You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 84.
Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here’s your host, Tobi Fairley.
Hey friends. So, I’m going to go out on a limb today and tell you that today’s episode is my very, very, very favorite with a guest that I have ever recorded. That’s right. So, my favorite guest episode we’ve ever, ever had in The Design You Podcast and that’s in 80 episodes. Okay, so there’s been a ton of guests, but today I have for you Katya Varbanova and she is a viral video creator and marketing strategist.
She helps entrepreneurs go from literally having no presence on social media and with video and helps them and teaches them to generate at least $20,000 a month with only 20 hours of work a week. Now, that sounds like an amazing result to me, right? And you’ll see once you hear Katya talk, why she is getting the results she’s getting with all of her members.
So, one of her favorite things that she likes to talk about, and it’s one of my favorite things too, hence my favorite episode, is she loves to talk about the Myers-Briggs personality type and how it plays into marketing. So, I’m really into personality testing. I love Myers-Briggs, I love the Enneagram.
And we go deep into the Myers-Briggs personality types and how they show up, not only in your business and your marketing, but when you’re on video. So, I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.
Honestly, I’m going to have to listen to this one over and over and over again because it’s basically like a master class for me and my business and for other creatives just like me. So, have fun listening to Katya and I’ll see you on the other side.
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Tobi: Hey, Katya. Welcome to The Design You Podcast. I’m super excited to learn what you have for us today. Because I mean, it is some stuff I’ve never heard before. So, welcome.
Katya: So glad to be here, Tobi. Thank you so much. Looking forward to crush today’s discussion. It should be fun.
Tobi: I know you will crush it. So, for the people who’ve never heard of you, because I’m just learning of you. We have a mutual friend Selena who introduced us, but tell everybody just a little synopsis of kind of who you are, what you do, and then we can get into all the juicy stuff you have for us today.
Katya: Of course. I am a viral video creator and marketing strategist. And I help entrepreneurs to create thriving businesses that generate at least 20K a month. And I do that through the power of video marketing and human psychology.
I kind of got into it really randomly back in 2015 when I was working as an executive assistant in a bank. I’ve had before that years of experience in sales and marketing in many, many different industries. But it wasn’t until Periscope was in the picture, back in the days that I jumped into the whole social media world.
And accidentally, if I must say, I built an audience really, really quickly without even trying, and as a result of building that audience really quickly through live streaming and through live video, I was able to go from zero influence, zero audience, zero name on the map.
Nobody knew who I was apart from people in my bank, and I was able to go from a zero, no sales, nothing, to quitting my job and becoming an authority on live streaming and Periscope, within literally 90 days. That’s really how fast it happened.
I quit my job in November 2015. And I’ve been in the same business ever since. I started by creating a community that today is called 20K Nation. And that community at the time was a free community, actually. I started as a free community and all I really wanted is to bring people together to collaborate and to grow each other’s audience together. I was really excited about bringing people together and collaborating and supporting each other to grow and share our message and sharing our voices.
And through the process, I got so burned out from having a nine to five and then having the free community at the time that I was just left with no choice but to charge for it. So, it went from a free community of 150 people to a paid community of 60 people in literally, I kid you not, from September 19th to October 10th. So, it took like three weeks to do that. And I’ve been doing it ever since.
Tobi: That’s so wonderful because a lot of the parts of what we do in building business and even building digital strategies and social strategies, we talk about how it’s a long game, and part of it is, but at the same time, I love when we have evidence that it doesn’t have to be. We can choose to believe that things can happen fast and that we can get those kind of results.
And I love that you’re willing to come on the podcast because a lot of what I love to do is sort of peel back the curtain and show like, “Okay, does she just to have an x factor or can that be replicated?” And you’re going to talk to us today about how we can do the same thing. We can learn to stand out.
So, one of the other things I’m so excited about and fascinated with, because I happen to geek out on this myself and use it in my own teachings and coaching program and stuff is that you’re super into personality typing, in particular Myers-Briggs. But I’m sure that any of the personality types could potentially play into this as well.
So, let’s kind of set the tone for this whole conversation around what you’ve learned in that whole area of psychology and personality types. Because you have a really unique perspective on finding your ideal client or your audience or your tribe, and it’s not about demographics or some of the things we typically want to say like, “She’s 40 and she’s a mom of three,” or whatever.
You think totally different about that, that goes much, much deeper, which I love because I agree with you, the deep stuff is what gets to people’s real emotions and pain points and all that. So, talk to us about that. How does personality type and a lot of this other psychology play into connecting with the audience that can help us stand out?
Katya: Well, I love studying and noticing what makes people take action, like what makes one person buy something versus makes another hate it? What drives somebody to make a decision like investing in themselves? What drives somebody to make a decision to stay stagnant? Those things always fascinate me.
