#278: Get Paid What You’re Worth and Grow a 6-Figure Biz

In this episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I’m interviewing Kathleen Celmins coach and creator of The Well Paid Expert, about how to get paid what you’re worth and grow a 6-figure business by selling high-ticket digital products and services.

We discuss the importance of diversifying your income streams and leaning into your expertise to future-proof businesses.

Kathleen explains the process of creating a digital product empire, starting with a low-ticket item and moving up to a high-ticket offer.

We also discuss the importance of empowering women to take up space and make more money, and the process of transitioning from selling a $27 ebook to building a six-figure business.

We emphasize the importance of creating a customer journey that aligns with the way people want to consume content and what they need the most to solve their problems.

Show Notes:

• MiloTreeCart
• Catch My Party
• MiloTree Pop-Up App
• Kathleen Celmins
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Intro (00:00:03) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie (00:00:11) – Hello my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie. I am a blogger and a serial entrepreneur. I build businesses online with my husband David. 

We started in 2009 when we created Catch My Party, and we’ve grown it into the largest party ideas site on the web. If you need graduation party ideas or Father’s Day ideas head over there. 

We also then created our MiloTree Pop-up app that so many of you use to grow your social media followers and email subscribers. 

And right now we have launched MiloTreeCart, which is the perfect payment tool for creators who hate technology for you to sell digital products to your audiences. 

These are things like digital downloads, memberships, coaching workshops, subscriptions, any digital product you create, you can sell with MiloTreeCart. 

Before I introduce the episode, I wanted to share two things.

Updates to Google Search

The first is that Google just had their annual IO conference and they started to lay out how search is going to look in the future. And if you saw this in your newsfeed, you couldn’t help but notice something called the AI snapshot. 

And this is where Google is using AI to return the answer to the search query right there on the search page, incentivizing people to stay on Google and not click off to a bunch of sites. 

I have no idea how big the impact of this is going to be on all of our traffic, but I do think that we should expect some sort of disruption. And therefore, in order to future proof your business, I recommend two things. 

Diversifying Income Streams

One, lean into your expertise. Show that you are a real person with real authority. And two, if you are monetizing predominantly from ads on your blog, please diversify. Look for other income streams like selling digital products to your audience. 

And the second thing I wanted to share is that by the end of May with MiloTreeCart, we are rolling out two features. These are the most requested features that will help you make more money. These are called order bumps and upsells. 

These are simple funnels so that when a customer comes and is purchasing, they will see additional items that make sense to them and increase what’s called your average order value. I share this because it relates directly to today’s episode. 

Today I am interviewing Kathleen Celmins. She is a coach and she teaches people how to sell high ticket digital products and services through funnels. This is how people are making six to seven figures and how you can too. 

I love the way Kathleen talks about making money, talks about why your expertise matters and why you should be paid for it. I think you’re going to like this episode. So, without further delay, here is my interview with Kathleen Celmins. 

Kathleen, welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast.

Kathleen Celmins (00:03:25) – Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. 

Jillian Leslie (00:03:28) – It’s funny because we were chatting so much, before I pressed record I’m like, no, no, no, we have to record this. And we decided even before we pressed record that we are friends.

Kathleen Celmins (00:03:40) – Yes, we are. Now we’re friends. And yes, you don’t know this about me, but I am a barnacle when I decide that somebody is my friend, you have to change your number to get out of my world. 

Jillian Leslie (00:03:52) – Oh good. Stalk me. Stalk me. I love it. I love it. Kathleen, and especially what we were talking about before we press record was business building and being serious. Being a serious person who really is ready for it, wants to make money.

Kathleen Celmins (00:04:09) – Yes. And we were just talking about this because we have a shared vision that we want women to take up space and make more money. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. 

Jillian Leslie (00:04:19) – That’s what gets me out of bed.

Kathleen Celmins (00:04:20) – Yes, we’re friends. 

Jillian Leslie (00:04:22) – Totally. Kathleen, give the audience if you would, a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are and what you do?

Kathleen Celmins (00:04:31) – Sure. I have been at this for a long time. I started in the personal finance world in 2011. Which for those of you who are listening is a really long time ago in internet years.

