Consider the Wildflowers
Consider the Wildflowers
097. Kate Ahl: Lessons Learned in Making Millions (& Watching it Slip Away)
Kate Ahl is the owner and founder of Simple Pin Media, a Pinterest marketing agency. Their goal is to help business owners leverage Pinterest marketing to help them make sales, grow their email list, and expand their community.
Founded almost ten years ago, Kate Ahl took the lessons she learned in assisting an extreme couponing blogger grow her reach by launching her very own Pinterest marketing agency.
In this conversation, Kate opens up about the early days of Pinterest & SEO strategy, building a 7-figure pinterest marketing agency, and how the best business lesson wasn’t learned in making a million, but rather watching it slip away.
Marketing in today’s world, developing a team, & wondering if the IRS might come knocking, all in today’s episode.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : https://shannaskidmore.com/kate-ahl/
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
EOS (The Book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business)
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Business Ownership is like this. This is what it is. It is going to be the ebb and flow. And it is a not at all a reflection of who you are or your character or what you've done right or wrong. This is just you on a journey, and one month you're learning this, and the next month you're learning this, and this is just what your time is to learn right now. Hey, friends,
Lauren / Team Skidmore:Lauren from Team Skidmore here and you're listening to consider the wildflowers, the podcast episode 97 if you've been interested in learning how to grow your business with Pinterest, you're going to love today's guest Kate all Kate is the owner and founder of simplepen media, a Pinterest marketing agency. Their goal is to help business owners leverage Pinterest marketing to help them make sales, grow their email list and expand their community. In this conversation, Kate opens up about the early days of Pinterest and SEO strategy, building a successful Pinterest marketing agency, and how the best business lesson wasn't learned in making a million, but rather watching it slip away, marketing in today's world, leading a team and wondering if the IRS might come knocking all in today's episode, let's dive in. Hey, it's
Shanna Skidmore:Shanna, and this is consider the wildflowers. The podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear 1000s of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the real behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout and those of utter victory. Or, as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering, but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today, stories that will inspire and reignite, encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome, Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hi Kate. All welcome to the podcast.
Kate Ahl:Thank you so much for having me here. I'm excited to chat with you. I'm
Shanna Skidmore:like, so pumped just from our little pre chat, chat, yeah, about all the things we're gonna talk about, but okay, remind me again. Have we figured out our, like, mutual connection?
Kate Ahl:I don't think so. Actually, we're
Shanna Skidmore:new to each other's world. We
Kate Ahl:are new, which I love. I feel like sometimes my environment gets, like, for lack of a better phrase, like incestuous, and I need it to not be. So this is great. This
Shanna Skidmore:is fun. Yeah, I'm excited. Okay, so we're gonna talk all the things, but I do just want to hear your back story, like, life before business, when you started your business was this your first business this kind of like, take us back to what your first career was like. I just want to hear how you became a business owner, and then we'll go from there. Yeah,
Kate Ahl:I like to joke that I'm an accidental business owner, like it wasn't really anything that I had planned on. So I have a degree in political science. I had always planned to be a teacher like of civics and contemporary world problems with high schoolers. Now I'm so glad I don't do that. But after college, I ended up meeting my husband, and he had a different career path, and so we moved from way up north in Washington to Portland, Oregon, and in that it was kind of like, okay, well, I don't know when teaching kind of like, comes back into the fold. So I just kind of did odd jobs for a little while, and then I started having babies, and I had three kids in under four years. And yeah, you did, yeah. I feel like I didn't know who I was. I was like, Okay, I guess I'm a mom now. And then the recession hit, and in 2008 we had actually just bought a house, which was, like, the dumbest thing ever, and my husband lost his job, and we I was a mom of little kids, and I was like, I don't really know what to do. Couldn't find a job. 2010 a friend of mine had started a frugal blog like couponing, and deals were, like, really big at that time. Yeah. So she was growing like crazy, and she said, Will you come help me manage Facebook? Like a lot of people are starting to use Facebook, and I just do not have the bandwidth for it. So I thought, sure, I can do this at home, at night my or during nap time. And I found that I really loved this kind of gamification of how to get people to engage, and not just for the purpose of engagement, for really for the purpose of, like, helping people understand what she did, right? Yeah. So then a couple months later, she said, Well, why don't you? I'm going to teach you everything I know about WordPress. I'm going to teach you all about how to build blog posts and affiliate marketing. And so that was right around the end of 2011 and I loved it. So I started, really, I guess I was her jack of all trades on her website, doing both social media, which really, at the time, was just Facebook, and then right doing affiliate marketing. So. In 2013 we started to explore Pinterest. And she was like, this is really cool. Facebook is changing their algorithm. It's when they first turned off, I guess the flow of organic traffic and all these business owners were like, Okay, what do I do? Like, right? This is our first introduction to ads. Like, nobody knows how to do ads. Nobody understands any of that. So where can we go? And the conversation started coming up about Pinterest, which, at that time, it was just two or three years old. And so people were like, Well, I heard about it. I don't really get it. Seems like a personal tool, not a business tool. So I dove in and realized, Hey, this is pretty awesome. I think I can get traffic for people. And right at that same time, too, my husband lost his second job, and we were at I was at her house, and I was like, I don't know what we're gonna do, because unemployment is gonna run out. Food Stamps are running out. Like we're a family of five, like, I just don't know. And she said, You should manage people's Pinterest accounts. And I was like, That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Like, nobody's gonna go for that. And she said, You're you're poor, like you, you need to do this. So she said, I'll work with some friends, and we'll see if we can get you some beta clients. You come up with a system, whether it's your packages or whatever it is, and we'll just start. And that was like December 2013 january 2014 I bought the domain simple pin media, and started to really like dream into how it could serve these clients. And my agency was born on that day, and here we are, 10 years later.