So, I got into it a couple of years back. I took a test ages ago and I found out I was an ENFP, which is the campaigner’s mostly known, other famous personality type of those were like Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robbins. And I was like, “Wow, those are some really inspirational big people that have created some amazing things.”
And I always kind of studied it on the side, I never got obsessed with it until I suffered – well, suffered, probably not the right word – but until I experienced the hardest, most painful breakup of my life. That I was with somebody four and a half years that it was the kind of relationship – I don’t know if you’ve ever had this Tobi, but it was the kind of relationship that was never unhappy, but was never happy either.
It was just kind of like we’re just comfortable. We get along and et cetera, et cetera. But it was never really amazing. It was never really incredible. And when we broke up that was really painful for my identity. I felt like I just lost myself after it and I was like, “Who am I? And why do I feel this way? Why do I feel like I wasn’t good enough? Why do I feel like I should have been less emotional?”
And anybody listening to this, have you ever gotten off a sales call that you’ve like, literally lost somebody and you just felt like, “Oh, I should have been less pushy or oh, I should have been less emotional or I should have…” You kind of judge yourself for how you are and you feel bad for being rejected.
So, this is what happened Tobi; I got into studying what it means to be in certain matches, relationships, and I found out that the kind of match that me and my ex had, it was a really good relationship for short term so that you can learn a lot from each other, but it was absolutely disastrous long-term relationship because the compatibility was zero.
There was a lot of commonality or what my mentor calls camaraderie. So, we had a lot in common, but compatibility wise, we were not filling each other’s blind spots, therefore, we couldn’t bring out the best of each other.
So, as I started learning about it, I found out that I felt less judgmental of myself and I felt like I could be myself in my business, in my life. And the more I did that, the more I studied it, the more I started diving deeper into, what are the clients that actually I get along with the most?
I have clients, Tobi, I have members in 20K Nation that have been with me since 2015, that are still paying four years down the line. And I was thinking, “Why are these people staying and still loyal to me while there’s others that have been with me for two months, and they’re like, ‘I don’t like it here, I’m just going to leave.”
Tobi: Yeah, I relate. I have the same thing. My membership’s going on two years old, and I have people that have been in since the beta group, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. And then I have other people who are kind of in the middle and then I have the people, like you said, who come in and they’re like, “I’m out.” They never even really tried, either. They never really fully stepped into it. So, I know exactly what you mean.
Katya: And where the personality typing here comes from, what I found as a result of all these years of studying is I found that there were certain personality types that naturally gravitate towards who I am, the real me, the one that’s unapologetic, the one that’s real, authentic, and the one that doesn’t wear a mask. And those personality types are also the most likely to stick around the longest.
When I go back into my list of who stays with me the longest, Tobi, 90% of the people that stick with me for four plus years are people that are either ENFJs, INFJs or ENTJs, INTJs. Those are the four types that stick with me for the longest. Now, I have other types that have stuck with me too for the longest, but out of all the – let’s say if I have 20 people that have been with me for four years, 15 of them will be one of those four types.
Tobi: That’s fascinating. And I think that that could be true for me. I use personality typing also. And I’ve used it in one of my signature courses that I used to teach live. And we would have everybody take the test beforehand. And I know there’s a ton of ENFJs that gravitate to me, like you said, and I happened to be in ENTJ. And I remember some INTJ.
So, that’s fascinating, because I want to know, but it might sound like they’re probably pretty similar to yours. So, you find there’s really almost two types, but you get both the introvert and the extrovert version of both of those. That’s so cool.
So, when you’re looking at those people, I know you mentioned to me when we were just chatting about this before the podcast, that the reason that those particular people are a fit for you, it starts to go deep, like their fears and their desires and how does all that play into this kind of equation?
Katya: So, the number one rule of attraction and compatibility and attraction and marketing as well is that we seek what we wish we could have. We seek what we don’t have. We seek to learn from people that fill our blind spots.
I’ll give you a really good example. I am incredible strategist, incredible with being able to – you give me a goal, you give me a, “I’m this and I want to be here,” I can design the plan to get there. And it will be a step-by-step how to get there. I am incredible at that.
My ideal clients, they suck at that. What my ideal clients are good at, they’re really good at implementing a vision and a plan once they have it. They’re the kind of people that you tell them where to go, they’re going to go and do it. But they spend so much time overthinking.
I attract perfectionists and overthinkers the most. I don’t overthink and I’m not a perfectionist, my motto is done is better than perfect. And I also don’t believe perfection exists. So, I always release minimum viable products that some people might look at them externally and say, “Well, you don’t have a fancy setup here, so it’s not perfect.”
And I’ll be like, “My clients don’t give a damn about how perfect it is. They care about the content. They care about the result. They care about the mindset shifts. So, the kind of procrastinators and overthinkers, this is some of their biggest fears.
