#208 – How Cathy Olson Built a Multi-Million Dollar Business as a Web Designer

Shannon Mattern (00:01.454)

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by Kathy Olson, who is the co-founder of Funnel Gorgeous and FG Funnels, where they empower women with affordable marketing, affordable marketing tools and strategies. And Kathy is also the co-host of the Gorgeous Effect podcast and probably so many more things that we're going to get into in our interview today. So Kathy, welcome to the show.

Cathy Olson (00:30.433)

Thank you so much for having me. I don't get to talk to designers very much, so this is going to be really fun because I usually talk to people who are non-designers. So it's like I love to speak to my brethren. It's like we get each other. So this is my favorite topic to talk about.

Shannon Mattern (00:46.382)

I'm so excited to have you here and you've been on my list to reach out to for a while because you know, part of what we do here at the Web Designer Academy and Profitable Web Designer podcast is we don't teach design skills at all. I know it's called the Web Designer Academy. It's called the Profitable Web Designer. There will be no teaching about any type of tech or anything going on here.

Cathy Olson (01:06.615)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (01:13.336)

We're all about the business side of running a profitable, sustainable business that you don't hate. you have been in the orbit of the people that I work with when I ask them, who do you follow? Who are you working with? What other memberships are you a part of? FG Society comes up all the time. And so that's one of the reasons that I wanted to.

like meet you and get to know you and have you on the show. So can you share a little bit more with our listeners just about you and what you do?

Cathy Olson (01:51.565)

Yeah, it totally makes sense that you're teaching the business side too, because the creative side, I think for a lot of us is like, that's our genius zone. So we don't really need too much on that side, but it's almost like the other side of the coin is when you are such a good creative person, you're not so great of a business owner. So I see why you do this. And actually it's...

Shannon Mattern (02:02.445)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (02:19.275)

I think a lot of people identify with kind of being an accidental business owner, an accidental entrepreneur, like in the creative space, you're like, I just love doing this. It was really fun. People told me I was good at it. They started wanting me to do their thing. And then all of a sudden I was taking money and I had to become an accountant and I had to, you know, like, how did I do? Yeah. How do I know this story? Because it was my story. So that's, it's very similar. I definitely an accidental entrepreneur and never planned on being it. I did go to school for design.

So I am one of those weird freaks that knew what they wanted to do when they grew up. Although I obviously didn't, this didn't exist. So I didn't really know, but at the same time I knew I wanted to do something creative. always done creative things. Always knew I wanted to make money like commercially from like art in one way or another. But yeah, becoming a business owner was crazy. So I actually worked for a design studio where we worked with multi-billion dollar brands, Disney, Apple, Costco, Best Buy, like you name it.

And I learned like the basic skills, production, all the stuff you don't learn in school. You learn how to design, don't learn how to do production work. So that was like really invaluable. But then they don't teach you business stuff. Like nobody teaches you business stuff. even if you do go to school for it. So that part of it was I broke all the rules, did all the things. You know, I probably should have...

been attacked by the IRS, I'm sure, back then. I don't know what I was even doing. That was a long time ago, so I've learned a lot. yeah, fast forward to, I had a design studio doing high-end web design. So I started teaching people how I was charging, what I was charging, how to become booked out, how to become sought after. That was my first foray into doing courses, was really just teaching other people how the heck I was doing what I was doing.

And then I was introduced to the world of sales funnels. I was introduced to Julie and that was in 2018, 2017 actually. And I just became obsessed. Like I think there's always been a side of me that loves like the marketing side or just like the psychology of why design works, I think. And so that really, when I started learning the psychology of sales, it kind of ticked that box for me that design alone wasn't ticking, you know?

Cathy Olson (04:36.204)

because I just always was like, what's behind the design? And like, we were like, just do it. And I'm like, no, but like, what's the, no, I always wanted to understand why things did like, almost, yeah, like a tinkerer, know, half left brain, half right brain. So that's why I love to do this now. And I love to teach people conversion strategies, like how are we, because I know we feel it, right? As designers, we're like, I don't know, that just feels better, but we have to explain it to our clients because they don't understand it.

And I think it's a huge superpower if you lean into because it is, especially even though in the world of AI, it's becoming more and more and more valuable to like break down how humans think and how we make decisions. And visually, this is so hard for most people to do. So like we have this like dormant superpower of we can make visuals sell and AI is still terrible at it. It has like...

I know hope almost to be, it's a good act. So it's like, we're like, we're opening up this big opportunity. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's a huge opportunity. And so I'm like, you know, screaming from the rooftops, become a good designer, become a strategic designer, and you will never go hungry because these tools don't do that, right? So I don't know. I'm going off on tangent.

Feel free to stop me. But that's where my heart's lying at now of like, my gosh, we are needed so much more than ever. And we're not pixel pushers. We never really were. But now people are kind of seeing it.

Shannon Mattern (06:08.429)

Oh my gosh. I was so excited by like five things that you said. I'm like, can we talk about all five of them right now? like one of the reasons, so I just hosted the Simply Profitable Designer Summit. called it Conversion Fest. And the reason why is because I want every single designer, web designer listening to this to stop thinking of themselves as a pixel pusher if they haven't already, but to truly

Cathy Olson (06:10.164)

All right, a little monologue there. Yes.

Cathy Olson (06:19.872)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (06:36.737)

believe that what they do creates valuable outcomes and results for their clients. And it's not just, this looks nice and they're really proud of it. And it looks good and they're confident to market it. Like that's all great. But like, I want you to know that you have created something that aligns with the way that human brains think. So that when

you are charging what you should be charging for this strategy in your super smart brain and being able to like translate their business into something that actually does lead a client through to a buying decision. You're not just like, but it's so easy for me to like use Squarespace to like lay out a page. And so yeah, that'll be a thousand dollars. Like, no, let's stop doing that. So that's one of the, you know, when you talked about

you want every designer to think of themselves in that way. Like that just, that lights me up because we think how do we stand out in AI or in a C it used to be, how do I stand out in the sea of all of the other designers or the cheap, you know, how do I charge more when everybody else is charging less? Or it's the same question just asked 17 different ways, depending on what's going on in the world. And I think you just have a beautiful.

