When Life Redesigns You: Becoming a Mother & AI expert | Caitlin Sullivan (ex-Spotify Business)

Speaker A: That part of my identity has had to shift or I've had to question what it means to be, to try to be a high achiever when you can't just outwork, uh, everybody else.

Speaker B: It teaches you to focus really well because you have no other option.

Speaker A: Basically, it was like phone here writing a LinkedIn post while breastfeeding. And if I could go back and not do it that way.

Speaker B: They are trying to over deliver on both sides. And then let's say they are breastfeeding at the same time, they are replying to a client and like, you know, this is happening in parallel all the time, which means, like, you are not there or there, you're kind of nowhere. Open minds, wisdom shines. It never binds. They are broken. Hello, everyone, and welcome to growthmates podcast. The new season, the creator's path. And actually this is the last episode of this season, so it's been a journey and I would love to keep it going, but, uh, I need to take some time off to take care about some important things that are happening in my life. And today I have a special guest, uh, Caitlin, uh, who is, like, enormous inspiration for me. She's a mother, she's a creator, she's a teacher, teacher trainer. I cannot even count how many titles you, you already have and why it's important for me to end the season with you. I think because I'm stepping away from the podcasting for a while because I'm gonna become a mother pretty soon. And this is something I revealed with the public, like, I think last week. And yeah, it's given me a lot of energy, but, uh, still a lot of, um, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of new thoughts that I want to discuss with you. You've been there, you passed through that chapter. And, uh, for me, it's going to be very interesting how to combine the business, the motherhood. And I really, my goal for today is to learn from you. So welcome, Caitlin. So happy to see you today.

Speaker A: Thanks a lot. Yeah, uh, it feels like a nice way to participate in your podcast, being. Being the person who's kind of ushering you into the next phase of your solopreneur journey. For sure.

Speaker B: This is. Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you found time for that. But first of all, maybe you can tell, uh, about yourself way better than I described you because I think you have so many things you're doing and you are creating a lot of different, interesting, uh, projects like courses and AI education and training. So tell about yourself, maybe who you are today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you represented me pretty well. And I think that you will probably find in the next year that you're going into or a couple of years that what looks like a lot of projects is never as many as you'd like it to be. So it does feel like a lot right now. Um, and it does feel like I'm doing a lot, but the list of things that I could be doing is endless. And there's an adjustment period that you might experience too that uh, we can talk more about going from kind of being this independent, very driven person who's okay with being a bit of a workaholic because you enjoy the work that you're doing and you make all the time for it, to then realizing that there are actual very hard caps on the number of hours you have for certain projects. So what I do for my day job, you could say, is teaching teams how to use AI for better customer research. Like doing better research and using AI better, those two things hand in hand. Um, and so I work with product teams, research teams, design teams, and um, I just try to help them not screw up their insights, processes. Um, but then I'm also a parent, so since becoming a parent things have shifted. And honestly I was consulting for a long time before kind of focusing on AI and before having a child. But something that we've talked about, maybe we can talk more about this too, is how you actually shifted faster from kind of being full time to more like productizing yourself and your skills. Whereas I spent a really long time consulting and then realizing at a certain point that that wasn't scalable. And I always wanted to scale more, but that pivot point coincided with having a newborn, which is an unusual combination of events.

Speaker B: Yeah, but I think it's very natural. This is exactly what is happening on my mind right now. Like you understand how much time you have in a day, you understand how much time you need to dedicate to a newborn and then you're trying to think, okay, how to make these things scalable, the things that I can do that I'm creating already. And I think for any creator or any builder, it's a, uh, pivotal moment and it's a growth opportunity actually to start productizing their work. I think for you it was more like a core course probably, but you will tell like what you tried, what worked, what didn't work. For me, it's a combination of productized services, like my onboarding, uh, and activation design, Sprint plus the course that I'm going to turn into self paced mode by the way, because uh, I will not be able to participate in live sessions with every cohort. But I really invested heavily into making it very well designed. So self paced format will be, I think in my opinion maybe even better. It will give more space, space for anyone who wants to take it to, to uh, slice it into the schedule and you know, just uh, take it easy. Uh, but before we jump into, into solopreneurship and business things, I'm wondering how motherhood shifted your identity. So who you were before becoming a mother and who you are today. What, you know, um, what elements are still with you from the original Caitlyn, and what are the absolute new things that you have never thought like you will become such a person?

