The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
What's your Magic? Exploring her German Roots and Becoming a Brand Expert with Karina Weber
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In this episode I talk to Karina Weber, also known as the Brand Architect.
We talk about her journey from Canada to Germany, where she built a flourishing marketing business, specialized in branding and carved a niche within female, service-oriented businesses struggling with branding issues.
Karina shares insightful nuggets about her unique journey, which includes a master's degree pursuit in Munich, mastering German (her Father's native language) and the challenges faced while expanding her business and utilizing social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook Ads to grow her brand and audience.
Karina talked about her experience providing free content, fine-tuning her offerings to resonate with her target market, and her innovative approach in creating a program that responds to her clients' needs.
We also talked about the pros and cons and necessity of building a location independent and travel-friendly business - especially as expats.
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. 20 plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency, freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here Now. I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. I'm here today talking to Karina Weber, also known as Karina the Brand Architect. I'm going to kick it off asking the question that I ask everybody on this podcast, which is what is the two-minute story of how you ended up in Germany? I?
Speaker 2:was basically fresh out of university had here in Canada. I went to university in Canada and came out of university and jumped right into my career here in marketing and got really tired of it quite quickly. Got tired of, I guess, the mentality that I was coming across. I've always been someone who's traveled a lot and I just got in German they say Platzungs, claustrophobic somehow within my life here in Montreal I decided I was going to go back to school. And what better way to explore the world and go back to school and meet new people and learn about different cultures and maybe learn German as well, than to go and do a master's somewhere else. So I ended up going to Munich to do my MBA and thought it would be for two years, and that was 16 years ago.
Speaker 1:And why Munich.
Speaker 2:I chose Munich because my dad is originally from Munich, so he was born in Munich and his whole family was there. He emigrated to Canada way back, like when he was 20, but alone. I thought it would be a great opportunity to reconnect with, or connect at all with, family there and to learn the language, because I didn't learn German with him here in Canada, so I'm an only child and my mom doesn't speak German. She's not German, and when there's three people and one of them can't understand the conversation, it creates bad situations. So we just always converse in English or in French here.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:French, okay, yes, yes, because I'm from Montreal, so my mom is French speaking, so English and French here in Montreal. And then I thought going to Munich would be a great way for me to get out of Montreal, go back to school, meet new people like check, check, check all of the things on my list and learn German.
Speaker 1:Okay, Wow, so voluntarily learning German Respect. Okay, we can circle back to that a little bit like how you kind of have this German background. But you didn't like have the. You had to learn the language, like the rest of us. But let's talk about the brand architect part of it, and so you mentioned you had you started out in marketing. How did the brand architect first of all, what is it and how did it come about? How did you build this business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the brand architect is my business, really focusing in on the strategy behind the brand, really focusing on what's the message I want to convey, what do I stand for? What are the visuals need to communicate in order for me to connect with the right clients for my business? And all of it came about because I had been working. I had been working, working in marketing my whole life and when I started my business, logically I was thinking marketing business. You know, marketing for small to medium sized enterprises, family run businesses. That's what I knew and I thought I'm just going to go into that industry, offer my services.
Speaker 2:I saw huge demand for it because small to medium sized family run businesses in Germany don't do marketing very well. And so I thought you know, great market opportunities, everyone needs my services. And it turns out that I stand by that. Everyone does still need my services. But it's a really, really hard sell because you end up in a situation where you have, maybe, a senior family member, you have a junior family member and that junior knows they need marketing help, but at the end of the day you don't get to talk to either because the secretary is like no, we don't need that. Bye, okay.
Speaker 1:So wait, so help me understand, like, what this looks like for you. So are you working like like an internal marketing department at a company here in Germany and you said I'm going to go out on my own and I'm going to put together a deck and go networking, like how did you?
Speaker 2:do that. That's exactly what I looked like. What it looked like so I had been working in another company. I was heading up the marketing department. By the end of my time there, I was the head of a big group that included the marketing department, it included sales and included HR, so everything that was basically putting the business out there, everything that was revolving around marketing and sales, and the staff.
