2199 - Capturing Authentic Engagement - The New Era of Marketing in 2025 with Profitable Impact Academy's Kat Halushka

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Kat Halushka. Kat, you are the co-founder of the Profitable Impact Academy. You're found on the web at profitableimpactacademy.com. Kat, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really, I've been waiting for this one. Yay, me too. I'm a fire of this audience. Let's share some juicy details. Oh, good. I like that. I like what I'm hearing already. Before we get into that, Kat, I'd love to know what you're into when you're not working or not working on yourself. What are you doing for fun lately or what have you been into lately? Josh, I think I'm just about as trendy as it gets.

1:48So for me, I'm all about pickleball nowadays. I'm gunning for my 5.0. I'm playing at least once a day for a couple of hours. I'm getting my skills fine-tuned. I have a vision board of me at Olympics, even though it's not an Olympic sport just yet. But we'll see. We'll see. Wait a minute. I missed it. It kind of clipped out. Which sport are we talking about? Pickleball. Oh, my God. You and everybody else that I interview on this podcast. I think you are in the past few weeks. And my friends who might be listening to multiple episodes here can verify and vouch for this. Okay, here we go. Talking about pickleball again.

2:27How long ago did you get into it? Uh, probably about like a year and a half, two years ago. Uh, I actually just accidentally tried it out in my local gym here and ended up falling in love. Honestly, it's one of those things that I felt like I could really start getting into. Uh, I've been on a health journey myself, really working on, you know, getting myself healthy, getting my body into the shape. And, uh, yeah, it's, it was easy enough that anybody could start and it was challenging enough that it actually get the sweat on. So I found that that was entertaining. It really activates your brain.

3:02You can really strategize. It could be challenging physically. It just got the whole, you know, nine yards of everything that fitness should be. It should really capture you, right? Yeah. The social aspect, you just get to do something fun together. It's everyone's supportive, everyone having a good time. And, but yeah, you're, you're right. I mean, that's, you know and I say this I mean it's just such an easy game to pick up and you get the you get quick endorphins out of it because you're like whoa okay this is actually pretty easy to volley back and forth and now the rules are a little cuckoo sometimes but that's all right that you you can get you can catch up with them the most important thing is just kind of practicing pinging it back and forth right so yeah and I gotta say there's only one problem with pickleball it's so addicting yes right you can't just stop at one pedal yeah now you gotta choose the bag all the gadgets everything so you're in Edmonton so your court time in Orlando so I don't know of any local in my area indoor courts I would imagine you're all most of yours are indoor yes we have we have outdoor for the summer season however short that is but then most of the time I I would play indoor to control the elements.

4:20And I have played in the winter. I might have tried it a little bit while it's snow raining kind of thing. Oh my, just make sure there's no ice on that court because it's already - Yeah, definitely. It's the number one thing is don't backpedal and don't trip on yourself and you'll do just fine. Well, Kat, let's talk about Profitable Impact Academy. What do you do? So really Profitable Impact Academy started out as a business coaching academy that supported people was online marketing. And I gotta tell you, Josh, it really escalated from there and very quickly because we really paid attention to what is it that people actually come in and asking us about.

4:59And it was always the same things. Number one is how are we hosting such successful events? And then number two is how does someone become a speaker who actually converts multiple six figures from stage? And so we pivoted our business very quickly into that direction and started teaching people exactly the thing that we did to pass our seven-figure mark, is how do you use speaking as a marketing tool and how do you convert clients from every audience? All right. Well, it's 2025. Give us a state of the union for marketing. Look, I think it definitely was pushed into progressing, right? Like where you used to go to local events and you had this very standard image for a speaker, like someone, you know, in a, you know, semi-business casual kind of like button up shirt or women in red dresses is very typical images.

5:56that's gone speakers don't have that one image anymore but besides that public speaking was very much forced to go online where between webinars and challenges we also are now very very entrenched into social media right people just consume so much more social media content now than they ever did before on on average when when you look at any person their phone is constantly with them. That doesn't leave their pocket, right? Or their hand. And so they're consuming anywhere between one and four hours a day worth of content. Why not be that person in that content? Yeah. And I mean, you know, every second there's like a billion new pieces of content being uploaded.

6:44So, you know, I think a lot of us have had that frustration for like, if you ask someone, I think if you ask the typical business owner, you know, how's your social media going, they're like, I'm doing it, but I don't know that I'm necessarily getting anything out of it. Because it's like adding a thimble full of water to a sea of noise that's out there. So obviously, I think the concern then, if you're advocating for spending more time on social or sharing more content on social, is how do we break through? And I am a huge advocate when it comes to capturing, not creation. So social media shouldn't be something that overtakes your whole business.

7:27Most of the entrepreneurs don't go into business to become content creators, right? And in the same time, it becomes a necessary evil of business nowadays is where you need to start showing up. Otherwise, it's almost like an open sign on the window in a coffee shop. If it's not lit up, the doors are closed. So for those of you on social media, on your pages, if I go there and there hasn't been a post in the last five years, I think that business is closed, right? So there needs to be some kind of content produced. And if you follow the rule of capture, not create, you're just capturing what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.

8:02And that's what it comes to. Like Josh, you and I are having a conversation right now. You're recording a podcast. I'm recording my social media content. This is going to be just taken by my team and turn into a bunch of reels, content, training, something that I can share with my audience. And it's part entertaining. So when you look at people and how content in generally progressed over the last years, content very much turned into having to be this educational piece, training, step-by-step instructions, like you have to follow the system and the process and the framework more into a movie-like.

