In this episode, I’m speaking with Kate Toon: an award-winning business mentor and digital marketing coach. She’s a down to earth human on a mission to demystify the realities of running a successful online business.

Kate’s helped more than 20,000 other businesses demystify digital marketing, grapple the Google Beast, and find their own version of success. 

Kate is a renowned speaker, podcaster and the author of the newly released book: Six Figures in School Hours: How to run a successful business and still be a good parent (2023). 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Kate’s ‘why’ for being in business – and losing it and finding it again
• Her transparency around not always knowing what’s next and how sometimes it’s about letting things play out versus needing a big goal to work towards
• How creative genius is overestimated and why so much of the time, it’s really about just doing your work and persisting long enough for happy accidents to happen
• Why Kate recently combined two of her online memberships into one
• What you really want versus what your ego tells you that you want
• Pricing and delivery models – and Kate’s moral standing on it currently
• The team and inputs required to run a million dollar revenue business
• Kate breaks down her marketing outputs and launches
• Kate has a teenage son and she breaks down what her business looked like at her son’s different ages, from newborn to toddler, primary school and now teenage years.

You can order Kate’s book, Six Figures in School Hours, on Amazon or Booktopia or through Kate’s website – katetoon.com

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Emily Osmond (00:02.272)
Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Kate Toon (00:04.477)
It’s lovely to see you and hear you and be on here again. Thank you for having me back.

Emily Osmond (00:09.638)
I think the last time was over two years ago, I think I should have a look. Yeah. It’s been a couple of years. Yeah. Towards the start. Oh, definitely hadn’t definitely hadn’t no, no. Yeah. So good to have you on here and congratulations on publishing your book. Six figures in school hours. Can you see I’ve got little sticky notes at the top?

Kate Toon (00:11.777)
Oh god. It’s… Yep. I think it was pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, my thing. I don’t think you’d made a human.

Nice. Yep.

Kate Toon (00:35.361)
Yes, and my little guggly eyes. You’ve got guggly eyes. Which one? Oh, you’ve highlighted. That’s the biggest honour. Thank you.

Emily Osmond (00:38.186)
eyes on it and I got highlighted sections too yeah sorry oh my gosh some things in here Kate we’re like oh so good but anyway let’s kick off with where you are with things right now I know you’re kind of like in a bit of a process with things

Kate Toon (00:54.897)
Yeah, it’s funny, I was just talking about this in my membership. I guess in business, you kind of get to a summit, like you set out all these things you want to do, a path you want to follow, and then sometimes you actually get to your destination. And then you’re like, what next? What do I want to do next? And so I think I’m in a weird period where I am trying to scale back a little bit. And that’s been really challenging, both for my own ego and for other people who

Emily Osmond (01:02.798)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (01:07.924)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Emily Osmond (01:20.354)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (01:23.405)
like the things I offer and don’t want them to end. So it’s been a quite tumultuous couple of months to be honest.

Emily Osmond (01:23.433)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (01:28.788)
Yeah. I know I’m actually the podcast episode from when we last spoke, okay. Was making, I think it was the making and unmaking of a million dollar business. Were you doing a similar thing at that point? A few years ago, I wanted to ask you, and then did you build it up again?

Kate Toon (01:37.022)
Yes.

Kate Toon (01:44.73)
I think I live in a permanent state of existential crisis of what am I doing? Why am I here? And I think, you know, I had made money, my God, and I’d hit that million figure, and then I hit it again and I hit it again. And that was amazing.

Emily Osmond (01:53.578)
Yeah, yeah.

Emily Osmond (01:57.522)
That’s in, that’s in annual turnover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to say, hey, it’s good to say, is it like the lifetime of the business? And you spoke about this in your book too. Is it the lifetime of the business? Is it in a, you know, what is it? So yeah, turnover. Yeah.

Kate Toon (02:00.461)
Revenue. Yeah, let’s be clear here. It’s not profit.

Kate Toon (02:08.977)
I did. Because there’s a lot of hoo-ha around that. So yeah, when people say, you know, in a given year, so one year, I made 1.1 million. And then you, but that’s irrelevant. The next thing to talk about is what your profit was and what your profit margin was. So my business has a great profit margin of around 51, 52% from across the board. But as we were talking about some of my offerings, the conference and the retreat, the profit margin would be way lower.

Emily Osmond (02:24.664)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (02:30.218)
Yeah, so good!

Emily Osmond (02:34.568)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (02:38.721)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (02:38.869)
And then some of my offerings, the templates and the courses, the profit margin, it’d be higher and it kind of evens out. So yeah.

Emily Osmond (02:42.818)
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. So good. Sorry to interrupt there. But, um, so you were saying, yeah, you feel like maybe you’re in a permanent state or just a, we go around in circles, don’t you think? Or in a bit of a cycle, whatever, whatever it is around, awesome, let’s go forward. This is what I’m doing. And you, you were saying kind of, you got to that, maybe that summit and you’re like, all right, what’s next? Where, what feels good to you? And even in your book, Kate, um, page 36.

Kate Toon (02:46.898)
No, that’s it.

Kate Toon (03:10.293)
Oh my gosh, he’s got, she knows the pages.

Emily Osmond (03:13.402)
You speak about, I might read it out. You said it took a while, but finally it clicked. After years of searching, looking under sofa cushions, asking others and retracing my steps, I found my why exactly where I’d left it, flexibility. My why was simply to have flexibility, work with good people, make enough money to be comfy and to be able to spend time with my family. The exact reason I started my business, the place where it all began was actually my destination.

