A Week In The Life Of Kate March 23, 2026

wake up to a quiet house. The first time I haven't been people’ing in nearly a week. Last week was the Weird Hermits Mastermind in-person retreat in Atlanta, which was incredible and life-giving. Then I had friends come Into town and stay with us for the weekend, which was the absolute best, and I'm so lucky to have such kind, loving, funny friends. They left early this morning, so I'm gonna take a very slow morning in bed and recover and just take it easy, as the last few weeks have been a lot, especially with my grief around losing our kitty Boo and some of the panic and anxiety that's been coming up. Fortunately, thanks to some EMDR and CBT therapy and re-reading theDARE book, I'm feeling much better than I had been, and my energy is coming back online as I'm moving into the follicular phase of my cycle. Spring has officially sprung in Atlanta.

P.S. Mattie and I have adjusted our fair play cards slightly, and he is now fully responsible for the mornings with the kids, which has gotten significantly easier now that they're getting older and often are getting ready by themselves. We just basically have to get them out the door and take them to school, so I've been able to sleep in, which has been really helpful for my POTS.

After reading in bed and catching up on old newsletters and some personal admin in my inbox from my phone, I decided to finally get up. I came downstairs to find the sweetest card left from my friend this morning. Making my electrolytes and coming to sit out on the porch with my morning briefing from Claude before I get fully started for the day.

Curious what my morning briefing is like? Watch this loom of how I set this up in cowork.

Creating a Personalized Morning Debrief with Claude - Watch Video

I was downstairs by about 9:45, getting situated on the porch and reading through the briefings and doing a brain dump in Claude of all the things on my mind this week, which was a lot. I found this to be an incredibly helpful way to start my week and sometimes every day when I have a lot going on in my head, especially when I haven't been working for a while, which is the case since I've basically been off since last Wednesday.

Another tool that has been helping me do this and nearly everything else in my business at 10x the speed that it usually takes me is Wispr Flow. I'm absolutely obsessed with this dictation tool, which I didn't even know I needed, as I'm such a fast typer. It never occurred to me that my life could be better if I just did voice-to-text for everything with a tool that actually understood what I was saying (unlike Siri who is so dumb and gets nearly everything I dictate wrong), whether I was yelling or whispering in bed with the sound machine on so as not to wake up my husband or in a loud place or completely silent.

It fixes all of my typos and grammar, and it formats things into a list automatically. It rewrites your mistakes, and you can save snippets and add certain spellings to your dictionary. I am fully hooked on this tool and using it for everything now, including writing these diaries this week, none of which I have actually typed thus far. All of which have just been me dictating to Wispr Flow to put in here.

Use my referral link to get 1 month off Wispr Flow! https://successwithsoul.co/wispr

Okay, I'm looking at my to-do list now for the day, and it is hella long. I need to break this down into what is actually super important and urgent, and use the Success with Soul Matrixto also help me delegate things and put things on the universe's to-do list and my own no list, which many of these things probably belong on.

The great news is 📅 The day is wide open: No Call Week + no family events = full solo, quiet work day with no interruptions. Rare gift. And I'm thanking my past self for setting it up this way so that I could come off of my week of people’ing and honor my introvert's needs.

Here's a screenshot of my brain dump so you can see what I'm working with here and what's swirling around in my brain this morning.

And here is how I've decided to prioritize things:

BIG 3 FOR TODAY:

• $1k/Day week in the life freebie email and opt-in page situation figured out first
• Check in on webinar ads and sign ups
• prep the webinar slides for tomorrow
• Update the sales sequence for after the webinar to sell MBA.

Do today (****Admin Day container):

• Bank transfers to Axos
• Message Tara about Block Builder
• Send Rachel a note to schedule a call for later this week
• Quick inbox cleanup pass
• Update $1k/Day diaries
• Grocery shopping and
• pick up prescription
• CBT forms
• Send friend sympathy card
• Book Fergus for spring break

Decide today (both need a fast answer, not a project):

• Week in the Life freebie: you literally said "just give people the Google Doc link and keep it easy" — that's your answer. Do that. You have a webinar tomorrow and spring break in 12 days. Don't build an opt-in sequence for this right now.
• Challenge + AA ads new format: are these going up this week or next? Decide and put it on the calendar so it stops floating.

This week (not today):

• February income report (already overdue in ClickUp)
• Test Kit vs. Beehiiv — can this be a Thursday Systems Day task?
• Check spring break house dates, confirm Savannah stop plan
• Add The Room Custom GPT to portal (Zapier or Delphi)

Strategic (put on the 30-day plan, not this week):

• Reactivate forever funnel
• Rebuild welcome sequence
• Pitch newsletter sponsors / Media Kit

All right, now that I've gotten my life sorted for the day, it's time to go make a quick breakfast and coffee and then get started on my actual tasks.

All right, had leftover Thai for breakfast, which was delicious, and made a cup of coffee. Now I think I'm going to move into my actual office and work at my desktop because I feel like I need a little bit more focus, and I actually have the energy to sit up right today. I'm going to start the slides, which are already done for the webinar tomorrow, but a few things that I need to double-check on, then get into the sales sequence. Both of these things are essentially already done; they just need to be updated for this particular week and cold audience.

I did take a quick peek at my ad stats, and it's been going really well. We've got 321 leads for a cost of only $1.76 per lead, plus 3 purchases of the tripwire. The tripwire is not converting super well; that's okay. I was mostly trying to get people to register for the webinar so I could test this webinar with a cold audience, and I've been spending $100 a day.

I've spent a total of $566 so far, and I just upped the budget to $200 for this last day's push. We'll see. Hopefully that doesn't break my ads for scaling really fast, but since it's such a limited campaign, I figured maybe it will be worth it. My landing page is currently converting at 55%, so really pleased all around with these results so far. Would love to get 500 people registered, so hoping we can get that to happen today and have some good data to actually test this with.

