(recording started part way through the call. First part of the call was just orienting to the purpose of the call and the needs of Yoga with Kaya.)

James Redenbaugh: Can you tell me a bit more about what you discovered when you were considering switching to Kajabi, or something like that about why you need something more custom?

Kaya Mindlin: So a couple of things, and I'm still open to switching. I just think the guy that was looking at it for me probably wasn't the right fit. Basically, one was what we were figuring out was some of them come with preset payment systems and preset email systems that aren't that great anyway. So a lot of people are like, "Yeah, you can go to teachable and you could use their email," but it kind of sucks. So you're still gonna use activecampaign or whatever.

My friend who was thinking about leaving teachable, he was having all these issues with all of his European people, where they were getting taxed like an insane amount for programs that they shouldn't have been taxed for because they were taught live. But it was being interpreted... basically, he was running into all these payment problems on teachable and teachable is just like "this is how we do it." And so he was losing people in Europe because the taxes were so astronomical, and he was locked into this system.

So there's some of that where it kind of seems like, oh, the idea is you're getting this prefab thing that's more streamlined, but in the end you end up having to still rig things and Frankenstein it anyway. So I was like, if I'm going to Frankenstein over there, I might as well Frankenstein over here.

And then the other thing is more visual. James, you know this is why I hired you with the architectural background and wanting it to feel like you're in this place, not in a linear course.

Kaya Mindlin: We did all this research. We looked at all the differences, and we landed on teachable as the best option. I also was looking at Podia - looked really good to me, but from what we could tell, once he started doing an experimental "what would it be like if we put this over here" - essentially, you can only have one piece of content on a page.

So let's take my Sri Studio, which is yoga practices right? I need to have things kind of stacked which learn dash lets me do with like you've got the program, then you've got the lessons, and you've got the topics. And in any of those layers you can have as many pieces of content as you want, so you can have buttons, you can have multiple videos, you can have text.

So I can be like a Netflix where you're in the program which is like the show, and then the show has seasons, and then the seasons have episodes. But in my realm, basically, let's say they go into the season - right now the season is mystical merging, and it has 4 episodes. But then, when they click into the episode, okay class 3 of mystical merging episode 3, essentially, they can have their video. But then I can also be like, if you're pregnant, follow this little video for this pose. And by the way, here's another video explaining some of the subtle body aspects of this. But in all the other systems you have to click out of that page to another page to get another video.

And I don't want them to have to click. All these videos are related. I want you to be able to like, okay, you're in this practice, we're at this pose, you're pregnant or you have a back injury - pause, go to this video and then pick up here, and I can't do that with the other system. So a lot of it has to do with - or like my other philosophy programs will be like an hour and a half lecture, and then there's a Q&A video, and then I want them on the same page. I don't want you to click out, click back. I want you to just be able to scroll down and be like this video, this video and this video are all related to this episode. Does that make sense?

Learn dash seemed to be the only place we could do that which is insane to me because I'm like, am I the only person who's working like this? Doesn't make any sense.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, all the online learning solutions are extremely templated and limited. There's got to be more to learn about how we can learn online. Nobody's really challenging that. The one thing that some of my clients use is circle, which was made by the people that created thinkific. They had an exit, and then they made circle. But it's much more focused on membership and community.

Kaya Mindlin: It's the one that's very community oriented right?

James Redenbaugh: And it's got great tools for that. But it's also still limited. They do give us css access so we can customize the look and feel but it suffers some of those same limitations. But what I was thinking as a possibility for you was actually thinking about what might be possible in web flow. I'm not thinking about that too hard, because while web Flow is an incredibly capable platform and it's a lot more resilient than wordpress, because there's not updates and plugins and...

Rob Hurwich: And that's the problem. It has to really be worth it, because I have so much content.

James Redenbaugh: Content, and all the members and subscription.

Kaya Mindlin: It would have to be like, this is clearly so much better that it's worth the leap, and I would lose people. So it has to be so much better.

I did look at Circle with that other designer, and I think it was... I actually love the community component. Community astrologically, by the way - we are in like a year or 2 and a half year phase actually where cultivating community in online spaces is actually super where it's at. So any platform you can use that's going to double down on cultivating community, especially spiritual or healing communities online, that is the way to go. And I am not a community person.

For my... they love the community component, they love the live Q&A. I use mighty network right now for the community. Mighty network also has an LMS system - it's horrible in my experience. I used it as a guest teacher, and it was the worst, at least 4 years ago anyway.

