Kendra Perry has decided to shut down HCA, and no one knows exactly why she did this. Was she misleading her clients? Did she want to put extra pressure on getting her last program? But now she has decided to reopen it. What really happened here? In this episode, Kendra finally addresses this burning question, shedding light on how she came up her ultimate decision.
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Why I Decided to Shut Down HCA (And Re-Open It Again)
Welcome back to the episode. I am excited as always to be with you. This episode is going to be a little bit different. I’m going to answer a question that many people have had for me, which is why I decided to shut down HCA. If you were a part of my last launch when I did the 3-day 6-figure wellness offer challenge, you might remember that I told you that was your final chance to work with me inside HCA. In January 2024, I launched the last round. A lot of people wanted to know why, which is normal. I told everyone that I would announce it in February 2024. It is February 2024. I am going to tell you the reason why.
It was really interesting when I announced that I didn’t think people would be so interested in the reason why. Many of you were curious. You wanted to know the reasons why. I did have a couple of people be a little bit aggressive and invasive with it and maybe felt like they were entitled to the answer. It was a little bit difficult for me and I wasn’t exactly sure how to navigate it, but as promised, I am going to tell you why.
Why HCA Shut Down
Here’s the honest truth why I decided to shut down HCA, and then after that, I’m going to tell you why, as you can see from the title of this episode, I decided to reopen it again. The reason is I’m pregnant and I’m going to be having a baby in the summertime of 2024. I made the decision to shut down HCA shortly after I found out I was pregnant in the fall of 2023. When I made this decision, for any of you who have ever been pregnant and had a bad first trimester, I had the very definition of a really hard first trimester. I was exhausted. I was nauseous. I struggled to eat any food.
I’m going to talk about my pregnancy journey a little bit more in the next episode. It is not because I necessarily want to but because I went through some interesting emotions and experiences that I did not expect. It was really hard for me to find other women who felt the same way I did, but I believe what I went through is very normal. It’s not often talked about. I do want to talk about it in the next episode because I’m hoping it will help someone.
When I made that decision, I was pretty shocked and I didn’t know how to proceed. My friends are starting to have kids. A lot of us are in our late 30s. I don’t really spend a lot of time with friends. All of my friends are teachers, nurses, and engineers. They all get the very traditional one-year maternity leave. If you’re in the US, you’re probably like, “One-year maternity leave? I know in the US, you guys get a lot less.” In Canada, if you have a good job, you’ll typically get a one-year maternity leave.
The representation that I’ve had of maternity leave has been the mother gets her year off and her partner works away from home, and then she is alone all day at home with the baby. That is a full-time job. There’s not much time for anything else. When you’re making decisions like that even though it was a long way away at the time, I ran a six-month program so I knew that I had to make a decision with what I was going to do with HCA by January 2024.
The reason why I was thinking about shutting it down is because I had been thinking about relaunching HCA in a little bit of a different way. I developed HCA in 2019. It’s an amazing program. I’m so proud of it. I feel like it’s my life’s work, but there’s a lot in it. It’s because initially, it started out as a resource, like everything you needed to do. It evolved over time to the point where there’s a lot in the program.
I was thinking about editing the program to make it a little more streamlined and starting to target a more established coach. I typically target early-stage health coaches and new people. I’ve been feeling this hole over time to work with a coach who’s a little bit more established. I had this idea to relaunch HCA and target a little bit of a more established coach.
I really wanted to overhaul the entire program, simplify it, and edit it down. I’d already had that plan in my mind. I’d already been thinking, “How am I going to make that transition?” What I was thinking was, “I’m going to have a baby. There’s no way I can run two programs at once. Since I have my six-month program, I’m going to have to sell the program the final time, and have six months. Since it’s ongoing evergreen, either I shut the program down or start the new program while the old HCA is still going, and then there are two programs that overlap.” I give a lot of support within HCA and thought, “There’s no way I could have two overlapping programs when I have a baby and when I’m on maternity leave.” That felt really overwhelming because I’m very much involved in HCA.
HTMA Expert, my other program, is very passive. I have other coaches who support the students. For that program, I show up for a monthly Ask Me Anything call, but I’m not in the Facebook group. I have coaches and practitioners who are way more intelligent than me and have way more clinical experience than me who are in there supporting the students.
