Episode 1
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[00:00:00] November, December, I started to experience a holy plot twist moment where the brand that I'd been building for several years, that I had, like, a five-year plan for, that I knew exactly how I was gonna scale it, sort of just kind of, like, dissolved. It felt like it kinda, like, slipped through my fingers, ~um,~ which led me to the decision to basically retire the program and go back to the drawing board. I pushed forward for a few months trying to feel like, can I still make this work, or is this just God putting me on a different path?
Kaelynn Priest: And ultimately decided, yeah, this is God putting me on a different path.
Hey, my friends. Welcome to the show, By Their Fruits. This is a show that I created after feeling like for years and years as a business owner, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a mom with young kids, just craving a place where I can one, I can be able to express some of the thoughts on my [00:01:00] heart about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and also running my own business.
Kaelynn Priest: But also, I just feel like a collective craving for this kind of conversation, where you probably already follow other people who are... have podcasts or content they're creating about Christian business owners, which is amazing, and that's what I've done for the last several years. But I still have just felt myself craving conversations from the lens of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Like, I wanna be able to talk about stories from the Book of Mormon that are influencing my business and my faith. I wanna talk about church history things that I love that are so deeply meaningful to me as a business owner. I wanna be able to use some of the same language and verbiage that you really only understand if you are really a member.
And so that's the whole goal of this podcast. But I've also found for myself that, you know, the, the core reason why I started a business nine years ago the first time was primarily for [00:02:00] financial reasons. But in this journey that's gone over almost a decade now, I have found some fruit as a result of creating my business that is not at all related to the financial means that have been created.
Things like my life that has changed, the person that I have become in the process of creating a business, ~um,~ the person that I've become in the process of growing a family while also growing a business, the employees that I've had, the contractors that I've had that I've been able to support because of my business, opportunities to network, people that I've met, speaking opportunities, ~um,~ a relationship with the Savior that has developed as a result of running my business.
And so all of those things to me feel like, you know the verse, "And by their fruits, you shall know them." To me, that is one of the verses that I can't think of a better verse that captures the reason why I do all of this, the reason why I run my business. And I would [00:03:00] bet if you are listening to this, that probably resonates for you, too.
Because- The work that your business is producing, the fruit that it's producing is affecting you, it's affecting your business, it's affecting your home, it's affecting your family, your ward family, your neighborhood, your discipleship. And so for me, my business has become so much more than a source of income.
So on this show today, I wanna tell a little bit of my backstory if you've never met me and you're like, "Who is this Kaylin chick, and what makes her qualified to be able to talk about business from this kind of standpoint?" I also wanna answer the question some of you might have about what the heck is Kaylin up to?
Because this podcast is kind of the opening of the door of a new, my own little plot twist moment, which we're gonna talk a lot about today. I'm calling this episode Holy Plot Twist, which is a little bit of a play on words as in like, "Holy plot twist, what is happening? This is chaos. This is crazy."
[00:04:00] And also, holy plot twist, as in like sacred, significant, meaningful plot twist. So I'll talk a little bit more about some of the plot twists that I have been a participant in in my journey of growing a business. And finally, I also wanna talk a little bit to the person who is going through a pivot right now.
It might be a huge pivot like mine, where you are, like, completely changing who your ideal person that you're talking to is, or it might be just a small one where you're creating a new offer in your business or something like that. But I wanna talk about some of my favorite plot twist moments from the scriptures, and just sort of bring it home with this theme that this happens a lot in God's plan.
That this thing that happens where everyone thinks they know where the story is headed, and then God does something nobody expects, is a pattern that you can expect. If you, if you want to not expect it, you can keep being surprised, but th- I have found that this is just a [00:05:00] pattern that God works by. And so instead of continually being surprised or distressed by it, I just embrace it.
I'm like, "This is so interesting. Holy plot twist," right? So let's dive into it. First, let me tell a little bit about my backstory. I'll try to not make this too long, 'cause like I said, this is... I'm gonna cover about a decade of ground here. But my family is a very entrepreneurial family. My three older brothers are all either founders or co-founders of very, very successful tech startups, which is super cool.
My dad's a very successful entrepreneur, and so dinner conversations around the dinner table as I was a kid growing up sounded like conversations about investments and profit margins and investors and the stock market and things like that. So it's sort of just a language that I grew up with, and in high school I specifically remember being so annoyed by that.
And then by the time I got to college, I went to BYU, by the time I got there, I was like, "Oh, my goodness. I see the hype." [00:06:00] I get the addiction to running a business, and like I said, I'd been watching my family participate in these businesses. And while I was... Towards the tail end of my experience in high school, my parents actually started a picture frame business that they ran quite literally out of our house, where the garage was the shipping department and my parents' office was, like, the customer service office.