Cathy Olson (07:55.712)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (08:02.953)

answer to that question.

Cathy Olson (08:05.132)

Yeah, the answer is the same. Because when I would teach, this is how I would charge more, right? This is how I went from charging like $1,000 to $10,000 to like 25 to $50,000, right? This is how I got more was the strategy, was the sales and marketing side. And so I would say to everybody, the skill that you do need to learn, because you don't really need the design stuff obviously, is the sales and marketing side. Period. End of story.

Like that's what you need to learn. And the psychology of why. If nothing else, to just explain yourself to your clients so that they can like actually value what you're creating and it's not just pixels, right? Like that there's all of the underlying things. Like I always, and I do this through examples all the time. say, you know, when someone gives you like a list or something and you could do it in bullet points or you could do it in a grid or you know, or you're doing it vertical or like, how are you choosing?

to organize the information, there's a way that you're gonna choose to organize it so that the brain reads it easier and more simply, right? And that the message connects. But we need to explain that instead of just doing it and going, here you go, we say, I designed it in such a way so that they understand the most important thing is this, that like under like explain why are the hierarchy exists and like so that they can understand there's a strategy behind it because they just don't.

They don't know what they don't know and they don't know what they're looking at and they just don't know why it works. But when you explain all the thought that went into it and why you did what you did, then it's like now it's valuable. But I would say if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, then that's when you need to learn the strategy of sales and you need to understand how to actually talk someone into something with design. Because we can make the mistake of making things pretty and that's it, right? Because we can kind of fool them in a way, right? We can make it pretty.

but it actually might not actually sell as well. And I think that actually creates that like the misconfidence when we don't really know why we're doing what we're doing and we're like, yeah, it looks great. I don't actually know if it's gonna sell better. I remember feeling like this. Like people would come to me like, I need to rebrand my website and I would put stuff out and I go, I don't really actually know if they're gonna sell more. Like I know it looks good, but I don't really have any strategy back here. I just was, did it cause I thought it looked cool.

Cathy Olson (10:27.828)

And so I would actually feel really not confident, right? I'd actually feel very imposter syndrome-y when I was designing like that because I wasn't sure if they would actually make, I didn't even know if they would make their investment back. And that was a crappy thing to feel. And I don't know if anyone else felt like that or is feeling like that. But when you learn these sales and marketing principles and like you said, conversion and like what moves someone closer to a purchase or booking a call or like whatever you're trying to do or becoming a follower or like, you know,

If once we start to learn how to work visuals in that way and towards a goal, we feel so much better about our pricing and our explanations and we know that they are going to have success. So now everything becomes easier. It becomes easier to talk about, becomes easier to sell. It becomes easier to get on phone calls with clients. It becomes easier to show up online and talk about design. Like so many things like unlock when you are doing the right work. Does that make sense?

Shannon Mattern (11:26.687)

It does. mean, you said the key sentence that I think is the thing that so many people are missing is that you know, the client, your client is going to have success. And that's like the one thing that I hear people say where they're like, but I can't control that. How do I know? Like I

You know, I know that I can like do my part and do all these things, but like, I don't know for sure that that's going to absolutely result in X, Y, Z for my client. So what they do is they like way back off from saying that they have any influence whatsoever. And we talk about like teeth. We talk about, know, selling not, you don't sell deliverables. You sell outcomes and results, but they get really stuck because they're like,

But how? But how do I influence that?

Cathy Olson (12:20.396)

Yeah, because if they don't, if they don't believe the outcome and result, how are you going to they're going to see it on your face that you don't believe the outcome, that they're going to get that outcome, right?

Shannon Mattern (12:30.079)

Yeah, and then they'll like way under charge, way over deliver and be like, I can't like this, this isn't even sustainable. Like I'm going to go back. I'm going to go like, go do something else. so tell me like what, when someone comes to you and they are missing that piece, like what is the process that you lead? Do you lead someone through to really like,

understand how to, I don't know how like, so that they can like check all the boxes like, yep, I'm doing these things. Therefore, I can trust the outcome and results.

Cathy Olson (13:06.518)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (13:12.522)

Yeah, I get what you're asking. So I think the first thing is I would actually take stock of kind of what you, what is your thought process? Because I think you're already doing it, but you just don't know why. And so it's almost weird. Like I didn't really learn what I was doing until I had to explain it to someone else and teach it to someone else. And so I don't really know what my exact advice on that is. I don't know if it's like,

build a course and then you'll you'll figure out why you do what you do. But even just explaining it to someone else, maybe social media would be a great place. Getting on, you know, making a reel or making a carousel post and saying like, why is this thing bigger than this? And then you say, well, cause like you have all this like idea, like all of this knowledge locked away in your brain and you don't even know it cause you just, immediately like you all these shortcuts, right? That your brain makes all these pathways and you don't even know why you do what you do anymore.

Shannon Mattern (13:45.633)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (14:07.798)

So actually like saying it out to someone else and saying, you choose, I chose this color because this, and I chose this font because it gives a feeling of this. And you just have to start kind of explaining yourself. I think you're gonna unlock way more than you think. And then the next step is yes, like I said, like learning sales and marketing and understanding why things are laid out the way they are.

You know, even if you're looking at a sales page or something like that, the sales page is the best place to go because you kind of see the progression versus a web page or website is designed in a different way because it's designed to be kind of like pick and choose versus like, you know, from top to bottom. But so a sales page is a kind of a master class in how to sell and you see like the story starts to build up.