Somehow I'm still sitting here at my kitchen counter on my laptop, doing a bunch of random stuff, like trying to fix a co-work task in Claude for my Monday Pulse that is pulling a lot of things every week. like:

• meta ad performance
• my email list growth
• revenue
• expenses
• profit margins, etc.

I'm not even sure where the other time went. I think I posted a couple things into Skool and have just been sort of bee-bopping around between tabs trying to get little stuff done. I sent a friend my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card link because I got so many great perks at the hotel last weekend. She was like, "How are you doing this?" It was all thanks to my card. Here's the link if you want it.

So now I really need to go move to my desk and knock this shit out.

Okay, moved over to my desk and uploaded my emails from the last MBA sale and the transcript from the last webinar to Claude. I'm doing some revisions based on certain skills I've created for email copywriting and conversion copywriting, and moving more into a demo-style webinar than a teaching webinar.

I'm having to balance my desire to make big changes with the limited time frame I'm working with and knowing that this webinar converted at 11% last time, so it probably doesn't need to be messed with too much. I'm also really thinking about how this is going to 100% cold traffic versus my warm existing audience and how that might change how I talk about things.

Taking a little break as I'm dealing with a friendship issue between my daughter and her bestie. So I'm taking Fergus out for a long walk to move my body, change my mind, and talk to my friend and her husband, who have kids that are in college and are my go-to parenting advice folks. They've done such a beautiful job raising their kids, and my friend is also one of the top CBT therapists in the country, so I definitely trust her opinion.

It's interesting because the other parent's response is to ban the girls from playing together for a while, even though they're in the same class together all day at school. I think it would be better to take a collaborative approach and get the girls to talk about any hurt feelings together so they can repair and move on. We've been going back and forth about that for the past week, and I’m trying to honor her wishes and also do what I think is best for my girl.

Oof. This parenting shit is no joke. They are 5, they are 5, they are 5. That's what I keep telling myself about all of this, and that kids will be kids and they're all learning how to be in this world. It's my job to teach and model kindness and let my kids work it out on their own, but this shit is hard, especially because we care so deeply about the other family. The girls actually seem fairly unaware that there's even an issue going on at all, which makes me think this is more of a triggered parent issue. Anyway, I can't be distracted by this any longer today, so I need to get back to the webinar slides.

All right, done with the slides and ready to take a very late lunch break.

Moving back outside to get some fresh air. Everything is covered in pollen, but fortunately I'm not having any allergies just yet, and it's so nice out. I can't not be out here.

I really should have given myself a timer instead of just randomly working on the slides, because that ended up taking way longer than it needed to. I've got a lot else going on that deserves my attention too. Now that I'm moving into updating the email sequence, I'm going to set a timer for 45 minutes and get as much done as I possibly can and hopefully finish it in that time.

Of course I'm immediately getting sidetracked with the sales page, because as soon as I went in to update an email, I had to look at the link for the page and now have spent most of the time making updates there.

All right, the kids are home and I have the downsell emails left to do in this sequence, which don’t even start until April 1st, so I am calling it a day and will pick up here next week so I can focus on more pressing things.

Tomorrow is Gemma's kindergarten teacher's birthday, and she was so excited to go to the store and buy her flowers, a candle, and candy. I ended up taking her to the grocery store and adding a few more things to our cart that were on our list. We grabbed McDonald's for dinner on the way home because the pork chops I defrosted were still frozen, so we'll do those tomorrow night.

By the time we were home it was basically dinner, bath, and bedtime. Afterwards, Matt and I watched an episode of Shrinking, which is one of my favorite shows. Then we just put on reruns of King of Queens while I knocked out some personal errands on my phone and ended up getting a lot done that I wanted to yesterday during the day but didn't have a chance to because I spent too long, admittedly, updating the slides and emails.

Up to bed by 10:30.

Whew, slept in big time this morning and woke up with 15 minutes to go before my therapy session, so had to jump out of bed and get dressed and ready quickly.

I've been having a bit of a relapse with some anxiety and panic, so I started seeing a new CBT therapist last week. We had our second session today, which was really helpful and interesting. I'm also going back to EMDR, which worked wonders for me in the past, and I'll have that tomorrow. This is the first time I'm actually seeing a male therapist, which is different for me, as I think I had a lot of distrust of men in the past. It feels like a big milestone in a way to be trusting a man with something so vulnerable.

Okay, done with therapy, and now need to go get something to eat and get myself situated for the day with my morning briefing and looking at some other things that I didn't get to yesterday. Today is my client day of calls, so I'm mostly doing that, Voxering my 1:1 clients, and hosting the webinar at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

Got some eggs, coffee, and electrolytes and had a quick call with my mom. Checked over the morning briefing, and now I've got one hour until the zoom call. Looking at what I should spend this one hour doing, since I didn't get to some of my admin tasks in email and clickup yesterday, I'm thinking that's where I'm going to go.

I do have a new email triage system in Claude Cowork that categorizes all of my emails and writes drafts for me so that I can just go in and only pay attention to the quick ones that are pre-drafted, make any changes if needed, and get through my inbox much faster. I think I should start there. And I'm kind of curious to time it since I have not looked at my inbox since Monday last week.

Ready, go!

Done. Inbox zero. Like, actually completely zero. The only thing I had left was a couple of tasks that I moved over to ClickUp that weren't urgent for me to do now. So essentially, thanks to this co-work system I've created, I was able to get through nine days of emails with everything done and responded to in 32 minutes. YES!

Now posting a few things intothe Skool group.

Moving back into my office for the room call where we're doing our breakout rooms and revenue planning and lead gen planning, which has really turned into one of the group's favorite calls of the month and mine too. I love connecting people together.

Just got off the room call, which was so great, and got to have a few nice conversations with Rachel while everyone was in the breakout room, which I always love. She's the best.