So I looked at Circle, but it was almost too much on the community aspect, like too much community forward, and my business needs to be Kaya forward, but the community like as the kind of secondary.

James Redenbaugh: Well, I don't want to propose a solution to all these problems right now. I want to keep understanding where you're at and where you're wanting to grow, and where Iris is at. Rob and I have been talking a lot about this and Iris the last couple of years. We've been very focused on web flow and what we can do there. And we've built some amazing things there.

Moving forward, the what we're doing in the services we're offering are a lot less about the tools that we're using and more about the approach that we're taking to partnering with our clients to better understand their needs and match them with all kinds of support.

So you know whether it's staying on Wordpress and evolving the system you have or shifting to a new system, or whatever - I want to be technology agnostic and just help you find the best solutions that make your life easier and make your business grow and help more people find this beautiful work.

And so Rob's jumped in and helped a lot with these Wordpress issues. But Rob is also, and forgive me for speaking for you so much Rob, but he's an incredible business mind. He has incredible skills in understanding marketing, automation and active campaign, and really seeing the big picture of what's possible. Not just solving micro issues - he's great at that, he's really smart, he'll teach himself things he doesn't know how to do yet. But we're not getting the most that we can.

Kaya Mindlin: Already emailed Rob and I was like, I feel like you're being underutilized. There's more here. And what else do you know how to do.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, I appreciated that. Thanks. Yeah, James, you can speak for me anytime if you're gonna speak about me that way.

Kaya Mindlin: And also just to jump in - just to cut in - that all sounds really, really appealing to me, because there's a lot that I don't do that I could be doing for the business, because I'm working in the business, not on the business. And I'm working so much in the business that I don't have time. And then with the family I don't have time to work on it. And I can see, like we're massively under utilizing activecampaign.

We have no clue what we're doing with that system. We're just like so basic. I could use more support in a lot of ways. I do zero marketing other than I'm on Instagram. And I'm like I would love someone to take that over for me. I would love, you know I go on - I've gone on a lot of podcasts, and I do instagram and word of mouth, and that's it. And I'm sure that there's more that I could be doing but it's not my area of expertise.

I would love if I could pass on to someone else the vision of it, if not all of the work. But like, here's the approach you should be taking. I need someone with like a systems vision for the marketing and the emailing approach. And also who can have the to-do list, even if I'm to-doing some of the to-do. I don't want to figure it out if someone else knows how to do it, which is why I'm not figuring out - I'm like, I don't care, we're getting along, I'm not gonna figure out active campaign.

Kaya Mindlin: So I want - I would love to have you find for me, or work with me to find like what's the best approach for me and my business for all different kinds of facets of it to make it grow. I don't want to figure out something that someone else already knows how to do.

James Redenbaugh: Awesome.

Rob Hurwich: That sounds amazing. And yeah, I mean just to say, right, that's how I got into this - into all of this from the beginning, right? Because I was, you know, for about 15 years I was in the health and wellness field, and even working as a practitioner, right? And so in my healing community, my teacher and mentor, and just an amazing healer... she kept having to do all the business stuff, and you know websites and spreadsheets. At a certain point I'm like you should not be doing that because your gifts are so valuable. Let me just start, and then that kind of spurned everything from there.

And I agree right? That's the beauty of collaboration. If everybody's doing really in their zone of genius, and doing what they really want to be doing, and where their gifts and skills and abilities are. So I think for me, yeah, that is the idea - is to be doing things really well that you don't need to be doing. And you don't need to be learning about but providing enough value right that we're that it's kind of a no brainer. That's really the ultimate goal.

And for me it all starts with what we're talking about right now, like, what are your objectives, what are you trying to do? And then, obviously, yes, I jumped into Wordpress because that's what needed to be done right. I was talking with James today, it's sort of like when somebody comes into your practice and they have like trauma...

Kaya Mindlin: They're like can you open my heart? And I'm like your arms bleeding like no.

Rob Hurwich: That's exactly it. Right? Yeah, it's like, let's get that arm... Yeah, and so that's the point. But like we said, that is kind of scratching the surface. And I'm hearing things that you're saying makes perfect sense. Right? I mean, I'm hearing that yeah, that we can reach more people, that there's absolutely ways we can do that, and that we can streamline things so that way you don't have to be doing the things that you don't need to be doing.