And then the really good sales pages, course, bad ones, don't study those studies, study ours, they're done really well. But you'll see, there'll be like little spots of almost like they're having an objection and we needed to crush it. So for example, let's say like, you say, here's the problem, here's the solution. And then you see testimonials. Testimonials act as like buffers to go, don't take my word for it. I'm not just blowing smoke.

listen to what they have to say. They also agree with me. And then you get, okay, cool. It's not just them selling at me. This they've people have had success. And so like you'll use it, just kind of breaking down what's happening. And then even, you know, like near a button you'll see, or like the buy button and they have what's called an offer stack. They're like, this is what's included. Here's how much it's valued out. Like what, and you start to think, what, what is that doing? Why do they need to have a list of everything? Well, because it's a digital product.

and it's so hard to know what you're gonna get, because it's so untangible, right? And so people are like, wait, I'm paying for something, what am I paying for? So it's kind of like a receipt when you go to a store and you wanna make sure everything's included that you purchased and that there's nothing crazy on there, or like, what did I get again? And you see everything that's included in what you're getting. So when you're kind of breaking down, well, this is there, this is there, this is there, you can start to teach yourself next time, okay, well, next time I want...

Cathy Olson (16:19.392)

you know, something intangible to look tangible, I know I should do like a mock-up or, you know, I, next time I want a list of features, we need to see why the features matter and like, why do the people connect to them? Not just, you know, a list of benefits, right? So, so starting to kind of learn that psychology, I think helps train your brain in order to now think like that automatically. So it's like a muscle we have to build, but, breaking down what's currently working and why people even, even listening to,

you know, social media hooks and you say, or like the way people do it, how they have a hook. And then they'll say, I can't believe blah, blah, blah. And then let me tell you. And then they'll say, you know, I'm Cathy Olson from Funnel Gorgeous and I build, you know, multiple seven figure funnels for clients and here's what I've learned. So you see like they have, okay, cool. They got my attention. Here's what I'm going to learn. Now it's going to be like the trust piece, right? It's the same sales, you know, thing when you see a page or whatever.

And then think of that in a visual way. Like if I were to put that on a page, how would I visually show that? And then I would have the credential piece, like as seen on or whatever. And so that's kind of really what I started doing, just being really, really like paying attention, listening, learning, going, wait, why is that there? What's the psychological thing happening there? And why did they choose to put it there? And then again, you're training your brain to think like that instead of, and yeah, it is really painful at first. It's super annoying because...

You're like, this is not a muscle I was taught. This is not like natural to me. I'm not a natural salesperson, right? A lot of people aren't. And so that's where, but then when you start to see the recipe of kind of, okay, this is how humans think, it becomes second nature eventually.

Shannon Mattern (18:01.865)

think I love how you're like, just start kind of explaining your decisions. It's like, you you know, if you go to a potential client's like current website and you can't figure out what to do next, like, and you know what to change, what to suggest to change or fix to solve that problem. And

You have that intuition. You have that instinct. Like you get to trust that you just have to put some words behind it. And then also like, if you are unsure, definitely like go learn from people who are sure. Like that's what you guys do. Um, you know, over FG society is like teach people these things where you're like, Oh, okay. Maybe I already was doing 70 % of this.

But, 30 % of it was like, I didn't realize. And so now you're filling the gap and now you know, and now you're super confident. Like go, go get that support. I want to go back to what you said earlier about how like you met Julie, your co-founder, and you got obsessed with funnels. Like, tell me more about like how you guys met, what that obsession looked like and how it kind of became.

Cathy Olson (19:05.078)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (19:13.516)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (19:23.573)

what it is today.

Cathy Olson (19:25.866)

Yeah, childhood trauma. I was just going to say, childhood trauma, think, is what actually attracted me to sales funnels. And that's like really a weird thing to say. basically around that time when I discovered them, social media was a popularity contest. And it felt like high school all over again, know, like Mean Girls and all that stuff. you know, like

Shannon Mattern (19:28.173)

Hahaha!

Cathy Olson (19:51.713)

the cool girls get all the clicks and they sell all the things and all they just show up and they do base. And it wasn't not true. Like there was definitely like these titans of the industry around that time that just put anything out and just sold it. Like they didn't even have to be good at it. It was just, it was a popularity contest. What I really loved about sales funnels was it took the playing field and leveled it. So it took like

you didn't have to have any social media following, like, because it basically is paid ads, right? So you didn't have to be the cool girl. And it was almost like everybody could sell on an equal playing level, like based on what they were actually bringing to the table and not their popularity. And so, yeah, so I think I was on social media and I was like, my gosh, this is so hard to sell this thing. You know, I keep trying to get like girl, am I following in order to sell it? Because that's the way you did it.

And then a friend of mine introduced me to sales funnels. She's like, you know, you don't have to do any of right? I was like, wait, what? Like sign me up because I can't stand social media. It's like driving me crazy. And she's like, you got to come to this event. They're teaching sales funnels. And at the time I was like a new mom. I had babies, like breastfeeding, all the things like so like traveling across the country was not easy. Even a little bit. You know, I didn't make a lot of money. So I mean, I did relatively not compared to now.

Shannon Mattern (21:14.092)

Sure.

Cathy Olson (21:15.048)

I made a lot of money as a designer, but as content creator or as a course creator, I did not make a lot of money. I mean, maybe like a thousand dollars or something, right? Like not a lot. And so it was a lot to travel around, you know, cross country. And she talked me into it I was like, all right, I'm going to go all in on the sales funnels thing. I went to this event and it was total smoke and mirrors. It was a high pressure sales.

Like I think the offer was to join her mastermind. was like $35,000, which I'm like, are you crazy? Like, what are you even talking about? Like, I'm not even making money. I haven't even done a sales funnel. I was so confused about the pieces. I was like, I don't understand. wait, so this is $97 and then what's an order bump? But how much is the order bump? And then what are you selling again? And how do you sell it? I had so many questions. None of them were answered.

So I went on Facebook, it was in my room, this is in Miami, I went in my room, I was on Facebook and I went to this group called Boss Moms and I was like, how the heck do I do a sales funnel? I'm at this event, I'm trying to learn sales funnels, they're just selling everybody on this crazy thing and they're not explaining anything. I came here to learn and I'm not learning and someone tagged Julie. And so Julie got on, she, cause she was in Connecticut, so she's on the same time zone.

And normally I'm in California normally. So she was in same time zone and we were like chatting inside of the actual thing. And she was like, this is what you do. And there's up zone, down zone, blah, blah. And everything she said made sense finally. Like she taught in such a way. And I said, my gosh, you have helped me more just in this like Facebook conversation than this entire thing I flew to Miami for, which ended up being like, obviously that's where it was supposed to be. Even though was like a weird way of meeting someone to go.

Shannon Mattern (22:57.548)

Sure.

Cathy Olson (23:03.564)

to be like upset at an event and then you find someone. Yeah, she ended up being by saving grace. I hired her like right away. We built a funnel together where she helped me build a funnel. I launched it. It did like, I think 25,000 or something in the first month. And then I ended up launching a webinar off of that. Did 25,000 or I don't know, 20, 30,000 ish just live on the webinar. Like from one freaking call. Like it was insane. And that's what I was charging.

for one website to do that would cost, that would take me, know, freaking three to six months to do. And I got it in one day, like 90 minutes, insane, like just like game changer, all the things. And so I really never looked back. At that point, I was like, okay, I'm definitely all in the sales funnels. And I was like, how do I switch my client business to no clients and just doing digital products? And it took a while. It definitely took a few years. I would say like maybe two years.

It was like 80 % clients, 20 % digital, and then I flip-flopped it to 20 % clients, 80 % digital, and then eventually took my last client in 2019, and I said, okay, here we go, we're done, we're done with clients, and here comes the world of Fun and Gorgeous. So yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell, but yeah, it's crazy that the things that you do will lead to the other things, even though they can be colossal failures, which now I'm just like, I'm always open to stuff because of that.

Shannon Mattern (24:31.678)

I love that story. also took my last web design client in 2019 because I was building my course business. just like what you said, social media, I do not want to be there. I hate my life. Every now and again, I'm like, I should try it again. And then I'm like, I.

Cathy Olson (24:37.984)

Nice.

Shannon Mattern (24:55.372)

I just did like 30 days of TikTok. then I was like, I just know like, I, I'm not, not made for it. So I did, I did like relationship marketing outreach being on other people's podcasts, all of those things. But I wanted to go back to what you were, what you were saying about like, you.

Cathy Olson (24:56.967)

Hahaha!

Shannon Mattern (25:23.21)

you like figured out the funnel where are you selling? Were you selling funnel gorgeous like the templates in the course at that time? Like what were you, what was the funnel that you figured out? And then how did that evolve into the funnel gorgeous that we know today?

Cathy Olson (25:37.645)

Yeah. So the first, um, offer was called brand designer for a day. was $27, I believe. Um, yeah, there's still OGs that like still have, and they're like, the course was so good, but yeah, Julie helped me build it out. So basically we do this thing in, uh, Final Gorge is called Launch Gorgeous where we launched together. I would say like this was me working with Julie was that kind of precursor to Launch Gorgeous. It worked very similarly where it was like eight weeks kind of done together. She'd give me homework every week.

Shannon Mattern (26:05.396)

Mm-hmm.

Cathy Olson (26:06.976)

And of course I just like, I like was like star student. knocked her socks off. remember I was hiring her at this point. We weren't working together. So she helped me build brand designer for a day. Again, it was $27. And then there was an OTO, which is a one-time offer. I think I had an order bump too at that point. Can't remember what it was. Actually I had a freebie first. like, so there was a freebie. It was 50 brand pairing guides. So was like little mini brand boards, sort of like.

Shannon Mattern (26:13.953)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (26:34.986)

these colors, these fonts, and then I would give it a name for style. And I had 50 of them, which took me so freaking long to build. But Julie's like, if your freebie is this good, like forget about it. Like they're gonna buy the next thing. So that's it. And it was true. It totally worked. So I had an awesome download as the freebie. So it was an ad, you you get the freebie and then you get the, like a tripwire basically. We call them PLM. They're called paid lead maker funnels. So you.

basically liquidate your ad spend, which means that you put money in and then you get more out. And so you build your list while you're selling. that's what it was. And then I think the OTO was web designer for a day. So basically it was like how to just design your stuff and you're not a designer. It came with templates, all kinds of stuff like that. So yeah, it was designer stuff. And then the webinar that I did,

think it was, gosh, only like maybe one or two months later, because that was building up my list so quickly. I went from, I don't know how many people on my list, maybe like 500 to like 5,000 very quickly, because it was all, it was returning. I was actually making a profit on that system. I was building my list and making a profit. I think my profit was maybe 5,000 or something at that point. But again, I was building that list and then I had the webinar.

And that was inspired pro. And that was when I was teaching designers how to charge more, kind of very similar to what you're doing. like, but it was like that idea of like high ticket, you know, what goes into it, more of the business stuff. And so that was, it was definitely a shift because it went from like kind of DIY design to like now you're a designer and you're going to be, and it was more of a community and stuff as well. So, so that was kind of

Shannon Mattern (28:07.585)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (28:26.988)

the shift in it, but I had attracted designers in that side, so it was fine to kind of shift to that. And again, I was working by myself at that point, and then I joined Julie's Mastermind, which started at the very end of 2017, I think, or 2018, yeah, 2017, very end, like December, so it's basically 2018. And then I just knocked her socks off on doing all the things. I was like, she could see, I just think she was really...

attracted to me like, not like that, but attracted to me as a person because I had a lot of the skills that she like kind of wished she had. We just very, we completed each other very well on the design side and the design psychology side. And she could see I was really good at like, I was becoming good at sales and marketing. So I think she just like really like saw that in me. And then I actually pitched the idea of Funnel Gorgeous, which originally was a course.

Shannon Mattern (28:59.809)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (29:22.668)

teaching people how to do gorgeous design with sales funnels and not just web pages and not just brands. And I said, I want to call it funnel gorgeous, know, da da da da. And she said, yeah, that sounds awesome. You're going to rock it out. And I want to do it with you. like that is something that sounds like something I would be a really good asset for. And so we taught it together. And so we sold it together. We made, think $50,000 in a week on that launch, which was frigging amazing. And I think it was only like a

maybe 197, 297 offer, but we had done a lot of build up. People were really excited with the two of us. It was a whole thing and partnerships are very hard, but ours has always been really fun. So people really like it. have kind of our yin and yang, like we're very different. And so I think it's helpful, but yeah, so Funnel Gorgeous. And then everybody was asking for templates. So we started building templates, selling templates. That kind of started the template side.

And then yeah, we were doing stuff in ClickFunnels. started teaching. We had Webinar Gorgeous, I think, next. That was our, that was $100,000 launch. I mean, it just kept going up and up and up from there. You know, eventually like to, we had Marketers Heart, which was an event. We did almost a million dollars in sales at that event, you know, in, I think it was 2022. Yeah, like, or 20, yeah, 22.

Yeah, so just lots of things. And then in 2020, we switched from ClickFunnels to FGFunnels. And that was another huge game changer. And the majority of our focus now is supporting people with FGFunnels and the whole ecosystem of how do you put these offers out because FGFunnels does everything, pretty much everything. It doesn't make coffee yet. But yeah, but FG Society has more often changed as well. So it used to be a certification program.

where we would teach people how to do really good offers, strategy on offers and building and pricing, and then copy. We would teach people how to do compelling conversion copy, and then we would teach the design part and actually building out the funnel. So was like these three skills that just made you like a triple threat marketer, which I think designers should all be as well, like I said.

Cathy Olson (31:31.767)

But then we shifted it to now it's more community-based and it's more ongoing learning. So yes, it still includes all of that base learning and everything that you, that definitely everyone needs to become like a conversion strategist. But now we have with AI coming out and just all these things changing and the world is changing. Like we needed a place to keep teaching and actually like talking to each other and having a community. So really FG Society now.

is a whole bunch, like pretty much we have a class I think every single week between all of our team members. Then the next one I'm teaching is actually really fun. I'm actually nervous for it, but it's about using AI to design something and then customizing it. So it's almost like using it like a template to start.

but then adding the human pieces to it and really rocking it out. And so it kind of gets you like maybe 20 % to 40 % of the way there. And then you do that, which I think is going to be the new future even for designers. Because it's almost like having an assistant that like hands you, like, you know, they're copy all blocked in and then now you can kind of have, do the fun stuff. So I'm actually excited about it. think it's, I think we're definitely moving into a new era. If you try to pretend we're not, that's not happening.

But I'm really excited about the future for that. I'm excited for us, but for everybody else, I'm excited to bring design to more people. Like I know that sounds weird because I know we're all like freaked out about it we want to hold onto it really tightly. But I think it's like such a cool thing to have. And I'm excited about the world and the internet and everything being more beautiful and having more beautiful design. And now I think we just have this like now we need to up level it and take like normal design.

and make it really freaking good, like really good design. that's, it's not enough to be just an okay designer anymore, which I think is good news probably for everybody. So now we're taking okay design because AI is gonna be able to do okay design. And now we like up level it to like really, really awesome, like really thoughtful, really like caring, like really beautiful design. So it's like this going from mid to high versus going from ugly to okay. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (33:42.154)

I love that so much.

Cathy Olson (33:43.82)

I feel like I just keep going off and I'm sorry, I gotta tell you, like this is what I love to talk about and so you like kinda have to stop me. I'm just like.

Shannon Mattern (33:47.424)

Yep.

want to stop you. I'm just like, I'm just like popping the popcorn like tell me more I could sit like I'm just like, I am

Cathy Olson (33:56.638)

Yeah, I'm not usually like this on podcast, but I think it's just because this is so close to my heart and I'm like, man, I can just talk on this forever. So I hope that you guys are getting from this. But yes, ask me any questions about what I just said. And I'm sorry that I keep going off on monologues.

Shannon Mattern (34:02.412)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (34:09.772)

Well, you know, you're, you're, you're saying like, we know that AI is fundamentally changing the industry for web designers. And, you know, people are still trying to like figure out like how they want to leverage it, how they want to use it, you know, how they can use it well, how they can not lose the human touch of things and how they can kind of

Cathy Olson (34:18.049)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (34:37.034)

You know, use it to help them speed things up or build a team without having to deal with people or like whatever it is. and it's like, it's a fundamental shift. That's like happening right now that we need to pay attention to and be in rooms where there are industry leaders like you and Julie showing people like, here's how we are doing this and how we're leveraging this and how we're still.

Cathy Olson (34:43.041)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (35:06.956)

staying on the cutting edge and I, my whole thing is like DIYers were always going to DIY. They were never gonna hire you. Now they're just going to go use AI. Like, but like you said, you know, now if AI can do a pretty good job, we need to like level up and do better, but like,

Also just feel really confident about how we're using the tools. So I'm right there with you. I just feel like it's such an exciting time. And I don't think, I don't know. just don't think there's any, that's probably sounds dumb. I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. I'm just not the kind of person that's afraid of stuff like that. I'm just like, where are all the upsides? Like, let's go find all the upsides and let's figure out how to make this work for us. And I also.

Cathy Olson (35:48.66)

Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (35:59.212)

love it when other people who are way smarter and more talented than me figure out how it works for me so I can go learn from them and have it be a shortcut in.

Cathy Olson (36:06.027)

I agree. I would agree with that. I love it when people just like, I just spent, you know, three months figuring this out here. I'll teach you to in three minutes. I'm like, yes, please. I will take that. I mean, it's even, you know, thinking about AI, people keep saying, are you afraid it's going to replace you? I'm like, dude, replace me. I would love that. I want to go frolic off in the sun and you just do the thing. Like, you know, I'm not getting any younger. I'm like, but so far it's a funny within our

our business. So Funnel Gorgeous, have, I don't know, like 20-ish people or something on our team at this point. Like, almost everyone's job can get like much easier except for mine. I'm like one of the one people. And also Julie, think, know, the CEO's got a CEO. it's so in Julie's like more and more of her job's getting like replaced like in a good way because she's like trying to, you know, actively replace it. But man, it's the strategy stuff.

Shannon Mattern (36:51.509)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (37:03.147)

the human psychology stuff, it is not getting there fast enough. And I'm like, kind of frustrated. I'm like, dang it, and even the design. But I mean, think design is just a step away from copy. I look at, that's how I figure out what's gonna happen is I look at what happened with copy, right? So with copy, know, chat was like, you know, everyone, we so excited. They could write all these things for us. It was amazing. And then all of a sudden we're like, wow, now we know copy.

you know stuff written by Chowtp from a mile away right and we like this is AI ew like whatever same thing's gonna happen with design right now people are blind to it they don't really notice the difference i'm sure you notice the difference i can see it i can see like the way Claude designs stuff it's like very obviously Claude it has like the little pillbox thing and then it has like the subhead and like whatever and i can see it i'm like i already see what it's doing

Shannon Mattern (37:37.321)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (37:54.614)

But other people don't, so they're just not there yet. And so eventually they're gonna be all, that's a cloud, that's AI design, like we can recognize it. But it takes a while for like regular people to kind of see that. Same thing happened with copy, but then now we're like, we don't wanna sound like AI. So like, how can we start it with AI? How can we ideate with AI? How can we brainstorm with AI, but then put our human piece on it for the copy? Same exact thing is gonna happen with design. How do we get started? How do we get?

20 % there, 30%, 40 % there, and then how do we put our voice into it, our brand into it, our style, our mood, what we're trying to happen, the psychology. So it's like this layer we add onto it. Same exact thing with copy, it's gonna happen with design. But I do think, at least right now, there's a lot of admin stuff that we definitely don't have to do, the stuff that we never liked doing, like anything doing with math.

or know, dashboards or data. I mean, that's where we're really geeking out on Funnel Gorgeous, because we have all of our data. There's this program that a friend of mine is launching called Data Curator, where she pulls in data from all these sources. Because a lot of people, even if you're looking at like a dashboard, if you like log in, a lot of it's wrong for a lot of reasons. And so we call it dirty data, basically. But like having all of these answers at your fingertips, really super helpful, really helpful for design, because

when we're designing web pages and we're like A, testing, we can actually see things, this is working really well, this is not working really, like we have the numbers to back up our design. So kind of back to what we were talking about a little bit about that idea of feeling confident, these numbers are gonna give us that confidence. Like this color worked, this didn't work, this worked, didn't, like I just changed, we have a webinar every Monday going over the tool and the tech and stuff and FG Funnels is free.

but I just changed a bunch of design stuff on the page and it's already doubled the conversion. And I'm like, there was nothing wrong with the other version, but I just had like a hint, or like a hunch of like, I think it's this. And so I changed it and now it's like doing really well. So, but having that data to back up the design decisions even better, right? So how can we put AI into our, know, like even client follow-up, right? We set up last week, we were setting up a whole thing.

Cathy Olson (40:15.411)

a follow-up system on how to, like all the leads that you're getting and just automatically drafting emails to follow up with and you just like tweak it and hit send and just, or just, hey, we talked or reminding like what happened with that client or what was their goals or whatever. And just like having that top of mind as soon as, how, know, much time I used to waste going, getting back into a project and going, okay, where was I at? Who was this person again? What was our like?

AI can have that ready to go for me. I mean, there's so many ways besides design that AI can make our lives so much easier and be like our little assistant just hand, it's almost like a, handing it like a surgeon a scalpel. Here you go, here you go. Here's all the tools. And then you have all your tools and you're like ready to go. And you're like, yay, I just get to do the fun stuff. So I'm all for that. And that's, that's right now. Like that's the stuff that we're teaching at FG society too, about getting this stuff set up so you can do more of the fun stuff. So I think it's all, it's all good news. I think as far.

But I do think if you're gonna stay the same, no, it's bad news. If you don't plan on upleveling and becoming this new version, this like strategy designer, no, you're definitely in trouble. But as long as you're open to the new future that looks like AI is my assistant, it's gonna help tee up the project, it's gonna help me do all the things I don't wanna do, and then I get to take it to the next level, then yes, you are gonna do really well.

Shannon Mattern (41:36.924)

so good. I want to talk to you about like your up leveling throughout your journey because you went from running my, you know, boutique high-end web design firm to funnels to million dollar event to team of 20. Like how has your own identity or mindset about yourself needed to like shift for you to make these

Cathy Olson (42:03.84)

Mm.

Shannon Mattern (42:07.015)

evolutions in your business, asking for a friend.

Cathy Olson (42:07.689)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think you're probably already doing it, so I'm going to say a really boring answer, but it's looking for opportunities and being open. It's like almost exactly what I ended with, to say as long as you're open to changing and pivoting and paying attention. I would say that's the biggest thing. I've been saying this forever and ever and ever because this is even how I did really well in my design business, my design studio, was paying attention to underserved markets.

Shannon Mattern (42:18.495)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (42:36.885)

For me, it was feminine design because I went to design school and they teach you like neutral design, which is masculine, like inherently, and do not teach you like how to do, or at least they didn't teach me. Maybe it was just my university did not teach like feminine design whatsoever. So there was a huge gap of like people who, I actually worked with the wedding industry at first. So the wedding industry very much like very emotionally charged, very like female kind of like the way our brains think and like,

Like it was just really, really hard for most people to even design that way, let alone like, you know, have a thriving business. So I kind of fell into that gap and I said, Hey, I'm going to serve all these people that are not being served. But I've, I've used that over my whole career. Like even, you know, going to sales funnels, I'm like, wow, okay. This is the next, the next unlock. This is the next piece. Like, you know, just, then, and then going into software and running a software company. Like, I mean, I never thought I would, I never thought I'd do any of the things I'm doing, but it's just like,

serving in the case instead of serving one person, serving a hundred people instead of a hundred people serving a thousand people, like just kind of up leveling it to whoever like needs it and kind of focusing on that. And then the funny thing is I think as far as like identity is concerned, I definitely had to switch out of getting paid for my like deliverable. Like that was a big one. Like that when I, when I shifted from I'm doing design work and here's my work that I've spent.

