Starter Girlz Podcast

The Weatherproof Business Formula: Lessons from a Global Tech Entrepreneur (with Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud, Business Coach & SaaS Founder)

• Jennifer Loehding • Season 8 • Episode 116

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Some businesses thrive no matter the market — Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud knows why. As a global tech entrepreneur, co-founder of a SaaS company, and creator of the Weatherproof Business Formula, she has built companies that grow, adapt, and scale.

In this episode of Starter Girlz, Jennifer Loehding sits down with Ksenia to hear about her journey from growing up in the Soviet Union to coaching over a thousand executives and creating resilient business strategies that help entrepreneurs succeed.

This conversation explores the realities of entrepreneurship, the evolving definition of success, and the lessons Ksenia has learned about resilience, adaptability, and building systems that enable businesses to thrive. You’ll hear discussion-based insights on vision, strategy, leveraging technology and AI, starting lean, niching effectively, and maintaining balance as you build a thriving business.

⭐ What You’ll Learn in This Episode
✅ How resilience and vision shape business success
✅ Lessons from scaling a global SaaS company
✅ Patterns in business that can form repeatable systems
✅ Insights gained from mentoring  on strategy, mindset, and frameworks
✅ Leveraging technology, AI, and no-code tools to support growth
✅ Starting lean and validating ideas before scaling
✅ Niching down to focus on the right customer segment
✅ Balancing work and life to prevent burnout
✅ Using systems and technology to work smarter, not harder

📘 About Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud
Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud is a serial tech entrepreneur, business coach, and co-founder of a global SaaS company. She is the creator of the Weatherproof Business Formula, a four-step system that helps entrepreneurs build resilient, scalable businesses. Ksenia has coached over a thousand executives and helps business owners turn patterns she’s discovered into repeatable systems for sustainable growth.
🔗 Guest Website: https://kseniavotinova.com

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Jennifer Loehding (00:45)
Welcome to another episode of the Starter Girlz podcast.

am your host Jennifer Loehding and wherever you are tuning in today, we are so glad to have you. Alright, so I'm going to open up with this today about my guest. She grew up in the Soviet Union, began her career in Paris and followed a path that looked like success from the outside until life took her to Bali where everything shifted.

It was there that she realized she didn't want to keep building businesses for others. She wanted to build something of her own. That decision led her to co-found a global SaaS company that has been profitable since day one and is still thriving 15 years later. Along the way, she learned what most entrepreneurs never do, how to build a business that can withstand uncertainty, disruption, and growth without burning out.

or betting everything. And so I've gotten to chat with her for a little bit. I'm so excited to chat with her today. And you guys gotta find out where she's calling, wait till you find out where she's calling in from today. So that's gonna be fun. But before I do bring her on, I do wanna do a quick shout out to our sponsor.

And with that, I do wanna make a mention to head on over to startergirlz.com say this every single week and why? Because one, it's a great place to catch up on any episodes that you have missed.

You can also sign up for our community newsletter, stay in the know of what's coming up and going out. And then of course, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, or maybe you're right in the thick of it, and you wanna find out what your number one success block is that may be hindering your success right now, I do have a two minute quiz over there that you can take, it's kind of fun. And it will tell you what may be keeping you from moving to that next step. And so head on over to startedgirls.com, and as I always say, do your thing.

All right, so let's get our guest on the show. So much fun today. Okay, so today I am joined by

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud I love her name and I'm gonna let her, she's gonna have so much fun chatting with her today. She's a serial tech entrepreneur, co-founder of Lee VPN and business coach at NCN. Ksenia has over 20 years of experience in tech and has coached more than 1,100 executives from leading global companies on building profitable, resilient business strategies, or excuse me, yeah, strategies.

She is the creator of the Weatherproof Business Formula, a system designed to help founders build technology-enabled businesses that remain stable and profitable over time.

Her work focuses on helping women in tech turn ideas into validated businesses without leaving their corporate careers. so, Cynthia, welcome to the show. I am so excited to chat with you today.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (04:08)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited as well.

Jennifer Loehding (04:11)
It's gonna be fun. Okay, so tell our listeners, because I did tell them where you were calling in, so tell us where you are calling in from today so they know how special this episode is.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (04:22)
Well, I'm calling in from Paris, France. And today it's no longer snowing here, though. Last week Paris was covered in snow probably for the first time in a decade. Yeah, and everything shut down.

Jennifer Loehding (04:35)
Really? my goodness, wow.