I worked in my last corporate job as the blog manager for an inbound marketing company. In those days were inbound marketing. In order to win the inbound marketing game, you just had to have more 500 word posts than other people.

Jillian Leslie (00:05:00) – Can you explain with your viewers what is inbound marketing, company blogging?

Kathleen Celmins (00:05:03) – It  was right at the beginning of HubSpot. And it was building out content for our internal team and then for the agency we were building a content agency with that model. 

If you want people coming to you, you need to have content. That’s something that’s very obvious today as of this recording. In some spaces there are still spaces that are not as online as others that still don’t know that. It’s a given now and it really wasn’t back then. 

And then I left there because in 2013 I was working for a 100% remote company, which again, after the pandemic sounds like no big deal. Everybody works from home. But back then it was really scary.

I was like, am I am going to  lose all my social connections? Am I going to get weird? Am I going to be one of those people that decides that since I’m working from home, I don’t need to shower? 

And once I worked there for, I think it was like 18 months or something, I realized, no, I’m fine. I can work from home, but also I can do the same thing for myself that I was doing for this company. And there’s way more potential upside. 

And so, I partnered with a friend in the personal finance space. I worked behind the scenes to make the podcast that we were on. I was never on the air, but I made it profitable. I was the business manager. We went from free revenue to mid six figures per year, really set them up for success.

And by the time I’d worked with them for four or five years, I was tired of being in the personal finance space, the personal finance space, very much spend less, earn more, invest the difference.

And my business partners were doing a really good job at that. But I was tired of the same stories. And what I really, really liked was helping other people in that space make more money, helping other people do good. 

And so I, in 2018 spun off on my own and built a marketing agency. And then in 2020, turned it into a content agency with a business partner. And we were focusing on video content and it worked out really well. 

Virtual video marketing content worked really well when everybody was at home and they needed to connect with other people. So, I’ve done a ton of work for you. And from there, pivoted again. 

We closed down the agency and now I’ve taken all of the things that I have learned, all of the processes and swipe files and templates that I use to make. My agency works smoother and has turned it into a group coaching program where people join at their leisure.

They can join whenever they want. And then my promise is, in 90 days we’ll build you, we’ll take you from idea to fully functioning sales funnel. 

And if you’re not making money by the end of those 90 days and you’ve done everything necessary to get to that point, I will cut you a check for a thousand dollars to put toward ads and also work with you. 

And until it’s profitable, that is how much I believe that we’re still at the beginning of digital products working and how much I believe in this framework and process. 

Jillian Leslie (00:08:54) – Is the ideal person that you work with. So, somebody is listening and they’re like, I want to make a lot of money selling digital products. Who can you help?

Kathleen Celmins (00:09:08) – I really love that question. And I love the hypothetical person. If you think you can’t, you want to make money with digital products, you’re the right person. 

More specifically, if you have been in business even a couple of years, you’re sitting on a gold mine. There is a hundred thousand dollars revenue stream in your SOPs, in your Google Drive, in your Dropbox, somewhere in your system that you think of as something that everybody does. 

That’s where there’s real. So, that’s where the gold is. 

Jillian Leslie (00:09:45) – What if I’m a blogger in a niche?

Kathleen Celmins (00:09:49) – How are you monetized?

Jillian Leslie (00:09:52) – I’m typically monetized via affiliates, ad revenue, affiliates, that kind of thing.

Finding Your Expertise

Kathleen Celmins (00:10:00) – So, we’ll take your hypothetical. Let’s say you don’t have any digital products of your own. And you’ve seen the teachers pay teachers model where it’s all really low ticket. And you think maybe that’ll work for you and it might. But also there’s probably something else there. 

We would look at your top performing posts, we’d look at your top performing affiliates, and we would figure out what else there is. I think a lot of bloggers use the word just, I’m just a blogger. How can I do that? And that keeps you small. Don’t stay small. 

You aren’t just a blogger. You’re an expert on content that works. You know what’s going to hit and what’s not. 

