Katelyn Bourgoin: Buyer Psychology and the Ownable Idea That Grows an Expert Business

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The Business Owner's Journey Podcast host: Nick Berry
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Transcript for: Katelyn Bourgoin: Buyer Psychology and the Ownable Idea That Grows an Expert Business

00:00 Katelyn Bourgoin's Entrepreneurial Journey

03:32 Navigating Pivots and Failures

05:38 The Future of Service-Based Businesses

08:18 Building a Brainware Business Model

10:52 Messaging Strategy for Consultants

13:22 Positioning for Expert Entrepreneurs

16:16 Finding and Framing an Ownable Idea

18:46 Revelatory Messaging and Buyer Psychology

21:21 Parallel Process and Expertise Business Growth

24:02 The Evolution of Unignorable

Katelyn Bourgoin (00:00)

I think that people want to believe that they can just, you know, be an expert, that being an expert and that their expertise is what makes them stand out. Their quality of work is what makes them stand out. So it's like what I say is like you can't build a business on expertise because expertise isn't what matters.

Nick Berry (00:27)

Katelyn Bourgoin is a marketing strategist, the founder of Be Unignorable, and one of the sharpest voices you'll find bridging behavioral science with modern marketing strategy.

Why do some experts become so well known for one idea while someone else who's equally talented stays completely invisible? Today, we get into buyer psychology, ownable ideas, and the real reason why expertise alone won't grow your business anymore. Expect to learn how to spot where the market's moving before everyone else, whether courses actually deliver the outcomes that buyers want. Katelyn's take on why expertise isn't enough to stand out anymore. The best and worst ways to find an ownable idea

Nick Berry (01:02)

What Caitlin's feedback on my parallel process reveals about why your business may have grown in spite of you.

Nick Berry (01:09)

What makes positioning statements actually revelatory? How to shape what you believe into what your buyer needs to hear? Her take on the future of services in the AI era and much, much more.

Katelyn is a phenomenal guest. Enjoy this episode.

Katelyn Bourgoin (01:22)

it's funny, I started my journey as a agency owner and now 15 years later, I'm an agency owner again. And there was this big period in the middle where I did all sorts of different things. So guess what I would start with is a lot of folks right now are probably experiencing something similar to what…

You know, I think there's always this question that we have in service businesses or when we're selling expertise and we want to sell something more scalable, know, stop selling our time. And that was something that was really attractive to me about three years into my agency, we'd been growing quickly, but I was feeling kind of the call of like doing something that wasn't selling our team's time. And went through this whole journey, ended up building a VC back tech company that failed miserably, but looked really good for a while. Then ended up building a

creator based in education business, which is more what I'm doing now where it's more of like a media and course based business. I'm in the process of pivoting to doing services. So I think it's an interesting, I guess there's this through line through all of that, which is that I think as there's always this like shiny object syndrome that we have as entrepreneurs. And I think particularly as expert based entrepreneurs, when there's so many different ways you can package what you do into something that people want to buy and

I guess one lesson I'd share with your listeners is that I think right now is actually a really exciting time to be in services because for a long time, figuring out how to scale a service-based business required having a lot of excellent talent.

and being able to be good at going out and getting lots of clients. know, businesses kind of just became bloated by nature of the beast. They wanted to deliver more services. They became an everything agency. I think with what's shifting in the world with AI and the way that like individual businesses want to hire and get support in their own business.

I think it's a really exciting time to be in the world we're in because there's ways that we can augment what we're doing and create businesses that look more like what I've been calling brainware businesses, where instead of it being like a software business or services business, it's this kind of cool thing in the middle. And so, yeah, I share that. Like I've gone through the whole spectrum of both and come back out being really bullish on where services can go.

Nick Berry (03:32)

You've put out some very successful products and then you discontinued them and you've made several pivots over time. Those are big decisions. I want to hear more about your thought process. How do you think your way through those decisions?

Katelyn Bourgoin (03:43)

Mm-hmm.

