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7: How Nick Wolny Used Data to Create the Fastest Path for Clients to Achieve the Program Promise | E7
Episode 77th September 2023 • Your Systems Friend • Ashley Rose
00:00:00 00:46:05

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The best curriculum not only gets our coaching clients a specific program promise, but it also helps them get that result as streamlined and quickly as it can. 

When Nick Wolny, an editorial consultant, built his Airtable Base for his program, Camp Wordsmith, and began tracking client progress, it became clear he needed to streamline the curriculum to help clients achieve the program promise faster.  

Now Nick knows with 100% confidence that his clients will achieve the program promise of producing and broadcasting written content consistently within their first quarter of joining. 

In this episode, Nick shares the changes he made to refine his path to the program promise, how he has automated nearly every part of his program to run without him, and how his client and sales data has helped shape nearly every decision he makes in his business.

03:30 — Why Nick began tracking client progress and what he realized with that data 

11:48 —  Centralizing your program data allows you to answer any question you have about what’s working and what’s not related to your program

12:09 — How Nick used his client progress data to create a new onboarding experience to create a faster path to the program promise

16:09 — Why simplifying your curriculum is more valuable than having dozens of lessons (and what you can do with lessons that aren’t needed to get the result) 

22:35 — How the right systems foundations can create so many possibilities for you to improve your program and operations

26:47 — Understand the balance between what you need to know as a CEO and what can be delegated

29:31 — Why you don’t need to include all the same program features as others do to get clients results 

36:01 — You should be continuously refining your program and curriculum 

37:05 — The right data allows you to think big picture like a CEO rather than checking off tasks 



👋 CONNECT WITH NICK WOLNY (HE/HIM) 

Nick Wolny is a professional editor, writer, and consultant. He reports on finance, technology, LGBTQ+ life, and how they intertwine, and has previously contributed to CNET, Fast Company, Business Insider, Out magazine, and Entrepreneur magazine. Nick is the founder of Camp Wordsmith®, a source of truth publishing system and learning curriculum for online professionals.

Website: https://nickwolny.com



WAYS TO WORK WITH ASHLEY:


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🤓FREE MASTERCLASS: The 3 Systems You Need Before Your Next 6-Figure Group Program Launch

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👋CONNECT WITH ASHLEY

Website: https://systemsoverstress.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemsoverstress/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJJ01c-NTjI8eZzp2wwO7GA

Transcripts

Nick Wolny:

It became really clear to me that I had to shore

Nick Wolny:

up my onboarding experience a lot.

Nick Wolny:

What I thought was obvious is not obvious.

Nick Wolny:

Getting much, much more granular with that onboarding process and being able

Nick Wolny:

to say with confidence, with a hundred percent confidence in your sales

Nick Wolny:

copy and in terms of your delivery.

Nick Wolny:

Like you will walk away with this promise fulfilled if you complete

Nick Wolny:

these lessons in this order.

Nick Wolny:

Welcome to Systems Famous, the podcast where we're revolutionizing the coaching

Nick Wolny:

industry by putting client results first.

Nick Wolny:

I'm Ashley Pendergraft, a systems and automation expert with over five years

Nick Wolny:

of experience in the coaching industry.

Nick Wolny:

Let's get into the show.

Ashley Pendergraft:

All right, Nick Wolney, welcome

Ashley Pendergraft:

to the Systems famous podcast.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We're

Nick Wolny:

thanks for having me.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We're so excited to have you.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I can't wait to get into all this.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and about

Ashley Pendergraft:

your offer and who you help get results.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

So I'm Nick.

Nick Wolny:

By day I'm an editor at cnet.

Nick Wolny:

after six years of being self-employed as a marketing consultant, focusing mostly

Nick Wolny:

on digital marketing and copywriting.

Nick Wolny:

I went in the opposite direction of most of this online entrepreneur culture.

Nick Wolny:

I got a great offer for full-time corporate job.

Nick Wolny:

And a condition of taking that job was that I could continue

Nick Wolny:

to build my consulting business.

Nick Wolny:

And so I'm doing both, and I've been doing both for about the last 18 months.

Nick Wolny:

What that required is, Taking a lot of my one-to-one consulting, a lot

Nick Wolny:

of the really hands off on stuff.

Nick Wolny:

I was doing a lot of ghost writing that I was doing and.

Nick Wolny:

Pivot into a much more leveraged automated offer that just didn't

Nick Wolny:

require so much of my time.

Nick Wolny:

My company's core offer, it's called Camp Wordsmith.

Nick Wolny:

it's the best goddamn content marketing strategy program in the world.

Nick Wolny:

It really is, and it is camp themed.

Nick Wolny:

A little bit about me as my background is I was a classical musician.

Nick Wolny:

So I'm a classically trained French hornist.

Nick Wolny:

And I don't use that anymore, but I just loved all those years going

Nick Wolny:

to band camp, going to arts camp.

Nick Wolny:

Did you ever go to camp, Ashley?

Nick Wolny:

Oh, you got married at a camp.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Not only did I go to camp, I ran a digital detox summer

Ashley Pendergraft:

camp for adults before this business.

Nick Wolny:

That's right.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I got married at a summer camp.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We'll put, we'll put your what Nick's website in the show notes,

Ashley Pendergraft:

but what Yeah, it's beautiful summer camp themed branding.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's amazing.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So, yes, I, I love camp.

Nick Wolny:

And my my expertise and my business model does

Nick Wolny:

not use much social media.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

I lean much more into search into SEO.

Nick Wolny:

If you want to build a business without much social media, I'm your guy.

Nick Wolny:

I can help you get there.

Nick Wolny:

But it's going to require a different skillset.

Nick Wolny:

And it's also going to require creating content that is a little more rigorous,

Nick Wolny:

that is a little more focused.

Nick Wolny:

When you're in that kind of quiet focused environment, you can do really.

Nick Wolny:

Awesome stuff like you, you actually are much more productive

Nick Wolny:

than you think you are.

Nick Wolny:

It's just about kind of keeping those distractions at bay, much

Nick Wolny:

like a digital detox, right?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Just getting refocused on things.

Nick Wolny:

I think that's one of the biggest keys with writing.

Nick Wolny:

People struggle so much with content writing, but when you know what you're

Nick Wolny:

going to say and how you're going to say it, like it just flies right out.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

So we just want to do that more often.

Nick Wolny:

So that's kinda the inspo behind it.

Nick Wolny:

I also just wanted to do something really branded.

Nick Wolny:

I'd kind of done the Nick Wotley consultant for like years and

Nick Wolny:

I was just kind of ready to do something cool and branded and

Nick Wolny:

something that's not all about me.

Nick Wolny:

So yeah, it's content marketing strategy program.

Nick Wolny:

It focuses specifically on writing.

Nick Wolny:

Hence the name Camp Wordsmith.

Nick Wolny:

It has three components.

Nick Wolny:

It has an editorial database swipe file built in Airtable.

Nick Wolny:

It has a custom built portal and it has a monthly client's only newsletter.

