Jen Casey (JC): Fill us in! Who are you and how did you get your start online?

Amanda King (AK): It’s actually kind of a long (but funny!) story.

JC: I would love for you to share it all because there’s a lot of women who listen to this show who are in the place you were eight months ago, and the idea that you’ve had this amazing launch feels so impossible and far away. Just in you sharing this, it’s going to help collapse the belief that it takes a long time to make something happen.

 

AK: It seems so surreal to me in the current moment. I dreamed about this and now that it’s a reality, it’s completely mind-blowing because of where I was eight months ago. I’m not even the same person anymore.

My story starts back in the corporate world. I was a corporate pastry chef for a local D.C. restaurant chain and I had about five different restaurants underneath me. I loved my job. Desserts were my passion. It was my soul. But I hit a stage of burnout like no other. We opened a restaurant and I just could NOT. I was working 18 hour days, ten days a week. There aren’t even 10 days a week, that’s how much I was working. It was absolutely insane. We launched a donut program and I didn’t touch donuts for two years afterwards because it was so terrible.

I reached a stage of burnout and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do the corporate thing anymore. I couldn’t do the long hours of busting my butt for nothing. I was burnt out and tired. My relationship was suffering, my mental health was suffering, and my body was suffering. Finally I stopped and I said, “I’m not doing this anymore.”

I left without any job or any prospects. I was thinking, “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do tomorrow. How am I going to pay my bills?”

JC: Was there a specific moment when you had that breaking point? 

AK: It was on New Year’s Eve, actually! The owner of the company had just come back from a lovely little vacation and all of us had been working since October, nonstop with no days off. He comes back from vacation and while I was pulling a bread pudding out of the oven, he walked up to me and screamed, “Amanda! Do you not care about your effin’ job?!”

I was just standing there like, “I’m sorry, what?”

And he was like, “Where are all the effin’ donuts?”

This guy is six foot freakin three and I’m 5’3, so he’s towering over me. He’s taking up my entire circumference and berating me in front of the entire kitchen staff. It was a brunch and I’ll never forget it. He kept screaming at me and I kept trying to walk away because I couldn’t speak. I was paralyzed and he kept following me. So finally, I slammed the door on him and I walked into the hallway and I broke down for 45 minutes hysterically crying.  Couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe type of crying. And that was it. I was like, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. This is terrible.”

At the time, I was terrified because I had no prospects, but looking back now, it was the best decision of my life I could’ve ever made. My life changed dramatically. 

I started a dog care brick and mortar business here in Virginia. It was going amazingly well. We were almost near 100k and then we had to close down boarding and daycare because we were running it out of our house and got in trouble for doing that. 

We got shut down. It was 80 percent of my sales. I went from making almost 10 grand a month to barely four because all we could do was dog walk.

During this whole process, I had joined a network marketing company because I had also gained 30 pounds. I was extremely unhappy with everything… my physical being, my mental being, everything. This network marketing company provided an opportunity to be around a lot of positive women and they helped empower me. I worked with this network marketing company for about a year and that’s when I met Jen and started Pitch To Your Niche. I was super struggling with the idea of being a cookie cutter version of what they wanted me to be, and not being able to find my space and personality in the online space. I was truly struggling with selling anything. The cold messaging and the workout pictures were not vibing with me. 

When I met Jen and started Pitch To Your Niche, I was at my tail end of just trying to make something work. I did Pitch To Your Niche and then you [Jen] offered the mastermind and I was like, “I need to get as close to this woman as possible. I need to be near her because she knows all the things and I need to know all of the things, all of the time, and I need to learn how to do them all.”

We spent six months learning all of the backend stuff, like how to build a website and a logo. I’ll never forget when you said, “Don’t focus on building a website until you have something to sell because the website is not going to be a success if you don’t have something to sell.” And I took that as, “I’m going to work on websites for three days, nonstop.”

 

JC: I get it because I attract people who are vibrationally similar to me. For a lot of the ladies in the group, I see similar traps that I fell into. You’re not seeing 90 percent of what’s happening. Not just on the backend, structure, and strategy side, but also internally for that person.

So you were like, “I don’t have anything to sell, but I’m going to go build to website.” But then you DID create something to sell!

 

AK: I did! So like I said, I have a background in pastry. Everyone knows me for my food, so I decided I was going to create a dessert course and launch a cooking book about healthy food because I was still on the weight loss thing because that’s what I held onto for a year. I thought, “I’m going to make that shit work. I don’t care. I’m going to make it work.”