That's a great question. I consider like I am a bit of a like a bit of a futurist in that I can I like to I like to think that I can kind of see what's coming when it's still quite a bit down the road. And going back to my initial pivot from like so my first agency was a branding agency, started it at 25 years old, no frigging clue what I was doing. grew it to a team of about eight, we were working with like clients with Target and Holiday In. But like I was like, I want to get out of the services world, I want to sell something more scalable.

than my time. at that time, this is 2013, I was like, well, courses are kind of interesting, but that world's way too crowded. Like there's no space there. It's so saturated. Now remember this is 2013. Like I was wrong. There would have been lots of opportunity to build an education-based business at that time. But I thought that it was too saturated and I decided I wanted to build a tech company.

I see happening now when it comes to strategic pivots, it's like, I never wanted to sell courses because I've never thought that courses actually deliver the outcomes that a lot of people want. And as a person who cares about delivering outcomes, who wants my clients or my customers to get success out of their, any work that we do together.

I was, you it was always to me kind of like alienated by that industry because it felt like it was a lot of smoke and mirrors and not a lot of value being created for the majority of buyers. And so I decided to do the tech company. That was the leading decision why I didn't go into the education space then. And I at the time could see that women

were a huge opportunity in untapped market when it came to business because there were all of these women building these creative, creative businesses, coaching businesses, like basically selling digitally online. And I saw an opportunity to build a network specifically for them. And I was like, women are creating businesses at the fastest rate in history. And the way that they do business and approach things is differently. And I think we could build a community specifically for women entrepreneurs to actually be able to do business together.

Now this is again, 2013 and at that time I was like, there's this huge thing happening with creator businesses and there's an opportunity to be able to,

build the space specifically for women who were also starting businesses at this rapid clip. But going out and pitching that to VCs was really frigging hard because they didn't understand anything about the creator economy that was about to happen. They didn't understand why I would build a business that just targeted women because as a marketer, that's obvious to us, right? Like understand your ICP, be really targeted. But so raising funding for that was a real challenge. Figuring out how to scale was a real challenge. I didn't have the right technical team in place.

But like the way that I guess to come back to this like decision making framework is like I try to look ahead at where I see the market is moving and figure out how to get there sooner. And the reason why I, with after Vendee, which was my VC backed tech company, like we became, it was looking great from the outside.

We had raised money from like a prominent VC eventually, it took me time to get there. But like we were being called like the next LinkedIn by Inc Magazine and Forbes. But like internally, we had built a product that just kept breaking and it wasn't sticky and people would join and then they would not stick around. And so as a…

as a platform, it was never going to work unless I could figure that retention piece out. And we just didn't have the runway to do it. And I didn't have the team or the experience to do it. Like I was too inexperienced. And it's funny because years later, like five years later, a company launched called Chief, similar concept, a network for women entrepreneurs, now a like, I think like a $2 billion business. So I just didn't execute it well, but the idea was right. But

Nick Berry (07:18)

Mm-hmm.

Katelyn Bourgoin (07:22)

To kind of answer your original question, I wanted this meandering way. I think that I try to look at where current tensions are and try to figure out how to solve for those ahead of time. And this is why I'm so excited and bullish after like making millions of dollars in a education and media based company. I think that world's going to change dramatically in the next coming years. And I want to get out of it and get into where I think the market's moving before that change happens.

Nick Berry (07:49)

where do you see the market moving now?

Katelyn Bourgoin (07:51)

I see it moving to something like brainware companies. think ultimately nobody ever, so I had a conversation with Nathan Barry, who's the founder of Kit on his podcast back in 2022. And I talked to him about how I didn't like people selling courses because again, they don't often get people the outcomes. Nobody wants to take a course. People want to get the outcome promised by the course. And so I think there's gonna be this future where people who have a specific methodology and approach to getting an outcome.

In my case, that's helping people to figure out what they want to be known for and to build a personal brand and authority around it. I think in the future, you'll see that rather than creating kind of like or courses where people have to figure out and do it on their own, you'll see this movement towards non-technical people being able to build technical solutions that allow them to scale their expertise.

and deliver it in this really new, interesting kind of like hybrid way. So what I'm trying to build with Unignorable now is that it's a done, basically done for you model, but we're building a lot of infrastructure in the backend that allows it to still be scalable. And so I think that you'll see a lot more of that where you'll see service-based agencies picking one narrow focus of something that they wanna do and an outcome they wanna deliver for clients and figuring out.

how to with the combination of really smart people and processes and these new tools that we all have access to deliver that outcome for their clients and do it more predictably and scalably than we ever have before. So I think that's where things are gonna move and people will wanna pay for the outcome, not the information.