Kate Toon (03:39.513)
Oh god that sounds good, I got goosebumps then. Thanks very much.

Emily Osmond (03:41.627)
You’re a very good writer. And I wonder, is this where you’re at right now, refinding a bit more flexibility?

Kate Toon (03:46.481)
It is. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you’re a very driven person as well, and always feeling that you have to achieve and I am as well as this kind of like bottom patting that I’m constantly requiring, which we could dig into a lot more, but let’s not. But, you know, you take things off on your list, and then you have, it’s like, it’s like you have moments of clarity where you’re like, what am I doing this for? You know, it’s eight o’clock and I’m tapping away at some comment on Facebook. What am I doing? Stop. What am I doing?

Emily Osmond (03:57.55)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (04:00.909)
Hehehehe

Emily Osmond (04:08.238)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (04:15.051)
Mm.

Kate Toon (04:15.737)
How is this serving me? Am I happy? What, you know, is this the right thing for me right now? And unfortunately, I’m somebody that thinks about things a lot, probably too much, and it doesn’t always serve me. And so I think, you know, I’m only 50, which probably sounds very old to some of your listeners. And it feels like I’m tired. But I also don’t know what I want to do next. And do I keep doing this? So I don’t know. I know I’m

Emily Osmond (04:20.553)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (04:24.204)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Osmond (04:35.286)
Yeah. Mm.

Yeah.

Kate Toon (04:41.161)
I’m supposed to be a business mentor and I should be able to have answers for this. And it’s very easy to answer for other people. But for me, I don’t know at the moment. I don’t know what’s next. And that’s a bit scary.

Emily Osmond (04:45.883)
Yeah, it is, hey.

Emily Osmond (04:53.078)
And this is so impactful to hear because when we’re on Instagram or social media, Facebook, it’s so easy to think that everyone knows exactly what they’re doing, where they’re going, they have their plan, it’s all happening for them. And so thank you for just being honest and saying, I’m just figuring out what the next, what you want things to look like.

Kate Toon (05:16.702)
Yes.

Emily Osmond (05:22.466)
from here.

Kate Toon (05:23.233)
Well, this is it. And I think what I do whenever I get this kind of fear and I’m not sure what I’m doing is I focus on the work. So I sit at my desk and I, you know, I answer emails and I reconcile my zero and I talk to my members and the line I always, you know, uses Picasso’s you know, inspiration finds you working, but also good things find you working. So, you know, we tap in a way and I get a little email from someone that says, Oh, I’m running an event in October. Would you like to come and speak? And I’m like, okay. And I say yes. And that’s great.

Emily Osmond (05:29.558)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Emily Osmond (05:48.654)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (05:52.509)
And then something else pops up or something else pops up. Like today I’m chatting with you. That’s a lovely thing to do on a Monday. Talk to me five years ago. I’d have been so like, oh, beyond that I was getting to be on your podcast. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t even have it five years ago, but you know what I’m saying? You know, and so sometimes it’s not about pushing forward to a goal, but just letting things play out, you know, do the work, be a good person, try and help people and good things will come back. Cause I know it sounds very woo.

Emily Osmond (05:54.158)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (06:03.886)
Aww. Hahaha. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (06:12.423)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (06:19.874)
Hmm. It that reminds me of something else you wrote in the book that I found so helpful was you said, I think this is another kind of a bit of a myth when it comes to working for ourselves. So you said, let me find it here around. You said,

Kate Toon (06:20.045)
But you can’t plan everything. We have much less control than we think we do. And that’s what I’ve learned.

Kate Toon (06:44.594)
I love that you’re quoting my book! This is the best!

Emily Osmond (06:49.67)
I also have the seemingly rare ability to sit at my desk, even when I’m tired, have no motivation or inspiration and just get the hell on with it. And that my friends is my superpower. And he said it isn’t finding a secret hat or get rich quicks scheme. Like it’s just getting that work done.

Kate Toon (07:06.421)
It really is. I mean, now I can look back and say, I made a course that has made me $3 million. And maybe I’ll sell that course and make more. But if you, I didn’t set out to build a course that would make me $3 million. You know, that’s revenue by the way, revenue, revenue. But you know, we’re sitting here wanting our shark tank idea, wanting our moddy body, wanting our who gives a crap, wanting our amazing profit first book or something with you can’t engender that.

Emily Osmond (07:28.514)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (07:31.662)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (07:36.193)
Generally you just do the work and some things take off. It’s like you can’t really plan to go viral. You can do the things that everyone recommends and it doesn’t work. And then you can do none of the things. And suddenly you go viral. A lot of business is happy accident. And I think people forget that. And really the key is just hanging around long enough for those happy accidents to occur and lots of people give up before the happy accident can happen, because sometimes it’s just about persistence and longevity, not

Emily Osmond (07:43.582)
Bye.

Emily Osmond (07:51.34)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (07:58.062)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (08:02.574)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (08:06.157)
creative genius. I think people overestimate that.

Emily Osmond (08:10.114)
Yeah, I think persistence is such a, like, that’s the secret. Just hanging in there, keep and go and the persistence to, yeah, keep putting those posts out, keep showing up and doing the work. And, um, and eventually it’ll start coming back to. Yeah. Yes.