Speaker A: I never saw myself as a mother and I think that's, that's been a really important journey for me because I, my mother had me really old. She had me at 41. And so, you know, old is um, you know, can be interpreted in different ways, but like in terms of what a doctor would say generally that's pretty old to be having a child. Uh, and I thought that was cool. Like when I figured that out as kind of a older child tween somewhere in there, I thought that was cool. And, and that framed the way that I saw becoming a parent because my mom always expressed it as, you know, I did lots of stuff that I wanted to do and then I was very ready to just be a parent. And she was a working parent. Both of my parents worked very hard. Um, she had a tough job, she was a bit of a, she's a bit of a matriarch. But um, it just, it framed things in a way that I think for a lot of other kids and families that I was growing up with, you know, those parents were kind of having more of this like, you know, the focus was more on younger parents, um, still very early in their careers while having kids. And I never compared my mom in that sense, you know, when I was very young. But later on I thought this was really cool and I, I would rather wait too. So I'm a few years older than you, to be clear. Um, and so I didn't have my child super young either. I'm not in my 40s yet, but that, like the feeling that I wasn't really ready to be a mother or that I wasn't a motherly type of person, I think has shifted dramatically. You do become that. I mean, you're forced to become that. And I've always been very caring, very sensitive, but I just didn't think I wasn't the person who says, you know, motherhood is one of the most important things in my world and I'm really looking forward to having that. I was scared about every part of this experience. So that's changed. Changed dramatically and more. On the work side, I think I've always, like I was saying, a bit of a workaholic. Like, I work very hard. I enjoy being totally absorbed by a project that I'm interested in. And just like I used to spend long evenings if my partner was away for a weekend, I would spend the whole weekend lining up like sync 16 LinkedIn posts to schedule for the next two months or something. So all of those things that, that part of my identity has had to shift or I've had to question what it means to be, to try to be a high achiever when you can't just outwork, uh, everybody else. And that's pretty fundamental. I think that's been a pretty big sh.

Speaker C: Before we go deeper, I want to take a moment to thank a few tools that are supporting this season of Growth Mates. These are tools I use in my work and recommend to clients, so checking them out is actually one of the best ways you can support the show. First one, Mobin. Mobin has been my number one product inspiration source for years. Whenever I'm working with clients or designing a new activation flow, I literally start by checking how top products solve similar problems problems. Mobin has thousands of real flows, Figma, Airbnb, Duolingo and more. And for this season, I created a special upgrades flows collection which you can browse completely for free. The link is in the description. Second one, Obby Core. This one really changed how I think about onboarding. Instead of boring tooltips, OBI creates a

Speaker B: personalized onboarding call with an AI assistant

Speaker C: that feels almost human. It adapts to you, asks questions, guides you like a trainer. And honestly, it's the first onboarding experience in years that really surprised me. If you're working on activation or education,

Speaker B: I really recommend trying obby.

Speaker C: So if you want to support me, the podcast, and the creators building these amazing tools, all the links are waiting for you in the episode description.

Speaker B: All right, let's get back to the episode. Wow. Like, it resonates so much because I've been postponing my motherhood as well for, I think five years or so. The moment when I started thinking of that and when it actually happened for multiple reasons and, um, I think the main signal is you're never ready. To be honest, I wasn't ready. Even I was really, um, I really wanted that to happen, but I wasn't ready and I think I'm still not ready. Um, however, the environment around you is also very, very important thing. And for me it was like a bit of a uh, challenge with the environment in my full time uh, job or like the actual configuration of my role that didn't allow me to express my, myself in, in things like that or even like allow my body to, to consider that I, um, was intentional all the time. I didn't have enough, um, enough energy probably even to, to allow my body to, to make it happen. Um, and I don't think it. I know like there are like situations when women leaders are becoming mothers and they are amazing in both, uh, roles in leadership and motherhood, um, or they are trying to find that balance. But for me, I just didn't feel like internally something allowed that. So for me, solopreneurship actually was like a breakthrough. It was a breakthrough to give me some energy, some creative capacity first. So I changed myself, I changed the way I think about life day, the future. And then this allowed motherhood to come in m. And I think motherhood is also about a lot of uncertainty. It's comparable to a startup, I think, uh, to building something new. And when you tried already to build your services or become a solopreneur, you know, like, okay, I can handle this level of uncertainty. Why not add in a bit more uncertainty into that and trying to balance your business and your, your parenthood. And now you're doing that. I'm like about to start doing that. I don't plan to take a huge like, you know, I cannot even afford that. I cannot take three years, two years of like uh, uh, maternity leave. I will take maybe four months off, uh, just to fully dedicate myself to uh, to baby. And then I will smoothly like step by step. Because my work today doesn't allow me, doesn't actually not allow me. It doesn't require m, me to work like uh, eight, ten hours every single day. I can work three days a week for four hours and still do something and still deliver something meaningful. And for you, you are balancing both like motherhood and your project. So how does it work? Because you cannot be the best of the best in both. Maybe how you define this good enough in every element you are doing.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really hard. Um, I think I'm constantly re evaluating what good enough is situationally based on whatever the context is that you're in. Because as you said, there's so much uncertainty. There's so much uncertainty around everything I'm doing. It can be really stressful too. I'm kind of having to learn new stress management techniques that I've never been particularly good at. We can talk about that too. But, um, I think in terms of defining good enough, what's good enough when your child is in a phase where, like when you're breastfeeding, right. Like, you're very much physically tied to your child in a way that means you actually have to back off a little bit with work stuff because you're expected four hours of focus time all together in one go. It's just not possible. Right. And you're expecting your partner or someone else in your family or a babysitter to take over. And not all timing is perfect. So good enough there is very different than good enough for me now with a kid who's just over two, I have a lot more freedom. I have some childcare, but it's still actually not full time childcare. We don't have. We don't have daycare on Fridays, so it's different. Almost like every six months, I have to reevaluate. I have to kind of always stay on my toes and go, what is feasible now? And what would be a stretch goal or stretch feeling of good enough? Um, I think lately good enough with work is feeling like I chose to focus really well. I'm kind of measuring my personal success work wise. Less on, oh, do I have a big name client? Or how many people are taking my course this time? And more on, did I learn to focus enough that I could actually bite off a meaningful chunk of a project I've had on my desk for a while and see that I made progress there. And with parenting, good enough is, did I spend quality time with my daughter without my phone? Did I pick her up from daycare a few times this week and go to the playground and feel like I was actually there and didn't have my mind on other things? Yeah, those are kind of my good enoughs.