Nick Berry (09:25)

so yeah, that's very interesting. So is that like you're outsourcing your infrastructure? So if you're the idea person or you're the creator, like so you can focus on that, you take your role and then I can come to you and you have my infrastructure, or what does that look like?

Katelyn Bourgoin (09:39)

So it looks like for us is like, so the central argument that I have for building unignorable is that I believe that expert entrepreneurs in particular, like they don't get known for being good. They get known for like this one idea that people associate with them and that that's the way to grow a business. And I think it's always been true, but I think in the current landscape we're in, it's more true than ever. And so, but how do you figure out what you want to be known for? How do you figure out what

the thing is that you want to really drill in on and create a message around and create and build your business on top of. And for a lot of folks figuring that out on our own is really effing hard. Like there's a whole bunch of cognitive biases that are working against us to actually figure it out on our own. We overthink our own stuff, we're much better at reasoning other people's problems that are own. And so I feel like there's this huge opportunity for expert entrepreneurs to figure this out and that it's going to be the launch pad.

for their businesses. And it's also really hard to do alone. And so I was thinking of like, okay, like, so I ran the unignorable challenge, which was a 30 day group cohort with the team at demand curve. And we helped a lot of our students get amazing outcomes. Like they went on to build like audiences that completely changed their business and their life.

But they were the minority, right? Like a lot of people that went through that, had over 1800 students. There was a lot of people that never applied it, that never actually did the work, that still felt stuck because it's hard to figure this stuff out on your own. And so the way that it works inside of unignorable is that basically we work with our clients, we're building a complete methodology that's kind of like…

very systematized on how we help to get into their head and kind of like extract their brilliance. And then we go out and we do deep market research, because as you know, I'm nerdy about why people buy, to understand their audience. And then we work together to shape what they want to say and what they believe into what their audience wants to hear into a message that can be their platform. And the process of doing that…

requires all of this, like, kind of like, there's all of these steps. And if we can use AI and automation to kind of like automate more of the steps, the stuff where you don't need the smart strategist, like the research side of things, like the, you know, the onboarding of the clients, all of these kind of like manual steps, the more of that we can automate, the more the time we spend actually with our clients becomes really high value. And so then we can deliver for them an outcome that they're willing to pay a premium.

in for because they get an outcome that's meaningful, but do it in hopefully less bandwidth on the team's time. So that's kind of like the model I'm working towards.

Nick Berry (12:15)

AI, it's going to make the whole thing more of a practical endeavor for that idea owner to have all of these other capabilities. I Yeah, so.

Joe Daniels,

Katelyn Bourgoin (12:27)

hmm. Joe went through the

bait as well as trying to figure out is this actually going to work or is this just like a big thing that I have in my head is never going to

Nick Berry (12:34)

So Joe, Joe was a previous guest on the show and I communicate with him and I think really highly of him. So he's paid you some very high compliments in our conversations. He said insanely valuable and helped me package how I think into something that I can actually communicate, which I mean, it's sounds simple, but like that's the obstacle.

Katelyn Bourgoin (12:35)

So he's amazing. Yeah.

⁓ Joe. And so just so you're listening, have some context

that you and I have. Joe is a messaging and offer expert.

Nick Berry (13:01)

Right.

Katelyn Bourgoin (13:02)

He struggled for three years to do this on his own because it's so effing hard to do on your own. I'm in the process right now. Like once they actually publicly launched this, I will be hiring people to help me with the messaging for this because it's so hard to do on your own. I'm already working with Joe on helping to shape the offer. So there's no shame in getting help with this, even when you're an effing expert.

Nick Berry (13:22)

would

take it a step further. It's beyond, that there's just no shame. Like that's what the best do. Right? It's like, he's not an exception in doing that. You're not an exception. I'm not an exception. Like that is what you do is you go find the people who know how to do this part of it and you enlist their help.

Katelyn Bourgoin (13:28)

It is true.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And so since we work together, Joe has found his ownable idea. And for him, that is Buyability And what that means for Joe is that like, essentially, there's we're again, like looking at what's changing in the world. People used to spend a whole bunch of time.

trying to like research which companies they wanted to work with, figure like they would do sales calls, they would kind of like go through the whole process with a few different vendors before they would decide who they're gonna work with. That's not how we buy anymore, right? We often discover somebody, often a thought leader through social media, or we get referred to somebody and we go and we start like consuming their content and then we get to their website and we look at their offer and we try to decide.

does this gonna solve my problem? Do I understand what it is? Am I curious enough to wanna move to the next step, whether that's like saying yes right then, but is it so clear and so viable that you can say yes right away? Or whether it's, okay, I'm definitely booking a sales call to like move forward, because I'm so convinced and I wanna work with these folks. So there's this big shift happening in the way that businesses make buying decisions. And Joe is at the forefront of explaining how do you make your company viable? How do you make your service offer

viable? How do you package it in a way that instead of just saying contact us for a quote, which we all know we've all been on those websites and how often do you actually move forward if it's not through a direct referral or you've been following that person for years, then maybe you move forward. But what happens with all those people that are landing on your website that are discovering you that never take the next step because your offer is not clear. It's not viable. They don't know exactly what they're going to get. That's the work that Joe does now.

And since he reframed how he talked to what he did, because he used to call himself a home page messaging expert, right? Since he reframed what he does around being viable against this idea of not having to sell harder, but be more viable. He's generated within the first couple of weeks, it was like 100K in pipeline. I'm not sure where he's at now in terms of the change, but it's been a massive change for his business because he's clearer on it now.

And if a brilliant expert like Joe needs help to get clear on it, then what help do the rest of us have, right?

Nick Berry (15:47)

Right, exactly. somebody like for them to have an own idea, is this something that already exists and they just haven't named it yet?

Katelyn Bourgoin (15:54)

Often yes. Yeah, often

what it is, is that they will have a strong opinion and belief system and a way of doing work that is different, but they've never actually been able to sit down, articulate it, tease it all out. And what is often the case is they don't even recognize their differentiated approach in the way that they should because to them it's obvious. And it's like,

Well, of course you do it this way. And then when we're having conversations with them or we're pulling this out and we're looking at the competitive landscape, there's a lot of what we do is looking at what else is out there. What are other people saying? How are people buying solutions in your space right now? Because we want to be able to differentiate our clients and

A lot of the times the things that they do that are different, they kind of discount them. They don't realize how unique they are. And so it's our job to identify, help them identify those too and go, wait a minute, stop right there. Like that thing you just said is really powerful and you're not even talking about that. And like, so a lot of it's often that work and it's kind of like excavating it out of them.

which requires us to go off and do a lot of kind of like pre-work to understand the landscape and the market so that we can spot those things. So there's a, it's like very much in them already, but it just needs to be pulled out.

Nick Berry (17:05)

some refining and then, taking that to market is it's an own path from there.

Katelyn Bourgoin (17:09)

Mm-hmm.

we the way I frame it is you need we help people to find shape and share it. Because oftentimes, especially people who are not necessarily natural marketers like Joe, the way that they talk about what they do, what makes them different is absolutely true and absolutely important. But it's not framed in a way that the buyer needs to hear. And so even they'll keep saying this message that is like a belief system that's really powerful, but it's just not framed right. So so much of what we need to do is that take that and go, okay, this

Nick Berry (17:28)

Mm-hmm.

Katelyn Bourgoin (17:38)

is what you want to say, we're going to help shape that into what your buyer needs to hear.

Nick Berry (17:43)

So for example, Joe now may feel like he's still talking about the same things that he's always talked about, but now he's framed it differently. It's framed it in a way that it doesn't need to be translated again for the message recipient. It's the things that he's talked about, the things that he's already believed, generally speaking. Yeah.

Katelyn Bourgoin (17:49)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And a big piece

of this too is you've got to like the language of making it sticky is a huge part of what we do and we're really good at. Because when you think about so, just so your listeners have context, like we're talking about ownable ideas, like what, as though they would know what they are, but they're not going to know what they are. So an ownable idea is essentially a mental territory that you can own that is when you, you know, when you are effective in owning it, when people think of that thing, they think of you. And like when somebody else is sharing that idea, it sounds like an echo

coming from anybody else. So some examples of these, I'm going to name some ownable ideas, then I want you to say if you know who said them. So who's the first person that comes to mind when you hear start with Y?

Nick Berry (18:41)

Sinek

Katelyn Bourgoin (18:42)

Yeah, right? Who, when you hear atomic habits, who comes to mind?

Nick Berry (18:46)

is that clear? James clear?

Katelyn Bourgoin (18:47)

Yeah, that's

James Clear. What about story brand?

Nick Berry (18:50)

I can see the cover of the book and I can't think of his name. We talk about him all the time. I do. ⁓

Katelyn Bourgoin (18:53)

But you know him, right? You know him. There's not like,

you're not like, there's not like five people that go, it could be this guy, this guy, that girl. No, there's like a person that owns the space Donald Miller is the guy. And so there's like to become an idea owner, it's not just about coming up with some clever like language, right? Like atomic habits had a really clear argument that was completely different from most productivity and habit.

Nick Berry (19:01)

Right. Yeah, there you go.

Katelyn Bourgoin (19:17)

Formation advice that have been out previously before people just talked about like, you know consistency and like working harder and like he was like no he's like you need to actually create like it's the small like repetitions and like figuring out the The thing that's gonna make it easy for you to do that's going to make it fun for you to do that's gonna remove Friction like if you can figure out these things you can optimize around that you can actually get make progress on the things you care Like he had a completely different framework and approach

to habit building and like to productivity than anybody else had been talking about before him. And so it's not just that the language atomic habits is clear, is compelling. You have to have the underlying story and approach that's different. And that's what we help people to shape up.

That's what we help people to find. But once you do, and you can wrap it in language that spreads, that's where it spreads like fire. And that's with Joe, he already had the whole approach that was different. He already had an argument for why people were doing this in the wrong way. But he hadn't wrapped it in the biability language yet. He hadn't figured out the exact story and how to talk about it yet. And that's the work that us doing it together just crystallized it for him.

Nick Berry (20:27)

Okay. So my example might the parallel process my thesis is that an expertise business to grow the founder has to grow as a leader alongside the business having to grow. Like it's developed.

Katelyn Bourgoin (20:39)

I like that. Now, here's my question

is, I think that that's absolutely true. I don't know that I've not heard that before. So this is where there's the opportunity to keep shaping it, right? Because like when I think about the key ingredients to an ownable idea, one of them is it needs to be relevatory which is much easier to write than to say, but like it needs to be something where somebody goes, I haven't thought about it that way before.

So let me kind of share an example. Everybody wants to, like, you know, in all of history, humans want to be able to have, like, to be financially secure, do work that they care about, not have to work too much. Like, that's all true. We've all wanted that, right? Lots and lots of people have made a lot of money by meeting that desire with a new message. So you look at somebody like Justin Welsh, right? Justin Welsh didn't create the word solopreneur.

but he completely reframed it and made it a movement. And the way that he came about it is he shared something kind of revelatory. Before Justin started talking about solopreneurship, most people thought that the way to build wealth and success was to start a big company, raise a bunch of money, become the next unicorn tech company. That was like what success looked like for a lot of ambitious people. Or it was keep moving up the corporate ladder, get the biggest title you can get, be part of the C-suite. There was paths to success.

But work by yourself as a solopreneur was not a path that people saw as quote unquote successful until Justin reframed it. And he reframed it and said that actually being a solopreneur wasn't about building a small business because you couldn't build something bigger. It was because you chose to build small because you wanted the freedom that came with that path. And you could still make a lot of money on that path. I mean, how many people out there were selling make money on the internet before Justin?

Everybody, so many people, right? But Justin was able to offer a new lens on how to go about it and create an identity people could step into that didn't sound like anything they'd heard before. Small used to be bad. Justin made small actually an intentional, thoughtful choice and gave people an identity they could step into. So I'd say when it comes to figuring out the ownable idea, there needs to be like a revelatory component.

And I think that yours is there. I think that there's an element to shape it where it becomes more like a, like I didn't think about it that way before, because that's what makes people pause and go, because a lot of times like we might give advice that's good, but it's good and they already know it. So it's not going to have the stickiness.

Nick Berry (22:59)

Yeah. Yep. I can see what you're talking about. it's some of it would be maybe language, but some of it also is going to be the point of view itself. It needs, we're going to have to show them the image from a different angle or under a different light.