Kate Toon (08:15.306)
Mm.

Kate Toon (08:28.425)
And it’s cumulative. Like it’s not one thing that ticks the box. And I did go viral on an Instagram post the other day. I got a million news. It was a nightmare. I ended up deleting it because it just, it garnered me so many irrelevant followers who were going to ruin my engagement metrics. Um, it was related to my business and everything, but it did not serve. So you’ve also got to be careful what you wish for. What you think is success often isn’t what success is. And, and for me, you know,

Emily Osmond (08:35.726)
Oh wow.

Emily Osmond (08:53.688)
Mmm.

Kate Toon (08:57.449)
Generally, whenever I feel a bit lost, it’s coming back to the customers I already have, rather than waving my tits around trying to get new customers, focusing on the ones I have, serving them really, really well. And it kind of causes a ripple effect outwards of goodness. But yeah, a lot of it is just hanging around. I’ve seen so many, I mean, I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I’ve seen so many people come and go. And so, yeah.

Emily Osmond (09:03.862)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (09:14.958)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (09:20.278)
Yes. Do you know what I sometimes do? Okay. I look at, um, I’m like, what are the podcasts that I used to listen to that have just disappeared and I, you don’t really notice, like, what are those people that always use? Yes.

Kate Toon (09:29.525)
You don’t notice till you look. And also people are huge. We all, I think maybe it’s a woman thing. It could be a man thing, but we get fixated on other people. Like, you know, they’re running in the race with us and maybe they’re a bit far ahead of us and we get a bit fixated with them. Look at Susan, she’s doing this, this and this. And then you forget about Susan for a bit and focus on your own stuff. And all of a sudden Susan’s gone. This person who was so huge in your mind doing so well, being everything you wanted to be, she’s gone. She’s gone. She’s doing something else. She’s raising goats in Acapulco. And,

Emily Osmond (09:38.007)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (09:42.254)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (09:45.982)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (09:52.341)
Hmm…

Kate Toon (09:59.101)
And therefore that’s why, you know, it’s just, the whole thing is just about focusing on what you can do. It’s such a cliche, your race, what you can do. And also accepting that a lot of your days will be pretty dull. You know, like your life looks very glamorous on Instagram, but I know that a lot of it will be just getting up, dealing with your baby, you know, doing a bit of work, finishing. It’s not glamorous, is it? It’s just answering emails. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (10:05.719)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (10:12.149)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Osmond (10:17.178)
Mm hmm. No, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, totally not. Yesterday I drove, um, came back from a week at my partner’s family farm and was in the car for, well, it’s like a seven hour drive almost with the kid on my own. Cause my partner stayed out there to work. Yeah. So it took like nine hours to get back. So I’m like, this is this.

Kate Toon (10:35.103)
Oh, gosh.

Kate Toon (10:41.845)
That’s brutal.

Emily Osmond (10:44.342)
It’s definitely not glamorous. Got home, he was up to whatever hours because he slept so much in the car. Anyway. Oh. Hmm.

Kate Toon (10:45.742)
No, it’s not.

Kate Toon (10:50.921)
And yet you look amazing today and here you are, you know, you got up, you keep on going. And that’s, I think, you know, persistence is one thing, resilience is another, no matter how good or bad, like you don’t rest on your laurels when things are good and you don’t let the badness set you back. Just turn up the next day and plod on. And that’s been, it’s not sexy and it’s not something you could write a book about necessarily, but the ability to plod on is really crucial, I think, as a business owner. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (10:59.431)
Mm. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (11:05.698)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Emily Osmond (11:17.662)
Yeah. Let’s take a look at the shifts you’re making in your business now and the reasons behind them. So maybe we’ll dial into your different revenue streams. I always geek out. I’m like, what are the different, what are the different revenue streams? What’s the business model? So what has yours look like? And what shifts you making Kate?

Kate Toon (11:31.967)
I love it.

Kate Toon (11:39.093)
So when I started out, I was a freelance copywriter and SEO, and I set up a few passive income streams probably in about 2015. I set up a course and a membership and in the early days, I’d say it was about 80% service-based, 20% passive income. Within a year, I’d flip that pretty much. So 80% of my income came from my courses and 20% came from service and then I dropped service altogether. So I have no clients, not even coaching clients. I don’t do really met anyone on one.

It’s a very clear split between my three elements. I’ve got clever copywriting school recipe for SEO success, and then the Kate Toon family of bits and bobs. And they’re about 30, 35% each. Um, in terms of other revenue streams, it’d be a bit of money from speaking, a little bit of money from the book, um, a little bit of money from influencer and sponsorship deals for the podcast, but that’s, it’s a trickle, affiliate deals, that kind of stuff. Um.

Emily Osmond (12:32.159)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (12:33.821)
What I’m doing is I am combining two of my memberships, TCCS and DMC, and moving my copywriters into my core membership, which is funny because I started DMC second. Why am I doing that? Because I feel disingenuous marketing myself as a copywriter. I am not a copywriter anymore and I haven’t been for many years. And also I feel like copywriters need to diversify and learn digital marketing, not just copywriting. So then I’ll be down to Recipe and DMC.

Emily Osmond (12:42.126)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (12:46.002)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (12:50.09)
Mm.

Hmm.

Emily Osmond (12:56.642)
Hmm, interesting. Okay.