They’re scared that if it’s not perfect, they’re going to give others a bad experience, terrified of that. But also, a lot of my clients are terrified that they’re stupid. They question themselves so much. And as a result of that, they don’t launch, they don’t create, they don’t speak up because they worry they’re frauds. They worry they’re not good enough.
And I’m over here completely the opposite, I don’t have a problem with feeling not good enough. I don’t have a problem of procrastination. My problems are different, my fears are all about I am scared to fail. I am really worried about my future and I’m worried about what would happen tomorrow. My worries are different. And my strengths are their weaknesses.
So, they look at me and go, “Wow, I wish I could be like that. I wish I could have that level of perfectionist.” And that’s how the personality typing compatibility really works. The more different somebody is to you, the more likely they are to be drawn to you.
Tobi: This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever heard and you and I need to be like, literally best friends or either we would hate each other because I feel like you just described me when you were talking about you. And I feel like you just described my membership when you were talking about yours, which is so fascinating. Except my type and your type aren’t the same type.
So, I know that we have other things. What I did notice that is not as much like me as you is you said you did the step-by-step plan. I’m way in the visionary category and I like to have an integrator or someone else figure out the minutia.
But from the standpoint of my members being perfectionists and overthinking, and me being never worried about my worth, and being willing to put out kind of what they would consider B minus work, because I want to get to the money and the goal and the outcome faster, it’s so fascinating. I love thinking about that.
So, that for me, personally, that was such good insight because I can see myself in a lot of parts of what you’re talking about. So, that’s so cool. So, you have this philosophy, which I also love, which is so good for those perfectionists and overthinkers and all those people who don’t think they’re worthy.
I just even had someone this morning, I saw a post in my own membership where they thanked someone else for being really vulnerable. And they said, “I’m so glad you posted this because I also beat myself up a lot.” And she said, “In fact, I’ve just been telling myself why I wasn’t even worthy to be in this group anymore and I was thinking about leaving.” Because people do that to themselves until they start talking about their emotions. And of course she’s absolutely worthy to be there.
But we do this to ourselves and we start thinking, “Katya has the it-factor or Tobi has the special sauce or this other person has – they’re just an extrovert and they can do it,” or whatever. But you have a belief that every single person is born to create some kind of iconic experience, like they’re supposed to be an icon to some group of people, right? Maybe not my group or maybe not your group, but you believe everybody has their group that would relate to them, their personality type, their message.
So, talk to us a little bit about that because I love this idea of giving people permission. And I think that, like you said, that’s what the personality typing does. You kind of stop trying to be someone else and you kind of have a little less insecurity or second guessing of yourself, you kind of go, “Oh, interesting, that validates who I actually am.” So, you’re saying every type, all can be icons in their own right. So, what does that look like? Talk to us about that a little bit.
Katya: I’m going to give you an example with yourself if you like, I think it’d be fun. So, let’s talk about the purpose of an ENTJ in life. The purpose of an ENTJ life is to basically help others value themselves and to be the richest person on the planet, that’s the plan.
Tobi: Those are my two favorite things by the way.
Katya: That is literally the purpose of an ENTJ, to be the wealthiest. Example Jeff Bezos, a good example of an ENTJ, Ray Dalio a good example of an ENTJ. That is their purpose. Their purpose is to be wealthy, and to give a lot of that wealth and to also help people value themselves who don’t value themselves.
Tobi: Yes, that’s my favorite thing to do, honestly. In my coaching program, like for this lady who I haven’t even gotten to talk to yet that says, “I don’t feel worth…” I’m on it. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, I see everything amazing about you that you don’t even see for yourself,” and I love to help people polish that up and pull it out and believe in themselves. It is my favorite, favorite, favorite thing on the whole entire planet to do. So, I love that.
Katya: So, let’s see how that applies and who that attracts and why. ENTJs, they are magnets for ENTPs and INTPs. Absolute magnets for those kinds of people. Why is that the case? Well, because an ENTJ never cares about failure, that is not something that scares them. The ENTJs are way more scared of mediocracy than they’re scared of failing.
While an ENTP is way more scared of failing, than they are scared of mediocrity. So, very often ENTPs are like, “Well, I’m over here living a mediocre life because I’m scared to fail and I’m playing small.” And then ENTJ is over there saying, “What the hell are you talking about? What’s this fear of failure thing? That’s really stupid. That’s really dumb. What are you talking about? You haven’t even tried, you’re already failing. You’re not even trying.”
So, you come in as a symbol of willpower. You come as a symbol of, “I don’t care what you think, I don’t care what you know, I just want you to stand up and do something.” And for you to be a symbol of that, for you to be a symbol of, “Who cares if you fail? Failing is actually what makes you more successful.”