James Redenbaugh: So the model that we've been evolving in Iris facilitates exactly this. And I'm happy to share the write up with you after the call to dig into the specifics. It's still evolving, it's in process. We've got some clients underway in that kind of prototyping it with us. But essentially, it's like you give us a budget every month, and then we take that and create as much value for you as we can in that month.

And then evolve that as time goes on, and of course work with you to understand the goals and the areas that we can improve and see where to really focus our efforts. But the idea is, we have this growing network of creatives and supporters and developers and designers. And we now have PR people and marketing people and content people, and they've all been working in these siloed engagements. We'll do this project together that has a beginning and an end, and we learn stuff.

Now, we're moving everybody into these monthly engagement rhythms so that as a team we can all function much more efficiently, and address the whole of our clients ecosystems, and the whole of the ecosystems between our clients, so that more learning can happen between the projects that we're doing, not only within them, and our clients can access all kinds of support without needing to be the ones to manage it and understand every detail of it and create task lists.

Kaya Mindlin: All about it. I am - I'm the person, if I get a haircut, and they're like, what do you want me to do? I'm like, I don't know you're the expert. Do what you do. That's great, do it. So I don't want to micromanage anyone.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, wonderful and so in this system, for you, Rob would be the main point person and the high level advisor, the product manager, the project manager to see where to focus our efforts. And then, as needed, we can bring me in to also leverage what I already know about the website and do creative facilitation, or map the whole thing, or do branding stuff. But he can also bring in wordpress support to more efficiently work on the pages, work on these issues. We can leverage him for his extensive expertise in active campaign, and those things, not only solving problems in there, but creating systems.

Kaya Mindlin: Setting up systems. That's what we need totally.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, so that you can continue to generate more and more value. And all of this is getting managed in a platform that we're building just to manage this. So in the past we've used Asana, Clickup, slack, Google docs, all kinds of things which are great tools but don't never quite work for what we need like you found with your learning management tools.

So we've actually been building a system on our own website finally, so that we can see on a high level the different initiatives that we're tracking in a given project, the different support that we have available, our agreements with clients, and everything. We're creating creative resources. So we'll solve a problem and then it becomes a post on our website which becomes a library of resources that we can access. Eventually our clients will be able to access and see like, oh, they did this cool thing on this website.

Kaya Mindlin: Right, okay.

James Redenbaugh: I could benefit from that and you know we've already figured it out. So it's easy to just duplicate again for stuff like that. So that's going to be evolving over the coming months. But already we've got clients in this new rhythm, and we have new more management level support in Iris right now, which is really great because for too long I've been trying to manage too many people, and too many balls. And so yeah, I'm really grateful to have folks like Rob and our broader team and this new system.

And like I shared, right now it's a Google Doc, hopefully maybe even later today we'll finish the web page explaining the structure. But it's pretty easy to understand. There's different engagement levels, each is double the previous level. Just decide what scale of support you want next month. There's incentive to kind of commit to more months of support if you want to accomplish a lot over the next 6 months, we can make sure we have the resources available for that. And yeah, it's all about taking stuff off your plate and then looking at what we can create together, bringing more minds on it and making it better and better.

Kaya Mindlin: Okay, that sounds really good. That's exciting. Yeah, I love it. Cause I really don't wanna go out and find people to do all the different things. And I said, I don't wanna do it myself. So that's great. I love that direction.

Rob Hurwich: I think that's very smart - your approach. Neither of those things - yeah, do it all yourself or finding people. And I think that's the idea of what we're doing, and then be able to make it as efficient as possible.

Kaya Mindlin: Alright, I mean, I just have like... I'm wondering, will I be able to look at those tiers and even be able to tell where I fit, because I don't know. I have like - I have a list here of like things I would love to tackle, not necessarily all at once, but things that I would either love to do, that I'm not doing, or that I'd love to get off of my plate. Like, will I look at those tiers and know, or should I lay it on you guys?

James Redenbaugh: Lay it on us, and then I can outline for you, you know, give you a sense of what we can accomplish in a month at a given tier.

Kaya Mindlin: I mean, it won't be all this in a month, that would be insane, but just like and this is off the top of my head. I'm like I should be better at like writing things down in the moment when I come across a challenge or something that's missing. But anyway, one is active campaign - better utilization of that, for sure. We've never done a drip campaign, not a drop of a drip.