Kate Toon (13:03.069)
And I reckon it will be about a 60 split with 10% other bits and bobs. And then ultimately I will probably shelve recipe and end up just having the membership. And with that comes an income drop. So as I said, 1.1 million last year, last year I was about a million. This year I’ve set my target at 800,000. So I am dropping my income expectations as I go, because I don’t want to work so hard. And a few people said to me, well, if you’re really smart.

Emily Osmond (13:08.025)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Osmond (13:14.959)
Mm. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (13:25.846)
Mm. Yeah.

Kate Toon (13:31.965)
You would work less hard and make more money. And I’m like, it’s, I know that’s what you think you can do. But most of the people who are making money, I know are working quite hard. Whatever they say on Instagram about being chill and only doing two hours a day. It’s just not true. Um, it’s what they’re selling you, right? Because that’s the dream, but the dream is often not the reality. So to make the money I make, I work quite hard and I want to work less hard and I’m happy to make less money.

Emily Osmond (13:36.462)
Hehehehe

Yeah.

Emily Osmond (13:52.012)
Mmm.

Emily Osmond (13:57.492)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (14:02.406)
I have had a, um, a bit of a like realization with myself in terms of, I’m not actually willing to do what’s required to grow really big right now.

Kate Toon (14:20.127)
Yes.

Emily Osmond (14:22.038)
And exactly like you said, it isn’t doable on two hours a day to have a certain size business.

Kate Toon (14:35.041)
No, I really want you to record that and play that back to yourself when you’re having a bad day, you know, because…

Emily Osmond (14:39.45)
Oh, okay. But I’m like, I’m just not willing to do some of those things. I’m just not willing to do some of those huge launches. I’m just not willing to, I just right now, no.

Kate Toon (14:53.929)
No, and I’m the same and I’ve done all the things. So I can honestly say I’ve done the things. Like one thing for me is I could make, I could try and make it big in America. You know, I’ve got a course, the recipe course, it could be sellable everywhere, but to make that work, I’d have to go to America. I’d have to speak at American events. I’d have to be on American podcasts, which don’t fit in with our Australian timeline that well, I’d have to ramp up the energy, the Facebook ads, the whatever. And I just can’t be bothered. But equally from a moral point of view.

Emily Osmond (14:57.833)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (15:03.43)
Hmm

Emily Osmond (15:08.61)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (15:12.287)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (15:18.83)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (15:21.701)
I don’t want to tell the stories that need to be told to make people buy the things that I want to sell. So I do believe that the whole coaching industry, slightly problematic in that it plays on our idea of not enoughness. Buy this template, do this course, you will have an amazing business. 90% of people who buy that will not, because it’s not about the template of the course, it’s about the personality and the drive and most people who really succeed didn’t succeed by doing someone else’s course.

Emily Osmond (15:38.197)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Emily Osmond (15:51.138)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (15:51.425)
They did it from their own gut, in their own mind. And I’m not willing to tell that story. So it’s not just about physically what you’re prepared to do financially, mentally. It’s about the morals of what you’re willing to say. Does that make sense?

Emily Osmond (15:54.975)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (15:58.407)
Mmm.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, Kate, are we the same person? Do you reckon this is a bit of a shift? Like I feel as though there is a wider sense of this at the moment, perhaps a bit of a shift. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Kate Toon (16:18.113)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (16:22.017)
think with some people there is, I think some people are still very much banging the drum. But I think those of us who are a bit more introspective and question why we’re doing it, we just had a chat with Jade from Small Business Grave Club about the kind of existential crisis of why am I doing this and what is it for and to what end? And I do sit with other entrepreneurs and they’ll say things like, you know, I want to help as many people as possible. I want to be able to buy nice things. And I’m like, is that really your motivation? What hole are you trying to fill?

Emily Osmond (16:34.51)
Cool. Yeah. Yes.

Emily Osmond (16:48.896)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (16:52.041)
Mmm.

Kate Toon (16:52.245)
because sometimes this drive and drive and drive is really about trying to heal something. You know, I’m getting very deep in woo now. Um, I do, I do, but you know, identifying what your trauma is, identifying what your gap is and when is enough? Like no one cares what I do next perfectly. I might be interested from a kind of curiosity point of view, but no one really has my best interests at heart other than me and my close friends and family.

Emily Osmond (16:54.734)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (16:58.79)
Yeah.

I love a good deep conversation, okay? Surely you know that about me now.

Emily Osmond (17:08.536)
Mmm.

Emily Osmond (17:12.607)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Kate Toon (17:22.061)
So it doesn’t matter what I do next. And I’ve spent a very long amount of time trying to impress people who don’t even like me, you know, it’s very, you need to be aware of that. Why am I doing this? Why am I showing off about this? No one cares. And so I’m trying to care less myself. And that’s very challenging because I’m at battle with my ego. My ego is like, do this thing. It will look amazing. Speak at this event, wear this outfit. And my insight is like, but you can’t, you don’t want to, you just want to watch a bit of telly and have a crumpet. Have the crumpet man.

Emily Osmond (17:29.603)
Yeah.

Hmm…

Emily Osmond (17:38.219)
Mm. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (17:48.999)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (17:52.607)
What are some things that you have changed or made decisions that previously your ego would have loved and now you’re like, wow, you have felt yourself change? What are some things?