They had a couple of employees that would come in every day. So I got a first-row seat to watching them grow an e-commerce business, and I watched them, you know, develop their products. I watched them work on their marketing. I watched them hire people and transition through lots of different amazing high school young men who would come over and help package and ship products.
So super cool experience to watch that. And as I was starting my family, Nate and I got married, I was thinking to myself, "It would be super cool... You know, I've watched my parents do this. I bet that I could run an e-commerce business like [00:07:00] this, where, you know, I'm outsourcing the production of the product and basically drop shipping it, shipping it to customers.
I bet that I could do that. The only thing is that I want my product to not include glass of any kind, and every single product needs to be the same size." Because my parents' picture frame, one of their core products was custom picture frames. So they were making these gigantic picture frames, teeny, teeny, tiny picture frames, every, like, any size in between, which required them to not only create a custom frame, but also custom packaging for every single order, which is just a really cool niche, and it worked for them.
But I was like, "I don't want to run my business that way." And so, so as I was getting ready to... I was pregnant with my first baby. I was shopping for baby products. I discovered these wooden baby gyms on Etsy, and it was out of my price point. But I was like, "I bet I could make one of those. It's, it basically looks to me like five pieces of wood f- that I bet that I could get at Home Depot."
And I was correct. I [00:08:00] did go get five pieces of wood from Home Depot, and turned it into a wooden baby gym. And then after that, I thought to myself, "If other people are selling them for this much, I bet I could sell them for that much, and make them myself, and have a pretty healthy profit margin, and ship them from my parents' basement," where Nate and I were living at the time, "and make some money while we're trying to get established on our feet as a family."
We wanted to buy a home., Nate and I were both finishing our degrees, and so obviously financial stress was very much on our minds. And so I was looking for an opportunity to sort of cushion that stress a little bit. So after that, ~um,~ that became my brand, Poppy Seed Play. And I launched the products on Etsy.
A few years later, I put products on our own website, and then I started drop shipping for retailers like Nordstrom, and Buy Buy Baby, and, ~um,~ West Elm. Super, super cool. And I'll talk a- I'm sure a lot about that in this [00:09:00] podcast about how none of those ideas were my own. They were all inspiration that was given to me, either through people who reached out to me to give me ideas, or through answers to prayers, or quite literally answers that I got while I was reading the Book of Mormon, which is why I've always wanted to be able to talk about entrepreneurship from this angle.
So Poppy Seed Plate grew and scaled, and was a pretty amazing source of pretty passive income. I was spending maybe five to 10 hours per week on it, and making what to me felt like a pretty amazing s- salary, basically. So after a few years of that, I started to learn about this course creation industry.
~Um,~ the course industry was super interesting to me. Just imagine me, a girl who's in her late 20s, who is spending 100 grand plus on inventory every year, going, "Oh, wow, I could use the same skills that I've learned to build my product business [00:10:00] to build a course business, and have the cost of goods sold be zero dollars?"
That was very interesting to me. So then I went down this road of learning how to create and market and sell courses, which I absolutely fell in love with. I created a course for Etsy sellers to help them learn how to sell products on Etsy. And then people started to come and ask me, "How are you selling your course so well?
Like, what are you doing that's making it work?" And so then I started sort of consulting with and mentoring course creators and coaches to help them create their own courses, digital products, group programs, ~um,~ which was just so much fun. So much fun. And that honestly kind of led me up to this past, mm, October, November.
I had my fourth baby, Freddy, in July, and then kind of, like, moved back into business slowly, and then something changed in, like... For me, I started feeling it in, like, November, December. [00:11:00] And I had, I have still not really heard anybody talking about this, but I do think it's very real, and I do wanna talk about it, because a lot of my listeners have been course creators, digital product creators, coaches.
And I felt a huge change in the market b- about last fall, where things that I had done for years that sold easily, that were easy to get people to be excited about, all of a sudden just, it felt like it went crickets. It wasn't quite that sudden, but my suspicion is that that's because of AI, that, you know, people didn't rely on informational products anymore, which for someone who sells informational products and also mentors people who sell informational products is a big problem.
And so, ~um,~ like I said, November, December, I started to experience a holy plot twist moment where the b- the brand [00:12:00] that I'd been building for several years, that I had, like, a five-year plan for, that I knew exactly how I was gonna scale it, sort of just kind of, like, dissolved. It felt like it kinda, like, slipped through my fingers, ~um,~ which led me to the decision to basically retire the program and go back to the drawing board.
Which that's me basically summarizing the last seven to eight months in a few sentences, and I just wanna say that that was really difficult. It was really painful. It was really sad for me. Like, I've spent years and so much money, as a side note, invested into this brand, and so much of my heart and brain and soul was just poured into this resource that I thought really was gonna be, like, my thing.
