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Welcome to the Consistent Creator Series, an intimate, in-depth conversation with online business owners who use consistency as a cornerstone to the growth of their business. In this interview, we will cover what consistency means to them, the commitment they made to consistency, how they choose to be consistent, how they’ve used consistency to turn their asset into a business that works for them (rather than the other way around), and how to stay consistent, even when life gets in the way—because that always happens, but you can’t let it stop you.
In the inaugural entry inside the Consistent Creator Series, I decided that there was no better person to interview than, well, myself!
Kathryn Roberts, founder of Quest for $47, is a consistency strategist for online business owners. She helps people who struggle with growth to create a consistent content strategy that allows them to cut through the noise so they can establish their expertise, connect and engage with their ideal client, and turn their business into an asset that works for them by integrating consistent sales into their marketing plan.
Kathryn lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her cat Bishop (who is a girl, even though she has a traditionally male name, because of comic book reasons and the fact that Kathryn is a huge nerd), and goes live every weeknight in a live stream series called 10 Minutes Before Dinner, which you can watch inside Kathryn’s free Facebook community, Consistent Content Creators. You can follow Kathryn on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
To take the mystery out of your content creation journey and learn how to plan an entire year of blog content, join Kathryn’s free, 5-day email course, Content Explosion.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your business.
I am Kathryn Roberts, the founder of Quest for $47, where I teach online business owners how to develop a consistent content strategy that that allows them to not only establish their expertise, but also nurture their audience and create income in their businesses. It’s something I am very passionate about—consistency is something that has been a core value of my business from day one, even if I hadn’t known how to put it into words at the time. My business started out as the question, “How much money do I need to make every single day in alternative—passive income—in order to pay my rent and expenses outside of my corporate salary?”
I did a little digging, I did a little math, and that number was $47 a day. All I would need was to generate $47 a day in alternative income from my corporate salary, and I would be able to cover all of my rent and all of my expenses. I’m not going to lie, my rent is very generous—my landlord is also my uncle, so I get the friends and family deal on rent—but that doesn’t mean that your number, how much money you want to make each day, is not attainable, and is not something that you can’t accomplish.
$47 a day is a starting point. I don’t stop after generating $47 a day. $47 a day is a great place to start, and a great way to break down an income goal into something you strive for daily. Because when you say, “I want to make an extra $40,000 in a year.” That sounds really daunting. How are you going to make $40,000 in a year? But if you take $40,000 and do a little math, divide $40,000 by 365—we’ll call it that, even though there are 366 days in 2020. That means you would need to make about $110 dollars, every single day to reach your goal. I think that having to make an extra $110 a day is a lot easier to swallow than thinking about how to make $40,000 in a year.
It’s really the idea of: how are you creating consistent income in your life, in your business, outside of your 9-5 salary?
Another reason why I am so passionate about this, is especially these days, entry-level jobs are really not providing enough salary to support young people, young women especially, in a way that allows them to actually live their lives while they’re young. It’s a lot of, “I have to go to work, I have to pay my bills, and I can’t really afford to do much else.”
So, what do you want your passive income for, how much passive income do you want, and how are you going to generate it, is all what I teach through Quest for $47. How to: create consistent content, market consistently, and sell consistently, because when you do all three of those things, your business is going to grow exponentially. And it’s going to make your life so much easier.
Even if you think, “Oh, I don’t have anything to sell.” I’m going to challenge that, because you definitely have something to sell, and you definitely have the right thing to sell in your business to make a significant impact in your life. Even if you don’t want to leave you 9-5 job, it means still having the opportunity to create something that is going to bring you income while you’re at work, and while you’re not.
What does consistency mean to you?
To me, consistency means showing up, every single day. And that’s what I do. When I left my day job in January of 2019, I decided that I was going to stop at nothing to grow my business into something that is successful, something that I get to use to live the life that I want. When I say, “What does consistency mean to me?” It means showing up, every day. It means being consistent with how I engage with my audience, it means being consistent with how I create and promote my content, and it means being consistent in the stuff that I get to sell. I’m not going to lie, and I’m not going to tell yo anything otherwise, but I have been working on being consistent in the things that I get to sell in the sense of having more things to sell at different price ranges—more on that in a minute.