Nick Wolny:

And so that's what it is.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

I remember when, when we first met and we talked

Ashley Pendergraft:

about Airtable, you weren't totally ready or sold on it

Ashley Pendergraft:

necessarily, but you're like in due time.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And that in due time was when you're like, I just got a job and

Ashley Pendergraft:

now everything has to be automated.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And that was the turning point.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So it was like, even, even if it's not like a new job that's coming up like

Ashley Pendergraft:

those, it's so helpful to just automate it because you never know when those

Ashley Pendergraft:

things are going to going to pop up.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

We, we met at Rachel Rogers event the most in Los Angeles, California.

Nick Wolny:

The best city in the world.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah, and you showed it to me.

Nick Wolny:

We have that great photo that we like staged of like, you are at the laptop, we

Nick Wolny:

were at, sitting at the table and you're at the laptop and like I'm being, I.

Nick Wolny:

Happy as hell with like my hands over my mouth kind of thing.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, this is so amazing.

Nick Wolny:

I just don't know that I need this level of leverage.

Nick Wolny:

Like I'm not doing this like multi six or seven figure business.

Nick Wolny:

Like I don't have like a staff of people going in and out of a database.

Nick Wolny:

I don't know if this is right for me.

Nick Wolny:

I'm fine with my my little Google spreadsheets and my little

Nick Wolny:

Asana boards and all this stuff.

Nick Wolny:

And over time, what I discovered, particularly in that corporate job

Nick Wolny:

is, oh my God, what I thought was automation is nowhere near the amount

Nick Wolny:

of automation like I actually need.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

So it was kind of this forcing mechanism.

Nick Wolny:

I think two things happened.

Nick Wolny:

One was the job was created, it created a forcing mechanism where I

Nick Wolny:

just couldn't fuck around anymore.

Nick Wolny:

I just, it had to be hyper, hyper efficient.

Nick Wolny:

Because I would have, I can't get back to your Vox until tomorrow.

Nick Wolny:

You sent, yeah, you sent it at 9:00 AM I, I have 11 meetings today.

Nick Wolny:

Like, I can't, you know what I mean?

Nick Wolny:

It was stuff like that.

Nick Wolny:

And then just taking a really good look at my offer.

Nick Wolny:

I think that's what also scared me initially about Airtable is that in

Nick Wolny:

order to document that and create that database and that inventory, you've

Nick Wolny:

gotta know what steps you're giving people and in what order and what IP

Nick Wolny:

has been created and in what order.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, well, you know what I offer, it depends on who you talk to.

Nick Wolny:

That was also a forcing mechanism in terms of, of really distilling everything down.

Nick Wolny:

Not necessarily into one offer.

Nick Wolny:

I still have, I've got a couple of different offers.

Nick Wolny:

Camp Wordsmith is certainly the flagship, but just getting very granular and

Nick Wolny:

very clear and operational about what that offer is and what it consists of.

Nick Wolny:

So it was great for that.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah,

Nick Wolny:

because you have volume, you have hundreds of lessons inside

Nick Wolny:

of Camp Wordsmith, is that?

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

And they're now all documented in one spot in Airtable, and you also have.

Nick Wolny:

3,500 students varying, payment tiers inside of Camp Wordsmith.

Nick Wolny:

So before you had the systems that Nick was a part of, systems

Nick Wolny:

of Stress, my group program.

Nick Wolny:

Before you dove into that, how were you managing both 3,500 clients and like

Nick Wolny:

all of those lessons and the, the effort and the organization it takes to get all

Nick Wolny:

those out into your, into the platform.

Nick Wolny:

Well, the short answer is I wasn't, I was just like, go try it out.

Nick Wolny:

And to be clear, like my program does not require the consumption of 300 lessons

Nick Wolny:

in order to deliver by Program Promise.

Nick Wolny:

I created a portal a couple of years ago because I had the, I

Nick Wolny:

had different sets of ip, right?

Nick Wolny:

I had a course on email.

Nick Wolny:

I had a course on pitching media.

Nick Wolny:

I had a course on copywriting, things like that.

Nick Wolny:

And I just wanted to kind of live all in one place and be able to offer

Nick Wolny:

one overarching offer that involved the, the putting those in sequence.

Nick Wolny:

So depending on how people come in my build is, it's a custom site that's built

Nick Wolny:

on wishlist member through WordPress.

Nick Wolny:

So I can, I can sell anything a la carte.

Nick Wolny:

In it if I want to.

Nick Wolny:

People would come in, they would, consume these lessons or consume those lessons.

Nick Wolny:

But since it was this custom build, I didn't have great things like lesson

Nick Wolny:

tracking or engagement tracking.

Nick Wolny:

And particularly at the end of 2022, I explored creating a free tier.

Nick Wolny:

Call welcome tier, and I put my whole list into the welcome tier.

Nick Wolny:

I was like, check out this cool shit that I've built, right?

Nick Wolny:

I have the best illustrations, I have the best, right?

Nick Wolny:

I mean, back me up here.

Nick Wolny:

Like the branding is no,

Nick Wolny:

we only work with the best.

Nick Wolny:

Like you have the best, you have the best everything.

Nick Wolny:

Pro tip, if you want to, if you want stuff look really good, even

Nick Wolny:

if it's held together with duct tape on the back end at first, just go

Nick Wolny:

get some custom illustrations done.

Nick Wolny:

Like, it's like, it's totally amazing.

Nick Wolny:

So anyway, so it's got this great aesthetic and all that stuff, and

Nick Wolny:

I wanted to show that off Ashley.

Nick Wolny:

It's like I'd made that investment.

Nick Wolny:

Even one of the concepts from the event that we attended, it was like,

Nick Wolny:

Really use all of your resources.

Nick Wolny:

Use all of the resources that you have available to you.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, well, or use all the assets.

Nick Wolny:

This was an asset for sure.

Nick Wolny:

It was a big build.

Nick Wolny:

It took a long time.

Nick Wolny:

And I just wanted to show that off to more people, not just my customers.

Nick Wolny:

I built this free tier.

Nick Wolny:

I just threw my whole list into the free tier.

Nick Wolny:

People were like, cute, but then in terms of our initial work in Systems

Nick Wolny:

Over Stress when I began to get really granular about, I what are

Nick Wolny:

people doing once they're in there?

Nick Wolny:

How are they engaging?

Nick Wolny:

What are they, what, what lessons are they completing?

Nick Wolny:

What videos are they watching?

Nick Wolny:

It just became really, really clear that even that, giving people the content

Nick Wolny:

is not the solution per se, right?

Nick Wolny:

Because even when they've got the content right in front of them

Nick Wolny:

they're not necessarily taking the actions that they need to take to

Nick Wolny:

get those results, you promise.

Nick Wolny:

How many of the 3,500, how many of those were just folks on your

Nick Wolny:

email list that you dropped in?

Nick Wolny:

Oh probably 3000.

Nick Wolny:

so when I did that, I had about, 55 in my the Camp Portsmith all Access Pass

Nick Wolny:

which is that like flagship offer.