Speaker B: Wonderful. I think, to summarize that, and this is also something I learned from books and all the content I'm consuming about motherhood. Uh, it teaches you to focus really well because you have no other option. Basically, you either focus and deliver something in this amount of time you have. This is why I said, for me, setting up some boundaries and like, okay, taking a nanny for four hours or so and being focused at least for this period of time while I'm transitioning back is something I can plan or like, anticipate. Um, from the, uh, parenthood side and then for actual time with your baby, it's less about the amount of that time, it's more about the quality of that time as well. Because I see a lot of, um, women are trying to, to do both and they are trying to over deliver on both sides. And then let's say they are breastfeeding at the same time, they are replying to a client and like, you know, this, this is happening in parallel all the time. Which means, like, you are not, um, yeah, you're not there or there. You're kind of nowhere.

Speaker A: And I've been there too in the first few months. It's really hard not to be there, especially if you don't. I know people actually in the Netherlands who had daycare after four months or three months or something, and that's really early in Germany. So in Berlin we actually have free daycare, thankfully. But, uh, most daycare centers don't accept kids until after one year old. And that has a huge effect on M. That whole first year, you're kind of expected to just take off entirely. But that's a model that's made for employees who work in industries where you are guaranteed to have work to go back to when you are done with that first year of your child's life. And that doesn't work for, I would almost say 50% or more of us now, friends of mine and tech companies who have tried to do that then didn't necessarily have a job to go back to. At the end of that, the risk is so much higher. So we're all kind of forced, whether we're running our own businesses or not, to find some sort of balance or do all of the things a little bit in that first year. So I think it's almost unavoidable for a lot of us. But I think, yeah, the exact scenario that you described, I just thought, oh, that's exactly what I was doing. It was like phone here writing a LinkedIn post while breastfeeding. And if I could go back and not do it that way and find tidier time blocks, I would definitely do that.

Speaker C: By the way, if you are new here, besides making this podcast, I also help companies grow meaningful products through growth mates. My whole career I've been balancing between user needs and business goals. And the biggest truth I've learned is this. What is good for the user is also good for the business. Over the last eight years, from Miro to supporting over 25 teams, I've collected a lot of practical frameworks that actually work and now there are three ways I share them. First, my PG advising program. This is where I work closely with your team to build a sustainable user centric growth system, not just experiments. Second, the onboarding, um, design Sprint. It's a short focused collaboration to fix activation and redesign. The first time experience many teams see a, ah, real uplift very fast. And third, my course user centric product led growth in the AI era. It's a free week intensive where we turn a real challenge into a clear growth roadmap. People from Miro, Dropbox, Atlassian Loom have already taken it. And for podcast listeners there is a discount with the code growthmates. If you want to explore any of these. Everything is on Growthmates club and the link is in the episode description and if someone on your team might benefit, feel free to share it. And now let's get back to the episode.