I knew that program would be fine because it runs itself. Also, the sales for HTMA Expert are automated, which I’ve talked about on this show. With HCA, I love to do live events for it and I do several coaching calls a month. I’m in the Facebook group. It felt like, “How can I have two programs with an additional program going at the same time?”
I had no representation of what mat leave would look like for someone like me. When I say someone like me, someone who works from home, someone who is an entrepreneur who makes very good money, someone who doesn’t work that much, and also someone who has a partner at home. Ryan, my partner, also works from home. He does a lot of work for me in my business. He’s a freelancer. He takes contracts as he chooses.
I didn’t have any representation for that. The way I was thinking about mat leave was really the only way that I had ever seen it represented, which was I needed to fully take time off. My plan at the time was, “I need to take 90 days off. I need to take 12 weeks off and be 100% off.” At that point, Ryan, my partner, would take over as a stay-at-home dad. My business makes significantly more money than his so it makes sense for me to be the one that goes back to work. I felt like, “I need to take all these things off my plate. I’m going to be so messed up. This is going to be so hard.”
At the time, because of the really challenging first trimester I went through, I was making my decision not from a place of being informed but from a place of being scared, exhausted, and confused about what that whole thing was going to look like. I felt, “This is what I need to do. I need to launch the last round of HCA in January for that launch. We’ll run it, and then I will relaunch the new version of HCA in October after that twelve weeks is up.” That was my plan. When I told you it was the last round of HCA in January 204, that was truthful. That was how I felt. That was the decision I had made.
What was really interesting was that as I started to tell people and colleagues about my pregnancy, I started to get a lot more insight into what maternity leave would maybe look like for someone like me. I was able to connect with some entrepreneurs who have businesses very similar to mine. What I realized is I don’t need to be 100% of nor do I want to.
I’m a very driven and motivated person. I love using my brain. What a lot of these people told me who I spoke to were like, “Looking after a newborn can be monotonous. They sleep a lot, especially in the first few months. You want to make sure you have as much time as you need. You’re probably going to want to do your coaching calls.
One of my good friends, Chanee, works with me inside HCA. She’s our mindset and productivity coach. She’s amazing. She had a baby in 2023. Her first call back after 3 weeks or 4 weeks after having her baby was to do one of the calls for HCA. What she told me was she really looked forward to that call. She’s like, “I was excited for it. When I did it, I felt like myself again. It was fulfilling and rewarding.” She did that monthly call three weeks after giving birth. She’s still working in HCA. I hope she never leaves because I love her so much.
That was enlightening to me because she was like, “It’s monotonous. You’re someone who loves to use your brain. You can do a coaching call if you want to.” I started to think about it and that really started to resonate with me, because truthfully, I will not be at home alone with a baby. Ryan will be here 50/50 with me. He’s going to stop taking contracts. He’s going to be 100% off. He’ll be there to support me.
On top of that, we are in a really privileged position where we do have money. I can afford support. I could afford something like a night nurse, a doula, or childcare. We also have Ryan’s parents and sister who live in town, not that far away from us, who are very excited to babysit and be involved. It occurred to me that I was in a little bit of a different situation than a lot of my friends who need that year of mat leave, don’t have friends and family around, and maybe don’t have the income. I started to think, “I don’t think I want to let this stuff go.”
The other thing that was really getting to me at the time was the fact that HCA is amazing if I do say so myself. It’s the best it’s ever been. I’m so proud of where it’s at. I know it’s transformative. It deeply helps the people who enroll in it. Also, it is generating the most revenue than it ever has. I’ve struggled over the past bunch of years to find a way to sell it that worked. After launching this 3-day challenge, I’ve had the 2 biggest launches I’ve ever had in my business.
I’ve talked about it on the show, but in September 2023, we were able to generate about $75,000. I did about $90,000 or $95,000, so it is almost a 6-figure launch. It was a few sales away from that first six-figure launch. I am very proud of myself. It made me realize how far I have come and it seemed so silly to shut it down.
Right after the cart closed for HCA in the middle of January 2024, I started having this bad feeling in my gut. I was thinking, “I don’t think this was the right decision.” I mulled it over for a few days and knew it was the wrong decision. I got on the phone with my OBM, Elise, and said, “I feel stupid for shutting down HCA. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense because there’s going to be nine months where I’m not bringing in any income for the program.” Typically, we have ongoing enrollment or we launch it regularly. I was like, “This is going to be a huge hit to my income, and I’m making the most money that I’ve ever made. Also, the program is amazing. I feel like I’ve really picked up traction for this program. It doesn’t make sense.”