Shanna Skidmore:I'm obsessed with this. Also, we started our businesses almost at the exact same time, which is so amazing. I feel like this person was a little bit ahead of their time. Yeah, that you're talking about. Because, I mean, I feel like 2010, 1112, blogs were becoming like blogging was becoming big. But even just thinking about Facebook algorithms, digging into Pinterest, I don't know, I don't hear, actually, anyone talking about that who had their business back then. I think that's incredible.
Kate Ahl:Yeah, it was really fascinating. In fact, we would go to these I went to a conference with her in Cincinnati, where somebody was really talking about SEO. And now that I look back on that, he was like, way before his time, where people were having this conversation, so her and I were digging in on, okay, how do you optimize your website for SEO in 2013 and what does that look like to really get start to grow your email list, even like it was just this beginning of the conversation. And yeah, Pinterest wasn't something that people were even exploring. And I love having that early experience, because I think it gives the before social media and after social media, like I have the experience of both. And I like that unique vantage point.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, I'm obsessed with all of this because I feel like I have clients who in the 2010 2011 2012 were blogging. So they were building SEO, basically without people ever even talking about SEO, you know, yeah, so they had this booming business because of content creation. And then there's this like shift, you know. And it felt like everybody, a lot of people, moved away from blogging, and it became all about the Instagram, then it became all about the ads, you know. And it's like we're still content creating, but now, just for a very different platform. And I'm so interested to get your insight of the people who kept blogging or were kind of the OG bloggers, how that has served them long term. I don't know if you have an insight on that, but yeah, you've watched the whole progression. Because now I feel like people are getting back to, oh, we need to focus on SEO. Yeah, we need to create content on our blog. Yep, it feels like a full circle moment. Do you have any I mean, I didn't prep you for this question, but do you have any thoughts on
Kate Ahl:this? Yeah, I do. I think in 2016 I remember going to a blog conference, and people were like, blogging is dead, like Instagram is taking over. Nobody's gonna blog anymore. And I thought in my head at the time that is so short sighted, because Google is not going to go the way of Instagram. And so if you're cutting off this main arm for these, like quick hit Poppy moments, you're missing out on two types of traffic. And I at the time, I was like, oh, man, blogging is not dead. It's just different. And what we saw was those people who kind of carried their content arm on their website all the way through it changed from it kind of turned into like a bicycle spoke instead of them looking at either or. It became my core center of my bicycle wheel is going to be my website, and I want Google to recognize that, and I'm gonna use these different arms, whether it be Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, to draw people in. And I saw people double down on that and say, I'm not giving that up, but I'm going to add to it by coming up with an Instagram strategy that might help fuel that, or see it just in a new and a different way. And I think those business owners, one I didn't see them burn out like I did. The other people who went, like full in, into into Instagram, because I think they thought it was going to be this thing that really just gave them this lift that all the virality would be. It's kind of like they were chasing they were chasing the views, they were chasing the likes. And I saw those same people go towards Tiktok when that exploded. And so that's exhausting as a business owner to keep chasing these things. And instead, I think those bloggers, content creators, they switched it to I'm a content entrepreneur, and I know that I need to play, first and foremost, the game of Google, and then from there, I can use all these other aspects to draw people in, or I even say that maybe Instagram just becomes its own little Content Hub, and I'm not going to try to drive people back to my website, because nobody leaves Instagram. They stay on it forever, right? And so I just think the level headedness of those people took over, and they they settled in. I think that's the best phrase. And said, Okay, I'm gonna settle in. And then some of them did come to a place where they're like, I'll sell my business, right? Like, I don't want to, I don't want to create content anymore. That grind is kind of it's exhausting, especially if you are heavy on photography on your blog, right? So I think that's just a normal iteration of how it happens with business owners. And I think especially like you and I, there was a lot of ingenuity happened. Like 2013 2014 2015 it felt like the wild wild west online, that people were trying so many different things. There were there were no rules, there were no regulation. It was like, go for it, right? So I just think now those people see their business as a legacy content business, and they're still investing in it, yeah.
