How I streamlined my business with one powerful platform

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 Today I’m pulling back the curtain on a powerful tool that’s become the backbone of my online business and is saving me thousands of dollars a year. I’m sure you’re gonna wanna hear about it, so let’s go.

 Well, before I get started, I wanted to say a big, warm welcome back to The Clare Wood Podcast. And if this is your first time listening, welcome. It’s so wonderful to have you here. As I share in the intro, this podcast is all about how you can create more profit in your service-based business, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you about this particular tool.

When I first got started in business, I had one tool for my email marketing, another for my course hosting, another one for landing pages, and I really struggled having all of these different platforms. Now, something has shifted for me in the past few months, which is that I’ve been able to integrate everything into one platform.

So it’s now become my CRM, my email marketing, and my course and content hosting, and that platform is Kajabi. So let’s go back. Oh my gosh, it blows my mind to think I’ve been in business for nine years now, but when I first got started, I was using MailChimp for my email marketing. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

And the reason I loved MailChimp is because it was free, and I thought that was a really great thing when I first got started. I didn’t have a ton of email subscribers. I certainly didn’t have any segmentation, and it was a really fantastic place to get started. But at the time, the tech on MailChimp was quite limited, so if I wanted to set up a landing page, I had to use a different tool.

And I was using a tool called Lead Pages, which again was great, you know, all templated, easy to use. However, at the time anyway, it, it was quite expensive. It was a bit of an investment.

And I then had my website posted on WordPress. So a few years into business, I started to realize that MailChimp, and again, I know it’s developed a lot since then, but at the time it just didn’t have the tech to take my business to the next level. So I moved to another email marketing platform, which was really fantastic for many years of my business.

The tech, the capability of being able to segment the list, and I really was, you know, going quite well with that platform. It isn’t really a cheap platform, but it had served me really well up until last year, and when I was in the middle of launch, a huge tech glitch happened, which meant that I couldn’t email my email list.

Now, I get it. Tech stuff happens. Glitches are inevitable. But what really disappointed me was the complete lack of support from this platform. So the team, the customer support team, is based in the U.S. I am based in Australia, as you may be able to tell from my accent. And I would email through these requests and I wouldn’t hear back for the whole next business day. And in and of itself if they’ve come back and solved the issue, but the responses were almost comical how bad they are. These kept going back and forward, and I was waiting, you know, a full day, sometimes even two days to get a response back. And they were completely ignoring the context of the challenge.

They weren’t resolving the issue. There was no way for me to call or get in touch with the team except for sitting there waiting for emails. I was getting more and more stressed and desperate. And I dread to think how much money I lost in that launch because I just wasn’t supported at all. And it was during that period of time that I made the decision that I needed to move away from this platform because it had been years where I hadn’t needed support.

And then in this one time where it really was critical and in particular, time-critical, they just weren’t there. They weren’t contactable. So at that point in time, I made the decision, “Do you know what? I’m gonna move my email marketing, my CRM, everything over to Kajabi,” which I’d been successfully using for my courses for years.

I had moved my landing pages over there as well, and yeah, I was using the platform without any problems. So I wish that it was as simple as leave one platform and move to another. But you know, I have years and years and years of history of email sequences, of automations, of data that all needed to be migrated across.

So this process actually took months and there were quite a few challenges on that journey. But we did get there, and I was able to transition everything across to Kajabi. I was a little bit skeptical at first because the other platform, is well known for email marketing, and I was a bit like, worried, is Kajabi, being an all-in-one platform, gonna be able to replace these other tools without sacrificing the quality?

And honestly, it’s been one of the best business decisions I’ve made. So I’ve got my CRM, I’ve got my email marketing, and of course I also host my online content over there. So if you are listening and you host courses, memberships, or any other sort of digital products, or you are thinking about it at some point, Kajabi is a really fantastic place because it’s really easy to organize and deliver your content. It’s got a really professional look and feel and my courses are all organized into modules and lessons with beautiful formatting for text, video, and downloadable resources. I also, to make my courses more inclusive, I have them transcribed by AI, so I’m also able to upload the transcription into the same place.

