AMPLIFY Your Brand and Business

217 | Massive Growth Requires Messy Action

• Krista Marie • Episode 217

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We put so much pressure on ourselves to make every new service launch flawless: perfect pricing, perfect workflows, perfect offer. But the reality is, you have to let yourself launch 'messily' if you want to be able to refine it and turn it into an offer that brings in substantially more money and clients.

In today’s episode, I’m walking you through how to create offers that you and your clients LOVE, and that transform the financial future of your business. 

Because having a business that brings in consistent high income isn’t about having perfectly successful launches — it’s about having the courage to launch something new and messy and feel confident WHILE doing it.

Inside this episode, we’re covering:

  • Why your V1 doesn’t need to be perfect (it just needs to exist)
  • The mindset shifts that make launching feel less daunting
  • How to navigate through a messy launch when it starts to feel overwhelming
  • The permission you need to take messy action and start launching the offers that have been on your heart

I can't wait for you to tune in, and I'd love to hear your takeaways! Send me a DM @heykristamarie and let's connect. 


Loved the episode? Have a topic or guest host request? Send me a text message!


Ways we can work together:

I'D LOVE TO CONNECT WITH YOU!

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to Amplify Your Brand and Business, the podcast that helps you create a brand that sells out your offers 24-7 so you don't have to. In today's episode, I want to take you a little bit behind the scenes into what has been happening in my business recently and the growth, but I also want to talk about the side of growth that I feel like people don't really talk about. I feel like on social media you hear people talking about scaling and growing and like tripling your income, tripling your clients. And then no one actually talks about what that does to your nervous system, what that feels like in the moment, how it feels to all of a sudden get an influx of new clients and how that actually affects your mindset, affects your like your mental, emotional systems, and how to continue working through all of that, processing all of it so that you can continue to handle the growth that's coming your way. And so I want to bring you a little bit behind the scenes and also talk through what I'm currently doing to navigate a season of growth and also to talk through how to embrace the chaos, how to embrace the messiness of everything that happens behind the scenes when you're growing, so that you can refine it, so that you can streamline it and make it better and simplify your processes. But we have to go through this first messy period anytime we want to launch something new, whether it's a new product or new service. We have to go through this messy phase and we have to let it be messy and also figure out how to survive and work through and process the mess in order for it to be something that's sustainable on the other end. And if we haven't met yet, I'm Krista Marie. I'm a brand strategist and a brand photographer for women business owners. And over the last five plus years, I've coached hundreds of women inside this podcast, inside communities and programs. And in each podcast episode, I'm here to help you create a brand that does the heavy lifting for you. The brand that has people coming to your website, to your Instagram, and saying, Oh my gosh, you're speaking directly to me. No one's saying it like this. I feel like I can instantly connect with you. How do I pay you? Like that's the type of intimacy we want to create and connection inside of your brand. And part of that intimacy, part of that growing connection, part of that building a connection and a deeper connection with your ideal clients is doing things like this, sharing behind the scenes, talking about the ways that you're growing, the way that you're thinking about your new services, your launches, um, how you want your business to grow. Like bringing people behind the scenes is such an important part of building a deeper connection with your dream clients. And so, as I mentioned, so the business has really 2025, if I'm being honest with you, has been a year of exponential growth inside of the business. And it was something that I did not necessarily plan for. Uh, to be completely honest with you, I actually knew how much travel and uh just how much I was gonna be like not working from home and working remotely and working from other places and just travel in general. I've had so many trips throughout the year that I actually didn't think that this was going to be a very big season of growth for me if I'm being totally real with you. As most of us do, I started 2025 with the goal of like this is gonna be the year that, you know, like I really feel like everything takes off and everything I've worked so hard for like really starts to showcase and like come to fruition. I just didn't actually know that it was gonna happen. I didn't know that it was gonna happen so quickly, and I didn't know it was gonna happen kind of all at once. And here's the thing, right? Is that I I'm here to celebrate that. And I want you to celebrate any big moments of growth that you have in your business when you have an influx of clients, when you have people coming to you asking no questions and just knowing you're the person for them, when you have these milestones in your business, yes, of course, celebrate them. And also, can we talk about what it does to us internally? Can we talk about how overwhelming can it can feel to our nervous system to all of a sudden have a new influx of clients that we don't really have support for? Right. For so many of us, if you're listening in, you're probably like me, we're a one-woman show. Like I, it is me, my business. I do my social media, I do my marketing, I do the actual service providing of my businesses, both website design, brand photography, uh, brand strategy, I