~Um,~ the, the program that I'm referring to I called The Greenhouse, and it turned into, like, a copywriting mentorship where I helped business owners write really good copy that sells, and as you probably know, that has become a different industry because of AI. [00:13:00] So, ~um~ I pushed forward for a few months trying to feel like, can I still make this work, or is this just God putting me on a different path?
And ultimately decided, yeah, this is God putting me on a different path. Which like I said, was... It required me to shed some layers of my identity, and, ~um,~ it bruised my ego a little bit. But, ~um,~ yeah, I just kind of let myself wade through that emotional experience. I don't wanna overstate it too much here, but because we are getting to the plot twist moment.
But I guess I'm sharing that just in case there's anyone listening who has felt that sort of dark night of business before, or maybe you're feeling it right now. If you're feeling it right now, I just wanna give you a big virtual hug from me, because it's so lonely. Like, there's no one you can really go talk to about this.
Like, if you, if your minister comes over to talk to you and minister to you, and you pour out your heart and [00:14:00] soul about what you're working on in your business, I promise you their eyes are gonna glaze over. I've tried to do it before, but it's just kind of a different world that we live in. Especially if you run your own business, it's hard for other people to be able to understand or relate if they haven't done it themselves.
So I'm here saying I have done that myself. I do absolutely understand the emotions and the, the kind of, the emotional weight that's wrapped up in it. And so that's why I'm saying I just want to give you a big virtual hug if you are going through that right now or have gone through that. But then we get to the plot twist moment.
So those of you who've been watching me over the last few months are, have watched me shift my entire brand from talking to Christian business owners to talking to LDS business owners. And I, you may have heard me talk about this, that I don't quite have, I, I, I for sure don't have the full five-year picture of what this...
I'm, like, holding my hands up like, this, whatever this is, is [00:15:00] supposed to be. ~Um,~ my business model has always been that I say a prayer in the morning, and I ask for the one thing that God wants me to do today, and then I go do that thing, and that is quite literally my entire business plan right now. So I don't know what it's gonna turn into, but this podcast is an example of something that didn't exist even in my brain a couple of months ago.
So I'm just living on a prayer right now, but feeling so grateful for ~Um,~ the messages that I've received from people who are resonating with the kind of content that I'm creating, who feel like it's a blessing to them. I feel like it's a blessing to me. ~Um,~ the ultimate reason why I decided to shift in this direction is I, I was journaling one morning about what business would I work on if I knew I wasn't gonna make any money, and it was this, this brand of LDS business owners, virtual support, podcast content.
Like, this is the stuff that I'd be writing about even if I made no money ever. So this business, I don't even know [00:16:00] if it's gonna be a business. There is not a monetization plan right now. ~Um,~ but I am-- I just feel excited and grateful to be able to create this kind of content for the person who out there, the person out there who probably, like me, has been craving this kind of conversation.
So I wanna talk about, finally, let's talk a little bit more about the person who's going through the pivot right now. Maybe you are like me and you are pivoting out of the course creation, ~um,~ informational, educational product industry. I, I just wanna say as a quick side note, I do think it's possible to still make it in the educational product industry.
I just think it looks very different than it did in 2022 when you... For me, I bought Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy, and my digital course did really well in the first year, and basically every piece of information that was inside of that course you could get just by doing a quick ChatGPT search now.
So I do think it's possible to still make it. I think it looks like, ~um,~ including a lot of your [00:17:00] support. I think it looks like including lots of demonstrations that are harder to get out of AI. ~Um,~ so I don't think the entire industry is like, has completely dissolved. But for me, for me, it is, the industry is, is...
The path is a dead end for me. So, ~um~ I wanna talk a little bit about some holy plot twist moments from the scriptures, and I- it would be impossible for me to choose some of my favorites. I tried to choose some of my favorites today, but when you really start to think about it, that's basically what the scriptures are.
They're just a series of these plot twist stories where, you know, like I said, where everyone thinks they know what's gonna happen. They have a, a picture in their minds how they expect it to go, and then God does something totally different, totally unexpected. So the first story that came to my mind was the Anti-Nephi-Lehies from the Book of Mormon, and I really like to try to make the Book of Mormon stories, well, any scripture stories feel [00:18:00] really like I can sort of put myself in the scene, put myself in the shoes.
And so imagine this group of people who have just converted to essentially be members of the church, and they were Lamanites, and they're converted, and they make this covenant with God as a sign to him that they are converted, that they will never shed blood again, to the point where they, to actually show God, to symbolize it to him, they bury their weapons in the ground.
And then not long after that, an army comes to destroy them, and everyone is expecting this pretty, pretty rough battle. But instead of fighting, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies go out to meet the army, and they fall to the ground and they start praying. And instead of defending themselves, they subject themselves to whatever God's will is for them, and that's when the plot twist comes.