You could even call yourself a viral content expert when you’re planning on your content ahead of time, the types of things that will make Google happy or make any of the social media algorithms happy.

You think that’s just something everybody knows and it’s not. So something like that. Something just as simple as that because it doesn’t seem like very much to you. And that’s because you are the expert and the analogy I keep using is surgeons.

It’s no big deal to a surgeon to take your appendix out because they know where it is. It’s no big deal. But that surgeon is not afraid to charge for it. They’re not afraid to and they don’t do hourly base pricing. It’s the same sort of thing. 

Everybody listening here has a surgeon’s level of knowledge about their topic.I would say it’s that thing.

Jillian Leslie (00:11:58) – It’s like the water you are swimming in that you don’t see the fish doesn’t know he’s in the water. 

Kathleen Celmins (00:12:09) – The fish doesn’t know he is in the water. 

Jillian Leslie (00:12:11) – So, you have your own water that you don’t know. For example, maybe I am awesome at recommending products, I have a bunch of girlfriends and I’m the one who is always at Target finding the best conditioner, finding the best weird thing. 

And I’m always telling my girlfriends about it. And they’re always buying them going, oh my God, you like that thing that you recommended was so awesome? Like, that is a skill.

Kathleen Celmins (00:12:39) – Yes.

Jillian Leslie (00:12:41) – And I bet there are ways to monetize that, whatever it is. So really, step back and one thing that I think is very valuable is asking the people around you, what is it that you do effortlessly that you don’t see in yourself?

Kathleen Celmins (00:13:01) – And if that’s scary, listen for questions. If you get the same question from three different people, that is worth investigating. So, let’s say that you are really good at laying something out in Canva in a way that’s so much more beautiful than literally anyone else.

And you’re friends with other bloggers, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here. It’s impossible to do this by ourselves. So, they’ve asked you like, “Hey, I’ve got this recipe roundup. Could you tell me how you did that pin or that image?” If you get that question three times, that is a nugget for a digital product.

Jillian Leslie (00:13:50) – I think that is very wise advice. And I think we were talking about this offline as women, we underestimate our expertise. We go, yeah, but yeah, whatever. Yeah, it’s super easy. You could do it too. 

I just did it this way, and B, BA, B. So notice that we as women, and again, I’m speaking in generalities, however, we do have this tendency to not see I call it kind of special sauce.

The Importance of Perspective

Kathleen Celmins (00:14:22) – I use the analogy of wine. You are the wine inside your bottle. You not only know what color you are, you know exactly which grapes from exactly which row and exactly which vineyard you come from. 

Your specific alcohol, the best temperature to be at. You don’t know what your label looks like. All you can see are the other labels around you. You don’t know if you’re at the top shelf at a fancy wine place or at the bottom of the gas station. You don’t know until you get some outside perspective. 

You can ask me, “Hey, what’s my bottle, what’s my label look like? And I can say, you need to do some work on your label. And you’re like, great, great. I’m glad we’re having this conversation or like, “Hey, where am I in the marketplace?”

I’m like, I hate to break it to you, but you’re at Circle K. And it’s really, really hard for us to have any perspective from inside the bottle. And it’s not a personal failing, it’s a universality. So, it’s really helpful. 

I have a friend who is just a genius at spreadsheets, Excel, Google Docs doesn’t, or Google Sheets doesn’t matter. And my brain doesn’t think in rows and columns. And so often I will share a Google sheet with her and say in English, I need it to do this. And 57 seconds later, I get it.

And that is a skill that I would pay for. If I didn’t have her, I would have to pay for it or spend six hours trying to figure it out myself. So anything that’s easy for you, anything people are asking you about, anything that makes your job easier.

I heard somebody tell me once, I just don’t know what I would build a product around, because I don’t know, I just have this one thing. I don’t know if anybody would want it, but I have a way to onboard my new contractors so that they are pretty much autonomous in less than two weeks. But I don’t think anybody would want that.

I was like, are you kidding me? You don’t think anybody would want that? I know lots of people who cycle through tons of contractors before they get to one that even works six months down the line.

And she said, “Oh, well maybe I could turn that into something.” And she did. I love that. So, there’s lots there. There’s lots there.