But it’s all about showing up every single day—even when you don’t want to, or even when you don’t feel like you have anything to talk about. One of the things that I challenged myself to do in 2020 is to show up in Instagram stories, every single day, but specifically to do a little video in my Instagram stories, every single day. And I have been doing that, every single day, for the first 40-some odd days of 2020. It’s really helped my Instagram account grow, and that’s really what all of this comes down to. When you are consistently where you want to be consistent, you are going to grow consistently. It may be a couple followers here, a couple people in my free Facebook community, Consistent Content Creators, it may be a couple things here and there, a little bit of growth and a little bit of engagement, but that it all the things that you get to do, and you need to do, especially as you are growing your business, growing your social media platforms.
Because no one starts with an Instagram account of 20,000 followers. That would be nice, but that’s not the point of this. You’re growing a business and growing a platform full of your ideal client, or people like your ideal client, or people who just find you and like you, and your want to engage with those people. You want to bring them into your community, you want to nurture them when they’re in your community, and those are all things you have to do every single day.
There are no days off as an online business owner. Yes, you can put yourself in a position where your business is making you enough where you get to take off for a week, but even if you do take off for a week, there are still ways for you to automate, and schedule posts so they publish while you’re not physically working, so you get to live your life not chained to a computer. I have been chained to a computer for over a decade, and it’s a lot of work. But when you automate the way you get to grow, it makes your life so much easier, and it gives you so much more freedom to do the things that you want to do, so you can live life on your terms.
What is something you wish you knew about being consistent in your business when you were just starting out?
I could go a million different ways to answer this question, but the number one thing is that it takes a commitment to be consistent. Back when I first started Quest for $47, it was July of 2018, so I was still in my 9-5 job. What I wish I knew then was the kind of commitment it is going to take to build my business to what I want it to be.
I knew it was going to be successful, I knew it was something I wanted to eventually grow into something that I was going to do full-time—and my timeline definitely accelerated. But I did not know that it was going to take so much more of a commitment than I ever expected.
Because it does take a commitment and take discipline to sit down and get to work, every single day, no matter if your day job sucks and you’re miserable and when you get home you’re exhausted, you still have to get to work. If this is something that you are driven and very passionate about finding success in, then you still have to get to work. Even when you’re tired, even when you’re uninspired, you have to work. If this is something you want to do, you want to be successful, and therefore get to be successful, you get to get to work, every single day.
You carve out the time, you find the time, and you make it happen. It may feel like you’re doing a little bit here, a little bit there, and a tiny little bit here—it may feel like you’re not moving the needle, but you do get to move the needle every single time you get to work. That’s why I say, when I sign off of every live video that I do, I say, “All progress toward your goal is epic progress, and I believe in you.”
It doesn’t matter what progress you make toward your goal, as long as you are making some progress toward your goal. It doesn’t have to be massive, epic progress, every single day, because all of that progress is epic progress.
What did you have to give up when you were starting out, so you could be more consistent in your business?
When I was just starting out in my business, I had to give up my lunch hour at my day job, I have to give up my mornings, I had to I’ve up my mornings, and I’d have to give up spending. Those are probably my top-three. My lunch hour, my mornings, and my spending.
Let’s start from the top—my lunch hour. There are only so many hours in the day, and my day job meant that I was going to be at work from about 7:35 in the morning to a little bit after 5, every single day. And that is a long period of time, five days a week, to not be doing the things that you want to do, especially when you’re working for a company whose goals do not align with your passions. Let me tell you, I was NOT passionate about the things I was doing at my old job, especially by the time I got around to launching Quest for $47. I had to take advantage of every minute that I could, which meant that I was no longer permitting myself to spend time with my coworkers, shooting the breeze, at lunch. I decided to use my lunch hour as an extra hour to get to work, which meant not sitting in the conference room with my colleagues, it meant shutting the door to my office if I was on a call with the mastermind I joined, it meant putting my office phone on Do Not Disturb and making sure people knew that I was not available during the hour our office was closed for lunch, so I could get some stuff done during that hour. It’s not easy, because you are going to run into colleagues that do not understand what you’re doing, or why you’re doing what you’re doing, but when you are driven and passionate and ready to make a change, you have to do whatever it takes.