Shannon Mattern (43:53.749)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (44:01.376)

you know, eight hours, 20 hours, 100 hours on, and I'm getting paid for the hours I spent that to like consulting, giving advice, teaching. mean, teaching, you know, usually isn't a very lucrative thing unless you do it the way that we're doing it, and then it becomes great. But, you know, so like, so shifting into using my brain in different ways other than using, you know, like actually designing was a big one, a big identity shift.

And then now, I think now my journey is going from, you know, me putting things in, advice, creations, design, whatever, building things to like, actually, like my team is actually doesn't need me much anymore. And so I, it's actually a weird place to be in. And I posted about this on social of like, no one prepares you for like someone needs like.

like putting out all the fires all the time, you know, coming in, okay, I'm gonna come into Slack and there's gonna be all these people that need me to like going to Slack and like, no one needs me. And like, it's a really weird place to be. And I'm not like through it yet, but like, that's where I'm at right now. If like, get like, people are like, I know you're so busy and I know you can't, I'm like, I actually don't have anything to do today. It's like, but then I'm like, but I need something to do cause you know, I better fill. And so I'm like trying to like, I need to learn this or I need to do this or I need to, which is great. And I'm, you know,

but it's a weird identity shift that I'm still kind of figuring out because like this business makes money, whether I show up or not. Like at this point it's running, it's doing the thing, which it should, I guess, after all this time of me doing it, but it's weird. It's weird to just literally, like I was out the entire week last week. I didn't talk to anybody in the team and everything was the same. Like nothing changed. Not that that doesn't need me ever, but it's just, but it doesn't, I don't have to do in order to make money, which is a

Shannon Mattern (45:38.315)

you

Cathy Olson (45:52.991)

weird, like, what do I do now kind of spot. So that's where I'm at now.

Shannon Mattern (45:57.994)

But like, it's so fascinating because like, that's what you created when you built your first funnel is like, okay, like I created this thing that like, I built it in a certain way so that I didn't need to be attached for it, for it to work and be successful. Now you've translated that into like a business that's a revenue generating asset that you built to work without you having to like be in there pushing buttons.

Cathy Olson (46:05.609)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (46:13.12)

Right.

Cathy Olson (46:19.754)

Yes.

Cathy Olson (46:26.227)

Yeah. Yeah. So it's just swung. It's swung from literally hours deliverables to I actually don't have to deliver anything. Like, so it's like, wait, what? Like, know, so yeah, it's, mean, I, know that it's the goal, but I guess in everyone's wants that. But then when you're there, it feels weird. It feels, everything has felt differently than I thought it was going to feel. That's like one thing I'll definitely say too. Everything has like, you know, you become the person that it's normal for.

Shannon Mattern (46:27.879)

And so like

Shannon Mattern (46:38.507)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (46:55.679)

So by the time it happens, you're like, okay, well that didn't really like feel like I thought it was gonna feel, because you went through so many things to get there. Yeah, it's fascinating and strange, but I love it and it's awesome and everyone else should do it too.

Shannon Mattern (46:56.327)

Yeah...

Shannon Mattern (47:02.453)

Sure.

Shannon Mattern (47:09.781)

my gosh, so good. OK, we only have a few more minutes. So I have a couple more questions for you. What is the biggest challenge the business, whichever one of your businesses had to overcome to get where you are today?

Cathy Olson (47:29.211)

Ooh, I would say haters probably like it, but not the way that you would think. Not like on social media, cause we're still not like, I still don't have a lot of followers on social media. So it's not like random haters. It's like, it's like real haters. Like people who actually don't like us. think, yeah, I think, I think the biggest, when we switched from ClickFunnels to opening up FG Funnels was the hardest thing I've had to go through in the business. It was a lot, it was a

big like death of identity as like we were in the ClickFunnels community, know, loved, revered, put on stages to like, when you're not allowed to come, like, not that I didn't want it to go, but like we weren't allowed to show our faces there. So it's like, we lost all the friends in that area. Like we were called traders, you know, like we had all these arrows in our back, you know, for just doing what was best for us, for the company, for the business, because there was such a weird like culty kind of thing happening over there.

Shannon Mattern (48:13.417)

Yeah.

Cathy Olson (48:28.303)

so that was really hard and it wasn't as hard on Julie as it was on me. I was like, I remembered like I was crying about it and I was like, Julie, I miss my friends. I miss my identity. I miss my community. Like this is really sad, you know, the best thing we've ever done for the business, but very hard, like emotionally when you have so much like caught up in that, which ended up being crazy because everyone left. then everyone, you know, now everyone's friends with us again because they all left and they're all, you you've seen like FG finals or high level or whatever.

So it's kind of silly that I went through that, but it was, I think that was the hardest part, but it was also the biggest shift in our business. You know, we basically invented another million dollar business overnight. So like, yes, it was freaking hard. Yes, it was like painful and it was like almost like a cleaving of like separation, almost getting kicked out of like a community. But it was the best thing we've done for our business so far.

and it was a really good decision. I think I do look at it, know, bittersweet. It was very, very hard, but it was very, very awesome and needed to happen anyways. We did it a little bit, we did it before, like it was a sinking ship and no one else knew, and we kind of got off the sinking ship before it sunk. Whereas a lot of people stayed on and it sunk. So it was a good thing, but that was definitely the hardest thing for sure. So not haters like online, but like literal, like people who were talking bad about us, posting bad stuff about us.