Shanna Skidmore:Oh, I love this so much. Okay, because my story's a little bit different. But then we're gonna circle back to Kate. Okay, just all about Kate, because I started my business. It was all word of mouth until about maybe 2015 26 I mean, I was on Instagram, but I used it to, like, take pictures of my dog and maybe 2015 ish, I started using it as a tool for business. So I didn't actually start until 2017 when I decided to leave Instagram, which was producing 70% of my website traffic at the time, yeah, leave Instagram that like, oh, there's a whole world of blogging. I didn't even learn about SEO, I feel like until later in life, I just kind of so it's just such an interesting because I didn't learn about long term strategy content until I decided to get off social media. So and I'm so grateful I made that move, but I did a audience poll. This is probably 2016 2017 and I had a really big client of mine, big, big name client on network TV, like everybody knows who they are. And she filled out my client questionnaire. And she, when she started her business, wrote a blog every single day. That's how she started her business. And this was, you know, long time ago, but and built up. That's really, I mean, how she grew quickly. But she wrote a blog every single day. This was her challenge to herself. And I remember in 2017 I guess, when I decided to leave social media, she wrote in on my audience form, blogging is dead, yeah. And I was like, You know what I'm saying? Like, so I do feel like there was this. I feel like you shared it really well. People who went to different routes with it, like, let it be the hub, and then had the spokes, or really went into Instagram. And now I have so many businesses who got their business grew through Instagram, who are now struggling. You know they're kind of backtracking, but Okay, So Kate, you you, you purchased simple pin media, and then how did you come up with your offers? Like, how did you learn Pinterest? How were you like, this is my business. Now I'm gonna sell it to people. What? What were your offers? What were your pricing? I mean, you're, I'm assuming, at this point, like trying to pay the bills for your family, yeah, just kind of walk me through those early days, yeah.
Kate Ahl:So I would say right away, it was nobody else. Was really there were a very few people who were at all, even dabbling in the Pinterest for business space. And so. I actually found this underground community. It was when Facebook had secret groups, and I found this secret group of 12 other women who were doing Pinterest for business, and some of them were working with other people, but mostly they were kind of teaching people that they knew in their blogging community how to do it. So I joined them, and I was watching them kind of do these things, and I started to realize that everything I could just be self taught. I could teach myself how to do it. And the friend that I was working for let me use her account as a guinea pig. So I was looking at her business model, and I said, I know what the greatest pain point of these bloggers is. They're stretched really thin. They feel the industry shifting right before their eyes. They are wondering what's going to happen to their traffic, because they so relied on Facebook, and they're looking for another option. And if I can say I have another option for you, let me try it, and I just need you to collaborate with me and make sure that we're creating the right images, and I'll do it month to month. I started with, like, a number of pins per day. I would pull over their content. And I said, this is how my system's gonna work, and I'm gonna charge you. It was so low at the time, but it was like, let's I figured out my hours actually with working for the friend. I said, Okay, it's gonna take me this many hours. So let me charge these people just a little bit more in exchange for their feedback for the first three months. I said, this is a beta. If it fails, like, don't tell anybody. We'll just, like, quietly walk out the back door. And so I said, I want your feedback on everything, and I'm not going to be offended by it. I want the good, the bad, the ugly, the change, like, I want this to be about you. And so at the end of the three months, they started looking in their Google Analytics, and they said, Oh, this is working. So let's keep doing this. Let's go on to month to month. And I have a friend, and they really want to do this too. We'll take them on. I was like, Well, sure. So I charged them a little bit more because obviously they weren't in beta. And then really, I would say I had five or six clients. I think I had six by July of 2014, and my oldest daughter was diagnosed suddenly with type one diabetes. She's eight at the time, and I was sitting in the hospital room and I have my computer and type one diabetes is a very like sudden, like diagnosis, like, you go to the doctor and they're like, go straight to the emergency room. You're going to be in the hospital for a couple of days. So I'm kind of reeling, trying to figure out, like, her life has changed, my life has changed. And I was emailing these clients, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, like this. I'm not proud of the statement that I came up with this, but I need a hit by the bus moment person so if something, if happens to me, I need somebody who can help me, someone who understands. And it was the first time I thought of actually adding a team member. And I asked a friend next month. I was like, Hey, can you can I teach you how to do this? And she said, Sure, I'm a stay at home mom too. And this sounds really awesome. It sounds really weird, but Sure, let's do it. So that was kind of like the beginning days of kind of figuring out how to serve those clients, but then also kind of a little bit of me growing at the same time,
Shanna Skidmore:yeah, oh my goodness. So tell me, and thank you for sharing that, that story that's so tough. And I think when you're running a business as a solopreneur and a service based, you have to show up, you know, you have to do the work to and that's but life doesn't stop happening. Yeah, in the midst of that, what do you feel like? Went well those first few years. And then what do you feel like was like train wreck. Learn that the hard way. Yeah, in the first few years of business,