Whether it's for newcomers to my email list or for people that are like in a program, whether it's people will sign up for a self paced program and then they don't hear from me. They have to reach out. They can send me something, but there's no like, "hey, how's it going with the course? Did you do part one?" - they get nothing. They just sign up, and then they have access. And that's it.

So automating, you know, for newcomers to the list, automating for people that are in self paced programs. I have a vision for my - so Sri is the online Yoga, and we have 2 memberships. And one of them is the Yoga membership, and I'm on the precipice of shifting how I'm approaching that which would mean probably some automation like, here's your curated practice for the series for the month, and they just get a regular email every week or twice a week. Here's the practice, hey have you done this. Right now, Cheris does all of that manually.

So having that preset up, even if automated or set up for the year, would be amazing, and never looking at again, because I'm paying her hourly to do it manually, which I don't think we need to be doing. So email, that's active campaign.

The refreshing the front page at the minimum of my website for onboarding people. So whether that and like having someone help me figure out - should I have a quiz that people can take to figure out where to start? Should I have a video that explains why everything is modular instead of one big $4,000 program? How do I onboard people in a way that feels more clear when they land on the website rather than confused because blah blah! We all know when people are confused, they don't buy. And amazingly people come and get confused, and they still sign up for a program.

So what would it be like if they weren't confused? So front page, or some way of onboarding people that helps make it more clear where to start. Affiliates - I feel like I'm leaving a lot of money on the table by not using affiliates because I do get a lot of referrals, and I have a lot of people that are Yoga teachers or Ayurvedic or Vedic astrologers, and they could be sending people my way. But there's always a little bit of an ick factor with affiliates. So I'm like, how do we do that? Is that the best choice? And if so, what's the best system for that? We're doing it now but not very well.

And how do we support affiliates? Are we like, here's the email that you send to people? And how can we support affiliates if that's the way to go? And maybe even the first question is, should I be doing that?

Kaya Mindlin: Bundling programs I've looked at - I'm not even sure whether member press or whatever we use even allows that. But doing bundling like, you know what that means? Should we be doing that, and if so, can someone take that on? Social media - I do it all. It's my main way that people find me, social media and podcasts, teaching and people's summits and programs and stuff.

And I like that I'm the one doing the social media, but I feel like I could probably offload half of it or a third of it, just from having a video editor who's a social media expert taking my content and making video cuts and being like, here's your social. I mean, I have so much damn content that would make amazing clips for social media, and I shouldn't be the one doing that.

So a video editor, social media expert that could be doing that. And a social media expert that could maybe help with social media strategy to make that more clear or more streamlined or help me with - I never look at analytics for my website, for my social media. Someone to look at analytics and be like "you should do more posts on this type." So a social media person including like maybe video editing.

Marketing - like I said, I don't do any marketing except for the 3 things that I just mentioned. Should I be doing ads on Instagram since Instagram seems to be the place where my people are? I've never done ads. Should I do that? Who can do that for me? Or Facebook ads, or whatever.

And then kind of a refresh of the Sri studio, I think, is the last thing that's on my list right now - the Yoga studio. We talked about this when we first built it, Rob - was having like a search so people can be like "I want to do heart opening" or "I need help with my neck and shoulders" or "I need only seated poses" or "I'm pregnant." And we didn't do search because they didn't have any content yet.

So I would love to have some kind of search system so people can kind of find the series that they're looking for. Yeah, so that whole Sri studio needs like, kind of a refresh. Actually, the whole thing. Yeah, that's my list right now. And I'm also open to someone else coming in and looking at my site and my business and being like, "Oh, actually, you need to do XYZ as well," because I don't know what I don't know, so I'm open to suggestion.

James Redenbaugh: This is a great list and little question - have you ever done any PR stuff?

Kaya Mindlin: I mean my PR is Instagram and going on people's podcasts, which is usually people reach out to me. I have reached out to people and been like, I want to come on your podcast. And it's kind of like, also, people reach out to me. Is that PR? Yeah, what else? What else? What is PR, what do people do? I have no idea.

James Redenbaugh: There are PR agencies that will get you written up in different magazines and featured on different stuff like that. Nowadays, it's much more about the digital podcast world. But...

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah, I mean, I haven't done - I haven't done officially PR, I've never worked with a PR firm. I've just been flying by the seat of my pants here. And no, I would - I actually would love to have that.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, amazing. I just wanna say... yeah, go ahead first, Rob.

Rob Hurwich: Oh, there was one other - I think you did a great job at it, like James said, that's a great list. And I made a little bit of a list myself before the meeting. And yeah, everything that I had on mine was there. The only thing that you didn't mention was SEO, and that's...