Tobi: Yeah, I’ve said that 1000 times, not to interrupt, but it’s so weird hearing my own life story read back to me and we don’t even know each other. This is my favorite podcast episode ever that I’ve ever done. So, keep going.
Katya: And then the other thing is where people are like, “Oh, but I’m scared to charge the money for this and I’m scared to charge the money for that.” And you’re like, “But seriously, girl, if you don’t charge for this, no one’s going to pay attention. No one’s going to listen to you. You’ve got to value yourself. How will you expect other people to value you if you don’t value yourself?”
So, you are a symbol of hope for people that they don’t have to be doormats. ENTJs are like absolute magnets for people who act like doormats, who are ready to step up and be in control of their own lives. Because ENTJ’s number one need is to be in control of their own life and to have the freedom that they’ve always wanted. An ENTJ without freedom of choice is like an ENTJ that’s ready to die.
Tobi: Honestly, yeah. If you put me in a box, I don’t want to be in control of everything, I don’t want to control you. But if you try to limit my choices and control me and I don’t even compete with other people, I just compete with absolutely how far I can go, to the top and I never think there’s a limit. This is really bizarre to hear you literally describe me on point in every way.
Katya: I’ll give you one more that is really important for you and that is reputation management. A lot of your clients, a lot of your members are the kind of people that are like, “Oh, I don’t care what other people think of me, I just want to help people.” And you’re like, “Oh, I’m sorry, but what people think of you is literally a direct representation of how many people you’re going to help.” Because if people think you’re a doormat, no one’s going to pay you, therefore, you’re not going to pay anyone.
So, guess what, my friend? Your reputation is everything. You can hide from it, you can tell me you don’t care. “I don’t care what people think of me. I don’t care what people think of me.” Well, guess what, you better start caring because all these people are making decision who to invest their money with based on what they think of you. And because you have no awareness of what other people think of you, you just don’t care. Well, I’ve got your back. I’ve got your back. And I’m here to save you.
So, that’s what they’re really attracted to. Because there’s somebody like you out there that can help them manage that reputation, that can help them build a brand and not just, “Oh, I just want to help people.” Okay, great. So, how are you helping people exactly by, “I don’t care what other people think of me.” That’s not helping anybody.
Tobi: I love this. And just to clarify, you are right, but sometimes I don’t think about myself as caring what other people think about me. But you’re right. It’s a little bit of a differentiation. Of course I care what they think about me in business, but I’m not going to not be myself because someone doesn’t like that version of me.
So, I guess that’s when sometimes I think, “I don’t care what people think of me.” But you’re right. And I’ve always kind of struggled with saying, “Well, I guess I do, but I don’t really.” But that’s a great clarification because I absolutely do care that people see my power and they understand what I can do and how I can transform and what I stand for. And so, that’s a great, really great clarification there. Thank you.
I feel like I need to send you a check, like you just literally rewrote my website or something in that session. That was awesome. So, every personality type. So, it’s easy for people to then go, “Okay, well, Tobi is a powerhouse, of course, she can be iconic to someone.” But what you’re saying is every single person has those same level of positive attributes about their type.
It just might not come across maybe as in the same way as mine. It might not come across as strong, it might be a quieter power, but sometimes that’s – well, depending on who you’re working with, that’s more important for some people.
Katya: I’ll show you an example of how somebody like your clients could be really iconic, like the kind of people that – let’s take somebody who’s afraid of they’re stupid. Let’s take somebody with an imposter syndrome. You attract a lot of people with imposter syndrome?
Tobi: Yes. Yes, plenty.
Katya: So, I’ll tell a lot of people think, “Oh, imposter syndrome is bad, imposter syndrome is bad, and, oh, I don’t feel good enough, therefore, I’ll never be successful.” I have this really unique view that actually feeling like an imposter and not feeling good enough is probably the best thing you can do for other people.
Because guess what, somebody who doesn’t feel good enough goes out of their way to become the best. Somebody who doesn’t feel good enough spends the time to learn, spends the time to invest and become the best. Somebody who doesn’t feel good enough is willing to wake up in the morning and think, “Do you know what? I don’t know it all. I need to learn more.”
Every single person that’s out there and like, “Well, I’m not successful because I don’t feel good enough.” No, you can become successful even if you don’t feel good enough if you use it to fuel you, to become better at what you don’t feel good enough.
And a lot of you guys listening on the podcast who are like, “Well, I don’t feel worthy of charging $5,000 or I don’t feel like I can deliver this experience for my people.” Well, guess what then, use that to fuel you, to research how to invest. Use it to fuel you to become the best so that you can be somebody that can be of value.