Speaker B: Wonderful. And yeah, I think your advice on anything you would do differently is very appreciated for me right now because I'm kind of planning all these things and I can tell maybe there are women who are listening to us who are already pregnant or planning to be pregnant who are now like trying to plan what, what to do in this first year. So I can tell about my, my approach to that and maybe it's, it's useful for some, some of you because first of all I really considered that I uh, will take time off like one and a half and even two months before my due date because I really want to enjoy this time without work. I don't want to work to the end. And then what happened actually is that my Q1 this year is the only quarter I can actually properly work. And then what also was a combination is like the second trimester and Q was in parallel and I had way more energy. I had like, I feel like I have an energy of two people in, in me, you know, and my, it's my unique situation. Not all women have this. My first trimester was like very slow, very dizzy. But second one was like, yeah, I'm back to my energy level. And uh, I actually decided to plan ambitiously. Like I will uh, take the amount of projects and clients I can uh, deliver. I will increase the quality of clients I'm working on. And I was lucky to, to organize that. And basically my Q1 is like uh, the revenue for the whole year basically. So this helps me to not worry about the income till end of the year. Um, but again, I'm not in the, I'm not in the position that, okay, I'm lucky and this is why it happened. Actually. It required a lot of effort to organize that and to actually deliver on that promise. Okay, let's make you one as the full revenue for the entire year. And then, um, this makes me, like, feel a little bit less, um, worried about the taking more time. If I need more than 4 months, I will take more, etc. Etc. Uh, but it's insane that, um, yeah, women cannot take, ah, that time actually in organizations or in countries, uh, where you don't have, like, you know, coverage for one year. In Netherlands, we have four months only. And yeah, I wish, like, the system would be a bit different. And I think the balanced ways to allow any women to take one year off fully covered. Uh, and this is like a baseline. But if, um, you can plan it, like, you should plan it somehow, I think. And, uh, I'm still worried about this. Okay, the moment of getting back in October, in November, But I'm already starting, like, planning that maybe, uh, reserving some client work in advance. Um, while, you know, I think motherhood or pregnancy also gives you some energy or some hormone changes. That makes me feel like everything's gonna be all right. Everything's gonna be all right. And on that note, maybe we can also talk about your creative projects and how you ended up even becoming a solopreneur. If you define yourself as a solopreneur, uh, because you've experimented with many different things before landing on what you are doing these days. Right? You were freelancing, you were learning of limits of that model. Uh, so can you tell maybe about some mistakes you've made, some learnings you've made through your. Through your path towards where you are today?

Speaker A: For sure. It also, I think, connects very well with what you were just describing in terms of your planning process. Because I did not plan like you did. I did not do that well before, uh, you know, having a child. I just. As a quick timeline, I had started freelancing in 2018, and it was really easy for me. It was. It went very fast. I kind of immediately had many clients and I could charge a really good rate. And so it was kind of like I didn't have all of those stresses that some people have with freelancing and wondering if the next job was going to come in and things being kind of up and down between months. It was so easy and straightforward. I got really lucky. I had a great network, and that kind of worked very well for me. So even though in my head I thought, I want to be a solopreneur, I followed people Like Justin Welsh and, you know, all of those people. And I had that in the back of my mind. I knew I needed to kind of productize my skills a little bit if I wanted to scale beyond that. But for a very long time, I was lazy. Uh, like, I couldn't really imagine pushing myself to get beyond that because I lived so comfortably in that bubble of I have all of the clients all the time and I can get paid well and I like my work. And. And so it was really difficult to kind of get myself out of that. And I played around with different course ideas and sort of did some landing page tests on my website and things like that. And I also saw at that point, the year that I was pregnant in 2023, I saw that year all of the LinkedIn posts basically were like mini demand tests. So I was just trying to get a sense of what people were interested in and what I could create a course around or whether I should do an audit like you do and things like that. Different sort of ways of packaging my expertise. So I kind of did see myself as a solopreneur to be. But I had a really hard time getting over that hurdle between being a freelancer and just selling my hours and figuring out how to package the thing I deliver people into a product that removes my hours and my lifetime. So that I think the way you've described now how you've been planning for your pregnancy or, uh, for giving birth and taking time off, it sounds so brilliant. And at that time, I mean, I was kind of getting more and more pregnant throughout 2023, and this deadline was fast approaching. So I had this real fire under my butt, like, I need to figure this out. But it actually didn't happen until the very end of the year when I had a newborn. So I did not plan things as well as you did. I was just testing things and hoping something would stick. Uh, and it didn't really stick until I kind of finally opened my eyes to what was right in front of my face that I didn't want to see, which was the AI work.

Speaker B: Wonderful. So eventually your productizing your services turned out to become a course as far as I understand. Or there is something else. Uh, you, you tried but didn't. Like, maybe you tried other things and you decided, no, this is not the scalable model. And then you landed on the course idea.