The second thing I sacrificed was my mornings. I am someone who has a very specific morning routine, but the routine I have now is different from the one I had when I was at my day job and running my business on the side. I would wake up, I would hydrate myself, I would have breakfast, and then I would get dressed and ready to go to work. When I decided I needed to find some time to work that wasn’t when I got home and was exhausted from my day, it meant I would have to get work done in the early mornings. So, I was up, every single day, at 5 a.m. Which, let me tell you, I do not miss having to wake up at 5 in the morning, every single day, not that I work at home. I would wake up, get right out of bed—taking a page out of Mel Robbins’ book The Five Second Rule (which I featured in Required Reading), which I hadn’t known about the concept at the time, but the principle was the same: the alarm goes off, and I got out of bed, and I got to work. I would do my morning morning routine alongside getting stuff done for my business, so that I could feel more confident that I was doing the things that were moving the needle as I was establishing myself as an online business owner, before I got to my day job and had to deal with all the stuff that was going on in the company that I worked for.
It was challenging. I was able to get myself into the routine of early mornings, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. And it doesn’t mean that suited me very well. I am someone who works very well at night. I do a lot of work that I do for Quest for $47 even now, in the evenings. It’s not the easiest thing to do, when you really like your sleep like I do.
And the third thing I sacrificed when I was just starting out, to be consistently growing my business, was my sending. I decided to tighten up my extraneous spending by a lot, even before I thought that I was going to leave my day job, because I wanted to make sure that I was prioritizing investing into my business. Because that’s something that you have to do if you want to be a successful online business owner. You get to invest before you make money, and anyone who thinks that you don’t have to invest any money is lying to you. If you want to build a successful business and you want that business to come in a timely manner—whatever you determine to be timely—then you’re going to have to invest. I’m not going to say that you have to invest a ton of money, but you are going to have to invest in a website platform, in an email service provider that isn’t Mailchimp, in educating yourself on how to grow your business, and the types of software that you’re going to need to grow your business. You’re going to have to invest in all of these things, in order to be successful.
So, in order to do that, it meant going shopping less. I didn’t even go shopping all that often, but it also meant less trips to Lululemon for leggings—though I still will spend money that I find to be valuable investments, like WonderUnders. They’re the best, ever.
I made the concerted effort to put my money into my business, because it’s going to give me the massive returns that are going to allow me to go shopping whenever the hell I want.
What is the one biggest challenge you’ve run into when it comes to being consistent, and how have you overcome it?
I’m not going to say that I don’t know what to talk about, because I never run out of things to talk about. I do know that is something that challenges a lot of other online business owners, but the biggest challenge for me, when it comes to being consistent, is structuring the content I create and the content that I promote in a way that makes my message cohesive.
It means a lot of trial and error, to be honest. You’re never going to get it right the first time, but putting something out there means you have a course to correct from. When it comes to being consistent, you have to have the idea of who you’re talking to. Who is your ideal client and what do they need from you? Because when you know those two things, and when you can find out those two things, that’s really going to inform your content strategy and give you the cohesive message that you want.
When you have a cohesive message, you may feel like you’re saying things over and over and over that are the same, but what you’re doing is reinforcing your message and showing your audience that you know what you’re talking about in a lot of different ways. Because sometimes people learn differently, and sometimes people need to get the message differently.
You have to work on what your message is, what your core is, and how you are going to convey that core message. And the way that I overcame that challenge was my continuing to talk, to continue to convey what I thought was my message. I didn’t realize what my message was until someone told me it—shoutout to Deanna Frances, the host of the Lean Into Curiosity Podcast (check out my episodes here and here), and who is going to be a guest in the Consistent Creator series soon! She was the one who said to me, “Kathryn, you are the queen of consistency.” And it took me a while before I realized that yes, that is my thing. I’m the queen of consistent content creation and consistent content promotion and that’s what I get to use as my message.
But it did take time to get there, it took someone telling me who I am, and it took trial and error, but it did not taking me waiting until I figured out what my message was before I started saying what my message is. Nothing is set in stone, you can always go back and change things, and your message is going to evolve as your business evolves. There’s nothing that should stop you from starting out with the message that you feel is right for you right now. The absolute best thing for you to do is take that action, get yourself out in front of your audience, and figure things out as you go.
How do you stay consistent in your business when life gets in the way?