Kaya Mindlin: I've never done SEO. That's definitely leaving money on the table. We've never done it - low hanging fruit, for sure.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, so there's plenty you could do there. I mean, you have an SEO plugin, right? So you're doing like a baseline level of SEO. But there's certainly more there to do. So that's just another option to have on the table. Sorry, James, what were you saying?

James Redenbaugh: You've done an amazing job running this whole thing.

Kaya Mindlin: Without a PR firm or a marketing person.

James Redenbaugh: With just a ragtag team. It's been very successful for that, and it's evidence that it can be so much bigger, you know. It can grow so much more.

Kaya Mindlin: Also evidence, I think too, it's evidence on the other end that like the best business model is to just be good at what you do. And then everything else - and then you can grow. So that's like, okay, I'm good at what I do, the content is good, and that's why people are coming, but then totally grow, and I don't know how to do that at all.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah.

James Redenbaugh: Wonderful. Well, that's you being great at what you're great at makes our job easy, you know. And there's definitely - I mean everything on your list are things that we can address in the ecosystem now.

Kaya Mindlin: Cool.

James Redenbaugh: And there are most of them are also big, intangible things like domains. So we can get more specific realistically like, what tangible goals could we achieve in these different domains? And also how do we think about prioritizing these things? And yeah, there's a lot of knowns, and there's a lot of unknowns. You know we can theorize all day, but until we try some stuff, we won't know if you'll get more value out of improving your active campaign automation or more value starting to do social media ads.

And the system that we're building - haven't mentioned this yet - is really focused on analysis and analytics. So anything that we do it doesn't just get done and okay, now it's off in the world. It goes into analyzation mode. And we see, is it underperforming? Is it performing well? Is it performing better than expected, and then we can learn from that and grow accordingly.

So I think the best approach would probably be to start with some high level strategy and really look at the big picture and outline all these things. And then pick a few things to start in a tangible way - how do we address low hanging fruit in active campaign? How do we start doing some simple tests of Instagram ads and Facebook ads? How do we hire somebody to do a few video cuts of your content and see how you like it, see how it looks, see how it starts to perform out there and stuff like that. And then you're dynamically, you know, if Instagram ads are doing really well, let's put more energy into that kind of thing.

Kaya Mindlin: Great, love it.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that James just mentioned sparks a couple of other items, which is what he's talking about is like analytics, but not just marketing analytics - business analytics. So I think that's something that I always like to think about and to bring in. Which is we want to make sure that we're measuring everything that we can that makes sense. So that way, we know what's working and what's not.

The more we're doing that the more we're able to see - we're not just sort of guessing and throwing darts, but we have hard numbers to show. Okay, we're making progress, or this isn't the path that we want to continue to take. And then the second thing is that we're working on making sure that the back end systems and the operations and processes are working efficiently.

For me, it's all about how to get the most time out of high value tasks. And so if we have good processes, and Charisse - I'm saying her name...

Kaya Mindlin: Terrace.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, or whoever else is working on things - is efficient, then they can also be working on higher value tasks.

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah. And there are certain things that clearly Terrace is really good at. And there's other things that are really not her - she shouldn't be doing, and I don't have another. I mean, even hiring where that's needed would be something else like, should I have a VA that does different aspects that Terrace isn't really great at.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. But I love doing analytics and stuff. Because why do things if it's not gonna be working. Where is Terrace's zone of genius?

Kaya Mindlin: She's really good at the customer service piece. She can do the working with the active - like she's pretty scrappy at figuring things out on the website, but she's not visually inclined whatsoever. Like she'll be the first to say that she doesn't have the aesthetic. I have the aesthetic. She doesn't even notice certain things - like we had a crazy lag in my zoom videos for like a year, and I thought it was losing my mind. I'm like, is it me? We bought a new computer, I got a new camera, I could not - and she was like "what lag?" It was so obvious. She just can't edit my videos, and she can't decide on colors or anything like that or font. You know she's not visual, but she's really good at the customer service.

She's the one in my inbox - she responds beautifully to people. She really understands my audience really well, and how they need to be coddled and all. She's like a - she used to work for personalityhacker.com. They do those personality testing things. So she's really expert at figuring out people's personality type and how they need to be responded to and talked to. So she's like a secret been in my inbox in that regard.

