We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Kolbye a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Like most business owners, what you see online is not the full story. I started my company 2.5 years ago and have scaled to over $1 million dollars by the age of 27 years old all while traveling around the world full time in places like Bali, Thailand, Croatia and many more. But let’s look at what happened behind the scenes to get there, because it was far from an overnight success.

I often tell the story about my first month in business and how I made over $5k, was booked out with clients and starting hiring a team. But what people don’t always hear is how I had spent 1 year prior building up an online personal brand and audience where I was building relationships and posting content every day – building trust. I didn’t have anything to sell at the time but, often times, building an audience and getting them to trust you is one of the hardest parts of starting a business – and no matter how good you are at marketing, it takes time.

After I started my business, we grew very quickly to over multiple six figures in less than a year. To many that may seem great, but it actually created a lot of “problems” – we were not prepared for the growth. I didn’t have a team, I didn’t have proper systems to handle that level of clients, and mentally I was struggling to keep up on the backend. No one had prepared me for how to run a company and in the blink of an eye here I was navigating it on a large scale alone.

This along with my personal work ethic led to burnout at the end of 2020. I had been working 10-12 hour days 7 days per week – often times, staying up to 3am to accommodate for time zone differences. I burned out to the point of exhaustion, depression, and had lost all the joy and motivation of not only the business I had created, but the lifestyle of freedom that the business was supposed to manifest. Instead of quitting corporate America, I had created my own prison within my own business, tied to my desk.

It took a year to recover from burnout – a year full of growing my team, growing systems, and just simply managing what I could. While we still managed to double our revenue and hit $1 million dollars that second year in business, it was a huge wake up call that the sexy milestone of revenue and wins that businesses portray online don’t actually reflect that feeling of success on the backend. If you are building a business you have to make sure to also prioritize yourself and focus on your version of success and happiness or else the “overnight success stories” will keep you chasing ghosts and feeling empty.

Since then so much has changed in my business and how I operate as a CEO and we are on a much better and happier track now. I have a team of 10 and am able to take weeks off at a time while my team steers the ship. We bring in leads on autopilot and have the infrastructure and mindset now of a true 7+ figure business. But don’t forget that behind every sexy title and success story is a human just like you and me who laughs and cries and has a family and struggles each day to be the best they can be.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Amanda Kolbye and I am a 7 figure CEO, business strategist, and online educator who focuses on helping female entrepreneurs start and scale their own online businesses in order to create generational wealth, build a freedom lifestyle, and become the best in their industry. My company offers a variety of online courses and live coaching programs as well as digital products to help every stage of business owner from just starting off to those scaling to 7 figures+.

A few years ago, I quit my cushy 6 figure corporate job at 24 after realizing that, although I had achieved this version of the American dream by advancing in my career so early, it felt so empty – I knew this could not be it. I knew only two things for sure: I wanted to live overseas and I wanted to be my own boss. So I quit, sold everything I owned and moved to Thailand with a sure-fire knowing that I would figure it out. I created multiple businesses along the way but eventually realized my past experience and natural strengths were in marketing and business development so I quit all my other businesses and started the company I run now. I had seen too many talented aspiring entrepreneurs “give up” because they had the skills or products, but had no clue how to run a business and that was where I came in. I approach business from a holistic perspective of strategy, mindset and systems and believe that decisiveness, risk taking and execution are the key to success in any field.

I have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs all over the world quit their 9-5s, hire teams, scale $500k/year businesses as a solopreneur and so many others wins, but what I’m most proud of is the global community I have cultivated full of loyal ambitious women in 30+ countries who talk daily, lift each other up, refer each others’ services, and are the reason you keep going on those tough days. To me an online business is a tool – a tool to create wealth and freedom of choice to live life on your terms, and that’s my ultimate goal with my clients.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I always tell my clients that your brand reputation is the most valuable thing you can build. It takes time to build but will serve you in anything you continue to do. For my business we have built our entire brand using social media and so the four biggest factors I attribute to the success of my brand reputation are: relationship building, integrity, consistency, and expertise. The overall goal is to build the know, like, and trust factors with your audience in order for them to buy from you and be a loyal customer for years to come. The other key is becoming known for something and building a memorable brand. Instead of building a business with many products, I focused primarily on ONE, became known for it, and became the go-to person for that market. Beyond knowing what you are all about, people also have to like you and trust you, and by taking time to build genuine relationships as well as sell and run my courses and programs with a high level of integrity, I have created a reputation that people advocate for – and to me that is the ultimate test of a good reputation. Lastly, the consistency piece is important because your audience needs to be able to not only rely on you but also in marketing we have to repeatedly infuse our message in order to establish an actual reputation – this is a non negotiable to create a solid brand reputation.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

My entire business has been bootstrapped every step of the way. But I didn’t start off with tons of savings or a wealthy family to support me.

When you bootstrap a business – or really any ways that you raise capital – you have to be okay taking risks. I invested over $100k by the end of my first year in business and I started with less than $10k in savings, and to this day have zero loans or credit card debt. I heavily invested the money I made right back into the business and strategically lowered my living expenses by living overseas.

I believe one of the biggest reasons we have grown so much is because, to this day, I’m constantly making “scary” investments again and again and again to push us forward and give my company the team and tools and support it needs to sky rocket to the next level. There is no guarantee ever, so it’s about being smart and getting scrappy in the beginning, and eventually it’s then about saving to get through the low times as well as starting to make your money work for you.

In the beginning I leveraged my time because that was the resource I had the most of. I was the social media manager, customer support, copywriter and designer – I stayed up late nights to get everything done and watched endless tutorials to learn how to do it all. But then as soon as possible I leveraged my money by outsourcing everything that was not my zone of genius and continued to make decisions fast and towards aggressive growth, which means taking risks. As long as you are committed, go all in with your efforts, execute consistently, and don’t give up, I truly believe your success is inevitable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amandakolbye.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandakolbye/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandakolbye/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMDB7DYhskoqBha8Z3BV9Bw
• Other: Podcast – Made for More Podcast with Amanda Kolbye – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-laptop-lifestyle-podcast/id1529443551

Image Credits
Rachel Lauren with JaciBrands https://jacibrands.com/ (for all photos)