Some highlights from the call in case anyone is curious what actually happens on these:

• The fourth Tuesday of the month is when the Roomies plan out their revenue actions and lead generation for the upcoming month. Kate and Rachel lead the group through a process where everyone shares:

  • One specific way they plan to grow their email list next month (e.g. running Pinterest ads, submitting to a bundle, etc.).
  • One specific way they plan to make money next month (e.g. launching a new product, running a promotion, etc.).

The group breaks out into smaller rooms to discuss these plans, get feedback and accountability from each other. Then they reconvene as a larger group to share key takeaways. The goal is for everyone to leave the call with a clear, actionable plan for growing their list and revenue in the next month. It's a very practical, implementation-focused call. Here are some of the takeaways that came up today:

• Build Trust to Combat AI: In a low-trust, AI-heavy environment, authenticity and a strong personal brand are essential. A strong personal brand is now more critical than a faceless one.

  • Authenticity: Be visible (e.g., weekly lives) to build genuine connection.
  • Authority: Have a clear point of view and share personal stories to avoid sounding generic.
  • Specificity: Define your audience precisely. This clarity informs effective messaging, pricing, and sales page copy.

• Newsletter Strategy: A newsletter's success depends on engagement, not length. Long-form content is effective if it's not boring. A varied mix of formats (storytelling, tips, short/long) serves different readers.

• Bundle Tripwire Expectations: Tripwire conversion rates on bundle opt-ins are significantly lower than on standard lead magnets (e.g., 1% vs. 20%). This is due to the high volume of freebies people are already receiving.

• Pinterest for Direct Sales: Pinterest can drive direct sales for low-ticket items by linking pins to product pages. This strategy is less effective for high-ticket courses.

Now I think I'm going to take a little break before the webinar in an hour. I might look at some click up stuff in a little bit, but I think I'm going to take a walk for now.

Ended up just sitting outside this whole time on my deck, getting some sunshine and journaling with Claude about the stuff that's going on with my daughter and her friend's mother. It felt good to just have the sun on my skin and be reflective for a bit.

Now time to sign on for the webinar.

All right, the webinar is done. We ended up having 496 people sign up and I spent ​​$845. My CPL was $1.70, which I feel really good about as Industry benchmarks for cold traffic webinar registrations typically run $3-8 per lead depending on niche. And now we'll just need to see if these leads actually convert. Here's a screenshot from my ads so you can see the exact stats. I was really happy with my opt-in conversion rate and my click-through rate and CPM, so these ads definitely did their job. Now it's my job to make sure that they convert on the back end.

This is making me realize that I forgot to set up the retargeting ads fully, so I probably should do that tonight. But first I want to just debrief the webinar while it's fresh in my mind. I uploaded the transcript, the chat history, and the attendance to Claude, and it's helping me debrief. I'm going to share some of those results with you all here.

So first, my top creative was this:

Which drove 421 of my 496 leads and consumed $691.88 of my $844.51 spend. That's 85% of my leads from a single creative. I'm surprised that the video creative underperformed significantly relative to spend

The copy winner tells you exactly what your audience responds to

"Show me the receipts" drove 219 leads at $1.45 CPL and $318.63 in spend — that's 44% of all your leads from one copy angle. The proof/transparency framing is your strongest hook by a wide margin.

"UNPOPULAR OPINION: 2026 isn't harder" came in second with 101 leads at $1.56 CPL and also tracked 1 purchase. That's the contrarian/reframe angle.

"There's a version of your business where daily sales happen automatically" came in third at 61 leads but at $2.10 CPL — notably more expensive. The dream-state/vision angle works but costs more per lead.

The webinar numbers

• 40 total joined = 8.3% live show up rate….For cold traffic (Facebook ads to a free webinar), industry average show-up rate is typically 15–25% so I'm not super excited about this stat.
• Of those, roughly 18-20 stayed for 60+ minutes — that's a 45-50% high-retention rate on a 90-minute webinar, which is solid for cold traffic.
• The people who stayed were genuinely engaged, and 15-17 people were in the room for the full pitch and Q&A.
• The drop-offs were mostly early, which is typical cold traffic churn at the opening before you've earned trust.

What worked

• The chat tells a great story. The opening "how do you feel about social media" prompt generated immediate, specific, emotional responses — "a lot of effort for little return and it is not aligned with my values," "it's exhausting," "I don't want to post multiple times a day." That's exactly the audience you want in the room.
• The Claude skills demo landed. The Fathom transcript confirms you did it live and walked through the email writer → blog post conversion in real time. That's the moment this webinar has never had before, and based on the retention numbers, people stayed to watch it.
• The Q&A questions were exactly the objections we anticipated — will this work for 1:1 coaches, what if I'm just starting out, does it work with my current tech.

What didn’t work:

• You overshot by about 20 minutes on the teaching section. Looking at the transcript, the section that ate the most time was the detailed flywheel walkthrough plus the visibility strategies section — those together ran roughly 25-30 minutes when 15 would have been enough.
• One structural fix for next time: if you can get the flywheel explanation down to 8 minutes instead of 20, and cut the social media myth section to 2 minutes (they already believe it — they're there from an ad), you hit your 30-minute mark. Everything else was close to right.
• The Claude demo ran slow and you had to fill dead air. The demo itself was the right call — watching it work live is powerful. But Claude was loading and you said things like "taking a little bit of time here, sometimes Claude can be a little bit slower as it's figuring out how to do things" and "while it's doing that, let me show you another example." That's improvised narration over a loading screen, which is a credibility moment that cuts both ways — it's human and relatable, but it also slightly undermines the "this is seamless and easy" message you're trying to land.
• Ask yes/no or either/or questions instead of open-ended ones. You asked "what would you do if you didn't have to post on social media?" — that's a big reflective question that requires someone to think and type a paragraph. Cold traffic won't do that. Rachel's question "Who's ready to put up their 9 grid and leave social??" got an immediate "ME!" from Briana because it required exactly one word. Design every engagement prompt that way. "Type YES if you've ever spent two hours on a post that got three likes." "Type EMAIL or SOCIAL — which one are you betting on right now?" Those get responses because the answer is essentially free. Specific moments where you stop and wait 20 seconds for people to answer would help. The flywheel section, for example: "Quick — type which phase of this you think you're stuck in: ATTRACT, CONVERT, NURTURE, or RETAIN." That tells you something useful about your room AND keeps people active.