Speaker 2:For that was, you know, my domain, and it was a very male dominated industry that I was working in and it was just not a good fit for me long term going forward. And so I decided I was going to start my own thing and I was going to focus just on marketing. But, as I said, it was so difficult to get clients. I was getting clients, but what happened is I started to really dig into what's the pattern here, who are the clients that I'm actually able to sign on and what am I selling them Like? What is their main need? And it turned out that everyone I was bringing on board as far as clients goes, everyone who I was able to connect with, were usually female, usually service businesses, and they all came to me for marketing, websites, design, and their problems were always starting. Way before that, they were all brand problems. It was what I noticed across the board when I really started digging into what is the common theme here? What kind of clients am I getting? What do they need from me?
Speaker 2:And so that's when I started to really specialize in the branding direction, because that's where I realized there was so much need and naive me. I thought you know what? I'm going to put together a course and I'm going to have them all go through this course and I'm going to get them to where I need them to be in order to help them with the marketing. And naive me, because that's not how things work Right, like you can't just throw together and I know this now that you don't just throw together a course and like everyone signs up and goes through that and then you can help them with marketing.
Speaker 2:It turned out to be a much deeper dive than that. A much bigger, much bigger problem, I suppose, than I had originally not anticipated. But I had originally estimated and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I had expected. So the deeper I got into this branding and the brand strategy, which I had been doing in my career beforehand, but the focus had been a little bit different, just as far as what the business was and who the clients were, and I just realized that this is what I love. I love that intersection of strategy and creativity. That is absolutely my zone of genius and that's where I decided to focus all of my attention to, and that's really when I saw my business start growing.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me two questions. So when you were selling, you kind of started out with this idea that you were going to sell into SMEs. Was this all like in German?
Speaker 2:So again, naive me, I was thinking hmm, I can offer my services in English, french and German.
Speaker 1:Okay, why is that naive? That's like a great well.
Speaker 2:I know that it sounds really great, but naive because it takes so much effort to craft your message in those three individual languages in a way that's going to connect with the different cultures behind those languages.
Speaker 2:I mean even in English there's a difference between North American English and British English and you know Aussie English. There are different terms and expressions that we use. So even there it's obvious in one language how you speak and who you're targeting. And then trying to do that across three different languages with the French, you know there's French obviously in Europe, but there's also French, canadian, and there are, you know, pockets of French across the globe and in Africa and German, the same thing.
Speaker 2:You know. You've got just in Germany, so many different areas, you've got the Austrians, you've got the Swiss on top of that and it just became like nightmare. I was so busy just trying to translate all of my marketing and communicate in a way that I could maybe connect with people. There was no time for actually running my business, right.
Speaker 1:Right. So when you started, when you made this kind of it's not like a pivot, but slide into serving these female service businesses, Was it more? Was it kind of like a pivot from B2B to B2C? Were these like one person businesses or were they multi-person? It sounds like SME, I think like Mittelstand, yeah yeah. So who were these women that you were service providers?
Speaker 2:So it's both, and even today it's both. I don't just serve women. The way my brand is built. It tends to appeal more to women, but I still have small and media-sized businesses. I have startups. I have men that are a part of my client base as well, so it has really shifted. My focus has shifted away from how your business is structured to what are you trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:Okay, and let's talk about that, because so, brand, like you ask five different people and you will get a five different answers about what brand is. I try to be careful when I talk about brand and brand services that I offer by calling it visual branding. How do you define the work you do and the branding and the brand strategy? Is it brand? Would you call it brand strategy?
Speaker 2:It's absolutely brand strategy, and so I like to explain this using three words. Brand strategy is everything that you need to know about your business before you can work on the branding. The branding is everything that is going to communicate. So everything that's visual, it's your brand voice, it's your imagery, it's your color, your colors, your typography, everything that we tend to think about as being a brand Photography is branding. That's the brand design. So brand strategy is everything you need to know before you can do that. And then your brand is that living experience. It's what your client is experiencing, it's the expectations that you've set for what your client is going to experience with you, what results they're going to get, what the outcome is going to be, and so it's everything that you're communicating, that strategy that has flown into the visuals that your client has bought into, and then the experience of working with you. Do those align? Does that all add up? Are they getting what they thought they would get? That, to me, is then your brand.
Speaker 1:So when someone comes and works with you like a high level, what does that experience look?
