My Dirty Secret About Reach - And Embracing The Business I Actually Want
Here’s the thing: there is no immunity from worrying about your numbers. There is no point you can reach where you stop, where you think “I have enough now,” and you can just get on with the stuff you enjoy. The number of people in your audience, whether on Instagram, your mailing list, your Facebook group, is always a source of worry. No matter how many benchmarks you reach, you’ll always be certain that everything will be great just once you reach the next one.
I have worried about the numbers. Not a constant buzz of worry, but the clanging wrecking ball of fear that busts in through the wall of the idea you’re working on – “you don’t have enough people to make that work.” The worry in my darkest hours that if I’m ever going to succeed (whatever that means), I need more people that I can’t get. The worry that my numbers growth is stagnating, and that must mean I’m ‘losing it.’
You’re probably reading this thinking, “Kayte, you’ve got 22k followers on Instagram, literally shut up you’ve got nothing to worry about”. I know I would be. Let me break the numbers down for a sec.
I get an average of 700-900 views per Story.
I get an average of 1000 opens on my email newsletters.
I get an average of around 800 likes on my Instagram posts.
So really, I have an audience of about 900 people who take action and engage with me. Yes, 900 is a lot more than many people have. But it’s also a lot less than 22,000.
I have felt shame about these numbers. I have thought that if anyone ever knew my business would be over – who knows, it might be now ;). Any time I’ve shared screenshots of the back end of my Instagram, I’ve been meticulous about covering over the numbers. I’ve been too ashamed to tell even close friends the reality of my engagement numbers. As a high achiever, I am ashamed that these numbers don’t meet the 10% threshold that I decided was ‘good’ conversion. But more than that, I have worried deeply that these numbers mean I’m terrible at marketing. That it is irresponsible for me to teach and talk about marketing when I have these numbers, like a dirty secret locked away in a cupboard.
On the worst days, the days you want to give everything up because you think you’re no good, the numbers are always one of the reasons that get carted out. Because it’s not just because I’m bad at this, it’s because no one likes me or cares. “Just shut up, no one even cares, no one’s even watching,” “no one reads this because they don’t like you,” “all those people are ignoring you because you’re not helping.” The reason audience numbers stick their fingers between our ribs so much is because they’re intensely personal. It’s so hard to be objective about how many people opted into your email list. I never think about it in terms of how many people clicked a button, but of how many people like me.
Particularly in the online education world, the scale is seen as a prerequisite to success. You need to have hundreds of thousands on your email list to get tens of thousands of opens to get thousands of sales. This is called churn, and I never liked the idea of churn because it seemed like a lot of work and a lot of pissing people off with emails. Scale is also significant because if you want to make money in courses (which has a relatively low price point compared to one-to-one), then you need to be able to sell volume. Again, this seemed like a lot of work I didn’t want to do, a lot of time helping people who’d lost their password or sorting out tech that didn’t work and the mental weight of holding hundreds and hundreds of peoples’ expectations on my shoulders.
When I looked at people who had these massive education businesses, I never thought, “wow, I want that.” I actually thought, “Wow, that seems kind of awful.” To not be able to connect with people directly and make sure they were getting the help they needed, to think so much about email funnels, to spend more time fiddling in software than typing out a story. But most of all, the pressure of the numbers. To live or die by the numbers. That was something I did not want.
But you rarely see any alternative. Because these big educators rely on the numbers, they are spending a lot of money on making sure you see them everywhere and become one of the numbers. They crowd out anyone doing it on a smaller scale, so it seems like the only way. I never wanted a huge, multi-million education empire, but I did feel like I wanted a big, six-figure empire. Because I didn’t realise I was allowed to think about an alternative.
That is until lockdown made me question why I wanted the six-figure income when I was already living the life I wanted (only with the stress of needing £100k). And once I’d questioned that, suddenly the numbers were up for debate too.
When I shifted my aim to earn as little as I needed, rather than as much as possible, suddenly the low numbers looked great. Any time that old thought of “you don’t have enough people who care” crept in, for the first time, I could say back, “what are you talking about? I have SEVEN HUNDRED people who care” and go back to work with a smile on my face. When you want to make 20, 40, 50 sales, 700 people is an ocean.
But equally, if seven hundred people were in a room, you’d be able to see everyone’s eyeballs. You’d see everyone’s outfits, their furrowed brows as they listened, watch 700 pens make notes in 700 notebooks. How wonderful that these people like me enough to be here in this room. How magical that they all care. That they are appreciating what I’m saying so much that they are writing down my words to use later. What a gift.
While I was worried about not having the numbers for scale, I was overlooking the fact I had the numbers for intimacy. I doubt the big educators experience the warm glow I get when I see a name buy one of my products that I recognise from years of to-ing and fro-ing on Instagram. I love that in one of my course groups, I’m able to share in individual a-ha moments and jump and down in excitement at their successes. I like that I’m not overwhelmed.
I’m not ashamed of my numbers anymore. I love my numbers because they are people. They are all people who are putting faith in me to help them with their dream – I never wanted to be in the business of scale because my soul wanted to be in the business of making dreams come true. I’m sorry it’s taken this long for my brain to catch up with my soul, but that is so often the way. If the other 21,300 want to come into the room, they’re so welcome, but I’m not going out to get them. We’re staying in this room, you, me, and the other 699, until we get your dream sorted. I promise.