Kate Toon (18:07.217)
Yeah. I think a few of them is time. So I do not want to work at the weekend and I do not work in evenings. So for example, I always have 6pm calls for my SEO course because I want to help the UK people. And now I’m like, if a UK person wants to do my course, they have to accept them in Australia, I don’t want to do calls at six o’clock, I don’t want to do it. Um, speaking at events, I was asked to speak at an event. I looked at the lineup and I thought, well, I’m really not sure I want to hang out with those people for a couple of days. I’m not sure I want to.

Emily Osmond (18:18.1)
Okay.

Emily Osmond (18:24.096)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (18:36.833)
I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to, I don’t want to be there. So I’m not speaking at it. Whereas previously I’d be like, I can’t say no, because I’ll never get asked again. And now I’m like, if I don’t get asked again, I don’t get asked again. You know, speaking at events generally, I’m like, do I really want to do this? It’s really three days out of the office mentally, no matter how much money they give me, is it really enough to pay what I could achieve in the time at home? Do I really want to put my adrenals through that?

Emily Osmond (18:38.113)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (18:43.895)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (18:47.928)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (18:52.823)
Mm. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (18:59.376)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Kate Toon (19:04.181)
my health through that, do I want to miss my son, my dog, my toilet, my bath, my bed? You know, so things like that. And, you know, my ego always says yes, but my real me says, really, Kate, why are you doing that? How’s that really going to help?

Emily Osmond (19:11.39)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (19:17.477)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (19:20.982)
Do you reckon you’ll go, so you started with more the one-on-one type of work. Do you reckon you’ll get back into that?

Kate Toon (19:30.309)
I don’t know because I’ve got a real one-to-many mindset and also financially one-to-one is I would not feel comfortable again, moral choice. I’m sure that I could have a VIP day that I could charge $8,000 for, like some other entrepreneurs do. I morally could not take $8,000 from somebody because I do not personally believe that I am going to change their life. They will change their life. And yes, I can help them and give them a framework and it could move them forward and they could really enjoy the day.

Emily Osmond (19:33.599)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (19:38.839)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Osmond (19:42.379)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Emily Osmond (19:47.885)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (19:52.747)
Mmm.

Kate Toon (19:59.053)
could not morally take that amount of money from someone. So therefore I think I’d rather take $800 from 10 people than $8,000 from one. And that therefore that model works for me. So yeah, that’s my choice though. Everybody.

Emily Osmond (20:01.151)
Mmm.

Emily Osmond (20:08.192)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (20:13.107)
Yeah, yeah, it’s really interesting. Hey, do you find do you feel? So this is something that I have is especially with the high price points like I take on a lot of responsibility and I feel a lot of pressure and I can find it a little bit stressful to which is yeah.

Kate Toon (20:30.337)
That’s exactly it, Emily. I don’t want to put myself through it. Like if I gave someone eight grand, I’d want them to change my fricking life. Do you know what I mean? Like come and clean my house for a year or whatever. I think it’s possibly lack of confidence that I’m not able to do that. People have had coaching with me and said it was life-changing. It was amazing. But I don’t want to put that level of pressure on myself. And also, again, I just like there are better ways to spend your money than on a one…

Emily Osmond (20:33.898)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (20:37.154)
Yes!

Emily Osmond (20:50.067)
Mmm. Yeah.

Kate Toon (20:58.837)
Don’t pin your hopes on one person. You know, I could have a chat with you for 10 minutes and get more from that than I could from, you know, than I could from, you know, doing a big, I’ve never ever done coaching with anybody. I’ve had a couple of chats with Robert Geras, one with a lady called Beck Lambert. And I was very briefly in Susie Daphnes’ membership about five or six years ago. And Anna Dower’s membership.

Emily Osmond (21:00.578)
Hmm. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (21:16.627)
Mm, mm. Yeah.

Kate Toon (21:26.389)
But I’ve never done coaching as a conscious thing, because I just find that I can get everything I need from my peers. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Emily Osmond (21:26.434)
Hiya, cool.

Emily Osmond (21:34.253)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Um, OK. Oh, my gosh. I just had a total mental blank of what I was going to. Oh, yeah.

Kate Toon (21:39.721)
I’ve totally, well I’ve totally ruined my own business now because now no one’s gonna hire me as a coach. HUEH

Emily Osmond (21:44.962)
So let’s get to this with what you offer. You have what sounds like an absolutely amazing membership. And you also have some more DIY style products. Is there one that you prefer doing? Is there one that you would go like to lean more into?

Kate Toon (21:56.909)
Mm.

Kate Toon (22:08.759)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (22:08.766)
Is there one that you can see in the future might suit you and where you want to go better in terms of hold? Cause it is holding space for a community and a group of people and making sure everyone’s getting on and happy and all that type of thing versus more the, um, here’s the product and you can now enjoy that without. Yeah.

Kate Toon (22:29.409)
without me. Now, I definitely like the hands-on and I think DMC, my membership is where I want to live. You know, what I do now, like for this morning, someone asked the question, I say, Hey, do you want to go live for 20 minutes? We’ll just chat about it in the group. That then helps them, but it helps all the people who watch that as well. That’s what I like. I just want to have fewer things to focus on. I feel like I’m spread a bit too thin, too little butter over too much bread. So just one place, one, you know, also being less available everywhere else. So there’s more desire for me there. Like if I’m always

Emily Osmond (22:48.148)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (22:57.422)
Mm-mm.