And a lot of you are thinking that’s a negative trait, but in reality, do you know what imposter syndrome also comes with? It comes with incredible empathy. So, people who have imposter syndrome tend to have the biggest empathy of all as well. So, sure that may be one of your weaknesses and you may feel like an imposter but at the same time, you’re one of the biggest that can really help people who feel stuck. You can really help people who don’t value themselves because you’re the kind of person that comes and brings empathy and brings – you are an over-giver and you are somebody that is there selflessly helping others.
Tobi: That’s so powerful. And there’s probably a really good listener, caring about what they really feel and making sure they feel heard. I absolutely love that. And I think the interesting thing is, is a lot of times when people do have something like imposter syndrome, they forget that everybody’s strength can also be their weakness. Like my power and my need to reach these high-level goals and high levels of money can also be what makes me overwork and burnout.
So, we have to keep perspective that, yeah, we can get really focused on a negative trait that we have, but we have to remember that most the time, I believe that’s kind of two sides of the same coin, depending on how you look at it. And that’s pretty much what you’re saying.
Katya: This is the key I want people to take away from this. If they write one thing, this is what you want to write, I believe the humans should not focus on fixing their weaknesses. I believe human beings should focus on perfecting their strengths and becoming the best at what they’re good at.
Tobi: I love that. And I totally agree. So, let’s move into talking about one of your specialties, which is viral video. Because a lot of the people who do, since we’re on this imposter syndromes, or we’re on people who maybe feel like a little bit of a doormat or some of these other kinds of things that they would consider negative are the very people who are like, “Nope, not me, not showing up. Not showing up on social, not showing up on video.”
And when they do see themselves on video, somebody like me and you, we see ourselves on video and we’re like, “Damn, I’m good.” And these other people see themselves on video and they’re like, “Oh my god. My mouth does this weird thing and my face looks horrible and I need to lose 20 pounds and I sounded like an idiot.” And of course they don’t, but they think that.
So, how do you start to help people? Because you actually have a process that moves anybody, whether you’re like me, an ENTJ, or somebody else, another personality type, you move them into this way of creating viral video that meets their particular audience with whatever personality type that should be. So, talk us through that whole kind of framework that you have for creating viral video.
Katya: Well, the first thing is you got to realize what is viral, what is a content that spreads? Well, it’s the kind of content that when a person sees on their screen, they look at it. It could be a post, it could be a video, it could be an audio, it could be any format, but when they see it and when they go through it, they think to themselves, “Wow, this person said exactly what’s been in my mind for so long that I haven’t been able to express. Therefore, I need to share it.” Because by sharing it, I declare to the world that this is my identity.
Tobi: Cool. So, they see themselves in it and they’re like, well, you said it way better than I could, so I’m just going to share your version which feels like an expression of my own feelings or ideas.
Katya: Correct. It’s something that people share. Think about it this way, what was the last thing you shared on social media that was somebody else’s? Why did you share it? Was it because they said it exactly how you would say it? Was it because it made you feel better about yourself?
I’ll give you an example. Very often, in my controversial politics round people would share certain news to validate themselves and say, “See, I told you, here’s an article that proves I was right the whole time.” Right?
Tobi: Yeah. We do want to be right a lot. And we love it when there’s evidence, right?
Katya: Yes. So, when it comes to creating viral, I just want you to detach from what you know about what viral is. “Oh, viral something to get 7 million views in three days.” No. Viral content is something that your ideal people look at, that you create, and they go, “Wow, I can’t not share this.” And by sharing it, they create the ripple effect of virality.
My definition of viral is something that’s been seen the most amount of times. It’s like if you have a piece of content that’s being seen the most amount of views or it’s had the most amount of likes, that’s a viral content in your realm. If you have a page of 2000 followers and you have something that’s being viewed 10,000 times, I would call that viral for you. That would be viral for you.
So, I have a system and process that I teach on how you can find out what is something worth creating and then how to make it go viral. So, we can talk about that if you want.
Tobi: Just briefly, because I know it goes back to some of those emotional pain points. And I love that because I talk about that a lot in my own membership and I think people get really stuck there. I kind of don’t even know what my own feelings are, how in the world am I going to know what my – I can’t speak about my feelings, how in the world can I know what somebody else’s feelings are?
Katya: Well, let’s talk about that. Somebody who doesn’t have awareness of their own feelings tend to be somebody who’s very well aware of other people’s feelings, and that’s the truth. Somebody who can express their own feelings tend to be somebody who’s very empathetic. That’s a very strong personality type rule.
It’s the way you don’t have sympathy, which is understanding your feelings and being sensitive. You and I are the kind of people that have very good understanding of our own feelings, but the kind of people that don’t have understanding of their feelings, the reason they don’t have understanding of their own feelings is because they have understanding of other people’s feelings.
So, the first step is target the feelings of others that are the strongest. What is the most powerful feeling your ideal client will react to, and tap into that. So, for you, for example, you attract people that are terrified of failure and terrified of other people thinking badly of them. Imposter syndrome, right?