Kate Ahl:I want to say the thing that went well was I was very inquisitive about who I was. I was very aware of, okay, how do I work with teams? Like, Oh, I'm really good at giving a task to somebody, teaching them how to do it, and not micromanaging them. I'm not a control freak. And I was like, I think that's going to be in my favor if I have a team. So it was a, just a good aha moment for me to say, Oh, I'm a good team builder. Okay, let's do this. I wouldn't say that I had. I would say the train wreck, and I wouldn't even, like label it that so much, because I feel like the first three years in business were so much about me being curious and inquisitive, and I was, I think what I was doing at the time that probably did more of a disservice to me was I was trying to follow other people's lead in my industry, in the online space, and what I didn't. Pick up on soon enough was that they weren't service providers. They were course creators. And course creators have a very different type of marketing. And so there was an element where I was growing on referrals, and I hired a business coach one year into my business, because I quickly realized, like, this is not my skill. Like I have a degree in political science, like, that's, this is not me, so I need somebody to help me put the structure in place to build a business. And a couple years in, I remember having a meeting with him, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like such a failure. I'm like, not. I'm not having these, like six figure months or whatever it was that I made up at the time. And I remember him looking at me from the other side of the computer, and he was like, Are you kidding me? He's like, You are comparing your business model to somebody else's business model that is apples to oranges, and you are coming up a failure, because it's totally different. And I was like, Yeah, I am. And I think at that moment, it was me saying I need to stop chasing other people's success, because their success is not mine and it's not mine to own either. My success and my story is how I build it and how I lean into it. And I was so distracted by the gurus of the day, and sometimes I still am right, like I think that's natural, because some of those gurus, they're so good at marketing, like they crush it at marketing, but they might not really crush it at teaching. And there's a very distinct difference between somebody who's a really good service provider or really good educator and somebody's a really good marketer. So that was probably my biggest trap in the first couple of years. Oh,
Shanna Skidmore:that is so good, and we're chasing someone else's success. And also, I mean, clearly, I love talking about money, I love talking about numbers, but I think even more so, like uncovering and empowering other people to understand how to decipher the numbers they're hearing. Like when you hear, Oh, I had$100,000 a month. It's like, Well, did you just do your course launch, and now you're gonna live on that for the next six months? Because that's different than, like I do $1,000$100,000 in service based sales every single month, or E commerce. You know what I'm saying? It's It's so hard. So speaking of the numbers, what do you feel like went well for you? I mean, do you feel like the number side clicked where you how were you figuring out your salary and paying your bills and paying the team? Do you feel like that stuff kind of came naturally? Or what were you learning about running a business, figuring out your own numbers? Yeah,
Kate Ahl:I feel like it's always come naturally to me. I do like our finances for our family, so numbers and kind of crunching them, and I was very cognizant of not going into debt. That was a big thing for me. So I wanted to see, okay, I'm paying these people. Okay, what are my expenses? What are my taxes. I was very quickly started working with an accountant, and I said, Okay, I am so afraid. I'm so I have an irrational fear that I completely understand is irrational. I hate tax time. I hate bumping up against it, and I don't want to be surprised by it. I want to save the money so real quick. I
Shanna Skidmore:think a lot of people have a very similar like, fear of going to jail. Yeah,
Kate Ahl:it's the fear of the audit. Like, somebody's going to show up on my door, I'm going to accidentally forget a receipt for gas somewhere, and it's going to have to pay $20,000 like, that's just how this how my my time is going to end. Yes, totally,
Shanna Skidmore:yeah, yeah. With you. So,
Kate Ahl:I had a spreadsheet like right away, and I would just begin to calculate, okay, I want to walk away with paying myself this much, or I want to make sure that I'm making 50% profit margin on all of our services, which means I'm going to have to charge this, I'm going to have to pay this, I'm going to have to keep my expenses in check, and this is what's going to taxes. And so those first two years were just me, like I was just figuring out on a spreadsheet how much I wanted to make, but how much I wanted to, like, pay my people in a way that they would stick around right? Like I wasn't interested in having people who didn't feel like they were were paid well. But you have to now. You have to really balance that with like, Okay, well, don't sacrifice yourself for your team member, which I've definitely fallen into that trap too, as well. And then I kind of came up with this system that I would try to make 50% on pretty much all packages that we were doing. And we still try to hold true to that. But obviously now, like our expenses are greater, I've had a bigger team. I've had a really big team. At one point I grew super fast during 2017 I had a wait list. During that time, we at our height of our agency. In 2020 I think we had 130 clients, and I had a team of 40. It was like, what? Yeah, it was crazy. I had a whole leadership structure. We did the EOS model, we did all these things. And I would say those first year, like getting to like, a million in revenue, that wasn't the greatest lesson, dropping down from my height of revenue the last couple of years has been my greatest lesson in finances, and my greatest lesson in that businesses are not up and to the right. And frankly, a lot of businesses from 2014 to 2020 had an up and to the right, and it was a pretty good run. And now it's having to make tougher decisions about your finances, because, okay, I can't afford to pay this person anymore, and clients are canceling because they're really freaked out about the pandemic and they're freaked out about the recession. People are cutting their marketing budgets, and one of the quickest things they can cut is us. And so having to come to grips with with, I guess, the reality that that is, that is what business ownership is, and when things go up and they go down, and Far be it for me to expect that my business will be exempt and have an up and to the right forever.