Speaker 2:like that experience looks like one-on-one, and we dig into really what the magic is. It all starts, for me, it all starts with the magic and that magic has to be whatever the edge is that makes that business different. That's what we want to be highlighting, that's what we want to understand, and for me it also needs to be very objective. So I come from an economics background. My formal education is in economics and business international business. So for me, if I'm asking someone like what's the magic here? What is the thing that you do differently, what's the edge? If they say to me it's my personality I'm sure everyone I work with is lovely, everyone has a great personality. That is amongst my clients.
Speaker 2:But that's not enough to convince someone or to communicate in a compelling way why they should do business with you, why they should potentially pay more to work with you than with someone else. You can't just say it's your personality. What is it? What's the thing here? What element? Maybe it's your expertise, maybe there's something specific that you offer or you have a method that you use. What is the thing that makes your offer different and valuable? So that's where I start.
Speaker 1:And is it different when you work with individuals versus a business? Because obviously I mean businesses. You can say have a personality, but there's personal brands versus brands for companies. How do you approach that difference?
Speaker 2:So there is a difference, but it's maybe not what you think it is. So when I'm working with an individual, the challenge there is to get them to separate their business's brand from themselves. There's a tendency there to say like everything that I like, everything about me is my brand, which it isn't, because not everything about a person is flowing into their business. It's really about picking out what's relevant here, what is adding to the magic. It's not everything, so that's the challenge on the individual side. The challenge when you work with businesses is depending on how many people are involved and how established the business is. And that might sound strange, because how established the business is, wouldn't they already know what their magic is?
Speaker 2:It's often no, they don't, but everyone has a different opinion and that's the challenge there is to get to the core where everyone from the different levels in this business, who obviously have different experiences of that business and just due to their roles, get them on board and agree. Yes, this is the thing. There tends to be a lot of ego that comes into that. So if you have like a startup founder or two, they tend to focus on what their big dream is. If you have people who are developing the product, they tend to focus on features or some kind of special thing that they've been able to achieve.
Speaker 2:That is mind boggling to them but hard to understand for the rest of us. So it is really about or if you have customer service people, then they always want to say it's our excellent customer service. I mean, excellent customer service for me should be a given. So that's the challenge on that side.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow, that's why I only like working with, like max, max, three people. But really, yes, that's the same thing. Same thing as well with me. So let's go back and talk about. I want to talk about how you built, like, when did you become the brand architect? Like? I'm assuming, you started out like Karina, this is my business. I can be your marketing person, or do you? Marketing for you Like how did the brand architect come into being and how did you get traction?
Speaker 2:So yeah, when I started my business, it was just me going out there and knocking on doors and I had put together pamphlet of everything I could offer. I had a portfolio of examples of previous work that I had done, of websites that I had done, print materials, magazines, all that kind of stuff and that, as I've covered before, didn't really get me that far. I mean, it got the ball rolling, but I couldn't really see how I was going to do this sustainably long term. It was just so much work and how. What did you do?
Speaker 1:Well, what did you do Like? Did you have a few? Contacts or like from your old job or what.
Speaker 2:I had a few. No, I had no contacts from my old job. I wanted to. I specifically didn't want to go into that kind of industry Like I was burned and had taken the lesson with me of exactly what kind of business I didn't want to build and what kind of clients I didn't want to have.
Speaker 2:So also helpful, very helpful, very helpful to know that. Not so helpful when you're trying to approach new people. So I started talking to a few people in my private network or in my personal network and asking them if they had any tips for me, any businesses that they knew. I was lucky that I had quite a few entrepreneurs in my network or business owners where I could get that message out. I was also part of the Rotary Club in the small town that I lived in and so I was able to get the get the message out there. That was extremely helpful. Not necessarily find new, new clients in the club, but at least make them aware of my services so that they could spread the word for me or at least have me top of mind if anyone they knew needed marketing services. And and I just started talking- to people or to people to anyone, to anyone, I like anyone that would listen.
Speaker 2:Okay, I would say, like, listen, this is what I'm doing. You know, do you need this? And one of my most surprising and and turns out, best clients ended up being my my dog school trainer. Ah, interesting, yeah, yeah, and completely random.