So, for example, picking that emotion like saying, “Okay, I’m going to target the emotion of feeling like a fraud.” Let’s say, you’re going to say, “Okay, for me, Tobi, the strongest emotion that I know my ideal client will react to and tap into is the feeling like a fraud.” Right? So, then start with that and you want your content to be about that emotion.
And sure, you may not personally be able to relate to what that’s like because you’re not supposed to. All you got to do is talk to some of those people that you’ve worked with and literally pull out the words from them.
How do you feel about this? How does that affect your life? What does that mean in your day to day life? What does it mean to feel like a fraud in your personal life? What does it mean to feel like a fraud when you’re on a sales call? What does it mean to feel like the fraud when you’re posting a piece of video? And pull the feelings from them. You are not supposed to feel the same way your other people are feeling.
You know how people teach storytelling like, “Oh, tell the story of how you used to feel and that will attract people.” That’s only one way of doing this. If you don’t have awareness of your own feelings, you don’t have to do that. That’s another part of what I do. I don’t believe there’s a one size fit all marketing or a one size fit all business model. There’s 16 types of business models and 16 types of marketing.
So, what is the strong emotion that your audience has that you can tap into? That is the number one thing. And then it’s about taking that emotion and creating a piece of content that can make them think, “Wow, this video just expressed what I feel better than I could.
Tobi: That’s fascinating. And you say 16, because they’re 16 personalities on the Myers-Briggs, just to clarify for people, which I love. And what I really like about what you just did is you gave people permission to not have to have gone through that experience.
In fact, it might be – you’re kind of saying it’s something that comes naturally for them, but they start to recognize it doesn’t come so naturally for other people. And I think that’s great awareness because a lot of times, I notice the people I work with, they do discount the things that come naturally to them.
And they’re like, “Oh, everybody can do that.” And I’m like, “Everybody cannot do that.” And what you’re saying is, not only can everybody not do it, there are specific personality types of people that you can go out and look for that for sure can’t do that. And that’s a gold mine for your business or your content. I mean, my mind has been blown about, I don’t know, 25 times already. But, wow, that’s a really good one.
Katya: Remember what I said earlier. Stop trying to fix your weaknesses, double down on your strengths. Turn your strengths into perfections. So, the stuff you said, “Oh, this comes too naturally to me, I can’t possibly be getting paid for this,” double down on that. Delegate everything else or ignore everything else. Maybe you’re not at the stage where you’re ready to delegate, but maybe you’re at a stage where you can go, “Do you know what, I’m not going to focus on this.”
I’ll give you an example with me. I suck at building logical automation and sequences myself. I need support for that. So, at the very beginning of somebody’s business, you might fall into the trap of looking at all these marketers who tell you that, “The reason you’re not successful is because you don’t have an automated system to get your leads and sales and the only way to do that is to build an automation system.” And somebody like that can feel really bad. They’ll be like, ‘Well, it’s not my natural strength and that’s why I can’t do that.”
Tobi: “I don’t have the money right now and that’s just not possible. And so, I’m a failure.” Yes, exactly.
Katya: When in reality, somebody like me who’s not very good at logical sequences, I am incredible at rational decision-making and data analysis. And I am incredible at pricing things. I can look at your packages and I am the kind of person that within two seconds, I can tell you exactly what’s wrong with the pricing. And guess what? That comes so natural to me that I could really easily discount and say, “Well, it only takes me two minutes, so why should I get paid for it?”
But guess what, the person on the other side, what it takes you to do two minutes, the person on the other side may have spent two years banging their head against the wall to figure out and they still haven’t and you come in and you fix their thing for two minutes. You don’t think that’s worth something? It’s worth everything.
Tobi: I agree with you and my favorite – so I’ve been kind of a believer of that same philosophy. I heard years ago at a conference I went to, just make your A’s A+s and anything – it’s like in school, they teach you the opposite. In school, they’re like, “Oh, you’ve got a C or a D in this class, you really need to bring that up.”
And it gave me so much permission to be myself when I heard that probably 10 years ago at this really cool design conference I went to and I loved that. And I was like, “Okay, I get that.” So, everything that’s like a C, or D, or even a B or B- to me, in my mind, went to the delegation bucket.
But I love that you also just gave us permission to just ignore some stuff for a while. Just ignore it. Because we put so much pressure on ourselves to do all the steps. And I hear a lot of the people I work with saying there’s so much to do. And I’m like, “Well, not really. Let’s break it down a piece at a time.” But I love this idea of just ignore it completely, you can pick it back up later or not. You’re really good at giving people permission to honestly just lean into who they are. That’s amazing.
So, before we wrap up, let’s talk about this idea of fostering brand loyalty. And you based that really on this whole psychology and personality type thing, too. So, we talked about it earlier, just briefly of like, some people come in to our program and then they leave and they’re not the right type.
