Are you looking into pivoting in uncertain times when it comes to your business? Recently I was invited for an interview with Kevin Ly, founder of Beyond Meditations and KEPLY Business Course. In this interview, we go around how I ended up becoming a confidence coach on my journey towards becoming an entertainer. This part specifically talks about the changes I had to make to my business plan in order to survive the pandemic.
This is in continuation to part 1 of the interview series with Kevin Ly.
Kevin: I wanted to ask what was your business model before Covid-19? As there's a massive change going on in the world at this moment. What has your business model evolved into or innovated and pivoted to since then?
My initial Business Plan
Michelle: When I started with the internet, video in general, as well as music, it was more of a one-to-many business model. The idea was if people resonated with my message and they want to join my community. They could just spend a few dollars here and there, buy some music, or maybe buy a DVD, back when DVDs were a thing.
I continued that and recently expanded to an e-commerce store as well. This is where I was selling clothing, specifically custom clothing that I designed and worked with designers on.
Then was the dare to dream school that was still in beta mode. I had just beta-tested my courses and my products. But I'm so grateful that I had started all this long time back. And that I had the knowledge business for a consulting company model already in its incubation phase. I was somewhat already established in it, had done some one-on-one consulting, as well as built up the course.
Pandemic and Business Model Changes
When the pandemic hit suddenly, sending physical products became a lot more difficult. A lot of my suppliers were scrambling to continue functioning. Initially, they were working at half capacity, then a quarter capacity then they shut down completely. Then they tried to reopen but were having trouble with shipping so I actually ended up pausing my store for a while because it was just so hard to keep up with what was happening with the shipping deadlines changing and the supply chain affected.
I was so grateful that we had already begun and tested the beta course for Dare to Dream School. I had already had some clients. We, me and my team, were able to quickly pivot and focus more back on the consulting.
So instead of a one-to-many, it was one two one, or one to a small group. But we were able to charge a higher price because that was consulting. The value of music and other small digital or physical products is expected to be much lower. People don’t expect us to spend a lot on that sort of thing.
As Covid-19 came, I updated the sales page and put it on a new platform. Even though we weren't supposed to relaunch the course until later in the year, suddenly everything changed. We scrapped our entire e-commerce plan even we had all these sales planned. But as was the need of the time, we just scrapped everything and made another quick plan as a replacement.
I'm about to do a soft launch of my Business for Video Confidence course that I had beta tested last year. I have people enrolling because I had been nurturing during this time. So I’m very grateful I had a digital product to pivot to at this time.
Surviving with E-Commerce during the Pandemic
Kevin: So essentially you went from having an e-commerce store that was completely disrupted by supply and delivery, you had to pretty much pause it or shut it, for the time being, then you curated what you've learned through this whole process and combined it with mindset coaching to create courses for other people.
Michelle: I won’t say e-commerce is entirely hit because many of my equals in that industry are still doing pretty well, despite the pandemic. The reason being, they, unlike me, are very comfortable with Facebook ads and other similar mediums. I am not or else, I think I would have survived as well.
But as someone who sold luxury items like music and things people don’t need to survive, I’m glad I paused my store. Although, I do think if I had a solid base with Facebook Ads I could have sustained it. Not to forget, my apparel was a bit high-end.
I was constantly getting emails of shipping prices going up week after week. Followed by not shipping on weekend. I think I skipped a bullet there. I would have made a few sales and spent a lot of time answering angry emails.
Note: My stores are since reopened once worldwide supply/chain/shipping logistics restabilized.
Kevin: I want to ask, through this whole process of you transitioning from e-commerce to digital courses and obviously, keeping in mind this whole pandemic, what learns have you had or what would you consider doing differently, if you had to do it all over again?
Lessons Learned
Michelle: If I had to do it over again, I would have spent, well hindsight it’s 2020, I would spend the beginning of the year not focusing on rounding out more of my products for my e-commerce store and I would have instead used that time to do the soft launch of my course. So that by now I would have had the entire funnel set up, the entire ad campaign ready to go and I probably could have benefited more now from that.
But having said that, I couldn't have seen it coming. At least I had enough diversity in income streams; I did have something to jump to.
Amongst my creative friends, the people who are doing a live stream and Youtube are doing okay because they switch to just live streaming all the time and started depending on donations from their fans, which is something I used to do a long time ago. That works too. But there are some people who relied entirely on live venues and they're really suffering right now because they're not able to pivot.
There's a tiny group of us creatives who started getting into the knowledge business consulting so that we can show other people how do you get online, how do you build a brand, how do you grow audiences. I think we're probably in the best position right now because if there's one thing people are willing to do right now, it’s using this time to learn.
Time to learn is now
Kevin: I agree 100%, especially in isolation, you just want to expand and learn. There is some statistics about three out of five people at home wanting to upskill right now.
Michelle: I think it's also that some people are using this time to really pause, reflect and think about their life because they were forced to stop doing their regular nine to five and face their life.
Someone just enrolled in my video for a business boot camp that's about to start and he was working in IT but never really wanted to do that in the first place. He actually really wanted to start a Youtube channel and start live streaming.
When we talked, I told him, hey you're stuck at home anyway so why not use this time to explore it? I'll teach you how to do it so at least you can say you tried. I've been there. I was in exactly the same place and I know how it is to have that wake-up moment.
It's good that the pandemic has at least allowed people to examine their existence and think about their life. What do you want to be doing with your time?
Kevin: I think this whole period has really accelerated people's journey. Now you've got so much time to think about and do something differently. I think that's a great segue into asking you about what do you think the future landscape will be in your industry? More specifically, of people, whether it's Youtube or the knowledge business, where do you think that's going?
The Future of Creatives and Consultants
Michelle: Well, every time I talk about my business it's twofold because I technically work in these two different businesses.
So in terms of being creative, there have been a lot of changes anyway in the last couple of years related to how people who are creative make money online. So a while back there was the Youtube apocalypse where, for instance, the way ads worked changed. A lot of people started losing money because they were relying on ad money alone. A hard lesson was learned by some of those creative entrepreneurs that you have to have multiple income streams.
But for anybody who is still holding on to that business model, it’s long gone, almost entirely over now. So, I think, post-pandemic a lot of people who are creative need to start thinking about truly treating what they do as a business, whether they are a musician or a filmmaker, or a painter. The idea of just hoping you make some money on ads or selling a couple of t-shirts on CafePress? It's only going to go so far.
Follow the third part of my interview with Kevin where we talk about the importance of pivoting in these uncertain times.
Pin it for later!