All right, that's it for now. I'll be debriefing this launch next week after all of the follow-up emails go out with the replay and more about MBA. This is the first time I've ever run a webinar exclusively to cold leads, so I really have no idea what to expect. I'm staying very detached from the outcome, as this is all just data and good information for me to have.

The kids are at soccer, so I've got a little bit more time to respond to my one-on-one clients on Voxer, which I try to do every day at 2 p.m. Eastern. Because of the timing of the webinar, I got thrown off, so I'm a little bit behind in catching up now. Gonna go outside on the porch to respond so I can be in the sun and fresh air.

All right, done with voxing the clients and got my plants watered at the same time. The kids are actually going to go out to dinner with the soccer team, so I've got a little bit more time to myself. I just ordered food to pick up from across the street, so the pork chops will have to wait until another day.

The kids are home, and I spent most of my time alone talking to my friend, journaling about the Gemma situation, and eating dinner in the garden. Basically just getting them ready for bed now.

Watching TV with Mattie. We ended up having a really connecting talk about what's going on with the girls, and I feel really supported and optimistic. I've been playing cross play with some of my friends and family members, so I'm doing that while we're watching reruns of King of Queens and just having a chill night. Up to bed by 11.

Wow, I have thoughts about today. This is the lowest revenue day I've had in I don't even know how long. I'm kind of in shock and definitely bummed, considering we hosted the webinar today and I was hoping we would make at least one sale while we were live.

I do think a part of this is that I don't have any lead gen ads running right now. My tripwire sales with the bumps and upsells, which usually make up a lot of the new revenue earned each day, are not currently happening. It does make me feel a little bit better that I can pinpoint why this was lower than usual, but I'm still shocked that the day was so low.

I actually woke up on my own fairly early this morning, which felt good. I'm starting a new medication today for my POTS, so I took that first thing and then spent the next hour lying in bed on my phone, shopping for the kids' Easter baskets and getting everything ordered for our trip.

Up and dressed downstairs to work with Matt on the garden hose situation, as our sprinklers got uninstalled and we need to fix them. I did my best last night, but this is not my strong suit. It's amazing how quickly he can fix something that I worked on for 20 minutes and couldn't figure out.

Cleaning up a bit around the house, starting a fire, and trying to figure out what I want to do to enjoy this slow, quiet morning with the cool spring air. I think I'm going to do one of my mobility strength workouts to just get my body moving again, as it's been a while other than walking.

Done with my workout. I did this video, which is one of my favorite channels on YouTube, especially since I've been diagnosed with POTS and need lower-impact workouts and focusing on strength.

Also sent a couple of emails to some pet sitters and boarding places about our cat, because I need to figure out what to do with her when we go on spring break and also when we spend the month of June in Santa Fe. We used to be able to just leave her home alone, but now that she's here truly by herself and not with her sister Boo, I feel bad leaving her by herself for that long. Plus she's now on transdermal thyroid medication that has to be administered twice a day. That makes it trickier because it gets super expensive to have a pet sitter come that often, and our normal neighbors and my housekeeper are going to be traveling as well, so I can't rely on them either. Feeling a little stressed about what to do here.

Writing a sympathy card to my friend who had the anniversary of a family member's death last week, wanting her to know that I'm here for her and I care.

Got the card put in the mail, and my brother ended up calling to talk about his wedding. I'm actually officiating, and they're still in the process of finding a venue and choosing a date, so we could be a ways out, but I'm so excited for them.

P.S. Claude is down, including projects and co-work, and I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit that I don't know what to do with myself. I really miss my morning briefing.

Alright, time to get to work. Today is my writing day, so I need to get the whole soul list and two other emails written for this week to start, and then I'm going to work on the February income report blog post.

After this, I definitely want to get the ads back up and running, especially after seeing yesterday's revenue.

Okay, I've been writing up a storm, and everything is going really smoothly. I'm almost done and taking another quick phone call from my brother to talk about him cat-sitting for us, and then going to hop on to Alison's webinar about bundles that don't suck.

Going to take a quick lunch break before this too.

All right, on the webinar and multitasking for a bit so I can try to finish this blog post and the whole soul list before Telegram office hours for the $1k/Day Experiment. As a reminder, if you are already a paying member, you get access to these office hours every single week, included in the price of your membership. If you are not a member, let me take this chance to tell you a little bit about how this works.

Oh man, I was recording a Loom to show you guys how amazing Claude's skills are and how it's helping me write this blog post, and I ran into a major tech snafu that I got to troubleshoot live on the Loom. Sharing the behind-the-scenes of all of that here, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly and unfortunate.

Streamlining Monthly Income Reports with Claude's Skills - Watch Video

All right, time for Telegram office hours. I'm going to pause. I'm about 75% done with the blog post, and still have to do the whole soul list from scratch, so this is definitely taking longer than I expected. Here are the questions I'll be answering live over in Telegram. If you're not in the $1k/Day Experiment yet, come join us now and you can submit your questions to get them answered live now.

All right, ended up answering all of those questions and several of them I ended up recording Loom videos for because it was just easier to show them rather than explain it just with my voice.

So now I'm going to go over to my one-on-one clients that I have Voxer office hours with as well and get back to them over there.

Telegram + Voxer ✅ That feels good. I also went back and forth with one of my friends who is a WordPress expert to see if she could help me with this whole revisions thing. Unfortunately, I think this is a Showit WP Engine issue, and I can't control it, so I have to wait to hear back from Showit on getting this revision fixed. The good news is it's not a make or break thing. It's not going to cost me sales, and the post is now just in draft mode. But now I am going to spend the next hopefully one hour or less finishing my writing for the day.