Your Digital Product Empire

Jillian Leslie (00:16:55) – Yes. I think it is like, after you listen to this episode, to really step back and say like, ooh, like kind of talk about talk. Think about yourself as if you were your best friend looking at you going, that’s cool. 

So if you can get those, just even that change in perspective, I think that is the first piece in building this, in building what I like to call your digital product empire. 

Will you walk me through though, how it can turn into an empire? Because the question I get all the time is like, I’m going to sell a $5 ebook, and how does this even work? And I loved what you were talking about in terms of funnels. 

Now funnels just before we start are really pathways that you’re leading your audience on. And again, you get lots of people hopefully at the top of your funnel and they’re going to learn more about you and you’re going to see if it’s a good fit and they’re going to see if it’s a good fit. 

And ultimately at the bottom of the funnel, what they purchase. And all of that has a variety of paths you can take. So would you break this down?

Kathleen Celmins (00:18:08) – Sure. So, the $5 ebook is intended to prove to you as the creator that you have something worth selling. There are not very many people that can get rich on a $5 ebook.

Even people with a zillion followers have a higher ticket backend. I know people who have book funnels. It’s like free plus $5.95 for shipping, but that goes into a higher ticket funnel. 

So, if you think about the $5 and $5 up to $20 up the e-book level is to prove to you that some part of your expertise can be monetized. Once you have that proof and you don’t need that to be $500, you need that to like one sale, three sales will prove that you have something to sell. 

And then it goes up from there. I don’t believe in the old school like ascension model.

You’re not going to go from $5 to $27 to $5,000 to $100,000. It doesn’t work like that anymore. It’s better to come in at a medium range price point. So, once you’ve done the $5, I think the instinct is like, well now I’m going to do something $27 and $27. 

There’s nothing wrong with the $27 product, except that what it’s doing is it’s building your list for free. So, that would be the stage where you’re proving that ads can work for you. So, you’re sending paid traffic to a $27 product, you’re probably spending $27 per purchase. 

Building an Email List

Jillian Leslie (00:19:50) – To break you building your List. Can you explain that? Because I think that’s counterintuitive. Like, wait, what? I’m going to spend $27 to get a $27 purchase.

Kathleen Celmins (00:20:00) – Channel that, that’s why I don’t have any $27 products because it doesn’t make any sense. So, if you’re trying to build your list, great. If you want to build your list for free, it’ll take a little bit longer. 

If you want to build your list for paid, it might be a break even. And that can be okay. I think it’s hard to spend money on ads without a monetary ROI. So, let’s eliminate the $27 and go for something that’s a few hundred dollars. That is where all of my people fall into.

You want your price point for your offer. Your digital offer needs to be not so expensive that they have to talk to their business partner or their husband or somebody else who’s also in charge of their finances to buy it, but not so cheap that it immediately goes into their PDFs to read later folder  and they don’t do anything with it.

There’s a happy medium and we do this inside my group where we talk through it. I have a price point that I want people to start at. I get a lot of pushback. So, I’m flexible within a hundred or so dollar range. 

Mostly the real value comes in when you cut up that main offer into its component pieces so that some people will just buy the core offer, but most people will buy. Some people will buy just the steak, but lots of other people are going to buy the potatoes and the wine and the broccoli and the dessert to go with it.

Advertisement (00:21:39) – I want to take a short break to say that if you are ready to start creating digital products, but you’re feeling intimidated, start with an ebook. And in fact go grab my ebook on How to Write an Ebook using ChatGPT. 

You can get this@milotree.com/aiebook. I’m selling it for $29. But if you go to that link, you can get it for free. And remember I wrote this ebook using Chat GPT and it took me three hours. This is doable. 

So again, go to milotree.com/aiebook, you’ll get all of my prompts. So honestly, there is no reason not to try this. And now back to the show.

Jillian Leslie (00:22:28) – One thing that I’m noticing as we’re rolling out MiloTreeCart, because I’m watching on the back end. What are people selling? Where are they having success? People are definitely doing exactly what we talked about. They’re starting with something small.