Nick Wolny:

And then I had another like 500 ish who had purchased a la carte.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Without Airtable and the systems that you had, would it

Ashley Pendergraft:

just kind of been like, based on vibes?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like, like of like, of the, the tracking of seeing like, oh, the people.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Because now Nick has an incredible Zapier king, like all, every, every lesson that's

Ashley Pendergraft:

completed gets added into this Airtable database and connected to the student,

Ashley Pendergraft:

which his Custom Corp portal couldn't do.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And a lot of course platforms actually don't have that granular

Ashley Pendergraft:

of data capabilities, but were able to make that work with Airtable.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So you were able to see that there, there wouldn't have been another way to see

Ashley Pendergraft:

that without, without this build, right?

Nick Wolny:

No, I don't think so at all.

Nick Wolny:

I mean, I, I would do things like feedback forms.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Just, just stuff that was very manual.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And stuff that requires.

Nick Wolny:

A more active engagement point from the user that, you, you can't necessarily

Nick Wolny:

get from even your most avid user.

Nick Wolny:

Like, they're not necessarily going to fail out a survey

Nick Wolny:

or, or something like that.

Nick Wolny:

So to just really go off of that behavior-based tracking as much

Nick Wolny:

as possible, what percentage of the video are they watching?

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Are they pressing that goddamn button that's at the bottom of the, that we

Nick Wolny:

literally, in my orientation, I say it at least five times, you've gotta

Nick Wolny:

press this button, though, just to get really, really clear with that.

Nick Wolny:

And I just didn't have, it was ironic.

Nick Wolny:

I think a lot of us do this in our businesses.

Nick Wolny:

We're saying one thing, but then we look at our own businesses and we're

Nick Wolny:

not, we're not doing it as much.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

Just talking a lot about, it's why I love email.

Nick Wolny:

It just gives you a very clear g p s on what's working and what's not working.

Nick Wolny:

Let's do segment, all that stuff.

Nick Wolny:

But here I am flying without a G P S in terms of whether or not my, my

Nick Wolny:

free tier members were participating.

Nick Wolny:

And to be fair, they were m QLS at best.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

They, were they marketing qualified leads at best, because

Nick Wolny:

they were on my email list.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Certainly not even sales qualified leads.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

Like, who's to say that they were, I was just, I I didn't ask them to be in there.

Nick Wolny:

I just, I just dumped them all in there and told them, go check it out.

Nick Wolny:

Even in terms of that, Behavior or that qualification.

Nick Wolny:

I, I hadn't done that.

Nick Wolny:

Airtable more than any other system, I think, I just think the.

Nick Wolny:

Connectability of Airtable to everything and from everything is

Nick Wolny:

what makes it such a powerful tool.

Nick Wolny:

And it just, everything just kind of clicked for me where I was

Nick Wolny:

like, oh wait, I could actually, everything there is for me to see

Nick Wolny:

and build I can do with this tool.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I lo I love that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I also

Ashley Pendergraft:

You made, like you made a, a guess.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like you're like, oh, I think like I'm going to put these people in

Ashley Pendergraft:

and I'm going to see how it goes.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And then the data was able to back up and be like, well, they're not rallying.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And so you can, there's two ways you can go.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's like, how do I further engage the free tier people, or do I just

Ashley Pendergraft:

like focus on a different route?

Ashley Pendergraft:

And you just wouldn't be able to know that without that data.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Right.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Which I think is really great.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And our biggest thing is like, we love to have centralized data because then, Any

Ashley Pendergraft:

question you have about your group program can be answered because it's all right,

Ashley Pendergraft:

all there and able to easily analyze.

Ashley Pendergraft:

What are some other things that you've been able to decide, or like any

Ashley Pendergraft:

data-driven decisions or anything that was surprising to you when, when you

Ashley Pendergraft:

had everything centralized in one spot.

Nick Wolny:

It became really clear to me that I had to shore

Nick Wolny:

up my onboarding experience a lot.

Nick Wolny:

What I thought was obvious is not obvious.

Nick Wolny:

I had a past business coach who had an internal saying in his

Nick Wolny:

company and his internal saying, marketing coach, who's like, like,

Nick Wolny:

people are not paying attention.

Nick Wolny:

It's like people are not paying attention.

Nick Wolny:

To get very, very clear and granular with the orientation and the onboarding process

Nick Wolny:

and having those checks and balances to ensure that people are getting the promise

Nick Wolny:

that they signed up for and paid for.

Nick Wolny:

And so how my on onboarding works is people come in, they're in a new camper

Nick Wolny:

orientation and everything else is locked until they complete that, right?

Nick Wolny:

We need to them to complete those basic lessons.

Nick Wolny:

Then after that, what they unlock is the unlock the actual

Nick Wolny:

setup of the editorial database.

Nick Wolny:

This swipe file, it is an Airtable swipe file with 14 different tables in it.

Nick Wolny:

And people can use as many or as few of those as they want.

Nick Wolny:

We just give them a copy of the master file, show them how to set that up,

Nick Wolny:

and then from there they go into a core curriculum, which shows them, using the

Nick Wolny:

concepts of my consultative framework, how to implement those different components

Nick Wolny:

of the framework in the respective tables of the database swipe file.

Nick Wolny:

So they're not just sitting with an Airtable swipe file that's big and

Nick Wolny:

empty and they don't know how to use it.

Nick Wolny:

It's literally one lesson to one table.

Nick Wolny:

And they can use as many or as few of those tables.

Nick Wolny:

As they want.

Nick Wolny:

And then from there they go off to camp, right?

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And they can just kind of, drive around and check out whichever other courses

Nick Wolny:

they want, sign up for customized learning plans and things like that.

Nick Wolny:

But that sequence getting much, much more granular with that onboarding process

Nick Wolny:

and being able to say with confidence, with a hundred percent confidence in your

Nick Wolny:

sales copy and in terms of your delivery.

Nick Wolny:

Like you will walk away with this promise fulfilled if you complete

Nick Wolny:

these lessons in this order.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yep.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And tell us what is your like clear program promise for Camp Wordsmith.

Nick Wolny:

Camp Wordsmith is an editorial turnkey database and online

Nick Wolny:

learning curriculum for online business owners, service providers and creators.

Nick Wolny:

And what you will walk away with is the ability to plan in quarters

Nick Wolny:

any components of your marketing strategy that involve writing.

Nick Wolny:

So my framework, it's called the four T framework.

Nick Wolny:

It's a map.

Nick Wolny:

It is, of course, it's cute and illustrated.

Nick Wolny:

But it's kind of how my career shook out Ashley, is that like, I, I just

Nick Wolny:

don't adhere to this common thing in our online entrepreneur industry that

Nick Wolny:

that one skill or one thing is going to be what unlocks the, the whole shebang.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

I'm much more into the digital marketer calls it the T-shaped marketer.

Nick Wolny:

Where it's, awareness of many different components of marketing

Nick Wolny:

and then deep expertise and a couple of those components.

Nick Wolny:

Okay.

Nick Wolny:

I very much ascribe to that.

Nick Wolny:

So my areas of expertise certainly are content writing, email writing,

Nick Wolny:

copywriting, and media writing.

Nick Wolny:

I've never had a publicist and I have, I.

Nick Wolny:

Tons of media.

Nick Wolny:

Media hired me Because I had so much media.

Nick Wolny:

So I know how to do those things and I know how to do them well.

Nick Wolny:

But there will be times where copywriting's more important

Nick Wolny:

and then there'll be times where email writing's more important.