Kate Toon (22:59.421)
everyone else’s thing. No one, why would you pay when you’re getting the milk for free? You’re not going to buy the cow, right? So I need to be more cow and just be a cow in one field rather than trying to move from field to field to field. Just do a lot less, say a lot less, be a lot less, expect a lot less of myself. And then maybe have a bit of time to like, you know, go to the toilet and eat lunch and stuff like that.

Emily Osmond (23:02.988)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (23:10.272)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Emily Osmond (23:24.143)
I would love you Kate to share. I guess when you when you let’s say last year with your business, what did that look like in terms of the input that was required for that from you and then also from other people? So your team, what did that look like? So people maybe get a sense and of course every business is so different, but you have your own experience here of what that looks like.

Kate Toon (23:42.655)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (23:51.857)
Yeah. So as I said, last year was a million dollar revenue year. My profit was down to about 36%, which is still considered pretty good. Last year, or I’d say go last financial year, my focus shifted onto the book, which took a huge amount of time and resources and costs. It was expensive, you know, to do that. In terms of my time, I still work probably Monday. Last year, I worked Monday to Friday, which is five days a week, which is a lot for me because usually I don’t work on Fridays. That’s my day for myself.

Emily Osmond (24:06.273)
Mm.

Kate Toon (24:21.321)
I work nine till two on those days, that’s it. Maybe one six o’clock call. So that’s my commitment. I have several team members, most of whom work part time. I’ve got an OBM 10 hours, a VA 15 hours, a marketing manager 20 hours, a designer, a coder, a developer, a podcast person, a bookkeeper and accountant. So probably I have about another 80 to a hundred hours of resources on top of my time.

Emily Osmond (24:49.078)
per month or week per week. And you actually, you do a great job of laying this out in the book too, which is so helpful. Yes.

Kate Toon (24:50.696)
per week, per week, yeah.

Kate Toon (24:55.549)
Yeah, I’ve got a lot. I even put my little organogram in and hours break down. So yes. And in terms of, you know, marketing, I have three podcasts. I have two large free Facebook groups. I have, you know, multiple social media accounts and there is content going out on them every day. I do three large newsletters a week, two member updates for my members. I run, do three launches for both memberships a year. So that’s six launches and then three launches for recipe on top.

And then there are micro launches in between. So I did like an AI summit. I did my sales page course. It’s a lot. So, you know, it takes a lot of effort to make a million dollars. It’s profitable. It’s great. But it’s a lot. The mental load of all of that is extreme. And also, you know, my outgoings just for my team expenses would run to 25 to $30,000 a month, and that’s just my team. Add on top of that, my subscriptions.

Emily Osmond (25:38.301)
Hmm

Emily Osmond (25:47.359)
Mm.

Kate Toon (25:51.145)
for a Gora pulse and Canva and zero and everything else. You know, I am having to make at least $35,000 before I make a dollar. Does that help?

Emily Osmond (25:57.682)
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s um, it’s, it’s just valuable to hear of cool. Like what, what does it look like? And you’re very open with it. And you discuss all like, break that all down in the book, which is so fantastic. Yeah.

Kate Toon (26:03.149)
I’m very honest.

Kate Toon (26:09.046)
Yadda.

Kate Toon (26:15.517)
Yeah. And I didn’t start that, right? You know, I started earning five grand a month, then it went to 10. I had a VA for one hour a week. It looks like a lot now and people were like, holy God, but this is over 15 years. And I’ve just added layers and layers and got everything running smoothly, then tweaked one element and then everything’s the wheels fall off for a bit until that runs smoothly, then tweak another element. So it’s built up over a long time. This is not an overnight success story by any means, 15 years in the making.

Emily Osmond (26:26.949)
Yes!

Hmm…

Emily Osmond (26:39.965)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (26:44.97)
I want to go to something, um, one of my favorite lines in the book, just because it, it really resonated with me Kate and, um, it said, here’s what I realized about having your own business. It’s a fact we can choose our hours that makes us feel more guilty. We’re not being pressured into working long hours by some big bad boss, but by ourselves. And that’s why it feels suckier.

Kate Toon (27:07.165)
That’s the mum guilt, right? Because you have chosen to be on this podcast now rather than to be with your child. You terrible, terrible mother that you are. I know, right? There’s no one to blame. And when you have a boss, you can blame it. Oh, my boss asked me to come in early. My boss wants me to do a late night Zoom. And for me, what works really well is to separate my identity and have a boss. So my boss sets the schedule. Sometimes I hate my boss. I hate yesterday me. Yesterday me, me.

Emily Osmond (27:09.644)
And I-

Emily Osmond (27:13.721)
Mm-hmm.

Oh my gosh. Shocking.

Emily Osmond (27:26.755)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (27:31.179)
I love that.

haha

Kate Toon (27:34.997)
But it’s really hard because we’re choosing. And we can sit here and go, we have no choice, I have to do all these things, but we don’t. And that’s why, and you can’t live in a permanent state of gratitude and a permanent state of why. Sometimes you just have to get on with it, shut up, do the day. And I think it’s really important to realize that you’ll have good weeks at work, and good weeks at being a mom, and then we’ll rarely be the same week. But yeah, the fact that we get to choose is both glorious and horrendous at the same time.

Emily Osmond (28:03.774)
Yeah. And, um, for me, we’re, we’re at different stages of the parenting. I’ve got Lando who’s one now, but, um, it has at times felt like a bit of a justification, like, okay, well, yeah, no, I, do I have to work right now today? I guess not. Things can wait, but yeah, I want to, and to keep the business going. Yeah.