Alright, finally done with the income report, which took way longer than expected. I'm hopeful that with all these updates and changes I made to the skill, next time will go much smoother and I can actually reduce this to about thirty minutes.

I need to take a few minutes break now, and then before I know it, it's going to be time to take Jackson to OT.

Alright, took a little break to pop around to some websites for fun and took the dog outside. It's actually warmed up a bit if I'm in the sun, so I think I'm going to go sit on my back deck and write the whole soul list until the kids get home and I take Jackson to OT. That gives me about thirty minutes if I don't put on any makeup before I go, which feels absolutely silly and ridiculous, so that's not happening.

Inside to pack up my bag and grab a snack for me and Jackie.

He’s fully set up at OT and I’m grabbing my laptop to finish the WSL in this window. Whatever I get to is going to have to be good enough.

Done! Whew, that was a whirlwind day of writing. Tomorrow it’s lots of calls and getting my ads turned back on. Then getting through ClickUp because oh my god I am so behind over there and I know my team is waiting on me.

Spent the rest of the night with the kids. We grilled out those pork chops finally and made dinner together. Did favorite things around the table and then did a game of family soccer outside before coming in and taking baths and watching Harry Potter until bedtime.

Jackson is newly obsessed with Harry Potter and says a lot of his friends at school have been talking about it and while I have my own feelings about J.K. Rowling, of course, I think this is perhaps a case where we can separate the art from the artist, especially since the books themselves contain zero anti-trans content — they're about belonging, fighting fascism, and institutional corruption. Genuinely good themes for a 7-year-old.

As I thought more about it, I realized Harry Potter is actually a low-stakes entry point for teaching him that:

• You can love something and critique its creator
• People who make meaningful art can also hold harmful views
• Critical thinking about who benefits financially matters

That's a more valuable lesson than a sanitized media diet.

Anyway, I was up to bed by 10:00 last night and slept really well, after Matt and I caught up on shrinking, I played a few games of Crossplay, of course.

While I'm super bummed that we're well below our target once again this week, I am very excited to share that we got our first sale from the webinar*. This means that I have officially made back the money on the ad spend (or I will, assuming that the payment plan completes, as she signed up on a payment plan). Here's to a couple more.*

Woke up, spent a few minutes in bed feeling surprisingly rested, and cuddling with the kitty cat and the doggo, both of whom have been sleeping with us lately. Even though we used to have Fergus sleep in his crate, he just loves being snuggled up, and it's so hard to say no to that face.

Took a shower, got ready for the day, came downstairs, made some coffee and cleaned up a little bit, and now I've got about 30 minutes before I have a coffee chat with my friend Gemma.

It's a gorgeous day in Atlanta, so I'm out on the porch reading through my morning briefing and getting myself situated for the day. It's definitely going to be a full day of calls, so I'm not going to have a ton of time to actually get real work done, but my priority is getting the ads back up and running.

I had about ten minutes left to actually do something, so I reviewed the Get It Done Week debrief that Rachel put together with a new Claude skill we created yesterday, and it was amazing.

-11:20 amOh my god, I just had the best call with Gemma! I love her so much, and I'm super excited because we have several collabs that we're going to pursue in April (a JV webinar in April, Kate speaking at the "AI Unlocked" summit, and Kate sponsoring the event), and you guys are going to die when you see them. So, so, so much goodness. She is a true gem. Pun very much intended.

Now, before my call with Rachel, I'm actually going to spend some time just following up on some of the action items from my call, because everything is making me feel so excited. I do need to get those ads running, but I don't want to lose momentum on some of this either.

One of the key takeaways for me was talking about the success of her recent Claude webinar and some of the elements that made it her best launch ever. I'm thinking about how I can apply some of this to my business in addition to just collaborating with her because her AI All-Stars program is amazing, but here's what's coming up for me.

• Shift to an evergreen funnel, as most sales occur post-replay and/or Hire our friend Ashley to help me redo our webinar to get more sales live and potentially do a hybrid launch to my warm list and run ads to it. Do this every four weeks.

• Test an emotional, mental-health-focused angle (e.g., "delete social media for good") to attract business owners, Not just stop marketing there, but don't even use the app as a consumer.

  • News Hook: Use the recent $6M verdict against Meta/Alphabet for platform harm to support the new angle.

• Use Claude Projects for each product that I sell in the business and then you can layer in the skills inside the project

• New product idea: An AI tool for cyclical living that integrates business tasks (e.g., "review your P&L because you’re luteal").

Hopping on a quick call with Rachel to talk about potentially moving our newsletter and a couple of other odds and ends that I wanted to fill her in on from my mastermind retreat last week. I'm so grateful that I have such a good collaborator and partner to bounce ideas off of and get coaching from, and who really just knows me so well at this point. I also had to eat some lunch while I was on the call with her because my call schedule today is bananas.

Obviously, y'all know that I'm a giant Kartra fan, and this would definitely be something different. I want to share a little bit around my thought process for why I think, at this stage in my particular business with my particular goals for the future, moving my newsletter off of Kartra might make the most sense for me and where I'm going.

POTENTIALLY MOVING EMAIL PLATFORMS

I'll be honest — I've been loyal to Kartra for years. We don't even pay for it anymore (affiliate perks), it handles everything in one place, and inertia is a powerful force. But lately? The relationship is starting to feel like staying with someone because you've already unpacked your stuff.

Here's what's actually going on and why I'm seriously considering moving our email to either Kit or Beehiiv:

The features Kartra simply won't build

I've been asking for these for two+ years. No custom HTML embeds in the email editor. No saved segments (we have to rebuild them from scratch every single send). No dynamic content — meaning I can't show an MBA buyer a different footer than a non-buyer in the same email. No polls, no interactive elements, nothing. They're not an email-first platform and it shows.

The money I'm potentially leaving on the table

Both Kit and Beehiiv have sponsor networks baked in. We're talking: a brand pops up in your dashboard and says "we want to sponsor your newsletter," you click a button, the copy is already written, and you get paid. One of my mastermind friends got a Lovable sponsorship offer literally appear this week — clicked a button, done. Given that I have a $100k sponsorship revenue goal for 2026, doing that manually vs. having a network surface those deals for me is a significant difference.