Nick Wolny:

And then, people want to go after those media bylines.

Nick Wolny:

And I just, I whisper to them.

Nick Wolny:

I'm like, you don't have a website yet.

Nick Wolny:

It's just, put those things in, in the correct order.

Nick Wolny:

, In terms of those components, deciding on a quarterly basis which

Nick Wolny:

of those territories you want to focus on for the next quarter.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

And to decide on quarterly projects, those big rocks, whether it's setting

Nick Wolny:

up a, a cadence where you're going to publish a new blog post every week,

Nick Wolny:

or a new really nice Instagram post.

Nick Wolny:

Even if.

Nick Wolny:

I don't use much social media, but if you want to use a ton of it,

Nick Wolny:

you can totally use it for that.

Nick Wolny:

Or maybe another quarter you want to get all your nurture sequences

Nick Wolny:

lined up and you want to figure out your weekly newsletter,

Nick Wolny:

cadence all that kind of stuff.

Nick Wolny:

I just think it's too hard to do everything all at once

Nick Wolny:

and, but I also think that I.

Nick Wolny:

It's not going to be one skill.

Nick Wolny:

It's not like, ooh, if you just figure out TikTok ads, you're, that's the secret.

Nick Wolny:

It's just that's not how business works.

Nick Wolny:

It's a lot of different components and also our markets

Nick Wolny:

are really changing quickly.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So many of us, and me included, you've been in the

Ashley Pendergraft:

program, you've seen how much shit is inside of systems overstress.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like you can do anything in there.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

What we don't have right now, and what we're working on is actually what you,

Ashley Pendergraft:

how you kind of had that, here's the promise, everything else that you get

Ashley Pendergraft:

to play with is gated until you hit the promise, essentially like master this

Ashley Pendergraft:

database and then go explore and play.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And for those of us who have, I don't want to say bloated programs,

Ashley Pendergraft:

but there's just like a lot in it and there's not this clear steps.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I used to gate things and then I had people who were mad at me for gating

Ashley Pendergraft:

them I, and I want it to be liked.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So I was like, nevermind, everything's ungated.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But that's not going to help them get the results.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like I, not that I know better, but like I know what's going to get them the results

Ashley Pendergraft:

and it's not having everything available at one time and totally overwhelming them.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And so I think that you did it right in the way that you're like, I'm not

Ashley Pendergraft:

going to get rid of these, hundreds of lessons, but I'm going to strategically

Ashley Pendergraft:

move them around so that these things are extra, these things aren't.

Ashley Pendergraft:

If anybody has a program that feels like too unwieldy, that's the strategy

Ashley Pendergraft:

that totally refining the result and being able to kind of reverse

Ashley Pendergraft:

engineer the process and then give them the rest once they've really like

Ashley Pendergraft:

marked the progress as, as complete.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

I think also not projecting what type of client.

Nick Wolny:

Who purchases my offer, not having to be this absolutely exact avatar.

Nick Wolny:

Hmm.

Nick Wolny:

My framework is I like to say lightly linear.

Nick Wolny:

It, that's why I picked a map as the graphic.

Nick Wolny:

It's like, you're going to drive around to these different territories or whatever.

Nick Wolny:

And, and I'd have some people who'd be like, camp Wordsmith is so great.

Nick Wolny:

I've, I've gotten more interviews this year than any other year.

Nick Wolny:

And then you'd have someone else who would say, camp Wordsmith is great.

Nick Wolny:

I picked my email service provider and I got my landing page set up

Nick Wolny:

with my badass lead magnet, and I'm getting a 50% opt-in rate.

Nick Wolny:

It is just totally different set of results but appreciative of the other,

Nick Wolny:

of the other components of the program.

Nick Wolny:

They themselves are just particularly the focused on certain aspects of

Nick Wolny:

the framework more than others.

Nick Wolny:

And I just think people's businesses are very different.

Nick Wolny:

I don't own a brick and mortar business.

Nick Wolny:

I have clients who own brick and mortar businesses, and so they're going to

Nick Wolny:

take things into consideration that I would not take into consideration.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

And not, my framework doesn't perfectly copy over into

Nick Wolny:

their business model owning.

Nick Wolny:

An equine therapy center outside of Toronto.

Nick Wolny:

Actual client.

Nick Wolny:

You know what I mean?

Nick Wolny:

It's just so, it's like

Ashley Pendergraft:

if they find, if you backtrack those, what's

Ashley Pendergraft:

the, they all have, they all get one result and then they go play.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

I think the big result I also, that the swipe file is really assisting

Nick Wolny:

with is you should be working on your marketing in quarters.

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

You should pick something that you want to improve or optimize or

Nick Wolny:

systematize or develop a consistency around, and then you should go do it.

Nick Wolny:

You know that client the Equine Therapy Center client her name's Gail.

Nick Wolny:

She was having a lot of requests for horse boarding because

Nick Wolny:

she's got this center, right?

Nick Wolny:

So she's doing all this, copy about healing and tr trauma

Nick Wolny:

healing and things like that.

Nick Wolny:

And she's doing corporate retreats and stuff.

Nick Wolny:

And then meanwhile there was this search interest in horse

Nick Wolny:

boarding outside Toronto.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, can you just go take care of that please?

Nick Wolny:

Because you're going to like, she's like, yeah, I've got like all

Nick Wolny:

this passive income coming in now.

Nick Wolny:

Because when, when someone searches horse boarding near Toronto, I show up, and she

Nick Wolny:

was like kind of showing up anyway, but it's like, why don't you go take a quarter

Nick Wolny:

and like actually dial that in because it seems, there's a lot of interest there.

Nick Wolny:

And it, and it's just easy money, so why don't you go take care of that?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I think so many entrepreneurs, especially like neurodivergent, I'm a have a d h,

Ashley Pendergraft:

ADHD and depression, and people have this knee jerk reaction to the advice

Ashley Pendergraft:

to like, Have one niche, have one thing.

Ashley Pendergraft:

They're like, but I'm multi-passionate and I want to do all these things.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I, I think there is a sweet spot of, you can be

Ashley Pendergraft:

multi-passionate inside of your offer.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You can still have one result, but it can be for a bunch of different people.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And you can add on to that and explore other different options.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But I.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I do think that the more refined, like your results, if you have one result,

Ashley Pendergraft:

then you can play with everything else and be multi-passionate, kind of every,

Ashley Pendergraft:

be creative in other, other outlets.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But having that one result I think is what's going to be the future of like

Ashley Pendergraft:

really strong, memorable group programs.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah, I think so too.

Nick Wolny:

And having it be like a, like a through line, right?

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Everyone working towards a common goal, even though their respective

Nick Wolny:

businesses or brands are very different.

Nick Wolny:

And that's why I say in the lead of my sales page is, I, I named four avatars

Nick Wolny:

service providers, small business owners, creators, and online professionals, I

Nick Wolny:

believe working quarterly has big benefits for all four of those groups of people.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

And the nuts and bolts of bringing each of those different business models

Nick Wolny:

to life is going to be different.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

Like someone who's just trying to, not even get famous on YouTube,

Nick Wolny:

but just get to the point where that's a, a real stream of income.

Nick Wolny:

They're going to be focusing on really different things then.

Nick Wolny:

My client who owns an eco wellness sanctuary in Panama, there's, there's

Nick Wolny:

just different, but they can both absolutely benefit from online publishing

Nick Wolny:

and doing it on a regular basis.

Nick Wolny:

So I think as long as there's a through line, you actually want to, you want to

Nick Wolny:

bring in diverse, different people from, different backgrounds, different just

Nick Wolny:

different industries, because I think that really helps with the learning as well.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah, to have you on the call and then someone

Ashley Pendergraft:

else who has a pickleball course.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I'm like, we've got, we've got rain.

Nick Wolny:

What?

Nick Wolny:

Wait, who had the pickleball course?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Um, his name is Trey.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like I, the, the, the different types of programs.

Ashley Pendergraft:

That's why I love the industry.

Ashley Pendergraft:

People are pretty bitter right now about like the coaching industry

Ashley Pendergraft:

and like, there's just like a lot of

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

Writers too, Because of ai.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah, there just feels like there's a lot of things that are

Ashley Pendergraft:

heavy, and I am like, it actually feels so exciting to be having these conversations

Ashley Pendergraft:

about getting our clients' results.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And when we focus on that, it just, it's like, feels so much more

Ashley Pendergraft:

positive and all of the, the negative parts about, oh, this person is

Ashley Pendergraft:

scamming, or, oh, this is unethical.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's like, But we're, if we're focusing on client results,

Ashley Pendergraft:

everything else kind of evaporates.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But yeah, he has a pickleball course.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Iconic.

Nick Wolny:

The, the first call, the first group call I was on back in

Nick Wolny:

January, there was the guy who has the, the group program for foot surgeons.

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

Remember?

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, I need to shut the fuck up about my, my niche being

Nick Wolny:

too small because they're there.

Nick Wolny:

I just need to go find them.

Ashley Pendergraft:

They are there.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I want to revisit when you said like, I thought I knew about automation,

Ashley Pendergraft:

but I really didn't know what was possible or what I could unlock.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Tell us about kind of that journey and how you look at automation now.

Nick Wolny:

getting the job and realizing how many things I was still

Nick Wolny:

doing manually under the guise of, well, it's my voice or, well, I, I like

Nick Wolny:

it to be a certain way that I think that was just me being belligerent

Nick Wolny:

and a just a little controlling Right.

Nick Wolny:

And also unwilling to develop the type of standard operating procedure that

Nick Wolny:

would be necessary for an assistant to come in and take things on.

Nick Wolny:

And so I'd previously used Zapier for just basically when I had to glue two

Nick Wolny:

apps together and, and they didn't have a direct integration, right?

Nick Wolny:

Like I gotta get the person from the Zoom webinar into the right

Nick Wolny:

active campaign automation.

Nick Wolny:

That's what I would be using Zapier for is things like that.

Nick Wolny:

Lots of one steps apps.

Nick Wolny:

And I just as, especially.

Nick Wolny:

When I started Systems Over Stress and then completed the hubs, set up those

Nick Wolny:

hubs and those automations, and then took those concepts and started dev to develop

Nick Wolny:

my own swipe file for my own program.

Nick Wolny:

I was like, wait, there's, there's opportunity to automate a whole

Nick Wolny:

bunch of stuff out in this as well.

Nick Wolny:

So some of the automations that I do, I've, I have Upwork automations

Nick Wolny:

set up, so when I check a box and Airtable, it will automatically

Nick Wolny:

send a message to my VA in Upwork.

Nick Wolny:

Oh, cool.

Nick Wolny:

With all of the things in there.

Nick Wolny:

And then that's also nice in case my VA ghosts or in case I want to, you know,

Nick Wolny:

change vass or something like that.

Nick Wolny:

So just setting up those like lines of communication.

Nick Wolny:

I have to lean into virtual assistants in order to do what I do.

Nick Wolny:

It's just, there just aren't enough hours otherwise, , Getting

Nick Wolny:

that stuff really clear.

Nick Wolny:

I also think that.

Nick Wolny:

Being in a program that had a heavy focus on Zapier helped to

Nick Wolny:

expand my automation vocabulary.

Nick Wolny:

Hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

Things that I did not know were automateable regarding like the parsing

Nick Wolny:

of data, for example, like if a date is not formatted the way I want.

Nick Wolny:

There, you can just reformat it in Zapier automatically.

Nick Wolny:

Just stuff like that and learning how to work more effectively with data.

Nick Wolny:

I joke that I am allergic to code, as are many other people in our space.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

But here we are basically operating tech companies, basically

Nick Wolny:

operating media publications.

Nick Wolny:

I assert that every online business is a media publication.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

, how, how.

Nick Wolny:

Working for a media publication, I know that there's lots of automation

Nick Wolny:

involved and anything that does not have to be done by human, whether it's auto

Nick Wolny:

populating documents that have, a lot of initial information in them already.

Nick Wolny:

That is how those companies operate.

Nick Wolny:

We are operating tech companies, and so it behooves us to develop a vocabulary

Nick Wolny:

around how to handle data, how to work with data, how to process it, and perhaps

Nick Wolny:

format it differently and what tools will help us format it differently.

Nick Wolny:

And it's fine if you're a, a Crystals coach or whatever, or you know something

Nick Wolny:

that's very, very, very not tech.

Nick Wolny:

It's fine.

Nick Wolny:

You can still, it's a language to be learned if you see yourself being an

Nick Wolny:

online business for years to come.

Ashley Pendergraft:

My co-coach is a Crystals coach who

Ashley Pendergraft:

became an Airtable Super fan.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Which is just like, I love all of that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And it's so true.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like if you are in this space, whether you like it or not,

Ashley Pendergraft:

you, tech exists, systems exist.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So why not develop the vocabulary to make your life easier?

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think you touched on a great thing, which I'm so deep in the tech world

Ashley Pendergraft:

and so deep in the system world that I often forget what people know and don't

Ashley Pendergraft:

know when it comes to the vocabulary, people don't even know what to ask.

Ashley Pendergraft:

When I see someone auto manually sending hundreds of emails to their clients,

Ashley Pendergraft:

like, I'm like, you can automate that in Airtable in two seconds.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And they're like, I.

Ashley Pendergraft:

What do you mean?

Ashley Pendergraft:

I did not even know it was possible.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I didn't even know you could do something like that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And so just being in spaces where it's like, Hey, here's the possibilities

Ashley Pendergraft:

because I didn't, I don't teach in Systems Over Stress how to make a

Ashley Pendergraft:

Airtable database that you can sell in your office, like, or all of

Ashley Pendergraft:

these, like amazing, or sending it to ChatGPT or sending it to Upwork.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I don't teach those things, but just because you now have like that portal of

Ashley Pendergraft:

possibility, you're able to like really go down the rabbit hole in a really cool way.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah, I think that's also like that continuous learning piece is

Nick Wolny:

important for us as entrepreneurs as well.

Nick Wolny:

There's power in continuing to learn.

Nick Wolny:

I think there's kind of an over delegation epidemic happening in our industry.

Nick Wolny:

People are like, eh, I don't want to learn about it.

Nick Wolny:

And so they just like hire it out.

