What exactly is The Glow-Up Lab, and why would I need it?

It started in the shower (where all the best thoughts live)

My shower thoughts probably should be more fun 🤣, but mostly they're about work, Kajabi, the state of the world... and that blasted AI doomsday podcast I listened to a while back.

And one morning the thought that came to me was this: are templates dead? And I don't just mean for Kajabi-land.

If I'm honest, it's something I'd been wrangling with since the start of the year. It's why I'd had so many sleepless nights, and so many 3am mad-woman typing sessions with Claude and Chatty.

Then it clicked. AI has been here for far longer than we think it has.

To keep my online business lean, to let my hubby's old business run with half the staff of similar businesses, to let every business I've ever worked for gather information faster... we've used software. Not just out of the box, either. With add-ons, fancy-pants mini connectors and the like. Zapier. The bells and whistles in our email programs that sort, redirect and send "I'm on holiday" replies. Spreadsheets with formulas and scripts for the hardcore among us.

That's really what AI is. IT'S AUTOMATION, but on steroids.

It's advanced to the point where we're no longer stuck with one tool. We're joining many together to make them do EXACTLY what we want. Did you catch that? We're making them do what WE want. We're still the ones with the ideas, the creativity, the wants.

So I crawled out of the doom and asked a better question. What did templates actually do for us? They saved us time. And for those willing to dive in, they gave us that "look what I just did" feeling... I made something myself, without a whole team, and I can use it over and over.

The world of tech is changing again, like it always does. That doesn't mean we stop being the creators. Every one of us in Kajabi-land started this for exactly that reason: to share what we know with people who need it.

So I got to work building my own tool. One that embraces the speed and the incredible "make it work" of AI, with my knowledge of how Kajabi works, what to build, where to put it and how to make it look the goods.

That tool is The Glow-Up Lab. ✨ And this post is the one I should have written first: what it actually IS, and how to tell if you need it.

First, can I say something out loud?

Almost everyone I talk to in Kajabi-land... clever, hard-working people with businesses I'd happily buy from... has a half-finished site. 🫣

A sales page that's "nearly there." A checkout they're not 100% sure is connected to the right thing. A welcome email they keep meaning to write. And that one page they've rebuilt four times... on four different Saturdays. 😅

And every single one of them thinks it's THEIR fault.

It's not. Here's the actual problem: Kajabi hands you all the pieces (pages, offers, emails, forms) but nobody hands you the ORDER. Nobody says "build this first, then this, then join these two together, and THAT'S when you're done." So you build a lovely page that isn't joined up to anything, and you're left wondering if you've missed something. (You usually have. Everyone has. That's the point.)

You're not behind, my friend. You were just never given the map.

"But Penny... isn't AI going to fix all of this?"

Hmm. Have you seen the AI demos going around? They all assume you're already comfortable telling a robot what to build.

Think about that for a second. You'd have to already KNOW what a good sales page contains just to ask for one. The people who can do that were never the stuck ones.

Remember the shower thought: AI is automation on steroids, and YOU hold the keys. You shouldn't have to become an AI person just to get a finished site. If you haven't signed up for ChatGPT and you're not sure you ever want to... I've got you. (And you're the majority, by the way. Don't let the noise tell you otherwise.)

So what IS it? The Glow-Up Lab, in one breath

It's a tool that connects to your Kajabi site. You pick the thing you want built: a block, a quiz, a checkout page, a Netflix-style slider in your library, a little widget that locks a page behind a special password... and so much more. You answer a few questions about your business, and it builds it.

Inside your site. In your colours. Ready to edit in the normal Kajabi editor, like anything else you've ever made.

No downloading. No uploading. No wrestling with settings. And no robots to negotiate with. You never type a prompt, you never see a line of code.

The Lab has one job, and it's the job nobody else is doing: be the map AND the builder, so your site actually gets FINISHED.

What it actually builds (the rooms)

I call the different parts of the Lab "rooms", because that's how it feels inside. Here's what's open right now:

• 🧵 The Glow-Up Kit. A library of blocks and sections Kajabi doesn't have. Foundations, Showstoppers and Finishing Touches. Flip cards, confetti, image marquees, password-locked pages, your page SEO, and the enhancers that make your Library, your Video pages and your blog page look like they were designed on purpose instead of laid out like a filing cabinet. You pick one, make it yours, and it lands on your page.
• 🎉 Pop Quiz. Personality quizzes, scored quizzes and intake forms. The questions, the personalised result pages, the follow-up emails in your voice... it all comes out the other end DONE, and the Lab shows you exactly where to join it up in Kajabi so the answers land in your contacts.
• 💰 Cha-Ching. The money pages. Your checkout page, glammed-up order bumps (those little "add this too?" offers) and styled upsell pages, with the words written and the images dropped in. It's the one page where people actually hand over money, and it's the one page nobody ever touches.
• 🛫 The Runway. The big one. A whole sales page, the checkout, the thank-you page and the welcome email... built together, in the right order, nothing forgotten. It even fills in your Page Details for SEO.