The creator/recommendation network

Both platforms let you either pay to be recommended to other newsletters or get discovered organically. One woman I know hasn't touched her Kit Creator Network settings and has added 800 subscribers from it passively. That's not nothing. At our current list size and our aggressive growth goals, this is a real lever — and it doesn't exist in Kartra.

The analytics situation

You currently cannot see who clicked what in a Kartra email. As someone who makes data-informed decisions for a living, that's embarrassing. Kit and Beehiiv both have real analytics.

Deliverability and the AI inbox future

Email deliverability is getting harder as AI-powered inboxes get smarter at filtering. Kartra is a jack-of-all-trades platform. Kit is specifically focused on email deliverability and is keeping pace with how inboxes are evolving. That matters a lot for 2026 and beyond.

So what's the actual plan?

Phase 1 (Q2 2026, most likely): Migrate live broadcast emails to Kit or Beehiiv. Keep automations, checkout flows, and course delivery on Kartra for now — they still do that well enough. Use webhooks to keep both lists in sync so subscribers get tagged properly across both systems.

Kit or Beehiiv decision is still in progress. Short version: Kit is the tried-and-true workhorse with a massive user base and great automation chops. Beehiiv is the shiny newer player with a newsletter-operator focus, a slightly lower price point, and a very clean UX. I'm still playing around in both.

What I'm not doing: Substack (they take 10% of revenue — absolutely not), or moving our courses or checkouts anywhere anytime soon.

The real takeaway here isn't "Kartra is bad." It served us well and continues to do some things VERY well. I absolutely love it and stand by my recommendation that it’s the right fit for 90% of online entrepreneurs.

The takeaway is: the platform you start with is not necessarily the platform you scale on. When your business goals shift — especially toward media, sponsorships, and newsletter growth — your tools need to match.

I'll keep you posted as this unfolds.

I've got an interview with my friend from the MixerMind, Nata Salvatori, and we're chatting all things SOCIALFREE business for her upcoming summit, The Sustainable CEO.

Dang, she asked some of the best questions I've ever been asked on an interview. That was so fun, and I can't wait for this to come out.

Just catching up in this doc a little bit and moving outside to get some sunshine before the weird hermits call, though I'll probably take that from outside too.

Weird Hermit mastermind call, which is my favorite two hours of the week every single week. This group of women truly blows me away with just how fucking smart they are and how ahead of the curve we are in so many areas, but in particular in AI. I feel so proud to be a part of this community. Here’s a little sneak peek of what we talked about:

• a real-time debrief on what's working (and very much not working) with hosting summits and bundles right now, a lively debate about whether the B2B online business owner market is getting too saturated with these collaboration-style events and what more creative formats might look like.
• a fascinating conversation about using current news cycles to sell existing offers instead of spinning up new ones. Spoiler: someone we know did a $425k launch recently, basically by doing exactly that.
• We also geeked out on tools — a $3/month Notebook LM add-on (use code KATE10 to save 10%) that creates private podcast feeds automatically (yes, I'm using it for these diaries), Claude HTML page issues that apparently multiple people hit today thanks to an AWS/Cloudflare glitch, and a viral collaborative lead gen concept that honestly might be the most original thing I've heard in a while for list growth without social media.
• Oh, and the quiet consensus that big all-in-one course containers are a harder sell than ever right now, and memberships are where the energy is. Make of that what you will.

Hopped off the Weird Hermits call and went to get on my next call, but they no-showed, so I'm actually grateful because I really didn't feel like having another call.

It's somehow 5 p.m. now. I don't even know where the last 30 minutes went. I feel like I was just bebopping around between tabs and trying to close some loops.

The kids should be home soon, and I'm actually going out to dinner tonight with two of my best friends who I've known since we were six, and we're still super close. I'm not sure how many other people can say that, but it always feels so special to me.

Obviously I didn't get any actual work done today with all these calls, and given that we're going on spring break week after next, I'm probably going to work a bit tomorrow in between some of my appointments. We've got a behaviorist coming for Fergus in the morning, and then I've got EMDR and laser hair removal later (TMI, LOL).

So tomorrow's priorities will be getting those ads set up and getting through ClickUp, which I'm going to start going through right now. I think that's what I have the bandwidth for after a long day of extroverting.

Wake up, it’s my day to take the kids to school so I’m up and getting everyone ready to go. Dropped them off and stopped and got a decaf iced latte on the way home, then came and sat on the porch with Fergus taking in the gorgeous weather. Reading my morning briefing and the competitor news analysis report I had Claude create for me. Got an idea to host a live “Watch Me Build” call every month exclusively for $1k/Day members, and I’m going to do the first one on April 2nd, which will be perfect timing to get all the free readers of this week’s diary to upgrade into full members. I think if I can get into a regular rhythm where we are hosting these every month, it’ll give me a really natural way to “launch” the membership every month just like how GIDW does for the Room. I love that cadence, it’s predictable, consistent and allows me to flex my creative muscles without having to come up with new launch ideas every month. Super excited about this idea.

Behaviorist training session with Fergus. I absolutely love the team we found to help us with some of my angel boy’s house training and reactivity. It’s been so helpful and we’ve only had a couple sessions so far. Honestly, this was so fun and the whole time I just kept looking at my boy and saying “he’s so cute, it hurts.”

Training session complete, gotta jump in the shower and get ready for therapy. Hit the road around 10:45 and called my friend on the drive. I talk to her at least 3-4 times a week and truly feel like I would be dead in a ditch somewhere if I didn’t have her in my life. She has really showed me what unconditional love feels like and I am so grateful for our connection. We actually met in a mastermind in 2020, even though her business is running a private CBT therapy practice and we always say it was fate that brought us together because she never should’ve joined that mastermind but we got each other out of it so it was worth every penny.