Speaker 2:But I had, you know, I I had just gotten a dog around the same time as I was starting all of this and I went to this you know dog school and had a few one on one sessions with the dog trainer and she asked me, you know what I did? And I started talking to her and she was like, oh, I, you know, I've been looking at redoing my website. And I said, sure, you know, I can help. And we, that's kind of got the ball rolling. And she's been with me now since the start of my business, for, you know, over six years, wow. And we've, you know, rebranded her completely and redone everything and she's spread the word about my business. You know, you know this yourself. One happy client is so valuable because they will tell everyone they know about, right, right. So that really got the the ball rolling and that's how I, that's how I started.
Speaker 1:When you you became, were you already the brand architect. When you like had this business. I was, I was just simply me, okay, okay. And so. So then, when it grew from there into the brand, yeah, it grew from there.
Speaker 2:She was one of the first and the referrals that she brought me where I was able to. Then, you know, I said I have about 10 clients. Now Let me let me evaluate what it is that they're purchasing from me. Let me evaluate what their main problems are, and that's where I was able to recognize that pattern that actually it's it's a branding problem.
Speaker 2:They don't have a foundation. They're kind of just going on personal preference and they're changing things up all the time. That tends to be one of the biggest telltale signs that there is no brand foundation or no strategy behind it. They they don't know what's right for their business, so they just base it on personal preference. And the next shiny new thing that they see they're like oh yeah, I need to. Oh, I like this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to use this template or I'm going to, you know, start writing like this now, because they don't have that, those guiding principles. For this is what my brand needs to do. This is how it needs to feel, this is with whom it needs to connect.
Speaker 2:So that's where I I started identifying those problems and built the rest on that and spent spent two months November and December, way back, I guess, yeah, five or six years ago now, thinking of what should my business name be? And that's something I would, I would always recommend is, you know, people always want to get their business name nailed down, like right away, like give yourself time, it's going to grow, it's going to evolve. Yeah, and, and that's where I figured out, you know, it is for me, about, about brand strategy and being that architect, of creating that foundation so that what you build on top of it, what is visible, the way you are styling and decorating, all of that needs to be aligned and have that really strong foundation. And so that's how I arrived at the brand architect. I've been the brand architect since then.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you have. So you correct me if I'm wrong, but you have kind of two core offerings, so you do like one-on-one consulting and then you have a program. Yes, so the brand driven entrepreneur is that right, yes, okay. So tell me about, like, creating a program, how that, how you built that, how you decided to have a program and what was involved in getting that going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So way back when I, when I had that first of idea of you know I need to, I need to create a program. I need to just get people, like, up to speed on what they need to know about their brand before we can work together, I started writing out ideas and my list just kept getting longer and longer and longer and I realized that I don't know how realistic it is for me to create, to put a program together where all of this is encapsulated in this one program. So I reached out to my, my clients and my audience that I, you know, was slowly building online and asked them what they would like to learn from me. And I had put together a few, a few points, like you know, kind of multiple choice, like pick what you, what you would like to learn.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately that completely backfired because what everyone ended up marking was not the three points that I had, you know, originally planned on covering. They all wrote other. They wanted to learn how to sell. So throughout my whole career, you know, I've always been in marketing and sales and I suppose they all really appreciated the experience of buying from me and, almost unanimously, the, the word, the. The answer that came back was teach me how to sell.
Speaker 2:So I thought, okay, I can do that. It's not what I'd plan on doing, but yeah, I can totally do that. So I put together like a short four week program on how to sell and in that program I realized, okay, we're going through this, but none of them have any idea of what they're selling.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So so here we are going back to like okay, they don't know, they don't know what their magic is, so you can't, you can't sell anything if you don't know what makes that thing absolutely amazing. So I decided I would create a program before that on what's the thing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm excited to get to this, because a lot of times when a website client comes to me, they're like, well, I need more customers and it's like, yes, this is a part of that, but this is not that thing. That's like what comes next. There's like all these pieces in it and it's there. There is some education involved. But I want to go back to one thing. You said you were building this audience. So tell me about how you built that audience. Where was it social media? Did you have a newsletter list? I'll be above like how did you get an audience going?
Speaker 1:Enough of an audience that could give you meaningful feedback about what to create.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started. I started on social media and I had a on Instagram. Okay, yeah, On Instagram just because it felt like I could share a variety of things there I used to do. I used to do Facebook as well, but I've massively well, I've fallen out of love with Instagram as well but, like, Facebook is completely not on my radar anymore, but that was kind of where I felt like I could get a lot of bang for my buck and I used to do quite a bit on LinkedIn as well. That's kind of fallen by the wayside as well.