record the podcast episodes, I edit the podcast episodes, I share the podcast episodes. Like I am the person who does everything in my business. And so when I launched my new offer for website design, I guess that was like two months ago, maybe not even a month and a half, two months ago, um, I didn't know that it was going to take off as quickly as it did. I was, of course, so thrilled. In my first week of launching it, within five days, I booked out my beta launch. Like I had five people that were interested, which was so exciting. I booked five people in five days. And one thing I noticed is that for website design, almost everybody that I asked them, okay, what, you know, when do you want to have your website done? Almost all of them said, like, as soon as possible. And having it be a new offer, having so much excitement around it, me in a very silly, was like, okay, great. Sounds good. And so I brought on all these clients and I did space them out, but essentially it was like one after another. It was like, okay, I'll complete this website and then I move immediately into completing this one, and then immediately into completing this one. And not realizing how much bandwidth that would take up, obviously, I feel fairly comfortable with building websites. I've done it for the last 15 years as I've been a business owner. I've created multiple websites for myself and tweaked and designed multiple templates. And so I feel very confident with that, but it's very different when you're doing something for yourself versus when you're doing something for somebody else. And maybe you felt that in your business too. Like if you are going to launch a new service and you're like, well, I do this for myself all the time. Like this should be fairly simple. Like I, I, you know, I know so much about this. Like I feel like I'm somewhat of an expert. I know that I have resources and knowledge that can support my clients. And then you start doing it and you realize, oh, it's very different when you start doing something for other people because now you have other people's inputs, you have other people's perspectives, you have other people's design requests or like creative requests that you're now having to navigate that you didn't necessarily have to do when you were making decisions for yourself. And so I want to first talk about this. There's a very fine line. If you have a new service that you want to launch in your business, if you've been thinking about wanting to create a new offer or a new way of supporting your clients, there's a really fine line between letting a new idea simmer and like take shape and take form and get clarity on what that offer is going to be versus putting it off until it's perfect. And what do I mean by this? When I was first thinking about creating uh this new website design offer, I had the idea. I did, I will say I acted on it pretty quickly. I have over the years learned how to read my kind of like my gut and my intuition. And most, most of the time I'd say it points me in fairly the right direction. Um, but I knew, I knew I needed to let it sit for like a week. I knew I wasn't, I didn't have the idea and immediately put it on social media because anytime I have done that, anytime I've acted too quickly, like I have an idea and I immediately put it out there. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it doesn't. And so I've kind of learned it's like this 50-50 gamble. And so now, whenever I have an idea, I like to let it simmer for a minute, you know, I like to let it sit on it for a couple of days. And I'm very intentional when I have a new idea. One of my main goals for like the first week of having this new idea is giving myself lots of space where I am detached from my computer. So anytime I have a new idea, if I have a new offer that I want to provide to my clients, I intentionally carve out space in my week to do things like go for a walk or take a hot bath and like literally just listen to music or for my walks a lot of time. I don't even put in my headphones. I'm just listening to the birds. I'm like hearing the ambiance, the noise. Like I let myself just sit with myself and with my thoughts. And I don't even intentionally think about the offer. I think that's the other thing. When I have a new offer, something I want to launch, I don't overthink about it because I know if I overthink about it, I'm blocking all ways of creativity. So the first thing I want to recommend to you, if you have something that you want to launch, if something feels really exciting, if it feels really new, it might feel really good for you to immediately talk about in social media. And if that's your thing, absolutely go for it. If you're like, I don't know that I'm ready to share it yet, I feel like I need to let this simmer, give yourself a week and carve out intentional time where you have quiet space. I like to on my walks, I literally just like take in the moment. I take in the sights, I take in the surroundings, I practice gratitude around where I am in my life, like where I physically am in the walk. I like to look around and like practice gratitude for things, but I also let my thoughts like just flow in and out. Sometimes I'll think about the offer and then I'll think, hmm, that's an interesting thought, and then I'll move on to something else. Like I don't try to control my thoughts, I let them go where they want to go, but I almost every time I will swear to you, my walks and getting massages are the two places where I feel like my creativity absolutely thrives. And it's, I know it's because I'm I'm quieting everything else. I'm letting myself relax. I'm letting myself not actually work and think about things. So that was the first thing I did is I let it simmer. And then the second thing I did is I learned. I learned from someone else because I was launching something that I have done before, but again, I'd only ever done for myself. I've I'd only ever created something for myself. And I needed to learn, well, how do I create a process that's gonna work for clients? How can I start to prepare