And you’re right, it is test, it is concept like testing, figuring out where that product market fit is. And it can take a little bit of experimentation because you think this offer is going to be the one, and then ultimately nobody purchases. But then you go, wait a minute, you get some feedback.

Or maybe you think about it, or you go into Facebook groups and you see how people are really talking about this and that. That’s the experimental phase. Then what I am noticing is the people who are starting to really make money are doing it by selling higher ticket items. 

They’re not necessarily going from the $5 ebook to the $27 ebook. Now they might still offer those, but it’s coming in things like a coaching session, a package of something,.

A membership, a paid workshop, like bigger products where all of a sudden they’re seeing thousands of dollars coming in, no longer in $5 increments. But it’s interesting watching them jump kind of what you were saying from those early tests into something much larger.

Selling High-Ticket Items

Kathleen Celmins (00:23:56) – Most people who will tell you that high ticket is the best often have a high ticket offer themselves. And so it’s a little bit, it strains credulity. The best way to make money online is to sell high ticket. 

By the way, if you want to join me, it’s going to be high ticket. But it is true, especially if they do have it, because those people have spent a lot of time doing the testing at the lower ticket, I don’t want to say lower end because it’s always really good stuff at the lower ticket. 

Those people didn’t hit crazy wealth numbers until they had something that was over $1,000 themselves.

Jillian Leslie (00:24:48) – How do you make this mindset shift? This is the thing, I’m okay selling a $27 ebook, but I can’t be charging $150, or I can’t be charging $300, let alone $3,000. What is that thing? Where is it fake till you make it? Is it pumping yourself? 

Kathleen Celmins (00:25:15) – I don’t believe you.

Jillian Leslie (00:25:16) – Before you put out the offer, how do I get there emotionally?

Kathleen Celmins(00:25:22) – I think it’s better to take emotion out of it, and that’s easy to say, but hard to do. But mostly what I mean by that is it’s not about you and whether you can make something that’s worth that. And this was a big shift for me mentally.

When we’re being self-conscious like that, what we’re actually doing is being self-centered. And we don’t think we are because we don’t think of ourselves as self-centered. But when you’re thinking about how can I do this? 

What you’re doing it’s uncomfortable. It’s a big bright hot spotlight right on your face. But it isn’t that. It is, how can I help the people that I help, that I want to help the most? How can I give them the absolute best transformation experience?

Kathleen Celmins (00:26:20) – And if you’re doing that, if you’re solving one of the top big, big three problems, how you can do that, how you can achieve that transformation, it doesn’t  take you all the way out of it.

If you’re helping somebody lose weight, what do you have to do about it? It doesn’t matter if what you think about it, what matters is their transformation. If you’re helping somebody make more money, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have an MBA

It matters that you have figured out some way to make more money in some really specific way that will change their lives. 

Jillian Leslie (00:27:04) – I can help. Just one second. What are those three big areas that you talk about?

Kathleen Celmins (00:27:09) – Health, wealth and relationships. Those are the big three. Online money making things. If you are a recipe blogger, for example, you can’t make a thousand dollar cookbook. There’s just no way you can do that. You bump up against the limits there. 

Let’s use the recipe people, because like Pinch of Yum, for example, makes a lot more money teaching other people how to get there than they do on their Chicken Alfredo recipes.

Jillian Leslie (00:27:44) – Got it. Let’s then talk about how this journey works. Let’s say I’ve validated something and I’m selling a $27 ebook, and I’m like, yay, I figured out something. 

Let’s say it’s on parenting, parenting a difficult child. And I come to you and I go, “What?” Tell me, how does this turn into something bigger? How does this turn into let’s say, a hundred thousand dollars business? You say back to me, “What, okay.”

Expanding Digital Offer

Kathleen Celmins (00:28:26) – I say, great, you are a parenting expert. You have figured this out in a way that now you’ve made $2,700 validating your idea, validating your expertise. Now there are two ways to go from here. One is teaching exactly your methods. 

So, maybe flesh it out more. Maybe it’s not an ebook, maybe it’s a coaching program. If you look at the poor infant mothers, they’ll pay literally anything for a sleep program. So, could you expand it out? Could you turn it into a program? 