EMDR. Well actually, we didn’t do EMDR today. We mostly talked about what’s been going on and created a plan for what’s next. I truly have the best support team in the world, even if I do spend my life in therapy. Like literally, I have an EMDR therapist, a CBT therapist, a couples therapist, a parenting therapist, therapists for my children and now even the dog has a fucking therapist. 😂

Had a great session and now I’m driving up to Buckhead for an appointment. It’s actually not until 2:45, so I’m going to go work at the Cheesecake Factory and get my favorite salad for lunch. Diet coke and a solo meal, I am one happy mama!

I ended up brainstorming a few ideas with Claude mostly and signing up for this Skool automation community and poking around a bit. It honestly didn’t feel like work, just thinking about some stuff and Voxing Rachel some ideas as they were coming up.

Stopped in at my favorite store ever, Evereve, to do a couple returns and of course ending up buying more than I came in with the get rid of. I’ve never known a store that was so truly made for me. I could buy almost anything they sell and be so happy. I’ve basically totally redone my wardrobe from there over the past year and I’ve never gotten more compliments either. Love!

Heading home now after my laser appointment and Rachel ended up calling me to chat through some ideas. We made a lot of decisions and talked through a few strategies… We covered a lot of ground. Pricing. Offer architecture. Funnels. The temptation to blow everything up and start over. (Always present. Always tempting. Almost always wrong.)

Here's the condensed version of what we decided and how we got there.

The question we kept asking: what problem are we actually trying to solve?

This sounds obvious. It is not obvious when you're in it.

We spent a solid chunk of the call circling the idea of combining The Room and MBA into one offer. It felt elegant in theory — one price, one thing, less to explain. And then I told Rachel that my friend (and seriously the best coach I’ve ever seen) Faith Mariah asked me point-blank at our retreat last week: when you only sold one offer before, did you like it?

My gut said no before my brain could dress it up. I hated it. When it stopped selling, I had nothing. No fallback, no flexibility, no other way to bring money in.

That's the thing about gut reactions — they contain data. I've learned to treat mine less like feelings to be managed and more like information to be read. The gut said no. We moved on.

We're keeping Learn / Watch / Do as three separate offers through all of 2026. Not debating it again. Decision made, door closed, moving forward.

The upsell pricing call

We're changing the MBA upsell from $44/month for 12 months to $97/month for 12 months — with a $1,000 pay-in-full option alongside it.

This was mostly a math conversation, but there was a values layer underneath it too. I know it sounds like a simple number change, but it was not a simple conversation.

Here's the full picture of what we were weighing:

The structural absurdity we'd been ignoring. Our current checkout flow goes: $17 tripwire, $77 order bump, $44/month upsell. This is almost backwards. The upsell is cheaper than the bump. We'd essentially trained people to expect prices to go down as they moved through the funnel, which is not exactly a confidence-inspiring signal about the value of the thing we're trying to sell them into.

The integrity problem. At $44/month, someone can fail their payments after month one and have gotten access to a $2,000 program for forty-four dollars. Maybe that's generous. Or maybe it's a structural flaw that we dressed up as accessibility. I've been telling myself it was the former. The payment failure data from the Lovable dashboard I created and shared about last week suggested I should think harder about that.

The 12-pay vs. 6-pay debate. My mastermind had a pretty clear opinion: 12 payments is too long. People forget what they signed up for. They lose the thread. The data backs this up — failed payments cluster in the second half of the payment cycle, which is exactly what you'd expect from buyers who were on the fence to begin with and eventually just... stopped caring enough to keep their card updated.

The counterargument, which I actually find compelling: even if someone drops off at payment three of a 12-pay plan, we got $132 we maybe never would have gotten otherwise. So my read on the data was that even partial completers net out fine. So we're keeping the 12-pay so we can keep the monthly payment under $100. The logic isn't "12 months is better than 6." It's "more people will say yes to 12 smaller payments, and even partial payment streams add up."

The psychological price ceiling. There's something real about the under-$100-a-month threshold. We landed on $97 (not $197) specifically because it keeps the monthly number below three digits. That's not accidental — that's buyer psychology, and pretending otherwise would be naive. The goal isn't to maximize the payment plan price. It's to find the number that's high enough to attract committed buyers and low enough that committed buyers still say yes.

What we're NOT doing. We're not switching to a 6-pay plan. We're not offering three options at checkout (too many choices = paralysis). We're not raising the pay-in-full price above $1,000.

We're also, critically, pulling baseline conversion data before we change a single thing on the page — so we're actually measuring this instead of just vibing our way through it and calling it strategy.

Raising the price isn't about extracting more from people. It's about charging something closer to what the thing is actually worth, and structuring the offer in a way that attracts people who are genuinely ready to use it. A $44/month buyer and a $97/month buyer are making different psychological commitments. We want the latter.

The bundle idea: simple promos, a few times a year

This one came in through a different door. Because what Faith suggested instead of combining everything into 1 offer actually landed: instead of restructuring the business around one offer, what if we did a few bundle promos a year where people could get all three for a flat price? Think: a simple email series, not a big launch. ~$3,000 for everything, or something like that. The December promo vibes that had a 15% conversion rate and quietly made us $45k, but intentional and recurring.

It's elegant because it doesn't require us to change anything about how we operate day-to-day. The three offers stay as they are. A few times a year, we say: hey, want all of it at once? Here's the door.

The woo part (you knew it was coming)

Here's what I notice when Rachel and I are in our best decision-making mode: we're not trying to force an answer. We're listening for the one that's already there.

The "combine the offers" idea kept not landing. Not because the math didn't work, but because something in both of us kept going meh every time we came back to it. That's not nothing. That's information.

The bundle promo idea landed immediately. Energy shifted. We both said "yeah" without having to convince ourselves. That's also information.

I don't think good strategy is purely rational. I think it's rational and somatic — meaning you do the math, and you also notice what your nervous system does when you say the thing out loud. I've made too many "logical" decisions that felt like lead in my chest, and I've learned the hard way that the chest usually wins eventually.

