Katrina Sawa has a no-nonsense approach to developing consistently profitable businesses, and supports entrepreneurs in implementing proven marketing and business strategies to create thriving businesses while living a life they love. 

She sees business leaders spreading themselves too thin, wearing all the hats and covering all promotion channels in an effort to grow their business, and she has a message for all of them: 

“Stop working so hard!”

In this episode we discuss

• To niche or not to niche 
• Understanding the flow of business to start building revenue 
• The trouble with trying to do everything, all at once 
• How boundaries and systems prevent burnout 
• Maintaining your positive mindset in a negative environment 
• The power of wanting more (because you deserve it!) 

Katrina is the international best-selling author of 17 books, a publisher, speaker and the founder of the International Speaker Network, a free, educational, networking group with thousands of members. She’s been featured on the Oprah and Friends XMRadioNetwork, ABC, and TheCW. Katrina was awarded the National Collaborator of the Year Award by the Public Speakers Association and a 2-time Nominee for the Wise Woman Award by the National Association of Women Business Owners.

Visit www.JumpstartYourBizNow.com/freetrainings for free videos and training resources to help you jumpstart your business.

Susi: Welcome back for another episode of Happified. This is an episode coming to you from the podatorium extension, if you will, Katrina and I connected at Podalooza recently and have decided to get together and have a conversation, share this with you. We might even get it to go a little deeper than than was available in the context of that terrific event, where I connected with so many phenomenal speakers, coaches, and people who are making waves in the world. 

So let me introduce you to Katrina Sawa. She is the CEO and founder of JumpstartYourBizNow.com. She’s lovingly known as the Jumpstart Your Biz coach, because she kicks her clients into high gear, making more money, doing what they love and fast. She’s the creator of the Jumpstart Your Marketing and Sales system, 10 X international, 10 time international bestselling author with 17 books, including “Love Yourself Successful,” “Jumpstart Your New Business Now,” and “Jumpstart your _” book series. Katrina’s also the CEO of Jumpstart Publishing, where she helped entrepreneurs, publish books that generate more clients and revenue.

And she’s the founder of the International Speaker Network, a free educational networking group with thousands of members. Katrina, thanks for hopping online with me and bringing your wisdom to the show. I appreciate it. 

Katrina: Thank you, Susi. Good to be here. 

Susi: And I love the breadth of what you bring to your clients, to your business and the way that you show up in the world.

I kind of qualify myself as a multipotentialite, since I heard that defined on a Ted X talk, I resonate with that. And so I appreciate that- well, I think it’s easy for people who are building a business, for entrepreneurs to be intrigued by, be passionate about a number of different things. And I think it looks like that’s something that you can relate to too.

So how do you and your work help people create a business that’s aligned with what they want to be creating for themselves when there are so many appealing things that can draw us in every kind of direction. 

Katrina: Well, that’s a loaded question. And all the things I do is a culmination of actually 20 years in business.

So I didn’t start them all at once. Right. I started out helping small business owners with their marketing because I was in advertising sales when I left. And that’s where I met a whole bunch of small business owners, brick and mortars, and anybody like all on the chamber of commerce. 

This was before social media, so what you would do is go to a local networking chamber and BNI and all those. And so I’m, I just started doing marketing and then I was like, well, I do much more than marketing. And I learned from other coaches and masterminds, you know, I do more about business too, even though they were trying to get me to niche down into just be the followup queen, because I was so good at following up from events and things like that.

I said no to the niche. And I went bigger and wider with my expertise and because I thought it was doing people a disservice, frankly. By just teaching them follow up one thing. And when, when you need to know these 462 things about running a business and mastering your business and making a lot of money.

It seems silly for me to talk about one thing. And so I refused the niche and I probably would have been making millions of dollars faster, but whatever. But then like, I didn’t even want to be an author back then. I had no, like, why would I, why would I write, why would I take a bunch of time to write a book that’s going to sell for 15 or $20 when I can sell something for 200, 2000 or $20,000?

