Kellee Wynne:
Well, hello, hello. I am back. Thank you for your patience. I was gone last week. I didn't do my work in progress podcast. Hopefully you did tune in and listen to Susan Yates. That was a great conversation. And I didn't have anything for midweek this week.

Why? Because I took a little family vacation to the mountains. And in this new phase of running the podcast, I give myself permission to just live my life and not feel the pressure of a deadline. So I went and I just let it go and I had fun. If you've listened to past podcasts, especially the early years, I was always going up to this cabin in Pennsylvania with my family. A little rustic, some updating, 1970s, the old. But it's always a like one of my most joyful times because I'm in nature, I'm making art, I'm spending time with the family. And every time we go, my husband and I are like, we want to buy a place up here. So it's still on my wish list.

I had a great time. I didn't get to go last year or the year before, so it was really nice to go back. And I think I just have this bug to be out in nature far more than I was before. All the kick in the butt to do it on the weekends, but it's been so hot. Finally a break in the weather. So David and I are going to go again next week, so we'll see how it turns out. For recording another podcast episode, I think I'll have something for you midweek, but I'll definitely be ready for something to drop for you next Friday. Nonetheless, I'm here.

I'm feeling good despite it all as I gesture to everything. I'm excited, like really excited for Build it. Remarkable this year. It's been a long time. I've pushed it off and pushed it off and pushed it off again. But here I am, ready to go, ready to help and serve new people. And I'm kind of in the middle of a pre sale right now for the people on the wait list. So if you're not on the wait list, just come message me, we'll talk.

You have until Monday, August 4th. Got a little few extra bonuses there, so I already have people signing up and I'm really excited about that. It takes a lot of work though, not support that I want to convey about what my days are like right now. It's not anything glamorous. Like I've said before, I'm sitting on the couch most of the time, just typing away next to my very Furry shedding dogs or I'm up in my office. Either way, it's like putting together the pieces of the puzzle. The email that needs to go out, the podcast that needs to be recorded to talk about it, the sales page and the follow on emails and the just setting up the whole thing takes some time. Once it's done, it's done.

But this time it kind of required me to go back to the beginning and start fresh again because I have a new perspective on how I run things. And I've changed up the format. Before we would have maximum six months together, but it was really like deep dive for three months and then a three month of light support. But I've changed the way I run the program. Now we're going to have an intensive upfront teach you everything you need to know. Think of it kind of like, I don't know, college. You're learning, you're not implementing. But I know how long it takes and how much work it is to build a really successful course creator business.

So I've changed the program to a year long program and I'm really excited about that because I haven't changed the price to reflect that. I've just given more opportunity for people to succeed. And yeah, I'm excited about that because when the community builds and we work together, we really do see more success. So in the meantime, I just want you to know I'm gearing up towards the big launch which is in the last week of August. I'm going to have a five day challenge for you to come and learn about how to create a sales machine that works for you so that you are making more money with your educator business. Because no one wants a business that's not making money because that ends up being a very expensive hobby. It's a lot of time and effort to put into something that's not working. I want it to be working for everyone so you'll hear more about that.

It's part of what I teach. Oftentimes a lot of artists decide they're going to go ahead and make a course and they make it and they put it out there for sale. They mention it once or twice, don't get the sales and they're like, that didn't work, I'll make another one. Or I'm not even going to try. And yet there are so many pieces to put together to really make it work. And it's not an overnight quick success thing. I mean, I guess if you have a hundred thousand followers and you've already been building Your email list, then maybe it could be. But I don't believe in overnight success.

I believe in the slow, steady tortoise run, not the hare. Right. Because working steadily and consistently usually gives you better results. So that's my philosophy. And I hope I'm not scaring you, those of you who are sitting here going, well, I wanted to start a course business, but it sounds like a lot of work. Look, maybe you're not cut out for it. Maybe it's not your thing, maybe it's not the time. Maybe this isn't the path for you.

I get it. It's not meant for everybody. But for anyone who has a desire or you're. You've got this, like this burning, nagging. I've always wanted to do this. I really want to help people. I really want to get this art out into this world. I really want to help more people find the joy of creativity.

Or you've already started, then it doesn't have to be exhausting or all consuming. It's just a steady, long pace of doing the work and of course, putting the systems in place. And that's what I teach. I don't. I don't just give you a few little tactics. I give you the entire foundation, from your messaging, how to talk to people, how to build the right business model, how to build the right offer, how to test it, how to get feedback, how to do the whole marketing system, from social media to the lead magnet that fuels your list to the list that fuels your sales. And then the launch, which is what I'm gearing up to. I love to teach the launch.