You can either drip feed the content, or you can have it all available at the time. I sometimes also have bonuses that are available for some people but not for everyone. Again, that’s all really easy to do through Kajabi. And the cool thing is, is that everything basically is in one spot. So if people are doing the courses, they can just come in, all of the bonuses, all of the course content, the videos, etc., is all in one place.

The other thing that I’ve done for my new mastermind community, The Profit Collective, is that I’ve got ’em all to go and download the Kajabi app. And what this means is that they can actually go into the app and all of the content is right there on their phone. I know that my students, my collective members are working through a lot of my courses and I said, “You can have your phone there while you’re doing the dishes and learning at the same time.” I had considered actually creating a custom app because you can also create custom apps within Kajabi, but honestly, the one that’s inside the Kajabi app, for where I’m at right now, it’s doing such a fab job. So I’m really happy with that for now. The other great thing about Kajabi is the landing pages.

Now, I’m gonna be honest, I’m not really doing any of the work in my landing pages. That’s all my beautiful assistant, Sally, but I have had to go in and edit them at times, and it is so easy to use, like it’s all templated. It’s very easy to make tweaks, changes, move things around if you need to.

What I’ve really been surprised by, the email marketing capabilities, because it was a big shift for me to move away from my old platform, and it’s been really cool actually seeing how powerful and flexible the email marketing capabilities are in Kajabi. So there are things that you can do, like A/B testing, you can schedule your emails, check your analytics, all of those things.

Now look, I know that I am going on like a raving fan, and that’s because, like I said, it really has been a game changer for me. But I do wanna say, you know, Kajabi certainly isn’t perfect. I mean, no platform is, really. There are some limitations, and again, it depends on what you are gonna be using it for in your own business, if it’s the right fit for you, and if it’s the right fit for you at this particular stage of business.

But I would say that it is very well known as one of the leading tools in email marketing and, of course, hosting landing pages and course content by a lot of big, well-known course creators. So you might be listening to all of the tech thinking, that’s great, but it must be expensive, right? And yes, it’s certainly not the cheapest tool that’s out there, but here’s what I am loving about it: I am actually saving so much money by having everything in one spot. I am talking nearly $500 a month that I’m saving, and I’m thinking back now and I’m really annoyed at myself that I didn’t actually make the move sooner, because that’s a lot of money when you think about it, particularly across a number of years.

So yes, there was definitely a learning curve when I first made the switch, and yes, occasionally there are features that I wish were there or a little bit more customizable, but the benefits of having everything integrated in one place, for me, far outweigh those minor limitations. The workflow is smoother, my customer experience is more cohesive, and I’ve got more time to focus on my customer service experience instead of stressing about the tech and the costs. So if you have online content or courses, if you are thinking of launching a membership or some sort of online program, or if you’re simply looking for an option that can be a customer management tool that can be an email marketing platform, maybe Kajabi might be the right tool for you. Now, if you are wanting to check out Kajabi at the time of recording, they have a huge offer on, which is that at the moment you can get three months of the Kajabi, that’s the Creator Plan, which is the most advanced Creator Plan. Three months for only one payment of $99.00. Now, this is a time limited offer, which is only available until May the 23rd, 2025. I do receive a commission if you go and sign up through my link. So if you have heard about Kajabi in this episode and you’d like to go and check it out, I’d be really grateful if you could do so via the link in the show notes for this episode.

And like I said, full transparency: I am a referral partner, proud referral partner. I would never put my name to something that I don’t use and love myself, but I do get a commission if you sign up via that link. Even if you don’t wanna sign up for Kajabi, I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit more about how it’s worked for me, how it saved me time, and it’s gonna save me thousands of dollars a year having everything integrated into one platform.

So just a reminder, the offer that is currently available is three months for $99.00. Just click in the link in the show notes to sign up and go and check that out. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll catch you again in the next episode.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio