“I built a brand, and it basically ended up as a coven.”

In this episode, I share the realest thing I’ve learned from running this business: connection is the actual ROI.

꩜ What is the Client-to-Bestie Pipeline™?

You won’t find it in any sales funnel course, but the Client-to-Bestie Pipeline™ is real. It’s when your business is so soaked in your authenticity, your people find you... and then don’t wanna leave. They become clients > then collaborators > then full-blown besties. It’s not manufactured, it’s straightup magnetism.

It all starts with mutual admiration (a fangirl moment or two), leads to DMs and voice notes and sometimes ends in a wedding invite to India, or daily check-ins with women on the other side of the world. Yes, all real.

꩜ Relational business isn’t a bonus, it’s the Backbone

When you are the brand, the most powerful thing you can do is be yourself. Polished perfection is out, people crave realnness more than ever. Whether you're DIYing your site or showing up on Instagram, your energy is the thing they feel before they click “shop now”.

“When you show up as You, your people find you.”

It's especially true for solopreneurs: people working with you want to know you. Don’t underestimate how powerful your quirks, your voice and even your native slang can be (I literally named my biz “pearler”).

 

꩜ Showing up with 'Bestie Energy'

Bestie energy in business is about:

✓ Using your actual voice in your copy
✓ Dropping the third-person “we” if it’s just you
✓ Being okay with swearing, slang, or softness - whatever feels most you
✓ Responding like a friend, not like a robot

And if you’re not sure how to write like yourself? Try voice recording your thoughts and transcribing them. You’ll find gold in the rambles.

 

꩜ Real girlies, real Stories

Some of my favourite examples of the pipeline in action:

✧ Lucy: Web designer peer turned voice-memo soulmate. We haven’t met yet... but I’m going to her wedding in India.
✧ Emily: A Scottish Illustrator and template buyer I now speak to every single day. We're basically the same person. 
✧ Mel: My bookkeeper, confidante, queen of my receipts, healer of my money wounds. 
✧ Tiff: A Texas-based copywriter and creative crush I’ve never met IRL, but adore deeply.
✧ Angel: A visibility coach I met on Etsy who guessed my birth chart in a review and has been in my life ever since.

This is the magic of showing up honestly. It’s not a performance, it’s an invitation.

 

꩜ From personal brand to coven

Your website isn’t just a sales tool, it’s an energetic beacon! When you build it from an authentic, intentional place (and ideally with some sparkles and spells), it becomes a portal. That’s why I don’t make beige templates. I make ones that call in the weird, the woo and the wildly aligned.

“These relationships don’t happen by accident. They’re cultivated through showing up, not as a polished persona, but as your whole, human self.”

꩜ Tips for Channeling this energy online

✓  Write your copy in the first person.
✓  Don’t hide the fact that you’re a one-woman show, it’s a selling point.
✓  Mention things people only learn once they’ve worked with you
✓  Lean into your accent, quirks, and cultural slang

 

꩜ Business Is That Deep

For sisters like us, business isn’t separate from who we are. It’s emotional. Energetic. Spiritual. Sacred. Branding and strategy is born of and affected by deeper stuff like identity, healing, and becoming. And when you run your biz through a feminine lens, connection becomes the currency.

“Where capitalism says your network is your net worth, the feminine says community is queen.”

So if you’re ready to start building a business that attracts not just clients, but kindreds, you’re in the right place.

 

꩜ Mentioned in This Episode:

• CHAMELEON Squarespace Template — maximalist, magical, and made for you

• Shakti Leadership — a book for bringing feminine wisdom into business

• @pearler__work on Instagram — come say hi

 

 

꩜ Episode Transcript

Oh my god, hello!
G'day, I'm Katie. I am the Fairy Webmother from PEARLER. I'm a web designer, I make templates for Squarespace, and I also help a lot of people DIY their websites, their brands, and their emails.

This little podcast has been a long time coming. It has haunted my dreams for at least a year and a half, and I'm finally stepping into the podcast studio, pushing down any nerves that I have—armed with coffee and some misplaced confidence.

I'm starting with a topic that may not be so directly related to web design, but I think it's going to be relatable. And I think it might hit for a lot of you.