Speaker 2:But originally I had started on Instagram just because I could post about my different thoughts about, you know, what I felt was wrong in the business world. It was easy to get people on board with my way of thinking or who wanted to explore different avenues to grow their business. So that was a great starting place for me, and I still have a relatively small audience on Instagram, but I'm very lucky in that, right from the beginning, the people that were interacting with me were very outspoken, were very interactive and would give me lots of meaningful feedback, and I think that's something that's kind of decreased over the years on social media in general, but I still have that and that's why I still find Instagram a good place to test things out and look for feedback.
Speaker 1:Okay, but I know because I'm on it. But you have a list, obviously I have a list. What would you say is your? Main marketing channel. Now it's my list, it's your list.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely my list, so I have built. As many online businesses have a marketing. I don't want to use this word, but for lack of a better one, I will say funnel, funnel, yeah.
Speaker 1:It is what it is. I mean yeah, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:It is what it is right. So yeah, and I have, at different stages of my business, put out different elements of free contact and that has been the way I have built my list and I try to put out really valuable and meaningful free content and that's been a real game changer for me. So I've been able to build a significant list quite I'm not gonna say easily, but I got a really really good free offer that resonates and that's allowed me to build my list quite quickly.
Speaker 1:Did you have to experiment with that?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, I know this is a topic. How?
Speaker 1:many attempts, yeah, like lead magnets, like how many iterations of like free fees?
Speaker 2:So I created a first one that I still think is absolutely amazing, but apparently I'm the only one with that opinion. So I created that and it had like a little like free mini course with it and I thought it was and, like I said, I still do think it's so good to just get in that frame of mind of what do I need to be, how do I need to be thinking about my brand and my business, what my brand needs to be doing for my business. But, as I said, no one seems or very few people seem to share my opinion on the value of that one. So I started creating another one, which was the thriving brand blueprint, and I think I had two or three iterations of that just to kind of make sure I have everything in it, that it's really leading people to the right place, that it's looking fresh. I did a rebrand kind of right in the middle of when I was bringing that freebie to life. So that last iteration, the third one, just absolutely took off.
Speaker 2:And I had so many people contacting me saying I can't believe you're putting this out there for free.
Speaker 1:Wow, and did you just like put it on Instagram, put it on your site or like, how else? How did you drive traffic to?
Speaker 2:it. I put up ads so.
Speaker 1:I started just yeah.
Speaker 2:I started with organic traffic to it to kind of test things out and see, like, what's the feedback? What kind of words do I need to use to get people to understand what this is all about? And then, once that was all dialed in and I knew that it was working and that people were responding to it and booking calls with me because of it, then I decided to run ads to it and I ran those ads for two and a half years, I think.
Speaker 1:Okay, and can you sit? I mean, I'm guessing the answer is yes, but like the ROI was worth it, absolutely. And did you do it yourself or did you hire somebody? No, I hired someone.
Speaker 2:I hired someone because Facebook ads yeah, a Facebook ads specialist. And thank God, because my first few attempts at creating my own Facebook ads although I was like in an online entrepreneur mentoring program that had a Facebook ads specialist in it, but it always felt like everyone else was getting it and I wasn't, and it was so frustrating and I would just see, like you have been built 100 euros, you have been built 100 something, yeah, and what's happening? How do I stop this? I feel like I'm bleeding money. So I turned all of that off and then I looked for a Facebook ads specialist, although I have to say, it's very good that I, like I, don't regret having started the Facebook ads journey on my own, because it allowed me to find the right person.
Speaker 2:There are so many people out there that are very eager to put their hand up. When you say I'm looking for a Facebook ad specialist, and if you don't know what you're talking about you will have no way of understanding that they also have no idea what they're talking about, so that in and of itself was worth the expense of the learning cost of learning.
Speaker 1:I suppose, yeah, that's a really good point, Cause sometimes you'll go to somebody and say well, I already know that, like let me go back to one other point I wanted to ask about, which is okay. So you were fluent in German.
Speaker 2:Like I was not fluent in German, okay.
Speaker 3:So when you started to Germany, I wasn't fluent in German.