That just seems silly to me. And then I saw my friends, five or six years into my business, getting speaking gigs and PR and getting clients after they read their book and getting more authority and I’m like, oh, okay, well, that’s a good reason to write a book then. Okay. So I started doing chapters in books and and then wrote my own, and then now I help publish because it’s addicting.

It’s a big thing, but they all flowed together, right. And the speaking thing, that’s because speaking is the fastest path to cash. So because I’m a speaker to grow my business and get leads, I do a lot of free speaking like this podcast or my, my own events or other events. I mean, speaking is a logical fit.

So in my mind, they all flow together. It’s not like I have multi businesses. They all go together because every entrepreneur needs to grow their business and their revenues, needs to speak, and most likely needs that up as well. 

Susi: At the right stage- 

Katrina: At the right stage, yeah. It should not be writing your own book when you have no money to your name and you don’t have a job.

So please do the money-making activities first. And then when you have money coming in on a consistent basis, then you can focus on the full book. In my opinion. 

Susi: I think that’s really helpful. As I was sharing briefly, before we hopped on the air, observed a lot of people who are sharing their expertise in the business of building your business.

And they all say you have to “start here”, which is completely different. You have to start with a book, you have to start with a high-end signature program. You have to start with this. So and while this episode might have a lot of great nuggets for entrepreneurs, I think even if you are employed, even if you’re working with a business, if you’re just thinking, what else could I do with myself rather than clock in and out every week, there are some nuggets that you’re going to be able to take away from this conversation as well.

Just in terms of, there are a lot of people who are very forthcoming with advice, especially, you know, in this space where if you give away free information, you’ll collect clients who start paying you, right? So there’s lots of free trainings, free webinars that seed something, trying to lead you to go deeper with them.

And it’s been a process for myself to get clear on what really aligns with my own priorities and not trying to do all the things at the same time and spreading myself too thin. Do you find that to be a lot of a common issue with the folks that you connect with, who are struggling to feel successful in their businesses?

Katrina: Oh yeah, they do too much. And because they you’re, there’s so much noise out there. Everybody is telling you do this, do that, do this, do that, so you made this huge laundry list of 462 things that you need to do in addition to learn, and you don’t necessarily need to do them all. So depending on what your goals are, I mean, if you are in business, your goal should be to get in front of more people in more ways so that you can, they can experience you in some way.

So they want to hire you. Period. End of story. You don’t need to do a whole lot. You can speak, you can- I say, pick a lane when it comes to your marketing. I said this like a year ago, and I keep saying it because the social media world is out of control. And we, as the consumers and users of social media, we have zero control on our profiles and pages and things like that account.

We have zero control of who sees what, when and why, right. Because of all the algorithms. So. You either have to love social media and want to hang out there like three to four hours a day to getting leads and nurturing your group, your groups, and your followers and private messaging people and going live and staying in your lane and, and really educating and entertaining people there.

You really have to spend a lot of time there, or you could go the networking and speaking route in person or virtual. I say pick a lane. You don’t need to do a hundred percent in both these days. You can pick one. I have chosen the speaking and networking lane because I’ve always been a networker. I am not a fan of hanging out on social media.

Now I’m there a lot. I also have a team. I delegate stuff, but I’m there most of the time doing stuff myself. But if I really wanted my groups to grow, I have a lot of groups on there, I would be in there all day long. I have friends that have tens of thousands of people in their group because that’s their main focus.

So I would say stop doing, trying to be a hundred percent in both lanes and pick a darn lane and just be really good at it. Okay. And then if you’re not in your own business, just be careful with- Like, my husband has a job and he’s on Facebook, first thing. And he wants to spout out all the news, quote- unquote news stories that he hears every morning.

I’m like, where’d you hear that? Like, is there proof? Like, is it really happening? Right? He tells me all these things and he lives by it in the morning where I want to talk to him in the morning, before he goes to work. I want to have conversation. And all he wants to do is tell me what’s going on in his stream of consciousness Facebook.