Not everybody has to do a launch the same way, but I always encourage my members to do at least one bigger community event a year in order to grow their business, because that's how people get energized. That's how they know who you are and how you show up. So you'll see that that's always how I love to run mine. It's like you get all of me, all of Kelly. You get it on the podcast, you get it in real life. I don't really hold back. I come with a lot of heart and soul and encouragement, but I also give honest feedback. I want to make sure that people are making decisions that are going to suit their future.

So you don't get the fluffy. How do you feel about it? What do you think you should do? Kind of coaching. It's more like mentorship where you're st and I give you real time feedback from everything that I've Seen work for other people and myself. That's how I do it. That's why I call myself the boss Boss. Not bossy. Tell it like it is. Tough love, coach.

And I'm sticking with it because I put that out there like a year ago and then I got a little shy of saying it. And then I realized, you know, I have to be myself. If I'm not myself, I'm not going to enjoy the work that I'm doing and I'm not going to attract the kind of people that I enjoy working with. Here's this kind of interesting thing about energy. And this isn't woo woo. This is literally the truth. What you put out, how you speak, how you show up attracts the people who are attracted to that. And you will enjoy working with them a whole lot more than if you tamper yourself down and hide who you are and hold back from being your most honest, authentic self.

That's when things get suffocating. In fact, I think that's one of the reasons why when I was running my art course business full time, right, it's in the back wings now, I had to kind of be this personality that was acceptable to all people, right? More neutral. And now that I finally am like, screw it, here I am, this is what I'm doing. I feel so much more alive in the work that I'm doing. So right now, that's. That's how I feel. I'm alive. I'm energized.

I'm finally over the hump of 2024. I'm really glad that I waited to launch until now because now's the time where I'm like fully showing up. I'm not sure if I could have done that any sooner. And it's full speed ahead. I'm 100% sure about build it. Remarkable about what I can deliver and the kind of people that I can help. And I hope that's you, right? That's what I'm doing right now. That's like full time.

Other than spending time with family, it's full time. I'll get back to the art making soon. I'm. I'm definitely looking to sign up for more art in person art workshops and gatherings, especially when I know that I can connect with other people, you know, physically, in real time. Just, I'm craving it a lot. But at least being out in nature next week and the week before, it's just building up to something that feels a little more holistic for my soul right now, and I'm excited about that. I wanted to tell you something else in my behind the scenes right now, as I'm feeling better about myself and my mental health. I'm also struggling a lot with the world in the way it is.

And I have been working really hard this year to be able to hold space for the concern, the worry. My empathy for people, my empathy for global events and local events without it affecting me so much that I feel frozen. Because it's so easy to get lost in despair right now. It's so challenging to wake up every day with a barragement of new atrocities. None of it makes sense. And every day there's something fresh and new and I know you feel it too. It's like, how do we keep moving on? And then I look back over the years and it's like there's always some mass tragedy, a natural disaster, a pandemic, a collapse of the economy, a war. I think what is now in some form or another has always been.

And at some point we need to come to the place of realizing that the best thing we can do for ourselves is show up, make the art, talk to the people, build the community, spread joy. Even when you feel like joy is a hard thing to grasp right now, your joy is a rebellion. That's how I feel. Your art is a rebellion. And I wanted to read a quote that I posted on Instagram and I've posted this quote so many times, unfortunately, in the time that I've been on social media, because it's always needed. It's from Toni Morrison and she says this is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for sile, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.

That is how civilization heals. And I will add, we make art. Right it. Hopefully that message is enough to keep you moving forward and not feel guilty or worthless for your pursuits. Right now it's if we stop, they are winning if we stop living our life and trying to make change and trying to better ourselves and better our financial situation. Because let's be honest, the more we have control over our financial future and not relying on the institutions that, that we used to rely on, the better we are, the less we are a burden to other people and the more we can affect change. So at any point that you stop and you're like, this is frivolous. This is something that I can't do.

This isn't appropriate to do right now, I'm going to tell you it's more appropriate now than it's ever been to follow your big, audacious dreams. Because when you do that, you will be affecting change. Not everyone's meant to be Doctors Without Borders or sailing with a load of food for the people in Gaza, right? Not everyone's meant to be the one that's protesting on the front line. Sometimes our protests come in different ways. By changing minds and hearts, by helping support other people, other women, making money that we can donate to the causes that are the most important right now. I know I'm kind of just, like, standing on my soapbox right now telling you everything that I believe, but it's. It just comes up over and over and over again, year after year, and it feels like it never ends. And yet if we stop and step back 10 paces and just look at life for what it is, we are here right now.