What I realized is that I can be off for maternity leave, like 90%, but I don’t want to give up my group coaching calls with my students. Those are some of the most favorite things that I do in my business. I love showing up to support my students and I love helping people, and I don’t do that many of them. I do about three calls a month inside the program. That’s 3 90-minute coaching calls a month. It’s very doable, especially with all the support that I had. If I was going to be at home alone with no one to help me, then that probably wouldn’t be as available to me. The night before I get on the call, Ryan can be the one who gets up with the baby. I can get a good night’s sleep. I can go sleep in the basement. We’ll work it out.
Honestly, even if I’m sleep-deprived, I can still crush it. The reason I know this, and I talked about this on the show before, is I started my business in a deep stage of chronic fatigue when I was dealing with horrible insomnia. I built this entire business only getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. I can turn it on when I need to. I know that I’m very good at operating on very little sleep. As much as I don’t like it because it makes me very grumpy, I can do it, and I’ve done it. I know I can do it.
It changed my whole perspective on maternity leave. Especially as I moved into the second trimester and started to feel better, I had a better perspective and could see things more clearly. I talked to my OBM Elise and said, “I don’t want to shut this program down. It doesn’t make sense. I’m making too much money. The program has so many amazing students in there and I want to keep bringing more in.” I made the decision to reopen it again. The program is going to be reopening at the beginning of March 2024, and I’m really excited about that. I know it was the best decision possible.
This was a big reason why I wasn’t ready to tell anyone at that launch. It wasn’t far enough in the pregnancy for me to feel comfortable telling the internet land. I wanted to put off telling the internet for as long as possible. I really wanted to keep this to myself, and I have every right to do that. I understand why some of you were curious. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions and being curious, but with the few people who were aggressive and felt like they were entitled to that information, it did feel very violating. It threw me off.
I didn’t quite know how to deal with it because, at that time, I was not ready to tell people. That was the reason. I wanted to be honest. That’s the big reason. It’s not because I need a break. It’s not because I’m not passionate. It’s not because I’m not feeling it anymore. It’s not because I am launching something better. It’s because I’m having a baby.
Working 10 Hours A Week
There is one other thing I want to touch on that I realized. I made an episode not that long ago where I talked about how I worked ten hours a week in my business and this is what happened. The reason why I was only working ten hours a week was because I was so sick. I was so sick in the first trimester. I was exhausted. I had no energy. I was nauseous, I had food aversions. I was not able to work. I lost all my motivation. I had this really crazy brain fog that I’ve never experienced in my life. I couldn’t be creative.
I was only working ten hours a week, and as I said in that episode, it freaked me out. I was like, oh “What’s going to happen to the business? The business is going to go downhill. I’m going to lose revenue.” My business grew. In 2023, I had my biggest revenue year ever. I increased my revenue by 40%. In January 2024, I had my first $100,000 month. I’ll be talking a little bit more about how I did that in an episode coming up soon. That was enlightening for me because I realized that I don’t need to work much in my business for it to run. What I was mainly doing that made up those ten hours a week was supporting my students inside HCA, creating content, and then meeting a bit with my team, answering questions, and that sort of thing.
What I realized is when I go on mat leave, I’m going to be scheduling all my content in advance so that it goes out for four months. That’s what was taking up most of those ten hours. I’m looking at this being like, “If I schedule all my content in advance and the only thing I have to do is support my students in HCA and be available to help my team when they need me,” which, honestly, they’re pretty self-sufficient and don’t need me that much, “I’m probably not going to have to do more than a few hours a week.” How I want it to look is I want to be off 90%, but I want to have the option to work more only if I want to.
That was eye-opening for me because I was so scared. I am someone who is very obsessed with growth and I am ambitious. I love being in the business. I was so worried that things were going to go stagnant or I was going to lose traction, but I realized that I don’t need to even work much in my business for things to go rolling. All of those things together, speaking with entrepreneurs who were in my situation, realizing that I don’t need to work much in my business for it to run properly, and seeing how much HCA has grown and how amazing it is made me realize that I needed to walk back my decision.
This is a really good lesson not only for me but for you. I want you to understand that it’s okay for you to change your mind about your business. Sometimes, we make decisions and then we realize it was the wrong choice. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t mean that you suck. The only way for us to know how a decision is going to go and if it is the right decision for us is to make the decision. I’m glad I made that decision. It made me realize a whole bunch of things.