My biggest achievement from PEARLER has been really surprising. I actually got asked this question the other day when I was doing a little podcast episode for *The Go-To Gal* (you can go and search her on Instagram), and she asked me what my biggest achievement in business was.

The words that started to come out of my mouth even surprised me—because it wasn't ROI, or how many templates I’ve sold, or working for Squarespace, or all those sorts of things.

No, it was what I have coined the *Client-to-Bestie Pipeline™*.

This is basically from being so solidly in my authenticity that I've magnetised such cool people to my business and to my Instagram—or however they found me—and I’ve created besties from them. It's been so natural, so organic, and it’s truly the most delicious part of having this business. It's why I would really hesitate to give it up.

In fact, in some of the hardest times of business where I do think about burning it all to the ground (don’t we all?), I step into gratitude again and remember the people that I have managed to find via PEARLER.

So let’s tuck into that.

We hear it being thrown around a lot that successful businesses are the ones who connect on a more emotional level. In their authenticity. When you *are* your business—when you're a solo entrepreneur, or maybe you have a small team—we know full well at this point that it’s a huge part of how we can be successful as a small business in this day and age.

There has to be a personal element.
There has to be storytelling.
There has to be realness and relatability.

I’m gonna give you a little spoiler alert for where all of these episodes are likely gonna go—and that’s that I will start by talking about business and web design and branding, and I will end up talking about something a lot deeper. Because this is a huge theme not just of this podcast, but of my business as a whole: it *is* that deep. Websites *are* that deep. Your business—especially when you're a solopreneur—is *that* deep. Because it is you.

Now, where I’m going with this is that how to be authentic requires you to know who you are. Which is easier said than done.

I will talk more about this in future episodes because it’s really near and dear to my heart, but self-actualization, self-discovery, therapy—all of these things are gonna make you really feel solid in who you are and how you show up.

There are lots of other ways outside of Instagram that we can still be this magnetic human person that people fall in love with, and I’ll go into that in a more practical sense shortly.

Having a relational business isn’t this “nice to have” anymore. It’s truly the backbone. It’s certainly been true of my business, which is why I love working with solo business owners so much. I don’t really target bigger businesses at all, because it is such an incredible advantage to be able to be personal. To have a 1:1 feeling on your website—even if you aren’t offering yourself and your time directly in your business. That is something that bigger brands will never have.

When you show up as you, *Your People™* find you.

So my client journey will often look a little bit more like a friendship arc. It starts out with this mutual gratitude and admiration—
"OMG I love this, you’re so creative!"
"OMG your business looks so cool!"

A little bit more back and forth when they need help, and that builds trust. Before you know it, we’re sending DM voice notes, we’re fangirling each other on Instagram, and making sure we hype up each other’s posts or whatever. Then it devolves into a full-blown love fest: personal numbers exchanged, regular Zoom calls to actually know about each other’s lives.

I’ll rattle off a few amazing situations that I have cultivated from PEARLER.

Most recently, an invite to a wedding in India (I know, bucket list vibes). Lucy and I have not met! Our voice memo game popped off so hard over the last few years. She’s also a web designer and has bought a few of my templates, and we have such an incredible respect for each other that she felt compelled to invite me to her wedding—and I will be going!

I have my bestie Emily Wylde, who is in Glasgow in Scotland. She bought one of my templates. Again, mutual admiration and the exact pipeline that I just described is how things went with Emily. I met up with her last year in July when I did a little bit of a European summer. So, absolutely adorable. We are in touch essentially every single day.

Also my bookkeeper Mel from The Numbersmiths—she lives about an hour away from me and that is also a friendship that's blossomed. I haven’t done any work for Mel but she has been an incredible support to me. She sees all my receipts. She sees my soul.

I have Tiff in Texas and she’s an incredible copywriter. Again, we have not met. We are dying to see each other. She has a whole family life in her part of the world so it’s down to me to get my ass over there. (Know that your... whatever money you give me... will probably be funding these trips!)