So be careful where you’re spending your time. You know, I mean, if you have a job. You probably use social media as a personal outlet, right? Which is fine. I’m on there for business though. My friends know to text me or call me because I don’t even see my actual girlfriends’ feeds anymore, cause it’s too full of business stuff, but that’s okay ,I don’t want to like, hang out with them. My husband sees my girlfriend’s feeds, I see my business stuff.

Susi: Yeah. I think that is something to, to recognize, if you have a friend and you’re supporting them and growing their own business, understand that their feed is full of a bunch of stuff that has more to do with business than personal and pleasure, 

Katrina: Yeah, private message is best. 

Susi: Yeah. Yeah. Private message is best, and even emails are kind of risky, cause that inbox is overflowing. 

Katrina: Well, the emails do you have to look at spam and trash. You have to look at your spam, trash and promotional folder on a daily basis, you guys. And clean it out of course, with the garbage. But I, even my own emails fall into my damn spam box, okay. So like you have to look for things there.

I know a couple of friends that fall in my trash all the time, like business connections. And when I send them an email then I’m always looking for their reply in my trashcan, you have to do that. You have to do that. 

Susi: Yeah. So there are some, there’s some housekeeping that we, that we learn along the way, so we stop missing things. And I, and I want to go back to what you were saying too about, there is a lot of that advice to niche down, to be the guru of one narrow lane. And so you were the queen of followup and everyone said, oh, that’s what people will really come to you for. And while you acknowledged, perhaps that might’ve been like the secret to faster millions, had that been what you could stick with. There’s so much more to it. And so I appreciate that while you were getting advice, that could be very valuable. A lot of people really stick with that or when they can niche down, they discover that they can talk more directly to the people they want to cultivate.

I appreciate that what you were seeing was that it wasn’t enough of the solution that you wanted to bring to your client. 

Katrina: Yeah, I followed my gut. You know, I followed my gut. My gut told me no, don’t do that. Like, they need to know everything about how everything flows together. So it’s a smooth running moneymaking business machine.

And I, so I didn’t listen to my coaches right, when they told me to do this other thing. I’m not saying to do that, because usually your coaches are very smart and mine were smart, but they were also after the money. So, and I’m while I want to make lots of money, don’t get me wrong. I also wanted to live my truth and live what I know I needed to do on this planet.

So rather than just following the money and being kind of happy with what I was doing, I chose what I really wanted to be purposeful and passionate doing. And while it’s taken a lot longer to make multiple six figures and, you know, get to that money at least I’m there. Now it needs to be bigger. It’s always needs, you always need more. 

You always want to want more. You need to want more. I love, love sharing that message because too many people are settling for 80,000 a year or a hundred thousand a year or less, or they’re in a job at 150 and they’re going, this is great. I can never start my own business, cause how am I supposed to ever make $150,000? Which is totally possible by the way, if you open your eyes, but they stay there, and then maybe they don’t like their job so they’re like staying in a hell for 150,000 a year. That’s just not a good idea. The grass is always greener. You just don’t know what you don’t know. That’s what I say. 

Susi: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I love to explore that a little bit further, um, wanting more, the power of that. Are you a fan of super specific goals, the real Rockefeller Institute, like quarterly and crunching your numbers every week? Or where do you fall on that? How do you help inspire your clients to have vision that pulls them forward.

Katrina: I wish I was a little bit more specific with those smart goals and all that kind of stuff. I just tell people to go bigger. I’m all about living bigger. Live big means how to live the life you really truly want with the family and loved ones that you’re meant to have, happiness, the health and the money.

Right. So I, I just think bigger numbers for my clients, and then I show them how to get there. So we don’t necessarily crunch the numbers of what has happened. We crunch the numbers of what’s possible and what else they can do and show them, you know, by raising your rates or having a higher end program or doing this or that instead of this. You know, doing that instead of this how can bring them a lot more revenue and more fulfillment.

Susi: Yeah, and I appreciate, as you’re saying, you know, the things that we want, there’s connections and relationships. There’s happiness, there’s health. Oh. And successes on the list. Of course we need that green energy to thrive, but it’s not the only goal that we’re working towards too. Do you remind your clients of that or how do you, when people struggle with balance?

