So we want you to charge what you feel comfortable charging, but then I also tell people to charge three clients that rate, and then raise the rates. So after you get paid three times at that rate, if it’s too low, for example, and I think it’s too low, I’ll say, “Okay, I want you to get paid. I want you to feel comfortable, because you’ll get more confidence as soon as somebody pays you.” So I don’t care if you charge $50 an hour. You don’t want to stay there, but if that’s all you can say right now, then that’s what you say, and then once three people pay you $50 an hour, then let’s go to $75, let’s go to $100, okay. And then three people pay you that, let’s get you to $125 and let’s get you to $150. And the more confidence you get, the more you’ll double and triple faster.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative), this is true. I love value based pricing. When you really work out, assuming that you are successful in creating that transformation or the result that your client wants, what is the value to them? Is it going to grow their business 3X, 5X, 10X, right? And then, is it fair that you get 5% of that growth, 10% of that growth, 20% of that growth? What is it? And it’s interesting when you do that, because suddenly, you realize, wow, okay, so if I’m going to, by advising someone, increase their revenue by a million dollars a year, well, so what should I be paid for that? Right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right. At least a hundred grand, if not more.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. Exactly. And the minute that you take people through that, it’s like, “Oh. Oh, right. Okay.”

Katrina Sawa:                    Right. So-

Melinda Wittstock:         But this goes back to being very clear, though, on what that transformation is.

Katrina Sawa:                    Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         Like what will for sure, I swear on my life, happen, if you work with me.

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, and you can’t always guarantee, and most people can’t guarantee, right, because it depends on the client, if they’re going to slack off or don’t do it in a certain time period. I mean, you can’t guarantee always, but I can guarantee if you do what I say you’re going to probably double your income for the most part, for most of my clients.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, that’s the critical thing, if you do what I say-

Katrina Sawa:                    Do what I say.

Melinda Wittstock:         … and you do the work, right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         So when you’re structuring these kind of deals, because just as an aside, there’s nothing more heartbreaking, I think, than having a client that’s just not doing it, because you can’t provide value and it’s disheartening for the entrepreneur, right, to be-

Katrina Sawa:                    Sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? Giving all this advice and not being listened to and all of that, and so how do you qualify that at the beginning so you actually end up with clients that are more likely than not to actually do what you say?

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, that’s a hard one, because especially with the types of people that I work with that are newer, and a lot of them do have a lot of head trash, so we have to get through a lot of the head trash, but what they see in the beginning when they want to get the result, they’re hiring me to help them grow their business and make money. Okay, they don’t realize, usually at that time, that there’s so much limiting beliefs and head trash in the way that we have to work through or frankly, unsupportive marriages and significant others that aren’t supportive, so along the way, we get these little bumps, right? And so we have to go fix this and work on that and work through this scenario, and they don’t realize. And it doesn’t always come up, and sometimes I can’t always recognize those limiting beliefs and things in the beginning. Sometimes people are pretty confident or they look pretty confident and then they pop up later, right?

So it is hard to guarantee. However, especially with health people, if they’re a health coach or something like that, but think about the return on a health or relationship coach, too. I’ve paid … Let’s see. When I was looking for my last husband, my last  … he’s the last one. When I was really looking for … I had the starter husband already and then I was dating for a while and I realized there was stuff that I needed to change and work on in order to be ready to attract the new guy. Right? So I actually invested about six grand in relationship courses. I also invested about six grand in a matchmaking service, and then I spent, I don’t know, like $500 or $600 on online dating sites over six months. And because of those investments, I found him in six months when I started looking, because I was all in. I was all in, highly invested, I spent 20% of my day looking for the man and really prepping that whole relationship stuff.