We're doing the best we can for the people that we love. And the best thing we can do is be strong and heal ourselves first. The best that we can do is to show up and make more art, make more joy, make more beauty in this world. It is not frivolous. It is needed. It is, as Toni Morrison says, how civilizations heal. But for all of the support I want to give right now and advice I want to give right now and all the encouragement, I could not say it as well as Ardeth Goodwin. And if you don't follow her, you ought to.

She's an amazing, bright, colorful artist, very thoughtful and very, very poetic in the way she writes. She's so talented and right as I posted my Toni Morrison post about, um, that was yesterday. Oh, my goodness. It was just yesterday. I was watching a few reels, and her reel came from a few days earlier, and she was talking about the same thing, and she had written about it, and she spoke it so beautifully that I asked her if I could share it with you. And she said, absolutely. So I'm gonna play that audio from that reel and have you have a moment to just listen to her words. It's about four minutes long.

It's totally worth it. And of course, I'm going to link who she is in my show notes and everything. So you should, you know, if you loved it, go tell her that you found it through me and give her a follow. Here is Ardith Goodwin in her own words.

Ardith Goodwin:
Are y' all struggling like me, to balance the desire to stay tapped into what's going on in the world? Because we should, as human beings, be aware and proactive, but at the same time, feeling overwhelmed and suffocated because it's too much. I don't believe our brains and hearts and minds were equipped to process this amount of information and this type of information so quickly and so consistently. I struggle with it. I do. One of the things I do, though, is I use creativity to be a good medicine for that. And it's about one of the only things lately that's making a difference in my psyche. And I've written about it, and I thought I would share what my thoughts are looking at. The gift of creativity through the darkness.

Ardith Goodwin:
Pull up a chair with me if you can relate to that. It found me in the dark lately. The days feel stretched heavy with headlines, injustices, sorrow. The world is aching loudly, constantly, and I wonder where is the line between staying aware and becoming consumed? It feels wrong for me to look away, but also unbearable to keep looking. What to do? I pray, I write, and I reach for my brushes, not to turn away from the world, but to stay in it just differently. There's a kind of alchemy in color, a palette that doesn't fix the world but holds it, a space between sigh and sob, where the act of making softens the weight of what I cannot change. I didn't find creativity as a hobby. It found me in the dark when I didn't know how to speak.

Ardith Goodwin:
What hurt? It rode in on the wings of treatment, when words fell flat. But paint and collage helped it rise. Pigment became prayer's pathway, collage became a daily companion. And slowly grief began to glow with meaning, and fragments of pain shifted into pages with light. I've seen it happen in others, too, the ones who draw on napkins in the waiting room, who sing to themselves in the kitchens, in their cars, who build shrines from thread and clay and poems, not to show off, not to sell, but to survive. This, I think, is what a creative practice gives us. Not answers, not solutions, but oxygen. A rhythm we can return to when the noise of the world grows unbearable.

Ardith Goodwin:
For me, creativity is an extension of my faith, and one is directly connected to the other. But it also feels rebellious, honestly, to choose beauty in a broken time, to make instead of numb, to color in the gray edges of despair, with something that dares to sparkle. And it is enough not to change everything, but to keep me from disappearing under the weight of everything. So today I say thank you for the brush in my hand, for the way a stroke of opera can remind me there's still hope, still mystery, still something worth touching with wonder and beauty. Because without this, without. Without the sacred act of creation, the world would be unimaginably bleak. But with it, color lifts the soul. Words help me see and sense the missing parts that are possibly too tender to touch.

Ardith Goodwin:
Collectively, creativity offers something soft to hold onto. In the middle of all the hardness of now, I am grateful to have been made by a creator who designed beauty to be a salve for the brokenhearted. And I'm even more grateful to have the capacity to know that. Thanks for pulling up a chair with me and for cheering me on. I know the days are hard for many of us, but creativity is good medicine.

Kellee Wynne:
Okay, so what did you think about that? Pretty powerful stuff, isn't it? Pretty powerful conversation we're having right now. I never shy away from both the boisterous and the soulful, heartfelt part of who I am as an artist, as a mother, as a woman, and as the mentor. Right. I'm so grateful to be here for you. Now we're gonna transition to the second part of this podcast episode, Work in Progress, which is off the record conversations that I've had within my program this last two weeks. Cause I was gone last week. So I'm gonna just fill you in on a couple of moments that really stood out in my mind. I think you'll appreciate.

I love giving you like this little glimpse, like your fly on the wall. So here's what's happening. I was really proud of one of my members. She launched her beta test of her new program. Mind you, I teach this to everyone. A trial run, you get a few people. You're only setting a low barrier to entrance here. It's like I only need 10 or 20 or 30 people to do this, or even five if you don't know a lot.