Speaker A: I was running workshops like I was running training with companies directly. So right before I gave birth, I worked up until, I don't know, two and a half, three weeks before giving Birth, to be honest. And so right up to that very last week, I was running live training, like remotely, but live with companies around the world. And so for the second half of that year I had back to back trainings lined up. And they were usually a mix between teaching product and design teams to do better customer discovery and also blending in a little bit of AI. So if I had a series of four workshops, the last one was on AI and the other three were kind of about how you identify risk and how to do better interviews and that sort of thing. But I kept feeling like this is still not, not scaling enough, you know, because everything needed to be custom. And I kept feeling that even for the last two years or the last one and a half years, that every training I've done is so highly custom that I cannot just. And I don't just copy paste slides from one team workshop into another. I cater to exactly what the team needs, which can be great. And um, it gets great reviews and that sort of thing. But it's still not easy to scale.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's interesting, like I had a little bit different, uh, approach to that. I just realized like I started with a course initially and I love it. I run four cohorts, pretty successful. I even started loving these live sessions, you know, because they are very demanding in terms of energy. Like if people are thinking, if you're a remote facilitator talking to uh, a group of 30 plus people for one and a half hour, it's easy. It's not after that I really have to lay down like that in meditation for, for several minutes to come back to, to myself. And uh, for my course I have five sessions like that. So it's a lot, uh, of energy. But these live sessions were like you described, like mini workshops, mini trainings that were repeatable, but I was integrating on them every cohort, like I was changing them every time. And then I realized like some companies are coming my way for more, uh, custom type of um, support. But then I was thinking how I can help them. This was more of the material of my course. So I repurposed a lot of materials from these workshops to the client work and I, I slightly customize them, sometimes heavily customize them. Uh, but it was a bit different way, like not from the workshops and training to the course, but from the course to the workshops and trainings. And I agree with you, this is not super scalable model. But what I think I would love to keep, I, um, would love to keep a couple of not, um, maybe a couple But a few uh, long term clients who really need my help for something meaningful, something very strategic and very big that they are doing for a year or several years. And I'm delivering that to them in the custom uh, like workshops and design sprints like I'm doing this year with Autodesk, um, while thinking on the background how to make something else and make it scalable. And my approach course is one of these creative assets that can be scaled. Now I'm thinking of that in a self paced format because I think live sessions are very demanding. Uh, but I think another idea that I'm thinking about is like of course creating a product someday, creating a proper SaaS. Like because I have so much energy and knowledge about SaaS world that I think it's so reasonable for me to leverage my audience, to leverage my knowledge and to turn it into SaaS. Like for example in uh, the previous episode we talked to Michael Reed who is a um, creator of Dive Club and the podcast and education and he's now creating his product in Flyte, which is like serving design audience very well. And the connection of the dots is amazing. But of course I'm not going to do that in parallel with my first year of my newborn. I will wait for a while, I will let this, all the ideas I have to settle and maybe someday ah, I will realize something like that.

Speaker A: It's funny that you say that though, um, and that you recognize that it's not going to happen in year one with a newborn. Because I've had the same thoughts since the very beginning when I was testing a lot with AI and no one else was for customer research yet I was getting so many requests on LinkedIn for more about how I was working and how I was, you know, making sure that hallucinations weren't coming up in insights and things like that. And as soon as I started running trainings and my course on that, I started getting more questions from people like, but why don't you just create a product on this? You know, like why don't you just make the product that does AI analysis better than all the other ones on the market. And I have thought about that ever since and I started vibe coding just in the last few weeks. Not something that would compete on the market with uh, the mazes and the dovetails of the world, but actually a um, plugin for cursor. So I'm kind of just trying to figure out how to use my knowledge that I've been teaching in various formats for the last year and a half or Two years and put it into a tool that product managers are already using, that, that addresses a different part of the journey. So, yeah, we're thinking the same in that sense. But it's taken me until my child is over two to get there because until now it's just been kind of like putting out fires, biting off the small chunks that I could bite off that felt reasonable within my very limited schedule, calling it enough, like you were saying. And only now I'm like, I can maybe create a, uh, product. I can maybe bite off these bigger chunks, take on these bigger topics like synthetic users. I'm doing a bunch of in depth studies on synthetic users, but these are things that the first time I heard of synthetic users, I had a two month old and I was like, who has time to do these studies? No one.