Because the attacking soldiers are so moved by what they see, they're so impressed by the faith and the [00:19:00] courage and the willingness of these people to die rather than break a covenant, that they also drop their weapons and are converted. And Talk about what an amazing plot twist to witness. Something that nobody would've expected, and has become one of the greatest conversion stories in the Book of Mormon, where thousands of people were converted as a result.
Another one of my favorite stories is the lost 116 pages of the Book of Worm- Book of Mormon manuscript. When I... I- It's difficult for me to put myself in Joseph's shoes, but when I imagine losing that big of a chunk from a manuscript that I'd worked so hard on, that I felt so, like, deeply entrusted by God to care for.
Like I said, it's hard for me to fully imagine what that feels like, but I imagine that being very distressing. And, and on top of that, also being fearful of what's gonna happen to those 116 pages. Are they going to be used against us [00:20:00] in the future if they get in the wrong hands? But the reason why I love this story is because of two verses inside of the Book of Mormon.
~Um,~ the really cool thing about this is that God prepared a backup plan, like, centuries ago. He knew this was gonna happen, and he was prepared for it. And, ~um,~ so there's a verse in Nephi when he, when God commands Nephi to make the second, ~um,~ record, the second set of plates. Nephi literally says, "The Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in Him, which purpose I know not."
So he's like, "Okay, this is a weird request from Heavenly Father, but He asked me to, so here I go. I'm doing it." And then towards the end of the Book of Mormon, when Mormon is compiling the record together and he includes both sets, he's like, I, he... This is what the verse says: "I do this for a wise purpose, for thus it whispereth me according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord, which is in me."
Like, I trust that God has a, something great in story f- in store for [00:21:00] this. I don't know why I'm doing this, but here you go. And how cool that God had literally prepared another record covering that same time period for the manuscript that would be lost. Talk about a holy plot twist And then, you know, I s- like I said, this is basically the entirety of the scriptures are stories like this.
We have Joseph in the Old Testament who's sold as a slave and ends up becoming Egypt's ruler and saving the brothers who sold him into slavery from the famine. ~Um,~ we have David, who's a shepherd boy who ends up taking down a giant slayer and protecting himself and the other people. We have Esther, who's an orphan girl who turns out to become the person who saves an entire nation.
We have Paul, who is hunting Christians to kill them, who ends up becoming a Christian missionary. [00:22:00] We have Lazarus, who died and was dead for four days before Jesus came back to raise him from the tomb, who is raised from the tomb And then we also have the Savior himself. Talk about the ultimate plot twist where he's crucified and dies and then raises himself three days later.
So I'm pointing out all these examples again to help you see that these, f- to me, I'll speak for myself, sometimes these plot twist moments feel like everything is broken. Everything has gone wrong. Everything is hard. Nothing is going right. When in fact, when we look at all of these patterns of this plot twist theme happening through the scriptures, I think it's pretty safe to say that this is part of God's plan.
I think he really likes us... Well, I think he recognizes our tendency as his human children to get ideas in our heads about w- what, how we think things are gonna go. And then I [00:23:00] think he really likes to interrupt the process. I think he likes to show us who's in charge, and I think that he likes to help us remember who's in charge.
And sometimes the only way to experience that lesson is through experience. And that's a- at least how it's felt for me. So like I said, if you are experiencing your own plot twist moment right now, I hope that you can start to look for the reasons why this might be exactly what was supposed to happen.
Start to look for the dots to connect. Start to look for the reasons why this is a holy, sacred, meaningful, important plot twist, instead of one of those ones that's feels like everything is going wrong and everything is falling through the cracks and breaking, which as I mentioned before, is kind of how I had felt in the last few months in different moments.
So in closing, I want to invite [00:24:00] you to really be patient with yourself if you are in one of these moments, and trust because of the volume of stories that we have where everything ends up turning out okay, that that will be the end of your story too. And I feel like I can speak to that a little bit because I am kind of in the middle of that experience myself, where something had to fall apart for something, I hope, even better to come together.
And that seems to be, like, a pattern that God lives by, and something that we can watch for and expect to have happen. I hope you loved this episode. And like I said, this is the first episode of this- show. This is the flagship episode. So if you would share it with a friend, one of your business besties who's also a member of the church who might need to hear this message, please send it to them.
I would love if you would review the show. I would also love to hear your thoughts about it. Feel free to send me an email, send me a DM. If you have any additional commentary you want to add to the [00:25:00] conversation, I would love to hear. I'd love to share about it. And I'm just so grateful to have you listening to the show.
Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for being here, and I hope that you look forward to amazing episodes coming in the next few months that will be by myself and by some other amazing guests who I have lined up for you to hear from, amazing business owners who are changing the world because of their fruits.
So have an amazing week, and I'll see you guys next time