Nick Wolny:

I want you to own the knowledge.

Nick Wolny:

I would just say be cautious of that over delegation piece.

Nick Wolny:

Like you want to know how the sausage is made, you want to know how things

Nick Wolny:

work, and then you can make an informed decision on whether you're going to

Nick Wolny:

do it or if you're going to develop a system so that you can delegate it.

Nick Wolny:

And I just feel like I'm building capacity, I'm building a business, I'm

Nick Wolny:

building a skyscraper, just foundations and systems that I'm going to need.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

As I grow.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I think about, there's like a meme about ChatGPT.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's like, don't worry like designers, like you'll be okay because clients

Ashley Pendergraft:

still have to know what to ask for.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like they don't know.

Ashley Pendergraft:

They don't know what to ask for with ChatGPT or some of these things.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think that's so true with systems in the Be Nick's, Nick is a special case

Ashley Pendergraft:

and that he went as a C E O, he went into Systems over Stress and set it up.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You set it up all yourself pretty much.

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

Yep.

Nick Wolny:

Which I always, and I always do that, I always do that, right?

Nick Wolny:

Like if it, yeah, if, if I'm going to invest in a program.

Nick Wolny:

I want to be the one in the program and that's why I don't

Nick Wolny:

invest in that many programs.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

Because I want to own the knowledge and I want to document it very clearly, so.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I appreciate that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think anyone, if there's CEOs, CEOs who are listening, the bare

Ashley Pendergraft:

minimum is you have to be sold on the program before you delegate it.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You have to be sure, like, yes, I want the way that Ashley does

Ashley Pendergraft:

Airtable from Systems of stress.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And then you can pass it off to a team member.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But it's really hard, like, You gotta do your own research in that

Ashley Pendergraft:

capacity, then you can, then you can delegate it out for people who are,

Ashley Pendergraft:

have a who, people who are delegating.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But I do think it's really important.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Don't delegate the decision making process of that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You've gotta own that.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And then for the, the tech, the setup, the implementation, that's a

Ashley Pendergraft:

little, little more okay to delegate.

Ashley Pendergraft:

But I do agree that you gotta, you gotta own, own the decision

Ashley Pendergraft:

making and the research process.

Ashley Pendergraft:

When you mentioned the building, the skyscraper of it all, and I think

Ashley Pendergraft:

that's what, when you're building these systems, you're building the size

Ashley Pendergraft:

skyscraper and ultimately that's what group programs are meant to be like.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We like group programs because they're scalable, because they

Ashley Pendergraft:

can have 3,500 people in there.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You can't have 3501 0 1 group clients.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Hopefully it's not anybody's goal.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And the only way that the skyscraper is sustainable is with those

Ashley Pendergraft:

systems, with those processes.

Ashley Pendergraft:

So it's like less of like a Jenga tower of like if one VA goes.

Ashley Pendergraft:

That like the whole thing is going to crumble.

Ashley Pendergraft:

That's like, that's the power of having these really strong systems foundations,

Ashley Pendergraft:

which I think you're, you're executing

Ashley Pendergraft:

so well.

Nick Wolny:

I think too, another thing that changed in my business is

Nick Wolny:

that I've mostly moved out of like working with people synchronously.

Nick Wolny:

So something I loved about syn systems over stress was the support ticket system.

Nick Wolny:

Where I didn't actually have to be able to make Wednesdays at 11:00

Nick Wolny:

AM or whenever the office hours time is in order to get help.

Nick Wolny:

Like I can asynchronously go in and watch the three lessons I need to watch

Nick Wolny:

and then try to implement it, and then when I get stuck, open up a ticket.

Nick Wolny:

I think I've created kind of a gap in my value ladder where I've got, like

Nick Wolny:

Camp Wordsmith is really automated.

Nick Wolny:

Like it's really well designed, the content is good, Ashley, you know, it's

Nick Wolny:

designed to help you be off on your way and give you all the information

Nick Wolny:

you need and very action oriented.

Nick Wolny:

And then in terms of getting help, Like the next option

Nick Wolny:

up from that is done for you.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And my done for you is capped.

Nick Wolny:

So I think that.

Nick Wolny:

Having the confidence to step into that and to decide that my value ladder doesn't

Nick Wolny:

need to look like other people's value ladder, but like, based on me having a

Nick Wolny:

nine to five it needs to look like this.

Nick Wolny:

And, leaning into, what are my strengths and also what are my systems that are

Nick Wolny:

going to allow me to sell something that is at a four figure price point and does

Nick Wolny:

not involve any interaction with me.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I'm curious too, Because you could, I'm like, oh, you

Ashley Pendergraft:

could make like a copy review thing to put in camp boards, but like, it's like,

Ashley Pendergraft:

you know how the systems are there, but it's like, do you want to, and is that

Ashley Pendergraft:

going to be something like, you get to decide, like, I could make this, I

Ashley Pendergraft:

could put more things in this program.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Does that align with the pricing?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Does it align with the time I want to put into it?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like there's just so I, I like.

Ashley Pendergraft:

You're like, yep, this is what, this is what the What it's going to be.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And I think also just really drilling into the promise, getting very clear on

Nick Wolny:

the promise, getting extremely granular on how that promise gets delivered.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And then from a sales perspective, just externally, it's Okay, well what is having

Nick Wolny:

that promise fulfilled worth to you?

Nick Wolny:

I use my own systems extensively, as do you, I think that's one of the things I

Nick Wolny:

loved about Systems over stress, right?

Nick Wolny:

Is like you are using the systems that you advocate and that you teach us about.

Nick Wolny:

I have to use my own, I.

Nick Wolny:

Publishing systems my own swipe file, because I'm stopping and

Nick Wolny:

starting all the time, right?

Nick Wolny:

I'm putting out a fire here, and then I'm putting out a fire there.

Nick Wolny:

I'm not doing this Walden bullshit where it's like, Ooh, I'm going to go sit by

Nick Wolny:

the lake and write, like, it's just like no one has time for that or to do all

Nick Wolny:

this productivity crap where people's like my perfect four hour morning.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

It's like, okay, you don't have kids.

Nick Wolny:

So it's like.

Nick Wolny:

I need something that's very stop and start and that where I can just hop back

Nick Wolny:

in and truly in less than 30 seconds I can pick back up and start writing

Nick Wolny:

productively right where I left off.

Nick Wolny:

I know what I was working on, where I was with it, what column it's in

Nick Wolny:

on my Kanban board, all that stuff.

Ashley Pendergraft:

One of my friends, Kirsten, her advice is like,

Ashley Pendergraft:

make curriculum your head coach.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think if, if you make your curriculum your head coach, you don't need

Ashley Pendergraft:

the extra bells and whistles of like the, and I will out myself, we have a support

Ashley Pendergraft:

ticketing system that is incredible.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We built it in Airtable.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's, we get a lot of questions in there because our curriculum needs

Ashley Pendergraft:

to be like revisited and reworked.

Ashley Pendergraft:

It's a nice kind of, Stopgap, I guess, or like this, a way for us

Ashley Pendergraft:

to say, okay, we, the curriculum isn't as strong as it could be.