Shanna Skidmore:Yeah. That's a hard lesson to learn. Yeah. So with that, have you seen any major turning points in your business? And it sounds like you have and then kind of these last few years, how you've seen the market shift, your business shift, and how you've dealt with that,
Kate Ahl:then a lot of tears some days. So I would say the height of our business. In 2021 I reached like, 1.3 million. And I was like, This is amazing. This is awesome. And then in late 22 I think it was July of 22 we started to see, like, a really big decrease. And I thought, Okay, the first thing I thought was, what am I doing wrong? Like, clearly, this is a reflection of me. And so we started looking at our services. We started, we started really doing that Assessment Checklist, because inside our company, one of our things is, one, we fail forward, and two, we are always going to be learning from everything that we can to do better, to be better, to get better, like I that's just how we are. And so at the end of december 22 I actually had a complete breakdown, because one, I had buried my head in the sand. I was kind of looking at numbers. But also I had a really horrible bookkeeper at the time. So there, there was that was happening at the same time. Our numbers were right, but there wasn't the story that I needed to make a really good decision as a business owner about when to cut people and what? Okay, what does the downward spiral look like that we're in? So essentially, from July to December, I'm watching things go down. And I, for a while, I joined Entrepreneurs Organization, which I love, like, my forum is amazing, and I was with them in November, and I just, we were on a retreat, and I just started sobbing. I was like, you guys, I feel like the biggest failure. I feel like I am such a sham. I don't even know I'm a part of this group. Like, I don't even know there's, I don't know where we're gonna go, like, I don't know who to fire. Like, this is just, I'm a mess and nobody, and I hadn't told anyone, and I have a great COO, who is, like, my work wife, she's amazing. I hadn't even let her in. I hadn't let my husband in. And I in the end of December. No, it was actually probably the beginning of December. I actually came home from a workout class and I fell to the floor. And I actually, legitimately, I was having a panic attack. I was sobbing. I was like, this, this is how it's gonna end. Like, this is the end of the line for me. Like, I'm watching my numbers plummet. And if I look back now, it wasn't plummeting at like 50 or 60% it was, but it was plummeting at like 20% and when you're on your height of your previous year, yeah, 20% pretty big gut punch. So I tapped into that group, and I said, You guys like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make payroll. I didn't have a line of credit because, frankly, nobody had ever talked to me about it, but they had been having, they had all mentioned line of credit in this group. And I thought, What's this like? What you guys have lines of credit? And they're like, Yeah, we just have them, just in case. And somebody had been a business owner in 2008 so they talked about lines of credit in 2008 and so I'm such a failure moment in my business. I was literally sobbing in my bed, and Alan, one of my forum members, called me, and I had told him I'd booked a call with the bank manager to see if I could get a line of credit. And he called me, and he said, Kate, I only want you to say these things. Just tell him. You're interested in future investments, you don't tell them at all where you're at in your business. Like, I just say these three things. And so I got on the phone with the bank manager an hour later, said those three things. He calls me back, and he's like, Okay, we've approved you for a line of credit. It'll show up in a week. And I was like, Oh my gosh. It works like this. It let the air out of the balloon for me, because I was like, how am I gonna pay people, right? And how am I gonna pay myself? How am I gonna like, and I'm the primary income earner for my family. So you can see how all this is just crushing. And I so I had to tell my husband, I had to tell my my coo. I was like, We are a sinking ship right now, and we we need to stop the bleeding. And so I went to my team and I wrote them a letter because I couldn't do anything on video, and I said, I need to be honest and transparent with you, like, here's where we're at, and we need to cut $10,000 a month in expenses. And all of you are important to me, and all of you are amazing. Like, I can't think of one that I would get rid of. Like, there's no dead weight here. That's easy. Like, oh, let's cut so and so. So I said, Would anybody volunteer to cut their hours? And their responses were like, bombed to my soul. I mean, I was like, they were just like, Absolutely, we love this company. And my people have been with me for 678, 10 years, right? So, like, they're in it to win it. And they said absolutely, and it was almost to the cent, the $10,000 we needed for us to get through the first quarter of 2023, and that really, like, I don't even know how I got down that path, but I'll say, like, that has been like, the biggest kind of realization of how hard business ownership is, like, the the cutting your teeth of, yeah, and I had a friend at the at the time Tell me who she owns a non profit, and she's having her own struggles, because she's trying to get donations and all these other things. And she was like, hey, business ownership is like this. This is what it is. Think of the nail salon on the corner, or think of the construction business owner like it is going to be the ebb and flow, and it is a not at all a reflection of who you are or your character, or what you've done right or wrong. This is just you on a journey, and one month you're learning this, and the next month you're learning this, and this is just what your time is to learn right now.
