Free Time with Jenny Blake 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy
Revenue Decline Triggered Pivot
- Khe Hy noticed a sharp revenue decline combined with increasing costs in early 2023 signaling business trouble.
- This led to his realization that his healthy January launch forecast was missed by 40%, forcing urgent decisions.
The Pandemic Wave Illusion
- Khe Hy drank his own 'Khe is awesome' Kool-Aid riding the pandemic wave of success.
- But the wave ended, forcing him to confront the real difficulties of entrepreneurship.
Beware Borrowing Other Goals
- Borrowing others' arbitrary goals, like hitting seven figures, can disconnect entrepreneurs from what genuinely matters.
- This contributed to Khe Hy losing sight of his priorities amid growth pressures.
“How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” —Ernest Hemingway
That’s the kick-off quote from returning guest Khe Hy’s recent pivot-in-progress big reveal, taking us behind the scenes of his business in a recent post titled, “The $645,099 business pivot.” Khe is the founder of RadReads and former Wall Street managing director.
Khe returns to the pod today (as our first three-peat Free Time guest) to share his experience from the belly of the Pivot beast. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Khe’s earlier Free Time appearances, linked in the Resources section below and in this Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time.
More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe.
🌟3 Key Takeaways:
- You’re not alone: Don’t feel bad if you caught a momentum wave during the pandemic that has vanished since. It can feel like you’ve captured success in a bottle, and it will continue just the way you’re experiencing it now, but the same circumstances rarely last.
- Borrowing other people’s goals can lead to chasing arbitrary success metrics and other people’s work-life balance. Instead, follow the fun! Ultimately, it will be much more sustainable.
- There’s freedom and surrender in openly sharing your process. Many entrepreneurs are not straightforward about how difficult it can be to maintain and grow a business, and being outwardly transparent helps you be inwardly honest about what you really want to accomplish.
📝Permission: To feel. To cry. To fully experience and talk about what you’re going through. Your humanity in the situation is not at odds with who and how you want to be as a founder and CEO—they are perfectly intertwined.
✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Get quiet: What is it that you truly want? What part of my business is driven by ego and “borrowing other people’s goals,” and what part is driven by the pure magic of it? For any friction area where you feel stuck or drained, take a page out of Khe’s business playbook and “follow the fun.” What would following the fun tell you to do next?
📘Books Mentioned:
- Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers
🔗Resources Mentioned:
- Khe on the web, Instagram: @radreadsco, TikTok: @radreadsco, Twitter, LinkedIn
- Courses: Supercharge Your Productivity, $10K Work Accelerator, Life Operating System, Jenny’s Free Time Business Operations Dashboard
- Rad Reads: The Magic of Doing $10,000 Per Hour Work
🎧Related Podcast Episodes:
- Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time
- 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson
💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »
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