But you have a couple of philosophies. And I think this is so helpful because I see so many people who are getting the wrong people and then they do, exactly like you said, they beat themselves up. They’re like, “Oh, my process was wrong, or I sounded dumb, or my price was too high, or I was too aggressive, or I was not aggressive enough.”
And they literally just are brutal to themselves with all of this whole litany of reasons why they’re trying to decide why this didn’t work. And you and I, our personality types do that list, we’re like, “Whatever they weren’t a fit. But you have some really clear thinking on whether someone was – well, I’ll let you tell them.
There’s two ways that you see this. And let’s just break that down a little bit because we talked about it but I want it to be really clear for these people who struggle with that kind of negative self-talk and thinking they did something wrong and I think they really need to hear this.
Katya: Well, here’s the thing when it comes to – by the way, I still struggle with this sometimes to this day, so I want to preface this by saying I’m not perfect with this and I still have this need to be liked by everybody sometimes. And I forget the, “Oh wait, we’re not supposed to be liked by everybody, that will be ridiculous.” If everybody liked me, that would mean I was a people-pleaser. So, I don’t want to be a people-pleaser.
So, the first thing you need to realize is that not everybody that’s coming into your life, whether personal or business is designed to stay there forever. How many of you have had relationships in the past that came for a reason, but they were only there for a season.
It’s the same thing with those clients. Some of your – especially if you have a membership site like you, Tobi, some people are meant to come in your membership for a reason, for a season. They’re not meant to be there forever.
And the first step is you need to realize that some of those people, especially those that are very similar to you, anytime you have somebody coming into your membership, Tobi, that is exactly the same type as you, they will more likely stick around for the shorter term to learn from you. But to create the long-term loyalty, they need to look at you and go, “Well, she is so different from me, she always fills my blind spot.”
If they look at you and go, “Well, she’s exactly the same like me. She has exactly the same strengths as me, exactly the same weaknesses as me. How is that person, somebody that I want to learn from on the long run? I want to learn from somebody that’s different from me so they can bring different skills, different knowledge, different perspective.” It’s kind of like that echo chamber effect where you want to learn from different people.
So, to create and foster loyalty, number one, you need to 100% embrace the real version of you and you need to embrace that people that are exactly like you are not meant to be loyal to you forever. They’re meant to come for a season. They’re meant to come and go.
I have so many clients that have come to me that I’ve worked on a one-on-one basis for three months, and they come in and they crush it. They would invest $15,000 and they would come back with $80,000 within the first 30 days. And after the three months, they would go because they want to move on to somebody else they want to learn from.
And it’s very easy for somebody like me to go, “Wow, I just helped this person get such amazing results. Why don’t they want to stick around? What’s wrong with me?” It’s so easy to think that. But that’s a very actually selfish mindset, because what you’re saying is, “Oh, I helped this person just so that they can stick with me,” when in reality, you have to be okay with letting people go and making their own choices.
I had to learn that just because someone leaves my membership or – I’ve had hundreds of members through 20K Nation. I’ve had 1300 paying customers over the years. And some people have bought once and never bought again or even like said that they didn’t like what they bought. And then I’ve had people that have bought once, they bought twice, they bought three times.
I have a client who has not only bought every single thing from me over the years and has invested 10s of thousands of dollars working with me, but she’s now hired me to run her entire marketing. I don’t even do agency work, but I have a client that I’ve served for so long that every time I create something, she’s just like, “Yes, I want to buy this.”
And there’s people out there that if I did the same thing for, they wouldn’t really appreciate it the way that she does. So, loyalty is about, number one; show up as yourself 100%. Be who you are meant to be. And number two; don’t take it personal when people leave. Focus on what people want to learn from you. Not on what you want to teach. That’s another thing.
A lot of the reasons people don’t stick around is because they feel like, “Well, this person doesn’t listen to my needs, why should I be loyal to them?” Or, “This person doesn’t provide the solution to this problem, why should I be loyal to you?” And you need to realize that loyalty is not something that you just deserve by having a client. It’s something that is mutual, and it’s something that you can’t force.
This is the thing I’ve learned, Tobi, you can’t force somebody to be loyal to you. You can only give them the experience you want to give. You can give them the time, the energy, the love, the effort, and the guidance. You can’t force them to be loyal to you. You can’t force them to love your advice. So, that is really the biggest lesson that I’ve learned about really accepting people for leaving.
Tobi: I love that. Yeah, I love it. And if you can kind of then understand these different personality types, or like you said, if you’re not being yourself, if you’re wearing a mask, then the people that are meant to connect with you can’t even see you, they can’t recognize that you’re there person.