Katelyn Bourgoin (23:07)

Absolutely.

Exactly.

You need to figure out like how do I share this in a way that

meets the core desire that my audience has that solves a painful problem that they're experiencing, and that shows them a new solution, right? Because it's the new solution and the new approach. Solopreneurship for many people was not something that looked like the ideal solution. And then when Justin framed it the way he did, another great example of somebody who did this masterfully is Cody Sanchez with Boring Businesses, right?

Again, same at same basic argument of Justin, which is you want to be wealthy, you want to be successful, you think the path to doing that is to start some sexy startup or to, you know, crush yourself in like a nine to five. But actually, idiots, there's all this money to be made on mainstream buy a plumbing company started like buy a car wash. Like that was like what

like I never thought about like I was thinking I was gonna do you know, the next unicorn tech company or I was gonna do like some sexy direct to consumer product like a car wash. And then she's like, yeah, they're like, so it's like that revelatory nature where it's like boring businesses are actually the path to wealth.

When you hear that the first time you hear it, go, that's not what I thought was true. And that needs to be a piece of it for it to really take off. And so for me, when I think about ownable ideas, it's like the underlying element there is like people keep thinking, I need like a personal brand or like, like I, you know, I, I'm an expert. So like, I just need to keep stacking credentials and like, you know, doing good work and that will help me do grow my business. I don't think that's true. I think that that's

was more true years ago. think that now the path to building an expert led business is to be known for something hyper specific that nobody else is like that you become the de facto solution for that. And I think that that's was true for the people who always had like big, big breakouts like the Simon Sinek's of the world. But I think now with AI noise and like commoditization of services, it's like the only path.

Nick Berry (25:10)

So why is there resistance to that?

Katelyn Bourgoin (25:11)

Well, because I think that people want to believe that they can just, you know, be an expert, that being an expert and that their expertise is what makes them stand out. Their quality of work is what makes them stand out. So it's like what I say is like, you know, it's you don't become an like you can't build a business on expertise because expertise isn't what matters. Like expertise doesn't matter anymore the way that we always, but people would think I'm just going to get more credentials. I'm going to go back to school or I'm going to get like this, like, you know, I'm going to have this proof point, these great case studies. And that's the thing. It's like, no.

Like that's not enough.

Nick Berry (25:41)

Yeah. and we get kind of tied up in this thinking about things in the way that we've always thought about them. And so we have to kind of break that thought pattern for, you know, I can keep thinking about the parallel process and the growth for the founder, their development as a leader and a business owner and alongside the development of

Katelyn Bourgoin (25:58)

I like the parallel process language,

by the way. It's like, it's sticky. it's like, it's got that alliteration that's nice, makes it more spreadable. Like it creates curiosity. I'm like, what does that mean?

Nick Berry (26:05)

hehe

Yeah. And I think what you're, what you were just saying was that like, I know it, I know it inside and out. Knowing it better is not good. That's not the missing ingredient, right?

Katelyn Bourgoin (26:14)

Mm-hmm.

I think

maybe, this is like, this is the, as I think through yours now, like I would, we have a whole process running through this with our clients, but like on the, the jump, what I like about the parallel process from a visual perspective and like what I, where I think the revelatory statement is, is like they, like most people think, they probably think that the reason their business isn't growing is business related, right? It's like, you know, I don't have the right team. I'm struggling with pipeline.

And they the revelatory way of framing that is like your business isn't your like isn't your bottleneck. You are right. And that becomes like a bit of a different thing. That's not the right language. You'd have to sit down and like really think with the narrative. But it's like your business has probably grown in spite of you. That might be relative revelatory. Like you've gotten to the success you've gotten to in spite of yourself. And people are going to what? Like I wanted to take you know, I want to take credit for where I've gotten to. Like I've worked my ass off to get here.

Nick Berry (27:02)

Mm-hmm.

Katelyn Bourgoin (27:08)

And it's like, no, you probably got lucky. You probably had some things that worked out because if you've not been growing in parallel with your business, then like, you you're not going to keep growing. like, yeah. Yeah. And that's

Nick Berry (27:18)

It's not going to outgrow you. It's doing what you designed it to do. yeah, and you can kind of

feel the dissonance just thinking through that,

Katelyn Bourgoin (27:26)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (27:28)

Yeah, I like that.