Speaker 1:When you were starting this business, were you fluent in German Like yes, yes. By that time I was yeah. But you decided to target an international audience, which I'm your audience is pretty international, correct, Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, why? I mean you are Canadian, so I can say, but you did like was there any just thought process? And just like, I'm going to do this in English versus German or French.
Speaker 2:Well, when I first started out, I did do you know English, french and German? And for this business, not for this business?
Speaker 2:No for the first like when I first started, okay, and I suppose that when I was changing things, when I was evolving, when I was refocusing or sharpening my focus, I was also in a frame of mind that I'm still in today of simplifying, like this needs to work for me. I need to be able to do my best work. I do feel that my best work happens in English, although I do have German and French-speaking clients that I work with one-on-one, but I have so much content, I have so much material, I have a group coaching program. Now I can't possibly do this in multiple languages. So if it's, one-on-one.
Speaker 2:I don't have to create anything Like. I don't have to be making documents or videos or anything like that. That's fine. I'm happy to speak in English or French, but other than that, it needs to be just English. For the sake of my own sanity and of actually getting stuff done, it needs to be just that one language.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes total sense, and you wait. So your group coaching program that you just mentioned. So I want to I know this, okay, like full disclosure. We like know each other. I was like I have all this background information, but I know that you had previously and told me this my information was about to date you heard working in the kind of launch model, like you launch cohort for the group coaching program.
Speaker 1:And now you have switched to evergreen. Yes, tell me about that, why you made that decision and what the experience has been like.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So maybe just to dock onto what we had been talking about previously of how this all came about. So in my model of you know, asking about what do you want to learn from me? I ended up going back three times because I figured I figured out like, oh, you want this, oh, but you need this that comes before that, you know. So I ended up creating four programs that way, and four programs just felt like way too much to be launching all the time. So I stuck them all together and created like one giant program, because you need all of them anyways.
Speaker 2:If you really want to get the benefit you need to do, you need to do it all. And oh my goodness, but launching is just so stressful, like it's. It takes so much out of you. And the bigger the program, the longer the launch runway needs to be, the more stuff you need to be doing. And I feel like the focus is so much on just getting as many people in in this short amount of time that it was like it was just completely exhausting me. And then I had the other experience that I had so many people saying, oh, I really want to join, but you know you're doing this module live at this particular time and I'm afraid that if, like I'm on vacation, I'm going to fall behind. I'm not going to be able to do this because my group program has self-paced content, so you know content you can work through on your own, but it also has live coaching. So if you don't keep up, then you know it can feel like you're falling behind, like the questions and the coaching calls aren't relevant to you anymore. So that was a big, a big complaint I was hearing and I thought you know what my clients don't seem to want this I hate launching. So why am I doing this? There must be another way.
Speaker 2:And so I figured out, I put a lot of thought into this because if I was going to do, you know, group coaching live, it still needed to be relevant. You know, I had to figure out how am I going to coach people who are all joining the program at different times? So I figured that piece of the puzzle out and then I re-judged everything. I went through every piece of you know content, every PDF, every worksheet, every video, every presentation, everything, every recording of live, live coachings that I had, and made sure that anyone could start whenever they wanted start working through this.
Speaker 2:You know, join the live coaching calls, have relevant support, get the support that they need, and this way I can focus on making the program accessible to the person who needs it in that moment, instead of what was happening before, which was I would get you know someone on a call and they would say I need this and this and this. I'm like my group coaching program would be perfect for you, but sorry you can't access it right now, which you know was a ridiculous answer To give someone. So this makes it possible for when I have a call with someone and I think they would be a good fit and that's always my main priority and my main focus Is this going to be a good fit for the group that's in the program, for the person who is joining, for what their needs are, what their goals are, and I can just get them in and get them on their journey immediately, instead of saying like you have to wait six months or however many months to join this program, okay.
Speaker 1:And then do you have like there's content in there, but do you have like office hours, like what? What is it? What's the structure?