I launched a dessert course around Christmas time called 10 Healthy Holiday Desserts That Will Keep You In Your Skinny Jeans. Then I launched a freakin cookbook around January 1st called F*ck The Diet and it was all about eating healthy, low carb meals. Neither of them really sold. I sold one cookbook, literally ONE cookbook, and I sold five or six seats in my dessert course. Nothing was sticking.

Everyone always says, “When you become an entrepreneur, it’s all about throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what will stick.” Well, I was throwing spaghetti out the ass and nothing was sticking. I was going to Costco and buying the jumbo bags of pasta thinking, “F it, let’s just see if it works!”

Nothing was working, so of course you get frustrated and you start beating yourself up. Cooking was my safety net. I knew I could sell cooking because that’s what I was known for. People knew me for that specific thing, so why wouldn’t it be successful? But it wasn’t and I was so frustrated by the end of it. I made maybe $300 from that launch and maybe $325 with a cookbook. I was also miserable in my network marketing company and I did not want to be there anymore.

In December, right after I launched the dessert course, things were just not going well. I listened to the 12 Days of Business and you [Jen] were on it! I signed up and listened every single day to each woman talk about coaching for an hour. I kept thinking to myself, “Oh my god, this is what I want to do.”

I want to help women step into their own. I want to be able to empower women. I want to do this. But I was like, “But you can’t do this. You have no certificate. Who are you to get up there and tell people what to do or how to own their lives when you’re a hot mess yourself? You’re just going to fail. It’s going to be another failure, Amanda. Let’s put it on the long list of shit you’ve been through in the last two years.” I kept trying to talk myself out of it. I kept thinking there’s no way I’m going to be successful with this. 

Finally in December, this past December, I couldn’t afford anything. We couldn’t even do Christmas this year because money had gotten so tight with dog walking. I was able to pay my bills and everything, but not being able to do Christmas this year sucked. I’m a big holiday person and I understand it’s not about the presents, but I enjoy giving and I like seeing people get excited. So when Christmas came around and we didn’t do anything, it was that moment of, “What the hell am I doing? Where do I want to go with this?”

I started thinking back to all of my jobs and I realized what really made me passionate was helping other people, managing other people, and coaching other people. That’s what made me go to network marketing company because I loved the coaching aspect, but I hated everything else.

After that, I was like “Alright, 2019 new year, new me! I’m going balls to the wall this year and I’m going to show up and get in the online space. I’m going to say that I’m doing life coaching. If you don’t like it, there is an unfollow button. You don’t have to pay attention to me anymore, but I’m going to start showing up like a life coach.”

…And I DID and it was like the universe just tilted.

 

JC: Exploded! For other ladies who are listening to this thinking, “Well, wait a minute… I’m in network marketing. Should I not do that? Are the only people making money online the people who are coaching other coaches?”

I think it’s so important to understand that no, that’s not the case. What Amanda is sharing here is that those other things were not in alignment for her. Every single time (because I’ve watched you go through it) you did one of those things and took action in one of those areas, even though it seemed like a failure on paper, it wasn’t because it brought you the clarity that you needed to be able to say, “I know 100 percent that I do not want to be branded as the fit pastry chef.” But if you hadn’t had that “failed launch”, maybe there would have been a part of you that contemplated, “Well, I don’t know. I was a pastry chef for so long…”

There’s no one right way to go through this process. As as an entrepreneur, the more you’re in it, the more you realize the shit that doesn’t work. It’s all information and data that is giving you clarity.

Amanda could have decided that cookbooks were her jam and she wanted to teach other women how to be a pastry chef. If she wanted to go all in with that, she could have done it and she would have crushed it. But you realized that by taking action on it, it wasn’t in alignment for you. That’s why when you heard some other women speaking about empowering other people you were like, “BAM, that’s it.”

That’s why you had that contrast: to be able to see what your next steps were. From the outside looking in, I was excited when things weren’t working for you and when you were really polarized, saying things like, “I DEFINITELY never want to do this again.” I was like, “GOOD!”

 

AK: With the pastry chef thing, I didn’t want to go all in because I did one course and was already starting to feel the burn out. I poured my heart and soul into this thing and as soon as it started launching, it was like the universe knew. She knew that NO, I really don’t want to do this. I’m doing this as a safety net because I think it’s what I should do, not what I want to do.

So for people in network marketing, if you are truly passionate about what you’re doing, great! But there are people in network marketing who aren’t passionate with it and I think that’s what correlates the people who are successful versus the people who are not, because the people who are passionate about it, they don’t even have to work on the sale. It’s like the sale is thrown to them. So if you’re struggling with sales, it may be that you’re not so passionate about it, but you want the money. You may love the products, heck I loved my products, but I wasn’t 100 percent all in. People could feel that from me. People could feel that vibrational energy that something was off and I wasn’t all in. 