How much snow did you guys get?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (04:41)
Probably few inches only but it was enough for everything to stop Yeah

Jennifer Loehding (04:43)
Enough though that you don't get it, right? That's

so awesome. Well, how beautiful. think I shared with you, my daughter got to go to Paris, I guess, not last year, but the year before when she did a European excursion up there and she had so much fun in the city. Paris and Germany are on my bucket list of travel destinations and mostly because

my family is both German and French. So they are both on my places wanting to visit. so, yay, how fun. Which is gonna lead me to the first part of what we're gonna talk about today because I want you to start from the beginning and walk us through your journey basically from your early career to what ultimately led you to building your own company. Can you take us back there?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (05:34)
Yes, of course. Well, as I always say, Paris is always a good idea. So you should absolutely come. And I arrived here more than 20 years ago to do my master's degree in business. And then I landed my first job in FinTech, which we call today, used to be called just a small business doing software. And

Jennifer Loehding (05:42)
Thank you.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (06:00)
Working there for five years, I learned a lot and was progressing very fast in my career because the company was so small, just about 20 people. And then I realized that I want to have an MBA degree and that's how I ended up doing it at INSEAD, ⁓ which is based in France and in Singapore ⁓ and one of the top business schools. And that was an exciting opportunity for me that opened a lot of doors because I could

basically pick any job that I wanted to. So the next job that I got right after my MBA was running a luxury estate business in Bali. And it was really a dream job because I was given a carte blanche. Like anything you want to do with your business, you can. Because I was coming from the strong business background and the business owner.

had this luxury hospitality background. So she was really responsible for those 20 villas that we were running to have that five-star service. ⁓ So I came in, I was really excited about my job and I was working really, really long hours until the point when the business owner was actually German by origin, just like you, German-American, ⁓ came to me and said, you know what?

I'm ready to move to California to join my family. You are doing such a good job running this business. How about you stay and you run this business for me. And I accepted the deal because I had no other choice because she already made her suitcases. And then at some point I realized that I was working really, really hard. ⁓ And that while most of my friends in Bali were enjoying sunsets and

and going out and surfing in the mornings. I was just so serious about building that business and doubling and tripling their profits. Then I found myself doing 15 hour days in Bali, which was absolutely crazy. And then I thought the business owner, she's just calling in two times a week for one hour meetings. And that's all she does. And she gets all the profits. And I'm over here doing crazy hours.

increasing the value of this business because of all the work that I brought in on the business side and she's getting all the profits. Why do I do this for her and don't do it for myself? I could just start exactly the same business if I wanted to. The thing is I'm not really interested in luxury real estate. Like I'm interested in tech and other things. So I should just go after my passion and things I'm interested in because I already have enough experience and knowledge.

to start something of my own. So that's how I started my own business. ⁓ The co-founder of my very first tech company, Livy Pien, found me when I was in Bali, pitched his idea to me and we decided to team up. He brought in the tech skills and I brought in the business background and just took this business global.

Jennifer Loehding (09:16)
Wow. You know, it's so interesting to me that, you know, when I talk about these stories all the time, how they sort of unfold, you know, and here you were working and took your business and then went into hospitality. And then in the middle of that had this sort of like light bulb moment, right? Which is, think what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs. They're like, Hey, I'm working for somebody else and I could be doing this for myself. Right. And then here you go back into finding where your passion is and align that up with the skillset.

that you developed as a leader and an entrepreneur and were able to launch this tech company. So what a fun story. love, I always love the non, these nonlinear stories, you know, they're never just straight, like I come out of school, this is what I do, you know, and this is what happens. It's never that way, you know, it's always around, ⁓ I don't know, I guess it's like a journey and unwind, unwinding, going all over the place kind of journey, right?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (10:15)
Yeah, and it kind of all makes sense at the end, but you can't you don't see it in the moment. You can always see it looking back at the past. That's when you connect the dots.

Jennifer Loehding (10:18)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. You're so right. I think everything is like that and you do, but you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about this, that if you, know, in each thing you do, if you find the lesson, the message, the takeaway, whatever you were supposed to gain in that experience and the story that I was using on that, I can't remember which episode I was recording, but I was telling the story about how in many of the things that I have done,

in the interim, there are a few things I've done for a very long time. I was in Mary Kay for a very long time and I've done my podcast for a while. Those are the two things that I've done for a while. ⁓ But in that journey with that, I had partnered up with this firm for a really short period of time and it ended up.

not working out that I was gonna stay there. And it was mostly mutually both because I couldn't work with them. I didn't like the way they were running things and they kept changing the goalposts. And I'm not a change a goalpost kind of person. I'm like, you tell me what you're gonna do and I expect you to do it. And so anyways, long story short, it didn't work out. But when I came out of that situation, I was kind of bitter in the beginning about it because I had felt like I had wasted, I had given things up to do this and then I'd wasted my time doing this.