This one felt light. We're doing it. More to come as we build it out. Watch this space.

Off the phone with Rachel, which I ended up taking mostly from my front porch once I got home because it is a truly perfect Spring day outside. Kids are home and our Friday evening routine of vegetating on the couch with our devices is in full effect. We don’t’ let the kids have their ipads during the week, so Friday night they always want to come home and go straight for them, which Mattie and I have decided is the perfect way to end the week. I usually end up working (like I’m doing right now catching up in this diary…although usually it’s more like watching Claude videos on Youtube or playing around with AI tools and ideas…so fun “work” that feels more like play) or reading, playing a game on my phone and just hanging out with a cocktail on the porch with Mattie. Honestly, it’s perfection. Just so chill, which is exactly what I need after a long week.

We ordered sushi takeout for dinner (we also always get takeout on Fridays) and I am firmly planted on the couch with the kids and pup, and even Scout is curled up next to me, so we are one big happy family, all on our devices. LOL.

I’m going to leave you guys with this, a summary of some of the decisions Rachel and I made on our call today as we brainstormed ideas and I shared some of what came up during my mastermind and where my head is at lately:

The Webinar Experiment: What I Tried, What Happened, and Why I'm Already Pivoting

Let me tell you about the time I spent weeks building something I hated from the first day I started building it.

On March 24th, I ran my first cold-traffic-only live webinar. 489 people registered. 40 showed up live. I don't have final conversion numbers yet, but I can tell you they were not the stuff of victory laps.

And I'm already done with it.

I know. I know. "Kate, you did it once." Yes. Correct. One time. And I'm here to explain why that was enough information, because I think there's actually something useful in this for you — especially if you've ever abandoned something "too soon" and wondered if you were quitting or just listening.

What I was trying to solve

The thinking was: I need a repeatable way to sell MBA (Mindful Business Academy) to new people every month. Evergreen funnels are working, but slowly. A live webinar felt like a way to create urgency, build connection, and move people faster. The plan was to do them regularly — monthly, maybe twice a month.

On paper: reasonable.

In my body: immediate dread.

From the first day I started setting it up, there was this low-grade "I hate this" running in the background. I kept dismissing it because I hadn't tried it yet, and I'm very committed to not letting discomfort be confused with something actually being wrong.

But there's a difference between discomfort and misalignment, and I've learned — slowly, expensively — to tell them apart.

What the data actually said

489 registrants from cold traffic ads is genuinely not bad. The cost per lead was actually amazing (less than $2). The webinar itself went fine — I'm not awkward on camera, I don't spiral when selling, nothing exploded.

40 people showed up live, which is about an 8% attendance rate. Industry average for cold traffic is somewhere between 15–25%, so that's low, but not catastrophic.

The sales didn't materialize the way I'd hoped. We'll see what the follow-up sequence does — and actually, our audience historically buys in the follow-up, not live on the call, so that data isn't fully in yet. But even accounting for that: I'm done.

Here's the honest question I had to sit with: if this webinar had gotten 10 sales, would I be saying something different right now?

Probably yes. I'd probably be saying "wow, that was actually not that hard, let's do it again next month."

Which means my decision to stop isn't purely strategic. It's partly that it didn't work, and discomfort got louder when it didn't pay off immediately. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But here's the thing

The operational reality of running a live webinar every month is genuinely bad for how I work:

Every time I run one, I have to clone the email sequence, rewrite it, set up new ads, turn the ads on, run the webinar, turn the ads off, and archive the whole thing until next time. It's not complicated, but it's also never just running in the background. It requires me to be actively managing it, every single time. That's the opposite of what I sell.

I sell evergreen. I sell systems that work while you sleep. I tell people to stop trading time for money, to stop building businesses that require constant manual input. And then I was over here rebuilding the same live funnel from scratch every 30 days.

The incongruence was loud.

The pivot: evergreen webinar

Here's what I know works — or at least, what I know has worked before and what I have real evidence for: evergreen webinar funnels.

My biggest revenue year came from an evergreen webinar funnel. My audience buys in the follow-up sequence, not live. I'm a better writer than I am a live seller. The math on evergreen — set it up, drive cold traffic to it, tweak until it converts — matches how I actually want to build this business.

I tested an evergreen webinar for MBA once before, briefly. It didn't convert. But I also used a recording that was a couple years old, never tweaked it, and killed it after a few weeks because the challenge ads were popping off. That's not a test. That's giving something a cursory glance and walking away (not too dissimilar to what I’m doing with the live version of this).

This time, I'm actually going to build it properly. Two things I'm doing differently based on what I've learned:

1. Registrants will pick a time to watch — not just land on a replay page. That one change alone makes it feel live enough to increase show-up rates.
2. The entire email sequence will be written for cold traffic specifically. Not adapted from warm launch copy. Written from scratch for someone who doesn't know me yet.

Will it convert immediately? Probably not. I'm going to have to test, tweak, break things, fix them. That's the experiment. And I got really inspired after listening to this podcast episode. It reminded me that I used to make $50k/month with an evergreen webinar funnel that was primarily filled with cold traffic from ads.

What I want you to take from this

Not "trust your gut and quit early." That's too simple and frankly a little dangerous as advice.

More like: one data point can be enough information when it confirms what you already knew going in. I didn't walk into this webinar neutral. I walked in already telling myself it wasn't how I wanted to build this. The result confirmed the feeling. And when the data and the gut are pointing the same direction, you don't need a larger sample size.

The other thing: I'm not embarrassed that I tried it once and moved on. I'm embarrassed that I spent weeks building something while ignoring a voice that was saying "this isn't it" from the first day. The lesson isn't to quit faster. It's to listen sooner.

Okay. Pivoting. Watch this space.

Want to see exactly how I build and test the evergreen funnel? That's what this whole experiment is for. Stay tuned. I will definitely be sharing more in the 2026 Diaries after this.