And I wasn’t. It wasn’t until January when I went ALL in and decided I was going to be a life coach. That’s when realized I was never all in. I had never been all in until the moment when I was. I was like, “So this is what it feels like!”

I will show up regardless of how many people are watching. I’m going to speak my truth. I’m going to be authentically me, not a cookie cutter version of what every other coach out there wants and is supposed to me. I’m going to show up, I’m going to swear, I’m going to stumble over my words and I’m going to burp in the middle of a Live. If I’m going to help women step up into their own, I need to be 100 percent in and ME. I have to embrace my imperfections and just freaking go with it, and I did and it was magic.

 

JC: Isn’t it crazy!? I had a similar experience early on in my coaching business when I stepped forward.

People asked, “How did you do it?”

…I just claimed it. That’s it.

I’ve watched you do that and it’s so inspiring to watch because the women following you are seeing what is possible and you’re creating that vision for them.

 

AK: And that’s totally what I wanted to do because when you jump into the online space, it’s so overwhelming. You get it from 18 different ends of how you should run your business. You need all of the bells and whistles in order to start an online business. Women don’t even get their online businesses up and running because they get so caught in the overwhelm and that’s what I was doing at the tail end of the network marketing thing. I was focusing on the website, the logo, the sales pages, and Facebook Ads, but I wasn’t showing up at all. I wasn’t being present. 

In January, I decided, “I’m doing this. I’m going all in. I’m going to do this launch without all of the bells and whistles and I’m just going to be present as f*ck.”

I’m going to be present as f*ck with my group, with the people who message me, and with the people who are on my lives. I’m going to see where this will go. 

 

JC: Boom. What’s so amazing about what you’ve done is that you didn’t build a whole course. We sat down and you outlined it, but you didn’t spend six months building a course before verifying that people actually wanted it. That’s one of the things that I love encouraging people to do. Sell the course and then do the coaching live. Do a beta. Get the first one out of the way so that you can make sure  people actually want it.

If you’re creating all of your stuff in a vacuum, you’re doing yourself and your audience a huge disservice. They want to co-create with you!

I think you’re starting to see that as well. Your audience has been growing so freaking fast and they’re devoted to you. I think you did it by owning the shit out of who you are and being unapologetic about it. Now that you’re starting to grow this incredible tribe, what have you learned from them about your own brand? 

 

AK: From the beginning, I didn’t want to be just a generic life coach. I wanted to niche down. The more I was connecting with the people in my Facebook group and on my lives, the more they would message me saying, “You are empowering me. You’re empowering me to take the next leap of my life. You’re empowering me to jump on a live video.” That word just kept sticking out. Empowerment. That’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to do. I want to empower women.

Because of them, I decided I was a women’s empowerment coach. They also allowed me to realize what they struggled with the most, which was fear. We’re afraid of failure, we’re afraid of success, and we’re afraid of being judged. From speaking to all of them on a personal level, I decided I was going to be a women’s empowerment coach and I’m going to teach women to step out of their fear, step into their fierceness, and create their own online business.

If I didn’t connect with them, I would have never figured that out because I would have just been a generic life coach. But because of the connections with them, I know what I need to do. This is my purpose in life, this is my passion, and I am going with it. I owe everything, every little piece of success, to the women in my closed Facebook group, to the women that message me every day, and to the women who watch my live videos. They make me want to get up every morning and keep doing what I’m doing. 

 

JC: You’re teaching them how to get off the sideline and you’re leading by example. 

I want people to understand what some of your beliefs around success were when you were in network marketing. What did this mountain of success look like to you? You know, strategy is 20 percent of the game. 80 percent is learning how to master your beliefs. If you didn’t believe that success was possible for you, you wouldn’t be showing up on live video, period. End of story. It’s because you had a shift in belief around what was possible that your behavior changed and it brought you a different result. What were some of your beliefs then and what are some of your beliefs now?

 

AK: It’s funny because this is a culinary thing through and through: You have to struggle to make money. You have to struggle to be successful. You have to work 18 hour shifts. You have to be on the point of a mental breakdown every second.

I grew up in a family who said things like, “You want to be successful in life? You need to work hard.” That was ingrained in me, so I ended up joining fields that I was practically dying in because I thought, “No, I need to work hard to make this money. This is my paycheck. I need to keep working harder. I need to keep forcing it.”