And you test out your ideas, your program, how you want to run it and get feedback. And she had an entire community built around a different subject. And she totally burned out, hit a wall and had to quit everything. But she's back now and she has a different point of view and she needs to put out to a different kind of customer. And she was very nervous that she wouldn't hit her goal. And I am so proud because she was one shy of her goal, which in my opinion, it's a total win. Right. And I'm always looking at what is success.

Sometimes we want thousands of people to come and buy our offer. And that is exciting. But even I'm looking at this launch and feeling like I don't even know if I'll hit last year's number of how many people will join. But I'm holding onto this thought now, which is a big shift from where I was, which is Even if it's 10 people who come and join Build it, remarkable, that's 10 people that I get to help, and I'm okay with that. And I will keep moving forward. And so this big win for her was really like, yes, I know it was 19 people out of 20, but that's a big win. Right. And I'm encouraging of the smallest wins being a big win and worth seeing.

Celebrating. So are you celebrating even the smallest milestones? I hope you are. Another really, really important conversation that was kind of like this big aha moment. We were discussing how to reach more people with our social media or our writing, our messaging in general. Right. So when you're running a business, you need to know who to talk to, how to talk to them, what it is they're going to be interested in. And there's a lot of ways people don't really grasp, especially artists, the whole concept of how to market effectively. And yet the truth of the matter is it's.

It's the most natural way in which you talk is the most effective marketing. So what we came up against was looking at the accounts of the members in the conversation and looking at the kind of content they were putting out. And it was a lot of directive content. Directive meaning you should do this. Or for example, here's what supplies you need to take with you on your next getaway versus if I was getting away for a weekend, here are the art supplies I would take with me. And that instead is more personal. It's more storytelling. People lean into that rather than the you, the you should, you need you, whatever feels directive.

It feels almost too assertive in the sense of someone's telling me what to do again. And I don't know if you've ever noticed that when you're scrolling or you're reading a newsletter or whatever, but good copy comes from a place of storytelling. Telling your experience, telling experience of someone else you know, and relating it to the person who's listening. Right? So we don't just tell a random story for nothing. We're telling what we would do or what we experienced or how this one moment in time led you to this aha moment, which is the exact same aha moment that you want your audience to come to. So it's a lot less pushy and a lot more realistic of how we would talk to people. If you sat down with your friend and you're like, you should do this and you need to do this it's not as. It's not as friendly as saying, well, this is what I would do in your situation.

Right. So what I'm saying is marketing's a lot easier than you think. It's not this perfect string of words together. It's definitely not AI Written because it's a total giveaway every single time. When something's AI written and does not feel personal, it feels very much like a machine. Use AI to get your ideas and then write it in your own voice completely, 100% and tell your story. Show up and say this one time that I. Blah, blah, blah.

Here's what I would do if here's somebody that I helped, and this was the result. You know, I discovered this one thing when. So start thinking about your marketing from a storytelling position and an I position rather than a you position. And boy, the lights that went off in that zoom call was like, I've been doing it the other way because that's how I thought you're supposed to do marketing. Why didn't I know this this whole time? In fact, I've taken copywriting classes, and this is how they taught me. And I'm like, well, I think maybe the copywriters are wrong because I've been in some courses with some of the best known copywriters, and they teach exactly what I just told you. Tell your story from your point of view and make sure it relates to the person you're talking to. It's not random.

It's for their benefit. They need to see themselves in your story, but you don't have to be so directive to them. And the change in feeling about how they were going to do their marketing and what they were going to write was so fantastic. It was just like total light bulb moment. And I don't know why. I've never really spoken about that or taught that before, just as something that's always been natural to me. And I guess that's the problem when you're teaching is you make a lot of assumptions that everyone else knows what you know. And the truth is they don't.

This comes to art as well. I just made an assumption when I was first teaching that everyone knows how to use a palette knife. I don't need to teach how to use a palette knife. And then I go and teach a class, a workshop, in person, and I see them using a palette knife and stirring it like a teaspoon. And that's when that moment where I'm like, oh, wait, they don't know common things about a new subject. That they're unfamiliar with. You know that information. I know that information.

Teach what you know, put it out in there in the world. And now I realize this is something that I should have said a long time ago to my own students is how to write copy or how to just tell a story about yourself that people will stop and listen to and feel connected with. And that is a huge shift for all of us. Another thing I just want to just mention, this isn't like any advice. One thing that I'm really excited to see, what's different now within my community than was the first couple of years I was teaching this. As we move towards using ads to grow our list so much faster now, some within months once they get that juicy lead magnet they've built up where their newsletter is and then they start running ads and their growth is super fast. Even at just like $5 a day or five pounds a day, which is very doable when you're new to this, that growth is essential. And so to just see even the beginners, the people who just started their business using this and growing their lists fast, it's really exciting.