So, all the more reason to just be yourself and knowing some people aren’t the right people, or some people will come in for a little while. But beyond that, you can’t control that anyway. So, you just show up as yourself, you deliver what those people that connect with you need and everything else takes care of itself really.
Katya: 100%, it all starts with how you show up. Quick example; if you are the kind of person that’s typically loud and obnoxious in a good way, you’re somebody who’s an entertainer, you just love to put a show on for people, you just love to be in the spotlight.
And yet, in your marketing, in your audience, in your speaking gigs you show up as somebody who’s like, “Well, I don’t want to be a show off and I don’t want to be somebody that’s too loud and I’m just going to bite my tongue and I’m just going to keep my opinions to myself,” who’s that going to attract? It’s going to attract people that are compatible to the kind of personality type that bites their tongue and the kind of personality that isn’t a show off and isn’t somebody like that.
Tobi: That they are pretending to be?
Katya: Yes, you’re pretending to be. Oh my god, so many entrepreneurs I see this. They’re pretending to be this high, moralistic, like, I’m just here to give and give and give. When in reality every single giving they do comes with strings attached. It’s like, “Why are you pretending?” Just own it.
Just say, “Hey, guys, I’m here because I want to be incredibly wealthy and I don’t give a damn what people say about that.” If you think it’s too elitist to want to be wealthy, you know what, you don’t belong here and that’s okay. Go find somebody out there that believes in other things. But in my world, I believe that being wealthy is the greatest gift you can give to the world. And if you don’t accept that, then goodbye.
Tobi: I love that. Because a lot of people – gosh, that’d be a whole other podcast if we got into money mindset, but that’s true. And I’ve even said before, one of my mentors that I learned life coaching from, and I agree on this, she’s always saying, “I love money.” And I’m like, “I love money too.”
But it’s not like we just want a bunch of green stuff in our pockets, so we’re going to be greedy or hoard it all. We love the stuff we can do with it and help other people with it and change the world with it. But not everybody’s going to feel that way. And you’re right, it would be very inauthentic for me to act like it and I didn’t charge giant fees and I didn’t help people like maximize their profits and all of that. There’s no way. I couldn’t even bite my tongue. I would bite it off.
Katya: You know what, one of my longest clients, her name is Dr. Michelle Maser. She always says, “Women who are prosperous change the world.” Because women with money, what do they do with that money? They care for their communities, they…
Tobi: They invest it in everybody.
Katya: They invest in things that improve other people. That’s not saying that men wouldn’t do that, but it’s to say that there’s no shame in wanting to be a woman of wealth and women of power because there’s so much you can do with that wealth and so much you can do with that money that can really change the world in a way that what we’ve been conditioned to believe is too strange, it can become the new normal.
Like, “Oh, it’s so strange to see one woman on the boardroom of this company.” Why is it strange? Why does it have to be strange? Why don’t we normalize prosperity and entrepreneurs? Why not?
Tobi: And the starving artists helps – not only does it not help you, you can’t help anybody else if you have no resources or anything. I completely agree. Well, this has been the most – I mean, honestly, I’m not kidding. I’m going to just take a stand right here of all my 70-something episodes, this is my favorite episode so far.
And a lot of it, of course, was because you basically gave me – I feel like I’ve been on your couch getting a session today, which was amazing. But I do think so many other people are going to get so much out of this. So, my gosh, I can’t thank you enough. I knew about you. I looked at some of your videos and some of the other things you’ve done, but literally, I’m like, “How can I get more of her in my life?” I want to suck up everything you have to say.
So, I just appreciate you so much for being so transparent, so helpful. Wow, I’m truly – I mean, I talk a lot. My daughter, who’s a teenager, tells me I never shut up. And I’m almost speechless with like how much you’ve blown my mind today. So, honestly, thank you, thank you.
Katya: I appreciate that. That’s so sweet of you to say, and it shows a lot of leadership. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate what you said. It’s really kind of you. Honestly, it really is.
Tobi: I mean every word of it. And you probably know, because you already know my personality type and you basically know me inside and out that I don’t say things that I don’t mean. So, I do mean every word and I can’t wait to say connected to you. And I just know my audience will be all over this. So, I can’t wait for them to know more about you too. So, just thank you so much. I’m just super grateful you were here and it was a total pleasure. So, thank you.
Katya: Thank you for having me.
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Okay. So, did you love it as much as me? I mean, honestly, I cannot stop thinking about this episode. I know it’s going to be like my weekend journaling, my weekend thinking, it is going to be on my mind for months because there is so much gold in this episode.
So, I can’t wait to hear from you. Reach out to me on social if you loved it. Tag me, tag Katya, tell us what you loved about it. Because I just think it was the most fun episode to date.
So, thanks for listening friends, and I’ll see you back, right here with another really fabulous episode and guest of The Design You Podcast next week. Bye for now.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. And if you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program Design You at tobifairley.com.