And then my husband reminded me that in the middle of that part of this was I had gotten my hands on a lot of literature. And when I say literature books, basically, but there were certain books like Spend Selling, which is a great selling book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is a really good book about team. But it was all these great reads that I don't, maybe they would have crossed my path at some point, but they came in at that time and they were immensely instrumental.

in a growth period that I needed to have that material come in. So he reminded me and I'm like, yeah, you know, I thought that was a really good lesson because even though that whole series didn't work out, it brought me to some knowledge and some things that I may have never come across had I not walked through that valley. So yeah, it's really about finding those pieces and connecting them, finding where they connect.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (12:31)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (12:33)
Good stuff, I love it. So as you're moving through the journey, how did your, I'd love to know this, how did your definition of success evolve? And what does that mean to you today? Like what does success look like to you?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (12:48)
Very good question. ⁓ Because while I started this tech business, LVP, I just turned 15 years old and my definition of success evolved in 15 years. When we just started out, were, all we wanted was freedom, freedom of location to be able to work from anywhere we wanted. And in their early years, we traveled through Asia. I did.

yoga retreats in Thailand and in Bali. And then I went to Argentina to learn to dance tango and working in my business at the same time, because our whole team was completely like digital nomads. Like they were all virtual. You had no office space. And then there was the, also this notion of time freedom. You can work as many hours as you want as soon as, as long as you're creating value and doing the job.

and you can work 80 hours if you want. You can work during the nighttime if you want to. And that really served me in Buenos Aires when I was dancing tango at night and I would sleep in the mornings and then my work day would start somewhere in the afternoon. And even for people we managed in our team, said, you know, we don't care what your hours are. All we care for are the specific tasks that you're supposed to complete for our business to run.

And that was our definition of success in the beginning. Like we were making enough money to support our lifestyle and we had location freedom and time freedom and no boss. But then eventually it evolved. Like we wanted to scale the business and we started partners reaching out to us for partnerships and getting some more serious contracts and people we were accountable to, business partners.

Jennifer Loehding (14:28)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (14:43)
So I was learning a lot about how to structure the team, how to automate things. then eventually everything, what it came up to is how to create a business which leverages technology so that you have a big part of it, which is either automated or nowadays uses artificial intelligence to help you run the tasks behind the scene.

Jennifer Loehding (15:09)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (15:11)
So that of course you still need people in your team, but then people are doing the tasks that really create value. They don't do anything routine or mechanical. Like they don't need to do that anymore because you have technology for that, but they oversee the machines. ⁓ And that type of tech enabled business also allows you to have time freedom and location freedom and eventually financial freedom because

Jennifer Loehding (15:25)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (15:40)
You are just optimizing your costs so much that your profit margins are crazy. ⁓ And that's what the definition of success became to me today. And I also strongly believe and people I work with, I teach them to start businesses that leverage technology on one side. And secondly, they don't require raising any funds because if you know how to build a business the smart way, you don't need to raise funds. You don't need to run after investor money.

Jennifer Loehding (15:43)
Yeah. Right.

Mmm.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (16:10)
So start your own business, especially today with artificial intelligence and all this no code tools where that's basically AI doing all the coding for you, all this software development. Like you just click and build anything you want. ⁓ So you don't sometimes speak to, to potential clients and they say, well, I have this business idea, but where do I even start? I need to raise so much money. I have to leave my job. And I would be like, why would you do that?

First of all, you don't need to leave your job. You can start building something in parallel. And secondly, what do you need the money for?

Jennifer Loehding (16:51)
This is so interesting that you say this and I want to touch upon this AI thing because I just had this I told my husband the other day I said, know because you have so so many people I don't say so many there are a lot of people that are resistant to AI like they are I think they just don't know enough about it that they're fear they fear it right I use AI Every single day of my life I mean and I'm talking from everything to comparing cat food prices on Amazon

to building out sales proposals for clients. mean, today, just case in point for my audience and for you, Ksenia, notes for your episode today. I take all the information that you guys put in the pod match and I put that into the AI and I have it help me craft notes and questions and things that I wanna pull because...