James Redenbaugh: So she's really good at that. Great to know, and quickly, I'd love to just get the download from you - a high level, style-wise, visual-wise. What do you still love about your website? And what would you like to see evolved?

Kaya Mindlin: I'm like staring at this thing for so... I mean, you can see the colors are a little bit different. We kind of toned them down a little bit. There's a little bit more earthier. It was brighter when we started. I mean, I'm actually pretty happy with the color scheme that we have going on right now. I like the incorporation of the ancient paintings that we have. Some of this we did with you guys. I forget her name.

James Redenbaugh: M.

Kaya Mindlin: M. Yeah. She's lovely. I like - I still like being testimonial forward. I think that works really well for my audience. So I mean, I like the look and feel of it still. It feels feminine and motherly and homey and warm, and all of those things, but I just don't know if this is the best - like I'm sure it could be better, and from a marketing perspective. And that part I just don't know. I like that the top bar we kept pretty simple in terms of the menu. I'm happy about that.

I had to give my logo a refresh because someone stole my tagline - "the mystical and practical nectar of Yoga." So I had to add it to my logo so it was just everywhere someone was stealing it. So I got it - I have a refreshed logo. It's based on the original one that I did with you guys. Yeah, I mean, I still like it in terms of the vibe. Functionally, I feel like there's just things that I just don't know. I don't know the best approach. I don't know from a marketing perspective and a psychological marketing perspective. And I'm open to change. I want the feel to be the same.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, it sounds like you're talking about the user experience.

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah, could the user experience be better? Particularly the piece of like, just should it - could it be more clear? I love when I land on a website and it's - what I hate is when you cannot click around. I hate this new thing which I hope is dying, and maybe it's dying out where it's like all you can see is the thing they're trying to sell you. Can't find a bio.

I have clients - my students tend to be skeptical. They've been burned in the past by like manipulative gurus and things like that. So every - be super upfront. They cannot feel like they're being manipulated. Which is why I've not gone into some of the marketing trends because they feel manipulative, so that balance of just being like this is warm and motherly, and it's all open to you, and you get to choose your own adventure like it's modular, and you choose.

I want to keep that, and I want it to stay warm, and I love the colors. And all of that. But could it be more clear? Could it be more directed? Here's the journey you should be on, based of a balance of like clearly directing people but also not having people feel like they're being manipulated and forced by a funnel into something that they're not - that they need to feel sovereign.

But I want that sovereignty, but also some clarity where there is a sort of like - what they really would all love is that they could email me and then I tell them what to do. And that does happen. And when that - if I get an Instagram message and I'm really responsive to people when they come through the threshold that way because it's worth my time, because they usually end up - once people get in the door with me, they stay with me for years, and they do all of the programs. So it's really worth my time upfront. But I can't do it if there was like a hundred people messaging me a day. So I'll be my own bottleneck.

But if people Instagram message me or email me, and they send me like a love letter - "I've listened to every podcast you've been on, and I heard you in the summit, and I'm obsessed, and I love everything you say, and I want to study with you, but I don't know where to start. And here's my story" - where do you think I should start? I get a lot of emails like that. And then I'm like, "Okay, based on what you said, I think this, this or this," and they're like, "Oh my God! This is exactly what I needed to hear. I'm signing up immediately."

So how can that happen without me being the one to email? And that's why I had that idea like a week ago - oh, could there be a quiz or like a map? You're a yoga teacher, and you've done this, this and this, and you're interested in that. Take this course, you know. What would that be like?

James Redenbaugh: This might sound really unappetizing, but it's gonna be more and more commonplace.

Kaya Mindlin: Gonna say, like AI.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Because an agent...

Kaya Mindlin: I'm like sweating. I'm like having a hot flash.

James Redenbaugh: We don't have to go there at all. We don't have...

Kaya Mindlin: No, go ahead. Go ahead. Say, I just gotta take my socks off. I'm literally having a hot flash.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. An agent could be trained on your responses and could understand your offerings. I mean, as much as a robot can understand and make suggestions based on their input whether it's a text field or...

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah.

James Redenbaugh: I'm a yoga teacher, you know, I'm this old, I have these issues.

Kaya Mindlin: I'm open to it. I'm not completely closed off to it. I think, Michael - maybe Michael told me he said something to you like Kaya needs like the AI Kaya and... By the way, my Vedic astrologer, who's like in his seventies, like 7 or 8 years ago, before I was teaching online, or when I was just starting to do like phone courses, he said, "Kaya, you're gonna be like a hologram." What is he talking about? And now it's like, yeah, we need the AI Kaya and the video.