Shanna Skidmore:Kate, that's so thank you so much for sharing that. Because I think when you, like you said, are on an up and right trajectory, like everything's just going gangbusters, growing, growing, growing, growing. You don't expect it to stop.
Kate Ahl:Oh no. You're like, I'm on this high forever, forever.
Shanna Skidmore:And I think we don't talk enough about like business ebbs and flows. Would you I always like to ask, what would you say? And all of this journey has been the best thing you've learned about money?
Kate Ahl:I would say it's more threaded in with who I am, that I am not the sum my worth and my value is not the sum of my profit and loss statement. So I don't necessarily have like money issues are like spending or not spending, but I so closely connect it with if I've done a good or bad job, right? And so I've had to really back that up and say the profit and loss statement does not reflect the value or the worth of Kate and I. I don't necessarily have that like personal wise, my husband and I are very strategic with our money, and we talk through it, and it ebbs and flows and very detached from it. But there was something about it in my business that just got too quickly threaded into my identity. Oh,
Shanna Skidmore:my goodness, that is so helpful, I think to hear because it's so true. I don't think many of us would say we start our business for the money, although all of us have bills to pay. Yep, I know. Personally, I'm quick to say, oh, man, I have messed up. I did something wrong, like, if sales are down, or what, where did I mess up? Instead of being like, Okay, how did the industry change, right? How did our audience change? How should we shift our offers? Like, I love the people who have the mindset of, what can we learn from this where, because I'm so quick to be like, I did something wrong? Yes, yep, it's me, Kate. I'm curious, for someone who never saw themselves being a business owner, kind of started a business because you needed cash, has three kiddos and grew a company with what do you say, 40 employees? How has life shifted? And you personally shifted? So as you've become and stepped into a role you probably never expected to have, how has your mother, like your family life shifted? How has, how have you grown as a leader to To run such a big team? You
Kate Ahl:know, I'll say that another component in this so I like to say business ownership for me, has highlighted my greatest gifts and my greatest insecurities all at the same time, which I think motherhood has done the same thing and marriage has done the same thing. And the other day, I was thinking, my husband and I were talking about our kids. My daughter's a senior in high school. She's going to graduate and start launching. And my second daughter's a junior, and so we're about to embark on this, like, new phase and transition of life. And my son is 14, and I didn't mention also I was a foster parent in the middle of this, and now I part time co parent a fourth kid who's eight, and so that journey too, of like we fostered her as a baby, and so she was kind of like the the grief and the trauma of the foster parenting journey was happening at the same time my business was growing. So I guess I would say, like, I love being a business owner, but I'm very cognizant of the fact that entrepreneurship and owning a business is a 24/7 thing. And so when I see people who either, you know, lately there's been a lot of conversation on YouTube about people who are burning out, or YouTubers leaving, and they've been around seven or eight years, right? And so they're stepping back, and people are wondering, you know, there's always a conspiracy around something. And I loved this one Creator over there, and he said, I don't think you understand that thinking about your business happens when you're at dinner with friends, when you're about to fall asleep, when you're driving, when you get up, when you're working out, when you like is never, ever leaves you. And so this kind of mythical idea that entrepreneurship means freedom. Yes, you have freedoms in some area, like I love the freedom to dictate my own schedule. I love the freedom to outsource what I don't want to do to a team member. That's great, but I don't love the moments when I'm having a panic attack on my floor because I don't know how I'm going to make payroll. So you take the good and you take the bad and you either love it or you hate it. And I think that's what our industry currently right now. I think with a lot of people who have been in, like I said, business ownership for eight plus years, they are having to wrestle with that question, like, do I want to do this the next 10 years, is this a legacy business? Is this a lifestyle business? I just think there's a lot of questions in there that each business owner has to answer uniquely for themselves and for me, I love it like I love I love leading a team. I love cultivating people like I was talking with somebody yesterday, and we were kind of, we're on the same wavelength with I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to be the smartest gatherer of people in the room. I want the smart people around me working in my business where I get to say, Ooh, you, you're good at this. You go do this, and you're going to make it 100 times better than me. Because I'm I'm not that, but I know my strengths, and I am going to sit in that place, but I'll lead you to where you can be great on my team.