And this is actually something that challenged me a lot at the end of last year. I had multiple events that took me back home to California, and I was not consistent. I will admit that I was not consistent because I am fallible and I am human. Life happens and life gets in the way. And that’s why in 2020, I decided that—come hell or high water—there is one place where I am going to show up every single day. And that one place, for me—which can be different for you—is Instagram stories. No matter what is going on, no matter what I’m doing, and no matter where I am, I am going to show up at least once on Instagram stories with with a little video.
I mentioned this earlier, and I have been doing this every single day of 2020 and I am going to continue doing it in all the next days of the year, and it’s been a really great way to feel like I am still showing up, despite the fact that I have a lot going on in my life.
The perfect example is that recently, I was at a softball tournament, and I was working from the ballpark all day for two and a half days. With what I was doing, it wasn’t easy to pop up in my community, Consistent Content Creators, I did not post in my Instagram feed that weekend, but I could throw up a couple stories, and I did my videos before I went to bed. That is my come hell or high water thing that I get to do, because the more active I am on stories, the more my content is being seen by my ideal client, and the more my account is going to grow.
When you focus your efforts on your accounts, that’s how they grow. It’s going to be a little bit here, a little bit there, but come hell or high water, I am going to show up, no matter what. No matter if it’s a weekday, the weekend, late at night—I think one of the videos I did was at 11 at night, but it doesn’t matter, because A, those things live for 24 hours, and B, people will see it when they open up Instagram in the morning. There’s no reason why you should’t worry about the time of day—especially if you’re posting in stories. I know it’s different for your feed, because you want to be sure that your ideal audience is awake and active, but stories are great, because they last 24 hours. If you post late at night, but then also post early on the next day, then you’re still going to have people seeing your stuff. And this all leds to the next question…
If it all comes down to just one platform to be consistent on, which would you choose and why?
My drop-everything place to be consistently active on is Instagram stories, because of all the things I talked about in the last question. It can be as simple as putting up a couple stories telling your audience that you’re running around like a crazy person and have zero time, but what are you up to? What are you struggling with right now? How can I help you? Or put up a poll? Ask a question. It’s a really great, easy way to engage, that doesn’t take up a lot of time. Give them the opportunity to engage with you.
Because all of this online business growth should not have to take a lot of your time. When it comes to marketing your business, it is a very important fraction of what you do, but it is only a fraction.
So, stories are a great place to show up, even if I don’t have the time to show up for hours on end. It helps my audience feel like, I was there, even though I really wasn’t—like when I was working that softball tournament, because it looked like I was active from my stories, but I was actually teaching people how to score a softball game.
What is your greatest asset in your business that allows you to be consistent, easily?
For me, that is 100% my creative genius. My ability to create ideas out of a hat is one of my favorite assets of my business. If you give me a topic to talk about, I can give you five different blog posts at the drop of a hat. If you give me something you want to create in your business—which I actually did the other night—I can help you create a power hour offering for your in minutes, including what the potential client’s struggles are, and what the outcomes are going to be, how you’re going to help someone who chooses to work with you for a power hour.
I create things at the drop of a hat, and that’s what allows me to stay consistent. I come up with ideas very easily, for how to not only convey knowledge to my audience, but also how to nurture my audience and sell to my audience. I do that consistently, all from my brain, because it’s a pretty awesome thing, if I do say so myself,
If you had one tip about being consistent, what would it be?
I have so many, but I think the biggest one is that it is indeed a commitment. You have to commit to being consistent, every single day. It’s not just something where you say, “Yeah, I want to be consistent,” and then let life happen. You get to be a consistent content creator as an online business owner. You get to have this opportunity to help your audience, and that means you have to show up.
Being consistent means showing up, every single day, and it is really important to do that.
If you want your online business to be successful, you have to put in the work. You have to be consistent and you have to be committed, and you have to make sure that you’re not letting life happen to you, in the sense of, “Oh, I just don’t feel like it today.” I posted on Instagram a few months ago (check out the post here), “Any time I say, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” I stop myself and say, “I’m going to start right now, because the more you say, “I’m just going to do it tomorrow, the more you’re pushing it off, and the less likely that it’s actually going to happen.
If you are committed, if you are driven, and if you are disciplined, then you get to go to work, every single day, in your business.
What is one thing about consistency that still challenges you now?