Could you turn it into something that’s higher touch? Could you add coaching? Could you add a one-on-one aspect? Could you add a group aspect? If you’re a night owl, could you add nighttime access?

Could you like, thinking about that, basically you are solving the parenting problem. One parenting problem in a really specific way. That’s the transformation. How else can you do that? 

Brainstorming the Transformation

We call it in my group thinking about your offer, your transformation as the pig, and the different ways that you’re letting people access that are the different lipsticks you’re putting on your pig.

How does it work with this? Does it count, if you take it to how could you charge 10 times more? How could you charge a hundred times more? What would it look like to charge a thousand times for it? Don’t get stuck on the idea that it’s an ebook. That’s just the delivery vehicle. 

The idea is the parenting transformation. The other side of that is how could you teach other people to become parenting experts or build a business that you’ve built? 

What would you teach yourself three years ago that if you’d known it three years ago, you’d be a lot farther along in your entrepreneurial journey than you are now? Those are two different angles for brainstorming.

Jillian Leslie (00:30:48) – I like your thing of like we could be in a membership, we could be one-on-one, I could do one-on-one coaching. I could do the night owl thing where you can call me 24 hours a day, all of those things. And so I’m going to put a price tag on each offer. 

And then how, when I get somebody into my funnel, first of all, how do I get them in my funnel? And then how do I lead them on this journey?

Creating a Customer Journey

Kathleen Celmins (00:31:19) – A, that’s the easy answer. And then B, in my 90-day program, we have a framework we go through where we brainstorm all the ideas, we pull together what would be a good core offer, and then we split things out into the different component pieces. 

When we talk about the customer journey, how do we go from, take this free quiz about whether or not you have a more difficult than average child to a core offer to the highest ticket thing you sell. So, it’s a customer journey. You’re solving problems along the way. 

We talk about it in our group as an upsell path and a downsell path where, how can you help? And it sounds disingenuous to say how can you make the most money off of these people? Because that’s not where anybody listening to this is coming from. 

They’re coming from a place where, how can you help the most people, how can you help more parents have better relationships with their kids? Maybe they had a long journey to get to it. Having a kid, how can you help them not be so frustrated with what they wanted for so long?

And if you keep that top of mind instead of how can I squeeze the most money out of each person coming through, then your marketing aligns much more with how you want to show up in the world. And honestly, the truth is you’ll make more money too.

Jillian Leslie (00:33:05) – So, it’s kind of like this, when you go to the fancy restaurant, but they have the burger. It might be an expensive burger. But they do offer the burger now they also offer the lobster. 

And they have wine, you could buy a glass of wine or you could buy a big bottle of wine and you’re going to the restaurant, you’re going to have that restaurant experience. But again, you show up and you can order the burger or the lobster. 

And let’s say it’s a business dinner. Great. Everybody is going to order the lobster. Let’s say it’s just you and your family and you just feel like burgers or you want to experience it, who knows?

But you can go to that restaurant and have that restaurant experience, but still fine tune what your experience there is going to be like and how much you’re going to spend.

Kathleen Celmins (00:33:57) – Exactly. So anybody coming from a restaurant will get fed, but the restaurant customizes the experience for each person in each situation just like we do online.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:10) – Exactly. So I feel like you’re going to give them the experience of I am this parenting expert and I’m going to solve your problem, which is you’re hungry. So at the end of the day, you leave the restaurant, you’re full, at the end of this, you’re going to get a solution.

Now you might get the down and dirty solution, you might get the DIY solution, you might get the total VIP solution but you get to choose that.

Kathleen Celmins (00:34:40) – Exactly. And so for the creator, to reframe it as giving somebody every potential option that works with the way they learn best.

What they need the most in order to solve the problem that you are an expert in solving really takes away like squeezing blood from a stone feeling that a lot of online marketing can get you to feel.

Jillian Leslie (00:35:11) – Yes. And it puts the decision making in the customer’s hand, Hey, you want this? Great, I’ve got that for you. Oh, oh, you don’t want that. Okay, I’ve got this for you.