Ashley Pendergraft:

To get our clients the results that we want.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Let's add in a support ticketing system, and then we hopefully will kind of tip

Ashley Pendergraft:

the scales of like, people won't need to use the support as much because

Ashley Pendergraft:

the curriculum will be so strong.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And instead of feeling bad about my program or myself for that, it's like,

Ashley Pendergraft:

thank God we have these resources to get our clients results while we're working

Ashley Pendergraft:

on further improving other things.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think it's, your curriculum is so strong that like you get to, you get to

Ashley Pendergraft:

see that and like, like that's the goal.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And I don't think bloat is bad.

Nick Wolny:

I feel like it's like it, maybe there's content in there that's

Nick Wolny:

first draft or second draft.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

And it's great that you got it out there and it's great that you birthed it.

Nick Wolny:

I have, some of those lessons are definitely second draft lessons, right?

Nick Wolny:

Where they could, they could be brushed up a bit more.

Nick Wolny:

They could just be a tighter, more focused or, have a one pager accompany it that

Nick Wolny:

makes it easier to understand or whatever.

Nick Wolny:

But I, I think that if that is like a shiny object or is part of the

Nick Wolny:

offer and that that's the component that really appeals to them.

Nick Wolny:

I'm still a features and benefits person.

Nick Wolny:

I'm still a, I still use a video sales letter, right?

Nick Wolny:

I'm such an old school copywriter.

Nick Wolny:

I'm such an Ogilvy snob about all of it.

Nick Wolny:

That, people like the extra things.

Nick Wolny:

If someone's really interested in content writing, they see how I write

Nick Wolny:

articles, they want to do what I do.

Nick Wolny:

Then there is an article writing course in there.

Nick Wolny:

Is it part of that main core curriculum?

Nick Wolny:

No.

Nick Wolny:

Like, Because that's not directly connected to the core promise

Nick Wolny:

that you're signing up for.

Nick Wolny:

But if that's the thing that bumps people up into, whether they're

Nick Wolny:

going to purchase or not purchase, then yeah, I'm going to offer that.

Nick Wolny:

And I think it's, I just think it's a, it's a journey.

Nick Wolny:

Also, the trademarking process really helped with that because my trademark,

Nick Wolny:

like people literally got married and got divorced in the amount of time it

Nick Wolny:

took me to get this fucking trademark.

Nick Wolny:

It took me about 18 months to land the trademark on it, which is long.

Nick Wolny:

And I think

Ashley Pendergraft:

we did not have a pandemic when I, my trademarks were out,

Nick Wolny:

so, yeah.

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

It's so long.

Nick Wolny:

But what that did is like, okay, I'm, I'm going in on

Nick Wolny:

this, like I'm going to own it.

Nick Wolny:

And that did, for me, that created something where

Nick Wolny:

it's like, you can't leave.

Nick Wolny:

You can't leave this brand, right?

Nick Wolny:

Like, okay, you're in the dip and you're sick of this and you're sick of building

Nick Wolny:

and you're sick of having shitty launches.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

And it's still not trademarked, right?

Nick Wolny:

So it's, so I'm just sticking with it.

Nick Wolny:

There was something about that, that from a reinvention perspective and a revision

Nick Wolny:

perspective of my ip, rather than like, oh, I'm going to go create this offer

Nick Wolny:

now, or I'm going to go, I'm going to do like a light rebrand or a rename.

Nick Wolny:

Because it's new, that became like largely not available.

Nick Wolny:

Because I was too deep into this trademark.

Nick Wolny:

And so I think that also has helped me look at my curriculum.

Nick Wolny:

I want a seventh grader to go into Camp Wordsmith and be able

Nick Wolny:

to execute everything right?

Nick Wolny:

Like that's.

Nick Wolny:

I very much want that.

Nick Wolny:

And in media that's what we focus on very much.

Nick Wolny:

Right?

Nick Wolny:

It's very, it's very, it's called service journalism, right?

Nick Wolny:

You want to help your reader make a decision that's called service journalism.

Nick Wolny:

I think just applying that mentality to my curriculum rather than something

Nick Wolny:

else that's like around brand or something else like that is big.

Ashley Pendergraft:

My word of the year is refinement when it comes to

Ashley Pendergraft:

systems over stress in my group program.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Just in general, like how do you make it better?

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I think.

Ashley Pendergraft:

The ones that like the, those of us who are staying in the game and winning are

Ashley Pendergraft:

refining things instead of burning down building, burning down, building this

Ashley Pendergraft:

curriculum every time I've like just refined it a little bit more, a little

Ashley Pendergraft:

bit more, and I don't know if I'll ever be done because you get new people

Ashley Pendergraft:

who are in the program and they ask different questions and it helps you help.

Ashley Pendergraft:

The seventh grader style.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Yeah.

Ashley Pendergraft:

When I, when I was first looking at the program, I was like

Ashley Pendergraft:

trying to rework the messaging.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I'm like, well, who is it for?

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I'm like, it's not for beginners.

Ashley Pendergraft:

And I was like, well, what if it was for beginners?

Ashley Pendergraft:

Like, how can I be better at teaching this to make it also for beginners?

Ashley Pendergraft:

And so there's, there's some decisions and refinement there, but I think it's

Ashley Pendergraft:

really fun to just commit to making one offer work, even if it's like

Ashley Pendergraft:

not as shiny to, to keep refining it.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Camp Wordsmith is already, I feel like, taken over the world, but

Ashley Pendergraft:

we'll just continue to do so.

Ashley Pendergraft:

We touched on it a little bit, but I am curious, as it's my own

Ashley Pendergraft:

podcast, I am going to ask you this.

Ashley Pendergraft:

What have been some of your big, like the systems shifts you've had in terms

Ashley Pendergraft:

of like how you think about systems or the biggest like shifts you've had in

Ashley Pendergraft:

your business since working together?

Nick Wolny:

I think one is being able to see feedback and real time data quickly.

Nick Wolny:

So in the program, we set up the sales hub first, and I

Nick Wolny:

had seven years of sales data.

Nick Wolny:

And just to be able to look at seven years of sales data from a high level

Nick Wolny:

view and to, kind of go down and went down memory lane for a bit in terms

Nick Wolny:

of like, Ooh, this was when I was in my retainer phase, and oh, this is

Nick Wolny:

when the pandemic happened, mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

And to just kind of look at that again, but I think.

Nick Wolny:

Being able to see all the data from a very high level view is really clear.

Nick Wolny:

So that's number one.

Nick Wolny:

Number two is creating a database in which I can get to the page that I need

Nick Wolny:

to be on in two to three clicks, tops.

Nick Wolny:

So every newsletter I've written for the last seven years is in there

Nick Wolny:

and I can click on the web link and I can look at what I wrote in

Nick Wolny:

that newsletter in five seconds.

Nick Wolny:

If I need to edit a post I.

Nick Wolny:

Right.

Nick Wolny:

Every single blog u r l is in there.

Nick Wolny:

Every single c m ss u r L is in there.

Nick Wolny:

So I can, if I need to edit something, I can go in and I can

Nick Wolny:

click and I can get that edited in not even a minute in seconds.

Nick Wolny:

And so, and that has a real bitch to set up at first, right?