Speaker 2:of it. So the structure is there. There is that you know, self-paced content. There's a community that goes with it, so you can share in that community, ask questions, and I pop in there once a day during the week and have a look and see if there's any questions, if anyone needs support, and you can always get questions answered. That way. There's a specific questions form. If there's anything that you want to talk about on the next coaching call, to make sure that you know I get around to you or I have any documents you need to, you want to share with me. So I'm a structure person, so I like to have those structures in place so that everyone knows where they're going, when they can get support, how they can get support, how they can share things with me. And it is it is a very individual journey, so I want the program to reflect that as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, and this I always curious about these things what platform do you use for the community, like for your whole program? Like I'm just curious, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm on Thinkific. I migrated to Thinkific last year as I was rebuilding everything Because I used to be on Teachable, which is a great platform, and I was on Teachable for many years and I really enjoyed it. Teachable has the benefit of taking care of your payment transactions for you, specifically, taxes in different regions of this world.
Speaker 1:Okay, that can be very challenging for for online businesses.
Speaker 2:So that was the reason why I had chosen Teachable in the first place. But I mentioned before my falling out of love with Facebook. And I decided that I wanted to have that community aspect hosted, if possible, on the same platform as where my, where my course content is, and that option was available on Thinkific. Oh, they have a community function.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, so everything is all there in that one spot and I don't have to put any content or anything on Facebook. I don't have, which was a problem in the past. I had people saying like, oh, but I don't want to.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go on.
Speaker 2:Facebook. I don't want to be on Facebook, which I totally get and understand. So now it's like one account you have everything there and the community is there, and that's it. The payment processing from my end is a bit more difficult, but, baby steps.
Speaker 1:I'm learning. So okay, this is totally self-interested now. But one question I just always have is that when you have a group, even if it's like one platform, everybody sort of was like oh, another thing, like another login, Do people ever squawk about that, or is it a non-issue? It's a non-issue.
Speaker 2:And that non-issue, I believe, is because everything is in one spot, one place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, interesting, interesting, interesting. Okay, sorry, I literally had. It was not a client for me, but she was like, should I? It was a sales call and she's like going to do this course and this and that. And I was actually like, before you build all this, just make a sales page, like, yeah, yeah, I don't think she was hearing that there are any challenges. Okay, so there's obvious benefits to this like evergreen model, but do you okay, we've talked about this before I, oh my God, launches getting a lot of people, it's so much work, it's so much marketing. Better, like 10 high ticket clients rather than trying to get all these people. How, what, what say you to that attitude? And like, how do you keep? Like, how do you keep the people coming into the program on an evergreen model?
Speaker 2:So I didn't have difficulty beforehand getting generating interest in my business. I have a regular inflow of client calls being booked, so when someone gets on a call with me, it's really a question of is it is one on one the better fit, or is the group program the better fit, or is maybe someone else a better fit for this person Like? Those are the three options that I you know that I tend to play with. So my, my main focus with my, with my group program, isn't to just get as many people in it as possible. It's to get the right people in it who are really interested in building the kind of business that that fits with my mentality or my strategy. So my main focus was to get all of this like revamped and launched, and I'm actually now redoing the marketing strategy for it to make sure that you know I am generating enough interest on a regular basis but really focused on just the right people Like.
Speaker 2:my big focus is having just an amazing community that that in and of itself provides value to be a part of, and I, that focus is a completely different one than you know. I want to have a six or seven figure launch. I'm not trying to rate it, as far as you know which one is more valuable, but those are two different strategies and they require different execution plans. That's all I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, and you are coming to us live today from Montreal. So I know part of the goal with your business was that you could be a little bit more, even though you are based here in Munich officially. But you want to do more travel, and has this kind of business allowed that for you?
Speaker 2:Yes, my goal was always to build a business that allowed me to travel and ironically, it's a launch two and a half years ago that went wrong or not went wrong but had, like, all kinds of technical issues.
Speaker 2:Like 10 minutes before my live workshop, I lost all internet connection, like the whole neighborhood was like was out and the house that I was living in had, like you know, 50 centimeter thick walls, like there was no way for me to get like to connect via LTE to somehow get things working. It was a disaster and I ended up and I was flying to Montreal the next day, so I had to like postpone everything and, like that disaster had such a huge benefit because it showed me exactly which parts of my business were not location independent.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So by going through that, I was able to see like, oh no, wait, hold on a second. My systems for this are not built properly. I need to, like you know, rearrange this, or you know whether it was my hardware or my software or just my own management structure. It showed me exactly what needed work for me to really be able to travel with my business. So I took the learnings from that and rebuilt everything, restructured everything so that on my end, on the back end, I can work from anywhere, anywhere.