So when you’re all in, you do what you need to do, whether it’s your business, your relationship. A relationship coach could, I have relationship coaches that charge $10,000 for the year to help you find the love of your life, and if you don’t, she actually guarantees it, otherwise she’ll continue working with you for free. So when you put a price tag on your services … like relationship coaches, you don’t find many charging like that. Right? They’re by the hour or they have a program that’s a six-week and it’s $1000, or maybe they have a coaching program that’s $500 a month if you’re lucky, right? But nothing significant. And there’s no reason you can’t. If someone’s really serious about finding love, I would pay … I did, I paid 12 grand to find love.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, because when you think about it, and this goes back to women investing themselves, what’s it worth to you to have this transformation in your life? Whether it’s finding your ideal partner, like your man or whatever, or it’s really growing your business to hit a million dollars or hit 10 million dollars or your billion dollar unicorn, wherever it is, whatever-

Katrina Sawa:                    Or lose weight or get out of pain, all of it. I mean-

Melinda Wittstock:         All those things. They’re transformational, and when we think of money, money’s just a tool. What I love to tell women is that money’s not … it’s not a thing. It’s a tool, it’s something to be used for leverage, and if you’re using it for leverage, you’re investing in yourself and ultimately, you’re creating something that can give you recurring revenue. Right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Beginnings of passive income, so you can make your money work for you rather than you having to scramble and work for your money.

Katrina Sawa:                    Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so Katrina, you have built this amazing Jumpstart brand over many years, and it’s huge. It’s encompassing … How big is your business now? Because you’ve got so many different ways into it and different products associated with it and everything. It’s amazing.

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, unlike some of my peers, who hired co-coaches and built out a coaching team, I decided not to do that, which is fine either way, frankly, it’s just the business model I chose, to stay with just me, but I do have a team of three or four different assistants and/or designers and all that kind of thing. I have a whole techy team now, so I built out a website and virtual services company, so that’s kind of a sidebar of what I do, because most of my clients needed either a new website or their website fixed and then they needed an assistant, and so I put that into place as Jumpstart Your Techy Services, because I couldn’t find enough contractors, basically, to refer my clients to that would be dependable and priced right for the newer business owner.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, god, because it’s such a headache, when you come to build your WordPress site, there are all these templates out there, but oh, my god. You need more help than just kind of standing up a template on WordPress, and then it’s just hard to find dependable talent. It’s all this kind of stuff, so really what you’re describing is like you see a pattern over time of a need that’s consistent persistence. Everybody needs, and you figure out a way to scale that offering so you can offer it as a reasonable price, and then everybody wins, right? Smart.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah. And you don’t have to, but it definitely is a place to do it and a place to add another revenue stream, if you can manage it, and I found some good people that would be reliable for that techy team. There’s a lot of moving pieces, though.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, absolutely. And so where do you take the business here from now? How big are you now? Are you trying to get bigger? Or are you just happy where you are?

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, bigger is relative. My whole thing is living big, right, so it’s all about living a bigger life and that’s my Live Big Mastermind, my Live Big events, it’s kind of a second brand, and to me, living big is being able to spend a lot of time with family, weekends off, taking vacations, as well as massively inspiring lots of entrepreneurs online and offline at my events, through coaching, et cetera. So living big is having that life, is having the lifestyle that I want. So I’m not there yet. I’m doing really well, but I need to easily double what I’m doing, revenue-wise, in order to be where I want to be. So yes, people would think, “Oh, you’ve been in business 16 years,” well, and I’ve been in six figures for half of those, but that’s not enough. People think, “Oh, I just need to get to $100,000.” No you don’t. You need to get there and then you need to double it, because it’s not enough when you get there. Because when you get to $100,000, that’s when you need a bigger team and you need more technology and you need … It’s just more to do and manage.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, you really do, and I like what you’re saying, though, too, because between the lines what I’m hearing is that you’re building a business around a lifestyle that you want, rather than building your life around the business that you want, and there’s a subtle difference. Because I hear people say things all time like, “I want to build a $10 million business.” Well, do you know what it actually means to your life?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right, and you could. If I had co-coaches and I could fill … my events are not 400, 500 person events, and actually, I used to want that. I don’t really actually think I want that anymore. I would like to get to 150 person events, and honestly, I’ve never 150 people at my own event before, and I do a heck of a lot of marketing. So note to people out there trying to do your own event: Don’t set your goal at 100 people and buy this huge conference room and pay for it, because you might be sorely unhappy to see the results. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible, it’s just, oh my god, I was trying to get 100 people at my events since 2009, okay?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah.