Yeah, sure, I could sit here and do that stuff, but why would I when it takes me five minutes to do that, right? So you are absolutely right when we talk about how to, I guess the word we're here saying, delegate, right? Learn to delegate and automate, you know, whatever you can do. So good for you on that because I don't even know at this point, like my life would be greatly impaired if I could not use AI, you know what I mean? I I love it. ⁓

I do want to ask you a question because we were kind of moving into this was going to be my next question about this funding thing because, you know, building, you know, leave EPM without obviously outside funding. did this and you kept the business profitable. I'd love to know what this taught you about like resilience in the bit in business and life. I resilience grip. What did this teach you?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (18:31)
Yeah. I guess that comes maybe from my cultural environment. Growing up in the Soviet Union when you didn't really have access to funds and you always had to pay. Like if you want to start a business, I know my parents were entrepreneurs and they always have this question like, how can we make this business profitable from day one? And profitable is always about the revenues versus the cost structure. So.

Jennifer Loehding (18:41)
Okay.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (18:58)
For me, when we started our tech business, it was all about starting very lean, meaning the very first product that we shipped was

Almost free. Okay. My co-founder is a tech person, but what he did, he took this software, which is open source, meaning it's available to anyone. There's like this websites where there's databases of software, of the code that you just take and you customize a little bit. So it was already software free to everyone that we customized, basically put our logo on, connected some parts of our service to it. And that's what we were selling to our first customers. And we took.

just one country, which was France in one language, which was French, and just used one small social media channel to offer it in order to test our idea. And when we knew that there is demand, we started scaling. And I think we even started building our own products somewhere close to year 10. We were using open source software, like for the first decade of our business. And because it was

Jennifer Loehding (20:08)
⁓

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (20:10)
It was good enough. could add more features. We could make it look like it was our own, but it was not. And it was a good product that was solving a problem for our users. And that's how our business was profitable and we just could keep growing organically.

Jennifer Loehding (20:28)
Yeah, no, I love this.

Yeah, sorry, I'm gonna cut you off.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (20:32)
Yeah. And to me, that's the whole principle of starting businesses that are resilient. They can only be resilient if you can see a way how they can make profit and you have market proof that you're actually solving a problem that people are willing to pay for. The problem with the startups of today who are going to raise funds is that very often they don't really validate the problem. Like we've partnered with many startups.

Well, not many, quite a few. And one of the examples is a startup who raised ⁓ more than $3 million for their first beta product, which they shipped, but then they used all the money that they raised on marketing and PR. They got the best PR firms in California. They went to all the tech conferences that could talk about them, basically, of course.

sponsored booths and everything. And then they just ran out of funds. A year later, $3 million later, they did not exist anymore. And it was such a pity. And I just see it all the time and it's just so frustrating to me because this money, this funds, they could be used for society to create something good, which is, solves actual problems for people that people really need instead of just, you know, putting it on social media and...

Jennifer Loehding (21:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (21:59)
and tech magazines and conferences to talk about the idea that nobody wants.

Jennifer Loehding (22:03)
Yeah, well, and you know what I think and this is you're probably finding this as you're working with people and I say this because last year I worked with a mentor when I was trying to I think I shared with you I was trying to build out a course and I was trying to get like my unique selling proposition like what was I actually trying to solve but interestingly enough it's funny because just last week I was going through you know I was trying to look at starter girls and I had kind of over the last few weeks sort of come to this like

I don't know what you call it, like just this moment where I stopped for a minute and I'm like, what am I doing with this show? Like, what is the point of this show, right? And it was because what was going on is like, I had a great person helping me with like our titles and our thumbnails. But what I found is that we were not clear on what the target, and I say this because I had somebody message me one day and she's like, your show is great, but it's like all over the place. And I'm like,

No, it's not. There's really, there's a purpose and a passion and a mission there. But I wasn't clear because my titles were going from solving a problem to an individual. So one week we were talking about you, the entrepreneur. And then the next week we were talking about how to, to sell something, which was confusing because it's like, what are we doing here? Are we talking about things where problems are solving? So I had to tell my guy, said, no, this show,

And now that the audience is gonna hear this right now, what this is, this show is about you, the individual on the show. It's about you, your journey, what you've learned, what you're doing and how you can help someone. And I was conveying this when I would go in, you to all you guys, y'all come on, we do the intro calls, I'm telling you this. And so my point, the reason I'm saying this is because when that person said that to me, that your show is all over the place, it made me stop and think.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (23:31)
Thank

Jennifer Loehding (23:55)
What is the problem? Like, what am I trying to solve? What is my audience here for? What do they want to hear from me? And what are we trying to do? And what we're trying to do is I'm actually, at the end of it, I'm trying to show everybody that there are cool people contributing to the world and making a difference. That's what I'm really trying to do here. And I do that through the stories, right?

