This week we welcome Flip Your Life Community member Ben Landers on the show!  We celebrate his incredible success story and explain how Ben had his first six figure year online!  Listen in, and learn how you can too!

In this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast we answer online business questions and celebrate the success of real Flip Your Life Community members! Today, we answer questions about launching podcasts, making more sales on webinars, and how to price your memberships! We also celebrate Daniel and Tawnya growing their memberships! Learn more at https://flppedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife Today's Questions & Case Studies: Nicola - "How do I get started in podcasting?  I want to launch a podcast, but I don't know where to start." Beth - "What is the best platform for hosting webinars?" Daniel - SUCCESS: Daniel gets 45 new members! Tawnya - SUCCESS: Celebrates new members and FINALLY reaches the next level! Tyler - "What is the best price for your membership: monthly or annual?"

Imagine getting 1000 people to pay you $26 per month! That’s exactly what Jennifer accomplished in just two years inside the Flip Your Life Community! Listen to today’s podcast, and learn how she did it (and how you can too). Enjoy the show! -Shane & Jocelyn

In today's episode, we help Kenny and Nancy determine priorities to help grow their business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we're going to show you how to make a living raising chickens. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. I am super excited for this episode. I know I'm super excited every week. I'm always excited. That's what I do. I just live excited. But I am really, really excited about this one because we have an awesome guest for the show today that we met at a live event. They're out there in the Flipped Lifestyle universe, listen to the podcast all the time, and we got to talk to them at a live event and they have one of the best niche markets I've ever heard in my entire life and I cannot wait to share this episode with you today. Please help us welcome our guests, Kenny and Nancy Troiano. Guys, welcome to the program. Kenny Troiano: Well, thank you for having us. It's a pleasure. It's an honor, actually, because we've been listening to you for so long. It's amazing that we're actually able to do this. Nancy Troiano: Yeah, really glad to be with you. Jocelyn Sams: I love it. Yes. It is great to talk to you guys. We actually just met you not too long ago in California, so it's great to talk to you again and I can't wait to dive in to what it is you're doing. Shane Sams: Yeah, we were speaking at an event out in San Diego and we said, "Hey, let's have a meetup." So we put the all points bulletin out to all the Flipped Lifestyle email list. We said, "Hey, is anybody in San Diego. I know this is last minute, but we're going to be-" Jocelyn Sams: "Come meet us tonight." Shane Sams: "Come meet us on this patio at this random hotel in San Diego." And you guys showed up and I'm so glad you did, because you have an amazing story. Kenny Troiano: I saw the email. I said, "Hey, what the heck, let's throw that out there, see if they'll want to talk." And you guys invited us. And then I told Nancy right away, I called her on the phone. She was at work and I said, "You won't believe this, but we've been invited to talk to Shane and Jocelyn. You want to go?" And she's like, "Yeah." Nancy Troiano: Heck yeah. Shane Sams: "Heck yeah we do." And we were sitting around a fire and I remember everybody was sitting around it like, we had a lot of people show up. There was like 25 or 30 people ended up around those two fires that we had. And I remember sitting in front of that fire at first and the wind was blowing out on that patio and I thought I was going to get set on fire. And then the people that were hosting the live event, it was Pat Flynn's Flynn-Con event and his business partner comes up to me and goes, "Shane, Shane, Shane." And is said, "What's up, man?" And he goes, "They told us that you had the whole patio reserved and we've got all our sponsors and we want to come out here and sit on the patio." And I'm like, "We don't have the whole patio reserved." He's like asking us at his event if they could come out on the patio and I was like, "That's right. Flipped Lifestyle is taking over the world, baby." Nancy Troiano: Yes, they are. Kenny Troiano: I was actually standing next to you when he said that to you. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Right. That was amazing. Jocelyn Sams: That was a little weird. All right. Let's tell everybody else what you guys do out there. And they might be a little bit surprised at what you do because you guys are living in California and I think a lot of people don't really associate California with farm life. Shane Sams: And livestock and stuff like that. Kenny Troiano: California's actually a pretty big agricultural community. Shane Sams: We were just talking about this with our assistant. She was like ... First of all, you tell everybody what you do and tell us a little bit about your background and your online business, and then we'll talk more about what's happening out in California. Kenny Troiano: First of all, I teach people how to breed chickens. And I've been doing this for over 20 years. Actually teaching for almost 30 years now. But I've been raising chickens for a long time and everything, and maybe 20 some odd years ago, I can't remember exactly, 22 years ago, I'm trying to get the timelines right. The feed stores in my county, we have like a small town, but we have like five feed stores. We had six at one time. And they all do really well. That's how many people raise livestock, it's in every backyard around here. So, the feed stores knew that I raise chickens, so they would send people over to me to answer questions and help them out and get them started, the beginners. And at the time, it wasn't that they thought I was an authority. They just knew I raised chickens. Kenny Troiano: And I would also get the chicken magazines, too, and my daughters would read them and would overhear me talking to people on the phone or they would come to my house and we would talk chickens. Shane Sams: I love how you just flippantly threw in there, "Yeah, I get all the chicken magazines," and I'm like, "There's chicken magazines? I didn't know there were chicken magazines." Kenny Troiano: There's a lot of chicken magazines, you know. So my daughter came up to me, she goes, "Dad, you could do better than these guys," because she would read the magazines and "Why don't you start writing for the magazines?" I told my daughter Sam, I go, "If you think it's that easy, you do it." Because I wasn't exactly the greatest student. I didn't flunk English, but I didn't excel in English, okay? So I told her, "If you think it's easy, you do it." So she did. She started writing these little articles. She was only 13 years old at the time. And I would send them into the magazines and they would publish everything she wrote. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Kenny Troiano: Yeah. This went on for like two years. And then finally she was going into high school and she said, "Dad, I need a little time off and I was wondering if I could take break." I go, "Sam, you can do whatever you want. Let me, I'll go ahead and write a few articles and give you like a four or five month break and if you want to come back, you can." Because I didn't want them to forget about her. So I went ahead and wrote a four part series on selection, how to select your birds. And it really took off. I didn't even have a computer at the time. This was before computers for me. Shane Sams: What did you type the articles on? Did you hand write them or were you using like an old typewriter- Kenny Troiano: Typewriter. Shane Sams: ... like a word processor with the tape that erased and stuffed? Kenny Troiano: No, typewriter. Hunt and peck. Shane Sams: Nice. That's amazing. Kenny Troiano: So, I sent those in and they got a lot of attention and I got a lot of mail. I was like, "Wow, this is kind of cool." I've been writing for the magazines ever since. After that four part series, I never stopped and then other magazines asked me to write for them. Now I'm writing for magazines, I'm sending articles all over the world in different magazines in different countries. So I ended up taking, after four years of that, I took the information, all those articles I wrote and I put them into a collection, in a book, and I published a book. It did okay. Not enough to make a living on, but I made pretty good money. Kenny Troiano: And then four years later I wrote a second book, which was more formatted. It was more on breeding and everything. And that did really good, but I wasn't really making the kind of money that I could make a living on. I really thought for a while there that I was going to make a living writing a whole bunch of books, that I was going to just keep writing books and making a living, and I realized that wasn't going to happen. I was going to make, I still make money on my books. The orders still come in and it's nice extra money. But I needed something more. So I ran into Jeff Walker's product launch formula, and I thought, "What if I create a program with a series of courses that I could market digitally?" Kenny Troiano: So I started on that. And then one day I was driving down the road with my wife and my daughter, I have three daughters. Two of them are in their 30s, 35 and 33, and then I've got my young one which is 16. So I've got pretty good span there, by the way. So I was talking to my oldest daughter about an idea I had of putting together an online magazine where I could put it on the computer, I could put my material on there with multiple formats and color instead of black and white, and I could do all these different things and they could subscribe to it. And I looked forever to find something that would do that, like a program. And this was kind of, I think before membership sites were, I don't know about popular, but easier to do where they had plugins and things like that. Kenny Troiano: So, I kind of just put it on the back burner and just knew some day I wanted to do that. And then I don't remember exactly where it was where I heard the term membership site. Could've been Michael Hyatt. Could've been the four hour work week. I read a lot of books at that time. And then I was searching the Internet, Googling membership sites. You had a free webinar and it came up, and I basically took a bunch of notes, listened to everything you said, and you gave a series of steps like, "You get this platform, you do this and that." And I just kind of followed them and got the ball rolling. And then shortly after that, I found your podcast and I just started listening to that podcast. I'm a road biker, too. So I would listen in my mp3 player, your podcast up and down the road. And I would stop and I had a Note 4 at the time, and I would write all this stuff in my phone that you would do and I'd go home and implement it in my thing, my website. Kenny Troiano: And it just kind of went from there. One thing I just always tried to do was not to introduce a lot of bells and whistles, but to keep everything as simple as possible. Shane Sams: Yes. Kenny Troiano: It just kept getting really complicated the more ... SO I started one website, it's called The Chicken Breeder's Gazette. The first launch was like what? 30 some odd people, Nancy? Nancy Troiano: Right. It was pretty small. Kenny Troiano: At the time- Shane Sams: 30 something members? You got 30 something members on the first launch? Kenny Troiano: Yeah. To me, that was terrible. Because I'm so well known all over the country. I told Nancy that I would like to try to start, launch this and get like 1000 people, and I figured if I didn't at least get 300 people, that was a travesty, you know? Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: I like the way you think, actually. Kenny Troiano: So I almost quit when I got like 34 people, I think it was. I was like, "Oh, no. I can't, this is not going to work." And I know you guys would probably think that's great, because Nancy was saying that to me all the time. Nancy Troiano: Well, that and I'd always have to remind him it's a marathon, it's not a race. Shane Sams: I wonder where you've heard that before. Nancy Troiano: Exactly. Shane Sams: Who says that? Kenny Troiano: Yeah, really. She kept telling me, "Shane and Jocelyn would think you're doing great. You got these members, you're doing this, and this, and that. They would think you're a success." I just didn't feel like a success. So it started kind of slowing down. The members weren't really coming in and I just couldn't figure it out. So I actually started a new membership called The Breeders Academy and that has done better. I still have the Gazette. I still have about 20 some odd members over there, but the Academy has almost 100. Shane Sams: Wow. Kenny Troiano: It's doing a lot better. It's still not doing as well as I would like it to do. Shane Sams: And how much do you charge for The Breeder's Academy? Kenny Troiano: I have a few membership levels. I have $29.95 is the master breeders. And then I have a little cheaper one which we call the apprenticeship program, which is $9.95. It's just to get them in the door. And I've had a lot of people upgrade since they got in there. And then I had an annual one for $295 that, it did okay. A lot of people would join that, but the problem I had with that is some times they would get surprised at the end of the year with this all of a sudden coming out of their account. And I had a few instances where they got a little upset and stuff, and some of them just kind of keep it going no problem. And just recently I changed it to, it's still like an annual $295, but what I did was I made it so that it expires at the end of 380 days. I give them a few extra days. Shane Sams: I gotcha. Kenny Troiano: They can, if they want to rejoin and they want to keep it going, then they can just rejoin or they can maybe go to the monthly plan which is $29.95. Shane Sams: What we've done for that is we've noticed that same thing, too, now. Mathematically it works out where you have, usually annual plans we're seeing somewhere between 15 to 30% depending on the niche will actually renew, right? You're doing a lot of refunds. And you do make a lot of people mad, and we don't really want to make people mad even if the math works out that it's worth it, you know what I'm saying? So we actually, what we did was we changed all of our annual plans and our terms and conditions. They now renew at the monthly plan. That's the equivalent. So what happens is we send out, how far in advance do they get that message, Jocelyn? Jocelyn Sams: I think it's like a couple of months or maybe like a month. Shane Sams: Like a month out we say, "You are about to renew on your annual plan and you will convert to the monthly plan." We let them know that. And then once they roll back over, it's a lot lower charge, so they're not like ... It eliminates the anger because it's like, "Hey, I got this charge. What is this?" And we're like, "Oh, you had an annual plan and it rolled over." And a lot more of those people are staying now at that monthly rate and then we just give them a nice, the email when they renew gives them an option to upgrade back to the annual plan at a discount. You see what I'm saying? So that way we keep our retention, we increase lifetime value, but it's like you didn't get charged $300, right? And you lose all the anger that way. You still have people cancel, but it's like you lose all the anger. And the anger is what you want to eliminate. Kenny Troiano: Yeah. I have to figure out how to do something like that, because I'm using paid membership pro right now and I don't know how to make it so that it automatically goes to a monthly after the annual. Shane Sams: Sure. There's probably something in there you can set it up that way. But let's back up a little bit. First of all, yeah you're successful. Do you know how many people right now would come to your house and steal all your chickens because you got 100 people around $29 a month? That's crazy when you think about it. Some people in America don't make that much money a month. And if you found 100 people, with probably a few tweaks, you could double or triple that within a year. You've got the momentum, you've got the members, you've got the community, you've got the authority, and you've got this niche. Who would think an online business could be built out of raising chickens, right? But you've done that. You've built the foundation. Shane Sams: It's kind of like when people build a house. You ever drive by a house and you see, "Oh, they're building a house there in that lot. I didn't think anybody was ever going to build a house there"? And then about two weeks, three weeks later, they've poured the foundation. And it just looks like, "Man, it's taking forever for them to build that house." Then you drive back by the next week and you're like, "Oh look, they've got the frame up." Then you come back by a week later and they've got the roof. Then you come back and there's something else. And then it sits there for a month because it rains, right? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, without even paying attention, you drive by and you see somebody moving in. That's when the house ... and that's kind of like what you're doing with this membership now. You've got the foundation and the frame up. The hard part's done. Now it's just marketing at this point to take it to the next level, to get that next 100 members. Shane Sams: We always tell people if you can find one, you can find 101, right? But if you found 100, there's 1000 of them chicken raising people out there, I know there are. There's 1000 people out there breeding chickens and their chickens aren't breeding. And they need some help from The Breeders Academy! Kenny Troiano: I'm trying to scoop them up, man. Jocelyn Sams: what I want to know is can you tell people how to keep them out of the road, like our neighbors. Shane Sams: We live in rural Kentucky. There's chickens everywhere. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, maybe we could like send them to you, I don't know. Because I'm about to run over chickens all the time. We talked about a lot of people don't really think about California as somewhere agricultural, and I know that we do see the commercials about California cows and cheese and stuff like that. And it's a really large state. But when most people think about California, they think about LA or- Shane Sams: The whole place is LA and San Francisco. That's all you think about when you're not from California. Kenny Troiano: And we're actually embarrassed about that, to tell you the truth. We don't like to be associated with LA. Shane Sams: You're the country folks. You're the country folks, right? Kenny Troiano: San Diego's a lot different than Los Angeles, that's all I can say. Jocelyn Sams: For sure. But you know, we know about this kind of stuff, we'll get along just fine. You've opened up your membership. You kind of changed direction a little bit. You've got people in right now. So I guess my question is what is next or what's holding you back from going to another level? Kenny Troiano: I'll tell you what we've done that's helped out. I'll tell you what I think I need to do, but I'll tell you what I've done that's helped out a lot, which is starting the podcast, the Bred to Perfection podcast. That made a lot of difference. I've heard it from you and other people that, I get it right, get to know, like, and trust you factor, and that's made a lot of difference. And almost everybody who joins nowadays, it's because they were listening to our podcast. Shane Sams: Awesome. Is it a weekly podcast? Or how often do you do it? Kenny Troiano: We try to make it weekly. We don't always succeed, but yeah, it's basically a weekly show. Shane Sams: I just picture someone that has a backyard chicken coop and they've got like, what's a normal person own? 10 chickens? Let's just say 10 chickens. Nancy Troiano: Maybe that, yeah. Shane Sams: I'm going to say 10 chickens. And they're out there throwing seeds from a bucket or whatever you feed chickens. I don't know what you feed chickens. You're the chicken expert, not me. Jocelyn Sams: I know. It's like we live in Kentucky. You would think we know all about chickens. Shane Sams: I have no idea how to raise chickens. Jocelyn Sams: Aside from- Shane Sams: We might need to learn. We've got plenty of- Kenny Troiano: I can help you with that. Shane Sams: I just picture a guy out there, or a girl out there throwing seeds from a bucket, feeding their chickens while they're listening to your chicken podcast. And that to me- Kenny Troiano: And that's exactly what happens. Shane Sams: It feels gloriously wholesome and it's just American. Someone out there listening to a podcast raising chickens. It's amazing. Why is it not consistent? We have three pillars in our business that we think everyone has to do to build an audience online. You've got to be consistent, prolific, and relentless. So the consistent part is a consistently, you have a consistent core piece of content. For us, it's our podcast, right? We have two podcasts a week now. We have one podcast on Tuesday and then we bring back a best of episode or maybe we release one of the trainings from our community or we do something on Saturdays now. So we have consistently, every week, no matter what, we've been going ... I think we've been on almost a five year run now of not missing a week of our podcast. Kenny Troiano: Wow. Shane Sams: What's keeping you, because that is really critical. That know, like, and trust comes from your audience being able to rely on you, and if they ... like on Tuesdays if there's anything late, I know we would hear about it immediately. Some times iTunes will mess up and the feed won't go in iTunes, but it'll be out on our website and we'll get like 10 emails like, "Hey, where's the podcast? It's not on iTunes. I download it and listen to it on work on Tuesdays." Because I run the website, some times iTunes doesn't update. Go check it out. But like what's keeping you guys from being consistent on that podcast? Why do you miss them? Is it just time? Is it effort? Are you doing it in real time weekly? How are you getting behind some times? Kenny Troiano: Well, we've got 32 episodes out and I have 30 some odd episodes in the bank that just need to be- Nancy Troiano: Edited. Kenny Troiano: Edited and formatted and put out. It's always time for me. I get these great ideas. I get these questions from members. And the best I can do some times is put them on a list and try to order that list in the order that they need to be produced, I guess you could say. Shane Sams: Right, right. Kenny Troiano: So I just keep adding to that list and I'm not ticking off that list as fast as I need to some times, so it always comes to time and we're doing, since we started interviewing our members and getting some experts on here and there, we've got a lot of episodes in the bank, so we're not hurting for episodes, actually. Thank God for 20 some odd years of working and doing this for that long and creating all kinds of content and material and programs and articles. I've got so much in the bank that I'm good for five, six more years without ever having to produce anything new. Shane Sams: Yeah. If you would get them edited now. Are you editing your own podcast? Kenny Troiano: But I'm talking about articles. I'm talking about articles- Shane Sams: On your blog. Kenny Troiano: Yeah. Like the material that I drip into my website, if it wasn't for the fact I had so much already produced, if I had to create new content, I'd be in trouble. Shane Sams: Right. So you've got, did you say you've got all this content scripted or you actually have 20 or 30 things recorded, it's just a matter of finding time to get them edited and uploaded and all that stuff? Kenny Troiano: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay. Kenny Troiano: They're recorded and ready to go, they just need to be edited and formatted. Shane Sams: Okay. Do you edit your own podcast? Kenny Troiano: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay. I think you know what's coming next, right? You need to go take about $200 out of that 100 people paying $29 a month and you need to say like, "Hey, we're going to outsource this. It's time." It's time to go hire someone on Fiverr, hire someone on Upwork, and just find someone, all they have to do is edit it, upload it, and go. And you could even just get a transcript for any copy that you're going to put on the stuff. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And it would be awesome if you just had all of those scheduled out and then you know you don't have to worry about that piece for a really long time, right? Shane Sams: Yeah. Because you could drop all those in a folder today, hire someone tomorrow, and like we do this with YouTube videos. One thing that we do is we cut up our Q&As in our community and then we can roll those out like as single Q&As. Because we usually answer 15 to 20 questions, every Q&A that we do live in the community. So we take those and we cut them up and we're like, "Hey, we can roll these out on YouTube later." Okay? So we hire someone and we tell him, "We don't want to get $1000 a head, so you're allowed to do one of these a week that creates 15 videos," and that just keeps us pushing forward, right? Shane Sams: So you don't have to go hire someone to say, "I need to pay you $3000 to do 30 episodes." No. Just say, "HEre's what we want to do. I want you to do five of these a month." And that way we're constantly getting one week ahead. And that way it's affordable, you've got it kind of on a payment plan where you're like, "All right, this is a fixed cost, but I know I never have to worry about this podcast again for the next 30 weeks." That lets you step back and say, "How do we get more members in? That's all we're going to focus on now. We need to stop creating content for the next six months, because we've already got it and we need to go out and we need to do the things that we need to do to prolifically promote all of your stuff. You've got the consistent content. Scratch it off the list. Now you can go out and actually promote The Chicken Breeders Academy, because you have time to do it and you're not thinking about, "Oh my gosh, I got to sit down for two hours and edit all this show, and edit all this podcast and do all these things." Kenny Troiano: Right. Nancy Troiano: Here's two things. We do know that we want to create enough podcasts to last throughout the end of the year, because Christmas is crazy busy for a mail carrier. So we know we need to do that and we're only like five podcast shows away from getting that completed. The other thing is we're a little bit apprehensive about having somebody else edit our shows, because what if they edit out something that was important to be said in the show? Kenny Troiano: Or they leave something they shouldn't have left in. Shane Sams: Okay. Kenny Troiano: Like I said, if you heard our raw stuff, it's pretty bad. Shane Sams: That's an amazing question that I don't think anyone has ever asked before and I totally get that fear. We get that fear 100%, okay? What you have to do first of all is realize this principle. Where were we at? New York when we were talking? Yeah, we were in New York one time, we were kind of in a group of entrepreneurs and we were all talking, and this was back when we were thinking about selling ElementaryLibrarian.com. And I remember in the conversation, Jocelyn was saying, "Well, this is my community. I've done this. What if somebody doesn't get it who buys it?" And one of the people in the Mastermind looked up and said, "Everyone is replaceable, even the founder of the company." And what's important to you and like what we say on our podcast, will probably shine through as the editor is listening to it and anything they cut out is going to be prob not important. Like you can tell. Shane Sams: And anything that gets through the editor and makes it to the ears of the people that you talk to is going to be something they didn't even have before no matter what, right? So, they're always going to learn, they're always going to get content. Something's always going to go through. And yes, the editor is going to put things on the editing room floor that you wish had made the podcast. But it doesn't matter, because the person listening didn't even know that was there in the first place. Jocelyn Sams: As of right now, they're not even getting the information, because you have everything recorded and it's not even out there. There are definitely weeks when I've listened back to the podcast. I don't always listen back, but some times I do. And there are weeks that I'll listen back to it and I'm like, "Oh, we're talking over each other. Why was that included in the podcast?" Shane Sams: Or I say something like, "Oh, he left a part out of that thing that I was talking about or whatever." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And it's okay. It's better for some information to get out than no information to get out. And it's much better than you trying to do it yourself. Shane Sams: 80% of what you would do done by somebody else is 1000% better than you doing it by yourself. Because it actually happens. Let's say you're missing every third or fourth podcast and there's just not one that week because one didn't get out, right? Well, releasing a podcast that's slightly edited that may, let's be honest, just tell them not to cut out anything, just be like, "Cut out the mess ups. Cut out the screw ups. Cut out the ooms and the ahs and all that stuff. Just leave the rest of it in." You don't have to edit it perfect. And if you can let that go, you will become a prolific content creator. You won't be able to maintain the flow of content. It'll just pour out of you, because you can just let it out. Shane Sams: For years, we even, we read through the transcript, but we don't check our transcript perfect like at all. It's probably 95% what it really should be because, you know what, 25% of our audience reads the transcript. Another 50% listen to the whole podcast. Somebody else consumes it in a different way. You can't match up everything to everyone listening anyway, so don't try. Just get the stuff out, get it batch. Yeah, you got to just kind of let it go. It's not your baby anymore when you let somebody edit it. But you're the one who actually makes all the content, right? Kenny Troiano: You are talking to a control freak here, you know that. Shane Sams: I live with a control freak, bro. So I have this conversation all the time with almost everything that we create. Kenny Troiano: But I'm always telling Nancy that I need to do something because I'm wearing too many hats and I can't make this all ... and we were just talking about it this morning that I'm wearing too many hats and I can't make it all happen just with my effort. And it's like pretty soon I'm going to be doing video, and edit those, too. Nancy Troiano: Here's the thing, once we have all the podcasts done for the rest of the year, then he's going to switch over to video and start working on that. Kenny Troiano: Right. Shane Sams: What are the three hats, Kenny, that you need to wear? What are the three hats- Jocelyn Sams: That only you can wear. Shane Sams: That only you can do in your business right now. One we know is chicken guru extraordinaire. Kenny Troiano: Yeah, content creation, big time. Dealing with my customers, because only I can answer their questions, really. And that's the biggest thing. And then the marketing, which I'm always struggling with. I think I have a brilliant idea and it flops. Nancy Troiano: I think that's one that you would like to push out to somebody else. Kenny Troiano: Yeah, I wish I could find someone I could hire to do that for me. When it comes to marketing, to me I come up with these great ideas, "Oh, we're going to get all kinds of members," and it just doesn't produce like I think it's going to. What I was thinking, like the podcast really made a lot of difference and we have a lot of hope in that. So, we're going to continue to do that. And I do know that I need to start doing webinars, but every time I want to do it, it's that time issue that gets in the way to create the webinars. And we just started doing Facebook live and I was afraid to do that because I'm putting myself out there and I get nervous. So I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that. We started doing the Facebook live, we've done three or four of them now, and we're like, "Wow, we can do this. This ain't so bad." Shane Sams: And live's better, you don't have to edit it. It's amazing. I love live video. Kenny Troiano: I'm just calm. We're just chatting with the screen, with our people listening. It ended up turning out to be okay. So I told Nancy, I go, "If I can do this live, then I can do a live webinar." So I'm getting more confidence about that. Now it's just, again, we're back to the time issue. Jocelyn Sams: Right. And one thing that I would challenge you on would be the questions like customer service, because this is something that I was reluctant to let go of for a really long time because I was like, "Oh, well nobody can answer the questions like I can." Here's the thing, once you've answered them a lot of times, most people are asking the same types of questions. So I started using a customer service ticketing system. It is called Zen Desk. And the cool thing about Zen Desk is that it keeps all of your responses and it keeps them in like a database. So what I would do is for the first few months, I would respond to all of the customer service tickets and then I turned it over to someone else and if they needed some help, they would look back and see, "Okay, well what did Jocelyn respond? Oh, okay. She said this, so I'm going to copy and paste it and type a couple other things in it." Jocelyn Sams: And if there was something they didn't know how to answer, then they would ask me and I would tell them, and from then on it would be inside that ticketing system. Shane Sams: Even in our community, our community has grown so big that we can't keep up with everybody, right? So like what we did was we have a community manager that we hire and we pay him ... How much? It's a part time college student kind of role. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, yeah. We pay him just like, I think it's like $12 an hour, I think. Shane Sams: $12 an hour or something like that, and what he does is he scours our forums, because you would think Shane and Jocelyn have seen literally thousands of businesses, talked to hundreds of people on our podcasts, answered thousands of questions on all of their Q&As, only they could answer the marketing questions, right? Well, no. Not really because we took all of our wisdom and knowledge and made a course called The Flip Your Life Blueprint and we have 50 courses that basically answer 80% of all questions could be asked. So now what he does is he makes sure every single person in our forums, if they ask a question, like say it's about sales funnels. Or webinars. His job is to know where the answers are and get people to them. He doesn't answer- Jocelyn Sams: His job is not to answer. He doesn't give a personal opinion. He doesn't say, "In my experience." He says, "Hey, have you checked out the webinar course? Here's a link to it." Shane Sams: "Here's Shane and Jocelyn's webinar course. Shane and Jocelyn actually answered this same question on a Q&A last week and it's on YouTube. Here's the link." So it's getting people to their answers the fastest. It's still you answering the question. It's like Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey ain't sitting down and helping nobody write a budget by himself. But they're going to point to his course that helps you write the budget. And that's what you have to do. You've got to let go of this stuff. You have so much content that you've created and I'm pretty sure from egg to dinner plate, that's probably a terrible analogy, but raising a chicken is about the same. From egg to the fryer, it's about the same system. When you hatch the egg, you raise the chicken, they make more eggs. I bet you answer the same questions a lot of the time. And if you can answer the most frequently asked questions and then have a system in place where someone points to the answer, it doesn't have to be just you, right? And then you're free to say, "Wait a minute, why didn't this launch work? Why didn't this webinar work? Let's actually me and Nancy sit down and figure this out and we can focus on the important thing, getting more members and creating new content," okay? Shane Sams: Challenges, when you look at ... We've really figured out that the only thing that really we have to do is talk on this podcast. Like next week at Flip Your Life live, we have to be onstage. That's something that only we can do, because the event itself is billed as headlined by Shane and Jocelyn, right? Nancy Troiano: Right. Shane Sams: But all we're focused on is the content. We have a live event coordinator who's handling everything else. We have an AV team that is handling everything else. We have an MC who is going to go out and take care of the crowd and keep us organized. Our assistants will be there. Our assistants will help us with all the other stuff, like checking people in, registration. We have one job. Be Shane and Jocelyn and answer questions. That's our job during the thing. If we were constantly just involved in everything, we couldn't have the live event. It wouldn't even work, right? But it's the same thing with your chicken stuff. You've got to let go of ... You need to question yourself as anything but podcasting, circle the podcast, circle Q&As in your membership, and now say, "Those are the only things I do. I want to go get more members, so how do I get rid of everything else?" Shane Sams: And some times it doesn't take hiring 20 people to do it. It could just be some automation. It could be not doing some things, saying no to some things, right? Like I would question why you're doing maybe even Facebook lives and YouTube videos and stuff now. Why aren't you just focusing on getting the podcast out consistently and then promoting that podcast every single minute of every single day of your life to triple your chicken audience, and then let your podcast send them to opt ins to get them on your list so you can market them to your webinars or to your membership itself. I really question going tactically wide when you could go deep on one thing right now and not add more things to your plate. Let go of some of these things and see if you can work out a better system where you're not so overwhelmed, right? Shane Sams: I'm rambling a little bit here, but I just had a Mastermind discussion and one of my buddies said the other day, he came on and he said, "Hey guys, I got an idea." We just planned a fourth quarter and we realized that we were maxing out our capacity every quarter and all these fires kept coming up that we had to put out. All these things, these new opportunities would show up that we had to act on, so we did something pretty unique. We only filled our calendar to 70% capacity. We went through every person's calendar, every project, and we said, "Drop it down 30%. Say no to 30% of the plan right now," and now when opportunities come or when we have ideas, we're going to have capacity to act on them. And I would challenge you a little bit like you don't have to do more, you might have to do less better to double you membership. Nancy Troiano: You know, that speaks volumes to me because a lot of times what we talk about in our podcast is we'll have breeders that will have 10 varieties of chickens on their yard and we say, "You need to focus down to one or two of them so that you can give them all of your attention." That speaks volumes to me about what you just said. Kenny Troiano: Yeah. I do need to release some of it. I know I'm doing too much. And I like the idea of automating some of it, too. Shane Sams: Even without the automation, people go to automation instead of saying no some times and that causes more problems, because then you got to learn how to automate it, right? What if your whole, like we know for sure that your content is king, because you are the chicken guy, right? So what if your entire business was just take, is one podcast a week, every day is promote the podcast, and then you're emailing out other content to get them to join your membership, right? And then you go and you do a webinar, right? You say one webinar that you do every other week forever. And now all you have to do is podcast and all you have to do is email your list and all you have to do is a webinar twice a month. And you start adding 10 members every two weeks. Shane Sams: And then all of a sudden, six months form now, you've done 12 webinars and you've added 100 more members. And nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. You don't have to go Facebook live. You don't have to go YouTube live. Just take your podcast when you record it, turn the video on, and then put that on YouTube. There's your YouTube channel. Upload that to your Facebook page. You don't have to go live. You could just do that. And you just hire an editor out to go do that thing and now you can focus on the marketing. Jocelyn Sams: Do you see how by getting someone to help you get this content out, that is then going to release you to be able to work on other things to grow your membership? Kenny Troiano: Oh, yeah. Nancy Troiano: Most definitely. Kenny Troiano: We've been talking about this for a while. It's just a matter of making it happen. We just keep putting it off or we keep coming up with reasons why we shouldn't do that. But I do know we need to do that. Shane Sams: I would challenge you both after this call, and anybody listening to the podcast right now, to sit down, because I know everyone listening is overwhelmed. Everybody gets overwhelmed because we all want to fill our bucket. We get capacity, and humans just want to fill their capacity. It's like getting a bigger garage. You're like, "Man, all my stuff fits on one wall." And then four years and two kids later, there's 97 things on every wall. Nancy Troiano: Exactly. Shane Sams: We fill things up. It's what we do. So we have to guard against this. Write down the five things that actually produce members in your business, period. For us, it's definitely the podcast. It's email marketing. I email the lists every day. It's more and more becoming Facebook ads. It's doing webinars and some kind of live component. That's been our life for the last year and a half. Those five things matter. Nothing else matters. I wanted to do a YouTube channel and a daily YouTube video live every day. It didn't matter. So I just said, "We'll just cut up the questions and we'll upload those. We can outsource that." Shane Sams: Just think about the five things that actually matter that lead to you being able to promote your membership to your list every day. And your followers every day. That's it. And then get rid of everything else. Say no to everything else. Now automate those five things only. Don't add anything new for a year. Go out and just hammer the nail that's working every two weeks and make more members happen over time. And then a year from now when you've got 200 or 300 members, maybe now you add something new because you've got capacity and you've got funds to actually go hire more people and do it. Does that make sense? Kenny Troiano: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, guys. It has been a fun chat with you today. Tell everyone where they can find you and then also tell us your action step, what you plan to do. I think it's pretty clear after our conversation. But just let everyone know where to find you and what you're planning to work on based on today's conversation. Kenny Troiano: Well, first of all when I do the five steps that you talked about, write those down and implement those. And then we're going to work on trying to find someone to do our editing, which is going to be a little tough. We're going to have to struggle with that one a little bit, but definitely those five steps right away. And they can find us on Spotify, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, and our show is Bred to Perfection. And they can find my website at, it's called The Breeders Academy at www.BreedersAcademy.com. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today. We have loved talking chickens with you guys. Kenny Troiano: You got it. Thank you for having us on your show and the opportunity to meet you guys in person in San Diego, that was great. We talked about it all the way home. Nancy Troiano: It was great seeing you guys down there. Kenny Troiano: Hopefully we can do this again some time. Shane Sams: What a great conversation with Kenny and Nancy Troiano. I love hearing amazing stories about amazing niche memberships like raising chickens. I mean, there's so many cliché things out there in the world, guys. Everybody's trying to do the live coach thing. Everybody's trying to be the motivational speaker, but man, people are making real money with real world niches in online business and you can too. We would love to help you start build and grow your own online business over at FlippedLifestyle.com. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle dot com. You could head over there right now, check out the side bar, grab your online business quick start guide. It's a free series of courses to help you come up with your idea, research to make sure that it's making money online, and get started creating products that you can sell on the Internet. Shane Sams: That's FlippedLifestyle.com. We would love to help you in our community today. Before we close the show, we're going to read you a bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our motivation and inspiration from the bible and we love to close our show with a piece of wisdom from the bible. And today's bible verse is Psalm 138:3. The bible says, "When I called, you answered me. You made me bold and stout hearted." So be bold and stout hearted. Go out there and chase your dreams. Whatever your idea is, it is worthy. You can go out, you can start an online business. You can share your experience, share your wisdom. You can change the lives of the customers that you find and you can change your family's future forever. That's all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there. Take action. And do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Nancy Troiano: One thing that, our ultimate goal here is to at some point be able to have conferences like what you guys are going to do real soon. And we're thinking that would be so much fun to do. But like you were telling us a little while ago about you've got somebody to do all these different functions and all you've got to do is be the content for the conference. That's kind of scary that you have all these different people doing all these things for you and you have to learn that, "Okay, we're going to need this for this and that for that kind of thing." But like we said, that's our ultimate goal is some day to be able to have those conferences in person. Shane Sams: Sure. Sure, yeah. Well, we've learned in the last couple of years, conferences have a different place in your business. It's to build retention and they're usually not profitable, okay? Small things are profitable. Classroom setting sizes are profitable if you can sell an expensive ticket like 30 or more. But once you start getting into hotels and stuff, it's really, really like a lot of money. I would probably say make your goal at least 500 to 1000 members, and go get it and make that happen. And then maybe start doing work. When you get to 500 members, which you can get to 500 members, you just got to put your mind to it and say, "That's our goal, we're going to get there." You probably have enough money now to start thinking about doing workshops. And then push as high as you can get to start selling those conferences. Shane Sams: We sell a conference ticket at almost $1000 and it's still usually just a break even event. You know what I'm saying? But if you've got the capacity to do it, it can be an amazing thing for retention. You may have 500 members and you say, "Hey, here's a conference ticket to come to this conference." All those people pay you every month until the conference, right? So it creates an anchor. It creates a place to get together. It creates things like that. Conferences are a big deal and they are fun. Workshops are easy. Workshops you can usually get away with. It's a little bit cheaper, you can make them profitable. But going out and making a big conference of 100 plus is really overwhelming and I probably actually wouldn't recommend anybody doing it until they get to 1000 members. Because then you've got a community big enough to support it, okay? Kenny Troiano: I'll tell you what I do like to do and want to get back into as well, which would impede on my time I'm sure, was ... and I left it out, I forgot about it, was we used to do seminars. We used to travel the country doing seminars. I worked for an organization called The Sustainable Poultry Network and it was really funny when they first hired me, they said, "I know you wrote books, books are great. But do you know how to speak in front of people or are you just a writer?" And I said, "Well, I've spoke in front of a small group, so you can let me try it and see if I work out. And if I do, then you can keep going." "Oh yeah, okay. So we'll bring you to Wellmont, Ohio." They actually put me in the basement thinking that maybe my subject matter wasn't going to be popular or maybe most people wouldn't, I wouldn't get a very big following. And it filled the room. Standing room only. It was crazy. Shane Sams: Love it. Kenny Troiano: And then the next seminars after that, I got the biggest rooms. Shane Sams: Yes. Kenny Troiano: And I really loved that interaction. Shane Sams: Maybe the best thing to do then in this regard would be probably like go speak at other people's events to continue building your membership and your authority. And then you have side events like meetups and stuff like we did at Flynn Con. And that's a great way to start that live event process, and then keep your mind focused on that one goal of getting to your income goal for your membership. And then all doors open and there's more possibilities. Okay? Kenny Troiano: Sounds good. Sure. Before we get offline here, I got to say this and I wish I would've said it in the actual podcast, because I'm now regretting it. But I got to thank you guys, because if it wasn't for you, we would not be where we're at today. We would've never found what we needed to find to make this all work. I wouldn't probably have even known about it. It probably would've took me a lot longer. I really appreciate what you guys do and I want to thank you, because you guys made all the difference in our lives, I'll tell you. Shane Sams: Oh, man. Jocelyn Sams: Thank you so much. That's awesome. Shane Sams: That's why we do what we do, bro. That's why we do what we do. We appreciate tha.t Kenny Troiano: Really, you guys are doing a great job. I can't thank you enough. Nancy Troiano: Your steps that we followed, you made it so easy for us and it was simple and it was great. Kenny Troiano: You know how some people say they found you through Pat Flynn? Shane Sams: Yeah. Kenny Troiano: I found Pat Flynn through you. Shane Sams: Yeah, baby. Kenny Troiano: And I listen to mostly all your shows. I've missed a few here and there. But I've only listened to maybe 50 of his. Shane Sams: That's amazing. I've got to cut this out and I'm sending it to Pat. Jocelyn Sams: We love it when people tell us that. It's really funny. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Kenny & Nancy's Website Flip Your Life Community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Theresa design and launch her product. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's show we help Theresa design and launch her product. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody. Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flipped Lifestyle community onto the show so that we can help them take their business to the next level. We're really, really, really super excited today to welcome Theresa Steckel. Theresa, welcome to the show. Theresa Steckel: Hey guys, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Shane Sams: And lest you think that Shane and Jocelyn are perfect I'm going to tell you what happened earlier today. We looked up, and I got a notification that said someone had joined a Zoom call. And I looked down, and I was like, "What?" Because we were getting ready for an appointment. We had a student teacher meeting at Isaac's school as we were getting ready- Jocelyn Sams: It was a parent teacher not a student teacher. Shane Sams: Or a parent teacher not a student teacher. That's right. We're not the students. We're the parents. But we had this parent teacher meeting, so we were getting ready to go to that, and I looked down, and I was like, "Oh no. We've double booked, the dreaded double booking when five people are controlling your calendar and you're not one of them." And so I looked over at Jocelyn. I was like, "I think we have a Podcast right now." Jocelyn Sams: And I was like, "What?" And I'm usually such a slave to the calendar. It's so funny. I get up every day, and I look at it, and I'm like, "Oh no we've got A, B, and C to do," but for whatever reason this morning I didn't do that. Shane Sams: And then for some reason we had A and then B, B, B, and C because there was all sorts of stuff going on at the same time. So Theresa was kind enough to move this down a couple hours, and we have finally gotten on the call together. So we are sorry that we stood you up a couple hours ago, Theresa. Theresa Steckel: You know, that is just the way it goes sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: Yup, life happens. I really hate rescheduling Podcasts, but thank you so much for being kind enough to do that for us. Theresa Steckel: You're welcome. I really am just happy to be on the call, so I appreciated you guys rescheduling too. Jocelyn Sams: Alright. Well, I'm excited for you to talk a little bit about your background. We talked about it before. Before people come onto the Podcast we do like a little intake survey so we can learn more about you, and it sort of guides our discussion and lets you know what we're going to be asking you so you can start thinking about it. And one of the things that we ask about is your background, and I think your background is really interesting. So can you get into that just a little bit. Tell us about how you started and what it is that you do and anything else you want to tell us. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so going way, way back we moved to Oklahoma, I don't know, like 24 years ago, and I became a housekeeper in a nursing home making a whopping $4.25 an hour and decided that ... I got talked into going to an LPN program. One of my friends talked me into it, so I got admitted into this LPN program, and she did not make the class, so I ended up there by myself. Shane Sams: Oh no. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. Shane Sams: What is an LPN? Theresa Steckel: It is a licensed practical nurse so more technical and less assessment and critical thinking. So I worked as an LPN. I was married at the time. We had a daughter. So basically after that worked my way through nursing school and eventually as I was working through nursing school had two kids and a husband, was working full time. Spent a lot of time in pediatric hematology/oncology and then worked in public health for a few years and then decided I thought I wanted to teach. So I went back to school and got a master's with a focus in nursing education. I taught full time for about three years and then but really kind of missed the clinical care. Theresa Steckel: I loved working with students, but I missed sort of that hospital piece of it, that acute care. So I got a full time job in nursing leadership, became a director of patient care. I was in that role for about seven years, and as part of that position I was responsible for 85 to 110 beds kind of depending on which time period you looked at, up to 200 employees at one time. Shane Sams: Whoa. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, 125-200 was kind of ... Usually I sat closer to 120, which was a little more manageable. And then most recently about a year and a half ago was promoted to an executive level position and have been working more in focusing on service and kind of the patient experience side. I've loved really all the jobs I've had. There's always something you don't like. Really like I've spoken at state events and national events a little bit. I've really liked that. I love working with students and mentoring. As a leader you have a lot of chances to work with students and new nurse graduates, so I always really loved doing that. But that's kind of how I ended up here. Shane Sams: This is crazy because you've literally climbed the ladder. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, this is like the classic American dream. Shane Sams: This is the American ... I started out as a housekeeper making $4.25 an hour, and now I'm a vice president. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so it sounds great. So Theresa- Theresa Steckel: It does sound great. Jocelyn Sams: Why are you trying to do online business. Clearly you have the dream life, right? Shane Sams: Yeah, like what's the ... Before we get into what you're doing online what is the desire there? Why online business instead of ... You're clearly successful. That's an amazing resume. Anyone would be proud. Gosh, in charge of 200 employees and 110 patients. Theresa Steckel: Right, everyone's dream 200 employees. Shane Sams: I know, right? Jocelyn Sams: Definitely not my dream. Shane Sams: Maybe not two employees. What is the goal? What's the dream? What's taken you down this path? Theresa Steckel: Yeah, you know I've always wanted more flexibility with my family and my kids and always kind of had ... I called a bug or an itch or just sort of a deep desire to have your own business and do something on your own, and I've never really been able to shake it. So while I've kind of climbed and done great things in my career that's just never gone away, and feeling like there's something more that I'm supposed to be doing. Does that make sense? Shane Sams: It totally makes sense. We always say that people are driven into online business for two reasons. It's usually inspiration or desperation, right? You're inspired to do something, you feel like there's something that you want to do or maybe something happens like we have like a negative experience, a catalyst that kind of drives you forward. Our good friend, Mark Mason he says the two reasons that you start a business are because you're being driven away from something ... I'm sorry, you're moving away from something, or you want to move towards something, right, it's kind of the same thing. Theresa Steckel: Right, right. Shane Sams: So you're definitely leaning on the I'm moving toward this rather than like I'm at the ... You're not at the end of your career, but you've kind of done it, you know, and it's like can I do this other thing inside of you. Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jocelyn Sams: Well, and here's the thing. I feel like, Theresa, that probably you have other gifts and talents that you want to share with the world, and when you work in this healthcare space you're sort of in this one area mostly, right, instead of being able to share all that you have to offer. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, you have to kind of especially as a nurse find ways to not get pigeonholed into specific things. It's pretty broad. It is a great career. I wouldn't say that it's not, but trying to branch out into other areas you can't just go work at Google or something. Shane Sams: Right, exactly, and like try some new project. 20% of your projects are all the same or, no, you're the vice president. You have one job, right? Theresa Steckel: Yeah, yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, exactly. Theresa Steckel: And I have definitely had kind of those events in my life in the past where I wish I had more flexibility. My mom was really sick for a long time, and I didn't have the flexibility to go spend the kind of time with her that I would've liked to. My job was great to let me go whenever I wanted to, but it would've been nice to just been able to go be with her. Shane Sams: Yeah, without asking for permission basically. Theresa Steckel: Right. Shane Sams: Or making sure everything was okay on the backside. That was interesting. I was actually posting on, I took a picture of me and Jocelyn at the school today, and she was like, "Why did you just take a picture of us sitting in the waiting room at the principal?" And I was kind of like, "Because I want to remember," like this is cool like it's the middle of the day and we can go to a parent teacher conference, and at the end of the parent teacher conference we got to tell our teachers like we are always on call. If our kid ever needs us you call us, and if you need help let us know. We can volunteer. We can be here for that, and we don't have to check in with anybody. And that's one of my absolute favorite things about online business, period. Have you always wanted to do online business or did you maybe try some other things? Theresa Steckel: No, no, I tried some other things. I did that whole thing, too, where you write down everything you can think of and try to pick a job or pick a business out of the sky, like socks. I was going to make socks. Shane Sams: You were going to make ... Oh no, wait. This was not in the intake form, I don't think. You were going to make socks. What does that mean? Theresa Steckel: No, it's like- Jocelyn Sams: I don't know what this is. Shane Sams: Yeah, I got to hear this one. Theresa Steckel: I never quite figured it out, which is why it never worked. Not like make them myself but you can import things from China and get designs on them. I have a sister who is an artist, and I was like, "Ooh, she could design these cool socks," and then I don't know. We could sell them to nurses because they buy, like, compression socks and you know. Shane Sams: That was the first person I ever had say, "My first idea was making socks." You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I had an idea of making curtains once. That's a little different than socks. Shane Sams: Yeah, Jocelyn tried to sell curtains once. We went out, and we were teachers. We didn't have any money, but I was like, "Let's do it. Let's go buy the fabric, buy a sewing machine." Jocelyn Sams: Hey, I made two sets of curtains, and they did work. The problem is it took me, like, you know- Shane Sams: 75 hours to make the set. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, a long time. Shane Sams: Right. Okay, so scratch socks. What happened next? Theresa Steckel: So we've done a couple of different things. We had a brick and mortar business at one point, and I don't know if you read this in my intake form but sort of the last two weeks of that business I had our last child, so she was about a week old and my husband was supposed to find someone to work in the business because I had a full time job. So his job was the business, and I had a job job like a traditional nursing job. But he was also working part time, and he got stuck working this one weekend, so I had to run the business. And my baby was seven days old, and I'm working in this business where we rent out vehicles and trailers and I'm nursing, and it was horrible, and I was ... Shane Sams: Yeah. I have to say this. You wrote in your form, "I was one very unhappy lactating mamma." Theresa Steckel: Yeah. Shane Sams: So hard when I read that because I was like, "Well, that's not a good situation for anyone." Jocelyn Sams: No, that reminds me of teacher life too. My baby wasn't seven weeks old, but like when I had Anna I was working at the school, and it was a really old school, so every single square inch of space was taken by somebody and there was nowhere you could go to pump milk, so I had to go in this office, and I can remember one time the principal opened the door and I'm like, "Oh no, don't come here." He was going to bring a kid in there to talk or something. I'm like, "No, no, no." Shane Sams: Oh my God. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, and it makes that noise, right. It's like [inaudible 00:11:37]. Shane Sams: Okay, for all the men out there uncomfortable about this breastfeeding discussion I'm going to move us forward. Theresa Steckel: I'm a nurse, so I can talk about just about anything. Shane Sams: Talk about anything, that's right. I was just kidding. But is says you and your husband are still married through this- Theresa Steckel: Yeah, we are still married, 25 years even after that incident. But when he talks about brick and mortar I look at him, and I don't know how he doesn't die because I think, "No. No, I'm not doing that again." Shane Sams: All right, so brick and mortar is out. Making socks is out. What was next? Theresa Steckel: So we dabbled in a little bit of MLM, but it always felt like a bait and switch to me. I was never comfortable with it. You're not really selling the product. You're selling an opportunity, and- Shane Sams: Oh. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: Jocelyn hates MLMs. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, you are speaking my language, Theresa. MLMs, I don't know. I was reading this thing about them the other day about 99 point something percent of people lose money, and I'm like, "How are they still in business?" Shane Sams: I know, right? Yeah. It always makes me mad because when we try to run Facebook ads sometimes it says like, "Are you an MLM because we don't allow MLMs to advertise on Facebook?" I'm like, "No. We don't even ... No. We have no products. We're not trying to do that, like we're not even an MLM." Jocelyn Sams: Okay, and before we get e-mails we're not an MLM because you own your own business. You're not trying to recruit people. Shane Sams: Right, we're more of like a marketing ... Jocelyn Sams: We don't take any cut of it. Shane Sams: ... marketing and promotions company. That's what we are really. We're just helping you build it and market it basically. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. So didn't do that. And then my husband's had a couple of service-based businesses I haven't really helped out with, but I just really want something, like I said, that's flexible, still allows me to be creative, kind of use my leadership the way that I want to. So I probably have for four years been just trying to think of ... And at that time I still didn't know about ... I knew there were online businesses, but I didn't really know what that meant, which is kind of ... And now that I've discovered you guys I don't know how I was so slow to figure it out. Shane Sams: Yeah because if Shane and Jocelyn can do it surely I can. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. Shane Sams: You guys can figure it out, what's taking me so ... Jocelyn Sams: I don't know. This interview's going downhill. Shane Sams: It's going downhill fast. We're off the rails. Theresa Steckel: It just didn't make sense to me until ... I still remember the moment I was listening, and so I know that this is a common way that people find you. But I discovered Pat Flynn through a different conference I had gone to, and he was a speaker there, so a couple months later I was doing some back reading into some of that material, and I thought, "I'm going to check this guy out a little bit more." So I went to his stuff, I listened to a bunch of his Podcasts, and I still remember. I was like on the stair climber at the YMCA, and I heard I think it was Shane's maybe second interview on the Pat Flynn show, and I was like, "Oh, that makes sense to me like that's something I could do," because when I would Google things that nurses were doing online they were doing a lot of blogging where they were really just doing affiliate marketing, so they didn't have a product. They were just peddling other people's things, and I didn't like that. And I'm not totally opposed to affiliate marketing. I just didn't want that to be my only thing. Shane Sams: It shouldn't be your only ... We're not against affiliate marketing either. We don't do affiliate launches and stuff because we like to ... One, we don't want to spam our e-mail list with everybody else's stuff. But we do recommend products. We recommend things like aWeber and Kajabi and stuff like that like we've done that in the past. Jocelyn Sams: And that is a way to do business. Shane Sams: But it should not be your only way to do business like your business has to be your courses, your services, your products because it's your family and it's your future and it's your life, and you can't rely on somebody else's stuff to support you. That's more like gravy, right. That's the extra stuff that you get. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I think when I heard your Podcast just the concept of the idea made more sense to me. But I still was like, "I don't know what I'm going to do," and then I just kind of like I said I listened to ... I was on one of the member calls one time where Shane was like, "Get off your butt. Just pick something." I was like, "Oh, I don't know." "Just pick something." Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Theresa, you're making our member calls sound unappealing. Shane Sams: Right. Theresa Steckel: No, they're great. They're a lot of fun. Just, you know ... Jocelyn Sams: Our member calls are amazing. Shane Sams: Hard core. We're hard core in the member calls. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. If you want to see how they go we have a couple clips. We actually cut out individual clips of some of our best questions and answers, and we put them on your YouTube channel, so flippedlifestyle.com/youtube, check that out okay. All right, so let's pivot here then. Let's talk about, okay, what was the thing that you just picked and then tell us how that's kind of turned into something different and the direction that you're taking now with your online business. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so what I did was I called a couple of my friends who were instructors, full time nursing instructors, and I said, "What do you need?" And a couple of them were like, "I really need some good case studies." And so in nursing education that's one of the ways we teach students. You kind of go through, "Okay, this 50-year-old male walks into the emergency department and he has these symptoms. What's your first thing, what's your second thing, what meds, what diagnosis?" You kind of walk them through a real scenario. So I thought I'll do that. I'll write some of those. So I started trying to write those, but again I'm in leadership, so it was just the amount of time ... And I don't know. I'm still trying to learn for myself what part is necessary and what part is me just trying to be perfect. And I can't quite figure that line out yet. But it has to be accurate, right. You're teaching people how to take care of patients. So just the time that it was taking to build all that and validate that the data was accurate. Theresa Steckel: And then I think when I was at the live event last year I'm trying to think who asked me the question, maybe Bonnie, about content. And that was when I realized that other people could help you create some of that stuff I thought ... But even with that hiring people through Upwork to create some of it was really expensive. And it was, I think, February before I even had, February 2019 like three case studies ready to sell. And I didn't enjoy it really. So I kind of kept doing it because I didn't have any other ideas, and my daughter started nursing school in January. So she was coming to me and asking for help with this or that, and I kind of told her how I made it through nursing school and how I've coached my other students to make it through nursing school. And then I started looking at some of the things that she created after I kind of told her how I had done it. Theresa Steckel: And suddenly I was thinking, "You know what, it would make so much more sense for me to just do that because that's what I really like." So then I pivoted towards more tutoring students starting with the first semester because I kind of have all that content together. And I can still use those case studies that I've made. They're not first semester material. They're more second and third. But they'll flow really nicely in there. So what I've been focusing on now since probably the beginning of July is trying to create materials for nursing students and then figuring out what would the rest of that look like if I built that around a membership. Shane Sams: I assume that's going smoother and coming a little easier. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I haven't made any income off of it, but I haven't really put it up for sale, anything for sale yet within that piece but as far as- Shane Sams: [crosstalk 00:19:25] not for sale. Theresa Steckel: I know. Shane Sams: Right? Theresa Steckel: Right. But the content creation is much easier to me. It flows much ... It just feels more authentic. Shane Sams: Good, that's awesome. Theresa Steckel: Does that make sense? Shane Sams: It makes total sense. And that's why we're so big ... Like people come into the community, and they really wrestle with their ... Like the first course that you take is learning your idea and then validating it, right? Theresa Steckel: Right. Shane Sams: And people really struggle with that part because they want ... We all want to go hit the home run or we hear the guy on stage that hit the home run, right. And we want the home run, and we think that's how you do it is that you really research it, and you make a good decision, and your first business works out. But here's the truth. 90% of people's first tries at online business don't work. But we always find this. It bends you toward what eventually does work, right, like even now just in the story you just told I just did something, and I did it, and I realized it wasn't right, but it made me wrestle with it, and that pushed me back to where I think I should've been the whole time, right? Theresa Steckel: Yeah. Shane Sams: And until you make that decision you can't get to that part. Theresa Steckel: And I think listening to you guys for the last year and a half you say that a lot. And I just had to keep reminding myself of okay, this might not be the thing, but it will turn into the thing. And I also knew I didn't know how to build a website. I didn't know what an autoresponder was. I didn't know about e-mail list creations. I didn't know any of that. So just doing something forced me to learn those steps. And I haven't sold a lot of my first product, but actually two this week. It's my best week ever. Shane Sams: Congratulations. That's awesome. Theresa Steckel: But I've learned the process. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That is amazing. And there are so many people who are listening right now who have maybe been listening to us for years, and they haven't even done that much. So even if it wasn't the perfect thing think about how much you've learned, and now even if you decide to pivot it's going to be so much easier this time. Shane Sams: Oh yeah like we just had, a couple weeks ago we had Kevin Depew. He just crossed over- Theresa Steckel: I listened to that, yeah. Shane Sams: Yes. Actually we played a best of episode the weekend before that. I wanted everybody to hear his first episode where he was just like, "I have nothing." But he was kind of where you are. He was in his second iteration, like he had tried a couple ideas, didn't work, but he was to the point where he was comfortable with tech. He was comfortable with the terminology. And he was like, "Yeah, I can pivot really fast now. I think I can actually have this thing launched in a month instead of a year." And he did, and now he just crossed over his hundred member mark, and he's doing really well. But it's all because he made a decision to try something. And he failed a couple times, but it got easier and easier, and then the ideas can happen faster. Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I were talking just we launched a product a couple months ago, and it was a paper newsletter. It's called Prolific Monthly, and it's like deep marketing strategy like daily promotions. And I launched the entire product line on a completely new platform that we had never used by myself with absolutely no help from our team in three days, right? And this thing required logistics. I had to figure out who was going to mail it, how we were going to make it, what was going to be in it, like the whole thing. But it's just after years and years now of launching products and seeing hundreds of other people launch products you just get good at it. And I look back and I'm like it took me ... I don't even know how long it took us get our first digital product online, like probably six months. But now it's like, "I've got an idea." Three days later we have a product. Shane Sams: So anyone out there that's listening to this do what Theresa did. Pick something, do something, learn things, pay your dues, get through the ropes, and then bam, the next idea is probably the one that's going to make it, okay. So let's figure out how you're going to make this idea big. Before we get into the technical stuff of the business, it sounds like the product's kind of being created, what fears and mindset struggles are holding you back? Theresa Steckel: I think ... There's so many, and recently it's a little bit ... It's been a lot of anxiety lately and a little bit of exhaustion. I'm used to knowing what I'm doing. I just know what I'm doing. I know what I'm going to do the next day. I'm kind of in control. So I think starting a new job and this online business at the same time and just learning so much in a year and a half has been a little overwhelming and exhausting, and learning to manage my energy has been a little bit more challenging. And then just like I had a sale this week, and she said she couldn't find the product, so I tried to send it back to her, and she didn't respond to my e-mail. I didn't sleep the entire night. Shane Sams: Like you were just worried about the customer. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I was just, you know, and I'm like ... And then you start thinking I'm like, "Gosh, what are they going to say about me? It's online and I'm going to have ..." You know, it's so weird. Jocelyn Sams: I suspect we are the same person. Shane Sams: Yes. I think you guys are related somehow. Jocelyn Sams: Like you're sitting here talking, and I'm like, "Yup, yup, mm-hmm (affirmative)." Shane Sams: They're going to tweet about me, and all the world will know. Theresa Steckel: Right. That I'm a total failure, and my people at work are going to know. Jocelyn Sams: Why didn't I tweet my customer and make it right? The whole world will know that. Shane Sams: Then I'll tweet that, and people will think I'm lying because they'll believe the customer. Theresa Steckel: Exactly. That is exactly where my brain went. Jocelyn Sams: We're sitting in two chairs, and I'll tell you more. Right now he's just sitting here looking at me like, "It's you. It's you." Shane Sams: As you were talking I was sitting there pointing at Jocelyn while you were doing that because it's the same things that she says. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It totally is. Shane Sams: I am glad you didn't say imposter syndrome because if you were like, "You're the vice president of 24 years. Whatever, you don't get to be imposter." Like when I hear that though, they're like, "The stress of getting it right for your customer and just the anxiety and the ..." I love how you put those. I've never ... It's funny how many Podcasts we've done now. I've never heard someone say that and felt so related to what you said. You said anxiety and exhaustion because we feel that a lot. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And I'll tell you I think that was a lot of what was going on with me the past couple of years because I've had all this stuff going on, and I guess I didn't really let myself have permission to think about it or rest or whatever, like I just kept going, and I finally just reached a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And I just started kind of falling apart. And then on top of all that we brought the kids home for home school, and I don't know that just made it that much worse. Shane Sams: Well that was kind of like what Theresa's going through like, Theresa, you said, "I just started this new job as a vice president what like a year ago, something like that." Theresa Steckel: Yeah, about the same time I started trying to build a business too. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, so it's like you basically launched two new things, and you were vastly over prepared for one and maybe under prepared for the other, and that just collided like a battering ram basically and kind of created some exhaustion in there. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, it's a lot of learning. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, absolutely. I just wonder if maybe now might be a good time for you to hire someone on a very part time basis to help you with some of the website stuff. Shane Sams: Do you have anybody that helps you in your home like do you hire a housekeeper or anything like that? Theresa Steckel: No. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That might be the best place to start actually. Shane Sams: Yeah. This is something that we've been talking about a lot lately with people especially like our one-on-one clients is we're seeing people ... People know they need some kind of support network to help them achieve their goals, right, and their dreams. And everybody goes straight to, "Well, I need a virtual assistant or I need this or I need that," but not really. Jocelyn Sams: And it's okay for people to do that. Shane Sams: Sure, it is. Jocelyn Sams: People think, "Oh, hiring a virtual assistant. That's my next step." But then when you mention hiring someone to help you with housework or something that's when people step on the brakes, and they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." Shane Sams: Why would I do that? Hold on. I can't do that. Theresa Steckel: I know. I've definitely been thinking about it for a while. Shane Sams: I'll tell you right now. I love everybody we work with. We have an awesome small and mighty team right now, and they're the best people ever, but if I fire anybody it's everybody but the lawnmower guy and the person that is our personal assistant at our house because if we don't have the support ... We have a personal assistant who comes every day from 10:00 to 3:00. And she helps us handle all of the chores like not deep cleaning. We have a cleaning lady that comes in on Thursday who does the deep stuff, right. But Jen helps us get all the other stuff done. She does our errands for us. Jocelyn Sams: She files stuff. Shane Sams: Files stuff like if Jocelyn needs her to run to the store to get the stickers for the kids' project tomorrow or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: She does grocery shopping. She buys birthday presents. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: And really in most areas it's a relatively inexpensive thing to hire. Shane Sams: It's actually cheaper, probably, than hiring some kind of online assistant or marketing help. And what's crazy is it's not that we don't want to ... like we think we're like too good to do those things. It's when she handles that it allows us to serve you, right, and for us to be there for our community and be there for our clients and to be there for our members and to be there for the people who write in every week from our Podcast listeners. We have to clear that mental space. We have to clear it even if it's only a couple hours a day. Shane Sams: Pat Flynn, we spoke at FlynnCon, and he asked us on stage like, "Do you mow your yard anymore?" Because the story that ... I discovered online business while I was mowing my grass. I was on the lawnmower. I found The Smart Passive Income. I heard this guy talk about online business, and I nearly wrecked the lawnmower I got so excited because I was like, "That's it. That's how I'm going to do this." And he asked me, "Do you mow your yard anymore?" I'm like, "I haven't mowed a yard in five or six years," because if I'm mowing the grass I'm not in here talking to you on this Podcast. Jocelyn Sams: And it's not about being lazy or anything like that. It's about clearing your mental space because right now our assistant is actually, she's on vacation. She was on vacation today, and what I'm sitting here thinking right now even is that, "Oh, I forgot to put the laundry in the dryer." Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: I mean I'm serious thinking that, and I really did so I have to do that after this Podcast. It just takes off that kind of stress. And there are other things that you can do. It's not just somebody to do your laundry or whatever. If you're sitting here thinking, if you're listening out there and you're thinking, "Okay, well that sounds nice, and if I had the money I would do it," well how can you ... Don't say why you can't do it. Think about how you could do it. Could you skip a meal eating out this week and pay someone to come in even two or three hours and do your laundry? Could you pay someone to watch your kids for a little bit while you do some work? Could you pay someone to mow your grass? There's a lot of different possibilities. And I don't want to dive too far into this because I'm actually presenting a talk on it at the live event. Shane Sams: So you're going to here a lot more about this. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, I have to hold back just a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: Just a little bit, but. Shane Sams: Actually the reason I stopped mowing my grass was because we had a coach, like, six years ago, and I was still mowing my grass, and I got on a coaching call with him, and I was still mowing my grass. And I said, "Hey man, I just got done mowing the grass," and he goes, "Why are you mowing your grass?" I'm like, "I don't know. It doesn't take ... It's an hour and a half." And he goes, "That's an hour and a half that you could've grown your business." And I was like, "Oh, that is true." Jocelyn Sams: Ouch. Shane Sams: And then he told me, he said, "I want you to hire someone to mow your grass next week, and I want you to sit at the window, and I want you to have your laptop in your lap and I want you to watch out the computer or watch out the window while they're mowing the grass. And I want you to make five times more money than you pay that guy to mow your grass." And I did it. I wrote an e-mail, I sent it out, made a couple hundred bucks. I paid that guy 20 bucks to mow my grass because it was a small yard. Shane Sams: So that's what we're saying here is like can you ... The anxiety may still be there, but maybe you can get rid of the exhaustion if you would just take back five hours of your life every week like write a list of everything that you're doing at home besides your job and besides your online business and your kids, right. And just say to yourself, "How can I get back five hours a week, 20 hours a month around my house?" If you can do that the exhaustion goes away, the creativity comes back up, and you get to move forward without feeling anxious and exhausted at the same time. Does that make sense? Theresa Steckel: Yup. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa. It's been a fun conversation today, and I think we got to delve a little bit into topics that we sometimes don't get to, so it's been kind of fun. But let's talk a little bit about moving your business forward. What can we help you with just to kind of overcome and move to that next step? Theresa Steckel: Well, I think I have probably two key things. One thing is more kind of technical, so I still have stuff on the old website, and then I have the new website. And I know that my e-mail list, which isn't very big, like maybe 43 people now, 50, I can't remember, but I know it's a mix of students and instructors. I just sent out an e-mail this morning that was written towards instructors, but it was really like, "Hey, I have this free dosage calculation Webinar that your students could have. Do you have anyone that's struggling? Maybe they would like to watch this." But I'm not quite sure how to kind of transition that. Do I just kind of let it float over there by itself or do I just get everything redirected to my new site? Does that make sense? Shane Sams: It does. I think in any pivot there's always this question of what do I keep, what do I get rid of, what do I turn off, what do I turn on, right? Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: And you'll have much more clarity when your product is completely done. How far are you from being completely finished with the student-focused product? Theresa Steckel: For the first semester? Shane Sams: Yeah. Theresa Steckel: If I could take a week off of work I would be able to get it done. It's probably going to take me ... I think it's going to take me a few more weeks. I've noticed that I have this really bad habit of, I don't know if it's a habit, but I get creative and I start creating a bunch of stuff, and then I've got to go back and put the logo on it and the website name. And I didn't organize it very good as I was creating it, so I've got almost probably two thirds of the actual stuff created. It's just kind of going back and reorganizing it is taking me almost as long as it took to create it. Shane Sams: Yeah. I think the best ... Anytime someone doesn't have their product done, and they're asking us about all these other questions I almost always tell them do your product. Forget everything else. Don't send any more e-mails. Theresa Steckel: Okay. Just get it done. Shane Sams: Yeah. Don't send anymore e-mails, don't do anymore blog posts, don't do anything else. You're so close to having the actual product. Because when the product is done it becomes a magnifying glass shining the sunlight onto the ground, so it focuses everything like you all of a sudden know exactly what to do because you say, "Wow, I've got this product. What do I need to do? I need to tell people about the product." And that's what everything becomes about. And if you're going to pivot I would just like when you get the product done abandon the other thing like don't worry about it like put the stuff in there, forget it, shut it down. Anything that you want to bring over bring over to the new place. And go all in. Go all in on this one thing and make it grow. You've already got the passion behind the content. You know this is where you kind of want to be going forward, so don't worry about what's happening on that old stuff. Shane Sams: Go all in on the new thing, but get that product first. If you can finish the product all this other stuff becomes so much more clear like how do I get it ... How does my e-mail list grow? Well I need a lead that leads to the product. What kind of content do I create? Content that leads to the product. So just finish that product, and if you get that done it's going to help you do so much better so much faster. Theresa Steckel: And then I think the second ... So that makes sense to me. And actually I kind of forgot that I had stuff for sale on the other website, so when I got a couple sales this week I was like, "Oh no, what do I do?" Shane Sams: Yeah. That's where the greed kicks in. You're like, "Maybe I should focus on that a little." Theresa Steckel: Yeah. And then I thought I'm having all this anxiety about a product I'm not even planning on continuing to sell, so sort of wasted emotion a little bit. And then the second piece is ... So the part I like is ... So I am an introvert, which isn't always obvious when you meet me, but I like the one-on-one kind of interaction with people. And I think one of the hard things for the online business to me is you can't really see how people are responding to you, so it makes it scarier to me. I mean it's much more vulnerable than when I'm just in a one-on-one situation. So I'm trying to figure out what would fit for me as far as like I've thought about kind of doing Zoom calls or Webinars with students a couple times a month. Theresa Steckel: You know, I guess I'm trying to figure out what would that look like? Would it just be a Q&A where I'm like, "Hey, what are you struggling with?" Or would I have a topic I've designed to talk about or is that something that I can just figure out after I get the product done? Jocelyn Sams: Yes. So the beautiful thing about online business is that you can design it any way you want it to be designed. So I often say the best product or the best way to do something is the intersection of what your customers want and what you're willing/able to provide them. So you have to figure out what it is they're looking for and what fits your skillset and your strength the best to get it done. Shane Sams: And you can change it any time like right now so we've always done Q&A in a chatroom format. So in the Flip Your Life community if you're a premium member of our community you get to go in, and there's two live Q&As with me and Jocelyn every single month, right. We answer questions, we do all that. We've always done it where people type in the chatroom, Jocelyn reads the questions, we answer them, okay, but last ... They changed some of the tech on YouTube, which is how we used to deliver this content, so we said, "All right, we're going to use Zoom." And since we were going to use Zoom we decided, "Let's let people answer the questions this time." So everybody puts their- Jocelyn Sams: Ask the questions. Shane Sams: Or ask the questions, yeah, not answer them. So everybody put their questions in the chat. Jocelyn picked one. I just clicked on them, and they talked, and they got the answer to their question and talk to us live on air, right. It was awesome. It was totally cool. We've always kind of not done that because of logistics, but I kind of wish we always had now because it was really, really fun. It could change in the future. We could ... I was just coaching somebody the other day, and they didn't want to do live calls where it was too confusing to get all of their people together in one place at the same time or something. So what they did was the people submitted the questions early, and then they read the question online, and then they just did like a Q&A, but you submit your question ahead of time. So there's a thousand different ways. Theresa Steckel: Okay. Shane Sams: And I would just do it and practice a couple different ways and change it on the fly and see what happens because you'll eventually find something you're like, "This is it. I love this, and I want to do it this way." And that's what you're looking for, but you won't know until you experiment a little bit. Theresa Steckel: So just pick something is what you're saying. Shane Sams: Yes. That's usually what I say to people. Jocelyn Sams: The moral of your story, Theresa, is pick something and move ahead. Shane Sams: Yeah. You know what's so funny. It's like pick something is probably the wrong way to do it. Theresa Steckel: Yeah. Shane Sams: I should tell people pick the next thing. Just pick the next thing because the next thing probably has no bearing on the three next things, right. It's just do the next thing, and it will lead you to where you have to go next. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa, we are at the point in the show where we are going to ask you what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about here today? Theresa Steckel: I have two, but I think my first thing is I'm going to get my product done. Shane Sams: I think you should do that. Theresa Steckel: Yes. And second I'm going to hire someone. Jocelyn Sams: All right, awesome. Shane Sams: Love it. Theresa Steckel: Clean my house. Shane Sams: And I am going to see you ... Let's see, right now we're recording this. What is today, August what? Jocelyn Sams: August 23rd. Shane Sams: It is August 23rd, so we are going to see you on September- Theresa Steckel: Ooh, like a month. Shane Sams: Okay, it's almost exactly a month. As soon as I see you at Flip Your Life Live I'm going to say, "Theresa, who did you hire, and is your product done?" Jocelyn Sams: And let's see the product. Shane Sams: And let's see the product. Actually you got to come up to me on your phone and pull it up. Theresa Steckel: Okay. Shane Sams: Is that a deal? Theresa Steckel: Sure. That won't make me nervous at all. Shane Sams: That's a massive accountability, massive accountability, okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right. So if you would like to see Theresa's product and know who she hired join us in Lexington September 19th through the 21st. We would love to see you there at Flip Your Life Live. Shane Sams: I don't even know if this is going to air before Flip Your Life Live, but if it is- Jocelyn Sams: Well, if it does ... Shane Sams: If it does you sign up flippedlifestyle.com/live. If not, you've got to buy the replay, sorry. Jocelyn Sams: Yup, buy the video if it's after. Shane Sams: All right, guys, what a great, great conversation with Theresa. Man, that was an awesome talk. I love watching people's journey. I love seeing them make those big pivots. And I love watching them find the thing that really they latch onto, and they're ready to take it to the next level. We would love to help you take your next steps. We would love to help you choose your next thing over at flippedlifestyle.com. We have a free course to help you come up with your idea, validate that it's going to make money online, and even get your product started. There is a free course over at flippedlifestyle.com. It's called our online business quick start guide, and we would love to have you go check that out over at flippedlifestyle.com. Shane Sams: All right guys, that's all the time we have for this week, but before we go we always like to close our show with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible. There's a lot of great stuff in there about being successful at business, but today Theresa has a Bible verse that she'd like to share with us, so Theresa take it away. Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so I chose Matthew 6:26, which says, "Look at the birds in the sky. They don't plant or harvest. They don't even store grain in barns, yet your father in Heaven takes care of them. Aren't you worth more than birds?" I always think about that verse, and this is going to sound really silly, but when Shane tells his cow story I always think of this verse. If God cares about that cow he cares about you. Shane Sams: I know like let me tell the cow story because someone might be like, "A cow story? What are we ..." This whole conversation. Jocelyn Sams: We should make them go back and listen to the podcast. Shane Sams: Oh I should, but I'm going to tell the cow story. When I was selling insurance in my young 20s right out of college, and I had this little office where I was just ... I was a glorified secretary, and I hated my job so bad, and I just wanted out of it so bad. And I remember leaning up one day on the filing cabinet looking out the window, and there was a herd of cattle across the street. And I remember thinking to myself right there in that moment I would love to be one of those cows. Look at those cows. They're just free, free to do whatever they ... Theresa Steckel: I know. I'm from Nebraska, so I can so connect with that. Shane Sams: That's right, that's right. So if God takes care of the birds and the cows he's got something for us too, right Theresa? Theresa Steckel: Right. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is it. That is all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Until next time get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Shane Sams: Even if you just had someone like Monday and Thursday. Jocelyn Sams: And I'll tell you it'll make you so happy when you come in and like- Theresa Steckel: Everything's clean. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: Yes. Theresa Steckel: We've been working on what things we can cut out of our budget because my husband's decided now too he's not going to do online, but he's trying to do something new. So we for, like, the last two weeks have been just kind of line item like what can we cut out, what can we cut out, what else can we cut out. Shane Sams: Yup. But this is buying back time. It's way more important than spending money. Theresa Steckel: Right, right. Jocelyn Sams: And mental space. Shane Sams: Yes. Because that's going to allow you ... Like for example if you cut ... It looks like you ... I'm not saying you do this, but let's say you cancel cable, right? But you take that money and immediately put it right back into somebody else or something else, right? Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: That doesn't really make you anything. But if you put it back into this mental space and this time it allows you all that time back to go make more money and more space. Do you see what I'm saying, so like there's ROI. Theresa Steckel: Right. And that's what we're trying to look at is what things can we cut out that really aren't going to move us forward so that we can pay for things that are going to move us forward. Shane Sams: When you're looking at your line item veto what we do is we say ... We're actually about to do this. We do this every about quarter. I've got all three of our last, like, statements printed from the business and our personal life, and we're going to through it with a highlighter, and we're going to say, "How does this save us time or how does this make us money?" And if it doesn't do one of those things, especially the business side of the equation it's probably going to get axed, right? Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: So just ask yourself that every time. Does this save us time? Does this save us money? Does this make us money? Nope, bye, and it's gone. And then start looking at those other things that do, okay. Theresa Steckel: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa, you've got this. Can't wait to see- Theresa Steckel: Thanks, guys. Shane Sams: We'll see you soon, okay. Theresa Steckel: Have a great day. Jocelyn Sams: All right, thanks, bye. Theresa Steckel: All right, bye, bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Theresa's Website Flip Your Life Community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we explore how to convince your spouse that online business is not a scam. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we explore how to convince your spouse that online business is not a scam. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. I am really excited about today's show. I'm always excited about the show, but I'm super excited about this one because we are welcoming back Daniel Hulsman to the show, and this time he has brought his wife with him, Katelyn Hulsman is here too. So, Daniel, Katelyn, welcome to the show. Daniel Hulsman: Thanks for having us. We're really excited to be back and I'm really excited that Katelyn / nervous that Katelyn is here to talk about what she's doing now. Katelyn Hulsman: Thank you so much for including me. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. We were so excited. Not too long ago, Daniel posted about you getting involved in the community and I could not wait to show Shane because the very first words out of our mouth was, “They have to be on the podcast.” Shane Sams: They have to be on the podcast. For those of you who may not remember Daniel's first episode on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it was episode 212. We actually just posted it again in a best of edition on Saturday of last week. And in that episode we introduced you to Daniel Hulsman. Daniel had written me, I like to call it a scathing email full of doubt and disbelief of what we were doing. Jocelyn Sams: I’m not sure it was quite scathing. Daniel Hulsman: I was trying to get as much fury into it as possible. Shane Sams: There was some fury. There was definitely some fury in this email. But I remember looking at that email and I said, “Hey, I'm going to email this guy back and I'm going to be like, “Hey look, let's talk about this bro. Let's go back and forth.”” Jocelyn Sams: And a lot of times when we get emails that are hateful or, whatever, I will just say, “You know what, just delete it and move on.” But Shane made it his personal mission to get you on board with what we were doing and he was successful. And I'm happy to say that this is over a year later since we talked to you the first time and you still love us. We're still all friends. Shane Sams: I remember when you sent me that email, and I think I read the whole email in episode 212. So if anybody wants to listen to that, go back to episode 212 and check it out. But, I remember when I read it, at first I was mad and then Jocelyn was kind of like, “Delete it.” But then I was like, “I'm going to get this guy to join the community. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to get this guy to join the community.” I write you an email back, you joined the community, we bring you on the podcast. Turns out your online business was able to make a little money, right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes, it was. It sure was. No, but let's be fair. What you wrote me back was not an email, that was a short novel. Shane Sams: Yes, I prefer a novella. That's what I’m going to go with. Daniel Hulsman: Of course, yes. Shane Sams: I'm going to go with a novella. But yes, I wrote you an epoch. That's what it was. It was an epoch. But it was awesome and I remember you writing me back and it was just kind of like, “All right, you're right. Let's go.” Daniel Hulsman: Got enough now. Shane Sams: But then, tell us just a little bit, catch us up what's happened since then. You were back on the podcast again and gave us a little update in episode 263. So, tell us where you're at now that we're over episode ... What is this? It’s going to be 300-and-something by the time we release it. So where are you at right now in your online business? Jocelyn Sams: And I just want to say too, it's not been all smooth sailing. Like if you listened to your second episode you were having a lot of like mental doubts and just trying to overcome some obstacles. So, we've worked through a lot of that through the community. We worked through it on the podcast, and now over a year later what's going on? Daniel Hulsman: So, I guess where things are at right now is that we’re treading waters the way I would kind of say, like the membership community is inside of our membership site with which we launched a year ago, almost to the day. And it's been going well inside of the community it’s been fun. Like we've been doing more … Katelyn gave me some ideas that have like really been resonating with the people inside the membership community, but we're having a really hard time growing it. We never broke in 50, and or we've been hovering between like 30 and 40 pretty much the whole time. We had a couple of months there where we just got slammed with lots of stuff outside of online business. And that ended up kind of showing in the results where we kind of lost some customers. So, we ended up getting the churn under control there, but now we're just really struggling to grow it. Daniel Hulsman: And at the same time we've got … Now we have two humans to care for instead of one tiny human. Shane Sams: That's right. If I remember correctly, Katelyn, you were pregnant last time Daniel was on the show, right? Like the baby was on- Jocelyn Sams: Well, the first time. Shane Sams: Yes. The other baby was almost here. So, how old is the newborn baby now? Katelyn Hulsman: He's six months old. Shane Sams: Ooh, that's a tough time you all. I remember. Jocelyn Sams: And like, people always would tell us like going from one to two kids is so much harder than zero to one. And I was like, “Oh, you know, whatever.” But it really is very, very difficult. Shane Sams: Very difficult. It's a whole different animal when you've got two of them things running around. Do you know what I mean? Katelyn Hulsman: I know. Now each of us has one of them at all times. Shane Sams: What I can't fathom is how people go to three and then you're just outnumbered like at all times, or four or five. Or we've got a couple of members with like six and seven kids and I'm like, “I don't want to be outnumbered. I like a fair fight.” You know what I'm saying? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. I'm with you on that one. Shane Sams: All right, so let me bring this back a little bit. So Katelyn, you were a bit skeptical of all this online business stuff in the beginning, correct? Katelyn Hulsman: I was, yes. I'm a fairly practical person and fairly blunt. And so, when Daniel started to get into this stuff, I was kind of like, “Well, that sounds really exciting for the people who are able to make that work, but how many people actually are able to make money doing online business?” Jocelyn Sams: Katelyn, you are my people. I totally get you. I totally understand what you're saying. And like, that's where I was too. I was like, “Well, that's great. I'm sure that some people are able to make it work. They have some kind of special gifts and talents that we don't have. And this is just dreams. Let's move on.” Shane Sams: I remember when I first heard someone making money online I was mowing my lawn. A lot of people have heard the story, but I was out cutting my grass. I was listening to a podcast by Pat Flynn, the smart passive income. He was talking about making money online, and I just knew it was our destiny, and I jumped off the lawnmower and I ran inside. I busted through and I remember Jocelyn was standing over by the stove and she was cooking or doing something for the kids lunch, or whatever. And I told her all about this dream and how awesome it was and we could do this. And I asked her what she thought and she was basically like, “Good for them. Go finish mowing the grass.” Like it was just total dismiss at that moment, right? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I often say Shane is a light switch. It's like he goes from off to 100 miles per hour, and I'm more like a dimmer. So I start out and I'm like, “Eh, I don't know.” It takes me a while to come up to his level of excitement. And I'm not sure I ever come up to your level of excitement. Shane Sams: I don’t think you've ever been. It's hard to get to this level of excitement all the time. Jocelyn Sams: I’m thinking I’ve maybe been to like 25%. Shane Sams: Maybe. I'm working on getting her to 50%. That's my goal by the end of 2020, okay? All right. So, bringing this around, so Daniel starts making … I want to go back just a little bit in time to when he actually got in the community and these members started coming. Because listen, I know it's frustrating right now being stuck. There's all kinds of plateaus. Like we've hit three or four plateaus in all of our membership growth over the years. And you're kind of at one of those plateaus now where it feels like, “Oh, how do we grow this thing?” It's there. But when he started getting members and it was more consistent, like what was happening in your mind at the time, like when you saw Daniel get in the community gets this thing going. Oh, Daniel, real quick. Tell everybody about your business again. Daniel Hulsman: Oh yeah, sure. That's just probably important. Shane Sams: That's probably important. Daniel Hulsman: Small footnote, the website is for new and aspiring composers who want to get into the gaming industry, writing music for soundtracks for video games and it's vgmacademy.com. Shane Sams: Vgmacademy.com. You basically help people compose like the score or the background music when you're running through the level or playing in the background of a cut scene, or something like that. Correct? Daniel Hulsman: Yep, we help them with that or help them with like kind of the business end of things, which is always really terrifying for folks, it seems. Shane Sams: Is that like negotiating with the game companies and things like that, like how to talk to them? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, contracts, naming your rates and getting a contract together, marketing yourself, that kind of stuff. Shane Sams: Got you. Jocelyn Sams: And if you didn't listen before, Daniel is into this because he has done this in the past. Tell everybody just like the 30 second version of your experience with this. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, so actually I've never composed myself in the past, but what I did was I tried to get into it in college a few times, and there just was no good resource. So, out of college I ended up just getting frustrated with it and decided to make one myself, and leverage the expertise that I had in like some of the areas that are weaknesses for new and aspiring composers. But I did. I also work with a choir and a couple of times a year we record soundtracks for video games. So I've sent out a few, to big video games and that's a lot of fun. Shane Sams: Awesome. That's amazing. I love your story because I’m a gamer. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and since we're on that subject, I have to bring up something that was in the intake form. I know we need to move on, but it says that you guys met in opera class. I need to know about this. Like this is just so fascinating. Shane Sams: That’s amazing. Where did you all meet? Opera class. Katelyn Hulsman: Well, Daniel was a music major in college and I was a music minor. And I guess, I mean, we had met before … I think we'd met before this, but the night that I really noticed Daniel was our opera teacher told us, she wanted to have a party at her house and could we all meet in this one location if you needed a ride. And she would make sure that the students who had cars would show up there and offer rides to the students who did not have cars. So, I showed up there myself waiting for a ride. Daniel picked me up in the car. Shane Sams: Did you work with the opera teacher to set this up Daniel? This is- Daniel Hulsman: Totally, you saw right through me, Shane. Actually, just saying, this is Katelyn’s version. My version is I picked her up on the side of the road. That's the version that I like to tell. Katelyn Hulsman: You tell that version. But so he actually played his car's theme song for me on the ride to our opera teacher's house. So I was sold at that point. Shane Sams: Amazing. That’s amazing. We have a similar story. When we first met probably about a year. Jocelyn and I met in a stairwell. We ended up like I was a … You were a sophomore, was your … I think Jocelyn was a sophomore and I was a second sophomore. You know what I'm saying guys? That’s how it works. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, pretty much. Daniel Hulsman: I know what you’re saying. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying. And I was coming downstairs to meet some friends of mine we were going to go out that night, and Jocelyn was coming upstairs and I guess … Where had you been, the gym? Jocelyn Sams: I had been to the gym. Shane Sams: She had been at the gym. I just fell in love on that stairwell. I was like, “Oh my gosh, who is this?” I stopped Jocelyn. I asked her her name and we talked for just a second and I was like, “Well, I got to go meet my friends. I hope I see you around.” And she was like, “Yeah, okay.” And then so she goes on upstairs. I go downstairs and I told my friend, “I just met the girl I'm going to marry.” Like I told him that. And I didn't see her again. How many days was it until we met again? Jocelyn Sams: I don’t remember. It was like maybe a week or two. Shane Sams: Yeah, about a week or two. Jocelyn, I was standing at the desk at our dorm talking to the person that was working the desk and she walked in and we got to hangout and the rest is history, as they say. But, we actually realize later that we had met before. Actually, Jocelyn had lived in another dorm the year before us, or the year before we met and I was over there to see another girl and I was hanging out with her. Jocelyn Sams: Your cousin? Shane Sams: No, it wasn't my cousin. That wasn’t Amber, it was Catherine. It was Catherine. Jocelyn Sams: But Amber did live in the same building. Shane Sams: Amber lived in the same dorm too. So we were all in this room together and Jocelyn, and we hear a knock on the door- Jocelyn Sams: And they know this is going to date me a little bit. Shane Sams: It’s going to date Jocelyn here. Jocelyn opens the door and goes, “Hey you all, can I borrow the phone book? I need those yellow pages, you all.” Jocelyn Sams: Some of our listeners are probably like, “What's a phone book?” Shane Sams: What's a phone book? If you’re a millennial, we’re sorry. Katelyn Hulsman: They actually still deliver them to our house. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, we just got one randomly for the first time in years. Shane Sams: Hang on to that. Daniel Hulsman: We’re excited about it. Shane Sams: Tell your kids that's the only way you can look up a phone number for like 10 years and then like let it … It's like making your kids watch ‘80s movies, like they have to watch the Goonies Neverending Story. Now you've got to find a phone number in the phone book guys, and then we'll teach you about the internet later. But then, we figured out later that we actually had met and I kind of like, I kind of remember it, but it was like not really. So, maybe it was love at second sight Jocelyn, that's what it was. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I don’t know. One of the things that I need to know about this, do you guys like go around the house and sing like Arias? I need to know this. Shane Sams: Opera. Are y'all blasting out some opera in the morning over coffee. Katelyn Hulsman: You know what, maybe we should do that actually. It's funny. I wish we did, although I will say our oldest son is really getting into musical theater now. And so, he definitely is walking around the house with a straw hat and a hanger trying to recreate Jolly Holiday from Mary Poppins. Shane Sams: Nice. Jocelyn Sams: Well, I'm going to need to see you guys do one of those viral videos where everyone's like singing a video game part. Now that would be pretty cool. Shane Sams: It’s going to happen. So let's come back to today now. We've got, Daniel's thinks, got this online business idea, he's hating on Shane and Jocelyn. Shane and Jocelyn call him back. I was like, “Get in here.” He goes out, he sells some memberships and we get to the point where you are today. So, Katelyn is still skeptical, still not totally on board. And then one day in the forums I see this post in the success forums inside the Flip Your Life Community, “Success. My wife has joined my team.” I opened it up. I'm going to read this whole thing to you guys because it's epic. All right? Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day. My wife and I have butted heads several times over the years about my former blog, now business. Jocelyn Sams: I feel you. Shane Sams: She has severe doubts that entrepreneurship and online business in general and will not believe that it can replace full-time income until she's staring at that reality in the face. Has Katelyn ever read this, first of all? Jocelyn Sams: I’m thinking not. Daniel Hulsman: I’m asking her. Shane Sams: All right. She is currently on maternity leave and has acknowledged that we're really relying on the small, steady monthly income from the online business and has offered help. We've probably had this conversation starting from both ends, me suggesting her suggesting about 10 times in the past and it never landed anywhere good. How many conversations between spouses never land anywhere good? This time it ended with me just handing over the login to the business Twitter account and cutting her loose. The next morning I walk in to get our three month old baby out of the bedroom before he wakes up my wife since she's nursing through the night I wake up early with our two sons in the morning and let her sleep a little bit longer. She's usually laying there unconscious looking like she's been clubbed over the head. Jocelyn Sams: I’ve so been there before. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Everybody with a baby's like, “Yes.” All right. But the morning after giving her the Twitter account, I walk in and find her curled up looking at her iPhone. She looks up at me and says, “I've been tweeting.” She's been awesome so far. Totally complimentary with the Twitter stuff finding and responding to relevant timely stuff. I don't have time to see or react to making a list of people for me to contact for interviews with notes about why I have a good feeling about this. And then it says, now … What does it say here? Now if only I could get her to see the full-time entrepreneur light at the end of the tunnel. Baby steps. And it just got a mad response because everybody knows your story in the community. And that was a awesome thing to read, man. Shane Sams: Because like, when two people unite together to do something, you're stronger. It's more than just two people’s efforts. You know what I mean? And it's just awesome to hear that and to hear her coming right now. Now Katelyn, where are you right now like with online business? Like, you've seen it make money and you know about us and you know about these other people in the community that you can see that are making money. Where are you right now, whether you're involved, you're doing the thing, what's the feeling right now? Katelyn Hulsman: Well, I feel very onboard at the moment. Really, for years Daniel had been having me listen to podcasts with him, including yours. And it was hard for me to kind of come to the place of believing this was something that we could actually make money off of. But I actually had kind of an aha moment on the phone with my best friend. She had been telling me about trying to kind of take on more with the kids to give her husband time to work on his MBA. And he had all this coursework to do, and she was trying to kind of take some burden off him so he would have time to do that. And at the time we had gone years probably more of a hobby for Daniel. He hadn't been able to dedicate as much time to it, and it hadn't been generating any kind of income. But I guess I had this conversation with her probably a few months after he had launched the membership site, and it was actually generating some money. Katelyn Hulsman: And I was sitting there and she's telling you all the things she's doing. And for a second I realized, “Oh my God, why have I not been doing this for days?” And I realized, I needed to invest in this business that was bringing in money that we were now depending on. The same way that I would be investing if he was going back to school for a masters or whatever it might be. I needed to actually treat it like a business now, because it had transitioned from a hobby to a business. And I think, when you're in it every day, you don't necessarily realize this has become something else now and you need to treat it as a business now that it's grown into one. Shane Sams: That's amazing. We always tell people, we actually talked about this on stage at an event we spoke at recently. The interviewer kind of asked us like, “Well, how do you get each other on board?” And we have a course about this inside the Flip Your Life Community. And the basic moral of the story though is, you've got to prove it. Like, you can't convince someone that it just works. You can't come in sweaty off a lawnmower and say, “I got an idea.” And someone believe you. But when you see it and you do it and you grind it and all of a sudden it is making money, and not just money but like enough money to pay a car payment, or enough money to pay the bills or enough money to even pay a mortgage, then it becomes real. And it's a lot easier then to open up to those aha moments of, “Wait a minute, what if I got involved?” Shane Sams: Kudos to you Daniel for sticking with it. Because how long were you in business before you really launched a membership that made some good money? How long had you been doing the VGMA Academy? Daniel Hulsman: I think I actually launched the website in 2014. Shane Sams: Oh wow. So it was like- Daniel Hulsman: It was several years. Shane Sams: Three or four years. Daniel Hulsman: Like three and a half, four years. And I even remember like this was … I don't blame her even for being skeptical of what I was doing, because it was like a situation where I was spending time on it as a hobby. It was like pre-kids and I would like do all this stuff and then nothing would really tangibly happen in our lives as a result. And I remember I had an aha moment one day where I was kind of like talking in like sort of like almost like really talking about it like it was a business in order for trying to defend how much time I was spending, which obviously it was not getting huge results back then. And she said, well, it's a hobby right now. It's not a business until it's making money. And then I had to kind of like really reassess how I was spending my time on it and figure out how to make it work. Shane Sams: Wow. That's awesome man. Well, I am so glad. And we're going to kind of turn this story into the normal episode of the podcast because we really want to help you guys get to the next level. That's our number one mission. When we get on the podcast is, let's figure out where you're at and let's figure out where you're going to go next. Man, I'm just so happy for you guys because it really is an epic turning point when both of you are on the same page, and both of you are working together, and both of you do see that light at the end of the tunnel. And it's kind of like, “Man, if we can just get there together, how awesome is it going to be together on the other side?” And for everybody listening to the podcast right now, we totally understand the one person having an idea and the other person just kind of not on board. And we know there's a lot of people out there. Shane Sams: You've been listening to our podcast for a while, you've been listening to other podcasts and you know that you hear these success stories and you know it can be possible in your life and maybe your spouse, whether it's the husband or the wife. We see it both ways all the time. It's just not on board. Doesn't believe it. Doesn't see it. Just go prove it. Go and make that first dollar. Go and make that first $50. Go get those first five or six members. And once they see that, that's the only way you can get them on board with it, man, when they come on board it's going to be amazing. Jocelyn Sams: I would say too, just keep planting those seeds. You know how Daniel was having Katelyn listen to podcast and I'm sure he has entrepreneurial books laying around and all this kind of stuff. Like, all of those seeds eventually will start growing. And it took a conversation with a friend about something completely unrelated, but because he had planted those seeds and said, “Hey, this is possible. I need you to get on board.” Then that conversation was able to help her open her mind to the possibilities. And one day something clicked in her mind and she's like, “Oh yeah, okay. Maybe this is possible.” So, don't give up, that’s what I’m trying to say. Shane Sams: And also too Daniel said something, Daniel did the work. Three years he worked. We find a lot of couples discover online business and they'll just try to talk their way into it. Like they'll talk their spouse on it, but they're not actually doing anything. Well, you said that there wasn't a lot of tangible benefit. But you had your group, you had your blog, you had stuff that you could show that you had actually produced, right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: You were considering the content, and all this stuff. So, you actually did the work. That's the worst case scenario is when you hear our podcast, hear our story, and then go tell your spouse that this is going to happen, and then you don't do anything. You just keep telling them how it's going to happen. You got to do the work. So the work added up, the seeds added up, the conversations added up. Then you made some money and now it's off to the races. Katelyn Hulsman: Well, I think it's also in marriage, I think probably everyone feels like this, where time is just such a precious resource. We found ourselves a lot of the time trying to prioritize what do we need to do today, what do we need to do tomorrow? And I think in that conversation I had with my friend, I realized that too often it wasn't a conscious thing on my part. I wasn't trying to prioritize lower than some other things. But I was doing that. It was the thing that I could kind of put lower and we had a more urgent issue. And it just kind of made me realize, “No, this needs to be a top priority because it really is something we depend on now.” And I will also say that, we've always tried to kind of support each other's interests. And so, I had listened to a lot of the podcasts with him, even though it wasn't my interest in the beginning. Katelyn Hulsman: And it was really exciting for me when he started listening to yours because it was the first one I had heard that was really more like family first. And that was kind of eye opening for me because a lot of the other podcasts I had heard and stories that I had heard about other entrepreneurs had been single people going after it and kind of doing it on their own. And it was a little concerning to me, “How do you do it as a family? How do you balance that, and how do you allocate your time?” And so, that was a turning point for us as well when I really started listening to you guys, because you talk a lot more about how you've been able to work it out with your family and the choices that you've made to make it work for you. So, that was also something that really helped us out. Shane Sams: Let's, let's go one step further. Like, so you listen to our podcast, and you see, “Okay, there's a husband and wife, they actually care about their kids. They're not living on a beach in Thailand somewhere on $6 a day.” Did the community show you anything? Like when Daniel got into the community and you see, “Wow, it's not just Shane and Jocelyn, there's literally hundreds of other people in there.” And the success story, a forum now has like … I can't remember it. It's something like 4,000 posts total in it. When you see like this community open up in front of Daniel, did that have any impact on kind of … Was that another seed that was planted like, “Wow, it's not just an MLM, there's not a big pyramid going on over here. These are all individuals doing it individually but walking together.” Did that make any difference in what you saw? Katelyn Hulsman: Yeah. I mean, he started talking about posts that were being made in your community and- Daniel Hulsman: Questions I was asking and getting answers to. She's never jumped into the forum herself, which you can honestly tell because that was our first kind of hearing my little spiel about her joining my team. But she's never jumped in there, but I started talking about how I was just going in there and asking questions and getting not only answers from you two but answers from other people and suggestions. I don't know how visible it was because the community for me, like one of the biggest benefits that I get out of it is when I'm feeling stuck or in like in crisis or like in doubt I can kind of get in there and get support for that. Shane Sams: Love it. Daniel Hulsman: And now I don't need that as much, because I've got my wife on board, which is awesome. Now we're like talking about it together and just now she's getting more into it. She's kind of going through like a lot of like the phases that like I went through at the beginning of the journey. So like, little things are still there I'd like to go away. But it's funny. I guess it's a funny dynamic now where it's like, I feel like she's experiencing things that I've already experienced but I'm still experiencing, so I can talk about them, but I'm not over them myself yet. It was nice to go and be able to talk about that with her, but the community definitely was super helpful, especially during those months in the winter when I was really having a tough time. Jocelyn Sams: Okay guys. This thing has come a long way and we're very proud of you for where you have been and just where you've come from and where you're going. Let's talk about what is holding you back right now as you're trying to move forward, what kind of fears or mindset issues are going on that's just causing you some problems? Katelyn Hulsman: Well, for me personally, I think because I'm really so new to all of it I get nervous every time there's a new competitor. Daniel laughs at me because I'm like, “This person is doing the same thing.” I get very worried about it. I see everything crumbling the minute there's a new competitor. So that's been a little bit of a learning experience and also fear of mine. And also, we've talked about being plateaued a little bit. I think I'm a little nervous about, “Where do we go from here? What's the next avenue you choose?” Katelyn Hulsman: And is it possible we might choose the wrong avenue and kind of have to backtrack? Daniel has a really great foundation, but I'm kind of playing catch up a little bit. That's sort of where we're at, I think. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. And you've also talked to me about like, not being worried that we've hit the cap, like we've hit the ceiling already. And is this it? If it is, what do we do time wise if it's not, what do we do next? Shane Sams: Does every cancellation feel like an arrow to the chest? Katelyn Hulsman: It does. Shane Sams: Is that like anxiety and like, “Oh no, someone else left, how do we replace them.” Did you- Katelyn Hulsman: Well, I feel like I've disappointed someone when they cancel. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. I totally get that. I feel the same way when people cancel. But, I think that the competition thing is kind of hard sometimes because you're out there looking and you see things because you're looking for it. But a lot of times people don't even know competitors are out there. You know, the Internet is a big place. If they're happy with your membership, they're probably not looking around other places. And if they find you just on a random search and or like say an ad or something and they get to you first, chances are they're not looking around saying, “Hmm.” It's not like Amazon- Shane Sams: “I want to compare.” Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It's not like Amazon and Walmart. Like if I find something I want I'm going to see if it's cheaper on Amazon or Walmart because there are two totally different products. Like you're a different person, you have different skill sets and experience than this other person who's doing something similar. You have different personalities, all those types of things. So, really it's not competition so much because they're totally different. Like, some of the people are going to be your people and then some of the people might be this other person’s people. Shane Sams: I always consider online business a lot like golf. Golf, you have to go out and play your game. Like in full contact golf would be an amazing sport to watch because you could run over and tackle a guy right in his back swing, or like maybe you could scream at the guy ahead of you. You know what I'm saying? But that's not how it works. Golf, all you can do is play your game and then you look up at the leaderboard at the end. Jocelyn and I don't even look at competition a lot. We try to ignore it as much as possible because you get into comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy. You can't be happy in what you're doing, and you just can't focus on anything else. And the truth of the matter is the Internet is so big and all niches are big. If you've got 100,000 people in the world that want to do something, that's a huge niche, and you only need 100, 200 of them to make a really good living on the internet. Shane Sams: The best thing to do about competition is just ignore it. When you find someone that's doing what you do, try to like not even look at them. I actually made this terrible mistake last week. Our history site, we're ramping up for back to school right now. So we sell lesson plans to history teachers. And I got onto this third party marketplace called teachers pay teachers and I started looking and I realized there's like 20,000 people selling worksheets for history teachers in this third party marketplace. So, technically, even though I have a membership where people can get all my lessons, they're kind of my competitors, because people can go buy these one off thing. And I got to thinking, “Oh my gosh.” Then I found this one guy, he has 40,000 four star reviews on teachers pay teachers. 40,000. That's insane. Shane Sams: He probably got in early, he's been there forever, but that, but our website still makes thousands and thousands of dollars a month. So I don't need all of his one off sales, or his thing. I can't compare myself to him. We're not the same person. We're selling a different product. It's got a whole different vibe. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president, that's the same … But like, at the end of the day, they're different. And they're going to be a little different and people are going to have different needs and I only need like a couple hundred of those people in the world to do this thing. So, try to ignore competition as much as possible on the Internet. It's not like we're both opening a fried chicken shack across the street from each other and we're both trying to sell fried chicken. Like, we're in a different town, we're in a different place. Shane Sams: These people are all over the world and our goal is just to get you from 50 to a 100, then 100 to 200 and now we're off to the races. And if everybody else in the market goes somewhere else you've got your core. And that's what matters. Jocelyn Sams: And really it's a good thing when somebody else starts something similar because they see that there's a market there that there's money to be made. And that's good news for all of us. And I know it seems like, “Oh well, these people are competing against me. There's a small market,” or whatever. But it's probably bigger than you think. There are probably thousands of people out there who don't even know that either of you exist. Shane Sams: And also too, remember this, collaboration can exist online that can't exist like in a small town, mom-and-pop type of business. You can eventually befriend these people and you can help each other because consumers on the internet are collectors, especially people who are learning stuff. If I want to learn something, like if I want to learn about … If I buy a book about real estate, I got into real estate a couple of years ago. So I bought my first book about real estate. You know what I did after that? I bought like 10 more books about real estate. So, sometimes there's even opportunities to reach out to, quote unquote, competitors and be like, “Hey, I see that you sell your products in the first and third quarter, what if we did an affiliate and you sold mine in the second, third. You can make extra money. You could offer your people something new. I could do the same for you.” Shane Sams: And we give people more information that they can go succeed with. They like you better because you introduced them to someone cool, and you get this more cyclical nature of helping each other instead of hurting each other. Now, there will be people who are just hyper competitive. They want to be the top dog and they're not going to do that. So, collaboration is not always possible. Jocelyn Sams: It's not always the answer for everyone. Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: You might not want to do it and that's cool, but just look at it more as an opportunity than a threat. Shane Sams: And get out there and just like run your race, play your game. It's your shot, you swing. And then let the chips fall where they lay at the end of the round. Okay? Daniel Hulsman: Sounds good. Shane Sams: Does that make sense? That makes sense, right? Katelyn Hulsman: Yeah. No, actually it's hitting home. Daniel has a much better attitude with that stuff than I do. And you're kind of speaking to some of the inclinations he probably already has to kind of befriend people who are doing this. Shane Sams: Well, I'll tell you another thing here. The danger is you're dealing with a lot of the social media type stuff and the stuff like that, so you're actually going to probably see that more because you're not really making content. You know what I'm saying? When you're in content on your cave, right? Katelyn Hulsman: Exactly. And then I have the decision of, “Do I tweet this person now?” Do I do a tweet about somebody who's going to compete with what we do? It's very strange to me, but I'm playing catch up. So it's a- Shane Sams: Always ask yourself this, “Will it help my potential customer? Will my customers smile when I share this with them? Will my customer be happy that I helped them, that I recommended something that could make them go to the next level?” Even if it's a little close to what we're doing will they have affinity for me so much that they'll come back and join us anyway, because I always lead them to the good stuff. That's usually how you understand if you're sharing somebody else's stuff. So if I'm going to retweet something from one of our friends or somebody, like Pat Flynn is our direct competitor. He sells exactly the same courses we do. Jocelyn Sams: Well, a lot of people sell the same things we do. Shane Sams: A lot of people sell the courses that we do. But I share his stuff sometimes. Like we're going to promote his book really hard here in a couple of weeks. Because, one, we're in the book. Two, it's our friend and he's doing the same thing and I know the book will help our people. That's usually how you kind of solve that dilemma is, is this going to help someone? Is it going to drive affinity back to me, and do those two things add up to maybe a potential member down the road? If they do, then go ahead, share it. Don't worry about it. Think abundance, think collaboration, and think about running your own race, you'll be fine. Okay? Katelyn Hulsman: Yeah, that's a great attitude to have about it. And actually Daniel had had a while ago sort of someone be a little prickly with him along time ago, and- Shane Sams: I would never know what a prickly customer was like. Daniel Hulsman: This is a new experience, Shane, I'll tell you all about it. Shane Sams: But what goes around comes around son, that’s what I'm talking about. Katelyn Hulsman: It was not a customer, but it's another industry person was a little prickly with him. And one day I was looking through things, I saw this person's name and I kind of tried to avoid it and Daniel was like, “No, no. we should reach out.” And I said to myself, “Well, that's a great way to look at it.” Shane Sams: My Dad always told me, if someone's like really like prickly, I guess that's a great word actually. About like with you and when they do something that harms you or hurts you or they say something to kind of put you down or whatever, he said, “Every time you see them, do not let them avoid you. You walk up, you shake their hand, you get six inches from their face. And say, “How you doing?”” He said, “You never let them see you back down. You always go straight up to them and you just kill them with kindness.” And we were at an event a couple of weeks ago and a few years ago we had a little … I don’t know if it will be a disagreement. What would you call it Jocelyn? It was a moment of- Jocelyn Sams: It was a slight. Shane Sams: It was a slight. We were slighted by someone in the industry. And we came in and we saw him at this event, and I went right up to him and right in his face shook his hand, hugged him and like, “Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you again.” Just bam. But you know what, that opened a conversation and we sat in a back room one day and we really talked out the slight and we actually kind of had a good little … It was amicable. We were like- Jocelyn Sams: Everyone was still friends. Shane Sams: Everyone was still cool. Everyone was still friends. Jocelyn Sams: No barroom fight broke out, or anything like that. Shane Sams: That's right. I would have won if it did, I'm just saying, I’m a big guy. I’m kidding. We did that and it was like, “That's a great attitude to have even when your competitors.” You don't have to share his stuff, but hey, we're pulling for you. No big deal. Jocelyn Sams: People don't really know what to do when that happens. We had a situation- Shane Sams: It killed Jocelyn. It scares Jocelyn to death. Because I look over and go, “I'm going to talk to him.” She goes, “Oh my God.” Then I just walk over there. Jocelyn Sams: But I've kind of started doing this too. Like this has sort of rubbed off on me a little bit. We had a situation locally not too long ago with the one of the activities my kids are involved in. But anyway, we had a disagreement with some of the coaches and stuff. But, anyway we talked about it and I think some of the other people that I'm friends with they were expecting us to avoid each other. But like, I just walked in and I'm like, “Hey guys, how are you?” Shane Sams: And went right into the room with them the next day. Jocelyn Sams: People don't even know what to do when you do that. They're just like confused. But it’s fine now. There’s no big deal. Like everyone's moved on and whatever. Shane Sams: And again, you don't have to be best friends with anybody. That's why we try not to look at what anybody else is doing, especially when we're making decisions. Like we'll watch the magician's hands a little bit, but most of the time we're just like, “Let's do our own thing. Let's see what works.” And then compare it maybe to other people. Because then we're not polluted by what our competition is doing. Jocelyn Sams: All right guys. Hopefully that helps you bust through that fear of competition and competitors and all that type of thing. Let's talk about how we can move this business forward. What questions can we help you with as you're trying to grow? Daniel Hulsman: So, I think we've got maybe a couple of things that we still really wrestle with. One is, like we were saying earlier that we feel kind of stuck between the 30 to 50 number of members in our membership. And then the other is that just sort of balancing business and family time. I think it's still really tough for us to prioritize because everything, and everyone who’s got kids knows that when you’ve got two small children everything feels urgent. So, it's still kind of tough for us to know where the … We're still trying to find that balance I guess that’s what we're saying. Katelyn Hulsman: Well, and because I've been doing a lot of the social media, I don't want to feel like when I'm with the kids, I'm like also on my phone, but then with ... So, I'm having a hard time of figuring out when is family time, versus when is business time, because business time could be at any time. And I want to make sure that we're still getting those quality family moments, but not neglecting the business because obviously in the past maybe I de-prioritized the business a little bit maybe when I shouldn't have. So, that's kind of what we've been wrestling with. And also, kind of an aside to that is just kind of finding my place in the business because, this is really Dan's baby. And so, it's kind of hard to figure out, “I'm not an employee, but I'm also not really a full partner.” Katelyn Hulsman: And trying to navigate that kind of balance, I guess you would say. Shane Sams: And I bet as you've gotten involved too like all your conversations are about business. Like it’s all you feel that you talk about. Katelyn Hulsman: Yes. Shane Sams: It's like babies or business, that's it, right? Katelyn Hulsman: Yes. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's been my life for about the past seven years, something like that. Let's address the family stuff first because I know all about mom guilt, and I've had it for a very long time, 10 years. That's how long I've been a mom. But, the way that I like to deal with it is to calendar everything. So, we use Google calendar and we share a Google calendar together. We always put our family time on first. So like anything that the kids have to do, like if they have sports activities or other activities, we put that on first and that's always our priority. We put quality time with the kids on, so if we take them to the waterpark, if we do another activity together as a family we put that stuff on, and then we put business stuff on. I've said it many times on the podcast, humans are terrible multitaskers. Shane Sams: We think we can multitask, but we cannot. We are very, very bad at it. So, what you have to do is you have to block out times. Now, this is harder with babies because somebody needs a diaper change, they need a diaper change. You can't really like be like, “Oh sorry, it's business time. You have to wait a couple hours.” That's not going to work. And we get that and we recognize that. But, at the same time you need to have times blocked out to work on the business. Preferably if you can get someone to watch the kids for you, even if it's a student, high-school student, somebody who could even be in the house with you. Like if you can even pay them a little bit to just keep the kids away for just a little while so you can have really focused time to do your work, and that's your work time. Shane Sams: And anything else for the kids can wait. So make sure they're fed, make sure they're changed, all that kind of stuff. If an emergency comes up, yes you got to deal with it, but otherwise don't feel bad about saying, “Okay, right now is mommy's work time. You're going to have to do something else for a little while and I'll be with you in just a little bit.” Shane Sams: And then also too focus on quality, not quantity. This is something that Jocelyn and I really wrestled with in the last couple of years big time because our team is growing, our websites are growing, our stuff is growing, and we're really starting to see like literally one we're together 24 hours a day. Jocelyn Sams: Which is wonderful. Shane Sams: Which is great, most of the time. But sometimes it's like we've been together for 24 hours a day. And we've been really conscious of … And then all those conversations are like kids or business, that's all we talk about. We've really focused more on like we drove down to Knoxville, Tennessee the other day to go to dinner. And Jocelyn basically said when we got in the car, I don't want to talk about business until we get out of this car. This is an hour and a half where we could just not talk about business. Let's talk about something else. So we might talk about a trip that we're going to go on, or we might talk about something we're going to do. So, even just blocking really disciplined- Jocelyn Sams: Intentional. Shane Sams: … intentional once or twice a week, “Can we just not talk about business for 30 minutes?” Like it's off limits. We don't get to talk about it. Both people have to come up with one other thing to talk about. Just even that at the house, I'm not talking about going out to dinner, I'm not talking about driving somewhere. I'm just like, “Hey, this hour right here on Thursday night from eight to nine no one gets to say anything about Twitter or the video game academy.” Stuff like that really goes a long way, and it doesn't take much. It really doesn't. You just need those gaps to let your brain kind of reset. And also to like get away from each other a little bit. Like, if you feelyourself like three days in a row, always talking about business even when Jocelyn, will come in into the room and just lay down at night and read or play a game on her phone and I might go just go sit in the other room and we're just not in the same room. Shane Sams: That way you kind of have some like absence makes the heart grow fonder in the house. You don't have to be up in each other’s grill talking about business all the time, but people forget that because they think, “Oh, we worked on business for eight straight hours, now we have to go on a date and be romantic for two straight hours.” That doesn't work. You can't be together 10 hours and there be any romance. There's a lot of nomance at the end of 10 hours together. So like getting away from each other even like if you did this right, like right now, one 30 minute block where you weren't allowed to talk to each other for 30 straight minutes. Preferably with the kids at someone else's house, and then one 30 minute block where you were not allowed to talk about business. Shane Sams: You had to talk about something else that happened. That would go a long way to just giving you some boundaries in the house. You know what I'm saying? Katelyn Hulsman: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: And I would recommend getting … Like he was saying, getting the kids like totally away from you. Even if you can do it one day a week, like the other day I was shocked. Shane had taken the kids somewhere and I had something I really needed to work on, and I got more done in that hour and a half than I got done with probably like a day and a half if the kids were here. And I was like shocked at how much I was able to get accomplished without them being like, “Mom, can I have a snack? I need your help pouring the milk. Can you make me some macaroni?” All those kinds of things. Like you would think that my kids are 10 and 8 they would be a little more self sufficient. Well, not so much so much. Shane Sams: Not so much. It's like it's going to get worse as they get older. But like, even for each other. Like if you can't find childcare, I know a lot of people are listening will go, “I can’t find childcare or a babysitter.” Well, you got two of you. So, one of you take the kids somewhere for an hour and just sit on a park bench if you have to and let the other person have a minute to breathe and then switch. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we used to do that. Do a mom swap. If you know a mom locally who needs the kids to go somewhere for a little bit, but they don't have a lot of money, swap with them. Take their kids for a day. You let them take your kids for half a day, whatever, and just make it work. Like that's what we used to do before we had a lot of extra money to hire people we would do things like that. You have to get creative. Shane Sams: And just don't feel guilty about it. Like, when you feel yourself getting frustrated with each other because you will. That’s what Jocelyn always says. We bring out the best in each other- Jocelyn Sams: Most times. Shane Sams: … but occasionally the worst. And that's going to happen. Just recognize there's two ways to do it. Like, don't talk about business and get away from each other for a few minutes and give each other a break. If you can do those things, then that's going to calm that problem. All right. Let's get into some more technical stuff about the business here, some deep strategy. Tell us a little bit about where you're at. It sounds like you said earlier you've got the churn problem under control, so you're at least adding enough members to cover people that cancel right now. But that's a slippery slope. Like that's the edge of the mountain. We're walking on the edge, we don't want to fall off. What's happening? How are you getting the new members? How much are you promoting the membership? How much time and money are you investing in the membership? Shane Sams: Because the goal now is to get to 100. 100 is an amazing place to be in your membership. That's a stabilizing point. And we want to get this thing, you're saying you're floating 30 to 50. We want to float 100 to 150. So, what are you doing right now to promote this stuff? You're being consistent, but like how are you being prolific in your promotions? Daniel Hulsman: I’m not. I'll tell you what I'm doing. There's always more that you can do and I'm not doing very much. I've been pretty strapped with both kids at home this summer. I'm a teacher, so I'm at home during the summer. But the main way we're getting new people into the site in general is through a quarterly 21 day challenge. So, every quarter I've been doing this. I started doing a quarterly after you told me to last year. Shane Sams: And it worked. Daniel Hulsman: And it worked. So, I'm getting anywhere between three to 500 people signing up for this challenge every quarter. And I'd say like 100 to 150 of those people are brand new people who's never signed up for anything before. But then, at the end of the 21 day challenge, I do a promotion for their membership. And that's when I really kind of like hit it hard via email. And I pitched them pretty hard with some of the templates and like some of the examples that I saw in the community. The trick is that … Sorry. The kind of the unfortunate thing is that we do these like three-week challenges. We get to the end and the first two times back in last July and then last October, that was like when I was in beta mode and promoting as like, “This is a beta. This is the lowest price it will ever be.” Those two went really well and I ended up getting like 20, 25, 30 for each of those two launches. Daniel Hulsman: And then after that when I raised the price in January, and ever since then it's been like two people, six people, one people. So, it's really kind of grinded almost to a halt there. And I've really had to kind of fight to just get a handful in. Outside of that challenge. Shane Sams: How much is the membership now? Daniel Hulsman: It's $29.99 per month. Shane Sams: And how much was the one that was the last time it got like a good amount, like 15 to 20. Daniel Hulsman: $19 a month. But what I'm doing is I'm also like, you can go to the website and sign up for the membership at that price now, and in January I launched it at that new price and I didn't do any like promotional pricing or anything on it. And I got one or two people sign up for that price. And then the next time I did it, I tried it like a 25% discount for three days only for just the people who signed up for the challenge. And I got like six people that time, but then I just did the same thing. And I only got one person this last time. I think that I kind of painted myself into a corner a bit, like discounting a membership, like probably not a great strategy in general. But I think there are a lot of possible things that are not working. I just don't know which to really dive into. Part of me says like getting new people in, like in general, but I don’t know. Katelyn Hulsman: Well, and one thing that we've talked about a little bit was I had kind of talked to Daniel about, is there a way to make it easier for people to kind of come across the membership in times when you're not running a challenge? Because, for a while I think that part of his website was a little buried. I think you've brought it out a little more obviously now, but I think we're struggling with, when you use social media, how much are you … Does it come across as too salesy, if you're using social media to sell a membership? We had recently, he put up a post in his Facebook group advertising the membership site after the challenge and we had somebody make an angry face at it in the Facebook group, which we were a little surprised by. Daniel Hulsman: That like rocked Katelyn’s world for a day. Katelyn Hulsman: Yes, it did. It rocked my world. Daniel Hulsman: She was like, “Someone gave an angry emoji. Oh my God.” Shane Sams: How many people are in your group right now? Daniel Hulsman: I think 1700. If not, it's really close. Shane Sams: 1,700 people didn't emoji the post but one person did, dan-dan-daa. Daniel Hulsman: We gotta close up shop now. Shane Sams: It’s the one Goomba at the end of the level that got you. You know what I'm saying? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: You can't let that bother you. Like that's going to happen. People get mad at me. I had a guy on my history site last night I posted. I post these funny memes, and I posted a picture that was totally like benign and this guy basically … And I post my real name on that Facebook. It's like 6,000 followers. And I post my real name on there all the time. And the guy said, “Shane Sams, you’re an F-ing moron.” Katelyn Hulsman: Oh my goodness. Shane Sams: Straight up, right on the comments of the thing. And I just posted a little picture of Sylvester Stallone with the word joke going over his head. Like I just totally trolled back. But like you can't let them … Don't let the emoji warriors get you. Don't let the emoji warriors get you. You can't be. Well, let's break this down. One, I think you need to do more challenges. I actually think you need to do a week long challenge. You need to evolve that process, and you need to do it probably every month. Like, if you could do it one week, every month now, let's ramp it up. But what you're going to have to do is, do you have more than one challenge or is it the same one every three months? Daniel Hulsman: It's the same one, but the theme of it and like the content changes a tiny bit. Shane Sams: What we've got to do is we've got to make them feel … You need two, that you can go rotate, like back to back. And this is going to be on you because you've got to figure out how this works within the context of what you're doing. But like, maybe one is like all about … I know that your challenges about composing music, correct? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: Maybe you could do more of a little bit of a challenge about maybe like the business aspect of getting into the business. Daniel Hulsman: Let’s say that was kind of one concern I think I'm having is that the people getting into the challenge or like people who are doing it for fun. And so, I'm not getting people who are really serious about it professionally. Shane Sams: If you had two challenges, one was all about the music, and one was like, you could theme it kind of like you show them the process basically of getting in and out of the business. Jocelyn Sams: I don’t think there's even a way of bridging those people who are doing it for fun. Like maybe even just put a bug in their ear, “Hey, did you know that you can make money off this?” Shane Sams: That song could make you money. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: So I think you need to do the challenge at least once a month. Jocelyn Sams: I would like to see it as automated as possible. When you do it the next time, really write out the procedures if you haven't done this already, so that why maybe even Katelyn could help you, or eventually you guys could get a virtual assistant to help you to be able to roll those parts of the challenge out. So, it's not so manual at the time. Shane Sams: You did this for three weeks though, you said, right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. And just so you know, Katelyn had to step away for a minute to go check on the baby. He was with my mother downstairs. Shane Sams: Our kids will be pouring in here at any minute. That's what happens. This is real life, guys listening to the podcast. Daniel Hulsman: It's real life. So, but like I said three weeks. It's 21 days, Once every three months. And a lot of it is automated or it's automatable. Like the emails I've already written, they're already automated. I just have to like basically recreate the workflow that sends the emails every time. Shane Sams: If you could take that challenge and get it down to a week and they don't do the whole thing … And this is a simple way of saying this. We'd have to talk about it more. But like, if you could take the first week and that was actually part of the challenge where they got to a point where they could feel the result but they weren't quite done and then the rest of the challenge lived in the community I think you could pitch it every month. You know what I’m saying? Because like, the goal is to get them started. I know that you write like a whole piece of music or whatever. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Well, it's like you have to write, you write it like an idea. So it's basically just like about like making sure you're getting new ideas generated every day and not just like sitting there stuck with a blank screen stressed about not writing anything. Shane Sams: If we could condense a part of that down to the one week challenge and we could change it just a little bit, you could open and close it more often. So like right now if you've got six every three months, next time you'll have it. If you've got three every month, that would still be more right. It'd be none. I know you’d probably get more, because it'll get more momentum because you open and close it. So it's like open on Monday, closes on Friday. We don't do it again for three weeks. So you just do your normal stuff then the challenges. The August challenge is opening. The September challenge is opening. The November … Whatever. You know what I'm saying? It's like opening and closing more challenges is definitely like the next step. But now you do have to get more traffic. You've got to get more people in that group. Shane Sams: That's going to be the goal. I'm wondering like what you're doing to get people to grow your group or grow your email list. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, I mean, when I talked to you in December I was kind of like in survival mode, so we just sort of … You gave me a lot of permission to kind of like not do that and so I've really been focusing on like the membership and stabilizing that. So right now I'm just starting to like get a little bit more content going. I've done a couple of interviews that I have posted on the sites. I don't have a podcast, but it's an idea that I'm kind of playing with. I've got a YouTube channel that I do nothing with. I've like put a couple of videos like years ago up as like just a way to embed videos on a blog post and I've got like 350 subscribers. I could go maybe in that direction. There's a lot of directions I feel like I could go. I do have like an exciting opportunity later this month where I've got a grammy nominated composer that I'm going to be interviewing live probably on Facebook live. Daniel Hulsman: And so, we're going to hopefully get a good live audience for that. Shane Sams: Awesome. Daniel Hulsman: He's going to be in our members only area a few days after that. I'm going to use that as not only a way to promote what he's working on, but then too to plug the membership at the end. But, other than that, I'm not really buckling down and like creating a lot of content right now. I feel like I need to sit down and like plan out social media and then like get that all going. Because what Katelyn's doing is great. It's like really reactive. It's really timely. And then for me, like really what I need to do is sit down like kind of thoughtfully slam the promotions, schedule all the automated stuff. Shane Sams: Our general rule when we're trying to grow our businesses is, and we say this all the time, is to be consistent, to be prolific and be relentless. Consistency always goes to that one piece of content that comes out every week, like it's our podcast. That's our consistent thing of content. Prolific always talks directly to promotions. Like, how are you going to promote everyday? I wake up every day and while my coffee is literally pouring into the pot I think to myself, “How am I going to promote today?” I don't care if it's one email, one social media post, one tweet. I've got to do something to tell somebody that I've got something for sale. It could be promoting content like on Tuesdays I always send an email out that we have a new podcast come out. On Wednesdays I might send an email that says, “Hey, did you catch last week's podcast?” Shane Sams: But on Thursday I might say, “Hey, we've only got 13 tickets left to flip your life live.” On Friday I'm going to say, “Hey, you need to join the flip your life community, you've been sitting around listening to the podcast for two years, what are you waiting on?” Right? And then I'm just constantly every day trying to figure out how can I promote, what can I promote? And I actually have a 30 day calendar at the beginning of every single month, I actually include this calendar in Prolific Monthly, my newsletter. And like it's exactly like, this is what I do to promote. What I'm going to do in August or September, October to promote our membership. And that's probably the next level. What you're going to have to think is, how do I promote content to get more cold followers? How do I promote my membership to get more people to join? And then, how do I follow up with people I know are on the edge? Shane Sams: That's another thing I do every day, is reach out to people who I know are interested. Like if I get an email back off of one of our auto-responders, I got this one email goes out and it says, “What's frustrating you?” I always write those people back because everybody's one question away from buying your product. Stuff like that is the next level, and you're going to have to figure out how to manage that with that little baby we hear talking in the background. Jocelyn Sams: I love those baby noises. Shane Sams: I love those baby noises, I miss them. But that's where you got to go next is being prolific with your offers once a month, at least, as some kind of challenge. And then being prolific, promoting your content and then being relentless like every day someone needs to hear about this academy. They need to know it's there. Even if it was just a social media post at 10:00 like, “Hey guys, the thing is open now, check it out,” every other day, that would be good. Daniel Hulsman: I think that just really kind of paralyzed because there's so many different directions I can run with in terms of like what to do. A lot of my content I feel like is old, like I've got a couple of newer things now, but I know a lot of that I wrote years ago, and a lot of it is still relevant. I don’t know. That makes me, there's more I can be doing that's like way more timely and relevant now. And then, in terms of promotion, again, Twitter is like mainly what I've been focusing on for years. And I've got this Facebook group, so I don't know if I should just kind of just stick with those two and just try to get more people following in both of those places, or if I should try to do the thing where you make a video and turn it into a YouTube video on a podcast, or just like try to do a podcast and keep it super simple. Daniel Hulsman: There's so many different ways I feel like I could get new people to the site. It’s just a little overwhelming to kind of pick one and run with it. Shane Sams: That's what you got to do. You got to pick one and run with it. That's what most people won't do, because they all work. You'll find a millionaire on every social media network. You'll find a millionaire in every business. You'll find someone making a living online doing everything. But they usually pick one thing like the pizza guy who runs the pizza shop picked pizza instead of hamburgers. That's why he's making money. Like, pick one timely thing to do a week and then promote everything else you've ever created every other day. It's so much easier and that will keep you from getting overwhelmed. So, just pick that one path that feels the most right to you right now and just do it for six months and see where that takes you. That's probably going to be your best bet. Jocelyn Sams: You're doing a lot of things right already. So, I feel like you just need to do more of the things right. You need to find a way to make it work where you can basically pitch these people more often. Maybe it's not a three week challenge. Maybe it looks like something different. So, if challenges are working, how can you find a way to make one work more often? Shane Sams: And you may have to rewrite the whole challenge model, but you know challenges work, and you just need a couple to rotate the way it's not the same challenge every single month. Does that makes sense? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's how you become more prolific with challenges. You say, “All right, this worked scrap the three week thing, I'm going to have, “Hey remember the 21 day challenge, now we're doing a seven day challenge, or a five day challenge.”” The same amount of people are going to join. The same amount of people are getting involved. They're just going to hear your offer more, which is going to equal more sales, basically. Daniel Hulsman: I actually kind of really like the idea of like alternating and doing a different kind of challenge like with the more business centered stuff too, because then I know of at least getting people who are more interested in making a career out of it, then people who are really just enjoying the process of writing. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. All right guys, we've had so much fun talking today. There are so many exciting things going on in your world and I'm really, really excited to see what is going to happen for the future of the site. But before we go, we always like to ask, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today? Daniel Hulsman: I guess for me it's figuring out one way, one path to promote way more prolifically and decide what I'm going to do to grow, getting more … cold people into the website environment and then just kind of hit that same nail over and over again for a while. Katelyn Hulsman: And one takeaway that I have is I'm going to stress a lot less over the competitors and the angry emojis. Shane Sams: Yes. Oh my gosh. Katelyn Hulsman: And focus more on the people who are receiving and enjoying the content and potentially giving us constructive feedback. Worry little less about the people I’m not going to reach. Shane Sams: Worry about that baby. That's all you got to worry about. Worry about the baby. Worry about each other, and everything else will kind of take care of itself. Well, listen guys, we are super proud of you guys. There are big things ahead. You've not tapped out the market yet. There's a lot more members probably waiting right in your existing audience. And when you start pitching them more and you start promoting your stuff more, they're going to really respond. So keep going. You're doing it together now. That is absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see the next amazing post to the success forum by you guys. Katelyn Hulsman: We really appreciate all of your help. It's been a blessing, honestly. Shane Sams: All right. And I think, Katelyn, you have a principal that you're going to share with us. A life related Bible verse or principles from the bible that you have that a you want to share with everybody. Katelyn Hulsman: Yeah. It's not a direct quote, but the bible verse that always sticks with me is, what you hear in the ear, preach on the house tops. And when I was preparing to join you guys today, it's one of the things that came to mind because I actually think it's something that you all do really well. You really have shared a lot of the knowledge and experience that you've collected and it's made a difference in our lives. I'm sure it's helped a lot of other people as well. Shane Sams: Love it. I love it. We need to have a baby on every episode. Jocelyn Sams: I know. Shane Sams: If you’ve got a baby bring em on the show. We're going to have to start interviewing the babies as well. Jocelyn Sams: One time we had cattle mooing in the background. Shane Sams: Yeah, we had some cattle mooing in the background. This is the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, that's how it rolls around here. You know what I'm saying? Daniel Hulsman: My next success story is going to be when the baby starts to tweet. I'll put that in there. Baby is on board. Shane Sams: All right guys. That wraps up another edition of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. What an amazing discussion with Daniel and Katelyn Hulsman. Jocelyn Sams: And their baby. Shane Sams: And their baby. It is so exciting to see people get their entire family on board with their business. We would love to help you change your family's future just like the Hulsmans. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We'd love to have you inside the membership community. We've got all the training, coaching and community support that you need to be successful in your online business. And maybe, like Daniel, you need a little support in your promotions. Maybe you're not quite being prolific enough in getting your content out there, getting your message out there, getting your products out there. Well, I have a print newsletter. That's right. A print newsletter that I send out every single month. It's called Prolific Monthly. And if you go to prolificmonthly.com right now, you can sign up for the next edition of my print newsletter. Shane Sams: I include a calendar and tips and copywriting help, everything you need to promote all of your content and all of your products every single day of the month. That's prolificmonthly.com. You got to sign up really fast or you're not going to be able to get it before we send the next print run out. So I go to prolificmonthly.com, I would love to help you promote your business every single day. All right guys, before we go, I know Katelyn shared an amazing principal earlier in the podcast, but I had to share this bible verse with you guys, because it's one of my favorite bible verses and it really sums up what it's like to work with your spouse and work inside of a community surrounded by people who are going the same direction as you. It's Ecclesiastes 4:12 and the Bible says, though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves, and a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Shane Sams: Hey listen, get your spouse onboard with your dream. Go out there and prove it to them. You may be working on this thing all alone right now, but you can prove that you can make it happen. Then get them on board. Then surround yourself with other entrepreneurs, other family focused folks who are going in the same direction so that your dream will not be broken and it will come to pass. That's all the time we've got for this week guys. Until next time, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Daniel's Website - VGM Academy Flipped Lifestyle Podcast 212 with Guest Daniel Hulsman Flipped Lifestyle Podcast 263 with Guest Daniel Hulsman Flip Your Life Community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In this Best of Episode we help Daniel decide if he’s expert enough to start his online business. This episode was originally published on July 10, 2018.  You can check out the original episode here:  http://flippedlifestyle.com/podcast212 FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all!  On today's podcast, we help Daniel decide if he's expert enough to start his online business. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work.  We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online.  And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life?  Alright, let’s get started. What's going on everybody?  Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again this week!  Super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show today. I've been looking forward to this specific interview all week, and you're going to learn why here in just a minute. Jocelyn: I'm pretty sure he's talked about it like every single day.   Shane: Every single day.  I'm so pumped up right now to welcome Daniel Hulsman to the show.   Daniel, what's up man?   Daniel: Hey, how you guys doing?  It's really good to be out here and talking to you both!   Jocelyn: We are pumped to have you here, as Shane has mentioned.   Shane: I am super pumped to have you here! Jocelyn: Shane loves telling stories, so I'm just going to let him take it away.   Shane: Alright, here's how Daniel and I got together, okay? Jocelyn: Something I should know?   Shane: No, no.  This is a G-rated show, Jocelyn.  Alright, so Daniel sent me an email during a recent launch.  A few weeks ago, we opened the doors to the Flip Your Life community and started giving everybody out there a month for free.  Daniel apparently heard this and signed up and you know, and he went through a couple of the emails and things like that. He had not joined yet, he had not joined the membership yet.  So, I wake up one morning, and I get this email because yes, we check our emails, okay. And I get a message and the first line -- what was the subject line on this? Daniel: I'm just shaking my head over here.   Shane: I know, right.  There was some hater-ade in this email, people.  This is a critique, is what I'm about to show you, I'm not going to read the whole thing.  But Daniel's sends me this email and says two things -- a little smug Daniel, I'm not going to lie -- but it said two things: "One, your customer service link in this email leads to a 404 page.”  So that is not a good sign when somebody pointing out a broken link. Jocelyn: When your email starts like that it’s probably not going to go too good. Shane: And he made the emoticon, it wasn't even the Emoji.  He actually used the type of symbols of a smiley face with a tear.  That's sad, guys, we're supposed to have all this together, right?  And then he goes on with this giant block text of paragraph about just all sorts of stuff he didn't like in our marketing and things like that, but here's what drew me in.  Are you ready for this Daniel? This is the turn to the positive, this is the turn to the light side of the force. Daniel: (sighs) Shane: So he's critiquing all of our sales techniques and blah, blah, blah, and I just heard all of this skepticism in all of this stuff.  And then he said, "And you gave me a heart attack on Episode 200 when you said goodbye because I did not want your podcast to go away.”   So that's where the turn was and it says, "You are changing lives of people like me who want a better life for their families.”  I read every word of this email and it was really long, and that's the point where I was like, man, I saw something there. I was like, “This guy wants a better life.”  Then he went on to say, "I've been struggling to get my website off the ground for a few years, and your story inspires me to keep trying." So, all of that criticism, all of that critique, when I got to the end, I realized it was just frustration.  It was just a little frustration, a little skepticism, a little "Is this real?" and you've been doing this for a while, and I sent him a message back, my email.  I purposefully had to write more words than you did. Daniel: Oh, that was a good little novella.   Shane: Yes, yes.  There was some massive… this was a no-sugar soliloquy.   Jocelyn: Oh, now we're going to get tons of hate mail, so people will get to have--   Shane: Yeah, everybody will just send me hate mail now, like, "Shane will write me back if I do that!”  Here's what's funny though. This is the difference between me and Jocelyn. I was writing this email, and when I was doing it, Jocelyn was like, "Are you still writing that guy back?"  And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm still writing. I'm doing it!” Jocelyn: I'm trying to talk to him about stuff, and get things done.  And he's like, "No, no, no, I'm writing this email!” Shane: "No, Daniel is getting a message back from me.”   Jocelyn: I'm like, "Okay.”   Shane: I could have gone a thousand ways with this email.  I could have gone, "How dare you find my broken link.”   Daniel: Or just deleted it.   Shane: Or just deleted it and I could have just ignored it.  But I really just felt drawn, and there was potential there and you wanted something more, and that's what we're here for -- that's our mission.  So basically I won't read the whole soliloquy. Jocelyn: Please don't.   Shane: I won't, I won't.  I won't read this parable that I wrote you back.  But in the future book, it will come out. But my main point was, “Are you going to let a link that goes to a 404 page or a sales page hold you back, and are you going to look back again in a few years from now and say, ‘Man, I've struggled for a few years and I'm done,’ or are you going to look back and say, ‘That was the moment I actually took action and took my next step.’” And I challenged you.  I just said, "Go join! It's free for 30 days.  You go look at every course we've got and you see if it doesn't move you forward.”  And I said, "Instead of critiquing our sales process, watch the magician's hands. You've been struggling for a few years, and we have it.  Maybe there's something there. Maybe there's something we're doing differently.” I've got to read what you sent me back. Daniel: Oh, yeah.  Please go ahead, I was angsty. There was a long time of just reflection before I sent anything back.   Shane: I jumped up, man, and you can ask Jocelyn.  I started going crazy and pumping my fist because I was so excited.  You sent me this message back, and it said, "I started to spend a few minutes, trying to think of a clever yet grateful response to your candid feedback--" and I like how you said 'candid feedback' because if anyone saw this message, it was pretty candid.   Daniel: Yeah.   Shane: And it says, "But I think I'll just shut up and get started instead.  Sounds like I've got some work to do. I just finished the form, I'm logging in, and when I get home, I'm printing your email and hanging it on my wall next to my computer.  Thank you for the much-needed kick in the (blank)!” So I just want to say, you're welcome for the boot print on the back of your pants. Daniel: Thank you, sir.   Shane: And I am so glad that you are a member of the Flip Your Life community now, and that we turned a critic into a customer.  After you followed up, and I saw what you have going in your business, I know that you've got a great, great potential to do something with it, okay, so Kudos to you, man.   Jocelyn: We love these kinds of stories so much because it's just awesome.  So many people want to point fingers at other people and say, "You're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong.”  But most of the time it's more like a mirror. They're looking back at themselves, and thinking, "My life is not perfect either.”  None of our lives are perfect. So that's the cool thing about this, is that we're able to help each other and we don't just give up on people. I mean, if you were like a blatant hater or... Shane: There is a difference in a critic and a troll.  I was actually very thankful you found that link.  Before I wrote you back, I emailed our team and I said, "We've got to fix this link.”  That's how I started my email back to you, so I was actually really grateful that you sent email in the first place.  It helped us, and I wanted some reciprocity there to help you back. Jocelyn: And so we knew that we had to talk to you because of this crazy story, and we just love it when things like this happen, so thank you for being here today! Daniel: No problem.  And I'm sure my wife's going to get a real kick out of listening to this as well because when I finally told her that you had offered to speak with me this morning, she was like, "Why?!" And then I had to tell her the whole backstory.  And she's like, "I am a little surprised that you sent that email, but sounds like you deserved your response." Shane:  That is absolutely hilarious!  Jocelyn: Okay.  If we're being honest with ourselves, like everyone listening to this show, myself included, we've all done something like this.  This is not something-- we're not trying to pick on you and say like, "Oh, you shouldn't have done this or whatever." Shane: This is like when you get mad and you honk at somebody or give them a rude gesture on the highway for doing something you did a week ago.  It's all it is. I've seen so many emails like that. There's a difference between a troll, and a guy who's like, "Guys, I really like what you're doing and I'd love to have it, too.  And I think I could get it, but I'm frustrated, and nothing's just working and I'm just trying to vocalize that, and I don't know how to do it." Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've been beating my head against a wall for years.  The whole way that I started my current website, I actually bought another course, a $500 course years ago.  I've been a longtime listener of that podcast, and I signed up. They're very adamant, don't skip any steps. As a good little soldier, I did all the steps and at the end I had ended up with this website and like a tiny little affiliate sale every now and then.  And a website that I felt was nice, but it was a website, it wasn't a business. I just didn't know where to go after spending all this time pouring myself into this and years later here I am still not sure how to course correct. Shane: Well, listen.  You're not the only person that's ever done that.  The next step is always the most frustrating step that never goes away.  We're sitting here figuring out our next step just like you are. It's just at a different level.  That frustration is part of the journey and hey, man, we'll get you past it, and let's get you to the next step and that's what we're here for so we can help you do that.   Jocelyn: The reason that we started this trial because we feel like there are so many people out there who are frustrated, and they don't know what to do next.   Shane: Or they've been burned by that $500 course in the past and nothing happened.  Like I got burned by a course like that! What happened in 2012, when I first started this, the first thing I discovered was Google ad marketing, like where you make a niche website that has like five pages and you put Google ads on it and the gurus all said you'd be a millionaire in six months.   Jocelyn: All that was before the big Google smackdown, they call it.   Shane: So I built a couple of these sites and, granted, it did make our first ad click, which was eleven cents that inspired us that it's possible to make money online.  But I'm paid a dime and a penny! If you can't pay my groceries with this thing, you can't even get the cart at Aldi! That's a quarter. For anybody that has an Aldi, you know what I'm talking about here, you can't even get the cart out at the grocery store for a dime and a penny.  But what happened was -- it's so funny-- I got frustrated, but once we figured that out, I bought another course about email marketing. I noticed, not that that guy was email marketing for affiliates.  I noticed that his email marketing was to sell his course on email marketing and he was selling his own product.  That was really the epiphany that we had was, it's not about partnering and JV Partnerships. That's cool, that's later.  It's not about affiliate links, it's not about ad clicks, it's not about Amazon and all that. You're not going to make any money that way.  It's about figuring out how you can serve other people, creating a product that solves their problem and that's what you promote. That may be the next step for you too.  Alright, so rewind! Jocelyn: That was a lot of information. Shane: It's still one of my favorite stories ever and it always will be, and I'm going to be so proud of you, not only because you joined, but I can't wait to see you succeed.   Jocelyn: I can't even express the joy that Shane had when you decided to join the membership. Shane: Oh my gosh, when you joined the membership, I was like, "That dude joined.  Holy cow, that's unbelievable!” Jocelyn: That's his mission in life.   Daniel: You know what it was.  It was the last line in your email.  It just went off on me and then at the end, the last time was just 'Finish', with a link back to the form that I didn't complete.  That was just the word that echoed in my subconscious until I did it. Shane: Oh yeah.  I see it now.  It just says 'Finish:' and then the form.   Jocelyn: I hope that, if nothing else from this story, I hope that people understand that we really do care about you and we want what's best for every single person listening to this podcast.  That's the reason why we do what we do. Yes, we are a for-profit business. We have to pay our bills, but we want everyone out there to succeed, and that's why we're offering this free trial.  So I hope that if nothing else, people understand that we really do want what's best for every single one of you. Shane: And I also realized too, there's a lot of movement out there.  People want to shut everyone out of their lives and all these gurus are like, "Well, if anyone hates you, delete them, and if anyone critiques you, screw them, and if anybody, whatever, whatever, whatever," but like man, 90% of the people that even send you feedback, they're just really asking you for some advice.   Jocelyn: And if somebody has taken their time to email you, even if it's something you'd really don't want to hear-- Shane: They care.  They at least care.   Jocelyn: They care enough to send the email.   Shane: Love it, hate it, but never ignore it, man.  Help somebody next time they send you a bad email, send them back and say, "You alright?  What's going on? Can I help you?" Jocelyn: That being said, please don't send us a lot of hate mail! Shane: I can read through the fake hate mail guys.  I know fake hate from real hate. Okay, so let's do it!   Jocelyn: Alright.  So before we get more into the story, let's go back just a little bit.  We want to know about you, your background, and what you have started so far online.   Daniel: Sure, so, by day, I'm a father.  I live in Boston and I am a full-time music teacher at an inter-high school in Boston.  I grew up in Delaware. Go Blue Hens! Our mascot's a giant blue chicken, really exciting!   Shane: We have a mascot in the Kentucky school called, “The Hilltopper.”  It's literally a red pile of dirt. That's what he is. The Hilltoppers and the Blue Hens can go to war.   Daniel: I don't even know what to say about that.  That's so strange. But you know, why not? Sure.  I graduated with my music education degree looking to be a music teacher, and then that was 2008 and then the economy crashed.  All the arts jobs disappeared so I had to kind of scramble and figure out something else to do. I ended up working for Apple for a few years doing B2B sales, and then I just started nerding out on online marketing stuff after reading the Four-Hour Work Week.  I ended up getting a job at a marketing software company called Hubspot. Worked there for a year before getting back into teaching.   So it's been kind of a bit of an eclectic journey professionally.  But then on the side of that, two years ago, as I said, I started, you know, I did an online course and at the end of that I had a website for video game composers because I love video game music and I've always loved to do games and stuff.   Jocelyn: Okay.  I need to just stop you right there because in your intake form, it says I manage-- Shane: 'Intake Form.' That sounds like he's getting up for parole, and your intake form-- "Your podcast application" would be better, probably. Jocelyn: On the podcast questionnaire, how's that?   Daniel: Perfect.   Jocelyn: Okay.  I just have to ask you about this because I don't know what this means.  Okay, it says, "I manage a choir that records professional video game soundtracks twice a year.” So let's back the truck up. Shane: That seems like the coolest job ever!   Daniel: Alright, sure.  So I ended up by networking in the Boston scene here, which actually there's an orchestra called the Video Game Orchestra in Boston and they started as a club out of Berkeley College of Music, and then they ended up becoming a full-blown professional orchestra that records the live music for video games.  I happened to meet and befriend the guy who runs that. Over a couple of years, just because he knew I was a singer, I ended up getting pulled into a choir to record a trailer for a game called, “Final Fantasy 15.” Shane: Are you kidding me?  You sang on Final Fantasy 15?! Daniel: I did.  I sang on the trailer, and then I sang on 10 tracks on the soundtrack.   Shane: Dude, I am so glad you wrote me hate mail! Jocelyn: Who gets this job?   Shane: Yeah, this is amazing.   Jocelyn: "Yeah, I sing on video games.”   Daniel:  It's a very fun thing to drop in a conversation.  I've got to admit. I mean, you know, it's very few and far in between, but the gigs are extremely fun.  I've just wrapped up a second one or our first one for the year. It's just a lot of fun. But the third grader in me is just elated.  Every time I go into the recording studio and get the recorded video game music, I got the music pumping into my headphones, and with the school to sing-- the instrument that I was trained on was voice.  And so it, you know, I'm really thankful for that because now I get to go and sing on video games. Jocelyn: My nine-year-old son would think this is the coolest thing ever.   Shane: Oh yeah, because he loves music, he loves video games.   Daniel: Then you know, he and I, we understand each other, then.   Shane: What's cool about this, too, man, is I can see where this is going.  One thing that people love about the Flip Your Life community, and once again there are needs for life coaches and business coaches, but everybody doesn't have to be one.  The variety of niches and our community is second to none. Like we have people, we talk about it all the time. We've got people doing everything you can imagine. Ninety percent of our people are doing something besides life coaching.   And you hear about this, I would never think, oh, there's a niche for video game music composing.  But even as you say this, we've got a member named Chris Greenwood, he goes by the name, Manafest. Really big Christian artist, awesome guy.  His songs, though, one of the ways that he markets his music is he licenses it for games and licenses it for movies. And now you're actually recording original tracks for things, so there are so many niche markets out there that you wouldn't think people would want to get into.  But then you're like, "Well, wait a minute, if you're doing it and he's doing it and somebody else is doing it, well, there are probably thousands of people that want to do it.  Right?" And uh, that's where this kind of came from. Jocelyn: Okay, so your site is about this video game music, correct.   Daniel: Yup, to help new and aspiring video game composers.   Shane: What is it called?  What's the domain name?   Daniel: VGMacademy.com Shane: videogameacademy.com, okay.   Daniel: You can go to either videogamemusicacademy.com, or you can go to vgmacademy.com, and it'll redirect you.   Shane: You actually own a three letter domain?   Daniel: vgmacademy.com Shane: Wow, that's really awesome that you have that, you know what I'm saying?  Because those are hard to get. Daniel: Well, it was kind of those dot academy ones, I wasn't that fast.   Shane: I got you, I got you, I got you.  Now tell everyone a little bit about where your community is, because you've actually built a community, an audience around this.  We've not monetized it yet, which is very common, right? So tell everybody else about the other assets that are around the website.   Daniel: Yeah, sure.  So I've got an email list that has got currently over 2,600 people on it, which I feel pretty good about that number.  I just obviously don't know what to do with it at this point. I've got a pretty sizable Twitter following of like 4,500 people or somewhere around there right now.  But my thing that I really liked the most at this point is that I've got a private Facebook group that has just reached 1,000 members.  It's like a no-spam, no-self-promotion zone for people to get in there and get questions and ask help, but also engage in anything that's going on with the website.   I've got a community challenge that I run over the summer.  So this is the second time I'm doing it, starting in a couple of days in July.  It's a 21-day challenge for composers to get in there, and just write something, even just like a little tiny something.  One little musical idea, just write something new every day for 21 days straight to make it a habit, and everyone goes in there.  Last year it was awesome! Everyone posted, you know, put up a graphic for each day. Shane: Is this free?   Daniel: Yeah, this is free! Yup! Shane: Do you make them opt in to get in the challenge?   Daniel: Yes.  Yeah. Shane: Okay, that's good.  Do you create content regularly on your website?  Like blogs or videos or anything like that? Daniel: I used to, but this past year, to be completely upfront and honest, I've just been kind of burned out and frustrated.  I feel like anytime I come back and pour energy into it, I feel like it's misdirected, or it doesn't really move the needle on anything.  So this past year, it's been pretty inconsistent. Shane: Listen, you have no idea what you've got in your hands.   Jocelyn: You're doing so many things right!   Shane: So many things right, so many things that other people can't even figure out how to do or won't figure out how to do.  Like how to do a challenge, how to opt in for it, how to get them in a private Facebook group. And your audience? I mean you have 2,500 emails.  Do you know how many people would drive to Boston and punch you in the face to steal 2,500 emails from you? You have this Facebook group with a thousand people, Twitter followers.  You have an audience that you've built! When Jocelyn and I launched our first product that did like thousands of dollars, we had less than 400 emails total, and it did like almost three grand in like the first week.  So you've got the people, you've got the thing, you've proven that people want this, and these challenges, you've proven that people will opt in. It's not a large stretch to just say, "Well, what if I charged for a challenge that got more involvement with me?" Jocelyn: Or at the end of my challenge, I'll give them their next step and I charge them for it?  Daniel, this is not hard! Shane: Yeah, you got this, man, dude.  I want to talk about two things, first, really quick is fears and obstacles.  Something's holding you back because you've got the tools in place. Jocelyn: What's going on inside your head that's saying, "I can't do this?   Shane: What are you afraid of?  What's the fear that's holding you back?   Daniel: The biggest thing is that I feel like-- and this is again a part of the result of that original course.  I ended up with a website and a community that's really looking for someone. In some ways at least I feel like I'm not qualified enough to take people to the next step that they want because I'm not a full-time working video game music composer.  I'm a music teacher. I know a lot of basics in terms of songwriting and composition. But in terms of like a lot of the technologies that people want help with the digital audio workstations, people can spend and waste countless hours of time diving into the audio technology and the audio engineering part of it.  And that's just something that's a huge time investment. I'm not able to become the expert on that as fast as I think I would need to be at this point. I feel like I'm in a lot of ways behind the ball of my audience in terms of the audio engineering component.  But that's the biggest thing: I kind of feel like in some ways I'm just not qualified. In other words, I think I am.  I think that I know a decent amount about marketing, I know a little bit about negotiating, which is something that comes up with freelancing.  So I got some transferable skills, you know, music theory and that kind of stuff. But I just don't know if I'm at a point where I have put myself in a position where I can be as helpful as I originally intended to be.  I think I have really big and ambitious dreams. But then becoming a parent, apparently you have a lot less free time and energy. So yeah! Shane: You have less time than the millennial on the beach in Thailand? Daniel: You know, believe it or not, I have a little less time than them, you know.  And that was the thing that shocked me. That was, I was definitely one of those, "I'm going to make it, I'm going to figure out how to manage this and make it work for me,” sort of people.  But then I had a kid that didn't sleep for two years. Jocelyn: Okay, let's push pause on that because that's a different issue.   Shane: Let's pause! Okay.  We've pulled out a fear and an obstacle.  The obstacle is kids that don't sleep on time.  We'll get to that in a minute. Now the fear is this: let me do a mock conversation for you here, okay.   I walk up to you and I'm like, "Oh man, I would love to compose music for video games.  Man, that'd be a cool job. I would love to do that, but Daniel, I think you could maybe teach me how to do that, but you know what?  Like I just want to make sure that you're even expert enough.” So then it comes back to you, "You look at them and say, 'Have you sang on Final Fantasy 15?' And that guy goes, 'No,' and you look at him and you say, 'I have.  Sit down and listen.'" Okay, so let me just dispel that: you're expert enough!  What you're trying to do is what a lot of people do: you think you have to know every single thing ever about your topic.  There are things that we don't know about online business. I meet with people that are very high level all the time in different spaces.  I'm in a mastermind group with some ballers and they're good dudes and we all do our businesses very differently and sometimes they say things and I can't even wrap my brain around it, what they're talking about.  But that's okay because I don't teach that thing even though it's still online business. What we teach is how to start, how to find an idea, how to get your website going, how to get your product created, how to get it out to market, how to start a membership site and create stable recurring income.   I don't know anything about JV partnerships and affiliate marketing, but I've got a friend who's made millions of dollars doing it, but I don't teach that.  I don't have to teach that and I don't have to go learn that. You don't have to learn all the digital audio mixing and stuff like that.  You could partner with someone who sells that and be an affiliate for them though, and then you could teach composition, negotiation, how to get the job, how to keep the job, how to make sure they call you back because you're getting called back.   You got to teach what you know and then point them to other people.  We don't teach people to do public speaking even though that's a big part of some brands.  Jocelyn and I, the only public speaking we do is at our own live events, we don't have time to go do all that other stuff.  But if I wanted to send someone to teach public speaking right now, I would send them to my friend, Grant Baldwin, The Speaker Lab, because he knows how to teach public speaking.  But I'm not going to go learn how to teach public speaking just so I can create a course about it, that doesn't make sense for us. Jocelyn: Let me tell you, and everyone who's listening, a secret.  And it's not really a secret. But you are not for everyone.  We are not for everyone. There are people out there who say, "You know what, I've grown my business and you know, I'm making a million dollars a year, and your stuff is beneath me.  Like I don't know how to get to the next level, and you're not going to be able to help me.” No, we're not, because that's not who we serve. Shane: I don't want to help you get to 10 million dollars a year.  Fine, you're a millionaire. You figured it out! You know what I mean?  Like that's not our point. Our mission is to help 100,000 people start their online business, and get to a point where they could have the decision to quit their job.  That's our mission is to help people start that journey. Our mission is not to take the person from a million dollars to 10 million dollars.  I'm not going to go try to figure that out. I'll leave that to somebody else. Same thing here, don't think you've got to teach all these other things.  I don't know the Video Game Music Act that requires you to have so many hours of certain degrees to teach people how to get into the industry. That doesn't exist.   Jocelyn: Let me tell you what this is, though.  This is you looking at yourself saying, "I'm not perfect in these ways, and I don't want someone to point out those flaws," and let me tell you how I know that because this is my everyday life.   Shane: Yeah, Jocelyn always does that.  We might have a deficiency. Like, one of the things that we struggle with is leading our team.  Jocelyn and I are very much like visionary, mud-on-the-wall, let's go, let's figure this out, and sometimes it's hard for us to pull back and lead our team.  But we have a really big team and we've got to actually go and sort this out. We have to be better. Jocelyn: It's just not something we enjoy doing.  Therefore, we don't want to do it. Shane: But we do share our struggles with our community.  We share our struggles on our podcast, and those struggles are just as valuable as someone who's got it figured out.  You could even talk about that. Listen, what if someone is a composer, and understands music because they went through music, and the band, and choir, and all these things, and they went to college, and they were vocal, and they learned how to sing.   What if the millions of people who do that never learned how to use these digital audio things?  And now you can say to them, “I don't have this skill, but I made it. I figured it out and I can help you do it, too!” Jocelyn: Do you know what the beauty of having a community for this is?  You don't have to know all the answers. You are surrounded by lots of other people who are interested in the same thing and guess what?  They might be strong where you're weak. It's just like our community. Like there are things that I'm not fantastic at, but there are hundreds of people inside our community, and a lot of them might have experience with it where maybe I don't.   That's the awesome thing, is that I can go in and say, "Hey, I've never done this, but our member, Kevin, has done this," or, "Our member, Karen, has done this.”  You know, I can pull out names of people who are an expert in this field and I don't have to be. So that is the awesome thing about doing that. Shane: That's one reason that we always say people come for the content, but they stay for the leadership in the community, because the leadership guides them to what things that leaders don't even know.  Like I can at least point to you the direction where you need to go, and the community fills in gaps of knowledge because if we have thousands of entrepreneurs in one place that are dealing with the three-year-old who doesn't sleep, that are dealing with the fear of being expert enough, that are dealing with how do I overcome this software plugin or whatever, then now we get to fill in the gaps and we get to work together and you can create that same dynamic.   You've probably seen this, I bet, in your community, haven't you?  Like people are talking about things and giving feedback that you didn't even think of and conversations and challenges. Have you seen that in your community? Daniel: Yeah, yeah! It's funny that you mentioned that because you know in a way I haven't needed to talk about the technical stuff in terms of the software in the Facebook group because a lot of times when people ask that question, which is not as often as I would've expected, but when those questions do come up, a bunch of people jump on them.   Shane: Exactly.  And that's why a community is really important in this kind of thing because what you have to do is say, “What CAN I teach people?  That's the most important question. “What problem CAN I solve?” And we so often get bogged down in the things that we can't solve.  "Well, I can't solve this for them. Well, I can't teach them this so I must not be sufficient," but you are sufficient. You are good enough and you are awesome at these things.   You have to make a bulleted list of “What Can I Teach Them?”  Well, I can teach them to the composure. I can teach them to negotiate.  I can teach them where to look for these gigs because you've probably got an idea of that, you know, you can teach them all those things.  That's what forms the basis of your content and then your leadership with coaching or community and things like that, that's going to guide them to the next step.  And that's what you are. You're a lantern bearer on a dark path, you're going down a path, you're showing them where to go. Jocelyn: You've already found the lantern.   Shane: That's right, you got it.  So you know where to go. You came back and got somebody else.  Now, you're taking them to where you were. And another thing I really sensed from you is you really want these people to do this.  Like, you know this is awesome, and these people want to do it. And you're like, "Man, I really would love for everybody to get to sing on Final Fantasy 15, right?" Daniel: Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest kicks I got doing this challenge last year was that, I was blown away by -- I was very clear with the community that I was really only looking for you to show up and write two to four bars of music a day.  A few seconds of music, a little idea. People really just created some really beautiful, some really awesome tracks, and a lot of them were doing full-blown, completed tracks almost every single day. That to me was a huge win. There was so much really great music that came out of it.  And I was just really happy! Jocelyn: But here's the problem.  You pumped the brakes, you gave them something awesome.  And he said, “Okay guys, see you next summer. We'll do this again.”  Daniel, stop it! Shane: You're like, "Look, I'd love to create a course, but I got to write some hate mail to Shane.  That's what I've got to do here." Daniel: I've got emails to write.   Shane: “I've got emails to write, y'all.  I know we're making great music, but I'm writing great copy here.”  I love your mission that poured out right there. Your mission is to help people write great music.  Your mission is to give them a doorway, an opportunity to go the next step. Your mission is not to teach them the mixer, teach them the thing, get them the job, all of that.  The first step that you can teach everybody is that you can do this. because you do it every day in your classroom, you do it every day in your group, you do it on all these challenges. You can teach people to make music that's changing their world, the people around them.  They're releasing new things into the world that never existed before, and then they have the opportunity to go the next step, And then they have the opportunity to learn the technology. And then they have the opportunity to apply for the job, but until they write that music, until it's released into the world, they don't have that opportunity.  Your endgame for them might be to do what you've done, but you have to help them get started and give them the opportunity. Jocelyn: And I'm going to tell you something.  I talked about this a few weeks ago on the podcast.  I feel like I can speak freely with you because, well, this whole podcast this week is kind of crazy.   Daniel: Yeah, it's free, pretty free.   Shane: There's been some free speaking.   Jocelyn: But here's the thing.  I talked about this, I think the 200th episode.  You are being selfish by holding this gift back, so stop it.  You have to do this. You owe it to these people who have a dream, who have something that they want to do, you're being selfish by not giving them the next step.   Shane: Your mission is not to get people a video game job.  That's a result! Your job is to help people unleash music that's inside of them into world through the conduit of video games.  I play Fortnight with my son. Daniel: Nice! Shane: Isaac and I play all the time.   Jocelyn: Not so nice for me.   Shane: Yeah, Jocelyn loses about an hour and a half a day of her life, so we play Fortnite together.  We play almost every day. I love the music at the beginning of Fortnite. I just love it, it makes me happy.  But going back before that, before I had kids, and right up when we had kids, I played Halo, that very famous game.  And I looked it up one day. Jocelyn: That music haunts me.   Shane: Yeah, the music haunts her.  It's not just the music. I looked it up one day and it keeps all your stats, and me, my brother, and my two best friends from high school, we lived far apart from each other when we were adults, right?  So Halo was a way that we got to connect every night. We got to get together for an hour before we had kids and we could actually play games and we got to connect virtually. When I hear Halo's music, I don't just think of the video game, I don't just think of the actual looked-up-in stats, ninety days of my life in actual hours, that I put into that game over a few years in Halo 3.  I don't think about that. I think of laughter, and I think of joy, and I think of all the good times and good conversations that I got to have with my brother who lived five hours from me, with my best friend who lived five hours from me.  Like that's what I think about. If that guy doesn't write that music that was the soundtrack of that game, then those memories don't happen and that nostalgia doesn't come back when I hear that music again.  That's your mission, bro! It's the help these people unleash music that can be used in these games, not only for them, but for all the people that are going to hear it. You've got no choice, man. You got to do this and you are expert enough. There is no degree, there's no certification that can make you more qualified for what these people need. Jocelyn: And I want to say, too, before we move on from this, think about people that you respect as leaders, just in everyday life, maybe in online business, every different area of your life.  Do you respect somebody more who is perfect and never makes mistakes, or somebody who says, "Hey, I don't know everything, but I'm going to help you. I'm going to do the best I can to help you get to the next step," and I feel like that's why people follow us because we're not perfect, we're not polished, we're just regular people who are trying to help other people have a better life.  So, who do you prefer to follow? Shane: Yeah, let me tell you a story about a guy.  This podcast may never end. We're going to talk for a while, we're just sitting back.   Daniel: This is my first day of summer break.   Shane: You're good.  Alright, cool, man.  Our kids are probably doing something right now.  I haven't seen them in about an hour, whatever. They'll be all right.  I can see the lake behind our house. So as long as they're not going into that, we're cool.   Okay, so I had a very influential man in my life who was a teacher of mine in high school.  He actually was what made me even consider being a teacher when I got a history degree because he was my history and political science teacher.   He really taught me a lot about how to argue politics, and think about deep issues and you know, look at both sides, and not be so hateful like everybody is on Facebook these days and all this other stuff.  He was very good at playing devil's advocate and arguing socratically. But that's not where he made the most influence in my life. I actually took a media class and I got to be the director and producer of our school news show when I was a senior in high school.  And I was a hoodlum! But when people see what I do now and my teachers, they're like, "Wow, you're not in jail! That's pretty amazing.”  And then when people see Jocelyn, like from her high school, they're like, "Why did you marry that guy? Because he had very great potential to go to jail.”  For him to give me a leadership position like that and give me that opportunity, it was amazing. I so appreciated it because he knew that I had a passion for the video editing, the audio editing, and the production of it.  I still have a passion for that stuff today with our podcast, with our videos and things like that. Here's why this story is so related to what we're talking about.  He took the media class because he liked the journalism aspect of it. He liked the telling stories aspect of it. He couldn't use a video editor. He could barely use a VCR.  We're going way back now. He didn't know which way to put the tape in the VCR.  It would've been upside down, inside out and he didn't understand how to use anything technology-wise.  And we had got a grant, and they had bought us all this video editing stuff. So this was like professional tape editing stuff back in the day, right?   Daniel: Yeah.  We had the same stuff.   Shane: Yeah.  So we go in and he's like, "Shane, you're the producer, you're the director.  So you've got to figure all this stuff out. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to tell you how to organize the show.  I'm going to tell you how to lead your team. I'm going to tell you how to do this.” And we would sit in there.  I would remember me sitting at the station just slaving, I would stay hours after school.  I'd leave the school at like 8:00 in the night right after school. Loved it, editing the broadcast for the next day, and he never left me.  He was always right there beside me, and it's really emotional, thinking about it like right now, how much that changed my life because it kind of was a foundational thing for now, like what we do.   I always remember him just sitting there with his leg crossed, reading his newspaper and every once in a while, he'd look over and go, "Shane, how's it going?" Or I'd look back at him and say, "Hey, do you think this story should go before this story?  How should I edit this?" But I had to figure out the technology. He had no clue how to do it. But he taught me how to lead and he taught me how to put things in the right order and how to compose the show. And it didn't matter if he didn't know how to do the editing, and it doesn't matter if you don't know how to use the technology.   You're leading them and you're teaching them how to compose and you're pointing people in the right direction to figure it out.  He gave me the instruction manual. I just had to read it. And that's really what you're doing for your people is you're just leading them, and you're helping them compose and you're giving them the chance, the opportunity, and who knows what happens to those people 10 to 20 years from now?  That's up to them. You're going to give them the chance and they're going to pay you for it, and then some of them probably the minority are going to do something with it. It's going to be inspiring and it's going to be world changing, and that's going to be because you made the decision, "I am qualified to do this, and by God, I'm going to teach it.”  Okay. Whew!   Jocelyn: Whew! That was a lot of information.   Shane: Oh my gosh.  I'm sitting in here, teared up thinking about that guy, and how much it changed my life and it tears me up because I know we've changed lives, but not all of them, the minority because the majority can't cut it.  And if you're in the majority, you need to get over in the minority, if you're listening to this podcast. I know you can change lives and I know that everybody listening has something but they can do! All that guy did was sit beside me and read the newspaper, answer a question here and there.  He didn't answer every question. He answered maybe one question a day. We'd sit there for four hours together.   Daniel: And he just gave you the opportunity.   Shane: And he just gave me the opportunity, man.  That's what everyone listening to this podcast right now has to do, is release what you know into the world and give people an opportunity.   Jocelyn: Okay, Daniel, we have said a lot of words.   Shane: Which, for an introvert like Jocelyn, this was like triple the word count of the normal podcast.   Jocelyn: I know, my word count for the day is over, so I'm not going to be talking anymore.   Shane: Oh, yeah.  Now, my wife will not speak to me until tonight!  I know that she's going to go into her cave, watching Netflix and it's over.   Jocelyn: Okay, but in all seriousness, alright, how do you feel about all of the stuff we just said?  I know it was a lot to process, but how do you feel about that and how do you think that it can hopefully help you to move forward to the next step?   Shane: It's not what me and Jocelyn think your next step is.  It's, what do you think your next step is? Daniel: I think I need to stop trying to be everything and really focus on what I know.  As I was listening and I had been thinking about this and going through the content in the Flip Your Life community this week, I think what's kind of been slowly shifting to the surface is this idea that I know music theory, I know how to teach that.  I know how to teach the basics of composing a good tune. And that's something that is missing a lot in this niche. A lot of people go towards the technology and they go towards the audio engineering and spent hours and hours and hours and making a really basic thing sound really complicated and expensive but the music is forgettable, so it doesn't take it anywhere. So, I think I need to focus more on the piece that I know, and divorce myself from the piece that I don't need to focus on.   And then I guess in terms of specific steps, I need to come up with a core product offer I can lead people to.  Get them the end result of getting their music, getting music that is not only memorable but the music that they'll like themselves the next day, which I think is like a huge pain point.   I think that I'm thinking of like a lot of the people who get into this niche, they have these composers that they've been listening to since they've been growing up.  And there's this one Japanese composer who is like the John Williams of video game music. Shane: John Williams is the greatest composer of all time who did Star Wars -- I just want to show my nerd cred. Daniel: Well done, sir.  Well done! Tip of the hat to you.  People constantly are comparing themselves to this guy.  They always hold him up as the example that they want to aspire to.  He was fantastic at writing great melodies and he was fantastic at using, you know, really beautiful harmonies and then people go out and they write these like beats and there's no melody, and they have no idea how to get over that hump. I think it's just a piece that's missing because they went to the technology but they don't have music education, the formal education.  The technology's there, they have access to that. They've got a lot of resources to learn that, but not everyone went through a formal music education degree or knows where to look or what the problem is. Jocelyn: Right.  And I think that we can really help you craft your offer in the community.  Like, that's something that our community members can really latch onto and help you with because I really think that you need to launch something off this next challenge.  That is really, really important. So we can definitely hash through all that. Shane: And it could be ready in 21 days.   Jocelyn: Absolutely, yeah.   Shane: It's already named, it's the Video Game Music Academy, right?  So you have to open a membership area, and your whole thing is give them the training they need to write these things, and then give them a place where they can share music for you to listen to so you can tell them what to do next.  That's it! That's the whole concept of your membership, is that they need someone to show them how, a place to let people hear it, and some feedback, and then they can go and take the other courses that you make, like How to Contact the Video Game, how to submit your music, how to do that stuff.   Jocelyn: We will get into that inside the community a little bit more, and I wanted to touch on one other thing that we kind of glossed over.  It was the time aspect because we've talked about this a million times. Everyone has the same amount of time, but here's the thing: Once you can get clear on your mission, and you can get clear that you are enough of an expert or whatever mindset hurdle is holding you back, I promise that time will not be as much of an issue going forward.   Shane: You've been obsessed so far with how to monetize a product.  That's not exciting. But now, you have a passionate mission to reach into people's hearts and unleash music into the world that can change other people's lives AND maybe make those people a living.  That's deep, dude! That's going to make you find the time, that's going to push everything that's taking up your time to the side, except the things that matter, your mission, your family, your focus.  You're going to see your calendar changed dramatically over the next couple of weeks. I promise you. Daniel: Sounds good.  Sign me up! Jocelyn: Alright, Daniel.   Shane: I'm signing off.  Jocelyn usually signs off, but listen, man, I am so glad that you wrote me that email!  I'm so glad that you wrote it in the way you did, where it was a critic, but it wasn't hateful.  You let yourself be vulnerable there and you were like, "Man, I'm just frustrated, and it frustrates me that you're doing this stuff.”  I'm just really glad that you were also responsive to my feedback back to you and most importantly, that you took action because if you don't take action, right, wrong or indifferent-- I'm not going to say that that hateful email was right, wrong or indifferent.   But like if you don't take some action, right, wrong or indifferent, nothing happens.  You took action and it turned into another action, and then it turned into a better action and now you're going to take even better actions going forward.  And that's how we all get to where we want to be, is just taking action. So, hey man, I'm glad you're in the Flip Your Life community, and I cannot wait to see how you change the world through this music business and it's going to be awesome watching your journey going forward, Daniel.   Daniel: Yeah.  Thank you, thank you both!  And for anyone else who's listening, who is not sure about whether or not to finish that form, shut up and do it.  You'll feel a lot better. Like I said, I've been through a course before. I was super impressed once I got into this.  I mean, you know, everyone's in there, everyone's doing the work and I've been checking in every day and, the videos, and it's like... it's bulletproof.  At the end of every video, there's a giant yellow button telling you what to do next. I'm not confused. I know what I need to do, so I'm feeling better.  I think I know what I need to do next now, and I'm looking forward to having you help me out craft my offer. Shane: All right man.  Awesome stuff, dude!  Welcome to the community!  Let's get it going. Daniel: All right.   Shane: Hey guys.  Thanks again for listening.  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.  If you still need more help with any of the topics that we discussed today, or maybe you have a question about something that we went over, we have all the training and support you need inside of the Flip Your Life community.   With over 50 training courses on dozens of online business topics, active community forums, and live member calls with me and Jocelyn every single month, the Flip Your Life community is your opportunity to get the help and support you need to make your online dreams a reality.   And the best part is you can get started today for free.  That's right! All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and you can get full unlimited access to everything we offer inside of the Flip Your Life community at no cost for 30 days.  Your first month is absolutely free! If you sign up today, you can get unlimited access to all of the courses inside of our training area, unlimited access to all of our community discussion forums, and you'll get to attend our next two live member calls with me and Jocelyn, where you can ask questions about your online business.   And it's all free for the first month.  All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and start your free month today.  That's flippedlifestyle.com/free. We can't wait to see you inside! Shane: Before we go we like to close every single one of our shows with from a verse from the Bible.   Today's Bible verse comes from Proverbs 11:3 and the Bible says, "Honesty guides good people.  Dishonesty destroys treacherous people.” Make sure you are always building on an honest online business that’s full of integrity and you treat people the way you would want to be treated.   That's all the time we have for this week! As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.  Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We will see you then. Jocelyn: Bye! Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Daniel's Website Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Grant make time for his online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Grant make time for his online business. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. We are super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show so that we can help them take their online dream to the next level. Shane Sams: Our guest today is our good friend Grant Downes. Grant, welcome to the program. Grant Downes: Hey guys, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today. You are coming to us from your vehicle, is that correct? Grant Downes: That's true. So, I am securely fastened here in the van in the garage, which hopefully will insulate me from the kid sounds that are upstairs. Shane Sams: Hey, listen, there is no better acoustics, or there are no better acoustics than inside of your car, inside of your garage. When I first started creating our courses, the very first course I ever created, it was the same thing, it was just chaos, kids running around everywhere. I tried every room in the house, from the basement to our bedroom. Jocelyn Sams: And then you listen to it back and it's like oh, kids screaming. Shane Sams: Oh, just terrible. I can hear kids. So, I went out and locked myself in the garage, got in the car, sat in the back seat in the middle, so I could be as far away from anything as possible, and it sounded great. So, if you're struggling to find a place to record anything, go to your car. Jocelyn Sams: And just remember, please do not run it inside your garage. Shane Sams: Yes, don't turn it on if it's cold. We don't want you to do that. Grant Downes: Yeah, pro tip. Shane Sams: And don't record while you're driving, that's, unless you got a lapel mic or something like that on so it's all good. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so you are at home. You have a family. Let's hear a little bit about them and your background. Grant Downes: Yeah, so I am in eastern Ohio. I live with my wife, Sarah, and my three kids, Charlotte, Henry, and Brenna. I grew up on a tree farm kind of around agriculture, a beautiful 300 acres of rolling farmland here in eastern Ohio, went to school for horticulture, which is basically plant stuff, and then worked kind of a couple different jobs in the plant industry. So, I worked at a nursery for a long time, did a little bit of landscaping, also spent time in agriculture, actually, a feed mill. Now I work as a pesticide and fertilizer inspector for the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Grant Downes: And then what's really awesome about that position, actually, is that I am based out of my house. So, I have a nine county territory that I run around in, and I do inspections, and I meet with people, and investigate complaints, and give tests, and all sorts of things. But I come home every day, start at eight AM in my basement, run out and do what I'm doing, come back home, and then I'm done by 4:30 and I'm already home, so it works out pretty well. Shane Sams: So you're not actually working in your home a lot, you're actually out on the road like going to farms. Do you inspect like the plants, or do you inspect like the chemical barrels of chemicals that they're doing? Like, what do you do? Grant Downes: Not so much plants, but sometimes products. Usually people in licensing is most of what I deal with, and then typically I spend four days in the field and then Friday is an office day. Although, like yesterday, for example, I was at home writing a report. So, I sat in my basement all day and wrote a report. Shane Sams: How does one get into horticulture? Is that what it's called? Agriculture? Grant Downes: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's, like, what makes you obsessed with I want to know everything about plants? Like, that's my job. What is that? Grant Downes: You know, it varies. So, agriculture and horticulture are a little bit separate. Horticulture is more like garden plants, and greenhouse plants, and nursery plants, whereas agriculture is more of your corn, beans, animals, livestock, that sort of thing. Grant Downes: So, I've been in a little bit of both. When I grew up on that tree farm, so that was like growing an ornamental product, basically, and so that's more on the horticulture side of things, but agriculture kind of goes hand in hand. You're still growing, you're still formulating a plan of fertilizer, you know, whatever the case is. So, growing is growing, it just depends on what specific direction you go in. Shane Sams: You know, everybody gets like, all these people get like obsessed with their lawns, and they want everything to grow perfect, they want every blade of grass to be green and every garden plant to look good. I just look outside and I'm like, as long as it doesn't grow too thick and it all looks kind of green, I'm cool. Like, I'm cool with that. I'm not a big, I don't have much of a green thumb, and Jocelyn, I'm pretty sure, has killed- Jocelyn Sams: Oh, my goodness. Shane Sams: ... every living plant we've ever owned. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I'm like the worst when it comes to plants. People give me live plants sometimes and it's very nice, I'm very appreciative, but I cannot keep them alive. Like, I forget to water them, and I don't know, I'm not very good with plants. Shane Sams: Plant murderer. Grant Downes: Yeah. Shane Sams: Every morning I take my dogs out to let them go out and use the bathroom, all that stuff. Jocelyn Sams: And kill our landscaping. Shane Sams: And kill our, they kill our landscaping, which apparently that's not good for your plants, and I always sit there and look at our landscaping, and I'm like, can I get all fake plants? I look at my lawn and I'm like, can I just turf this like a football field so I never have to. Grant Downes: You could. That's an industry. People have artificial lawns. Shane Sams: Hey Jocelyn, I've been telling you about this. This is totally going to work, so- Jocelyn Sams: It may be worth the investment, you know? It's very expensive to mow all this grass. So, anyway. Grant Downes: Yeah, well, just put in some field turf, it will be fine. Shane Sams: All right, Grant, I'm not going to lie, sounds like you have a pretty sweet set up here with your day job. So, tell us a little bit about why you wanted to start a website, what is your website, and what is the purpose of it? Grant Downes: Sure. So, I do have a decent set up. I mean, it's really about as like home office working as you can get. I get to go out and I can meet cool people, and I do nice things, but I'm also working a strict 40 hour a week and then I'm off and already home for my family. I think the online business thing would just be a continuation of that process, except it would even be more of what I want to do, instead of what my department wants me to do. Grant Downes: And so then, you know, my online business that I have got going on, it's called SustainableFamilyHome.com, and the whole goal is to provide people, you know, just kind of like us, busy families with young kids, a opportunity to find little ways that are easy in their life to become more sustainable. So, things like doing a little bit of gardening, composting, using reusable water bottles, you know, little, easy, incremental changes that are not hard to make that will help just be more sustainable over time. Shane Sams: Okay, so what sent you down the journey for SustainableFamilyHome.com? How did you get into online business, were you running around inspecting and licensing listening to podcasts, or did you read a book? Like, what was your first step into the waters of hey, I think there might be another way to make a living than what I'm doing right now? Grant Downes: Sure. So, actually a couple jobs ago, before I was with this inspector gig, I definitely had a career crisis. I wasn't super happy in what I was doing. It was a small company and there was no room for advancement, and so I was starting to look outside of what was available in that framework. Grant Downes: Discovered The 4-Hour Workweek, flipped through that very quickly, it was really fascinating. That kind of led me to Pat Flynn and then eventually to you guys, and just thinking I would love to have, even if it was just a little bit of a side income, something else that could provide for our family, you know, pay for a vacation. And then, sure, if it was successful enough, allow that to build up into what could be a really cool, self determined full-time job. Shane Sams: So, what did you like about The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss? It's funny you say that, because I find that's a common thread between most people that want to go down this path. I read The 4-Hour Workweek, you know, after I discovered there was a thing called online business, of course I saw this book on a shelf that said wait a minute, four-hour workweek? That sounds awesome, right? Grant Downes: Sure. Shane Sams: And, but I started reading it and it really does lay the case out, like, hey, the world is different now. You don't have to do the 40-hour workweek. You don't have to have an employer. You don't even have to stay local. You can reach out to anyone in the world and kind of make a living online. So, what was it that sparked that in you? Was it to make more money? To do more of what you wanted to do? Or just basically, hey, I want total control of my time, not just average control of my time? Grant Downes: Sure. I mean, definitely a couple factors. I am very much an analytical and processes person, so through that story, what if, the book, you know, he really laid out okay, all these processes, it was a lot of outsourcing, it was a lot of okay, setting this up and let it run, and set this up and let it run, and it works together. I love that sort of process system scheme. And so, that was fascinating. Grant Downes: And then, you know, just the concept as a whole. Like I mentioned, at that time I was not happy with my job, had a manager that was not a manager, and was really just looking for something else, and just think wow, you can really be autonomous, and put these systems in place that can lead to something awesome. So, it was really, I don't want to say a light switch, but it was definitely an open way of thinking about something different. Shane Sams: The thing about The 4-Hour Workweek that always gets me is people, the book is actually not saying you're only going to work four hours a week and make as much money as you want. It's saying that at most four hours of your week will be spent on stuff you don't like, right? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: Because it does take a lot of work, it does take a lot of hustle, and it does take a lot of guts to even start a website to do your business, or to try to replace your income and do something different. Shane Sams: I love this quote you put in there from your dad in the ... we have this form that everybody fills out when they come on the podcast, and it says, “My dad is a great role model for me, and is the hardest working person I know.” And then you talk about how online business seemed like a dream big dreams. But then later you said, “It reminded me of a quote my dad said growing up, 'You have champaign tastes and a beer budget.'” Like, what does that mean? Like, why did you put that in here? How does that relate? Grant Downes: You know, that's funny, it used to be for sure, I really wanted to buy big things, and even now, like at Christmas time, I don't want a little bunch of tiny little gifts, I want one nice big gift. Grant Downes: But regardless, the way it ties in now is with time, and that's kind of, I think, what we're going to get into a little bit more here is that I have a lot going on. And so, with my champaign tastes I want to do everything. I really want to be involved in a lot of things. I want to make positive contributions all over the place. I want to experience tons of different things. Grant Downes: Like, last night I went to do a mountain biking group ride because I never have been mountain biking and I wanted to try to ride some trails. So like, that was just something else I worked in. Grant Downes: And my beer budget is I only have so many hours in a day, and then that's something I know you guys have stressed a lot is we need to get control over our hours. And so, okay, I've got to fit what I really want to do into my budget of time. And so, I think that's one of my biggest struggles that I'm still continuing to work on. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you are a dad. You are an employee. You are a business owner. You are an aspiring mountain biker. Did I say that already? Shane Sams: You're apparently on the village council as well? So, you're a politician? Grant Downes: Yes. Politician is a strong word. We're pretty apolitical. We just really run the town business and get things done. Shane Sams: How big is the village? How big is it? Grant Downes: So, our village, Magnolia, Ohio, is about 1,000 residents. Shane Sams: Oh, okay, so this is a real village, like straight up village, right? Grant Downes: Yes. Shane Sams: But you're going for mayor, it says, of the village too. So, you're going- Grant Downes: That's true. So, I am going to be on the ballot here this coming November for mayor of Magnolia. Our previous mayor retired, or is retiring, I should say, after four years, and he's kind of elbowed and nudged, and said, “Hey Grant, I think you should give it a try.” So, after thinking about it for a while I decided to give it a try. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you're also a coach of a youth soccer league. Shane Sams: Oh, my gosh. Do you breathe? Grant Downes: Yeah. Shane Sams: When do you go to the bathroom, or eat? Grant Downes: Very seldomly, seldomly. Shane Sams: Right. I mean, this is, it reminds of like Lord of the Rings where he goes, “I feel like butter spread, too little butter spread thin over a piece of bread, right?” Do you ever feel, it seems like you feel that way right now, like you just have, well, I do this, and I do that, and I'm constantly going from eight AM until midnight, and then I have no time left for anything else. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so it's not very surprising that you say you feel like you don't have a lot of time. I mean, I totally get this. But let me ask you, what's your vision for your website? Like, what is your plan? What do you plan to sell? What products? What services? Grant Downes: Well, so far I do have a website up and running. It's basically 15 different blog posts on various topics, kind of what I mentioned earlier, composting, reusable water bottles, you know, things like that, that are easy to incorporate. Grant Downes: Each post basically walks somebody, if you had never done anything before on gardening, let's say, I have a bunch of how tos, exactly what you need to get started, and then embedded in those posts are Amazon affiliate links. So sure, that's basically my only way to receive money from someone right now is if they did make a purchase through one of my links. Grant Downes: Ideally, I think what I would like to do is build up to that membership site. So, you know, for people who really want to be on board with getting more sustainable, you know, have the community, have a lot more information that they can utilize as to all right, here's little tweaks here and there that I can help make my home, my family, my day to day activities just a little bit more sustainable. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So, you have that idea. You have that goal of eventually doing a membership style website, which I think is kind of interesting for this product, and you think that your main problem right now is that you just don't have time to work on it, right? Grant Downes: Basically. Shane Sams: Now, wait a minute, you don't have time or you're not making time? So, because you chose mountain biking the other day, right? So, is this business a true priority for you, or is it something that you feel like is just another one of the 1,900 things that you slice on your pie every day? Grant Downes: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that it's probably somewhere in between. I can't say that it's a need, because I am employed, right? And my family is okay. It's definitely a little bit more of a want. I would love to have this, to have more control over my life, my income, things along those lines, and then just trying to balance it in between where everything goes. Grant Downes: You know, it's funny, I actually let my wife read the intake form and all of the answers that I wrote down to your questions, and she's like, you know, don't be too hard on yourself. You're taking care of us, you've got a lot going on. Yes, it would be cool to have this thing, yes, work on that when you can, but don't stress yourself out or get too crazy. Grant Downes: So, I don't know. It's definitely, for me, trying to find the balance as to yes, I would love to have this thing, and I would love to help people. Like, that's the thing, this is something, overall, that is important to me. You know, our planet is in a precarious state, I guess, for lack of a better word, and it would be awesome to help people make a positive influence on the earth and in their lives. So yeah, finding time is that sweet spot. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I love that. I love what you said about, you know, it's important to you to help people become aware that we do need to be involved in sustainability, and the longevity of our planet and all of the stuff on it. So, it is something that's important. Jocelyn Sams: I think that is important to you, but I don't know that this is a proper recommendation for a membership site, I wouldn't say. Would you? Shane Sams: I'm not for sure about that. And you said something really interesting in your form, “I'm not sure how to translate the urgency I feel into creating urgency for others.” Like, you're urgently, like, I want to be sustainable. You've bought into that style of life, and it's like trying to translate that to others, but that's kind of the wrong way to run a business. Shane Sams: Businesses don't succeed because you can take your passion and urgency and plant it on someone else. You can inspire someone else, right? Like, that's possible, but usually a business that's successful takes something in their customer that they already have an urgency for, right? And you go and give them the solution to that thing they've already discovered for themselves is urgent. Shane Sams: Like, I urgently wanted to quit my job. I had to find a way to get out, because I was in a bad situation with a bad boss, right? So, I was already looking for a solution, all someone had to do was drop the solution in my face. If your house is on fire, and I walk up and hand you a fire extinguisher, I have met your urgent need, right? Shane Sams: And this gets into the aspirin versus vitamin analogy that we often talk about. If you're trying to make someone care as much as you, it's going to be really hard to sell something. And that's not what you want to do in your business anyway. Shane Sams: You want to tell people things. You want to teach people things. You want to help them solve their problems and give them the answers that they need right in the moment, and if you're just constantly thinking oh, man, I can't make anyone else care as much as me, you see what I'm saying? Like, you're not going to have motivation. You're not going to be able to look at your calendar and say let's see, mountain biking or mission, nah, I don't really care about my mission as much, you know? So, it does become a harder sell to go and get people. Shane Sams: So, if you could change the way you think about it a little bit first, of hey, wait a minute, I don't need to create urgency, I need to find people who are already feeling urgency about this issue, it becomes a lot easier to kind of market the thing, and get involved in the thing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I think that there is a market for this, certainly. You know, there's a market for pretty much everything, but I just wonder if maybe you're thinking about it the wrong way, because it seems to me like you should create something like a book that maybe you sell on your site, maybe you sell on Amazon. I don't know, but that would create a little bit of extra income for you guys, and at the same time you're not tied down to a membership site where you have to be there all the time serving your members, so- Shane Sams: This almost seems like courses, too. Like, it's hard to think about it like a membership site right, I'm sure we could get there if we work through it, but it seems like if I was going to be more sustainable, right? What's one thing I could do, composting? Is that what you said? Grant Downes: Sure. Shane Sams: To become more sustainable. Jocelyn Sams: We're apparently not very- Shane Sams: Not very sustainable right here. Jocelyn Sams: ... sustainability minded. Grant Downes: Yes, start composting today. You can do it. Shane Sams: We recycle our cardboard, how about that? Jocelyn Sams: We do recycle cardboard, because- Shane Sams: That's right. Grant Downes: Okay, that's something. Jocelyn Sams: ... I use a lot of cardboard. Shane Sams: Because Amazon sends us a lot of boxes. I'm just saying, Jocelyn's got the little one-click buy option going strong. Shane Sams: But like, what if you had a course that was like $99, and it was like how to compost, right? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: And then you can string together courses in a very similar way to a membership model. It's called an ascension model, right? So, if I got into composting, what would you tell me is the next thing that I need to do, Grant? Like, what's the next thing that I need to do? Grant Downes: Well, if you're composting, I guess you would probably want a place to use that compost. So, if you're not already gardening, I might lead you in that direction. Shane Sams: Okay. So, basically, say someone comes in and they buy your course. Well, the thank you page is not the end of a sales funnel. The thank you page is the start of the next sales funnel. So immediately, on that thank you page, it would say hey, you're going to need something to do with all that compost, take my gardening course, that's $97, right? And then two weeks later, if they didn't buy it, you remind them again, because maybe they got into composting, they see it looks really cool, and they have all this big mound of compost sitting around, right? Grant Downes: Yes. Shane Sams: And then what does that string to next? What does that string to next? What would happen after you taught me how to garden? All right, I got my compost bin going, okay, I've got my garden growing, I'm like, herbs, sweet, or herbs if you're across the pond, herbs or herbs. We've got some herbs and herbs growing in our compost garden, what happens next? What do I need to do? Grant Downes: Well, then I would push you, probably, into making sure that you can store all that food from your gardening, so having nice, reusable food storage containers. Shane Sams: Okay, there we go, so that's another course, like how to make sustainable food supplies or whatever, you know? Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Okay, fire hose. Shane Sams: Sorry. I'm just saying. Jocelyn Sams: Let's back the truck up just a little bit. Shane Sams: Okay. My point is that you can string together courses, which is actually a lot more passive. It does take a lot less time, right? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: It's harder, because when you get a member, a member kind of just gets used to like, I'm a member, I'm a part of this community, I'm going, right? Shane Sams: This is much more sales driven, because you have to sell the next thing, but the good thing is you create the course, like, composting is composting, right? Like, making compost is going to be the same in two years from now, how you make it, okay? Gardening is kind of gardening, right? Water, sun, plants, dirt, I don't know what else goes into it, compost apparently. Shane Sams: But you can make the course once, sell it forever, and you just create, my buddy calls it the funnel of death, just keep stringing together these courses over and over until people hit all the things that they buy. But you make them once, then you go sell it for six months, then you make the next course, then you go sell it for six months. And then you look up, and all of a sudden you're like whoa, I had 500 course sales this month, or something like that. Shane Sams: So, maybe that's the way you could make it more immediate for people is, well, this person wants composting, right? So I need to make just that course for them. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, I'm just laughing because I feel like this train is three towns down the way. Grant's just watching it go by. Grant Downes: No, it's all good, but I do have a question. So, if we circle back to my existing content, right? So, the blog posts I have now, those are kind of, you know, in theory, designed to walk a person through that. Should I not be giving that content away? Jocelyn Sams: Definitely not. Shane Sams: Definitely not, no. Grant Downes: All right, so then if I take that content away, how do I have blog posts, you know, free content, and then separate that into the paid stuff later on? Shane Sams: Basically, your free content should only tell them what to do. So, free blog post would say you need to compost. It wouldn't say here's how to compost. Does that make sense? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: And it would tell them the reasons why they need to compost. Like, give me three reasons why I should compost without telling- Grant Downes: I mean- Shane Sams: ... me how to do it. Grant Downes: ... you shouldn't have that food in your trash because it's going to stink, it's going to fill up a landfill, and then the benefit is you can use it in your garden and provide nutrients for your garden plants. Shane Sams: Okay, so that- Jocelyn Sams: There's your blog post. Shane Sams: There's your blog post. That's what a blog post should be about, because now you've actually created urgency in me, right? Like man, I don't want my trash to stink. I got to get that trash out of here. And gosh, I don't want to fill up another landfill. And wait a minute, I need to garden? I don't know how to garden. If only there was a course on this website that- Jocelyn Sams: But wait- Shane Sams: ... taught me how to garden, right? Jocelyn Sams: ... here's a free checklist that you can sign up for if you give me your email. Shane Sams: Exactly. So, that's kind of where you probably went off the rails a little bit, or maybe I went off the rails, according to Jocelyn, because I go off- Jocelyn Sams: Um, yeah. Shane Sams: I get a business idea and I just go with it. Jocelyn Sams: I know, but we need to stay at this town. Shane Sams: Okay, gotcha. Sorry. I was going to the next town. But like, that's what you have to do is create the why, right? Maybe that's why you're not creating urgency is because you're giving them a steak instead of an appetizer, right? And that's where all your free time- Grant Downes: Yeah. Shane Sams: ... is going to. And you also probably feel like, man, I made this thing that shows them how to do it, what do I do next, right? Jocelyn Sams: Let me ask you a question, Grant. What if I told you that you could spend like a weekend putting together a little book about, say, composting, because that's what we keep talking about here, and get it for sale on your website, batch up a little bit of content, meaning like a month of content, and you don't work on it again until next month? Grant Downes: I mean, that would be cool. That sort of a batching format is definitely where I need to focus, because you know, midweek commitments, soccer practice, all that stuff. Yeah, if I could set aside six hours, eight hours, 12 hours, whatever that weekend timeframe is, crank- Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Grant Downes: Crank a bunch of things out, and then have it be there and just trickle out over time, that would certainly be helpful. Shane Sams: Yeah, I think that's probably the way you should go. And you may, eventually, all your customers, you could even, if you wanted to create some kind of community environment you could throw together a quick Facebook group, and everybody that bought an eBook, or everybody that bought a course, you could just throw them in there, they could all talk about sustainability together, and that's where your fans kind of just hang out, right? Grant Downes: Sure. Yeah, I have a Facebook group, there's just no one there, so- Shane Sams: Right, exactly. Shane Sams: But your sales can kind of end up there, like, eventually, and that's- Grant Downes: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Shane Sams: ... you just string these courses together. But you could actually create like what Jocelyn just said, pick one weekend a month to create your content, you have 28 other days to do whatever else you want, like run for village council and ride into the mountains on your bike, right? And then, after that, you know, you don't have to do anymore, but your goal would be day one, create a new product, right? Like the gardening product. Jocelyn Sams: Like something to sell. Shane Sams: Something to sell. Day two would be create a lead magnet for that product and write like three blog posts about it, or maybe one blog post. You know, a lot of people have been asking me lately, wow, I just, I want to be a prolific content creator, and I'm like, no, that's not what you should do, you should be a consistent content creator, you should be a prolific promoter. Shane Sams: You could literally make a course on Saturday, or an eBook, that tells them how to do something like gardening, composting, plastics, whatever, you know, and the next day write one epic blog post on why that's so important, and then create a lead magnet for it, and then just set up an ad to promote it for the rest of the month, let it work for you, right? That's your whole business model. Shane Sams: And you just, eventually you've got to string these together in an order in your sales funnel that's like, okay, the first one is composting, the second one is gardening, the third one is food storage, and these kind of sell out over time, right? Grant Downes: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. And so, your goal is to do this in X hours per month, okay? So, maybe you give yourself eight hours to get it done, and that's how much time you have. So, if you get one blog post done, and one product done, and you send out a couple emails, then that's your eight hours. Shane Sams: Are these long blog- Jocelyn Sams: Then you move on to the next month. Shane Sams: Are these really long blog posts, the ones you've already created? They actually show you how to compost, like literally how to do it? Grant Downes: Yeah, they vary. Gardening and composting are longer. I mean, I have another one, for example, that's air drying clothes, pretty short. So, it just depends on the topic, but- Shane Sams: Okay. So, I would probably pull those down, the big, the two, like the best ones, like the gardening and the composting one, take those off, turn those into products, okay? You might have to flesh them out, right? Grant Downes: Sure. Shane Sams: But that will get you a jump start on the first ones. And they can be, these don't have to be super expensive, they could be $10 eBooks, right? It's just something people download, and it shows them how to do it. Because if it shows them how to compost and it solves a problem, it doesn't matter the length or the format. All that matters is if it solves someone's problem, if someone wanted to learn about that for $19 on a 20-page eBook that's cool, right? Shane Sams: So, you could totally sell that, because it solves a problem. Pull those off, use those as your first two eBooks. You already have the products basically done, okay? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: And do what Jocelyn said, write a blog post on the why. You just told us why we should compost, so you've already got that outlined, and then make some kind of checklist, like the things you need to compost, right? Like, you need X, Y, and Z. And then, of course, that's for the opt in. And then the opt in goes to the sales page, you start selling your eBooks, and then you write the next one next month. So, 12 months from now you have 12 eBooks selling all over the place. Put them on Amazon, put them on your website, put them everywhere. Jocelyn Sams: So, I think this solves a lot of problems for you. It helps you to be able to get something done in a short amount of time. It helps you to hopefully make some extra income, and just kind of satisfies that curiosity of can I do this, can I make something work? Jocelyn Sams: Could you change it in the future to become something bigger, of course? Like, if you start seeing it get some traction, and you're like, hey, this is really cool, I wonder if I could make something else out of this, well, of course you can. But if you just want to see what's happening, and just kind of prove a theory to yourself, can I do this, can I make some extra money online, I think this is probably going to be the best way for you to go. Shane Sams: And another note on recurring revenue, whenever people get into a membership site, or recurring revenue, recurring revenue only just simply means that your existing customers pay you again, and again, and again, okay? So, it's not like it has to be what we have, this forum of hundreds of people hanging out on Q&As, right? That's not what a membership has to look like. That's a good way to do it, but it doesn't have to look that way. Shane Sams: Recurring revenue can be I created 100 really cool customers. They really like what I do, so I sell them something else next month and they buy it again, right? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: And then they become super fans. And then, 30 days later, I create a new product and they buy it again. So, that's all what recurring revenue means is you have an existing group of customers that love what you do, want the next thing, you create the next thing and they buy it again, okay? So, you can create that recurring revenue for yourself just based on your customer list. Grant Downes: Right. Now, I wanted to ask you a little bit about community. So, we talked a little bit about sure, you could have a community group on the side, but I feel like there's two buckets to put that in, right? So, you could either have, excuse me, you could either have the ... like a private Facebook group for your existing customers, or let's say you could have a free Facebook group, and try to bring people in and lead them to products. Do you guys see an advantage one way or the other? Shane Sams: I mean, for us, the way our business works in Flipped Lifestyle, we definitely want to put them in a paid community, right? But, for another business that we have, USHistoryTeachers.com, it's an education company that sells lesson plans to social studies teachers, that one has no paid community, not at all. It has a big Facebook group. It's actually the largest Facebook group for social studies and US history teachers on Facebook, okay? Shane Sams: So, that's a big community, I share memes, everybody, it gets dozens and dozens of shares and likes, and people laugh and have fun. So, I've kind of created this free community there, right? But it has no paid component to it. So, it's more of a what does the business really need, right? Shane Sams: Our business for Flipped Lifestyle, people need a community. You need to be surrounded by other people. You need to see people succeeding to keep you moving, right? You need to have some accountability, place to go ask questions. US History Teachers, eh, they just want something funny to get them through the day, and they need their lesson plans in the morning. Jocelyn Sams: And of course there are benefits and drawbacks to each way. I mean, the benefits of a paid community is that you don't have to babysit them as much because, you know, the people, they've paid money, they're not going to come in there and spam it up, usually. Free groups, sometimes you'll get people in there who are trying to basically poach your customers, and pitch them stuff, and all that kind of stuff. And so, you're going to have a little bit more, like, babysitting of that type of community, but the good news is that it can bring potential customers in to your environment. Shane Sams: I would still think that there's a coaching component to what he's doing, don't you think? Like- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, totally. I mean- Shane Sams: ... if I downloaded a composting thing, and my, whatever, maybe my composting pile didn't compost, or caught on fire, or I don't know what would happen bad in composting, but let's say my garden, the plants wouldn't grow, I would think I would need to ask the dude who wrote the book, you know, hey, why is this herb not growing, you know what I'm saying? Grant Downes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: So like, it seems like there is a community element about this that could be paid on the back end of all of your coursework, or bookwork. Jocelyn Sams: I think that there are a lot of different opportunities that you could pursue, you know, as your schedule freed up, or as you see a need. But for now, if I were you, I would just start kind of with what we're talking about as far as like the eBook, and possibly get into some courses if you see that that's catching on. How do you feel about that strategy? Grant Downes: You know, I do like that a lot. That does break things down a little bit for me in terms of okay, because I, well, a big concern, you know, thinking about membership, has been all right, well, if I've got this free content, how do I then create pay content that's even better. This system, the way we've talked through today, definitely helps, okay, separate the why into the free content, and then the good stuff will be paid but still, you know, there and available for everybody. Grant Downes: And even about the coaching, I remember that was in the training somewhere that you guys mentioned hey, if nothing else, have a button on your website that says, you know, individual coaching, click here. Shane Sams: Exactly. Grant Downes: And then that's always been in the back of my mind as something that, yeah, I'd like to be available as well. Shane Sams: And just one more thing, circling around to the beginning of this conversation, stop trying to put your passion and urgency on your customers. Go find customers who share your passion and urgency, right? Someone, somewhere, is typing into Google right now, how do I compost, okay? And if you have a thing called how to compost, they will eventually find you, right? Shane Sams: So, try to jump in front of existing traffic. Don't try to find some random person, and shake them, and go save the world! Right? Grant Downes: Right. Shane Sams: Like, don't do that. Find the people who are already looking for it, and let your content be kind of the bait that kind of like draws them in. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and on the time, I just wanted to throw this in here too, one of the things that you might have to practice, and this is something that I have to practice too, is saying no, and this is something that can be hard for people, you know? You have your kids involved in stuff. You want to help coach the team. You want to be there for the community meeting. You want to be there for your kids' back to school stuff and all that kind of thing. Jocelyn Sams: But there are times that we have to say no to stuff, and I think that that would probably help you, you know, to prioritize and say okay, well, I had this time blocked out to work on my business, I'm not going to be able to attend the mountain biking meeting or whatever, you know? Grant Downes: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Like, you're going to have to figure out, and that's something that you can only do yourself, what is the most important, and how do I make it a priority? Shane Sams: And these can be hard decisions. I had a friend the other day who was really, really involved in the church for years, and years, and years, and leadership, and doing all these things, and was really, you know how it is when you volunteer for stuff, you kind of, you know, it's 80/20 rule, right? Only 20% of the people are ever doing anything. Shane Sams: So it's people rely on you, you get really ingrained, and then all of a sudden people start over asking, you're doing so many different things, you didn't say no for years and now you're saying yes to everything. And he had this really big dream that he wanted to start his own business, and do these things, and I actually said to him hey, when we started our online business and it got traction, we had to let go of a couple things. Shane Sams: One of those things was actually teaching a small group that we taught in school, at like Sunday school or whatever, for like two years, okay? And it was a group of our friends, but we just had to step back from it because there are only so many hours in the day. You're only awake 16 hours a day, right? Grant Downes: Right. Shane Sams: So, we had to say we're going to give up some things now that we can get back later if we want them, okay? And he stepped down from all of his leadership positions. He started a business, made his first sale the other day, and things are kind of rocking now, you know? Shane Sams: So, there are things you're going to have to say no to to be able to get the things that you want, and that's going to be really hard. You might have to wait to mountain bike, but wouldn't it be amazing if you could take a month long mountain biking trip later because you didn't have to go to work, you know? Grant Downes: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I have gotten better at that in the last few years. My wife and I joke that if I sign up for anything else I will come home and all of my stuff will be in the yard. So- Shane Sams: Yeah, don't want that. That's a bad thing. Grant Downes: ... yeah, we're getting a balance there. Yeah, it will be okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Grant. It has been really fun talking with you today, and I really look forward to seeing what happens with your sustainable living website. Jocelyn Sams: Before we go, we always like to ask our guests, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today? Grant Downes: I really want to go back to those two big posts, basically the gardening and the composting, and try to format, I need to do that, I'm sure, go through the Flipped Lifestyle training to see what an eBook would look like, and then start to put things in motion to get those going. Shane Sams: That's an awesome goal, Grant, but I want to push you a little bit. I want to challenge you a little more here. Grant is coming to Flip Your Life LIVE in just a few weeks, so I kind of want to tie this goal to that. I want to challenge you to have the first product, the first lead magnet, and everything leading to it on your site before you set foot in the door. And I actually want you to like start an ad for it, maybe you just boost a post- Grant Downes: Oh, yeah. Shane Sams: ... on Facebook, before you come to Flip Your Life. Shane Sams: Because like, wouldn't it be amazing if you made that first sale of this first product before you actually got to Lexington, Kentucky. Would that be amazing? Grant Downes: That would be amazing. It would be really cool to see all this background and work actually translate into some dollars. Shane Sams: Exactly, so let's- Jocelyn Sams: All right. Shane Sams: ... put that on there. I challenge you. I'm going to be there at check in. I'm going to find you. But I'm going have them- Grant Downes: All right. Shane Sams: ... call me, I'm going to say, is Grant here? Where's Grant? Has Grant showed up yet? And I'm going to be like, did you put it online? Show it to me. I want to see it. Okay? And if you- Grant Downes: All right. Shane Sams: ... make your first sale you got to post it in the Flip Your Life LIVE Facebook group, okay? Grant Downes: Sounds awesome. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that wraps up another great discussion with one of our Flip Your Life communities. We can't wait to meet Grant at Flip Your Life LIVE in Lexington, Kentucky, on September 19th through the 21st to see how he is doing on his goals. Shane Sams: We would love to meet you in Lexington, Kentucky as well, but if you don't act fast, we won't get that chance, because we only have a few tickets left before the event, and it is coming up very, very soon. All you have to do to get your ticket to Flip Your Life LIVE is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/Live and you can get one of the few remaining tickets that we have left. As of today, we only have 13 tickets left to the event. Shane Sams: And please remember, we are not doing Flip Your Life LIVE in 2020. This is your last chance to go. So, if you were putting it off, you were waiting, you are running out of time. The tickets are almost gone, the time is almost running out, and we are not going to be doing this event again next year. So, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/Live and see if any tickets are left today. Shane Sams: Before we go we'd love to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible. Today's Bible verse comes from Proverbs 24, verse 27, and it says, “Do your planning and prepare your fields before building your house.” So, get your priorities in order. Get your plans set so that you can accomplish the things that you want for your family and in your online business. Shane Sams: That's all the time we have for this week, guys. Until next time, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. See you soon. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Grant's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Pat successfully launch a membership website. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show we help Pat successfully launch a membership website. Shane Sams: Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to help another member of our flip your life community start, build, and grow their own online business. Excited to welcome Pat Eardley to the show today. Pat, welcome to the show. Pat Eardley: Thanks for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today and I can't wait to see what is going on with you and your business. But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about your background and what led you to kind of pursue online business. Pat Eardley: Currently, okay, so maybe I'll back up and tell you background. So I am from Virginia and I live in Charleston, South Carolina. So like the best place on earth, I believe. And I've lived here for about 12 years. And my background professionally is human resources. I've been in HR for a little over 20 years. So mathematically that means I started when I was about five years-old. Jocelyn Sams: Of course. Yes. Shane Sams: Of course you did. Pat Eardley: And so I have an HR consultancy. I've had this business for 10 years now. This year makes 10 years. And it's myself and I have two employees. But it's just not scalable. We truly are trading dollars for hours. You can say that you're not because there's some automated components, but it really is trading dollars for hours. So that really made me look into online business. And is there a way to scale it by having an online component to the business? Shane Sams: So what exactly is... So you own the business, right? So yourself- Pat Eardley: I do. Shane Sams: So you're kind of in the flipped lifestyle, but your business dominates a lot of your time because you are trading those time for dollars. Correct? Pat Eardley: That's correct. Shane Sams: So you're looking at the other direction. Jocelyn Sams: Well, let's first of all explain HR. Like that's human resources- Shane Sams: For sure. Jocelyn Sams: ... For people who have never been in corporate or maybe they just don't know that. Shane Sams: And what is an HR consultancy? Like what do you? I know there's HR people that work in corporations that handle human resources, and when employees have problems or something like that. But what does an HR consultancy do? Pat Eardley: So what we do is we help small businesses. So typically if you have less than 100 people, you don't have an HR person on staff. It doesn't make sense to have an HR person full time or even part time for that matter. Financially it doesn't work. So what we do is we help small businesses manage the HR component, which is like hiring, firing, the onboarding, the off boarding. What happens when there's bereavement and someone needs an extended amount of time off? Or there's an injury at the workplace? Or maybe it's just annual reviews, like doing that on a regularly scheduled basis. A disciplinary action conversation. Those are the type of HR things that frankly, business owners did not get into business to do. They don't want to manage that stuff. Shane Sams: But they can't afford to basically have someone do it for them. So you're like an HR mercenary, right? It's like a horrible way to say that. But people go out and they're like, "Man, I really wish someone would take all this HR off my plate, but I can't afford to hire anyone. But maybe I can hire Pat and her firm and they'll take care of that." So really you're pretty much maxed out on how many businesses you could ever personally serve because you would have to hire someone else to add more businesses. Because there's only... Like if you're having these HR meetings, and disciplinary meetings, and hiring, and firing. There's only so many hours in the day. So basically in your business now it runs up to a cap, correct? Pat Eardley: You're exactly right. Shane Sams: Like a time. Pat Eardley: There is a cap. It will cap out. And the only way to, I don't know, get beyond it is to hire more people. Shane Sams: Right. Pat Eardley: That's not of interest to me. I don't want to have 20 employees. Shane Sams: Exactly. So you've got the two employees you do now, did you hire them to add more businesses or do they just support you with the businesses that you serve? Pat Eardley: One supports, one adds. Shane Sams: Gotcha. Okay. So basically one was for growth and one was for support. Pat Eardley: Yeah you're right. Shane Sams: Okay, cool. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So you're doing this consultancy, you have your support people. And now what is this going to look like as you transition it to an online business? Pat Eardley: Yeah, so the online business. So the business is MyShiftHR.com. So my brick and mortar, if you will, I'll just refer to it, the consultancy as a brick and mortar. That's actually called Shift HR, like shifting car gears. Shane Sams: Like S-H-I-F-T. Pat Eardley: Yeah. Because you have to have a change in order to have a difference. Right? Shane Sams: For sure. Pat Eardley: So Shift HR. So My Shift HR is the online product. And what that is, is there is a forum for business owners to be able to ask those questions that they don't necessarily have anyone to talk to about, and they don't want to pay $200 an hour to talk to a lawyer about them. There's also a component where we'll have trainings from other professionals, like maybe it's an insurance person or maybe it's a payroll company talking about new changes, laws, best practices. And then the heart of it is the HR portal. So the portal will be where they can get forms, documents, policies, procedures. They can write an employee manual, they can write an operations manual all from this portal. And the portal is a white label. Like it's not mine. Shane Sams: Right. Pat Eardley: But I am a reseller. So that'll be white labeled and it is already to Shift HR. And you would be subscribing to that whole thing I just described. Shane Sams: So white labeling basically is someone has made this product but you get to basically lease it and put your branding on it, your stuff, and people can come in and it looks like all of your stuff. But all that legal stuff, documents and things like that come from somewhere else that's already created, correct? Pat Eardley: You're correct. Shane Sams: All right. So this is interesting. So basically there's gaps here is what I'm seeing. So if you don't have 100 employees or more, you're not going to hire an HR person. And then I assume then there's a gap somewhere between like 30 and 100 people where you could hire a consultancy. But then like maybe people who are like one to 30, one to 50 employees they want to still do it themselves because they can't afford to hire the consultancy or the HR person. So their goal is just to at least do it as painlessly as possible. They don't want to come up with procedures, they don't want to figure all this stuff out. They just want to go somewhere and say, "This is my problem. Where is the solution?" And the solution would exist somewhere within this HR portal. Was that what the online business is? Pat Eardley: Yeah. You're on point, you're spot on. Shane Sams: The difference is there's do it yourself, right? And then there's do it for you. But in the middle is do it with you. So this is a very like do it with you kind of membership. It's like, "Yeah, here, just read this document. It'll help you hire somebody. Read this document, watch this course. It'll help you deal with the workman's comp claim." Or something like that. Pat Eardley: Yeah. And Shane that was good. I'm going to borrow that, that do it with me. That's good. Shane Sams: Yeah. I'm pretty good at writing descriptions for businesses. I've done this a few times. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Pat. So in your podcast intake form that you fill out before you come on the show, you told us that this is a brand new business. And I'm just wondering what you have done so far? I know that you have a website. So tell me a little bit about what is already there. Pat Eardley: So yes, the website is done, the portal is there. Really what I'm trying to do now is building the followers, right? Building the list because it is a different client than what we would be after in the consultancy. Because in the consultancy we know that there's a minimum amount that that client or that prospect is okay with spending. Shane Sams: Right. Pat Eardley: But this is someone who's at a lower price point, they need a lower price point. So I think that right now I'm trying to figure out like how do I get to those individuals? How do I target them? Jocelyn Sams: And I know that you're thinking about membership as far as like your product. Do you have anything prepared for that? Like is it ready to go basically is what I'm asking? Pat Eardley: Yes. Yes. To answer the question. It is ready to go. Shane Sams: Okay. What fears and mindset issues are like holding you back then right now? Is it just confusion? Is it just, I don't know how to reach these people. Is it just they're so different because we're not marketing to the same people in the consultancy. If it's ready to go and ready to launch, like what's kind of holding you back right now then? Pat Eardley: I think it's a few of those things you just said. I'm a little fearful because it is a different client and I'm not sure where to find them. I don't necessarily think they're on LinkedIn. They may be on Facebook, they may be on YouTube. So I'm trying to figure out what is the right avenue to take to find them. And then secondly, how do I communicate what the site does. Shane Sams: Right. Pat Eardley: With HR I will go to events and I'll tell people, "Oh, I do HR." And they think, "Oh payroll?" And I'm like, "No." And they're like, "Oh, benefits?" "No." So how do you teach the audience what you do? And I'm thinking that that's via video. That's what I'm thinking. Shane Sams: Well that could definitely be the platform. And it's really interesting the fear, you said like, "I don't know where to find these people." It almost sounded like deep behind your voice it was like, "Do they even exist?" Right? Because you've had success finding clients in the, we'll say 50 to 100 range, right? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Shane Sams: So where are all the people in the one to 25, or one to 50 range, right? Because you've never had to go out and find those people before. But I would actually say there's probably way more people like that than there are in 50 to 100 employee range. Right? So they're there. It's just a matter of finding them. And usually the best way to find people in your niche is to search for people who are searching for symptoms. Right? So like a lot of times we'll say, "What is a symptom of a problem they're having?" Because they don't know... Let's say there's someone with five employees, they just started hiring, they've made a bunch of mistakes, they have no clue how to manage all these people. Right? Like Jocelyn and I- Jocelyn Sams: Oh are you talking about us? Shane Sams: Yeah we're talking about us. That was us. We started hiring people. We had no clue what was going on. We had no clue how to manage anything like benefits or onboarding. I didn't even know there was a thing called onboarding when we first hired our first employee. Jocelyn Sams: Well there's not a class in college called How To Effectively Manage People. Or maybe there is, I don't know. My degree- Shane Sams: Wait a second I know that. Jocelyn Sams: ... Is literally in management and I fail at this. Shane Sams: Yeah right. And it's like all the HR stuff, they don't... No one would know the technical terms of onboarding employees that you've hired recently, right? Like no one's going to know. They're going to be like, "God, this person I hired didn't fit their job." Or something. Right? Like, "I can't find a A+ employee." Right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: So that's the best way to do it is to figure out the symptoms of the problems that they are having, and then figure out the language that they're using to talk about it. And that will at least tell you what they're searching for. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And honestly, I would venture to say that most small businesses aren't really thinking about this. They're not sitting back and going, "I really need an HR person to help me out." What they're thinking is, "Oh gosh, somebody just filed a workman's compensation." Or whatever it's called, workers comp claim, "And I don't know what to do." Shane Sams: So the way you can word this to like catch people and your lead magnets and stuff, is you can use have you ever statements, right? These are powerful statements, especially for email lists, or even if you're involved in online Facebook groups and stuff like that. You can say, "Have you ever had an employee file a workman's comp claim? And you had no idea what to do?" Right? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Shane Sams: Or, "Have you ever hired someone but couldn't figure out how to teach them how to do their job?" Right? That's onboarding. We know that word is onboarding, but that is not a word in the vocabulary of the pizza guy who's got five employees, a cook and a couple servers, right? Pat Eardley: Yeah, you're right. They're just saying, "How come they don't get it?" Shane Sams: Yeah. Like, "How come you didn't do your job?" They don't know. You could walk up to that guy and go, "Could you show me your SOP's for making pizza and getting them to the table?" And he'd be like, "What's a sops? What's a sop? That's what you do with a rag when you spill out water. You sop it up." Pat Eardley: That's so good. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? He doesn't know what a SOP is. Right? But like I didn't know what an SOP was five years ago. But you could say to somebody, "Do you have a checklist that the pizza cook needs to follow?" But that's a system and procedure. We know that, HR helps with that. We have onboarding and stuff like that. But they don't know that. Right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: Or like, "How do I get health insurance for my employees?" Like that's a question that someone... So that's the kind of mindset shift you've got to have when you have the curse of knowledge. You've got 20 years of experience. You've been doing this since you were five years-old. Remember? All that information is in your head and you know all these jargon's and terms, and things that people need to know. But what you need to look for is the question that they're asking. Okay? So that's where you got to go to find your audience is the symptoms. Think about the symptoms, research keywords in Google. Because everyone goes and tries to solve their problem with Google. Right? They search there before they search their own brain. We can start looking there for some of these symptoms that people are having. Then My Shift HR is going to cure it for them. Okay? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: All right. So you have your platform, you have your product ready, which is awesome. That's one of the things that we are really big on, having your products ready to go. So that when your audience starts coming they will have something to purchase. So let's talk about audience. Do you have an audience? Have people started coming to your site and do you have social media followers? Do you have an email list? Pat Eardley: I do have an email list. I probably have about 45 to 50 people on that email list. Shane Sams: Awesome. Pat Eardley: I don't have what I would say an audience on social media because I don't have like a Facebook page that is the My Shift HR Facebook page. But I do have a Shift HR Facebook page. So I guess that would be a question that I'd ask you. Do you guys feel that I should... So the flip your life live training that you've been doing Shane. One of the, I think it was the first training you said that you set up your businesses separately. And I'm wondering should I do that for this? Like should there be a Facebook page for My Shift HR? And whatever other social media avenue I choose, should that be separate from Shift HR? Because I haven't done that. I haven't done anything in that realm yet. Shane Sams: I totally would separate them completely. Because the one big thing that we've already determined for sure is this is a totally different market segment, right? Like this is not the same person necessarily. And you're going to need some way to filter them like, "These are the people who might be candidates for my consulting. These are people who are candidates for the do it with you online training." Right? Pat Eardley: Yes. Shane Sams: Yeah. You need to separate everything and keep... We will even separate things like products. We have our flip your life community with all of our trainings, we have our forums, we have our two Q&A's that we do every month, Jocelyn and I do Live with our premium members inside of the flip your life community. Right? But we have another product, it's a print newsletter. It's all about marketing and promotion. It comes every week to your mailbox. Okay? I have that completely separate. It's a separate payment processor. It's a separate everything because that's a different avatar, and that's a different segment than the actual flip your life community, right? The flip your life community is really focused on starting, building, growing, getting those first 50 customers, right? Getting those first 50 people to pay you $50 a month and make that first good chunk of change. And then it's time to really market and promote it. And that's what my newsletter is, Prolific Monthly. But we separate products even, if it's got a different segment you need to have some separation between it, you know what I'm saying? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Shane Sams: I could start a Facebook group for my marketing newsletter because it talks about different things than are talked about in building your website, getting your courses done, creating your content for the first time. And if there's a line between brick and mortar and online, and the markets totally different, yes you need to totally separate that. Now you can see the other one though. You can be like, "Hey, everybody who follows me right now on this page, if you have less than 25 employees, you've got to check out my new page." You see what I'm saying? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Okay. Shane Sams: That's the market delineation there, right? That's 25 to 50 people, somewhere in there. We know that's the gray area, right? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Shane Sams: If you can get them over to move over to the new place, then you're going to have a lot easier time marketing your stuff and you're not going to overwhelm them with, "Hey, I've got a consultancy package open if you've got 90 employees." And then they're like, "Well this isn't relevant to me." Right? But this other one would be. So yeah, I would totally, always have something separate. Jocelyn Sams: And let's talk a little bit about your content strategy. What are you doing as far as content? Are you blogging, are you podcasting? Are you doing videos? What does that look like? Pat Eardley: What I've been doing is Facebook Lives. Shane Sams: Okay. Pat Eardley: I will post a statement or a question and see what feedback I get from the question. And then that opens the door for further communication. But what I found to be most successful is Facebook Lives. Shane Sams: Okay. How many people follow your page right now? Are you doing Facebook Lives on your personal profile page? Or are you doing- Pat Eardley: Yeah. No. I'm doing Facebook Lives on the Shift HR page. Shane Sams: Okay. Pat Eardley: But so that was the question you just answered about like I probably should make that separate. Or I should do the Facebook Lives on the Shift HR page and point them to My Shift HR. Shane Sams: How many people follow you there? Is it a big following? Is it a little following? Is it? How many people are there? Give or take. Pat Eardley: I don't know. Let me... 1300, 1200. Something like that. Shane Sams: Oh wow. That's really good. That's really, really good. So you've got a lot... Yeah. You can keep doing them there. But here's the problem with building Facebook's platform instead of your own platform. That'll show up in their news feed. Maybe. Maybe you can put some money behind it and boost the Facebook Live so more of your followers see it. Right? But really it just disappears into the nothingness of the social media noise factory. Right? Like when you're done with it. And you're not getting any Google search traffic off of that. You're not getting any traffic on any other platform. It's just there, which is okay. But I think we need to... To build your audience, you're going to have to expand out and you've got to get search and social traffic. And this is where a lot of people make a mistake because they'll do one thing and then like they never get found in Google. Shane Sams: And they're like, "Why does no one ever find me?" And I'm like, "Well because they search for things that you're interested in. And you're not there. You're not in the search results." So I wonder if you couldn't even like do your Facebook Live there, right? And then like you said for a while, you could start pointing people to your other place. You know what I'm saying? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Yeah. Shane Sams: Or you could start a group. Just say, "I've got a group for people who are less than 50 employees." Right? And like attach the group to the page so the page can stay brick and mortar, and the group can be kind of your online component or your avatar. But then you could download that video, right? And then upload it to YouTube. Pat Eardley: Okay. Shane Sams: And then people could find you on YouTube. And then you could take that YouTube embed, right? And you could do a blog post and you can embed it at the top of the blog post, write some notes, and start getting search traffic to your new website, right? So you don't have to do a lot of extra work, but you just need to give yourself a better opportunity to be found in more places. You could even take the audio off that same Facebook Live, and you could launch a podcast. And like you just use the audio, it doesn't matter, right? You're still telling people about your group, you're still telling people about your freebies on your email list. But now that one Facebook live creates YouTube traffic, creates traffic from podcasts, it creates a blog post. And it's not really that hard. You're just downloading, uploading, downloading, uploading. That's it. That's all you have to do. Pat Eardley: Okay. Right. Shane Sams: And you can give yourself a lot better chance to be found. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And it will be awesome if you could teach one of the people who are working with you, or you can even hire someone to do this relatively inexpensively to explode that content out. You can find someone and just say, "Okay, I need this video uploaded here. I need it uploaded here." And put together some simple procedures for doing that. Shane Sams: Yeah. Pat Eardley: So here's a question. So when would you guys say that for videos, home should be YouTube? Shane Sams: I think so because YouTube is a search engine. It's the second biggest search engine on the planet, right? So if you're going to do video... Now, the problem is, it's not a problem. But the thing is you've got people engaging with your Live videos on Facebook, right? So like you kind of have, it can start, it doesn't matter where the content explosion starts from. I can light the wick to the dynamite at the end or in the middle, it's still going to blow up, right? So it doesn't matter. So you can start on Facebook, get your engagement, that's going to get your questions and stuff like that. But it's like you can't hide that content there on Facebook. Everything eventually falls off the bottom of the newsfeed, right? What we need is content that can be found in organic search results. Shane Sams: Okay? So like YouTube, people search for, how do I follow a workman's comp claim? Wouldn't it be nice if you had a video called How To File A Workman's Comp Claim If You Don't Have An HR Person, right? And then you do a video on Facebook Live, people ask you questions. Then you take that video and put it over here. Now you write a blog post called that. So now if someone searches for that in YouTube, they find you, if someone searches for that over in Google, they find you. If someone is on your Facebook page, you can boost the post and now they can find you through some paid advertising. Right? And then at the end of that article on your website, you have, "Hey, get my free checklist for filing a workman's comp claim. Opt in now." Shane Sams: On YouTube, "Click the link in the description to get my free opt in for how to file a workman's comp claim." Like you see what I'm saying? Like you're giving yourself an opportunity to be found where people are looking for the answers to their questions. Okay? And it doesn't have to start anywhere. It's more like a circle. Like there's Facebook on one spoke of the wheel, there's Google on one spoke of the wheel, there's YouTube on the other spoke, maybe Twitter's on the other spoke. And you're always just constantly referring to everything all the time, and sending people through all of your stuff. That way they follow you everywhere. And you've got a better chance to like talk to them. Pat Eardley: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And the good your content strategy should be pretty easy as far as knowing what to talk about because you've been doing this a very long time, which means that you have lots of good questions and you have insight as to what people might need to know. Shane Sams: And she's doing Facebook Lives with feedback so she has people literally asking her questions. Like every question is a blog post or a YouTube video. Jocelyn Sams: And at the end of your video say, "Hey guys, I'm doing a series. And I would love to know what you need help with. Type your questions in here. And I'll answer them on a future Live video." Shane Sams: So let me circle this back around to why this is important for your launch strategy because we really want... You've got a product that's the most important thing. You have a product and some people paying attention to you, right? So like you got a social media following, you've got a small email list that could definitely be launched right now for beta. Like, "Hey, this things open. Go try and buy it." Right? You could totally ask people to do that right now because the product's ready? Right? So as a launch strategy though, what you have to do is build audience. And you build audience with content. That's the only way you can build an audience online is with content, either your content or participating in other people's content, right? Shane Sams: If you were to go on an HR podcast and they had business people listening about HR, that's content you're creating to get in front of new people. If you create organic content regularly consistently produced blog posts or YouTube videos, whatever it is that's going to build your audience. And then you're always asking for the opt in, that's going to slowly, organically build up enough people where you start filtering them through the machine to get into your sales pages and all that stuff. Now if you want to just immediately go after a bigger audience with some paid advertising, then the best way to launch a membership or any kind of product like this is consistent weekly webinars. Shane Sams: You would basically go find, remember those words we talked about that people are searching for in the language that they're looking for those symptoms. You would go to Google, you would go to YouTube, and you would do some research using tools like the Google AdWords keyword tool or VidIQ.com for YouTube. And you would see what are people looking for? You would find some of these words, show ads to those search results to let people sign up for your webinar. You could have a webinar that's called How To Handle Human Resources When You Have Less Than 25 Employees And Can't Afford An HR Professional. Right? Something like that, just really direct. Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: And that's like an opt in. So, "Hey, I'm having a free training this Thursday or Sunday." Whatever day you do it. "Come sign up for it. I'll send you an email to remind you." They opt in, you do the webinar, you put your thing at the end of it. Okay? So there's your two big strategies that you've got to flesh out now. You've got to have a prolific and consistent content schedule, right? Where you're repurposing and reusing this on different platforms. That's your organic strategy. And then you've got to have a paid strategy and the best way to do it when you've got a product is just buy traffic to your opt in page, get them to a webinar and pitch it live. Shane Sams: We'll do it live. If you do it live, you're much more likely to sell a few people in. But you also, right now need to send an email to those 42 people and say "The doors are open. Come to the grand opening. This is going to be XX dollars, but I'm only going to charge you X dollars if you join now for a beta. Come in and break stuff." See what happens, right? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Right. Shane Sams: You've got got an email list. And I would do a Facebook Live launch. I would hype it up like, "I'm going to do a Sunday night Facebook Live launch." You've got 1300 people. I bet all 1300 of those people are not consulting candidates. I would say some percentage of those people that follow you right now are definitely in this target market, right? One to 50 employees, let's say. Pat Eardley: Yeah, right. Shane Sams: So you need to do a Facebook Live and open the door. You need to send an email and open the door and let people know that you have something for sale. Because someone might buy it. You just have to ask them to buy it right now. Jocelyn Sams: Okay Pat, this might seem a little bit overwhelming, right? So what are you thinking right now? Pat Eardley: Well, there's a ton of information, but it's good information. So the question that popped up in my mind when Shane, you were talking about doing a Facebook Live and then uploading that to YouTube, and then turning that into a blog. Should blogs be separate from your membership site? Should they be a separate URL altogether? Shane Sams: Not really. No. It's just like your web... No. You use blog on your website, you know what I'm saying? Pat Eardley: Okay. Shane Sams: You're just creating content. You need organic content to go to your website. You need search traffic, right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: So you have your blog on My Shift HR, right? That's the one that's got the membership on it, correct? Pat Eardley: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: You just do the blog there. And then at the end of the blog you point them to an opt in. And at the end of the opt in you point them to the sales page for your membership. Pat Eardley: Okay, that's great. I knew that you could do blogs for a typical website. But I just didn't know if that same rule would apply for a membership site. So thanks. Shane Sams: What platform are you using on it? Like where? Is it hosted on a WordPress website? Like what- Pat Eardley: Yes it is. WordPress. Shane Sams: Yeah, you can just go ahead and make posts and they'll appear organically in the background. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I think what maybe you're trying to ask is should the membership site be separate from your website? Is that kind of what you're saying? Pat Eardley: No, no. Okay. So Shift HR is a separate website. And that does have a blog on it. But I didn't know if you could actually, if you should, like what the rule was for putting a blog on a membership site. Shane Sams: Oh there's no rules. There's no rules. Pat Eardley: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: You're like there's no rules. Shane Sams: Yeah. There's no rules. We just make up the rules as we go. Basically, here's the deal. If you don't blog weekly at least, or if you don't do something on your website weekly, nobody's ever going to find your website. Pat Eardley: Yes. Shane Sams: Because every blog post, every podcast, everything you do on your website is a breadcrumb to lead Hansel and Gretel back home. Right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: If you're not throwing breadcrumbs, then the witch gets Hansel and Gretel and you don't, right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: So it's like you've got to go out and create content of some kind. You're doing the same thing on YouTube, but here's the problem. If you ever look up and you say, "I'm building someone else's platform, not mine. Then you don't control your platform." Like you can make your YouTube channel. And it's very unlikely. But what if they shut your YouTube channel down? Then you lose all your traffic. What if Facebook and their infinite algorithmic wisdom shuts down your Facebook page? You don't get to talk to those 1300 people anymore. Right? Pat Eardley: Right. Shane Sams: But you just never know what's going to happen with that stuff. But you do know what's going to happen on your website. So you want the search traffic coming there. If you do anything content driven on any other platform, the goal is to drive them back to your place because you own your place. But you have to create content there. You know what I'm saying? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Shane Sams: And the only gray area is what contents free and what contents not. But you've already kind of figured that out. Pat Eardley: Yeah. And I think your point about converting the videos into a blog is great because like I hate writing. I used to literally write an article every month for the local paper about HR. And I didn't enjoy it at all. So I think- Shane Sams: In online business you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Pat Eardley: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That's the awesome thing about it is like you can build it whatever way you want to. So if you really, really love speaking and doing video, then find a way to make it work to take it to other platforms. Okay, Pat. Well it has been so much fun talking to you today and I can't wait to see what happens next in your business. So before we go, we always like to ask our guest, what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next little bit based on what we talked about today? Pat Eardley: Well, I think that what I need to take action on is definitely getting more content out there. It's pretty overwhelming. And I know like this is you guy's every day. But for a newbie I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's so much to do." But I think just simplifying one, and then figuring out like, "Okay, just start with content and then you can convert this to that. And then you can convert that to that." It's really not as hard as it seems. Shane Sams: You just have to take the next step. Like that's where people get overwhelmed as they zoom back too far. Right? If you think to yourself, "Oh, what's the next year of content going to look like?" Yes, it's overwhelming. But if you think, "What's my next blog video going to be?" Then you just go do your video and then you make it a YouTube video. And then you make it a blog post. Jocelyn Sams: And if you ask the people on your videos, you don't even have to think about what the next one's going to be because they'll tell you. Shane Sams: And I want to challenge you to do one more thing launching this product. Because launching a product has this big mythical almost like storytelling aura about it. I'm going to launch my product, right? If I can go to your sales page right now, you've already launched, it's available. It can be bought, right? So it's not about launching your product, it's just telling people that it's for sale. You need to email your list as soon as we hang up, "This is open, go buy it. Here's why you should buy it." And now you're launched. Okay? Never hold back telling people that you have a product for sale. It needs to be on the front page of the website, like a little ad for it. Right? So I would really encourage you in the next 24 hours too, to email those 42 people and do a Facebook Live about your membership. Tell people about it. You never know, there might be 10 people there begging to give you your money. Okay? Pat Eardley: Yeah. Thank you. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another great talk with one of our flip your life community members. I cannot wait to see what happens next as Pat launches her business. If you need help launching your very own online business, Jocelyn and I would love to help you do it inside of the flip your life community. All you have to do to learn more about our community is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife. We have all the training you need to get started with your online business. We've got all the community support you need to hold you accountable, and help you take your next steps. Shane Sams: And Jocelyn and I will be there to help you all along the way. Go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife, and who knows you may be on a future episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. We are about out of time, but before we go, we love to close every episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible. And we love to share these verses with you guys so you can get that too. And we're super excited because today our guest Pat has a Bible verse that is special to her. So Pat take it away. Pat Eardley: Well, the Bible verse that I want to share is Jeremiah 17, 7, and 8. And most people have heard the first part of this verse, but I don't know if anybody out there is like me, but sometimes I struggle with fear. And this verse has become my life verse to help me to not struggle with fear. So it says blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is in the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by the stream and will not fear when he comes. But its leaves will be green and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit. So when life gets hard, sometimes we want to just kind of recoil and not fight. But this verse helps us to know that God's got it. And we just need to be strong and fight through it. Shane Sams: Oh I got chills. Wow. What an amazing Bible verse that Pat shared there guys. Look, it's really important in your life, in your business to plant those deep roots, get through all those anxious times because there is great hope, and awesome stuff on the other side of those trials, those tribulations, those hard things, those overwhelming things that we all have to fight through on a daily basis. And what a great reminder it is to get through that stuff. That's all the time we have this week guys. Thanks for listening. Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Pat's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community. You'll have to bear with us. Jocelyn and I are just getting back from a conference, and both of our voices are a little shot. We're still a little jet lagged, but that's not going to hold us back from helping today's Flip Your Life community member, Brian Kelley. Brian, we're tired, but welcome to the show. Brian: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Shane: And Brian's on the road too. He's on the road too. Brian: I absolutely am, yup. Shane: He's in Chicago at a conference, so he might be a little tired too. We're going to go through this now. We're going to fight through it together. How's that? Brian: That sounds great. Jocelyn: We're excited to talk to you today, Brian. You are coming to our event, which is coming up very, very soon so that is super exciting. And I know that you have been taking a lot of action lately which is how you got on the show today, so congratulations for that. And we can't wait to hear a little bit more about it, but before we get there let's hear about you and your background. Brian: All right. I work in restaurants. I've been in the restaurant industry for about 25 years, and I actually love it. I love my job. I'm married with two kids, and the issue I tend to run into is that I'm concerned about our financial future. I like what I do, but both of our kids have special needs, and it requires extra planning for the future. I don't think that there's a way for me to get my family where we ultimately need to be at retirement with just our incomes. So I'm looking to supplement it with something online. Brian: And then the other reason that I've been pursuing it is just because I think it's a lot of fun. I've listened to your Podcast for a long time now, and I've actually been a member for a year. Everything that I learn that's new and sitting down and actually creating a website and stuff is really intriguing to me. I find it exciting, and I like it, so that's kind of why I chose this path. I'm just looking for any bit of success at this point. I think I've done a lot of the base level stuff. I'm up and rolling, and I'm just trying to get that first dollar made. Shane: Dude, I get it, man. I sat there for months and months waiting for any amount of money to flow into my pocket. And what's crazy is we ask our guests on the show, we look for people in the forums who are taking action, filling out success stories, helping other people, and you have just had this flurry of activity. You've been taking all the courses, talking in the forums, coming to the live event in September, and all of this stuff lately. And that's kind of how we were like, "Whoa, what is this guy doing? He is doing everything. We've got to get him on the show, we've got to help him because we really want to reward action takers in the community." What caused this flurry of activity. You said you've been in the community for a year now. What's happened lately or changed or how'd you [inaudible 00:03:42] to get moving forward in your business? Brian: It was two things. It was, one, probably first and foremost, a new idea for a website. And secondly was I just got really angry that I hadn't finished my last idea, that I hadn't succeeded with it. I got mad and determined because of that. So I just committed and said I was starting again and going to try to do it again. Shane: And are you looking to create a full time income right now or is it more like a side hustle like you love your job? Are you looking to create something on the side that's more like, "Hey, now I can make a lot more money and still do this job that I love, and then maybe someday I can use it to get some time freedom back?" What's the ultimate goal right now? Brian: The ultimate goal is to create a full online business. Shane: Right, right, right. Brian: [inaudible 00:04:39] I want now like I really meant it when I said I think this stuff is really fun, and I'm extremely dedicated to it. I don't have to have ... I'm not beating down the door to escape my job. I love it. I love the people I work with. It's not an urgent need, but there is that need. It has to happen over the next 10 to 20 years for sure. Shane: For sure, yeah. Recently I met this guy named Mark Mason. He has a Podcast called Late Night Internet Marketing, and his story reminds me of yours a lot. He was like, "I love my job. I've got a great job. It fulfills me. I love the people I work with. But I like other things too," is what he said. And he's like, "And of course, if anything ever happened I've got this other thing. It's sitting there waiting for me. I've got choices in my life." And that's what online business can do for you. It gives you choices, and it gives you exactly what you need in the moment. Some people may love their job and just want some extra money or some people may love their job, but they're not quite sure how it could handle a recession, so they want to have something in their back pocket to do that. And some people are like, "Man, I love my job right now, but I'm smart enough to look into the future and see I'm going to need something different later," right? Brian: Yes. Shane: All of us should be doing that. Even in our online business right now we do that a lot. We look into the future and be like, "What is our business going to look like 10 years from now? What does it need to look like based on our needs, our kids' needs, our future needs as we get older or whatever?" And we have to think about those things, and it's really cool that you're seeing the flexibility here of, "Hey, let's not get desperate. Let's not get crazy. Let's just build something cool and have fun with it, and it will be there for me if I need it and my kids need it. Brian: Yes. Jocelyn: All right. So you like your job now, but you want some options as far as making extra income, which I think is a great idea. I actually used to work in the restaurant industry too years ago. I don't know if you've ever listened to our Podcast where I talk about I used to work for a commercial dish machine manufacturer. Shane: She puts your dishwasher in the back room is what she did for them. Brian: Right. I heard you say that on the Podcast. I think about it every day when I walk by a dishwasher]. Jocelyn: Yeah. Shane: That's hilarious. You might be the only person that sees a dishwasher and thinks- Brian: I know people who sell this equipment. That's right. Jocelyn: So I actually didn't do a lot of end user work. It was mostly to manufacturers' representatives and that type of thing. But anyway, so yeah I know about the restaurant industry. I've been to many trade shows and all that kind of thing, so I know a lot about restaurant stuff. Anyway, I love that you are trying to branch out and do something different. Let's talk a little bit about that. What have you tried before, and what are you doing now? Brian: Okay. As far as what I've tried before there's probably a list of five or six, maybe more, things going back 10 years all the way starting with Etsy and just trying to make products for Etsy. I looked into doing drop ship stuff for a little while and decided that totally wasn't for me. Most recently when I joined the community I had an idea for online fishing tournaments. I thought it would be really fun to do online fishing tournaments. I have a lot of friends and family that are competitive at fishing, and I thought it was going to be a great idea. The issue I ran into was two-fold. One, it really wasn't ... What I had created wasn't conducive as it was, so the membership model and I really wanted to do that, and it required so much involvement that it just was never going to work with my schedule. I didn't have the time to execute the operation, so I kind of let it die, and I got discouraged because that was my favorite idea at the moment. Shane: What is an online fishing tournament? How would that even work? Would I fish at my house and you would fish at your house and we'd take pictures? Jocelyn: No, this is what I think of. Do you remember there used to be the Nintendo Wii that had those little controllers. There was a fishing tournament on there. Shane: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Jocelyn: That's what comes to my mind. Shane: Oh yeah, we would compete on ... What was ... Brian: Actually it was like real fishing, and it's modeled after the capture, photo, release style of fishing, which is what a lot of kayak fishermen do. So instead of wait it's on links, so I built an app and people could just take a photo of the fish they caught on a fish ruler and upload it. And basically it allowed people to compete wherever they were on the same species of fish. Shane: That's actually a really cool idea though. Brian: It is, but the problem is I had to be there to launch the tournaments, and I had to be there to judge the tournaments, so there were specific times where I would have to wake up at like ... Fishermen wake up at, like, four in the morning, right, to launch a tournament. And then I had to judge it, and then there were issues with faking species. Shane: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: There's some logistics that ... I still have that website. I have not thrown it away. I still have an e-mail list for it. There's a ton of interest in it. I just can't execute that right now. Shane: Interesting. We'll keep that one in your back pocket, okay? Jocelyn: I have never heard of an online fishing tournament. This is a first. Shane: My nephew comes over. We've got this lake behind our house. And he'll just sit here and catch fish for five hours. He's all by himself, but I could picture that being like what if he was virtually with other people fishing at the same time? Brian: And could win money for if he caught a big fish. It makes it a lot of fun. Shane: What a cool idea? That's an amazing idea. What else did you try? Brian: Oh gosh. We were doing ... I was trying to do something connected to restaurants so I modeled a website after some others I had seen that were basically just promoting websites kind of like an affiliate except it was locations and venues would pay a fee to be listed on the website, and the website would market to people that were traveling to the area, give them itineraries, lists to view, things like that. Shane: That sounds cool. What was the holdup there? It's too hard to get every restaurant in the world on it kind of deal or ... Brian: No, it was honestly ethically I didn't want to promote ... I work at a restaurant. I didn't want to promote my competition, and I didn't think that was the right thing to do. And it was honestly that started out as a way for me to gain a marketing strategy for my own restaurant briefly, and I just didn't feel okay doing that. And also there's a reason that ... I'm very experienced in the restaurant industry, but there's a reason that the things that I'm choosing to do are not related to the restaurant, and that is because I don't want burnout. Restaurant hours are long, so if I were to tackle more restaurant stuff after that I just feel like it's restaurant all the time, and that's just too much for me. I think I'd burn out because [inaudible 00:12:11] something new. Shane: For sure. A lot of people come into the community, and one of the things that you hear online a lot is, "Chase your passion and the money will follow." And there is a lot of truth to that, but like Jocelyn and I usually try to start with something you're more familiar with because it's actually a lot easier to create something and make money with something you're trained for or that you know. But if someone doesn't want to do that there's lots of other alternatives. You don't have to do that, and I totally get the burnout stuff. Shane: Even as much as I used to love football coaching, like I loved it. I ate it, I breathed it, I slept it. I was always on football coaching. But after you start a community for football coaches, you talk to coaches, you go to work and coach, you come home and coach, and you make playbooks, and you go study playbooks, then you use your playbook on Friday night I really felt the burnout. It didn't matter how much I loved or was passionate about coaching football, at the end of the day you've got to do something else, like you've got to do something else. I can totally get onboard with that. Shane: Tell us about your idea now and how did you switch to that, and when did you start it? Brian: All right. My ideal now is to educate people on credit card points, travel points and miles that you can accumulate spending on credit cards and how to cash them in for maximum value to book free trips and vacations. So my website now is learnthepoints.com, and there is a strategy in there which we teach people so they can earn eight to $10,000 worth of free travel in basically nine months. So that's my goal is to have people that are willing to pay for a monthly membership for even if it's a short term be educated on the best way to accumulate these points and to redeem them for the most value. Shane: And also, too, make sure you're paying off the credit card, staying out of debt? Brian: Yes, 100%. Shane: It's always free money, right? Brian: It's free money. Don't spend anything that you weren't normally going to spend and set up automatic payments, pay everything off every month. I came up with this idea. I got shocked, honestly, just recently. My wife and I do not have any debt. It took us a while to get there. We're very credit card averse. I had just never looked into credit card points before. I had heard people talk about miles and flying and all of that stuff, and I just assumed in my head that these were people that fly all the time, and that's how they do this or they're on these big corporate accounts, so that allows them to rack up all these points. And that's just something that's not for me, and I don't apply for credit cards, so when offers come by I don't look into that stuff. Brian: But what happened was we went through a dark time in December as a family, and when the end of the school year was rolling around and it was summertime was coming up, and we were like, "We need a vacation." All I had set aside for vacation for free money was, like, 500 bucks, which is not bad. We can have fun as a family on 500 bucks, no problem. But all of our other money goes to saving. It all goes to retirement accounts or education accounts or you name it. So we've never really taken a really awesome vacation. Brian: It was kind of out of desperation or just, "You know what? I'm going to look into this and see what it's about," that I discovered what the possibility was with credit card points. And then when I realized all these bonus sign up tricks and stuff I just got obsessed and started doing all this research and figured it out and based on that developed a strategy and a plan that's basically going to get us free vacations for the next three or four years for our family. I was like, "This is awesome. How did I not know about this for so long?" I was like, "Hey wait. This could totally be an online business. Other people need to know about this." So I just popped up a website real quick and then got enthused and jumped back into the trainings. Shane: Wow. Brian, what happened in December? Brian: Unfortunately in December we lost our daughter at birth. She died, and we were really excited. We have two boys that are young. They're four and five. Both of our boys have special needs. They're both autistic, and my oldest son has Down's syndrome. We were really excited not just to have a girl in the family but to have what would be most likely our first typically developing child as well. And it was just we were really excited about it, and there were complications during delivery, and she passed away. So it was a really sad time. There's a lot of grief and anger that comes with that, and it really ... My wife and I both went to counseling. We both got help through our church. We had spent probably three months was just like in shock and recovery. And then the next three months was kind of like just rebuilding your life a little bit and trying to return to normalcy. Brian: But after being through those last six months and dealing with that there's just this need for a break like from all of life almost in a way. We work hard. We have separate schedules. It's crazy at the house because the kids are crazy. So I could see it on my wife's face like we need a vacation. Shane: Like an actual remove from the world like- Brian: Like the community pool is not going to cut it this time. We've got to go. Jocelyn: Absolutely. Shane: How did you explain it to your kids? It would be hard enough explaining it to kids who are developing at normal rate. Was it tough? Brian: It was tough because we did a lot of practicing. We did a lot of therapy going up, so we had a doll that we carried for half a year before the due date where we were training the boys on, "Hey, this is Baby Sister, and this is how you hold Baby Sister." It took us three months before they stopped throwing the doll around. We were practicing and training and getting ready, and we had her room ready of course. We found our own special ways to talk about her with the boys and remember her. I feel like we're in a really healthy place thanks to the involvement of others in the communities that we're in mostly. It's always sad. It's just something that you're never going to forget. You don't move on from it so to speak, but you cope better and better every day. Shane: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. I know that's probably really hard to talk about. Jocelyn: That's just heartbreaking. I'm so sorry to hear that. Shane: It is. I'm having trouble even not crying right now, and I stammer over my words for a few minutes. I also want to just kind of highlight that you did recover, and you did move forward, and I love how you harnessed the negative thing to think about something positive like my family needs to more forward. We need to go on a vacation. That's not trivial. That's a thing that's going to help us to take the next step because we have to take the next step. Brian: Right. Shane: And then even to come up with an idea like we have a saying that we always say around our house and around our kids and others is like, "Successful people don't say I can't do that. Successful people say how can I do that?" So you didn't say, "Oh there's only $500 in the bank. I can't go on a vacation." You said, "No, this thing is important for our family. How can we make it happen?" And that's true for life. That's true for online business. That's true for anything like if you're going to be successful you've got to figure out how to do it. So regardless of whatever happens with this online business idea, dude, just the fact that you made that happen, and your family did the thing was totally worth going down that path. Brian: Yeah. Shane: That's a powerful story, man. There's an awesome story in the Bible, I believe it was David's son passed away. I don't want to butcher the Bible, but I'm just going off the cuff here. And he mourned, and then he immediately put on his cloak and got back to work. In the story people were like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I have to move forward. I've got other sons. I've got a kingdom I have to do," and I really felt that kind of story coming through when you were telling us that, man. I have no words about something like that, but I am very impressed and inspired by that story you just told me because if that ever were to happen to us I know, "Hey look, Brian got it, he stepped up, we can do this." So anybody else out there listening to this I hope you are really inspired by Brian's story too. Jocelyn: Okay. I am kind of curious, and I'm sure other people are too. So you got this credit card thing going. You started learning about it. And were you able to book something? Brian: We're actually we've racked up a ton of points, and we're saving them. We started kind of at the beginning of the summer, and my wife works for the school district. School's about to start, so we're just deciding what date we're going to book and where we want to go. Shane: That's amazing. Brian: We're kind of lined up and ready. We're all excited now. It's like one of those things where we were really anxious to go anywhere. We would've taken anything, you know what I mean, but now that we've got these points in the bank and we can pretty much go anywhere for free we're like, "Hold up, hold up, let's think about this. Let's pick a really good one." Shane: Right. We get a lot of points too. We're like you though. We're like we hate debt. Credit cards scare us. I pay out credit cards. Any credit card use that we have I pay it off every week, every Thursday. I don't mess around. Every Thursday I sit down. But we use two cards. We have a business card, and we have a personal card. And we put everything on it, like everything. And we pay it off once a week because man those points are like free flights here, free all-inclusive vacation in Cancun. You can just book hotels. Jocelyn: We travel a lot because our daughter's on a travel cheer team, and I got every room last year except for one for free. Shane: Yeah, and that's like nine cheerleading vacations. Nine weekends of the year we're on the road staying two or three nights. And it's just you show up, and you have a room for free. Brian: And what I think is crazy is that there are just so many people that were like me six months ago, had no idea that you could do this. Shane: I didn't know you could do it either because we were Dave Ramsey people too of course. We're like, "Get out of debt. Never use a credit card. Credit cards are evil." And I'm like, "But they're giving you free money. Wait a minute. Let me look at this for a minute." Now, you're not going to get rich off of it, but free money's free money. It doesn't matter how you look at it. Jocelyn: And disclaimer, we do not advocate going into debt to get credit card points. Shane: No, don't go into $10,000 in debt to get $5,000 in credit card points. That doesn't make sense. You're losing money there y'all. Tell us a little bit more about that. Brian: What I try to get people to understand, and I don't know if my message is really good. I'm still trying to perfect it to get it quick because there's a lot of pushback. People just don't know that you can do it. There are credit card fees on some of these cards, but essentially I had $500 in the bank. For $500 you can afford the credit card fees on eight different cards at one time. And if you were to do that you'd have somewhere between, depending on your spending, $8,000 and $12,000 worth of free travel. So it's not that it's- Shane: Right, you're spending 500 for 8,000 basically. Brian: Yeah. If you were going to spend 500 you have two options. You can either spend $500 on your vacation or you can spend $500 on the credit card fees and take a $10,000 vacation. Shane: Yeah, that's incredible. We actually know a guy that does something similar to this. He was a member of the Flip Your Life community. His name's Brad Barrett. Have you ever heard of Brad Barrett? Brian: I did. I started researching everybody. I found his ... He has a Facebook group and a training that he does. And it's awesome. Facebook group is an awesome community. He built something really great there, and his training is very to the point and succinct, and it's good info to. So I really liked looking at his stuff. Shane: Yeah. And he was an accountant, and he really did want out of his job. He just went all in. But he focused. He only went like ... It was to go to Disney. It was straight up to go to Disney. That's how he taught it. And we've met other people who do successfully do this. And I was just at a conference this weekend, and someone was telling me like, "You know, I feel like I've got to invent a brand new thing. I've got to go the blue ocean." You guys hear that blue ocean, red ocean stuff? Brian: Right. Shane: And I looked at him. I said, "No, that's not what you do." You don't have to bake a new pie. You don't have to invent a new recipe. You've got to look around and find a pie, and you just want a slice of that. So that's why we always really encourage people like if you see someone else doing something similar to you that's not bad. That's good. That means that they've figured out how to make money at it, and there's 4 billion people connected to the internet. I promise you they're not selling to all 4 billion people. You just need some of the other people that are interested in that space. It's like abundance mentality. There's more than enough customers out there. You don't have to invent the better mousetrap. You just need to find people that need a mousetrap and sell them one. You're on the right path, and there's definitely something to this. So what's holding you back right now? Is there a mindset issue or an obstacle from doing this? Brian: Okay, so I went back and I watched the Vetting Your Idea video. So I had jumped into this full force before watching that video. I wish I would've watched it first. Shane: Wait a minute. So you're saying you should do the Flip Your Life blueprint in order? Brian: Shane, I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to take this opportunity to tell people to follow the plan the right way. Shane: Right. People jump in all the time, and they're like, "I watched video 12, and it was awesome." And I'm like, "Did you watch one through 11 because they're important?" You've got to do it in order. The Vetting Your Idea course, you know what's funny about that course in particular. I laugh because I'm saying watch it in order. When we made the blueprint, when we created the blueprint that course didn't used to be in there. Yeah, because we were so caught up in helping people find their idea and get started. I kind of looked at it, and I was like, "I go through the process whenever we have a new business and I'm like is someone else doing this? How do I find out if it's making money online?" I have a process that I check things, and I realized we were ... Because a lot of times people get held back, and I didn't want to put too much information in front of someone like I just wanted you to get your idea and start because that's where the real magic is when you start. Shane: But then I thought, "Wow, there's really an easy way to tell if people are making money on this, and I just need to show that to them." So we put that course back in later. I actually made that course after the original blueprint was created so that people could properly vet that, yes, this is a real idea. People are definitely making money online, and I can check it empirically. I can go and say, "That is a 100% truth. This can make money online. I just have to do it." And that's kind of probably what you saw when you watched that with the idea course. Brian: Yeah 100%. So I started looking, and what I found a lot of regarding credit card points and miles there's a ton of people who are offering free courses, and they are using affiliate links for their credit card sign-ups. Shane: Yes 100%. Brian: That is what most, like 95% of what's out there is affiliates for the credit cards, which I don't think there's anything wrong with necessarily although I have started my website and really pushed that I am not an affiliate for the credit cards. Shane: Great differentiator. That makes you different. Brian: Yes. I've also noticed affiliates have different promotions and all that stuff, and sometimes teaching others isn't true. It's just not the best version of the information because they're promoting a specific credit card before another one, so I really wanted to focus on ... yeah. I really want to focus on what's going to be my users, my guests on my site, and what's going to get them the most bang for the buck the right way to do it. I'd rather not get involved with affiliates at all. I'd rather just tell them the truth like if you want to get the most money this is how you get the most money. Shane: So one sticking point is like you're kind of ... You said a lot of other people have went down the road because if I can get you to sign up for the credit card I might get a $100 fee. The bad part about that strategy is you're really relying on a lot of traffic. You've got to have a lot of traffic coming in to make that work because you're not getting any recurring off these credit card points that you get people to sign up for. It's just you get 100 bucks, you move on. You know what I mean? So you almost have to get them to sign up for five at once just to make a good chunk of change out of the beginning. Are you concerned that nobody will pay for it because the other ... Brian: Right. I was concerned that nobody would do a membership for the information. There is a lot of free information out there. It's just that my information's better than the free information that's out there, but I need to be able to convince people that it's worth whatever I'm charging right now I set it up to charge $25 a month. Shane: Right. Brian: I did find at least one site that is doing a membership model, and that gave me hope, but it was hard to find. Shane: To be fair the internet's a big place. You know what I mean? So there's probably other people out there doing it to. If you found one there's probably more. Brian: Yeah, I would think so. There is another aspect to it. Some people are also doing one-on-one coaching and booking trips for people using their credit card points to get the most value for it. So those are some one-offs that I found. But my biggest concern is that looking for validation that approaching this from the membership model setting up a $25 a month membership to educate people and provide them with free tools and resources is something that somebody will pay for, that it'll work. Shane: I would say they would if you position it correctly, right? Because there's an old saying in copywriting where if you can give people free money they'll buy your product. And this is a free money product. It is. It's like if you get the cards you will get free money. You will get the points. So if you can say, "Hey look, I ..." Telling your story is the most critical part of your marketing because you literally did this. You're like, "Look, I have no debt. I have these cards. I've got three vacations, enough money for three vacations over the next three years. I have $8,000 in credit card points. I spent $500 to do it. I made $7,500." This is true. These are all facts. You can check it. It's 100% real, and it happens when you do it this way. So like that's free money. It really is. It sounds so scammy but it's not. It's free money. It really is free money. Brian: It is, yes. Shane: And you've actually done this. Your story is where you have to start with your marketing to convince people that that's going to happen. Jocelyn: I almost feel like this is one of those situations where it's a side-by-side. And what I mean by that is that you have a course on one side, and you list all the benefits of just doing the DIY course. And then on the other side you have your monthly payment, which is the same price as your course, but it just recurs. And you position that as this is the courses plus support from me as you go through this. Shane: Yeah. So it is kind of two products. The content is isolated, but then there's a way to interact with you like I'm going to help you make purchasing decisions, and I'm going to help you. I'm going to walk with you as you spend the money. We're going to have a ... A buddy of mine does a membership, so listen to what this is. He does this membership where basically it's a writing hour. So twice a week he shows up, he does a quick writing tip, and then basically he has, like, 300 members and they all just show up to write together. That's what they do, but it's accountability. It's to ask a question. It's to just hang out really. There's no relieving content involved in the membership, but people love it because they've got somewhere to go in the moment to either get accountability or ask a question. Shane: So it's like you could have a weekly pay off your credit card party. Hey guys, last week we got our groceries. Hey Jim, what'd you do? Oh man, I bought a subscription to Netflix. Okay, let's pay that off. You could keep people out of debt parties. It's not like you're really even answering questions. It's just you show up, and everybody's accountable to stay out of debt while they're accumulating their points. And then they can ask questions to you like, "Well, I found this other card. Is this a good card Brian?" Yeah it is. That's a good card. You should do this. You should do that. Don't worry. You can trust my advice because I'm not an affiliate for that card. Brian: Exactly. Shane: But you can throw stones at the other people like, "Hey guys, all these other people they're recommending cards that give them the best affiliate payout. Not me. Brian you can trust because I'm here for you." I love the idea that the course is separate or they can work with you for real, work with you. And your whole story then becomes so important because now they trust you to join your membership community. So you're not selling them content anymore. You're not selling them the path anymore. You're really just selling you. You know what I mean? And your experience, your coaching, and your leadership. Brian: If I switch this over and change it so I've got this side-by-side thing going on on the website would you market or promote the course, and then when they get to the landing page they would see the course or the membership option then? Shane: I'm going to give everybody that's listening a tip right now. Nobody cares what's in your course. Nobody cares about the course. All they care about is your story. The only thing I would be telling yours like you need to go on this vacation, and you need to have some pictures of it, and you need to be able to talk about it, and you need to be able to blog about it. And everything happens going forward is I had this horrible experience. I knew my family needed vacation. I found a way. We did it. And now I'm bringing the torch back from Mt. Olympus. This is a heroes journey story if there ever has been one. Jocelyn: I agree. And I don't think that the course material is unimportant per se. Shane: Right. It's not unimportant. It's just not the most important. Jocelyn: But I do feel that the most important things are being able to relate to you, can you solve their problem, and then the course material is way on down the list. Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the second thing. Jocelyn: And I think people get this backwards. People always want to do their sales page look at all these wonderful things that I have in my course or program. And they want to give you the 10-minute rundown of every nut and bolt in their program. People don't care about that. People care about can you solve my problem and do I like you? Shane: What most people remember at any event, like let's say you go to a rock concert, when musicians create their set they really focus on the first song and the last song because that's what you're going to remember. It's like a movie. You remember how a movie started. A lot of stuff happens in the beginning, and we all remember the end. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn: Right. Shane: It's like Avengers. There's like 18 movies over like 20 years, and pretty much it all boiled down to at the beginning Thanos wanted some rocks, and at the end Iron Man fights him. That's what we all remember in between, right? So that's kind of what you're doing here. It's like, "This is my story. This is real. You can trust that it's real because all these other people are only recommending things that pay them good. I'm not because I'm not an affiliate for any of these people. I'm telling you the truth, and inside my community I'm going to help you do it. Shane: So you can have a general list of things like categorical these are the results you'll get inside. Know the first thing you'll buy. Know the first card to get. Know the order that they're going to get. You're more telling the results, but you're not telling the exact courses and all that stuff. There's no reason to. No one cares. But when they get inside we get into detail. Jocelyn: Okay. Shane: First course, blueprint one, second course, blueprint two, third course, blueprint three. That's when you get really into it. Don't try to sell the content. Like you said the content's free. I hate to tell everybody this. All content's free. Every piece of content that has ever existed inside of any course is somewhere free on the internet. Now, can you find it? Is it hard to find? That's where curation and courses come into play. But it's all free. You've just got to figure out how to make your free stuff look better, and your story is the best way to do that. Brian: Okay, great. Jocelyn: Okay, Brian. I think that we have some good ideas about moving forward as far as your product goes. What else do you need help with right now? Brian: I think I'm up to close to 400 people on my e-mail list. That's mainly coming through Facebook and Facebook ads with my lead magnet. However, I have not converted anybody on my e-mail list into purchasing as of yet. Shane: How often do you e-mail your list? Let me ask you a couple questions here. It's a big list. You should've converted something, so let's figure this out. Brian: Yeah. I have an auto responder set up for the first eight e-mails that follow very closely the e-mails in the blueprint. So those go out, and I follow the same timeline, so it's like a couple immediately and then about a week later and then a couple days later. And then there's one at the end two weeks out that's like, "Hey, I'm not going to send you anymore. You'll just continue to get vacation updates from me basically." And I send out whenever I have time to design a new vacation that somebody can take for free I just e-mail that to my whole list. Shane: So basically your e-mail ... So only your auto responder is what's tried to sell this so far. You've only [crosstalk 00:40:30]. Brian: That's true. That's correct, only my auto responder, yeah. Shane: Okay. What if you sent them a message that said, "Hey, I'm doing a live training this week, and I'm going to show you how to get $8,000 for free?" Brian: I haven't done that yet. Shane: Okay. You've got to add more layers to it. The auto responder is just for picking low hanging fruit, the lowest of the fruit. Actually it's like walking under an apple tree, and the apple has already fell off, and you bend down and pick it up. That's where automation comes in. You're never going to convert more than a single digit percentage off of your e-mail list, right? You have to add live Webinars. You have to add weekly Podcasts or blog posts or something. Shane: I'm also looking at your site here, and it definitely needs a facelift. It's just too plain, and it's also too ... It looks too pie and the sky. For example, let's take you. I'm going to describe your website as I go through here. One, at the top you've got all these credit cards. That's cool. Then it says, "Become a member." You know what I'm saying? It's just like okay that's cool. Then it's like a picture of four probably 18-year-old girls running down a beach. That's not Brian. Brian was a dad who had just lost his daughter and went through a dark time. And the rest of his family needed him to step up and help them climb out of the darkness, right? Brian: Right. Shane: So Brian, with his two children and his wife went forward together. I need to see a family here. That's what I need to see. I don't need to see this. Shane: Then the next one is a guy with like a mini Afro and a surf board. He's like, "Whoa, dude, I'm a cool 18-year-old dude on a beach in Thailand making six bucks a day or whatever." That's not Brian, man, I really came home from work at the restaurant and I was tired, and I knew we needed a vacation. So you're not talking to the other guys out there that are like, "Yo, I'm tired. My family really needs me to step up and figure out a way. I've not been able to afford a vacation in three years. What can I do to help my family get a little break?" You know what I'm saying? Brian: Right. Shane: It's just not resonating. The people who are on your list are just not resonating with what they're seeing and hearing in your marketing. Brian: Ah, that makes sense, okay. Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your story is not being told, and that's why nobody's buying anything from you. We tell some pretty deep stories, and we wrestled with how much of our personal life we always want to share on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast or when we speak on stage. And 99% of the time it's be an open book because our stories are what really help someone else. And we told our stories this week. We were at FlynnCon, and we spoke with Pat Flynn on stage, and we told the story of Isaac being mistreated in a daycare center. That's a really hard story to tell when you find out someone was literally locking your child into a bathroom to punish them for potty training accidents at three years old it's horrifying to even say that out loud. But that story always makes people realize how important their kids are, how important their time is. They want to get their kids out of daycare centers and home with them. Shane: I have to tell that story because if I don't then I can't relate to someone enough to make them change their life. So your story has to take over this page. Your family has to take over this page. And you have to say to somebody, "If we did it you can do it too," and that'll resonate more as well. And then showing up live not just in their inbox is going to give you a better chance to convert those. Shane: If you could get 50 of those people to come to a Webinar, and you told us your story like the way we even talked about it off air today before the Podcast started people are going to resonate with that because they're going to look at their kids, and they're going to look at their family, and they're going to realize this guy's for real. If he wasn't for real he'd be signing up for all the affiliate things just trying to get my affiliate check, right? But he's telling me the truth, and I need to listen to this guy, and he can help me. Where do I sign up? So if you could just plant some storytelling overtop of all of this, and then do the work. And I know you're going to do the work because you're an action taker, you could turn this thing around. 400 people, man, you've got members. We just have to get the message right to do it. Shane: I'd love to see your e-mails too. We don't have time to go over every e-mail in your auto responder today, but your e-mails should be telling the story. It shouldn't just be here's all the benefits. It's like in 2018 December this happened. It moves into why you went down the path to the credit cards, and that creates trust, and it shows them like, "Hey, this guy figured it out. I can figure it out. Let's do this." Brian: Okay. Yes. Jocelyn: All right Brian, it has been great talking to you today, and I can't wait to see what you do next. Before we go we always ask our guests what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today? Brian: I am going to ... Since I am out of town right now I am going to set up the side-by-side course versus the membership on the website and just get that done quickly. And then when I get back home I'm going to start taking some pictures with my family and redoing my story on the website. Shane: Love it. I love that you're like, "I'm going to take some pictures with my family. We're putting them on there." That's good. And I want to see the website, so make sure you send it to me in the forums or hit me up, and I want to see the link when you redo it because it'll be awesome. Brian: Will do. Shane: Hey Brian, before we go let me ask you a question. What made you come to Flip Your Life Live? Flip Your Life Live happens in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19 through the 21st of 2019. It's our big Flip Your Life Flipped Lifestyle Podcast family reunion where all of our listeners, fans, followers, and members can come together in one place to hang out together, eat together, work together, and really get inspired to do big things for our families. I always love to hear people's stories. Why did you come to Flip Your Life Live? What made you look at it and go, "I got to go. I just got to go to Flip Your Life Live?" Brian: I wanted to dive all in. I didn't want to leave anything on the table. Really I am not afraid of failure. I am really afraid of not trying, not giving it my all. And I just felt like, "Hey, this is something I haven't done, and I can't say that I gave it all I could if I didn't go." Shane: I love that, man. No regrets, right. I'd rather have a life full of failures than a life full of regrets at the end of it. Brian: Also I'm not paying for the flight, so that helps. Shane: Shameless plug for the credit card points. I love it. That's amazing. Jocelyn: Love it. That is awesome. Shane: Listen. If you would like to join us and Brian in Lexington, Kentucky at Flip Your Life Live this year go to flippedlifestyle.com. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/live. We have a few tickets left, but they are almost sold out, and this will be the last big conference Flip Your Life Live that we do for a while. We are not doing the event in 2020, so you can't go all in next year. You might as well go all in with us and Brian this year at Flip Your Life Live. Jocelyn: And who knows, maybe if you join Brian's membership maybe he can get you a free flight too. Shane: That's right. Maybe you can fly there too. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. We'd love to see you at our live event. All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast today. We would love to see you inside of our community as well. Who knows, you may end up right here on the Podcast just like Brian did. So if you'd like to take action today go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can check out all of our membership options. Shane: Before we go today we like to close every show with a verse from the Bible. Today's Bible verse comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19. The Bible says, "Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. This is the will of God for your life." Shane: Until next time, guys, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Brian's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we celebrate with Kevin for crossing the 100 member mark. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we celebrate with Kevin for crossing the 100 member mark. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. And we are super excited for a number of reasons in this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Yes, we have a member of our Flip Your Life Community back on the show today. It's a guest that we have had before. He's actually the most prolific guest in Flipped Lifestyle Podcast history. This is his fourth appearance on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. And this one is going to be a great one because we are celebrating a major milestone in this member's life. His online business, his membership has just crossed the 100 member mark. Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, our good friend and member of the year at last year's Flip Your Life Live, Kevin Depew. Kevin, welcome back. Kevin Depew: Hey, what's going on guys? It's great to be here. Jocelyn Sams: We are so excited to talk to you today. We got a message not too long ago from Kevin. And he was really excited saying he had crossed over 100 members. And I think that it's safe to say, Kevin, that this was definitely not an overnight success. Kevin Depew: Yeah, this would be the polar opposite of overnight success. Shane Sams: Hey, success is success, right? And it usually takes a long time to become an overnight success. So, real quick, tell us a little bit. How many members do you have now? And- Kevin Depew: We're at ... Go ahead. Shane Sams: How many members do you have now? And tell us a bit about what your business is. Just remind everybody what's going on. Kevin Depew: Okay. Yeah. We are at 105 members. We run a website, relaxandlearnguitar.com where I teach folks over 40 how to play guitar, so they can relax, have fun, and be part of a great online community. Shane Sams: Man, I see your stuff in my newsfeed all the time because you know you see the stuff from your friends and stuff? And I just always see ... like, you always make me want to play guitar. I need to relax and learn ... I need to relax a little bit. I'm a little high strung. So, maybe I need to learn it. But man, that is so incredible just knowing your journey and knowing how long it's taken you to get to that 100 member mark. And that's a really big number for us because we tell everybody if you can get 100 people to give you $50 a month or 200 people to give you $25 a month, you can make real money. You could make $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year. And just getting 100 real people to give you money and you give them value and you make a difference in their life. Like, imagine if you were in your living room and you had 100 human beings pile into your living room right now, what would that look like? Your house would be spilling out into the streets because you couldn't fit 100 people into your house, right? Kevin Depew: Yes, very crowded. Shane Sams: Yes. And you've got 100 people that are in your thriving guitar-based community, man. And how long ago did you start Relax and Learn Guitar? What year did you start that in? Kevin Depew: So, my ... Let's see, a bunch of pivots and a bunch of changes. And Relax and Learn Guitar, first member was December of 2016. Shane Sams: Wow. Kevin Depew: Yeah, two and a half years. Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing. And I love how you said many pivots because you had another website. I remember when you joined the Flip Your Life community. And in the show notes for today's episode, we'll put all of Kevin's other podcasts. Just a little reminder, I remember you came in and you said you posted your first idea in the forums. And I remember reading it, distinctly yours for some reason, I remember reading it and thinking, "That's horrible." Kevin Depew: What? Yeah! Shane Sams: "That is terrible. What are you ..." What was that idea? Jocelyn Sams: But of course, we never say that to our members. We say- Kevin Depew: No. Jocelyn Sams: "You might want to try something else." Shane Sams: I'll tell you what, I said it in private this time, Jocelyn. I'm going to be open and honest here, no sugar. I went to Jocelyn and I went, "No, Kevin." What was that original idea? Kevin Depew: Yeah. Well, I had a couple before I even joined the Flip Your Life community. The one that was original was a time management website, and then I was working with caregivers. I did a few other things. I was very much focused on the things I'd done in my work life. And then when I switched to, you would ask, "What do you want to do?" When I switched to something I was passionate about, that's when it really became much more clear what to do. Shane Sams: Yeah, it became easier. I always felt that after you ... Like, when you switched off of the work thing and you did go after something that you like, you know? Because I remember saying, "What do you want to do?" And you were, "I just want to help people learn how to play guitar because they need to relax, they need to chill out. This is my meditation, right? What if I could help other people do that?" And you were then on fire. And that kind of gave you the energy and the perseverance to kind of stick with it because your membership didn't take off right out of the gate, did it? Kevin Depew: No, not at all. It was very slow. Shane Sams: How long did it take you to get your first member, do you think? Kevin Depew: That was almost three months to get the first member. Shane Sams: Wow. Kevin Depew: And then it was kind of one or two a month for a while for a long while. And I just kept at it with creating content consistently and trying to be really responsive to folks I did have, answer their questions. Did a lot of phone calls with people just to talk to them. It was probably six or seven months before we started kind of seeing the Facebook ads start to work and get more emails that then led into the membership. Shane Sams: Interesting. Jocelyn Sams: Imagine that. You put in the work and good things happened in time. Wow. Kevin Depew: Yes. They are, it's pretty exciting now. Shane Sams: So, let's walk through this because I want to take everybody kind of today on a journey to 100 members because a lot of people listening right now, they're just like where you were. They have no members. Jocelyn Sams: And it sounds like such a lofty goal, you know? If you're just getting started, 100 members, "I don't even have one member, you know? How am I going to get 100?" Shane Sams: Right. So, let's kind of walk through that a little bit, and we'll bring it up to today and figure out how you actually crossed the century mark and you filled 100 people in your house, okay? So, you get your first member, right? We talked about that back on an earlier episode of the podcast. What was it like after that, though? Because you said it took like six or seven months before any kind of traction started building, even after you got that first member. What kind of kept you going in that phase? Because we've got a lot of members that post that first sale success story, but then they get really frustrated because it's like they've tasted the promised land, but they can't get in, you know? Like, they can't build momentum on it. So, what kept you going after you got that first sale and then that huge gap until some traction started building after that? Kevin Depew: Probably two things. Somewhere along the line about learning how to celebrate even small wins. So, even though you don't have your second, third, 20th customer who's paying in your membership, if you've got emails coming in with people asking questions, you have people sharing some of your information, you have people thanking you for what you are doing, that's probably a big part, celebrating kind of the small things along the way. And then, honestly it's probably the ... It was the Flip Your Life community I was really active in there and talking to other people that were on the same kind of journey and same questions and just kind of learning from them. And just kept trying. It wasn't really ... For me, it's never been a matter of if this is going to happen, it's always for me been, "When is this going to happen?" That's just my mindset. So, I'd say those two things. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I love how you talk about celebrating those small things. I think that's something that we are really bad at. I've talked about that on the podcast before because I think that we are such ambitious people. We've had such success in a lot of different areas, and we think that everything that we do is supposed to be a home run. And when it's not, it's so disappointing, you know? We feel this immense failure. And that's not a great way to be. And I love how you talk about just knowing that you're affecting one person, you're affecting four people, you know? Just all those little things adding up to be something really awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah. I love how you talked about the community too because that's a good filter, you know, when you're struggling in your business or when something's going wrong, as you're kind of surrounded by other people. And when you have a question, like, "Why is this ad not working?" But then you see someone else ask that question, you can kind of think to yourself, "Oh, it's not just me. Someone else is struggling with getting their ad to work, so maybe we can combine forces and work together." Or when you are not having success and then you log in and you see 10 success stories posted last night, right? Then you get to be like, "Wow, it is real. There's other people doing it. And I just have to keep going because my success is somewhere under one of these rocks. I've just got to keep flipping rocks." Kevin Depew: Yeah. My wife was much better at, and still is, about the celebrating part. And another kind of shift there was when she kind of saw, "Okay, this might work, there's people actually paying us," because it's all been ground up. She always says, "You built this from the ground up. You made the website, you've created the membership area. You're doing the videos. Be proud of that because a large amount of people don't even get to that point." So, she's much better at reminding me to celebrate small wins. Shane Sams: Yes. Most people don't even create their first course. It's just always an idea, right? It's a dream that's kind of stuck in your head. And until you get it out there and you build it brick by brick or you grow a grassroots following, it's never going to become a reality. But the cool thing about when you build a grassroots following is your business has deep roots and those people are loyal to you and those people care about what you're doing, and they feel a part of your community, right? Like, sometimes success can come too fast, and then it flames out like a forest fire. And that's not what we want. We always say we want to be a glacier. We want to build strength and size snowflake by snowflake until we are an unstoppable, immovable force just roaring down the gorge, right? And as you build that momentum, and as you build that foundation, your house is built on rock, not on sand. You can say, "Hey, I've got 105 members today. Tomorrow I'm going to have 110. And then the next day I'm going to have 120." And you just keep stacking those bricks until your foundation is so strong it holds this big huge awesome online business and you've got this amazing worldwide community of second life halfer guitar players chilling out around the campfire. Kevin Depew: Yes. Shane Sams: So, the ads start clicking, okay. What kind of happened next? So, when you saw the ads start to work, what happened there? Did you get to like 20 members or 25 members? What started happening with your ads? Kevin Depew: Yeah. I would say ... So, once the kind of cold ads started getting traction, then it was making the warm ad, repixeling. And I've just slowly moved it from $5 a day, $6 a day. We're at about $20 a day now on the ads. And it's just a cold ad and a warm ad to get folks onto the email list. I would say we got to probably 30 members by the end of 2000 ... See, I have to go back a little bit, end of 2017, I guess, about 30 people we had in the membership. And most of that was just paid traffic and ads was the primary way to get them. Shane Sams: What do you think was the biggest difference to where the cold ... That's that hard one, right? When people learn about us, warm ads, you can upload your email list, you can find people that follow you and target them. Jocelyn Sams: The people who have landed on your website. Shane Sams: Yeah, yeah, people who know about you. What do you think the difference was in getting a cold ad to work? Was it just targeting? Was it the ad itself? What do you think helped you turn the corner and get some traction there? Kevin Depew: When I had enough traffic to make a lookalike audience that was big. And then, doing a video. Video has been everything. So, when I was first starting out, and it seems kind of ironic, I'm playing guitar, but I didn't really have a YouTube channel. And yes, I mean, I built the website, I built the membership. And then everything else kind of came after that. But once I kind of embraced the live video, I was doing live video on Facebook. And then it's moved to the live video on YouTube. And once the ad changed to a video ad, that's when it moved. Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing because people saw you playing, they could hear you playing. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: There was proof right there that you knew what you were doing and could teach someone. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and it also gives you somewhere to send people. So, like if somebody messages you on social media and says, "Hey, I found your stuff. It's pretty cool." You can say, "Well, check it out. I also have a YouTube channel." Kevin Depew: Yes. I always joke and say, "If it wasn't for Johnny Cash, I would not have a membership." Shane Sams: Why? Because that was the- Kevin Depew: That's the one ad. That Johnny Cash ad has done very well as far as learning how to play. Yeah. Shane Sams: Everybody wants to be Johnny Cash. Kevin Depew: Yeah. I do. Shane Sams: You've got to burn that ring of fire, man. You've got to burn that ring of fire. It's interesting you say that now for just everybody listening who's a beginner, cold ads are to people who don't know about you. The main thing for a cold ad to do is to create awareness and hopefully create an opt-in, where they can become more familiar with you, they can build that relationship with you. And cold traffic is everything. It's the life blood of your business. You have to be found by new people before ... to be able to grow your business and get more members because you can't just stay static. You can't just protect what you've already got. You've got to grow. So, the cold ad started creating enough awareness and traffic to make your warm ads work because everybody thinks, "I'm going to get a cold ad, they're going to opt-in, they're going to join. This is going to be amazing. It's all going to work flawlessly." But that's not true. Cold ads, they need to see you probably five or six times before they even recognize you enough to try to trust you, you know? Kevin Depew: Yes. Shane Sams: So, people are constantly seeing you strumming Johnny Cash in their newsfeed, right? Kevin Depew: That's the idea. Shane Sams: That's right. And eventually they say, "Who is this guy? He looks so relaxed while he's playing his guitar. Maybe I need to relax and play guitar." Kevin Depew: He makes it look easy, I bet I could do it. Shane Sams: He makes it look easy. Kevin Depew: Guess what? You can. Shane Sams: There you go everybody. You're going to learn how to play guitar before this episode is over. Get your guitar out, Kevin. All right, so in 2017 then, you got about 30 members, right? That's not making a living, but it's making something. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I mean that's no joke. Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Having 30 members. Shane Sams: You know? So, then you come in to Flip Your Life Live, which is in November ... I'm sorry, when was it? Jocelyn Sams: September. Kevin Depew: September 18. Shane Sams: September of 2018. So, you go into 2017 with about 30 members, how many members did you have coming into Flip Your Life Live in 2018? Kevin Depew: 51. The big change there is that Vicki was able to quit her full-time job in early 18 and really help. I mean, she's taken on all the social media posts, a lot of the promotion stuff, and kind of the bookkeeping part, which was just huge. So, we basically looked at each other and said, "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We're all in on this. And let's go to the live event." Shane Sams: Isn't it amazing how that first initial ... You know, some people feel discouraged when they have 25 or 30 members. And you're like, "No. This is creating a foundation. We've got enough money for ads. We've got enough money for you to come home. We're going to invest and go to this conference." And even though you were still grinding, like, let's be realistic, you added 20 members net in like seven, eight months, right? Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: It wasn't this avalanche of members coming in, but you could feel those baby steps starting to creep and add up. She comes home, you split focus. Now you could worry about content, she can do the backend, you're coming to this event to be surrounded by people, and it's just starting to build. Jocelyn Sams: Let's talk about what happened after the event. So, you came to the event, both you and Vicki came to the event, which was awesome because it's the first time that we had met and in real life, you've been our member for a very long time. So, let's talk about what happened after that. Like, what did you implement as a result of being at the live event that helped you get to where you are now? Shane Sams: Because you've doubled. You've more than doubled the membership now, right? Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: So, we're starting to see the magic numbers like 2X, 5X, 10X, right? Like, these things are starting to happen now. What's the big difference? Kevin Depew: I mean, I'm very much like if you tell me an idea to implement, I'm going to try it. So, I had my workbook, that was a big piece of just kind of going through the content from the event. The biggest part I would probably say though was I hooked up with some really great people and did a mastermind. We were talking monthly. One of those folks helped with a new Facebook ad that really took off and has increased the number of emails that we're getting. Shane Sams: And these are people you met at Flip Your Life Live? Kevin Depew: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Shane Sams: Give them a shout out. Who was it? Kevin Depew: Shout out to Lauren from Corner of Hope and Mane. She's been- Shane Sams: I love it. Kevin Depew: ... Amazing with kind of Facebook ads and just marketing strategy stuff. Chris from Multiples, Living With Multiples, Leah from Mom Knows College. Those are the main folks. Shane Sams: It's so awesome because I know all those people. Like, when you say their names, I see their faces. Like, we have literally hugged and eaten food with all of those people from Flip Your Life community, right? And you know, I think we even sang happy birthday to Leah last year during the live event, right? We had 100 people- Kevin Depew: Yes, we did. Shane Sams: That was awesome. So, just amazing knowing that you came to that place and met those people and they helped you. Together, you all doubled your membership, right? Kevin Depew: Yes. Shane Sams: And it's so parallel to our journey because when we first started out, we were the same way. We were all alone, we didn't know if this was real. We were kind of making some money, but we were like, "Is it all going to go bankrupt next month?" And then we start building momentum, we go to a live event, we meet people, we form a mastermind. We do huge things. And I just hear that story so much. Jocelyn and I just came back from FlynnCon. We spoke at FlynnCon with Pat Flynn on stage. And we were there and on stage we were talking about what was the biggest inference maker. And we told a story about going to one of Pat Flynn's early events called a one day business breakthrough. And we met our good friends Cliff and Jessica LaRue, the selling family. And they were at Flynn Con. And we had dinner with them. And it was so crazy because three years later, we're still friends with people we met at this very first live event. And you just can't replace those kind of relationships or even put a numerical value on how those relationships impact your business. Kevin Depew: Right, yeah. It's been amazing. And we're in such different businesses, but we're in the same business, so that's the cool part. Shane Sams: That was a Kevin bomb. Kevin Depew: There we go. Shane Sams: Kevin just dropped a bomb on your heads about masterminds. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's the thing is most of the people that we have been friends with for all this time, we're in totally different businesses too, but it's just knowing someone who's also willing to invest in themselves, most likely if they're willing to travel and spend the money to come to an event. They're not a total psycho. So, there's that. Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And no guarantees about that. But most likely that's the case. And just having those shared experiences, I just think there's really no substitute for that. Shane Sams: So, what other than ads have you done to grow your authority? To grow ... because I remember talking to you a lot about authority. Like, "Well, I'm just a guy who knows how to play guitar. I'm not Johnny Cash. Who's going to listen to me?" That's a big fear that a lot of people have. How did you kind of overcome that and grow your business? How did you build your authority from 50 to 100 members? How did you start leading your community and convince people, "Hey, this was the place where you needed to be?" Like, what other things did you do besides buying ads to grow your business? Kevin Depew: So, the game changer in 2019 has been challenges. We've done three of them this year, just finished one up in the middle of July, which is what pushed us over the 100 mark. So, it's a lot. I'll tell folks it's a lot of work, but it's really paid off for us. So, we've done, learn this song in five days, it's sent out to our ... we've got over 5,000 folks on our email list now. Shane Sams: Wow, that's incredible. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Kevin Depew: Yeah, so it goes to the email list. And I've learned that I've tried running ads for the challenges and didn't have a lot of luck with that. So, I've just been focused on the folks already on the email list, getting them into this free challenge Facebook group. It's five nights. I do an email every morning with a PDF download of what we're going to work on. We go at seven o'clock every night five nights in a row with a different lesson each night. And at the end of the week, we've learned a song. And then I pitch the membership. And Vicki helps, the one who's kind of filming that and helping moderate the comments coming in. On the last challenge, we had over 300 people. So, about 100 probably by the end that were actually kind of viewing pretty consistently. And that's one of the questions I had for later, but those three challenges have gotten us over the 100 mark for sure. That's been the key. Shane Sams: I love this story because we always tell people there's only two ways to grow your business, roll up your sleeves or open your wallet. And usually, it's both. You've got to invest in ads, you've got to grow your list, and then you've got to go after the people on that list. And we go after our list in different ways, right? I love copywriting. I love writing letters to our people, right? We don't do any kind of affiliate promotions. Someone just sent me a message the other day and said, "I have never received a sales pitch from someone else in your email list, and I really appreciate that," because we're not constantly jumping on all these affiliate launch bandwagons, right? And I activate my list with this personal ... Like, I feel like I'm writing them a letter. And I almost expect people to write me back. I love it when people write me back. So, listen guys, If you get an email from me, hit reply, okay? I love hearing from you. Jocelyn Sams: You're going to have a bunch of emails. Shane Sams: I get enough as it is, but I want more. But I love how you have found another way to do it. Yours is like, "Okay, get awareness, get people on my list, but then invite them to this periodic quarterly maybe five day live thing." This isn't pre-recorded. You're manually having this engagement and this relationship with them because you know it works. You've found what works for your people and you guys are just hammering that now, right? So, what an amazing testimony of how rolling up your sleeves a little bit, opening your wallet a little bit, how that can kind of add fuel to the fire that you already started. How often are you doing the challenges? Kevin Depew: They've been about every six weeks. Let's see. I had one in March, May, July. So, six to seven weeks in between them. Shane Sams: That's a good gap. It's not quite every month, so there's a little like, "When's the next challenge?" You know? Kevin Depew: Yeah, if I wasn't working full-time, I could probably pull off the monthly. Shane Sams: Right. This makes me want to do a challenge, Jocelyn. Jocelyn Sams: I know. Shane Sams: We could do a come up with an idea challenge. Jocelyn Sams: I've had so many ideas about this and I have taken notes on it when we've talked to other people who are successfully running challenges, and yet we still have not done it. Shane Sams: We're not being prolific about doing it. I'm learning from you now, bro. Kevin Depew: Okay, great. Jocelyn Sams: I know, I have a lot of ideas about it. Shane Sams: Yeah. Like, I love how we do learn as much from our community. You probably have found this in your mastermind, you're all kind of peers and we're all kind of working. And some people are ahead, some people are behind. But you learn something new from each other every day, right? There's not a day that I don't log into the Flip Your Life community that I don't look over at Jocelyn and go, "Look what this person's doing. That is really smart." Right? Because none of us have all the answers. That's why community is so important because we have to do that. Where did you get the ideas for the challenges? Kevin Depew: I mean, Vicki had some of that. Lauren has helped with kind of that idea of saying, "You know, if you can get folks ..." Because before the challenges, I was doing weekly lives for probably seven or eight months both on Facebook and on YouTube. And we were getting folks to show up and like things and say positive things and they were getting things out of it. But they weren't clicking the link, the description. Shane Sams: Buy button. Right, right. Kevin Depew: They weren't taking that step. And I've learned too that in my audience, it takes a little while. So, there's folk that have been on my list for a year and come to two challenges before they join. But they're staying. So, I've had pretty good retention. Shane Sams: So, what I'm seeing develop here is we always talk about consistent, prolific, relentless, right? Like, you're consistently creating content, you've been super prolific with your content creation because you've been doing Facebook live, you've been doing YouTube live. Jocelyn Sams: And when something didn't work, you didn't just throw it all out the window and say, "Online business is not for me, better try something else." Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: You tried something different. Shane Sams: That's right, and it worked. You just created an event that was more ... I don't know what to say. It's more- Kevin Depew: Interactive. Shane Sams: It's more interactive and bigger than your daily lives, okay? And you created this thing where you could relentlessly sell. Like, it's pretty relentless to say, "I'm blocking off a week and I'm going to get up and email these people every day manually. I'm going to go live with them at 7:00 PM at night, and then the last day I'm going to do a webinar." That's what we're talking about about being relentless, you know what I'm saying? So, dude, what a great job. I mean, I'm just so impressed by you, Kevin. I can't- Kevin Depew: Thanks. Shane Sams: I feel like it's awesome developing the friendships that we've developed in the Flip Your Life community. It's not a teacher, student relationship. We do teach a lot, but you're one of our friends. You're right down the road, you're a couple of hours away. And we've met you in person, and we're so impressed by you and everything you've accomplished. And we just know that you are a great example for everybody listening. Hey, real people can take something they love and turn it into a business, and they can go get 100 members. And if you can get one, you can get 100. And when you get to 100, you start opening your eyes and saying, "Wait a minute, could I get 1,000? I probably could. That's probably possible." And that's what we're going to try to move you to next, man. Kevin Depew: Okay, great. Thank you very much. Couldn't have done it without you guys and without the community for sure. Vicki and I are very appreciative. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Kevin, we appreciate your kind words about our community so much. And we appreciate you for being an awesome member for such a long time, being so relentless, just not giving up, and keeping pushing forward always. So, that is so awesome. Now, let's talk about what happens next for Relax and Learn Guitar. Shane Sams: So, 100's not enough. Kevin Depew: Okay, yeah, I'd like to increase. Shane Sams: You've got to become the guitar guy, that's what we want. So, what do you need help with right now? Are you stuck? Do you feel like there's good momentum? Or what's kind of holding you back? Kevin Depew: I'm probably just kind of question mark. So, probably the most specific, and it's kind of a specific nitty gritty question. So, the strategy for the first two challenges that we had done, we had done the five days, I left the videos in that Facebook group to replay for folks who couldn't make it to the live each night. And I left them in there for maybe four or five days past the challenge finishing. And kind of said, "Sign up now for the membership, and the videos are going to be taken down on Wednesday," or whatever. And I took them out of that group. People stayed in the group. Kevin Depew: This last time, we didn't take that approach. So, I don't know if I ... I want the events because I think that's really the answer, at least initially for a while. I think we can keep building the list, offering a challenge every six, eight weeks, whatever it is, and selling the membership that way. Do I leave all of that content in that free Facebook group just to play in between the challenges? Or does that make it less special? Shane Sams: You're recording each [crosstalk 00:28:47]. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: Are you doing a different song every challenge? Kevin Depew: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. Kevin Depew: However, the first three nights of each challenge are very similar because we go through dexterity, finger exercises, chord, chord changes, rhythm. That's a very ... Like, part of that five day challenge, the first three days are very similar. The last two really gets into the new part of the songs. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, how long is each lesson of the challenge? You said you go on at 7:00. How long is it? Kevin Depew: It's 30-45 minutes each night. Shane Sams: I just wonder if you couldn't do something differently and start creating evergreen funnels behind the live events. Like, I think you could get out of there, right? Take it out of the Facebook group. It has to disappear, the live parts, right? But what if you had challenges that were, "Learn this song in a day." And you structured it in a way where people could opt in. So, you take the challenges that you're using to sell your membership, you pull them out and you rebuild them as a course, okay? And it's like, rebuild them as an evergreen funnel. Like, you have a thing that says, "Learn Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire in a day. Click here." They opt in. And this is kind of a long opt in. We usually say a short opt in. But this is kind of a ... Philosophically it's can they get a result in a day? You could probably, if someone was obsessed and took a whole Saturday, they could spend 30 minutes, do one course. Spend 30 minutes ... Like, five hours longer, they'd be playing the song a little bit. Kevin Depew: Absolutely, yeah, because part of that 30 minutes is questions and answers, saying hello to people. The cool part is- Shane Sams: So, you can edit all of that out. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Yeah. Shane Sams: You know? And you could turn each one of these into just a pure evergreen opt in funnel. And it always pitches in the last lesson. Kevin Depew: Okay. Shane Sams: So, that might be some low hanging fruit where 5-10% of the people opting in could just go ahead and join you, right? And if they did one of these, even if they didn't do it or didn't join it, they would be so much more hyped for the live one, right? So, that's probably where you should take that content out. It's too valuable to leave it in there, okay? Kevin Depew: Okay. That's what I was kind of thinking. Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, and don't put it in your courses though. You could, you could put it there too. But use it as opt ins. Say, "Hey, learn this song in a day. Hi, I'm Kevin. I've got a challenge for you. You've always wanted to learn guitar, you've never known what to do. You've kind of messed around with it, but I'm going to teach you how to play a song in one day. All you got to do is get up, pour a cup of coffee, block off a couple hours, and three or four hours from now, you're going to be playing this song. Promise this is going to happen if you do the work. So, opt in, I'll give it to you for free." And now you've got kind of like an evergreen webinar, but you've structured it like a free course. Kevin Depew: Okay. Shane Sams: And then that will go ahead and start selling people and really warm them up because if they go do the live challenge then, how much easier is it to follow up, "If you loved doing the challenge by yourself, you're really going to love doing it with 300 people." Kevin Depew: Okay. Shane Sams: And that's where I would probably put that stuff is keep using it as leads, but make some evergreen funnels now, so you can kind of ... When you go eight weeks in between a challenge, it doesn't matter. You've got challenges running every day and you can have those on your sidebar, "Learn to play Ring of Fire. Learn to play a Nirvana song." Whatever, you just pick different genres because people will like different genres. And how many of those have you done so far? You said three or two? Kevin Depew: We've done three, yeah. Shane Sams: So, what songs? Kevin Depew: Did some Bob Dylan, some Hank Williams, and some Johnny Cash. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness, you've already got a nice little- Kevin Depew: Yeah, you've got to have the core, right? Shane Sams: Yeah, if you're not doing those guys, who are you going to do, right? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, exactly. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Shane Sams: So, start some ads on those. Just go take a day or two to edit them and put some evergreen challenges on it. Just make sure you're pitching. The pitch needs to be in there at the end, right? Full blown pitch it at the end when they watch that last course, you're going to start picking up a lot more sales that way. Kevin Depew: So, you see this as an ... I mean, could I use it as an opt in and also to the email list? I mean, it could be part of the autoresponder. Shane Sams: Yes. Kevin Depew: Once they apply through, "Hey, I do live challenges, but you don't got to wait. You can do one now. Click here," kind of thing. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: And I would also put it in your member area so you can curate it because some people are like, what if they missed the Hank Williams Junior challenge and they join your membership? That can go in the community too. Kevin Depew: Yes, I already do that because at the end I say, "If you missed any of this or you would like the replays, you can slow the speed down, whatever you want to do, become a member and all of these challenges are inside the membership for sure." Jocelyn Sams: Perfect. Shane Sams: Yep. 100%. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Kevin. At this point in the call, we usually ask for an action step. But today, we want to know a little bit more about where you're heading more longterm and just your overall goals? So, what are you planning for the site? And what about for your life? Like, is there a magic number that you have to hit to maybe leave your job? Tell us just a little bit about that. Kevin Depew: Yeah, so goals is to keep growing this. I love what I'm doing in there, the interaction with the guys is amazing. And the messages I get back from them and the interactions about how much they've enjoyed and now are looking forward to things in their life is great. So, we want to keep growing that. And yes, we have a magic number. 300's kind of the low end of the magic number that we could probably make it work, but believe me, we've already talked about that. The goal is ... I joke and say this is my retirement plan. So, I'm not going to ever probably quit working, but I would like to quit working in a full-time job and work full-time for myself inside this membership and have that be kind of what I'm doing maybe two years out, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and the cool thing is that when you do this kind of work, it doesn't feel like work because you do what you love every day. Shane Sams: That's right. Kevin Depew: Absolutely. Yeah. I want to hang out at home with my wife, work on the guitar stuff, and we just got a new puppy, so that's fun. Shane Sams: Hey, well listen, that puppy's going to grow up and maybe, maybe Relax and Learn Guitar moves to doing beach live challenges, right? Kevin Depew: I would love to do a live event too with my guys. Shane Sams: Yeah, sitting on a campfire on the beach, puppy running in the ocean, time to learn some Margaritaville or something, right? Kevin Depew: Yep. That's perfect. Shane Sams: We're ready to roll, man. Well, listen dude, we love you man. Like, we do. We're so impressed by you. You inspire us. Every time that I think about, "Man, I wish someone would do this," or, "I wish we could do that." I'm just like, "Man, look at Kevin Depew. Look what he's done." When you hit the 100 member mark, dude, I cried. I am not lying. You can ask Jocelyn. I was sitting on my couch and Jocelyn told me about it, and I cried, dude. I just was so proud. Jocelyn Sams: I think we've had the most celebratory ... I don't even know what you'd call it. Shane Sams: Moments or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, about your successes because we've just been with you since the very beginning. Kevin Depew: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I can remember being upstairs and Shane yelling to me that you got your first member, you know? We were both like, "Yeah." We were screaming in the house. Kevin Depew: That's awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah, it really is our life blood to hear these success stories, not because we helped do it or helped in any way. You did the work, you made the investment. But it's just we know that people's lives are changing. And 100 members, man, if you can get 100, you can get 1,000, right? It might take a couple of years, but you're going to get there. And I know you're going to do the work. I know you guys are going to keep investing. And we are just so happy for you guys and we are so proud of you guys. And we're just thankful for the example that you set inside of the Flip Your Life community. And we're super thankful that you've came on the podcast four times now. And we just keep sharing you, we just keep begging you to come on to share your story because I know you're inspiring other people out there, man. We just really appreciate you. Kevin Depew: The feeling ... it's absolutely mutual. I am so appreciative for the work you guys have done and what you've created to help me and Vicki and a lot of other people. And just honored to be part of it and flattered for the compliments. So, thank you. One more thing, another part that was very important in the success was the one on one coaching with you guys through Voxer that happened right after that live event. So very helpful to be able to say, "I've got a question today." And it was like, I think I got a question a day. And I absolutely used that every day. And then, to get an answer back from you guys, that was a really, really important part of this too as well. Shane Sams: Man, I appreciate that. That's why that program exists. We usually reach out to people when we see them on the verge of something crazy, you know? When we know they're at the tipping point, but maybe they're frustrated, or maybe they don't know exactly how to handle the next step, that's when we reach out to people in the coaching program. And I love people like you, Kevin, who come into our Voxer program or one-on-one coaching because I know you're going to take action on what we say, right? We talk about it. We figure out a solution. And within 24 hours, Kevin's knocked it out and got his next member. So, man, you killed it in the Voxer program. And it's there just for that reason. Shane Sams: Wow, that wraps up our amazing interview with Kevin Depew. What an awesome, inspiring, incredible dude that guy is. Him and his wife are action takers extraordinaire. They're an awesome example of what can happen when you invest in yourself, when you roll up your sleeves and you do the work, you can build a life changing online business. You can literally grow from zero to 100 members and change your life and the lives of all of those people who are in your membership. We would love to help you guys achieve this kind of success. We have dedicated our lives to helping other families do what we did, start an online business, turn it into a membership, get that recurring revenue, grow to 100 members. Imagine having 100 people giving you $50 a month. That's $60,000 a year. You can take control of your life and you can change your family's future. And you can do it inside our Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: So, if you'd like to learn more about the Flip Your Life community, if you'd like to come hang out with us, if you'd like to come hang out with Kevin Depew, all you have to do is go to Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have programs available for every budget and every ability level, and we would love you to join the community today. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that's all the time we have for this week. Before we close the show, we would love to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible, and I've got a great verse for you today. In Galatians chapter six, verse nine, the Bible says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." So, be like Kevin, be like Kevin Depew. Go out there, keep grinding, keep hustling, keep investing, and you too will reap a harvest when the time is right. Until next time, guys, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Kevin's past episodes: FL 103 - We help Kevin gain traction for his guitar tutorial website FL 194 - We help Kevin find more organic traffic and find the right people to join his membership FL 283 - Sales Funnel Strategy from Opt-In to Pitch Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Kevin's Website, Relax and Learn Guitar Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In this Best of Episode we help Kevin gain traction for his guitar tutorial website. This episode was originally published on August 9, 2016.  You can check out the original episode here: https://flippedlifestyle.com/podcast103/ FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn:  Hey y’all!  On today’s podcast, we help Kevin make a pivot to a new online business. Shane:  Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always become work.  We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.  We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online.  And now, we help other families do the same.  Are you ready to flip your life?  Alright.  Let’s get started. What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.  It is great to be back with you as always.  This week, we’ve got a beautiful sunny day out the window here in Kentucky at the podcast, and we are excited because we are welcoming back a former guest and friend of ours, Kevin Depew - a Flip Your Life member who has been on the podcast before, but we have something we’ve never done that’s happening here on the podcast today.  We are going to help someone pivot from one online business idea to another.  So, Kevin, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Kevin Depew:  Thank you.  Great to be here. Shane:  And, it was very interesting watching the progression of Kevin’s online business since he was on the podcast.  What episode was that Jocelyn? Jocelyn:  I think it was 79. Shane:  Episode 79, so if you want to check out his first episode to kind of partner with this, go back to flippedlifestyle.com/podcast79.  Kevin had an online business that was totally different than where he is today and where he is making progress.  So, Kevin, tell everyone a little bit about, just quickly where you were when we last spoke.  And, maybe what your avatar was, what you were trying to do, maybe a couple of, you know, little problems that you had with that and then, tell us about your business and your avatar now. Kevin Depew:  Sure.  So, that was back in late January – so, January, February when I had my first call with you guys.  I was really new.  I had turned a blog in November 2015, just kind of getting idea to want to do online business.  And, at that point I had come across you guys through I believe it was from Pat Flynn’s podcast, really felt like you guys were some real folks I could learn from.  So, I jumped right into the community and I think I did my phone call with you guys.  I was maybe in there a week and a half… Shane:  All right. Kevin Depew:  Yeah.  Got an email and said, “Yes.  I’m going to – I will talk to people in person about online business.  What the heck?” Shane:  I probably will. Kevin Depew:  At that point I was doing the blog with createsometime.com and it was a tag blog.  So, let’s just say that.  The avatar was everyone living in America, basically Shane:  Right.  And literally you said that.  I’m pretty sure you’re like, “Yes, I just wanted to help everybody.”  And I’m like, “No.  That’s not how this works, man.”  You know? Kevin Depew:  Yes.  I learned a lot.  So, at that point... I mean I have strengths in being creative and art, and music, that kind of thing.  And I’m also really good at time management.  I’ve worked my entire career, 25-plus years administration, children and families, multiple projects, you know, hiring and training and working with multiple people. Shane:  Right. Kevin Depew:  So, it was very broad.  That first phone call – we really narrowed down how to choose a more specific avatar, which I was kind of... what ended at that call was figuring out a more specific avatar and a more specific problem. Shane:  And, we really niched down to you were trying to help older people who had parents that were caregivers for their older aging parents and you were going to help them control their time, basically. Kevin Depew:  Exactly.  So, we narrow it down to that demographic and just kind of myself as the avatar and things I’ve learned from that.  And then, you know, step off from there with the blog post, the lead magnets, time management, -- the stress and issues that caregivers have -- did some Facebook ads, learned a lot of stuff.  And, you know, it wasn’t really gaining any traction.  So… Shane:  Sure. Kevin Depew:  ...there was a lot of involvement with the help of you guys. Jocelyn was very, very patient and very helpful.  So, I will say that for sure. Jocelyn:  Yes, Kevin, we definitely did a lot of soul searching on the old action plans forum. Kevin Depew:  Yes. Jocelyn:  We talked together a lot, I know.  And one of the suggestions that – I’m not sure if it was me or another community member had, was for you to actually sit down with a person and to see what they were willing to pay for and if there were people willing to pay for something.  So… Shane:  Like this avatar, basically. Jocelyn:  Yes, so I think you actually did that.  And, tell us a little bit about that and how that led to change in direction a little bit. Kevin Depew:  Sure.  Yes, that was in May pretty much.  I did meet with about five different people, face to face and had asked them a couple of questions about how they would like to get content, whether it be a free blog or through a community or through a course.  And, just found on that topic, there’s a lot stress and a lot of time that people are trying to spend better in taking care of themselves.  But, it’s really something they felt like they weren’t really jazzed about paying a lot of money for.  So, you know, my wife and I are trying to figure the stuff out.  And she’s like, “You know what?  You’re creative.  You’re giving a guitar lessons to people.  You love music.  What about that?  That seems a little more concrete.”  So, that was two months ago.  So, since then that’s been the major shift to working on a website that’s teaching people how to play the guitar and then moving the direction of a membership site for that topic. Shane:  That’s good, man.  And like this is so interesting.  Like when I was talking to you come back on the show, I was fascinated about this because nobody talks about pivoting.  Everybody is always just like, “Chase your dreams.  Get an idea and hammer it until it works.”  You know, it takes a lot of courage to pivot and you did that.  And I’ve seen how much easier the last couple of months was than the first six months, because it’s just flowed out of you because you’re finally kind of hitting your stride.  You may have been through it once before, you know you’ve created the blog, you’ve kind of done all the growing pains stuff, learning how all this fit together and it seems like it’s been a little bit easier for you to pivot into this new idea, where you do seem to be getting like more personal traction in it.  Does that make sense? Kevin Depew:  Oh, absolutely.  I will say I totally agree with that.  And a part of me is like, “I’m just not doing this right.”  You know what I mean, I’m starting to self-doubt and kind of figure out... and I’m a person who kind of once I get my mind set to it, I’m going to figure it out. Shane:  Sure, sure. Kevin Depew:  I felt like I can’t be really wrong.  Let’s just try something else. Shane:  Exactly.  And, that’s where most people I think really fail at online business.  You know, we tried different things before things worked.  Most successful people, anybody that you find, whatever they’re doing online now, they were not necessarily doing that in the beginning.  The beginning was where they had their first ideas, they tried and they learned and they made some mistakes.  And, eventually, you find your way to that idea that does stick and you know how to act on that better because you figured all the other stuff out.  So, it’s a lot easier, you know, the second or third time to try something, but most people just quit because they stopped their blog and two months later they’re not quitting their job and that’s just not how you do it. Kevin Depew:  Yes, yes.  That’d be nice. Jocelyn:  Yes, for sure.  Alright, Kevin.  Let’s jump into some questions for today.  Let’s fast forward a little bit to what you’re working on now and what is your biggest challenge right now?  I know that you’ve just started kind of recently.  So, you have your website up and I think that you have your opt in bonus going.  Have you had people opt in? Shane:  Yes.  And also to tell everybody your domain name and then maybe narrow down the avatar a little bit..  It’s not just all people that want guitars.  Who are we speaking to here? Kevin Depew:  Yes.  And so, the website is relaxandlearnguitar.com and my avatar is that – I’m going just say affectionately – the middle-aged person... Shane:  Right. Kevin Depew:  ...like myself.  And recently, maybe the empty nester or those who have more time to themselves to learn to play for the first time or maybe they’ve done that in the past and life got in the way and they wanted to pick it back up and start again. Those looking for ways to enjoy, have less stress and just have better health – mental health-wise by learning an instrument, which I think is a very powerful thing for folks who do that. Shane:  That is an awesome avatar, awesome avatar.  Where are you at right now like Jocelyn said?  then if you want to go ahead and tell us what your biggest challenge is with this new direction. Kevin Depew:  Sure.  The website is one-week old.  So, I have revamped everything.  And you’re totally right, man in “the second time around.”  I’ve got these pieces like WordPress or AWeber or Leadpages.  I’ve got that under my belt.  So, it was just a matter of kind of redoing these things.  It didn’t take me as long as I thought it would. Shane:  For sure. Kevin Depew:  So, I have a website, I’ve got a blog.  There’s probably eight or nine posts on there, there’s a couple of free lessons, there’s an opt in. I did have to learn Vimeo because obviously with this avatar, that’s going to be huge of how that’s going to be delivered. Shane:  Sure. Kevin Depew:  So, you know, a little learning curve there.  But, I have a YouTube channel now, too. It’s one week old.  I’ve not have any new opt ins, but I have not done any kind of like paid promotion.  And that’s kind of first question like – I know I need to work on and I’ve started just beginning with video taping those first kind of core membership video series I’m working on. Shane:  Sure. Kevin Depew:  And, while I’m doing that I’m also kind of promoting the website too before there’s an actual paid piece to it.  What does that look like? Shane:  Right, exactly… Kevin Depew:  So, how do I gain traction, I guess? Shane:  Well, I think that you do have those first few lessons done.  And the big selling point in any membership like this, we find this a lot – and a lot of our people who’d come through better in the arts or in like teaching music or teaching people how to draw, stuff like that - The powerful thing is going to be… not only the community that you build, but working directly with you like people want how-to videos but there’s how-to videos all over the place.  I would even argue in your space, what you’re doing here.  The stuff that goes in an organized fashion inside your community, like you’re going to have like lesson one, lesson two, “Start here.  Go there.”  That’s all going to be inside your membership in a nice, neat orderly fashion.  I think most of your videos you’re going to be able to just release on YouTube anyway.  And that’s going to get you a lot of traction.  Because just let the videos be free and let people come in, and start picking up the guitar and learning from you.  What you’re going to offer people is come into the community, record yourself playing, share it.  Let me come on as a teacher and record myself, telling you what you need to do or talking in the forums about what you need to undo to improve your video.  I think that’s what you’re going to find is more valuable here for the membership not just the content.  You want to get your content out there.  You want people to say, “Dang it.  Kevin taught me the guitar.”  You know what I mean?  and then, “But I want him to help me get better.  I want to be around a lot of other empty nesters.  I want to be a lot – around, you know, 50 to a 100 guys that are doing this with me and we’re all doing it together.  I can see where they messed up,  I can see what they do or I can write a song and go share it with them in a safe place.  And Kevin can come in and kind of help me a lot on that journey.”  So, I would actually argue if you’ll just set your forums up, you’re not going to need a ton of content in there.  As your content gets out into the world, people are going to start coming there for you.  There was even a coaching component to this.  You know, one of the fastest ways to make money is to just go one-on-one and do what doesn’t scale first.  As people discover you, let them just come in.  Do some Skype lessons.  Jump on Skype, see them play, help them out, talk about video one that they found and then move forward into that with them.  So, you’re really a lot closer than you think.  You do have a paid product, you’ve got you. Kevin Depew:  OK, yes.  That’s shift the there.  It’s a lot of competition with a lot of talking in the forums, I operate under the premise that what folks are going to do is be there for the relationship and with myself, more so than the actual – because you can get free guitar lessons, you get free lessons on a lot of stuff online. Shane:  Yes. Kevin Depew:  So, yes, that makes sense so it’s kind of this recapping on.  I’ve done five or six lessons already that were going to be on the membership site.  Just go ahead and put those on YouTube now and have it lead back to the website.  Is that… Jocelyn:  Yes, I think that’s what you should definitely do.  You need some free content out there.  You need to be bringing people back to your site so that they can opt in and hopefully join your membership off that. Shane:  Like it doesn’t matter how good your lessons are if no one sees them.  So, like, yes you’re going to be able to offer things in your membership later.  Like when these people really get down the road with you and invest in you, they’re going to say, “Teach me something high-tech.  Teach me something awesome.  What can I play when I’m on the beach with my grandkids for this vacation this week that’s going to impress them?” Those are things you can offer in the membership but like basically right now, you can just say, “Let it all go, man.  Let it all free.”  Now, this is another trick to – no, it’s not a trick.  It’s like a way to leverage your content.  Like things you release for free can be out there.  But, then you can still use those in a paid area because you’re going to organize them and guide people through them in a certain order.  That’s how you monetize your content.  You know most of the information, when we give advice on here that we could get probably charge for, if we were doing like consulting calls.  But, we let it go out there because information wants to be free and we want people to see that they can come to our membership to get direct help.  So, that’s exactly what you’re doing here.  Be that guy for these people in public as much as possible.  Get a following and then draw them back into your membership where they can get actual one-on-one help. Kevin Depew:  And that’s what they’re paying for is the direct one-on-one help. Shane:  And the community and the relationship and, you know, stuff like that. Jocelyn:  And you can have other pay content also like you don’t have to release every single thing that you make. Shane:  Right. Jocelyn:  But, you need enough there so that people can discover you. Kevin Depew:  Sure and that’s kind of a traction thing and like, “Yes, it’s great.”  But until they – when no one’s looking at the website, there’s a whole lot of thing that’s going to be going on there.  So…. Shane:  Exactly.  That’s why initially when you start a membership website, no matter what you’re selling, it’s really coming from the point of, “Work with me.”  Now, as you get to a certain level of people, 200, 300 – that becomes harder and harder to scale.  So, you’ll have to come up with other kinds of strategies like more lessons, like more automation, like more group coaching instead of one-on-one coaching.  But, you’re at a phase right now where everything you create should be out on YouTube, everything.  Eventually, you’ll pull people in and say, “Let me do some one-on-one lessons.  I’ve got 10 guys coming through this month.”  You know, like we do our Masterminds in Flip Your Life. Kevin Depew:  OK. Shane:  If you get a 100 people following, 200 people following you over the next couple of months, you get 10 of those people to come in one-on-one. You learn from them, you help them and you go through a month or two with them and that helps you get more people down the road. Kevin Depew:  OK, good. Jocelyn:  Alright.  Let’s move on to the next question. Kevin Depew:  So, kind of related to this, or an option to that first question.  That’s kind of maximizing effort.  I thought of I want to release a blog post every couple of weeks.  I want to have a free lesson on that blog every month.  And then, also the thought of recording these content for YouTube and getting out there.  So, it’s kind of how do I maximize my effort and use that same content in all those different places? Shane:  Yes. Kevin Depew:  Does that make sense? Shane:  Well, I don’t know why you’re blogging.  You can’t read a guitar play. Kevin Depew:  OK. Shane:  Like why not just make videos and put that on your blog with the embed and write a description. Kevin Depew:  OK, yes. Shane:  Like, yes, don’t blog.  Do one thing really, really good at first.  You can’t be everywhere until you’re somewhere.  It’s impossible.  Jocelyn and I can be in as many as we want because we have six people that work for us, but you can’t and you don’t have a following yet.  You’ve got to be in one place, but you can use that one thing everywhere.  That’s the real trick to it.  So, if you make your YouTube videos and you release them on YouTube and you write a description, there’s nothing stopping you from embedding that in a blog post and writing the description on your site too to get more traffic.  There’s nothing wrong with you uploading that to your Facebook group or your Facebook page that you start and using that same video in 20 different places.  That’s how you’re going to leverage your time.  Just because somebody else blogs, podcasts and has YouTube, that does not mean that you have to. Jocelyn:  Yes. Kevin Depew:  So, one of those a-ha moments.  OK. Jocelyn:  Yes, for sure.  And, you know, I think that there are places for blog posts on your site.  Like if you decide to do that later, maybe you like My Top Five Favorite Guitars or something like that, you know? Shane:  That’s good. Jocelyn:  You can write some of that content so that Google will find you more easily and that’s OK but don’t feel like you have to do that.  I mean if you’re already making the videos, let’s just use that as your main content. Kevin Depew:  Yes. Shane:  What’s the most important thing is that what you always have to ask yourself when it comes to content.  For us, like on Flipped Lifestyle, this podcast is the most important thing.  It is the only thing that we create.  Now, we drop that into a Dropbox folder and it gets turned into show notes.  It gets turned into a transcript, which can be a downloadable opt in.  It gets turned into a YouTube video.  We go have a team and add slides to it, and we put that on YouTube.  So, we can share stuff that we create, audio clips and things on our Facebook page. So, we use that one piece of content in a lot different places, but we don’t say to ourselves, “I’ve got to create a new YouTube video this week, I’ve got to create a new podcast this, and a new blog post this week.”  That would be impossible.  In fact, when we send our email out for our podcast, we actually use the show notes copy in the email so we don’t have to write a second email.  We just take the show notes and use that in the email that we send out to our followers to let them know there’s a new podcast.  So, leveraging your time is about picking that one thing that your people like and that you love to do or do well, and getting it out in multiple places. Kevin Depew:  Yes, that makes sense.  No wonder I’m feeling like, “Oh, man.  How am I going to do all this?”  But if I’m saying, “The most important piece is that video.  I’ve done a video on how to tune your guitar.”  Let’s just use that as an example.  I’ve put that video on YouTube.  I have a link or have that piece of the website mentioned in that video, so that they would go from the YouTube channel to the website. Shane:  Yup. Kevin Depew:  That’s where they’re going to see the opt in and that’s the post. Shane:  Yup, that’s right.  Everything drives you back like that.  It doesn’t have to be all new stuff to do that. Kevin Depew:  Yeah, and that same video goes into membership and it’s kind of video number one.  And, if you’re in the membership I’d organize it for them because I know the thing that happens just with entrepreneurs too I think is that there’s so much information out there.  I think that happens with people learning how to play an instrument.  There’s so much free stuff like where do you even start?  Who do you listen to? Shane:  That’s what you sell.  Right... Kevin Depew:  I’ve done that.  OK, I’ve done that work for them because I’ve said, “You come here to get all of the very easy-to-follow package.” Jocelyn:  Yes, I mean, I think that you’re starting to kind of understand the way that it has to work, especially if you’re working by yourself at the beginning.  There’s just no way that you can do all of those things. Kevin Depew:  Oh, yes, yes.  It gets – it’s a lot.  I mean I’m kind of, you know, still working full time and my wife’s still working full time.  So, we want that to eventually change obviously.  But, right now, that’s what I have to do. Shane:  Yes, you got to do what you got to do.  You just got to pick something and do it as best you can, get some traction and then you’re going to expand out later, OK? Kevin Depew:  So, do I do like a Facebook ad or YouTube ad that kind of directs to that video on the blog? Shane:  I think you can, but you’re right at the beginning. Kevin Depew:  Oh, right. Shane:  Your only mission right now is to get enough content out there to be found. Kevin Depew:  OK… Shane:  So, go ahead and setup the membership area.  Go ahead and get the first couple of videos in there.  It’s there.  It should be for sale.  That’s the first thing that should happen.  But, you need to be focused right now on building enough content to support that membership area.  And then, when that feels comfortable, maybe around the 10th to 20th piece of content, you can start really ramping up promotion of that. Kevin Depew:  OK, that was my question.  Like my promotions now come of – sounds like a little early on the promotion piece because I have other stuff done first. Jocelyn:  Yes, I would kind of get some stuff out there organically.  Let’s see what’s popular with people.  You can see that by your number of views.  And, I think that even YouTube has some analytics, things like that, that you can look at.  And then once you kind of establish that, then you can start to put some money on those pieces of content that are already coming up organically. Shane:  Yes, we started a YouTube channel last week.  We did not promote it.  We didn’t tell anybody.  We uploaded one video and like in 48 hours it already had almost a hundred views.  That’s because I keyword researched what the title of the video was, it was called Lego Land Hotel review.  We went to Lego Land, we did a travel review.  So, I really researched what the top 10, 15, 20 searches were for the Lego Land Hotel in Winter Park Florida or was it in Winter Haven, Florida? Jocelyn:  Yes, we always get that... Shane:  Yes, Winter Haven, Florida.  But, we basically put it in position to be found and it got found organically.  Now, I’m going to send it out to our email list.  And, everybody that’s listening here or get the email discovered eventually.  Things will get traction if they’re researched properly.  Like if we look up how to tune a guitar and we do the research on it, I’m sure there’s a keyword phrase or a way that people are typing that in.  It might just be “How to tune a guitar.”  They might be typing in “Tune a guitar” or “Tune my guitar” “How do I tune my guitar?”  We can find something and really work on those titles and stuff and we can get you some organic traffic on YouTube which will then lead – fixed to your site, a couple of emails, get a little feedback.  And then, we’ll know exactly what to draw traffic to. Kevin Depew:  OK, that makes sense.  I do the keyword research right.  I think my next step is like I kind of choose those words that have a lot of hits or people are searching for. Shane:  Yes... Kevin Depew:  I haven’t gone back in like the next step or actually looked in what Google started and what that page looks like for those phrases.  So I know I could do much better there. Shane:  Yes.  We just had a post last night.  Someone was asking about that and I explained in my example in the forums why a 500-key word search per month was 10 times better than a thousand keyword search in this specific example.  And, we’ve redone the keyword videos in the training area.  Those will be rolled out pretty soon where you can go in and really get deep into that, how to do that work research right to make sure you’re targeting words not only that are popular.  That’s what the first thing is, but can you be on the first page of YouTube or Google?  That’s what really matters. Kevin Depew:  Awesome.  OK.  Yes, good. Jocelyn:  Alright.  I that we have time for one more quick question.  What do you have for us? Kevin Depew:  OK, so this will be kind of down the road.  So, I’ve had producings in place to kind of gain traction and interest and, you know, eventually have that form and that membership side open.  I’ve heard a lot of folks talking about a beta membership on either your podcast or in the forums.  I mean, is that – I have some people come in for free to help me figure out the bugs or like what does a beta membership look like, I guess, is the question. Jocelyn:  OK, that’s a good question.  As far as letting people in for free, I don’t recommend that you do that.  Maybe for a limited time they could come in for free.  I would prefer to see you sell it at a very discounted cost.  And that’s what we’ve always said in the past.  So, basically when you start getting your list up, when you start getting people to opt in and they’re reading your emails, things like that... you can ask them if they would like to be a part of what’s called a Beta Launch.  And, basically that just means that you’re going to open up your forums or your membership community to people on your list and they’re going to join at an discounted rate which you will continue for the lifetime of their membership as long as they never quit.  And basically, the purpose of doing that is so that these people can guide your content.  They can come in.  They can make sure everything’s working OK.  They get the benefit of getting a lower rate and then you get the benefit of having early adopters come into your membership community to test everything out to guide your content and let you know what it is that they’re looking for.  And so, it’s just a really beneficial relationship for both parties. Shane:  And, basically, you’re really upfront with them when you do a beta launch.  You say, “I haven’t made everything.  I’ve only made these three videos but I’m planning these 10 over the next three months.”  So, they know that everything’s not going to be there.  But, they’re getting in for the discount.  You tell them, “Hey.  Come help me get in the forums, talks, start, you know, my community.”  They now that there’s not going to be a lot of chatter in the forums right away.  They know that they’re going to be a part of seeding all the conversation in your community.  But, like Jocelyn said, it’s really beneficial to them because if you were eventually going to charge $50 a month for something and they can get in for $20, that’s a no brainer.  The best thing about a beta launch is let’s say, you get 20 people for your beta launch, OK?  You’re going to give them a low rate but when you go live with your public pricing, they’re never going to quit because they don’t want to quit and have to come back later for double the costs.  So, the beta group is basically, “Come break my stuff and tell me what to do next for a while.  In return, I’ll give you massive value and more of a one-on-one relationship than I will be able to give to people down the road.” Kevin Depew:  And, you will give me some testimonials out of it. Shane:  Oh, yes.  That’s a huge benefit of it.  You know, you only need two to three really good testimonials to take a business pretty far. Kevin Depew:  Yes. Shane:  And, you can totally get that out of a 10-person beta group. Kevin Depew:  OK. Shane:  Awesome. Jocelyn:  Alright.  Well, we hope that that was helpful for you today, some great questions and I think that the decision that you made to pivot was a good one.  Time will tell as you start to build this new business and we look forward to helping you in our forums.  We always ask everyone at the end of our calls, what’s something that you plan to take action on, say in the next 24 to 48 hours, based on what we talked about here today. Kevin Depew:  I think I would say it’s kind of a shift of putting the videos I’m taping that I thought would just going to be in a locked membership.  But, no one has seen those so how would they know to come buy them.  So I think it’s putting those lessons onto the YouTube channel.  So, the next thing would be actually uploading.  That’s what takes the most of of my time. Shane:  Yes, for sure.  And I think if you get that done today, you’re going to see great benefit immediately.  Your YouTube channel’s going to tick up and there’s going to be people that show up.  OK?  Well, Kevin, listen man, I am really proud of you, dude! because you’ve take a lot of action and that you’re going about this in the exact right way.  You’re looking at it.  You’re testing.  If something works, you keep doing it.  If something doesn’t work, you change something.  And, usually that’s the people we see that eventually get there.  And, I love this new – the avenue for you.  I love this new angle.  You seem happier.  You seem more energetic. Kevin Depew:  Yes. Shane:  You’re moving forward now, man and it’s just absolutely awesome to see. Kevin Depew:  Great, thanks. Couldn’t do without the help from you guys and the community.  It’s been awesome. Shane:  Another awesome call – one of our Flip Your Life community members.  To learn more about our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can help you with your online business today. Jocelyn:  Alright.  Next we are going the end to our Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show and these are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our regular nine-to-five jobs.  Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is volunteering at Isaac’s school.  Not too long ago, they had some testing and after their testing, depending on what scores they get, they have a wall of handprints where the children can put their handprint on if they receive distinguished scores.  Well, I happen to be at the school one day and there was a lady there volunteering and she was trying to get all these kids rounded up and she had no help.  She was dealing with paint cans and lots of primary aged students, like kindergarten through second grade - usually those few things together don’t mix very well. Shane:  Paint and kindergarteners.  Not a good combination. Jocelyn:  Yes.  So, I asked her does she need some help.  And she says she would love  to have some help.  So, I was able to take some time off, go up to his school and I was able to see him actually put his handprint up on the wall for scoring those distinguished scores.  It just means so much to him to have me there at his school, just to support him and be there when he’s there.  He thinks that’s really cool.  So, I’d love to be able to go there from time to time and volunteer. Shane:  And, it’s cool just because this was a friend of ours, she actually was a former neighbor that we used to live beside.  It was nice to know that people can count on us to help and that we have the time to be able to go invest into the kids.  Not just Isaac but his friends and at the school that he’s a part of.  So, it’s really cool to be able to just volunteer in the community and do those things, we would never be able to do that in the past because we would have been at work ourselves.  We would have been in school.  So, outside of that we would not have been able to do anything like that.  Before we go, we’d like to close every single one of our shows with a verse from the bible.  Today’s bible verse comes from Proverbs 11:3.  And the bible says, “Honesty guides good people.  Dishonesty destroys treacherous people.”  So, make sure you’re always building an honest online business that’s full of integrity and you treat people the way you would want to be treated.  That’s all the time we have for this week.  As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and until next time, get out there.  Take action.  Do whatever it takes to flip your life.  We’ll see you then. Jocelyn:  Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Kevin's Website:  Relax & Learn Guitar Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help a truck driver start an online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we help a truck driver start an online business. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your host, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, lets get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. We are super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show, so that we can help them find their idea, start, build, and grow their own online business, just like we have, and just like hundreds of other people have in the Flip Your Life community. Shane: Super excited to welcome our guest today, Bryan Goodwin. Bryan, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Bryan: Hey guys. I appreciate y'all having me on here today. Shane: I think this is a first Bryan because ... we're going to get into your story in just a second. Bryan is a truck driver, and we are actually recording this podcast, he is in his truck on the side of the road right now. Right? Jocelyn: Not driving. Shane: Not driving, he's not driving, but this is the first time I think anyone has ever recorded a podcast with us inside of a semi truck, so I'm pretty excited about that. Bryan: Well, actually I've heard just about all y'all's episodes, so its ... I think yeah the first one y'all had someone that was a truck driver or is a truck driver. No, there's a truck driver in the forums. Shane: That's right. There is. There is. I remember that podcast, but they were not actually in their truck. Bryan: Yeah, they weren't actually in the truck. Shane: That's where you took it to the next level, Bryan. You took it to the next level. Bryan: Glad I could do that. Jocelyn: I'm just curious. I know you spend a lot of time on the road. I'm sure that you listen to a lot of different stuff, but how did you discover us, and have you listened to everything? Bryan: How I actually found you, I'm not a hundred percent. I believe what happened is I was just looking for a business podcast. I was looking for some more information on businesses, because I listen to the (inaudible) and things like that. Y'all's came up, and so I decided let's give them a try, started listening and, I don't know, got all the way up to one particular episode, and I was like, "All right. Well, they've got me pretty much sold. I've got this, but I want to see what else I can learn," so I jumped all the way back and started with episode one, which I actually had to manually download the first 30 because y'all had already cleared the 300 mark- Shane: Right. Bryan: -by that time, so I had to manually download the first 30 and then go from 30 all the way up to what I had listened to at that time. Shane: Love it. Bryan: I've listened to a whole lot of Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Jocelyn: Bless your heart. Shane: Right, bless your heart, man. I know we had you hooked here because I've heard you say y'all about five times, and as soon as you heard that hey y'all at the beginning of the show, you're like, "Wait a minute." Bryan: Oh, yeah. Shane: These are my people. These are my peeps. I've found my people. Jocelyn: Yeah, so I was curious about that because I know you spend a lot of time driving, and you probably spend a lot of time listening. Shane: Well, I'm glad that we have kept you company on many miles of road. Bryan: Yep. Shane: Hopefully, we can help you take everything to the next level, what you're doing. Maybe someday we'll get you off the road. Bryan: Well, that's the objective. Jocelyn: All right, so you are a driver right now, and tell us just a little bit more about your life, about your background, and then we'll get into more of the business side. Bryan: Okay. I've been driving truck for about 11 years now. I drive for the oil field. I actually just hauled what's called frack sand from quarries and stuff like that and take them out to where they do the hydraulic fracking at, and they use the sand actually as a means to prop the cracks and the rock up. I won't go into the details on what fracking is because that just goes completely off rails, but- Shane: We've been known to go off the rails a little bit here on the show, man. That's okay. Bryan: So- Jocelyn: This is all Greek to me. I have no idea what all this means. Bryan: Yeah- Shane: Jocelyn, I just heard sand and I was like, "Sweet. Sand. Okay." Jocelyn: Okay, I can call it that. Shane: There's a big truck of sand. Bryan's at the wheel. Here we go. Bryan: Yeah, so the issue that I run into is that I'm subjected to the swings in the market, so if oil fields, natural gas, and oil prices are getting really high, then yeah I get to have steak and go out and have fun, but if they fall through the floor, I'm eating Cheerios out of a tinfoil bowl. There's a lot of feasts and a lot of famine, and you don't really know when one is going to come upon you, and when the other one's going to leave, so just the swings, and I'm not enjoying the trucking life anymore. Bryan: I've always wanted to get myself out of the truck after about, I don't know, probably about seven years of it. That's when I really started diving into podcasts and started trying to come up with different ideas. I've ran podcasts and blogs for probably about 10 of those years, but just I'm to the point now to where it's like, "All right. I've got to start trying something. I've played at poking the bear a bit. Now, let's go ahead and let's wrestle the guy down to the ground." Jocelyn: Yeah, exactly. Well, tell me about your driving? Do you drive for away? Is it mostly more locally? I know you live in Oklahoma, right? Bryan: Right. It's mostly just regional. There's been a couple times where we've had to go grab sand at some really odd places, all the way up from Oklahoma all the way to Pennsylvania to pick up a load- Shane: Whoa. Bryan: -get halfway ... yeah- Shane: My gosh. Bryan: -go and get halfway back for the oil company that we were hauling for to go, "Yeah. That sand you got, nevermind. We don't need it. Go take it back." Shane: Oh my Go-. I think you just also set the record for the longest commute of anyone who's been on the show. I got this 24 hour commute, guys, and I'd really like to show you...so maybe this aha business thing can open some doors for me. Bryan: Open some doors, exactly. So, it was - but most of the time it's just around the western Oklahoma area, western Texas, Texas panhandle area, may go up into Kansas just a little bit, but most of it's Oklahoma. Shane: Just a lot of moving down the road, man. Bryan: Yes, sir. Shane: Lot of lonely times on the road, right? Bryan: Yep, lot of I-40. Jocelyn: All right, so you've been doing this driving thing for quite awhile. You decided, okay this is not the life that I want long term. So tell us a little bit about how you decided to start something online, and what it is that you're doing. Bryan: All right. Started out - one of the podcasts I listen to is Late Night Internet Marketing, and Mark Mason is the host there. And he had talked about how he was doing drop ship. I was like all right, hey...cause I'd kind of heard about it and I'd wondered how do you get into drop shipping, thinking that would be better than having a room in the back packed full of inventory. Shane: Let me explain what drop shipping is, because some listeners might not know. Drop shipping is basically where you are responsible for selling goods, but they're kept at another location. So if you fulfill - you may have a big inventory that's kept at a factory, and you just sell it online - the order goes to the factory, or the warehouse or whatever, they send it out. You're just responsible for basically selling it. You buy the goods, they're kept somewhere else, they're shipped from somewhere else, and so you never touch the stuff, you're just responsible for the marketing, and the sales, and getting it actually ordered by people. Bryan: Precisely. And so I thought, that would be a great idea. It's really easy to get it all set up. So I went over to one of the little online store areas. You can set one up for about 30 bucks a month, and tried that out, and just through 3-6 months worth of 30 dollar payments out the window. And didn't make sale. But, I liked what the premise was about, but just because I was focusing more on the guy lifestyle - just being the guy. That's kind of what I've always... Shane: What kind of products were they, that you were trying to sell? Bryan: Well, they were anything from some of the unique whiskey glasses and decanters. And so you had kind of like the smoky bar room vibe to it. Shane: Gotcha. Stereotypical man stuff. Bryan: Yeah, stereotypical is the best way to put it, yes sir. Stereotypical man stuff that was neat looking - wasn't just a normal glass, it was like a glass looked like it was kind of twisted - things like that. Bryan: Anyhow, went from that and just realized I wasn't making any money, wasn't making any sales. The closest I'd get - the software that was in the background would say that the sale was done in a very sketchy way, and so it was probably a stolen credit card, so I was like all right, I'm not going to set here and put myself at risk and be on the hook for a bad sale. Shane: Right. Bryan: So I went ahead and I decided I'll ditch that and go back into what I really like to do. I like to write, I like to blog, like to write. And just kind of start go blog and do affiliate marketing, things like that. And that's where Relaxed Male come from. And it's just kind of progressed, and every time I progress a little bit, about once a year it, seems like I'll get a little more focused, and a little more focused. So it was guys lifestyle, and I was like, no, let's talk about guys and getting them leadership and keeping the outdoor element to it, because I think getting people outside and being outdoors and stuff like that is really important for people as a whole. And for men more in particular. Bryan: And so I've gotten down to where now it's men's coaching. Men's outdoor coaching is what I'm focusing into. Shane: I love this journey, okay. Cause you said some really interesting things there. Shane: One, just like, to combat stereotypes a little bit. So, since we're stereotypically talking about men's stuff we're selling, let's combat some stereotypes. You wouldn't think, you know, you talk to a truck driver - we all have this Americana image of a good 'ol truck driver driving down the road, a manly man, working with his hands and all this stuff. But you're like, I'm a truck driver, and I love to write. I like that. It's like, I thought about what I really like to do, and I was waiting for you to be like, fix diesel engines, or something like that. But you're like, I just love to write. And I just want to blog. Shane: But it's so funny, we live in this weird world now where that is true. We all are a weird conglomerate of interests now, because of the internet, because of online, because of the way the world works now. And it's like, yeah man, a truck driver can love to blog, and he can get his message out there. And this driver - you know, you probably have a lot of anxiety about meeting deadlines and stress getting the sand where it needs to be, and there's people yelling all this stuff. I'm like, man...you just go home on the weekends, you're like, I'm getting out, I'm going outside, going for a hike. I'm going to hunt, fish, whatever you do. You do something outside to relax. You've learned how to manage this crazy lifestyle of driving to Pennsylvania from Oklahoma every once in awhile, right? Bryan: Right. Shane: And you've learned how to manage this, and now you want to mentor other men how to do this, right? Bryan: Right. Jocelyn: And I think it makes a lot of sense, I mean, there's also a lot of family stress I would imagine that goes along with this type of job, too. Shane: Yeah, just being away from everybody and stuff like that. Bryan: Oh yeah. That's one of the big things about in oil field, is you're on call. It's not a - it's Monday morning, it's time to hop in the truck and go drive around. It's all right, it's time to head out and it's 11 o'clock at night and they're like - hey one trucking company messed up so they're needing some loads. So I need you and about five other guys to hop in those trucks and head out to go grab some sand. Bryan: So, it was always...it was kind of a running joke at the company - which is an amazing company, I'm not disparaging them in the least, because the company I would drive for, they're great folks. But, there was more than one time where I would be two hours down the road going to the city, and I would get a call just as I crossed into the city limits, and they'd be like, we need you to go ahead and go on a run. And it was like, oh man, all right, I'll be there in two - I'll be back in about two hours. Shane: Crazy, man. Bryan: Cause we'd sat there for two days beforehand with nothing, so it was like, all right, let's get some errands run. Shane: But the crazy thing is though, Bryan, this is the life that a lot of people live, and there's millions of truck drivers. There's millions of people that are on call. Everybody from truck drivers to doctors. And that disruptive, not being able to plan things ahead lifestyle can make you feel out of control. Shane: I'm sure there's a lot of people listening right now, you don't feel like you have control of your schedule. You feel like you're at the whim of the markets and everybody else. And that's just - the world works - we all got to grind, we all got to do things. We all have to meet expectations of others and ourselves. And managing the anxiety of that, managing the stress of that is really half the battle toward living like a flipped lifestyle. Shane: We've talked a lot about this lately. I don't want to pigeon-hole the flipped lifestyle into totally 100% you've quit your job, you're making money with digital products, whatever. Jocelyn: Life is good. Shane: Yeah, life is good. That's not what it is. It's more like being able to create a life where you feel in control. That's the flipped lifestyle. If you could just manage your anxiety and stress, that might be the first step of hey, I've got joy back in my life to enjoy what I'm doing now, and then I can do something else later too, and change what I'm doing. Shane: So, I think it's a super worthy mission, and I think it's an amazing idea. I love that you're - I can just picture you driving down the road in your semi-truck, but your wheels - you listen to a podcast and you just turn it off, sitting in silence thinking about your next blog post. For some reason, that makes me really gloriously happy. That's awesome. Jocelyn: Your website is relaxedmale.com Shane: Which is a great two-word domain name, by the way. Jocelyn: And you've tried a couple different things on this, right? So let's talk a little bit about that. Bryan: I've tried a couple different things. First off, like I said, I was doing affiliates and realized it didn't work. So, focused in on more of a service, just because I had the epiphany that I wanted to help people. And, I've done that for - every since I was little - I would try to find a way of helping people out. So, naturally wanted to start doing coaching, so that's where the...I started getting into how to coach, and wanted to run a blog post about how to help guys through the different challenges that they're running into through today's society. Bryan: A lot of the posts are maybe a little on the touchy-feely side, but at the same time there's also a touch of woo-woo into it, so there's a method to it, and I've been trying to kind of use the blog as a means to map out a good solution. And I've got couple different ways that I like to take that. Shane: Cool. I pictured it's like, Bryan Goodwin, the touchy-feely truck driver. I just pictured...which could actually be totally misinterpreted in a terrible way. No, we're not going to call you the touchy-feely truck driver. I do not want to do that, okay. I do not want to go there. But, I think we all can just be friends here and know what we mean, okay? Jocelyn: Let's steer clear of that. Shane: Let's steer clear of the touchy-feely... Bryan: Touchy-feeling truck driver. Shane: I think Relaxed Male is a much better choice of a domain name than the Touchy-Feely Truck Driver. Yeah, that might be a terrible made-for-TV movie someday... Shane: I love your website. I'm looking at your website. You're doing a lot of things great. You've got a great - you're website at the top says Reconnecting Leaders to Nature - I want to talk about that in a little bit. Love your logo, it's a stick man leaning back on a mountain like he's in a hammock though. That's pretty genius, and it looks amazing. And then all your imagery is very good, it's manly, you have this picture of this tent that's by this campfire, by this lake, with mountains...it's like someone pulled over their truck in Colorado and slept under the stars. You know what I'm saying? Bryan: Right. Shane: And you've got this big picture of a chain, and your writing is very good, it's very plain spoken. It sounds like you. I love how you started your About page with "You know, this was going to be an online store for guys. I was going to try some drop shipping. Then, as I was writing the blog post, the store fell away and I closed it." I love how decisive that is. "The store was not important. I wanted to talk about the adventure of being a guy." And then you just go in to talking about how - basically what I just said - your writing is very good, very, very good. Is that plain English, Jocelyn? Very good, or should I say you write well. Jocelyn: Yes, either way works. Shane: Either way would be correct? Okay. All right. I'm just making sure all the grammar police aren't out there pulling me over. Ya'll write good, you write real good, man. You know what I mean? Bryan: You're all right. Shane: We're all right, we're all right. Shane: Your website's beautiful, you write well, you've got awesome imagery. Your doing a lot of things right, and I can see how this has evolved by just sitting here and looking at your site. You've got a pop up opt in and a hero bar at the top way for them to opt in. Have you been able to collect some emails and stuff like that? Bryan: No, my email list is very hard-earned, and I've actually had two new ones sign up just within a couple weeks. Shane: Awesome man, those are real humans, man. Everyone counts. You know what I mean? Bryan: But, I avoid like the plague to say I have just X-number of opt ins, because I think I have a low number, but I mentioned something about it on the blog and something about just visits, and people were like well, that's better than what I'm getting, so... Shane: How much traffic do you get right now? Bryan: This month here, apparently I've done something correct, because I'm up to about 10-30 people a day visiting. Shane: I'll tell you what you did correct, you joined the Flipped Lifestyle community, man. You've went into the Flip Your Life community and you said I'm doing something right around here, and everybody's like, I'm paying attention. So they showed up, right? That's great. That's good for 30 or 40 emails a month if you do it right. Shane: All right, so you've got the blog, you've got some direction. You've got some opt ins and things like that. Let's talk about how we're going to grow this thing. Jocelyn: All right, so you have the website, you're no longer selling items that are being drop shipped, and I'm just kind of looking at it here - I don't really see any form of monetization right now, would that be accurate? Bryan: No, there is some up at the top where you'll see coaching. Coaching the Mastermind are the monetization areas. Shane: Oh, okay I see it. Jocelyn: Okay, I gotcha. Shane: There's buttons below the fold, so we need to get those above the fold for sure. Bryan: Okay, there's also the...so I need to work on. Jocelyn: I see, I see the menu bar. Shane: I see the menu bar now, I see it. Yep. It's just kind of hidden a little bit. Bryan: Okay. Shane: It's not prominent, basically. Jocelyn: Okay. Shane: But that's okay. Jocelyn: So, we have that. What is holding you back right now? Shane: What kind of internal fears or doubts, or maybe an external obstacle, like technically challenges or something...what's kind of keeping you from moving forward. Because it looks like you're doing a lot of things right, so what's stopping you? Bryan: I have where I want to be. I have a vision of how I want Relaxed Male to look. I want to be able to not have grand conference, but you know you have, maybe a yearly gathering of some of the guys who are able to get together, and we go out to do a week long camping expedition out in the middle of the Grand Teton or something like that. I have this vision of that, but I'm not exactly sure how to progress into that - to get on the right road to go to that dream. I see coaching and masterminds as kind of a way to get the ball rolling, but I'm not 100% sure if that's really the best way. Bryan: Right now, I feel like I'm just trying, but I'm just not making any headway. I don't know if it's just me being impatient or what. But that's precisely what I'm feeling - I've been hammering at this for totally the blog is almost two years old. Which, everything I've heard and read and understand about blogs, I'm just right there at that point where a lot of times you start building critical mass and everything takes off out of nowhere. But I've also done blogs that lasted four years and stayed around 10-15 visitors a day. Bryan: So I don't know if I'm just always, am I focusing too much on the visitors? Am I too obsessed with my numbers and just keep chipping away and eventually something's going to break and I'm going to all of a sudden have people paying attention, or what. Shane: Yeah. Bryan: Am I making myself any more clear, or am I about as clear as mud? Shane: No listen, I guarantee you that there are thousands of people listening to this podcast right now in their cars, on treadmills, or wherever they're at, and they're shaking their head like that's totally me. Right? That's part of the journey. Shane: There's four phases of entrepreneurship. Jocelyn and I call it the Flipped Life cycle. Shane: So, at first you become a yearner. You yearn for more. You want more, you know there's something else. It's almost like you're out on a hike and you're standing on one side of the mountain. And you know there's something cool on the other side of that mountain. You yearn for it, but you don't really do it. Shane: So then you learn. You start learning about online business. You start learning about all the things that go, right? You start learning about how to start a blog, how to do these things. And it's kind of like learning the trail that takes you to the top of that mountain to see what's on the other side. Jocelyn: And a lot of people never get past that. Shane: That's exactly right. And then what happens is you move, you shift, and you actually go on the trail. You start walking, right? And this is where you want to go become an earner. You want to take all these things you learned, take action on them, and go earn some money, right? Shane: But before that is the grind. You got to sweat, you got to hump it, you got to pull it up, you got to climb the mountain. But then here's what freaks people out...they grind for all this time, they get to the top of the trail that they learned about, they look over, and they realize that there's a huge valley with no trail, and they got to get to the mountain top on the other side, right? Shane: And that's where a lot of people quit. And that's kind of where you are right now. You went to the top of the mountain. You're getting traffic, you're getting some emails, you're getting some traction. You're idea is kind of clarifying into some general concept into what you want it to be, and then you realize ah crap, there's still a lot of work left to do. You know what I mean? Bryan: Yes. Shane: But that's kind of what happens. You have to go through the grind, and then there is a tipping point where you start earning money. And then everything just starts burning it up. You figure it out. Right? Bryan: Okay. Shane: Now, so that's kind of like the path. And you're kind of at the edge of the grind. You're kind of coming out of it like, man if I just could put this together, I think there - it's like a puzzle that you've poured out. You see all the pieces, there's a picture on the box, and you're just not sure where the corners are yet. Right? Bryan: Right, okay. Shane: And that's where a lot people are. And what we want to do is we want to get you to the next level. So I think the best use of our time here is probably clarifying this idea, right? We've got to take the fuzzy picture, and we've got to turn the knob, and we've got to bring it into focus. Okay? Shane: So, let's talk about really the mission of Relaxed Male first. I think you're onto something here about a mentorship and a coaching program. I know a lot of people that do this really well. There's a guy named Aaron Walker. His brand is called A View From the Top. Have you ever heard Aaron? Bryan: Oh yes, Aaron's...Big A. Shane: Big A, man. Jocelyn: Yep. Shane loves Big A. Shane: I love Big A. I've met the guy, and I have some friends who hang out with him. Gosh, what a genuine soul and human being. He's got this Facebook series. And every morning he goes for a walk, and he goes, What's going on, it's Big A coming to you live from the National [inaudible 00:25:33]. Right, it's hilarious. Shane: But anyway, but I know a lot of men that are in his mastermind. He's got a mastermind that's called Iron Sharpens Iron. And he just wanted to take his mentorship to these people. And it's an expensive mastermind, but they do trips like this. But they don't do hiking - they meet at a hotel or something. It's a different vibe than what you're doing, but it's definitely taking your life experience, finding guys that need it, and a lot of guys need this. Reconnect with nature, get rid of this anxiety from your job, let me show you how - listen to how stressful my job is, and I figured it out, so I can totally help you figure it out. So, you're more than qualified and worthy to do this. Shane: But I want to talk to you about your mission. I think your mission is a little too broad. Bryan: Okay. Shane: Relaxed Male is fine. That's a good domain name, we can use that. But it says Reconnecting Leaders to Nature, okay? Bryan: Right. Shane: And I think that's influenced maybe from hearing other podcasts and a lot of people do stuff like that, like leadership and whatever. Jocelyn: It sounds nice. Shane: It sounds nice, but it's so - what is a leader? Who are you really talking to? I'm just wondering if you wouldn't reconnect now. Imagine if this said - let's go super hyper-specific and broaden back out - what if it said Reconnecting Truck Drivers to Nature? Right? You are a truck driver. What if every truck driver in America listened to your podcast or read your blog at the truck stop or - there's millions of truck drivers out there, and they're probably as stressed out as you were until you figured out dang man, if I just go out and camp for a few days, I feel so much better about that drive to Pennsylvania. You know what I mean? Bryan: Okay. Shane: And so maybe it's just a tightening of the message to draw in super high quality traffic. You can get 30 hits a day on a blog, but if every one of them joined your list because they're targeted, you're getting 30 emails a day. So it's not about the bulk of traffic, it's about the quality of traffic. And I could even see maybe it expanding out to more like reconnecting blue collar workers to nature. Right, guys that are out there - these are manly men who are - what about the mechanic that's working on the trucks? What about the guys on the oil field that are taking the sand out, putting it where it needs to go? Shane: I think if you could just focus in a little tighter, you're going to have a better chance of resonating.It's not about getting attention. It's about resonating with the people who are paying attention. Jocelyn: Because right now, when I look at your website, just on first glance, it reminds me of some type of yoga retreat or something. And I don't feel like that's who you are. Shane: Yeah, right. It's more like being the meditative quality of being in the tent. It's not about sitting around going Wohhmm with yoga mats on the side of the lake right? Jocelyn: So I think where we are right now, is you have to decide who am I and what problem am I solving for people in a unique way? And that's what your site needs to say, and that's where your content needs to go. Shane: And you also have to create competitive advantage with your idea. Take the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. When we were thinking about the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, we started looking at other podcasts and saying, well what are these other guru people doing, right? We know we can teach this, we've taught people in real life...how can we be different? Okay? Bryan: Right. Shane: And how can we resonate? Well, the first thing we said was we've got to both be on the podcast. There's nobody else that's a husband and wife team doing what we're doing, right? Or at least not doing it as good as we can do it, okay? So that was one differentiator. And then we said let's exclude solo-preneur, single people, 20-something millennials running around Thailand on 6 bucks a day. We don't want to talk to them. We want to talk to families, we want talk to - we can talk to single people, but we want them to have kids. We can talk to married people, but we want them to have kids. And we decided that we would talk to families, we would talk to adults who were raising children, who wanted to go out and start their own online business, right? Shane: We would talk to people who had real responsibilities, like keeping other people alive and making in a real 9-5 job. Bryan: Right. Shane: So if you can think what's my unfair advantage? I've been in a truck for 11 years. Who's a truck driver going to listen to? Another truck driver or some random other person who's trying to tell them to connect with nature? Right? Bryan: Right. Shane: Who's the guy working on the oil fields going to listen to? A guy that understands what he's dealing with? Your anxiety is different than our anxiety, right? Bryan: Right. Shane: So if you can really hone in and just...I'd love to see a picture of you on the About page in your truck - like someone takes a picture of you leaning out the window. And be like, hi I'm Bryan, I'm a truck driver, I understand you. Let's go on a hike. Right? When a guy sees that, he wants to opt in, right? Because that dude gets me. Shane: I think back when the...when I was looking for somebody to follow, I looked at a bunch of gurus. I ran through the Ravenscrafts and the Brian Masons and the Timothy Ferris's and Gary Vaynerchuck's and all this. But I connected with Pat Flynn of The Smart Passive Income podcast, for one reason, and one reason only. When I went to his blog, at the very top above the fold, was a picture of him holding his son who was the same age as mine. I didn't know Pat Flynn from Adam. I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't know what his podcast was about. But I did know this: he had a son, and he had the same concerns I did about that little boy. And I needed to go and listen to him, right? Bryan: Right. Shane: So, I think that's what you're too broad right now is. It's just too leadership and male. I get it, it's every man who could ever possibly lead anyone. But that's not where we got to be at. Does that make sense? Jocelyn: Yeah. And we've said if you're targeting everyone you target no one. Bryan: No one. Yeah. All right. And so, I can see. Is blue collar at this moment still too broad? Shane: Not necessarily. Usually it works better when you start really targeted. Truck driver's still pretty narrow. You don't want to also exclude people, right? Blue collar makes sense because you could say something like the blue collar man has a different kind of stress, a different type of anxiety than business people do. You know, we're out and we're doing physical things that could kill us. You know what I'm saying? We're risking our lives every day to make industry move, right? When I pull the lever on that thing of sand, if I'm in the way, whatever. If you're working on a car, you could break your hand or cut yourself, or whatever. You're constantly on call, you never know when you're going to be needed. There's just a different way to present that, but a lot of blue collar people can totally relate to that. Shane: Like a mechanic, from an oil field worker, from a truck driver, from a logger, from a whatever is going to be able to understand what you're talking about. Jocelyn: And just remember that you don't have to necessarily use that in your language. And what I mean by that is, Shane and I, on our website, we don't say we only target families and people with children. We don't explicitly say that, we just put pictures of ourselves with our kids. Do people follow us who don't have kids? Yeah. And that's okay. But, in our minds, we're marketing to the people who are people - parents - with children. Shane: Yeah, and you could also say like - it says Reconnecting Leaders to Nature. That's cool, but what if it just said - what if it said this: The Relaxed Male. Reconnecting Working Men to Nature. Jocelyn: Yes. And that's what I was going to say is that you can use your language to allude to that without explicitly saying that, if that makes sense. Shane: Any person that's working could consider themselves a working man. But we all know that stereotypically, when you hear about a working man, you're talking about a blue collared guy going out and using his hands and doing stuff like that, right? Bryan: Right. Okay. Jocelyn: So does that make sense and fit the direction you think you're going? Bryan: Yes, it helps out tremendously. I had a little adjustment made last week with the mastermind group that I'm with. They were pointing out that I was being even more broad with one of the lead magnets, one of the opt in forms that I had on the site. I wasn't even mentioning men, it was self-coaching tools for a better life. And it's like, what does that even mean really, and who's that supposed to really attract to. So, they were like, well, you're about guys so why don't you start incorporating guys into that. So from here, yeah, I can see just nudge that down even granular. Shane: Yeah, right here it says: 14 of the Best Morning Routines. And it's just a name and thing, right? Bryan: Right. Shane: But what if that said - forget 14 - what if it said The Best Morning Routine For Working Men. No way they don't know it's them. You know what I'm saying? Shane: And you got this other opt in, I'm looking through your site, and it says Get Four Self-Coaching Tools to Beat Anxiety. What if that said Working Men Experience a Different Kind of Anxiety...and then the sub-heading said Get Four Self-Coaching Tools to Help the Working Man Beat Anxiety, or something like that. Bryan: Oh okay. Shane: You know what I'm saying? We can grammarize this is a little bit better later on. Right now we're just trying to get the mud on the wall. So. And your pictures. On this picture. I'm looking at your above the fold hero image. It's this beautiful picture of a tent sitting on a side of a lake looking down into a valley. I don't even know where that is. But it's gorgeous. Shane: But what if that was actually a truck driving down the road... Jocelyn: This needs to be...the About page needs to be a picture of you driving your truck. Shane: For sure. And even your front images, if it was like a truck - a huge open cinematography spread of a truck going down the road, but it was driving through the mountain of Colorado. So kind of tied in this image of truckery and cars and going down the road, but into nature or something like that. There's just a... Shane: And then instead of this picture of the tent that you've got on one scroll down, that could be a picture of people working in an oil field. And we could - about 50% of your images are nature, and about 50% of them are what we would consider blue collar jobs. Bryan: Okay. Shane: Truckers, miners, whatever. Bryan: Okay, got you there, yeah. Shane: And imagine then how much easier it would be to sell this thing. Hey guys, I'm Bryan. I'm a working man. I drive a truck. I know what you go through on a daily basis. I've been doing this for over a decade, and I know that you're job, while it's paying the bills and you're taking care of your family, you're doing a great job, but you're stressed, you've got a lot of anxiety. You're having trouble managing your working job and your life with your family. Well, I've started mentoring people in the Relaxed Male Coaching program, whatever...and I'm going to tell you how, on a daily basis, to get rid of the anxiety, get rid of all that stress, and I'm going to make sure that, not only can you go do your job that you love to do, but you can come home and be with your family. You can come home and go out into nature and be there with yourself so that you're a balanced working man, or something like that. Shane: That'd be an awesome name for it - The Balanced Working Man, or something like that. Have a guy standing up on top of an oil rig or something like that. But by niching down and really communicating who you're talking to, your blog posts are going to get more traffic. Those posts are going to get more opt ins, and you're going to have a much clearer picture of what you want to teach people. Does that makes sense? Bryan: I'm seeing that, yes sir. Shane: Does that clarify maybe how you could actually even teach your mentors in your coaching program? Bryan: I think it helps at least give me a better direction on how to point them to the...I realize how scattered I am with the information, and I'm just kind of talking too broad of an audience. So I definitely see where, if I was to just take that and just squeeze it down to even blue collared, ah, heck I could even do for the oil fields. I mean that would... Shane: Oh, that's a huge industry. Natural gas, oil, truck. That's the truckers, the drillers, the unloaders, the loaders, everybody. Jocelyn: I can even... Bryan: Precisely. Jocelyn: ...see this maybe going into - you could sell to corporate. To companies. Shane: Oh gosh, that would be huge. Make a deal with a company. Jocelyn: Yeah, maybe they want their workers to have a better quality of life, and you could market to them. Shane: Oh wow, that's really good. Really, really good. Bryan: Okay. Jocelyn: Okay Bryan, I think some really good stuff has come out of this conversation today, and I can't wait to see where you take this. Jocelyn: We always ask our guests before we go what is one thing that you plan to do in the next day or so based on what we talked about on this call. Bryan: Well, that is definitely going to be niching all the way down. I think I'm either going to focus in on the oil field angle a lot more. Get the language changed, and start just making sure that I have that particular guy in mind whenever I start re-writing some of the sales pages and things like that. Shane: And also, as you're - you've got coaching and mentoring down there - you could really focus hard on your product. Because it'll help you when you blog. If you know what that coaching and program's going to look like and you know what that happens, you know what you're pointing your stuff to to get something sold, it's going to make it a lot easier to write opt-ins, a lot easier to write blog posts, and it's going to make a lot of difference. Okay? Bryan: Okay. Shane: All right guys, that wraps up another great conversation with one of our Flip Your Life community members. It is awesome to see someone get focused on their idea, because with great focus on your idea, that's what leads to an awesome product. That's what leads to an amazing platform, and that's what leads to making money online and replacing your income so that you can quit your job and live the life you want. Shane: We would love to help you inside of our Flip Your Life community. All you have to do learn more about the community is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. You can read about all the amazing courses that we have inside to guide you through the process of starting, building, and growing your own online business. You can check out all of the amazing forums with our community of hundreds of family-focused entrepreneurs from around the world to rally around you and support you in your dreams. And of course, me and Jocelyn will be in there right with you all along the way. Shane: So go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and check out the community today. Shane: We would also love to meet you live and in person in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19-21 at Flip Your Life Live. This is our Flip Your Life family reunion. It is our conference that we hold for all of our listeners of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and everybody that's a part of our Flip Your Life community. We would love to see you in Lexington, and you can get your ticket now at flippedlifestyle.com/live - that's L-I-V-E. Shane: But you want to hurry, because we are almost sold out and tickets will not be sold after August 30th. So you've got to get your ticket right now if you're going to get one. We only have a few left. It's in the teens, guys. Those seats are going to fill up, and we're not adding anymore chairs inside of the venue. Shane: And guess what? We are not doing this event in 2020. This is your last chance to come to Flip Your Life Live, the big conference that we've been holding for the past couple of years for our Flip Your Life community and Flipped Lifestyle podcast listeners. So go to flippedlifestyle/live right now so that you can get your tickets before they sell out. Shane: All right guys, that is all the time that we have for today. But before we go, we're super excited because Bryan has a Bible verse that he wants to share with you guys. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible for our business and our life, and we love it when our guests have a verse that they want to share with everybody. So Bryan, take it away. Bryan: All right, my Bible verse is Isaiah 41:10 and it reads: So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Bryan: Just completely dig that verse, because if you're ever feeling overwhelmed, you know that you don't have to live a life in fear. And fear is one of the big things that I like to talk about on my site itself, but there's always something you can use from God - He will actually help you out - you don't have to live a life of fear and worry that you're going to mess something up, because God's there to actually help you out. Shane: Whoo! That was a great Bible verse from Bryan. I love anytime the Bible says do not fear. We talk about this all the time with our kids. The Bible says do not fear or some permutation of that phrase like 365 times. The Bible gave us a do not fear quote for ever single day of the year, ya'll. Shane: So go out there in a fearless way. Don't be afraid to pursue and chase your dreams. There's nothing to be afraid of, there's everything to gain. You just got to take action and go get it done. Shane: That's all we've got for today ya'll, so until next time, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Bryan's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Kevin decide between a course and a membership. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Kevin decide between a course and a membership. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What is going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to help another member of our Flip Your Life community take their online dream to the next level. We're really excited because we have met this member in person last year at Flip Your Life Live. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member, Kevin Crowe. How you doing, Kevin? Kevin Crowe: I'm doing good, how you doing? Jocelyn Sams: We are great. It is great to talk to you today. Love Kevin's story, because he came into the live event last year, and it was so funny because he and another member of our community, Nick, they came up to me, I think it was at the reception, and they're like, "Hey, we're introverts too." Shane Sams: It was all secretive like, "There's a club. We're the introvert club, and we're in it. So, we're all in it together." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I was pumped. I just ... I always will remember that, because it was just awesome. Like coming up, and they're like, "Hey, we're kind of like you." So, it was kind of cool. But you'll be really happy to know, Kevin's coming back to the event this year, and we're thinking about even doing an introvert room. Shane Sams: Yeah, we're going to have it at Flip Your Life Live, dude, we're going to call it The Quiet Room. Kevin Crowe: That's awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's going to be off over to the side, so during the working ... So, how Flip Your Life Live works, for everybody that's not been, Jocelyn and I get up on stage, we answer questions from the audience, and do all of our content, but then we actually have breakout sessions where we work on what we just learned. It's really chaotic when you put 100 people in a big room. Shane Sams: It can get loud, people are talking, there's some music playing, but this year we're going to have the spa room, the quiet room, where we have the lights turned down a little bit, and it's like you go in there's going to be a sign that says, "Shh, online businesses being built." So, there's going to be an introvert room, man. It's going to be awesome. We thought about you, Kevin, when we came up with it. Kevin Crowe: That sounds like paradise. Last time we just kind of tucked ourselves away in the back corner table. Shane Sams: It was ... Everybody's just got their hoodies on just looking down. Shane Sams: It's alright. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, exactly. I was talking to Shane earlier, and he's like, "Oh, you know, two introverts, it's going to be ... I'm going to have to talk a lot this show.", and I'm like, "Listen, introverts are not necessarily shy, they just need to be alone to process things, and to gain their energy back, that's all." Shane Sams: Yeah, we were having a meeting yesterday, Kevin, you might be able to relate to this, and Jocelyn, I was like ... When I start talking I don't stop, which everyone- Jocelyn Sams: Well, if you listen to our podcasts- Shane Sams: To our podcasts you know, but as I was ... We were writing ideas on Post-it Notes, and I looked over at Jocelyn, and she was carefully writing these ideas on her Post-it Notes in perfect handwriting, and I'm just flying Post-it Notes out, I've got like 25 Post-it Notes, she's on the third one, and then when we started talking about them, I just start laying out Post-it Notes, and she's like, "Dude, calm down, one at a time. Let me process this. Let me see what your first Post-it Note is before we're on Post-it Note 12." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, Shane, he wants to hit me with this firehose of information at all times, and I'm like, "Bro, I have to process this.", and then he wants to ask me questions, and me to just spit something out, and that's not how I roll. You know this, Kevin, that's- Kevin Crowe: Oh yeah. Jocelyn Sams: ... we have to think about it- Shane Sams: You got to absorb- Jocelyn Sams: ... and process it, and- Shane Sams: ... all the information, basically. Jocelyn Sams: ... Yeah, all right, well, it is always good to have a fellow introvert on the show, and we're excited to talk to you today about moving your business forward. You've had some really interesting things going on, and we will get into that just a little bit later. But first, tell us a little bit about you and your background. How did you get into all this? Kevin Crowe: Yep. So, I live in Calhoun, Georgia, about 50 miles north of Atlanta, just me and my two dogs. No wife, no kids, just a girlfriend. But, I was born in Michigan, but I've lived in Georgia most of my life, so I definitely say y'all. I've worked in shipping and logistics for most of my life, and right now I'm working for a logistics company up in Chattanooga. But, I recently changed jobs there. I was working in operations for a while, but now I got a new position in marketing, and I'm able to work from home most of the time. I might go to the office maybe one day a week. So, that's really helped me to start the flip my life process. Jocelyn Sams: So, tell us a little bit about that process. I'm assuming that somebody in your company didn't just come to you and say, "Hey, Kevin, you seem like a good candidate for working at home." Shane Sams: And that's pretty amazing too, because one thing we've talked a lot about this year on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is flipping your life means taking control of your time more than anything else. That's like if someone asked me, "What does flip your life mean? What is the flipped lifestyle?", it's you get to wake up and choose what you do. Yes, we all have things to do, and we have deadlines, and we have all this stuff, but you get to pour your coffee, you get choose where you go during the day, you get to pick when you work, and you kind of created that even before your online business is off the ground. So, how did that happen? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, exactly. I've been listening to you guys for years, and a bunch of different online podcasts, so I've learned a good bit about online marketing. Not enough for my own business to take off yet or anything, but I noticed a need with our company that we didn't have much of an online presence, or weren't really doing much with marketing, so I approached my boss and just, I told him the things that I saw, the needs in our company, and he basically just created a position for me, and now I'm working at home, I'm loving this job, and just taking the things that I've learned. Shane Sams: How often do you actually go into the office. Kevin Crowe: Well, the last time I was actually in the office was about two weeks ago. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Kevin Crowe: Yeah. It's just kind of ... I go when we need to have meetings and stuff like that, but other than that I can do my job completely from home. I got a pretty sweet home office setup, and I just chill here with the dogs. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's awesome. Kevin Crowe: They're asleep under my feet right now. Jocelyn Sams: That sounds like my dream job. I'm here with my dogs right now, we've got two labs, but yeah, so this is actually very similar to something that happened to me a long time ago when I still worked in the corporate world. I had been there I guess about four years, and there were some changes going on in my life. Shane had moved to Alabama for a time, and if you guys have listened to our backstory podcast you know all about that, how we sort of went our separate ways for a little while, and then we decided we couldn't do that anymore. He got a job opportunity in West Virginia, and I was still working the corporate life, and I'm like, "This is not going to work.", because my company was in Kentucky, and we were going to be living in West Virginia, and so- Shane Sams: It was like a ... How long a drive was that? Jocelyn Sams: Probably about six or seven hours. Shane Sams: Yeah, it was really far away, like a really long drive. Jocelyn Sams: So, basically I just went in, and I'm like, "You know, I'm going to be moving, so is there any way that we can work something out?", and at first they're like, "I don't know if that's going to work.", and after thinking about it for a while we were able to come up with something that worked for everybody. Shane Sams: This was back in like 2000 and ... was it 2005, or? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, 2004 I think. Shane Sams: 2004, or 2005 when it wasn't normal to work on the internet, or work at home back then. So, it was kind of radical that Jocelyn would even ask this, but she was the marketing coordinator. So, literally all she did all day was call people, coordinate projects, work online, send files, do things like that. So, it was actually like, "Man, you could totally do this over the internet." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so I just asked. I'm like, "What's the worst thing that can happen? They might tell me no." I loved the way that you did because you had a plan, you wrote something out, or I assume you did, and you went in, and you're like, "Hey, these are the weaknesses I see, this is the benefits that I can bring, and is there a way that we can work this out?", and I think any smart business owner would at least consider it. Shane Sams: Yeah, for sure. What did your boss say when you asked him that? Kevin Crowe: Well, he said that it's been something that he's been thinking about for a while with our company, and he saw the need too, he just hasn't really had time to address it, and he was thinking about going outside, making an outside hire, but that he was excited that I was excited about it, and he just said that he would rather have somebody who's already been experienced at the company to take that role over anyways. So, it worked out well. Shane Sams: Wow. That's awesome, dude. Well, good job, and anybody out there listening, have the courage ... Some of you are like, "Man, I really wish I just had more time." We hear this story actually happen time and time again in the Flip Your Life community, people will go to their boss and say, "Hey, can I work remotely two days a week? Hey, is there a new need for a new position? Hey, what can we do to give me a little bit more flexibility?", and then they free up time all of a sudden to do their side hustle, or gain control of their life, or get some more freedom to be able to spend with their family, and that's really the goal. Jocelyn Sams: And I think though sometimes people are just so scared to ask. We had a member not too long ago who worked for like the federal government, and she was like, "There's no way. They definitely won't let me do this.", but they did, they let her go part-time. I actually planted that seed ... It's Wendy, you guys might have heard her podcast, oh, she's been on the podcast before, but anyway, I planted that seed. I had met her at an event, and the two of us were talking, and I was like, "What are the possibilities ...", because she was driving, I think it was like ... Was it like 90 minutes, or something? Shane Sams: It was ridiculous. Her commute was insane. Jocelyn Sams: It was a crazy commute, and I'm like, "What if you could work it out where you could only go a couple days a week?", and she's like, "Oh no, that'll never happen.", but then she contacted us not too long after that, she had a conversation with them, and they said yes. Shane Sams: Yeah, so, I mean, the worst they can say is, "No.", right? Kevin Crowe: Exactly. Shane Sams: 99% of the time they're not going to be like, "I can't believe you asked that, you're fired.", you know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: No, and I think that what you can do also, just for anybody out there listening, is just reassure them, "Hey, I'm not planning on going anywhere, but I thought that this would be a really good opportunity.", blah blah blah. There's a way that you can present it where it doesn't sound negative like, "I hate this job, and I'm getting out of here if you don't let me do this." Shane Sams: So, what a huge change it's going to ... just to give you more ... You're not driving to work every day, if that alone saves you the time and energy to start to be able to start your own side hustle and things like that, what an amazing opportunity it is. But I'm going to tell you here, Kevin, when people listen to this back you're actually going to get in trouble, because a few minutes ago you said, "I live down here with my two dogs, and no wife and kids, just a girlfriend." Jocelyn Sams: I know, I caught that. Shane Sams: I can't wait until your girl listens to this, and goes, "Oh, I'm just a girlfriend, Kevin? That's all I am, just a girl. Just a girlfriend over here on the side." So, what's her name? What's your girlfriend- Kevin Crowe: Yeah, woops. Annalise. Shane Sams: What is it? Jocelyn Sams: Annalise? Kevin Crowe: Her name's Annalise. Shane Sams: Annalise, when you listen to this, I'm just telling you, I called him out. Kevin Crowe: Well, I just meant that she doesn't live here with me. Shane Sams: Right, I got ... I understand. I'm just trying to dig you out of a hole that you dug- Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Kevin Crowe: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Kevin, so now we are ready to hear a little bit about what it is that you are doing online. What made you decide to start an online business, and what are you working on? Kevin Crowe: Okay so, I've been thinking about online business for years. A long time ago I started a football blog, not really having much of a direction or knowing where to go, but as I got to thinking about what I could do online I realized that one thing that I love that I'm good at and that I know a lot about is fantasy football. So, a lot of my coworkers would ask me about fantasy football advice, or what it is, how it works, and that just sort of made me think that I could do something with that online. Shane Sams: What's your blog called? Is the blog the same site as your online business now? Kevin Crowe: Yep, it's thefantasyfootballcoach.com. Shane Sams: Oh wow, that's a good domain name. That's really cool. Kevin Crowe: Yeah, I was surprised that it was still available. Shane Sams: What's your background with fantasy football? Were you old school, doing it on paper before you could do it online and stuff? What got you into fantasy football, and how did you become the go-to guy at the water cooler to see who's starting their quarterback this week? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, well I just love football, and most of the people who know me know that I'm pretty obsessed with football in general, but I don't quite go back to the paper days, but I did start back in like 2001, 2002, so it's the pretty early days of online fantasy football. I got into it from some coworkers and friends wanting me to join their league, and I had no idea where to start. So, I learned it pretty quick, and I've just been playing it for a long time, and people at work just tend to come to me and ask me, because they just know that I like football, and I play ... I'm in like five or six different fantasy leagues. Shane Sams: You're playing in- Kevin Crowe: So, I just- Shane Sams: ... Let me tell you something, that's time consuming y'all. Here's how ... For people who don't know, what fantasy football is, is you get a bunch of people that are friends, and you get together, and you draft real players. So, if I've got the first pick, I might say like, "I want Eli Manning.", I would never pick him first, but he's at this point in his career. But you know what I'm saying, you pick your quarterback, then Kevin gets to pick, then Jocelyn gets to pick, and we go through the rounds. Basically you pick, and you draft a team, you have a quarterback, you have a running back, you have a defense, you have receivers, and- Jocelyn Sams: And they can be from different teams in the league. Shane Sams: ... they can be from different teams, right, and then what happens is you watch the games on Sundays, and you watch all the games, because you might have a receiver playing in one game, and then your defense is playing in another game, and then your quarterback's playing in another game, and then they actually add up the stats of those players, and create a score. So, if me and Kevin are in a fantasy football league together, all my players get to add up, and they have a score, and then all his players add up, and they have a score, and then we basically win or lose the game. Jocelyn Sams: So, Kevin, each thing is worth some type of points, right? Kevin Crowe: Right. Jocelyn Sams: So, if you get a tackle, if you get a sack, all these different things are worth different amounts of points, right? Shane Sams: Jocelyn's showing off her football ... That's the wife of a football coach talking right there, guys. Jocelyn Sams: You know what's hilarious is before I met Shane I knew absolutely nothing about football. I mean, I knew that if you scored it was called a touchdown, but that's pretty much it. Shane Sams: After about 10 seasons of being a football coaches wife she knew way more than some of the coaches I'd hired before, I'm just saying. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I won't say that I'm an expert, but I do know a lot about it. What's hilarious is that one of the schools that he worked at was so pitiful at football, oh my gosh, I mean it was so bad. Shane Sams: We were bad. Jocelyn Sams: But anyway, the cheerleaders of the high school team, they didn't know anything about it either. So, I would always sit on the front row, and I would have to tell them if it was offense or defense. They had no idea. Shane Sams: They didn't know, they'd be like, "Defense ... defense." I'd be like, "We're on the three with the ball, what are you talking about?", and yeah, so Jocelyn had to straighten that stuff out for us like really, really fast. But really, people don't understand though, fantasy football and fantasy sports in general is like a major multi tens of millions of dollar industry where people are playing online, people playing in their pools for money, like the winner's going to win money. There's a very ... There's incentive, even if you're just playing in a local pool with 12 people, to win, because everybody might've put in 100 bucks, there might be a $500 price, or you're playing online for prizes and stuff. Jocelyn Sams: And it just kind of makes it more fun to watch. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I know you've done it before, right, years ago? Shane Sams: Oh yeah, I don't like pro-sports at all. I only watch college football, college basketball, except for NFL when I draft, because if I do a fantasy draft, every game matters, and you're just glued to the TV all Sunday, because you may be coming down to the 9:00 game, and it's over on the west coast, but you've got a guy playing, and you're down three, right? Kevin Crowe: Yep. Shane Sams: So, it makes the games themselves way more fun. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so you've realized that you had this kind of talent, because people were asking you about something, and we often talk about this, people say, "Well, I don't know what I would do online." Well, like Kevin said, he said, "Oh, well, people are always asking me about this, and they see me as an expert in this field. So, maybe I'll give this a try." All right, so you started a website, and then what? Kevin Crowe: Then I created an eBook, I finished that last year, but it was already most of the way through football season, but I started to promote it a little bit this year, and I just made my first sale actually last week. Shane Sams: Boom. There you go. Jocelyn Sams: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: You release something and it sells, especially when it's ... How much did you charge for it? Kevin Crowe: Just a few bucks, but it was my 11 cent moment. Shane Sams: That's right, man. Jocelyn Sams: We'll take it. Shane Sams: I made 11 cents my first sale. So, seriously, what's a few bucks, like $4.99, $3.99? What'd you charge for it? Kevin Crowe: $2.99. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Shane Sams: That is like 30 times more money than we made on our first sale, Kevin. You got to take this into perspective, brother. You know what I'm saying? But that is awesome. I mean, that just shows that there is an interest for something like that out there, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, validation. Shane Sams: That's validation. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you have your site, you have the book, you've made a sale, which is amazing. So, what is next? Where do we go next? Shane Sams: What's holding you back right now? Fears, obstacles? You've got this eBook sale, why aren't you just flooding promotion on this eBook, or where are you ... What's next for your fantasy football blog? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, I thought the next step would be to create an online course. So, I actually finished that a couple of days ago, and now I'm just trying to figure out, do I just want to sell that as a one off course, or do I want to turn it into a membership where I can get some recurring revenue? I'm just kind of unsure on how to proceed, because the window is kind of small, because football is season, right- Shane Sams: Right. Kevin Crowe: ... So, I want to get my course out there now, but I don't know how many people are going to be buying it once football season's actually underway, halfway through, or whatever. Shane Sams: So, basically we've just got to figure out how to position this to make the most money, or make the most money over time basically. Kevin Crowe: Right. Shane Sams: So, this was ... you're just ... What's your eBook about? It's like how to draft, or what is it? Kevin Crowe: It's basically the ultimate guide to fantasy football, so it's taking somebody who's never played, and teaching them the ropes basically from preseason drafting, through the draft, what to do afterward, and what to do if you make the playoffs. Just kind of a strategy guide. Shane Sams: Sure. I'm almost thinking that that ... If I'm thinking about the way that your product works, what's the most valuable thing to a fantasy football player? Well, the first thing, for me, is the draft, because that happens first. You've got to get your draft ... You've got to go into the draft knowing what's going on, and really you need a draft guide. You need something that's going to help you make picks in the moment. I always had this big printout, and I was highlighting people off as they went, but it was like a pick order almost. So, my quarterbacks would be ranked, and as people took quarterbacks I'd highlight them, right? Kevin Crowe: Yep. Shane Sams: And then it's running backs, whatever, like a pick guide. So, that way it took the guesswork out of it for someone who shows up at their fantasy football draft and doesn't have enough time to really research it, you know what I'm saying? Kevin Crowe: Yep. Shane Sams: But, I think the money, dude, is in the weekly picks, because every week you've got a depth chart, and you've got a roster, and you've got to pick the starters. So, you might have three quarterbacks. Well, maybe one quarterback, depending on how your draft works, you might have one quarterback that is against a really weak defense, even though he's not your best quarterback, and you might choose to start him that week. But, choices like that seem to be where some recurring revenue, or some bigger money would be in. I'm just wondering if you couldn't give them the strategy guide as an opt-in, but then sell them something where you send out a thing like that this week. Just like they would do on ESPN Insider, or anywhere else, where you actually tell them the pick order. What do people at the water cooler ask you to do? Jocelyn Sams: So, I think what might be interesting ... How long is the book? Kevin Crowe: The book is like ... it's 50 tips...so, it's about 25 to 30 pages. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's something someone could read right before the draft- Jocelyn Sams: I wonder- Shane Sams: ... if they've never done it before. Jocelyn Sams: ... I think that's a little bit large for a free thing, though. Kevin Crowe: I have a top 10 tips eBook- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I wonder if you- Kevin Crowe: ... for a lead magnet. Jocelyn Sams: ... bring it up. Exactly, yeah. Shane Sams: So, could you give away the top 10 tips, and then take the big book and put it inside of a product ... We'll call it a product for right now, okay? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: Then maybe what you would do is you would say, "Hey, it's a $100, or $99 season pass." So, they pay $99, they get access to your thing for the entire season, inside is your ... You just got the 10 tips for free, but inside is the strategy guide you need before you start the season to get this right, and then you say, "Hey, also, on whatever date, I'm going to release my pick orders where you can go to your draft, and you can get in there, and make sure you draft the best possible team, and then every single week I'm going to email you my start em, sit them charts where you're going to help them decide who ...", it's basically just a newsletter is what it is at that point, but it's something that you're doing anyway, because you're playing fantasy football, right? Kevin Crowe: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: ... So you're researching all this stuff anyway, and then they kind of get a little monthly email. So, say you get like 100 people to pay $99, you got basically $10,000, and then all you're going to do is each week you send out your newsletter on email. So, it is in real time, and it is live, so there is going to be work to do. This is a hard passive product, you know what I mean? Kevin Crowe: Right. Oh yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But it's something that you're doing anyway, and I think that eventually if you were to want to make it more passive you might bring someone else in, so- Shane Sams: To help you do stuff, to research and stuff like that. Jocelyn Sams: ... Yeah, somebody else to spread out the work a little bit. Shane Sams: Yeah, but I mean, I don't think it's going to be that much work, because you're going to be ... One, you're doing it anyway, and you're just going to write a little report up that says ... You might have each position in the newsletter, and your top picks this week to start, just five for each position and why, you know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: I mean, this is going to be kind of short too, I mean, at most one page front and back. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's just ... You don't even have to put pictures and stuff, it's just bulleted lists, like, "Here's my top quarterbacks of the week, start them, sit them. Here's my top running backs of the week start them, sit them." Maybe a little information on your top pick, and just to help people to decide what they're doing, but that gives you a bigger ticket, because it's like NFL fantasy season pass with Kevin, like, "I'm an expert, I know this, I'm going to make sure you win your fantasy draft, I'm going to make you be able to rub it into your friends in the forums." Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying, like talking trash to them, and you're just going to give them the information that they need. I think it's going to be hard to sell just the strategy guide, or even a pick order by itself, because those exist, but if I was doing fantasy football, and I'm like, "Man, I've got a guy, I've got a ringer. I've got a guy that tells me every week what to do, and his name's Kevin.", I'm going to be much more likely to pay for something like ... Does that make sense? Kevin Crowe: Yep, totally. Jocelyn Sams: I think that possibly, it might be a good idea, you could go live each week and answer questions, or talk through the newsletter that you put out. Shane Sams: Yeah, if you want to do that, that'd be ... Yeah, send the newsletter, and then you have a follow up video for like an hour, where people could actually- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and you don't even have to prepare anything, just go through the guide, explain more about your picks in depth, why you decided this, and then answer questions. So, people might be sitting at their computer, "Okay, should I start person A, or person B?" "Oh, well, I think you should start person B, because ABC.", you know? Shane Sams: Yeah, that could be really- Kevin Crowe: You're inside my head right now, Jocelyn. Shane Sams: She's an introvert. Jocelyn Sams: Introvert connection. Kevin Crowe: Yeah, so I've looked at starting a membership, that's one thing I've been thinking about, and you talked about the Q&A, and that was something I was thinking about that could help me get recurring revenue if I'm doing a live Q&A Sunday morning before the games start where people have those questions of, "Who should I start?", and I'm there to answer the questions for them. Shane Sams: Yes, that would be amazing, because you can't go to ... You can watch the start them ... They have fantasy football shows on ESPN, but you can't ask about your team, and they don't always cover your players. So, to have an expert do that, you know what I'm saying, who's been playing for almost 20 years, and someone's just starting out, or they're really into it, they're going to be all over something like that. So, maybe they get the email on Friday, because it's like then you got the weekend to think about it, and there might be a Saturday game when college football's over, something, you know what I mean, and then on Sunday you go live to talk about it, so they've got time to process what's in the newsletter, but that would be fine. Shane Sams: Think about it like, I mean, who knows how big something like that could get. 99 bucks season pass, get the strategy guide, get your draft pick orders. I'm going to have a special draft live where we can ask questions, whatever, and then ... You could even ... you know what would be amazing, is if you had something set up where they could email, and you would get an email on your phone and they're in their draft, and you can send them a pick. That would be amazing. That might be too much. But, 99 bucks, you go get 500 people over the next couple years doing this, you got ... that's $50,000 in a season, you know? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: I mean, you can ... and that's not unreasonable, because there's millions of people that play fantasy football, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: So, what about outside of the season though, is there anything outside of the season that fantasy football people care about, or do they usually just move to another sport at that point like baseball, or golf, or basketball, or something? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, it's typically just after the Super Bowl people don't really think about fantasy football again until ... I mean, when the NFL draft happens there are some questions about rookies, and what teams they go to, and how that might impact, but people generally don't start worrying about fantasy football until July or August when they're getting ready to do their next draft. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so how much interest/expertise do you have in other sports? Shane Sams: Like other fantasy sports. Kevin Crowe: Not much. I've played fantasy baseball a couple times, but it's not something that I do regularly. It's mainly just football for me. Shane Sams: Well, that's where you could outsource. That's where you probably ... So, let's say if you build up a fantasy base over so many years of a couple hundred people, because they're going to come back year after year, this is a perfect regenerating product, it's like ... We always say that ... My U.S. history teacher site is like this, because every year a new crop of social studies teachers graduate college, and a bunch of teachers retire, and teachers change jobs. So, it's regenerating the customer base all the time, and this is the same thing. If you get 100 people, and you help them do good in their fantasy league, they're going to come back to you next year, you're going to re-market to them, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: But maybe you could get someone like a partner who's doing really good in baseball, or maybe you know somebody that's like a pro at fantasy baseball, they could do that for you, and you could just be the gears behind the machine. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I wouldn't bring in a partner, I would probably just hire somebody, but- Shane Sams: Hire it out, yeah, you're in control. Jocelyn Sams: ... I know that the thought is, "Okay, well if this person knows so much about it, they'd start their own website." Well, here's the thing, most people don't know how to start a website, or how to do online marketing, but you do. Shane Sams: You said earlier you listen to almost ... Have you listened to every Flipped Lifestyle podcast, or almost every Flipped Lifestyle podcast? Kevin Crowe: I think I've listened to them all, honestly. Shane Sams: Okay, so you've listened ... Those people haven't, you know what I mean, and you still just got your product out recently and made your first sale, you know what I mean? So, it's not like they're just going to run out and do this. You may not even have to. Like I said, you go out and get 300 to 500 people, that's a modest amount of people over the next couple of years to build up as a customer base, and all of a sudden you're making 40, 50 grand a year just off this, and you're working at home anyway. So, it might not even be necessary to go into the other sports. You could just spend the money off season. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so I would just start with the fantasy football, and if it gets to a point where you're ready to expand a little bit, I would maybe just choose one more. If it's something that you yourself would be willing to learn, and invest time into becoming an expert at it, then that would be amazing, but if not, you can always go with somebody else. Shane Sams: What is your ultimate goal with this business? Is it a side income, especially now that you're working at home, or is it maybe to make enough money to stay home and just do this only? Kevin Crowe: Well, for a while it was to do it full-time, just because I wanted that to be what I did all the time, but now that I have this job where I work at home and I love this job, it's more of like a side income, I just want to be able to make enough on the side to take vacations, and do other things like that. Shane Sams: For sure, and that is a worthy goal, and I want to stress that, because a lot of people get obsessed with the quit your job, do this, but gosh, what if you could play fantasy football and make enough money to pay your mortgage and your car and go on a vacation every year? That would be pretty- Jocelyn Sams: Not the worst life ever. Kevin Crowe: No. Shane Sams: Yeah, that sounds amazing, and especially if you're already working at home. So, this has a lot of potential, dude, there's a huge audience for it, huge niche. I mean, you've sold one of them. I think if you just put it together, and do something, it's like a hybrid. It's not really a membership, but it's a seasonal product, right? Kevin Crowe: Yep. Shane Sams: We've got some friend, they sell Halloween t-shirts. So, every year they fire up the printing press, and they make hundred of Halloween t-shirts. It's a seasonal income, it gives them that extra money that they need, and this could be something that could turn into something great for you like that too. Kevin Crowe: Awesome. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Kevin, it has been a fun conversation about your business. We are so excited that you made a sale, that is so awesome, and I can't wait to see what you do next, and more importantly, we can't wait to see you again in September. But before we go, we always ask everyone, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about on the podcast today? Kevin Crowe: I am definitely going to look into getting the membership set up, and get that structured, what it's going to look like, and get ready to launch that to my audience that I got. Shane Sams: When do people start drafting? We're in mid July right now, it's pretty soon, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, typically August. Some people do early August, but mostly mid to late August. Shane Sams: Awesome. Well, just don't over complicate it. It's basically, "I'm going to email you, and I'm going to be in a private Facebook group on Facebook Live." So, if you can just do those two things and get that set up, you're going to be able to launch this way before August 1st. Okay? Kevin Crowe: Cool. Jocelyn Sams: As a fellow introvert I'm going to say this, because I know it's happening, stop thinking so much. Shane Sams: That's right, just go do it, dude. Kevin Crowe: You've got me pegged. Shane Sams: All right guys, that was another great conversation with a Flip Your Life community member. We would love to help you inside of the Flip Your Life community just like we helped Kevin today. All you have to do to join the community is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have all the training you need to come up with your idea, research your market, create your product, and launch it in your own online business. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Shane Sams: We would love to see you and hang out with you and meet you at Flip Your Life Live. We're going to be hanging out with Kevin, you can come meet him too, it's happening in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19th through the 21st. You can find out all the information that you need about Flip Your Life Live at flippedlifestyle.com/live. There are only a few tickets left. Once they sell out, they are gone forever. We have decided that we are not doing a Flip Your Life Live conference in 2020. So, stop putting it off, stop waiting for it. This is your time. If you want one of the last few tickets remaining for Flip Your Life Live, go to flippedlifestyle.com/live and get yours before they sell out. Shane Sams: Before we go, we always love to close our podcast with a bible verse. Jocelyn, and I get a lot of information and inspiration from the bible, and we want to share some of that with you. Today's bible verse is 1 John 3:18, and it says, "Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth." What that bible verse is saying guys, is stop talking, get out there and take action. It's not about the words. It's not about the talk. You are judged by your deeds and what you are doing in the real world, so get out there and take action if you really want to make it happen in your life. That's all the time we have for today's show. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. See you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Shane Sams: For some reason I kept wanting to laugh, I don't know. I was about to laugh. Jocelyn Sams: You were all like- Shane Sams: I know I was like dancing around in my chair, I don't know what I was doing right there. Jocelyn Sams: I don't know what was going on right there, but- Shane Sams: I don't know what was happening right there, man, it was kind of weird. I'm just antsy, antsy. I'm ready to take action- Kevin Crowe: Well, I have been trying to figure out a way out of the dog house for that just the girlfriend comment. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, yes. Shane Sams: Yeah, you're done. You're done- Jocelyn Sams: Maybe we can edit that out. Shane Sams: No, we're not editing it out, Jocelyn. It's all going in. This banter is going to be the B-roll it goes with it, I'm telling you right now. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so I had an idea for you, I didn't really want to get into it on that, because I was afraid it would be too long, but so I think maybe one thing that you might could do is either write a blog post, or ... I'm trying to think. So, most people, a lot of people do a party, right? Like a draft party? Kevin Crowe: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: So, my guess is that people are googling draft party ideas, or something like that. I would do some keyword research on that, but I think you should write something about that, maybe have something that people could print out- Shane Sams: How to host a fantasy draft or something? Jocelyn Sams: Yes, and so- Kevin Crowe: Oh, that's kind of cool. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so you could have your branding information on ... Do people have something that they write on? How does it work? I don't know, I've never done this. Shane Sams: It's usually on computer, or on paper. Kevin Crowe: Yeah, most of the time it's on computers, sometimes people have those big draft boards where you peel off the players name and stick it up on the board where- Shane Sams: People get elaborate, it's crazy. Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I wonder if you could ... If he can get something that would be in peoples homes, that would be in front of a lot of people who were drafting, you see what I'm saying? Shane Sams: Oh, like a ... or even like a draft printout that said the website, like basically everyone that prints that is giving it to 10 of their friends, so it's going viral almost. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, but I would like to see you come up with a blog post that has some ideas for food to have at a party, some ideas for décor, you might could even do some Amazon affiliates. Shane Sams: Well, what you ... No, what you really want them to hand out is the top three picks for every position, because that's what people are going to hand out. Jocelyn Sams: Well, that's fine, but I'm saying to get traffic.  Shane Sams: I am. Kevin Crowe: Yeah, I was actually going to ask you guys about affiliates, because to me that makes a little bit of sense on my blog to- Shane Sams: Does DraftKings have an affiliate program? Kevin Crowe: Yep. Shane Sams: Bro, yes, DraftKings- Kevin Crowe: Yeah, that's been on my radar. The DraftKings, or even Fanatics for sports apparel. Shane Sams: Yeah man, if you do what Jocelyn said, like have some posts that are about hosting the draft, but then maybe you have an opt-in that is like, "Download for your draft D's, the top three pics at every position.", and then they could hand it out to everybody. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and it would have your information on it- Shane Sams: And it would have your information- Jocelyn Sams: ... and then you could have- Shane Sams: ... Get weekly draft support at- Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Yes. Kevin Crowe: Oh, that's cool. Shane Sams: People are going to ... you want ... The draft host has to find the blog post, then he prints the free thing to give to all of his people playing- Jocelyn Sams: Yes, exactly. Shane Sams: ... and now you have 12 people in your hands that say, "Hey, get weekly draft support.", and all you do is put the top three picks at each position. Jocelyn Sams: Now we're on the same page. Shane Sams: Right, so it's basically you want the host to find the post, and then you want the opt-in that ... Give your people all this thing, and then maybe when they go to that website ... I would do the affiliate thing, the host thing, maybe you could ... Oh, here's another post you could do. Do a comparison between multiple fantasy football platforms. Like DraftKings versus- Jocelyn Sams: Versus. Shane Sams: ... CBS Sports Live, and then you pick draft teams, and click here to get a 10% discount on your affiliate. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I'm going to tell you right now, Kevin, this is a very keyword heavy thing. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, for sure. Jocelyn Sams: You need to concentrate on Google a lot, because people are going to be typing in, "how to win at fantasy football. DraftKings versus whatever." Shane Sams: Have you done the research on that? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so if I were you, I don't know- Shane Sams: I do like the idea of targeting the draft people though, the guy or girl that's hosting the draft. Kevin Crowe: Yeah, that's something I definitely have not thought of. That's pretty cool. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, hold on. I don't even remember what I was saying, because you interrupted me, which was rude. Shane Sams: Sorry. Jocelyn Sams: Sorry. I had something good. Shane Sams: [crosstalk 00:38:01]- Jocelyn Sams: Oh, yes. So, what I think you should do if you haven't done it already, I would invest in some SEO training. I bought a course on Udemy not too long ago, and it was like the top course. I actually haven't done it yet, but it was like $10. Shane Sams: Just to get a little deeper into the ad platforms that you want to run ads- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I would really ... I would invest a lot of time- Shane Sams: But you said you've already done the keyword research, right? Kevin Crowe: I've done a pretty good bit, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, but I would invest some time and energy in making sure that your posts come to the top. Shane Sams: Like getting the posts themselves doctored up, and clean. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, because Google's going to be huge for you. I might even put somebody behind ads. Shane Sams: Fantasy is competitive though. Do you have an email list? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, I do. It's got about 550 on it. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, there's some people in there. Hey, you should send an email out that says, "Hey, just doing a quick survey, who is hosting a draft?", and ask your 550 people who is actually going to host their teams draft, and then send them the free thing that they can give out, like print it, and just say, "Hey ...", so let's say that 10 people write you back. Send those 10 people a free cheat sheet front and back top three people at every pick with basically a sales copy at the bottom of the back page, so that everyone in their room gets a "Need help making your picks every week? Go to thefantasyfootballcoach.com.", and get you some traffic that way too. Jocelyn Sams: But ask your people, be like, "Hey, if you're hosting a draft party, what information do you need-" Shane Sams: What do you need? Yeah- Jocelyn Sams: What would be helpful for you to have?", like ask- Shane Sams: "What would you want to give your players, and I'll ...", say, "What would you want to give out to your players, and I'll make it for you.", and volunteer yourself to do that, and they'll basically ... Anyone who writes you back, is automatically going to give that thing to their people. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so they're going to get there to their draft party, and they're going to be like, "Man, this is sweet.", and it's going to make- Shane Sams: Because that'll raise their status in the room. Jocelyn Sams: ... Yes, it's going to make the person look good. Shane Sams: Yeah, what can I do to make you look good for your players, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah, that's cool, because a lot of the ones that I've gone to, the in person drafts like that, people have the top however many players printed out, and just given it out to everybody who walks in. Shane Sams: But it would be nice if the back half of that paper ... Actually, if you can get it all on the front, and then the back was literally a sales page, was a sales letter about your course. Everyone in the room might- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, but these people are going to be printing it themselves, though, they won't print the back. Shane Sams: They might print two pages and staple it. Jocelyn Sams: No. Shane Sams: Yeah, you want the- Kevin Crowe: I could at least just have the website and stuff at the bottom- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Well, I would cut the page in half, the top of the page I would have the top three picks at every of position, which will fit, just put little squares, you know what I'm saying? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then the bottom is basically a little short sales letter for your product, which is, "I will help you ...", you could put on it, "Do you want to beat every player in this room right now, dot, dot, dot.", and then you have a little paragraph that says, "Hi, I'm Kevin, I've been playing fantasy football for over 20 years, I'm going to help you pick the best starters every single week, and keep you up to date on everything that's happening in fantasy football. All you have to do is go to thefantasyfootballcoach.com, and you can sign up today." Jocelyn Sams: How many times have you won your draft, do you know? Kevin Crowe: Several. I was in six leagues last year and won four of them, and made about 1,000 bucks. Shane Sams: Okay, that's what you need to say. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that needs to be on your sales information. Kevin Crowe: It's on the- Shane Sams: "Last year alone I won four of my six leagues and over 1,000 bucks. Wouldn't you trade $99 for $1,000?" Jocelyn Sams: This reminds me ... Do you remember when J.T. was doing the- Shane Sams: PA announcers? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah ... No, he was doing the radio show. So, Shane had been a coach in high school for years- Shane Sams: Oh yeah, I was like the expert. I was the color guy on the radio show, because I knew about football. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and one of his friends was doing this show, and he was like, "Hey, who's going to win this game?" So, Shane picked all ... He told them who to pick every week, and I think you got like 90 something percent. Shane Sams: Yeah, basically it was a high school football pick em show, and he would call me every week with every high school game in the tri-county area where we live. So, there's like 10 schools in the area, and I was 90% for the season. Kevin Crowe: Wow. Shane Sams: But yeah, every week I just was like, "They're going to win. They're going to win. They're going to win." Jocelyn Sams: One time you weren't here or something, or I don't know, he couldn't get a hold of you or something, he's like, "I need to get him. I don't know who to pick." Shane Sams: Yeah. Right, exactly. I was pretty awesome. So, this is good stuff. I think you got a lot of potential here. I think this year we're running up to it a little quick, but if you can make a few sales and get your logistics done, it could really blow up next year, because you'd have a whole year to market it, you know what I'm saying? Kevin Crowe: Right. Jocelyn Sams: No, blow it up this year. What are we waiting for? Shane Sams: Well now, you can blow it up this year too, I'm just saying you can't get a bunch of people, if you've got 500 people on your list there's probably 40 to 50 that would definitely want this, you just got to get them to buy it. Jocelyn Sams: But just think about what your people are thinking about right now. They're probably thinking about their party, and they're probably thinking about- Shane Sams: The draft. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then ... Yeah, they're not worried about the games yet, they're just worried about the ... and they're probably in multiple drafts. Jocelyn Sams: So, that's the content that you need to focus on right now. Kevin Crowe: So, what do you think about charging monthly, because- Shane Sams: I would not charge monthly on this, I would make a season pass, and charge $99. Kevin Crowe: Okay, because I was just thinking for people who might not join until October, or something. If they're just wanting to get into for- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's still the season pass. Shane Sams: Season pass, man. That's why I think giving away as much draft information as possible for free is amazing opt-in stuff. One, because you can find a lot of that stuff for free anyway, and I don't think the value is in the draft. I think the leads are in the draft. The value is, "Oh crap, it's Sunday, who do I start?", you know what I'm saying? "What defense do I run if I've got two defenses? Who has the better matchup?", and I'm clueless Shane Sams: The drafts can be put on autopilot a little bit, because if you have a really good draft sheet you're going to know who to pick next, because you're going to go, "Okay, well the top quarterback's gone, the top running back's gone, top, top, top.", and then you're looking at it, and you're like, "Well, of the receiver and running back, these are the two highest scores. I'll just pick the highest score.", right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: So, those can kind of be ... That's free and automated basically. You can go buy a magazine at book whatever, but what's not automated and what's not good is I need someone to ask. I need someone that I can hit reply and email and say, "Kevin, who should I pick?" That is not easily done. So, that's where it really ... You can read articles and all this stuff, but you still have to make the call, and most people need validation more than anything else. So, they need someone there to validate them, and they will pay for that, right? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: On the pricing, if you're in October, you could always discount it. Shane Sams: Yeah, I would just charge $99 for a season pass no matter what, unless you did like a playoff bundle, because you know how people redraft for the playoffs? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: You could totally do a playoff pack of like 25 bucks, playoff special, where they get the whole playoffs for 25 bucks, or something like that if they redraft, but 99 bucks is worth it, and that's how you position it though. "Last year alone I won four out of my six drafts, and I made over $1,000. What if you could win your draft? How much money would you make? Isn't that ... I bet it's more than $99. This is totally worth it.", you know what I'm saying? Kevin Crowe: Yeah. Shane Sams: "And then imagine the bragging rights every week when people are looking at you like Nostradamus, because you're walking in and killing them, and they don't know how you're doing it. You've got your secret in the back pocket, Kevin Crowe. Not Russell Crowe, but better looking." That's what you say. Kevin Crowe: The fantasy gladiator. Shane Sams: The fantasy gladiator. Change your website, fantasygladiator.com, and then just have a picture of you standing in the middle of a football field screaming, "Are you not entertained?", that'd be amazing. That'd be awesome. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, Jocelyn and I reflect on the past, talk about our fears and struggles, and discuss plans for the future! FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. You're listening to episode 300 of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Super excited to be with you this week for episode 300 of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It's just me and Jocelyn today for episode 300. And if you're wondering what we're going to talk about on today's podcast, on this milestone episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, episode 300. If you're wondering that, good, because so are we. We have no plan, we're going into this ... We tried to come up with some stuff and we just couldn't think of anything or figure it out. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. We had all kinds of ideas of things that we wanted to do. We've been talking about it forever. And a couple days ago our assistant emails us and she's like, "Hey guys, just wondering if you have anything for episode 300?" When in the back of her mind I know she's thinking, this episode is supposed to come out next week, get this done. Shane Sams: We're batched ahead on all of our interviews before and after, but you guys have not recorded episode 300. And we started talking about it a little bit and we're like, why can we not think about this? Why can we not figure it out? Maybe we should have a guest on. Maybe we shouldn't have a guest on. Maybe we should talk about X. Maybe we should talk about Y. Maybe we should talk about Z. And we just could not come up with any topic. So what we decided to do for episode 300 is one, explore a little bit why we couldn't figure out what we wanted to talk about. Two, talk about some of the projects and things that we're doing right now and how that's going to impact what Flipped Lifestyle looks like in the future. And then we're actually going to go through the same questions. We're going to interview each other a little bit and talk about those internal fears that are holding us back. Those external obstacles that are getting in our way. And we're going to talk about our biggest business questions that we have for growing and scaling our business. Because we are not immune to fear, we are and not immune to the obstacles, and we are definitely not immune to all the questions that rise up. And we find ourselves right now in kind of a weird limbo in our business. Shane Sams: We've got this huge live event coming up, Flip Your Life LIVE. It's happening September 19th through the 21st. We've got new projects that we've started. We recently acquired back some ownership in another company that we owned. So we're going to be able to grow that thing and make it more profitable now. And we've just got a lot going on and it's kind of left us in this weird paralyzed place. Have you ever felt that way in your business? Have you ever felt like there were things happening and you felt busy and you felt like things were going on, you had a lot of ideas, but you were just kind of stuck or plateaued? And that's kind of where we feel right now emotionally, mentally, and everything about our business. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah we thought we would just give you a little bit of insight into what we're thinking, what we're working on, because we really haven't done that I guess in a while. And I was just thinking today that in August this is going to be five years of this podcast, which is kind of crazy. Shane Sams: Unbelievable. Jocelyn Sams: So we've come kind of a long way but of course there's a lot of things that we still want to do and a lot of places we still want to go. So we're just going to kind of explore that a little bit and just give you guys a little bit of an insight into what we're thinking. Shane Sams: All right, so the first thing we want to talk about is Flip Your Life LIVE. And yes, we want you to come to Flip Your Life LIVE. It's in the teens, however many tickets are left right now. I'm not exactly sure what the count is. We've not met with our live event coordinator in a couple weeks. But we've only got a few tickets left and we really want you to come to Flip Your Life LIVE. It's September 19th through the 21st, it's in Lexington, Kentucky, and it's going to be an amazing event where 100 entrepreneurs from all over the world are going to come together and work for a couple days to build and grow our businesses. We've mentioned this on the podcast a couple times, but we want to explore it a little bit. We are not doing Flip Your Life LIVE in the big conference style event that we've done for the past couple of years anymore. There will not be a Flip Your Life LIVE in 2020 or 21. Jocelyn Sams: And we've had a couple questions about this. I've had a couple of personal friends message me and they're like, "Is everything okay? Why aren't you having an event?" And yes, everything is fine. It has nothing to do with any type of crisis or anything like that. It's just that this event, it just takes a lot of work and a lot of bandwidth that's taking away from other things that we do. Shane Sams: As we explored ... Our first initial idea for Flip Your Life LIVE was let's create a family reunion for the Flip Your Life Community, for our Flipped Lifestyle podcast audience. Let's create an event, a place where people can go and they don't have to worry about constantly getting pitched every hour on the hour. They don't have to worry about hearing a bunch of speakers talk about the crust of whatever they do and then sell them the rest of it. Let's create an event where people come and learn real deep content. Let's create an event where people have time to work on that content together and individually at the event. And then let's create it where it's a Q&A with S and J every hour on the hour. You can ask questions about everything that we talk about. And we wanted to make it a catalyst for people on their calendar where they're like, "I've got to get stuff done before Flip Your Life LIVE. And when I leave Flip Your Live LIVE, I'm going to be super hyper crazy excited and make massive strides to make progress in my business." And we did that. Shane Sams: Last year's event was incredible. This year's event has been awesome. We've done live trainings every week for our attendees. And everything is just really coming to a head. But, Flip Your Life LIVE had an unexpected consequence or two. One, it sucked up all of our bandwidth. I mean from January 1st until September 19th. Every day, almost always, every morning we get up and we look at each other and we're thinking about Flip Your Life LIVE. We're planning meals with our person, we're planning content, we're talking to people in the Flip Your Life LIVE Facebook group. We're just constantly thinking about the marketing and the sales and how to get people to come to Flip Your Life LIVE and we just did not expect it to take up so much bandwidth. Even the stuff we've outsourced. Like our live event coordinator handles all the meals and planning what people are going to eat and all the logistics in the hotel, but you're still thinking about it. You just can't put it up because it's such a big deal and it's such a big event. And people are coming and you want to put on such a good show that it actually pulled us out of the Flip Your Life Community. It pulled us away from our Q&A's. It pulled us away from our Flip Your Life Community forums a little bit. And it actually impacted the reach that we could have. Shane Sams: It even pulled us away a little bit from podcasting. We used to be 12, 13 weeks ahead on our podcasts, and now we're only staying about three or four weeks ahead, because instead of a podcast, we have to record a meeting about Flip Your Life LIVE or we have to talk to each other about something that's going on with the event instead of going on other people's podcasts. We used to do interviews all the time. We've done dozens and dozens of interviews in magazines and on other people's podcasts and those were really good to spread our message and get our word out there, but we've not been able to do that for two years because we don't have time to do that. Shane Sams: So Flip Your Life LIVE was an amazing event and it is going to be an amazing event this year. And we kind of looked at ourselves last year when we were getting ready to walk on stage and said, "Did we really do this? Did this really happen? Did we really pull this off?" Like how did a couple people from Kentucky who started a podcast four or five years ago get 100 people to fly in from the world to change their family's future? And it was awesome. But it's just really kind of holding back our business right now and other things that we want to do. So we decided hey, let's blow this one out. Let's make this one bigger, double what it was last year, awesome. And then we're going to go in another direction. Jocelyn Sams: So for me, the event is amazing. I mean it was my idea to begin with. I had gone to another event that was sort of similar to this and I thought it was really cool. And I thought wow, it would be awesome to bring our people together. But what I really didn't anticipate was, first of all, the massive expense that it takes to put on a live event. There are of course benefits to doing that and there are drawbacks to that. I've mentioned it before that we pretty much make zero profit on the event, which means that we do all this work and we don't make any money. And of course it's not all about the money, but it's hard to put so much time and effort into something that you're getting no financial return on. Now are we getting other types of return? Yes. There have been people who have done really amazing things leading up to the event, following the event. I'm not saying that it wasn't worth it, but it's just been really difficult for us trying to sell this thing, trying to coordinate everything, and just keeping those wheels in motion all the time. Shane Sams: Yeah, and we are a profit first company. Jocelyn and I don't do anything unless it is going to be profitable. And when you hear the work profit, it's not just like oh, we made more than we spent. That's not what profit is. You have to also take into account opportunity costs. Like every time I'm doing a Flip Your Life LIVE training, which I love to do, that's my energy, I love it every week. It gets me hyped. Jocelyn doesn't come around me for three or four hours because I'm like a nuclear bomb generating heat after I get off the mic talking to our Flip Your Life LIVE attendees. But that could be a webinar where we could put another 100 people in the Flip Your Life Community. That could be a coaching call where I can help one of our Flip Your Life Community members go to the next level one on one. So there's a lot of other things that we think we could do with our time that would make a bigger impact on more people and it would actually make more money and put more money in our pocket which is what business is all about. Jocelyn Sams: Does that mean that we are never doing a live event again? Not necessarily. We will probably not do the large scale one for quite some time, maybe ever. We don't like to make promises or bold statements like we will never ever do this event again. Shane Sams: Never say never. But for right now, it is definitely not on our mind. It is not in our plans for next year, the year after, or on the horizon. And we've started thinking about some other things that we could do. Jocelyn and I used to go around the country. We've been to Chicago, San Diego, Tampa, and we've had small mastermind style live events where we have maybe 15 to 20 people in a room and we just really get into the weeds with them about their business. Those were really, really successful. Much more profitable than the big live event. And we got a lot of great results out of them too. Jocelyn Sams: Another thing that we have considered and that I'm actually really excited about, is a destination style event. So what I mean by that is maybe we would go to an all inclusive resort where there will be childcare and everybody can just hang out together and we would do it more like a vacation and also a mastermind event. So one of the things that I wanted to do with our podcast listeners is I would like for you guys to fill out a little survey. So if you're a listener and you would like to share your thoughts on what we're doing or what we might be doing, we put together a little survey over at flippedlifestyle.com/survey. And we would love for you to answer a few questions and just tell us some feedback about some of the things that we talk about. Are you interested in a smaller type mastermind event? Are you interested in a destination type of live event? And that would help us as we sort of make plans for the future. Shane Sams: And the reason we came up with those two options as some kind of live event thing, because live events are one our big core beliefs. We are going to a live event, actually as we are recording this, we are getting ready to fly to San Diego in a couple days. And we are going to be appearing on stage with Pat Flynn at his first live event, FlynnCon. And we're going to be going to that event, it's going to be an amazing event, we can't wait to do it. By the time you've heard this we've already done it so you can probably go to YouTube or Twitter or somewhere and you could find video of the event and what we did. But live events are really important to us. We believe in live events. We go to live events and we want to host some kind of live event. But, we started looking at some of the problems or objections or the things that made a huge conference hard for our people. And two of the biggest objections were, number one, traveling to the live event. It's a big deal to go to a live event. That's part of the reason why you take so much action before and after a live event, is because you've invested so much time and money to get there so you want to get your ROI. Shane Sams: But getting to the event was hard for people. And so we said hey, we need to maybe go back where we can go to them. If we did two or three smaller masterminds we could probably reach as many people as our big live event and we could actually come to them. So if we come to your town it's a lot easier to attend a mastermind or a live event than it is to go all the way across the country to a big thing. The second biggest reason was, I can't leave my family. I can't leave my kids. I can't find a babysitter. I can't find anything else. And so we said hey, a destination live event ... You know if you go to an all inclusive in Mexico, they're, one, half the price of any hotel in America. Two, they've got kids clubs, they've got childcare. If we all go on a Disney cruise or a Royal Caribbean cruise or a Carnival cruise or something, they all have kid's clubs. They've got childcare. So you can get away to mastermind, you can get away and have dinner together and you can do those things. Shane Sams: So a part of this was, yes, it was taking away from our business. But a part of it too was, hey I think we could serve our community better if we would do some kind of different live component. Still give people the destination, still give people the day on their calendar, but solve some of these problems for people that will allow them to actually attend. Shane Sams: The next thing that we wanted to talk a little bit about was the Flip Your Life Community. That's our community where ... We setup this community ... Did we setup the community right away? We had a course or something when we started out. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. The podcast has been on since 2014 and we started the community in 2015. Shane Sams: That's right. We had some training and stuff and we had a couple beta groups and then we went to a life changing live event. And we met an expert named James Schramko, who talked to us about recurring revenue. A lot about recurring revenue. And he was really into the big ticket, high ticket coaching stuff. And we kind of applied what we talked to him about at that live event to our own brand and said hey, let's create a membership for the masses. Let's create a place where anybody can go. You know some people can't afford to go out and pay $5,000 every six months for coaching. Let's create a place where people can have an affordable monthly rate. They can go in and get all the training they need to start, build, and grow their own online business. We can fill up a forum and surround people with a community of family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world and we can be in there and we can actually create leadership opportunities for us. We can answer forum posts, we can do Q&A's with our members. And that's what we did and we started the Flip Your Life Community. Shane Sams: It continues to grow, it continues to amaze us every single day. It's incredible when we log in and see all the success stories. There are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of posts in our success story forum. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of questions that have been answered over the years in the Flip Your Life Community. And we just see so much growth. We were just on a member call about two weeks ago and one of our long time members, her name's Kathy, she was talking about how she had finally gotten some traction and she got 15 people to join her membership in one month. And the crazy thing was, it was the worst month of the year in her niche to get members. And we have been working with Kathy ... Kathy came to Flip Your Life LIVE last year. She's been a long time listener of the podcast, long time member, and really I'm just giving her a shout out right now because Kathy, when you hear this, we're so proud of you for sticking with it. And to see her after a couple years of grinding and striving and getting that first sale, but not being able to get traction and all a sudden bam, getting those 15 members in one month and just building that foundation. Shane Sams: Crazy stuff like that happens all the time in the community and that's just our favorite place in the world because we are so proud of all the people that are in there taking massive action and changing their lives. And it's really fulfilling to see hey, we do this podcast every week, you hear us help someone one on one, and then people come and join the community. It's pretty amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I loved our last member call because we actually had more success stories than questions. That's the first time I think that's ever happened and it was really cool because people are actually taking action and making things happen in the community, which makes me so happy. Shane Sams: So the Flip Your Life Community is going really, really strong. We always like to kind of do a state of the union on episode 100, 200, 300. And we just want to reaffirm our commitment to the Flip Your Life Community. Our commitment to family focused entrepreneurs. We're not out here with massive egos and narcissism and our Ferrari's and our Lamborghini's. We know that this community is a bunch of people who love their families and want to have a better future for their kids. They want to get out of the grind. They want to create a side hustle. They want to do something with their life that's more than what they're doing now. And we love the Flip Your Life Community and it's going to be there and going strong for a long, long time. Shane Sams: All right, the next thing I really want to talk about before we get into our question session where Jocelyn and I are going to interview each other like we do our guests every single Tuesday, is my new project that's called Prolific Monthly. It's a newsletter. It's a literal paper newsletter. It's like a top secret document that you get in the mail. It's 15 to 20 pages. I've had an idea for a hand delivered, physical product, a paper newsletter, for a couple years now and I've just never really got around to messing with it. One, because we've been so preoccupied for two years now with Flip Your Life LIVE. And once we decided not to do that it was like all of the ideas gushed out of my head that I've been putting on the back burner that Flip Your Life LIVE has prevented me from thinking about. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, they gushed out of your head, out of your mouth, and into my brain. I mean, it was literally like a fire hose of information just hitting me at all times, and I'm like, "Bro, I cannot process all this. You're going to have to slow down a little bit." Shane Sams: Make a list dude. Make a list. Jocelyn Sams: So one day I got an email, and you guys probably got this too, about this newsletter. Like, "How many people would be interested in this?" So before the email goes out he sends me a text and he's like, "Hey, I'm getting ready to send an email. Don't freak out. I'm not doing anything." I'm like, "All right." Shane Sams: Because Jocelyn really doesn't like it when I just start random projects. Because she knows I'm kind of all in. She always tells me, "When you tell me about things, it scares me because I know you're going to go do the thing." So it kind of created this ... It was kind of like boundary system. Like okay, I have to preface every new idea with, "Okay, I'm not thinking about doing this right now, but hear me out." Jocelyn Sams: So all it took was about, I don't know, a couple dozen of you guys to write him back and say, "Hey, this sounds like a great idea." And the next thing you know ... I figured this out the other day- Shane Sams: Remember the text said, "I'm not doing this right now. This is for later. I'm just conducting a little interest survey to see if anybody in the audience would like it." Jocelyn Sams: So like a good wife I smile and nod. Well, the other day we were on our member call and this hit me like a ton of bricks. So the next day Shane tells me, "Hey, let's go over to this restaurant that you really like in the next town over." I'm like, "Okay." Shane Sams: She's was like, "That's a great idea." It's called Compadres and it's this little ... It's like a home mom and pop Chipotle. Jocelyn Sams: It's really good. Shane Sams: It's really good. Like super delicious. Jocelyn Sams: Best tacos ever. Shane Sams: Best tacos ever. So shameless plug for Compadres. Jocelyn Sams: So I was like, "All right, yeah, I love tacos. I'll go." So we head over there and it just so happens that there's a print shop on the way to the restaurant. Shane Sams: No, it wasn't on the way to the restaurant. You can see my master plan was happening here guys. We went to the tacos, we ate tacos, I didn't say anything about business, didn't talk about anything in business at all. And I was like, "You know, we need to go to Starbucks." So I drove around town, got me a coffee, and I went to Starbucks so that I would have to redirect back by the print shop to get back to the road back to our hometown. And I'm like, "Hey, there's the print shop. You know what, remember that idea I had the other day about the Prolific newsletter?" Jocelyn Sams: I'm just going to go see if they can do it. Shane Sams: "I'm just going to go see if it's even possible." How long was I in there when you first started thinking uh, he's up to something here? Jocelyn Sams: I mean you were there at least 30 minutes. I'm like, what are you doing? Because I didn't go in. I'm just sitting there thinking he's just talking to this guy, whatever. The next thing you know he comes out all excited and at that point I knew that it was happening. Shane Sams: Yeah, right. I did not sign any papers. I did not do anything. I would never actually go through with something until you actually give me your signature of approval. So I go home and I was telling Jocelyn how much it was going to cost, I was showing her the profit margins, and I was telling her my ideas on how this could really help people. Because the point of the Prolific Monthly newsletter is to help people be more prolific in promotion. Because I'm a big, huge believer that you have to be consistent, prolific, and relentless. You've got to consistently create content. You have to prolificly promote your content. People get that backwards. You don't have to prolificly create content guys. You have to consistently create content. Once a week, twice a week. But then you have to prolificly promote your content every single day to get traction, to get followers, to make sales. And then you have to relentlessly sell things. You've got to be up front and say, "I have products. They cost money. You should buy them." Shane Sams: Those are my three core philosophies in business and life. Be consistent, be prolific, be relentless. So Prolific Monthly, what I wanted to do was I wanted to send people a calendar. So on the 28th of the month, before the 1st of the next month, you get, in your hands, a calendar that literally tells you what to do every day. It talks about what's on your avatar's mind. It talks about what's in popular culture happening. It talks about what you should do every day. You should do this sale this week. You should do this promotion this week. You should send these emails this week. And I wanted to put this thing together and then have articles in it like this is what you should do in August of 2019. This is what you should do in September of 2019. This is how you prolificly promote your brand and grow your sales and change your life. Shane Sams: So I was really fired up about this magazine. I came home and I was like, "Look Jocelyn, it costs this. I've already got it written." I had already created some of the stuff for it. And I told her about what was going to be inside. And I convinced her to write an article. Jocelyn's like the back page article. She's like the closing thing. So I got her to write an article for it, and I said, "Hey, let me do this. Let's do this." So I talked her into it, but then we're on the member call and someone was asking about it and I look over at Jocelyn and her mouth is open three inches, and her eyes are looking at me like oh my gosh, you tricked me. She was like, "I just figured it out. You took me for tacos to soften me up to launch this new business." Jocelyn Sams: Yes. That so happened. And I can't believe it took me that long to figure it out. Usually I can figure stuff like that out quicker. Shane Sams: Yeah. So anyway, just one more story about this. So I go and launch it. I talked her into it on a Monday. Remember, we've not actually created this thing. We just got quotes and everything else, and some interest from some surveys. I send out an email on Tuesday, over the next three days I get sales. So I set up a beta. My beta exceeds the actual amount that I thought I could get. And I looked over at Jocelyn, I said, "Well, I guess we better write this thing." And I go out and on Friday and Saturday we create the newsletter. We edit it, we go through it, we put it together. Super proud of how it came out. It was absolutely incredible. I'm so pumped. And then the next Monday, one week later, I emailed the files to the printer and he sent them out. Shane Sams: And actually, anyone listening right now, you should be getting your copy of Prolific Monthly in the mail this week. So it's going to be absolutely awesome. And it was just a fun experience to launch a product. But the moral of that story is the second we removed something from our slate, Flip Your Life LIVE, it freed up all this bandwidth to come up with ideas that were very profitable, very helpful for our community and our audience and our listenership, and it was just an awesome thing. Shane Sams: So if you'd like to check it out go to prolificmonthly.com. P-R-O-L-I-F-I-C M-O-N-T-H-L-Y. Prolific Monthly. You can check out the newsletter. You can sign up. We go to print again on the 20th of August and you can get your copy for September. But that's my new project. I'm really super excited about that. And I invented it and created it in a week. Jocelyn Sams: And one more lesson about that. If you're going to send a physical product, make sure you get a mailing address. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Here's a mistake for you guys. I was in such a hurry to get this thing to market after the survey showed so much interest, that I went into Kajabi. If you have not checked out Kajabi, it's an awesome platform. And I was like I'm going to try a new software tool because I want to learn a new platform. So I went into Kajabi, I set up a sales page and an order form, and I sent it out to the list to start taking beta members. And about two days in I was like man sales are great, beta's going to sell out, this is better than I thought it could go. And I looked down and I was like, why do I only have this person's name and email address? And I looked at the form and I forgot to get a shipping address because we've never needed really shipping addresses before for anything, and I did not put shipping addresses. So I had to manually go back and find all these people and put their addresses back in. And I learned the lesson that I should have probably learned over the last 20 years. Always let Jocelyn check my work. Because Jocelyn would not have let that go out without that right? Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely not. Shane Sams: All right, on that note, that's kind of what's going on with Flip Your Life LIVE. Still again, love to have you there, flippedlifestyle.com/live. And check out my newsletter Prolific Monthly if you're having trouble advertising and promoting your brand. But we're going to go into a little question and answer here. We're going to take each other kind of through the things that are kind of holding us back right now. Because even though we've got a lot going on, even though we're getting our bandwidth back, we still feel kind of stuck in our business. We've reached a weird plateau in our business. We've got a lot going on, we've got a lot of things happening. There's a lot of good going on in our life. We see it all around us, but we feel stuck like we don't really have a plan for the future. We don't really know what the next level is. Shane Sams: We've said this before on the podcast, but it's really easy to see the future when you're in that nine to five. You know you want to quit your job. You know you want to go out there and scale and make more money than you're making now at your nine to five. You know you want to spend more time with your kids. But now we're kind of like what happens next? What's the next part? We've built this business that's impacting hundreds of lives all over the world. What does the next level look like? And as we've wrestled with that this summer especially, we've been stuck. We've been totally stuck. We've had trouble setting goals. We've had trouble figuring out how to grow things. And we've kind of looked at each other and been in this ... What would you call it? It's almost like a ... What's it called? Like a stationary orbit. We're just kind of circling the earth, doing our thing, but we don't really know what's going to happen next right? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's been a kind of unusual last couple of years, but I mean even the last little bit. We have our community, which is awesome, and we definitely have ideas of ways that we want to grow, but there have been a few things, like the live event, and some other things that we'll get into in just a little bit. But it's just made it more difficult for us to figure out what we're doing. And I think part of it is because when we started our kids were super young. Our son Isaac was three and our daughter was 18 months old. Their lives obviously were a lot different at that time because they were babies and they didn't have anything to do after school, and they didn't go to school. And because our kids are now growing up, Isaac's 10 and Anna's eight, they are involved in more things, and their lives are getting more complicated, which makes our lives more complicated. Jocelyn Sams: We're starting to wrestle with things like how much screen time is appropriate, how much exercise do they need, all these types of things. Shane Sams: What friends should they be hanging out with? And we're having to manage their relationships while we manage our relationship, while we literally interact ... I can't tell you guys how many people we interact with a day through our forums, in our private coaching program, online we get emails all the time, social media posts. We probably interact with 100 to 200 people a day. And we're still trying to sort out ... We have a marriage that we have to work on and we have kids and they have problems. Isaac has had a lot of anxiety in the last year or two. He's had a lot of things that we've had to wrestle with and look at that and be like, we don't know how to deal with this. So we've talked to counselors. We go to counseling with Isaac and we talk about his problems, we talk about our problems, and we talk about all the things that we have in our life. Shane Sams: So we're dealing with all the life stuff. I don't want you guys to ever look at our Instagram and think it's perfect. We talk about that all the time. We actually have a joke that the more perfect someone's Instagram is, the more likely they probably are to be getting divorced. We look at each other and we're like, we have all these things that we have to deal with and we have to struggle with. We're together all the time. Jocelyn and I wrestle with that. We work together, we hang out together, we have parenting together, we have our marriage. There's so many things that are going on. Life is just really, really complicated now. Jocelyn Sams: And if you, like us, are raising kids right now in this time, there is no owner's manual for this time. When our parents were raising us all this technology wasn't available. Shane Sams: There was not internet. There was no cyber bullying. Jocelyn Sams: And there's really nowhere for us to go for support. We're having to figure this out in realtime and figure out what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, how do we control this? There's just so many things going on in our heads and that mental stress has been really tough for me. So let's kind of get into that just a little bit. Let's talk about ... We always ask people on the show, what are some internal fears or obstacles that are holding you back? Shane Sams: I think the biggest internal fear or struggle that I'm having right now is definitely comparison syndrome. They say comparison is the thief of joy. And as we've gotten around more successful people ... I'm in a really good mastermind right now with a lot of really great guys that are doing really cool things in their businesses. As we compete for those top spots in the podcast rankings, we see other people who are our peers, who kind of came up with us, who are ahead of us and there's a lot of competitiveness in this space, a lot of ego in this space, and I really find myself down in the dump sometimes comparing myself to other people and saying, "Our podcast is better than that. Why don't we get more downloads and why don't we get more shares, what are we doing wrong?" And I just really struggle a lot with comparing myself to people. Almost where it's oppressive. I feel bad about myself because we don't do something someone else does. Or I see someone who's doing other things. Shane Sams: I know deep down, logically, that person is giving up something to get more results in a certain area. Whether it's more money in ads, whether it's time with their family, whether it's something else, I know there's something. I don't know the whole story, but comparison really is the thing I'm struggling with I think the most in our business right now. And it gets me down. I get depressed sometimes. I feel sometimes like nothing I do is good enough in our business, or all the efforts that we take should have put us at the top of the mountain and top of the rankings and the top of the search results, but it just doesn't and that really gets me down sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and it drives me crazy. I think it's a man thing. I don't know. Shane Sams: What do you mean? Jocelyn Sams: I don't know. I think it's because you're just in a mastermind with men and I think men are just kind of naturally competitive in that way, like you just want to be the top dog or whatever. I don't know. Because I don't really deal with that a lot. I mean I don't really look at a lot of competition I guess. I do a little bit. Like I'll scroll through Instagram or whatever and I might see a few things here and there, but I try to shield myself from some of the comparison because I don't want to go to that place. So maybe that's part of it. Shane Sams: A part of me likes being pushed, and then a part of me thinks about the bible and it's like run your own race. Every runner runs the race to win it, but what race are you really running? I read a great devotional about this probably about two weeks ago that really helped, and it was talking about hey, it's not about running someone else's race and you should live your life cheering other people on in their race. Like when you see someone else doing something good, you should cheer them on, and then you run your race. What are your goals? What are your aspirations? Where is your finish line? That's what you're running to. But it's so easy to say that out loud and it's so easy to read that in a devotional. It's just really hard to apply it. And I can definitely think of probably a couple days a month over the last year where that has derailed me. It's knocked me out. And I find it happens most when something good happens. Shane Sams: For example, last week we launched Prolific Monthly. I was on a high when we got it done. But when I emailed the files in and I looked out and I thought about what other people were doing and other people this, and I got kind of down yesterday. It was like a crash almost from the high of launching the product. And I think that was just that comparison thing creeping back in. So that's been my biggest internal fear or struggle lately and it's something I'm going to have to work on right now. What's yours? What's the biggest fear or mindset issue that's holding you back right now? Jocelyn Sams: Well, mine is definitely a mindset thing in general. I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast in past episodes, but I haven't really delved into it too much. I want to talk a little bit about my mental health. I've had kind of a rough time for a couple years now, and actually it's funny because some people have noticed this. I've gotten some messages about it. People just concerned, and I appreciate all of those. Shane Sams: People from the podcast and stuff? Jocelyn Sams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Shane Sams: They could hear a difference? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, we've talked about that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And for a long time I couldn't even listen to our podcast because I sounded just so bad. And I didn't really realize how bad it had gotten. But I went down to Mexico this past March with some friends and some business people that I mastermind with, and we were talking one night and all of this stuff just kind of came spilling out, and I realized how bad this really was. And I've been doing some different things to try to improve. I've always had a lot of anxiety, but I just started really struggling with it and I just couldn't even really do anything. I couldn't do work. I couldn't do anything. I was just paralyzed I guess. And poor Shane, he's been shouldering so much of the burden of the business and everything else because I just couldn't do it. I just reached a place where it was just getting, even a little bit scary. Jocelyn Sams: The good news is I have gone somewhere and I am getting help from a professional. I have started some medication, which has helped me immensely. And I feel like I'm on the right track to getting better and getting more involved in the business, and pushing things forward. So that is definitely a good thing. So I think that, for me, has been the hardest thing. And then on top of that, this last December a lot of you guys have listened to the podcast about where we decided to take our kids out to homeschool them. And I was already not doing well, but I knew it was something that Shane really wanted so I decided to tough it out and try to do it anyway, and it was just not a good thing for me, especially at this time. I love my kids, but just having the mental health issues and bringing them home all at the same time was not great for me. Shane Sams: Yeah. And we're actually sending our kids back to school. We did our best. We gave it a shot. No regrets. But for right now in our life, with our business, with our community, with each other and our individual health we just said hey, let's go back to school, let's get the kids back where they're going everyday, let's get on a consistent schedule, and let's try to sort this stuff out. And it's funny because watching this happen over the last couple years ... A lot of things changed in our life. We sold a business. That was a huge transition for us when we sold elementarylibrarian.com. I think that was one of the things where I remember you kind of turning the corner into a different space in your head. Jocelyn Sams: Well it's almost like a death for me. That was my baby. It was something that I had grown from the ground up. And it went to someone else. And I realized through this process that I can't even go to the website anymore, and I've unfollowed everything on social media. I just can't bear to look at it. I think that was a part of it. I think there were a lot of other things that contributed to this anxiety and even some depression along the way, but like I said, I'm on a good road now. I hope that we're able to move forward and things just continue to look up. Shane Sams: And it's funny because, just always remember we fully recognize that we are very blessed. We have had good fortune. We have put ourselves in the right place at the right time, but while we were in those right places we made great contacts, we met the right people that helped us do the right things, and we are fully aware that we live a very blessed life. We've got a dream house and a dream property. All of our needs are met. We have a great life. But what I've learned, mental health can creep in guys at any time. It can come in and it can attack you, it can attack your family, and whether it's spiritual, mental, physical, whatever it is, you can be living your best life and still inside your head be struggling. Shane Sams: I remember the conversation I had with Jocelyn about counseling, and I said, "You got to talk to somebody. We've got to talk to somebody about this." And then Jocelyn had to talk to me about, "Hey, maybe medicine will help me a little bit." Because I'm kind of scared of medicine a little bit. That's probably a weakness of mine is I'm not real big on taking medicine. Maybe it's fear because I don't understand it. But we've had these conversations and through counseling, through the medication, through working through this, I can see a dramatic improvement in the last two or three months. Incredible. It makes me happy because you're happy. Shane Sams: So don't listen to all these entrepreneur gurus who are like, "Tough it out. Work 90 hours. Suck it up. Be an individual. Be tough." You've got to get help when you need help. And you might need help at the bottom of your journey, when nothing's going right. And you may need help at the top of your journey when everything from the outside is going perfect. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's the thing is like, I am an expert at burying this deep down. I've been doing it for years. And it took me a long time to get anyone to take me seriously. I had gone to a couple of different people and they're like, "Oh, you seem fine. You don't seem depressed." And I'm like- Shane Sams: Everything in your life is perfect. You're getting your work done. You're doing this, you're doing that. A lot of people listen to you, blah, blah, blah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I was like, okay, apparently I'm fine, and I just kept going and kept going and kept going. And I did do things to try to get better. I did an online counseling thing for a while. I tried massage. I tried physical therapy because I was having some issues with my neck because I was holding that tension and anxiety in my neck and my upper back. I tried that. I tried something called dry needling. I mean I did all the work. I did all the things to try to get better. I did meditation, which I still do now. And it might have improved some, but I think I was just so far into that spiral I just couldn't come out on my own. It sort of feels like you're drowning and just your nose and mouth are about the water. So you can breathe, but you can't do much else. And that's pretty much how I felt for a long time. So I would just encourage you, if you're feeling that way, go and get some help. Find someone who actually believes you, especially if you're good at hiding things. Jocelyn Sams: My psychiatrist that I go to, she said really most people who are in your situation, they wouldn't even be able to function. And I was able to function fairly well in some circumstances, not all. And I think that that's deceiving to people. They think well, if you can do well in this area then you're totally fine, when I definitely wasn't totally fine. So anyway, I've been working with this particular person since March and I have seen a very drastic improvement, which is very good. So anyway, if you're struggling I encourage you to get some help. Shane Sams: There's online counseling. There's people in your community. We drive an hour and a half to get to the person that Jocelyn works with now. So we drive 30 minutes to go get some counseling with Isaac to help him with his anxiety that he's experiencing. Wherever you got to go don't let your success trick you into thinking you've got this. And if it's holding you back from success, take care of that first. Jocelyn Sams: All right, what else do you feel like is holding you back right now as far as the business goes? Shane Sams: I think probably the biggest business thing that I'm struggling with right now is really building a team and becoming a true CEO. Jocelyn and I really value our time, our freedom, and I think sometimes that makes us a little scared of leadership. Which is hilarious because we have this community of hundreds of people that we lead. And we have this podcast listenership in the thousands. I was reading the other day that only 18% of podcasts actually have recorded an episode in the last three months. So I'm like, okay, we're already in that 18% and then I look and we're always in the top 20 of business and marketing. So we're probably one of the bigger podcasts in business and marketing. We're not the biggest but we're definitely up there. And it makes me laugh when I'm like, man, I struggle with leading and growing our team. We can grow our audience, we can grow our community, but we don't really grow our team. Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I have been burned on employees in the last couple years a number of times. We've made bad hires, we've struggled to get through those bad hires, to fire those bad hires, and to do different things. And we've always really resisted hiring people, especially full-time people. I feel like for the first time right now ... We were up to 14 people working with us and now we're down to probably six, counting a couple of contractors. But I'm really super happy with the people that we have now. I see the difference in what paying people and hiring really good employees makes a difference. Our executive assistant is incredible. Our personal assistant is incredible. Our editor is awesome. And we've got a couple really good contractors. Like for the first time I feel like we hired a contractor for our InfusionSoft account who's really super attentive and does a really good job and always gets things right the first time. We've just seen a difference that hiring can make lately. And I was at a mastermind retreat with my mastermind. Shane Sams: We drove down to Nashville for a couple of days and we all met together. We rented an Airbnb and we stayed and we just put it out there. Like what do you guys see that's holding us back? And without question every man at the table said it's your team. You guys won't hire. You're trying to do everything by yourself again and you're really taking this all upon yourself and you have this fear of growing your team because you know it will make your job different. I know it won't just be us on the mic and just us leading cool courses and just us helping people in our forums or at our Q&As. It'll be okay, we've got to manage this team, we've got to have a meeting on Mondays and we've got to say hey, you do this, you do this. You're in charge of marketing. You're in charge of sales. You're in charge of customer retention. You're in charge of X, you're in charge of Y, you're in charge of Z. And there's going to be a different vibe there. But I also know that we have a mission to grow our business to a point where we can reach as many people as possible. Shane Sams: And it is not going to be possible to go to the next level without a true team. Full-time employees, benefits, running an actual bigger type corporation. I know that's really on my mind right now from a business perspective and I've got to learn how to hire better. I've got to learn how to fire faster. I've got to learn what people need to do their job correctly. We've got to be able to sacrifice something to hire these people, income and things like that, and I know hiring at a high level is where we want to go. So I've been reading a lot of books. I've been getting up every morning and reading three devotionals on leadership. I've got this one called ... It's the Maxwell Daily Promises or something like that and it's a bible devotional based for leaders. And then I've got another one called Jesus CEO. I've been reading a chapter of that every morning. And I've got another one called Make It Better or something like that where it's like daily devotionals about mindset. Shane Sams: So I've been pouring leadership teachings into my brain. I've been reading this amazing book called Who. I think it's by ... Is his name Geoff Smart or Geoffrey Smart? Jocelyn Sams: I'm not really sure. Shane Sams: It's smart is his last name, but it's called Who, W-H-O, and it's all about creating amazing job descriptions and figuring out what you want and who's going to lead your team, and putting all that together because we've kind of started moving toward hey, we're going to figure this out on how to hire. We're going to slow down, become great leaders, and maybe start hiring people next year. So I know that the scariest thing on my plate Jocelyn is hiring people. Because we're talking real salaries. Not freelancers, not contractors, people that work for us, that we're responsible for them and their family, and they are responsible to go to bed at night thinking about Flipped Lifestyle and how we can reach more families like you guys who are listening and convince you to take the leap and start and grow an online business and stick with it until the end. Shane Sams: So that's the big thing, I guess, for me is just it's time to grow up and become a CEO. And that's kind of terrifying because I don't really want to grow up. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's definitely scary for me. I don't know. It's just a new level I guess. For me, there are several things that are holding me back right now. But I think that one of them is a fear of success, which we've talked about on the podcast before. And the reason that I fear it a little bit is because I know that with more success and potentially notoriety, comes a lot of negative things. And we always have haters no matter what we do, but I feel like the more successful and the more visible you are, the more hate you are going to get. And that's hard for me because people will bring things up that you're already self conscious about and it just makes you feel really, really bad. So that's part of it for me. I just don't want to have to worry about it. And I guess I don't want affirmation of something that I already see in myself that I don't like. Jocelyn Sams: So that scares me a little bit. Also, I feel just kind of lost right now in the business. We sold Elementary Librarian a while back a couple of years ago and that still bothers me. I feel like that is something that's holding me back a little bit is just not knowing exactly what I'm doing and Shane and I have a lot of differences a lot of times because we do both own this business. We have very different ideas about what we should do and how we should do it, and I think sometimes that holds us back because we don't really get a solid plan, we just sort of go on our way. And then we're like, "Well what are you doing?" "Well I don't know, what are you doing?" Shane Sams: And there's not third vote. There's no third vote to help us, in the moment, figure things out sometimes. I think in the last year especially, we froze in those moments. When we are at the fork in the road and Jocelyn wants to go left and Shane wants to go right, we both just kind of don't hit the brake and go off road right down the middle and crash. So it is hard. It's just really hard. It's a different dynamic. A lot of the people that we're in masterminds with, they are solo in charge of their business and their spouse is not involved, and it's like we have a dynamic that we have to deal with that I don't think anyone else really understands unless you're working with your spouse. It's really hard to get that. So we've got to figure out better ways to either do both ideas, or figure out a compromise, or do one idea and not freeze. I think we froze in the last year and it's kind of hurt our growth a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: I think it's hard for us too because we are very different, but in some ways we're very similar. We both like to control things, and when you have two people who want to control things, that can be a little bit difficult. So I miss having my own projects that I can control and I can do all on my own. And I haven't really had that in a while. So I'm hoping that when we start this hiring process that we can sort of, I guess- Shane Sams: Create capacity to be able to explore other ideas, or something like that? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and just we would have more defined roles. Right now we sort of do everything and we try to reach some kind of consensus together, but that's kind of hard to do sometimes. Shane Sams: All right, so let's talk about action steps. Let's wrap this thing up here a little bit. Jocelyn what do you think your next steps are? Now that we've kind of talked about all these things and we kind of see some things, some chapters coming to an end and some other chapters turning the page and opening up, like what do you think your next steps are? Not in the next 24 hours, but in the next 24 months. What does that look like? What do you think you want to do? What's your vision or something you want to explore basically? Jocelyn Sams: The first thing is I'm going to continue to get well. I talked earlier about dealing with anxiety and all that kind of stuff. So I'm continuing to work on that. That's really my number one mission is just to get well. And beyond that I've had some ideas about wanting to expand into brick and mortar and service based businesses, and also some ideas about maybe going on some destination type trips for our live events. And I talked about that a little bit earlier. So again, if you're interested in something like that, let us know at flippedlifestyle.com/survey. So that's some of the things that are on my mind. I have a few other things also, but I'm trying to just take it one step at a time for right now. Shane Sams: I think that's a good tip for our listeners too. You don't have to know in the moment what to do next as long as you're at least thinking about what the next step is. It's not always about just being so decisive that you do something. I mean that's really where we want to go, but I love how you were just wrestling with it and thinking about it and just trying those things. I think what I really want to just keep working on is hiring. I've got another mastermind here at the end of August coming up where we're meeting back. We're basically starting to meet two or three times a year and focusing on goals for the next mastermind. And I really want to have a good idea in my head what the team is going to look like a year from now. And I want me and you Jocelyn to kind of talk through that. Jocelyn's reading the book Who with me. We're going to go make these scorecards out for these employees. Shane Sams: I just want to make sure that we're hiring A+, just amazing people. Like world class people to help us grow a world class brand. And also just to myself just to keep growing up, keep filling my head with leadership and knowing this was where it has to go because we can't scale ... We've always envisioned Flipped Lifestyle being the brand for the masses. All these people have such closed doors and they position themselves where no one can get to them and they have all these high end products. I was just listening to a guy the other day and he was like, "You should never sell to the masses. Screw the masses. Go find rich people with a lot of money and get some of their money." And I'm like, what a terrible thing. I want to give everyone in America, every family, every person that wants to change their future, an opportunity to start, build, and grow their business and change their life like we did. We were working people. We were school teachers in southeast Kentucky and we made it out of that and found a way. Shane Sams: I want to show people that path and I don't want to close that off. But I want to make sure that we have the team in place to keep Flipped Lifestyle a lower cost membership, a place where anyone can go learn this stuff, and then reach as many of those people as possible, and we're just not going to be able to do that alone. I think for me, especially over the next six months, is just one, learning how to be a leader, how to hire people. Two, doing things that we can do right now to increase revenue to make sure we have plenty of extra revenue streams to hire these people. And then go find those people. Shane Sams: I may actually put a question on the survey. If you are interested in even working with the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and you have experience in retention or marketing, or we're going to be looking for a web content manager. If you love our content and you love this kind of content and you've got experience producing this kind of content. I may put a couple of questions on the survey and you can just go tell us that you're interested in working with us and when we get these job forms ready to go maybe you can apply for some of those jobs. Just stuff like that. I think just hiring is my number one focus for the next six months. And we'll see where it goes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay guys, we are going to wrap this thing up, but we would love to hear from you. I know some of you guys are out there listening and maybe you've never interacted with us and you think that we don't even know that you're out there listening. But we look all the time, we see people in different countries that are listening, different states, and we want to hear from you. So if you want to give us some feedback about our podcast and some other things that we're doing, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/survey. We have not even created the survey as of right now, but we will- Shane Sams: By the time you hear this it will be created. We're recording this a little bit early. So we're going to go make that survey as soon as we get done recording today. Jocelyn Sams: So check it out and give us some feedback. We want to hear from you. And that means all of you, even you lurkers who don't want to communicate. Shane Sams: Don't be shy y'all. Come fill out the survey. And also too, this is episode 300, seriously, I have a question for you. Why have you not joined the Flip Your Life Community? We are the most affordable, largest community of family focused entrepreneurs on the planet. Guys, you need to come and check out what's going on. We have a super active community. People in there helping each other. People just like you. We literally have all the training you need to get started online. We can show you how to get your idea. We can help you build your product. We can help you set up your website. Jocelyn Sams: And if you've been a member before, come back. We want you back. We have people come back all the time. We welcome you with open arms. Shane Sams: Yeah, we have all kinds of different price points. Maybe you just need training courses right now. Maybe you just want to walk into the shallow end of the pool. Well we have a plan for that. Maybe you want to interact with me and Jocelyn twice a month literally live on our Q&As. They're the funnest times of the month for us because we get to hang out with dozens and dozens of you guys from all over the world inside of those Q&As so that we can help you take your next steps just like we do on our podcast. Or maybe you need additional help. Maybe you need help promoting stuff. Maybe you need help working one on one. Whatever it is guys, we created this for you. That's what the Flip Your Life Community is. It's not about me and Jocelyn. We've already done it. It's about you and your family's future. Sometimes I get frustrated with you guys because I know we have thousands upon thousands of people listening to us every single week and so many of you just have never taken action. Maybe you have listened to all 300 episodes of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and you haven't done anything yet. Shane Sams: Well, it's time. I want to challenge you here today on our 300th episode of the podcast. Five years of doing this. If you have never taken that leap of faith, go join today at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We've got plans where you can join for as little as $19 a month. You can get coaching from us on our Q&As twice a month for $49 a month. That's our premium level membership. I highly recommend that you go try it. Give it a try. If you don't ever try it you'll never succeed. If you don't do this now, then when will you ever do it? Guys it's time to take action and go out there and check out all the things that we have for you inside of the Flip Your Life Community. So go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and join today. Draw a line in the sand, let's make it happen. We'll help you do it together. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up episode 300. It has been an amazing ride for five years doing this podcast. We commit to you that we will be here for you every single week helping people from the Flip Your Life Community change their lives. Helping you by letting you listen in to those calls. And we've got a lot of great plans, a lot of surprises for you, coming up on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We want to make sure we're bringing you the best content and giving you and your family the best chance at a better future. So thank you so much for listening. We are so grateful and so thankful for all the people that send us messages, follow us on social media, and join our community and listen every single week. And we want to be here for another 300 episodes with you guys. Shane Sams: So thanks for tuning in. Until next time, get out there, take action. Join the Flip Your Life Community. Get started today and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you next time. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Listener Survey PROLIFIC Monthly Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Sarah sell without being too salesy or spammy. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Sarah sell without being too salesy or spammy. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is so great to be with you today. Wherever you're listening to the show, thank you for listening. We're really excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show, so that we can help them overcome fears, breakthrough obstacles and take action on the next steps in their online business. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member, Sarah Cottrell. Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah Cottrell: Hi, thanks so much for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Welcome Sarah, I'm actually sensing a little theme here in the podcast. If you listened a couple weeks ago, we had another attorney on, and Sarah of course is an attorney. Tell us a little bit about you, your background and your online business. Sarah Cottrell: Well, so I worked as a lawyer for the last decade. I graduated from law school in 2008, and last summer, after the last of our kids was born, I left my legal job to stay home with them. My path through being a lawyer was a pretty common story. This is true for a lot of lawyers, which is that I started practicing, and pretty early on realized it was not for me in the longterm. However, we had a lot of student loan debt, and I say we because my husband is also a lawyer. We actually met in law school and combined between the two of us, we had over $400,000. Jocelyn Sams: Ouch! Shane Sams: Oh my God. That is a lot of scary mountainous debt, especially when you're like, "I'm not going to use this degree anymore," right? Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. It's basically like you have a mortgage, except there's no asset associated with it other than your own blood, sweat and tears. Shane Sams: Wow, that's unbelievable. Are you still in debt? Sarah Cottrell: No, we paid off all of our debt last June, so June of 2018. Shane Sams: Well done, congratulations. Sarah Cottrell: Thank you. Shane Sams: I can't even imagine having that much debt coming out of college. Jocelyn Sams: What a weight lifted, oh my goodness. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I was about two years in to practicing when I realized, "This is just not for me in the longterm." When you have over $400,000 in debt, you can't just chalk it all and leave. We had to make a plan to get out, and it had to be a longterm plan. You know a lot of personal finance guru types will say, "Do all these things and cut everything down, and then pay off your debt in like 5 months and then you'll be great." Well, when you have a mortgage size level of debt, you have to have a little bit of a longer term plan that is survivable for five or 10 years in my case. That's what we did. Sarah Cottrell: We made a plan and got out of debt, and that enabled us to be in a position where I was able to stay home with our kids. I also have started doing some writing on the side, which is something that I've always been interested in. With a full-time job and young kids, especially a job that was a lot of research and writing, not a lot of time for writing. Shane Sams: Well for one thing, what's crazy when you were telling your story I was like, "How was 2008 over 10 years ago?" I saw this thing on Facebook the other day, and it was like, people of a certain age you always think the 70s are 30 years ago. I do think that. I'm like, when was 1970? What, 30 years ago? When was 1980? What, 20 years ago? Really, 1980 was like almost 40 years ago and it doesn't seem like that in my brain. Sarah Cottrell: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: When you said, 2008, I was like, how was that 10 years ago for one thing. Then getting out of debt in that short amount, that actually is a short amount of time to me to get out of $400,000 in debt. That's crazy that you did that. That's one of the things that hang people up that we always find coming into the community, is like, "Well, you know I got this college degree. Then I was in this career, and I've got so much time invested in this career, that I just don't want to pivot." I'm like kudos for you for having the guts to say, "Yeah, I'm not going any further. Two years is enough, even though I've invested all of this, I'll figure out how to use this later in my life." Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. Well, and I think for lawyers in particular, you are trained to be extremely risk averse. What you're talking about the sunk costs fallacy that I have all this money and time invested into it, so I can't leave, that's a very strong, mental obstacle for many lawyers. Shane Sams: For sure. Sarah Cottrell: For us, I mean I'm two years in I'm thinking, "I don't want to be a lawyer forever," but I still worked as a lawyer for another eight years. Shane Sams: You had an end game in mind. Sarah Cottrell: Exactly. Shane Sams: That's institutionalized though in almost all businesses and industries. The day I resigned from my job, I slid the letter of resignation over to my principal and he looks at me and he goes, "Man, are you sure?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm 100% positive." Then he goes, he's like, "But how long have you been teaching?" I was like, I said, "Nine years I'm going on my tenth year." He goes, "Nine years, and you're just going to throw all that away? You're just going to throw all that retirement away?" I looked at him and I was like, "Yeah, but there's 18 left before I can retire. I'm not just going to sit here for 18 more years." Sarah Cottrell: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Just because we put nine years in, I mean. Shane Sams: Yeah, I don't care how much time I've got put in it, I've got the rest of my life to live. Anybody listening out there, you know Jocelyn and I full degrees, masters degrees, all this education. Taught for almost a decade, we bailed, because we wanted to go a different direction. Sarah was a lawyer, she didn't want to be. $400,000 invested in her education, and decided to do something different. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I'll tell you, I was looking yesterday because I have one pesky student loan left, and it doesn't have a large balance, but we have one left. Shane Sams: The reason is, I'll tell you why we keep that loan, this is so morbid. If you die, those go away. Sarah Cottrell: I feel you, yes. Shane Sams: We're like, we could pay it off early, or we could just use it as a reverse insurance policy if something ever happens. Totally morbid logic for why we still have the student loan. Jocelyn Sams: Well I was looking yesterday just to see how much was... Jocelyn Sams: Not that much left on it, but anyway, that loan is for an MBA that I never finished. To this day I am paying every month, it just comes out automatically whatever, I pay every month for a degree I didn't even get. You know what, it's part of my life experience. It's part of the reason that I am the person I am today. I don't have any regrets. I'm not sitting here every month going, "Oh you know I'm still paying for this degree that I don't even have." I don't even think about it. It's just part of my life, it's something I did. Jocelyn Sams: Somebody, is it Dave Ramsey that calls it the stupid tax? It's a stupid tax, we've paid a lot of stupid tax in our life. Shane Sams: We've paid a whole lot of stupid tax in our lives. It's all part of the story and it gets you to where you're supposed to be at. Sarah Cottrell: Exactly, yes. I mean to me, and this is part of why I created Former Lawyer, just because you put a lot of time and money into something, if it's not working for you, to say, "Well I'm just going to keep doing it for another one, two, three, maybe even four decades," is actually crazy. Especially because lawyers are so risk averse, it's very hard to get over that hurdle and say, "I'm going to spend the next five years getting myself out of this situation into a better situation, even though ultimately that's what's going to be better for you in the long run." Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you mentioned just there in passing what it is that you're doing now. You left your job and you started a website. Tell us a little bit about that. Sarah Cottrell: The site is called formerlawyer.com, and the purpose or the overall purpose of Former Lawyer is to provide support and inspiration to unhappy lawyers, who want to make a career change. Right now what that looks like is, there's a blog. There's a podcast I'm actually starting to record episodes this week. What I'll be doing is, in each episode I'm going to be interviewing a lawyer, a former lawyer, someone who used to work as a lawyer and now works in some sort of other career. Sarah Cottrell: My goal is also to have some membership component, but that's the piece that I am still working on. The other pieces I have a little bit more clarity. Shane Sams: For one thing, that's an amazing domain name formerlawyer.com. That's a masterclass in naming your business, because it's helped everything about what it is. Like the Former Lawyer Podcast, the Former Lawyer blog, formerlawyer.com. It's just so tight and good and it's a two word domain. Jocelyn Sams: That two word .com, like that is almost impossible to come by. Shane Sams: That is an awesome domain name and a name for your business. It's when you say it out loud, I can envision it like a miserable lawyer is driving to court to represent some dude or a lady in a divorce, that he just doesn't even want to be in court that day. He's listening to your podcast, interviewing someone who broke out of the prison. He hears that, and she hears that, and it's like hope. I could totally do that. Shane Sams: You said something interesting in your intake form that you filled out before you were on the podcast. "I don't see myself as a guru that tells people, "Do this," and end up where I am. This is more of just a John Lee Dumas model where you're not claiming to be the guru. You're just interviewing people who have done this and giving people ideas, and pushing them out that way. Is that what I'm getting from that? I'm I hearing that correctly? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Part of that is, every person's issues are so individualized. There are strengths, there are financial situation, whether they have a spouse or don't have a spouse or a significant other. There are just so many things that impact when you're making a plan for example to get out of debt, how long it will take. What it is that you actually want to do, and so there are some people out there who are former lawyers, who do specifically career coaching, where they're telling someone like, "Here's what you need to do. This is the job that you should be looking for," and those sorts of things. Sarah Cottrell: What I see as a need is, less so the, "Here let me tell you exactly what you specific person should be doing." More this idea of, it can feel really lonely. One, because you're like, "I'm I the only crazy person who doesn't actually want to be a lawyer? Is thinking about walking away from this thing that I put all this money and time into?" Also, it can feel like a lot of... My family and friends who are like, "What are you doing? You're throwing away this thing that they perceive as though great, because they don't necessarily understand all of the drawbacks of what it is to work as a lawyer. Shane Sams: For sure. Sarah Cottrell: Then also it's just the length of time. I mean, again, we're not necessarily talking about someone saying, "I want to get out," and they do three months and they're out. We're talking about sometimes two, three, four, five, 10 years. That's a long time to be doing something on your own without other people saying, "Hey, you're doing great, you're going to get out. Keep going." Shane Sams: Sure. I think that's really good, that's really, really good. It just fits the motif of the Former Lawyer. People will look at you like, what was the guy's name? What was Morgan Freeman's character's name? Gosh from Shawshank Redemption? Somebody go send me that on Facebook message. Oh Andy Dufresne. It's like you're Andy Dufresne, you got out. You got out of the prison, you're in Mexico on the beach. It's like whatever. You're the other side of where they want to be, like the story. We always say instant street cred, you did it once, you don't have to do it more than that, right? To be this expert that can actually present this story, and then show other stories of other people who've made it. That's awesome. Shane Sams: You've got a lot going on. You've got a lot of stuff that you've created, and you're already creating content. How many blog posts do you have on formerlawyer.com? Sarah Cottrell: I think that there are about, I want to say eight or nine currently. Shane Sams: Good. Sarah Cottrell: I have stuff scheduled to post three times a week. I'm currently only batching like for a week ahead. Shane Sams: This is still in the beginning of everything, right, it's all been created? Sarah Cottrell: Oh yeah, like June, it all launched in June. Shane Sams: When did you buy that domain name? Sarah Cottrell: Oh years ago. I mean before I even knew when I was going to be getting out of the law. Shane Sams: Give me an estimate of when you bought that. Sarah Cottrell: It was three to five years ago. Shane Sams: All of you people sitting on your old dusty domains that you bought five years ago, dust them off and get to work. You all get some blog posts going, it's time to start building that online business. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you started working on content. First of all three times a week is very ambitious, and I applaud you for trying to do it. I don't know that it's 100% necessary, like it might take some pressure off you for now just to schedule the post out for like once a week. Shane Sams: Yeah. I would not go... Sarah Cottrell: Okay, sorry. Shane Sams: Be prolific with your promotion, not necessarily your content in the beginning. We have three rules, like one, be consistent with your content, for us that's a weekly podcast. Could be more, could be less, but we're going to have a podcast. Two, be prolific with your promotion, that's like sharing and ads and things like that. Write one post and promote it for seven days, then write another post. Then relentlessly sell, like sell every day to your list. Sell everyday on your social media. Sell every time somebody asks you a question, because everybody's only one question away from giving you money. Shane Sams: Think of it that way like when you're thinking about being consistent and being prolific, especially in the beginning. Like Jocelyn said, you can burn yourself out really fast, and we don't want you to be formerblogger.com in about six weeks. Sarah Cottrell: I think one of the reasons that I have been so prolific with content since starting not that long ago, it goes back to one of the concerns that I have of, I want to feel like I'm providing value. It's this issue in my mind of, oh well I need to show that I have something to provide. Therefore, I think I've been focusing more on the content creation, because I don't want to feel like I'm selling nothing. Does that make sense? Shane Sams: It does for sure, and that's why we're going to talk about this here in a few minutes when we get to your business question. I don't hear a lot of talking about what you're selling, what the product is. I was reading a book this morning. I've got this book on leadership and it said, let me word this correctly. "Our society loves the sound of hammers." We love the sound of the hammer and the nail and the building of things, but nobody likes to make a plan. Shane Sams: That's the thing is, you can have a pile of wood, a box of nails and a truck load of hammers. You can throw the workers out there, and you can say, "Go start hammering," see what happens and nothing will happen. It'll just be a bunch of wood hammered together, but if someone walks in and goes, "Here's the blueprint, this is the finished product. This is what we're selling. We have six weeks to put it together, let's go." That's going to create something. It's not necessarily just, "I'm going to write a blog, I'm going to start a podcast. I'm going to have a Facebook page. I started an Instagram last night. I bought-" Jocelyn Sams: "Maybe something cool will happen." Shane Sams: "Maybe something cool will happen, I'll get some value out there and people will love me." Even if you became the most popular person on earth, you would still have nothing to show for it, because there would be no product, nothing for sale. We always recommend that people start with a product first mindset, and figure out at least the basics of what it's going to look like on the end. Then it will evolve into what your customers want as you talk to them and get them. Shane Sams: You're probably just swinging a lot of hammers right now, and that's why it feels like, you're trying to get busy instead of start building a business. Jocelyn Sams: I'm going to make a little bit of an assumption here based on some of the information that you put in your form and also what I'm hearing from you. I'm assuming that you do not really want to make a type of product that basically tells people their next steps, I'm I right in that? Shane Sams: Or like what their job is or something like that? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. What I envision is something more like this. Okay, membership community where you can come in and talk with other people who are in similar stages. I actually, I'm in a writing membership, and one of the things that they do is facilitate people, forming smaller affinity groups. Say, people who are in a certain city and are looking to get out of the law. Or people who want to leave and be a stay at home parent. People who, I don't know, are getting ready to quit their job in the next twelve months, whatever. Facilitating things like that. Sarah Cottrell: Then also in terms of the podcast content, there are some questions that I'm planning to ask our guests that might be a little bit more like things they don't necessarily want, just blasting out into the entire universe. That would be stuff that would be available within the membership to members only. Shane Sams: A private place to share their concerns, not with everybody around them kind of deal. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Just the general, "I'm new and I'm trying to make a plan. What have you done people who might be in a similar situation?" The other thing is, many, many, many people who are lawyers and want to get out, have not thought about what else they want to do ever. Shane Sams: True. Sarah Cottrell: I know so many people who hit this point of, "I don't want to be doing this anymore," and they are just like, "I don't even know what's out there." Shane Sams: It's like a pro athlete that gets too old to pay, they don't know what's next. This is all they've ever done kind of deal. Sarah Cottrell: Yes, exactly. Shane Sams: Well let me jump in here really quick, because there's two things I'm hearing. I'm actually going to read this question you wrote in your form instead of let you do it, because I hear this is happening. Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Shane Sams: We have a question in our form that says, "What fears, mindset and obstacles are holding you back?" You say, "I don't want to be spammy, I don't want to be salesmany or seem like I'm trying to sell people something unrealistic." I hear a dramatic fear of commitment to your product, because you don't want to go sell something to somebody. I really feel like this might be like a major issue holding you back. When I'm looking through everything you've done, you've done everything but address. You've thought about the product or the membership, but it just sounds like with all of your questions and everything, like you're scared to sell these lawyers' something. Shane Sams: Is it because you feel it's like you're selling a dream to them, or you're selling hope to them? What is this fear of maybe even selling yourself a little bit, that you have that's keeping you from saying, "Hey, this is the product, I know people will join it. Let me write a sales page for this right now,"? What is that? This is a membership. Right now I don't hear a lot of content, so it's almost this could be opened next week if you really wanted to. Something's keeping you from doing that. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I think the primary thing is, well they're two things. One is the more, I don't know, high level meta thing, which is that I feel like many lawyers were sold a certain line of what their life is going to be like. Then they got into the law, and that wasn't accurate for them. And, I do not want to. Well I know there's a lot of value in what I'm wanting to provide. I do not want people to feel like I'm saying, "Join this membership and everything in your life will magically become better. You will be just like me and you will be able to leave the law." Shane Sams: What you really don't want is, you were sold that lie, and you resent the lie that you were sold. You don't want to be resented by someone else the way you resent being a lawyer. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I don't want to prey on people's desperation to get out of the law. Shane Sams: You're not. You're not doing that, that's not true. You're not doing that. Sarah Cottrell: That is accurate. Shane Sams: You're wanting to help people, so that's the truth. Now, you can't help that the fact is they are desperate. They are desperate for a career change, they are desperate to get out. They are desperately in debt and might need someone to show them how to handle that. It's not your fault that they're desperate, it's a fact that they're desperate. The truth is, you want to help them and show them that there is another way. The truth and the facts are not aligning with your actions here. They're not. Shane Sams: Now your feelings, one thing you said, you said the four letter word. In our house, whenever we start a sentence with, "I feel like," we go like, "Conversation stops right there, hold on. What do you mean you feel like? Is that real? Is it factual? Is that the truth?" Facts don't care about our feelings. This seems like the major mindset issue here that you're struggling with is, you feel and you've told yourself this story. You don't want the end of the story to be someone's mad at you, but that does not match the facts and the truth of the matter that your intentions are good. They are desperate and need help, and you can help them. Jocelyn Sams: This is something that goes through my mind at times also, just by the nature of what we do. There are a lot of people out there who are selling the dream. If you pay me $1,000, I will help you buy a Lamborghini. Shane Sams: For $997, all your dreams will come true, end of the webinar, here we go. Jocelyn Sams: There are a lot of people out there who are selling that kind of dream. A lot of people out there might look at what we do and say, "Well you know you're just doing the same thing." Our truth is that, we want to help people who feel like there is no other way and they need to do something different in their life. We're here honestly to help people. It's just something that you have to reconcile with yourself, just I'm here to help people. If other people want to perceive it another way, that's their problem. It's not my problem. Shane Sams: What's that counselor friend you've got that says, what does she always say Jocelyn it's... Jocelyn Sams: Heather Gray? Shane Sams: Yeah. What's Heather say, what's the story or the... Jocelyn Sams: It's like the stories that you tell yourself. One of the things that she says to do is to say, "Some people might say this. What I want you to know is something else." Shane Sams: Right, so you said, some people might say, "I'm just preying on the desperation of lawyers who want to quit their job." Jocelyn Sams: What I want you to know is that, I felt this way. Shane Sams: I really want to help you. Jocelyn Sams: The reason that I'm doing this is because I want to help other people in the same situation. Sarah Cottrell: Yes, 100%. Shane Sams: You've got to reconcile that today. We're recording this guys, it's the fourth of July. It's the fourth of July right now you all. Jocelyn Sams: It's a holiday. Shane Sams: It's a holiday, but we're working, we're helping Sarah. We're getting after here. Listen, it's the day of freedom, so set yourself free. Be free of all that nonsense, because it is not true. You honestly, this is heavy, you may be the only person that possibly can help them. If you don't help them, then nobody else is going to say this stuff, because 99.9% of people don't want to let their family down. They don't want to quit the job. You're a doctor, a lawyer, your successful right? Shane Sams: If they don't have a trailblazer to say, "I did it. I'm going to introduce you every week to somebody else who did it," they may never hear that story that inspires hope, that gives them a chance to change their life. That's what we do and that's what you're doing. You're just doing for a different segment of the population. Okay? Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right Sarah, we're busting through the mindset issues. Now let's talk about how we are going to make some money. How can we help you with your offer? Sarah Cottrell: Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to prioritize content creation and what I'm creating, when to start selling the membership or product. How to do a beta launch if that's what I should be doing, and how to price it. Basically, all the questions. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: Basically, you're like, "I'm making blogs, I don't know what else to do." Is that what you're saying? Jocelyn Sams: We're here until the fireworks tonight in other words. Okay. All right, so let's just break this down. I think that Shane and I have some different ideas. It's going to become interesting moving forward about what we think you should do. Ultimately it's about what you want to do. Take all this in and just think about it. Basically, right now we have nothing for sale right? Sarah Cottrell: That is correct. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: You want to sell a support group for these attorneys basically? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: It doesn't seem like you want to create anything, you just want to have them to have a place to go. Is that true? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. I don't know. I think there's an asprin versus vitamin argument here a little bit, or like asprin or something we have to think about. One, I'm not sure how practical that is in my opinion, because to me it's like, it's a support group. You're alone, you want to talk to other lawyers who might want to quit their jobs, that's kind of a vitamin. There's a lot of serious headaches like, "Well how do I get out of $400,000 in debt? How do I re-identify myself as something else?" That's an asprin. Jocelyn Sams: "How do I talk to my family about why I'm doing this?" Shane Sams: Yeah, there's a lot of huge obstacles that you're going to have to solve for people like headaches. That you're going to have to provide them an asprin for, before you ever get to the vitamin. Usually the vitamin almost goes first, you know what I'm saying? The vitamins are free, the asprin cost money. If I've got a headache, I'm going to get up at midnight and run to Walmart to get some asprin, because I need to fix this headache, it hurts. If I wake up at midnight and I forgot to take my vitamin C, guess what, I'm not going to Walmart till tomorrow, it's not urgent. That's what we say when we say, is this an asprin or is this a vitamin? Shane Sams: Now I think at face value, it's a vitamin. It's like, is it really that urgent that I join this community? They might listen to your podcast, they might read your blog posts. Are they really going to go the next level if there's nothing in it to them to solve their actual practical problems that they have? Does that make sense? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: What we've got to figure out are some different ways that we can highlight the headache and make this thing where they're willing to get up out of bed, go to the computer. Get out their wallet and order the bottle of asprin. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, but before we go there, I want to present a possible other solution. Usually we will fall on the side of creating your own product and selling it. That we like that, is because that is what we have always done. However, I do think that there are some other ways, especially with things that are like this vitaminy. Where you can make money and it's a little bit less work. I just want to throw this out there and then we can talk about which way is more appealing to you. Jocelyn Sams: Basically, what I hear Shane saying is, that what you could do is address some of the hard issues that are facing people who want to get out of this field. I think what he's trying to say is that, you could create some content that would help people with these big headaches, right? Shane Sams: In a way. I think that's the draw into the membership. I think the membership is good, but I almost think that the membership itself should be totally free. It should be almost like a thing that they could sign up for and start connecting with these other attorneys, with these other lawyers. Basically, it's your lead magnet, like the forum itself, the community itself, whatever it looks like, is something you could just let listeners in. If you've got a podcast, if you've got the thing at the end of it, you say, "Hey, come join the Former Lawyer community. This is a private community that we can let people in," and have that private support group ready to go. It can be like an opt-in. Shane Sams: I know a lot of places that use forums or a community driven approach to their lead magnets. It's a place where you can go hung out. There's no barrier to entry, low hanging fruit, all that stuff. Then I was thinking in the community on your email list, you could create content that just showed how you did it. One of the things you said that really stood out to me before was, "Hey, everybody else needs other places they can pivot, they can quit their job, they can go a different direction. For a lawyer, it's a longterm plan." Shane Sams: You're not selling a, "I'll get you out of your law debt and fix careers in six months." It's, "Yo! If you want the fast plan, go somewhere else. This is the longterm plan." Then inside of that you show them content that addresses this things. You have a course called how to tell your friends and family. You have a course called how to pay off your student loan debt without being a lawyer for the next 40 years of your life. That content then is what you sell almost like an advanced tier. These people are all lawyers who are dreaming, interacting together, but then the content is led by you, and it's the lawyers who are actually taking action. You're the 20%, you're the people that are actually taking action. You're going to do it, and then maybe you do Q and As each month. That was what I was thinking. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so that's probably the way that we would do it just based on our history, and because creating content is fairly easy for us to do. Another way that popped into my head to do this, might be to... I was also on board with the free community, because in the age of social media, it's really easy to find groups of people who have something in common basically. I can go on to Facebook, I can go on to LinkedIn, I can look at these groups and find people who are probably similar to me. Jocelyn Sams: With you having the podcast, I think that's a really good vehicle for you to be able to do some other things. I think about one of the podcasts that I support. I've talked about several times on the podcast that I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and other types of media. Anyway, one of the podcasts that I support is Crime Junky, which is one of the top 10 podcast in the world right now. The reason that I support them, it's not something that I really need. It's definitely a vitamin in my life, it's not an asprin. They will create extra content for their fan club, so I joined their fan club because I love their podcast so much and I want to hear more content. I think that could be an opportunity for you. Jocelyn Sams: I think also selling affiliate products might be an opportunity for you. If you don't want to go and create all these courses, create this amazing community for people to come to and either take on sponsorships for your show of things that might be of interest to people who are leaving the law profession. Or, you could also find courses that other people have created for these same things, and be an affiliate for them. Shane Sams: Yeah, or she could even sell like other biz op stuff. There's a lot of people out there selling how to start a business, like ClickFunnels they do a lot of stuff like that. How to come up with your idea, how to set up your sales pages. They have an affiliate program to get people to sign up for ClickFunnels. There's other places that teach real estate like Bigger Pockets. They have an affiliate program I think for their stuff, where it's like learn how to do real estate instead of be a lawyer. You could promote that stuff on your podcast. Jocelyn Sams: There's probably courses out there, how to get out of enormous amounts of student loan debt. You could be an affiliate for that type of program. Shane Sams: Let's build an audience. I would only pick stuff that was high ticketed back if that was true though, because you're going to need any affiliate sales to make a lot of money. You know what I'm saying? Every time it happens, because it'll be the normal. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so let's go through some of the benefits. The benefits of having your own stuff obviously is that you get all the profit, I mean minus cost of course. Also, it is under your control, nothing's going to change all that kind of stuff. The drawback's is that it's going to take time, it's going to take energy, it's going to take effort. With the affiliate stuff, it's just the opposite, like the benefits is that it's already completed for you. You just sell it, but the drawback is that... Shane Sams: You have to build a huge audience to make affiliates work. You've got to have a good lead capture, but that could work though because of the forums. Jocelyn Sams: You don't have complete control. There are some different things that you have to consider for each side. I just want to throw that out there, it's not something that we recommend for all people. I think in this case, it might possibly work. Shane Sams: Well there's a lot of lawyers that probably hate being a lawyer. How many lawyers are there? Can you build a big enough audience of lawyers who hate their jobs to build an affiliate thing? I don't know. How many lawyers are there in the country? I'm going to look that up. Sarah Cottrell: I would have to go back and look at the data. I mean I think every year, I don't want to say a wrong number, because I'm just not completely sure. Shane Sams: Don't worry, I'm looking it up on Google. Sarah Cottrell: We're talking like... Shane Sams: We have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips here. At this time... Sarah Cottrell: The magic of Google. Shane Sams: All right, there are 450,000 lawyers right now practicing in the United States. There are 34,000 new ones every year. Let's just assume that half of those hate their job. Sarah Cottrell: Accurate. Shane Sams: Yes, so you've probably got 200. You've got an audience size of somewhere between 200 and 300,000 people to go out there and put this out there to your podcast. Then it's just a matter of converting those, either end with affiliate sales or whatever. Jocelyn, couldn't she do the affiliate sales inside of the community, like instead of her creating this stuff? On the podcast say, "Hey, come join the Former Lawyer community if you want to learn how to leave the law profession." Then you could populate it with other people's stuff that already exists, if you don't want to sell your own thing. Jocelyn Sams: Or you can also sell sponsorships on your podcast, so that's another thing that the crime podcast that I listen to they do that. Shane Sams: You could reach out to someone who sells a biz opportunity, because I don't think you're going to be able to promote this. You've got to show them a path to get out of debt and get out of their job. If you don't do that, they're not just going to go hung out for a support group, they're not going to do that. You've got to have some kind of path. You just have to figure out how to populate that path with content. Either create it yourself, or you go out and you promote other people's stuff. Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense to me. The affiliate thing that is a little bit clearer to me. The other piece, Shane that you were talking about, if I were to do my own thing, are you're saying like creating courses that I would then promote to the members in the community? Shane Sams: Yes, you would basically do... This is probably more of a free membership course driven webinar model, no matter how you do it. You're freebie is the support group. I'm trying to think this through, and then you would have maybe like weekly webinars selling a different aspect of the journey. Whether it's promoting someone else's thing or yours or something like that. You're just telling your story, like how did you get out of debt? All you've got to do is say, "I will show you how I got out of debt, which enabled me to leave the legal profession." That's a webinar, you sell the course, and it's just your steps that you took. Your plan that you created and they're open to follow it or not. Your job is not to make them follow your plan, it's to give them an opportunity to follow your plan. Jocelyn Sams: Essentially if your community's free instead of advertising other people's stuff, you would advertise your own products if that makes sense. Actually you could do both. Sarah Cottrell: That's what I was just going to ask. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you can totally do both. Sarah Cottrell: There are certain things that I feel like I could create a course, and I feel confident that it would be helpful for people. There are other things that I think would be helpful for people that I'm just not the expert on that thing. Shane Sams: Like what? Name one. What are you an expert in, let's start there? Sarah Cottrell: Well, I guess I would say the things that I feel like I know something about are one, making a longterm plan to get out of debt. Shane Sams: Boom, that's the first product right there. Jocelyn Sams: I would say getting out of debt, I would say you're probably pretty good at that. Shane Sams: An expert, you did it, you paid up for it. It doesn't matter how long it took you, right? I love this. I love the alternative pitch there too of, it's not the get rich fast it's the, "Hey look, that's not true. Those people are wrong. This is the longterm plan, this is what I did." Bam, that's the product, right? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Then like for example, I think I could talk to the people about how to start thinking about what you want to do, but in terms of specific career coaching. I want an individual person to hold my hand and help me figure out what to do. There are other people who do that, and I think do it well. I don't necessarily want to be doing that individual hand holding, but there are other people that I could refer people to, that would be helpful. Shane Sams: Okay, then this is all you have to do then. You're the bridge. That's how you get to view yourself. You build the community on your podcast. You give the Former Lawyer podcast, you give people hope by letting them hear testimonials and stories of you and other people who have actually left the legal professional and got to be debt free. You tell them, come join a bunch of other lawyers in a safe place where you can talk about not wanting to be a lawyer, it's free. Come join our free community. Shane Sams: You sell them one thing, the longterm plan to get out of debt. You can do that on a weekly webinar, where all of your members you invite them, they show up and you sell the product and the product can be $497. They're lawyers, it could be more if you wanted it to be. They've got disposable income, so you sell that. You have this nice generating, engine generating however many sales a week of thousands of dollars. At that point, and this is how all online businesses work, you sell them one thing, and then to make real money you sell the next thing. Shane Sams: Then you create a portfolio of affiliates, so you might promote twice a month. Maybe two times a month you sell them your get out of debt longterm plan. That's all you sell, and then you sell them and your other affiliates that maybe you go do a, what do you want to be? You go find someone. Maybe there's somebody that teaches people how to become writers, like you said you liked writing. Maybe there's a lot of lawyers that would like to become writers, so you have them come on for a guest webinar and sell their product. You get 40% of whatever's sold. You just find this portfolio of six to 12 good affiliates and over time that maybe you want to be in real estate , well have a real estate coach on. Sell their products and then you get half. Shane Sams: Your job is to be the bridge and the guide. Bridge them across the debt problem, and then introduce them to people that can help them find a new career. That's it. That's the whole business model, and all you have to do is podcast and drive the leads. Does that make sense? Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we're feeling pretty good about that? Sarah Cottrell: I think so. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's a little overwhelming right now, but the good thing is you've got a lot of things in place. You really only have to just give the content out there and maybe create that one course. That way you could go ahead and say, "The community exists, there's a course inside." Within a month, if you would just create it, and then you can start looking for affiliates as you grow. Shane Sams: You know what's funny is, you're going to find affiliates, because these former attorneys are going to be selling something when they come on your podcast, I guarantee you. "What did you do?" "I bought 10 houses, some apartments, now I teach people how to do real estate." "Oh you do? Well how about you teach the Former Lawyers how to do real estate." That's where you're going to find all these affiliate programs from. Cool? Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense. I have one question about that, which is, should I start... Okay, so I have Restrict Content Pro on my site, I just haven't actually done anything with it. Shane Sams: What is that? I didn't hear that. Sarah Cottrell: Restrict Content Pro, it's a formatting software. Shane Sams: Membership forum basically yeah. Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, membership forum software. I have that already, should I be waiting to actually open the membership until I have created the course? Or should I be... Shane Sams: No, I think it's your main lead. Sarah Cottrell: Got it. Shane Sams: When you start recording those podcasts, episode one at the end should say, "Go to blank.com and sign up for a free account to the Former Lawyer membership site," whatever you call it. The Former Lawyer community and say like, "Even if you're still a lawyer, but you don't want to be, we want you in there. It's a safe place to talk." Make a pitch for it basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and every blog post you write, every piece of content should all be pointing there. Shane Sams: Then when you create this first product, that's going to be like your seed product, so you have your own thing, you can go ahead and create that. Then put that in there and sell it to those people, and then you can start finding these other affiliates to sell the other stuff too. Sarah Cottrell: I love that, because I feel like I want to help people, and that makes me feel like I'm helping people. Jocelyn Sams: Love it. Shane Sams: What if you just connected them and got them out of debt, then you tell them how to get a new job, that's amazing. You know what I'm saying, send them to us we'll be an affiliate, no I'm just kidding. Jocelyn Sams: All right Sarah, it has been so much fun talking to you today. I can't wait to see what happens next in your journey. Before we go, we always like to ask our guest, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about here today? Sarah Cottrell: I am going to put together an outline for the course that I'm going to create for the membership. Shane Sams: That is an awesome action step. Product first, get that done, give those podcasts recorded. Who knows, Sarah you might be selling those before we know it. It won't be salesy and it won't be bad, and it won't be desperate. It'll be awesome,, because you're going to free a lot of people from the bondage of a career they found themselves strapped in. Okay? Sarah Cottrell: I'm excited. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another great episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Cannot wait to see what Sarah does with her online business, and we cannot wait to see what you do with your online business as well. Dust off that old domain, recharge that dream and get started. If you don't start, you can't finish and we would love to help you get started over at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Shane Sams: You can check out all the information about the Flip Your Life community. We have all the content, community and coaching you need to finally get your online business done, take it to the next level and who knows, someday maybe even flip your life. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We would love to help you inside of our community, and who knows maybe someday you will be a guest right here on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane Sams: Also, we would love to see you in Lexington, Kentucky this September 19th through the 21st for Flip Your Life LIVE. This is our conference, we are going to connect you with over 100 family focused entrepreneurs from around the world. Go through some amazing content, covering lots of sales strategies, traffic strategies and other things to grow your online business. That's happening this September. You can go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. There are only a few tickets left, and here is a huge announcement guys, we are not doing Flip Your Life LIVE conference in 2020. This is probably going to be your last opportunity. Your last chance to come to Lexington, to come and meet over 100 members of the Flip Your Life community. To come hang out with me and Jocelyn and take your business to the next level, live and in person. That's happening again September 19th through the 21st in Lexington, Kentucky. Shane Sams: Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live to see if any tickets are still available. There were only a few left when we recorded this promo, so you need to go there right now if you're planning on coming. Again, don't put it off, you can't wait till next year. It's not happening next year. It's probably not going to happen any point in the future. This is the last large Flip Your Life LIVE conference. We'd love to have you there in Lexington, Kentucky this September. Shane Sams: That's all the time we have for this week guys, but before we go, we would love to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration in life and business from the Bible. Today we are super excited, because Sarah, our guest today, has a Bible verse she would like to share with you. Sarah Cottrell: One of my favorite Bible verses is Colossians 1:17 which says, "And he is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." I just love that verse, because it reminds me that ultimately my identity is in Christ, and I do the work, but He is the one who holds all things together and I can trust Him. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome reminder. I think that all of us need that reminder from from time to time. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you again. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Sarah's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Marty monetize his golf podcast. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Marty monetize his golf podcast. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online and now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community on to the show. Really excited about our guest today because he is a golfer and I love me some golf. So, welcome to the program, Marty Griffin. Marty, welcome man. Marty: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm always happy to talk to anyone who's interested in golf, especially people who have kids who are interested in golf. Jocelyn: Well, that would be us right now because our 10-year-old son, Issac, he has just started getting interested in golf a little bit. We did a golf camp this summer and he was really, really excited about it. And we should also mention that Marty is a fellow podcaster. So, it's always exciting to talk to someone who podcasts on our show. Marty: Yeah, it's a ton of fun to do both of those things. I saw your picture of Issac at golf camp, and I was just like yes. Shane: I think it's a sign. Issac's getting into golf. We've got a golfer on the show. All signs are pointing to getting him out on the range and out on the lakes this summer. So, we're going to do that and we're going to talk about golf later on today. But, Marty, tell us a little bit about you and your background and your online business. Marty: I'm, like a lot of your community members, I'm a husband. I'm a father of two girls. We call them Moose and Goose. They're six and 10. I've been playing golf really, pretty much forever. I had some health issues early in life, and I actually had a couple open-heart surgeries. When I was 12 years old was when I had my second one. And the doctors told me that I couldn't do any of the sports that I was currently doing, which was wrestling and baseball. Marty: So, I happened to follow my dad to the driving range one day and I had enough of a knack for it, and I enjoyed it enough that he saw that interest and he got me lessons. So, that was every single waking moment for about 15 years of my life was golf. I'm talking 16 hours a day over the summer, taking lessons, playing in national tournaments. I even tried to go pro for a little while. Marty: So, I decided that in terms of my online business, like our good buddy Pat Flynn says, use your unfair advantage. I got 23 years in the bank doing something that I love that a lot of other people love, so I wanted to really flex that unfair advantage and really get into the golf side of things with my online business. Shane: That's amazing. I played a lot of golf too, when I was a kid. I started playing when I was like 13. The first time I ever swung a club, my brother hands me a driver. I'm like, what do I do? And he goes, well, just hit it like a baseball, but point down. That's what he said. I'm like, okay, whatever. so I watched him swing for a minute and they showed me how to grip the club. I just torched this thing. It left the driving range straight ahead and I was just addicted. The first time I ever swung a club, this happened. Shane: I got really into golf. We went every single day after school, me and my buddy. We would get straight in his car and drive to the next town over to the golf club that we played at. And I bet you for four straight years, I played golf every day it wasn't freezing outside. The best job that I ever had, I was a lifeguard at a country club. There were three holes, seven, eight, and nine, wrapped around the pool. Shane: So me and my buddy, I got paid to do this, this is incredible. For two straight summers I worked at this golf club. I would sit in the chair for 45 minutes and he would go golf those three holes. And then he would get in the chair and I would go golf those three holes. And then when we got off work at the end of the day, we would go play nine holes. So we would play like 27 holes of golf every single day. And half the day we were getting paid to do it. It was unbelievable. How can I get that job back? Marty: That's dream job stuff. That's the real flipped lifestyle Jocelyn is playing golf and being a lifeguard. Jocelyn: Now, did you make any money at that job? Shane: No, I made like minimum wage, but man, it was a good, hard-earned minimum wage. I think I lowered my handicap by about 10 that summer, so it was worth it. Marty: You got yourself a tan and a pretty draw. Shane: Exactly. Jocelyn: It will take me about 10 seconds to tell you about my golf experience. We lived in a townhouse on a golf course when we lived in West Virginia, so there's that. Shane: That was pretty much it. I think Jocelyn came out one time and we walked three holes, and I think she swung the club once. I actually got you a set of golf clubs one time for Mothers Day. Jocelyn: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they never got used. But, actually, when I used to work in corporate, I would go and ride along with people, because you know in the corporate world, golf's a big thing. I did actually try to play a little bit then, but it was pretty laughable. So, anyway, tell us what is your website and your podcast. Marty: I run a podcast called Golf Strategy School and the website is golfstrategyschool.com. It's been going since, I want to say I launched it in January of 2015. I initially started out trying to be like the John Lee Dumas of golf, where I was going to interview pros and coaches from around the world. And I did that for about the first year. It just didn't get the traction that I wanted. Marty: So I took advice and niched down further. I just kind of kept niching down further and further and further where I could see the opportunity for it and the listenership kept growing. It was a nice kind of feedback point. But I want to say around late 2016, early 2017, I wasn't getting any traction from my audience. My listeners were kind of just non-responsive. So, I actually hung up the microphone, I guess you could say it that way, and walked away from the podcast for a while. Marty: It wasn't until into 2018 about this time, June 2018, I started to get some emails from people who had found the podcast saying, hey, is it on hiatus, are you coming back? So, I started to kick around the idea of bringing it back. Shane: Did you leave the website up, though? So, you left the podcast on iTunes, you left the website up. You just stopped making new episodes basically, for a year, something like that? Marty: Yeah, correct. It was about a year. I just stopped producing new content. I just kind of felt like it was a one-sided relationship between me and my audience. I was just kind of shouting into a black hole. Shane: But you were getting downloads, you were getting listens? It was like pulling teeth to basically get them to talk to you. Marty: Exactly. I was getting downloads. If I went in a regular month, I might get 4,000 downloads. When I wasn't producing, I was still getting 2,500 to 3,000 downloads. Shane: Jocelyn, what was it you were looking at the other day? It was like 90% of the podcasters were getting less than 200 downloads a month or something like that. Jocelyn: Yeah, I'm in this group, it's a podcaster group on Facebook and they were doing a poll. How many listens do you get when your podcast comes out each week. The options were like 1 to 100 or 100 to 200. And then the final one was over 1,000. And hardly anyone was over 1,000. Shane: Over 90% were like less than a hundred. You're getting this many downloads, that's a lot of people paying attention to you. That's 2,500 to 4,000 human beings that are literally listening to you every single month. Jocelyn: And the thing about it is like, I think you were kind of even new on the podcasting game. I guess you could say you were ahead of your time. And I think really we were too, because podcasting is just now starting to become a mainstream-type thing, I feel like. Jocelyn: I was walking yesterday with a friend of mine. My daughter has cheerleading practice and I was walking with one of the other moms and she was like, tell me what a podcast is. And I was like, wow. Shane: And this is a smart, connected, professional person. It's not like this was someone who didn't have an iPhone or something like that. They knew technology. She works in a place where they use technology. It's just not the thing yet. Jocelyn: And I don't really say that to make fun of people or anything like that. I'm just saying, it's just now starting to hit where people are like, oh, yeah, I know what a podcast is. It's starting to become more everyday knowledge rather than just sort of like people who are nerds, I guess, because that's what I am. I've been doing this podcast for a long time. Shane: We've been doing this since like 2012. Shane: Let me ask you this. There's an interesting twist here in the story. Even though you were not getting a lot of feedback, or maybe you just weren't doing it right where you were reaching out correctly or getting them to opt-in correctly. There was some kind of disconnect between you and your audience, even though they loved your content. Shane: But, you actually started making money off of your podcast, correct? Marty: Yeah, that's the interesting thing. So, I had done an interview in 2016 with a couple of guys who had invented a product. And I was told by my fellow golf podcasters that I should interview these guys, they're very charismatic. And they were. And they offered me an affiliate relationship on their product. They only make one thing and it's designed to help you swing your golf club faster. So, I interviewed them and they gave me a promo code. I'm thinking, wow, man, I've really made it I have a promo code. Shane: Not even an ad, it's just a promo code. Marty: Exactly. It's not an ad, no one's paying me to put anything out. It's just there's a promo code out there that's loosely related to my industry. I remember I got a paper check from them the following month for like $28. And I wanted to run up and down the street like I made I, I did it. It was my 11 cents. Shane: You generated money from your words that came out of your mouth. Marty: Exactly. I went right up to my wife, I'm like, see, people do pay me to talk. Jocelyn: Totally killing it. Shane: Crushing it. Taking you to Applebee's tonight, baby. That's right. $28 bucks. Jocelyn: Appetizers on me. Marty: I was going to say, we're going to have to split that appetizer. Shane: Split the appetizer and we're drinking water, but we're paying for it with this check. Marty: So, a couple months later the affiliate revenue died down because I was still producing content. Well, after I had hung up the microphone. Out of nowhere, I got some email from PayPal saying, hey, someone gave you money. I look, and it was the company that I had my affiliate relationship with. Marty: And first month it was like 48 bucks. I'm like, hey, that's more than I got before. That's awesome. The next month, July rolls around, hey, you got like $97 from that company. I'm like, no way. August comes by, I got like 150 bucks. It just kept growing and growing and growing until I'm fairly business-minded. I knew the fourth quarter was coming up. Marty: Lo and behold, December rolls around, I get like 900 bucks. From this company. Shane: That's insane. From one podcast, one affiliate. Marty: One day's worth of work. Shane: That's amazing. Marty: and it just keeps paying. So, I'm thinking to myself, okay, that was Christmas, that was all Black Friday, Christmas, all that rolled into one. January rolls around, 1,100 bucks. February, 1,248 bucks. That was the peak that I hit was 1,248. Shane: And that was this year? Was that in 2019? Marty: Correct. That was 2019. So I'm getting this giant red flag being waved at me by my PayPal account saying, hey, these people want you to do more things. So, kind of buckle up and let's do it here. So, I decided to re-launch the podcast. Shane: That's awesome. So, there's some interesting things here. And we'll go deep into this. Okay, there's some red flags here too. One, it's really a testament to everybody out there listening to create some freaking content. This is ridiculous. If you create it, you've got a chance. You created this content way before the money ever started rolling in. But then it just started rolling in and it was true passive income. Shane: Somehow that episode got ranked or that coupon code got put into what's it called, Honey, is that that app? The Honey app picked your coupon code. Something happened, and you got found in a search engine. That's what happened. How many episodes did you record before you picked it back up again? When you stopped? Marty: Before I relaunched. I stopped at about 70 episodes. Shane: See, you put 70 episodes in and one of them hit. That's just a great lesson for everybody out there, that if you're not creating consistent content and you're not prolifically creating content and you're not putting things in there that can make you money. That episode had the coupon code that made you money. That's just like selling something. You gave yourself a chance to make money online and lo and behold, you did. Shane: So, what if all 70 episodes were giving you a chance to make money? Maybe there'd be something to that. Marty: Yep, that's exactly what I started to do. I started to make advertisements for myself in my podcast. Shane: Exactly. That's the good thing. That's the lesson that I want everybody listening to the podcast to get today is go make 70 podcasts, I don't even care if you know what you're doing yet, just figure it out. You've got to niche down, you've got to figure it out. If you're not doing it, you can't niche down. You can't figure that out. Marty: Yep, you've got to start. Shane: Here's the second thing. If that algorithm changes, you will go back to zero because you don't know exactly where it's coming from, how it's being found. There's ways that we can look into that. You can research that a little bit on your site. You can look at your top pages and what keywords are driving. Do you have Google Analytics on your website? Marty: I just set it up maybe about a month ago. Shane: Good. That's going to give you some data and kind of maybe figure out what people are typing in to find you. If the promo code itself was picked up in that Honey app or some other app that might be a little harder, but you could get some clues. Shane: It's kind of like living on rented land at this point. You've got this podcast, these guests came on. It's working, but if anything outranks you, you're done. I've got a buddy who ranked number one for a very prolific term. He gets like a million hits a month on his website. Crazy traffic. He was number one for a website and he was making like 60,000 off this one page on his website. Just all kinds of affiliates and things like that that he had on the page to monetize it. It was a big operation. It was designed SEO-wise to be number one. Well, he got knocked to third place, and it knocked off $40,000 in revenue, just one algorithm change. Shane: That's the danger of having uncontrolled revenue or relying on affiliate. Or what about this. What do they call it, the super speed trainers, or whatever. Marty: Yep, Super Speed Golf. Shane: If Super Speed Golf goes out of business and they're not selling that product anymore. Guess what, you don't get to make any more money. Marty: Absolutely, yeah. Shane: So, that's the risk of where you're at right now. But, I do love that you paid attention. So many people when they give up just turn everything off. You didn't do that. You left it on and you let it just keep running and you left those breadcrumbs for Hansel and Gretel to follow you back and they followed you back and gave you some money. Jocelyn: I think it's kind of an interesting lesson. You kind of hung it up for a while, but then you were like, oh, wait, this is starting to do something. This is kind of cool. I don't think that what Shane's trying to say is that there's anything necessarily wrong with having affiliate relationships. Shane: No, not at all. Jocelyn: There's nothing wrong with it, but it's always a good idea to have something else to diversify in some way. Marty: Yep. And that's my big concern right now is the fact that I only have this one revenue stream. In my nine to five, I'm a public speaker for a financial thing. And so, this is what I preach to people all the time. So, the fact that I'm just kind of walking down this very thin high wire, I'm like I know better. Shane: Don't we all? I think that all of our jobs that we all fall into is eventually so we can preach to ourselves. Jocelyn and I talk about it all the time. Of all people we know what to do. We tell people what to do, we help people figure out what to do, we've seen hundreds of people what to do. But sometimes we're sitting around and we're not doing what we know we're supposed to do. Shane: So, even just talking about it with you guys, with our guests, with our members, everybody, it's just like helping us. I remember when I was a football coach and I would coach the younger coaches. You had to teach the younger coaches how to be coaches. And I would tell them, do X, Y, and Z. And then I would think to myself, am I doing X, Y, and Z? Am I getting my scripts ready, am I? Shane: It makes you think about that in the real world. You're on stage telling people diversify, have multiple streams of income. Then you look down and you've got one coupon code bringing in the cash. Let's try to figure that out. We'll try to expand and grow. I've got one more question. Since you've started your podcast back, are the numbers back up to where they were? Marty: Way, way, way above and beyond. I just finished June and I had 11,000 downloads in the month. Jocelyn: Great! Marty: I just shared in the community that I crossed 200,000 downloads for my podcast over the lifetime. Shane: That's amazing. Jocelyn: That's awesome. Shane: We've got to monetize that better. How many days a week do you podcast? Marty: One episode a week. Shane: That's great numbers, for only having four episodes a month. That's really, really good. There is massive amounts of potential there, once we tap into it. Jocelyn: Let me ask you about your website. Other than the affiliate promotion, or the affiliate code, is there anything else that you're selling? Is there something that you plan to sell? What's going on as far as that goes? Marty: So I had, before I hung the microphone up, I had a membership area. And I only got like two people that signed up and I was banging down their door every possible opportunity about how can I help you, how can I do something for you. And they were just dead silent. The eventually stopped. Marty: So, now my plan is to, now that I've niched down further, is to recreate the membership with more focus towards my new audience. Shane: And what is that audience? Are you selling a course on something now? Marty: It's helping people break 90 for the first time. It's the average golfer. It's the once a month kind of player. How can I help you think your way around the course better so you don't make the stupid mistakes so you can play better. Shane: It's like a virtual caddy, basically. Marty: Oh, stealing that, immediately. Shane: Everybody thinks a caddy just carries clubs for people, but a caddy for a pro, the main reason they're there is to go play the course, walk the course, know every distance from every tree to the pin and basically, they're the brain. They're playing chess with the player on, the upside of going around this tree, might save you a stroke. But the downside is there's a water hazard and you could lose two. Then the golfer makes the decision on the risk. Shane: But that little book that they're flipping is not the scorebook, it's the strategy guide for getting around the course. So, that's kind of what you're doing. You're teaching people how to make good decisions to get as much upside as possible and reduce the downside as possible. Marty: Absolutely. Shane: I get this. I see where you're going with this. That's pretty interesting. And it's strategies that they could apply to any course. Marty: We go through practices and drills that people can do to improve their skills. But when it comes to on the course time, the way that I envision it is almost like four different modules. So, working from short game out until actually how do we play the course. Shane: That's amazing. That's awesome. I think that could really capture a part of the market. A lot of people just focus on the swing and taking strokes off your short game, and drills and things like that. But this is literally like, hey, let's learn how to play the game. It's like tapping into the people who are the thinking golfers. You do think about what your next shot's going to be. You think about what club you're supposed to use and not showing off how far you can hit the pitch and wedge. Marty: Exactly. That's one of the questions that I ask in my email sequence is do you want to have a lower score, or do you want to have a cooler story in the clubhouse having drinks afterwards. Because that's really what it comes down to. If you want to cooler story, have a great time, go somewhere else. Shane: Are the courses done? Marty: No. Shane: Why not? Marty: The text version of them are done, but the video version of how do I actually provide this to people is not. Jocelyn: Let's dive a little bit into why you haven't done this. So, you say that your videos are not done. Usually, when we are dragging our feet on creating a product to sell, it's usually because of some reason. So, let's hear it, Marty. What's your reason? Shane: What's the fear. What's the mindset struggle that's holding you back from just getting this finished? Marty: It's the same thing for a lot of people for me, I think it's imposter syndrome. This is something that I have literally dedicated decades of my life to. And what happens if people don't like it? Shane: Are you afraid they're going to judge you as golfer if you do that? Marty: Yeah. Shane: Are you an actual golf pro? Have you ever been a golf pro at a clubhouse or anything like that? Marty: Right out of high school I was trying to accomplish that, but I didn't know how to do it at the time, so I never actually completed that end of the spectrum. Shane: Is that part of this? Well, I never was a golf pro at a country club, so who's going to listen to me? Is that part of it? Marty: I don't think it's that so much because some of the biggest, best teachers that teach the best pros on the PGA tour, they are not affiliated with the PGA. Shane: For sure. 100%. The guy that's going to be teaching Issac his private lessons is not a golf pro. But he's a heck of a high school golf coach, I'll tell you that much. Marty: Exactly. And for me, it's the fact that I've done this for 23 years and for a large portion of those 23 years, that was like 100% of my life. It's the fear of kind of striking out of the thing that I put all this time into. Shane: If me and you went golfing today, just a normal, average round for you, what would you shoot? Marty: Probably 75, three or four over par. Shane: There are 99.9% of anyone who will ever play golf will never shoot a 75. You are more than qualified and an expert. There's no reason you should ever consider. No one could ever possibly judge you for that. I think my lowest round ever was like an 81. Like ever, ever, one time magic day. Sorcery. God looking down and said, angels, kick that ball out of the rough. Where we went with that. And you're like, 75, whatever. Jocelyn: Not a bad day. Shane: Yeah, not a bad day. But that's what I'm saying. I know you know this. But the scoreboard's all that matters. No one can ever judge you or tell you good, bad, right, or wrong, because it's like yo, bro, did you shoot a 75 last week? No, you didn't scoreboard. Shane: A lot of times fears or mindsets don't have a quantifiable number that proves something. Imposter syndrome's a really difficult one because it's like, well, am I expert in it. Jocelyn struggled with this when we started her elementary librarian site because she's like, well I've only been a librarian for a few years. And there were probably older librarians that came at her and said you're not qualified to do this. Shane: Yours is literally like, I have a score, I can go prove this any day of the week with clubs and balls and grass and divots. You've got a score, just latch on to that. Because nobody can touch you on that. Jocelyn: Have you been able to provide results for someone else? Marty: Absolutely, yeah. I ran a challenge a few years ago trying to drum up subscribers for my email list. At the time my email list was like 70 people. And I got 300 people to sign up for this challenge. What I did, was I walked them through three lessons a week for a month. In hindsight, I realize that was the course. And that's why I say the text version exists, but the video version doesn't. Marty: The feedback was fantastic. Facebook post after Facebook post of just shot 79 for the first time in eight years. Shane: So, where is this coming from, then? This is crazy. Not you're crazy, but this is crazy. Imposter syndrome is crazy. I don't know why it hits us all. Is it just like a block of some kind? Are you scared at the haters? Because you know there's going to be haters. Marty: Absolutely. And I think some of it is, probably the lion share is probably fear of the haters. Because when I was running that challenge. I had one, and I sent out my scheduled email and a guy emailed me back, just like I invite people to at the end of every message. And he was like, hey, this is dumb. You shouldn't teach putting this way, it's teaching you to miss putts. And I got in this long drawn out back and forth email with him. Marty: Eventually, at the end of it, I realized this one guy out of 300 is taking up so much of my time. Just delete, walk away. Shane: Here's what you should have wrote that guy back instead of arguing with him about putting technique. You should have wrote him back and said, hey, where's your challenge with 300 people following you? And he wouldn't be able to write you back because he's just some dude who thinks he knows how to putt. Why did you sign up for the challenge, bro? Marty: If you knew this. Shane: Right. If you knew all this. And, if you're so good at this, why aren't 11,000 people listening to your podcast. You've got so many numbers that can just defeat the haters. You've just got to latch onto that. Marty: Even beyond that, for some reason, I'll argue your side of the argument against myself. I just got back from Scotland. I played the third-oldest course in the world. It was the eighth-most difficult. And you talk about your miracle day where heaven and earth all aligned for an 81. Without my own clubs, because I just rented them there, playing at 11:00 at night in 40-mile an hour winds at the eighth hardest course in the world, I shot 82. Shane: That's what I'm saying. Anyone who can't do that, you get to teach. That's just the way it is. Because you know more than they do. So, you've just got to go create this thing and give it to people. And if anybody complains about it or doesn't want it, give them their money back and say goodbye. Jocelyn: They're just not your people. We're not everyone's cup of tea. Some people turn this podcast on and say these people are hicks from Kentucky and I'm not listening to them. And that's fine. Move on. There are plenty of other people out there that you can follow. Shane: I think there's something deeper than imposter syndrome. I think that's the easiest one you've kind of latched on to. Let me ask you this. This happens to people to, this is kind of a hidden fear that some people get. We see a lot of people that will come into the community, and they'll do what we tell them, and bam, they make money. And they freak out and quit. Shane: They get scared or they doubt themselves because they feel lucky. Do you ever feel like that with this affiliate thing? Oh man, I made some content, but I got lucky. That was someone else's product that carried the burden of being quality and good. If someone hates the Super Swing Swing Swing Club, then they're going to hate them, not me. Is some of that at play here? Do you feel like that's happening to you? Jocelyn: Isn't that a wing of the imposter syndrome museum? Shane: I think it is, but it kind of dips into fear of success. When you feel lucky. Jocelyn: Honestly, that's what I was going to say is fear of success. I've even had this happen in my golf life. When I was trying to go pro, I was playing an event and I shot six under par and everyone was congratulating me, I won the event. High-fives, handshakes, hugs, drinks afterwards. An I went and I sat down in my car and I had a full-blown meltdown. Like, holy crap, I'm capable of this. Am I committed am I passionate enough to actually do it? Shane: That's deep. I wish there was an easy answer for this. The only solution is to just make the product. And kind of accept the meltdowns. Accept stuff like that. Shane: I remember last year when we did Flip Your Life LIVE. Two years ago, when we decided to do a big live event, we were like can we, by ourselves, with no guest speakers, put over 100 people in a room. Could we get 100 people to fly to Nashville Tennessee and come just to see us speak for two days? Because usually you go to an event and they get six or seven headliners and a keynote. Because that way all of their audience is drawn, they can get a bigger crowd. Shane: But we were just like, can we do this. And I remember when we sold out. I remember specifically when we sold out and we looked at each other and we were like did we just do that? Why is anyone coming to listen to us? We're just Shane and Jocelyn from Kentucky. We struggled with that, deeply. Shane: But then once we'd sold it, that's actually a good reason to pre-sell things. Because once you sell it, you've got no choice to make it even if you don't believe in yourself anymore. Because you owe someone something for their money. I remember when we were kind of like, no, we did do this. And we podcasted for four years to earn the right to get these people to come and listen to us. Shane: That's kind of where it is now. At that point, it was like, well we've got to do it. We've got to go make the things. You know what, massive results for people who came out of that. People came in, they took action. And we saw people add 300 members over the next few months. We saw people launch their businesses and actually quit their jobs and all these things happened. And it's just because we did it. Shane: You will see that as soon as you make this course. People will start writing you those messages of the lowest round of their life. The sun and moon aligned and all that good stuff. And then bam, all of the sudden, it's like, well I do deserve to do this and the haters don't matter. But until you kind of force your way past it, it's like being stuck on a roller coaster and you really wish you could get off. Marty: Only way out is through. Shane: Only way out is through. You've just got to go. You've just got to push forward and you've got to get the product done. That's where you're at. Jocelyn: Hopefully, that helps you to be abl to move forward and actually get this product created so you can help other people with their golf game. Let's talk about what we need to do next in terms of getting this out there to your existing audience and what that looks like. Marty: Right now, I've got roughly 600 people on my email list. I send my weekly emails with my episodes and any blog articles that I've written. It's essentially only contacting them when I have something new to share. I'm not doing any selling because I don't have anything to sell at the moment. Shane: How do you get those emails? Do you get them from the podcast? Do you just offer lead magnets, what do you do? Marty: I've got a lead magnet on my website that has three free short game lessons. Those are videos that I had created. I just don't get a lot of website traffic. I only get about maybe 1,000 people per month. So, my emails have actually come from doing contests and giveaways and stuff like that. Shane: On the podcast? Or on the website? Marty: It's on all fronts. So, I'll mention it on the podcast. I'll have little popup floaters on the website and then I used $80 worth of Facebook ads last time. Shane: Here's what you need to do. One, I really think you need to pre-sell this thing. You need some way to force yourself to do this product. The easiest way that we have ever found to do that is to pre-sell it. The four modules are going to be short game, mid-game, driving, and then strategy, or something like that, right? Marty: Yep. Shane: I'm thinking that you need to probably go ahead and create a sales page that tells what's going to be inside it. Especially since you basically have the outline because of those text files. I think you need to go four straight weeks in a row and just hammer this product. You need to have episodes about this product, four in a row. Shane: one of them is, all right guys, I'm telling you about module one, telling you about module two, telling you about module three, talking about module four. And then basically at the end of every episode, I'm doing a beta launch. This is eventually going to be, whatever the price is going to be. But I'm going to let beta people in right now for 29 bucks or something stupid. Really cheap price. Shane: And then what happens is, over those four episodes, you're basically doing an extended webinar for each module inside of what the course is going to look like. And you're going to have a sales page and you're going to sell it, and they're going to pay it. And then there's going to be a countdown on the thank you page that says, "We launch this day." You're going to get those done by that day. You leave yourself no choice, this way. Shane: And it doesn't have to be right immediately after. If you did this four weeks in July, you can say that it's going to come out August 21st or something stupid. And then you just leave yourself no mercy. Let's say you sell 20 of these. Not a lot of money, but you've got 20 people that gave you money and you're on the hook to create it now. You have to, you have no choice. Shane: And all you've got to do is go film this stuff. It doesn't have to be perfect it can be edited shoddily right now and then it can be made better later. But at least the first draft would be done. And you have an audience that's big enough right now to sell. If you've got 11,000 downloads a month, there's probably 20 to 25 beta members just waiting for something like this to fall onto their lap, you just have to go out and tell them about it and sell it and then be on the hook for it. Because you don't want to give back 500 bucks to anybody. Marty: No, I don't. That's a transactional direction I do not wish to participate in. Shane: After you do that, I think your whole podcast needs to switch over to getting emails. Because you've got 11,000 people listening to you a month. Or 11,000 downloads. You've got 1,000 people visiting your site. Your site's not going to get you email addresses. Your whole life will be podcast to email list to sell this thing. That's the whole flow of your sales funnel at that point. Shane: But right now, your biggest problem is you know what you need to do, you just have to be forced to do it. And you need some financial accountability from your customers to make it happen. Do that. Plan four episodes. Each episodes is about one of the four modules. And at the end of every episode, you say to your audience, hey, I'm opening this to beta members now. It's $29, it's going to be $99, whatever it's going to be for the course. Forget the membership thing right now. Just get the product done because that's going to seed the membership. Marty: As a follow-up, as I'm thinking through what you're saying here. If we do four episodes, let's say like you said in July. One about each module. Because each module's going to be multiple videos. Am I incorrect in thinking it's a good idea to maybe put one of those videos in the blog post supporting that podcast episode, saying hey, this is something from the actual course. Sign up here. Shane: The only thing I'm worried about that is you don't have these done yet. Now, that could give you some accountability to go get that done. Jocelyn: I like the idea of that, for sure. Just to give people an incentive to get on the list. If people are just listening to your podcast, but they're not on your list, you can tell them about it once on the podcast, but if they don't do anything, you have no way to contact them. Shane: I want you go to make an order form that's $29 or something. And you say at the end of the podcast, go to what was your domain name again? Marty: Golfstrategyschool.com Shane: Go to Golfstrategyschool.com/beta and go there right now. This is going to be $100, I'm going to give it to you for $29. Golfers know that language, that's how everything's sold in the golf world. Shane: This driver was $400, now it's yours for 99 cents. Whatever. Marty: It has been a while since you played if you purchased something for 99 cents. Shane: Right. I got my clubs at flea markets. I bought them at yard sales. But what I'm saying is I want them to go buy it. I don't even want them to opt in. A waiting list, you can still bail on. It's like, no, this is the module, go to this page, buy it. This is what I'm going to teach you. These are the results you're going to get in this module. You can get the whole thing right now for 29 bucks, I'm going to make this, it's going to be launched on August 21st, I'm going to launch it at $99, I'm going to give it to you for $29. Shane: And the second week is I'm going to tell you all about this new thing. I know that golfers have a problem with this. That really sucks because you can't score what you want to. Here's all the benefits in my thing that I'm going to teach you. All the skills and strategies. Oh, by the way, that's going to lower your strokes by five on your next round. This is happening. But you need to get it now because once I close the doors on it, the beta price is gone forever. And you're going to do this all four modules, tell everybody about it. For a month, you're just going to talk about this product. Shane: And then, here it comes. Then we launch it, then we go. Then you have 21 days to create it, which means you have to get out on the golf course and film all your modules. That's how you do it. Shane: Jocelyn used to do this with a month of lesson plans. She would sell them and they weren't even finished. Then she would go and sit down in a room and be like, crap, I've got to give these to everybody by Monday and she would do 20 days of lesson plans for five grades. Jocelyn: It's amazing how much you can get finished when you know someone's waiting on it and they've paid for it. Shane: And perfection doesn't matter when it's due on a certain date. It's just got to be delivered. Marty: That's the strategy that I used when I created my first challenge, which essentially is going to be the course. I said, hey, does anybody want to do this? 300 people raised their hand. I said, oh, crap. Shane: Exactly. But if 30 of those people give you money, it's really going to light a fire under you. Pre-launching is an amazing strategy to bust through barriers and overcome these obstacles that you're facing because you have no choice anymore. And that's really what we want to put on you right now is that pressure and give you absolutely no choice. Jocelyn: All right, Marty, I can't wait to see how this turns out. It's going to be really exciting to see the next steps that you take with this audience. Before we go, we always like to ask people what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Marty: So, I think I'm going to go down the route that Shane was saying and I'm going to build a sales page. Shane: That's perfect. Get the sales page, get the order form, and then now you're ready to outline the podcast and you're off to the races. Shane: Listen, Marty, what a great conversation. Good talking golf with you today. I'm super excited. I may buy one of your challenges. Because then you got me looking over your neck, like give me this thing. I need to get my short game back. I got to teach my son how to play. Shane: Listen, thanks for coming on the show, thanks for sharing numbers, downloads, all these things that people kind of keep close to the vest and just being really super transparent. We're always so grateful that our members are willing to come on the show and be very vulnerable in a real-live coaching situation so that everybody that listens to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast can benefit from that. We just really appreciate you for coming on the show today. Marty: It was an absolute blast. I hope other people can gain from this as well, and thank you so much for the opportunity. Shane: All right, guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. What a great conversation with Marty. Maybe you're struggling with imposter syndrome. Maybe you have a great idea or an outline and you're just so close to getting that product created. Or maybe you're ready to launch or pre-launch something on your existing platform. We would love to help you do all of that inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can learn more about the Flip Your Life community at Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have plans for every budget and every need. You can get 100% access to all of our training courses, all of our forums, and hang out with us live twice a month right now. All you have to do is go flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Who knows, you may be a future guest on the show. Shane: All right, guys, that is all the time that we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Whatever you do, until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Marty's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Chris find the confidence to build his side hustle business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Chris find the confidence to build his side hustle business. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show so that we can help them take their business to the next level. Shane Sams: But before we do that, want to remind you that the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is brought to you by the Flip Your Life Community. We do not sell ads, sponsorships on our show. We are completely supported by you the listener and our members inside of the Flip Your Life community. We would love to help you take your online dreams to the next level, just like we're about to help our guest today. Shane Sams: If you'd like to learn more about the Flip Your Life Community, go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can check out all of our amazing membership options we have. We have an entire community of hundreds of entrepreneurs from around the world, courses that can help you at any stage of your online business and if you need a little bit more help from me and Jocelyn, we do live member Q and A's every single month. We'd love to have you in there. Check it out over at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Jocelyn Sams: Now it is time to introduce today's guest Chris Holdheide. Welcome to the show. Chris Holdheide: Hi Jocelyn, hi Shane. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it, thanks. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we are excited to talk to you today and we cannot wait to meet you in person in Lexington in September. We're very excited that you are coming and that someone in your family too, right? Chris Holdheide: Yes. Actually, it's me and my twin brother. We both signed up at the same time and decided - Shane Sams: That's awesome. Chris Holdheide: Yeah, we kind of debated it at first and then I kinda told him ahead of time that I was gonna buy my ticket and I kinda got him to, push him a little bit to buy his ticket and then, lo and behold here we are, we're going. We're gonna be there. Jocelyn Sams: Well are you guys identical twins, first of all? Chris Holdheide: Yes, we are. Shane Sams: Do you have identical businesses? Chris Holdheide: No. Jocelyn Sams: And, are you not going to switch name tags at the event? I'm just curious. Chris Holdheide: We might, just never know. Shane Sams: See that would just totally mess me up. You look down, you're sitting at different tables. I'm on stage. I'm getting confused. I wouldn't know what was going on, man. You can't do that to us, man. Shane Sams: So before we get started and get deep into your story and help you take your business, what you're working on right now to the next level. Like, what made you decide to come to Flip Your Life LIVE in Lexington, Kentucky this September? What was the big, you know you said you kinda looked at it, you thought about it, and you wrestled with it. What pushed you over the edge and then allowed you to push your brother over the edge too? To drag him down I-75 kicking and screaming to Lexington? Chris Holdheide: I'd been to several conferences over the years, but a lot of them were ... They're very generic and they just had a lot of you know content where it was just like, I felt like it didn't really help me or improve or help me move forward with my business. I wanted something that was a lot more hands on and that's what you guys were talking about, more hands on, and like you're teaching something then we're gonna go do something. I just thought, "that's gonna be what I need. That's what I need." Someone show me something and then I can do it and I can get my hands dirty and kind of learn some things. Shane Sams: Awesome. Our philosophy when we started Flip Your Life LIVE was to create an event where you did more work in two days and made more progress than you had done like in the year before you actually got to the event. So we actually designed it that way on purpose, like it's deep teaching, it's a no pitch event. We're not going to be selling anything at the end of every session, like they do at some events. We're going to go into a topic, dive as deep as we can into it, stop, let everybody work on it for a minute. We'll be sitting around at tables doing masterminds, helping each other to make progress on whatever we're doing. We're going to focus a lot on traffic and sales. Closing the deal and getting more people to your actual deals. Shane Sams: But then we come back out and Jocelyn and I actually stop and answer questions every session for thirty minutes to make sure there's no problems. You're completely clear on what you need to do. You can wrestle with it for a minute and then we even come back after the event at night and we have these big working sessions. So we do like four sessions a day. You work on everything at the event, you get to ask questions and then, we all come back and mastermind after the questions session so we get to go out and get things done. I'm glad you're coming. Have you been coming to any of the weekly live trainings that I'm doing for Flip Your Life LIVE, have you been coming to those? Chris Holdheide: Yes. I've been coming to almost every single one. Shane Sams: Love it. Chris Holdheide: Just not the ones, some were during the day, during work, but most of them, any of them in the evening, I've pretty much been there for every single - Shane Sams: You've got the replays there too, if you want to watch those. Chris Holdheide: Yes. Shane Sams: How are those helping you? Are those good, getting you kind of making some progress before you even get to the event? Chris Holdheide: Those are incredible. So far I've been able to create my first course, get it up, get it launched and just actually make my first sale. Shane Sams: Awesome, wow, that's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Wow, yeah. Shane Sams: If that's not a sign that you should be coming to Flip Your Life LIVE, so you can take some massive action. You need to be there. You can go to flippedlifestyle.com/live to check out how many tickets are left. We were under thirty the last time I checked and we want to announce this, I think we've said this on the podcast already, but this is the last time we're doing the big Flip Your Life LIVE conference. We've got some other ideas that we're gonna pursue next year. This will be your last chance to come to Flip Your Life LIVE so join us in Lexington, Kentucky, September nineteenth through to twenty-first at Flip Your Life LIVE. We would love to see you there and you get to meet Chris and help us figure out if it's him or his brother for the entire event. Jocelyn Sams: All right Chris, so let's start talking a little bit about what you are doing online and tell us also a little bit about you and your background and how you started doing this? Chris Holdheide: Okay. I started way back in 2004 actually, with my very first business. I started doing a lot of different things from multi-level marketing for about four and a half years and then I jumped into affiliate marketing and building my first website in 2008. It really just snowballed from there until today where I have, basically my bigger website now, that I work with mostly now. Shane Sams: What's that website called? Chris Holdheide: My main website is sidehustleacademy.com. Shane Sams: Awesome. And it looks like you have done a lot of side hustles. Being the MLMer and the affiliate marketer and doing all the side hustles. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah and I need to know about this, okay so, in your form that you filled out to be and the podcast it says that you run your own brick and mortar business gating for swine and dairy. I need to know about this. Shane Sams: What? Like pigs and cows? Chris Holdheide: Yes. Shane Sams: It's going to be another farm episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Jocelyn Sams: How does one get into building gates for swine and dairy? Just curious. Chris Holdheide: So that business was actually started by my father and he retired from it back in 2009, which I took it over. Me and another guy, we partnered up and we took it over and we've been running it ever since. It's basically a gating and manufacturing business. We build gating for swine barns, cattle barns, stuff like that. We've been doing that for just over ten years now. You know that's been going very well. We actually just built a brand new shop, fifteen thousand square foot shop. Shane Sams: Wow. That's amazing. I would say though, that that's a lot of hard work to run something labor intensive with, you've got to have people that you manage. I mean building, fencing and gating can't be easy. Chris Holdheide: No, it's a very high overhead business. It's also, it can be stressful at times and I wear a lot of multiple hats in that business. Because I do a wide variety of different things. Pricing, quoting, stuff like that. Shane Sams: Awesome. So is that kind of what your motivation is to get into that online world, is hey, we've got a high risk, high overhead, if something goes wrong, you know, I'm sure there's some liability involved and all that. Someone loses their pig herd, right, whatever. Chris Holdheide: Yeah, yeah. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying. I mean if you do something wrong, the gate breaks, pigs you know, run away, right? Chris Holdheide: Yeah. So it does very well. People are going to come back over time 'cause you know stuff wears out and stuff like that. So the gating business is pretty stable for the most part. I mean, this year's a little slower than the last few but you know, that's why I kinda turned to online business is because I want something that kinda supplements my income a little more and gives me more ... It's less overhead, it's more time with my family, stuff like that. That's what I'm really looking for. Shane Sams: Love it. Tell me about this MLM route a little bit because you know we hear a lot of people get into the MLM place and some people even try to mask an MLM as being like an online business. And if you're an MLMer out there, please don't get mad at me, but Jocelyn and I just don't like MLMs at all. But tell us a little bit about the MLM route, like what were you doing and like why did you get away from that multi-level marketing aspect of a side hustle? Chris Holdheide: So yeah when I started that, I had a few friends in it and I thought it was kinda a neat thing but what I learned, 'cause basically I was selling insurance, investments, stuff like that. But in order to even get paid in that business you had to have a license. So you had to go get an insurance license and investment license, stuff like that. Then on top of that, what they don't really tell you is that, MLM is a very high energy type business. You have to be beating people's doors down, calling people. You have to be doing it every day or you're just not going to get anywhere with it. And I did it for four and a half years. It was okay but in the end, I just realized that it wasn't for me. Shane Sams: Yeah, MLM is 24/7. And like, it's not just beating down doors. It's beating down everybody's door. Like you gotta beat down your friend's doors, you gotta be Facebook messaging people. You gotta be like, you have to literally like make every single network relationship in your life, family, friend or anywise into a business relationship. And it can get uncomfortable and like Jocelyn gets them all the time from people and she's like "Oh my gosh, I don't want to buy your MLM product." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I've had to take people, block people from my phone because they won't stop texting me stuff. Shane Sams: It's like when you hear from someone, you haven't talked to them in ten years. They haven't even liked a picture on your Facebook page and they just show up and be like "Hey girl, I got something good for you." Jocelyn Sams: My rule is if I haven't talked to you in like the last five years without something that's not MLM related, I probably don't want to talk to you about something that is. Shane Sams: Yeah. And it will just wear you out. It's like it doesn't give you any, there's no chance for passive income. I mean they say there is, but the top, what is it, one to three per cent actually get any kind of income or passive income out of those big networks. You know what I'm saying. So. We're not going to be building any downlines today y'all, if you're here for that you're in the wrong place, okay? Jocelyn Sams: All right, so you decided MLM wasn't for you and you then decided to start a website then? Chris Holdheide: Yeah, I started a personal finance website first in 2008. And then I wrote a bunch of content for the first year I had it up. I didn't make a whole lot. I started running AdSense on there and I think I made maybe a hundred bucks in my first year doing it. In the second year I kind of figured out this thing called SEO and how all that stuff worked and then I started dabbling with that and then within a year I was making about a thousand bucks a month doing that. Shane Sams: Nice, that's awesome man. Yep. That was mostly of affiliates or ads? Or just a combination of like everything? Chris Holdheide: That was just pure advertising at that point. Shane Sams: So all Google ad clicks, people click it you get, you're basically using SEOs, search engine optimization to bring more people to blog posts that you wrote and then hopefully those people would click an ad that you posted from an ad network, that's correct? Chris Holdheide: Right, right. Shane Sams: Cool. Chris Holdheide: And then, I was doing really good 2010. By the end of 2010 I was making a thousand bucks a month and then 2011 came and Google had a little update and all of a sudden, everything I had worked for, I think I was making about thirteen hundred bucks a month and it was gone. Google just decimated that entire business for me. Shane Sams: And that's why it's like, you can't build your house on rented land. You know what I'm saying? That's the danger of a true SEO strategy, of only relying on Facebook ads, of doing anything else, or you're putting all your eggs in someone else's basket, and it's why we're so adamant about building your own thing with your own products, with your own community of followers and fans because that's where the security really is, right? Chris Holdheide: Right, yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you decided okay this whole Google thing, you know it got kind of screwed up, but the online business, you still see hope there obviously. So then you decide that you're going to start this new thing right? Chris Holdheide: Yeah, so in 2015 I started my new site which is called sidehustleacademy.com where I just, I help people, basically I write a lot of content about helping people do various types of side hustles that I've learned over the years. Learned a lot with affiliate marketing, I was teaching people about that so and it's just, right now it's really just a content website and stuff like that right now. But I started a little YouTube channel and stuff like that. That's doing okay and stuff and it's starting to draw some people in. Shane Sams: Good. Chris Holdheide: I'm looking to take it to the next level though. Shane Sams: For sure. Basically right now, you're making money with affiliate marketing, so it's kind of similar to the ad thing, but you're creating the content, getting some traffic and then you're basically recommending products for people you're an affiliate for. So like, you gotta say, "here's a side hustle about this, this guy teaches a really good course, I recommend it." That's what you're doing, right now? Chris Holdheide: That's correct, yeah. Shane Sams: Okay. And how's that going? Chris Holdheide: That's going okay. I mean, it's not making a ton of, maybe around five hundred bucks a month on average. Shane Sams: Getting back up there though. Right? Chris Holdheide: We're getting back up there. Shane Sams: What's the problems with that that you've encountered? Like besides, is it percentages, is it just getting people to click on something when they really came to you? Like what are the biggest problems you're having with that style of business? Chris Holdheide: So that business, the bigger problem is just trying, because you don't really have a huge name built up to it, and to get people to click and then buy, it's a little harder. Shane Sams: To get that, know, like and trust enough to, you gotta have a lot of know, like and trust to recommend somebody, right? Chris Holdheide: Right. Yeah and that takes a lot just to get that, you know and then to write great content and you know make sure you're promoting good products and stuff like that you know. You want to really make sure that you're promoting a good product. You don't want to just promote anything. You want to promote the right things. Shane Sams: So basically you're putting a lot of time into research, looks like you're taking a lot of time into content. Chris Holdheide: Yeah, pretty much any course I recommend, I've bought. I bought it, I reviewed it, I went through it, so I know what I'm selling is good. Shane Sams: 'Cause that's a reflection on you, at that point. You've got to trust the affiliate, you know what I'm saying. 'Cause if they screw the customer, they're never coming back to your site, right? Chris Holdheide: That's right. That's right. Shane Sams: I follow a guy named Ben Settle and he said something on his podcast once. He's a copywriter and he's kind of a brash, hard core guy. One time he said, a mentor told him you should never enter an affiliate relationship with someone who you wouldn't give the keys to your house and let them stay there alone for week. You gotta have that much trust before you're an affiliate or they'll just burn your house down. Shane Sams: Right, so where are we now? Now, we've gotten up to this point now, where you've done the affiliate thing but you're trying to transition again to more teaching and course models and your own thing, right? Chris Holdheide: Yes, that's correct. Right now, I've got my first course created. I just threw it together. There is five videos, put it together and I threw it up on Teachable real quick and started promoting it to my email list and made my first sale. Shane Sams: Love it. Chris Holdheide: Right now I'm actually working on setting up my membership area so, trying to get that all put together and then get my community going there. Shane Sams: Awesome. You know I say, if you can find one, you can find a hundred and one. If you can find a hundred and one people to give you fifty dollars a month, you're making sixty grand a year, right? Shane Sams: If there's one person that'll buy it, there's more people that'll buy it. We just have to figure out a path to finding all those people. Also I want to comment here too, this is very interesting. I was talking to somebody yesterday, I was coaching somebody and basically we created this email sequence for them. They're probably listening to this right now. I'm not going to tell you who it is but they're listening. Shane Sams: But I was coaching yesterday and they wrote an email sequence and they sent it out and panicked 'cause like only two or three people bought something or something in one day, right? And they were freaking out 'cause their list is kinda big. "Do I need to change direction? Do I need to write longer emails? Do I need to write shorter emails? Do I need to not do emails? Maybe I should have ran ads to this. Maybe I should have tested it. Maybe we should pull the plug and not do the rest of the sequence." Shane Sams: They were just freaking out and I'm like, "Calm down." Like, whoa Nelly. You know. Pull the brakes a little bit. You gotta ride stuff out to learn if it works or not. I told them the goal is to ride this out for three months and just see what happens. And do it over and over again and test it. But she was totally willing to pull the plug immediately. Shane Sams: But what I love about your story, dude. 2008, was that when you said you started your first website? Chris Holdheide: Yeah. August of 2008. Shane Sams: That's amazing. And like, that was eleven years, when we're recording this. And you went up and you got to that magic thousand dollars a month, but you got slammed and destroyed. All the way back to nothing. But you pivoted and tried something else for a while and got it back up to five hundred a month and then you're like, "Man, I'm hitting a ceiling here. I need to do something else." And now you're testing the next thing which should be the best thing, right? And it's taken you eleven years of relentless never giving up to do it, right. And I just love that, man. I think that speaks volumes about you and your character and is a great example for everybody listening, like this is not a, "I tried it and I hit a home run." Or, I tried online business for three months, like success comes by grinding and grinding and grinding until you hit the home run. Shane Sams: Like, how many swings do batters make in a baseball season? Hundreds to get forty home runs, right? And you're doing that and all this stuff has built to the point now where you're like, "whoa, I made a course and sold it, maybe this could be a membership. I found one." Six months from now you might have a hundred and one people, right. Chris Holdheide: Right. Shane Sams: Dude, great, great job just sticking with it. Making money. And look at all the knowledge, you can't run the Side Hustle Academy unless you've been running side hustles for ten years. Chris Holdheide: Yeah. Shane Sams: Just an amazing story, man. I absolutely love your tenacity and keep sticking with it. Great example for you all our there that are like, "I started a blog in 2007 and I quit because I didn't get a million followers on Instagram." Or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: All right. So let's talk just a little bit. Obviously you have a spirit of not giving up which we love, but something is still holding you back. So let's talk a little bit about some fears, mindset issues or whatever else might be holding you back right now. Chris Holdheide: So when I was creating my first course, my initial thought was I was going to create this course and I'm gonna price it ninety-seven dollars. And then I started creating the course and I started having this feeling like, I just don't know if this is worth ninety-seven dollars and then all of sudden I back it down to like forty-seven dollars and then all of a sudden, I'm at nineteen dollars and I'm also thinking the same thing with like my membership. How much is this worth in the beginning? Is what I'm selling worth it? Or worth the amount of money I'm thinking it should be worth. Shane Sams: So basically this is a confidence problem. It's not really is the course worth it, it's more like, is anyone gonna pay me to teach them x, to teach them y, to teach them z. Jocelyn Sams: And actually what I hear in this conversation, Chris, is that you don't feel that you can convince someone that the value is there. That's what I'm reading between the lines. Chris Holdheide: Right. Shane Sams: Let me ask you a question here. So you're basically, let's talk about value and how to actually, the problem that most people do with their course is they assign the value to themselves and not the result that they're trying to get for their customer, right? Shane Sams: When we start valuing ourselves, well we're our worst critics. We look in the mirror and we don't like the way we look. We put our clothes on, we don't have the newest clothes. We get in our car and we're like, "Man, do I have the best car? Is anybody looking at me funny?" We're all self conscious, right? Chris Holdheide: Right. Shane Sams: If you try to put the value of what you're selling on you, you're always going to talk yourself into giving it away for free, right? Because it's hard to assign value to ourselves. But that's, the trick is, we've got to assign the value to what we're giving people, right? To the actual result that they're going to get. Shane Sams: For example, in our teaching businesses, our result was not, our value wasn't based on we're the best teachers, we make the best lesson plans, we're the smartest elementary librarians and social studies teachers in the world. Because if that was true, we would have probably not even made our courses. Jocelyn had been teaching for three years. I was a social studies teacher but I was half football coach so like I didn't even really teach a lot. You know what I'm saying? Shane Sams: It was like we couldn't possibly value. So what we did was we flipped it and said, You know the result that we could give people, if we could literally plan their day for them, every school day of the year, the result would be going home at three o'clock, seeing their kids, being able to sit down and have dinner and not worry that you're not going to have anything planned tomorrow. And that was priceless. So that was easy to go five hundred dollars. You've got to pay this. Or forty-nine dollars a month. It's worth forty-nine dollars a month to see your kids at night and not be stressed out about your job. Jocelyn Sams: And like what I'm wondering is, okay so your course, what is it for? Is it to help people learn how to start a side business? Chris Holdheide: So my course is all about helping people develop the idea that they want to go forward with and then figure out how to profit or make their first sale basically. Not to like build their entire business but just to get them started and make their first sale and realize like okay, there's something here. I can make money with this. And they see a way out, you know. Shane Sams: Sure, let me ask you this. If you could, you've told us, your side hustles have generated a thousand bucks a month, five hundred bucks a month, something like that off and on for different side hustles, right? Chris Holdheide: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: If you could tell somebody, "Hey man, what stresses you out?" If you could ask them that question and they said to you, "Man, you know what really stresses me out, man. My car payment. It's three-ninety-nine a month and I've got a hundred dollars in insurance a month and it just really stresses me out, man, 'cause that car payment makes me run thin every month and sometimes we run out of money for groceries." And you said to them, "Hey man, what if I could teach you something? I've been making five hundred dollars a months plus for ten years. That could pay your car payment. It could totally take that stress off of you. How much more space would you have for your spouse? How much more time would have for your kids, when you wouldn't be worrying about it? How good would it feel to walk into the grocery store and know you had a little margin and you didn't have to put the real Fruit Loops back to get the generic Fruit Loops, you know what I'm saying?" Shane Sams: Like, how would that make you feel? If you could literally say that ti someone and you could do that for someone. There is no way you can put a value on that, right? It would be worth it. I'll give you a hundred bucks to show me how to make five-hundred a month. Any day of the week. Right? Chris Holdheide: Right. Shane Sams: But what we've done there is we've transferred the value to the result, not you. It ain't about you, man. Like you've made a thousand, five hundred dollars a month for ten years. Like, yeah man. If you can teach that to someone, there's no way to put a value on that at all. Jocelyn Sams: And I can assure you that people do not really care about the quality of the course in those cases. All they care about is the result. Can you teach them to do whatever it is that you told them that you're going to do? Shane Sams: And that's how we price our products. That's how we have the confidence to say, it's worth it. Like our courses are not the fanciest, most polished courses in the world. I had a buddy in a mastermind group I'm in, they just spent like ten grand, hired a video crew, redid all of their courses. You know what I'm saying? And I'm not gonna do that. I just don't do that. It's fine if he wants to do it, right. And maybe his audience puts value in the presentation, but for us it's more like, let's just get this information in people's hands 'cause it could change their life, right? And that's where we assign the value of our community. That's how we price our community. And then you can look at other things like the demographic of your audience, like there's nothing wrong with having lower tier prices. We do that sometimes too, right? Because we want to help as many people as possible take our courses. Shane Sams: But like you've got to assign the value based on the result, not based based on your own confidence issues in yourself. 'Cause if you do that, you're always gonna just charge nothing. So... Chris Holdheide: That's great, that's great. Shane Sams: Yeah, so. Is your result worth a hundred dollars, tell me that right now? Chris Holdheide: I feel like it's worth fifty dollars a month. Shane Sams: Chris, you're not listening. Chris Holdheide: Okay. Shane Sams: Why do you feel like, if you said, "I can teach you how to make five hundred dollars a month." Why is that only worth fifty dollars? Chris Holdheide: I don't know. I'm just thinking what I was gonna price it at, that's all. Shane Sams: Fifty dollars a month is fine. You can do that. But try to focus on the result. Chris Holdheide: Okay. Shane Sams: And not focus on yourself. Because I think you're judging it on, "Does it look as good in the lighting? Did I make a good enough PowerPoint? Did I say it in an epic Nelson Mandela speech?" You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: Is it five hours long? Shane Sams: Is it, yeah, is it, does it give them the result? That's all you've got to worry about it. Okay? And I've seen your stuff. I like your website. Talking to you, it's fine. Your stuff is well worth fifty dollars a month 'cause the result's worth more. Okay? Chris Holdheide: Awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, so let's kinda jump into your next question. As far as building this thing, what can we help you with? Chris Holdheide: My biggest, my big thing there is trying to lead them down a path and how to build that up as I go in my business. I'm trying to figure out, okay, I've figured out in my first course, just basically how to get them to start their side business, but I'm trying to figure out how, where I need to lead them after that point and stuff like that. Shane Sams: Well I mean, I think you just look at your own experience here because you've spent the last ten years literally selling everyone else's stuff, right? And like you've spent the last ten years writing content designed to get them to click other things on your site, right? So that copy writing and that skillset that you've developed over the last ten years is the same thing you're doing here. Like getting people to go click on your product is the same as getting them to click on someone else's product, right? And just like in affiliate marketing, if you're an affiliate marketer, you might sell one product in January for affiliate Bob. Here's Bob the affiliate, right? But then in February, you might have different promotion for Sally, your other affiliate, you know what I'm saying? And you just teach people, you write different email campaigns to sell different products. Shane Sams: So what you have to do is, you have to look at the steps to guide them and say, well what's step one? Well that's, I'm gonna convince them to buy step one. Well then you look and you say, what's step two. If step one is starting their side hustle, then step two is going to be growing their side hustle to x sales per month or whatever. So you just sell that. That's what you guide them to, you just write the emails that get them to that. Maybe you've got another tier of membership or you just answer their questions like along the way. All you have to do is figure out how you've always sold everyone else's products and how you always sold the next affiliate's thing, and then you just have to map out your path that you want people to follow. What's the success path that your people need to follow to get from zero to a thousand dollars a month, right? Because you can teach that, you've done it for years. Shane Sams: You need to write that path out. Know the six steps they have to do to get there and then take them through that path with all of your email and copy. Chris Holdheide: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I've been trying to figure out that path, I guess but when you say that, that makes a lot of sense. Jocelyn Sams: And do you have people that you have worked with that this process has worked for? So in other words I'm asking do you have testimony? Chris Holdheide: The only one I have is my brother. I've been coaching him on a few things here and there and you know I helped him get a few coaching calls lined up and stuff like that. Shane Sams: You can make a million dollars on one testimonial. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's totally fine. The only unfortunate thing in your case is that the picture's gonna look just like you. Shane Sams: That's not his brother. That's him. He just changed shirts. Jocelyn Sams: This scam artist is trying to tell me... Shane Sams: Y'all need to be on camera together, but in this day and age with deep fakes and I don't know, he's got some trick camera stuff going here. That's what's happening. Shane Sams: You just have to have some kind of success. There's only two ways to actually sell courses. You can sell a lot of course to a lot of different people, right? You can say, "I only teach the first step." Well once they're past the first step, they leave you and go somewhere else. That's cool. You just need to find more people that need to take the first step. Or the real money is in selling your existing customers your next thing, right? Shane Sams: So you can sell them their next product, like beginning side hustle and then intermediate side hustle, turning it into a car payment, right? You know, get started, get it to five hundred a month. That might be your first two parts of the path. Okay? And you don't have to complete the whole path. You just need that path, right? It's the same way we get people to pay for our membership. We just treat our membership, each month is like a different product. You come in to the Flip Your Life community and maybe you don't have an idea. So your first month you're going to be researching your idea, talking about your idea in the community, getting feedback from me and Jocelyn on our member calls and then finally, month one, "I've got my idea. I've set some goals. Now what?" Shane Sams: Okay, it's time for month two. Now we're gonna figure out what your customer looks like and we're gonna start building your product. Month three, what do we do next? Well we're gonna build out this product, and then we're gonna get your website started. Month four, we're gonna try to launch this thing and build an audience. Right? Shane Sams: We just have a path, we know how long it takes. We know what people need to do next. And like that's how we sell membership. We treat it like a different product. Does that make sense? Chris Holdheide: Yeah. Shane Sams: As you're building yours out, you need to do the same thing. In the beginning, you know, when so and so creates their side hustle, what does the first month look like? That's the easiest way to think about this. That's how you get them in the first course. But then what does the second month look like. "Okay I've got this website, I've got some affiliate links. How do I promote this thing?" Okay maybe the second month is, well you start a social media page with some ads behind it, whatever. Shane Sams: So you just have to create a success path for your business. Figure out, we assume that it will take people about as long as it took us to get to the promised land which is thirteen to eighteen months, right? So our success path is actually written out over thirteen to eighteen months. That's how I thought about the Flip Your Life blueprint and I was like what did we do in month one? What did we do in month two? It's the same thing for our education businesses, right? What does a teacher do in August that teaches US history? I have to know that right? What do they do in September? Okay well here's September's lesson plans. What do they do in November? Shane Sams: And we just go through that path and that's how you build retention. That's how you get people to take the next step, is 'cause you know where they're gonna go, 'cause you've already been there and you drew the map and you're just taking them down the map. Like Dora the Explorer. Right? Shane Sams: That's probably your next step is actually creating that success path and that'll build out that monthly retention for you and your business and help you sell the next thing, help you sell the next month and keep people paying about forty-nine dollars a month every single month. Chris Holdheide: Awesome. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so that is kinda a lot of information. How do you feel about all of those ideas? Chris Holdheide: I feel like I'm ready to get some stuff done. I'm excited. Shane Sams: Chris, you sound a little overwhelmed, dude. Chris Holdheide: Yeah. Shane Sams: You sound a little like that. So let's boil this down and eat the elephant one bite at a time here. Like, what do you think your very next step should be? Chris Holdheide: As far as my next step should be, I feel like I need to finish up my membership and I need to start working on, start promoting and stuff like that. Shane Sams: Figure out what your next step is for your customer, right? I want you to try to create, on paper, an outline, handwritten. I want you to number one to twelve, okay? Chris Holdheide: Okay. Shane Sams: Now I want you to imagine that you've got someone that is just starting their side hustle journey, okay? And I want you to say, "Month one, I've already got. That's my course that exists right now." That's gonna start the side hustle. And then I want you to write a path for that person to walk. Each month, what do they need to do to get to a thousand dollars a month? Okay? What did you do to get to that point? To get to thousand dollars a month? And then just an outline. You get one line per step. Does that make sense? Chris Holdheide: Right. Shane Sams: Now you'll know that so you can start building that. The next thing you'll do is build the second step. That's all you gotta do. When that's done you build the third step. And then as you roll this out and more people join it and get into the membership and we start promoting that thing, they're gonna have somewhere to go so they stay and you don't have to worry about it anymore, okay? Chris Holdheide: Awesome. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another great interview with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Super excited to see what Chris does building out that success path for his customers which will lead to a lot of success in his business. Shane Sams: If you need help building that success path in your business, we would love to personally help you do that inside of the Flip Your Life community. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can check out all of our great membership options. We've got options that start as low as nineteen dollars a month to get access to all the courses, all the training you need and join a community of hundreds of family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world who are building out their online business and building better futures for their families. Shane Sams: So go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife today. We would love to have you in the Flip Your Life community. Who knows? You may find yourself right here on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast some day. Shane Sams: Before we go, we'd love to close the show with a bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration, motivation and business tips, believe it or not, from the bible. Today's bible verse comes from Second Corinthians chapter nine, verse eleven and it says "Yes, you will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous. And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God." Shane Sams: Guys, people need you. You need to build your business. You need to build your business just like us, just like Chris, just like all the people in the Flipped Life community so you can go out there and get those results to people. Take what you know and teach it to others so that their life can be better too and they will thank you for it with their hard earned money every single month in those membership sites that you've built. So, take that to heart, get out there, get started and until next time, do whatever it takes, flip your life. See you. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Chris's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Evan overcome her fear of charging for her products. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all! On today's podcast we help Evan overcome her fear of charging for her products. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, super pumped, cannot wait to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community today about growing and building their online business so that they can find the freedom they want in their life. Our guest today is Evan Garrapy. Evan, welcome to the show. Evan Garrapy: Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Shane Sams: We already changed Evan's life before the show even started. Because I asked Evan before we got going, I said, "How do you say your last name?" And she said, "It's really hard, it's Garrapy." And I said, "Oh, it's like therapy, but Garrapy." And she's like, "I've never thought of that!" Evan Garrapy: So helpful. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, we'll send you our bill for that later, right. Shane Sams: Exactly. That was worth the call, worth the call. Jocelyn Sams: All right, well we are very, very happy to have you on the show today, and I'm really, really interested in what you do. So let's talk a little bit about that. Tell us about you, your background, and about the website that you started. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. In 2007, after my grandmother passed away, my dad's mom, I got really interested in researching family history, because I realized there were so many things I wanted to ask her, and I would never get the chance to. And one of them was about her German heritage that she was really proud of. And I just felt like, I didn't write anything down, I didn't ask her questions, so I scraped up enough money to buy an Ancestry.com account, and I taught myself over the next, what is it now, 2007, 12 years I guess, how to trace my family online. And I've learned a lot, so I started a website to teach other people how to do the same thing. Shane Sams: That's amazing that you say that, and I want to dig deeper into your background too, like what you do outside of the online world. But I have tried to do the Ancestry.com thing, because I'm kind of like ... Everyone thinks, because we work online, that we know everything about computers, and every website. Jocelyn Sams: False. Shane Sams: This was false. So my mom one time, we got one of those DNA kits, and my dad got one. I tried to get on there and figure out how to start ... In the commercial it's like, "I clicked the leaf and I knew that Alexander Hamilton was my second cousin." That's so stupid because that is not how it works. Evan Garrapy: Not quite. Shane Sams: Once you get in it, you just get overwhelmed and confused. I couldn't figure it out, I gave up. I tapped out. So that's what you kind of do, right? Evan Garrapy: Exactly. I kind of compare it to that last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they're in that big ... The warehouse with all the crates. All the answers are in that big warehouse, but you would never know where to look unless you already knew where they are. So I just kind of teach people how to navigate the warehouse. Shane Sams: That's amazing. That just shows ... We were talking off air about how, I'm like, "No one's ever done anything like this. This is an amazing niche." If you just keep figuring out things that you've figured out how to do, you will eventually figure out how to start an online business. It's just going to happen. Shane Sams: Tell us more about your background too, like what's your actual background, what do you do for a living? What led, what's the nutshell version of how you ended up where you are today? Evan Garrapy: I am technically an attorney. I don't always like to admit it but yes, I'm a lawyer. I realized pretty quickly out of law school that it was probably not a good fit for me, and I was really bummed out, because you obviously spend a lot of time, a lot of money, blood, sweat and tears to become an attorney, only to realize, whoops, I made a mistake. But at that point it's not easy to switch because of all the money and time, and all of your experiences in this one area. But my mom heard you guys on a podcast, and I want to say, was that on Dave Ramsey? Were you all on there? Were you on that one? Shane Sams: I don't think so. Maybe somebody talked- Evan Garrapy: You were on something that my mom heard. She even told me about you guys. Shane Sams: Maybe somebody talked about us on Dave Ramsey. We need to look that up and see if it actually happened. Evan Garrapy: It was something my mom heard, and I looked you guys up, and I started listening to your podcast from the beginning. And truly, this sounds so sad, but I was so miserable that I would cry on the way to work. But I would listen to you guys, and it made me feel better. Like I had hope there was something I could do eventually. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: Good, that makes me feel better. Shane Sams: I thought you were crying because of it. Evan Garrapy: No. Shane Sams: Like "It made me cry, you all were so mean." Jocelyn Sams: I know, I was like, no one has ever cried over our podcast before. Shane Sams: What you're saying is, you hated going to work, but this gave you hope that yes, there is something else. Evan Garrapy: It did. I probably said that in a weird way, but it was some of the only hope I felt like I had. I really was down, I was like, I ruined my life. That sounds so dramatic, but I really just didn't know what I was going to do. Listening to you guys gave me an out, and I've just been kind of slowly working at it in bits and pieces, and started to take it really seriously, just this year. Shane Sams: Awesome. That's why we do this show though, honestly, because I was there. I hated going to work. I had no hope after some horrible things that happened to us, or to me specifically, at work, and I was looking for something different. Because I felt the same way, like I went to college for this, I went to two Master's degree programs to be a teacher, and a coach, and coach football. Jocelyn Sams: And that's not even anywhere near what Evan's done. Shane Sams: Near what you did. And I had been teaching for nine years, so to even think about switching was overwhelming, you know what I'm saying. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so many of the people listening right now, there may be somebody listening in their car right now thinking, "Oh my goodness, this is me." Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: So I'm just so glad that you've taken the next steps, and you're trying to overcome that. Shane Sams: You said something really interesting there, I kind of wrote a note here as you were telling your story. You said you figured it out after you got out of law school, right. So what pushed you into law school? Did other people say, "You should be a lawyer, because doctors and lawyers make money"? What even pushed you down that path in the first place? Evan Garrapy: People did say, they always said I should go to law school. Common thinking for a long time was, "You're a great writer," or, "You kind of like to argue," which I don't actually that much, "And so you should go to law school." And honestly, being a lawyer isn't about writing, and I don't like confrontation, so not a good fit for me Shane Sams: Yeah. It's so funny though, how we get- Evan Garrapy: And I did think I could make good money. Shane Sams: It's so funny how we get those things in our head though, right. Like one person, one time, says, "You should be a lawyer," and you're like, "Yeah, I'm so lost in my life, and I have no clue what I want to do, so I'll do that." And then you get to the end of it and you're like, "That is not what I should've done seven years ago, what the world told me to do." Jocelyn Sams: That's what I did in high school. I was in the FBLA. I won an award at a competition about computers, because you know, nerd. But anyway, I was like, "I'll be in business and do something with computers." Shane Sams: So she went to be a computer programmer and all this stuff, and then just wank, opposite direction. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, absolutely. Shane Sams: It's just so funny how common that story is, that we find almost everyone seems to come into the community like, "I thought this, someone told me this, so I did that, and now I don't want this any more." That is such a common story, of everybody really. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Because none of us know what we're doing in our 20s. We're just kind of like, "Well my advisor said," or "My mom said," or "My dad said," and then we end up looking up going, "I wish I had looked in the mirror and said, what do you say?" Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: But you get a do-over now, you can do what you want. You totally have that freedom. Evan Garrapy: I do. Like you said, I am grateful I went to law school, because I met my husband there, so I need to put that in, but I should've thought more about what day to day life is like as a lawyer. Shane Sams: What kind of law do you do? Evan Garrapy: Right now I'm doing consumer bankruptcy law. Chapter 7, Chapter 13. Shane Sams: So it's all positive and sunshine and rainbows, it sounds like. Evan Garrapy: There's happy people, nobody's ever crying at all, not stressful at all. Shane Sams: Yeah, I know. Well let's do what we can to change the narrative and get you away from bankruptcies. Jocelyn Sams: So you wanted to be an attorney, right. Shane Sams: So you wanted to be an attorney. Although attorneys do have a good racket. We were talking off air about, lawyers do make crazy money. Because we have this trademark attorney, and if I look at his email in my inbox he charges me somehow. He's got like a retina scanner. "You looked at the email, that'll be $5.95." "What?" And if I email him I get a bill right back, it's like $39.24. It's just so silly, it's like they charge by the letter or something like that. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Certain types of attorneys can definitely get away with that kind of thing. I'll tell you, my local county prosecutor job though, I think they were offering maybe starting at 38 a year. Which after law school is not that much money, with the loan. Shane Sams: That's for sure. That's like your monthly payment on your law school loan. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: Right, exactly. So tell us a little bit more then. We know why you want to get away from that job, but what are the positive benefits that you see? Like if you can get this online business off the ground, flip the script, and change your life, what are the benefits you're wanting to get out of your online business? Evan Garrapy: I want to build something that I can really be proud of. Everyone's actually impressed when you say you're a lawyer, but I'm not that proud of it. Not to sound bad, but I really want to build something that helps people, that I can be proud of and have freedom over my life. I'm kind of freedom-obsessed. It makes me feel really panicky thinking about someone else being in charge of my time. Shane Sams: Me too. It drives me insane. It gets to a point where ... I drive Jocelyn crazy because she likes schedules, but I don't even like appointments. Evan Garrapy: Me too, I know. Shane Sams: Other than these podcasts, no appointments. You're not allowed to get on my calendar for any reason. Jocelyn Sams: And I love appointments. Shane Sams: Jocelyn loves appointments. Jocelyn Sams: As many appointments as possible. Shane Sams: She likes her rigid schedule. Evan Garrapy: I'm the same. My husband is the Jocelyn in our relationship. Jocelyn Sams: And speaking of which, speaking of charging people for stuff, I always say that I'm going to charge people for wasting my time. So if I come to the doctor's office, and I sit there for an hour, I'm going to send them a bill for my time. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Evan Garrapy: I want to do that too. Shane Sams: And this is a really ... To piggyback off of that, what a worthy thing, to be able to make sure that people can find out who they are, where they came from, and complete their story. Evan Garrapy: Yes. Shane Sams: Or even think ahead to the place where it's like, "I wish I had asked all those questions." Well now we can make sure those questions get answered and exist before it's too late. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. It just fills you with a sense of pride. If you go back far enough, really we're pretty much all related. So it makes you think of the world in just a totally different way. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: That's amazing. that's an awesome mission. Jocelyn Sams: So I'm actually a little bit obsessed with your business topic right now, and I'll tell you why. And I've mentioned this on the show before, but I'm a true crime nut. Evan Garrapy: Oh yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I love listening to True Crime podcast, and one of the things, I know this is really kind of weird, but anyway- Shane Sams: I think Jocelyn is planning her exit strategy. I'm just saying. She's listening to all these crime things like, "That's how that guy got away with it, hmm." Jocelyn Sams: It does look a little suspicious. If something happens to you, it will- Shane Sams: Her computer searches are putting her in jail if anything ever happens to me, I'm telling you. Jocelyn Sams: That is not true. But I do like to look up information about serial killers and things like that. Anyway, the reason that I'm really obsessed with this ancestry information is because one of the cases that I follow, actually many of the cases that I follow, have been solved using DNA, by people's family members who have submitted their information to police databases and stuff. So anyway, that got me thinking, "I don't really know that much about my family. So anyway, murder shows have gotten me thinking how I need to know more about my extended family. Shane Sams: Right, so she's been researching. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, I know the case you're talking about I think. Shane Sams: So you may have a customer, not just a coach, on this call. Evan Garrapy: Great, perfect. Shane Sams: I'm just saying, she maybe joining you. Jocelyn Sams: Let's jump into, what do you have so far? What does your site look like, do you have anything for sale yet? Evan Garrapy: I don't have anything for sale, but I have a blog with probably, I don't think there's even 20 posts I think. I have an opt-in set up with a free e-book. I have a small social media following and a YouTube channel, and I have a mailing list with about 60 people on it. Shane Sams: That's awesome though. Jocelyn Sams: That's a great start. Shane Sams: When did you start that actual blog? Evan Garrapy: I started the blog last year, but I didn't do much with it, just a few posts. Then this year, really only getting serious in January, even having a mailing list. So it's only been a few months. Shane Sams: Sure. How many people do follow you on social? Evan Garrapy: Instagram is a big one, that's like, well for me big, 500-something. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Okay. I might need to- Evan Garrapy: I really like Instagram, and people love pictures with their genealogies, so it's a good format for that. Shane Sams: For sure. What about YouTube? Do you have any subscriber base? Evan Garrapy: I think 16, but I only have four videos, and one of them is 1,300 views. Shane Sams: Oh wow, that's good. What was it about? Evan Garrapy: I did a video comparing the different options for family tree software. It's something you host on your own computer, just like any software that you track your own family tree. Shane Sams: Got you. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I love that. Shane Sams: You could even do something like, it would be neat to have a video comparing, what's it called, 23andMe and Ancestry.com, the big players, or something like that. Evan Garrapy: Yes. I do want to do that. In fact my dad just did an ancestry DNA test, and I'm going to actually use his results and try to compare. Shane Sams: Yeah, document the whole thing. Yes, document the whole thing. And right now you do not have an actual product created though, right? Or you do? Evan Garrapy: I don't have it up for sale. I've done the first part of a course that I wanted to release. Shane Sams: Got you, okay. Evan Garrapy: It's about a 40 minute video. Shane Sams: Awesome. Evan Garrapy: You're in good shape. Shane Sams: Good shape, yeah. So basically we're just, right now you kind of ... It's a little backwards, because you really want to get the product done first before you start blogging stuff. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: But it's okay, you caught it early enough where you're like, "I need something to sell." Evan Garrapy: Right. Shane Sams: And you have an email list offer that's actually converting. Because to get 60 emails off of 15 to 20 blog posts in such a short amount of time is a really good indicator. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, I'm excited. Shane Sams: Like to pick up 500 Instagram followers, even to get views on YouTube, that's all really, signs point to yes, that you're moving in the right direction. Evan Garrapy: I'm excited about that. Shane Sams: So basically, infrastructure wise, you kind of are doing this. Now let me ask you a quick followup question. You said you did a video about comparing the software. Is your product just how to research, or does it focus on something, like Ancestry.com, like how to use Ancestry.com? Evan Garrapy: How to research is basically telling people how to use each of these websites, because they're these big databases, but there's not really great instructions on how to use them. So I do different posts and courses about each one, because people have different preferences of what they like. Shane Sams: Exactly. So you might have in your membership, you might say, "Here's the Ancestry.com, how to use it course." Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: "Here's the 23andMe course. Here's this other software that you can manage by your ..." I'm sure there's more of these out there, right? Evan Garrapy: That's the part one course I've done, is a course on how to use FamilySearch.org, which is like Ancestry.com but it's free. Shane Sams: Oh, that's interesting. Do they have DNA and all that stuff, or no? Evan Garrapy: It doesn't offer DNA, but they have just as many sources as Ancestry.com. Shane Sams: Got you. Evan Garrapy: And it's completely free to use, so I just wanted to teach people how to use it. Shane Sams: Oh wow, that's amazing. Evan Garrapy: I almost prefer it. Shane Sams: Awesome. So your course could even show people how to do this from that. So it's like, you don't have to convince people to buy these softwares, you're like, "No, there's a free one. Just come here, let me show you how to do it." Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: That's a powerful way to train people, is if you can get them in ... We had a guy on the podcast ... Gosh, it's like four years ago. But he taught people how to go to Disney for free by credit card points. Evan Garrapy: Wow, that's awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah, he didn't have to sell anything though, he just had to get them to sign up for the cards. And then he showed them a free course how to use it, or he sold them a course how to do that. So it wasn't like he had to sell them anything, he just had to convince them to do it. And that's kind of like what you're doing too. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: The only kind of red flag for me is showing people nuts and bolts of how to use software, because they change things a lot. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: So I'm wondering if maybe we can find a way to make it more evergreen. Shane Sams: Yeah. It would be nice if there was a course that was like, "Here's the general thing how to do this, forget what software you're using. Here's the things you have to search for." And then also, you had the individual ones that you could update later, but you at least had the core thing that was like, "These are the first five steps to researching your genealogy, period." you know what I'm saying? Evan Garrapy: Yeah. I think that's what I've done with the blog posts. There's a difference between the software, which is just where you store your information, and the websites, where you can actually research. Shane Sams: Got you. Evan Garrapy: So that's why I was doing it more specific. And the websites don't change that much, which is why I was going to do the courses on those. Because that's just research, and that's like going to the library. Shane Sams: Exactly. If you're going to go that route, I've got to buddy that does a ... His name's Joe, and he has this website called Learn Scrivener Fast. And he teaches this- Evan Garrapy: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: He's a buddy, that's a friend of mine. Anyway, he does this piece of software that changes every once in a while. But he just puts it into his promotional calendar and he's like, "No, it's awesome. When they change something, I get to promote that I made a video on how to do the change." So it's almost like a new excuse to sell things to people. you know what I'm saying? Evan Garrapy: Yeah, that's been a good way for me to think of content too. Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: So you have a great start, and you have some people interested, you have some content going on, you're on social media, you're doing a lot of things right, which is awesome. But tell us something that is holding you back. Maybe it's like a fear, maybe it's a mindset issue, that is just kind of slowing you down a little bit. Evan Garrapy: Fear of charging people, which I know is really common, which is probably why I've been blogging and making content, and not jumping into creating a product. Because I'm kind of procrastinating, jumping in and charging people. Shane Sams: Why are you afraid to charge people? What are you afraid they're going to do? Evan Garrapy: I'm not afraid to charge people, I don't like ... Like I said, I don't really like conflict, I don't want to deal with people saying, "How dare you charge for this," potentially. I know I just need to get over it, but ... Shane Sams: You're a lawyer. You should be the most used to this. Lawyers charge for ... We've already talked about this. Lawyers charge for everything, you know what I'm saying. Have you had negative experiences like that though, as a lawyer? For example- Evan Garrapy: Oh, every lawyer. Every lawyer. Yeah, they think everything should be free. Shane Sams: Because you're a bankruptcy lawyer. You're literally charging people to go bankrupt. That's what bankruptcy ... you know what I'm saying? Think about that. "Hi, I'm bankrupt." "All right, that'll be $500 to file your bankruptcy." "No, I'm bankrupt, you don't get it!" So maybe you're just scarred from being ... Evan Garrapy: I probably am. Being a lawyer is very scarring. Not to sound dramatic again, but ... Shane Sams: It gets the mindest in. This is common though. I don't know why it is that we all are like ... Maybe it's just because we know so much about the thing, we think, why would anyone pay for this? Like you've been so deep down the ancestry research model, you know every nook and cranny that someone's birth certificate could hide around. So it's like, why would I even pay for this, why should I charge for this? Evan Garrapy: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And there are other people out there, like me, who are listening to crime podcast, and think hey, I need to know more about my family. Like I've heard of a couple of ancestry websites, but I don't know anything about it. And so I think sometimes what happens is that people like you, who are researchers most likely, and this is the way that I am too, I like to research things. I like to go and figure out what all is going on. And I think that you assume that other people already know the same things that you know. Is that part of it, do you think? Evan Garrapy: Yeah, I don't want people to say, "This is obvious. Why would you charge anyone for this?" Because I've been doing it so long, I just think of it as being obvious. Shane Sams: It is obvious, but it's almost like disconnecting the price from you. We talked to someone else about this on a podcast a couple weeks ago. You're not really charging people for you, you're not even really charging people for the answer, you're charging people for a shortcut. It's almost like a toll road. Like if a toll road will get you there in five minutes but traffic takes you two hours, you're going to pay to go on a toll road, because it's quicker. Evan Garrapy: Right, definitely. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's what we're really charging for. I say this all the time, and I say it to anybody in the community or out of the community. We have 55 total videos or something like that inside of the Flip Your Life Blueprint, our course area. You could probably find every bit of that information somewhere online, but it will not be in order, it will not tell you to this, then this, then this, you're going to spend countless hours of frustration in your life trying to figure it all out. Or, you just get on the fast ramp. We're like the fast pass line at Disney. You can go wait in line for three hours for the flight of passage, or you can go over here and get in the fast pass line and just jump on the ride. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, so true. Shane Sams: That's what you're really charging for. So don't even think about it as, you're charging them, or that you're charging them for your content. You're giving them the thing they want as fast as possible. Shane Sams: For example, let's go back to your original inspiration for this business. Grandmother passed away. You wished you had known more about her German heritage. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Someone else is sitting there right now, and they're looking at their grandparent, and they're like "Man, they could be gone, and if I don't get this done now and figure this out, they may not even know where they come from." So at that point it's a matter of hurrying and getting people to get to where they need to be faster, and you're helping them do that. It's kind of like a mission then, and not a business. Like "I have to get people to do this, so that they can get there faster." And if you can tie your pricing to that result and to that mission, it removes you from it. You don't have to feel bad about it any more. Jocelyn Sams: I just thought of an example for this. It reminds me of sort of a tour guide. So years ago, almost 15 years ago, when Shane and I got married, we went to Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is a state park, you can go check it out by yourself, certainly there are a lot of different activities you can do there, but you can go and look at the falls by yourself. But instead we chose to do a tour, and we paid someone to take us around and tell us information. Jocelyn Sams: Remember that crazy guy who said "Okie dokie" on the bus? Shane Sams: "Okie dokie" everywhere we went. I do remember that. "Okie dokie, come on guys. Okie dokie, get on the boat." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so we paid for that tour because we wanted somebody else's expertise. We wanted them to know where to go. We didn't want to have to wade through all the information, looking everything up on our own. we wanted someone just to take us to all the best places. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, we did this out in San Diego too one time. We're total tourist nerds when we're out traveling. But when we're in a town, we want to see the most things that we can see as fast as possible, and we just can't find it all by ourselves if we're only going to be there for like two days. So we took a tour in San Diego and they took us all over the place, and we got to see the big mountain with the cross on top of it, we got to see Balboa park, all these other things. Evan Garrapy: Wow. Shane Sams: One time in New York, we were only there for a limited time because we were watching a basketball game, UK was playing Duke, and we said, "How can we tour the city as fast as possible?" So we got on a boat and they took us around the outside of Manhattan. And we just went around the island and they just pointed everything out to us. Shane Sams: That's what you're doing. You're like, "You don't have time. You need to listen to me. Trust me, this is the best thing for you, and it is my mission to make sure that you don't miss this moment with your family." That's what you charge for. Evan Garrapy: That's a really good way of putting it. Shane Sams: It's an obligation basically. You have to charge for this to get them there faster, or they won't be able to do it. Jocelyn Sams: And the thing that you have to remember too is that 90 to 95 out of 100 people are going to be like, "No, I don't want that, I can find that for free online," or, "I can figure it out." Evan Garrapy: Right. Jocelyn Sams: You want to worry about the five to 10 people who are like, "Yeah, this is awesome, and I can't wait for you to show me what you know." Shane Sams: I'll tell you, this is the last thing I'll say about pricing fears. Because this is really common. We had it, you have it, everybody listening at some point is going to be like, "I have to charge for something," and you almost feel guilty about it. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Here's what we've learned. We've probably had ... I bet you that Jocelyn and I have had at least probably four to five thousand transactions over all of our businesses in the last so many years. Literally sold that many products to people. Like elementary librarian, history teacher, football coaching, Flipped Lifestyle, thousands of people have actually bought something from us. Over that same time we've actually helped some people. We've given them free resources, we've hooked them up because we felt bad for them because they had a really bad situation, whatever. And what we have learned is that 90% of the time, the people who pay, pay attention, and they will actually follow through. The people who go and get the freebee, they don't, because they just don't value it. So it's almost like if you don't charge them, they won't take action and learn about their family. Evan Garrapy: That's true. Shane Sams: If you just give it away for free, they're just piddling, they're not actually just trying. You actually help people when you charge them, because they give you their hard earned money, they will now take action and get the value out of the product you sold them. So just make sure you know that, that it's actually good for people to pay for something. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, definitely. Jocelyn Sams: So that seems a little bit overwhelming. Do you think that that helped you? Evan Garrapy: Definitely. I agree completely with what you're saying. I know a little bit from being a lawyer. People who do free consultations, the people that don't end up being good clients. But if you charge, even if it's $5, to meet with someone, it ends up usually working out better. Shane Sams: 100%, yeah, because both parties are invested, and they care about each other, you know what I'm saying. And they also care about getting the result that they're both entering into the agreement for, so it makes more sense. We say this all the time too, every person we've ever given a free membership to Flip Your Life, for a hardship or anything, I can never think of one person that actually went ... "Here, we will help you, we feel bad, do this, we're trying to do something for you," and they never follow through. So there came a point where we just said, "We're not doing this any more." People are going to be charged, or they're not going to do it. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: So we've kind of talked a little bit about your fear. Now let's talk about actual business strategies. What do you need help with right now? Evan Garrapy: I think I know what you're going to say, but I keep going back and forth with whether to start out with a course, and try to make it apply to as many people as I can, or do I have to do a membership right out of the gate? Shane Sams: Well you know what we're about to say. Evan Garrapy: I know, that's why I don't even know why I asked. I bought the buddy boss theme, I'm ready to go. Shane Sams: So she knows. Honestly though, that's a good question. There's very limited or rare chances that we will say just do a course. If you had 500,000 people following you for some reason, because you had something go viral, that actually does make sense to do. If you have a huge audience, like a massive audience, it can make a lot of sense to have like a $500 course, and go ahead and try and sell it. Because you can make a lot of money upfront really fast. But when you're starting out with your own following that's good, niche, you've got to few people following, you've got 500 people on Instagram, 60 people on a list, it makes a lot of sense to start the membership right away, because you can start recurring revenue. Like if you sell 20 of those people on that list right now at $50 a month for your help ... And I'll also tell you ... You've been doing this since what, 2007? Studying your genealogy is not something you take a course and do it in a week. Evan Garrapy: Right. Shane Sams: It's something that you basically get into and you do it forever. That's a perfect membership model. "How do I do this? How do I go to the next level? How do I go deeper? How do I find this? I'm having trouble finding my great great great grandmother, where do I look?" They're going to need that support that a membership can only provide. And if you sell 20 of them right away you've got $1,000 a month. You sell 20 more, you've got another $1,000. You start building an actual sustainable income right away. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: So you could probably go ahead and just launch the membership straight away, and just sell it as a, "Let me help you research your family." You can get the course inside to get started, and then every week I will do office hours where you can come and tell me where you're stuck. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Or you could even design the course in a way like, "Month one on Ancestry.com, here's what you've got to do. Month two ..." Because you've got to go in and set all that stuff up, and make your links and your connections. Evan Garrapy: Oh, yeah. Shane Sams: So you could actually just set it up like a 12 month program, like "One year from now you will know everything that could ever be known about your family tree." Right? Evan Garrapy: Right. Shane Sams: Then people get obsessed with it, they stay with it. And I'd say, like Jocelyn loves ... Our personal assistant who works at our house, Jocelyn got her listening to crime podcasts, so that's what she listens to while she's working. And that's all they talk about when they're not talking about what's going on around the house. I say these people will geek out together when they find some artifact of ancient yore or something like that, whatever. So it seems like a community would really bind together around this product. Jocelyn Sams: I really don't think that there's a wrong answer to this question. If you want to create the course and then later create a community, I think that's fine. Shane Sams: This is one of the rare instances too, Jocelyn, where I think that you could sell both. Like sometimes we say don't sell your courses outside of your membership, but like Jocelyn was saying, what if somebody really just wants the ancestry course, and they don't really care about talking to anybody else? Jocelyn Sams: Or if I just want to worksheet, or a little thing that shows me the best way to go about looking all the stuff up. I mean I might want to buy that, and I don't really want to talk about it or anything. Shane Sams: Yeah, exactly. So you could almost offer both. Like you could have, each individual platform could have its own course, but all of them could be in a membership if they wanted to come in. Evan Garrapy: oh yeah. Shane Sams: That's where the people really geek out. Because I know people that are a member of all of them. Like, "I got my DNA for 23andMe and my Ancestry, I want to compare them." Right, they get really into it. Evan Garrapy: That's how I am. Shane Sams: Right, exactly, so if you exist, there are 105 other people somewhere like you. You just have to get them all to join your membership so you can help them geek out better. Evan Garrapy: Yes exactly. I love that. Shane Sams: How big is this audience? How many people actually use Ancestry.com or whatever? Evan Garrapy: I think the last time I looked, they have either six or seven million members. And that's a lot of people. Shane Sams: See that's amazing. That's a lot of people. You only need like 100 of them, you know what I'm saying. Evan Garrapy: I know. Shane Sams: To replace your lawyer income it's probably going to be a little more, but 200 people paying $50 a month is 120,000 a year. That's a lot of money. Also too, when you can target a big ... You can go into Facebook and probably target Ancestry.com followers. You could literally show people who've liked Ancestry.com's Facebook page an ad that says, "I will teach you how to use Ancestry.com." Then they go and they get the thing ... Evan Garrapy: Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: Have you ever thought about ... I know you're blogging, but have you ever thought about ... Doesn't this sound like Crime Junky Jocelyn? What if it was like a podcast where you interviewed someone who found a really great story from their history? you know what I'm saying, or you talked about these things- Evan Garrapy: Oh, that's a good idea. Shane Sams: Or these things, like you could even read case studies of where people have discovered crazy things like that. It seems like this could be like a cool- Evan Garrapy: It's in the news now too, more and more. Shane Sams: Oh yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, for sure. Evan Garrapy: With ancestry DNA in all the crimes that they're solving. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: You could do a conspiracy theory episode too, like, "Is the government really just using Ancestry.com to register my DNA?" I want to know that! Evan Garrapy: I would love that! Shane Sams: Tinfoil hat on, this is my tinfoil hat going on. Evan Garrapy: My husband always calls me a conspiracy theorist, so he's going to love when he hears this episode. Shane Sams: That's amazing. So basically, circle back around though, I always recommend that people think at least about how they could turn it into a membership in the beginning. Because small lists can make big income, if you have a recurring revenue model. Small lists do not make a big income when you're just selling courses, I don't care if they're $1,000 a piece. Like if you've got 100 people you might make 10 grand, but what happens next? Evan Garrapy: That's it. Shane Sams: So you'd rather find people, get them to join the thing, and get them to go. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. So do you have an idea about what I should charge for something like that, like a membership course, for this idea? Shane Sams: What does Ancestry.com charge? I know they have monthly product. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, they have tiers, and it's annually, or biannually, and I think the very cheapest one is like $150. Shane Sams: A year? Evan Garrapy: A year. Shane Sams: A year? Evan Garrapy: That's a year, but it's just for the library. Like it doesn't teach you how to use it. It's literally just an expensive library card. Shane Sams: What's their more middle tier option, or whatever? Evan Garrapy: $200 or $250 a year I think. Shane Sams: If you just think about it this way ... Let's say that middle tier is their best seller, which it usually is, that's why it's in the middle. If I divide 250 by 12, that kind of works out to like $20 a month. You see what I'm saying? Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: I think that's probably a good starting place, only because you know people are paying for the access to the research for $20 a month. It only makes sense they're willing to pay $20 a month for something. So it's like, why not just charge what they're already charging to teach them how to use the tool. Because the answer to that question is, how much are people willing to pay? Well we know they're willing to pay about $20 a month. Let's start there and then see how high we can push it, basically. Evan Garrapy: Right, that makes sense. Shane Sams: Yeah. Just let the market tell you, "Someone who's interested in Ancestry.com information is willing to pay $20 a month, therefore they would probably be willing to pay $20 a month to learn how to use the stupid thing they already bought. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: All right Evan, it has been such a fun conversation today. I feel like we've just kind of scratched the surface, but unfortunately we are out of time. So we always ask our guest, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today? Evan Garrapy: I need to focus on finishing up the courses I already have in progress so that I can put them into my membership site and get that out for people, and start having that recurring income. Shane Sams: All right, what an amazing action step. I know Evan's going to get out there and take action and make that happen, and grow her online business. And we would love to help you grow your online business. So you heard an amazing idea for an online business today. Jocelyn and I, before the show started, said we've done hundreds of these episodes, and that is such a unique niche. You have a unique idea, you have a unique niche, that you can get into if you will just take action and make it happen. Shane Sams: If you need help researching your idea, we have courses inside of the Flip Your Life community that can help you pick what you're going to do online. All you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife, and you can learn all about how you can join the Flip Your life community. We have plans starting for a little as $19 a month to get you all the coaching, community support, and content you need to get started. That's FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife. We would love to see you inside. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time that we have for today, but we like to close every episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a jot of our inspiration, motivation, and business advice from the Bible, and normally we share a verse with you, but our guest Evan had a verse that she wanted to share with you today, so Evan, take it away. Evan Garrapy: Yes, this is from Matthew Chapter 5, 14 to 16. It goes, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." I picked that, and it goes back to what you said about having an obligation to using your talents to help people. So that's what I try to do in my work, my online business. Shane Sams: Ooh, I got chills. That's a great Bible verse. That's an awesome Bible verse, Evan. Thank you so much for sharing that. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: All right guys, make sure you get out there, make sure you take action, make sure you let your light shine, and go out there and help the people that you were meant to help through your online business. Until next time, get out there and take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you next time. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Evan's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Super excited to be back with you today. We've got another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show, and we are going to help them take their online dreams to the next level. Want to welcome Crystal Harper to the program today. Hey, Crystal. How you doing? Crystal Harper: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Shane Sams: And I'm super excited to have Crystal on the show, because Crystal is one of our private mastermind people. We've been working with her for a few weeks, now. And she has taken massive action and made massive progress in her online business, and we're ready to get to the next level, and go to the next steps. Jocelyn Sams: All right, it is great to have you here today, and I look forward to everyone else in our audience knowing more about your business and what you are up to. So let's start out by telling everyone a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online. Crystal Harper: Okay, well I got my bachelor's degree in psychology back in 2007. And back then, I was planning on getting my PhD in clinical psychology, but I actually had a daughter right after I graduated, so I decided to take time off from school. I became a waitress. I wanted to be on my daughter's schedule during the day, so her dad watched her at night, and I worked at night. But when I turned 30, and my daughter started first grade, I decided to go back to school for my teaching certification, thinking that I would be on my daughter's schedule. But once I was in the program, I realized that wasn't really the case. So I started thinking that working in the classroom wasn't really what I wanted to do, so I decided to go back to school again and get my Master's degree in e-learning, which I will graduate from in December. Crystal Harper: So I've just kind of been on the fence of where I'm going. And then I ran into you guys, beginning of April, and I just felt like that's where I needed to be. I've just always wanted to own my own business, but never knew how I could possibly do that. Yeah, like I said, I just found you guys and the rest is history. Shane Sams: It's funny, because Crystal, when she says, "I found you guys," here's what she actually means. So Crystal finds our podcast, signs up for the membership, buys a ticket to Flip Your Life live, and she went to our private mastermind, all within a week. I'm watching this happen, as the week's going on. Monday, I see ... Like, "Oh, we got a ticket to Flip Your Life live. Whoa, they joined the community. Wow! They signed up for private coaching!" What is going on here? So you dove into the deep end. Jocelyn Sams: You went all in, Crystal. Crystal Harper: I did. Jocelyn Sams: I like that. And you're also our people because I like how you're like, "Okay, so I started out to work in education, and then I decided I didn't want to work in education." Shane Sams: Pivot. Crystal Harper: Yeah. Right? Shane Sams: All right, like, "Fork in the road, go left. I don't even know what's right. Let's just go left." Jocelyn Sams: Oh, that's sort of the way we were. We were kind of like, "We want schedule flexibility. Let's be teachers." And then we're like, "No. Let's not." Shane Sams: That's not as peachy as you think it is. You Know? Crystal Harper: I know. Shane Sams: But it is really important for people to take that lesson, though. Just because you've already invested a certain amount of time into something doesn't mean you have to keep going down that road if you don't want to do it. And when you realize you don't want to do it, you don't just finish something. When we quit our jobs, I sat down and gave my letter of resignation to the principal. Right? And he looked at me and he goes, "How long have you been teaching?" And I said, "Nine years, going on ten. This'll be my 10th year," if I was going to finish. And he goes, "Nine years." He goes, "You've got all that retirement in, and you're just going to give that up?" And I looked at him, and I went, "Yeah, but I've got 18 left. I'm not just going to finish the last 18 years to retirement because I've got 9 in the system." You don't do that. I realized I don't want to do this, so I'm going to pivot. You know? Crystal Harper: Right. I mean, and it's all a learning experience, too. Shane Sams: Exactly. And I know there's a lot of people out there that probably know your story. Like, "have lived your story." Didn't know what they wanted to do, they were waitressing, being a waiter, doing stuff, just kind of floating around. Went back to school, and now this sucks, too. "That's it, I'm getting a new degree." Go to another direction, and that's where it brought you today. Shane Sams: But tell us about e-learning, though, because this is going to be ... I mean, this is where we're going to go with your online business, but tell us a little bit about e-learning. What does that mean to have a degree in e-learning? Crystal Harper: Well, it's e-learning and instructional design, is what the actual program is. So I'm really learning how to design courses online. So I can actually even work in the back end and just design courses for teachers, or I can teach online. So pretty much the business that we've came up with is teaching teachers how to learn how to teach online. Shane Sams: Exactly. Crystal Harper: Or showing them how to teach online. Shane Sams: And giving them that path. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: A few weeks ago, we had a guest on. Her name was Gina, and she is an online teacher. She teaches English to Chinese children. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: But she needs to ... It's different teaching on the internet. It's different teaching an online ... It's different creating an online course, than doing something live, in front of 30 students. You got to know how to transition. And there might be a lot of teachers out there in the future who never walk in a classroom, because they are going to be teaching from their home, on the Internet, and they've got to know how to actually manage that process. Crystal Harper: Yeah, and I've realized that especially since starting this business, that there are so many different opportunities to teach online that I didn't even realize while I was going through the program, but just doing all of the research, I mean, there's so many opportunities. Shane Sams: Well, tell us a little bit about your journey so far, though. This was not your first idea. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: Right. What did you kind of dabble into before we started actually working together, and I was like, "No, don't do that. You can do this"? Crystal Harper: I was just thinking about starting a business to help teachers learn how to work with technology better in their classroom, which I thought was a great idea, but then after talking to you, you kind of discouraged me of that. Shane Sams: Well, we started researching it. It's always about the research, and nobody was really looking for that. Crystal Harper: And I had even ... Yeah, I know. And I had even tried to find other people that were doing it, and I realized that there weren't. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so usually when that happens, it might make you think, "Hmm, this might not be the best idea." Shane Sams: If nobody's selling anything, and nobody's running ads about the thing, there's probably nobody making money with the thing. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And it doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, it just might mean it's the wrong time for it. Crystal Harper: Yeah, that's true. Shane Sams: So tell us about your business right now, though. Now, what have we created? Now, what's amazing is, is just a few weeks ago, you had absolutely nothing. Right? And tell us what we're doing now. What's your idea, how it's evolved, and what you've actually already created? Crystal Harper: Okay. Well first, I created the course. It took me almost, probably about three weeks, where I just created three different modules. So the first module is telling teachers about what opportunities they have to be able to teach online. And then the second module, what you helped me create, Shane, was the Harper Method. So I teach teachers, step by step, how to design their own online course. Shane Sams: We have an onboarding call in our Voxer program, and we were like, "Well, what is this going to look like?" And we started ... Something happened, and we were talking about some kind of weird acronym, or something. And I was like, "What if your name was just an acronym?" And we just made up what the H, the A, the R, the P, the E, and the R were. Right? Crystal Harper: Yeah. Shane Sams: And by the end of this call, we were like, "I think we just invented a whole thing." It was like, "You are now the ... " Wait, trademark. "The Harper Method: How to be an e-teacher," basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and education loves their acronyms, anyway. So it's perfect. Crystal Harper: Yeah, it seemed to work out. It seemed to flow well for me, and it makes me look a little more original because as I did the research, there are a lot of people out there who are doing the same exact thing. Shane Sams: Which is a good thing, though, because that means there is a market and you just got to get your piece of the pie, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: What is the Harper method? What did we come up with? Tell everybody about the Harper method. Crystal Harper: Okay. H starts for helping you understand your students. So, it's analyzing the characteristics of your students and their learning styles, just to determine what type of class that you're going to be teaching. Shane Sams: Okay. Crystal Harper: A is assign objectives and learning theory. R is resources, selecting and preparing your resources and strategies. Shane Sams: Okay. What's the P? Crystal Harper: P is participation, just you determine assignments, assessments, and feedback of how your students will be participating. E is evaluate. So, you evaluate your course that you've designed and look at where you need to improve. And then R is revision and repetition. Shane Sams: Awesome. Crystal Harper: So, you just go over what you've evaluated and repeat the process. Shane Sams: And here's what's funny, that didn't exist before our meeting. And now you've created the actual Harper method. We have modules and courses that actually teach this to e-learners to help them become better. And I always tell people this. They're like, "Everybody else looks so official and everyone's got their accreditation and certification." Here's the deal, somewhere at some point, every one of those certifications that you see anywhere, someone just sat in a room and made it up. All these acronyms, all these things that we have. Common Core and all that was just people who made stuff up. And you clearly have the expertise in this, because you have a degree in it. Jocelyn Sams: And I was going to say, it sounds very professional. To me I'm like, "Oh, wow." Shane Sams: "The Harper method". Jocelyn Sams: That sounds very legit. Shane Sams: That's like hardcore. But like you can go out and create these things. My favorite is like coaches. There's this coach named Brendon Burchard. And he has high performance coaching and getting a high performance coaching certification's a big deal. But that dude just made that up. He didn't go get accredited by Yale or anything. He just made it up and he started selling it. And it's like yeah, he created a system, you learn it, and it will help you be a better coach. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: All you've done is created a system that will teach people who are not e-learners or not e-teachers to go be e-teachers, and you have every right to do that because you've got the expertise to do it. That's amazing. Crystal Harper: Right. And it's funny because even going over the other models that are already out there, I feel like my model, I kind of ... Not made it better, but I tweaked things a little bit to where ... I can't. I'm sorry. Shane Sams: Go ahead. Go ahead. Jocelyn Sams: You're fine. Crystal Harper: Well, you know how just things continually get better when you look at something, you can see what could make it better. Shane Sams: Sure. Crystal Harper: So, I just kind of looked at what's out there and I tried to make my model flow a little bit better than what I personally have seen. Shane Sams: And the difference there between you and everybody else, okay? Anyone who doesn't take action, is you actually created this thing. There's probably 100 other people that looked at that same thing and said, "Well, I could do this better." But they never made the thing and you did. And that's why you've given yourself such an opportunity to go be successful and get your course out there, and actually start selling it and become this expert where people come to you to learn how to be like an e-learner, right? Crystal Harper: Yeah. It's pretty cool. Shane Sams: It's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Crystal. So, you got your product kind of outlined and where is it at right now? You have already been working on it. Have you completed it? Have you sold it? Where are you at right now? Crystal Harper: I did complete it. At first I put it on Udemy and I haven't made any sales on Udemy. But I have also put it on my website. So, I started up my website. I've been building my social media. That's mainly what I've been focusing on the last week or so is just building up LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest. Shane Sams: So, basically you're following the Flip your Life blueprint. It's amazing how things happen when you do that. You created your course. You put it in a third party market just so it's for sale, just in case. You've built your website and your social media, you're building your platform, okay? You're creating infrastructure that will support this and now you have to take it to the next level and just find people to buy the thing, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Right. Shane Sams: So, tell me about your e-mail list. You've actually got that out there, too. What's happening with your email list? Crystal Harper: Yeah. I made a few opt ins or lead magnets, and put them ... I have blog posts. I wrote out, I have a bunch of blog posts going all the way through October, but I put lead magnets on the blog posts and then on my website and people have been opting in. So, I got my first email a little over a week ago and then I got another one, and then I realized that ... Going back a little bit, I didn't have a lead magnet on the home page. And I actually just fixed that a couple days ago and then all of a sudden I got six more people- Shane Sams: That's amazing. Crystal Harper: Yeah, all in the last 30 hours, I've gotten six more people added to my email list. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this now. How many actual blog posts are done? Because one of the things that we really preach in the Flip Your Life blueprint is batching your content ahead so that you can go back and promote the content you've batched, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: So, how many of those have actually went live? Crystal Harper: Live, there's probably maybe around eight or so. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Now, think about that. People get frustrated at us sometimes because they listen to other people and they're like, "No, I have to have 100 blog posts and build an audience, and then I ask them what they want and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." But no. You've made your product, it's already for sale, and with just eight blog posts, you're being found. And people are subscribing. And now you can email them and you can sell them this product that you've already got that you can make money off. Even though it's in its infancy and it's just at the very beginning, like you can see things happening just because you're making things happen, right? Crystal Harper: For sure, yeah. Shane Sams: There's people that have 10,000 people reading their thing, but they never put an opt in up, so they never even get a lead, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: And you're starting to see it come to fruition. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, because they're like, "I'm not ready," or you know, "I don't know what they want." Well, here's the thing. If you make something, somebody might buy it. If you make nothing, there's no opportunity for anyone to buy it. Shane Sams: Exactly. Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: You're giving yourself massive opportunity. Crystal Harper: Yeah, it's just putting yourself out there. I've just been posting on social media every day and I'm getting between 15 and 20 something views a day, so there's people out there- Shane Sams: What's going to happen when you have 20 or 30 blog posts? And you've been consistently doing social media for months, right? You're going to start getting traction. The course will start evolving. You'll start talking to people and the first sales come, right? Crystal Harper: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's so funny how many times we've seen, I mean, we've literally watched hundreds of people go down the path and it always happens about the same way. And then we watch hundreds of others veer completely off the path and they just play on social media all day, and then they quit and say online business doesn't work, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: But it's like we said when we were first talking, "Hey, if you build the course and if you have a lead magnet, somebody's going to opt in." Lo and behold, guess what happened? You got leads, right? Crystal Harper: Sure. Right. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. My first question would be have you asked these people to buy yet? Are they in some type of a sequence? Shane Sams: Like an auto responder? Have you actually sent them an email and said, "Hey, I have a course over here"? Crystal Harper: I have not and that's part of my action plan for this week is to create an email auto responder, especially since I got six new people in the last day or so, I feel like I need to be emailing them. That's definitely my plan. I've been promoting the course on social media, but I haven't sent it out in email yet. Shane Sams: That's where the real power is. Because usually social media is kind of only good for getting you emails, like getting you leads, and then you follow up with them to actually make the sales. But that's okay, though. You're going in order. I'm telling you, you're doing things step by step. And that's why you're going to be successful at this, because you've done it right. Now you know, you're like, "Wait a minute, I have people that raised their hand, I just have to email them. And maybe they'll raise their hand again, except this time there'll be a wallet in it." Crystal Harper: Right. I know. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? Crystal Harper: It's crazy when you go step by step, but it really seems like it's working. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: Okay, cool. Jocelyn Sams: You mentioned a little bit about putting yourself out there, and I know that it's one of the fears that you have because I'm looking at your form that you filled out before the podcast, so let's talk a little bit about that. What fear is holding you back just a little bit right now? Crystal Harper: My biggest fear is going live. I don't mind as much going on video or audio and you record it and they see it later, but I'm terrified of going live. Shane Sams: What are you terrified of? Is that the real fear or is there something behind it? What are you afraid is going to happen? Crystal Harper: That I'm going to mess up and there's no erase button. I just, I guess I need to build up my confidence. I know that I know it. I know that I know the materials. But it's just like sometimes I get tongue twisted or just I don't ... Like right now, I don't know what to say. Shane Sams: I was kind of setting you up there as well, because I'm never short for words, you know what I'm saying? Crystal Harper: Yeah. Shane Sams: But what's cool about it, though, is one, you don't have to go live. I do encourage people to go live a lot, but if you don't want to go live, Crystal, nobody's got a gun to your head telling you to do it, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: I was talking to somebody the other day about, we were talking content strategies. And we basically had a little bit of a disagreement on what worked online or what was the best way to be successful. He was really pushing for like, "No, write one blog post a month, 3000 words, epic post. Deeply researched. That's the best way to get traction in your content." Shane Sams: And I was like, "No, be prolific. Go out there and share something. Write an email everyday," like I do, right? Or something like that. I like a prolific strategy. Be like John Lee Dumas. Do a podcast every day for whatever. If you want to get traction, throw as much mud on the wall, whatever. We had an impasse about what we each wanted to do, but we could both easily point to successful people in either direction, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: And you will find as many millionaires on Pinterest as you will on Facebook. Right? You just will. It doesn't matter. You'll find as many millionaire real estate developers selling single family homes as you will selling apartment buildings, okay? There truly 100% is no right way to do this. It's just your way. And right now you've just done blog posts and they've gotten you subscribers, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: Don't feel like you have to do that. Now, that being said, also don't be afraid to do it just because you might mess up. If you write a blog post, you're eventually going to write blog posts that have a spelling mistake, okay? If you make YouTube videos, you're eventually going to say something crazy. If we were on a member call, the last member call that we did for the Flip Your Life community, twice a month we answer premium member questions for members. They show up, we answer questions. Jocelyn Sams: We do it on video. Shane Sams: We do it on video. It's in our bedroom and we have two chairs that sit by this big bay window that look out at the lake. We were sitting here and we were like, "Whatever." I look behind me and Anna Jo is taking off her clothes in the back of this video, putting on- Jocelyn Sams: Well, she's changing into pajamas. Shane Sams: She's changing into pajamas. Like the dogs were in here, we were in here, the kids are allowed to come in here. And she literally had her shirt off. And I'm like, "What are you doing?" And she's like, "I'm putting on my pajamas," like it was just nothing, right? But you can't avoid every mistake is what I'm saying. It's impossible. I wouldn't necessarily even worry about getting tongue tied. People probably would like that better if you weren't perfect. Jocelyn Sams: And here's the thing for me, Crystal, is that the live video actually gives me a sense of peace about doing video because I know that it's live and I feel like people might actually be more forgiving because of that. And if something happens, I might just be like, "Hey, live video, you know." Brush it off. No big deal. But I feel like if I am editing something, it has to be absolutely perfect. Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: It's like in Game of Thrones, the last season of Game of Thrones, someone on Twitter noticed that they had left a Starbucks coffee cup on the table during- Jocelyn Sams: On ye old table. Shane Sams: Like ye old table during a scene of this medieval fantasy novel. Right? You know? But it was like they got butchered for it because you've got this $100 million a year show that has all the time spent, an extra year editing it to make it perfect, and they still left a coffee cup in, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: But live, it's like crazy stuff just happens live. It's just like no big deal. And I also love live, too, because I think it's actually easier for me to do a live video than it is to prepare, because I spend so much time preparing when I have to do something and I know I've got to prepare it and edit it and stuff. And some times when I do a live video, i' just like, "I have an idea. I'm going to write three bullet points and talk about it and then turn it off." And those are usually my most popular videos. Crystal Harper: Really? Shane Sams: Yeah, always. It's so funny that live seems so scary, but both of us kind of have agreed that it's actually a lot easier to do live. Jocelyn Sams: The more you do it, the easier it will become. This was something that was just really hard for me. It took me probably years. But now when we sit down to do a video, I'm not perfect at it. And I still mess up. But I don't even really care that much anymore. It's become so much easier because I've practiced it all these times. Crystal Harper: Right. I can see that. Shane Sams: Another thing, too, that I think people really intimidated with live video is the teaching. Right? One, you have to know your content when you're teaching live. That's true. I think most, a lot of people that are listening right now, your fear is not going live, your fear is people finding out you don't know what in the heck you're talking about, right? So, if you know what you're talking about, it doesn't matter. I could get on and talk about football all day. I could talk about the 3-5-3 defense for hours. I could talk about online business. You put me on. I did a 45 minute training the other day off of three bullet points that I wrote down literally walking in the door before the show, right? Shane Sams: And it was like I just know I'm talking about things I know. So, this thing that you've invented called the Harper method, if you want to talk about it, it's your thing. You're going to know more about it than anyone else on the planet. You shouldn't be intimidated by that. Crystal Harper: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And just remember that ... I forgot what I was going to say. Shane Sams: See? Jocelyn Sams: See? Shane Sams: Right there. Leave that in. We're not even taking the out. That's what happens. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, okay. I know. And just remember that people do not expect you to have all the answers. It's okay to tell someone you don't know something. If someone asks you something and you're not sure, just be honest with them and be like, "Hey, I don't know the answer to that question. Let me look into it some and I'll be happy to get back to you later." Shane Sams: And go after the low hanging fruit when you start. I think people think they have to do live videos that are like, "You're going to change the world with your next Facebook live," right? But sometimes a live video can be, "Hey, guys. Crystal Harper here. Founder and inventor of the Harper method. We've got a new blog post. It's titled The H in the Harper Method. Go check it out, I'm going to drop a link below." That's a live video. Crystal Harper: Okay. Shane Sams: You don't have to tell them that something's going on. Your live strategy doesn't have to be live teaching. Crystal Harper: Okay. Shane Sams: You can teach in those detailed blog posts and then just use live to show a little personality and tell people about your existing content. Crystal Harper: Yeah, I like that. It's like baby steps. Shane Sams: It's like baby steps, right. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: Or it's a strategy in and of itself. Crystal Harper: Right, true. Shane Sams: There's no right way to do this. Just incorporate all these awesome tools that we have to promote the stuff that you already do. Crystal Harper: Okay. That makes sense. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's talk about how we can grow this audience and get you to your next level. Crystal Harper: Well, is it too early to be starting my membership? Because I kind of already have started looking into starting a membership, but that was one of my questions that I wanted to ask you guys, like when am I ready to take that step? I mean, I only have a few people even viewing me right now. Shane Sams: Is it too early is what you're saying, basically? Crystal Harper: Right, right. Shane Sams: I don't think so. The answer to us for anybody that ever asks us this is no. It doesn't matter what you sell, it just matters that you sell, right? Crystal Harper: Do I need to start a ... I hear you guys talk about beta groups. Is that the way I should go about it before I actually just throw a membership out there? Shane Sams: Your first 20 members are your beta members anyway. Beta just means the first run and basically- Crystal Harper: Okay. Shane Sams: You've not started yet. You're literally crossing the finish line of having a thrown together platform with a product sitting in the middle of the stage, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: We just have to figure out how that product changes a little to make it into a membership. Basically, if you have the content living in a protected area on your site, the only thing you really have to add to it is access to you, and you have a membership. Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: You could do member calls like we do. Teachers could come, ask you questions twice a month, and you charge a recurring cost for that. There's different ways that you could do that. You could sell the course and then sell a $19 a month talk to the founder of the Harper method twice a month kind of thing. Or you could package it all together. It really doesn't matter how you frame it, but I like when people start with their membership, because let's say you have 100 people on your list and you're charging $50 a month. If you get 10 of those people, you're making $500 a month, that's a car payment month one. Shane Sams: When you have a membership, you don't have to convert so many people. If you're just selling a course by itself, like an email list of 100 people won't do it. But if you have 100 members, that'll totally do it. Like 100 times 50 is 60,000 a year, right? So, I like it when people start with the membership. Crystal Harper: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: The whole thing about doing the beta is that it gives you the opportunity to see if it's working for you and then also if it's working for your members. Like if you started out and you tell them that you're going to do two members calls a month and you don't like doing that or you want to change something about it, it gives you the opportunity to do so. Shane Sams: You can evolve, basically, with the first members. Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: You have an unfair advantage right now. Let's say you have 10 people on your list. You could literally record a video for all 10 of them and be like, "Hey, Christy. Thanks for signing up for my list. I'm getting ready to start a membership where I will personally teach you the Harper method. I'm only going to charge you $9 a month. This is eventually going to be $99 a month. But right now, limited time, get in. You can ask me questions about being an e-teacher. I can show you how to transition from classroom teaching to online teaching. I can show you how to do the curriculum and stuff. You'll literally get to talk to me, but it's a beta. So, I'm letting you select people and I select you," right? Crystal Harper: Yeah, I like that. Shane Sams: You could totally reach out to these people and try to get those beta members. Crystal Harper: Okay. Shane Sams: Any time you can build recurring revenue as early as possible, you should do it. Crystal Harper: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: And I would even reach out to them personally before you get this auto responder done. These people just signed up for your list, so take advantage of the small numbers right now and write them back personally. Say, "Hey, I just wanted to thank you for signing up for my list. Are there any questions I can answer for you?" Crystal Harper: Okay. Cool. Shane Sams: The auto responder, I think ... People always ask me this in the community. I don't know if we've talked about this much on the air, but we've talked about this in our member calls quite a bit. Your auto responder is almost like whipped cream on the ice cream. It's like the cherry on top. People get this romanticized version of online business, like "I built a product and I had a single lead magnet that led to seven emails, and that's how everyone joins." Honestly, that's not how barely anybody really joins, you know what I'm saying? Shane Sams: The auto responder, we always say it takes the low hanging fruit. There might be 5% of your email list that ever just signs up because you asked them with an auto responder, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And there's no magical auto responder. There's no magical copy. Shane Sams: No. Jocelyn Sams: And one thing that we've decided to do is that we've decided to market like it's 25 years ago. We actually reach out to people. We send them videos. We reach out to our audience. We reach out to our members. We say, "How can we serve you? Would you like to buy a live event ticket?" These are things that we actually do and that's going to help you, especially in the beginning to build that know, like, and trust for people so that they will invest in what you're selling them. Shane Sams: The auto responder is more like your day off insurance. Any time, like tomorrow, Jocelyn and I today had three podcasts that we recorded. We had a strategy meeting over lunch about some hiring decisions that we're making. We worked a lot today basically is what I'm saying. We put a lot of hours into the day and tomorrow we're going down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to take our kids to the water park at Dollywood. Crystal Harper: Oh, cool. Shane Sams: We're going to spend all day with the kids tomorrow. But I know that if anybody signs up for my list tomorrow, I've got an auto responder. At least they're going to get an email. They're going to get that coming out. We're going to have, we have a promotion running. We have like a quarterly promotion, like a first day of summer promotion. So, I know that email's going to go out this week to people who are not in the auto responder. I know that members are getting emails about Flip Your Life live next week. It's already kind of done. Shane Sams: Those automated emails are not the end all be all. The followup is what matters. If someone hits reply and asks a question about Flip Your Life live, I have those pushed to me. And then I make them a video and freak them out. Right? That's where sales are made. They're not made in the auto responder. Crystal Harper: And that's one thing I love about you guys is how you guys are just super connected with your customers. So, it just makes you seem much more real. Shane Sams: Well, you actually get to talk to us. Crystal Harper: Right. It's so cool. Shane Sams: Right. And everybody can make that happen in their business, because we really mean it when we say, like who wouldn't want to make $60,000 a year working at home? As a minimum. As a baseline. That's 100 people, $50 a month. 200 people, $25 a month. Those are real numbers. And they're really possible for anyone who's listening to this podcast right now. If you do what we say. Build recurring revenue, do a membership. Be real. Reach out. Let them know you're a real human. Let them know the Harper method is actually ran by Crystal Harper, and they can talk to Crystal, and Crystal will help them implement that to change the way they run their business, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And hopefully it will grow to a point where you can't do that forever, but there are still ways to get things like that done even if you grow to a really large number. Shane Sams: And it's why we actually started the program that you're in. We call it S&J All Access is what we call it. And one of our big things is our community has gotten so big, right? It's impossible for us to literally talk to hundreds of people every day, right? But we find ways to go one to many. We find like the forums, we can jump in and kill a bunch of questions, the member calls twice a month. We're live, listening to people asking questions and answering them right there on the air. Shane Sams: But the reason we started S&J All Access is because we have a philosophy where we say we need to be able to do for a few what we wish we could do for everybody. Right? I wish I could help every single person starting out do what you're doing. Like we're working like this. Crystal gets to actually talk to me on Voxxer. It's an app. Everyday she can send me messages. And I send her a message back and tell her- Crystal Harper: I know, it's amazing. I love it. Shane Sams: But I can't do it for everybody, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: And there is a cost associated to it. Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: But that keeps us, like someone asked me one time at mastermind, they were like, "Why do you let beginners into your private mastermind, your S&J All Access? Why don't you only work with people who have 500 members, you're trying to get them to 1000?" Which I do have people like that. But that's not the heartbeat of our community. The heartbeat of our community is people like you who are like, "I've got an idea. This is gold. We've got to make it happen. How do I do this?" Like, okay. Let's go. Let's go make it happen. Right? Crystal Harper: Oh, yeah. If I didn't sign up for the Voxer program, I know I wouldn't be where I'm at now, that's for sure. Shane Sams: I mean, most people aways tell me, "I don't think I would have made my course." Right? And I'm like, "Yeah." Crystal Harper: Oh, yeah. Shane Sams: "That's why I won't let you start until you make your course." Crystal Harper: Right. Now I'm really learning the steps. I know what to do next. Shane Sams: Exactly. Crystal Harper: It's super helpful. Shane Sams: And you'll do the same thing with that personal connection if you keep it in your business, and that's what creates loyalty. That's what creates recurring revenue. That's what creates a stable online business. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Crystal. We have had an awesome conversation today. It has been great talking to you. I cannot wait to meet you in person very, very soon. But before we go, we always like to ask our guest what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about on today's call? Crystal Harper: I think the first thing I'm going to do in the next day is personally email each of my email subscribers and thank them for joining my list, and maybe ask them some questions, or what they would like to know with teaching online. Shane Sams: And anyone that replies to you, ask them to buy your course. Crystal Harper: Okay. Shane Sams: Sell it. You got to sell that thing or you're not going to make any money on it, you know what I mean? Crystal Harper: Right. Yes. Sounds good. Shane Sams: All right. Listen, thank you so much, Crystal. I know Crystal was very nervous when we first got on the call today and I know it can be very intimidating to come on a podcast when it's not something that you do all the time. Thank you for just sharing your fears and your vulnerabilities. Listen, we all have these things that we have to overcome and there's a lot of people listening that just probably nodding their head with this episode like, "This is me. This person is me and I'm going to do this because she's doing it." So, thank you for coming on the show. Crystal Harper: Yes, thank you so much. I really, you just have to put yourself out there and just do it, even if you have fears. You just have to go for it. And it gets a little bit easier the more you do it, I guess. Shane Sams: Let's just keep building it and changing it and we'll flip that life. We won't just change your life. We're going to flip your life, right? Crystal Harper: Right. That's true. Shane Sams: You're amazing, Crystal. All right, guys. What an amazing conversation that we had with Crystal today. She is doing everything she needs to do to start, build, and grow a successful online business. She's got all the pieces of the puzzle laying on the table and we're just putting them together one piece at a time and I cannot wait to see what that picture looks like for her. And I cannot wait to see what it looks like for you as well. We would love to help you take your next steps in your online business inside of the Flip Your Life community. We have plans available for every budget and every need. All you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife and check out all of the great content that we have inside. Check out all of the amazing community support that is waiting for you inside of the Flip Your Life community. That's FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we would love to work with you inside. Shane Sams: Before we go, we like to close every episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast with a bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration, motivation, and even our business ideas from the bible. Today's bible verse comes from Proverbs 28:10. The bible says, "Lead good people down a wrong path and you'll come to a bad end. But do good and you will be rewarded for it." That's all you have to do, guys. Take something that you know, that you can help someone else out there on the Internet with, build a business around it. And when you take action, you will be rewarded for it. Shane Sams: So, thanks for listening today. Until next time, get out there. Take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Crystal's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all on today's podcast we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your host, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again today. Really excited about today's guest because this is going to be an interesting show. We've been talking a lot on the podcast about different ways to live the flipped lifestyle, different ways to take control of your life, to be able to make your own money to become and stay self employed, offline, online, work from home, work in your office, wherever it may be. Shane Sams: And this episode is going to fall squarely in the middle of every one of those possibilities because we have someone that has flipped their life through their brick and mortar business, but now they want to scale it online. There's all kinds of, we're at a fork in the road and there's 47 prongs on the fork. So we're going to dig into this a little bit today and see if we can make sense out of it. We want to welcome flip your life member Jennifer Dixon to the show. Jennifer Dixon: Hey guys, thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very, very happy to talk to you today. Jennifer is one of our more active members. We see her over and over again on member calls- Shane Sams: Asks amazing questions and I was telling her off air before we started the show. Set a new world record for amount typed into the podcast intake form. I mean we're talking to some multiple paragraphs here folks. I mean it was impressive. It was very impressive. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so let's just end this podcast now and maybe you should write a novel. Shane Sams: It's prolific that's it, that's right. You just to write a book and it'll be so prolific that no one won't be able to help but purchase it. Jocelyn Sams: Like podcast done that is like a record. Shane Sams: That's a record. We'll see y'all next week. Bye. All right, so first of all, before we get started tell us about your background. How you ended up doing what you do now in your brick and mortar business. Right? And then maybe a little bit about how you found us and then we'll jump from there? Jennifer Dixon: Okay. So you all can tell me to speed it up or slow it down because as you can tell, I'm not great at brevity. That might be the Southern roots. I don't know. We just go slow. Shane Sams: We'll edit you out, it's okay. Jennifer Dixon: All right, so I got into yoga about 10 years ago. I was really active and running, I was training for a marathon at the Disney marathon, actually with my sister and doing crossfit at the time. And I herniated a disk in my low back and I went from being able to sling weights around and run for hours on end, which I used to love to do, to basically being bedridden. I went through eight rounds of four epidural shots in my back. I wasn't even 30 at the time. And the next step really was surgery is what the doctor had said. And I was not willing to do that. My Dad's had back surgery and I am not a huge fan of the ramifications of that. So, my boyfriend now husband at the time was like, "Why don't you try yoga?" And I was like, "Yoga is for sissies." Famous last words. Jennifer Dixon: And he took me to my very first heated power class, and when I was getting into the studio, I had to use the handles to get out of my car, my back was hurting so bad. And by the time the class was over, I could touch my toes and my back didn't hurt. And ever since then I basically practice nearly every single day for this'll be, I think my 10th year. And yoga's given me my life back, it's legitimately saved me from living a life full of pain. And that's how I got into it. I got certified right away to teach. I didn't really ever think I was teaching, I had a very, very lucrative career in the energy industry. And I just did yoga and taught yoga on the side because it was fun. And then lo and behold, I got laid off of my very lucrative position. I think you talk about that there's not really jobs security when you're working for somebody. And boy is that not the truth. Two weeks after coming back to work from having my first child, I was laid off. It was divine providence, I know it's totally a God work, because my husband was laid off Wednesday. I was laid off two days later Friday. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh, woah that's crazy. Jennifer Dixon: That's when you know God's got his hands into something. And it was funny, they had this box full of tissues on the table and I think they were prepared for this emotional breakdown. And I was like, all right, God, I have no idea what you're doing, but all right, give me my severance. What's my insurance? And then we moved home in two weeks. And I sat around on unemployment for about six months and I interviewed and interviewed. And at the time I was working 60, 80 plus hours a week, traveling everywhere. And that was really cool before I had a baby. But then once I had a baby, and the baby didn't like bottles she just wanted to nurse, and she lost all this weight in two weeks. I didn't want to do that anymore. And I found a yoga studio for sale. And I kind of laughed at first when I first saw it because I was like, we can't live off of that. Famous last words. Jennifer Dixon: And at the end of unemployment I was like, all right honey, this is still there. Maybe this is what we should be doing. And my husband, he's a saint. God bless him I'm so lucky. He's like, whatever you want to do honey, whatever you want to do. And that was three years ago this month. Yeah. Shane Sams: So you basically bought an existing yoga studio that had clients already? And you just kind of picked up and started teaching and then you grew this into a way to make a living and kind of control your schedule, control your life. And you've just got this place now and you've built a community up there and you have plenty of members and things like that? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Well, I'm not going to say we have plenty of members. We can always grow. I do have a fantastic community. The best thing about it is I have a group of teachers that love to teach, and they love to work and teach for me in the community, it's unlike any other yoga studio I'd ever been in, which that was kind of the things that I wanted when I took over the studio is a lot of times yoga studios are not known for being like tears is the joke that I like to use. You know, where everybody knows your name, and that is exactly what the studio is. You come in, we get to know you. We get to know about your family, we celebrate your successes. It's a very tight knit community and I love that part of it. Shane Sams: Sure. But the challenges of the brick and mortar, how big is the area that you live in? Like how big is the town you live in? Jennifer Dixon: Chattanooga. It's pretty good size. I think- Shane Sams: Pretty good size. But you probably have a lot of competition. I'd say there's other yoga studios and other gyms and things like that? Jennifer Dixon: Exactly. Shane Sams: The problem with brick and mortar is sometimes you hit up against like geographic boundaries of how many clients you can have and there's a lot of overhead I would assume in something like that correct? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Shane Sams: Like you said there are coaches and staff and things like that. So did that lead you to say, hey, wait a minute, maybe there's another way to make money online or like what got you into thinking about like online business? Jennifer Dixon: I was thinking about trying to come up with another peg of income, you've got to have multiple pegs if you're doing this on your own. And my two pegs I do teacher training and the yoga studio we were still struggling to create margin in our lives. And I was listening to another podcast where you guys were on. And I think it's hilarious because you talked bad about your accent but I love it because it just sounds like home to me. Because I'm just a few hours South of you. Shane Sams: I need to put that on a T-shirt. Shane and Jocelyn sound like home to you. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, you all sound like home. It just sounded like my people, and I immediately signed up for your podcast after listening to that one, and kind of binged listened to it. And then one day, I guess it was funny because I've never thought of my life being flipped. It was a Friday. I was at the zoo. I can't remember if my son, yeah my son must've been born, I'm not sure if it was when I was pregnant or when he was born, but I'm pretty sure he was new. I was at the zoo with my daughter and you sent out an email about asking for a question or something. And here we were looking at the chimpanzees, my daughter's were making monkey noises and I sent you an email and you responded right away. And I was like, holy cow that's- Shane Sams: Shane and Jocelyn actually talk to people. That's a miracle, right? Jennifer Dixon: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And sometimes we even send a video like just to make sure people know that it's really us- Shane Sams: We jut like to mess with people basically, we just like to freak them out while they're at the zoo. Jennifer Dixon: I love it. No, I was like, whoa. And I think that was a Friday and I signed up for the membership that Sunday. So that would've been a year ago actually. Really recently. Shane Sams: So there's the first lesson for today's podcast y'all is be a real person and actually communicate with your audience and people will buy your stuff. Jennifer Dixon: Oh yeah, that's true. I signed up like that, after the first webinar I was like, I'm in- Shane Sams: I remember when you came into the community too because I can remember, you are on every single Q and A that we do. Which is awesome. Jennifer Dixon: Nearly. Shane Sams: Almost. But I remember the first couple of questions you had were basically like the theme of what we first initially talked about was how in the world can something like what I do become an online business? Because it wasn't about certifying other yoga instructors or anything like that. It was how can we just make the... If you look at a bullseye, you've got a bullseye in the middle. That's kind of where your brick and mortar business lives. And it's like, how can we create circles of income that span out from that and still do kind of the same thing right? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Shane Sams: So what path did you choose to go down? What did you start creating? How did that go and kind of bring us up to speed with where you are now with the online stuff? Jennifer Dixon: Sure. So right when I joined the community, I also decided to rebrand the studio because the studio had been around since 2010, and it had a different brand and I wanted to make it mine. And so this was a year ago in the summer was just one heck of a summer. I rebranded, redid a website, all that kind of stuff. And at the same time shot my very first material for a course, which I was going to put into a membership. And at first I titled it the Mommy Bounce Back program because my son was about a year. And this will go into probably a question later on. I'm not like a typical yoga person. And as long as I'm breastfeeding, I'm going to hold on the last 10, 15 pounds of momma weight, that's just my body everybody's different. Jennifer Dixon: And I knew that if I marketed to the women that were, at least my thought was if I marketed to women who had had babies either recently or were never able to successfully get in shape postpartum, then I would look real to them because I was legit there. And so I created, I think it was almost five hours of material, different videos, full length videos. And to me a full length video at the time was a minimum of, I wanted to do an hour and my dad was the one who was shooting the videos. He was like, maybe you should do a 45 minute one. And in my head I'm like no way. And so we did like one 30, one 40 and then two 60 minute videos. And then I did a lot of little drills and I did it in Kajabi at first because that was easy. And I'm not a tech person. And I sold, I can't remember, I sold five, I think I sold five. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Jennifer Dixon: I was pumped, yeah I sold five, and then it was like crickets, and it was bad crickets. And then a friend of ours offered to help me market it and all that kind of stuff. And I think I sold one more at a really, really discounted price and then nothing. And so I shutdown Kajabi because I didn't want that monthly fee. And I just started trying to like what you guys talk about, be really prolific with my content creation. So in the summer, like right around when I was filming all this, I upped my blog post. I'm posting three times a week, I'm writing that stuff every three times a week. I'm doing live things on Facebook for the studio and for online at least weekly. Jennifer Dixon: And then I started doing things on YouTube at least weekly. And then January happened and I was like, man, I'm so tired of living without margin. So I've got to make this work. I was up really late with my husband dealing with stuff and I said, honey, we've got to make this online stuff work. That's the only way we're really going to scale if I want to do this and this is what I want to do. And ever since then it's just been, all the ponies are running. Shane Sams: Right. So basically then this is very common, people do this. They create the product, they sell something, it's exciting. And then it's like, we ran out of people to sell something to, so basically you've turned all your energy toward trying to build an audience, right? Like trying to get YouTube subscribers, get followers, get the blogs going on. Let me ask you this is the thing still for sale though? Are you still selling the thing you created to these new people? Because you've been creating an audience now for six months regardless of how big it gets or is. Did you just stop selling the thing all together? Jennifer Dixon: Yes. I did, and I'm laughing until I forget which one of those, because I signed up for flip your life live, that was like part of that conversation with my husband. I was like, I've got to make this work, I'm going to this training. I know it's a lot of money. We're going to figure out how to do it. And so I don't remember which training it was Shane, but you were no sugar Shane, I guess. And you said, "If you got something, put it for sale," and you said Udemy which I didn't even know about. But like that day after the phone call or maybe the next day I had my course back up on Udemy. So it is for sale. Shane Sams: It is for sale now. Okay, good. At least it's for sale somewhere. Because I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I don't remember where building an audience leads to not selling things to them. That was the disconnect I was finding there because you made all this content and that's where you got it to go. You know what I'm saying? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: Well that's a good. There's a lot of people out there who do this. There's always a roller coaster. Just a little while ago we were talking to our accountants and we were looking at like our numbers, like we meet with them quarterly to see if numbers go up and down and we had a dip in April. And it was like totally because of stuff that we had done earlier in the year, some promotions, we had changed some prices and we had done some things, but our actual financial check mark dipped that month, and it always cracks me up when I talk to people and they're like, "Wow, you and Jocelyn just everything goes up and it's perfect forever." And I'm like, "No. It goes up and down, it is still feast or famine." Shane Sams: The membership model that we teach and that we use smooths that out, but it doesn't protect you totally from it. Like that's just business, right? You know this with brick and mortar. And it's like anything else. If you open a store in a town of a hundred people and you sell to all the hundred people, you have to go to the next town to find more people, that's just the way it works. And so many people though, the problem is they have that, "I sold something," and then it dips and they're like, "Ah, that was a fluke," and then they quit forever. Shane Sams: So I do want to like to commend you for like doubling down and getting your content going, running it in parallel, figuring out ways that you can use it with your existing business. And really that's what you just got to figure out now is how to maximize this new audience that you've created. So how is the audience building going? How is that prolific content creation panning out? Is it going up steadily? Is it spiking? What's happening? Jennifer Dixon: So my blogging is I had a brand new website. I think my website's less than a year old, and within six months I was front page for yoga Chattanooga, or Chattanooga yoga. And then within just a couple months after that I was number one with one of those searches. So I really feel like the blogging has helped get people into my brick and mortar business, which is- Shane Sams: Okay, that's interesting. Jennifer Dixon: ... which is really great. And when we do our client intake, they say, Oh yeah, I found you online and all that. So that's been great. My online video stuff, not so much. I think I have like 138 YouTube followers and I have a really big family that makes up a large number of that. Shane Sams: Well you know what, honestly though if you put 130 people in a room, that'd be a lot of people. You know what I'm saying? Jennifer Dixon: It would be. Shane Sams: And don't discount that. When Jocelyn and I launched our first product, how many people were on your email list? Jocelyn Sams: A couple hundred maybe. Shane Sams: Like 250 maybe. So you're not far off where we were at that tip to find that tipping point to start making some real money with this. So they're there. The problem is your product is totally geared toward expectant mommas right? or like mothers that just had baby? Jennifer Dixon: Not anymore. Not Anymore. So when I relaunched it on Udemy, I think I called it, I should have known this and I'm just having a brain fart, thrive hit yoga is what I call it. And high intensity training, yoga inspired high intensity training. And I talk about how it's great for women, especially if you've had kids or even if not. And then all of the content that I've been creating since that course has just been that high intensity training focus. So it's very low impact. I don't jump around. I mean, once you have a herniated disc, you always kind of got one, right? Jennifer Dixon: So you're not going to see me jumping around. But you're going to see me doing lots and lots of things that'll... You give me 30 minutes and you'll burn some calories or you giving me an hour and you'll really burn some calories, and it's just all yoga inspired fitness things. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So that is what you're selling then on your website, right? Shane Sams: Is that what you put back on Udemy? Jennifer Dixon: Udemy is technically the mommy bounce back, but I just repackaged it to not just talk about mommas. Shane Sams: I gotcha. Jennifer Dixon: And then what I'm creating now on Teachable is just thrive online a hit of high intensity yoga inspired fitness thing. Which has the mommas and it has other workouts. Shane Sams: Okay. So what's the biggest problem you're facing right now? Like what's the biggest struggle? Is it like figuring out how to run these things together or is it like figuring out how to promote that thing? Is it do I sell this locally? What's the biggest thing right now that's holding you back? Because it sounds like you've got a lot of pieces in play. Okay, forget the in-person yoga studio. You've got consistent content being created, you're creating this thing on Teachable that is going to be able to be marketed to these people. Right? So where are you stuck? What's causing like, because you know this is how you want to scale. Where are you frozen at right now that you can't move forward? Jennifer Dixon: Well, I guess I'm not really sure where I'm stuck. I just know what I'm doing is not working and that's not the answer that you wanted. So I did a five day challenge. Again, that was something in the flip your life live training to get us to sell some stuff. So I did a five day challenge. Technically it was 27, but one was me and one was a duplicate. So 25 people signed up, of that five people actually did all five trainings most of them did not. And nobody converted. And that made me really bummed. And you said Jennifer, go reach out to all of them. So I finally got through all 25 of those yesterday. I sent them some bonjoros and of the 25, 16, 17 opened up, but nobody gave me any feedback. Shane Sams: Interesting. Jennifer Dixon: So this'll probably go into, I listen to your podcasts a lot, like those fears and things like that. I don't know if my content is too hard, if it's not hard enough. I know that based on what I've done online, my stuff is way harder. Because I don't like most of the stuff that I've seen online, it's not hard enough. If I feel I'm looking for a workout, if I'm looking for something gentle, there's plenty of that, but there's not a good workout. And so I don't know if it's too hard if it's, I don't know. So that's like where I'm stuck. Shane Sams: I think it's just a connection problem more than anything because like 25 people signed up for the challenge, that shows they're interested. But then there was a disconnect and not one person sent you an email back. But 16 open the thing. That's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay. So first of all, I have several thoughts, but my first thought is that that's not a very large sample size. Okay. So if it were 300 people and you said nobody wrote you back, I would probably be a little bit more concerned. 25 people. I mean, who knows? This is like the busiest time of year for a lot of people. And we just came off of a crazy month of May. We were in Disney for a week. We had dance recital practice, we had dance recital dress rehearsal, we had cheer evaluations, we had two nights of dance recital. We are now three nights into vacation Bible school. Next week we have science camp. We have golf camp this week. The week after that we have- Shane Sams: Not a lot of time to reply to the yoga instructor. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So what I'm trying to tell you is that if you went to 25 of my friends during this time of year, they're probably not answering you either because we're just really busy. So I wouldn't say, okay, well this clearly didn't work because 25 people didn't answer me. I don't think that you have enough data to know that. So that's the first thing I would say. Shane Sams: And five people finished it. Honestly, if you just think about it like it's a small sample size, but if you put 25 people in a room and five of them do it, that's pretty good. That's 80/20 rule, right? Like 80 people, a hundred people in a room, 20 will actually finish. So it's like don't look at it like a failure there's a lot of valuable insight there that something just didn't connect at the end when it was time to buy something. Jocelyn Sams: And that's part of my next thought. Okay. So tell me what was the challenge exactly? Jennifer Dixon: I called it the, and I'm terrible with online stuff, so I can't wait to hear what I did wrong. So I called it the five day hit yoga challenge and it was a drip campaign. I think that's the industry lingo. Where the participants were emailed a link to a video that was embedded on my website because I was trying to get them for people to stay on the website. It was a YouTube video and some of them were unlisted, some of them were public video embedded on my website where they can watch it. Jennifer Dixon: And so each day for five days they got a video and then on the sixth and then each day they, I also tried to sell them the membership. And then on the sixth day I sent them a slightly longer video, like all the videos were 20, 30 minutes. And on the sixth day I think they got like a 42 minute video. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Jennifer. Whoa, back the truck up. Okay. First of all, why do they need to buy anything? Because you're giving them all this stuff. And second of all- Shane Sams: You have to take it away or they won't buy it. You can't just keep giving them stuff. Jocelyn Sams: Okay second of all, what were you trying to sell them and was that even related to high intensity yoga? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, I was trying to sell them into my membership that would have even more videos, just like the one that they had that they got access to. Here's like five different workouts you can do, and if you join the community, you'll get even more workouts with me. And this was in part of the emails, I'll come into the community and we can work out live until it got too big I figured we could do like zoom meetings where we can see each other, and if it's just a handful of people at first, my husband can be there and he knows enough about yoga that he can be like, hey, so and so it needs to do this or this person. And so then I can give them cues with him like in the background. Shane Sams: Okay, all right hold on. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, let's hit the pause button of just a minute. Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I are looking at each other like, okay, let's fix this. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, help me. Shane Sams: Okay. So for one thing, you think you sold them the same thing that the challenge was, but it wasn't, okay? The thing you were selling was you leading them live and being a part of a community, but you had this very sterile challenge of 42 minute videos where you were sending them emails and they click and watch them alone. Like think why people join your yoga Studio. They want to be led and they want to be around other people who love yoga. And you did not provide that for these people in the online environment that's why they didn't buy, right? They weren't just doing it for the high intensity workout. They weren't just doing it for this cool structure that was different than everybody else. They basically were like, I want to do yoga with somebody, and I want someone to tell me how to do it. Shane Sams: And yeah, that's kind of what you're selling. But it was totally different from the strategy. Imagine if your challenge had been like this, "Hey guys, we're going to make this challenge for five days. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do eight minute workouts every morning, live, I'm going to be there." And you do an eight minute tabata hit style workout that will make them just barely sweat. And then at the end of it, you say, "That's the end of the challenge, but I bet you feel better and you only had to show up live with me for eight minutes a day. What if we could do this for real? I teach 20 and 30 minute classes all the time. We can crush it, join the community, led live by me," and now they have an act. That challenge would have been a representation, an actual thing that you do in your actual community and it would've simulated what you do for people in your yoga Studio, right? Because people don't want an email campaign with videos. They can just go on YouTube and find videos. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so here's the thing too, Jennifer, is that usually with a challenge, what you want to do is sort of give them like the appetizer, and then you get them to purchase the main course. You gave them like a four course meal. Shane Sams: You gave them the four course meal and the blue apron boxes to make the next three weeks of video of meals. You see what I'm saying? But the main thing was, I think 25 people signed up because they thought they were getting led by Jennifer's sample of what they were going to do, and they didn't buy because it wasn't what they thought they were going to... Basically what they probably thought they were buying was more emailed videos. You see what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Are we overwhelming you? You sound confused. You got really quiet. Jennifer Dixon: I'm thinking. You can't see all the smoke. Shane Sams: Ooh, that was her head exploding. Jocelyn Sams: Jennifer's no longer with us, due to information overload. Shane Sams: Okay so we're going to take over the yoga studio. But do you understand what we mean? Like you didn't do anything wrong. It's just you did a challenge, but the challenge wasn't exactly, it doesn't sound like what you were selling. Jocelyn Sams: It didn't lead in to your paid offer. Shane Sams: Right. And also too, like challenges are like Jocelyn said, sampler platters. It's the guy that stands in front of the Japanese food restaurant at the mall with the bourbon chicken. You know what I'm saying? It's like that's what challenges are for. But you just like, wow, like here. Did you say one of the videos was 42 minutes? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's just too overwhelming for a new person. Jocelyn Sams: Your heart is in the right place. Like you were trying to give them something and be like, whoa, this is really cool. But the problem is you gave them more than they needed. Like if it were me, I'd be like, oh well, I can just do these videos. I don't even need anything else. Shane Sams: Anytime you have a problem, an alignment between a lead magnet, remember the lead magnet is the first step. If it's a five day challenge, like imagine someone who was totally out of shape and never done yoga before, came to your yoga studio and you were like, get down and down dog for 42 minutes, let's go. You know what I mean? You would kill them. You know what I'm saying? Like it would be like, get in warrior three and don't move until I look back at you. That's like not the first step of yoga. if I came in to you and I was 200 pounds overweight and I said, I really wanting to do yoga, I think this is the way that I can get back in shape and get my life back. What would be the first thing you would tell me to do? Honestly. If I got 10 minutes to swing by could you show me a couple of things to get my feet wet, what would you tell me? Jocelyn Sams: I think that your offer was more for like advanced people though right? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: So is crossfit. Like I go to a crossfit gym, but when a beginner comes in, there's nothing not advanced about crossfit. But you still don't kill them. You give them a PVC pipe instead of a bar. You see what I'm saying? So even someone who wants advanced workouts, what would you do with them in the first day? If I was coming to your beginner 30 minute class, what would you do for me? Jennifer Dixon: We only do hour long classes? Shane Sams: Okay. What would you do for me in an hour long class? Jennifer Dixon: You do the beginner poses, which is basically what was in all of the sequences, they're all beginner friendly poses. And you talk about the alignment a lot, you get a lot of cues, which I tried to do in the videos. And then you get the person comfortable with the names of the poses, the alignment, and then they move on to more challenging classes. Shane Sams: Okay, so here's what you should have done. Like let's say your beginner class is one hour, right? You would take that into 10 minute videos and they never should've saw anything over 10 minutes. Like they're at home or by themselves. They're overwhelmed. 10 minutes today, 10 minutes tomorrow, 10 minutes the next, 10 minutes the next. Now you know all the poses, would you like to buy into our courses and try a longer class? Like that's the beginner version of online courses, right? You take that beginner part, they're not really there with you, so you can't assume you can do the same thing and you break it apart, right? Like you've got to step back. Shane Sams: You're having some curse of knowledge things and I can really feel it coming through like, no, everyone should do this hour class because this is how I do it and it's better workout. That's fine. But you can't throw people into that online. They're home alone by themselves. Jocelyn Sams: Well, not to mention, most of them have probably never heard of you before. Shane Sams: Or done yoga. They don't even know what hit means probably they just thought yoga, sweet. And then they get in there and it was really hard. Jocelyn Sams: Or maybe I'm a person who is an advanced yoga person and I'm like, wow, I really want to do this workout but I don't even know this person. Like they're just wanting to get a little taste of what you have to offer. And when you hit me with like a 35 minute video, what if I don't like it or what if- Shane Sams: And also too they're not invested enough to finish something like that. Like the reason I would watch a 30 minute video is because I paid money for it. If I pay for my subscription in Netflix, I'm going to find a show to watch. Right? But if someone just told me the show, I'm not going to go out of my way to find it. You know what I mean? And also to that, did you say in the community you are doing these live? Jennifer Dixon: Well I don't have a community yet. Shane Sams: But that's your plan, right? Jennifer Dixon: That's the vision, is to do like a zoom call, like what we're doing except with video. And then we work out together. So- Shane Sams: Okay, that has to be a part of any challenges. You have to make people understand what you do, right? It's one reason why we changed our format of our podcasts. We don't talk to experts, we don't interview people who are writing books and stuff like that. We want to demonstrate how our community actually works. And the best way we can do that is to help someone, right? So even our podcast, even our free content is generated in a way that tells people that, you know what I'm saying? Because when you listen to this you're like, wow, Shane and Jocelyn brought a real member on and they're helping them, I want their help. Shane Sams: So if I joined your challenge, like I'd be like, wow, Jennifer showed up for a tabata or something. You know what I'm saying? You do a four minute yoga pose. And like wow she showed up. That's really cool. I want more of this. You see what I'm saying? Someone told me one time, you never ever make noncustomers feel satiated. Noncustomers should always feel hungry. Always. So that's the problem here I think too is like one, it wasn't what you were selling. You were selling them something completely different than videos. You were actually selling them lead, live community, whatever. So there was a disconnect and you stuffed them, they were so over full they wanted to puke and didn't even finish their meal. Shane Sams: So there was a disconnect there and if we can fix that disconnect, I would challenge you to do this again, but I would literally be like, remember what were those videos called Jocelyn? Eight minute abs, remember those from the 90s? Remember those eight minute abs that that guy would come on and be eight minute buns, eight minute arms. You know I'm talking about? Jennifer Dixon: I've done a few of those. Shane Sams: That's what I would do. I would say, hey, we're going to get on live every morning or we're going to do an eight minute workout or something like that. Just whatever. And it's just really short and you use it to teach the best 10 poses, right? Like you do two poses a day for five days. You just take them back and forth through the poses. Super simple. And then like the last one, you pick up the intensity a little bit, and make it more intense kind of 15 minute workout or something. And then when it's over, they're more into it, they got it. They got to see you every morning. They got to hear you say like, "Hey, it's good to see you again, Jennifer. Hey, it's good to see you again, John, it's good to see again, whoever." And it's like there's a feel there and then they lose that, and when they lose that, they'll buy it back. That's how challenges should work. So I wouldn't give up on that. I think it's a great idea. I love it. That would be really cool. It's like, what's the bike called, peloton? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like this the same model. Right? Like you can get on, you can take a live class, but you don't have to leave your house. You don't have to go to the yoga studio or if you find a personality that you connect with, you can do it with them right there on the zoom call. correct? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: So like I love the idea and I know a guy that does this, I've told you this before. We have a buddy named Jeff Mcmahon, he lives up in Cincinnati and he's probably listening right now, hey Jeff. And he kind of is the trainer for all the entrepreneurial people and podcasters and stuff, and he does virtual classes like all the time, even one on one and stuff like that. So there's definitely a model, people are definitely doing this. You just have to kind of connect those challenges better. Jennifer Dixon: Gotcha. Jocelyn Sams: Okay Jennifer, so tell us what is making you feel overwhelmed about this strategy? Jennifer Dixon: So my top three, I'll give you my top three. What happens if I say, okay, I'm going to do this zoom video every day for I don't know, five days, six days and nobody shows up during the workout? Do I still do the workout as if there was somebody there and then the people that have the link, they can watch it later. Then that's one. Two is what possible time of day can I possibly say every day I'm going to give you 10 minutes of my time. I guess it's just two there's not three, there's just two. Shane Sams: You're so overwhelmed you lost them. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: All right, well let's do number one first. Yes you would just go ahead and do it. You can actually do these in different ways. If you did it in a different way, maybe you could do the challenge even on YouTube live instead of Zoom, right? Because then you just do it live and then if someone finds it that's cool because you just got more leads. It's not a paid challenge so you really don't care that it's broadcasting for free. It might actually find you new people. Right? And then if they did not show up live, they would click through it and it would be there ready to go. See what I'm saying? I think YouTube live would be a better thing for free content like this. You could put like, hit yoga challenge day one, hit yoga challenge day two. So you're still emailing them, you're still getting them to come, but they can come live and they can participate in a chat, they can do things like that if you want to. Jocelyn Sams: So I would jus take one of the videos that you're already doing, and I've done some hit training before. So is it basically like sequences that you do? So many exercises together? Jennifer Dixon: No, it's not the interval. It's only one I. I don't know. It's just high intensity. I'm not doing intervals as much it's just high intensity. Honestly, it's a lot like a power class it's just not hot. And there's a little bit of psychology there, at least here at my studio if you say power then people are like, oh, I can't do that. I don't know it's just going to make me sound kind of silly. What people are searching for is that high intensity, that sort of workout, but they don't want maybe the jumping up and down. And so it's just yoga on- Shane Sams: Do you hold poses for a long time or something like that? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, or you do poses dynamically. So anytime you're working your balance. Shane, you said you've done some yoga, I don't know if you've done it. Jocelyn you've done stairsteps so you can totally do this. It's moving between postures with control. That's really, really hard because you're having to use your balance, which incorporates your core muscles and your glutes and all that kind of stuff. So it's a high end. Oh, gosh, I shouldn't use the word in the definition. Shane Sams: I know what you're saying. It's like get the high intensity workout you want without the impact. Jocelyn Sams: With no impact. Shane Sams: Basically. It's perfectly marketable. But the real key is the live component. That's the thing. Jocelyn Sams: So I wonder if you shouldn't change your language a little bit to high intensity, low impact. Jennifer Dixon: I've thought about that, but then when I look up high intensity, low impact, I'm like, if people see that and then they see what I'm doing, they're going to be like, this girl is crazy. Shane Sams: That's okay though. That's a total assumption that you're putting on. You don't know that, you do not know that. There's no way you can know that. Jocelyn Sams: So try it out and see what happens. Shane Sams: You're trying to think like the small group of people who've walked into your studio and left, and not like the people that stay because they thought it was cool. Like that's curse of knowledge at its finest. I know this and when they know it, they'll leave. Like that's not true, but there's no way you can possibly know that, if someone types in like high intensity yoga, right? And they find you and then you say it's high intensity, low impact, just because it's hard doesn't mean they're going to freak out and leave. Right? I don't think it was because it was hard that people didn't finish the thing. Shane Sams: I just think it was too long. Like not everybody wants to work out for an hour and a lot of people at home might just want a 20 minute workout in the morning, they may not want a big hour long thing. You know what I'm saying? Like- Jocelyn Sams: Well, I think we have to be careful because we're making a lot of assumptions. Shane Sams: Yes, a lot of assumptions. We're all making a lot of assumptions. Jocelyn Sams: The thing about it is they wanted to see if they liked what you had to offer. You gave them a huge banquet of stuff to process through- Shane Sams: And they didn't even do it. Jocelyn Sams: And as a result I feel like they were kind of like, ah, this is cool but like whoa, I don't even know you- Shane Sams: Yeah, it's like I don't even know if it was cool because I'm not even going to try that. You know what I'm saying? They looked at it and got scared basically. Jocelyn Sams: So instead let's give them some more bite sized pieces that are more similar to your paid offer. And see if that- Shane Sams: And I think you're thinking, I think you've gone SEO crazy. I hear a little bit of that too. Well not exactly the right people are searching for this exact right word, but that doesn't matter, what they're really looking for is probably just yoga at first. Like that's the core, right? They're looking for somebody to teach them yoga live at home. That's the whole gist of what you're really selling. No one cares about your method. Have you ever noticed that Jocelyn and I even on our sales page don't really go into what's in the flip your life blueprint? Jennifer Dixon: Yes. I did notice that. Shane Sams: We never talk about it. Because if I told you what was in there, it would overwhelm a beginners so much that they would pass out. So for all you beginners out there start passing out. Like if you got in there and really saw what it takes, if I threw all that out at you at first you would be so overwhelmed you'd never try. But if you came to me and said, whoa, here's where I am, I've got an idea. I even made a product, then I would look at you and say, let's build your website. I wouldn't say, let's go build an audience or let's get traffic, or let's start ads or let's do SEO research, I would just say, hey man, you need a website. It's the next step that's the most important step. It's not all the steps. Shane Sams: So I think you're trying too hard to regurgitate all of your past experience onto these people in that five day challenge, and it's just so overwhelming they don't even try. You know what I'm saying? Jennifer Dixon: I do. Shane Sams: All right, so imagine this, imagine if your whole thing was the four minute, I picked tabata because it's four minutes. I just say. For those of you guys that are out there, it's like you work 20 seconds then you rest 10, whatever. You can plant that on almost any workout scheme. But like if you did something like that, that was like a 10 minute workout, let's just say, that's not overwhelming. Hey guys, we're going to do two poses a day, 10 minutes a day. You can do that. And then at the end you tell them there's more inside and to show up next Monday and you'll do the workout, and it's like a, my crossfit gym, sometimes the coach won't even tell us what the workout is until we get there. Because she's afraid if she post it, we won't show up. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, that used to happen to me. Shane Sams: Right. You know what I'm saying? Jennifer Dixon: It's like I'm not doing that. Shane Sams: I know but you are doing that online. That's exactly what you did. Right? You're like, here's the 42 minute death workout, instead of hey guys, I'm not going to tell you how long we're going to go today so I'll just keep moving or whatever. So as for the other question, where am I going to find 10 minutes? Last I checked, you was running to the zoo, making chimpanzee noises with your kids. Jennifer Dixon: Oh no but- Shane Sams: You have time to find 10 minutes somewhere to do it. Jennifer Dixon: It wasn't the finding of the 10 minutes. But from what I understood is you wanted it to be the same time everyday, and that's where I was like, crap, what is the same time every day where I'm doing something the same time? That's where the disconnect was. Because if I'm going to do a challenge, I imagine we've got to meet up at let's just say 10 o'clock Eastern time every single day. And that's where I was like, ooh- Shane Sams: Make the time. If it's important enough, you'll find a way. If it's not you'll find an excuse. Jennifer Dixon: Yep. Shane Sams: But you can find the time. Like it's your schedule, it's your calendar. I would guess it would probably be early too, by the way. Like, I mean, you know, you can catch people before work, so maybe you do a 6:00 AM challenge to get people real fired up or you do a 9:00 PM challenge and you do it at night. Like we have webinars at 9:00 PM sometimes look at our member calls. You think we want to do a member call at nine o'clock on a Sunday? No, but we do it because we know people need it, and we know and we know they'll show up for it. Shane Sams: So like sometimes you just have to pick a time and you have to do it. You can find that, that's the easiest part of the whole equation to figure out, is when you're going to do it. Just look at your calendar and say, all right, next week I'm going to do a challenge and I'm going to do it every day at 8:00 AM forget it, whatever. Because it's not forever. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? It's like not forever. Jennifer Dixon: Would that turn people away if it was at my house? Because at like six in the morning, I'm going to be at my house. I'm not going to be- Jocelyn Sams: No. Shane Sams: No one cares. Jocelyn Sams: I don't think it will. Shane Sams: No one cares. Jocelyn Sams: I watch workout videos all the time, like on YouTube and people are in their bedroom. People are in their living area. Shane Sams: You watch our member calls twice a month and we're sitting in our bedroom. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah but y'all aren't doing yoga and let's be honest yoga has a fair amount of, what is the word I'm looking for? Stereotype expectations. And that's probably like into one of the questions later. That's why I was like, oh, because my house is not decorated. I've got two little kids, there's probably green boogers on the wall somewhere. Shane Sams: On the last member call that we had our daughter came in here changing into her pajamas. Jennifer Dixon: I saw that. Shane Sams: Yeah right. Exactly right behind us. And I was like, get out of here. There was dogs running in here. No one cares as long as you give them what they want. I mean, you can lock the door. And also too I'll tell you another story. I got to tour Michael Hyatt's office a couple weeks ago. He was an online guy. So they have these things in their offices called podcast closets. Okay. And they use them for webinars and podcast. Anybody at time can go on one of these closets shut the door and do it. And they've already got all this stuff set up for podcasts and Webinars, right? But they made it proportion. Like there's decorations on the back of the wall. It's so funny. All the decorations were smaller, there was paintings and pictures and stuff, and it looked really tiny. But it was done in a way of perspective. It made it look like they were in a huge room. You see what I'm saying? But it was totally an illusion, like they were in a big conference room with a wall of stuff but it was hilarious, because they had thought like, well, who cares where we are, we'll just make it look like we want. Shane Sams: And we interviewed someone a few weeks ago on this program who teaches English to students in China, and she does it in her laundry room- Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, I heard that one. Shane Sams: Where the camera points at the white wall and she's got it looking like a school room. So I promise you, one Saturday you could go clear one wall in some room of your house that you can shut a door- Jocelyn Sams: And make it look amazingly decorated. Shane Sams: And make it look like you're in a yoga studio. You could make it look however you want it. Jennifer Dixon: So that's not showing up every day. It's just doing it one Saturday? Shane Sams: No, I'm talking about you pick one wall in your house that becomes the yoga wall and point your camera at that and nobody will even know you're in there. It doesn't matter. Like you can make it look as pretty as you want. You can make it look not as pretty as you want, it doesn't matter. All that matters is what's behind you on the camera. It doesn't matter if it's in this big room, and I still don't think people will care. They'll see a yoga mat and somebody working out and guide them through a workout. Here's another assumption we're making. You're assuming people care, like me and Jocelyn don't really care about stuff like that. Some people will care, but you just want the ones that don't care. You want the ones who care more about is this person real and authentic and will they show up for me when they say they will, and are they going to lead me through this process? If they will, I'll follow them and everybody else who doesn't. Like all the stereotypes in yoga. Shane Sams: I'm six foot tall and 260 pounds and I do yoga. Is that stereotypical? Probably not. There's somebody out there that will follow you just the way you are and if you want to make it a little prettier you can. Like you don't have to have a film studio or a yoga studio or anything like that, that's not important, that's not what you're selling. You know what I'm saying? That's the Instagram model, 30 year old millennial Instagram yoga person. Let them go worry about what their camera looks like. You know what I'm saying? You're selling to moms. The mom that's doing yoga with you is probably doing it in her bedroom floor or she may be in the laundry room hiding from her children so she can do yoga. So she would probably appreciate that, that it is so real. Shane Sams: But I guess just challenge those. You can't worry about what it looks like. You just can't. You just got to do it. You just got to make it happen and make it live and make it real. And I think people will actually probably like it better you know? Jennifer Dixon: Got it. Shane Sams: Yeah. I hope that makes sense? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Get over myself. Jocelyn Sams: All right Jennifer, we've had a really fun time talking to you today and trying to figure out what your next steps are going to be. Unfortunately we are almost out of time but before we go we'd like to ask everyone what is one thing that you plan to do based on what we talked about here today? Jennifer Dixon: I will relaunch my challenge to include I guess three to five days of live mini trainings. No more than 10 minutes and try to get people into my membership that way. Shane Sams: I think that's a good idea. I think that's good because you can use the same process and just teach it differently and try it again. And I would really invite those people that did it the first time. They'll probably sign back up and they'll probably do it this time, you can say I revamped it. It's all new. It's going to be much easier and you're going to love it even more. Okay? Jennifer Dixon: Got it. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. What a great conversation with Jennifer about her business. Man it can be easy to get overwhelmed or even discouraged and frustrated when you're out there worrying about your online business, trying to make something work and you get a little success and then it goes away, and you just don't know what to do next to make it happen. And that's what the Flip Your Life community is all about. We would love to help you with your next steps inside the community, on our member calls and in our training area. You can check out everything we have to offer for the Flip Your Life community at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We'd love to have you in there. We'd love to see you on our next member call and maybe we'll even be able to talk to you on an upcoming podcast. So until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Jennifer's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Beth find an audience for her online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all! On today's show we help Beth find an audience for her online business. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, lets get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of our community so we can help them take their online business and their online goals and their dreams to the next level. Shane Sams: But first we want to let you to know that the Flipped lifestyle Podcast is brought to you by The Flip Your Life Community. That's where we teach real people, just like our guest and just like you, how to start, build, and grow their online business. We are proud to be one of the only business podcasts that does not sell ads or sell interview spots to guests who are selling their latest book or affiliate products. No, we are 100% supported by our members, listeners, and fans. That keeps us independent, free, and focused on doing what's best for you, the Flipped Lifestyle listener. Shane Sams: We'd love to have your support and support you in your online business journey inside of The Flip Your Life Community. Members get early access to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast each week, bonus and extended episodes of the show, complete access to our entire training library of courses to help you start, build, and grow your own online business, and access to hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from around the world in one of the most active business communities online. So help us keep the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast ad and affiliate free all while we help you build your dreams and create a better future for your family. We have affordable plans starting for as little as 19 dollars a month and your first month comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. You can learn more at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Join today, we appreciate your support and can't wait to help you reach your goals online. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, join today. Shane Sams: And with that we are super excited to bring on a real member of The Flip Your Life Community. Our guest today is Beth Dekker. Beth, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Beth Dekker: Thanks for having me I'm excited to be here! Jocelyn Sams: It is awesome to have yet another member of the Dekker family in our community. We also have your brother-in-law, Dan, and his lovely wife Rebecca. Shane Sams: Yeah. The Dekker, they're taking over. It's kind of like they're taking over a whole wing. They may need their own forum eventually. Jocelyn Sams: Dekker plan only. Shane Sams: The Dekker forum may be an exclusive membership, you've got to pay extra. You gotta be a true Dekker or related to a Dekker to get into that. Beth Dekker: There you go. That's another level. Jocelyn Sams: That would definitely be a fun group to be a part of, I'm sure. But we are very excited to have you in our community and we look forward to talking to you today about how to grow your online business. So tell us a little bit about you and your background and what you are doing online? Beth Dekker: Well, thank you so much for having me. I have been listening to the podcast for the last few years but I only recently joined the community. I'm kind of at the very beginning of the process. But I am coming to the Flip Your Life LIVE Event this year and I'm really excited about that. I have spent the last 13 years or so as essentially a support person for small business owners. That's been kind of my day job for several different entrepreneurs. I've had many titles, a manager, executive assistant, studio director, but ultimately among all of them I perform the basic same functions Beth Dekker: I was essentially the business owner's right hand person. My skills generally are in like ideation, activation and restoration. I have pretty good abilities to organize and prioritize the lots of ideas that my different entrepreneurs were generating and make them reality. Over the years when I would tell people what I did, I generally got two main responses. Most of the business owners that I would talk to would invariably say, "I need a Beth." And the people who had similar skills would say, “I want to learn how to do that.” I had the idea to start a company back in, I think it was 2017 called The Right Hands. Beth Dekker: I developed my course called Superhero Management, to be able to train people to do what I do. So far I've taught several in person courses but I'm really interested in being able to scale up my company to be able to reach people everywhere and step into the membership model. I do have a kind of a newer relationship this year with a big coworking company here in Columbus, where I live and work. Where I'm providing some education to their members and they have several hundred members that are already kind of built in small business owners. That means for now that I'm offering workshops in their locations, which are both free and paid. But my hope is that I can use this to generate leads for future membership plans. Shane Sams: Awesome. I love your business. For all the game of Thrones fans out there. You kinda train people to be the hand of the king, right? Like you're like you're training like the person who goes out like you know that you've got this crazy ideas generated leader of the company who has all the great ideas and can set the direction and cast the vision, but you need somebody to like, bundle it together and actually execute all that and lead the teams and do all that. And you train people like how to do that. Correct? Beth Dekker: Yes. That's exactly it. I was doing it for a while and quite honestly, I mean this has happened throughout history. I mean, I think Alexander Hamilton is also one of the most famous, right hands in history, you know, to George Washington as an aid to come. This is certainly a position that has been around for forever. I didn't bet that but I did realize I was doing something a little bit more unique than people who maybe have the title of executive assistant or personal assistant or virtual assistant or whatever that may be. All of those things together. And then I realized it was being successful, but that when I thought about it, I was like, Gosh, this is actually teachable. I can teach what I'm doing. It's not just me. Shane Sams: Anyone that graduates your program, you need to send them the little pin with the hand with the sword behind it like in Game of Thrones. Like you are now the hand of the king. Jocelyn Sams: I'm pretty sure that's copyrighted. Shane Sams: Probably copyright infringement of some kind but it's kind of awesome. Jocelyn Sams: I understand what you're saying. I love it when you said that there's a difference between an assistant and somebody's right hand. And I totally agree with that. We've had a variety of assistants through the years, but there's one person that I kept coming back to. And the reason for that is because that person just really provides the skills that I need, and they have that training that I needed to do a lot of different roles. And you know, I often say that I call it the competent right hand. This person for me is like, she can do most of what I can do, which is amazing. It's just so amazing to have somebody who has that type of skillset. And most people are looking for that. Shane Sams: And it's a special person too because it really is a different role. It is not a virtual assistant. It's someone who you can trust to do all the things that you need to do but can't, and can't do, but need someone to do them. Right? They kind of take over. They kind of fill in all the gaps that are holding you back. And there's this like infinite trust in that person that they're going to carry out their mission. Right? Beth Dekker: A big part of my class talks a lot about the relationship and that relationship between that person and you're a small business owner or entrepreneur or whatever you want to call them, is based in trust. I did a lot of research. I did several dozen interviews with right hands and they're entrepreneurs before I launched my business and almost every one of the entrepreneurs said that their number one thing is they wanted it to be able to trust somebody who had an owner mentality. And so that they were able to trust them to be able to walk into a room. And for example, if the floor needed swept instead of them leaving the room and not doing it, that they would grab a broom and they would sweep it because that's what an owner would do. Shane Sams: Have you ever seen that meme, there's an awesome meme. That meets this criteria where we're at. There's this dead possum in the middle of the road. Jocelyn Sams: I mean, of course we would go there. Shane Sams: Jocelyn, its Kentucky, there's dead possums everywhere, right? But like there's this awesome meme with a dead possum on the road, it's got like the yellow line that goes down in the middle of the road and the yellow line, just paints right over the possum and keeps going. But you can't see the like the paint truck. And the meme's like not my job or something like that. Like the guys that were painting didn't stop, get out. Like that's what you really need your right hand to do. You need your right hand, to see something that's wrong even before you see it and fix it so you don't have to deal with it, and you can beat the visionary. Jocelyn Sams: I know that for me as business owner like what I want that person to do is to be a problem solver. I don't need to be involved in every single problem. If you can solve it without me, nine times out of 10 actually probably 99 times out of a hundred I want you to solve it without my intervention. Beth Dekker: The more I always say that the mark of a mature employee is somebody who is able to present a problem to their boss alongside a solution to that problem, even if it's not the perfect solution that they have made an attempt to solve the problem already, instead of just coming up and saying there's a dead possum in the road, they're actually going to make an effort. Shane Sams: We've talked about Game of Thrones and dead possums, so we're going to circle back around here. You don't, you don't find dead possums and Game of Thrones just everywhere, only on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. You can be thankful for that. This is a really interesting niche. I've always been fascinated by your business ever since the first time we heard about it and just because it creates so much opportunity and I think there's a really huge market for this because you can elevate like there's a lot of people that do this for a living that could do it better. They could benefit from your course, right? Shane Sams: There's a lot of people who are in that virtual assistant role and may want to step up their game and become someone who's a higher paid employee who's a right hand to the entrepreneur and look, here's the deal. A lot of people want the flipped lifestyle. They want to be able to make money virtually or have more freedom or work with somebody who's really exciting and a really cool company and they don't know exactly how to do that because they don't want to own the company we hear that all the time. People come in, they're like, I don't want to lead a company. I don't want this business, but I do want to do something else. Shane Sams: We've had a few people on the show now that I've talked about other ways to do this, like we've, a few weeks ago we interviewed a virtual travel agent. We interviewed someone who teaches language online to Chinese students. We talk to all kinds of different people and I see this almost like that, like you're kind of training people to really thrive in a role that they're perfect for and be able to build that life that they want. Like a lot of these people are going to be virtual our, we call ours an executive assistant, that's what we call ours, right? Kathy? If you're listening, I may change you to the hand of the King and the Queen. Okay. We might change that, and I might send you a pin. Shane Sams: But like- Jocelyn Sams: And, Queen Shane Sams: I said, and Queen. I'm always in this as a team, tag team, duo here. But like that, that person is virtual for us. She lives in another town, a little ways away, we don't really meet in person a lot, but it's just man having a competent person that can handle all that stuff. Shane Sams: Like, we're getting ready to hire some new help for the summer person for some various like pop up tasks and we just know that we can turn them loose to her and that's cool. We don't have to worry about it. And this is a great opportunity for anybody out there. This could be something you could open up to and say, Hey, I could do that. I don't want to start the business. I don't want to teach the courses, but I could do that. And then you help people kind of elevate themselves into a role like that. Beth Dekker: Yes, exactly. And honestly, my background is in the arts and in theater specifically. And what I have found is that people that have that kind of creative brain, I'm more artistic brain, and that, but that enjoy kind of the organizational side of things often make the best right hands. And they generally kind of find themselves in positions where they are the support people, but they become kind of superstars in their own right and are able to really take on the right hand role as an executive assistant. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Beth so I sort of already got a plan for your business worked out in my mind, but before we go there, I want to know sort of what are you doing online right now? So I know you said that you have like in person workshops that you do and I know that you have a website, so what is it that you're doing right now? Like are you actually selling anything and what does that look like right now? Beth Dekker: Sure. I have a Squarespace site and so I just sell essentially products on there, services on there and I have my classes on there. I have my main superhero management class which is a two session course, kind of the big one. I do believe that in the future it can be broken down even farther than that. It's a really dense course, but I have that class, and I have several other ones that are kind of more enhancing other skills that a right hand would need things like social media work, that kind of stuff. Beth Dekker: I have several classes online. I have some that are listed that are in person, and then I have the most are listed as live webinars. I'm selling those there. I have sold a handful of them this year, which has obviously been great. I've taught my superhero management class a couple times and then the in person ones a couple of times and they went really well but it's certainly not the numbers that I want to see. Shane Sams: Are these, okay, so the courses are all live or you have some that are prerecorded. What's the two session? Beth Dekker: They're all live. My goal is to do them prerecorded, but just because I'm just starting up, I just haven't gotten there yet. They're all live. Shane Sams: But you have done these online before to live audiences and you've got recordings of those, correct? Beth Dekker: I do, yes. Shane Sams: What do you charge for the workshop? Beth Dekker: That's another one of my issues is figuring out what that work. My smaller workshops that are more like 45 minutes, with a kind of a Q&A at the end are $45 a piece. But my large superhero management course, which is almost, it's a little over three hours over a two session course is a $149. Jocelyn Sams: Who are you marketing each course to? Shane Sams: Is it the same person? So the small courses are skills, so the large course is kind of like the base and then the skill development adds on top of the base, these smaller workshops, is that correct? Beth Dekker: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. Let's say I'm right, let's say I'm a want to be hand to the King, I'm the foot of the King. I want to be the hand, right? And I come in and I'm like, okay, well I need to take the superhero management thing for one $149 right? And then I need to then shore up my skills in these other areas, other workshops like Ooh, I'll take the $49 social media course. Ooh, I'll take the $49, whatever course. Is that the correct flow that people usually go through this? Beth Dekker: Yes. That's kind of the intention I have divided up my site into, there's a button on the very front, it says, if you're an entrepreneur, click here if you're a right hand click here. And the classes that I've offered for each Avatar, if you will are different. Some of them are overlapping, of course, but they're slightly different. But yes, you're right. I think the superhero management would be the big one and then there's all these additional courses on the on the end. Shane Sams: Is there a course for the entrepreneur to learn how to train their hand of the King or whatever? Beth Dekker: No, That's definitely coming because that was something that I think as I went, I was going through your courses and I realized when I was really answering the question of Avatar and I was like, Oh, I'm actually selling to the entrepreneur, because they're the ones that are buying their employees this class. Shane Sams: But some people have bought them, but some people haven't. Correct. Beth Dekker: Right. I would say probably 75% of the courses were purchased by the entrepreneur. The other 25% were purchased by right hands or assistants that wanted to learn more about being a right hand. Shane Sams: Awesome. And now have you done any one on one actual training? Beth Dekker: Yes. I have done several hours of that kind of individually. Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay. So really what this looks like and the our goal for this call is basically to figure out how this turns into a recurring revenue model of training. Right? That's the goal to learn how to do that. To me, well, Jocelyn has got some ideas. What were you going to say first? Jocelyn Sams: My thought is that this is a perfect place to start for a membership site and I think that your mind is already gone there, right? Beth Dekker: Definitely. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I think that you've already got a perfect start. In the end, I think this would be a perfect way to match people basically. What would you call it? Like a- Shane Sams: Like a head hunter service for right hands. Oh my gosh! Like if you had a bunch of entrepreneurs over here training and you had a bunch of assistants training to be entrepreneurs and you could connect them together like for a fee almost or like, or that would just be a benefit of membership. They would be able to network to hire each other or something. You know? Beth Dekker: That was my initial goal. That's, that was way back when when I was talking about it. Literally everybody I interviewed said, if you could give me a list of right hands right now that I could interview, I would 100% pay you a lot of money to do that- Shane Sams: And they would be guaranteed trained. That's what's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: I can even see this as like a certification type situation. Beth Dekker: Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking and I think what where I really got caught up though, in that is all of a sudden I was like, shoot, I don't know how to market or I don't know how to find the, I want to be a right hand audience. I had tons of entrepreneurs. I literally am sought on the street of people that know that I'm doing this and know me and they're like, “Hey, do you have anybody in mind for so and so.” And I don't have right hands in the wings right now that I have trained and I don't know where to find them and that's one of my challenges. Shane Sams: What we've got to do first is we've got to figure out what the actual membership looks like. Okay. And then this may evolve. This would be an interesting chat because its going to like I have a feeling that whatever we talk about in the next five minutes, will totally change by the last five minutes. Because we're going to have to like toy with this a little bit because you know like it's almost like it's not, we don't want to make this a job service necessarily. It's a benefit of the membership that if you train here, we could recommend you to entrepreneurs, right? You will have the opportunity to network with entrepreneurs. To me, this, I think you can charge quite a bit for this. Like you're talking about that $49 for a workshop, but like this is easily $50 bucks a month this might be a $97 a month membership. Shane Sams: This is a valuable thing because you're not only training people to get better jobs, but you're helping entrepreneurs to make more money by having a better team and training their team better. Right? All that stuff. Okay. So you're on the right path. And I'm drawing a picture here of entrepreneurs on one side, right? We're going to say hands on the other, like you're in good, the right hand person, right? There's definitely two tracks in the membership. You're going to have to go ahead and make this thing for the entrepreneurs. Like that's gotta be done like right now. Jocelyn Sams: Well, some of that is already done, correct? Shane Sams: She has webinars. Do you have slides that you've went through and all that stuff? Like when you do the presentations? Beth Dekker: Yeah. I have full prezis for all those. Shane Sams: Okay. So why don't, instead of just making new stuff, why don't you just kind of edit those up and clean them up a little bit and make those your courses right now and you could put all those in a membership area just like we do. Right? Okay. And so basically you tomorrow or this week could have the entire right hand side of the equation completely finished, correct? Beth Dekker: Yes. I certainly have plans for more classes, but yes, at the classes that I have right now I could. Shane Sams: Perfect. Okay, so we're going to put all those on this side. I'm drawing three squares over here to represent the course area. Cause that's the first step in any membership. Content is first we have to curate content into an organized plan that they should take in order or be able to al-a-carte and go get what they need when they need it. Right? So your course on the hand side of the equation, right inside the membership is going to look like this. Master, that big thing at the, why do you call it management? What was the name of that course? Superhero management. Beth Dekker: Superhero management. Yeah, because when I first described what I did to people, I usually told them that I was, I was busy managing superheroes because one of my first inspirations for this class was actually Pepper Potts in Iron man. I remember, 10 years ago, the first time I had the idea for this class was I was watching Iron man. I remember I turned to my husband and I was like, Oh my God, I'm Pepper Potts. Shane Sams: Amazing! All right. Do you explain that in the course? Like when you say that? Beth Dekker: I do, yeah. Shane Sams: Okay, perfect. There's the first course they have to take that first. I do think your instincts are correct about breaking that into parts, not just two sessions. Like you might be like, week one, you watched the first half of part one, right? And you go take action and learn and whatever, ask questions, what do you do? So you're just going to list these in order and that's going to be a course on the other side of your content area is the entrepreneur side where you're going to have like how to train your person, how to communicate with your person. I'm sure you've already got this all thought out, right? Beth Dekker: Yes. As far as that the initial class goes, yes. Shane Sams: Really I think entrepreneurs consider themselves whether they are not really busy, right? Beth Dekker: Yep. Shane Sams: Really getting an entrepreneurial in, is just, "Hey, I've got one course for you and then you're going to make your assistant watch the other courses." Really your only goal when you're selling to entrepreneurs is short course. I'm going to teach you how to communicate and train your person, your right hand and like it's going to take you 45 minutes of your life and you're done. Then you're going to turn the rest of this over to them, right? The better. And then you can add stuff later. But that's the initial jist of this is, let me get you started and then you're going to work with your right hand person just so we've got something in there for entrepreneurs to market. Shane Sams: All right. So there's your content area. All right. That's the first part of building a membership. Second part of building a membership is community. We curate content, imagine if you got a triangle drawn in front of you. There's a big C in the middle of it. There's three C's to any program like this. So contents easy, we've already got it all done. We just have to organize it correctly. The next part is community. How are you going to build a community of entrepreneurs and right hands. I don't know that. What do you think? How are you going to build it? How are you building it now? Like what do you think about that? Beth Dekker: Yeah, I thought a lot about that because one of your videos, I think it was a couple of weeks ago for the Flip your Life LIVE members and I do think that it will most likely be like a Facebook group where I'm able to come in and answer questions at a certain amount of time. I would love to be able to have some kind of live Q&A's on there as well. I do like facetime. I'm a facetime kind of person and I think that having that in there to be able to answer questions to each other is just great as a support group. Shane Sams: I think you're going to have to have them separate. You might need two groups in this case. Okay? Beth Dekker: Okay. Shane Sams: I believe your business owners need to maybe be in a group together. And that's where you train business owners and they can ask you questions on how to like communicate better, how to lead their team. This is definitely a leadership kind of group. And then you need your right hands a separate, completely separate from them for a couple of reasons. One, I think the entrepreneurs and the right hands would feel more comfortable only being around their peers. You know what I'm saying? Beth Dekker: Right, I agree with that. Shane Sams: Because you can say things that you can't say in front of bosses and bosses can say things that they can't say in front of employees. Beth Dekker: It's a safe space. Yes. Shane Sams: Exactly. Safe space to vent, complain, and do all that stuff and ask you questions- Jocelyn Sams: Or to talk about how amazing they are. Shane Sams: Or to brag on each other. You know what I'm saying? Because that's going to happen. Okay. But that also, if you're going to make a feature of this membership connecting entrepreneurs to the hands, the right hands, you don't really want them to talk to each other because that's something that you have to be the gatekeeper of. Because if they can find them theirselves, they wouldn't need you. Beth Dekker: Sure. Shane Sams: But there is a strategic reason to separate them other than we just want different groups like talking in the different groups. Is that okay? Does that sound good? Beth Dekker: Yeah. That's perfect. Shane Sams: The management of that's pretty easy because if you are going to do Facebook lives or any kind of Q&A lives, we have found that the best schedule is every other week anyway. Like we tried to do like weekly one time and it like, it actually was like too available so people would not come because they're like, I'll catch the next one. I'll catch the next one. Right. So it actually works really good on like a bimonthly monthly schedule like every other week. So you could do like week one and three could be the entrepreneurs and week two and four are the right hands and now you're only still doing like an hour, hour and a half work a week on these to manage those groups, it's just they're separate. You don't have to worry about it. Beth Dekker: Sure. Shane Sams: We talked about content. We talked about community. We got these two groups that we're going to set up for the different people. The third point in the triangle for any membership is coaching. Like it's being a leader. But I think you're going to kind of cover that on those Facebook lives, right? Like you're going to do that stuff. And you could even offer a one on one tier above the normal membership price. You could have like, cause you like doing one on one, you just said you like getting face to face. You like doing that consulting stuff. Correct? Beth Dekker: I do. Yeah. Shane Sams: I would just have a nice coaching package that's probably the same. It might be like the same price for either tier. If they wanted to have some one on one coaching in addition to the thing it'd be, it would give you something to sell on each Facebook live. Like maybe, you take three calls a week or something like that just to boost revenue. And that way you just got that leadership thing in there and you're good on both sides. Beth Dekker: Sure. Shane Sams: That's the membership. Like that's what it looks like. That's how you get people like into your stuff and it's pretty much mostly all created like you've got the Squarespace thing. You can sell access to courses on Squarespace, is that, is that correct? Beth Dekker: You can sell individual services and then you can also sell products. The issue is, I would need some kind of a plugin or some other program to be able to create like a membership space. Shane Sams: Why don't you just use something like Kajabi or click funnels? Because- Beth Dekker: I certainly can. I just have to learn. Jocelyn Sams: Or alternatively, you could create another website where your membership is housed, it could be like a wordpress website and you could just link to it from your original site. Shane Sams: Yeah, you could do something like that. How technical are you with stuff? Like you're using Squarespace. So I'm assuming. Have you played with wordpress? Do you know how to do that or not? Beth Dekker: I played with a little bit of my husband's site. He's a food and travel writer and his is on wordpress and so he knows it a little better than I do. I just feel, for some reason Squarespace works well with my brain. I built several sites on that program. I'm not opposed to wordpress at all though. Shane Sams: Well. Okay, so basically like wordpress of course is the cheapest option, right? Because you just buy the plugin, install it- Jocelyn Sams: But I don't think you have to blow away what you already have. I think you- Shane Sams: No, basically you just write a sales page and you use your same site for the sales page, with the little button clicked over to Right Hands community or wherever, the order form or whatever. Click funnels is really good with this because clickfunnels and Kajabi are both, not cheap, but they're also really good at really simple content based memberships. Like people would join, they would go to a page that had all your courses. Okay. So you might have two courses set up and then they can just click and buy and use what they want, log in there that handles all the payments and then as they buy or you just add them into your Facebook group if they're still in the course. That makes Sense? It's pretty, the only management part when you use something like a Facebook group for your community is the manual keeping up with who's actually paying. Like once a month you're going to have to go through, you're going to print the customer list, see who's payment failed, to see who canceled, and you've got to go remove them from the group manually. Shane Sams: That's why, what we do is we have all of our content, all of our community, everything is hosted on wordpress. That way if you cancel or your payment credit card fails, it just locks you out of everything. That's why we choose to do it that way but it totally works either way, it doesn't matter. All right, we've kind of built out what the membership is going to look like. We don't have to scrap your entire website you've already got. There's going to be- Jocelyn Sams: Sigh of relief on that one. Shane Sams: That's exactly right. No technical stuff. It's like start two Facebook groups done. Okay. Do you have any followup questions or is any of that confusing or what do you see with this plan? Beth Dekker: That seems great. I think that's a really direct way to do it. I think one of my main questions is, I do enjoy teaching classes in person and because of this relationship that I have with this coworking company here in town, which I'm hoping to be able to use that as a great way to sell my membership because they have hundreds of members. How should I balance kind of these in person courses with my online courses? Do I keep them 100% separate? Do I talk about them both on my website? Like how should I work that out? So it's not confusing. Shane Sams: It's really just an ascension ladder I think because what's going to happen is, it is a separate product kind of, but it's kind of like our live event. Like you're coming to Flip Your Life LIVE. Like Flip Your Life LIVE, flippedlifestyle.com/live boom, we'll see you there. Flip Your Life LIVE is like a separate product to us. Like it really doesn't like, it's not really connected with the membership. Like it has its own Facebook group, completely separate from the membership. We do trainings in that completely off the grid of the Flip your Life community. But it's kind of, what all roads lead to in the membership like we want, if you're listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, we want you to come to Flip your Life LIVE. If you're in the community, doesn't matter what tier you're at. We want you to come to Flip Your Life LIVE. Shane Sams: They're kind of symbiotic in the way they fill each other up. And I think that's what will happen here. You'll find that entrepreneurs will join, you'll make business connections, you'll go do your workshops, which are your courses. But like now you can get people to come to these workshops or at the workshops, you can sell people into your membership. Things are going to kind of flow back and forth and I don't know if you're going to have to like separate them like you think you're going to. That makes sense? Beth Dekker: Yeah. No, it does. When I look at my sales page, I look at it and I'm like, I know what's going on here. And I'm confused. I need to make sure that it, cause I know that the company that I'm working with does want me to have like a little registration area and that kind of thing and I think I need to divide that out so that when they're linking to me they're linking to a specific part of my site that is just what is going on with them. Shane Sams: We have our, if you want to join our, I actually just covered this in a training last night for Flip Your Life LIVE attendees, we have a sales page for the membership. Like if you go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife all one word, right? You're going to land on a sales page for our community and there's going to be three options to join either our standard membership our premium membership or the accelerator program. But our one on one coaching program, our private mastermind is not on that page. It's on a different page. Our Flip Your Life LIVE is not on that page. We don't even talk about it cause that's not what we're selling there. Shane Sams: They almost string together back and forth. Does that make sense? You're going to market them separately, but they're going to be very symbiotic and send people like for example, if someone buys a membership to Flip Your Life, the Flip Your Life community, their thank you page sells, Flip Your Life LIVE. If someone buys a ticket to Flip Your Life LIVE, we say on the thank you page, Hey, we just want to make sure that you're going to get the most out of your ticket. Are you a member? We want to make sure that it's not just someone who bought a live event ticket. They flow back and forth. But if someone literally asked, hey, I need to go to your workshop, you need to point them to the workshop page. And if someone said, "Hey, I want to join your community at the workshop.” You need to be able to point them back to the community where they're completely separate in that regard. Shane Sams: But I don't want you to think of it as like a different business. It's almost a different product. Beth Dekker: Sure, ok. Shane Sams: Would that make it, so do you have the workshops and the community on one page right now? Beth Dekker: I have everything on one page. Like I said, it really is just the past couple of weeks that I've been trying to build up this relationship. Shane Sams: That's a store is what you've got, not a sales page. Jocelyn Sams: A lot of people do this at first and it's totally fine. Like you just have to think like your customer. Whatever page someone lands on, what is the logical next step for them? And that's what they need to continue down. If they're a business owner and they're reading articles about how to effectively hire someone to assist them in their business, you don't want them landing on a sales page for people who are wanting to become an executive assistant or whatever. Shane Sams: They're actually, if I'm following you Jocelyn there'd be three pages. Then she would have an entrepreneur page where they would join the membership in a different way. There would be a right hand page where they would join the membership and then there would also be a workshop, which is like a group kind of hiring you kind of thing to come and speak to other business owners or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: If that's the way you want to set up your business, yes. Shane Sams: Sure. If you're going to do all three things. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Beth let's find out if you have any additional questions for us before we go. Beth Dekker: I just really have, kind of one more because it seems like I have pretty much two different customers or two different avatars that I'm not sure how that affects my sales tactics for both of them or how that affects my lead magnets. If I am offering, say two different items, say that they could choose from, they could download either this pdf or this pdf, and that, that they could kind of choose which one or how that would work. If I'm using one thing to sell to two different people. Shane Sams: You've got, you're going to have different lead magnets for sure. And you do have two segments of your audience, but so do we, like there's some people who really want to go all in DIY, we have a DIY tier on our membership, right? That's marketed way different, than we would market our premium membership, which is more hands on with me and Jocelyn. There's two member calls a month or even our email program or even our Voxer program. Like, so you do market things a little bit differently in your language. But I don't know if you can get really, I don't know if you have to get away from only dealing with one person. Like you don't only have to market to entrepreneurs you don't like, you're really not selling the program to be the right hand or the program to train your right hand. Shane Sams: You're really selling you as the mediator between those two tiers. Like that's what your program actually teaches, right? It's like you're teaching those two entities how to exist and make great things happen together and maybe even how to find each other down the road. Basically it's like, if you had to make a schedule, it would be like, okay, well on Monday I'm going to write a blog post that's geared toward the entrepreneur, then have the lead magnet for the entrepreneur, five easy steps to train your right hand, right? Then on Wednesday, every Wednesday I'm going to release a piece of content that's geared toward the assistant or the virtual assistant who wants to step up in the company and be the right hand. And then they would have their own lead magnet. Like how to make more money being an assistant or whatever, so they have to have more skills. Shane Sams: And then Friday could be something like a management article of how to manage your right hand. Another one could be like, how to serve your entrepreneur and like there's, you just go back and forth and talk about different things. Like usually on like a Monday, I'll kind of send out a general email and the PS, will be something like, hey, if you're not a member, we have tiers as low as $19, whatever. And then maybe later in the week it might be like, Hey, I'm opening a spot in our one on one mastermind program that's x thousand dollars. Does that makes sense? You're just going to kind of bounce back and forth between the segments but you are going to need to think of them in silos. Think of them completely independently. It's just like where, it's just like coaches and players. They're all on the same team. You're not, you're not really dividing them up. It's your content is going to kind of speak to different people as you go. Shane Sams: I think what will happen as your sample size increases. I know that mostly business owners have bought it now, but there's a whole lot more people at the assistant level wanting to be a higher assistant level then there are business owners and I think this might flip eventually once you get more numbers, like into the funnel. Beth Dekker: That'd be great to see. Shane Sams: Because then you'd have more people to do it. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Beth, I am really looking forward to seeing what happens next in your business and what you're able to accomplish before the LIVE event in September. Before we close today, tell us what is one thing that you plan to work on based on what we talked about? Beth Dekker: I think I'm going to work on my, no I don't think. I am going to work on my sales page and build that out and then look at a building out the membership in wordpress. Shane Sams: Awesome. That's good. And Yeah, you just need to go tell your husband he's got to help you because he knows how to do it. Beth Dekker: There you go. Shane Sams: Listen, what a great call. Thank you so much. I love your business. Like ever since I've said it earlier but I really mean it. Like when I first heard about your business I thought, wow, that is something that every entrepreneur needs and everyone you know on the ladder needs to move up the ladder in their course in their a job. You've got an awesome idea and you're already seeing some things happening. And I know when you get this set up correctly, get the marketing in place that people are going to jump all over it. Just wanted to thank you for coming on the show. Again, being so transparent, letting us have a peek inside of your business and I know a lot of people out there listening are going to get a lot of benefit out of that today. Thanks for being on the show. Beth Dekker: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Shane Sams: Alright, what another great episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Man, Beth was just killing it, planning her business out, getting that membership ready, building that recurring revenue and doing it all before she comes to Flip Your Life LIVE. We cannot wait to meet Beth in person at Flip Your Life LIVE and we would love to meet you there too. Flip Your Life LIVE is an open event for everyone who listens to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, members of the Flip Your Life community at any level and we would love to see you there. Flip Your Life LIVE this year is in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19th through the 21st. Tickets are on sale right now at flippedlifestyle.com/live. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D-L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E.com/L-I-V-E. Shane Sams: You can get your ticket now, but you better hurry because they are selling out fast. We only have about 29 tickets left. The original allotment when I'm recording this podcast, and by the time you hear this, they may be gone. VIP tickets are sold out. We still have a few general admission tickets left. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live and we will see you in Lexington in September. That's all the time we have for this week guys. Thanks for listening. Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Beth's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Brooke overcome imposter syndrome and implement new marketing strategies for her nursing student membership. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brooke overcome imposter syndrome and implement new marketing strategies for her nursing student membership. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to have another real member of the Flip Your Life Community onto the show. Cannot wait to celebrate a big success in their business and help them take their business to the next level. But, first, we wanted to let you know that the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast is brought to you by the Flip Your Life Community. That's where we teach real people, real people just like our guest and just like you how to start, build, and grow an online business of their very own. Shane: We are proud to be one of the only business podcasts that does not sell ads or sell interview spots to guests who are in turn selling their latest book or pushing affiliate products. No, we are 100% supported by our members, listeners, and fans. That keeps us independent, free, and focused on doing what's best for Flipped Lifestyle listeners just like you. We would love to have your support and help support you on your online business journey inside of the Flip Your Life Community. Shane: Flip Your Life members get early access to the Flip Your Life podcasts each week, bonus and extended episodes of the show, complete access to our entire training library. Of course, there's over 50 training videos to help you find your business idea, launch your online business, and sell things online. Plus you will get access to hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from around the world in one of the most active business communities online. Shane: So help us keep the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast ad and affiliate free all while we help you build your business and help you create a better future for your family. We have affordable plans starting for as little as $19 a month and your first month comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. There's absolutely no risk when you join. You can cancel anytime. To learn more go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D-L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E dot com/flipyourlife all one word. Join today. We appreciate your support and can't wait to support you and help you reach your goals inside the Flip Your Life Community. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Join today. Shane: But today we are super excited to welcome Flip Your Life Community member Brooke Butcher to the show. Brooke, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Brooke: Hey, guys, thanks for having me. Jocelyn: We are very, very happy to have you here today. I am especially interested in what you're doing for your day job right now. We'll talk about that just a little bit. But before we jump into all that, tell us a little bit about you and your background. Brooke: You bet. I am from Oklahoma. I am a wife and a mother to two girls, five and three, so we're pretty busy around here. I'm a nurse, but I don't really work at the bedside right now. I went back and got my Master's so I could start teaching several years ago, and I worked as a professor for about five years teaching in the final semester of the nursing program at one of our colleges. I have stepped away from that as well just because it wasn't very flexible. Brooke: Right now for my 9:00 to 5:00, I'm working with nursing students in an online university serving in more of like a mentor role to help them navigate their classes and graduate on time. Sadly, it's not a teaching role or it would be more fun and tolerable frankly, but I basically have to check in with them weekly and do these calls. I'm working from home, so that's kind of a hard battle right now with the girls being the ages that they are and trying to keep them out of the office and that sort of thing while I'm working. Shane: You left out... On your intake form that you filled out you said, "A call that many of them despise." Brooke: That's absolutely right. Shane: So basically you're forcing these poor nursing students to spend time with you on the phone and they hate this. Why do they hate it so bad? Brooke: It's a weekly call and basically just to check in to say, "Are you doing your work?" You did this well last week. Seriously, some of them will answer the phone and be like, "Hello?" I'll say, "Hi, Nicole, it's Brooke." Brooke: "Oh, hi." Shane: Oh, no. Brooke: You can hear this shift in energy in their voices. Shane: Are these like nontraditional... I know not a lot of nurses are nontraditional students. Are some of these older people too that have families that went back? Brooke: Most of them are. These are actually students that are already... They're already nurses. They're going back to get their BSN. Shane: Oh, okay. See, that's even worse because you're taking... If you get on to college student, sorry if there's any college students listening out there, but those are children. You're getting real adults that you're taking time away from what they're doing. They probably just hate you for it. Jocelyn: Yeah. I was particularly intrigued by this because I'm just surprised that you actually call these students every week. I did my master's online when I was getting my education degree, and nobody called me every week to make sure I was getting my work done. In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't contact me at all. Brooke: Right. Shane: Why do they do that? Is it like a retention strategy for the nursing school or something or is it just meant to be support? Brooke: Yeah. It's meant to be support. They call it... They say it's like their secret sauce to the success of the students in their program. It's not just the nursing college, it's all of the colleges through that online university. It's a hard role because most people don't appreciate it. Some really do, but for the most part it's just frustrating. I'm not a phone person, which kind of adds insult to injury, but I took the job because it's really flexible with my family for the most part, and it offers much better pay than you'd get at a brick and mortar college these days. Shane: For sure. And it is... There's always trade-offs, right? We all make trade-offs no matter what our business is. There's going to be something in it that you don't like. Every job, even when you fully start your own online business and you're doing it self-employed forever, there's going to be something you don't like. But does the trade-off match up? Do you get the hours back with your kids? Do you have more money than another job or are you able to pursue another thing like your online business because you took one job over another? Kudos to you for not only supporting the nurses of the future but taking all their crap when they're mad at you. Shane: Well, tell us a little bit about what you're doing online. One reason that we asked you on this show was because you've been very active in the Flip Your Life Community, very active in our Flip Your Life LIVE attendee sessions by the way. Just chatted with you last night in one of those. We're super excited that we get to meet you and we get to talk to you, and we get to help you. You've been doing some really cool things online, and you've had some success. Tell everybody what you're doing online on the side, and tell us about these success stories you've been having, these big wins. Brooke: Yeah, you bet. I provide online resources for nursing students. These are not the student's I'm working with now. These are students who are trying to get their RN degree so they can go be nurses at the bedside. It's set up as a membership site. Right now I have it on Teachable where students pay $25 a month, and they have access to PowerPoints and videos, cheat sheets, study guides, practice questions, all kinds of things. Then I have a private Facebook group where I do Facebook lives, answer Q&As and offer extra trainings and things like that over testing and study habits and everything that goes along with nursing school basically. Brooke: There are four semesters in nursing school. I currently have all of the resources built out for the fourth and final semester, and I started a beta group back in January as I was building out the rest of the content and had I think around 22 or 23 students join there. Shane: Did you charge for your beta group or was it kind of like a free thing? Brooke: No, I charged for my beta group because what I did, I had been working with this group of five students. I had been tutoring them from the first semester. This was from the college that I used to work at, and one of the faculty members had given them my name and said, "Oh, I know sometimes she does tutoring on the side." These students had reached out to me. I was tutoring them as a group. Every week I would meet with them for an hour or two hours and go over content. Whenever it came to the fourth semester, I thought, "I have all of the content ready to go for this because I taught this entire semester." I sent one of them a group message on Facebook and said, "Basically made a template on Teachable. This is what this would look like. Do you think people in your class would be interested in this resource?" Brooke: I didn't realize this, but the student sent it to her entire class of 75 students. Shane: Wow. Brooke: Brooke is willing to build this out for us if she has people who are willing to pay for it. Within 24 hours she sent me back 44 messages that said yes. Shane: Oh, my gosh. That is amazing. This happened just last September, correct? Brooke: That's right. Shane: Wow. Brooke: That happened in August, and then I was like, "I better get my butt in gear." I started building out like the first unit. I said, "I'll have that ready to go by the day that your class launches." I think 25 people signed up right away. I offered two different tiers then because I was kind of afraid of my bandwidth having this full time job and everything. I said, "For those of you who will pay $25 a month I'll do Facebook lives for you and provide you with the video content and that sort of thing." Everybody else I think I only charged $10 or $15. Shane: This is the beta group, right, not what you're doing now? Brooke: That's right. Shane: This is the beta group. Brooke: Yeah. Shane: Okay. Brooke: That have access to the content. I should've just- Shane: Super smart. Brooke: Yeah. So it worked out really well, but, of course, that was the fourth semester so they all graduated in December. Shane: You basically built in your own attrition to stop all the payments? Brooke: Yes, so it was not a great plan. Jocelyn: Well, you know, the good news is you did that at the beginning, so that's a nice little lesson for you of what not to do. Shane: That's right. Right, exactly. This is an amazing.. I was writing things out as you were saying this like an outline. I just looked over at Jocelyn, and we're like fist pumping every time you said the next step that you took. Because you were like just doing something one on one kind of randomly tutoring people, and then you kind of just put it out there to a group, and you built an outline, and then you didn't even have anything ready to go. You just showed them kind of what it was like a prelaunch. And you had all these people raise their hand and then half of them gave you money. Basically what you just said too, I wrote this down, there were 75 people in the class who heard about this. That's like an email list of 75 humans. That's 75 people. Just like an email list of 75 people, that was a classroom of 75 people. Forty something of the 75 raised their hand and 20 something of those actually opened their wallet. Shane: That just goes to show you if you just put yourself out there even if it's not perfect, even if it's not done, you don't need a huge amount of people. If you can find an email list of 75 to 100 people, and they're the right people, you may be sitting on a membership of 25 to 30 people paying you $25 a month tomorrow and then once they give you money, you're going to be so pumped up and scared, you have to go create the content because you took their money. That's what you get, right? Brooke: This is right. Shane: How motivated were you after those people signed up to be like I have got to get this stuff done. I need to do six months of work in a month because these people are expecting this from me. Brooke: Oh, yeah. I was super motivated and kind of terrified because I was thinking, "How on earth am I going to pull this off?" I honestly had this vision since 2012, and I did not take action on it because I just kept saying oh well, now we've got a new baby. Oh, now we've got this and that. And now I kick myself because why didn't I take steps. For all of the listeners who are just sitting on something, just do it. I finally decided even if it fails, at least I gave it a shot, and I won't ever have this regret. I won't ever wonder about it. Shane: And don't worry, that happens to a lot of people too. I don't know if we've said this on the podcast before. I think I've talked about it a little bit here and there. Back in like... When was I selling those playbooks on Ebay on DVDs, Jocelyn? Was that like- Jocelyn: That was like 2002 maybe. Shane: In like 2002, we had just graduated from college. Jocelyn was working as a sales and marketing director for commercial dishwashers. Jocelyn: Don't be jealous. Shane: Exciting task right there, living the high life, let me tell you. Then I was working for my dad doing insurance. For some reason, I got this idea that I could sell football playbooks on Ebay. I would just download them and put them on a DVD and sell them. Jocelyn: And physically mail them. Shane: And physically mail them to people. Jocelyn: Because people still did that in 2002. Shane: Yes. What's crazy is I somehow built this website with dream weaver. I went and bought a book from the bookstore about dream weaver the old HTML website software that you did on your Windows 98 computer or whatever we were using back then. And I actually made money. I made like almost $500, but then I just stopped. I just went down a career path. I got a job coaching football, and I said, "I'm just going to go do this." Internet marketing wasn't a thing then, but this was a full 10 years before we circled back around and we're like, "Hey, I wonder if we can make money online." I often look back and go, "Oh my goodness, what if I had just kept going?" Jocelyn: And didn't play as many video games. Shane: What if I didn't play as many video games back in 2002 as I did? Where would we be? But you can't really do that, right? All you can say is, "Well, wait a minute. What's happening now, and how can we turn this into a better tomorrow?" It's truly amazing. Let's fast forward a little bit. You sell this thing, you build it accidentally where everyone has an end date, and they all leave in December. What happens in January of this year? Kind of bring us up to where you are in your membership today, how many members do you have and things like that. Brooke: In January, one of the students that I had been tutoring she had to sit out her semester in the fall because she had a baby. She was the first one to jump on and say, "Yes, I will sign up for your membership," because she had already been working with me, and she knew that what I was providing was valuable. She had clearly talked to some of her friends, and they weren't really biting. Some of them would come to some of the Facebook lives I was doing just on my regular Facebook page, but they weren't invested in any of it. So I started kind of implementing some of your strategies and things like that, and going on and doing more lives just to show people what I was capable of offering them and that sort of thing and reaching out. You said, "Send out an email that just says 'What are you working on right now?'" So whenever somebody would come visit or sign up for a cheat sheet or something like that, I would say, "What do you need help with right now?" Half of them would respond. Brooke: I think through doing those little things like that it started to gain some momentum, and I think it was in February I got 17 new members. Just slowly, week by week I'll look up and I'll have five new members and six new members. Now I'm at 36 right now. Shane: Amazing. Brooke: I started a beta group for the third semester students a couple of months ago, and I only have four students in that, which has been fine because I've had more on my plate than I anticipated. So that's been working well. Now, of course, this semester has finally ended this last week, and so I'm hoping that I'll have some time over the summer to really build out that MP3 content, the third semester content, so that way I won't lose all of my students each semester. Shane: Right. Basically, the long term play then is to have all four semesters covered, and then you can figure out a way to support... Maybe the first two semesters is totally passive people, just courses. They just join and do courses until they're out of those two semesters, and then you support with your Facebook lives, your Q&As the third and fourth semester people who are really anticipating I've got to buckle down and graduate. I need help. Right? I would say nursing students it's probably a huge attrition from the first two semesters into the end. You start with 100 people, and I don't know, half of them or less probably actually graduate? Brooke: Yeah. It kind of depends. Where I was, one, two and three weren't as bad, and then the jump to four was just crazy. They would lose all their students between two and three and then a bunch of people couldn't make it through four. Shane: That's crazy. Here's what's amazing though. You have had this idea forever, right? Since you've taken action in just a few short months, you've basically built a business that... Granted, you've not even turned the temperature up on it. You've not even put the fuel to the fire. You just got the fire going. You've already built a thing that's basically creating $1000 of extra income a month just from your content and just from you showing up to a couple of lives. It's totally scalable because the way you're doing it is one to many, so you could add another 40 members and be making $2000 a month really, really fast and eventually create an entire income off of this. Jocelyn: I think that there's a longer term play for this too that's a little bit different than some industries because it is sort of like a short term product meaning that once they're finished with school then they probably won't need it anymore. I wonder if maybe you could set up some type of program where they could refer other people to you maybe in exchange for being added to a free support group. Shane: Yeah, or something like that. Jocelyn: Or something like that. Shane: Or like a post nursing school support group for their first year. That could even be a community or something like that just to extend that lifetime value. Jocelyn: It's such like a close knit group, you know? It's like nurses know other people who are going to nursing school, and that would be great leads for you. Shane: Yeah. Also, too, what's really cool about this niche is it does seem short term. Let's say, how long does it take them to go through a semester? Is it like an actual college type semester like four months of the year or whatever? Let's say you get the third semester and the fourth semester done. You've basically created a situation where you've got a good seven to nine month retention, something like that. But the cool thing is, there's always new nursing students the next semester. There's always new nursing students going into the third semester. With the right marketing funnel and the right support to your sales process, you're just going to reset your members all the time. You got new members being created every day or every semester that they start their new nursing thing. If you ever get to the point where you've covering all four semesters, you've just got this amazing revolving door of I've got eight month retention for every new member I get, I've got new members coming in right when they leave. That's pretty amazing. It's all because you took action even though you started thinking about taking action seven years ago. That's crazy. Shane: Well, listen Brooke, before we go any farther, congratulations because you are farther ahead than 99% of people will ever make it. You have done some amazing things just from taking action, just from putting yourself out there. I can confidently say that with what we're seeing here you are definitely going to grow this thing, and it is going to be an awesome thing for you and your family. Jocelyn: Thanks. Yeah. I'm really excited to see where it goes. I'm really kind of curious also. What does your husband have to say about this? When you were getting started, and then it started working, was he like, "Whoa, this is really cool"? Shane: Well, first of all, when you started it, was he like, "Are you listening to those people from Kentucky again? Come on." Brooke: That's right. Shane: What was that like? Then when you dropped a grand in his lap, were you like, "I told you so"? Brooke: Yes. I remember last summer whenever the student came back to me with that list of all the students I said, "So I'm going to do this." He looked at me. He is not a man of few words. This man can talk for days. Speechless. I mean, he didn't say anything. He looked at me like- Shane: Jocelyn would know nothing about what you're talking about. Jocelyn: Yeah, I definitely do not know about that. Brooke: He seemed kind of confused about it a little bit, and he said, "All right. Well, I support you," but it seemed skeptical. Anyway, after a few months I would show him, "Oh my gosh, I've hit the $500 mark. I've hit the $1000 mark." Then recently hit the $3000 mark, and was just really excited. He was very much more supportive of me going to the Flip Your Life LIVE than I anticipated he would be because of the success he'd seen. Shane: That's amazing. What made you decide to come to Flip Your Life LIVE? Flip Your Life LIVE to us it's an event that we do once a year. It's kind of like the Flip Your Life Community family reunion. It's not just for members though. Anybody can come. It's open to all listeners, supporters, fans, members. It doesn't matter. We did that because live events are what really took our business to the next level. We wanted to kind of pay that forward by hosting our own live event, getting people to put this on their calendar, be really focused, and be able to go meet everybody in the community in real life because a different energy happens when you're in the same room together. What made you decide though to come to Flip Your Life LIVE? Brooke: Like I said I've had this vision and this dream for a really long time. I didn't just... I was actively looking for resources to help me learn how to get there, and so I was an avid podcast listener. I would consume a whole lot of SPI and listen to all kinds of different podcasts and read blogs and things like that about things, but I didn't take action on any of them or I would take tiny baby steps but not see any sort of momentum at all and get frustrated. I heard you guys on Pat Flynn, and I think I heard your second guest appearance first, and then he said they were also on the podcast back on this episode. As soon as that first one ended, I immediately went back and listened to the other one and then went to your website because I just really liked your energy and it seemed like you guys were really real, and it seemed approachable what you were doing. I mean, that's where I am education space, and you made it happen. Brooke: I started looking around at what you had to offer, and I just thought... And you had the 30 day free membership I think at the time. I joined that, and that was in January, I believe. I honestly started to see results right away with what I was implementing. I became a member, and I thought, "I'm going all in with this. I can't waste my life at that computer calling students any longer." You posted something on Facebook, and it rings in my head, "Don't live the same year for 77 years and call it a life." I can't do this job anymore. I want to spend time with my family. I want to be there for them. I want to be able to have a flexible schedule where we can go do things as a family. I think that's my ticket. Shane: I asked that because I love it when I see people do this. I'm like, "Hey, this person signed up for this level. Whoa, this person upgraded. Whoa, they just bought a ticket." It just like all happens in succession that leads you all the way to that Flip Your Life LIVE. You've been actively... We do weekly training sessions that are exclusive to our attendees. You've been coming to those, checking those out, and it's just going to be an awesome experience. I'm really glad you're coming because if you think great things are happening now, wait until you get to that live event, and you go home and do more work in a month than you've done in two years. Jocelyn: I love that quote that you were talking about about don't live the same year 77 times. Shane: The life, right? Jocelyn: Then there's another one that I really like that is similar. It says, "You're only one decision away from a totally different life." I really like that one too. Shane: You've already made those decisions, so now we've got to figure out how to get you to the next level. What kind of fears and obstacles have you run into now? You've launched this thing. You've already busted through a lot of fears and things like that to get to the point that you're at now where you're making money online. It's starting to stack up. You're starting to see money that could turn into a real income in a very short time, but there's always little things that kind of get in our way. What things are happening inside your head or maybe some external obstacles are you facing right now that are keeping you from getting to that next level? Brooke: One thing I definitely struggle with off and on is imposter syndrome. It doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, but when it hits it can really derail me for days. I had a bout of this maybe like a month and a half ago as I was building out some of the newer content. All of a sudden this hit me like you don't know what you're talking about. You haven't taught this in seven years, and you're not going to be able to answer their questions on this live session. Honestly, it set me back for maybe three to four days where I was putting off working on it because this was such like a looming thing for me as opposed to just kicking it to the side and moving on with my work. Jocelyn: Yeah, this is a tough one because I think that we all go through this. It's like everyone no matter what field you're in you're going to have this feeling at some point if you don't have it all the time. I have it pretty much every day. But the cool thing is that most people don't expect you to be perfect. In fact, they usually like you better if you do show a little bit of vulnerability. Sometimes you say, "You know what? I don't have all the answers, and I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm going to find out and let you know." That's really all most people ask for. Shane: Yeah. Imposter syndrome comes from this myth that to be a "expert," you have to know everything about the subject. Because when we watch Bill Nye the Science Guy come on his scripted science program, these personalities that we see, they look like they know everything, but we don't realize that they sat in a room and they had to research all the answers to their little questions for their little TV shows. They are not totally the expert. If you caught them out in the street and asked them a question, they wouldn't know the answer either. But experts do know where to find the answers. That's what you really know. That's what you have to lean on is you're helping students who definitely don't have the answers. Right? Brooke: Right. Shane: They're like going through the process of learning some of the answers, but you've been through it, you've seen it, you've got experience helping other people. You've tutored now dozens of people, and you know how to find the answers even if you can't recall it. That's what Jocelyn and I really try to do like on our member Q&As. When we come in the door our premium membership there's two Q&As a month where people could come in and ask us questions. There are times when we get stumped. You've probably heard us get stumped on our member calls, and we just say, "Hey, I don't know that for sure. Post it in the forums. We will go research it, and we'll circle back around with an answer." Because we do know where to find the answers. Usually it's in somewhere where we've posted it before. We just have to go back and remember what we talked about. Shane: Imposter syndrome is insidious because it makes us feel inferior. It makes us feel like we don't belong, and it makes us feel like we're not the ultimate expert on the entire earth in our subject matter. But really, we don't' have to be that. We are just a little ahead of other people who we are trying to help achieve a goal. We're all just a little bit ahead of somebody else. But if anybody's behind you, you can help them. You can clearly help your students and they've acknowledged that you can do that. Try to change it to where you're saying, "Hey, I need all the answers," to, "Wait a minute. I just have to help that person find the answer they need. If I can do that, I'm expert enough. I'm worthy of being able to do this because I'm just their guide. I'm just their mentor. I'm not the know it all that knows everything. I'm not Oz behind the curtain." Right? Shane: The moral of the story is something Jocelyn just said, that does not go away. You would think that we would never suffer from imposter syndrome because we've literally been doing this every single day since 2014. We've woken up every day and all we do is help other people with their online business, build our own businesses, and do all these things. Man, anytime a question comes up and you get stumped, you're like, "I don't know everything." Right? It just doesn't go away, and that's a part of the rollercoaster, and you almost have to learn how to ignore it basically. Jocelyn: It's also like we all have our own insecurities whether they are conscious or subconscious. Anytime someone brings one of those up, like maybe someone says, "Hey, I asked you this question, and you didn't know the answer to it," and it brings up something that you're already self-conscious about, then it makes us feel bad. Just remember that we all have haters. There's always going to be someone who's dissatisfied with what we do, and that always helps me just to know that there's no one in the world that everyone likes or that everyone thinks has all the answers. For me, that makes it okay. Shane: Because now I don't have to please everybody because I can't. I just have to please the people that pay me, and you're paying us in the Flip Your Life Community membership, so we're here to help you, and you're here to help those other nurses. Jocelyn: All right. Brooke, let's move on talking about how we can help you to move this thing forward. Brooke: As we've discussed I have hit a roadblock in that all of my students graduate and leave me. I would really like to have a good game plan or kind of a roadmap in place what I can do over the summer in order to help start the school year off really well, get a lot of members, because I really never advertised it to the masses as I know I should because I've been afraid that students who are not in that content when they show up to the membership, like those from earlier semesters, will show up and be disappointed and leave. I guess I just kind of... I don't know what next steps to take or how to prioritize really the best things to do in order to get the membership really rolling at the part of the semester. Shane: Yeah, and keep more retention, more live time value and things like that, right? Are you planning on making all four semesters' content? Are you planning on doing that? Brooke: Yes. I would like it to be a one stop shop, like this is where students go forever. Shane: And you already have the fourth semester? Is the third semester done or are you working on it right now? Brooke: I'm working on it right now. Shane: You know, I'll be honest. This probably... Even though you've already got the membership, you've already got some promotion, you've already got that marketing stuff kind of ready for that fourth semester especially, this seems like a product first problem. I almost think you have to just buckle down and knock out all four semesters just to get it done. Because you can't really promote this correctly to get people in longer. Imagine if you got a first semester student. Right when they're running in, they find you, they join the community for 25 bucks a month, and this all of a sudden is a two year member. That's a lot of LTV. That's a lot of guarantee. Shane: Imagine if you got 100 people at $25 a month, that's $2500 a month, and you could predict that you were definitely going to make that base income going forward for 24 months. That would be amazing, right? Brooke: Right. Shane: But you can't do that without that content being created. You know? Brooke: Yes. Shane: So sometimes it really just means buckle down and do it. Back in February of 2016 or something, I was looking at all of our content in the Flip Your Life Community, and we were constantly updating stuff. We had stuff in there about lead pages, stuff in there about WordPress, just tools that always change on you. They update them every six months, and, well, I better go update that course. I don't know how Facebook ads course people to keep up with Facebook. I don't know how they make new courses every three months. I looked at it and I said, "This isn't going to be sustainable. This isn't going to work." I went through and said, okay, I'm going to redo the entire Flip Your Life blueprint and make it more evergreen. Focus on the strategy, focus on the tactics. Shane: You've been in the Flip Your Life blueprint, there's a lot of courses in there, a lot of videos, a lot of workbooks, a lot of stuff. I actually did every single one of those in about a five week period. I just buckled down on February 1st. I looked at Jocelyn and said, "I'll see you in March." I knew if I would put that one month in then, it would produce freedom for me for the next three or four years because I wouldn't be updating courses every single month. I think I did 50 something videos over like a five week period because I just knew it had to be done, and I really believe that you're at that point where you're like, "This works, people react to it, I've just got to make sure that I can get all of the nurses into it." Jocelyn: It's also going to take a huge mental load off of you because you're not sitting there thinking about it. Like, "Oh, well, if I only had this done, then maybe I could attract more people." Or, "If I only had it done, then I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore." Right? Brooke: Sure, yeah. Shane: Right now you're probably feeling like, man, I'd love to market. Also, too, the biggest class, we've talked about this earlier, is the first semester nurses. That's your biggest audience, your biggest segment. You can't even market to them right now. When you get the content... I'm not saying that the content needs to be perfect. I'm just saying- Jocelyn: At least get it started. Shane: Yeah. If you could hit the main themes... How much content is in your membership right now? In semester four, what does it look like? Brooke: I mean, probably like 25 topics. It takes a lot of work to build out the content for each semester because you learn an ungodly amount of material. Shane: Oh, sure. Brooke: I mean, it probably took me a month to build out each unit, and there were four units in that. Shane: So there's four units in each? Would that be the same for the second and first semester? Brooke: The same for the first. The second and third semesters are different because you enter into mental health and OB, and you split it up. Shane: Here's the deal. If you can set yourself some deadlines with consequences, I'm willing to bet that you could do the first semester in a month and the second semester in a month, and you could just be done with them. I'm not saying it's the final product, I'm saying it's the minimum viable product. It's the least that you could do. You don't have to do every single thing that's in there. Basically you just have to create the course in a way where you can like, "Okay, here's week one. You study this," but then you come to the Q&A, they ask questions, you record those, and you start bulking up the course. Shane: I use this analogy sometimes when we're building courses. Everybody says, "Oh, it took me four weeks a unit. It took me 16 weeks. I got to do this thing." You built this massive product. That's fine. We're going to get there. The game that you're playing is kind of like a football field. Everybody does this. You know, the football is 100 yards long and 53-1/3 yards wide. That's what an actual football field looks like. That sometimes we get in our mind, "Well, I've got to play that game." But that's not true. You get to make the field. You get to create the rules. So you could say, "Our football field is going to be 50 yards long, and it's only going to be 25 yards wide." I'm going to do that right now, but we might extend it a little bit as we go. Shane: If you said to yourself, "I have to have something available for these first semester students, and I have to have it done in four weeks, that's the field. That's the game I'm playing on," what would that look like? What would be the minimum thing to get these people started just to get them one thing a week plus they get to come to that live thing with me to ask questions. What would that look like? It wouldn't look like the finished product, but it would look like something that you could sell. Right? Brooke: Yes. Shane: That's really what you've got to do next is you've got to say... What month is it now? We're in May. So you've got June and July and then you've got to start marketing for these people going into this semester. Correct? Brooke: Yes. Shane: Okay. You have got to say to yourself, "What does the first semester look like if I only had four weeks to create it, X hours a week, and it has to be done?" Imagine you've sold this to 20 people, and you have to deliver something, not the final thing. It's going to bulk up over time. What would that look like? That's your next step, and you've got to go out and create that. Then you do the same thing in July. You just say, "Okay, well, what would the second semester look like if I only had four weeks and I've got to get this thing ready to sell knowing I've got plenty of time to add to it as we go, and I'm going to do live Q&As to fill in the gaps?" Then you create those two things, and now you look and say, "The one stop shop, Brookebutcher.com. Here we go." What's your website? What's your domain name? Brooke: Thenursingprofessor.com. Shane: All right. Thenursingprofessor.com is now the one stop shop, period. Then let your members that buy your product tell you what to add to it and what you left out. That's a mindset shift. That's not, "Oh, I got to spend 16 weeks creating a new course." I have four weeks. This has to be done. Let's go. Jocelyn: And it also allows you to not be able to hide behind that. You can't tell yourself, "Well, I'd probably sell more memberships, but I don't have that done." So it takes that excuse away from you. Shane: Yeah, because there is something there to sell. What you have to be prepared for is someone will go in there, you have to be prepared for the questions. Someone's going to go in and say, "Oh, where's this? I'm studying this." And you'll be like, "Oh, yeah, I didn't put that in there because I was in a hurry." Then you just make it real fast, and you put it in there, and now it's there forever. Then the next person will say, "What about this?" You say, "Oh, don't worry." But that's what the Q&As are actually for is to show you holes in your system. If you can't point to a course at a Q&A, then you just found your next course you need to create basically. Brooke: Okay. Shane: Does that terrify you? Brooke: Well, I mean it just makes me feel like I'm not going to get much sleep this summer. Shane: That's right. Jocelyn: Well, you know, the sun stays out longer in the summer, so maybe you'll feel like you have more time. Brooke: You're right. Shane: Yep. Let me ask you this. How many hours do you usually work on... Let's say you're going to make courses. How many hours do you actually have in a day to work on this? Brooke: Not much. I start my job at 7 a.m., and I'm calling students while running around and getting my kids ready and fed and out the door to school. Then one or two nights a week I also have to work in the evening time. I mean, I use fringe hours. I try to get up early a couple of days a week when my daughter doesn't beat me to it, and then I stay up late working, so maybe four or five. Shane: A week? Brooke: Yeah. If my husband's working late one night, then I power through and get as much content done on those nights as I can. Shane: Okay. Let me ask you this. Let's say there's five hours that we're going to try to get back in a week. What is something that you're doing right now that you could give up for eight weeks to give your family a better life for the next eight years? What is something that you could stop doing even if it's just one more hour a week right now? Brooke: I honestly think it's just sleep. I don't watch a lot of TV when my girls are here. They're five and three. I do sometimes hire a sitter or schedule a play date with cousins and such so I can get some more work done. I've got family who's really supportive of stuff like that sometimes. Shane: Okay, let's say this then. We found something. You can part with something. You can part with money to hire a sitter, right? That's your main focus is to say, "I want to work five hours on this business a week, period." That's more than enough time. That's 20 hours in the month of June. That's more than enough time to create the outline of this content, right? That's more than enough time. But you have to be proactive with making sure on your calendar at the beginning of the week that you've got your sitter lined up. You may find those three hours that you're definitely going to work, but you got to be proactive about making sure you've got childcare and backup childcare to make sure those other two hours don't disappear on you. Shane: If it shrinks to three hours in a week, we've got a problem. Correct? Brooke: Yes. Shane: There's your strategy. That's what you're going to give up. You give up the 25 bucks to whoever is watching the kid or whatever, and that's what you do. For some people it might be Netflix and Chill. You give it up for eight weeks to give your family a better life for eighty years, whatever. It doesn't matter. You've got to give up something. Remember, it's only in the short term, and once you make this content, you're not going to have to do it again for a while. You may give up... Let's say you give up 50 bucks a week or whatever, 200 bucks a month for two months, that's 400 whole dollars, but if you go out and you sell 100 extra memberships to first year nursing students, you immediately 5x'd your money on the backside. Shane: It's just giving up something in the short term to get a whole lot of benefit in the long term, and you've got to lock it down like I am working five hours on this a week, and then what you do is you write down, as soon as you get off this call with us, you talk about it in the forums, we can go through and hash that out a little bit with you more in there. Now, you write down a plan. You say, "I have 20 hours. I am going to guarantee myself 20 hours in June. I will create this first semester program in June in those 20 hours. What can I do in 20 hours?" You say, "Hour one. Make this thing. Hour two, make this thing. Hour three, nope, that takes too long. Erase it. I'll do it later. Hour four..." You see what I'm saying? Shane: That gives you a 20 hour plan. You've got 20 hours to create whatever that first semester minimum viable product looks like, and we are selling it in August, and it's happening, and then we'll make it better. Brooke: Game on. Shane: That's game on. That's right. Jocelyn: All right, Brooke. It has been fun talking to you today. We always ask people before we go what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours based on what we talked about here today. Brooke: I will map out these 20 hours and start making an outline of what to do for my first semester content. Shane: Boom. That's what I'm talking about, Brooke. That is a game plan. I'm excited to see what you create. You've got all these deadlines that matter coming right at you too because you've got to sell this thing when they go back to school, and you got to show up to Flip Your Life LIVE to tell us how it went. Brooke: Right. Shane: Listen, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing your success with everybody in the Flipped Lifestyle universe out there who's listening in. I know that your story has inspired some people who've had dreams since 2012 to get off the couch and take action, and we really, really appreciate that. Brooke: Thank you guys for having me. Shane: Also, Brooke, has a Bible verse that she would like to share with us. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration from the Bible for our life and our business. We know a lot of other people out there do the same. Brooke would like to share a verse with us today. Brooke: This is from Ephesians 5:15 and the verse of 16. Be very careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise making the most of every opportunity. Shane: How ironic that we're going to make the most out of those 20 hours next month. They do know the verse, but I knew it was going to be related because God always turns it back around on the show. That's awesome stuff. Okay, Brooke, thanks again. We appreciate you. Brooke: Thank you guys. Shane: All right, guys. What another great show with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Brooke is doing amazing things. It took her a while to get off the sidelines, but once she got in the game, she really took it to the next level. She's making things happen. I have no doubt that she's going to be very successful in the next steps in her business. Shane: That's what you have to do as well. You can't waste any time. You cannot stay on the sidelines anymore. If you're just listening to the podcast, if you're just hearing about other people's success stories, it's never going to happen for you in your life. You've got to take action, and the best way to take action is to join the Flip Your Life community. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we would love to have you as a member of our community. We've got all the training you need. We have a massive community, an active community that is ready to rally around you and help you achieve your goals. Jocelyn and I will be there for you all along the way. Again, that's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and you can get your journey started today. Shane: That's all the time we've got for this week, guys. Until next time, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you back. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Brooke's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Chad grow his new membership site. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Chad grow his new membership site. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show so that we can help them grow their online business and change their family's future. Today's guest is Chad Bostick. Chad, welcome to the program. Chad Bostick: Hey guys. So happy to be here. Man, I've been a long time listener of the show for many many years and I was honored and shocked that you guys invited me to the show and just super, super pumped to be here. Shane Sams: Well listen, man. We reward action takers in the community and we watch those forums like a hawk, looking for success stories, looking for great questions, looking for people that are following through with their action plans and you earned your spot on the show today, man. So we're glad to have you. Jocelyn Sams: And I loved your success story. This is the reason that we chose you to be on the show today, because Chad put out that he got his first paid member and that's something that's really exciting and that we always celebrate here on the show. His success story says, "I'm out of town for work so I didn't think I would make much progress on my business this week, but while I was waiting for my flight Sunday evening," He had been to an event, "I followed up with one of the folks that showed interest at my live speaking engagement. We've exchanged emails a few times this week and last night he said he tried to sign up for my membership but the site wasn't working. He asked my permission to PayPal me money. I said yes." Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing. Someone was literally like, "Can I just throw money at you? Because this is awesome." That's what it's all about. Jocelyn Sams: It reminds me of that meme that says, "Shut up and take my money." Shane Sams: Right, exactly. Chad Bostick: It was so odd because I didn't even know how to respond. Somebody literally was like, "Shut up and take my money." I sat there and there was all of these negative thoughts in my head. I should say no, I'm not ready yet, I'm not a real entrepreneur, I don't know what I'm doing here. But instead, thank God I have Gmail so the Gmail client on my iPhone had responses built in at the bottom and one of the responses was sure. And so I just clicked the button. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh, that is a great story man. What a first sale story. That is awesome. Jocelyn Sams: I love that. That is awesome. And in the back of your mind you're thinking, "My sales process doesn't even work. Why do you want to give me money?" Shane Sams: That's amazing, man. Chad Bostick: Yeah. Shane Sams: Well listen, let's back up. We're going to get deeper into that first sale and we're going to talk about the next hundred sales as well, but before we do that tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us where you come from, what you do and the life outside of this online business pursuit. Chad Bostick: Absolutely. My name is Chad Bostick. I'm married 14 years to my beautiful wife Shauna. We have two kids, two daughters. One is nine and one is two, and so we've kind of got the whole range of kids here in the house and it's awesome. I am a software developer. Grew up as a software developer and have been a very technical person inside the software development space for many, many years. The last 20 plus years. Chad Bostick: What I struggle with my entire life has been anxiety. I have had really, really difficulties in creating relationships and talking to people and speaking up and it really held me back in life and in my career. When I first got my first programming job back in the 90s, I kind of lucked into it and it was awesome and it was great and I had a lot of fun, but then building my career and moving up took a lot of effort that I didn't know I was going to have to put into it. I showed up and I was a good employee, I did a great job, but after five years of the first company I worked at I found out that I was one of the least paid people in the entire organization and it was really soul crushing. Chad Bostick: There was a lot of other obstacles that I overcame but after a while I figured out that what I was really missing were soft skills. I didn't have confidence, I didn't have a good communication style, and I had no leadership skills whatsoever. So I worked on those, I developed those, and then my career started taking off and I started getting job offers, I started moving into management positions or being asked to be moved into management positions even though I said no for many many years on that. And then I've had amazing opportunities to work at big Fortune 100 companies and really small awesome niche companies in a lot of different areas and work on some amazing projects, work with some amazing people, and yeah. That's what I'm doing. Jocelyn Sams: That's really interesting Chad, and I can actually relate to your story in a lot of ways. First of all I'm really into computer stuff and I would even go so far to say as I'm a little bit of a nerd, or a lot- Shane Sams: A lot of a nerd. I used to ... Our first dates when we first started dating in college, Jocelyn worked at the computer lab as the person who helped people with computers and I would go sit beside her at the computer lab. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and what was funny is that I started out in college, my plan was to become a programmer. I used to program years and years ago. Chad Bostick: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: In the midst of all this one of the computer science instructors accused me of cheating. I think I might have mentioned this on the podcast before. I did not cheat but she accused me of cheating and after that I just couldn't even think about programming any more. It really affected me that much. Along that line I also suffer from anxiety. I've been dealing with it for probably my entire life, but the last couple of years it's been really bad, so I can definitely relate to you on several different levels. Chad Bostick: Yeah, the struggle is real. It's not fun at all when you get those anxiety attacks. I was so bad, guys, that back in my teens and in my early twenties, it was so bad that I couldn't even go to my family reunions and have conversation with my aunts and uncles and cousins because they felt like strangers to me and I didn't know how to open up to them. I didn't know how to just relax around people that weren't my best friends, and I had very, very few best friends. So it was ... That anxiety held me back in not just work but a lot of life opportunities as well. Shane Sams: You said something like you turned down some opportunities to grow in your actual job, like your nine to five. You were offered jobs and you said no to them over and over, is that what happened? Chad Bostick: Yeah, so at one point I had a boss who we ... I was in the oil and gas business at the time, working in the IT department at an oil company, and it's very cyclical. When it's hot it's hot and when it's not it's not. There's a lot of ups and downs and I didn't have a good way to grow my career so my career was growing through attrition. As everyone else was leaving or getting laid off I was doing a great job and I was sticking around, and then I was being offered these opportunities to move up into a senior developer position, into a lead developer position, into a supervisor or manager position, and I was like, "Whoa. That is way too stressful for me. I'm just going to sit here in front of the computer with my headphones on and stare at the code all day because that sounds like ... First of all it sounds like a bunch of meetings, which is boring, and second of all it sounds like a lot of responsibility of dealing with people problems instead of technical problems." That really stressed me out. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Listen, I totally get that- Shane Sams: I'm sitting here nodding. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, I'm sitting here shaking my head. Shane Sams: She's rocking in her chair right now. Jocelyn Sams: I totally get this because honestly, I've said it many times, I would rather work with things than people any day. And it's not because I don't like people, I mean obviously I talk to people for a living, that's part of what I do, but I just don't like managing people. It's just not my thing, it's not what I enjoy. I would prefer to sit on a computer all day long than to interact with people in a work type setting. Shane Sams: The problem is there's different ways to make money. I heard a speaker say one time there's three main ways people make money. One is with your muscles, you actually do things, you build the software, you build the house, you do the thing, right? But those are the lowest paid employees. And then the next one is you make money with your mouth. Like you're the manager, you tell people what to do, you talk, you do those things. Or you make money with your mind, you're like the entrepreneur who's creating and running the company. And the problem is if you get stuck in the muscles then you never move to that next level where you make more money, and then you never get to have a chance to go to the third level where you can make even more money, like owning your own online business. Shane Sams: I can see where that fear almost of success or responsibility could hold you back a little bit. How did you break through that, get out of that? Chad Bostick: First of all, in the software development space, it's a really really hot industry and not always the case that the manager makes more money. In some cases the software developers make more money than the manager. I've had several software developers work for me over the last eight to 10 years, that they were in a niche and they had a skill set that was very, very hard to find and they named their price and we were like, "Shut up and take my money," because we need this job done. A few individuals got to name their price and got whatever they wanted to. Chad Bostick: But when I was moving into management it was really difficult because I really said no for three or four or five times before I finally kind of just took a look at my life and was like, "You know what? Am I getting into the same patterns as I was before?" One of the things I was struggling with wasn't really the money because honestly guys, I felt blessed to have the job and I felt like not worthy to have the job in some cases. I did not graduate college. I was a college dropout. But I started writing code when I was 10 years old because it was fun and I don't feel like English is my first language, I feel like Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is kind of my first language because that was ... BASIC programming was what really grabbed my attention when I was a 10, 11 year old. Chad Bostick: It was a struggle for me to accept that job because on one hand I didn't feel like I deserved the job that I had, and get the money that I had, but on the other hand dealing with people problems just seemed like an insurmountable task. I would fail at it on my first day. And it turned out that wasn't the case and I had a knack in it. I just needed to practice my skill sets and get more comfortable in that area. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's what happens with most fears. We create this story that tells ourselves we can't do this, but then we go do it and it's fine. It's taking that leap from one side of the cliff, I can't do it, to the other side, okay I'm going to try it and then I'm good at it, is what most people really really need to do that. Shane Sams: So you've got this good job, you've started moving up in your career. Why online business? Why then do you want to pivot now and go down this entrepreneur path, which is a whole different set of challenges and problems than even climbing that corporate ladder? Chad Bostick: Yeah, that's a great question and it's not now that I want to make the change. I actually started down the online path 15 years ago and I had a lot of starts and I had a lot of stops and I had a lot of successes and I had a lot of failures, and I feel like this is something that I've been seeking and searching for for over a decade and I haven't quite figured it out. And it frustrates me because I'm a smart guy and I know how to get things done technically. I know how to build a website, I know how to set up all the funnels and all that kind of stuff, but just turning it into a business is not a skill that I've ever learned. It's not a skill or a collection of skills that I've really figured out how to practice. Chad Bostick: The reason I wanted to get it was just the freedom in so many ways. It's not just about the money for me. It was the freedom to work on the projects that excited me. I worked on a lot of projects over the course of my career that ended up kind of being the same thing over and over and over and just not really exciting. I worked on a lot of projects where I did not have a lot of empathy for the customer space. It was just like an area where it's like, "Okay, we're building this thing, but I don't really know who's going to use it or why they're going to use it." And just the project cycle of our project spins up and you work on it and then our project spins down and then the next project spins up and down. That project-based work has just kind of drained me over the course of the years. What I want to do is get into a business where I have freedom and flexibility to work on the projects that excite me, to work with the type of customers that excite me, and to have that freedom to work anywhere in the world however I want to do it. Shane Sams: I love this part of your ... We have a form that we fill out for everybody that's on the show and it says, "The nine to five is slowly killing my soul." You have this really matter-of-fact way that you say things, and it's really matter-of-fact all the way. You get to that sentence and it's like now stop, we're killing my soul. Like, and- Jocelyn Sams: But I think that so many people can relate to that. There are so many people listening to this right now that are like, "Yes. I totally get that." Shane Sams: It's almost just finding a purpose. Every project has to have a purpose. I'm the same way, I get bored really really easily, especially if someone else hands me something to do. Even if I like to do it, if someone tells me to do it, it just hurts me somehow because I don't feel like I'm flexible and free. Jocelyn Sams: It's because you're the rebel. We just read a book recently, it's called The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. It's a really interesting book. Shane is called the rebel. He doesn't want to meet other people's expectations and sometimes he doesn't even want to meet his own. Shane Sams: Yeah, I just want to get out ... Today's been the greatest day ever because we just had all these random things we've been working on. Jocelyn looked over at me ... We recorded another podcast about 45 minutes ago, and she looked over and an email had popped up in her inbox. She looked over and goes, "Did you just send that email or did you schedule it?" I go, "No, I just got bored and started writing it." I like to just be totally flexible and free and throwing emails out there and just doing all these different things and the nine to five, I've been in that grind, man. It can wear you down. Shane Sams: Even if it's something that you do feel blessed. When I got out of college I went to work for my dad. He was an insurance salesman, he had a couple agencies, and I got to go into insurance and I worked in one of the offices. I think I've told this story before, but I remember one day that I was only about a year into it and I was standing there leaning on the file cabinet, looking out the window, and across the street there was a herd of cattle, like cows. They were just walking around, using the bathroom, eating whatever they wanted. Some of them had jumped in the pond and they were getting a drink. I remember distinctly at that moment thinking, "Look how free those cows are. Man, I wish I was one of those cows." Because I felt so trapped in this nine to five life. Jocelyn Sams: Never on another podcast will you hear this story. Shane Sams: No, I wanted to be a cow. At that moment I knew that was my life's dream, was to be as free as a cow in a field. Jocelyn Sams: You heard it here first folks, on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane Sams: That's kind of what took me down to even thinking about entrepreneurship. Even many years ago before we ever did this I actually started a couple websites, probably five to 10 years before we ever even thought about doing our websites that actually succeeded this time. Don't think you're alone in that it's been 15 years, why didn't I do this? I actually started a couple sites and sold a couple things back in two thousand and ... What year was that, four? Jocelyn Sams: I think it was 2002, something like that? Shane Sams: No, I think it was a little bit later than that. Yeah, because it was before I got my football coaching job. When the internet was in its infancy I somehow found a way to build a website and sell something online. I don't even remember what it was. Maybe- Jocelyn Sams: No, it was like a football- Shane Sams: Drills. It was football drills. That's what it was. Jocelyn Sams: And so what he was planning to do was sell these on eBay, and he actually sold a couple of them. Shane Sams: That's right, and I made like 500 dollars doing it. Jocelyn Sams: On a CD-ROM and we were actually physically mailing them to people. Shane Sams: Yeah, and I ... But the problem is, I did it for three months and then I listened to the rest of the world that said, "Well, maybe you don't want to do this, but you should go back to school, get another degree, go a different path." So that's what I did and then something 10 years later, we get back into this, it bubbles back to the surface, we start our journey and we make it. So dude, you are not alone when you feel like you've put this off and you can't figure out why. I look back sometimes and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. What would have happened if we had kept doing this back then?" But you can't do that, you've just to move forward with what you've got now. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we have talked a little bit about what you've been doing the past few years as far as starting your own online journey and trying to figure out what you're going to do. Where has this taken you? What have you been doing recently? Chad Bostick: A few years ago one of the next steps in the evolution of Chad and fighting my social anxiety and pushing myself past my personal barriers was I knew that I needed to launch a podcast. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to make money and my wife and I were both kind of like, "Where's the sponsorships going to come from?" But I just had this desire in me that I need to get out and I need to just start a podcast. So I did it the go big or go home way and I started a seven day a week show that was, really looking back, it was really about career development, but at the time I didn't know how to articulate it. Chad Bostick: Every day of the week had its own topic. Monday motivation, Tuesday productivity, Wednesday leadership, Thursday technology, Friday people and communication, Saturday entrepreneurship, and Sunday is what I called being unplugged, which was a joke because I was working 24/7 and didn't know how to be unplugged. That was what I did and I produced 270 episodes and it was awesome and it was fantastic. It really helped me put myself out there not just in my job but outside of my job, and start to build a brand and start to connect with other people. Meet hundreds and hundreds of software developers and entrepreneurs and business leaders and managers all across the world and that was fantastic, but there wasn't any money and sponsorships. Or maybe there was, but I didn't know how to tap into it. Chad Bostick: After a while that shut down. We had a personal event where a little girl needed our help and so we ended up adopting her, but through the adoption and fostering process I had to get another job. It was a serendipitous moment where I was actually on a call with a recruiter who was trying to recruit me for a manager job and my wife was on a call with Child Protective Services who was trying to help us get this baby. I was saying, "No no no, I'm doing my podcast and I want to figure out how to turn it into a business." The lady that was talking to my wife was telling my wife, "You have to quit your business and get a job or your business has to be successful for three years before you can get this baby." My wife was grabbing my shoulder, shaking me, trying to get my attention and say, "Chad, you have to get a job now, otherwise this baby goes and lives with somebody else." I said, "Okay, so tell me about this job again. Sounds very interesting. I want to take it." Shane Sams: Right, exactly. Chad Bostick: So I put a pause in the podcast but now after two years of reflection on what that show was about, it was really about me trying to explore my career development path and all of the obstacles that I've overcome in my career and the transformations that I've had in my life and my career and trying to help others see that transformation is possible in their own lives and in their own careers. Now what I've done is focus all of that energy down into a more succinct, clear message, and that is I help software developers and IT professionals build their confidence, their communication and their leadership skills so that they can get better jobs, make more money, and have a bigger impact on the world. Shane Sams: Yeah. I love how this says on your form too that you recorded ... You'd heard John Lee Dumas, you just went all in making podcasts every day of the week. You did 270 episodes, then it says, "I made $2000 in ads but I spent $3600 in audio editing." Chad Bostick: Yeah, I know. Shane Sams: That's a common theme, though. Because you kind of have to invest and spend up front when you're starting your business. Everyone's first year or two probably looks in the red, because you have to get ahead of the game and then when you start making money ... There's only a $1600 difference there. If you go out and sell 100 memberships you're going to make all that money you originally invested back. All those building blocks have stacked up and led you to the place that you are today where you actually can succeed and make that first sale and do those things. So that's not wasted effort or time by any means, it's just learning, figuring it out, and you know now what that clear vision looks like because you did all those things in the past. Chad Bostick: Yeah, it was definitely lessons learned and I'm glad that I did it. It was very costly and it was very kind of painful to see that paycheck that never arrived and to know that I'm responsible for my family's wellbeing. I've got to keep a roof over their heads, I've got to keep the bills paid and whatnot. But it wasn't happening and I felt like a failure. Why is this not working? Again, I'm a smart guy. I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing good, I'm on Apple's New and Notable section, my podcast is growing, but just selling those ads wasn't working so I needed a pivot and I had to take some time off in order to get that clarity to get it. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. And the best news is, is that you didn't just give up. I think some people at that point would just say, "Well, podcasting's not for me. Better go do something else." But you didn't say that. You said, "Okay, well this didn't work, so now what can I do to make it work?" Shane Sams: And we're getting back into that now. So you've pivoted back. You're ready to go forward with a clearer vision, with an online business, right? Chad Bostick: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: What is the biggest thing that's holding you back right now? What are the fears and obstacles now as you move forward? We talked a little bit about your first sale a few minutes ago. Tell us what you're doing now, what's kind of held you back to this point, and then tell us more about how that first sale came about. Chad Bostick: The first sale that came about was really ... I feel like I kind of lucked in to this client, where I gave a presentation at a local event and I hadn't really prepared a whole lot of information for that event, but I knew that I wanted to get back in touch with that side of me that was doing the podcast. I hadn't done any public ... Well, I'd actually never gotten up in front of a live studio audience and spoke. I've only hidden behind the microphone. I knew that I wanted to speak in front of this audience, and so I bounced a couple of ideas off my buddies and had the idea for Career Design Patterns and they said, "Oh, that sounds great, you should speak at this event." Chad Bostick: I showed up, I gave the speech, and then afterwards this person approached me and said, "I need a job and I feel like I need a coach. Do you think you could help me?" And then, "Here, please take my money." That was amazing and it feels like I'm so honored to have that but I need to figure out how to repeat that same process. What I don't want to do, since I have to stay here with my family, I want to stay here with my family, I don't want to leave them and travel the world and be on a conference circuit. I want to figure out how to meet my avatars or meet my customers online and figure out how to put the message out there that I have been where they have been and I know how to solve some of their problems, and I can solve those problems for them. Chad Bostick: What I'm really looking for is marketing messages and marketing tactics on how to ... Again, I know how to build a podcast but I don't necessarily know how to pitch myself and pitch the services that I'm offering. Shane Sams: Okay. Wait, I want to talk about that, but I've heard something in our conversation that you haven't really articulated but I keep hearing it bubble back up. Jocelyn Sams: Like a theme. Shane Sams: It's a theme. You keep saying, "I'm lucky. Oh well, I got lucky and got that good job even though this shortcoming. Oh man, I was lucky enough to get offered one, two, three, four opportunities for this to move up the ladder. You know, I got so lucky that one person decided they wanted to throw their money at me." Shane Sams: You can't keep saying that because you are not lucky. Here's what I've heard about you this entire conversation, Chad. I show up and I'm a great employee. You deserve the raise, you deserve the promotion. I show up at the speaking gig and I get up there and I do my best and someone wants to give me money because I'm worth getting the money. The danger of that word ... That word is actually banned in our household. We don't allow our children to say they're lucky or I'm lucky or we got lucky, because everything is based on effort. Everything is based on work. Everything is based on putting yourself in the right place so that you can be in the right place at the right time. That's just true. Are there some good fortune along the way that help us all? Of course. But being successful and what ... All the things you've done had nothing to do with luck. They had everything to do with Chad, and you're just killing it and you're doing it. Do you know how many people would not show up at a speaking event and get up on stage? 90% of people would be terrified to even do it, and you might have been terrified to do it but you did it and guess what, you got leads and you got a sale because of it. Shane Sams: I just want to just really call that out a little bit right now and say don't feel like the good things that happen to you are luck. They are not luck. Jocelyn Sams: None of it is an accident. Chad Bostick: Okay. I'm taking it in. It's hard. Guys, it's always hard for me to accept any sort of recognition or rewards or pat myself on the back or do my performance evaluations, my self appraisals at the end of the year because I'm my own worst critic and I want to exceed not just everybody else's expectations but my expectations, and when sometimes it happens I'm like, "Wow." But I don't give myself enough credit that yeah, I actually deserve this. I own this. I rocked it out. I did the work. I put in the effort and my efforts and my ideas were good. That's definitely something I need to work on. Shane Sams: See, the problem is though, if you don't ... In this particular instance you just said, I can't remember if we said this off-air when we were doing our preroll or if you were doing it during the call, but you said, "I look down. I've been trying this online thing, these side hustles, these podcasts, these affiliates, whatever. I've been trying this for 15 years and I can't quite put my finger on why it's not taking off, why it's not making the money." Shane Sams: You've got this weird tug of war happening where the good things that happen to you, you're saying, "Oh, I got lucky." But then it stops you from taking your next step when it's time to take the next step because there's almost this fear of success tugging on the other side. So it's like luck is on one side, success is on the other, and you're afraid to go over and pull with success so you pull on the luck. Well, that must have been luck. Jocelyn Sams: I think that part of it is that you are intentionally distancing yourself from any type of responsibility in the positive things, if that makes any sense at all. Shane Sams: Like on the success side. Like if it's successful, well that couldn't have been me. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so if you tell yourself, "Okay, well I had nothing to do with this success, it was just luck," that means that you sort of let yourself off the hook a little bit for repeating it. Shane Sams: And you're also trying to ... It seems like too, the daily podcast thing cracks me up because it's like you do the 270 episodes, you're like, "I'm going to do it so much eventually I'll step on the success rake and it will fly up and hit me in the face." You know what I'm saying? I'm just looking to walk around and somewhere there's a rake in that field and I'm just going to let it whack me. But that's not being prolific, that's trying to get lucky. That's like playing the lottery every day in hopes that one day in your life it will hit. Shane Sams: That's not the mentality you've got to do to be successful. The successful thing is, "What have I done that's been successful? I'm going to do that again and again and again, but I'm going to do it in a more strategic way where I'm not trying to kill myself and I'm not just looking to be lucky, I'm looking for the success." You went to a place and spoke on a stage where there were people who were your avatar that needed your help and gave you money. Now we have to repeat that, so you're on the right path- Jocelyn Sams: Does it mean that you have to be a stage speaker and speak all over the world? No. But what can you pull out of that? What was successful about that that you could potentially replicate in an online way? Shane Sams: For example, whenever we find our first customer, one thing we tell people to do is really get deep into a conversation with that person and say, "Why? Why did you pick me?" The answer is not going to be, "Man, you were just lucky and I felt like sending you some PayPal money." That's not the answer that that person would give you. Jocelyn Sams: I felt kind of bad for you, and so- Shane Sams: I felt bad for you bro, it's your first speaking gig and you just got lucky I was in the audience. Chad Bostick: A pity customer. Shane Sams: Yeah, right? Exactly. It's not a pity customer- Jocelyn Sams: Hey, we will gladly take pity customers. Shane Sams: I'll take pity customers. Anybody out there want a pity customer, throw your money at me. Or throw it at Chad. Whatever, we're all here. Shane Sams: But he won't say it was lucky. He'll say, "Man, you said this that made me realize you were the person I needed to help me with my problem." That's really the conversation you've got to have right now and you've got to blow that luck thing out of your vocabulary because you've got all the things you need in place to find more customers, it's just going to be getting rid of the luck mentality to do it. Okay? Chad Bostick: All right. Shane Sams: Let's talk about this a little bit now. Your success, the real success in finding this member, was you got on stage. It says you got five ... Let's see, what does it say here? You converted five of 20 attendees. What do you mean by that? Chad Bostick: I didn't know how to write it. After the speaking event, when it was over, everybody kind of gives you the applause and there were roughly about 20 people in the room. And then after, everybody was filing out towards the door, I was trying to grab my laptop and get my bags and all my stuff, and there were about five people that kind of gathered around me as I'm trying to find the exit, same as everybody else is find the exit, because there's another speaker right after me. Kind of in a classroom type setting and there was another speaker trying to set up his laptop and I was trying to get out of his way and people were standing around and they were saying, "Hey Chad, I really appreciated what you said." Or, "I'm struggling on this career stuff too. I don't know where I'm going next." Chad Bostick: I was trying to get their names and numbers and whatnot but I did a poor job of prepping for that and having business cards ready or having flyers ready or having a sign-up sheet passed around the room. When I say I lucked into it, what I mean is after that we were filing out for lunch later on in the day and one of the attendees was out there in the lunch line and we just kind of bumped into each other and he said, "Wow, how did you get to be such a good speaker?" I'm like, "Wait, you weren't in my class obviously because I bombed it, right?" Jocelyn Sams: Oh, Chad. Chad Bostick: But no, he ... We sat down and we had a great conversation and he got really, really emotional about me spending time with him and sharing some of the struggles that I've struggled with over my career and some of the challenges that I've overcome with social anxiety, and I think it just struck a chord and it struck a nerve. After he's my paying client I have asked for his testimonial, I have spent a lot of time talking to him to try to figure out what's the DNA behind this little person here so that I can go find other people with the same problems or with the same ... That are looking for Chad. That's part of the process that I'm going through. Shane Sams: See, that's amazing though because you had five people interested and one ... I mean, imagine if every 20 people you come in contact with, five people gave you their email and one of them bought. You just go find 100, then you find 1000, then you find 10,000 of those people and you just keep finding more of these people because you're just filtering is all you've done. You showed up, you gave the speech, you filtered down to five which filtered into one. Shane Sams: I would guess that those other four people were probably ... You just didn't get to have the sit down and the lunch with them. You didn't get to warm them up even more so there probably might have been four more customers sitting there. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so here's the thing, Chad. First of all, I'm pretty sure we were separated at birth. Chad Bostick: Nice. Shane Sams: A lost brother. You might be Jocelyn's long lost twin brother, I don't know. Jocelyn Sams: I think you might be, because- Chad Bostick: A sister from another mister. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: I've never heard that before. Jocelyn Sams: We- Shane Sams: I've heard brother from another mother, I've never heard sister from another mister. Jocelyn Sams: We both had luck programming back in, as my daughter says, the 19's. Chad Bostick: Right. Back in the day. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Chad Bostick: What was your language? I have to geek out for a minute. What was your language? Jocelyn Sams: I started out with BASIC, GW-BASIC in the 1990's. I went on to program Pascal and I hung my programming hat up on C++. Chad Bostick: Yeah, that's a tricky one. Good, good, yes. We have- Shane Sams: Okay, back to normal human language, guys, okay? Jocelyn Sams: Right. But what I was going to say is that okay, I can totally relate to you with people. I don't really have a lot of the social anxiety. Mine is more everyday type of anxiety. But I can understand what you're saying about people coming up to you and you being like, "Oh, you thought that was really good?" Because I know, as I am, you're very hard on yourself and you think that no matter how well you do something it's still not good enough. Right? Chad Bostick: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. I got your number, Chad. Chad Bostick: You found me. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. What I want to say to you is I think that it would really be beneficial to you to find some partner, and by partner I mean an accountability partner, who's going to push you out of your comfort zone. Because I don't think there's any way you're going to do it on your own. Shane Sams: And not just your wife. This is like a mastermind, you know what I'm saying? You need to find the quick start that's got too much confidence but never actually does anything. That's the kind of people you're looking to surround yourself with. You know there's that saying that says you're the average of the five people you hang out with the most, right? Chad Bostick: Exactly. Shane Sams: That's not just saying find good people, it's finding the three or four other people that fill in the holes in your armor. We all have 25% of what it takes to really make it, but then we surround ourselves with those three friends, colleagues, mastermind people or whatever that kind of fill that in for us. If you're the person who's the quick start but never finishes and procrastinates anything, you need to find the person that says, "Get your blank together." Right? If you're the person who's telling everybody to get their blank together, you need the person that's saying, "Yo, why don't you dream a little bigger and go do something with all this blank you're doing?" Shane Sams: You've got to make sure you've got the right people in this space that are feeding you to be able to do that. Okay? Chad Bostick: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: And the good news is, you're already a part of that in some ways. You're already a part of our community, you post in our community obviously. But go out there and say, "Hey guys, I'm a doer. I'm a person who likes to mark items off a checklist. I have trouble believing I'm good enough." Whatever the issues that you're facing are. I need someone who has the opposite skill sets, the opposite palette, I guess you would say. Shane Sams: And let's form a mastermind together. Right, so we- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, even if- Shane Sams: ... can achieve together and talk or whatever- Jocelyn Sams: It doesn't have to be an official we meet every Monday night and we have a 15 minute hot seat type mastermind. It doesn't have to be that. You guys could add each other on Voxer and just talk every day and say, "Hey, today I'm working on this. I'm worried about X, Y, Z." And this person would say, "Okay, well here's the thing Chad, get out of your own way." And that's something I have to say to myself all the time, so I'm not picking on Chad. But- Shane Sams: It could even be a Facebook conversation with three people and you all just text each other. It doesn't have to be anything formal. Jocelyn Sams: Or in our community. Shane Sams: Yeah, exactly. Or you could go in and start an accountability thread and you all just join it in the Action Plan forum, right? That you all just get the updates for that kind of stuff. It's really simple to fix the problems that we all have. You know what I'm saying? It's just surround ourselves with people who can help us fix the problem. Jocelyn Sams: And I totally know your problem because I have the same problem every single day. Get out of your own way. Shane Sams: That's what we're ... I'm going to address your how to replicate this success in a second. But your problem has nothing to do with your offer, with the way you're presenting it, anything like that, because you're clearly presenting it in a way that's fine. It's just convincing yourself that one, you need to do this. You're worthy. Jocelyn Sams: You're good enough. Shane Sams: You're good enough and you're worthy to get the success. And finally, that people need you. Like that person ... Whenever I hear someone say, "And then that person got emotional." I can't tell you how many people have broke down crying with me and Jocelyn. That's when you know that someone needs you to get this right. Like you said, "They needed me to not do the podcast anymore so that this little girl would have a home with us." That moment of clarity gave you the catalyst to take that action, correct? Chad Bostick: Exactly. Shane Sams: You've got that same thing right here whenever you have the doubt, whenever you feel lucky, whenever you do that. That moment of clarity with that emotional person who needed your help has to make you take the next step. Okay? Chad Bostick: Got it. Yeah, there's folks out there who are struggling with some of the struggles that I've overcome in my life and in my career and if I'm not actively trying to find them and help them then I am doing them a disservice. It is my responsibility to track them down, to find them, and to help them get past those obstacles, and that will help me sleep better at night. Shane Sams: Exactly right. Jocelyn and I have always taken our online career as a responsibility, especially with Flipped Lifestyle but even with elementarylibrarian.com. We've got to help these people have their afternoons back with their children. Even with CoachXO, our football site, I've got to help these coaches win more games so they go home more Friday nights happy and enjoy their weekend. Shane Sams: Everybody out there, no matter what your job is, no matter what you're doing, go out there with a purpose and find the people that need you to help them. Don't just go out and try to make money online. That's not what it's all about. That's a part of it that makes it work, but you've got to go out with purpose or you're never going to feel worthy. You're always going to feel down, and when things do get a little hard you're going to stop. Jocelyn Sams: This conversation sort of reminds me of that book that we read. I can't remember what the book was. The one that talks about the different types of entrepreneurs and one of them is the reluctant hero or something like that. Shane Sams: Was that ... Probably DotCom Secrets, I would say. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I can't remember. But anyway, I can relate to that because I feel like my life is a mess. Every day I screw something up. All these people are looking to me for inspiration, information, just to inspire them to move forward and I'm like, "Gosh, I'm such a mess. Don't these people see this?" Jocelyn Sams: That's part of it. It's like being yourself and being okay with people seeing that you're not perfect, that's going to make people even more drawn to you. Shane Sams: All right. Let's just circle back here. I want to talk about now what you really need to do to grow this thing. Right? Chad Bostick: Okay. Shane Sams: Okay. Did you fire back up the podcast, or are you going to podcast again? Or right now basically, this was just, "I'm doing this and I did this speaking thing and I got a client." Chad Bostick: No. I fired back up the podcast. I rebranded, so I kept all of my Libsyn account where it is but I just rebranded, put a new logo, put a new name on it to niche down from Hello Tech Pros down to Career Design Patterns. It's up. I think I've published about three or four episodes now and- Shane Sams: How often are you doing this? Chad Bostick: Weekly. Shane Sams: Perfect. Okay, good. You don't need to do anything more than that. Because what you really want to do is create one really good episode and promote it for six days. That's how you make things grow. Let it kind of marinate a little bit. Shane Sams: Here's how you can recreate the success that you had without going on the road. Just make your podcast lead to webinars and that's your lead magnet strategy. In your form you said, "I've experimented with many different lead magnets and they all fall flat." But a webinar ... If you did one podcast on Tuesday and a webinar that came out on Thursday and the end of every podcast invited people to go opt in for your webinar. I'm doing a live training on Thursday, I'm going to help you do X, Y, Z, and then you go give that same speech that you gave in that classroom that converted 25% of people and got your first sale. You just do that same speech in a webinar format. Shane Sams: You can replicate the speaking circuit from your house if you just do that, and you can make that your entire lead magnet and opt in strategy. You just have to figure out a way to succinctly tell them why it's important that they go the next step beyond the podcast. Hey, did you like today's podcast? Did it help you overcome some of these issues you're dealing with? Well listen. I'm having a free training this Thursday where I'm going to do a live Q&A. I will talk to you about anything that's holding you back in X, Y, Z, so all you have do is go to blank slash whatever and register for the webinar. I'll see you Thursday and if I don't catch you there, I'll catch you right back here on the podcast next Tuesday. Shane Sams: Just do the thing that you did on stage with a little bit of a pitch at the end of it, and you'll see that you'll get more opt ins. The podcast will produce opt ins, the opt ins will produce sales, and it will completely replicate that speaking thing where you don't have to travel so much. It doesn't matter where they hear you, all that matters is that they hear you, and putting yourself out there in that way is going to allow the people to hear you in the exact same way that that person did at lunch that day. Chad Bostick: Yeah, I love the ideas of webinars. I've actually talked about it a couple of times to friends and to my wife. Just getting it set up, I get ... Well obviously there's some sort of internal battles that I'm having of launching that. But then finding the tech and then getting it signed up and then start talking about it, that I'm going to do this thing and then have it and have it scheduled. I think that's where I've been held back before. So I just need to get it scheduled and start doing it, on a weekly basis. Shane Sams: Let me tell you how to do this to get it started really easy. One, your job actually is information technology so I don't ever want to hear you tell me you're scared of the tech. Don't do that, dude. You all were talking about programming in foreign languages I didn't even understand a minute ago. Chad Bostick: I know. It's an excuse. Shane Sams: It's an excuse. Here's all you've got to do. Anybody listening, this is the easiest way to set up a webinar. One, just go start a YouTube channel. YouTube has an amazing thing in it called YouTube Live. You can set up an event on a date. That's where you're going to host your webinar. You're going to do it on YouTube, you're going to do it live. Shane Sams: Don't make a PowerPoint unless you already have one. If you've already got one from that presentation, maybe use that, but don't even make a PowerPoint. Just make a talking head, the first couple, and you're just giving the presentation. Then, at that point, here's all you've got to do. On your podcast you say, "Hey, go to this domain." And when they go there they have an opt in box where they join your email list. That's it. And then anyone who opts in on that form, you shoot them an email 30 minutes before the webinar with a link to the YouTube Live. And then in the description of the YouTube Live you just put the link to the thing you sell. And at the end of it you tell them to look in the description for the link, drop it in the chat box, and you tell them what to do. Shane Sams: So it's literally as easy as sign up for my YouTube channel, which is just put your name and email in, you've got one. It's that easy. If you've a Gmail account you actually already have a YouTube account. You've already got a YouTube channel. You've just got to go turn it on and then you click the button that says schedule a hangout. You pick a date and that's it, it's over. Shane Sams: Don't get lost in the technology. You can make a lot of money online just talking to people on YouTube Live and your podcast. Russell Brunson, one of the most prolific online marketers on the planet, he just does Zoom. He just has a Zoom link. They don't use fancy tools and stuff for webinars all the time. A lot of times they'll just, "Here's a Zoom link. Click it, open it up, listen to me talk. I'll give you a link at the end in the chat." And that's how they make millions of dollars online. Shane Sams: Do it live, don't worry about so much the presentation. The most important thing is you tell people on your podcast to go opt in. You show up and you do it live and you ask them to buy something at the end of it. That's really all you have to do. Can you get fancier later? We can always get fancier later. But right now it's just about showing up. And I think that you've actually stumbled in to exactly what you need to do to make this thing go to the next level. Jocelyn Sams: And it wasn't luck. It was all part of the plan. Chad Bostick: I stumbled into it on purpose. Shane Sams: That's right. There's a great quote that says, "Even if I fall on my face I'm still moving forward." Chad Bostick: That's right. Shane Sams: You know what I mean? That has nothing to do with luck. That has to do with relentless determination to move forward, and you keep doing that and you keep doing that and then you just look back and go, "Okay, I tripped over a stick last time. So I'm going to watch out for sticks moving forward. Oh, I tripped over a rock last time. Okay, now I'm going to watch out for rocks." So now I get to take a step forward and then fall again. Or two steps forward and then fall again and eventually you figure out how to just keep walking, and that's where you are right now. Do the podcast. Talk to these people in the same speech you gave on stage but do it on a webinar. That's your lead magnet that's going to get you opt ins, that's going to make you sales. Do that 52 times in the next year and see where it takes you. It's going to make your business blow up. Jocelyn Sams: All right Chad. It has been quite a, I guess you would call it a smack down of a conversation. It has been a little crazy but you know what, I kind of feel like I'm talking to myself and I know how to relate to you because it's how I would relate to me. It's how other people need to relate to me. So take a lesson over there, Shane. Shane Sams: I relate to you just fine. This is exactly how I talk to you sometimes, what are you talking about? Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes. Yeah, this is like pretty much daily. Anyway. All right, as we wrap this up Chad, it's been awesome talking to you today. We have really enjoyed learning more about you and your business. We always ask people before we go what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about today? Chad Bostick: I think the first thing that I have to do is go find myself an accountability partner that will help me push past these barriers that I have. So I'm going to reach out in the forums first and foremost. Keep it simple, reach out to my community, Flipped Lifestyle community, and put it out there and say, "Hey, I need an accountability partner who's going to check on me and make sure that I'm actually doing the webinar and I'm not just pretending that I'm going to do the webinar some day but not really." So I need that accountability partner to keep me on track. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and the awesome thing is is that you have something to offer them as well. You have the ability to get things done and someone else has the ability to dream a little bigger and make you think in those terms. Shane Sams: Also too, I would challenge you actually as soon as you get off this to set up that YouTube channel and the next time you record a podcast, tell people that you're going to do something and have that opt in ready to go. Right? If you will go ahead and start the YouTube channel and create the opt in page, now you've got everything in place. There's no excuses anymore, it's just a matter of you actually doing it on your podcast. Does that make sense? Chad Bostick: Yeah, that makes sense. Shane Sams: Yeah, so build the thing and go do that and you'll be right on your way to making a habit. All right buddy well listen, we've got to go. I hate that this conversation has to end but I just want to thank you really quick man for being so transparent because it's hard to talk about the things that hold us back. It's hard to talk about dealing with anxiety and having that fear of success and feeling lucky sometimes. We all get there but you've overcame a lot of that, you're still overcoming it, and now you're going to help other people do it too and that's pretty impressive. I know you've helped a lot of people who are listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast today, and we just thank you for being on the show. Chad Bostick: Thank you so much for having me. I can't express how much I appreciate you bringing me on the show and giving me this awesome advice. I'm going to take the action and flip my life. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome. We cannot wait to see what happens next. Shane Sams: All right guys, what an amazing conversation with Chad today. Man, we just tackled some big fears, some things that hold a lot of people back, and that's what we want to do for you inside of the Flip Your Life community. Maybe you need an accountability partner like Chad did. Maybe you need to go in there and ask some questions. Maybe you just need to celebrate some of the victories and things that are happening in your life. Jocelyn Sams: Maybe you might be the perfect accountability partner for Chad- Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Maybe you're listening to this and you're thinking, "I need someone who can get things done and I'm a big dreamer." Okay, join and hang out with Chad. Shane Sams: All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-Y-O-U-R-L-I-F-E, all one word, flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can join the most amazing community of online business owners and entrepreneurs anywhere. Family-focused real people who are out there trying to change their life who would love to have you in our community as well. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can join today. Shane Sams: Before we close, we love to end each podcast with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration from the Bible and there's a lot of great stuff in there about owning and operating a business. Today's Bible verse comes from Philippians chapter 3 verse 13, and it says, "But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize." Shane Sams: And that's what we all have to do. It doesn't matter if you've been trying online business out for 10, 15, five years. Maybe you're just starting your journey. It doesn't matter about any of the failures in the past. It doesn't matter about what you've done before. All that matters is what you do next. So keep straining toward what's ahead and keep doing whatever it takes to win the prize and you'll get there eventually. Shane Sams: That's all the time we have for this week, guys. Until next time get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Chad's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Priscilla overcome five fears that hold entrepreneurs back. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, today we help Priscilla overcome five fears that hold entrepreneurs back. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life Community onto the show so that we can help them take their life and their business to the next level. Really excited to introduce Priscilla Yocum to y'all. Priscilla, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Priscilla Y.: Thanks you guys. This is so surreal. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, it is great to have you here and we always get kind of tickled when people say things like that because we're just a couple of normal people from the great state of Kentucky. Shane Sams: Sitting around in our pajamas talking to you today, so it's okay. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we are. I have not even brushed my hair today, I'll just be honest so. Shane Sams: And that is why we podcast instead of doing videos. Jocelyn Sams: We are very happy to have you though. We're happy to have you as part of our community. And we want you to tell everyone a little bit, about you and your background. Priscilla Y.: Well, thanks so much you guys. I mean, I listen to you. I've been listening to you guys for almost two years now so that's the surreal part for me but in my everyday life, I am a professional organizer, so I started my own service business in 2010 and I absolutely love what I do. I help families organize their spaces for functionality and to better their routines. And I've loved to doing it. But since I started my business, I added two children to my family and- Shane Sams: Which can disorganize things very quickly. Priscilla Y.: Oh, yeah. It's made me a better organizer for sure because they bring a whole new world challenges and that's what I help, are families. So I'm kind of in the thick of it with them. And so I identify with a lot of their problems but one thing that I've found in my business that's made it more difficult in recent years is that I don't want to prioritize my service business over my children. And that's really hard when you're a one woman show not to do. And so when I started listening to you guys, I didn't really connect the dots that I could at all transition my business online, but the more I started thinking about it, the more I started feeling like it was a possibility. And so in about the last year or so I've kind of been thinking about how I can scale my business better by adding this online element to the knowledge that I have and I felt like you guys are the perfect place to help me do that. And so that's kinda how I got here. Shane Sams: That's awesome. So as a personal organizer in your service based business, I would assume that you literally go into people's houses, look around, create a game plan, and then do you help them actually do any of the physical organizing or is it up to them? What does that look like? Because it's definitely a time for dollars business. Correct? Priscilla Y.: Yes, exactly. Time for dollars. I don't work then I don't make money and if I don't work outside of the home, I don't make money. So I physically go into my client's home and I assess the situation and then I come up with a game plan. I've been really lucky that my business is 100% referrals. So usually if I've gotten that far, I'm for sure doing the project. And then what we do is we schedule as many days as needed for the project. There have been some projects where I can get them done in a four hour period and then there are some that take 40 hours. Shane Sams: So do you ever walk into a hoarder, have you ever been in a house and you're like, oh, no and you walk in, it's like, yeah, I'm a little disorganized, but then you walk in and there's 17 boxes of stuff in the living room. There's a room with all laundry, but there's a bed under it somewhere. Have you ever hit that before? Priscilla Y.: Well, luckily my business is referrals, so you get a lot of like business, so, no, the answer to that is no, I don't get a lot of that. I- Shane Sams: Dang, I was hoping for a good story there. Priscilla Y.: I have had one or two situations like that and I don't feel equipped to handle those projects, so I've turned those down. But what I do get a lot of are moms who are so tough on themselves, they call themselves hoarders and I walk into their house and I'm like, "Why am I here? Like, what is the problem in this house?" So when they start opening drawers and cabinets? And I like, oh, right, okay, this is what- Shane Sams: Now I see. Jocelyn Sams: That's kinda like my house. I always like people who do this job because I feel like I'm a pretty organized person. But then I watch these people who do this on YouTube or there's now like Netflix shows- Shane Sams: What's that Netflix show called? What is that girl's name? Priscilla Y.: Marie Kondo. Shane Sams: Yes, yes like- Priscilla Y.: That's like the tidying up. Shane Sams: Yes, everyone's obsessed with her right now, right? Like- Priscilla Y.: She's a crazy, she's the fairy godmother of my industry. Jocelyn Sams: So I look at things like that and I'm like, oh wow. I thought I was organized, but maybe I'm not as organized as I once thought. Shane Sams: I'm at a mastermind and a guy watched that show the other day on Netflix, one of the guys gets on to our mastermind. We have like a little circle where you leave messages and talk to each other. And he goes, "Dude, I just watched a show on Netflix and I immediately cleaned my garage and sold all my stuff." Like he watched it in the morning and just spent the rest of the day cleaning out his house. Priscilla Y.: I love it. Shane Sams: So do people pay you by the hour or do they pay you by the job? Like how does that work? And then like how many hours? I guess that just takes up a full time job every week, doesn't it? Priscilla Y.: Yeah, so well, I don't work more than part-time because I prioritize my kids. My husband travels two to three days out of the week, so I'm kind of a one woman show with my family as well and part of the time. And so I only work part-time, I'm just coming off of maternity leave. But before maternity leave I was working about 20 hours a week with clients within their home. And then usually there was about five to eight hours of backend stuff that I could do while the kids were napping or sleeping or whatever. So yes, I do charge by the hour. I've kind of played around with charging by the project, but that doesn't necessarily work with organizing because some people are very quick at editing and others are not. So I found that an hourly rate was the most fair to me. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's easy to explain to people too, like this it's this much an hour, let's just get in there and see how long it takes, right? Priscilla Y.: Totally, yeah. Shane Sams: So the reason you're kind of going toward this online thing is not that you want to even give up organizing, you just want to be able to scale your income, but you physically don't have enough hours to go get any more jobs. And I'm looking at your sheet here and it says you really don't want to hire other people to be organizers under you because you don't really like building, you don't want to build a business like that. Correct? Priscilla Y.: That's right. So I've done that before. I've had assistants, I had a team of three assistants at one point. And you know what, it's just so stressful. You're responsible for people that worked for... I mean, you guys know this, you have people that work for you, you're responsible for other people. And my number one priority is my family. So I always felt like I was being torn in different directions. And so scaling that way, which I know a lot of professional organizers do, is scaling with as a team. But my family is so young, I really just can't focus that way. So for me, scaling online to share my knowledge is something that would be much more reasonable. Jocelyn Sams: I totally understand what you're saying about working with people. That's something that's really stressful for me. I know a lot of people love working with the team and they love team building and all that comes with it. But I'm just not one of those people. I like working by myself and there's- Priscilla Y.: Me too. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I think that there's nothing wrong with that. Shane Sams: Nothing, wrong with that. Jocelyn Sams: You just have to realize what works best for you and you have to run that way. And that's kind of the way that we've decided to build our business. Shane Sams: We actually re-wrote our core values a couple of months ago and one of our core values in our company is scale income without hiring people whenever possible, we literally wrote that into our core values. Because I do have a lot of friends, they believe in the most important job of the CEO is to hire the team and to hire great people and great people grow your business. And we just don't want that even if it prevents us from going to another level like- Priscilla Y.: Thank you for saying that- Shane Sams: Yeah, you do have to have some support either part time contractors, like we all do that. We hire things out maybe by the job, by the task. But we've got people that work with us regularly, but right now we were up to the point where we had 14 people working with us and we have scaled back now to two not counting our personal assistant in the house. So it's, we didn't like it. We did not like it. Maybe that will keep us from becoming a $10 million company someday but who cares? We have a peace of mind. We have time with our kids. I got up this morning and played chutes and ladders with my kids. Right? Priscilla Y.: I love it. Shane Sams: So it's like, why does it matter if we hire 75 people and we have this big company, like that's not what success has to look like. And everyone out there listening right now, you have permission to grow your business without hiring a bunch of people. Jocelyn Sams: And the way that you want to do it. Priscilla Y.: Thank you so much for saying that because for me, I feel like everything that you consume, all of the business developments that I'm consuming is saying be a leader, lead more people and I'm like, "Oh crap, I'm not a leader. Am I bad at business?" Shane Sams: No, you're not. That's a great point. You don't even have to be the leader of all the things in your business. There's sometimes where you just turn things over to a contractor they do it in three weeks and we're out and we don't have to deal with them anymore. Right? Priscilla Y.: When you're strained, right. Shane Sams: Yeah, and it's actually just doing what you want to do. Jocelyn and I like interacting with people online. We like to do a podcast, we like to do our forums, we like to get emails from our exclusive members and we have a little Voxer program. One thing that Jocelyn and I really, really don't like to do all the time is one on one coaching, like on a call, like where we have the schedule. And we get up and there's five people there. Everyone told us well, you can't do high ticket offers without one on one getting in people's faces and being there with them. And I'm like, yes we can. We invented a new program, we use an app called Voxer, it's like walkie talkies and we talk back and forth to people and we were like, we don't have to make appointments. Our calendar doesn't fill up. Shane Sams: So if the kids have practice we can go do it and we can do it from anywhere. So you can invent any online business structure that you want as long as it works for you. And that's what everybody else really needs to do. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Priscilla, you're just getting started online and we actually selected you for our podcast from our community. So we have different areas of discussion. And you had recently gotten on talking about some things that you're working on. So tell us a little bit about that. What have you been doing so far? Priscilla Y.: So I've mainly been working on my lead magnet and I toyed around a little bit with idea of making it a video but then it was getting just too long. So I decided to make it a simple checklist and a big thing in organizing is spring cleaning. So it's just a simple annual spring cleaning checklist, kind of master lists for the house of things that you wouldn't normally remember to do. And so now I'm just trying to figure out how to best get it out there. I already have a website for my current service business, there's a blog attached to that. I also have an Instagram audience, a small one and some Facebook followers and a very small email list. Shane Sams: Okay, let me get some mindset, we're about to get into some deep stuff here but let me just talk about this. You don't have a small list. I'm looking at the numbers here. You already have 144 subscribers. Your open rate is like 55% average, which is insanity. That's like 75 humans paying attention to you, right? You have 700 and something followers on Instagram, 500 and something followers on Facebook. Jocelyn, our first email list that we ever emailed out to. It was only like 200 people, but it was 200 real people who bought Jocelyn's product and made like almost $3,000. So don't think that's small. There's probably hundreds if not thousands of people listening right now that are like, "Dang, I haven't even released a lead magnet. I don't even have an email list. I've not even started my Instagram." That's amazing that you're at the very beginning of your journey and you already created that kind of audience. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I love how you just decided like, "Hey, I'm working on this video lead magnet but it's not working for me. I don't like it. It's too long. I'm just going to do something else." Like some people would just stop right then and be like, "Oh this lead magnet thing's too hard can't do this, I'm out." But you didn't do that, you said, "Okay, well this is too hard or it's too time consuming so I'm going to do something else." Shane Sams: Yeah, and you've actually taken action. That's the people we love to talk to you in the community. We saw you in the forums working through this lead magnet, getting this thing done, bouncing back and forth between, and I think I'm going to do a video, but then the video didn't work and I've got this thing and now you've actually got content out there. You've got some people paying attention to you, and really we're just going to figure out how to turn that into an actual income. Okay. Before we get into your deep technical questions about the business stuff, I want to talk a little bit about fears, obstacles, and mindset issues that usually hold entrepreneurs back from whatever they're doing online because these are the things that actually stop us. Usually the technical stuff, you can fight for it. It's just a matter of grinding it out. Shane Sams: But sometimes those doubts, those disbeliefs, those things internally inside of us or externally that are trying to hold us back or what really stop people from being successful. So when people fill out the form to come onto the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast it's like, Hey, what a fear or a mindset issue or an obstacle? Something that's holding you back? Jocelyn Sams: Most people, they might list one, maybe two. But Priscilla, she's an over achiever. Shane Sams: She's an over achiever. She's organized, she's got five and it's like a bulleted checklist. Like you can see the personal organization of your fears. Jocelyn Sams: So we did this podcast intake form and earlier Shane was just kind of like reading it out before we get on the phone and I was like, okay, check, check, check. I feel like I was playing online business bingo. Okay, here's this mindset- Shane Sams: I think these are the five biggest fears that everybody has. Right? Jocelyn Sams: Bingo! Shane Sams: Bingo, got it. All right, so we've got this, we have a bulleted list. Normally we tackle one fear on the show, we're just going to have a kind of a lightning round of fear and obstacles. Jocelyn Sams: We like to over deliver in this podcast. Shane Sams: We're going to over deliver, so get back guys, everybody out there. I guarantee you in the next few minutes you're going to hear a fear or five that you have holding you back right now in life. Okay. All right. So what I'm going to do is we're going to read the fears to you, okay? And then you take us and give us a little more information about the fear and then we're going to talk about some strategies maybe for overcoming it. Jocelyn Sams: And we're not hating on you of course. Shane Sams: No, not hate on you. Everybody has fears. Jocelyn Sams: I'm happy to provide entertainment. Shane Sams: That's right. Okay, all right, Jocelyn, let's go to fear or obstacle number one. Jocelyn Sams: All right so number one. Hold on, I got to scroll just a little bit here. Shane Sams: There's so many fears. We had to scroll back up. It was below the fold. Jocelyn Sams: No, in fairness, in fairness I had accidentally closed the calendar. Okay, number one, I know families need my product but I'm not sure people are willing to pay for it. I find a lot of what I would sell for free on Pinterest, blogs, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Shane Sams: So that's kind of a fear of maybe people won't see the value in it. So where does that come from? Tell us a little bit more about why that's holding you back. Priscilla Y.: Well, I think really where it comes from is I'm a pretty resourceful person on my own and so a lot of what I've learned, I've had to learn by going on Pinterest and reading tons of blogs. And observing the way other people do things and in my mind, other people do that too. I'm like, "Why would they pay me for the knowledge that I have around this if they can go and do what I did? Which is go onto Pinterest or blogs or get these ideas themselves." Shane Sams: Yeah. I think you and Jocelyn might have the same brain cells because that's one of the things that really gets her fired up is, well I just go figure things out like trips, whatever, why doesn't anyone else do this? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. There is this I don't know if it's a book or a system, I don't know. But anyway, it's one of the personality assessments. I can't remember which one, but you basically identify as like a quick start or a fact finder and I'm a fact finder. It's the one with the numbers, I can't remember what it's called. But anyway- Shane Sams: Is it the Enneagrams? Jocelyn Sams: No, I don't think it's the Enneagram, it's another one that has like, well- Shane Sams: It's one of those things that tells you your basic personality traits. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I'm a fact finder and those things are really interesting to me. I love to Google search, I love to dig in and research things and find out all the information. And I feel like there aren't really a lot of people like that. And I think I never realized that for a really long time. I just kind of assumed that everyone else was like me. Shane Sams: Except Shane, I'm a quick start. Jocelyn Sams: That's a given. But I just kind of assumed that everyone else was like me. And as I started in business, I realized that most people just want to have things handed to them. They don't like to dig in and do the research. A lot of people don't. There are some people who do and they will probably never buy your product, but they're not your market. Shane Sams: And this goes back to it, fears are always defeated by truth, right? The problem is, sometimes we're in the forest and we can't see the forest for the trees and we can't see the truth. The truth that beats this fear almost every time is that people are not buying your content, okay? What they're buying is leadership. What they're buying is curation. What they're buying is someone who's walked the path to show them the potholes in the road. That's what everything is like you don't really sell courses, you create courses, but then you put the courses together to give a system to people that they can follow without having to go research it for four hours. Okay, so like that's what the flip your life blueprint is, we have so much content in the flip your life blueprint, right? There's dozens of courses, thousands of conversations and comments. There's so much stuff in there, but that's not why people like the blueprint. Shane Sams: They like the blueprint because it says at the top, step one, watch this video and do it. And then it says step two, step three, step four and just guides you through the process without you having to look it up, without you having to go search for everything and watch the magician's hands and totally deconstruct exactly how this stuff works. Right? And if you embrace that truth, you realize people will pay for the process. For example, I bet there's a lot of people out there who have thought to themselves, and you may have thought this in the beginning, is anyone really going to pay me to come in their house and help them sort their junk drawer like right? Did you feel that when you first started doing it? Priscilla Y.: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: Right? Because they didn't want to organize the junk drawer, they wanted to pay you to help do it. And it's the same thing with online business. Okay. Priscilla Y.: Okay. Shane Sams: Yeah. So people will pay for this. We have seen other community members in a similar space create products in this world and it's worked. Okay. So we'll talk a little bit more about what those it looks like. All right, so fear or obstacle number two on the organized checklist. Jocelyn Sams: I'm scrolling again. Okay. Number two says, I'm not sure I'm tech savvy enough. I built my own website, taught myself MailChimp and some other tools but I feel really overwhelmed by online business terms and tools. Doing keyword research was a challenge. Is that a red flag? Shane Sams: Okay. Priscilla, you literally said, I don't think I'm tech savvy enough but- Jocelyn Sams: I have learned 67 tools however- Shane Sams: However, I built a website, taught myself how to integrate MailChimp and other email tools and I've learned a lot of other tools, but there's one tool can be a little speed bump, is this a red flag, do I need to turn back now? Jocelyn Sams: Priscilla, it's over. Sorry. Shane Sams: Yeah, right. Jocelyn Sams: Just kidding. Shane Sams: The tech stuff is so funny because if you think about it, every piece of technology that we encounter, we have to learn it. Like you didn't know how to use an iPhone when you first got it, right? Back in the day I remember when I got my first flip phone, I got the razor, that Motorola Razor. Jocelyn Sams: I was going to say back the in 19s but it wasn't in the 19s. Shane Sams: It was like the early twos or whatever it's called. But I got this thing, but like I didn't know how to text on it. I had to figure out that you had to type the words like- Jocelyn Sams: And you had to hit the button three times- Shane Sams: Hit the button three times before it switched over. But like everything is new, everything is totally new and you figured all this other stuff out, why couldn't you figure the next thing out? Or if you can't figure that out, you just find another path and use another tool. Right? What hung you up about doing keyword research? Was it the tool or was it the process of finding good keywords for your brand? Priscilla Y.: It was both. So initially the tool was set up for my service business and the key words are different for this than my service business so changing the keywords alone, I found difficult and I like, this cannot be this hard, why am I having a hard time with is. And then once I got it I was kind of clueless as to what the data was pulling out. Like what am I looking at here, what is this two point whatever or number? So- Shane Sams: What tool are you using? Priscilla Y.: Google. Shane Sams: The Google key word tool. Priscilla Y.: Yeah. And so then I found a video on YouTube that kind of broke it down. And I still feel like I don't fully understand it, but I kind of narrowed in what is a decent range versus, that didn't get any keyword searches then, then that's probably not the direction. Shane Sams: Sure. Priscilla Y.: But. Yeah. Shane Sams: And see, what I heard there, you may not have a full grasp of what you're doing with the keyword research tool, but you're doing exactly what it takes to overcome the tech fear. You're wrestling with it, right? I can do as many courses. Like we got tech courses in there about WordPress, we have keyword research stuff. It's more strategic, not exactly with those tools. Right. But until you actually get on the bicycle and try to stay up, you're never going to be able to ride the bicycle. You can watch a course about how to ride a bicycle. You can have someone sit over coffee and tell you how to ride the bicycle, but until your butt's in the seat and your feet are on the pedals, you're not riding a bicycle. Shane Sams: Right. And what happened when you learn how to ride a bike? You fell. I remember when you learned how to drive a car. I remember, let me tell you a story about me driving. So I was learning how to drive a car and I was like 16 right? And my dad had an office parking lot and he was like, we bring two cars over to the parking lot and I had to practice parallel parking right, before I could go take my driver's test. So Dad's like, all right, look, you've got the whole parking lot. I want you to just get used to it in here when nobody's around you. I'm going to go inside and do some paperwork and get stuff done. So I've got one of our cars right beside the other car so I kind of parallel park once and mess it up. Shane Sams: I do it again and get way far and I'm like, man, I'm not close enough. I can't get to the car. So I get a little closer to the other car and I cut the wheel and I'm not kidding you. The one car went under the other car and lifted it off the ground and I was like, oh no. And I pulled it back in drive and I hit the gas and I pulled off and I just heard this big kaboom kaboom and the other car fell to the ground and started like popping like somebody was hitting switches in a rap video and it was insane. And I looked around, I was looking over at the mirror, the window, and dad was looking down at his papers. I got out and made sure for somehow, it didn't barely do anything but like scratch it a little bit, but somehow I got the car under the other car and I was like, oh my gosh. But I eventually I figured out how to parallel park. I passed my driver's test unlike my wife and- Jocelyn Sams: Hey. Shane Sams: And I was able to do that, but I had some problems figuring out the new tech, you know what I'm saying? So you're doing... That's how you beat the tech challenge is you don't try to figure it all out. You just go play with it. You break stuff, you put it back together, and eventually that fear will go away and it'll start serving you better. Okay? Priscilla Y.: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Shane Sams: Fear number three. Scroll the checklist one more time. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, I didn't have to scroll too far, this one's kind of short. Okay. It says, I'm a perfectionist. In other words, procrastinator/scaredy cat. Shane Sams: Why do you think you're a perfectionist? And also why do you think it's related to being a scaredy cat? Priscilla Y.: Oh, well, I mean, c'mon let's be real here. Any time somebody has to have something perfect, it's because they're afraid if it's not, they'll look stupid. There are very few people that are perfectionists. Just because it just bothers them if something isn't just the right, I think a lot of times, at least for me it's related to, "Oh man, I don't want egg on my face here." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And listen, maybe we should start a support group Priscilla. Shane Sams: I think you and Jocelyn definitely need to start a support group because you all have the exact same- Priscilla Y.: I'm in. Jocelyn Sams: I'm pretty sure that we're the same person and I'm sorry about that. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. So all right, I'm with you. I think mine a lot of times is fear of what might happen if it isn't 'perfect.' That's a lot of what bothers me. I don't know if that's what bothers you. Shane Sams: Especially when you're trying to meet external expectations. I think Jocelyn wrestles with that more. I think you do too, a little bit hearing these fears because you're more... It's not necessarily that you're not going to get it perfect. And I would say in your own life you might be a little more forgiving as a perfectionist, but it's like, what if it's not perfect then the other person expected perfection or they always- Priscilla Y.: And they're disappointed. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. And for me it's about, okay if the results don't turn out the way that I think they should be or the way someone else thinks they should be, what might happen then? It's like that fear of something unknown to me and I don't like that. That's why I try to very tightly control things, which is not a good thing. Shane Sams: That's why I don't let Jocelyn read emails that I send out before I send them because Jocelyn will spend four hours. The first thing she does is she has this super power where she can look at a 5,000 word block of text and go, there's not a period in sentence 38 and she can just like, you accidentally used a there instead of their, like she can just see grammatical errors it's like she can process the whole thing. Jocelyn Sams: It's sort of like they blink red to me. I don't know like I can- Priscilla Y.: It's a gift. Shane Sams: Yes, it's a gift. Jocelyn Sams: It is, it's a very annoying gift and a very annoying superpower. Shane Sams: The most annoying superpower you could ever have. Jocelyn Sams: You have to have those people in the world. Shane Sams: It's funny because I'll send an email and Jocelyn's like on the list so she'll see it after the fact. She'll be like, "Really, you sent this to humans? You let people do this?" I'm kind of like, whatever, there are 90% of people like me that don't even read it. I'll be kind of like, all the grammar Nazis will just unsubscribe and leave. I'm just kidding, don't unsubscribe and don't get mad at me if you love grammar, Jocelyn loves grammar. Jocelyn Sams: And if you get an email with a misspelling or an incorrect pronunciation, just know it wasn't me. Shane Sams: It is not Joc. She actually at one part wanted me to put down at the bottom, like typed by Shane so no one would judge her for any of my spelling errors, right. Because I sign things Shane and Jocelyn, so anyway, but the point is, like it is those external expectations, that's the feel here. Priscilla Y.: I totally identify with that. Shane Sams: Yes and it can make you put things off because you're afraid of getting judged. We had a problem with a local business recently and Jocelyn had been telling me about it and telling me about it and telling me about it and telling me about it and I was like, can we just say something to them? And she's like, no, because then the external conflict would come in or the judgment or the, what if they don't agree with us. Right. And I finally just sent an email because I was just like, and I sent Jocelyn a text, I said, I sent an email of everything you told me, no mercy. And she was just like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe you just did that." But anyway, it's like sometimes you just, the only way to beat this fear is to just do it and be scared and absorb any negativity that comes. And that's really, really hard. Shane Sams: So being a perfectionist is really hard, but I find that the best thing to do in this situation, when people start doing things consistently, you overcome it. Like let's say you're afraid to do YouTube videos. Well, let's just use this as a fear, right? Because you're, you're a perfectionist. You want to edit them. You want them to look as good as everybody else's. The way to beat that fear is to do live Q and A's or videos, 10 minutes a day, every day for a month. Jocelyn Sams: That cannot be edited. Shane Sams: That cannot be edited. That cannot be stopped, once you turn the camera on, it goes. They may not be the best videos you could ever release, but you'll get so used to doing that thing that it'll eventually feel like habit and you won't even care anymore. Jocelyn Sams: And just become the person who's perfectly imperfect, that's what we try to do, I mean, we sit here and record this podcast every week and we're very unapologetic that we're not perfect. If you're looking for somebody who is super polished, we're probably not the people for you. Shane Sams: Yeah. We have an editor and we have our little rig here, like basically you have this little bitty soundboard with two mics and it's plugged into a USB port. We don't have the fancy editing and maybe our audio is not the best of some other podcasts, but the point for us is to help as many people as fast as possible, right? So we don't have time to deal with the perfection and the audio files and all that stuff, like the content's where the money is, that's where the gold is. That's where the help comes from and we can't be slowed down by our perfectionism. If we're going to help as many people as possible. Priscilla Y.: So that's also what makes you guys so relatable too and I guess I'll have to remember that in my business is that really, I want my audience to relate or I want to be able to relate to them and they're not perfect either. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. And something that helps me a lot is just thinking about how no matter what, no matter if your content or whatever you're doing is as perfect as you want it to be or as perfect as you think someone else wants it to be, there's always going to be somebody who's not going to like it and it doesn't matter. Like you could halfway do it and someone's not going to like it. Or you can do it 150% and someone's not going to like it. So just knowing that always gives me a little bit of sense of ease just knowing that. There's always going to be people out there in the world who are going to be negative about whatever it is that you're doing. You just have to brush it off and move on. Priscilla Y.: I can do that. Shane Sams: All right, now that we've punched perfectionism in the face, let's go on to fear/obstacle number four on Priscilla's list. Jocelyn Sams: All right, number four it says until the fall when my daughter goes to school full time and I get a part time nanny for my son, time is a major challenge. I have about three hours a day I can dedicate to business since I'm still working with clients that time also has to be used for back office hours for my current business. Shane Sams: Okay. So this is the kind of fear I don't have enough time to get everything done. Is that what you're saying here? Priscilla Y.: Yeah. Absolutely. Shane Sams: Where does that come from though? Because three hours is a lot of time. Like if you point that way, do you feel like you should be doing something else that you're not doing enough? Everybody has the time veer for different reasons. It might be like I've only got one hour a day and maybe I'm using that and I should be holding my kids or playing with my kids or hanging out with my spouse or whatever. Or maybe I should be taking care of myself and relaxing like what's the fear there? Like why do you feel like that's not enough time? Priscilla Y.: So I think the fear goes back to fear number two which is about the tech stuff, or not feeling tech savvy enough. It's taking me so long to learn some of these things or I feel like it is, that a big chunk of that time that I have is just spent learning. And I know you guys say that it'll go by faster and I believe that. But I'm learning a lot of this on the fly, and so I feel like that's the part that makes me feel like I'm just learning and not creating and therefore I'm not putting stuff out. And so it feels like not enough time. Shane Sams: The fear of time usually comes from looking at other people and comparing what they're doing or seeing what's possible or trying to get there as fast as possible. And one of the biggest mistakes that we see beginners make, or even entrepreneurs at a higher level, is trying to get to the next level like it's a race, right? Because in reality some people may feel a desperation to get out of their job or a desperation to get to the next level or they're really inspired because they see someone made something happen, right? But then, and then it all of a sudden turns into a race. Shane Sams: But it's not a race. It doesn't matter if it takes you one year, two years or three years to get everything done. Everyone's going to do this at a different timeframe and everyone has to learn how to do the next step before they can take the next step, right? So it's not about like getting there as fast as possible. It's really just about getting there, in my mastermind this morning, we were sharing like we had a little, one of our people in our mastermind in my mastermind asked where were you 10 years ago? Right? And it was crazy because one guy was like, man, 10 years ago I had just moved to a new town and gotten a job and I was making $2,000 a month and my wife and I was making nothing but, and then he said last month was our first six figure profit month, but that was 10 years ago. Shane Sams: And it's not like he was like looking at the span trying to get there in 10 years or it was the same journey we all take. We're inspired because we see somebody else, he had started three other businesses before this one worked, but he had stuck with it for 10 years and he had gotten to the promise land. Right? And that's really what everyone has got to. It's just like the Bible says, you've got to run your own race, right. And if you start comparing yourself and you start feeling the pressures or you start feeling that desperation, you're going to try to rush through the process and then that's just going to make you run off the rails. If the train goes too fast, it's going to crash, right? So try to reframe it as not that I don't have enough time, I've got plenty of time because I don't have to finish in a year. Shane Sams: I don't have to finish in two years. I've just got to take the next step and learn it. Maybe that's what you do today and then tomorrow you do the thing and then you learn the next step and just slow down and get it right before you try to get it done quickly. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I would just encourage you to make sure that all of the things that you're thinking about are actually important, and I say this because it's something that I struggle with a lot of times. I will look and say, okay, well, our landing page has a problem and our SEO is not 100% optimized. Shane Sams: You didn't put a period at the end of that sentence, Shane when you wrote that copy. Jocelyn Sams: We need to be on Pinterest posting regularly. We need to be on Instagram, we need to be on Facebook. We need to be figuring out where we are in the rankings for this keyword. I have all of these things in my mind all the time, but they're not always important. All of them. Shane Sams: Especially like when you get sucked into a podcast that talks about a new tool you've never heard of and you're like, "Ooh, I bet that would help my business." And like really? I was talking to somebody the other day about needle movers, the only needle movers really in your business are that you're creating valuable content. You're getting Opt-ins for leads and you're telling your leads about your product to sell. There's really nothing else you really need to do in your business. If everyone would just do those three things every day. Create a piece of content, release it, make sure the content points to an Opt-in, get the email. Jocelyn Sams: Tell those people- Shane Sams: Tell those people you have something for sale. Jocelyn Sams: ... You have something cool that can solve their problem. Shane Sams: Yeah. That's the needle movers man. All this other stuff. Yeah. After that, if you've got time, you share it on 100 social media networks and you do all these other things but focus on the needle movers so you're not caught up in learning so much stuff, right? Priscilla Y.: Grow the needle movers. Shane Sams: Yes, exactly. Yes. It's all you got to do. Okay? Priscilla Y.: Got It. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Shane Sams: Fear or obstacle. We've made it to the fifth thing on the list and then we can get back to technical questions. Okay. But we're just, we're busting through the walls of fear today y'all so what is fear number five on the checklist? Jocelyn Sams: All right, it says, I'm not sure if I should create a course to sell product at a membership etc. The content has to be easy to digest yet actionable. Shane Sams: So is this basically you've got your lead magnet and you're kind of not sure what to do with, like what to sell to them? Priscilla Y.: Yeah, I mean I feel like my avatar is somewhat unique and I'm sure everybody says this, but busy moms tend to have very little time, and I see it a lot in my service business where follow through is really difficult. So a course sounds great but then my worry is will they complete it? A membership sounds amazing, but then my fear is will they interact with it? And so I guess it's kind of a fear that I'm not going to create the right content for my avatar. Shane Sams: This is actually a really common fear that a lot of people get stuck at this point. They're like, okay, what are they going to buy? Right? There's two parts of this and some of this is going to sound counterintuitive. Okay? Priscilla Y.: Okay. Shane Sams: The first thing you have, you do have one, it is awesome that you're thinking about how your people are going to consume the content. That's a big deal because you do have to create something that people can get results from or why create it. You got to care about how your people's success. Now the problem is when you go too far down that rabbit hole, you take all the responsibility from them taking action and put it on to you and you hold the weight and the anxiety of all of that. But here's the truth. It is your customer's responsibility to take action on what you're giving them. It is not your responsibility. If you buy a jug of milk, it's your job to drink it before it spoils. That's the truth. Or you wasted your money, right? And anyone who's going to sell online has to realize that maybe half your people may not take advantage of what you give them. They may come in, they may buy your thing and they may just not use it, and that's on them because all you can do is show people the path, right? You can't make them walk the path. It's the old horse to water. You can't make them drink. Right? Shane Sams: So that that's how you overcome this fear is to realize that in in any time you're coaching or teaching or providing a course or a membership, you're all your half is to give them the opportunity. It is their responsibility to take advantage of that opportunity. Jocelyn Sams: So the amazing advantage that you have right now is that you already have an audience. You have people following you on email, you have people following you on social media. The best thing to do honestly is just put it out there. Say, "Hey guys, I'm thinking about creating something really cool for you all and I was just wondering what would be the most beneficial to you? Here are a couple of ideas I have, what do you think about these or do you have any additional ideas?" Shane Sams: And also not getting caught up in what other people are doing, right? For example, like we sell video, we have video courses with PowerPoint slides, right? But if you'll notice inside of the flip your life blueprint, we also have Mp3s that you can listen to the course, right? We also have workbooks that you can download and write in and print things out. Okay, so you say people are busy. Well, what if your entire product that they bought from you was literally podcast they can listen to on the way to work on the way to the soccer game and it was telling them what to do when they got home to organize something and then it was like a Facebook group that they're already on Facebook. That's where your community lives. It doesn't have to look like what the experts do or me and Jocelyn or anybody else like if you talk to your audience, you can build the product that they're more likely to consume, right? Shane Sams: So you overcome this fear in two ways, what product should I create? One, what do your people say they want? Two, I am not responsible for their actions and success. I'm only responsible to lead them and give them opportunity. Once you embrace those two things, it's pretty easy to get over the fact and just go create the product instead of sitting around and worrying about it all the time. Priscilla Y.: That's so helpful. Jocelyn Sams: All right Priscilla, I hope that you feel a little bit better about some of these fears and mindset struggles and please don't think that we are picking on Priscilla because we did ask her if it was okay to kind of poke fun at her a little bit and she said- Shane Sams: It's all her fault. She's the organizer and she sent us a check list. And we got to go through the check list. That's just the way it is. Jocelyn Sams: So we are now going to jump into what you have been working on and how we can help you move forward. Priscilla Y.: Thanks you guys. I actually hearing all that stuff to me actually made me laugh too. I don't feel picked on at all and I just hope that it helps other people out there who might have at least one or two of those fears and I so what's next for me is I have this lead magnet now and I need to figure out what's next. Where do I focus next? I think it's creating content, but I'd love to hear from you guys where you would go. Shane Sams: The thing that we always say is product first, right? When we say product first we, what we mean is you create a lead magnet, which is a product that you exchange for contact information and you create a product that you can exchange for money. Okay, so you've got your lead magnet, you're getting emails, you're getting a social media following kind of built up here. The next step for you is to go to those people that are following you and for anybody listening, I don't care if you've got 10 emails or 200 emails or 2000 emails. If you have 10 people paying attention to you, you got an audience, right? Let them kind of tell you what they need, what should the course look like? Ask them specific questions. Do you want a video course that shows you how to organize your kitchen? Do you want me to do some kind of virtual coaching thing where we FaceTime and you walk me through your house and I create a plan for you from the comfort of my own home? Do you want me to create audio files that you can listen to and then take action? Shane Sams: Or do you want to actually see me cleaning a house and fixing up the organization in the bedrooms? Go to them and ask them what they want and then create the smallest version of that product so that they have something to buy. Jocelyn Sams: And always remember that just because you ask someone a question or they give you an opinion, it doesn't mean that you have to do it. If they say something and 10 people agree that they want to see you do A, B, C and you don't want to do A, B, C, then don't do it. I think sometimes people feel a little bit of pressure when they say, okay, what do you want me to do? And if Shane and I were to ask that, a lot of people would probably say, do one on one coaching. Well we don't want to do one on one coaching right now so we're not going to do that. So ask people but then also determine based on what they told you, like what fits in with your life and what you want to do. Shane Sams: And the key here again is create the simplest version of that product that you can put a price tag on, right? I mean it may be something as simple as people want to know how to organize their bedroom because they feel discombobulated and uncomfortable and they're not resting well because they don't have this oasis to retreat to at night, right? It could be something like that. Maybe you just create that. You do a one week bedroom challenge. You have a video that shows you the 10 steps of straightening it and you just make that and charge 25 bucks for it. It's just something to make money, right? Shane Sams: But get your product done. Because what happens is when you have a way to get leads and a way to sell something, now you have a place to point all this content you create to and that's how you make money online. And realize that it's going to evolve. This is not the product that's going to call the shot for the Babe Ruth home run. This is the first product and then you'll learn and then you'll make the second iteration and then you'll learn and eventually you'll have this big thing that can be sold for a couple of 100 bucks. It's really convenient for your audience. It's convenient for you and all of a sudden you've got a way to scale that income past those 20 hours that you're actually able to work a week. Priscilla Y.: I like that a lot, I feel like it just took so much off of my plate or off of my shoulders hearing that I don't have to make the big product right now. Shane Sams: No, you just have to make the first. Jocelyn created the biggest product I've ever seen when she made her one year lesson plans. Right. And, but she did it one month at a time and sold it one month at a time and then the next year- Jocelyn Sams: I had the whole package- Shane Sams: Ready to go. So people think we just wrote a bunch of lesson plans in a month and we sold all these things. That's not what happened. It was like a one year epic process plus an entire summer of putting it back together into something that could be sold in a big product. So it's like this is a process. It's not a race. When you're done, you'll know it because things will start happening. You just have to slow down and take the next step and get something for sale. Once you get something for sale, it's off to the races. Priscilla Y.: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Priscilla. Normally in this part of the show, we ask people what your action step is going to be, but I'm actually today going to give you some homework and your homework is to ask your audience what they would like see from you as a paid product. Shane Sams: And then you will know your next step and you can go build that thing for them and put a price tag on it. And like honestly, I'm challenging you to have this done in like 30 days. Put a time limit on yourself. Get this first thing done and out there based on that feedback and see what happens. Jocelyn Sams: And he's just talking about a product, not the final product. Right? Priscilla Y.: I got it. Yeah, I think, I know I can do that. Jocelyn Sams: All right. We're excited. We can't wait to see what happens next. Shane Sams: Well, listen, Priscilla, thank you so much for being on the show today, man. We always thank people for being so transparent with their fear, but you were transparent with five or six fears, so thank you so much. I'm sure that everybody out there listening probably got so much value from this show just being able to bust through those fears and ready to take action for themselves. Jocelyn Sams: And I feel you sister. I'll see you at the 12 step program. Okay. Priscilla Y.: Thanks Jocelyn. I feel like I'm in good company. Shane Sams: Wow. What a great episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, man. It was awesome going through all of those fears that were holding Priscilla back, but they really hold us all back. Just slamming those fears in the face over and over and over again. Guys, if you can get over your fears, if you can get over your obstacles, you can do all of the other stuff that really makes it happen in your online business. That's what we do inside of the Flip Your Life Community every single week, we work together to overcome these fears, push through all of the obstacles, get all of the little things done that build a business, that build a life that change our family's future, and we do it together. We would love to help you get past your fears, obstacles, any difficulties you're having, in your entrepreneurial journey inside of the Flip Your Life Community. Shane Sams: You can learn more about the Flip Your Life Community at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have courses and trainings and a community that is constantly talking about how to get past these things and how to get to the next level. We'd love to have you inside there as well. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. All right, guys, before we go today, we'd like to close with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of inspiration from the Bible, not only in our life but for our business. Today's Bible verse comes from Proverbs 13 verse 11 and it says, dishonest money dwindles away but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. Just like we talked about in the show today, guys, it's not a race. Baby steps will get you closer to the goal than no steps at all, but the point is to move forward little by little, until we find that success, until we flip our lives and we change our family trees forever. That's all the time we have for this week guys. Until next time, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Priscilla's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Lori start an online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all! On today's podcast we help Lori start an online business. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now we help other families do the same. You ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited because we've got a guest from the Flip Your Life community, an actual member inside of our community who is starting their online journey. Shane: They are starting an online business, and we wanted to talk to her right as she's getting ready to get out there, right as she's ready to launch this thing into the world, so that you guys out there who are listening who are also starting an online business, kind of listen in and bust through some of those fears, overcome some of those obstacles and take your next steps as well. Shane: Our guest today is Flip Your Life Community member Lori Pyne. How are you doing Lori? Lori: I'm doing great. Good morning. Jocelyn: Good morning. We were really happy to have you here today and to help you get started on this journey. I understand that, you've gone through a lot of different things in your life. And because of that, I think that it's going to make it even more sweeter, I guess you would say. No, that's probably not- Shane: More sweeter? Jocelyn: That's probably not correct English. It would make it sweeter once you reach that finish line, because you've gone through all of these different kinds of things. So go ahead and tell our audience a little bit about you, your background and what you are starting online. Lori: I have been in the legal field for 30 years. I started it when I was two years old, you understand that of course. Shane: Right. Lori: And while I was being an amazing paralegal supporting my attorneys, I ended up having an amazing son who came into the world with, oh my goodness, a handful of challenges. Lori: At that time I was able to find angels. Truthfully angels who helped me help him. My family, my friends. I met therapists and doctors, nurses, all of who helped him become the miracle baby he is. Lori: He's now 18 years old and we're getting ready for the next change, which is being an adult when you're six foot tall and five years old developmentally. Shane: What happened? What happened when he was born? Lori: He was born with ... They detected a problem. Actually when I was 18 weeks gestation. I don't know if you guys know how tiny your heart is at that point. I don't even think it's the size of an almond. But they saw something and they took another peak, and did another test when I was 24 weeks and my son was assigned a pediatric cardiologist at that point. He had a heart defect. Lori: He has a pulmonary valve that wasn't working right. His pulmonary artery was not pumping in ... Was too small, so he wasn't getting enough blood, and they anticipated birth and then surgery. He had to be five pounds, one ounce to be able to have surgery. And he was born exactly at five pounds, one ounce, he fooled them. He's a tough little guy, was able to make it to four months before he had to have his surgery. Lori: He was a bruiser at 10 pounds. And at birth he had oxygen deprivation and at his surgery, nine hours afterwards when it finished, his heart stopped. It had never worked that hard, never had that much blood flowing. And he ... Our doctors are amazing, I have to tell you. His recovery room was a mini operating room. So they operated on him, his second heart surgery in the recovery room he was in at the hospital. Lori: It was very odd. It's a little graphic, so sorry for anybody who's a little queasy. But they left him open in case his heart had more problems and they just covered him with a plastic sheet. And they had him obviously sedated, so he wouldn't move. And I was not allowed to talk around him, because everyone else could talk and he would ignore them. But he'd been hearing my voice his whole little bitty life, and he struggled to try, and get to me out of the sedation. Lori: Anyone who knows me, I'm a little chatty person and I had to sit there with him in that state without saying a word. Shane: Wow. Jocelyn: Wow. Shane: That is an unbelievable story. We were talking off air and I actually have ... We have a heart kid. We call them heart kids because they're like ... The heart community is amazing. It's just a whole other world of people whose children have had heart surgery. Have had heart defects at birth and they just know everything about the human body. It's unbelievable talking to the heart moms. Shane: My brother called me and the same thing happened ... Not the exact same condition, but he turned purple, and then they had to have heart surgery two days later. And we went up there and he had all these tubes attached to him and his chest was cut open. I couldn't even fathom it being his uncle, let alone being the parent. Shane: And just to overcome something like that, it kind of puts everything else in perspective, like life, business and moving forward and things like that, doesn't it? Lori: Absolutely. In fact, I have a life motto, if you will. When he came into my world, how do they call it, mature mom. I was a little older when I had him. I know in my heart of hearts that he is going to live longer than I am, and he will always need to have somebody help him. Lori: So my goal was to make sure that he thrives when I am gone. And people find that a little morbid and I don't understand it. It's reality. The opposite is for him not to live longer than me. And that is every parent's nightmare. Jocelyn: Absolutely. For sure. How did his condition and having to just be a parent to a kid with special needs, how did that influence your decision to get into online business? Lori: I had thought that as he got older, I don't know why I never consulted with anyone. I just was under the impression that once we got past the scary start, we weren't sure he was going to make it, then the helping him be able to do the basics. Eat, walk, talk, then school what could he do, it would get easier. In a way it's more complicated. It's not as scary. The beginning was just scary. Lori: But I have to help him become the most independent person he can be in our community. And I know people have very strong feelings about schools and how they take care of our kids and all that. But I have to tell you, other than a few less than great people, I've had amazing help through our school district. They take such good care of my son. They helped me become the best mom I can be. All the therapists work with me, the teachers. Lori: But once he's out, it's us. There is a community, we're in California and I think all states have it, we have a resource But I have to be more available to him to help him become the best him he can be. Shane: So basically you've been a paralegal for all this time. Are you still a paralegal? Lori: I am. Shane: And you're trying to transition out of that nine to five lifestyle because up until this point, you've had the support of the school system- Lori: Exactly. Shane: But as he ages out of that, you don't have that exact support network anymore. Lori: Exactly. Shane: So you're going to have to pick something more flexible, because if you don't, then you're not going to be available when he needs you basically. 'Cause maybe you do find some help but it's from 1:00 to 4:00. What are you going to do in the morning from 9:00 to 12:00 or something like that? Lori: And I'll be honest. Right now and all the men in your audience will understand what I'm saying. I have an 18 year old in body and a five year old. And five year olds have temper tantrums. And so, finding help that you aren't trained, the school trains people. It's very difficult. Lori: So we basically have our family. And our family, my mom is amazing. She's been there every step of the journey like a great mom would. But up until recently we've been able to hire somebody to help us. And he's going through a really tough change with his hormones and wanting to do things and literally not being able to, and he takes this frustrations out sometimes in scary ways. Lori: Imagine, a six foot tall ... I'm 5'6. This is six foot tall person having a five year old temper tantrum. So that's one of the reasons I need to be there. Shane: It's an unbelievable reason, it's an amazing reason to have that kind of motivation to start this online business. We get caught up when we think about why with want to start an online business. We do want to maybe quit our job because of a bad boss. Maybe it's because you want to travel more. Maybe it's because you want to homeschool your kids. And sometimes it's because, man I need to be there for someone that needs me. And this is the path that can get me there and the path I'm on won't get me there. So you have to make a change. Shane: And I'm sure there are people out there listening right now to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast cast that have kids with special needs that are motivated by this. Because maybe they think I've got to work, I've got to make some money. I got to do this. I got to do that. But it's not just about your dream sometimes. Sometimes it's about necessity. Shane: And thank God that we live in a time in history where work from home jobs are possible. Travel jobs are possible. Flexible jobs are possible, because these options were not on the table even 20 or 30 years ago. And now you've got a chance to really do something and be there for the person that you love to help them when they need you most. Lori: Absolutely. Jocelyn: Yeah. I mean there's really just no better reason, so I love this and I'm really excited to dive in and help you get this thing started. Jocelyn: So tell us a little bit about what you are planning to do online and what you have done so far? Lori: Shane has actually helped me be focused because I came to him at one of our trainings with "I have three things I'm working on." And he was very nice and he mailed be back or in the chat said, focus on one. Jocelyn: I'm surprised that he had that advice for you. Pretty surprising! Shane: My great problem is not focusing on one but I know when I do it, I become prolific. And that's usually our ... The great battle is the shiny object syndrome, when you start your online business especially. But if you don't do one thing, you can't do the next thing. So you've got to do the first thing first. Jocelyn: So because of that advice, you have decided- Lori: That I am going to take my skills of taking care of amazing attorneys and I had one fabulous attorney who told me that in her view, she does what only an attorney can do, and her support staff like paralegals and all, we do everything else. So I've taken that mindset, and it's kind of like, well I can do all of that for somebody, either an attorney or a business owner. They can focus on what literally only they can do, and I can take care of everything else. Shane: So is this like a virtual assistant path where you're going to have clients and you're going to be working flexible from home, but you're going to be taking things off of their plates. Are you going to do the same thing as you were doing as a paralegal, you're just not going to go to the office every day. You're going to have more virtual clients. Is that what you're doing? Lori: Well, that's how I'm starting out because I was told I had to focus on one thing. Shane: Perfect. We actually had a member that was on the podcast a few months ago. Her name was Christal Harahill, and she created a very, very similar business. What podcast was at Jocelyn? I don't remember what number it was. Jocelyn: I'm not sure. I'll have to look it up. Shane: But she actually did a virtual ... She served realtors kind of in the same way in the office as support staff. And she had some things going on. She wanted to go home and there were some other things happening and she was like ... And she realized that probably 80% of what she was doing in an office working for a broker or realtor she could do at home. She could literally contract out to other real estate agents and just do a lot of those tasks for them online. Shane: So she just kind of wrote the list, and maybe there was 20 things on the list that she did and she looked and said, well, I can't do these four things unless I'm with them. So she scratched to those off, and then that was her package. She just kind of built that out as, I'm going to offer this to serve people. She went to networking events and she built this entire book of business right from her home or anywhere, as long as she had her computer that she could do just by eliminating the office work and only focusing on the things that she could do as a VA. Jocelyn: And that is episode 265. Shane: So you can can go to flippedlifestyle.com/podcast265. My point in bringing that up is there is a template for making this happen, which will springboard you to the next thing, which is more passive. Does that make sense? Lori: Yes. And that is actually one of the questions that I had asked you was, can you create recurring revenue from a service based business, and you reassured me yes, that you can. Jocelyn: Absolutely. All right Lori, before we dive into the specific questions that you have about your business, let's talk just a little bit about fears or maybe a mindset struggle that has been holding you back. What is worrying you? What's nagging you in the back of your mind saying can you really do this? Lori: I think my fears are not extraordinary, which makes me happy because other people have overcome them. But I have a fear of do I know enough. I've been studying a lot of the different technologies that are used in more of the online world than in an office. I'm very versed in the technology used in an office, but obviously I now need to become versed in online. And which will make people kind of laugh at me, but imposter syndrome. Do I know enough? Can I do this? Will I be able to succeed? I have lots of wanton voices in my head telling me that I have never been my own boss. That I don't know what I'm doing. That I won't be able to find anybody. All of the fears that nip at our heels while we step out onto a new path. Jocelyn: Well, I want to say first of all, after 30 years in this area, if you don't know enough then I'm not sure anyone else does, Lori. Because that's a long time to be in an industry and just soak up all that knowledge and that information that you have in your head. That's really valuable. And I think sometimes people underestimate the value of the things that they know, especially with that much experience. Jocelyn: I would say as far as like your expertise and knowledge, I definitely would not worry about that. When I started my library site, I had been a librarian a whopping four years and two months. Actually, I'd been a librarian three years when I started the site. So, I just kind of dove in and shared my experiences. And I think people even like to hear that you're a little bit vulnerable sometimes. That maybe you are a little bit scared to put yourself out there. I mean we say it sometimes. Anytime I do a video or a live training of any kind, I will always start out with that. So that way I don't have to worry about it. People already know that I'm feeling this way. Shane: Yeah. I mean it's funny how we view ourselves in that way. That imposter syndrome is insidious, because it never goes away. It just never goes away. And no matter what, because you're always worried about what other people are going to think about us. It's not really do we doubt ourselves? You can look in the mirror and go what are you talking about? You've been a paralegal for 30 years. And you know the factual, rational part of you says, I can do this. But then you're like, but what if that lawyer thinks I can't. What if that person that contracts me is unsatisfied or doesn't think that it's valuable or whatever. Shane: And we still get that. When we speak at events, there's still that moment right before we go on stage where I'm like, do we really need to be out here doing this? Or when we get interviewed on a podcast that we've heard other people interviewed on. We say, man, do we really belong here? Shane: I had a funny situation. I went to Wrestlemania last month because that's what I do, 'cause I love professional wrestling. And I actually got to go to the hall of fame pre party with all the wrestlers. So a buddy of mine works for the wrestling organization, his wife wasn't going to go and he let me go with him. So it was ridiculous- Jocelyn: So Shane was a date- Shane: I was a date. I was a man's date. Just don't go down that road, you know what I'm saying? But like, it was crazy because I was on this bus and I was sitting behind Sergeant Slaughter. I look over and all these famous people are all around me. But it was really like magnified version of imposter syndrome. Because like everyone else in the room was a wrestler or a family of a wrestler. But it made me feel the exact same way as when I'm about to do a new training. Do I really know enough to train people on this? Shane: Or when somebody asks me a question that I'm sure of, but I'm like, is that the right answer? And it was this magnified version of, do I really belong in this room? And we've all felt that and that's natural. I hate to tell everybody this, but it's never gonna go away. So the best way to get over that is just keep doing it anyway. Just keep going. You do belong. We all belong, our experience is all valuable, especially to people who are less experienced than us. Shane: Or in your case, if you go out and work for an attorney, maybe an attorney can't afford to have enough paralegals in office, but they could have a part-time paralegal like you working virtually for them. And that's extremely valuable. Lori: Thank you. I said I know people will laugh, but it's still one of the fears. Shane: Everybody's got it. Everybody's got it. You're listening right now Flipped Lifestyle audience. I know you got it. You're good enough. What was that old saying in the live skit. You're good enough. You're smart enough and doggone it, people are going to like you. So go out there and make your stuff. Jocelyn: And it's also being okay with the fact that everyone won't like you. There are some people out who are going to say, well this is ridiculous and this is stupidest advice I've ever heard. But to be honest, the most knowledgeable person in the world on any topic, will still get that kind of hate. Shane: Yeah. And they don't know everything either. So it doesn't matter. Jocelyn: So it's all good. You just have to be okay with that. Shane: As with the tech stuff, this is another one that's ... I remember having a great ... And I'm pretty good with technology. I've got a background where I've used computers, stuff like that. I wasn't an expert or a programmer or anything. But I did have a background where I had dabbled with some html. I'd done some things just playing around in college. And I remember the technology did scare me to death in the beginning. Because when we started to having to like ... I realized I had to build a website, I had to be connected to all these tools and it was really scary. It was really, really scary. Because I was like, man this is all brand new to me. Shane: And I think the newness is really the problem, not necessarily the tech, because once you get in to most of these things, it really kind of works like Microsoft word. If you can use a word processor, then you can kind of use Wordpress, which is how you build a website. And when you start connecting things, it's really just copying and pasting codes into boxes. The challenge is getting over that initial hump that says, I don't know if you can do that, and saying, really that's only 20% different than the software that I already know how to use, and just kind of diving in. Shane: I actually think that people who have never had any technology experience do better when they get into the building of the websites and they're doing all the technology things like setting up calendars and schedulers, because they're like, it's like a kid. You don't know what you don't know and you don't know what you're not supposed to know. So you just dive in and you do it and you're like, oh cool, I did that, I learned that. But someone else has to kind of unlearn the fact that they think they can't do it. Shane: So technology is the same thing. Keep it as simple as possible. That's the biggest way to overcome that obstacle. Don't listen to what the gurus are doing, don't listen to what the experts are doing, because they've probably got teams where they've been doing it for a long time and they've already went through process of figuring it out. Just do it one step at a time as simple as possible. Shane: If you have a website to advertise your services, start with a one column blog with a contact form. Don't overcomplicate it. And then you can promote that and you can kind of grow over time. Don't try to do too much at once. That makes sense? Lori: That makes complete sense. And I will say as somebody who is just starting this and just learning the technology, and I told my husband this who's in the IT world. I have told him and I will ask him for help, but it's mine and I have to first learn it myself. I'm sort of stubborn. It's now the technology is at my level, if that makes sense. You don't have to code. I told him with great excitement that it's now the technology has gotten to my level, it will now be usable for anybody. And I mean for your audience, will probably be able to figure it out if I did something for 30 years, I'm not 30 years old. Shane: You had him going Lori, you ruined it. You had them going! Lori: And I know people my age can often be a little bit more intimidated by we're not digital natives and blah, blah, blah. But I just want you to know I'm doing it, and it's now doable. Even if you don't know how to code or speak tech language. Shane: A couple of weeks ago we had a travel agent her name is Marci Jennings. She's a work from home travel agent. That's what she does for a living. That's how she built her flipped lifestyle, works full time by herself on a computer. And she doesn't even have a website. She completely advertises ... Service based businesses really lend themselves to just Facebook page. Websites are better because you can get scheduling into it and you can do all these other things, like to plan your meetings and stuff. People can click a link. But the technology could be as simple as just being public and being present and you'll be able to do it. Shane: We have a form that everybody fills out before they come on a podcast. You said something really interesting here. That it's hard to stay focused because you get so overwhelmed by the huge mountains of unknowns, and that keeps you from understanding what the next step would be. And as we talked through these two fears that you have, that's really all any of these fears or obstacles. It's just the fear of the unknown. It's just the fear of what do we do? When we change our price, it's not really a matter of if people will pay it or if they won't. It's just unknown to us. Shane: Humans don't like the dark corner that you have to turn around and the blind spot, you can't see it. So learning to wrestle with the unknown and kind of honor the unknown, because it's all unknown. Jocelyn and I talk about this all the time. We're in totally uncharted territory of anything we ever dreamed possible. We don't even know what the next level looks like for us. And that's unknown. And I think that's what holds all of us back at any level. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, is just the unknown of kind of what's next. Jocelyn: It's like I said before. It's just learning to be comfortable with discomfort and that's hard for a lot of people. But if you can do that, if you can figure out how to solve those problems that seem impossible, it makes you feel like you can do anything. Because really you can. All right, Lori, I know that you've been working through the weekly trainings for the live event, right? Lori: Yes. Jocelyn: So let's talk a little bit about what you have done so far and what your next step is, what your question is for your next step. Lori: What I have done so far is been focused on my one and to let the other brilliant ideas that I have rest in my back pocket for a while. And ... I have had to look for a product to sell, for a lead magnet. And I actually had real difficulty with that. And I came up with an idea 'cause I haven't yet done it. I'm one of the ones who did not have it done by Monday. I was thinking that I can create things to help people be more efficient in their office. I've worked in lots of offices. I've seen efficiencies and I've seen things that are not. Lori: What do you think about that kind of expertise? Do you think that would be helpful? Shane: Let me define that. You want to get leads for your service? Lori: 'Cause I have none. Shane: Exactly. Lori: I'm starting at zero. Shane: I promise you you're not the only person who listens to this podcast that has no leads ... A lot of you guys have been listening for two or three years, and you still have a lead magnet. We'll talk about this. Shane: That's why one of the things we do, Lori's coming to Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 in Lexington in Kentucky on September 19th through 21st. Get your tickets at flippedlifestyle.com/live, how do you like that? But she's coming and we do a weekly training. I get on every Monday and challenge people to take their next step. I give them a next step. They go do their next step. Shane: Last week's was how are you going to get leads? What's your next lead magnet or your first lead magnet? Let's get this thing done. So the key there is understanding who are you going to serve with the core offer with the product? Now you're doing a service based thing. You want to work from home doing a service based thing where you can serve people in their office but you're doing it virtually. Is that correct? Lori: Correct. Shane: Okay. So you want your lead magnet to give them some tips on efficiencies to make their office better. With the hopes that they do what? What's the next step after the lead magnet? That they go be more efficient and they realize that you can teach them how to be efficient? Or do you want them to get on a call and try to hire you as their virtual paralegal? Lori: What a good question. I hadn't yet thought that far. I was starting just even what I would create. Shane: Exactly. Well the thing about lead magnet- Lori: So then the efficiency of having somebody who's a virtual person that can work off of your plate. Shane: Okay. So the lead magnet is the first step of your core offer. That everyone, no matter what you're selling, you get the lead usually by giving them the first step to that. So you have to know what the next step is or you're not going to have to create an effective lead magnet. Shane: For example, one of our lead magnets is just usually what we give out when we go on guest appearances is, and we call it the online business starter kit. It's for people who are totally beginners. And what it is, is it's a course that helps you come up with your idea. 'Cause if you get an idea, then your next step is to create the idea. Well guess what? We do it in the Flip your Life community every day. We make ideas become realities and turn them into businesses that make dreams come true. That's the first step. That's what I got to give you. Shane: Maybe your first step is you've already done all that stuff and you come to us and you're like, my next step is email marketing. And then the next step after that is putting people on my email list. Well we might give away a course about email marketing with the next thing we sell them as, hey, did you know we also have a course about how to grow your email list? So like that's what you had to think about when you're thinking about these lead magnets in the very beginning is, what could I give to someone that would literally make them want to hire me next? Shane: So maybe it's not something they can do, maybe it's just a brochure. Maybe it's a list of your services that you provide. Maybe it's ... And then the next step is, let's set up a call and talk and see if we can work together. A lead magnet can be valuable to just tell people what they're going to get. Not just here's something that you can go do for 24 hours. That makes sense? Lori: Okay. I'm writing notes while we're talking. Shane: We're recording this so you can totally go back. Lori: I know. Shane: But you're ready to take action as soon as you get off the call. Lori: I'm a student at heart, we take notes. Jocelyn: Okay. So we're working on a lead magnet. What Shane says is absolutely true. We definitely have to think about the next steps. I think there are a lot of people out there who don't really think about their next steps, and they have a lead magnet, which is really nice- Shane: Which leads to nothing. Jocelyn: Yeah. But if you don't- Shane: The lead magnet leads to nothing. Jocelyn: If you don't have anything for sale, then what really is the point of a lead magnet, right? So you definitely need to get that sorted out next. Shane: Have you ever been on a job interview to be a paralegal? Lori: Oh gosh, yes. Shane: Okay. What do you think is one of the most common questions that a lawyer asks you when they're hiring you as a paralegal? What is- Lori: You mean beyond the, tell me something about you? Shane: Yeah. What do they really want to know, you know what I'm saying, before they'll work with somebody. I mean you may not have this question off the top of your head right now. Lori: Oh, I do. I've had lots of interviews, and I've had to interview other paralegals. As you probably can figure out, in a legal department or in a law firm, it's a very deadline driven endeavor. And you're often tasked with doing more than is humanly possible each day. So one of the things that everybody wants to know is how do you handle stress? How do you handle having too much work? How you handle different priorities? You have different attorneys asking you to all get something done today, all of which will take three days. And that answer actually tells you a lot. The best answer is, you talk to them, you communicate. You let them know what is on your plate so they then are part of solving the problem and helping you decide. Not, I'm just going to get through it, and who needs sleep. Shane: So going back to the efficiency thing that you were kind of drawn to, I would guess that that's why that bubbled up to the surface. Because you're like, oh well the paralegals gotta be efficient so I'm going to do something to show them how to be efficient. Maybe your lead magnet is actually, how ... I'm just going to use our paralegals as some verbage here. I'm not going to say how I do it, you might say that. But how our team gets the work of three paralegals done in a day or something like that. And maybe you could just give them a one page workflow of what's it called Jocelyn? Where you ask like yes and no's. Jocelyn: Or even a communication guide. We're just talking about the communication. Like what's the best way to communicate with your paralegal and vice versa so you can make sure everyone's on the same page and going in the same direction. Shane: And you can have a little flow chart. It's like task, yes or no. It all kind of bubbles as it moves around. And it just demonstrates that you have clearly thought about this. So the lawyer is like checkout our paralegal efficiency system or whatever. This is how I work through problems. This is how I'm able to get the job done. Three days of work done in a day. It's a process that they could implement with their paralegal staff, but really it's an evaluation tool that lets them know, this person's thought about this. Wow, we don't do this. Man, I need to bring this into my team even if it's virtually, because this is amazing. Shane: And then maybe a part of it. You kind of bend toward the advantages of why it's better to do this with an online virtual assistant. Better than somebody in the office or whatever. So you can kind of worm that in there to where the next possible question is, how do I get you on my team? 