I mean, in, in every aspect of, of doing work and finding space for ourselves, I think people- Well, first of all, do you, do you consider balance a myth or an ongoing definition. 

Katrina: One of my clients is a life coach for coaches. And she talks about business life harmony, not balance. Harmony is different, cause it could be different levels. Balanced means it’s usually equal. And I don’t agree with equal. My business is my life and my life is my business. But I also know how to set boundaries and not allow my clients to take over my schedule. And to, you know, do business when I want to do business. 

So I think boundaries is very important and you can mesh your business and your personal. You know, before my husband had his current job, he used to help me at my events and do the audio visual.

And he’s a voiceover artist too. So he, he would be intertwined with it, even my step-daughter, you know, would stuff and fold envelopes and, you know, things for me to grow the business, although she’s not a fan of it. And now she’s getting to the age where she wants to make some money. So I’m like, you want to make some money, I got some jobs for ya. 

Yeah. So balance, I don’t know. I would say harmony and it’s okay to mix that. You know, like if I want to come in late to work one day, because my husband’s off in the morning, so we can hang out and go in the hot tub or whatever, right? We’ll do that. If I want to take off in the afternoon early, because I want to take my kid out to get ice cream or go shopping, or I dunno, just relax because I work hard, then do it.

You can’t feel guilty. We have to get rid of the guilt. We have to give ourselves permission to do what we need to do and what we want to do. But you also have to have that smooth running moneymaking business or career, that financial, you know, in order to make that happen. Otherwise you’re constantly on the hamster wheel turning and burning and that’s no life, right?

Susi: Yeah, definitely not moving you any closer to any picture of balance. I like harmony. I mean, I personally think that, you know, it’s like a teeter totter. It changes depending on the state, but I really like the analogy of harmony. So that might be something I start to play with too. And so you mentioned the importance of boundaries, and I think this is really important in what I see, the way people start being run by the stress in their lives because they haven’t identified where their boundaries are, or they have trouble maintaining them because some people are stronger and roll right over those. How do you keep on re-establishing the same thing. And you talk about feelings of guilt too. So how do you, when you’re working with clients, and you get to see something like that.

Like they don’t have the boundaries to help them find that space for themselves. They’re at risk of burning out. How do you encourage them to take care of themselves? 

Katrina: Yeah. It’s different for everybody. I mean, I’ve had a client who came to me and hadn’t had a vacation in seven years that she had her business, right? 

And so the number one goal was to free up some of her time and get her business- because she couldn’t, if she left the business, she wasn’t making money that week, right? So she needed to hire someone and she had to get, first of all, she had to become aware that she needed to hire someone, then she had to become agreeable that she actually needed to hire someone. 

And then she had to actually find the person to hire and train. And then of course they needed to get trained. And then you have to make them happy so they don’t leave. And so, you know, it took a little time, but for her, we finally got her to a 10 day vacation. I think it was within a year of working together. So that’s not that long considering she had like, had to hire an employee, get all those things in place, right. The other people, you know, have to set boundaries because they have, I have another client who has three kids in the household, three small kids in the household.

Right, and they run circles around her. She just, I just saw a post on Facebook that she’s like, how come when my husband leaves the kids don’t wonder where he goes, but when I leave for 30 seconds to go to the bathroom they’re running around the house trying to find me everywhere, right? And so, like I thought that was just perfect because especially if you work from home, whether you’re a career or a business you have to figure out how to set the boundaries of your workplace and when this time, and when it’s not time, like I don’t have a door on my office.

I have an office space when we built, or when we bought this house, we had a huge front room and we didn’t need a big formal, you know, living room. So we broke it into two. A bar room, yay, and my office. But we didn’t even think to put doors in it, cause my husband had a job. This was before COVID, and my daughter was at school and then a year and a half later COVID hit, and everybody was home. And I’m like, agh. So then I’m speaking really loud, all my things and all my noise and everything, all my calls, and they’re like over here and having to be really quiet. So it was really hard. I dunno, now I’m going off on a tangent, but everybody is so different and you have to look at your life.