myself for, well, what resources do I need to have for them? What education do I need to provide for them? What questions do I need to be aware of that they're potentially gonna ask? Like, what do I need to know in order to take this and make it successful for bringing it to clients? But just as there's a fine line between letting it simmer and letting it trying to get it to be perfect, there's also a fine line from learn from others, but also trust yourself and trust your gut. So one thing I knew is I invested in a few resources from a very known, well, uh, a very well-known web designer. Her name is Becca Luna. I am, I'll be honest, I found her. And within 24 hours, I think I purchased her first course. And then within three days, I think I had purchased two more. Like I immediately just knew like she is the person that I want to learn from. And again, I've taken multiple other website courses in the past, but hers was really geared towards like, here's how you make this a scalable business. And so I binge them. But here's the thing, what here's what I didn't do. I didn't take her model and replicate it and say, this is exactly how I'm going to structure my business. Like right from the get-go, I already made some tweaks and changes because I knew I don't really think this process is gonna work for me. Here's what I'd like to do instead. Or I would take things and I would kind of put it through a fine-tooth comb of how would I like to do this in my business. So the second thing I want to share with you is let yourself, yes, of course, learn from other people, invest in resources. Don't just shop around for free products because you're gonna just keep getting surface level. Like, here's the things you need to focus on. I feel like all the free things are like, here's what, here's what you need to focus on, here's what you need to do, but they don't actually tell you how to do it or how to do it well. So actually go and find the people that you want to learn from, invest in their resources and let yourself do it differently. Give yourself permission to not have to follow their steps step by step exactly. And I'll be honest, when I first did that, when I created my own workflow, my own strategy for how I wanted to do it, I knew at the time, like this is just my V1 strategy. Who knows how this is actually going to feel once I launch? I had no idea, like, is this actually sustainable? Is this pricing what I want it to be? Is this going to be the amount of work I think it's gonna be? Is it gonna be more work? Like, is it gonna take me more time? Like, I didn't have any of those answers, but I went with, okay, based on my experience, based on when I've done this in the past, I'm just gonna launch this beta launch and see how it goes. Launching a beta round was so helpful because you're letting people know, hey, like this is new, you know, like this is something that I'm I'm I'm very qualified to do this. Here's how I can help you, here's what you're gonna get. You can you can say all of that confidently, but you're also sharing this is a beta round. You're gonna get a price discount. And the reason you're getting a price discount is because I'd love your feedback. I'd love a testimonial, I'd love like to know how this process goes. And so if you're thinking of launching something new, I highly recommend launching some sort of a bait around. It honestly is, it makes it less, I feel like less pressure on you because what I've noticed working with a lot of photographers over the years is that they're afraid to launch something new. Cause like, what if someone knows or finds out that I haven't been doing this for a long time? Like a lot of wedding photographers that I would work with who were just getting into the wedding photography business, when a couple would come to them and ask, like, oh, can I see your portfolio? Or like, oh, have you shot at this venue before? And they would start to get really nervous about like, oh, like, what do I say to them? And I would always tell them, like, tell them the truth. Like, why would we feel like we need to approach this with this, like a false, uh, like a false idea of like, oh yeah, I've done this forever, if you haven't actually done it, like be real with your people, be honest with your people. Like, because part of what I found with that, there's when we feel like we have to prove to other people, if someone came to you and they were like, Well, let me see your portfolio, how long have you been doing this? If you feel the need to have to prove yourself, if you feel like you have to say, Oh, well, I've been doing this for five years, even if you just started like last month, if you feel the need to do that, chances are your just general belief, your self-belief, your self-confidence is probably pretty low. When you can be real with people, when you can tell them, hey, this is new. And I also know I can support you. Hey, I'm new at this, and I know you're gonna get this bomb result. Like when you can have that level of confidence, you're gonna attract the people that you need to attract. You're gonna attract the people who are excited to work with you, and you're gonna actually feel confident in yourself because you're not trying to pretend to be someone who you're not. So be real with your people. Like, trust your gut. Don't feel like you have to follow someone else's methods like step by step. And then, and then enters the launch mode and the chaos that ensues. So uh when I launched the website, like again, I had five people book in five days, and I did all of I'm still finishing up. Well, I'm still kind of doing some of those now. So I'm on the tail end of this uh beta launch. But there was like three or four weeks where I was handling multiple projects at a time. And if I can be so real with you, I was glued to the couch, I was working 24-7, I was feeling a lot of anxiety, and I was feeling burnt out within just a couple of weeks of launching it. And I had this moment where I thought, oh gosh, like, did I make a mistake? Did I, do I actually want to do this? And I want to share a few insights with you. Number one, I realized I do want to do this, I just don't want to do it the way that I've been doing it. And so launching Messi, launching in a non-perfect way, launching before I really knew exactly what it was gonna look like was the best thing I could have done because it allowed me to actually learn, learn what's working, learn what I like, learn what needs to be tweaked and changed and adapted for future launches. But I wouldn't have been able to know any of that had I not launched Messily. I also in that moment realized that, oh, I can actually bring on support for some of these things. So inside my offer, I was doing all of it. And then as I started taking it on, I realized, oh, you know what? This part of the process I actually don't love as much. So I really love helping people refine their copy. I love taking copy and making it more impactful, making it better. What I realized I don't necessarily thrive in or love is writing copy from scratch, like taking one one or two paragraphs and turning it into an entire page of messaging. Like that is not where I want to be spending my time. I'd rather be spending my time in the design process or some of the more creative work. And so I brought someone onto my team, like literally in the last week. I brought on a dedicated SEO copywriter. And the fact is, she's gonna be able to do the copy better than I can. She has 15 years of experience of copy. And she also understands SEO. She knows how to help you rank, she knows how to like structure your uh your copy on your page, she knows what metadata, she does the research to see, you know, what your competition is doing and what you should do in order to rank. Like she, she is an expert at this. And so now I get to provide a better experience for my clients because I have someone who's gonna be doing that dedicated for them. That was never a part of my initial plan. That was never a part of my initial idea. And so I'm sharing this with you because it's so important to let yourself start it messy. And yes, there is a good chance you it might feel chaotic. Your nervous system might be like, what are you doing? This feels like chaos. I thought that I wanted a, you know, a booked-out launch, and I thought that I wanted to have all these people, but now I had them and now it feels overwhelming. What you don't want to do is to start correlating those two things because I found myself at one point, I went on a walk and I thought, oh gosh, I thought I wanted this. I thought I wanted, I wanted this launch to do well. I wanted to get a bunch of people in. I wanted to do all of this, you know, at the same time. And then I started to correlate. Well, I guess if I want to make more money, this is how it has to feel. I guess it has to feel this chaotic. Let yourself detach those things. It doesn't have to feel this way. You have the ability to make the choice of do I tweak the offer? Do I not offer this thing I thought I was going to? Do I bring someone in to help support? Do I raise the price so that I can take on support? Like, how do I want to do this in the future? But we have to be give ourselves permission to launch in the messy way so that we can then take what we learn, refine it, and then make it sustainable, make it something that's gonna work for the future. And I want you to always remember if you're thinking about launching something new, I don't want this to scare you and be like, oh my gosh, it's gonna be, it's gonna be awful and you're gonna have a crazy nervous system. Like, no, I just the reason I'm showing this, I wanted to be real and share with you this is what's been going on behind the scenes for me and what I've been working through when it has felt chaotic. I've also had launches in the past that kind of flopped. Like I had things that I thought I wanted to do and I put them out into the world, and then no one really purchased. And then that's that's a whole different conversation of like moving on from a failed launch. But I do want to talk about letting yourself feel like a beginner, giving yourself permission to not have all of the answers, giving yourself permission to launch something new and not feel like you have to be an absolute expert at it and like try to prove to other people that you're an expert at it. Like let yourself start where you are, be honest about where you're starting from, always be open to gathering information and then letting yourself understand that you have the choice to decide. Do I want to continue this way or does it need to change? Does my offer need to change? Does the way that I structure it need to change? Do I need to bring on support? Like you have the ability to decide that at any single point. But we have to let ourselves launch in a messy way first if we want to refine and make it that process that will actually be sustainable, that will help us grow, continue to grow more clients and continue to grow and scale our business. As always, thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that I can just turn on the mic and just start recording and just share with you what's going on behind the scenes for me and just knowing and trusting that someone out there is listening to this, someone out there has had a spark in their heart and something that they have been sitting on for so long that they want to launch, but they're waiting for it to be perfect. They're waiting for it to be the right time. They're waiting to feel like they have all the answers. They're waiting to gather enough free information to feel finally confident that they can launch it and put it out into the world. And I want this to be your sign. Put it out there messy. Like let yourself follow your gut, follow your intuition, trust in yourself, let yourself do it your own way, and let it be let it be a learning journey. You do not have to have it all figured out in order to put it out into the world. Thank you so much for listening in. I'm so grateful for you. I hope you remember you deserve to have a brand that does all of the selling for you. And I'll see you in the next episode.