Katrina Sawa:                    So I’ve just kind of realized that okay, well mine is more of a boutique event, then. And then I have to make the most of what’s at each event and what I pull from each event. So I do four events a year now instead of two. I do them more often for cash flow, and because I love to do them, too. They’re one of my favorite things to do. So this is where you’ve got to figure out what you’re selling and you have to do things based on what you like. Some people hate live events and they get exhausted and they need a whole week off afterwards. I don’t. I can have a day off and snap right back in it. I don’t always, but I’m just saying, I’m the type of personality that can do that business model easily. If that’s not your forte, then we need to figure out maybe some other business models for you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative), that’s right. Well, it’s so critical to know what you want and what really makes you happy. I find when people are really aligned with their … I guess their purpose or their mission or this kind of higher goal or their big why or all these different things that we say about alignment, right, and also with your talent, so you’re doing the things that you and only you can uniquely do, and the rest, you’re figuring out a way to hire, you know?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Or maybe you have to do those thing in the beginning and they’re like watching paint dry, but get them done, get them working, get [inaudible 00:30:38] working, film yourself doing them or video or whatever, and then farm them off to other people as soon as you can, because those other people will love to do those things, they’re going to do them better than you, cheaper than you, actually, faster than you, and so you can really get to scale kind of a lot faster. Do you find that women have a hard time asking for help?

Katrina Sawa:                    Oh, of course. One of the biggest reasons, though, is … I mean, very competent women don’t ask for help because they feel like they should be able to figure it out, and that’s me, and then I hire people that are kind of like me, too. But one of the biggest reasons I think they don’t ask for help, though, is because they don’t feel like they can afford it. They look at their checkbook, or they, “I’m just starting, I’ve got to make some money first and get some clients and then I’ll come get some help.” It’s like well, how are you going to get clients and make money? [inaudible 00:31:39]. And I don’t know why that it’s so logical for people to think that they’ll be able to get clients in the beginning but then they need coaching. I’m like … I don’t understand that. I’m such a logical, realistic type person. But they don’t want to ask for help because they feel bad that they can’t pay the [inaudible 00:31:57].

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, or they, or-

Katrina Sawa:                    They don’t want to pick their brain or-

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, or actually, we’re such perfectionists that we don’t want to ask for help until we need the help.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah, or-

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s kind of like the cleaning your house before the housekeeper comes.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yes, exactly. “Oh, I have to figure out my entire brand and the message and what I want to sell and everything I want to do before I come to you to help me with my website.” Well, no, because that’s … no. In some other people’s cases, maybe, but with me, that’s what I help people do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Actually, you know, you find that, though, with service providers. Like if you hire a copywriter or a web designer or a branding person, they spend all this time asking you, and you’re like, “Well, wait a minute. But I’m hiring you to help me with this.” Right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s a pretty funny dance. And so you have a new book coming out that I know, and can you tell us a little bit about it? What are you writing about, and when’s it going to make its big debut?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right, well, it’s called Jumpstart Your New Business Now, and it’s an entrepreneur’s guide to starting and growing your business, making money doing what you love. I don’t have the tag line perfectly right in front of me, but it’s like that. It’s basically my 10-step Jumpstart Your Business system into a book format, and it gives you those reality checks, like you need this, you don’t need that. It’s really good, practical tips and strategies for the newer business owner. And even if you’ve been in business for a couple years, I find that most people still don’t have all the systems in place, they don’t have the right technology, they’re not efficient, they don’t always know the right marketing or the business models, or they’re just doing things one way and not the other, and so it’ll make a good book for most people, I would say, within the first five years of their business.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. So you’ve got a whole bunch of stuff going on. You’re about to, kind of like you’re going to go double your business, double your revenue, you’ve got your man, you’ve got this book coming out. Apart from all of that, what’s next for you? What’s the big moonshot? Where do you see yourself going in the next five, ten years?

Katrina Sawa:                    Honestly, I’m more of a homebody, and I want to travel less and do more virtually, and I just want to increase consistently. I don’t have this huge, like I want to do this big thing. I want to increase my business consistently while enjoying more time off with my family and not work so hard.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s a wonderful goal, and thank you for saying that, because I think a lot of people say things that they think they should say, but that’s not really in their heart, and it sounds so authentic that you just know, Katrina.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? And that’s lovely, and I just encourage everybody else to do that, too. Just get kind of centered. You’ve got to get rid of all the head trash, but get centered into what it is that you actually really want, and it doesn’t have to be what you think you should want or what people tell you should want, but actually what it is that you do.

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, I had a coach one time, before I even got to six figures, it was the year that I got to six figures, I hired him and it was a $25,000 mastermind thing that I invested, and he was … and I just wanted to get to $100,000. It’s a huge milestone in an entrepreneur’s world to get to that, right, and you can’t think of anything beyond that until you get there. But he was pushing me to have a goal of like $5 million. I’m like, $5 million is so unrealistic in my head space, I can’t even think that, but I put it out, it was just the dumbest thing. It was the dumbest thing to have a goal of $5 million when I wasn’t even at $100,000 in my personal opinion, so yeah. Don’t do that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, I guess have achievable milestones. Get there, and then you get there and you think, “Okay, right, how can I maybe then now get to 250, get to 500,” if you’re going for a million. What’s interesting is a lot of women never make it to the million.

Katrina Sawa:                    No.

Melinda Wittstock:         The million is very elusive, and we talk a lot about that on this podcast and what is the thing that causes that. Is it the business model, is it just that we’re perfectionists, we’re trying to do it all ourselves, or what?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right. Now keep in mind that a lot of the millionaire women business owners that I know, they’re in these huge businesses, they’re selling million-dollar contracts to whatever. Right? They’re not coaches and consultants. Now, I know quite a few coaches who are in the million-dollar range, but it’s a very, very, very small percentage of most people on the planet.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, certainly for coaching. It’s a hard number to get to for coaching. Now, if you’re a technology entrepreneur, you’re going for the $100 million, right?

Katrina Sawa:                    Right, you could do that in the first year as a million, and so when you see million-dollar women entrepreneurs, really look at the type of business that they have and stop trying to compare yourself and why I’m not there yet and … I mean, if you can get to a couple hundred thousand dollars in your business as a coach, you’re doing amazing. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Yeah, that’s great, to really level set those expectations. Because there’s so many different drivers of a business and different types of businesses. So if you’re a technology entrepreneur, as I have been, you can go for a long time perfecting your product before you even have a drop of revenue, right, and it’s all about user traction and people liking the product, and it’s about going out and fundraising, right?

Katrina Sawa:                    And not only that-

Melinda Wittstock:         Getting venture capital and all of that, right? It’s totally different.

Katrina Sawa:                    Yeah, but not only that is like even if the company’s making a million, you as the CEO still might only be taking home 60 grand. Who knows?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, you might not even be paid at all.

Katrina Sawa:                    If you’re lucky.

Melinda Wittstock:         But actually, I’ll encourage, if you do have that kind of model and you’re tempted not to pay yourself, pay yourself.

Katrina Sawa:                    Pay yourself, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         Always, always pay yourself. You’re the first person, as an entrepreneur, that should be paid, and I think sometimes we fall on our own swords as we’re trying to create value in our business and don’t pay ourselves enough, but the business wouldn’t exist without you, so.

Katrina Sawa:                    Right. I totally agree.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s so, so important. So Katrina, okay. How can people find you and work with you to jumpstart their businesses?

Katrina Sawa:                    Well, jumpstartyourmarketing.com is my website, and it’s more than just marketing these days, but jumpstartyourmarketing.com is the main website. There’s a lot there, so there’s live events there. Under the resources, there’s a ton of free training, so I’m all about you can try me out first and listen to some audios and look at a webinar. You can go to my YouTube channel, there’s like 450 video tips on there you can look through. There’s a lot of things you can do to research me and get content and get some training without even talking to me yet, but I would encourage somebody to actually take the next step and talk to me, too, because I literally can save, I’ve saved people $3000 on not doing something, time deciding on the wrong system or whatever, and sometimes I just can’t help myself, even in a free call, so you don’t want to shy away from that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Okay, that’s awesome. Well, I encourage everybody listening who sees a good fit here to get in touch with Katrina, and of course, Katrina, this will all be in the show notes, as well, so for anybody listening right now who’s driving or something and can’t take it down, you can go to wingspodcast.com/katrina-sawa and find the podcast.

So thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Katrina Sawa:                    Thank you.

 

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Listen to learn the secrets, strategies, practical tips and epiphanies of women entrepreneurs who’ve “been there, built that” so you too can manifest the confidence, capital and connections to soar to success!
Instantly get Melinda’s Wings Success Formula
Review on iTunes and win the chance for a VIP Day with Melinda