Speaker B: But you kept the idea and it nurtured in you for a while and it's okay. I think I have a bit of fear of missing out, to be honest. Right now with my creative projects and all ideas I want to turn into life. However, I'm also feeling like, oh my God, motherhood and the first year of a newborn is such a special moment in the life and I don't want to sacrifice any minute of that any, like, any important, meaningful connection to my kids. So this leds me to postpone some ideas like, um, with a bit more confidence, without actually feeling like, oh, when I come back, everybody will create everything and there is nothing to do. No industry is changing so fast. In two years, I don't even know what it's gonna be. So this is why I think it's good to have, like, if you are in a situation like that, like pregnant or about to be, it's okay to nurture these ideas, you know, And I think they can become even better after a while. And about doing both, I think this is also possible. I talked to Marie, who is the founder of Tali. Tali is amazing platform to create forms on my podcast. I love this episode. Feel free to listen. Uh, and she and uh, her partner Philip, they actually were building Tali and having two kids in parallel, like, they were like appearing in parallel with Tali was growing, you know, and she said like, she wouldn't recommend that, but still she, uh, admitted that they wanted both. They wanted both. They wanted to build a family, they wanted to build a business. They had the momentum to do that, so they combined all these things in parallel. And I think this is also beautiful. If couples or partners can do that, they have energy for that. Um, because I think it's self sustaining in a way. When you are creating something as a product, as a project, uh, it gives you creative energy that you can also spend on your kid. And kid gives you some energy. And everything takes energy, of course, but it can be self sustaining if it's not at maximum capacity and maximum level all the time, probably. Ah, but yeah, I think these stories are very, very inspiring in any ways. Like when I hear that, and my role models these days are people like you are people like Marie, like, you know, mothers who don't sacrifice their creative potential and, uh, like ambition, uh, for the sake of just being a mother. Uh, because there are a lot of situations where I see that m. Maybe it's not a sacrifice. Maybe it's also a decision that these women made. Like, uh, I'm a mother and this is my whole identity and this is who I am. And I also respect that. I think the world needs mothers like these. But I'm not that type of person. I just can't be that type of person. And this is why I'm looking for these role models, uh, like you. Yeah. Really.

Speaker A: There are so many things you mentioned that I want to kind of follow up on. So you just mentioned momentum. I think momentum is such an important piece of all of this. But momentum and a spark can show up at the most inconvenient times. And I think there could be people listening to this who think, oh, yeah, sure. And then you get to this point where everything has momentum, and that's just great, great. But I would say my whole 2024 felt like I was Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. There was no momentum, even if it looked like I had momentum on LinkedIn, because people were constantly like, wow, this is the best. Thank you so much for clarifying this complicated AI thing for me. I got a lot of really nice comments, a lot of really nice messages that did not mean that money was just falling from the sky and everything was easy. And what worked really well, where I would say I had really good momentum was in launching my course. It was timed right. And this kind of comes back to your mentioning of fomo. I have constant fomo. I work with AI all the time. So when people are like, how do you keep up? I say, I don't. I keep up on select things. I kind of choose my spheres within AI. And I say, this is all I can chew at one time. This is all I can, you know, have all of my readers send me automated emails about. I can't look at all of the academic research on everything AI related all the time. I, I pick my topics and these are the things that I really want to master and fully and present to my audience. And maybe I want to create a course on it because I keep getting questions. But momentum is not always there and a lot of people will probably in the next few years find themselves either being let go or choosing to jump out and try to do something on their own. And momentum isn't necessarily going to come easily to everyone. So I got lucky with, uh, the freelancing stuff for sure. I had a lot of momentum there. And there was some momentum when I actively chose AI and the very niche overlap of AI for customer research that really no one else was talking about specifically at that time. So there was momentum there. But then that doesn't always mean that the demand equals willingness to pay. And I was early enough that people weren't willing to pay when I started talking about this. Right? So I had a long period of time in 2024 actually where I was constantly like, I'm getting these requests to talk at everybody's events or their internal conferences, or run a lunch and learn for their team. And they're all these big companies and no one has budget because it was too early. Um, so I want to call that out because I think this was a huge barrier for me last year. It was like coming out of maternity leave, really needing to get back on track financially, not really knowing if I was actually running down the right path because the interest signals were there, the financial signals were not there. But I actually just persisted and decided this was a path that felt really meaningful. I felt really conflicted about the AI topic in general, but instead of responding with fear, I decided that I could just be the person to make other people feel more on top of it than I was feeling. Um, and I kept going. And then that did turn into kind of financial benefits, right? But I was early. And so sometimes I think, okay, there was a benefit in being early, but if I hadn't had so much FOMO or I hadn't had that, that drive to figure it out immediately, maybe I could have waited a little longer and made some money some other way and then kind of not had the feeling of anti momentum financially for a while. So I think that's just really important to point out for people because it can look really shiny and everyone who does AI stuff is just making so much money. But some listener may jump into that and say, I'm going to do AI for my niche and it's going to be a gold mine. And just because it doesn't work out immediately doesn't mean that it's something that you shouldn't devote yourself to. You kind of have to know from a gut instinct perspective whether this is something that means something to you that you feel you should continue with and believe that there will be kind of a financial stability that comes later or if it's something you're just doing for money and then you should fail.

Speaker B: Absolutely, meaning comes first. I think in any creative project you are doing yourself any new idea, any zero to one product. Uh, and I remember in our previous conversation you've mentioned that your entry to AI was half intentional, half hesitant and I think it's beautifully describes any entry to anything. Uh, it should be actually quite hesitant because it's uncomfortable, it's uncertain, it's unclear, it's scary, but intentional as well. Ah, at least 50%. Yeah. And for me AI was and still is like a bit of uncertain thing. I actually am a bit worried uh, about being trapped by that interest and being fully consumed by uh, the whole like you know, amount of content about AI. While I also agree with you, you need to find some uh, overlaps and combinations with other subjects that you are very curious about and find that overlap that really drives your curiosity. So I think in my case the product LED growth was always like a topic that interests me, but it doesn't interest me in a pure way without any configuration. So this is why I defined the user centric product LED growth as my niche is, my interest is the, of my course and everything I'm doing. Because this is a flavor to PG that I really love to talk about. You know, you can wake me up at 3am and I will talk about that with like you know, sparking, sparkling, uh, eyes.