Shannon Mattern (49:50.453)

Yeah. Yeah.

Cathy Olson (49:54.666)

Yeah, all the things. you have to develop a thick skin when it comes to that kind of stuff because, go, no, I'm not a bad person. Like, no, I didn't. I'm not a traitor. know, like I'm actually just a normal person trying to like, you know, feed my family. and yeah, so that was rough.

Shannon Mattern (50:09.995)

you

Thank you for sharing that. And I just want to say very tangentially just being in the online marketing world, not following it super closely, but seeing things. just like, I feel like somebody's bringing some integrity and ethics to funnels. I kind of want to pay attention. And so that was my reaction.

Cathy Olson (50:29.257)

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, people left with us. yeah, that's the funny thing is people really did rally around the reason we left, like, right? We're leaving because of this. And this was in 2020, so it was a crazy freaking time anyways. It was November of 2020. So, like, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy time, but we took people with us. I've learned a lot about, you know, standing for something even when it's hard.

You know, and I think the same thing when we create courses and we talk about stuff we teach stuff It's not always the most popular thing We try to be as honest as we possibly can when things are hard We don't pretend that they're easy like we talk about migration off of you know Wherever jobby or Squarespace or show it or wherever you are a flow desk even and switching over to FG funnels And it were like it's freaking hard like it sucks and you're gonna hate it But I think there's something in that

but we're gonna be here to support you, right? It's gonna suck, but we're gonna be here. So like that, so I think there's something in that that was totally worth doing over and over over again, standing for who you are. And I think that's also is how you're gonna stand out as a designer, right? Of like, here's what I do, here's what I don't do. I know a lot of people do it this way, I don't do it that way. And if you're, go ahead, go with them, it's fine. But if you're like me and you kind of don't wanna do it that way, come along with me. Oops, sorry. Come along with me and we'll do it this different way and it's gonna be great.

Shannon Mattern (51:55.977)

Yeah. And for all the people out there who find themselves like, I am afraid to fire this client because they fear the repercussions of like my network or my good name or what if they trash me or like whatever. I coach so many women web designers through the fear of firing a bad client or whatever. And I'm just like, you can, you have to have the courage.

to like at what cost are you gonna continue this relationship? It is costing you so much more than what you think. And when you have the courage to walk away, you guys did it on a like really big scale. But when you have the courage to walk away and then you realize like, when someone acts the way you're most afraid of them acting, they actually make themselves look worse and you come out better.

Cathy Olson (52:52.543)

Yeah, and it opens you up for the better opportunities, right? I think there's like, imagine if we would have wasted our time on the sinking ship. Like if you think about like the, know, the toxic clients or whatever as the sinking ship that you need to get off of so that you can jump onto the new ship, like, right? Just don't forget the opportunity that's on the other side of that, that you're saying yes to by saying no to something else.

Shannon Mattern (52:54.986)

Yes.

Shannon Mattern (52:59.529)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (53:03.913)

Yeah.

Yes.

Shannon Mattern (53:16.092)

my gosh, Kathy, I could talk to you all day and seriously, just your passion for what you do is just infectious. And I really appreciate you coming on the show. Can you tell everyone where can they go to learn more about FG society, get connected, get in that world, get in that room and start really putting that confidence behind what they're already doing and

you know, shoring themselves up for, for, for what's to come, going forward.

Cathy Olson (53:47.811)

Yeah, I definitely think if anyone wants to continue learning and kind of growing as we go, just like in a smaller container for sure, FG Society, it's $67 a month, total no-brainer, and you get so much training, it's fun. You just go to joinfgs.com. That's the best place to go. And I think that that's...

That's something you can even just, you know, try it for it's month to month. So you can just try it for one month, get, get some of the courses. Actually, it's funny. Sometimes we'll sell the courses that are in there outside and people will pay for like $97 for like a course we just did. And you could get so much more. so funny that people, just like, don't want to join a membership. They're like, I'd rather pay $97 for a one time than 67 going. But I'm like, just join the 67 and then cancel if you don't like it. Anyways, it's just funny. That's another human psychology funny, funny thing that I, that I geek out on. But as far as like social media, so.

We're at Funnel Gorgeous on Instagram and all the places, but I actually just started a brand new Cathy account where I'm doing a lot of solo teaching and all of the stuff we talked about today with conversion design, stuff that we're doing inside of Funnel Gorgeous that's working. I plan on actually talking about the breakdown of what I changed on the webinar signup page. I haven't done a video yet, but by the time this comes out, it'll be out. I'm gonna do a reel on that, like what I changed and stuff.

That's a brand new account and it's at Kathy funnels. and it's just Kathy with a C so C a T H Y and then funnels F U N N E L S. and that's going to be like a new account where I'm just going to geek out. I just like get to geek out all by myself because of the other ones, like a business account and we're running lots of ads and all that stuff. And I feel like I'm, can't really say like everything over there. So Kathy funnels side is, is my new exciting project where I'm just going to blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's all the stuff we're learning. Here's all the stuff.

that you guys need to know whether you're a designer or not. Anyone wants to do that. But yeah, I'm an open book. As you can see, I'm not a weird pedestal kind of person. So message me if you have questions over on that account. I'm on it every single day and I answer all my DMs. I'm not crazy like that. And I give all of the information away. definitely connect with me. I'd love to chat with anyone.

Shannon Mattern (56:06.588)

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm to put those links in the show notes. Join FGS.com at Cathy Funnels on Instagram. Yeah, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you being here.

Cathy Olson (56:21.269)

Thank you, Shannon. Thanks for the great questions. And yeah, I hope it helps some people and it encourages them that like they're much closer than they think and that they already know a lot of what they need to know in order to like for the future, they just need to keep, like they just need to double down on.

Shannon Mattern (56:38.997)

So good. All right, that's a wrap, everyone. We'll see you back here next week. Bye.