But my point to this is when you talk about the solving the problems and go back to what you're saying, solving the problem and then the money gets wasted, that's exactly what it is. I think a lot of times people have, they have an idea, a concept, a vision, right? But they don't really know, they like their idea, they like it, they like their idea, but they don't really know what the problem is they're solving or how to convey the problem that they're selling, right? And so I say all that, that when I worked with that mentor last summer,

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (24:36)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (24:46)
⁓ It was to help me get through this course and that's what I was trying to figure out is what was that course actually solving? Who was the audience? What was the problem? Because they don't care how you do it. They just want to know you're gonna solve the problem, right? Our job is to make the tool that does it, but they don't care about all that. So I agree with you on that and I do think as a business owner, I have worked with teams.

we do a lot of times waste a lot of money in the wrong areas because we think if we have the next hack, the next widget, the next marketing strategy, the next coach, the next this, when really we just need to get to the basics and lean it down and just get clear on what we're doing, who we're selling to, what we're selling, what the problem is. so I just wanted to say all that to say, I totally get it. I get what you're saying when you say that.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (25:36)
Yeah.

And that's so common. I mean, I see it all the time. I work with more than a thousand executives for Insead Business School at this stage. And I always hear the same thing like, but what I'm creating would create value for everyone. And people just don't want to niche down to one single ⁓ customer persona or like this first user that would be really, really specific.

Jennifer Loehding (25:44)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (26:05)
They want to get go very broad, but then by speaking to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. And that's how the message gets diluted. ⁓ yeah. And you end up not making any money. So that's something, yeah, that's something like a very big part of what I do is basically making people realize that.

Jennifer Loehding (26:10)
No one. Yep.

every six

Yeah, I was gonna say every successful business owner that has created something says the same thing you say, that you've really got to get down to who that first user is. I think too, Ksenia, talk about it from a credibility standpoint, right? Think about it from that. If you're speaking, because we want to speak to everybody because we think our idea is gonna help everybody, right? And a lot of times it can help a lot of people, right? But the problem is we got to get somewhere. We got to get with a group. We got to get somebody.

to build a community around somebody that's gonna follow that, want that. And we've got, you've got those early adopter people, right? Like those people in the beginning. And so, yes, and I think that is a hard thing to get to that place where we go, just, I'm gonna hone in on those people and be okay with that, right? Like be okay with that because you're right. If you're trying to do everybody, then you end up with just looking really like you don't know what you're talking about and like you're all over the place and you and you want that.

that reputation and credibility, right?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (27:25)
Exactly. You want to be the expert in your field. And that's why people come to you. Well, if we're talking about a ⁓ coach or consultant, right? And when you're from a business perspective, if I look back at what we did for the VPN, we went for a very specific client group at that time. ⁓ We only went after people who knew exactly what a VPN is. And to be honest, when I started that business, I had no idea what that was myself.

Jennifer Loehding (27:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (27:56)
But

there were tech enthusiasts out there who knew exactly what it was and they were looking for solution and that was the easiest segment for us to convert. And we went after it and we didn't go too broad until we could start scaling to other segments.

Jennifer Loehding (28:10)
Right, till you built one and then you can move to the next stage. Smart move. I love that you did this lean because, and I think it's great even you mentioned that, cause you know, I think I shared with you, I do have a client that I've been working with, oh my gosh, 2020. I think I met her right when COVID started and she's originally from Russia. She's now living in Spain, but she has been a very strategic, she's so young and I'm so impressed by her work ethic.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (28:13)
Yes.

Jennifer Loehding (28:37)
her strategic mindset, just everything she does is very lean. And there's just not, I crack up at her all the time because I don't coach a lot of people really anymore, but she's still, feel like we've just been talking for so long that she'll go on these, like she's leaving I think this week to go on a retreat in India. Those two goes on these excursions. We've been talking for so long and it's so funny every time she shows up, we never even have to have a very long call because she'll get on and she's like,

This is what happened this week. I didn't do this. I just didn't do it. I know what I need to do. It's like, we're just checking in, you know? And so I've just been very impressed by her work ethic and yeah, and I think she shares some of the things like you've said just about her mindset about business and how she does her, you know, started things and how she carries it out even now. So she's got, she has a Airbnb in Spain that she.

rents out now too and she's only, I think she's 29, she's really young. So, kinda cool, I love it. So I wanna move into talking a little bit about what you mentioned, touch back on this coaching after coaching, know, over a thousand people. What patterns do you see between the way people define success and how their businesses actually land? Like what makes these actually successful?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (29:59)
Good question. I think for every business, you probably saw it with your own podcast, goals evolve. The picture we paint to ourselves in the beginning is not always where we're going to land, but it's very important to have that vision. And after I worked with over a thousand executives ⁓ at INSEAD, ⁓ I realized that there were some patterns that emerged.