Kate Toon (28:07.839)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (28:14.026)
Mmm.

Kate Toon (28:22.953)
I’m, you want, oh, there’s the line. I want to, and it’s so important to understand that you didn’t just pop out human and your whole personality change. You know, yes, you become more of a nurturer and you love your child, but you are allowed to find creative freedom and energy and community and everything that makes you feel like a valid human through your work. Most people do, right? You’d be finding some of our worth through our human familial connections, through our partner, through our child, through our solo time.

Emily Osmond (28:33.102)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (28:43.231)
you

Emily Osmond (28:50.338)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (28:52.993)
But a lot of it, 50, 60% of our identity is who we are. What do we do? It’s the most asked question, isn’t it? Where’d you come from? What do you do? What do you do for a living? So we are allowed to enjoy it. And I think it’s really important to give yourself permission to enjoy it because as your child gets older and they say, mom, why are you always on your phone? You don’t want to be saying, cause this is how I earn money. And that’s how I pay for everything in the house. You want to say, because I really enjoy it. Just like you like playing with Thomas the Tank Engine. I love working with my community and helping them whatever. I don’t love it more than you.

Emily Osmond (28:56.846)
Hmm… yeah. Hmm…

Emily Osmond (29:10.936)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (29:14.271)
Yeah.

Kate Toon (29:21.813)
And I will stop in an hour and we’ll spend time together, but I do love what I do. It makes me very happy. And it’s okay to say that.

Emily Osmond (29:23.189)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (29:31.292)
Your side is in his teens now. I actually wanted to ask you Kate, what the different phases have looked like. I know you’ve interviewed lots of people for the book, but even if you have a bit of an overview, I guess of like running your own business with children from, there’s the newborn phase, toddler.

Kate Toon (29:33.088)
He is.

Emily Osmond (29:55.01)
phase, primary school and secondary school, which you’re up to now. Can you describe, I guess, those different phases or how things have changed for you or how you saw things change for the people that you interviewed in your book slash what I’ve got ahead of me, let me know. Tell me what I’m in for.

Kate Toon (30:10.741)
Such a good question. I mean, yes, exactly. Yeah, I’m gonna tell you. So for me, the business and the baby have always grown together. So business literally started when my son was in my stomach, five months old. So I’ve never had them separate. And the phases of parenthood and child rearing are exactly the same as business. So I can say this blanket. The first year is just crap. I’m gonna say that it’s an absolute struggle. You don’t know what you’re doing.

It’s a blur as well because you’re not sleeping properly, so you’re not backing up your short-term memory like you did before. So I can’t remember my first year, but I do remember it was really, really hard. Two to three to four, equally really, really hard. Yes, I managed to get daycare for my son a couple of days a week, feeling guilty about it every minute of it. And on those days I thought I’m going to be hyperproductive. But then I also had the house to clean and the shopping to do and I was tired. So I wasn’t.

Emily Osmond (30:45.267)
Yes.

Kate Toon (31:08.825)
All the way up to school, I’m like, I’m amazed I did anything. I’m amazed I did anything. I really wish most people would give themselves a fricking break because there’s only three years, then when they go to school, there’s a massive shift. It’s not that you have more time. It’s that they can wipe their bum. They can feed themselves. They are someone else’s problem. They are their own little entities. They’ve got their personality. You’ve, you’ve got through a really hard stage. So five was pretty good. And then I’d say seven to 10.

Emily Osmond (31:18.575)
Mm.

Emily Osmond (31:21.616)
Mm.

Kate Toon (31:38.037)
Beautiful, easy, fantastic. Now I have a fairly Joe average kid with no neurodiversity, no ailments. I’m very blessed in that. So, you know, he fits well into the school system. It was a breeze. My business was a breeze. That’s when the seven to 10 was when I took off. Took off, right? And then 11 was when he became a teenager and started to question everything. And that was when my business was 11 and I started to question everything.

Emily Osmond (31:45.71)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (31:54.845)
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (32:06.158)
Oh well. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Kate Toon (32:08.001)
What am I going to do? What’s next? What happens? Whatever. And now my son is free. It was, but it was because massive freeing up of time. He’s at senior school. He’s cycling to school. I don’t even need to drop him off. I don’t need to pick him up. The world opens up. And what do you do at this time when you’re so used to having none? And now he’s 14 and he’s argumentative and difficult and grumpy and beautiful and loving.

Emily Osmond (32:11.31)
That was when, I reckon that was our last podcast. Yeah, around then. Yeah.

Kate Toon (32:33.737)
And he’s becoming his own person and my business is argumentative and difficult and beautiful and grumpy. And then I think I’m going into the final phase when he went off, he pops off to university or college, which I think he will, and I will be 54 and my business will be 18 years old and I’ll have all the time in the world. And I have no idea what I will do then. In fact, I think I might go back and study. I might do something completely different. I don’t know. It’s interesting. So I do think it marries. It goes along the same stages.

Emily Osmond (32:38.062)
Hehehehe

Emily Osmond (32:45.589)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (32:49.806)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (32:58.442)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kate Toon (33:02.229)
The best bit for me was seven to 10. Kids love you. Business is going well. You know, it’s working. It’s been going long enough that you know, it’s working a bit of uniformity. You can predict what’s going to happen each day. That’s the comfort. So I hope that helps. That was a bit of a ram. Yeah.