Speaker A: Good measure.

Speaker B: Yeah. But if, if it would be just POG data driven growth, you know, tell me about all the metrics, I will not wake up, I will keep sleeping. So uh, with AI I think same thing. I'm curious about AI and behavioral psychology and um, other elements connected to user centric growth. But it's a difficult niche combination as you said. Uh, but we need to try to find uh, the pure interest and then follow that pure interest rather than um, trying to follow what everybody wants from us. And in terms of financial elements, sometimes we need to do something that everybody wants from us just to survive, just to get back to financial stability in a way. Uh, and I think it's also fine like for, for the business, it's fine to find These revenue streams where it's delivering on what industry or your audience wants from you. Um, and I also love how you, uh, raised that topic that it seems like success, pure success on LinkedIn. I also feel like it might be the vibe that I'm translating, uh, sometimes, but it's very difficult on the background. It's very, um, difficult, really. And what you've said about the idea came out then it took some time to get the actual ROI from that. It's always like that, that, like in my case the newsletter, for example, was the idea. Or even this podcast, which is a combination of podcast and you sweater for three years, I think, or two and a half years. It gave me absolutely nothing back. It was just a lot of energy investment, a lot of time investment, and like, okay, why? Where is something from that? And now finally, I have these brand partnerships. I have clients who are coming to me because they found my newsletter and they followed that for a year to figure out how meaningful it is and how valuable it is. But if I wouldn't create in it for a year, like, what they would see actually, and with any idea, it's like that. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker A: I get a lot of that too. We can talk more about newsletters, actually, because I think that's a really big if that's relevant to you, because I think that's such a good, good kind of solopreneurship topic. I have the same sort of pattern happen as well, that people kind of subscribe to my newsletter for a long time and I heard nothing from them. I kind of recognized their name or their email address. And then suddenly out of the blue, after a year and a half comes, uh, a request for a whole team training or something with decent budget. But they're kind of the silent fans for a long time. And I think there can sometimes be. And I can fall into this trap too. There can sometimes be this overemphasis on the ROI in the first place. And I am so hardwired for this because I've worked with so many startup teams where everything is like, demand testing, willingness to pay testing, right off the bat, figure out if this thing is going to work and if people are going to pay the price we need to charge for it for the business model before we invest more resources in developing the thing, do it, and fail early. So I've done that a few times and then realized that, no, there was actually more of a benefit to, like we were talking about a minute ago, just diving deep into the space that I'm actually interested in and seeing that through for a while, like wait for six months to a year. I actually started thinking like, I took a little bit of inspiration from being pregnant and started seeing things in nine month incubation periods. So if you have something in mind that you really find interesting enough that you can commit for nine months for yourself, at the very least, do that rather than saying, I need to hit this revenue, right? It needs to be a new income stream immediately. I need to be able to charge this much, I need this many people paying. Skip that. Do it for nine months. And if you get really bored halfway through, you already know that this probably isn't a sustainable revenue or, uh, income stream for you, you probably aren't going to want to keep doing it anyway. But if you make it to nine months and you're still enjoying it whether you make money off of it or not, and then you see, okay, well it deserves a position in my funnel anyway, right? Whether it's making money or not, maybe it's the top of the funnel, it's free forever. Um, then you keep doing it. You add sponsors like you've already done. And there are so many ways of working with it. But I think skipping the thing that doesn't seem to have immediate ROI means you don't get those leads later from people who have been real true fans of yours for a year and a half and you just didn't know yet. But that wouldn't have happened if you just quit your newsletter entirely because you were like, ah, uh, I don't charge for it. It doesn't deserve my time. And that's really hard. Going back to the first year of having a child, it's really, really hard not to be making those kind of doing that math in your head all the time and just one idea. And my newsletter journey has been unusual compared to most people because I launched my newsletter as a demand test. So I put out that I had this idea for a newsletter and I wanted to know who wanted it. And I sent a stripe link was like, if you want this, you can pay me €5 per month. And um, more people than I expected to did. So within 24 hours I had a paid subscription to, you know, business to a newsletter that I didn't even have yet. And I kept that going for a while, for a full year. I, I accepted subscriptions for it. And then I actually made it free. And I think to me it's still, uh, the way that I would have done it. I don't look back and think, oh, I should have Just made it free because I had a four month old or a five month old and I wanted to make sure that the time I put into something new that was so limited, I had so limited time, it had to pay off, it had to have an ROI at that time. So kind of that added subscription was really valuable to me. But then later when I said hey, I have a successful course, I have clients, I don't need that to make money anymore, I made it free. And I think you can always think in terms of life seasons like that. And you don't have to say, you know, my newsletter should always be free or my newsletter has to have subscribers. It can change.