Speaker 1:Living the dream. Living the dream.
Speaker 2:Living the dream? Yes, but it does, I mean, if you wanna work that way, it really requires a lot of structure.
Speaker 2:And I think it requires a big step towards how serious are you about your business? I think many people have a little bit of a misconception about this. Like you know, business nomads they're just kind of flying by the seat of their pants, and I would say it's really the opposite, because you still need, like you still have citizenship in a country, you still have a permanent residency in a country, you still have to pay taxes somewhere, you still have a need to have a bank, like you need to be able to accept payments. All of that needs to be structured in a way where you can handle it and you know, like take bookings and time zones that are even in 2020.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, oh God, an issue you know so all of that needs to be structured in a way where your business can function and you know your client isn't penalized in any way just because you're living the dream.
Speaker 1:You're living the dream.
Speaker 1:And I would add to that. So we spent two months in California this past summer and, on the one hand, I like to do work and it was great that I could do it, but I had to find a co-working space, and which I did and it was just. I really like not being a digital nomad, what's the opposite of nomad. I'm happy to be normal desk in my house all the time. But anyway, last question, what you touched on this a little bit, but is there anything that you know now that you wished you knew when you started?
Speaker 2:Oh, I write like lots of things I wish I would have realized, or I wish I would have been a little bit easier on myself as far as understanding that, like, my business will change and I will change that.
Speaker 2:You know things evolve and your friendships, your relationships with clients evolve. How to manage maybe that more personal side of business I come out of, you know, big industry where it didn't feel quite so personal, when a client relationship maybe didn't fit anymore, right, right. So I think I would have liked to know beforehand, or have those tools of you know, what it means to be in business on your own, when you know as things evolve, when you have to kind of say goodbye to someone or when someone says goodbye to you, how your business changes, how to make those next steps that can feel really scary, even if it's just changing platforms. I mean, my change from Teachable to Thinkific, for example, was like a major migration but also came with a much heftier price tag. You know of like can I do this? Can I actually afford this? You know. So just navigating those next steps, those changes, those natural progressions in any business, that's something that I hadn't really considered when I started.
Speaker 1:Actually I have one more question, but I think as a short one. How do you have permission? Like, do you have an unbefested, often house allowableness? Like, by the time you got out of school you just had permission to work in Germany. So there were no visa or migration issues.
Speaker 2:So when I went to Germany, I had a part-time job as well and I was going to school and the way it worked was I don't know if it's like this anymore, but at the time, if you had done any kind of studies and you had completed your studies in Germany, you were allowed to stay.
Speaker 1:For indefinitely or for like five years.
Speaker 2:So at that time I had to renew every year, right? And then I think, is it three years or five years?
Speaker 1:It was three years. I think now they've shortened it, but I had this too, like I had to renew every year for five years and then, after working for five years, I got my basically green card.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So that's how it was with me as well, and I renewed and this was actually an issue that I faced last year which is maybe interesting to talk about very quickly because last year I was just traveling so much and I had the first time someone contact me and say you're not spending 181 days in the country, like, where are you? And my business is set up as an Einzelunternehmen and that means it's also contingent on me having my residency in Germany, right? So I have now started exploring what are my different options for should I be traveling more? I still wanna have my residency in Germany, but should anything happen because I am traveling too much, I want my business structure to still be intact, so there are different options for that. I mean you can found a Guillenbihar and that you don't have to be a resident of the country in order to be the main shareholder in a Guillenbihar, which is like a LLC. So that's an option. It's an interesting option to consider.
Speaker 1:It's like heavy duty, like you have to put a ton of time. It's not like an LLC. You need like five bucks, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you can do an Uge which is like a Guillenbihar, but anyways, we don't need to get into all of the details of that, but it is something that I do think if you're traveling a lot, it's worth considering how you want to structure your business legally and also where.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to structure it. Yeah, that's it. Okay, that's a whole other topic. Yeah, okay, greena, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:They can find me on Instagram, at underscore, the brand architect underscore, or on my website, which is thebrandminusarchitectcom.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you so much for chatting today. I really learned a lot and I think our listeners will enjoy it too. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. You can find this episode and all other episodes of the Germany X-PAT Business Show at my website at wwwellinormeihovercom slash podcast. That's wwwelanorcom slash podcast. See you next time.