Shanna Skidmore:Kate, will you talk to kind of on that same note, before we go into kind of a quick fire wrap it up, because I could just keep chatting with you so much. But will you talk to them? Maybe some strategies you have found, you know, a world that asks us to do everything really well. Be a great mom, be a great wife, be a great business owner, be really good at HR. How have you found balance? And I don't even call it balance, I call it harmony. How have you what are some strategies maybe you've put in place where you said, like you think about your business. It is hard to turn it off like it is all the time. Yeah, are there some strategies that you have found allow you to be present when you're like, with your kiddos, with your family, with your team members, or what has made it feel like, enabling to find harmony in your particular situation?
Kate Ahl:Yeah, I would say early advice that somebody had given me was to create hard stops in my business to where you could have you I wouldn't check my email before a certain time in the morning, and then I wouldn't check my email in the afternoon. I wouldn't, I wouldn't try to work in these hours where I knew I would be doing dinner or be with my kids or whatever that looked like. So hard stops in my day were huge, right? I try not to. I would say the phone is a big part. You know, I have teenagers, right? So, I mean, the time they want to talk to me is like. Nine o'clock at night, actually, and they're all in my bed and they're laying around, and there's all these things. So that actually is convenient, right? Because that's not when I'm going to be working. And then I think too The other thing for me was just, I have, I have these two sticky notes on my computer that I'm looking at right now. And one is, who do I serve? And it's clients, customer, my community, not other influencers, because it is very easy for me to try to appeal to another influencer first, and forget that there is a hierarchy of people that come way before them, like, I don't need to impress somebody else on Instagram, or I don't need to impress another Pinterest Marketer. I have to impress my clients, I have to let their wins be the thing that drives our success, because if they don't have success, then we don't have an agency, right? And then I have another one that says, What is your highest value? And for me, my highest value right now is being the marketing director of my company. I wasn't always the marketing director, but that's a role I've had to step into in the last six months, and so I lean into that, and then I say, it's networking, it's building awareness, and it's building connections. Like I'm such a people person, and I am the figurehead of my agency, and I people do see me, so I need to keep that in front of me instead of my highest value is not, you know, I answering email today like it makes me feel good some days, but it's just not. So I think those are the two things that keep me in perspective, and also the last would be, I really come back to that stop chasing someone else's success, and that, that reminder of what other people think of how I do business, or their opinion of my business is, it's none of my business. It's the people who I lead. And leadership is very important to me, and I crushes me when I hear of people who work for other business owners that feel like they're micromanaged and their creativity is killed. And I love to just release people to do what they're really good at. And yeah, so that makes business ownership fun for me. I mean, I've been talking about Pinterest for 10 years. It gets it does get boring after a while, it's like, you know, can we talk about something else? But yeah, leading a team and developing people that doesn't get boring. I love that so
Shanna Skidmore:much. Okay, before we move into quickfire, will you give us an update of how you and the business are doing now? So after coming off your biggest year, hitting seeing sales decline, where did you adjust? What did you shift? Like? How have you, in a sense, bounced back? Are you still in the midst of that?
Kate Ahl:Yeah, I would say, I'm crossing my fingers for a flat year. I'll say that we've got innovative we've gotten innovative with some things. But I would say we had 20% down and 22 and we had 20% down and 23 and that's pretty significant for us. So my team is now roughly about half the size. We're around 23 ish people, but that's been good, and some people have self selected off like that has been. It's just been a natural like, kind of weeding out what we the extra and what we don't need. And we are just asking ourselves, How does the market need us to show up for them right now in both our product space and our services space. So we just launched a new product last week, and it really went well. It had the market. Well, my plan was to sell 15 of them. It was like a cohort of people wanting to do with them, kind of like a coaching through six weeks of Pinterest. And that actually went really, really well. And so I think it's throwing darts a little bit. Some things are not working. Is it our marketing? Is it our product? I think for us, we're in a marketing place and an awareness like we need a new type of business owner that we need to serve. And so it's finding where those people are at conferences, things like that, really, like boots on the ground, kind of networking. Because
Shanna Skidmore:I think, Kate, you're in such an interesting place, because I feel like Pinterest is coming more to light as a tool for business owners in their marketing strategy. And so I just love how you've highlighted business ebbs and flows. And I had a friend tell me years ago, she's like, the one constant in business is change, and as somebody who doesn't want change and doesn't like it, it's like, that's we have to be innovative and keep keep asking who we're serving, how we can serve them best, how we can show up for them, and keeping in touch. Because, yeah, the industry keeps changing, and it changes. Kate, thanks so much for sharing your journey and your story. And I don't know if you know this little tidbit, I don't know the exact data point, but a lot like a very high percentage of small of businesses close after their highest year in revenue. Yeah, I'm sure that happens for all. Sorts of reasons, but I just always think that's such an interesting statistic. Yeah,
Kate Ahl:I can see why
Shanna Skidmore:exactly you're in the arena. Yep. All right, Kate, let's go into a quick fire. Okay, before we wrap up, these are just fun questions. Okay, one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew
Kate Ahl:I know I get embarrassed, but it's very hard for me to recall most things. I actually don't know that. One's a little tough for me.