Katelyn Bourgoin (27:29)

And of course, like if we were to sit down and do this, like in a formal like, engagement, there's all this elements to it too, right? It's like figuring out the who because like to me, the one that I just shaped up like that would that works well, if you're going after a pretty successful expert entrepreneur, right? So if you're going after somebody who's built up like an eight figure agency, and you come to them with the message of like your business is growing, despite you, they're gonna go what?

Like, what do you mean? And like that could be, that's one of those like, wait a minute, like, and so, but if you're saying that to a, you know, entry level freelancer, they're not that message isn't going to have that same like stickiness, right? So it's about figuring out who you're going after and how to shape that message to.

Nick Berry (28:07)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's not near the slap in the face to someone who is probably goes through every day thinking, I don't know what I'm doing. Of course I'm the problem.

Katelyn Bourgoin (28:18)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (28:20)

Okay, so where is as far as the timeline with unignorable and in having this like the brainware concept to market is my understanding is that it's not it's not can you talk about that?

Katelyn Bourgoin (28:32)

we're doing our next round

of betas. So Joe was part of the first cohort of betas. took on five clients. I mean, we work with them all one on one. There's no like group component. But I wanted to do them as I wanted to do a cohort of clients using the process, kind of like improve the process, made massive changes from the work we did together. Since that time, all the clients, was really happy with the outcome for them as with the clients like

Chris Piper, who was joined with us for that beta. Like he's now going to hit a million dollars a year. Like his first year as a consultant, which is pretty impressive. Now he's an amazing track record. but I actually use his, his strategy when I'm presenting to, when I was presenting to this next group of potential, an ignore, an ignorable, clients. And two of them ended up hiring him. So that's how good his messaging is now. Cause I'm like talking through like, and this is the problem that Chris solved and like, and he's expensive.

So that worked out well. But so now I'm doing another cohort. We're doing four clients in April. I'll do another four in May. And by then my hope is that I will have enough of the process codified and the methodology streamlined enough that I can determine how I want to do the next.

version of this, whether it's launching and continuing to build it as an agency, whether it's building a software component, where there's an element of like, you work with a strategist, but there's some element of like, via these, like the software that we're building in the back end. So I'm still figuring that out. I don't know exactly what it looks like come June.

Nick Berry (29:59)

But right now it's the cohorts are month long and you have April and May. Okay.

Katelyn Bourgoin (30:03)

There's three month engagements.

yeah, three month engagements. I'm starting, I'm doing a kind of like rolling enrollments. So like four clients in April, four clients in May, we still got one spot left for May. And then, and then from that, I'm not going to take anybody, I'm not going to commit to anybody for June.

because I wanna use what I'm learning with these first ones to really streamline the process so that I can know how to scale it. Because there's basically two paths. It's like either we continue to do it in the version that looks like now, where I hire a bunch of great strategists and copywriters to work with our clients ongoing, or it looks more…

or I build a kind of like lower cost offer where there's more work happening with a

like an AI solution that the client can interface with directly and less completely done for you. So I'm not sure which path is going to be the one that I want to go after. It depends if I can get the output of the tools that we're building to a place where they don't need the like amazing strategists and copywriters to get amazing results. And if we can't, then we keep the humans in doing the work. yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Nick Berry (31:13)

Mm Probably a matter of time before you can. Right. Yeah.

So where can we go to get more information about that?

Katelyn Bourgoin (31:20)

Be unignorable.com is where you can sign up for the newsletter. when we're looking to get new clients, we'll do like a email out saying people can apply and then we'll just kind of like find the ones that make the, that are the best fit for the service and work with those folks. So there's not really a way that you can kind of go and apply right now. But if you're on the email list, then you'll get a, you know, be first to know when applications open again.

Nick Berry (31:42)

You just need to follow them and pay attention. Be ready. Katelyn thank you very much. I appreciate what you do. You've very insightful. You're a fantastic guest. A pleasure to collaborate with on this. thanks for sharing and spending some time with us today.

Katelyn Bourgoin (31:45)

Yeah.

Thank you, Nick.

Thank you.