You have to look at who’s in your life. You have to- One of the biggest things I think you said was how do you tell those people that are stomping all over your boundaries to back off. My girl’s in a karate, she’s like, and they taught her to say, stop back off. I want to say stop back off.

Right? Like if you only want to work from nine to five and you have a little lunch break, then you say, look between nine and five, look at the clock, kids, or whatever, husband, like, you can’t bother me. Or slip a note under the door or, you know, come quietly and slip a note at my desk or something. Yeah. 

Susi: Yeah. It’s a trick. It takes some training and it definitely, these last few years have been- a lot, to learn how to share space. 

Katrina: For a lot of people. Yeah. They, I mean we even said, well now we need a bigger house because of the way- first of all, or get me a door, you know, and it’s three for three grand to make a door. I’m like, okay, well just go back out and get the job so that I don’t have to worry about it.

Susi: My husband jokingly calls it my cone of silence. Every day, he gets a briefing and I’m like, okay, this is what I need the cone of silence. Because I work in our living room, so yeah. 

Katrina: Yeah. Yeah so, I mean, get a bigger house. This is why you want more. If you need bigger space and you need your own space, and you’re now working from home, whether you have a job or a business, you need your own space.

You need your own space. I mean, I have beautiful space. I have red walls and hearts and love and everything on here, my computer- or my printers in the other room, it used to be next to me. Oh my God yuck. I don’t want to printer next to me. That’s ugly space. Now I have the books and the fun things and the empowering inspirational things, right. 

Create your space. If you need a bigger house or more money to do that, then go make more money.

Susi: First things first. I like that you’re super clear on the basics.

Katrina: It can be that easy if you know what you’re doing. Yeah. Even if you’re in a career. You can find a better job or you can do real estate investing or some other something on the side that doesn’t have to take a long time of your time. But go make more money, set yourself up. 

Susi: So one of the titles of your books grabs me and I’d love to hear a little bit more about “Love Yourself Successful”.

Katrina: Yes. That’s my most popular book, 

Susi: Because we all need to work on that. Why is that so hard? Loving ourselves? 

Katrina: I wrote it 2012 and then I just launched the second edition this, this year. So I updated it, 

Susi: Congratulations, ten year anniversary.

Katrina: Updated it a lot. And added an update chapter. Cause people kept asking me, well, now what’s going on with you?

Because it ended, I think with a heartbreak and my personal life wasn’t complete. And this is when you know, well, this is why people don’t publish their full book because the story is never done, right. So I finally just had to cut it off and say, okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen in my love life or whatever, with the love stuff. 

So I talked a lot about the four types of love that everybody needs to focus on in order to make more money in their business or career in that book and it talks about, you know, giving yourself permission to want more, that you’re worth it, you deserve it. 

And to get rid of those toxic people and the people that might love you and you might love them, but they’re toxic to your energy. Or they hold you back because their own limiting beliefs. Don’t let somebody else’s limiting beliefs self-sabotage you, you know. 

You have to have a conversation with these kinds of people and tell them, look, you have to keep your opinions to yourself because I don’t agree with your thinking. And that is like small thinking, limited thinking, whereas I’m in an abundance thinking, and so, you know, keep your opinions to yourself. Or grow with me and come on, let’s go and do some self development and get over it. 

Susi: Back to the boundaries conversation. Right? 

Katrina: Right. Yeah. 

Susi: People do- my husband’s a bit of a ruminator. He feels he’s better prepared by chewing on all the worst possible outcomes.

And so we have that conversation, sometimes we go round. 

Katrina: Yeah. The, I mean the devil’s advocate, I’m kind of the devil’s advocate. If you do this, then this is going to happen, but I do it quickly and we make a decision and we move on. Because money follows speed.

Susi: Such a writer. You’ve got some good- yep, dropping some pearls right there. Money follows speed. If you want to know more about that, you’re going to have to stay connected with Katrina. And we should let folks know how to find you. We’ll have your links in the show notes, but how can people connect with you and see what you’re sharing, and learn more about your books, et cetera.