And that you’ve thought through all of these different pathways so that you can serve them in the way in which they want to absorb this information, and what their budget is. 

And chances are, if you deliver even at the smaller level, then guess what? When they run into more parenting issues because you’re their go-to parenting person, they might go, you know what? I didn’t know if you could really solve it for me, Kathleen, but you did like you helped me with sleep.

Now we’re into the toddler years where my kid is driving me nuts. Kathleen, how can you help me with this? Because I trust you because you solve this for me. 

Kathleen Celmins (00:36:05) – Exactly. Or like, okay, now that they’re sleeping , how do I get them to eat vegetables? And I think leaning into your expertise and getting to the point where you’re comfortable charging for it are the two biggest hurdles. And then the rest of it is just like__.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:31) – Plugin Chad moving things around.

Kathleen Celmins (00:36:33) – Not really, but more like organizing things on a board. Like what goes here and what goes here and that’s like a puzzle like my wall, a puzzle that’s fun. 

Jillian Leslie (00:36:45) – That’s so interesting. So, the two things people struggle with, I want to say this again, are figuring out that you can charge that you are worth it. 

Kathleen Celmins (00:36:57) – had a client who was a psych. How can I charge for a gift that was given to me?

Jillian Leslie (00:37:07) – Ooh.

Leaning into Expertise and Charging for It

Kathleen Celmins (00:37:08) – That’s a really good question. And all of us have gifts. In order to help other people, you need to be charging for it. And you need to charge enough so that you are seen as the expert that you know you are. 

So, leaning into your expertise, getting comfortable, charging for your expertise, and then knowing that you can set up a sales and marketing system that aligns with how you want to show up in the world. 

Knowing that you don’t have to do things the bro way, those two things combined will propel you farther along than just about anything else.

Jillian Leslie (00:37:57) – I feel like we’re here on this planet to become the embodiment of the best version of ourselves. And I feel like, again, speaking in generalities as women, like we got empathy down. 

Especially if you’re a mother, like your kid cries and you are there to comfort them. It’s not about you in that moment. It is about comfort and especially too as wives or whatever, there’s a softer side, I would say to women naturally over men. 

Stepping Into Our Power

So empathy, we got kindness to that kind of sweetness and helpfulness. Where I feel we struggle a little bit is stepping into our power, stepping into that place of I deserve this. I deserve to make money. I do have gifts. I do that.

So, always believe that if you are an entrepreneur, you are going to face yourself in the most brutal way. All of your insecurities are going to come out, all of your weaknesses will come out. And it’s about chipping away at those. 

So, what I’m going to argue is by building a business, like you are talking about Kathleen, you are doing the personal work that is uncomfortable, like facing yourself and really seeing those negative voices for what they are, which is, those are just stories and pushing through. 

So, I think there’s something not just about I want to make a lot of money, or I can do that, but also I’m going to make a lot of money and grow as a person in a really positive way. To me, it feels like a win-win.

Kathleen Celmins (00:39:44) – Also. If you want to make a lot of money, get comfortable saying that.

Jillian Leslie (00:39:50) – Ooh, tell yourself I like that. I like that.

Kathleen Celmins (00:39:52) – I want to make a lot of money. I want to make a lot of money, period. Not because X, Y, Z, but that’s a full sentence. And I honestly believe that, like the holding back of that, I don’t know if I should.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:10) – I shouldn’t charge for it.

Kathleen Celmins (00:40:10) – I want to make a lot of money and I want everybody listening to this to make a lot of money too.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:16) – Me too. 

Kathleen Celmins (00:40:17) – Let’s get there together.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:19) – Let’s lean into that. I do a lot of calls with our customers, and I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me, I can’t charge for that, or I give it away for free on my blog. 

And so it feels dishonest to put it together in some sort of package or the lack of that feeling of somehow it’s dirty, it’s icky. It seems like I’m selfish or I’m too money hungry. 

Or again, it speaks to this idea that we talked about before I press record of like, I’m not a good girl if I want to make that seem so nakedly, I don’t know bad, but let’s embrace naked ambition.