Even if you’ve gone so far as me to announce the end of a program, because I announced it to everyone, my social media, my email list, on a live stream, and at a launch and I was being honest at the time, even with all of that, I can still change my mind. I’m human. It wasn’t the right decision, but it was only through making that decision that I was able to realize that. In the end, it’s my business and your business. We have to do what’s right for us even if that means changing our minds.
Sometimes, people are afraid to walk back a decision because they’re afraid people will be pissed off at them. If you’re pissed off at me because I’ve changed my mind on this, I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I figured the worst thing that’s going to happen is somebody who enrolled in HCA in January 2024 is going to say something like, “I’m so upset that I enrolled in January. I enrolled only because I thought it was the last round. Now I want a refund.”
I don’t think that’s going to happen because everyone who enrolled in January 2024 is very happy they’ve enrolled. We’ve been getting great feedback. People seem pumped. I don’t think anyone’s going to be upset about enrolling, but honestly, I always like to think about the worst-case scenario. I’m like, “Worst-case scenario, we say, “Sorry. Here’s your refund,” and move on. It’s not a big deal.
It’s okay if people don’t like your decisions, but we can’t make decisions or run our business based on what we think other people are going to think. The time I made the decision to close HCA, it was legit. I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t trying to mislead you to get you to enroll in my program. I wasn’t trying to put extra pressure on you. It was that at the time, I thought I was making the right decision for me. It turned out it wasn’t, and that’s okay.
Reopening HCA
HCA is going to reopen in early March 2024. I am going to be running a very fun workshop. The promo for it, I’ll announce it on the show so you won’t miss it. I’m going to be doing a 90-minute workshop to help you plan out your online program outline. It’s not going to be a webinar. It’s going to be interactive. We’re going to go through choosing the perfect topic for your program. We’re going to determine the ideal length of your program. We’re going to determine how to price it, and then we’re going to create the outline for it. We’re going to create the outline for your entire program.
At the end of the workshop, you’re going to walk away with something tangible. You’re going to walk away with a roadmap that you’ve created for your profitable online program. I am very excited about that. I believe that’s happening on March 7th, 2024. I will announce it on the show so stay tuned for that. That is what we’re going to do to celebrate the reopening of HCA, which I’m excited about.
Y ou probably won’t believe me, but HCA will be going away. I am going to be streamlining HCA and redirecting it towards more of an established coach. that is going to open in October 2023 after my “maternity leave”. HCA will run. We will probably launch the final round in June 2024. What that means is I will have two programs overlapping, which is what I was worried about, but truthfully, because I have my partner at home, I have lots of help, and it will only be a few extra calls for only 90 days, I don’t see there to be an issue with that. It will be a bit of a busier 90 days, but I know I can handle it and I know I have the help to support me to do that. I am excited about that.
For any HCA students, when I do this final update, everyone’s going to get access to it. If you’re thinking, “Maybe I should wait for this new and improved program in the fall,” you probably shouldn’t because it’s going to be a lot more expensive. If you enroll in one of the versions instead of waiting to start being successful in your business and start making money in your business, you can start right away, which HCA will help you do.
Remember that this version of HCA is way more geared towards newbies. If you’re very new in your business, you’re probably going to struggle with the program in fall 2024. Will I prevent newbies from coming into it? No, but it will be designed for coaches who have been out there on the internet already marketing their business. For those of you who are getting started and have nothing in place, then this round of HCA is going to serve you the best. I hope you will join me when I reopen the program in early March 2024. I’ll probably launch it for the last time in June 2024. It will run for six months and the brand-new program will open up in fall 2024. I’m really excited about that. That’s the reason why. Thank you so much for your patience with this and your understanding. I really do appreciate it.
For the next episode, I’m going to go through the nitty-gritty and the raw and honest details about my pregnancy. I am going to go through how I felt, how that impacted me, and all the emotions that I experienced that I didn’t expect. I don’t necessarily want to because it feels a bit raw and a bit personal, but also, when I was going through that, I felt so alone. What I went through was very common and I don’t see a lot of people talking about it. That makes me want to talk about it because if I had heard someone talk about it, it would’ve helped. That’s all I got for this episode of the show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I will see you again at the same time and same place where I help you become wealthy AF.