Last but certainly not least, I have to tell you about Angel—who is an amazing Visibility Coach. She found me on Etsy, left me the most incredible review (also guessing my birth chart). She understood my crazy, insane style. She certainly matches my energy in that regard. So we’ve been amazing collaborators for years now, and the work that I create with her for clients is some of the best I’ve ever created.

Whether it’s the emotional support or even on a level of me posting a cute photo and getting the most incredible DMs with thirsty comments (far better than any loitering man from Hinge provides me)... these relationships don’t happen by accident.

They are cultivated through sharing yourself online—not some polished persona.

I am so far from polished. The Instagram facade can really trick us into thinking that we have to show up in a particular way, but people will always value realness over polish.

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I feel more okay with that than ever. I will never be the business that is selling the most templates, because mine are not for everyone. (They are pretty fucking crazy.) So I am so grateful for the fact that it appears that I have so many people that buy my templates and work with me after a real “hell yes” feeling. And that is the real difference.

I’m happy with the cult status, as opposed to clocking mega high numbers.

So, some practical ways to have what I would call *bestie energy* when you show up online is by using your voice as much as possible. What I mean by that is showing up on Instagram with your face and your voice where you can, and writing with your voice.

Where possible, try and avoid third person copy—especially if you are a solopreneur. If you’re not a “we” team, don’t pretend you are. There’s no need! Say it’s you, because that is a huge selling point.

Figure out how you talk in real life versus some strange too-formal version of yourself. I think a lot of us realised this at least a few years ago when we all started thinking about copy a little bit more.

If you’re unsure how to write how you speak, then record your voice and then get it transcribed and see how your voice looks written down. Basically, it’ll sound shocking and there’ll be so many “ums” and “ahhs” and all that kind of stuff.

This was a huge turning point for me because—obviously—I’m Australian, and in real life I use a lot of slang and I’m never putting a “g” on the end of stuff most of the time.

Really think about the lingo that you’re actually saying in real life and how you pronounce it, and if that can be written appropriately.

So, I do swears as well and I don’t go *too* hard but I definitely include some. I’m less likely to do swears on my emails just so they don’t trigger spam filters too much, but I take the risk on Instagram in terms of shadow banning.

Particularly because so many people who find me are in the Northern Hemisphere, the fact that I wasn’t leaning into my Australian-ness was a total missed opportunity. It really made me think about how I used to work for a fashion brand that was based in beautiful Bondi Beach and most of their customers were in the Northern Hemisphere—and they really hammed up the Australian.

So I thought, okay—I just need to lean into this person that I actually am. And the more that I did, the more that it delighted people and it made me feel seen and accepted. It was honestly one of the best decisions I ever made.

I definitely poke fun at it—like in the footer of my website it says “WTF is a PEARLER?” and it links to the Urban Dictionary meaning of what that is. Which is, if you would like to know, a “pearler” is a slang term for “that’s awesome.” “Oh it’s a bloody pearler,” is how you would say it. Which—it’s so embarrassing in a way to say—but at the same time, I had so many people being like: (bad American accent) “Katie, what’s a pearler???” And it would always make me giggle.

So I thought, oh my gosh, it’s a total missed opportunity to not put this on my website.

Surprise. Delight. Be as authentic as possible. And where you are unsure how to be authentic, then do the self-discovery work and really listen to what people say:

What they like about you.
What they find charming and cool.
What they would never have figured out just from looking at your website or your Instagram—that they only realised when they actually talked to you on email or worked with you directly.

Yes, you are building a business, but you're also building connections too.

Where capitalism and the patriarchy and the masculine say “your network is your net worth,” let’s remember that the feminine says: “community is queen.”

All we’re doing is building community.

The more people that know you, love you, get behind you—it naturally creates word of mouth.

I’m so delighted that I have this incredible base of women who shout my name from the rooftops. There’s only so many times they can give me money and work with me! But they can tell everyone they know:

“OMG I’ve worked with Katie before—she’s the coolest chick and you gotta go get one of her templates” or “you gotta go ask her about doing your website for you.”

This is where I get all my leads and my traffic. And so much of the money I make—I can trace it back to these people. That is a huge thing to be able to say.

So I built a brand... and it basically ended up as a coven.