Embracing Naked Ambition

Kathleen Celmins (00:41:04) – I think I’m attracted to ambitious people. They’re the ones that are changing the world. Let’s take up more space, let’s make more money and let’s send our offers out into the world and protect ourselves from the nose. 

Let’s take that parenting expert example. Let’s say you’re the parenting expert who has figured out how to get babies to sleep. And you ask your friend if they would buy something or your audience, they would buy that from you. 

And they say, actually no, don’t internalize that. No, they don’t have infants . It’s fine. Don’t let a couple of nos keep you small. Don’t stop at that. Those couple of nos, I’m working on an idea right now with a friend and another friend of mine said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

And I said,”Respectfully, I don’t think I’m ready to talk to you about it until it’s a stronger idea.” And she said, “I respect that be comfortable with yourself and be comfortable enough with yourself. Be strong enough to find the right person who has that problem that you can solve.”

Jillian Leslie (00:42:33) – I love that idea. And to think that the world is very big and the internet is very big. So, before you abandon it, go looking for those people with that problem, go befriend those people with that problem. 

Maybe your offer isn’t right. Maybe it isn’t an issue of you can’t seem to get in front of the people. Maybe it’s not an exact match. Go back, talk to them, hear how they talk about it, figure out how you can fine tune what you’re doing. It’s much more about being curious than it is about you failed.

.

Kathleen Celmins (00:43:14) – I think that’s true. I had somebody reach out to me on LinkedIn and said, “I can get your preschooler into MIT,” and I was like, “I’m sure there’s a market for what you’re selling.”

I’m just not going to do it. I know there’s lots of parents that want their four-year-olds to be in more rigorous training than I do, but like that person is going to find you don’t, they’re going to find their people. Many people.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:46) – Say that again.

Kathleen Celmins (00:43:47) – There’s 7 billion of us on the planet. You don’t need a billion people to buy your thing unless you’re going to stick to $5 ebooks, then you might. 

You need like a couple hundred, maybe a thousand people to buy from you over the life of your business for your business to be extremely vibrant.

Making a lot of Money

Jillian Leslie (00:44:14) – I think that is so powerful. That is like a perfect note to end on because it says it’s doable. This is all doable. So Kathleen, if people want to reach out to you to learn more about what you do, how you teach them all of that, where should they go?

Kathleen Celmins (00:44:34) – Thewellpaidexpert.com.

Jillian Leslie (00:44:37) – And I love that name.

Kathleen Celmins – Thank you. 

Jillian Leslie – Because the assumption is that if I work with you, I’m going to be the well-paid expert, not just the expert. The well-paid expert.

Kathleen Celmins (00:44:48) – That’s right. You come to me as an expert, we will work out the money stuff.

Jillian Leslie (00:44:51) – That is terrific. Well, I just have to say, I’m so glad I have a new friend and I’m so glad that we were able to hopefully shake some of you guys up to think about this in a whole new way. 

To step into your power to be able to actualize this, to make it a reality and to not think it is icky, but to go, no, you’re going to make a lot of money.

Kathleen Leslie (00:45:22) – I hope so too. Thanks so much. 

Jillian Leslie (00:45:25) – Thank you for coming on the show. I hope you guys like this episode for me. I just love Kathleen’s Can-Do Spirit. Why not charge more like what’s holding us back? You know, what’s holding us back? We’re holding ourselves back. 

And in fact, I have faced that in myself. So, please lean into making a lot of money. Why not? Why not provide a ton of value? Why not offer people a menu of possibilities? Things they can buy from you for a variety of prices? I hope this opened your mind. 

If you want to start selling digital products, please get on a call with me. We’ll talk about how MiloTree can help you. Just go to milotree.com/meet. 

I’d love to hear what you want to accomplish and help you get there. So again, milotree.com/meet and I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes You’ll Like:

• How to Write an Ebook at Lightning Speed with ChatGPT: solo episode with Jillian Leslie
• The Blogging Battle: Authenticity vs. Automation solo episode with Jillian Leslie
• AI-Driven Content and the Future of SEO with Steve Wiideman

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