And I'm in there building more rooms as we speak. The Lab isn't a thing I built once. It's where I now do my best work, for all of us.

Want to see the actual pieces rather than read about them? Here's a page with a bunch of them on it. (It's a tiny sample, but it'll give you the idea.)

"Couldn't I just plug ChatGPT into Kajabi and do this myself?"

A clever cookie always asks this one, because Kajabi does have an AI connection now (it's called an MCP, and no, you don't need to remember that).

You totally could. And a little secret... the Lab actually runs on that same connection. I built it on those rails. But here's the difference, my friend:

A raw AI connection gives you a blank chat box and a robot that has never met your brand. YOU do the prompting, the describing, the checking. The Lab starts with my finished designs and asks you questions instead.

And Kajabi has sharp edges (nasty, pointy ones). Pages that vanish mid-save. Quirks that change weekly. 😱 I've spent months teaching the Lab where every single one is, and wrapped it in safety rails. A chatbot without that knowledge finds them out on YOUR LIVE SITE.

And when Kajabi changes something (which you know they do, haha), I update the Lab, you hit update, and you breathe. [big sigh]

AI speed. Human taste. All inside Kajabi.

"OK... but would I actually use it?"

Also fair. So here's what it looks like in real life.

You're building a page and the thing in your head isn't in the section list. You know the one. Flip cards with an image and text on the back. Confetti that magically appears as someone scrolls. A row of video cards that slide sideways like Netflix. Kajabi doesn't have those. So you give up on it, find a "Kajabi Expert" (well... they say they are?), or you go hunting for code yourself. The Lab has them sitting there ready, and it puts one on your page in minutes... while you watch.

You've wanted a quiz on your site for about two years. Every time you look into it properly, it's a third-party quiz tool that only talks to Kajabi through Zapier (gosh, that's another two subscriptions right there!!!)... and then you close the tab. The Lab builds the whole thing in one sitting, 100% inside your own Kajabi site.

Your checkout page isn't doing what you think it should. It's the one page where people actually pay you, and nobody ever adds the little bits that help a buyer say YES. Ten minutes and it's back in the land of the living, doing its job.

Your new course is READY... and the sales page is the bit that's stopping you. Not even the writing. The wiring. You know you need a sales page. You're fairly sure you need a checkout. Someone mentioned a thank-you page. There's a welcome email in there somewhere. But which one comes first, what joins to what, and how do you know when it's actually DONE? So it sits in a Google Doc for another month. 🫣 This is exactly what the Runway is for. You tell it about your offer, pick a design, make it yours... and it builds the sales page, the checkout, the thank-you page and the welcome email together, in the right order, nothing forgotten. Then it shows you the one hook-up step in Kajabi so the email goes out the moment someone buys. The whole thing, in one sitting, instead of four Saturdays.

If none of those made you go "oh, that's me"... genuinely, you probably don't need this yet, and I'd rather tell you that than sell you something. 😉

Three questions I get asked every week

"If I buy a template, do I still need this?"
No. Templates are finished pages, and nothing is held back for the Lab. A template gives you the look. The Lab gives you the pieces you add later, when you want a page to do something the standard sections can't.

"Which one's better?"
Neither. They're not competing. If you want the whole design decided for you, get a template. If you want to keep building and changing, get the Lab. Plenty of people have both, but you don't need both to start.

"Aren't there AI site builders doing this now?"
There are, and they're clever. But they build you a whole new site somewhere else, and then you export a file and upload it over the top of what you've already got. The Lab works the other way round. It adds pieces to the site you already have, one at a time. And it does the wiring, not just the looks: the quiz that actually captures the answers, the checkout that actually takes the money, the emails that actually go out.

Two things worth knowing before you go

There's no subscription. You buy it once and it's yours. Everything you build lives on YOUR Kajabi site... no "cancel and it all stops working," no monthly fee quietly nibbling away in the background. (After years of watching every tool in our world turn into a subscription, this part felt important.)

And no, it's not AI doing the designing. The designs are mine. Every one of them made the slow, human way first. The robots just carry them into your site without dropping anything. 😉

Where to from here?

If you want the guided tour, that's what the rest of this series is for. So far there's The Runway, the Intake Form and the Blog Page Enhancer, with a post for every room still to come.

And if you'd rather just wander in and have a look around:

The Glow-Up Lab

Still not sure whether you need it? Email me and tell me about your site and what you're wrestling with. I'll point you in the right direction... even if the right direction is "you don't need this yet." You know I'll tell you straight. 😉