And I realized that those patterns were no longer my intuition, they were a method. They were a repeatable system ⁓ that defined what kind of businesses could be resilient and succeed and which businesses would fail. And that pattern for me was the whole framework that I've developed, the weatherproof business formula. That is four steps. The first one is the why. How clear?

Jennifer Loehding (30:35)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (30:59)
the founders are on the mission and the vision and where are they going? Like why they're starting this business? Because some people are starting a business for the wrong reasons. Either they want to get away from their corporate job or they want to earn the next number of money. But the thing is starting a business is not easy and it takes probably about five years to get to good space where you can see, start seeing traction.

And in those five years, there's going to be lots of up and down moments and especially lots of down moments. And if you don't have that core motivation inside yourself that makes you go through that moment and don't lose the belief in what you're doing, that's how you can keep going. And that's why there's so many businesses that go out of business in the first five years. Statistics, I think, are something like 90%.

Jennifer Loehding (31:57)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (31:57)
⁓

in the US, that's because people give up and they give up because they don't have that core, they don't have that why. The second thing is something we touched upon just earlier. It's defining the right who, so the right customer segment that you can go after, which really needs that problem to be solved. It's the definition of the hungry market. They really want to pay for it. ⁓

And also at the same time, they're easy for you to reach. Like if it's a market that for which like you're starting out, you have no network, you have no people to sell to because they're just so far from what you've been doing yourself. This is so hard. tell my clients like, why would you do that to yourself? Like find a segment to which you already have access. You can get recommendations, you know them, they're a part of your network, friends and family. This is where you start.

Jennifer Loehding (32:33)
Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (32:55)
So finding this right who, and then, and then you get into the third element, which is the what. And the what is basically your offer or your first prototype. And we talked about it as well. Like it needs to be really lean. There's so many ways how to build it cheaply and also how to build it fast so that like, if you cannot build and ship it in a week, you're overcomplicating things.

Jennifer Loehding (33:22)
Mmm,

that's good. Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (33:23)
And what my clients

do, so inside of my signature coaching program, they go through eight weeks of building from just an idea to the first prototype with a wait list of better users of their first clients. And most of the people get to like at least 15 people on their ⁓ waiting list before they even build anything. And the reason they can do that is because they can ship something very fast, even if it's just a landing page.

Jennifer Loehding (33:45)
Okay, yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (33:53)
describing the offer or just like a video of themselves on Instagram, telling what it is, just three minutes. That's good enough to get some demand from people and to validate whether that actually needed before some other people I interacted with, like can invest tens of thousands of dollars building a prototype, talking to one person, which is themselves. And then the last one is the how. The first step is all...

Jennifer Loehding (34:16)
Right. Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (34:21)
Obviously, how do you make a profitable business out of it? How do you create this perfect combination of revenue versus costs so that you can grow organically and scale it? And that last part, the how, difficult, important, but this is just details. Like there's so many ways. Once you figure out the first three parts, the rest is just mechanics. Just doing the right business practices just to get there.

Jennifer Loehding (34:48)
Right. And I think maybe you find this that a lot of people want to jump to that, the four without figuring the other pieces out. They just want to dive in and go, right? Because as entrepreneurs, I and I'm laughing, I'm kind of snickering about this because I've done this. I've done this. may, I don't know if you're like, it seems like you're very methodical and I love it because my husband's like that. It's very methodical. I plan things out, but I'm always a dive in and then I figure it out as I go. And so I have done this cycle in reverse order.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (34:55)
Exactly. Exactly.

Jennifer Loehding (35:15)
probably a lot of times and I'm learning now to be much more, I mean, I think there is a time to make a decision to go in, but I am learning to be much more methodical about this process because I agree with you. you don't, you know, this is basic in anything you do. If you don't get grounded in why you're doing something, that's the big thing. If you're not grounded in that, you're not going to weather through, you're not going to make it. The minute a customer denies your offer or you get a nasty,

rejection or you don't sell as much as you want that particular month, whatever it is, you're gonna fall through the cracks. I agree with you. And I love that you're laying it out here. You've got, okay, we're figuring out the problem and getting your offer, your unique selling proposition, and then here's the details. So I love it. I think it's great. And it's simple, it's four steps. Four steps. I have a four step.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (36:06)
Yeah. Thank you. Four steps. you know, sometimes,

sometimes like clients come to me inside the program and say, you know what, I'm going to change my business idea because I don't know, it was too hard or I got the feedback or something. And I was like, okay, let's go back to the first step to your why. Because those who are not changing the business ideas, they are on the opposite saying, okay, I got that feedback, which was negative.

but that that's not gonna stop me. I'm just gonna figure out the way how to address that and make my product even stronger because the first step, the why was so strong.