I don't teach the specific ins and outs of how to run the ads, like how to put the pixel in and how to get into meta and do all of that. But I do help people with the concepts and the words and the landing page and the whole flow through so that they know what assets or creatives they need in order to run ads. And I'm just so excited to see so many of them are making waves by running ads and so getting to that quicker than we ever did before. That's wonderful. That's faster growth. It's. It's almost feels like a cheat code when you can't break through the algorithm. You know, your time is money too.

Then spending a little extra to start growing your list is so worth it. So that's exciting to me. Honestly, it's amazing to me. And the last thing off the record we were discussing is the excitement to do more things. This is working. And I have this idea and I'm going to add this thing in and I like to do one of these every single year, which is adding a new product to an already big library of products. And I had to pause and say, I love that. I love the energy you bring and I love the fact that you can execute it so efficiently and beautifully.

But remember when we began, you had an aha moment where all roads lead to your one thing. Everything you do needs to lead to that. So every Time you add another thing to your library of courses, you're detracting from the most important goal. So which is a little bit of a, a hard pill to swallow. But she was like, oh yeah, that's right. I just got so excited. And I mean the truth of the matter is is her main thing has doubled in size since we began and that was less than a year ago. Doubled her income, to be honest.

And so that's my advice to you. I'm going to change this last little bit of the podcast on my work in progress from my back, back pocket advice because I don't have time to give you a full rundown of some of the great ideas on this format. So I'd rather just create longer format podcasts, telling you some of the ideas I have incomplete. Like this week I was doing niche clinics and I wanted to like dive deep into how niche is too niche. That's what I was going to talk about today. Maybe I'll do that as a recording for next Wednesday because it really deserves more than a four minute clip. Right. So I'm switching this last piece of work in progress to your call to action because if there's one thing I know, we need accountability and we need to know the direction which we need to head in order to build the business.

So I'm going to do call to action. Your a B advice, A for people who are a little more advanced in their business and B for those who are beginners. So here's my advice. Your call to action. If you are a little more advanced and you've already started something, make it work really well before you add anything more to your to do list. So if you're already running Instagram and YouTube before you go and say I'm going to add TikTok onto this, improve, make YouTube phenomenal. See how big you can grow it, how many people you can get to click through and get on your list, how many views you can get. Improve your thumbnails.

This is an example. Or before you go and add another course to your list, have you made sure that the courses that you have there have the best sales page, the best leads to get in there, the best after sale service like the right kinds of automation so that the students feel welcomed, improve that first before you add something new. That's my advice for all of you who are a little bit more further along in the journey. But for you beginners, this is where I want you to start with just two simple things. I want you to sign up for an email service provider and start practicing on Instagram. It doesn't even matter if you know where you're going with this. The fact that we have to master these skills means that we need to practice these skills. So start it now, don't wait until tomorrow.

This should have been done yesterday. Go and sign up. I don't care who you use, I don't have a preference. Mailchimp, convertkit, Flodesk built into an all in one. It doesn't matter, right? It doesn't really truly matter. Maybe you have Squarespace and they have a built in email list provider, something. Just sign up for it. There's a lot of them that give you free to a certain point.

Get that set up, follow their tutorials on how you verify your email address and then start a list and start growing it and start working on improving your reach on Instagram. What reel is going to work, what message is going to work, what images are going to work. And just work on those two things right now and it'll set you up so much better for the future. Even if you don't know what your offer is going to be, even if you don't know what your product's going to be, we can pivot, but you've got to get it started. Okay? So that's my advice, my call to action to you. If you've been interested in Build it. Remarkable. And you're listening to this before August 4th of 2025, come and message me because right now I have a pre sale going on just for the wait list with a discount and an early bird bonus.

And you really you're going to want to be there. And if not, if you're not sure yet, just mark your calendar for the last week of August. Monday through Friday. I'm going to do a five day challenge and it's going to show you the steps that you need to take so that you can make more sales. It'll be totally worth it. Even if you're unsure if you want to join my program, it'll at least give you the seeds to start where you want to go. All right, so thank you so much for being here, my friends, for listening to me today. This is such a joy and I hope that you enjoy it too.

Maybe you could like review or share the podcast. Thank you for joining me on the Made Remarkable podcast with Kelly Wynn. I will see you next week.