8:39So I always picture myself like I'm in Hollywood and I'm the star. And what is it that I can share with my audience, people who follow me right now, that I'm doing? It doesn't have to have any kind of context or subcontext to it. And obviously, you want to capture with purpose, right? So it needs to be something that would interest your audience. Most of it is really designed to connect on that person-to-person level. I'm pretty lucky in my business. I shifted from having coffee dates and million meetings and one-to-ones a long time ago. And that's the way to do it is really step into whether it's in front of a camera or just in front of the room, right?

9:22So public speaking, whether it's virtual or in person, it's speaking to many people at the same time. And that's what makes me love it so much is people can be engaged with me and I don't have to get to know every single person in that audience. So they get to watch me, know me, know what I'm about, resonate with me, love my stories, see themselves within my stories, know exactly what I do. And when they're ready, they can reach out to work with me. Yeah. You know, I like that. You know, one thing that's, I think kind of, it just doesn't feel great is when people share social media content and they're always kind of like low key selling.

10:02It's like, to me, that feels desperate. I get that people have to do business and that sort of thing. And maybe I'm just speaking for myself and maybe I'm the weird one, you know, but, but I don't mind, I think what you're talking about, you know, the personal side of things, Go ahead and, you know, tell me what you're doing or whatever, you know, but I think of social media as more of like a water cooler, as opposed to, you know, you know, walking through a carnival where people, you know, people are barking at me and selling stuff at me constantly. Like that is the opposite of what I want on social if I'm going to spend any time there.

10:41exactly and not to say you can definitely share very useful information tips some of the training on how you do what you do because after all there is a mix of entertainment and education when it comes to those platforms some of the my favorite creators that i follow are people who create how-to videos and from anything like how to set up my camera to how to post on social media to how to put together a dresser. Like I just, it's still useful. And I always look at it as when it comes to creating content or capturing content in my case, right? For your audience, you got to kind of like divide it into 80-20.

11:23It's always 80-20 rule, right? 80 % of the content should be just you capturing what you're doing, having that real conversation with someone, right? And 20 % of the content is designed to drive people to take action. So this is where what you're talking about is very much telling people how they can work with you and giving them the next step. But that is a pretty big difference between going to someone's profile and every video you scroll, they're like, sign up, sign up. Oh, don't do that. That's like being that me monster guy who shows up at a mixer and slapping business cards in everyone's hand.

11:58And so if you ever need an insurance sales guy, I'm here. You know, like, it's like everyone's like, as soon as that dude leaves that it's like, you know, we're kind of like warning other people, like, watch out for that guy. It's going to sell at you because it's just awkward. Right. And I see that, you know, how did, and I see you talking a little bit about speaking as well, like public speaking, that sort of thing. Do you mind sharing a little bit about how that fits within all this? Yeah. So speaking, whether it's virtual or in person really doesn't make very much of a difference. What we specifically focus on is having public speaking as a marketing tool in businesses.

12:39And so we help our business owners put together the one talk that they use over and over again in order to convert their ideal clients into their offers. So it's a little bit different, right? You can speak to inspire and then you can speak to convert. so we specifically help them to speak to convert so anything from techniques and how to become a better speaker right down to how to make a call to action in a more authentic way so your audience doesn't feel like you're pitch slapping them yeah i don't do that we don't need that we don't want that uh but we like kat i think we like other people and i really liked your comment of you know it's just like you know do what you do so that other people can see themselves in you, or you said something to the, you know, you said some mention of that.

13:27I really like that, right? And it's like, we're proxy for other people's fears, concerns, thoughts, you know, that sort of thing. I like that aspect of it. Kat, tell me specifically how Profitable Impact Academy works, like how do you engage with folks? Yeah, so we always start from very simple. People follow us on social media or we meet them in person, whichever way, a lot of the times people just see me speak somewhere. So I still am pretty attached to speaking in person. I just there's just something about the energy in the room. So I do a lot of in personal speaking all over the world. And generally, we will have conversations with people, they love it, they very much resonate with my story.

14:12And by the way, everybody has a story to share, right? Everyone, every single person. And so I find that a lot of those stories come out at those one-to-one conversations. But we do have a coaching program. It's called Impact Maker, where we specifically help people develop those tools and implement them in their business. So that's kind of our core thing. And I got to tell you, like when it comes to using the tools like public speaking, it's just so versatile, right? Like, look at us, we're doing a podcast. This is going to be turned into social media. Then this could be done as an in-person interview at a summit or a conference.

14:53Then you can turn it into a talk. You can create an event. But our main thing that people absolutely love about what we do is we host an event called Profitable Speaker Bootcamp. So Profitable Speaker Bootcamp is a two-day workshop. And when I say workshop, it's not one of those marketing, like we tell you it's a workshop, but you just listen to us for two days. It's actually a workshop. So this is where we have work done. Yeah. Get work done, work on the messaging, really develop themselves to understand why they're doing what they're doing and start putting together that one talk that they can use.

15:32So we have people coming out with stories. They come out with stages. At last event, our audience secured over 140 stages right in the room. So, and they have somewhere to share that message, which is my favorite part, because for some of them, they were crippled with fear of standing in front of the room at the beginning. And at the end, we watch them transform into sharing their story to an audience where it's the most captivating thing that I've ever seen. So that transformation is what I live for. This is why I created my business. Yeah. ProfitableImpactAcademy.com is the website. Kat Halushka, you are, by the way, your speaker, business coach, bestselling author, and co-founder of Profitable Impact Academy.

16:26Thank you so much, Kat, for joining us. Thanks, Josh. It was so much fun. I'm excited to connect with your audience.

17:00Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

17:43Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.