Speaker B: Very interesting. I have never heard of that. I think I have never heard of that way of launching the new sweater. And I think it's so wonderful, it's beautiful. Like yeah, anybody who wants to build something, give it a try. Um, however even now as um, someone who is also getting some random requests, sponsorships requests stuff I think the skill that, that I'm trying to develop is like separating um, these long term commitments that I'm doing anyways for free. Like it's my audience basically I'm doing whatever it takes to keep building a relevant uh, audience on LinkedIn and newsletter for free. Like you know, I'm giving a lot of content for free in order to grow my audience because I believe in that as a long term asset that can, can be, you know, know can uh, be with me whatever I do next. So this is my takeaway from many conversations with creators and builders and with that there are some type of, there is type of work that should be paid like um, in my case speaking um, in the internal event for the company for sure it should be paid. Like I still like receive requests when people expect it for free. It's non negotiable. Like I really get angry when I, I see messages like that and I wish not to see them but I try to educate people like politely why it is like that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And my last question to you because it's been a beautiful conversation and I think we can talk about so many things for so long. Um, but is there, there any new, maybe a bit scary idea that you're dreaming of next and if yes. Uh, what is it if you would like to share it with me or with everybody who is listening?

Speaker A: There are a few. So the thing that's most directly related to my work or the two one I mentioned like vibe coding and actual product and seeing if I could sell that as a completely non technical person like getting it to the state of design and AI experience, quality I would like it to be on and then actually shipping that to the world. That's pretty big and scary for me. I've worked with so many teams launching products from zero to one or second products from the ground up. But doing it on your own is a very different thing. And I think we can both say we've done that in the form of courses, right? Or audit products, things like that. But it's still another thing to ship a, ah, micro SaaS. So that's huge for me. Um, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get there. I don't know. So it's a big thing that doesn't have a deadline and it doesn't have a. It's not even the most perfectly defined scope. I think I need to kill a lot of features and functionality in my head before it's a real minimum lovable product, I guess is what we're saying now because of Elena Verna. Um, and then there are things like, um, big scary goal of running an ultra, but I'm coming back from an Achilles injury, so that feels like very far away. But you know, keeping in mind that as a solopreneur, you could also be taking care of yourself in lots of different ways, like physically, mentally and running has always been. Running and rock climbing have always been kind of my spaces for getting out of my own workaholic Brain M and synthetic users is I think, really the next very important topic in customer research for product and design teams. And there are so many questions right now because most people are hearing this term thrown around, but it's a really big, very complex space. So for me, as someone who's not an academic researcher, trying to bite off pieces of this, to find meaningful ways of using them for practical corporate uses is so fascinating, but also very scary.

Speaker B: Wonderful. I think when it's scary, uh, to jump, you need to jump. And you probably can say something else because, because you're climbing and no, it's probably not that safe. But, uh, it seems like when I listen to people like you who are doing a lot of pivotal changes in their life, it seems like, whoa, uh, this interest that you have in like running and climbing are so natural and gives you maybe energy and some adrenaline that you can reinvest later into other scary projects and scary ideas. So I wish you, you the energy to, to do all of that, to do actually all of these things. Uh, I believe, like, I believe, um, that we all have not, maybe we all have by default. But many of us have this energy. We just need to believe that we have it and then we are able to invest into all things we want. Um, on that note. Oh, my God. On that note, I really need to thank you, Kathleen, for joining and sharing all of your personal stories, especially about motherhood. It really means a lot. And everybody who listened to that season, feel free to listen to all previous 40 or so episodes while I'm on my pregnancy leave. And when I'm back, I'm definitely gonna get back to the podcast. I'm gonna create something next and it will be seasonal. So I love the idea of seasons, where to come up with a subject or a theme that I want to talk to, uh, particular people about, not just random, you know, B2B SaaS podcast. So this is going to be the vibe of growth mates. Um, stay with me. Uh, please share your comments. Uh, please share DMS if you want to ask me about something. I always love to see if there is someone on the other end who is listening and who is reading the newsletter. As you said, Caitlin, it's like difficult when you don't hear them, you don't see them, and then suddenly they come up. Uh, so please, let's stay in touch. Please follow Kaitlyn. We will share all the links in the episode description. And thank you for being with me today.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. This was, uh, a nice way of forcing myself to reflect on a lot of this and hear how you're handling it as well.

Speaker B: Happy to hear that for sure.