Now, it’s become so effortless. That’s the most mind blowing aspect of it. I’m not at my computer for 18 hours a day trying to send a thousand cold messages. When you truly follow your passion and your soul’s purpose, it’s like the universe just gets it and is like, “Here. Take it. Take all of this positive shit!” I didn’t have to send out a single cold message in my launch. I didn’t have to do any of that because people could sense the passion in me and it totally changed my perspective. I will never look at sales the same way again. I did not have to struggle to get a sale. It came so effortlessly because the world and people could sense that I was aligned with it. It took off from there.

 

JC: You grabbed their eyeballs. They were like, “Who is this chick? Where did she come from??”

Early on in the launch when you first put things out, you messaged me after your first sale. There’s something called the launch free fall, where people tend to open their cart and make a couple of sales the first day and then things trickle, and on the last day, there’s a big rush. There’s an ebb and flow to an open cart for a launch. The launch free fall is when you start freaking the F out and you start doubting yourself. People don’t really talk about this that much, but this is the real shit that happens behind the scenes. So you made your first sale for your bundle and then what happened?

 

AK: I freaked the F out! I sold the first bundle and saw the payment and thought, “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. This is happening. This is going to happen!”

And then I started doubting myself.

What if I launch this course and it’s only one person?

Is it going to be a one-on-one coaching thing?

What do I do?

Should I message her?

Is anyone else going to buy?

I was also afraid to celebrate because I had been taught that you shouldn’t brag about things. I wasn’t celebrating any of this stuff because I thought I was going to jinx it.

So that’s when I messaged Jen and I said, “I’m freaking out. I made my first sale. Should I celebrate? I know you say we should celebrate, but I feel like I’m bragging. What is happening?”

I went into a a DOWNWARD SPIRAL. Even during the launch, I would have days where it’d be sale after sale and then there would be one quiet day and I’d be like, “It’s over. What’s happening? Should I create a new course?

I would start getting paranoid and I would totally freak myself out. A couple of hours later, a sale would come in and I’d be ok again and realize I freaked out over absolutely nothing.

During a launch, yes, you see the fact that you make a lot of money at the end, but you do not see the immense amount of freak outs in between. I truly believe that when something you dream about starts to become a reality, it is so overwhelming, but in a really great way. It’s overwhelming because now it’s not something that’s so far away. It’s something you can reach out and touch and it’s tangible. 

 

JC: There’s a lot of emotional ups and downs as you start moving closer to the thing you’ve been dreaming about forever. And then your ego, that inner mean girl, starts yapping away. What I’ve learned over the years is that anytime you’re in a place where that shit’s getting really loud, you know you’re moving closer to greatness. It’s your body trying to go into self-preservation road and stay safe.

I don’t care if this is your first launch or if it’s your 70th launch, those things will come up. A big part of the entrepreneur game of staying in the game and not burning out is being able to maintain a certain emotional state through that process. You did such a beautiful job celebrating yourself and celebrating all of the women who joined your course. What did that look like when you started to figure out how to manage your state and stay positive so you could step into that celebration fully?

 

AK: I noticed on the days I was feeling good about myself, the sales would come flowing in, especially when I got towards 10k. I almost had a heart attack on the day that I got towards 10k because in my entire life, I thought I’d sell TWO.

The whole day I was in a funky mood. I had the payment link out to a bunch of people and I was freaking out. When I get into those crappy states, I put on music to the point where I almost go deaf. A lot of the celebration videos I post are of me dancing around like a complete and utter lunatic, but it’s because that’s what puts me in a really great mood.

When you get into the downward spiral, you have got to figure a way to get yourself out of it. So Adam and I, on the day that I was close to 10K, did things that put me in a happy mood. When the sale actually came through, I almost threw my phone across the room.

I was screaming, “OH MY GOD!!! I HIT 10K!”

I instantly shut the TV off, grabbed a bottle of champagne, and we had a dance party in our living room for three hours.

The best way to celebrate is just to let yourself loose. I posted a video online of me dancing during the 10K launch. I gave zero f*cks. I wanted to celebrate it, I wanted to anchor it in, and I wanted to feel it in every bone in my body. I believe that if you’re in a funky mood, people can feel it and the universe can feel it. We all have our ups and downs, but during a launch especially, try to keep as positive as possible. Do things that bring you joy. When you show up, people can sense that positive energy. It’s like a magnet.

We attract people, we don’t attract money.

When we show up with positive energy, people think, “I need to be with her. I need to be dancing next to her. I need to be making my an ass of myself with her because she is so blissfully happy.”