That is probably—and I’m the victim of this, because I do it to myself, when it comes to creating content in advance. Creating content in advance and batching is critical, because it means it’s all that much easier to promote yourself, because you’re not creating and promoting at the same time. You create one day, and promote the next five. Sometimes I will let myself be the person creates the content and promotes the content same day, and I can tell you from experience—whether you’re a full-time business owner or not—it’s not something you should do.
It’s something that I get better at, and push myself to sit down and refine my plan even further so I am taking a couple days out of the month to plan my content out, so all I have to do is promote my content the rest of the time. It’s something that you’re going to find challenging, but especially if you’re in a 9-5 job, especially if you have a busy life, have kids, travel a lot, getting your stuff done in advance is critical.
As someone who works from home and doesn’t travel as often, I have a little bit more leeway, but it’s still la lot easier on all accounts when you do it in advance, so all you have to do is copy, paste, and publish. It helps you focus the core of your message when you write out content that relays the core of your message all at once.
How does your consistency convert to income in your business?
Consistency converts to income because it means that I am consistently growing my reach, consistently getting people into my audience, I am consistently nurturing my audience, and I am consistently selling to my audience, all at the same time. It is all about what you do and how you do it consistently.
I talked about this in depth in 10 Minutes Before Dinner Episode 28, but it means that I get to nurture my audience and sell to my audience at the same time. Because there is no such thing as waiting for your audience to get used to you before you can sell to them. You’re getting new people into your audience every single day. I am reaching new people every single day, nurturing new people every single day, showing people every single day my expertise, and I am also selling to them.
It also means that you have to have things to sell—if you want to sell consistently, you have to have something to sell consistently—Which is why I created The Consistency Blueprint, which teaches you how to implement every consistency strategy I’ve mentioned in this interview, allowing you to grow quickly and easily.
How do you use content you’ve already created and promoted to reinforce your message?
This is really important, because I phrased the question as reinforcing your message, rather than being repetitive. I’ve talked about reinforcement before, and I’m going to continue to talk about reinforcement over repetition, because that is one of the core values of my business.
You are not being repetitive by talking about the same concepts regularly, you are reinforcing the point to your audience.
My best content, my most popular content, and my favorite content are things that I get to bring back around and talk about and showcase and emphasize the most important facets of my business—which is that you have to be consistent, you have to be committed, and you have to reinforce your point to your audience.
It’s all about looking at the content my audience reacts the most positively to, that my audience gets most excited about, and that my audience asks about. I get to put all that content aside, somewhere safe and easy to access, so when I want to reinforce something, I can pull that same piece of content and say, “Everybody has been asking about XYZ, here is something I published a while back with that answer.”
People don’t always scroll back to the oldest of your Instagram posts, it’s very much what are you creating and posting right now—another reason why you should post regularly to your feed—but that doesn’t mean your best Instagram content from a year ago can’t still be relevant today. You can’t let that die. You get to talk about what you want to talk about, and you get to repurpose, reuse, resurrect content from whenever in the past.
I’m not saying that you should reuse content every single day, but especially if you are busy and you have things you want to talk about but don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel, take one of your best old posts that is related to what your ant to talk about, and boom! You’re done.
Reinforcement is one of the most important things that you get to do in your business, something that I am most excited about, and I love to be able to do on a regular basis.
More on the reasons behind the Consistent Creator Series and The Consistency Blueprint
All of these very simple concepts: what is means to be consistent, knowing your ideal client and how to engage with them, picking my priority method of engaging with my audience on social media, scheduling time to create and giving myself deadlines, and reinforcing my point are all things that I do in my business, every single day, which has allowed me to grow my business so much faster, than if I just decided to throw stuff on the wall to see what sticks.
These concepts as easy to learn and even quicker to implement, and I walk you through each step of the way inside The Consistency Blueprint. This five-part, DIY program teaches you how to become a consistent content creator quickly and easily.
Inside the program, you also get access to a pair of transformative bonus masterclasses: Rock Your Lunch Break – How To Get More Done While At Your 9-5, and Easy Money – 5 Easy Ways To Make $1000 In Your Business This Month.
Click here to learn more about The Consistency Blueprint.
Have someone you think would be a great fit for the Consistent Creator Series? Send your recommendation (and their contact information) to kathryn@questfor47.com.
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