Jennifer Loehding (36:46)
Yeah, no, and it has to, and you know, and I've had that happen too with clients where like we're going through like the coaching and then midway through they're sort of like, I don't know if I wanna do this anymore and I've had to have that conversation, you know, like, okay, well, let's back up and figure out why were we doing this to begin with? Because sometimes you do, your priorities change. So sometimes that is going to happen. You know, like you mentioned early on about success and you were talking about in the beginning how it became about just having the freedom and then it became later.

about having the freedom, but growing the business and being more effective and scaling and all of those things. So I think, yeah, sometimes I could see even too, if somebody goes through this and they're like, you know, maybe I wasn't doing the business that I really wanted to be doing, but I was doing, cause I thought this would be cool and I don't really like this. And I say that even because my stuff, you know, like I've done, I've done this cycle, I feel like many times and I have kind of evolved, you know, in what I.

I mean, when I initially started doing what I was doing, I wanted to coach and be a speaker. And then I realized, ⁓ I don't really care so much about speaking on a stage. get to talk. This is my stage, right? I enjoy podcasting, you know? And I don't care so much about the coaching side of things. I love doing presentations. I have no problem with that, but I don't care as much at the coaching side. I like building. So yeah, I think you can, but I agree with you. You've got to get grounded in that.

why you're doing what you're doing. And I will tell you in all the years I was at Mary Kay, that was the thing we always led with is why you were doing what you're doing, what's your why. And even when I would tell my story, when I would get up and I would be like, okay, I always led with this is why I do this. So I'm with you on that. So good stuff. And I love that it's a four step. And the reason I say that, cause I also have a four step system that I do for when I'm working with.

I built a program around it, I have a different than yours. It's not on tech or anything like that. It's more of a how to make things stick, how to create change and actually make it stick. But I built, I created a four step system that I condensed everything I learned and put it down into that. now kind of like you, I can say, okay, you just got to figure a couple of things out in the beginning. The rest is just the how tos. It's your step four. So anyways, and I think simplicity is.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (39:00)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (39:07)
what we need, right?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (39:09)
especially now, without ⁓ the attention spans.

Jennifer Loehding (39:10)
Yeah. Right,

right. Exactly. Okay. So for someone listening who has an idea, but feels uncertain or afraid of risking what they've already built, how would you help them move forward? We talked about the why. Is there anything else you would say to them to kind of push them to keep going?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (39:33)
I would say, think about it that you don't have to burn all the bridges. If you're already in a corporate job, you don't have to leave it until you have the validation that your business can start bringing in revenues that are sufficient for you to finance your lifestyle. And when you have a streamlined system where you know the exact steps that you need to be focusing on each week.

The work required to build that business could be something from five to 10 hours a week. So that's something that you can do in the evenings or in the weekend. ⁓ And a lot of successful entrepreneurs that work with, that's what they do. They're building in parallel. So don't no longer think about it as like either one or the other. It can be both in the beginning. If your goal is to leave your corporate job and eventually to be a full-time entrepreneur.

That is possible, but don't put all the eggs in the same basket as we say. ⁓ Weight your risks and this is how you can get started. And obviously if you want to know more of what those streamlined steps are and what are the different things that could help you move forward, I have a lot of free resources on my website as well, including a scorecard that evaluates where you're at with your business idea.

in this specific moment based on my signature method, the weatherproof business formula I just talked about, and sends you a PDF of the exact action plan for the next three months that you should be focusing on to move this forward.

Jennifer Loehding (41:13)
and I'm gonna ask you for that website in just a minute, but I did wanna ask you kind of a personal question. I wanna say this for the audience, because you're a mom. you started this journey, you weren't a mom in the very beginning, right? So you've kind of done like I've done, where you have done things on this side and on this side as a mom. And so I wanna commend you on that. And then I wanna ask you a question, what do you feel like you've learned about yourself as this female entrepreneur, mom?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (41:20)
Yes.