Katrina: The website’s a great place to start. There’s all kinds of free trainings there, there’s books. I got stuff for free to thousands of dollars. So however you want to play, you know, come play. YouTube is great. I have tons of funny videos over there. Facebook is where I hang out. If I’m on social, so yeah. 

Susi: I’m with you. I’m with you. I don’t, I really can’t get myself to spend time over on Instagram. So Facebook is the place, but as a speaker, I imagine you do have some terrific content over there on YouTube. So I love “YouTube university”. Great way to get some inspiration. 

Katrina: Yeah. Watch you listen to though.

Some people are great marketers. And you can get squirreled really easily. You got to- oh, you asked this earlier. You said this earlier, how do you know who to follow? Cause there’s a lot of noise too. And I think you need to dig deeper or find out, really make sure that people are, especially if it’s someone like a business coach, make sure they’re making money at the stuff they’re teaching you to do or teaching people to do.

And they’re not just spouting stuff that they haven’t proven or done for years and years. And there’s a lot of newbies out there that are great at marketing and look really good on paper, but they don’t know what they’re doing or they teach one thing and they have no idea about these other things. So be careful.

Susi: Yeah. So like you were saying at the beginning, recognizing sure you could provide people brilliant solutions for powerful follow-up when we get to that part of the game, but a lot of people haven’t even gotten to that point yet. And so let’s share some real valuable information and help people at all aspects of their business.

Katrina: Yeah. 

Susi: Yeah. Great way to, to go in with your eyes open and pay attention to who it is, who you’re tuning into. Terrific. Is there anything else we haven’t had a chance to explore while we’ve been chatting that you’d like to share? 

Katrina: Well, I know you’re all about less stress, more happiness. I am too. Like stop working so hard.

Stop working so hard please. Like whether you have a job or a business, sometimes your to-do list is so long and you will work and work and work for hours thinking that it matters. And it doesn’t. 

What matters is that you get in front of enough people more often, in more ways and you entertain and educate them enough to want them to want more. Okay. And then they buy from you, period. End of story. 

So just simplify, you have to simplify, you don’t have to add more in this day and age, you need to really simplify and focus in order to make a lot of money and make a bigger impact and stop working so hard. 

Susi: I like that. I think, I think that’s absolutely an essential point because it is so easy to see, oh, well, they’re doing that really well, and they’re doing that really well. Without even recognizing, even as we take all this in, that they may or may not be mastering every aspect of every channel. And if they are, they probably have a great team. 

Katrina: Right. I have a great team. People think, do you ever sleep Katrina? And I’m like, are you kidding me? Of course, I sleep hours a night. Like I have a great team. I have systems , I have technology. You must embrace technology. 

Even if you don’t have a business, you gotta use technology. For your invites to your parties, for managing your own personal database, for sending out cards on the holidays for, you know following up with people when people die, I have like a stack of books that my client wrote on growing through grief. I have a system for when I hear somebody’s loved one passed away, they get a book and a card and I ship it off.

So there’s systems for everything if you look at it. I’m all about efficiency, productivity, and profitability, really. If you don’t have a business, you can still do some of these things. You should see my house, it’s hella organized. I mean, the pantries, the bathroom, I drive my teenager crazy. No, this goes here that goes there and she can never remember, and I don’t understand why. It’s like, pay attention, this goes here. I’ve told you 420 times. Stop it.

Susi: It’s true though. It’s so true. Efficiency pays off in spades. Once you get some systems in place. And a lot of times I hear people, and I catch myself of course, too, say well, I don’t have the time to do that. I don’t have the time to organize that, but when are you going to fix ,it when it’s broken and you’re trained to do it the wrong way.

And this is another really great set of tools that you have on your website. So that free training that you mentioned, that’s where people can come and get some ideas here and resources on how to be efficient, be optimized in your systems.

Terrific. Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. I hope that people take this information in and, and as you said connect with what resonates, put some things into practice, focus on what matters, grow that business and think about what you want to grow into.

Yeah, thanks for jumping on air with me today. Glad you could join me. I appreciate your flexibility. And I look forward to talking with you again soon. Take good care.