So yeah, I'm open to it. Some version of that. It is the thing that like - and this is where this is the thing about my website and my business model is it's a lot of people, but the vibe is Mama Kaya. So how can I mama thousands of people? Like it - there's this high touch feeling where people feel seen and known by me. It's why I do live Q&As. It's why I have the... It's why I'm still the one doing my Instagram.

Because I will - it's whatever that expression is, cutting off your nose to save your face, or whatever. I cannot lose the intimacy, the intimacy. I don't know if James remembers this, but when he was like we were starting the design process, he's like, what's the you know what's that was like? It needs to be like a womb, or like vaginal - like that's the vibe like it has to feel intimate. And so how do I grow the numbers without losing the intimacy?

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Well, it might be worth it to put - to have the call to action be "message Kaya" and see what you're needed. And if it is 100 a day like, yeah, that's too much. But maybe it's 10. And if those - if 8 of those 10 convert into long time subscribers, then that's...

Kaya Mindlin: Well, it would be an interesting bridge, right? Could like, maybe the way to go would be to do that like, okay, we're gonna do that for a month, because I don't know how many I'm losing on the site and leaving because they don't know where to start and not messaging me, because not all of them are that bold like. It's pretty ballsy - some of the messages that I get. I'm like, whoa! You've never met - you're telling me your whole story, and you're asking me to... anyway, how many people am I losing?

Could I do that for a month? And then we feed all of the responses that I've given for a month or 3 months into an AI system. I'm open to...

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, or we take that data and use AI to help us find the right diagram.

Kaya Mindlin: Right? Something like... Or even like prefab videos of me. Because it is - it is finite, like there is a limit to how many different ways this could go. So if there was like if it was preset up Pre-made videos of me being like, "Hey, this is what you said about yourself. Here's what I suggest," and people kind of still feel like I'm talking to them, even though all the people that fall in that category get that video from me.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah.

Rob Hurwich: Beautiful. Yeah, maybe there's a pipeline. Maybe there's a pipeline that you're always at the end of...

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah.

Rob Hurwich: But that there's a way where it can funnel down. So that like the people that really need like the real Mama Kaya personal contact can get it. But there's probably a big percentage that'd be fine with the videos or with the AI with the quiz, and they'll say, okay.

James Redenbaugh: Be in one of the memberships.

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah, yeah, oh, I love it. Smart guys.

James Redenbaugh: No but we should be leveraging the emerging technologies as appropriate, you know.

Kaya Mindlin: I'm not opposed to it. I just don't wanna be the one figuring it out.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. And I agree that it should never be at the cost of intimacy or the right feeling, or the right vibe.

Kaya Mindlin: The brand basically.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

Rob Hurwich: And is intimacy. So I can't sacrifice that. But yeah, I'm open to AI if it's used in the right way, and if I'm not the one having to figure it out.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, cool. Cause it's all cause that's right, like, even with AI, right? That's the whole - that's the promise of it, you know. The idea is that it's in service to what we're trying to accomplish.

Kaya Mindlin: But it's not the master.

Rob Hurwich: It's not the man. Yeah, it's not. If it becomes the master, then we've got a problem.

Kaya Mindlin: A huge ramble.

James Redenbaugh: Awesome, and wonderful. Well, I'll reflect on this and share some options with you about moving forward. I'll also share our summary and accounting of what we've done the last couple of months on the website. And yeah, hopefully, we can - it'd be good to target like getting started with something in March. It's not that we can't do things before then, but really exciting stuff. Would be really fun to sink my teeth back into this project as well, and see things growing on there.

Kaya Mindlin: Cool. I love it.

Rob Hurwich: Thanks.

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah, I like this.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Awesome.

Rob Hurwich: Absolutely. Yeah, I just want to bring in for now just a couple of like, practical questions. My plan is just to keep sort of try and continue forward and get to a point where I feel like got a good beat on what's going on with the Paypal stripe, Learn dash member press sync up and what we need to do. And like I suggested, at a certain point it might be helpful for me to meet with Sharis and see...

Kaya Mindlin: Charis, don't worry, it's okay.