Shanna Skidmore:That's a hard question if you haven't thought about it. And as someone who also doesn't get embarrassed too often, I've talked with a couple other people on the podcast about this. It's like, I think in life, I had so many things I probably should have been embarrassed about. Now I don't get embarrassed. Yeah, totally. All right, any regrets or wish you could do over moments, um,
Kate Ahl:business wise or personal wise.
Shanna Skidmore:You choose. Um,
Kate Ahl:I think that. I think that coming to the kind of the end of my parenting, I'm having a lot of conversation. I'm a lot of conversation in my head about things that I wish I would have done slightly different with my kids if they were younger, and, you know, to do the sport or not to do the sport. But I'm trying to harness that a little bit and say, you know, every parent at the end of their journey is going to kind of come to that place where, you know, you don't, you have blind spots, right? And you're in the moment of it, and it's, it's hard when you're, you're in the thick of parenting. But I would say that's in my mind a lot lately.
Shanna Skidmore:I think that makes total sense. I mean, they don't come with manuals, you know, yeah, on the job training, okay, a big win or pinch me moment?
Kate Ahl:I think that I have had some pinch me moments when I've been on people's podcasts or have been able to be in the room with people, and those have been really amazing. And I think I've learned a lot from what I thought would be an amazing pinch me moment turned out not to be as as big of it, but I would say a win for me, I think would be, I'm still here after 2022 like that is that's my win right now,
Shanna Skidmore:and totally worth celebrating, yes, because business is So much a longevity game. And I don't think we know that going in, you know, I'm like, sometimes the goal is just to be around, yeah? And that can be the goal, yeah, okay, best advice, or just really good advice that you have received, yeah,
Kate Ahl:I would say that not chasing someone else's success, like during that coaching call, and just really hearing, don't compare your business to somebody else's, because that that is not your business to run. You've got your own business, and you need to keep your eyes on that prize. And that has been something I have had to go back to many, many times over.
Shanna Skidmore:Yeah, love it. Okay, last quick fire, and then we will send it off. What are you working on now? Or one resource that you would like to share?
Kate Ahl:Yeah, well, I think what I'm working on right now is be really curious about marketing, and I even spent probably a couple it was a couple months ago, I got out pen and paper a big table we have, like a remote office here. I got it out, and I was like, Okay, what's marketing? Like, what's marketing for an agency? Like, I'm not going to pretend I know. I'm going to go back to the drawing board, and I'm going to be a kindergartner right now. And I started writing down all these things and paying attention to where we were doing our marketing. And that has been so fun for me, because it feels like Kate, it feels like simple pin media. It doesn't feel like somebody else's marketing. It's I started at day one. I asked the question, what is marketing for an agency, and what's marketing for simple pin media? And I get to build it and grow it and learn from it. And that has been that has been such a joy, and it kind of a renewing for me after everything that I've gone through. So that's what I'm working on. And I would say resource, if anybody wants to know about Pinterest, simplepenmedia.com we try to be really the number one Pinterest resource that's out there. So podcast, free resources, services, you name it, we've got everything.
Shanna Skidmore:I love it. I'm going to be doing my own research. Yes, because Pinterest, as we discussed before, hitting record, as is a huge part of our strategy. So I love what you're doing, Kate, thanks for showing up and helping business owners get in front of more people. Yeah, with your skills. Okay, let's send it off. Going back to day one, when you registered for the URL simple pen media. What would you tell yourself, looking back now, oh,
Kate Ahl:I think I would tell myself, do. To take a few more risks and get a little more curious in the early days.
Shanna Skidmore:So tempted to dig into that.
Unknown:Yeah? Okay. Thank
Shanna Skidmore:you for your time and sharing your story and such good insight. This has been so fun to get to chat with you. Yeah,
Kate Ahl:you too. Thanks so much for having me.
Lauren / Team Skidmore:Hey, Wildflower. You just finished another episode of consider the wildflowers the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com. For show notes, resource links and to learn how you can connect with Kate. One final thought for today from Brene Brown, vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat. It's understanding the necessity of both. It's engaging. It's being all in as always. Thank you for listening. We'll see you guys next time you.