Jennifer Loehding (41:43)
you know, building out this business. You've been obviously been successful and you're helping other people create that, hopefully create that success like you. So share with us what you've learned about yourself in this journey.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (41:58)
think what I've learned that something you mentioned earlier, I also get excited about the how and the perfectionist part of me wants to do so many things and do them perfectly. And being a mom, I realized that I cannot do that. So a part of the coaching that I do today integrates the fact that I want you to build a successful business, but I don't want you to burn out. So how about we find a system.

which is so lean that we only take the steps, the 20 % of steps that are gonna create the 80 % of impact. We forget all the details, we forget the perfectionism, we don't go there anymore. We just want to build the core that works so that the rest of the time you can still enjoy your life, enjoy your family. And that's been a big revelation for me, what I've been learning about myself. ⁓ And that's what I'm pro...

prioritizing this here as well. have my whole action plan of how do I relax, basically.

Jennifer Loehding (43:06)
as a fellow

perfectionist friend. I totally hear you, girlfriend. You know, it's so funny because you're gonna love this. I think I shared, maybe I did or didn't, but I hate social media. Like, I just hate it. And I'll tell you why. Because I can't just throw something out there. I can't just get on the camera and just throw something out there. That's why I love podcasts, because I can kind of structure it.

I'm gonna be honest, not that I go back and do a lot of edits after we pretty much roll the shows unless there's a technical glitch, we just put intros and outros on, but there's some kind of control in that that at least I can go back at the end if I had to. And with social media, I feel like one, I have to think too much about what to put out. And so I hired, like I have people help me with it because I can't, I just cannot just

put it, be free with it. And so my goal, it's funny because one of my things this year is to try to let go of the need to have everything always be like, have to have it this way, this way, this way, this way. And oddly enough, that program, you probably at the very beginning when I was mentioned about that thing on Starter Girlz, one of the success blocks is perfectionism, right? And so as I was actually building that out,

That's when I became increasingly aware how much the perfectionism will rule my life because I don't like putting out, to me, sloppiness is just not cool. ⁓ I had to get one of my co-hosts that was on, I could always laugh because she would get on MailChimp and write our newsletters and she would just get on there and start, and put them out. And I'm like, it takes me days.

to create the newsletter, to get it done because I'm going, don't like where this is at, and I don't like the font, I don't like the sign. I just, freedom. I'm with you on that perfectionism.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (45:07)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (45:11)
So, Senye, if our audience wants to get in touch with you, first of all, I want to say you are an amazing woman. This interview was fabulous. I'm so glad that I guided these questions today because I feel like you got to just really shine some light on what you're doing really well at. And so I'm glad that we structured this like this because you did really well. And I want to thank you for, you know, like all your knowledge nuggets, your wisdom, all of that stuff. And I'm sure somebody listening to this right now is probably in that stuck phase.

or maybe they're almost on the other side or maybe they just got the idea but they want to get in touch with you, where do we want to send them?

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (45:49)
Absolutely. Well, they can go to my website, Kseniavotinova.com or find me on LinkedIn, Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud. And my mission is in the next three years to be able to help 10,000 women get started on launching a business of their own. last year, and doing that mostly through my free master classes and free resources, right? And last year alone, I...

Jennifer Loehding (46:08)
Yeah.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (46:18)
There were over a thousand women who went through my master classes. So I want to keep growing this, ⁓ this impact because I think it's very important. Like I want every woman and every girl to have a choice, whether they have a, they go through a corporate path or they go through a path of entrepreneurship and building something of their own and using technology to do that. Because I don't want them to do all the work by themselves. I want them to use the systems and technology in a smart way.

Jennifer Loehding (46:24)
Yeah.

Well, and you're a shining example of having done both, you know, both corporate success and entrepreneur success and doing it in a way that that's sustainable and works for you. So congratulations on that. We'll make sure to when we get the show notes that we get your website in there, since I know that you have a beautiful name that is difficult, like to spell like my last name. And so I totally get it. We will make sure in the notes that we have the website in there so that and on the screen, my editor usually will scroll it on the screen for the viewers as well. So we'll get in there.

So thank you for your time. I know you're calling in from around the world in beautiful Paris, so we appreciate you. I know this is around the time your kiddos are gonna be walking in the door. thank you for making time for our show and our audience and for our listeners, and we appreciate you.

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud (47:32)
Thank you so much. I love this conversation and yes, hope it will create value for people who need it.

Jennifer Loehding (47:39)
Yeah, absolutely.

And of course to our listeners, we appreciate you, love you. We hope that you found this episode both informative and inspiring. And of course, if you did, you know what to do. All the things like subscribe, share and comment so that we can keep sharing all of this fabulous content with you. And as I always say, in order to live the extraordinary, you must start and every start begins with a decision. You guys take care, be safe, be kind to one another and we will see you next time.


Head Shot

Jennifer Loehding

Host
Head Shot

Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud

Guest