Rob Hurwich: Thank you - to meet with, and to make sure we have good procedures, and that I understand how she's using it. So that way can just be used well. And really, I think the idea is to bring the error percentage just down to a really low number that seems reasonable. And then the second piece, we're talking about the fonts, right? And shifting the global fonts. So that's something that I understand what's going on there and what we could do. But I want to also a couple of things - seems like it might be a good idea to check in with James about that, because he did kind of create that so has that deeper understanding. And then, second of all, to just make sure that we know what it is not only what it is that you want to do. Because we can change the global fonts, and then they'll change. We want to try it on the staging site first, but the other thing is, how are you using elementor? Right? Because the way that we set up fonts not only like the global fonts and then there's these preset fonts. So the way that we set it up, I think if it syncs up with how you use elementor and how best works for you, then that's gonna be like the best way to move forward.

Kaya Mindlin: Maybe just like a view - we could do Charis and I could do a video call with you, or something where we just actually look at. Here's how I'm - this is how I'm putting in copy in Elementor, and I mean I'm - Charis and I might be doing it totally different from each other.

Rob Hurwich: Right? Yeah. And if there's just one way, if you say, "Okay, like this is a way that we think is gonna work best for you," right from your user experience but then also create that consistent look on the front end, then we could just plug that in and do whatever we need. Can make a little tutorial video or something to, whatever you need, as far as like reminders. So that way two months from now, you're like, "wait! How! What was I doing?" Alright, here it is.

Kaya Mindlin: A video call would be good, probably after that. And yeah, I have no idea how to - I'm always afraid to change anything globally that just feels insane. And I don't know what the staging website is so...

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, well, you know. So I'll tell you what it - so staging website, it's basically it's just it's a copy.

Kaya Mindlin: No, I know what it is, but I mean like I don't touch it so.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. You don't know what - yeah, yeah. But that's what - that's the point. Like, a staging site is one where you can touch. And you can - it's actually right fun, because you can like completely break it and it doesn't matter.

Kaya Mindlin: I'll leave that to you all.

Rob Hurwich: Alright! I'll break - I'll break the things. I'll be in charge of that. Perfect.

Kaya Mindlin: Like my whole life is living on - I know it's still the staging site, but I'm like, "Oh, don't mess anything up."

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, yeah. Well, we wanna like make it less concerning to be in there.

Kaya Mindlin: Yeah. But yes, I like fixing, reducing the error issues on the back end, and then probably like working on some kind of plan for what happens when people land on the site like first fix the back end. So people aren't falling through the cracks. Then fix what I was talking about with like people feeling welcome but not confused when they land - sovereign, but clear. And then, being like, okay, how do we get more people to land on the website in terms of social media and SEO and PR, and all of that that feels like a reasonable order with some of these things in between. But yeah.

Rob Hurwich: That sounds great.

Kaya Mindlin: Alright guys, anything else?

James Redenbaugh: Not for now. Thank you so much, Kaya.

Kaya Mindlin: I'm going out of town next week, which is why I'm like, I'm fine with March. I mean, obviously send me like all the information proposal stuff about what we've done so far, and all that. But yeah, I don't feel the need to start anything new before March.

James Redenbaugh: Cool, great. Well, have an awesome trip.

Kaya Mindlin: Thank you.

James Redenbaugh: And I'll talk to you later.

Kaya Mindlin: Okay. Thank you both very much. Oh say one more - hi Rob pleasure, Rob, if you want, if you haven't already, please feel free if you think it would be helpful to like go in and watch any video that you want. Of course, take a class.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, yeah.

Kaya Mindlin: James, you should - I'm going to send you the link if you want it. But you should watch my - which Michael fed to me - the forecast for the Vedic astrology forecast for the year.

James Redenbaugh: I will.

Kaya Mindlin: Anyway, yeah, Rob, just so if you want - if you're gonna be like the point person, if you want to have more of a sense of like, what is Kaya even doing, feel free to go and play in the website as a user if you want to.

Rob Hurwich: Great. Thank you so much for that invitation. Absolutely. I will. There's already like 2 or 3 courses that's popped out to me, and I was like, "Oh, that looks interesting."

Kaya Mindlin: Do it.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, I think it'd be great to check it out and then see.

Kaya Mindlin: Just have a sense of what it is that's happening.

Rob Hurwich: Yeah, yeah.

Kaya Mindlin: Okay.

Rob Hurwich: Sounds great.

Kaya Mindlin: Thank you both. Have a good evening.

James Redenbaugh: Take care.

Kaya Mindlin: Bye.

Rob Hurwich: Bye.