Nick Wolny:

Because that centralizing process.

Nick Wolny:

But once it's done, you, I'm just like, Like I am thinking, I said it earlier,

Nick Wolny:

I'm thinking in a much more executive way, even though I'm a solopreneur.

Nick Wolny:

Mm-hmm.

Nick Wolny:

And so that's really empowering.

Nick Wolny:

I think that's the biggest shift that's happened.

Nick Wolny:

And then I think also, particularly with the launch hub that we developed

Nick Wolny:

my launch emails and sales pages and other things like that, looking at

Nick Wolny:

those, looking at those as like assets.

Nick Wolny:

And that's like, okay, we're going to take the assets, we're going

Nick Wolny:

to take the inventory and we're going to put it here for July.

Nick Wolny:

Rather than, Oh God, like it cart closes in three days.

Nick Wolny:

I, I have no emails in the queue.

Nick Wolny:

Well, I know what I'm doing tonight, which I know I'm not

Nick Wolny:

the only person who's done that.

Nick Wolny:

But to, again, I think it just goes back to like, if you're going

Nick Wolny:

to be building that skyscraper, you gotta be building assets.

Nick Wolny:

You gotta be building inventory and then in reusing it over time.

Nick Wolny:

So those were some of the biggest takeaways.

Nick Wolny:

Like if you're going to do this, Boss bitch.

Nick Wolny:

I'm a CEO thing.

Nick Wolny:

You have to cultivate executive mentality.

Nick Wolny:

And most of us don't need to think like an executive until we have multiple employees

Nick Wolny:

or even like layers of employees.

Nick Wolny:

But what.

Nick Wolny:

Becomes an issue there is you just become task master and you

Nick Wolny:

lose that executive insight.

Nick Wolny:

And so I think data, centralizing data has been a way for me to ascend back

Nick Wolny:

into that executive insight and make more intelligent decisions for my business.

Ashley Pendergraft:

:

Yeah, that's so powerful.

Ashley Pendergraft:

:

Thank you for being on the podcast.

Ashley Pendergraft:

:

Where can folks find you?

Ashley Pendergraft:

:

Is there anything you want to promote?

Nick Wolny:

You can find me at nickwolny.com.

Nick Wolny:

N I C K W O L N Y dot com.

Nick Wolny:

My website's banging as well Because it's all I have.

Nick Wolny:

I don't have much, I mean, I'd dick around on social.

Nick Wolny:

I some, if I, you'll know I have eaten an edible when I'm

Nick Wolny:

active on Instagram stories.

Nick Wolny:

So if,

Ashley Pendergraft:

okay.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I wasn't going to bring it up, but I was like, Nick, Nick did the

Ashley Pendergraft:

majority of this program on edibles.

Nick Wolny:

I know.

Nick Wolny:

I know.

Nick Wolny:

Okay.

Nick Wolny:

Can I tell a quick story?

Nick Wolny:

Do we have a time cap?

Nick Wolny:

Yeah, we got time.

Nick Wolny:

Okay.

Nick Wolny:

So a couple years ago so actually, so I, the event that we met at

Nick Wolny:

the most, I had gone to the one before that with Rachel Rogers.

Nick Wolny:

And I was like, I'm going to burn down my business.

Nick Wolny:

I'm going to create Camp Wordsmith.

Nick Wolny:

I'm, oh my God, it's going to be amazing.

Nick Wolny:

And then the week after that event, I was at the gym.

Nick Wolny:

I was doing a squat with a bar on my back with no weight on it.

Nick Wolny:

Mind you, No.

Nick Wolny:

No plates.

Nick Wolny:

No plates warming up and something slid in my back and nothing came up from Yeah,

Nick Wolny:

I worked with provider, after provider, after provider, but I was in so much pain.

Nick Wolny:

I took eight ibuprofen a day every day for about four months straight.

Nick Wolny:

It impacted my relationship.

Nick Wolny:

It impacted my ability to hustle and do anything like I was, anyone

Nick Wolny:

who has chronic pain knows it just, it does such a number on you.

Nick Wolny:

Like I just, I lost my light.

Nick Wolny:

Absolutely.

Nick Wolny:

It took months and months to rehab from that I.

Nick Wolny:

And the only thing that would make me feel better, I mean, I was consuming edibles

Nick Wolny:

anyway because I live in California, but I, that was just like, I almost

Nick Wolny:

getting a little emotional sharing it, it was like the only 30 minutes of the

Nick Wolny:

day when I would not be in intense pain.

Nick Wolny:

Like I would be making coffee in the morning, just like crying,

Nick Wolny:

like doubled over in pain.

Nick Wolny:

And so, and it was just like, life is short and, and also I'm like,

Nick Wolny:

my tolerance went up and I got into microdosing and stuff like that too.

Nick Wolny:

I can't do that now that I have corporate job.

Nick Wolny:

And since we are literally recording this right now.

Nick Wolny:

But, but in, at that time and it was all usually at the end of the day

Nick Wolny:

that we would have the, the call.

Nick Wolny:

And so I'd be like, yeah, I'm like a popped five and I'm here

Nick Wolny:

and then after this I'm going to go and just like, do, do, do, do.

Nick Wolny:

Centralized, centralized.

Nick Wolny:

And I was just having the best time.

Nick Wolny:

So I have a really positive association with Airtable because I was usually

Nick Wolny:

blitzed while I was centralizing my data.

Ashley Pendergraft:

I'm, I'm open to this as a strategy,

Ashley Pendergraft:

y'all, if you hate, if you hate.

Nick Wolny:

How's it out?

Nick Wolny:

Yeah.

Nick Wolny:

And so, so that's a pro.

Nick Wolny:

So again, Nickwolny.com.

Nick Wolny:

I'm only on Instagram really for social and I don't post much.

Nick Wolny:

I, I mostly poach PO post for work, just like media hits and

Nick Wolny:

stuff like that for my day job.

Nick Wolny:

But if you see me suddenly really active on stories in the evenings,

Nick Wolny:

It's because I have eaten like a chocolate or something, or a brownie.

Nick Wolny:

And then the Camp Wordsmith All Access Pass opens throughout the year.

Nick Wolny:

There's information about that on my website.

Nick Wolny:

It is the best content marketing strategy program in the world.

Nick Wolny:

If you, if you enjoy this vibe and you want like a quiet focused place where you

Nick Wolny:

can really work on those big rocks from a marketing perspective and do it in a,

Nick Wolny:

in a quarterly cadence, and you like the idea of that, then this is the program

Nick Wolny:

for you and I invite you to check it out.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Awesome.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Thanks so much.

Ashley Pendergraft:

What a, what a great, what a great thing to end on

Nick Wolny:

keeping a light.

Nick Wolny:

Amazing.

Ashley Pendergraft:

All right.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Thanks for being here, and we'll see y'all on the next one.

Ashley Pendergraft:

If you are committed to getting your client's results and creating

Ashley Pendergraft:

the go-to coaching program in your industry, we want you to join us.

Ashley Pendergraft:

Click that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app or YouTube

Ashley Pendergraft:

to see all the system strategies and behind the scenes stories of

Ashley Pendergraft:

what it takes to create the most impactful coaching program you can.

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