Emily Osmond (33:09.635)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (33:16.554)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so interesting. Um, but not so like, it’s so not surprising as well, how they married out up. And that is something that I remind myself to Kate of, I think I will be, um, impressed that I was doing anything at all, but it is the adjustment for me. As you know, you had me on your podcast talking about having the business and then the baby came along and it’s like, well, you know, it’s adjusting to that.

Kate Toon (33:24.09)
No. Yep.

Kate Toon (33:33.578)
Yeah, you will.

Kate Toon (33:37.921)
Mmm.

Emily Osmond (33:43.842)
But had I started my business similar to you when Landa was in my tummy, I wouldn’t have the same expectations on myself, I think. Yeah.

Kate Toon (33:52.405)
No, you have very, but the thing is even before I had my business, I had a big job and I had high expectations of myself in my job and I was running a team and being a GM and doing all these things. And I was like, you know, my son was probably about six weeks old and I was like, well, I want to be going out and getting my toes down and having lunch. And I could barely put a bra on, but I was like, no, I want my old life back. And it took me a long time to realize that my old life was gone. Well, I had to kind of make a new life. It’s a big…

Emily Osmond (33:56.818)
Yes, yes.

Emily Osmond (34:09.498)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I’ve, yeah, that is a hard lesson.

Kate Toon (34:22.493)
And I think for those, have you ever seen, you know, that Indiana Jones movie where there’s a big boulder following him running down, you have to, you have to watch it. Type it in. For the first couple of years of my business, that’s what I felt like. Like I was just ahead of the boulder at any minute I would get crushed. And sometimes I did get crushed, but the ability to pick yourself up and keep on going was what kept me going. And you know, anybody who’s listening to this, who has their own business, you have literally made a business out of your head that…

Emily Osmond (34:26.914)
Oh yeah? Okay.

Emily Osmond (34:32.622)
Mmm, yeah.

Kate Toon (34:48.717)
Whether it’s paying you $5 a week or 500 or 500,000, you have made this up. It’s incredibly hard. That’s why most people don’t ever do it. So you’ve really got to give yourself a pat on the bottom for even trying. You know, it’s really difficult.

Emily Osmond (35:01.806)
Exactly. And it will change. And that’s okay. And with you this many years in, you know, changing and adapting it to suit where you’re at and what you want out of it.

Kate Toon (35:07.273)
It gets better and better and better. Yeah.

Kate Toon (35:16.961)
I mean, that’s the joy, isn’t it? That’s the freedom that we have, that flexibility. See, I come right back to the reason I started was I thought I wanted more time with my son. But what I really want is the flexibility to choose. It’s freedom. Money is freedom. Time is freedom. The ability to say, I can’t be bothered today. I’m going to stay in my pants and watch Netflix all day. You know, I want to do this podcast today. Today, I want to spend time with my son. It’s the ability to choose and accept the consequences of your choices.

Emily Osmond (35:23.83)
Hmm.

Emily Osmond (35:28.766)
Hmm…

Emily Osmond (35:39.063)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (35:42.51)
Hmm.

Kate Toon (35:45.621)
That is the core. And once you can work that out, then you’re sorted for your business.

Emily Osmond (35:51.144)
I think that’s the perfect, perfect note to leave it on Kate. Oh, so good to chat with you. Thank you so much for coming back on here.

Kate Toon (35:57.309)
Always good. Thank you for having me. And don’t forget to listen to my episode of Emily on Six Fingers in School Hours. You can find it just Google Emily Osman, Six Fingers in School Hours. It will pop up. It was a great episode. We were very introspective then too, weren’t we? Yo, we’re thinking about things at the moment. We should stop thinking about things.

Emily Osmond (36:10.686)
Yeah, yeah, we were. Yeah, we are. We think what’s your I actually want to ask you, do you know your Maya Briggs type? Oh, yeah. It’s like, you don’t have one. It doesn’t fit.

Kate Toon (36:19.089)
No, I don’t do those. I’m not somebody who likes a label. I think it would be like ZZXX or something. Yes. No, I don’t do those tests because I find that I then become the answer that they’ve given me. Yeah. So, you know, no, but I’d probably be quite terrifying if I did do it. Yeah. It’s good to think, it’s good to think, but I think sometimes you can.

Emily Osmond (36:33.082)
Yeah, interesting. Interesting. I don’t know. I feel like we’d have similarities there by the sound with both big thinkers and little sensitive sometimes.

Kate Toon (36:47.901)
You can overthink and a lot of, you know, to be honest, most of my successes come on with just going, Kate, shut up and just get on with it and things will generally work out.

Emily Osmond (36:49.446)
Yeah, definitely.

Emily Osmond (36:54.452)
Yeah.

Emily Osmond (36:58.838)
So good. Where could everyone go for your book, Kate? Six figures in school hours and to join your membership. Where’s the best place for everyone to go?

Kate Toon (36:59.819)
Thank you.

Kate Toon (37:05.725)
Well, the best place to go is just type in Six Figs in School as I did my Google stuff. So I’m all over the first page for that. It’s available on Amazon, on Audible, wherever you go. And then you can find out more about me at katetune.com. Thank you.

Emily Osmond (37:18.133)
Thank you so much for your time.

Emily Osmond (37:23.995)
Yay!