We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amanda Kohal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amanda below.
Hi Amanda, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
[full disclosure I am not a writer but I will do my best to paint the picture]
The long of the short of where I get my resilience from is being told no, multiple times, in every chapter of my life so far.
When I was in my twenties the no’s hit a lot harder and was usually followed by tears or frustration which led to tears (a vicious cycle really). But as I got older, I got better at managing the no’s and turning a lot of them into yeses or pivoting in a direction that was better for me.
I should probably back up a bit. For many years, I worked in the male-dominated tech industry where I was often the only woman in the room or had to charm my way into “the boys club” just to do my job. During this time, I noticed a lot of patterns. A lot of the same biases, responses and interactions. I made note of these and adapted my communication style accordingly. This allowed me to brush a lot of the ‘no’s’ off and to continue moving forward.
When I finally left corporate to venture out on my own, I was met with a whole new set of lessons and letdowns I needed to combat.
There were a lot of ideas that didn’t pan out, opportunities that went to someone else and one business partnership betrayal that was the ultimate “I-am-done-playing-defense-and-navigating-business-like-this”.
After my business took off in 2021, from a series of Instagram stories and DM voice notes to my community, I was looking to scale and start bringing team members into the mix. Now, while I am in social media, I wasn’t sure traditional social media management was where I wanted to continue. At the time I brought someone into the business who was helping with our membership while simultaneously learning from me, all things social media.
We were each approached by a company that was looking for social media management. I was hesitant because I wasn’t sure if that was the direction I wanted to go in, and she didn’t feel like she could do it on her own. We decided to team up. Split everything 50/50 and start managing this client. That client very quickly led to 15 in the span of 4 months and we went from a team of two to eight in a quarter.
Talk about growing too fast, too soon. While the team allowed me to delegate and step away from a lot of the day-to-day management, what I didn’t know was that my “business partner” at the time was having side conversations with team members and clients. Telling them she was starting her agency, using my IP and templates to send proposals all while putting a smile on for me.
You can guess what happened next, but maybe not.
She orchestrated a call with one of my company’s clients and team members where I was met with a really unhappy client. Not because of the work, she had nothing but good things to say about the team and her results, but because of me. As an individual. I sat through twenty minutes of all the reasons this client didn’t like me as a person, in front of my “business partner” and team who said absolutely nothing. This call was followed by the client sending me a 13-minute long video of more reasons why she didn’t like me (she’s a therapist by the way) and my business partner pretending to be shocked.
A few days later, I found a proposal my BP sent to that client (using my templates) to work directly with her. She took two of my team members with her, and it was months later that I found out she had been telling the team I didn’t like them all to start her own agency.
As I write this, it feels like a bad high school movie. But it was real. And my lack of confidence and trust to collaborate that followed took hours of therapy and inner work to bounce back from. But I tell you, I was THIS close to giving up and going back to corporate.
Then, something kinda cool happened. I developed my signature method: The Instasite, went viral on TikTok for it and slowly started to show up on social again. We made 6-figures in four-months and started working with some dream clients.
I was able to share my method on over 15 podcasts last year, had articles written about it and continued to develop the method.
When I catalogue the moments in my over 12 year career in marketing where I was close to giving up, that next level was JUST around the corner. I make a conscious effort to remember that factoid whenever I feel like it would be easier to just blend in, do the easy thing and go back to my old ways of combating the no’s and disappointments.
Patience and an understanding that only you can change you is where I get my resilience from.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Worked in corporate for over 10 years in Marketing. Mostly in the tech industry, but started my journey as a marketing assistant at a winery, worked in education for a while and my last corporate gig was at a big tech company.
I left corporate in fall 2020 after my boss/mentor passed away 🙁
Living in Toronto at the time, my husband and I were navigating working from home in a 550-square-foot condo. We ended up selling a bunch of our stuff, putting the rest in storage and headed to Mexico.
We were only supposed to be there for 3 months, but got “stuck” there when our government shut down flights at one point. Ended up staying there for 6 months, went to live in Kentucky for a month and then back to Canada once the Pandemic calmed down a bit.
It was during my time in Mexico that my business really took off — might have been the backdrop or the very educational videos I was making about how to cut a mango, but whatever the secret sauce was, I finally found my place in my business; building a community and helping others leverage social money to build their business.
I started to build an agency. Had a business partner betray me. Started from scratch when my signature method came to me; The Instasite. After years of experimenting on social media and making note of how online communities are cultivated and nurtured and how they consume content — I literally said out loud “We’re using social media all wrong”.
I created a series of educational videos on TikTok walking through the strategy that went viral (they are still there today under the playlist “The Instasite”). These videos that I filmed in my car completely changed my life.
Now we build Instasites and completely revamp business owners approach to social media. I’ve gotten back into 1:1 with other social media managers and created a commercial license for marketers, SMMs and teams to white label my Instasite method and sell it as a service in their agency.
The next steps for me will be acquiring the accreditation for my method and writing a book on simplifying social media.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Patience Resourcefulness
Confidence
And as a bonus, paying attention to social media patterns
For improvement and development of these skills, its simply consistency. Showing up every day and taking small steps.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
Go all in on your strengths, and outsource the rest to others who are great at those areas.
When you are in the pocket, your community can feel it. You’ll also have a way better chance of being consistent and showing up each day if you enjoy what you do.
It’s important early days of your business to understand the software you’re using and what goes behind each space of the business. As soon as it’s time to outsource, do it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thewolfe.co
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thewolfe.co
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/amandakohal
- Other: TikTok: amandakohal — this is my primary platform
Image Credits
Douglas Joya Photography