'Cause that's the next step. That's what you want them to do is let's do some kind of interview. Let's do something virtually. Let's try to make this happen. Shane: Instead of saying, here's three ways to organize your desk. This is no, this is what I do, and this is what I can do for you if you'll just take the next step and talk to me about it and we'll go forward. Lori: I like that. Jocelyn: Okay. So you're feeling pretty good about that, right? Lori: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane: This is the key to building a good lead magnet. Is it's not just jab, jab, right hook. It's not just give the next step and crush it, right? It's not do a lead magnet and we get a four hour work week. That's not how it works. It's strategic. What is the end game? What are the five steps to get to the end game? And the first step is probably the lead magnet. That's how everybody should be thinking about their business when we're trying to get lead. Jocelyn: And you also have to go into the mind of your ideal customer. What are they really looking for, and what can you do to convince them that you have the answer that they're looking for in that lead magnet? Shane: So your lead magnet could be called ending your annoyance ... These are not the right words. Like, I would say lawyers are often annoyed with the communication breakdowns between them and their paralegal staff, because they're stressed out, their paralegals are stressed out and nobody's talking correctly to each other for expectation. It's just, here, do this, here, do this, here do this. I've got to go to court. So I would say that that creates frustration or annoyance or something in the office. So you would call your lead magnet, like how to stop being annoyed with communication breakdowns in your law office or something. Jocelyn: That's not a good name- Shane: It's not a good name but that's the start of it. That's the evolution of what it sounds like. Jocelyn: I suggest you can make it a little- Shane: Sexier or whatever. Lori: Well, and actually I can help you here, 'cause I actually do know something about attorneys and how to reduce the potential malpractice caused by miscommunication. Shane: There you go. That's it. That is brilliant. Now you've scared them and showed them a benefit. Jocelyn: So we've talked about the how to without statement before on different trainings and possibly podcasts too. So whenever you're trying to come up with a name of something, something really easy to do is how to ... Shane: Avoid malpractice. Jocelyn: Well how to do their greatest desire without their greatest fear. Shane: So it's how to improve communication. You can also use so that instead of without. So that you can avoid malpractice or something like that, basically. Jocelyn: I think that was backwards. Shane: Or something like that. But you just got to massage it until it works, then try it. Lori: Okay. Jocelyn: All right. So we got that working and you're going to get started on that. I can't wait to see how that turns out. What other questions do you have today as you're getting started? Lori: One of the questions that I had was, the thing that really excites me about the business you guys are helping us create is having revenue that happens when you're not working. I don't know how, do you say it. You're not- Shane: Passive income. Lori: Thank you. You're not exchanging dollars for dollars. And I was wondering if you could do that with a service based industry since this is the first business I'm going to be focusing on as a service based business. Shane: Usually when you're in a service based business, the way that you can make it passive is by building a team. For example, if you can get your systems down for being a paralegal, you could hire other virtual paralegals and your main job would be getting leads for them to do the work and you take a cut. It's kind of like you're the broker and then they would become the realtors or whatever. That makes sense? Lori: Or like an agency. Shane: Or like an agency. That's what it'd be called. So basically, you're the figurehead, you're the original paralegal. Let's say you build a book of five clients. Eventually what you would do is maybe get two other people under you that you could train to do this virtually from home and you don't have to have an office or anything like that. But then you pass your clients through to them to do some of the work. Shane: And a lot of times the lawyers don't even know who's doing the real work. So it's like you can build that out and what happens is, all of a sudden you get six, seven, maybe 10 maybe you have two or three people under you, and then you're just at the top. So you spend maybe 10 to 20 hours a week getting leads and marketing it. Getting the actual customers and then you've got a team of support staff doing the actual work behind you. Jocelyn: First of all, remember that no work is totally passive ever. I know that you know that. So even though people make passive income, nothing is 100% passive. Well I won't say nothing. Never say never. But there are very few things in this world that are completely passive. Shane: Next week we have a lot of members, so we're going to Disney world next week. We will make money everyday we're in Disney world even though we're not working. Does that make sense? Lori: Yes. Shane: So like, but we put in the work before, and if we stopped promoting it, it would die. Service based businesses usually follow that agency, employee model. But you could also create trainings for paralegal staff. You could have courses. You don't have to have ... Some people think your whole business is passive or it's not. But that's not true. Our business, we're here right now working with you. We're spending time to do this. Later in the day we'll be doing other things and we'll make passive income. Shane: But it's more of a mix. So you can have these clients and then maybe you create a paralegal training system for people to work efficiently for their staff. And you could train people once a month, and then you've got a little passive income working off those courses on the back. Maybe you build a 60/40 service based/passive income business to where you have the hours that you want, but you still put in the hours to make everything grow and support yourself. Jocelyn: The good news is that you don't have to decide the exact business model you want to do right this second. Nothing is to say you cannot later change. You just have to decide what works for you. Everything has pluses and minuses. If you work with yourself doing the services, the downside is that you have to be physically present and kind of- Shane: Doing the work. Jocelyn: ... Trading that time for dollars. However, if you go with an agency model later down the road, and you start hiring people, then you have to manage people. And so that comes with its own set of challenges. So those are just things to consider as you start to build your business. But don't let those things stop you. Just because you don't know what it is ultimately going to look like, don't let that be a roadblock for you. Go ahead and start. Start with the service based business if that's what makes sense for you and that's what you know. Then learn from your customers. Hey, how can I support you better in the future? Or, I'm thinking about going into a more passive model. This is what I'm thinking. What would you like to see? Shane: Yeah. You'll figure that out as you go. All businesses start completely work driven. And they become passive later. Even a course driven business, you're going to be putting so much energy into launches and getting recurring customers and doing things like that, that it's not going to be totally passive. Shane: The passive income myth is I set it and forget it and the ads run and they drive leads and they make sales and it just works all the time. Well if that was true, then all the people that preach passive income would not have podcasts and Facebook ads every week. You know what I'm saying? Like you ever thought about that? I had a guy once and he was trying to get someone on their podcast and the podcast was talking about courses and all this stuff and how they just set it and forget it and barely work and all this stuff. And that guy would, every time we tried to get him on the show he was like I can't, I'm too busy. And he's like, wait a minute, I thought you didn't work. You look at Tim Ferriss, somebody writes a book called The Four Hour Workweek. That dude is constantly on ... He does 10 hours of his own podcast every week. He's not working on a four hour work week. Shane: But the key to passive income is really that you can make money 24 hours 'cause your store's always open. Like last night, right before bed, we did a training last night for our Flip Your Life Live attendees. and I don't know what time it was over about 10:00 something like that. We started at 9:00, got done at 10:00. I stayed up for about 30 or 45 more minutes. Right before bed, somebody signed up for our membership. New member. I wasn't doing anything. It was just there. And they found the page and they bought it. And now that person will come into the community and they'll talk and they'll attend member calls and I'll show up for that. It's like the circle of life more than it is set it and forget it. Shane: It will evolve into something that you can control. Right now the most important thing is you control when you're working, not necessarily how much work you're doing. Lori: True. Jocelyn: Okay. It has been a really fun conversation today. I can't wait to see what you're going to take action on. And on that note, we always like to ask people at the end of our call, what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours based on all of the awesome things we talked about today? Lori: I am planning to work on my lead magnet and my strategy. Why I'm creating it and what it is leading to. Jocelyn: Love it. Shane: I love it when everything just kind of comes into focus. Isn't that amazing? Because when you know what to do next, you can actually take the next step. And that's half the battle online is just beating that unknown of what to do next. Shane: Lori, before we go, I want to talk to you a little bit about Flip Your Life LIVE. Now you're just dipping your toes into the online business waters. You're a member of the community. That's an awesome, amazing first step of getting into the trainings, getting to meet some people who are doing this too, people who are just like you who are just starting out, attending member calls, getting your questions answered, but why did you take the next step? Why did you decide to come to Flip Your Life Live? We get a lot of questions from people that say, I'm a beginner, is this right for me? Is this going to be over my head? What am I doing? What made you take that next step and grab a ticket to Lexington's Flip Your Life LIVE event this fall? Lori: Actually a handful of things. I like the way you teach. There's no nonsense, there's no sugar. And I know I have never had my own business. I have been a really awesome employee, but there's a difference when the buck stops with you. I know I have a lot to learn. I think you guys are going to teach me a lot, and you already have in our trainings. I take copious notes as you probably could gather. The other people in our community are teaching me, and it'll be an intensive work ... We'll be working the whole time, which is what attracts me to it. I also like being in an audience where somebody is telling me something and I'm learning. But I do best doing, and I know I'm going to get so much done by the time we get to the event, and then even more after, if that makes sense. Shane: It does. That's one thing we really try to do. When we used to go to live events, we would buy our ticket in January and then June would roll around. We'd go to the event, but we had never heard from them or talked to them or done anything. And I think I counted it up the other day. We're going to have 17 training sessions before we even get to Flip Your Life LIVE. We do icebreaker sessions where we introduce everybody to everybody. We get on a big zoom call, and Jocelyn and I go through and ask people icebreaker questions so that everybody learns a little bit about everybody that's coming. And we really tried to build it where you get more value before the event than any other event you could ever buy a ticket for. Lori: And I already have. What are we into end of April? Shane: Yep. Lori: Because each one is so focused it gives me a thing to work on now. And then next week I will have the next thing to work on. That just really works for me. Shane: And it's designed to take you through the blueprint before you even get to the event, so you're not just showing up confused and disoriented. You're going to know ... I remember last year we looked down from the balcony as people were checking in. Nobody knew we were there. And we were watching, we were kind of spying on everybody. And I just saw so many people hug people in line. They were in line hugging and taking pictures and I've never seen that in an event. Usually you're just in line waiting for your pass. You're just kind of a number as you're checking in. But we saw this community, these people coming in and hugging and meeting people in real life for the first time, and that really sets the tone for how our event works too. Because it is a work based event. Shane: Usually what we do is we come out, we cover content and we say, you've got 30 minutes, let's get to work, let's mastermind together. Let's take action on this next step. Then me and Jocelyn come out and say, now that you've wrestled with this topic for 30 minutes, what are your questions? We do live Q and A's with S&J. There's like eight or nine of them all through the event. And then we say, all right, now let's do it again. Let's get back into the weeds and let's finish this thing. And then we go to the next step. Shane: And that's how the whole event is designed, is not just the sit and soak. Not just to dream big and get motivated. That's a part of it. I might've made a few people cry, I made a whole lot of people laugh last year. I'm just saying. We're pretty good at that. But the main mission is for you to take action and actually change your life. Shane: I'm just really so glad that you're going to be there Lori. It's going to be an amazing experience and I cannot wait to meet you in person. Give you a hug. Lori: I know. I was just thinking, you're not building a community, you're building a family. Shane: We like to call Flip Your Life LIVE ... I'm so glad you said that. I did not prompt you to say ... with actually refer to it as kind of me and Jocelyn and Amber, our live event coordinator, we call it the Flip Your Life family reunion. That's what we call it because that's the feel you're getting. Everybody's eating country food and we're just hanging out and sweet tea's being poured in every glass. But it really does feel that way to us, and I cannot wait to see you at the family reunion. Lori: Exactly. Jocelyn: All right Lori. It has been such a fun conversation and I even hate to see it end, but before we go, I know that you had a special Bible verse and even a prayer that you would like to share with our audience So we would love to hear it. Lori: My Bible verse is addressing fear. So it's from Psalms 34:4. I sought the Lord and he answered and delivered me from all my fears. Lori: But the prayer I say every day, and I have been saying this prayer ... It's my private conversation between God and I ever since my son came into my life and I pray every day for strength and courage, patience, help, and ... I'm always very grateful and I always say thank you. Because I have been given amazing strength. I have done things I never knew I could do. Courage to face some pretty serious fears. I have much more patience than I ever thought possible, and I have been sent amazing, amazing help family, friends, everything, and I'm very grateful. Shane: That is awesome. And that's what going to carry you to even more success when you go forward. I love ... What is it the Bible says? Fear not 365 times? Whatever they say. God gave us a lot of reasons not to be afraid, because fear is going to try to stop us in whatever we're doing. And we just can't let it do that. Lori: What I try and do every night is I just give God my fear to take care of while I'm sleeping. Shane: Amen. I'm just going to throw an amen out there on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast this week. Well listen Lori, thank you so much for your transparency. I know there's a lot of people out there listening that are just starting out that are facing some of those same fears, hopefully we overcame those today. Shane: I know there's people out there with a lot of challenges in their family with their children, things like that. I know that your transparency is going to help them and inspire them to take action. I love the fact that you're ... I don't know the best way to say it, so I'm just going to say it the way I say things. I love how you don't let the challenges in your life hold you back. Even with a special needs son, you've got this dream. You've got this thing. You want to be there for him. Shane: A lot of people are like, well I got kids, how am I going to go to a live event? You made it happen. I got financial needs, 'cause of these medical issues, so I'm still going to go and invest in myself and get the training that I need to do what I want to do. And I just want to say especially after talking to you now in person, I admire you, I respect you and I just really appreciate you for coming on the show today. Lori: Thank you. I enjoyed myself. And I learned something. You always teach me. Shane: All right guys, what an amazing conversation with Lori today. So glad that she was able to overcome some of those fears and figure out her next steps. That's what we're here for guys. We're here to teach you what you need to move forward. We do that in a couple of ways. Shane: One is inside of the Flip Your Life community. We would love to have you as a member of the Flip Your Life community. All you have to do to learn about all of our programs, all of our courses, all of our forums and all the great things that we do for our members every single month, is to go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, that's all one word. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D L-I-F-E S-T-Y-L-E.com/flipyourlife. And you can learn everything about how you can become a member of the Flip Your Life community. How you can start your journey just like Lori is and just like so many other people are inside. Shane: And we would love for you to join us and join Lori so that you can meet us in person and meet her in person at Flip Your Life LIVE September 19th through the 21st in Lexington, Kentucky. Tickets are on sale right now but they are selling out. VIP tickets are gone. General admission tickets are almost gone. Don't miss your opportunity to be at this life changing event. All you have to do to get your ticket right now is to go to flippedlifestyle.com/live, L-I-V-E. That's flippedlifestyle.com/live and you can grab a ticket. And you can be at the next Flip Your Life family reunion with us and Lori and all of the other community members who are going to be there. Shane: That is all the time we have for this week. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We hope that it was helpful to you. Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes. Flip your Life! Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Lori's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we welcome back Mark to celebrate his success and help him determine his next steps. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we welcome back Mark to celebrate his success and help him determine his next steps. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, it is great to be back with you again today. Really, really excited about today's guest. This is someone who's been on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast before. It's someone we have met in person at one of our Flip Your Life live events, and it's someone who's doing some amazing things in the online business world. Our guest today is Mark Taylor. Mark, welcome back. Mark Taylor: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me back on the show. Shane Sams: Now, remind everybody where you live at? Because it's definitely not Kentucky from the sound of your accent, you know what I'm saying? Mark Taylor: It's not. It is the UK, but it's not the University of Kentucky, which I think we were talking about last time. Yeah, I live in a village called Rode, which is about 60 miles just north of London over here in Great Britain. Shane Sams: I think it's amazing that you live in a village. We don't have villages, we've got towns, I wish we had villages. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we've definitely not used that word, village. But I am quite obsessed with the UK actually. I think we might have talked about this before. I've actually traveled there once and I would love to go back again some time. Shane Sams: I think we're going to come soon Mark. Mark Taylor: Great. Shane Sams: They're about to pass all those laws. Jocelyn Sams: About the visas. Shane Sams: Where we've got to have visas now, the United States people to go to the EU, but I know England's going to let us in once they get out of there. They're Brexiting. Mark Taylor: Absolutely, I think everyone will be welcome. Shane Sams: We'll just come to England, we'll just hang out with you. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so I love British culture, I'm kind of obsessed with it. I'm a big tea drinker. I drink English Breakfast every morning, so I feel like I have a real kinship with you. Mark Taylor: Yeah, sure. I do the morning breakfast followed by the mid-morning breakfast, followed by lunch, followed by afternoon. Shane Sams: Second breakfast, third breakfast and tea. Mark Taylor: Yeah, sure. Jocelyn Sams: Believe it or not, southerners, we are big tea drinkers. It's more iced tea usually but I do drink a lot of hot tea. Mark Taylor: Yeah, love it. Jocelyn Sams: All right, well let's jump into a little bit of background for the listeners, for people who maybe have not listened to a podcast with you on it before. Tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background and what you've been doing online. Mark Taylor: I obviously live here in the UK. My background's in music. My passion is music, I'm a professional musician. Moved to London and went to music college and studied there and I've had the great honor really to play with many of the UK's leading orchestras and organizations. Through that I've had the opportunity then to become an educator, teaching drums, teaching music and played all over the world and extensively also through the UK. Mark Taylor: What's been really exciting is I've been able to transfer that passion into my online world through Education On Fire. I live here with my wife and we've got three children and we have a really lovely life. We talk a lot on the podcast about the ability to have that sort of balance in life and I've always had that. My wife and I decided always that we wanted to split the childcare and that she spends a lot of time and we've always managed to do that, being freelance and a musician means that we have a little bit of control of our schedule but of course, if you're not actually away touring or you're not away working then you don't quite have the financial freedom that you might have, which is where some of the online ideas came from, in terms of trying to monetize the sorts of things that I was doing. My life really fits into that three pattern really. It's music playing, music education and then the music and the online education, through Education On Fire. Shane Sams: The last time you were here, which was, what was that podcast? Jocelyn Sams: It's 189. Shane Sams: All right, for those of you who want to catch that episode, it's at flippedlifestyle.com/podcast189 but we talked a lot about your podcast, Education On Fire. Now at that time it was more just a passion project, right? It was just something almost like a hobby that you were doing because you had something in your life going on that you really wanted to get involved in the education space, correct? Mark Taylor: That's exactly it. I had three children going through different parts of the education world and as we know in the media, and the kind of thing, education's got a bit of a downer at the moment. There's lots of testing, lots of people taking their kids out of school and homeschooling. You're not quite sure how it fits in with the modern world and the passion project really came from the fact that because I was going into schools delivering music workshops, I was also seeing some fantastic teaching going on, some fantastic ideas and things being very creative. Mark Taylor: What I wanted to do was just really to flip that slightly and the podcast came out of, I want to share inspiring, creative ideas that people were actually doing, so yeah, it was literally a passion project just to support my kids and to support other teachers and people involved in education to feel like, ah there's great stuff going on over there, maybe I can copy that, maybe I can replicate some of these things and actually make my school a different environment based on what I'm hearing from other places. Shane Sams: Yeah. But like all passion projects, they take time. There eventually comes a point when you're like, okay, if I'm going to be putting so much time into this I'm going to need to monetize it. We need to figure out, well how can this not only support the passion, not only support the listeners and not only support the kids, but how can it support and my family a little bit better? That's the gist of the last episode. We talked about that, tell you a little bit about what's happened since episode 189 when you came on, what did you do differently after that episode and how have you grown the original podcast? Mark Taylor: It was really your input and your suggestions. I wasn't sure what to do, where to head, even where to structure my thought really and you said, speak to your audience, see what it is that they need, see who they are, which is something I found really interesting because I thought well, of course, they're teachers, they're people working in schools. I did exactly that, I tried to get some information, ask some people who were listening that I knew and they said, "Well actually some of us are teachers but actually, some of us are parents and actually, I really enjoyed sharing some of this stuff with my adolescent children because actually they're struggling sometimes and actually were quite interested in the fact that you're talking slightly differently. You're talking about things that are outside the box or things which aren't restrictive. You're talking about being creative and inspiring. Mark Taylor: I thought, well that's really interesting but what I do from there? I could create the odd bonus episode but my Education on Fire podcast, as it originally was, was themed seasons, so if I was talking about English or talking about PE, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to fit that in, bar the odd extra episode. Luckily, the platform that I was using, I was chatting to them about it and they said, "Well, you can have a separate feed and why don't you actually niche down even more and actually create more than one podcast?" Mark Taylor: So out of that came Learning on Fire, where I basically share conversations with people who are successful partly, but really about living life on their terms. They're fulfilled in what it is that they're doing. Some of those interviews are multi millionaires and some of them are actually just people living their dream, doing everything in a very small way, but they've actually found a way of creating the life that they want. Just through a series of questions and a conversation, we get to hear a running theme often, about people following their passions, the sort of advice they've been given, exactly where their journeys went. Actually whether it was in a straight line, which of course we know is very rarely the case. It just veered off and so from that, this brand new podcast opened up and I essentially just found myself running a network of two podcasts. Shane Sams: You accidentally started a podcast network. Mark Taylor: Yeah. Shane Sams: I don't think anyone's ever done that on the show, man. You just accidentally fell into that. Mark Taylor: Exactly. Yeah, I just thought that running one podcast was so much work that the easiest thing to do was to start another one. Shane Sams: Oh right, exactly, it's so simple. Jocelyn Sams: Totally logical. Shane Sams: Yeah, we've had to do that in past though. One thing we started doing, especially on our YouTube channel, flippedlifestyle.com/youtube, take you right there on the redirect. But we actually had to divide up our stuff a little bit because Flipped Lifestyle is very much helping people start podcasts start their content, start their business. Do the next level things, and we thought that the travel stuff would compliment it, but we found the people that were watching our travel videos were not always interested in the entrepreneurial space. So we actually re-categorized the place on our blog just for those, our YouTube videos, it's got its own playlist where we just put all the travel review videos. We really don't even talk about those much on the show because it's related enough and you think it's related enough but like you were saying, maybe I'll throw in an extra episode for two different segments and you realize nope, I'm just going to start this over here and go a different direction. Once you get your workflow, it's not that bad, right? Mark Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because I think inside my mind I went from being just sort of a passion project and doing something on the side, to people suddenly taking a bit of notice and saying, well actually you've got a network so therefore you must have something to say. Of course, as soon as you start generating more podcasts and there's more show notes and more blog posts, all of a sudden your website looks quite authoritative. Shane Sams: That's right. Mark Taylor: All I was doing was the same stuff. All I love doing is chatting to people and sharing their stories. It grew and grew and grew and I was really lucky, at the same sort of time I was involved in a charity called the National Association for Primary Education and I loved being involved in that because not only are they trying to support teachers and parents and everyone involved in education really, from birth to 13, they also have, because they're a national organization, they do have conversations with ministers, they have a certain amount of influence, as much as anyone does on policy and where education was going. Then I thought this is great because I'm actually able to talk at that level, I'm also able then to talk to teachers and schools and now I've got this Learning on Fire podcast, which is for parents and their kids. Mark Taylor: Then they were just wanting to grow their audience, their membership. They wanted to get their message out there and they said, "Well, you're already doing this kind of thing." I said, "Well, yeah I am really. Why don't we just combine the whole thing?" Two was fine, but why not have a podcast network of three? I said, "Let me produce a podcast for you and then we've got all these things then running through this network." Then they said, "Well that's great." I said, "It is quite a big time commitment and it's really going to need some professionalism really, just to make sure we can keep the regularity and equality going." They said, "Great, well how about we sponsor the whole network and then we can get our message out through the stuff you're already doing and then you've also got our individual message by the podcast you're producing specifically for us." Education on Fire effectively then became a three podcast network all in the space of a few months really and then it's almost like a full time job, but also it's part of my professional playing and my teaching as well. Shane Sams: That's incredible, and it's also because really this all came from just a discussion, a simple question like I'm doing something, I'm creating something, how can I make this something that becomes professional and makes money? Well, you grow your audience, you get multiple channels, multiple segments, a big organization takes notice and they're willing to give you money to be the advertiser on the show. Now you get to make cash from doing this podcast, which is incredible. Tell us a little bit more, you came to Flip Your Life Live last year. You won the award for the longest travel person. No, it wasn't. Jocelyn Sams: No, the Australians. Shane Sams: It was really close, there were some Australians. We had some Australians, you were from England, so you were the European representative of Flip Your Life Live last year. But you had some things that were going on before that, how did that play into getting the sponsorship and professionalizing this network to where you are making money. You're talking about living the dream, you're getting paid to podcast, that's pretty incredible. Jocelyn Sams: To talk about something that you love talking about which is really cool. Shane Sams: That's right, exactly, so how did that play into everything? Mark Taylor: Well, I think part of it is like you said. It was a passion project that moved in, and what's really exciting is I was kind of doing what I was talking about, which is that you don't know where these things are going to head. Follow your dream, follow your passion and see what happens. I was getting to meet so many amazing people. What Flip Your Life Live really did for me was the fact that it just made me think about how you can combine the two. It's not like if it's a passion project, that's okay but don't really talk about it. Or your professional life is like this and you don't really talk about it. It was the fact that there were so many similarities in everything that was going on. In terms of if I want to grow my audience I want to do this, if I'm thinking about email marketing, if I'm thinking about social media, I'm thinking about how to build a community. Mark Taylor: All these things were going on within Flip Your Life and then through the live events and all the prerequisites that you were doing it was like, ah I suddenly start to see how it's about relationships, how it's about bringing people together, how it's about just getting that message out there and actually how you do that. It was those skills that I was learning that I was then able to speak to the National Association and say, "Look, I understand what it is that you're trying to do and I think we can do this, this, this and this. I think actually that's going to make a difference to what you're doing." There's no guarantees, we don't actually know, but I was able to articulate it in such a way by talking in the way that we've been doing and how we've been chatting within the community and certainly on those Zoom calls and just be able to think, oh actually I really understand it. I can actually see it and because I now understand it, I can get that message across. Mark Taylor: They jumped onboard and said, "That sounds great. We've got no idea how to do that but you're already doing it. Let's go for it." It really is just that sense of the skills that you need to actually created a thriving business, whatever that happens to be, whether it's online or not actually are often the same in many ways. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, for sure. What Mark's talking about here is our live event works really, really differently than other conferences. We actually have weekly now, well we did monthly trainings I think the first year that we did Flip Your Life Live and now we're doing weekly prerequisite trainings where I am personally guiding people with accountability, through the Flip Your Life blueprint. We get deep into marketing, how to talk to your potential client. Your potential client was this charity. They wanted to sponsor your podcast. Selling an ad is no different than selling a shirt or selling a digital course. How you market that, how you present that, building community around it. Shane Sams: In the modern world, if you're not building a community around what you do you're not going to have a sustainable business. Why do you think 50 million people watched Game of Thrones last week? Because they've built this community around this show, around their network and that's what you're doing there. I'm just glad that all this has blown up man, because like you are one of the nicest people we have ever met. You're just a great guy and a lot of people say they have a passion but I've always felt like you really are truly in depth passionate about this topic. Even, you were an overnight success because you got this sponsorship and it started paying substantial money each month to be able to sponsor a show but you built these two podcasts and you got deep with your audience and you communicated with them even before it was monetized. How long did you do the podcast before you made this sponsor agreement with the network? Mark Taylor: It must have been, I think I launched originally in December 2016. 2016, yeah that's right. Then the sponsorship came through just as we were going to Nashville, so that was August September 2018, so a good 18 months or so. Shane Sams: You're an 18-month overnight success. Jocelyn Sams: How does that make you feel, Mark? Shane Sams: How does that make you feel? Everyone else is looking in and being like, "Wow, you met the right guy at a party and got a sponsorship in one day for podcasting." You're like, "No, that is not what happened. That is not true." Mark Taylor: Yeah, I think maybe I'm getting better though because it was like a 10 year success to become a professional musician, so maybe I'm getting the hang of it a bit better. Shane Sams: Hey, once you do it once you can do the next thing faster. That's what we always say, right? Mark Taylor: Yeah, for sure. Shane Sams: When people come into the community, sometimes they'll say, "Boy this is a lot of work and I just don't know if I'm going to ... what if I put in all this work and I don't make it?" We're like, "At least you learned all the skills." Jocelyn Sams: What if you do? Shane Sams: Yeah, what if you do make it? But at least you learned all the skills so your next pass is a month instead of year, when you try to build something new. Jocelyn Sams: Okay Mark, it's been really exciting watching your journey so far and we are just really proud of you and I can't wait to see what is next. With that in mind, let's start talking a little bit about how we can help you to grow to the next level you would like to get to. Mark Taylor: Yeah, so having been to the live event and I really had a really good think about what it was that I wanted to do, what I wanted to focus on and of course, keeping that passion going as well. Being a musician, I decided that I was going to create something music related. The one thing I'm always really grateful for is the fact there was so much music going on at my school that without that, I just wouldn't have even had the opportunity. Mark Taylor: I wanted to do something to support teachers and certainly here in the UK there's a lot of places where they have to teach music but they're not particularly trained and primary teachers here have to do of course, the whole curriculum, and it's really quite scary and fearful to suddenly have 30 kids with instruments and know what to do with it. I decided I'd combine the passion that my expertise and I've created Primary Music on Fire which is really that initial hand holding teachers into the first things that they can do when they want to do music and giving them some resources and a community where they can come together and just take the fear out of exactly what those initial stages are. That launched in February this year and we've had a few members coming. We have one member join before it even launched. I managed to do all the marketing in the way that we talked about in Nashville and amazingly it worked even before the launch day. Shane Sams: It's amazing what happens when you take action on what we say on stage. I tell everybody that, because we had people making sales in the room at that day, during sessions people were like, "I just made a sale because I did that last slide." It's like, when you do it, it's crazy what can happen. Mark Taylor: Yeah, it really is. It was just amazing, it was that kind of, ah. That intermediate result, which like you say, is sometimes the overnight success takes many months or years. Even though it had taken me a few months to put the whole thing together and to kind of work it out and get all the tech in place, I felt like it was a natural progression because it's still under the Education on Fire brand and I was able to tag everything within the website. Mark Taylor: I just thought it was a way of me, I've been talking about creative and inspiring things and following your passion and I thought well, this is a way for me to say, "Hi I'm a musician and I'm a music educator. This is me doing my passion stuff where I can actually give you direct access to me and also a community and the skills that you'd need just to do that." It can be just as simple as you're really scared about doing music tomorrow, come in, sit the kids in a circle, here's a whole load of rhythm games you can do, which over the 20 years or so I've been doing it I know they love and they get so much stuff. I can talk about how you put that into the curriculum, various things. Mark Taylor: It's really exciting. We've had a few members in there, we've done a beta launch and just make sure everything works, which it is. Now I'm literally thinking right, how do I move this forward, how do I get more people in, how do we get people excited about it and start to grow it? Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so in terms of monetization, what is going on right now? You have the membership, right? Mark Taylor: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, and you've officially launched that to your podcast and to your email list? Shane Sams: Who did you launch this to? Just people who raised their hand that they were interested? Mark Taylor: Yeah, initially it was the people that I'd had on my email list to say look, this is coming up and people that had been listening to the podcast. Then I did a short podcast season just basically counting down to the fact it was going to be live and people who wanted to be involved. That's where I got my first few people in from, and so now I'm comfortable that I kind of know how it works, the sort of things that are going to happen, I'm ready to open it out even more. Mark Taylor: I did start to do a few Facebook ads, which work really well, grew the email list a little bit, so that seemed to be working well and now I can just sit back and see if I can tweak a few things with that and just decide where to go from then. Because one of the interesting things was the fact that when started to talk about this with people they were saying, "Oh that would work great actually in my school." Then I had some other people through the podcast saying, "I'm a homeschooler and actually I'd really like to learn the ukulele because I could actually do this and learn it with my kids. The other thing I can do is I can then learn a little bit of the basic music stuff, so I don't need to get an expert into my house to teach it one on one, I can actually do it online." Shane Sams: Yes. Mark Taylor: I thought that was great because they came to me to talk about that and it's suddenly taken me in a whole different direction, so I'm thinking maybe doing a five day challenge to learn the ukulele. I've got someone who does this locally and we've got a few videos that we're working on and just get that going. Then we can incorporate that into the membership as well. Shane Sams: How much are you charging a month for the membership right now? Mark Taylor: Well, this is a big thing, is that at the moment all we're charging is 4.99 a month. Shane Sams: Is that pounds or USD? What are we talking about here? Mark Taylor: It's pounds, but it doesn't make that much difference. Shane Sams: That's right. Mark Taylor: The reason behind that was because there are organizations and there are things out there which charge, even the most full kind of membership or place where you can get content for music over here are around 250, maybe 300 year. It's not a massive market and school budgets are what they are. What we found when people were asking us about it, it was often the teachers saying, "Look, we don't know we what to do but we want to do something." They were going to put their hands in their pocket to do it. It was really testing the water to see whether actually for the price of a cup of coffee, you could get somebody in to see it and then start to grow it from there. I wanted to start it small enough that we could just test it and get people to go. I fully expect it to go up but I don't know how much that will be for. Shane Sams: For sure. You can do a series of raises, like you can go $9, $14. Jocelyn Sams: Pounds. Shane Sams: See how far you can push it before sales stop and then you just dial back one, you know what I mean? We're homeschoolers and we usually look for resources that are in that $10 a month range because we signed up for, what's it called, Reflex? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Reflex Math. It's like math games. There's another one coming out next month called like Adventure Academy, we're looking at to give kids that supplemental thing. As a homeschooler, that stuff adds up. If you're doing a Math one and a Science one and a Music one and an English one, all of a sudden you're paying 50 bucks a month on a $5 a month thing. I think it is smart to keep it low because the market's infinite. It's the schools, it's the teachers, it's the homeschool market. You've got a ton of people, you're only going to need ... if you get 1000 people in the world to do this thing then that's still four or 5000 extra dollars a month of top of what you're already doing, basically. Mark Taylor: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I feel like with your experience with the sponsorships, you might even be able to get people to come in and do sponsorships on the site. A lot of times, people who do lower-cost recurring revenue models, they will supplement with other people advertising on their platform. Maybe it's companies who sell to educators who might be interested in doing that, if that's something that you might be interested in bringing in to supplement that. Shane Sams: Or even like instrument companies or you partner with somebody and if you can grow this thing to 100 people and you tell the ukulele company, "Hey, why don't you be the official ukulele of Primary Music on Fire? I'm in all these schools, I've got all these teachers." Then all of a sudden they're like, "Yeah, I will do that for another couple of hundred dollars a month." Basically, at the beginning of your lesson like, "I got my ACME ukulele here." Whatever, you just give a little pitch. It's almost like a product placement. It's unlimited how much you can do with it once you get inside. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you don't want it to be a total pitch fest the whole time. I hate it when I pay for something and there's still super intrusive ads. I don't like that but I feel like if you can say to people, "Okay, I play this particular instrument, I really like it. I do get an affiliate commission from this if you purchase it but it costs you no extra and it helps to support the site." I'm okay with that. Shane Sams: Tying that back into your sponsorships, let me ask you this. Currently you have a sponsorship with this one company for your podcast, is that exclusive? Is that completely exclusive? Mark Taylor: It's exclusive for the first year. Amazingly, they wanted to do this for the long haul, which I'm really pleased about because the organization needed a bit of support from a tech point of view, so I helped them do that as well. I said it's going to need time to grow, so they're an exclusive sponsor for this first year, which will finish in the summer but then as they start to bring their sponsorship level back a little bit, the agreement is that I can then open it up to new sponsors as well, so yeah it does certainly infinitely give me more and more opportunities. Mark Taylor: One of the great things I like about the idea of the instrument sponsorship idea is that I'd thought not so much about that, the affiliate thing a little bit more, because it's actually such a low entry level I thought actually that kind of being able to promote resources that I use all the time in schools would be a good way of doing that, and actually having a bit of an affiliate income coming through that. But actually having a specific sponsor for the various things that we're doing is a brilliant idea. Shane Sams: Yeah, if the drum lesson was 100 bucks a month and then you had the ukulele was 100 bucks a month and then something else was ... all that adds up over time. Let me ask you this, you said you promoted this Primary Music on Fire though within the network, correct? Even though they're the exclusive title sponsor that's paying you this four figure a month income, you still promoted Primary on Fire on your podcast, correct? Mark Taylor: Yeah, that's right. The National Association for Primary Education, they're the official sponsor, they're the ones that are the guiding light at the moment for this year, but I was still able to bring Primary Music on Fire there as my own kind of sponsor, as it were, just to show that that was the case. I've got a few intros, a few outro sponsorships that I can do for their own it and it's quite prominent on my site as well. I think of that feeds itself because I've got people coming into one part of the podcast listening about English and then they're thinking, oh, there's a bit of music there. I think that sort of cross-promotion seems to work quite well. Shane Sams: See, one I would talk to your sponsor about this too, but they seem to be okay with you promoting your own stuff, right? Mark Taylor: Yeah. Shane Sams: Not as an external sponsor. I would really start thinking if you want to really grow Primary Music on Fire, and at the same time prepare for the big revenue increase, which is when your exclusivity ends and you can go out and basically find three more title sponsors at that price and then work out where you put your spots in the show to be able to advertise all these things. Once that ends, which is this summer, in a few months, you're literally going to be able to go out and find two or three more sponsors and boom. Your income is going to triple, just like that. Shane Sams: But the real growth is if you can put 5000 people in your membership, that's huge. You could go ahead and start working within that framework, which you're already in right now and really formalizing where ad spots go, not just the title sponsor, where do you read them at? Do you talk about them at the beginning, or what do you do? Mark Taylor: Yeah, it's really at the beginning. A little tag at the end and then they're on the show notes. Shane Sams: Okay, perfect, so what do you need to do is leave them at the beginning right now because they're the exclusive sponsor. I would dedicate a whole middle spot to Primary Education on Fire every week and maybe give out a free lesson to get the opt in. Then I would probably formalize the ending into less of a throwaway, oh and don't forget our title sponsor. That's a third commercial spot, basically and you really treat it like an official place because what's going to happen is basically you're going to bid out the next sponsor and if they pay more, they become the front sponsor. Your thing goes in the middle and whoever's left goes on the end, or wherever you want to put them. Shane Sams: You could even rotate them through the different shows, every sponsor doesn't get every single episode. It's more like, okay, this package we're doing one a week for three shows, so this package includes 10 spots. You may have a total, if you do three, four, 12, you may have a total of 12 spots and they can buy a package of six or 10 or whatever. That's where the real money is going to come from, but you can go ahead and start practicing this now and put two spots in for Primary Music on Fire every single episode. I bet you can go ahead and start pouring more of these next level beta members in to really push the ramp up. You could even go ahead and raise your price and try now and just use that as a commercial, treat it like a sponsor is paying you to do that spot. Don't just mention it like, "Hey, I'm launching this other thing." That's how you instantly start getting more people because this is just an awareness thing. You've go three podcasts that people are actually listening to, so every podcast they just need to know about the ways that they can pay you and you're going to be off to the races with that. What do you think? Mark Taylor: I think that's great, and interestingly, it feels exactly the same as when I finished the podcast we did before. It's that kind of, oh yeah, it's taking me to a new professional level in the way you're thinking about that and actually placing it and feeling like every bit has its own place in how you utilize that. Interestingly, one thing which I thought was a negative a little while ago, as I started to have marketing people contact me and say, "I've got so and so who wants to come on your show." I was like, well I'm not quite sure if they're an exact fit. But having got some on, they've been brilliant guests and they've really bought into the whole ethos of what I was doing. A lot of those people are working with companies who have got things that they want to promote, so it feels like there's going to be a natural progression and a way of working with these people, going forward, and I think the sponsorship idea, like you say, once it starts to really feel like it's something they can get into, will be fantastic. Shane Sams: They key is right now, imagine Primary on Fire is led by the CEO Mark Taylor and another Mark Taylor is running the podcast network. You literally have made a deal with Primary Music on Fire, just like you did with this charity, to be a title sponsor. Now how would you treat that ad spot now? You wouldn't treat it as, oh Mark I've got this new thing. I'd like for you to try it, if you're interested, you can if you want to, go email, whatever. It's now like, "And remember, today's episode is also brought to you by Primary Music on Fire, another part of the network." Another thing that you do, do you advertise your other shows on each show? Do you do that? Mark Taylor: Not on each show. I've got better at cross promoting it in a more natural way throughout the conversations, so that's been a bit better and then I've occasionally done the odd specific show just to say, of course I'm doing this, this and this. But actually not as an official short pitch on each episode. Shane Sams: I would formalize that process because that's the power of a podcast network, that's where the leverage actually comes from. Every podcast in the network promotes every other podcast in the network, which grows every other podcast in the network, and that way you have more leverage when you're negotiating these advertising fees. Then try to figure out a way to get three to four spots in, maybe one of the spots is to promote one of your other shows, "Don't forget we also do Education on Fire if you're an educator or you know an educator, go do this. Advertise your own thing and then you can have two title sponsors, your prices will probably go up as the audience goes up. All of a sudden you're looking down and you may have a five figure podcast instead of a four figure podcast, just like that. Mark Taylor: Yeah, I think that's great and it's perfect timing I think because like I said, I've got probably another three or four months at the most before the exclusivity finishes and if I start thinking about putting those foundations in place now I can really hone that ready to open the doors later on in the summer. Shane Sams: You should start finding advertisers right now, even though you can't advertise them yet. You don't want to wait until you can lose the exclusivity, you want to have it ready to go out the gate, you know what I'm saying? Mark Taylor: Sounds fantastic. Shane Sams: All the negotiation's done, the contracts are signed, you have a start date, it's all good to go. Mark Taylor: Brilliant. Shane Sams: How else have you decided to monetize the podcast? Mark Taylor: Those are the main ways of the moment. I did wonder, because I've had so much positive feedback from parents through the Learning on Fire podcast, because they're just wanting to support their teenagers, they know the sorts of angst that they go through, they know how difficult it is to impart what we deem to be really great information. I always think of it as if it's really a half an hour conversation where you're trying to give all the great advice and things that you've learnt, to your children in one go. It's that sort of fireside sit down chat, but we know in reality, certainly with two teenagers in our house, it's very difficult to have those conversations sometimes. Mark Taylor: I was chatting to someone the other day and they were like, "Yeah, it's almost like what we want to be doing is we want to be sitting in the car listening to the podcast." A few things get brought up and then the conversations just start to come. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Oh yeah, I've read that book or I listened to that podcast. This or that advice that was given to me by a mentor that I was doing. That's brilliant, how does that work?" Then they were just saying it's much more natural feel. I wonder whether creating something like Patreon or including something like that might be a way of being able to give my audience a chance to buy into what I'm doing, because I really feel like they're really feeling like it's something that they want to be able to support their children with. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I like the idea of trying it. It really can't hurt anything to try it and see what happens. Shane Sams: This does seem like a place where it would work. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I agree. I think that it could definitely work. I would definitely try it. I love the idea of having multiple revenue streams, I think that they will feed off of each other, like you were saying. I can't wait to see what happens, I think that you're onto something really cool. Shane Sams: The thing about Patreon really in this case because you don't have to do much to make it work, you could even just have a simple, you get to listen to all the podcasts a day early if you support me on Patreon. Jocelyn Sams: There's one podcast, I'm obsessed with True Crime podcast, so there's one podcast in particular that I support on Patreon and pretty much the only thing that they do is they release it one day early for people who support them on Patreon and it's also ad free. That's a very simple thing that you can do. Shane Sams: Ooh, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But for me it's worth it because they come out every Monday and by the time Monday rolls around I am freaking out because I want the podcast to come out so bad, so for me it's worth it because I get it that one extra day early. Shane Sams: You can even do something like, especially I feel like you're feeling this is more the parent angle, that's what it sounds like when you're talking about this. Would the parents be more likely to support you on Patreon than say, buy the thing. Mark Taylor: Yeah. Shane Sams: You could do, "Hey, you love listening with your kid on the thing, well guess what? There's an ad free version on Patreon. You get to listen to the ad free version a day early and then maybe you just record one bonus episode a month that's really geared towards that thing that they like that you get to say in front of your kids, you know what I'm saying? Maybe there is that bonus episode. You could even call it the Kids in the Car episode. You've specifically made this thing for them to listen to with their kids in the car. Like a sneak attack on their kid for wisdom. But that's all you've got to do, it's not any extra work at all, you just have someone edit the commercials in one episode, out the other and you just post it in different places and people are more than willing to pay for that stuff, absolutely. Mark Taylor: Yeah, it's like the Stealth Learning Podcast. Shane Sams: It is, and again, that's another fake ad. It's not a fake ad but it's another ad spot that you could even go ahead and implement right now, like your next podcast could have Primary Music on Fire in the middle, don't forget to support us on Patreon at the end and then you're already ready to show advertisers, hey I've got multiple ad slots here for you. Mark Taylor: Yeah, brilliant. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Mark, it has been a really fun conversation with you today and we're really, really excited to see where this thing goes to next. But before we go we always ask our guest what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so, based on what we talked about here today? Mark Taylor: I think the thing I'm going to do straight away is actually segment down the ideas of how I can make the advertising work, how I can put the pitches in place, using what I already have and then I think, think of that as that next professional level, in terms of how I can then grow that going forward. I think that's going to be great advice and something that's going to work really well. Shane Sams: There's a strategy out there called the Dream 100 strategy. If you just sat down one day and were thinking about it, who are the 100 perfect sponsors? You may not get to 100, you may only think of 20 but think of the 100 perfect sponsors for your audience and your topic, write all those people down and then start reaching out to them and see if you land four of those 100 perfect sponsors that you've identified as perfect for your brand, that way you can pitch them exactly like they need to be pitched to realize they're perfect for your brand. If you land three or four of them you've basically four extra business overnight and all you've got to do is put in a little bit of legwork to reach out to them. You're good to go. Shane Sams: Now if you've got the platform ready when you reach out to them you can say, "Hey, I've got a spot at the 10 minute mark that I'm using right now but I would love to plug you in there. It's 1000 bucks a month, it's 2000 bucks a month. It's whatever it is a month, then you're ready to roll and you're going to be able to knock those sponsors out really quick too. That might even be something you can do next level, once you figure that out, who are the 100 perfect sponsors for this podcast? I'm going to reach out to every single one of them. Mark Taylor: Yeah, absolutely love it. I think that's a great idea. Shane Sams: All right man, well listen, thank you so much for coming back on the show, Mark, man, it was good to catch up with you, haven't talked in a little while, haven't seen you since Flip you Life Live so it was great to hear your voice again and man, thanks for sharing your success and sharing your transparency and sharing the fact that it takes a long time to become an overnight success. Man, just keep going because I think you've stumbled into something that has unlimited potential if you just keep pushing it. Mark Taylor: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and thanks again to the community for everything they do and supporting inside there. My lasting memory of Nashville, I think the first time I saw you I was on my way back to my room, we were just walking along the corridor and you're like, "Hey, Mark," and gave me a big hug. I was like, ah I'm in a community that I love here. This is fantastic. Shane Sams: I'm a hugger, Mark. I'm a hugger man. Jocelyn Sams: We're very happy to have you as a part of it. Mark Taylor: That's very kind of you, thanks so much. Shane Sams: All right guys, what another great discussion with Flip Your Life community member, Mark Taylor. Man, he is doing great things. He's taking massive action and he's building a business that he loves. We want you to do the same thing and the best way that you can take your online dreams to the next level is to join me and Jocelyn at Flip Your Life Live in Lexington, Kentucky this September. Maybe you will run into me in the hallway and I can give you a hug too. We would love to see you there. It's an amazing event. We are right now starting our weekly prerequisite trainings. We train our members on how to get the most out of this live event. Nobody else, no other business conference does this. You're going to get weekly training, weekly accountability with us so that we can help you be prepared to take advantage of Flip Your Life Live and then take your life and business to the next level after the event. Shane Sams: You can learn more about Flip Your Life Live 2019 at flippedlifestyle.com/live. That is F-L-I-P-P-E-D-L-I-F-E style, S-T-Y-L-E.com/live. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live to see if there are any tickets left. We are almost sold out of the event so you want to make sure you go there today, you secure your spot and we will see you in Lexington, Kentucky this September. All right, guys that is all the time we have for this week. Thanks for listening. Until next time, get out there and take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Mark's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we're going to show you how to work from home as a virtual travel agent. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all on today's podcast we're going to show you how to work from home as a virtual travel agent. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast it is great to be with you again today. Super excited for today's show. This is a continuation of our work from home job series. We're branching out a little bit and showing you, the listener other ways you can make a living besides starting a website or selling virtual courses or anything like that. There's so many ways to live that flipped lifestyle in today's economy. The internet makes so many jobs possible to work from home and do things at home that you can really make a living doing almost anything you want. Anything that you can dream of. We have a an amazing example of a work from home job today. Jocelyn Sams: I'm really, really excited about today's episode because this person came into my world randomly I guess you would say. A couple of years ago Shane and I were thinking about going to an all inclusive resort, I really didn't know much about it. I had heard about using travel agents before but we've never really used one. Well I'll take that back, we used one for Disney but I really wanted someone who was an expert on all inclusives and knew all about what we wanted to find in our all inclusive resort. Jocelyn Sams: I did as some people may do actually probably just nerdy people like me. I got on Facebook and I used the search feature and I typed in all inclusive travel expert. I got a lot of different people and I started looking at their pages but one stood out to me in particular. What I do is, I go on and I message people and if they get back to me in a timely manner then there's a possibility that I will work with them and there's a pretty good possibility. Well Marci got back to me right away. We have been working together ever since. This has been a couple of years ago. Shane Sams: Today's guest is a literal work from home travel agent and is actually our personal travel agent, Marci Jennings. Marci welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Marci Jennings: Thank you so much for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today for a lot of different reasons. I think that our listeners are going to be really intrigued by what you do and just the types of experiences that you get to have as a part of your job. Which are really, really cool. We'll get into that just a little bit but before we do tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you got started doing this. Marci Jennings: Awesome, yes I have a bit of an interesting story I guess but I think that's, this is how most business owners are often. First of all I'm a mom. I have two kiddos, they are 13 and nine so I love having great vacation experiences, and that has evolved over the course of time. But I actually started my career in physical therapy. I came from the medical field and loved what I did but didn't love all the paper work and all of the bureaucracy that's involved in healthcare today. Over the course of time I realized that maybe I, was maybe looking for something more flexible and just something a little bit different. Jocelyn Sams: I want to know a little bit about this transition because I know that you're from a little bit larger area than we are. You're from the Kansas city area, right? Marci Jennings: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, in our area we were teachers before we left our jobs to do this. I know that a lot of people looked at us like we were crazy. How was it when you told people like, oh yeah, I'm a physical therapist but yeah I'm gonna stop that and be a virtual travel agent. How did that conversation go? Shane Sams: Or did you, did you quit before you found this or did you just start looking? Marci Jennings: That's great questions so yes absolutely people thought I was crazy for a while. Probably some people still think I'm crazy now but yes. I did work it alongside of it when I got started. How this happened was I loved to travel. I didn't grow up traveling very much. My, I grew up in the middle of Kansas on a farm. Our typical vacation was to go to Kansas city each year. We weren't big vacationers growing up but I discovered more about traveling and became obsessed with beach vacations in my adult life so each year I would travel to a different island for a week. Marci Jennings: I just loved the process of researching different destinations, finding the best deals and finding the cool things to do on these different islands. That was my goal each year was to travel somewhere different for a week. In the process of doing this for a few years, my friends and family just started organically coming to me and asking me questions about where I had been, which one was the best place, how do I find these great deals and all these and I just loved it. During this time, I didn't actually think that travel agents still existed. Marci Jennings: I had used one back in 2000 but I kinda say that was before the internet I know it wasn't but I felt that way. In today's world I felt like there was no, it wasn't necessary to have a travel agent. They probably didn't even exist anymore but I was pretending to be a travel agent for my friends and family just because they wanted to know my expertise that I had. I loved helping people. I would tell them about the different deals that I found and all of that and that was the extent of it as I was working in my physical therapy career. Then I met someone that when I asked her about what she did she told me that she was a Disney travel agent. At the time I happened to be planning a trip for my kids to Disney. Marci Jennings: I owned a timeshare at that time so we were planning on staying in our timeshare condo. All we needed was just the tickets for Disney. I told her that she said, "Oh, well, I would be happy to help you out. If you would like to get your tickets from me it's the same price as Disney but I will also give you lots of tips about the best way to do Disney, the best places to eat and just tips to make your trip more efficient. When she said that to me I'm sure the expression on my face was just so confused because I, I said to her. Marci Jennings: I said, "How does that work? It's the same price but how do you get paid?" She explained to me that in the travel industry they've done a lot of research and they've realized that people that use a travel agent are more inclined to have a more seamless vacation experience and as a result travel more often. The travel companies like Disney, cruise lines, resorts, they all appreciate that fact and they as a result build travel agent commission into their regular prices. It doesn't cost anything extra, it's built into the regular price. Shane Sams: Wow. Marci Jennings: If you book Best trip online and you have those things online and you don't use a travel agent that is built into the price anyway. The website is just going to keep that commission instead of it being paid out to an individual agent. Instead if you run that same trip through that travel agent then the travel agent benefits from that commission that the resort or Disney or whatever has built in the price already so- Jocelyn Sams: Yes, I think they are a lot of people out there who do not understand that. I know that I didn't understand it. When we, that's the same story that I have. We were planning a trip to Disney I was completely lost I had never been to Disney in my entire life. Shane Sams: Like stressed out, hair frizzy. Jocelyn, I thought Jocelyn was gonna have a nervous meltdown when we were planning this first trip to Disney World. Jocelyn Sams: I'm asking online. I'm like, I need help I don't know what to do then one of Shane's friends from high school had reached out to me. She's like, hey I'm a Disney agent and I know everything about Disney, I've been a million times I'm a pass holder- Shane Sams: And it doesn't cost you anything more. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah so I was shocked about this. I said the same thing, how is this possible? She told me the exact same thing. Once we started looking for Caribbean vacations, I was like, okay I'm going to find a travel agent because I love doing all the research for trips and I love going on and comparing all the prices, the same things that you were talking about but my problem is I have two kids who are involved in activities. I work full-time job and I have a lot of things going on. Shane Sams: And you don't know what you don't know. One of the things, our travel agent that we used for Disney she had literally been like a hundred times. Every time they launch a new ride she goes down there to ride it and make sure she knows what's going on. We got this little book and it had an agenda. We just went to all the rides that we wanted to ride. It was the most flawless, seamless, perfect trip ever. It was crazy because when we started looking at this beach places, we had never been to any of these resorts or anything and Jocelyn's like I bet someone goes to all these places and is a travel agent just like our Disney person. She started looking and she found you. We had the same experience, you planned it, you helped us set everything up we just showed up and laid out on the beach right? Jocelyn Sams: What I love about using the travel agent is that I can tell you what I want. I love Marci because she really makes sure that she understands what I want. Instead of just saying I want a nice beach. Well, she will ask me what does that mean to you? Does that mean you want nice sand, calm water? A nice beach means different things to different people. I love that because Marci you will ask me, okay what exactly do you want? You know exactly what to find, you've done- Shane Sams: You've been there. Jocelyn Sams: You've done probably how many trips for us? I mean a lot now probably- Shane Sams: A lot. Jocelyn Sams: At least five or six. Every time it's been exactly what I asked for. Shane Sams: What's, let me ask you a couple of follow up questions here. What's interesting to me is the reason that the cruise lines and Disney and places like that, really, our first intuition is they don't want to use a travel agent because then they got to pay the commission but they've already got it worked into the price and they know you create repeat customers. In essence a travel agent, the big service that they're providing is not just planning for the person but it's creating recurring revenue for these attractions, correct? Marci Jennings: Absolutely, yes. Shane Sams: Yeah. They get to go back and over and over and over again. You're kind of, your job really not only creates magical memories for people but it also supports the travel industry, correct? Marci Jennings: That's exactly right, exactly. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, do you only get paid commission or do they also, or do travel virtual agents get paid with perks or do they give you guys certain fees for certain things? How do you actually get paid? Is it just when you book a trip? Marci Jennings: Yes, that's a great question. We do get paid in a few different ways. Primarily it is commission and I think one of the most challenging things about getting into this industry is that you, as a general rule, you don't typically get paid until your clients travel. People are booking trips sometimes on short notice but oftentimes really far in advance, sometimes six to 12 months in advance. You do all the work first and then you don't get paid for quite a while on that. Marci Jennings: That's a challenge in this industry because not everyone could just jump in and wait that long to get paid. Commission is the primary way that we get paid. We also do get perks as well. That varies based upon what you're booking, whether it be Disney or cruise lines or all inclusive resorts. It's quite variable but they are definitely incentives out there as well because they definitely want travel agents to have experiences so that we can turn around and then sell that to our clients as well. Shane Sams: Once you get started it's kind of like the assembly line. If you start building a car on the first part of the assembly line they put the frame, then the tires, then the door. You don't have a car when the thing starts but once the first car rolls off the line they just keep rolling off the line. If you started doing travel planning now in let's say January, whatever month we're in. It's April I think we are right now. Let's say you start in January and maybe you don't get paid for that first one for three months. Shane Sams: But you've been selling other things by then so basically it will start rolling in where, oh yeah I booked this six months ago but I got paid today and I booked another one today I'll get paid for that one, six months. You can create like a stable, almost predictable, it's actually neat to be able to do it that way. Because if you book one in January for June, I'm going to get paid in June then you book one in February for July then you book one in March for, you can predict like oh starting here as long as I keep booking trips I'm going to keep getting paid every single month, correct? Marci Jennings: Correct, yes, yes. Sometimes I've had it people book it as short notice as less than 24 hours when they're departing and sometimes I'm booking things out three years in advance just depending on what it is and what the clients are looking for. There are, definitely another piece of it that's challenging from that side of things is they're peaks and valleys to this business. Marci Jennings: Even, once you've been an agent for a few years they're still peaks and valleys because we, depending on what you focus on, like for me I focus a lot on couples trips and family vacations but I'm definitely in leisure travel not in corporate travel. I'll have peaks, like spring break month will be huge for me and then summer months are huge but then there's definitely the drop off of other months where it's a lot less so you really have to be able to manage those peaks and valleys as well. Shane Sams: Every business has a cycle, right? When we were selling lesson plans as our primary income stream we were doing, we would do great in July, August, September, October, November then whoop Christmas break came and nobody was teaching. The spring was a little less and summer was really bad because there's no teachers teaching in June, right? We would have to do the same thing. We might make a lot of money one month but we had to divide that up over the next three months to pay the bills, right? Marci Jennings: Absolutely. Shane Sams: That's just a part, that business cycle. If you're going to work from home and you're going to be self-employed you've gotta learn to ride the roller coaster. You know what I mean? Sometimes there's business and sometimes there's not but what's interesting is you have total control of how hard you want to work and if you want to go out and really blow it up and work and make a lot of money during those peak times it's gonna easily cover you for the down times. Marci Jennings: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, let's go back a little bit because we jumped ahead a little bit. All right, you worked with a Disney travel agent and you were like, okay this is pretty cool. What happened next? You're still working in the physical therapy practice, right? Marci Jennings: That's right, yeah. Exactly yes, yes. Basically the conversation ended after I took this Disney trip and she assisted me. I said to her, I said, "I think this is fantastic what you do and I feel that I already do this for my friends and family but I love beach travel." Her company at the time was doing exclusively Disney destinations. I said to her I said, "If your company ever decided to expand out I would love to know about the opportunity because it might be something that I may be really interested in." I went on my merry way, back to my physical therapy job. About a year later, it was somebody that was, a friend that I would see intermittently. I ran into her again a little over a year later and she said guess what? Our company just decided to expand to all destinations, here's the contact information for the owner if you would like to contact her and see if it might be a good fit for you. Marci Jennings: That's what I did. When I met with the owner, I laugh about it now because I feel like she must have looked at me and thought I was crazy. Because at the time she's sitting there with probably about, I would say maybe 25 agents at the time. They all worked from home. They all had a major passion for Disney travel and that's all they knew. They didn't do anything else even though they were saying they wanted to expand out to that. I was the first person to come into the company and saying that I wanted to do it differently. Be a beach destination specialist. I'm also saying to her at the same time that all of my experiences have been in these various island destinations staying in condos which is also not really a big market but obviously she saw something in me. Marci Jennings: I'd only at that time I had only traveled to one all inclusive resort ever. It wasn't that great of an experience in comparison to the other travel that I had done in these different islands in staying in condos. She said let's give it a whirl and in my mind I had always been such a planner and just always so strategic in everything that I did. It was strange to me that I just basically, I guess I think it was because I felt like I was already doing this for my friends and family and getting nothing out of it just loving it that I just said, why not? I did start working this alongside my physical therapy career. I was working part-time. I think I was working around 20 hours a week as a physical therapist and then I jumped into doing this. Maybe my biggest thing that I did to get started was I just over and over and over again explained what I said earlier in this recording about how it doesn't cost anything extra to use a travel agent. Shane Sams: Right. Marci Jennings: Really just hammered that home more than maybe necessary. I feel like sometimes when people hear something they don't hear it the first time. I just kept reiterating that and that, and just putting a lot of information out there about what I did now at the time then grew it from there. Shane Sams: Who was your first client? Like when you put this stuff out there and you're like, I'm a travel agent now, it doesn't cost anything to do this you're going to pay for it whether you get help or not so you might as well get the help. Do you remember how much was your first commission or who did you get that first time where you're like oh my gosh this real, this actually happened. Marci Jennings: Right right. Yeah, great question. I can remember my first two clients. My first, I believe the first one actually closed the deal on, was a trip to Grand Cayman. It was for a family that I knew through my daughter's softball team. Our daughters played softball together. She was already looking for a trip and I stepped in to assist her and I've been there a couple of times to that island before so I had knowledge of it and got her this great package that she said was actually lower than what she had seen when she was researching it herself. Marci Jennings: She was happy about it, I was excited about it. I really was not focused even on what the commission was going to look like but then when I finished booking the trip, I think maybe the agency received about $600 in commission off of this package that I put together for her and I thought, whoa. I would have done this solely for discounted travel at the time. I would have been in just for that because I loved it so much. I thought okay wait there might actually be something to this. Shane Sams: Did you, the agency that you were working through got 600 and then you get a part of that or something like that? Marci Jennings: Exactly, exactly. Shane Sams: It's kind of like a real estate agent the broker gets a part of the commission and you get the rest of it basically. Marci Jennings: Yeah, exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Let's explore that just a little bit because there's probably people out there thinking okay I love to travel this sounds like an awesome job for me. Shane Sams: I mean I could book four trips a month and make a couple grand. It's crazy when you think about the math when it starts to add up. Jocelyn Sams: The question that I think our audience might be asking right now is do you have to work through an agency or what are the benefits of working through an agency? Marci Jennings: Yes. That's a great question. There are lots of different ways that people would do a career as a travel agent. I choose to go through an agency like this and affiliate myself with an agency because they basically take care of all of the contracts. Because as your, there's so many different entities that you can book through. Each individual cruise line, Disney, all these different resorts. The possibilities are endless. They manage all of the contracts on the backend of that and keep track of all the commissions coming in because when I say that you get paid on the time of travel that's not an exact science they all pay at slightly different intervals but that's kind of an average. Marci Jennings: There's all these back office stuff that comes through and I just decided that wasn't really something that I wanted to focus my time on. They already had all of that set up. From that perspective that's an advantage. The other advantage is that the way that those contracts are set up and the amount of commission that you get is based upon the volume of bookings. If you're with an agency that is selling quite a bit of travel you're commission level is going to be higher per booking. Shane Sams: Oh I see. Yes. Because there's other people in there selling too so it's like our agency sold 10 Disney packages instead of your individual self sold two you're going to a lower commission than someone who is selling 10 or whatever. Marci Jennings: Exactly yes, yes. Shane Sams: Got you. Marci Jennings: That's definitely an advantage of that of going through an agent. Shane Sams: You're outsourcing the backend is what you're doing. By giving up a little bit of commission you could earn, you're either going to pay someone to do that and hire someone to do it or you're going to do it yourself anyway. Marci Jennings: Exactly. Shane Sams: It's like I choose to make a little less per sale to not have to mess with all that backend work. Marci Jennings: Exactly, yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Let's talk a little about your actual day-to-day. You do work with an agency but you do work from your house, right? Shane Sams: You're your own boss kind of, you're like a sales, it's basically sales and planning, right? Jocelyn Sams: Yes, yes. I'm an independent contractor affiliated with an agency and we all work from home and in fact the entire company is just based out of a house too. There's no Brick and Mortar Business associated with this whatsoever. Shane Sams: That's what we like to hear. That's the flipped lifestyle right there. That's all, people get confused I think when we say, we probably don't do a good enough job at this. We talk a lot about starting your own business, we talk a lot about being self-employed, we talk about being independent a lot but really what we're just saying is, can you construct a life where you have total control of your time everyday, right? Where you get to dictate what you do. Where you get to choose how much money you want to make. Some people don't realize that when you do go down this path this flipped lifestyle path, this work from home path. Shane Sams: That you don't have to go make a million dollars. If you're happy, if you get to a certain level and be like I'm going to make X dollars as a travel agent and then I'm gonna go travel, right? I don't want to grind 90 hours every single month of the year. That's really what it sounds like you're doing as an independent contractor. You get up and you decide when you want to make your calls, when you wanna email people, when you wanna plan a trip. If you got a soccer game you go, if you want to, we were in Jamaica. Marci planned a trip for us in Jamaica and we look over and she shows up. She walks into the restaurant at the resort. I'm like, that's awesome. She just decided to go to Jamaica and she did. Jocelyn Sams: It's hilarious because we live in, Marci lives in the Midwest, we live in Kentucky and we're like lets meet up in Jamaica. That's- Shane Sams: That's where we met each other. Jocelyn Sams: ... where I met you in person. Shane Sams: Am I right? Marci Jennings: Yes that was the best. Jocelyn Sams: Not the worst life ever. Shane Sams: That's right. What does that day-to-day look like? Just on a normal, let's just say we can talk peak not peak whatever but like, just a general day happens as a virtual travel agent when you wake up what do you do? Marci Jennings: Yes, yes. Just like you were just saying Shane it is, the benefits of this is definitely the flexibility. As I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast I do have two kids and they are involved in a lot of activities. My day-to-day never looks the same. That can be a blessing and a curse. I feel like as a business owner most people struggle with that. The different things that are always a part of my day and what I need to juggle as an agent is, new business. Producing quotes and talking to different clients that have reached out to me for new business. Servicing current business, the people that are about to travel. I'm preparing itineraries for them, making sure their questions are answered, emailing the resorts for any special requests that they have. Managing those people that have already booked travel with me and getting that going. Marci Jennings: I also do some marketing which, the different avenues I use for that is, going to networking groups and then using social media so creating my content in regards to that. The majority of my time is spent on the computer. Doing primarily everything through email. In this industry and I think many others anymore is you're juggling the various ways in which people prefer to communicate. I think that's one of the things that you definitely have to get used to too. Is that some clients are texting me, some of them are Facebook messaging me on my personal page or business page. Emailing me, calling me, there's a variety of ways in which people communicate. That's something that I feel like is hard for some people to get used to too. Shane Sams: Do you have a home office or do you just primarily work wherever your laptop is? Do you coffee shop it up? Do you work at home most of time? How do you prefer to work. Marci Jennings: Most, right. Most of the time I work from home because I prefer quieter environments so when my kids are not here it's a quiet environment but not always. Occasionally I go to coffee shops too, I do a little bit, I mix it both but primarily home. Shane Sams: That's an interesting challenge because it's so funny how different work from home business work. Jocelyn and I have very much tailored our business in a way that we control communication as much as possible, right? We do two member calls with our community every month. Those are an hour and a half each. We have forums that we can go in and check every day and that's the only way to communicate with us, correct? We also do have an email, we have a tier where people can email us once a week, right? It's funny because we have, our business tightly controls this way people can communicate Shane Sams: Your business is the main thing is, everybody communicates differently. I'm always fascinated by how different work from home jobs can look, right? How different challenges creep up in different things to where, some people, I love to communicate like this. Jocelyn likes tight communications where nobody can get a hold of her notifications, no nothing. I like, I'm on Voxer, I'm talking to you on a podcast, I'm going to type you an email. You can build it and lean toward the work from home opportunity that you really want to do. Marci Jennings: Right. Yes, yes. Yeah and I think that part of why there's, it would be difficult to create that tighter way of communicating is because almost everyone that works in travel, when you start with your warm market and lose the people that you've, that you have as clients from the beginning are people that you know very well. Your friends and family. Especially because it's not something that, there's no additional cost to it. If your friends and family are gonna travel it's a no brainer why would they not use you. I would say, still today the majority of my clients are people that are friends. Shane Sams: Do you have a lot of repeat business? Is there a lot of repeat business? Marci Jennings: Yes. It definitely is. Shane Sams: Outside of, I know we're repeat business. We're calling you like every three months. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we've also sent a lot of friends your way as well. Shane Sams: Oh yeah. We're like, you gotta call Marci she's the one to do it. Marci Jennings: Yes. Shane Sams: Do you ever work while you're traveling? Does Disney or a resort call you to come down but you're like, oh man I've got like a client that I've gotta really plan a trip for but I also want to really be on the beach in Grand Cayman. Jocelyn Sams: Or are you at an all inclusive resort and annoying clients are texting you all the time. I mean I don't know who that would be. Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn's harrassing you. But, do you do that? Do you sometimes, you just take it with you and you're like, man this is amazing I can go do my travel agent job at the resort I'm planning for someone basically. Marci Jennings: Yes, absolutely. At this point of my business I travel so much that there's no way I wouldn't be, that I can get by not working during some of my travel. Sometimes it's just by choice because I can work from my house or I can work from my balcony at on of my favorite destinations especially in the winter- Shane Sams: I feel you, yeah. Marci Jennings: ... that would be my choice. Shane Sams: Location independence is amazing. That's one of the craziest. I love what you, I've never heard anybody say it that way but I totally felt you when you said that I have total flexibility but it's a blessing and a curse, right? Because we struggle with that all the time. When you wake up and you literally can do anything you want sometimes you really want to go anything you want but you got work to do. It's like, when do you do it, you're constantly juggling back and forth between activities. Shane Sams: Like we got up this morning we started home school, I checked my emails and then we did more home school, then I went out for a paddle on the lake on my paddle board and Jocelyn was inside doing something then we came and do a podcast. Sometimes that can get very confusing or it's hard, it is a struggle to find the discipline to get all your stuff done. Freedom is amazing but it's also hard to master, right? Marci Jennings: Exactly, yes, yes. I feel that for most people that's a constantly evolving process because especially when you have kids your schedule is constantly evolving. I mean, my schedule today and what it looked like four and a half years ago when I started this business, I mean it's not at all, there's very little similarities to what it looks like. Shane Sams: How old did you say your kids were? I forgot how old your kids are. Marci Jennings: 13 and nine. Shane Sams: Do you, our kids are 10 and eight, right? We're kind of right behind you on the scale there but I swear it feels harder now to manage life with older kids than it even did when they were babies, right? Because it's like they have so much more stuff going on. They can think and fight back so much more, right? It's hard to juggle everything because my schedule feels different every six months because they play a different sport or they- Marci Jennings: Right. Same here. Shane Sams: ... do a different activity. It's almost harder, I don't want to say that, someone is going to write me and go, I've got a baby it's hard. I know babies- Jocelyn Sams: It's all hard. Shane Sams: It's all hard. Everybody, what we're saying is it's just a different kind of challenge at this age and I'm so thankful that we're self employed because I don't know how we would have managed it if we were being forced to be somewhere else all the time, right? Marci Jennings: Right. I think the same exact thing all the time. Hey, I don't know how I would do it. I'm definitely, I definitely feel very blessed to have the flexibility but it's something that you constantly have to- Shane Sams: Earn. Marci Jennings: ... Figure how to manage. Jocelyn Sams: Let's talk just a little bit about how did you know it was time to make this a full time thing? You were working physical therapy, you were working part-time travel agent. When did you decide okay this is viable and I can go all in on this? Shane Sams: Or even I want this more even if I make less for a while. Like how did that thought process work out? Marci Jennings: Yes. I can't remember exactly when the timing of that worked out for me. I can't tell you exactly when because the blessing also that I had was as a physical therapist I at that time I was at that time what we call PRN which means I was called in on as a needed basis. The company I was working for needed me kind of routinely about 20 hours a week. It was in that place where as I got busier I could say you know what? I don't need to be here this much let's tone it down Shane Sams: Cut it back a little bit. Marci Jennings: ... a little bit. I was able to really wean it back slowly. I would say that it was probably a year to a year and a half into my travel business before I was really able to really completely set that aside and feel comfortable with it. Shane Sams: That's the time we usually find happens. It's somewhere between a year to 18 months that you can look down and say, I want this more even if it doesn't make sense to everybody else right now. Right? Marci Jennings: Right. Right. Shane Sams: There's nothing wrong, you had an unfair advantage you had put in all the work to become a physical therapist to give yourself that kind of opportunity. Everyone has unfair advantages, Jocelyn and I talked a lot about how even as teachers we did have a little extra time off, right? We could get some stuff done. We always had weekends off. As a football coach, I had a choice whether to stay in the office until seven o'clock or leave right after practice, right? We all have these unfair advantages and you capitalized on it to be able to build something that you really wanted. Jocelyn Sams: We don't have to get super specific here but as far as an income were you able to replace your physical therapy income with being a travel agent. Were you able to exceed that? What did that look like? Shane Sams: What does an industry person, what can you make as a travel agent? Jocelyn Sams: What's an average in other words? Marci Jennings: Yeah, great question. I'll tell you a little story back from when I interviewed with the owner of this company. She knew that I was coming to the table as a physical therapist and she pretty much knew what kind of income that produced. In the conversation with her because she never really had anyone, she had very few agents that were full-time. A lot of them were teachers and loved Disney and did that on the side. Marci Jennings: I remember her saying to me, she said, "Well, if you think you're going to love this that's fantastic but just so you know we haven't really had anyone that's really made more than about $30,000 doing this so I just want you to be aware of that because I knew you're coming from a different place a different income level and I just want you to be realistic. I said, again, ironically I was like, I don't care, I'm in. But as I built this business and it did not happen overnight but over the course of time I was definitely, I was able to exceed what I used to make as a physical therapist even when I worked full-time. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Marci Jennings: It is something that the more you work it, the more time you put into it the more effort, the better you are at it. I'm trying to say you can write your own paycheck. There's no range for sure, I would say probably some published average out there would probably say $30,000 but- Shane Sams: I read, I was researching it right before we got on and I read that part-time people hit around, can hit around 30 then the industry median was like 80 something thousand. For people who are totally full-time like all in, you know what I'm saying? But that's incredible because you have no commute. You have no boss, you have no whatever it's just do you want to roll up your sleeves and go make an income and do it from the beach. Jocelyn Sams: You travel to exotic locations all the time and it's part of your job. It's not the worst job ever. Marci Jennings: Right. Shane Sams: Our friend Susanne who does our, who did our Disney travel for us, she literally goes to Disney every month. She goes to Disney, not just Disney. One month's Disney, the next month she's probably walking around the Millennium Falcon getting ready to open Star Wars right now. She goes to the one in California, they just got to these places and have these events. Even those side benefits and she's just rushing it too like planning trips. Marci Jennings: Right, yeah. Shane Sams: It's just amazing, it absolutely is. Marci Jennings: I always think of the contrast, people that would create and start a traditional business, most people have to immerse a lot of money into something like that and then you should turn a profit from three to five years. While, I caution people when they are looking at this industry that they have to work for a while before they really see, before they get paid. Still there's no overhead and you're not waiting three to five years to turn a profit. Shane Sams: If you're consistent and prolific one you get there, it just will happen every month. It's actually kind of a benefit at some point because if I book a trip in June and I know I'm gonna get paid in January for a trip that they're taking, that's pretty sweet. Even that is flexibility because you might be like I'm gonna take a vacation and I booked these three trips back in May and they're going to feed here so I'm just going to go on vacation then, right? So, there's even some planning there. Jocelyn Sams: Do you have a website or are you primarily on social media? Marci Jennings: I just am on social media. Our agency has a website but I would say that probably very few people come through those channels- Jocelyn Sams: I like that because I think that it's a good lesson and we talk a lot about online business but online business doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have your own website. I mean- Shane Sams: You just have a Facebook page and like Instagram. Marci Jennings: Yes, I just solely do Facebook at this point. Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing like your whole, that's incredible. Jocelyn Sams: But you had the foresight to say, okay social media is a powerful platform I'm going to get on here. I'm going to post regularly I'm going to show people what I'm doing, where I'm going. I'm going to keep posting and things happen. Like I found you just from a random Facebook search. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: That's going to happen sometimes. Shane Sams: You don't need a website, right? I mean it's like you just need a way for people to find you and that's one of the key components of our courses is it's just about putting yourself out there. It's just about starting. It's just about doing it because if you say on Facebook, hey I'm a travel agent now if anybody wants me to plan a trip you got a chance that someone will reach out to you. Jocelyn Sams: But if you say it one time- Shane Sams: They won't. Jocelyn Sams: ... People will forget. Marci Jennings: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: You need to remind people, hey I'm here I do something really cool then that is going to get them an opportunity over and over again to come and use your services. Shane Sams: Do you get most of your customers through referrals or do you get them on Facebook or, like how do you find, that's the hardest part in any business, any work from home job is how do I find people to pay me, right? Marci Jennings: Yes. Shane Sams: How do you find most of your customers? Marci Jennings: It's primarily through referrals. Some of those started as, they found me on Facebook just like the two of you. Then they referred me out from there. I would say my two primary ways was just word of mouth and secondly through Facebook. I did a lot of going back and forth between marketing through my personal Facebook page and my business Facebook page in the beginning. I never, I always caution all business owners to be careful about not spamming their personal Facebook page all the time with business things. Shane Sams: For sure. Marci Jennings: But also I'm pretty blessed to be in an industry where nobody gets tired of seeing pictures of beautiful beaches and videos of amazing things, right? Everyone likes to look at those types of things. That's our industry, it's a flashy photo that draws people in. Bridging and reminding people over and over again on my personal page and linking that over to my business page really helped me get a consistent audience there. Again because I travel so much now it's probably now on average about every six weeks to a different resort then people see, all the people that I'm friends with they see my personal travels on there and they see a business page as well. Shane Sams: Exactly. Basically, how many, just to start closing this up a little bit. Marci Jennings: Sure. Shane Sams: I can see where someone could get into this maybe and even start making a couple of hundred bucks a month which is really, we always say that $500 is a car payment that could change someone's life, right? Marci Jennings: Right. Shane Sams: How many people do you really think, when you said it took you about a year maybe a year and a half like how many people does it take to support. If you have a good book of business of about 20 families. Is that, are we talking 20 families? Are we talking, like what would it take to make a living someday doing this? Just to give anyone that might pursue this path a goal, just to have that good recurring base of a good steady income where you know people are going to call you at least once a year for vacations. What do you think a number would be someone could shoot for? Marci Jennings: Yeah, that's a good question. That really depends on if somebody is looking for a $30000 or a $80000 income. That really looks different. Shane Sams: Let's say 30 because I'm sure there's thousands of people who are listening right now that'd be like, I would love to have 30 extra thousand. Marci Jennings: Right, right. Yes. You would probably on average need about 75 clients or families to produce that. You might have 10 in one of those months just like we talked about earlier those peaks and valleys, two in another month and 20 in another. It's not always even. It should organically grow over time. If you work- Shane Sams: It stacks on top of each other basically. Marci Jennings: Yes. If you work it consistently and you find your niche and you're passionate about what you do. It will at some point grow to the point where you couldn't stop it if you tried. Shane Sams: Awesome. Sounds amazing. Marci Jennings: That's where you have to then figure out what you want to do with it. Where you want to go with that. Shane Sams: That's awesome. What an amazing thing though. A lot of the time, one of the things I say a lot on the show is you only need a 100 people to pay you $50 a month to make $60000 a year. That's a thing we say a lot just to drive home the fact that you really, it doesn't take a lot of mountain moving to make a living working from home, online, as a travel agent, as an online business owner, as whatever. What you just said was, if you had just 75 people book a trip in a year you could add $30000 to your life. That is life changing money. Even if you don't pursue it full-time. Like you said it, once the, it's like a dynamo once it starts, once the avalanche starts, it might be a snowball at the beginning but you're not stopping it once it gets going and it's just amazing to see what you've built in your life, it's unbelievable. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's super cool. We're so glad that you've come on today to tell our audience about what you do and just all the cool benefits of being a travel agent. We want to give you an opportunity to let people know where to find you. If someone's interested in booking a trip. I know you do all different kinds of travel, you specialize in Caribbean all inclusive, right? Marci Jennings: That's right. Yes Caribbean and Mexico. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. If you're interested in learning more about Marci, where would they be able to find you? Marci Jennings: My business Facebook page is Off to Anyland Travel by Marci. Jocelyn Sams: Your name is Marci with an I, Marci Jennings: Marci with an I that's right. Shane Sams: All they have to do is go to Facebook search for Off to, what was it? Jocelyn Sams: Off to Anyland. Shane Sams: Off to Anyland or Marci Jennings and they would be able to find you online. We will put links to that in the show notes as well. I am actually also going to put together, I'm gonna have to research this a little bit. I'm gonna put together a little guide to anybody who might want to pursue being an online travel agent. Jocelyn Sams: Totally free. Shane Sams: Totally free, this is a, it's not even in the community or anything like that. I'm just going to put it with this podcast. You can go to flippedlifestyle.com/travelagent. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E.com/travelagent and we will have a little information packet there so you can learn more about maybe pursuing this as your version of the flipped lifestyle. All right, Marci well thank you so much again for being here. We don't have a lot of quote on quote experts on the show. We're trying to bring a different kind of expert, people who are literally out there doing things for a living. That are just making everybody else look at them like they're crazy. I look at your Facebook feed all the time because we're friends and I think you're crazy but it's the best kind of crazy because you're crazy on the beach, you're crazy on an all inclusive. Jocelyn Sams: You're our people Marci. Shane Sams: You're our kind of people because you are truly living the flipped lifestyle and it's absolutely amazing to watch. Thank you so much for being transparent, just sharing your story with everybody today. Marci Jennings: Thank you so much. Shane Sams: All right guys that wraps up another great episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Thank you so much for listening today. Man what an amazing story hearing about another way you can work from home. Another way that you can make money online. Marci does, has an amazing job as an online virtual travel agent and we would love to help you learn more about that too. Again, go to flippedlifestyle.com/travelagent or if you want to pursue any other work from home opportunities we teach a lot of different paths inside of the flip your life community. We would love to help you find your path to freedom just like we found ours. Just like Marci found hers inside of our community. Shane Sams: All you have to do to learn more about that is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can learn all about the flip your life community. Before we go we would love to close with a bible verse, Jocelyn and I grab a lot of information from the bible and we want to share some of that with you today. Today's bible verse comes from Psalm 18:36, the bible says, you give a wide place for my steps and my feet will not slip. Go out there, travel, do what it takes to build a business that can give your family freedom and change your family tree and your future forever. Shane Sams: It's out there. There are so many, different ways. It's not just build a website, it's not just be a travel agent, it's not just teach online. They're so many paths to give you and your family the freedom that you deserve if you just get started. Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Off to Anyland Travel by Marci More Info on How to Become an Online Travel Agent Flip Your Life Community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we're going to show you how to work from home teaching English online. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. On today's show, we're going to show you how to work from home teaching English online. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited for this episode, because we are kicking off a new series here on The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, all about different ways to work from home and make money online. You know, Jocelyn and I and the community ... We have a lot of trainings about a lot of different things you can do online. You can offer goods, you can offer services, you can offer digital products, you can offer physical products, you can do coaching, but most of our focus is on membership-based websites. Now, I- Jocelyn: And essentially becoming a business owner. Shane: Yeah. And when you become a business owner, that can mean a lot of different things you have to learn and a lot of different responsibilities. You got to build a website, you got to manage your brand, you got to manage your social media presence, you got to create courses and content, and that can be very overwhelming for people. And a lot of people have asked us, "What are some other ways to work from home? What are some other ways to make money online? What are some other ways to live the flipped lifestyle, to get to control my schedule, to get to work when I want to and be more available for my family and for my kids?" So that's where this series came from. We are going to be bringing on a number of guests who make money online and work from home in different ways such as creating and selling courses or even owning and operating a membership. And our first guest in this series is Jocelyn's friend Gina. Gina, welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Gina: Thank you. Jocelyn: Yes, we are excited to talk to you today. And Gina's actually someone who I know in real life. We used to work together a few years ago. And of course, we were Facebook friends, and I see she is always posting cool stuff about her job. And I sent her a message not too long ago, and I said, "Would you be willing to come onto our podcast and talk about what it is that you're doing?" So let's get into that just a little bit. Tell us a little bit about you and your family and what it is that you are doing online. Gina: Okay. I have a large family. I have eight kids at home, and I teach ... Well, English as a second language to Chinese children at home. So I have been doing that a little over a year now, and it is the best job I have ever had. Shane: I bet. Gina: It is. Shane: It's probably the best break you've ever had, as well. Gina: It is, actually, and most people would think you want to be with kids more, but yes. And I actually get up at three, four in the morning to do that. It's just an awesome job. Shane: So what is your background? Okay, we're going to get into teaching English as a second language online. So you actually do this live, right? This actually happens online? Gina: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane: Okay. So what is- Gina: Yes. Shane: What is your background? What were you doing before the eight children arrived or you did this online? Gina: In the midst of it. I was ... Actually, I worked at the school, and my degree is in psychology, so I had started working on my Masters a little bit, but it wasn't in teaching. And you do not have to have a teaching degree to do this, but you do need to have a degree. But I did work at the school for about six ... A little over six years, and it just ... It wasn't a lot of money. The flexibility wasn't as great. Although I was off during the summer. But I decided to stay home when my youngest one was born, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do when she got school-aged, but I knew I wanted to go back to work but wasn't sure about finding a job that was flexible enough for me to take off if I needed to ... if my kids were sick or if there was doctor's appointments or that would also compensate me for my degree. So I kind of looked into stay-at-home jobs. A lot of them were data entry. A lot of them were this and that, and I stumbled upon this, and it was just like, "Wow." I mean, it was a life-changing decision for me. Jocelyn: Yeah, that's awesome. And what Gina didn't mention is that ... Of course, we live in a super small area, so even though you've gone to college, even though you have a degree, it's not always easy to find good jobs, and particularly ones that are flexible. And that's why a lot of people work at the school system, and I suspect that's why you worked for the school system as well. Gina: Absolutely, yes it was. It was so when the kids were off, I would be off. I would have my summers off and that kind of thing. But in this situation, when I found this job, it was ... I just make my own hours, and I'm actually ... I start around five o'clock in the morning. I could work all night if I wanted to, but I start around four or five. I end around 10 am, and I'm done for the day, and I get paid really well to do that, and I get to teach children and love what I do, and I get to do it at home in my pajamas, and I don't have to get out- Shane: Without ... You don't need a shower. Just get up. Do whatever you want. Make your coffee, right? Gina: You know what, it doesn't ... Yes. It doesn't matter if I've had a shower. Nobody knows. So it's great. It's great. Shane: What does something like this pay? Let's talk about the job first. So you said you get up in the morning, and you literally are working with these kids that are in China, I guess, teaching them English. So are you on a Skype call? Is it a group call with a bunch of kids? Is it one-on-one? What are you actually doing during these hours that you're working? Gina: Well, the company that I work for will ... They do the curriculum and they do everything, so there's no paperwork on my end or anything like that. So I am one-on-one with the students. So it's only one-on-one with this particular company. And I get up, and it's like you have a teacher's portal. So you log in to the teacher's portal. I am not that tech savvy, so it's okay. But I have learned a lot, and they will walk you through ... You know, with workshops and different things to help you, but you ... It's almost like you're FaceTiming someone, but it's the student on the other end, and they are in Beijing, and ... A lot of them are in Beijing, because it's the whole country of China, so there's different cities and areas, and I have 25 minutes that I teach one student, and one class is 25 minutes long. Gina: So you teach them that ... It's a slideshow, so it pulls up on the teacher's portal. All you do is log into your classroom. They have booked your class. You don't have to do anything other than just open the times that you want to teach and that you're available, and then the company is actually the one that talks to the parents, because they can speak Chinese. I do not speak Chinese. And they book the classes for you, and all you do is you have an app. You can check who's booked your classes. You log in at the time that you have chosen to open up, and the student's right there in front of you. Shane: That's amazing. So it's like having a business, but you don't have to go find your own leads. They just find them for you and they book your calendar, and there's so many kids over there doing this, you probably just always have a booked calendar, right? Gina: Oh, you do. In the very beginning, it's almost ... You get a couple here and there trickle in. And then once they start giving you good reviews, then you just get more, and then they can ... Now I have so many wanting to book me that I can't keep up with it, and I have to close slots. It's very ... And the kids. You build a connection with the families and with the kids, and then I also ... WeChat is what it's called over in China. They don't have Facebook. But you can talk back and forth with the parents, because a lot of them do speak English, and you just get to know. You have a good rapport with the family. And I have a family that actually wants to come visit over here. Jocelyn: Oh, that is so cool. Gina: So it is very ... They send you videos. They'll say, "Look what we did today," and I have built so many connections across the world just over this job. It's pretty unbelievable. Jocelyn: Yeah, that is awesome. And you do have a little bit of autonomy as far as the way that you present the material, right? Because I know I've seen some of your videos where you've worn princess crowns and different types of things. Shane: Just fun stuff. Gina: Yeah. You do. Because the girls and boys ... They like different things, and you are to give them a reward. That's their motivation. So as you're doing the lesson, you will say, "Great job," and you give them a star, and it's digital. And they also have a ton of digital Snapchat kind of things. You can make yourself have bunny ears, and just ... It's kind of something fun. It gets the kids laughing, relaxed, comfortable, then they learn better. And anyway, they do have rewards. I'll do princesses. I can put on ... You get a crown and I'll put it on myself. Or you get earrings, and they're kind of like, "Wow, beautiful." And it's just a great connection to have as they're learning English. And they pick up quick. Shane: Tell me about the hours, then. So you do it really in the morning, but you also have a huge family, so you've got ... I can't keep up with two kids. I don't know how you're doing ... I have to be honest, you just became one of my ... We have a Mount Rushmore of awesome parents, people that have seven or more kids. You are now on the Mount Rushmore of these parents. But- Gina: Well, thanks. Shane: Did you pick the early hours, or it's just really necessary to do that because of the time zone differences, or a little of both? Gina: No, it's a little of both, maybe, but ... You have ... It's a 12-hour time zone difference, so when it's 8 AM here, it's 8 PM there. Now in China, they do ... When they get home from school, they do lessons. They have English lessons. Almost every family. It's unbelievable. But there are over 60,000 teachers that teach for this company. So they have ... They'll come home, and they'll do a class, which is just 25 minutes. So you can open up spots anywhere from 7:30 PM at this time here all the way until 10 AM. So if you want to teach from 7:30 PM until 11 ... Which it doesn't work for me, because my kids, that's bed time. But you can do that, or you can get up early like I do and teach from four to 10, or you can teach from midnight to four. It's your choice, and I have no problem getting booked at any time during, because there's always even preschool ... Because the kids were age ranged from three years old ... Yes. Some of them speak better English than my four-year-old here, but ... Shane: That's what happens in Kentucky. I'm just saying. Gina: It is, I know. It's really bad. So ... But from three all the way to 16. So you do have kids that aren't in school yet that can take a 10 AM morning class in China, and it's 10 PM our time. So you create your own schedule on what works for you, and that's why it's so great. Shane: Wow. So if you're going to be out of town or something, you can just basically block off, "I'm not going to be ..." If you're going on vacation, you can just say, "Hey, guys, I'm not going to be able to do it this week," or you literally could just bring your computer if you wanted to and do it from anywhere. You just have to have your laptop with you. Gina: There are many teachers that work for this company that actually travel around the world and teach. There is a teacher that I know that lives in Switzerland, actually, and she doesn't really live there, but she is staying there right now, and she is traveling around, and she just has her laptop. All you need is your laptop. Shane: That's amazing. Gina: So you can go anywhere. Yes it is. Shane: See, that's what we see. We call it "the flipped lifestyle." There's a lot of funny stuff of how we got that name, but what we really mean is the world tells us "You have to have a 9-5. You've got to be sitting in your desk. You have to follow the rules. You've got to build this life exactly like we say it has to be," and we're like, "No, you could literally flip that upside down and live however you want. If you want to get up at 5 AM and work and make money online, you can do it. If you want to live in Switzerland and travel Europe, all you need is your laptop. If you want to be like us, we work from home or anywhere we travel. That's what we do. We just bring our laptop with us." That's what the flipped lifestyle is. That's why we're bringing this new series in, is we want people to realize that there is unlimited opportunity to make a living online. There's unlimited opportunity to build the exact schedule you want. Shane: Like this morning ... We stayed up really late last night. My brother was in town, and I think it was like 10:30 or 11 before we even laid down. So we slept in a little bit this morning. We got up, we did a member call with about 45, 50 people at nine o'clock. We stopped and went and hung out with the kids. I rode my exercise bike, and Jocelyn made a phone call. And then Jocelyn just took off her robe as she was sitting down for this podcast interview. I'm in sweatpants and a t-shirt and flip-flops right now, and we got on the call with you. And then the next thing will be ... The next thing that Jocelyn's going to homeschool co-op next. So then we'll come back, go to a basketball game, and then maybe I'll do a little work before bed tonight. It's just amazing the life you can build because we have this crazy tool like the internet that can connect us with an entire other country that doesn't even speak our language. It's amazing. Gina: It's so ... It is amazing, because I can be teaching a student, and it's dark there, and I can show them my window and say, "Look here," and they're like, "Oh my goodness." It's amazing, because the crickets are chirping in China, and I am teaching this. Or I can be in the evening at a basketball game, and I can open some classes at 10 PM, 10:30, and I'm like, "Well, I got to go because I got to teach a couple classes," and I can pull in 10 minutes before my class starts, get on my laptop and teach and make money for an hour or two. I just get to choose that. And we have talked many times in our family ... Eventually, if the kids get older, we would like to move to North Carolina where my family is. Well, a typical job that you would have ... "What am I going to do? I've got to apply somewhere? I've got to see if I can transfer." But you know what? I don't have to worry about that, because I could go anywhere, and- Shane: Your job comes with you. Gina: I don't have to ever leave. Shane: Right. Your job comes with you, basically. Gina: Yes. So I can go anywhere. I can go on vacation. When I go on vacation, I can close it out like you had asked. I make my schedule two weeks in advance. If I know something's coming up, I just don't open those slots, so they're not available to students to book. But if something happens, you can cancel. You can cancel things. They like you not to, but. But if you're going on vacation, you just don't open slots. So you get to control that. It's amazing. It really is. Shane: Yeah. What's amazing about hearing your story is it's so different than what we do. Because we have a lot ... I feel like we have a lot more moving parts, but it's also other stuff that we like to do. I like to go out and try to find new clients. I like to ... The lead-generation part is something that I really dig. That's my jam. That's what I like to do. But you were kind of like, "I don't want to own this whole business. I just want to be a part of something that I can control my schedule." And there's so much flexibility and freedom to just build whatever you decide. You don't have to do what me and Jocelyn do. You can do what Gina does. You don't have to do what Gina does. You can build it like another way. Jocelyn: Yeah, and I just ... I have loved watching all of the stuff that you post. It's very obvious to me that this is something that you just really, truly enjoy. Tell people about your set-up, where it's at, because I get a kick out of that too. Gina: I am in the laundry room. So I actually sit right by the washer and dryer, and I just have a little desk and my laptop, and a bunch of my kids toys' are different props. Which I've not spent any money on actually, but a whiteboard. And nobody sees what's around. Now I will say that there have been times that I have had the dryer going, and it goes ... My kids are like, "I hear something." I'm like, "It's the dryer." And they think it's so funny. Shane: That is hysterical. Gina: But yeah, I teach from the laundry room, and it's just ... I can go anywhere. Sometimes I can take my laptop and move it with my camera and show them Christmas decorations that we do with the Christmas tree, and they're like, "Whoa." Shane: Do you just shine them at a wall or something so it looks like you're ... [crosstalk 00:16:59]. Jocelyn: Well, she has decorations. Shane: Oh, like behind you. So you've got the ... So it's just like a set. It reminds me of ... You know what's his name, Bear Grylls, Man Vs. Wild? You ever seen that show where the guy- Gina: No. Shane: Okay, so there's this show called Bear Grylls: Man Vs. Wild. He goes out into the wilderness, and he's like, "Here's how you survive in the Arctic," and "Here's how you survive a volcano," and all this stuff. Jocelyn: He drinks urine and all this. Shane: Yeah, he drinks urine and eats spiders and all this crazy stuff. He looks like he's actually out in the wilderness, but I watched this expose on him one time, and there was this one where he looks like he's climbing a mountain, and they pan back, and he's laying flat, and they just turned the camera sideways so it would look like he's climbing the mountain. And there's a road right behind him. And you're like, "I'm teaching in my classroom, but I'm really doing laundry at the same time." Gina: Yeah, it is essentially kind of the same, because I have a board behind me, and it's got the ABCs and it's got some of my things. But honestly, three feet over is a pile of towels and a bunch of clothes. Shane: So how- Gina: Dirty clothes. Shane: So tell us again, how much can someone expect basically to make an hour during this? Now, this particular job, the company that you're working for does require a degree, some kind of college degree, right? Gina: Yes. You have to have some kind of college degree and at least two years' teaching experience. Now you don't have to be a teacher in the classroom. Two years' teaching experience could be homeschooling. It can be coaching if your ... It can be Vacation Bible School. It can be Sunday School classes. Shane: Just working with kids basically. Gina: Anything like that. Yes, some kind of teaching. That's what you need in order to get the job. However, what you make is ... Everybody's brought in around about the same amount give or take 50 cents or a dollar an hour, but you make about 20-25 dollars an hour, depending on the class you teach. So if a student books you within 24 hours, you've opened a slot, it's not been booked, and you only have 24 hours to prepare for that class ... Which you really don't have to prepare, honestly. But you only have 24-hour notice. You get an extra couple dollars on the hour. So if it's a class that is ... It just depends on which kind of class you teach on how much you're getting paid. So it's sometimes 22 an hour, sometimes it's 24, sometimes it's 20. It fluctuates depending on what you were hired in at. Shane: But it's over 20. That's insane. Gina: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Shane: Jobs in our area ... And I know in a lot of areas, you can't just go out and get a 20-dollar-an-hour job. That just doesn't happen. And to be able to do it online, to do it from home, control your schedule, and ... I mean, if you just got ... If you only work 20 hours a week, that's like four or five hundred dollars a week in extra money for your family. $2,000 a month. You said something like ... You said homeschool. I was just imaging the millions of homeschoolers that are out there that are looking for ways to make money. What an amazing experience to teach kids English in China, and your kids might even get to talk to them and meet someone from abroad and understand that the world is a bigger place. Gina: Oh, absolutely. Yes. You can do that, and I mean, yes. And with teaching ... There are lots of teachers that homeschool, actually. There's a Facebook group with this company where you can support one another, talk about different things, and there's homeschooling teachers, and there's teachers that travel, and there's teachers that ... with this company, and so it's such a neat experience to be able to control it all and do what you want to do and like I said, not have to get dressed. You don't have to worry about gas money, clothes money, lunch money. You're right there. It's ... You can ... Shane: That's something that we often talk about with each other, the hidden benefits of working for yourself, and especially if you can work from home. Because you don't realize how much of your life gets poured into traveling from point A to B, or how much gas money you actually spend until you don't have to spend gas money anymore, and you don't realize even the time just to get ready every day, just to prepare your food, just to leave work to go to lunch or ... Man, you get two, three hours of your life back every single day just from working from home that you can then pay forward to your kids, pay forward to your spouse, or even invest back into yourself. Jocelyn: Yeah, and I know that you do a lot of volunteering at school and you're very involved in your kids' lives outside of at home, which is really cool. Gina: Yes, and I don't know that I would be able to do that if I was doing a nine to five desk job. I'm absolutely positive, I wouldn't be able to do as much. I don't feel- Shane: Let me ask you this. Gina: Go ahead. Shane: Could you ever go back to a nine to five job now? Gina: No. No. I wouldn't. Shane: Emphatically no, right? Gina: I absolutely wouldn't. Nope. And I've had people ask me, and I actually even tried at one point to maybe try to do another job and then this. But of course, I was hired because I was getting up extra early, but it was just draining. It was getting up, getting ... I don't know, I've been spoiled, okay? And I make good money doing this, and it's just great. And my husband will sometimes say, "Oh, I need to get a sick day, or do this," and I'm thinking, "Sorry," because I don't have to ask anyone for a sick day. I hate that. I don't have to ask permission for anything, because I'm my own boss. So if I'm not feeling well, then I don't open classes. It's just that easy. Shane: This is an interesting take, too, because a lot of people are learning that those college degrees they may have gotten ... Some people are going to have a college degree in history, but not a teacher. They can't be a schoolteacher. Or somebody might have a degree in business, like a general business degree. Jocelyn: Like me. Shane: Like- Gina: Or psychology. Shane: Or psychology. There you go. And they're having trouble finding a job. But now you have something that any college degree could apply for and you could go to and you could do. Gina: Yes. I actually ... They do provide workshops, and they're all free. So once you're hired, you can take different things to get certified in different levels, and it's just free education that they help you attain while you're teaching. So I kind of feel like ... I know many teachers now, and actually one in particular, that is retiring soon, and she cannot wait, because she loves to teach, but she feels like that you can't teach as much now in the classroom as you could because of the testing and the paperwork and the discipline that you have and the classroom to deal with, where she does this on the side, and she said, "I cannot wait to retire, because I get to do this all of the time, and make extra income, and I get to be home, and I get to do what I love because it's ..." We don't do curriculum and paperwork and such like that. We do our own thing. You get to do what you love. It's just- Shane: And you get to work one-on-one with students. That's what's amazing to me. Because that's the joy I got as a ... When I was a teacher and a football coach, that was where the joy came from, where it's the one-on-one interactions with the kids, and when you're really just throwing stuff at the group, it's not as fun, because the kid's sleeping in the back, got to fill out the papers ... But it's amazing you can just have these one-on-one interactions with these kids, get to know them, and what a difference. If you teach 20 kids a week, you're teaching 20 kids to speak a second language. Who knows what doors that's going to open up for not only them but the world just interacting back and forth. Gina: Oh, it is. And it's very interesting, because they are very disciplined and diligent about their education over there. So they are ... They ask you questions. The parents ... And feedback ... will ask you things like, "Little Johnny is throwing tantrums," and they like to spank, and they're very hard on them. Gina: So it's just like, "What do you suggest to help?" And sometimes I'm like, "Winston, he's only three. It's okay. He's doing well." But ... Shane: They're so competitive there, they're probably freaking out. And ... Gina: They are. They are. Shane: It's amazing to me, too. A lot of people ask us, "How ... ?" Some people actually want to go down the "entrepreneur" route, the "business ..." "I want my own business, I want everything else," but when they're starting out, they're not making enough extra money to pay for things like website hosting or to pay for advertising, or ... They always say, "I just don't have enough money," and we're like, "There's a lot of other things you can do online to make money. What if you taught five classes a week, made 100 extra dollars a week, 400 extra dollars a month to invest in the other thing that you want to build? There's just no excuse. Jocelyn: Yeah, that's a ... It's a great side-hustle, as people say, just start it up, work as many hours as you can, maybe it would give you the opportunity to quit your nine to five job. Gina: It could, because I tell you, that happens a lot. What I've seen is ... You will think, "Oh ..." Because when I started, I thought, "I'd just like to make an extra 500 a month." And that was my goal. Well now, I can pull in almost 2,000 a month, and it's just working part time. So it's money that's been able to give me to do things with the family and vacations that I would not have been able to do before and I would have had to have worked full-time at a desk job to make what I'm making now and still have the flexibility. Shane: So let me ask you this. So what are ... ? So for someone who is thinking to themselves, "Look, I want to make money online. I want to work from home. I know that we can change our family's future and all this opportunity is in front of me," and they say, "I do want a business, maybe. Maybe I don't want to grow a business. Maybe ... I don't know exactly what I want yet, but this sounds amazing." So what are three to five tips to get started in this? Just how to succeed in it, just preparing your degree, you just fill out an application, do you just ... What are your tips for success for someone who's going into this? How can they stay organized? How can they set it up? What kind of computer do they ... ? Whatever. Just what do they need? Gina: Right. You really all too begin with you need is like a headset, which ... I just got a $25 headset at Walmart. But a headset, a whiteboard just from the dollar store and a computer. I had a hard ... I didn't have a laptop when I first started. The computer was as large as my washer, almost. It was just awful. It was ... You can have that. You would fill out online the application. It's just a basic information and YouTube videos is what I went through. There were YouTube videos of some teachers that worked there, and they, as part of their ... another business that they do, and you ... They kind of walk you through the lessons that they teach, so you can get an idea of what you would be doing, what they look for. Gina: It kind of walks you through the introductory lessons, like showing flashcards and rewards, so you can feel comfortable even before you would do an interview. Because the interviews are live, so when you first fill out an application, they will send you an email. They would say, "You want to do a little live interview." It's like five, 10 minutes, and it's over the internet, like FaceTime, like a class would be. And they send you the link and you can schedule the time, and you can do a little interview telling them about yourself, and then you'd move on to teaching a lesson, and they send you those materials and you can ... I would say watching YouTube, talking to other teachers, joining the Facebook group for this company and feeling around with other people's experiences. Shane: So do they ... So you actually do do an ... How ... You do do an interview with the company, and then you move on to actually teaching. Gina: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane: So if someone started today, how long would it take them, basically, to teach their first class, theoretically? Gina: Theoretically. It takes them as long as they would like it to take them, honestly. Some of them go really fast through it. Some of them, I think, have a lot of anxiety on teaching a lesson, and so they book their time. I know a couple who have ... I was hired pretty quick, but some will say, "Okay, I don't want to schedule. I'm not ready for two or three weeks." Some it's been months, and they're still not hired, because they keep canceling their- Shane: But in theory, if they ... Yeah, if they wanted to, they could say, I can apply, I can do my interview, go teach my first course within a couple weeks, basically. Gina: I would give yourself maybe about a month for all of it, just because once you first ... Even if you're hired within a week or a week and a half, with setting up everything, then you want to open your slides, and sometimes it takes a couple weeks or a week or two to get bookings, because you got to do your profile, you have to do a little video of yourself, like "Hey, I'm Teacher Gina," and tell them about where you're from. So to just create all of that and get booked, I would say max about a month. Shane: Yeah. There's always a barrier to entry. If you want this job, if you want to make money, if you want anything good to happen in your life, there's a barrier of entry, because if it was easy, everybody would do it. Gina: Well, right. Shane: You've got eight kids. You've got a family. You had to go through the process, and if you could do it, I would say anybody with less than eight kids ... So that's what- Gina: Absolutely. And I did my interview at 1 AM when I knew no one would bother me, and I scheduled it at that time, and yes, it is ... The first month, I made $10. So I thought ... Everybody starts out somewhere. But it was $10 I didn't have, and then the next month, it was like 500, and then the next month, it was 1700, and then it was ... So it kept increasing to where now, whatever I open gets booked automatically, and it's a fun job. It's amazing that- Shane: Do you have a waiting list or something? You said you're just over ... You can book any slot you wanted. Can the teachers refer to each other? If you have a friend, can you be like, "Oh, I don't have any slots, but my friend Jill does," or whatever. Or like ... Gina: Unfortunately, no. I would love that, though. We have talked about that before. It would be great. If there are different parents and families that have different ... that like different teaching styles, so that's where this company is the liaison between the teachers and the parents. They will ... There are people called LPs which are called Learning Partners, and they speak Chinese and English, and they will facilitate back and forth, "This teacher is really animated," and then "This teacher's more of a low key," because you don't have to be a certain personality. Everybody has different likes. Gina: So they kind of book ... You can't refer another teacher because there's no communication, really, between when they book. Now, there are called priority bookings, and the priority bookings are where the parents can say, "She doesn't have this slot open, but I really would love for my child to be taught at five," and they can send it to you, and you can say yes or no. You can say, "No, I'm sorry. I just don't want to get up that early." You can say whatever you want. Shane: What's crazy is there's a billion people in China. You know what I'm saying? There's no shortage of students. That's like 20, 30 thousand people per teacher that's doing it now. What'd you say, 60,000 people or something like that? Gina: There's over 60,000 teachers right now, yeah. Shane: And even that's not close to enough to serve a billion people. So you couldn't book everybody's schedule, even if you wanted to. It's just a matter of- Gina: You couldn't. Shane: ... system, you know? Gina: No, you couldn't. And there's just ... There's so ... The kids ... They're actually expanding now to 300 more countries, so it's an expanding business that's going to be other countries. It's not just going to be China. So it's just ... They're constantly ... They push, push, push to refer friends, or if you know anybody that has ... that's interested because the interview process can be a little grueling, but it's cake once you get hired. Shane: Yeah. It's just getting over the obstacle, and once you get past the speed bump, it's smooth sailing from there. Gina: Absolutely. Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes it is. That's what I tell people. It's just so worth it. It really is. I ... My husband will say, "Are you teaching again?" And I'm like, "I think it's almost addicting," and I've never had a job where I feel like- Shane: Well, they send you money for sitting in your laundry room. Gina: Yeah. Shane: Pretty awesome. Gina: I know. Shane: Let's be realistic Gina: I'm like, "Sorry, going to the laundry room." Shane: That's what we tell everybody about online business, is it's hard in the beginning. There is a barrier to entry to all of these things, like different ways to make money online. But gosh, the reward is something that didn't even exist for humanity 20 years ago. That's what people don't get is like this is the first time in human history a life like this was possible, and it's crazy to just waste away in the way we've done it for the first 10,000 years when you could do it the way you can do it now. Jocelyn: For sure. And we ... I mean, we definitely want people to be able to get more information from you, so what we're going to do is we are going to set up a page- Shane: Yup. It's at flippedlifestyle.com/teachingenglish, and that's all one word. So T-E-A-C-H-I-N-G-E-N-G-L-I-S-H. Flippedlifestyle.com/teachingenglish, and if you are someone who is stuck right now and you don't know what you want to do next- Jocelyn: Yeah, if this sounds appealing to you- Shane: If you're looking at making a little money to support the bigger business that you're building, maybe to get some ad revenue going, pay for hosting- Jocelyn: Or maybe you just don't want to be business owner. Like it's just not something that really appeals to you, but the idea of making some extra money is something that really appeals to you. Shane: Then go to flippedlifestyle.com/teachingenglish, and we will have more information there, and we will connect you directly to Gina. So she's the expert. She knows about this field. We're so thankful, Gina, that you came on the show and were so transparent and just giving your time away to us to tell people about this opportunity. So we will connect you with Gina, and she will guide you and tell you how you maybe can get online, teach a few classes today, and make 20, 25 bucks an hour that you can use however you ... So again, that's flippedlifestyle.com/teachingenglish. And you can get all that information. Jocelyn: All right. We are going to wrap this up for today. Gina, thank you so much for your time, and sharing your experience. Gina: Thank you. Jocelyn: It's been awesome to talk to you, and I can't wait to hear about your next adventures with your students. Gina: Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Shane: All right, guys. That wraps up another episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. What an amazing opportunity and story that we heard today from Gina, being able to work in your laundry room and talk to kids on the other side of ... literally, on the other side of the planet, exactly 12 time zones away, and make money online. Make money anywhere in the world, be able to make more time for your kids and your family. There's so many opportunities to make money online and work from home right now. It's crazy not to explore all of your options. We cover a lot of options, how to make money online and work from home inside of the Flip Your Life community. We would love to have you in our community so you can explore all the different opportunities and options and find your path to change your family's future. Shane: To learn more about the Flip Your Life community, go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, all one word. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-Dlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. And you can learn about all of the courses, coaching, and community options that we have available for you. Our mission is to help you start an online business, make money online, work from home, and flip your family's life just like we did. We can't wait to see you inside. That's all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there. Do whatever it takes. Live your life. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Click here for more information on how to teach English online Flip Your Life Community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Brad overcome fears and obstacles while scaling his business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brad overcome fears and obstacles while scaling his business. Shane: Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living on life. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to Flip Your Life? All right, let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community and help them take their business and their life to the next level. We've got an awesome guest today, Flip Your Life community member, Brad Grey, and I didn't even try to rhyme that it just happened, but Brad, welcome to the show. Brad Grey: Hey guys, how are you doing? Jocelyn: Hey Brad, we are excited to talk to you today. You have some really interesting things going on in your business, and I think that our listeners are going to love it. So let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about you, your background, and what you're doing online. Brad Grey: All right. To start, I'm a husband and a father of three. Actually, I have three kids, two daughters, basically. Age seven and a four month old now, I guess. Yeah- Shane: That's a busy house right there. Brad Grey: Yeah. You're not kidding, and also a two year old son who is ... They have those terrible twos, so you've got all that going on and a dog running around. It's definitely busy. It's definitely a challenge to find that time, but I was able to kind of figure out ways to build that time with the help of you all, segmenting out the schedules and what not. I'm still a practicing biology/science teacher pretty much whatever they ask me to teach. I've been pursuing online business since about 2012 when I made a product, and I put it on Teachers Pay Teachers, and I started to blog a little bit. Just anything I could do really to make some extra money when we had my first child and every once in a while I'd get this little thing, a sale and it was like this bug just telling me, "Hey you need to be doing something else with this." Shane: It's like a virus. Brad Grey: It went on for years, and I just kept ignoring it like, it's only a couple of bucks here, a couple of bucks there but ... Then I came across your article in Forbes right about the same time I was finishing up my master's degree in curriculum and instruction and it was like a perfect storm. I was finishing up and I knew I didn't want to be the administrator, I wanted to just dive in and write curriculum. Jocelyn: I have to stop you here because in your form that you filled out it says "I knew what I needed to do, and I consumed what I suspect was at least 150 podcasts and even listened to some several times." Shane: That's amazing. You got the full Netflix binge listen of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Brad Grey: Absolutely I used to love going to mow the lawn just so I could get a couple of episodes in. Jocelyn: That is awesome. I love that. Shane: We need to put that in all our sales copy. We even make mowing the yard fun. Brad Grey: Yeah, tough to make that fun, but it was my only opportunity to really get out there and listen to you guys. I listen to several, some of them several times just, to help provide that motivation every once in a while you just need that kick in the butt. Listening to certain episodes helps with that for sure. It helps keep me going, and I'd listen to No Sugar Shane, telling us what's up. It helps keep us going. Jocelyn: Absolutely. So you were listening to the podcast and you decided that you needed to get this thing onto your own website and then you decided to invest in yourself and become a member of our community. Tell us a little bit about that journey. Brad Grey: Yeah, so ... Well, I had it like a wordpress.org site, or a wordpress.com site. I rolled that over and then built it up from there. I did have a couple of blog followers, 75, to be exact and that I converted over to an email list, but really what the challenge was is just finding time, finding the motivation. I took your advice, early in your community you have a breakdown of how to manage your time. Basically I just charted out exactly what I needed to do and basically looked at the end goal and mapped out what I needed to do to accomplish each day in order to meet that end goal of being able to launch a full curriculum and whatever. It was like six or nine months out. So just sitting down and mapping that all out was extremely helpful and having a goal each and every single day to accomplish to make it all happen. Shane: What's amazing is, we actually talked about when we were structuring the Flip Your Life blueprint, what's the order you need to do things in, because everybody out there is like, "Do your sales funnel, write your email list," and all this. Our background is busy working parents who are raising children. When are we ever going to find time to build a business? As we were structuring the Flip Your Life blueprint, and we were putting it in order, we were like, the first thing you have to do is get your calendar under control. If you don't, you're never going to have time to build all these things that the gurus say you have to have. We actually ... The second or third chorus is, time management. Look, got to fill this out. You've got to do this. It's not sexy, it's boring, and it takes a lot of discipline. If you don't do this part, then none of the others are ... It's like a meta skill, like it magnifies all of the other things that are happening. Shane: It's funny you ... You kind of snuck up on us in the community Brad. When I saw your success story, I was like, who is this guy? Because I was like, "Brad Grey?" You posted in the success forums, "I have 136 members," and we're like, "What is it, where did that come from?" Because usually we're like, okay, we see someone make the lead magnet, we see someone make the product, we see someone do this, you just dropped this hundred plus member bomb into the success forums one day, and everybody started chiming in and I'm actually going to ... I don't always read the success posts, but I want to read a part of yours because it's amazing. I click on the link, I go in and it says, "Hey, I'm Brad Grey. I am a lurker. period." And, that's how you start the whole thing. Jocelyn: I love it Brad, you're my people. Shane: You're Jocelyn's people, and that's why we were like, okay, who is this guy? It says, "I tend not to share much, today as a result of listening to the most recent member calls and buying a ticket to Flip Your Life I wanted to share a huge success I've had in this community." You go through and say, "I learned about the Forbes article. I wasn't a member for a long time, but then I got started, got momentum and then I did a member count today, and I have 136 members. I have almost replaced my income from my full time job. It has been truly life changing. I can't think S&J enough and the community, now it's time to level up, replace my income and get to my dream level." And then you say, "I have found 136, I can find a thousand." Shane: I was like ... It's just amazing to hear someone ... I'm sure you've got other posts in here, but I'm like, this is basically your first success post that's like really getting into the detail, and it's just like, "Hey, by the way I almost replaced my income." But that's so awesome because we forget like 80% of people are lurkers, and it's okay to lurk. It's okay to sit in the back. It's okay not to be talking about every single thing and asking a question every day as long as you're taking action and actually building your business. You've been doing that man. Congratulations on all that success dude. That's incredible. Brad Grey: Thank you so much. It's work. A lurker mostly because I got no time. There's no time ... There was no time to dwell in the community. I had work to do and a very tight schedule, so just getting focused, that's what kept me from being an overactive member in the community, but- Shane: We actually find that a lot though- Brad Grey: I get what I need and I .... It was good. That check in and being able to have someone to go to when you need help and you need it fast, it's truly awesome. Shane: That's okay though because we actually find that happens. A lot of people will at the very beginning of their journey, get into the community and use it as a resource. "Okay, I've got to watch this video, I've got to take action. I've got to jump in the forums real quick and ask a question." What happens that we see a lot in the cycle of people coming through the membership is once you get to that 100, 150, 200 member level, that's when you jump in and you celebrate. That's when you jump in and start, "wait, I'm going to chime in here. I've been through that," and you get that circle of people succeeding and helping, succeeding and helping. It creates this awesome feedback loop inside the community where you're getting what you need and you're helping other people get what they need and everybody is like moving forward and growing together. Right? Brad Grey: Absolutely. It's just really incredible how much activity you guys have been able to generate within that community. It's just, everybody's there to support each other. It's really great. Shane: Yeah, I can't wait till you actually get to the live event and you meet everybody and deepen those relationships and then you come back and you're like, oh my gosh, that's not just a picture in the forums. That's not just a person's name anymore, that's the person I ate lunch with. That's the person I sat by at the mastermind group. That's the person I jump on a Zoom call with every week now, and it becomes so much more real. Jocelyn: Okay, Brad. You've had a really exciting journey so far, but a lot of our listeners they can't really relate to the ship. Maybe they're still coming up with their idea, maybe they're just getting started. Let's take it back just a little bit to when you were getting started doing your own thing, meaning like your own website or having your own membership. What was something that was hard for you that you were able to overcome in those early days? Shane: What was your biggest challenge besides time when you first started out? Brad Grey: I think for me it was just believing that it was going to work. No, I read the Forbes article. I felt good and great about it and I followed your stories and I saw the other stories and there's always this doubt that, "am I doing the right thing? Am I investing this time in the right way when I could really be spending more time with my family?" But making those time investments early on, for me, yeah, they paid off, but it was tough to pull back and convince myself that what I was doing is going to work and also convince my wife that this is actually a good use of my time. Brad Grey: Getting the support all around was one of the biggest challenges that I had when I was going through this, because I would even ask for a babysitter so I can stay on track and meet my weekly goals of putting out content and building the curriculum. So it's not just my wife supporting me, but even grandparents supporting, just to help with the kids. There's a lot of investment there and a lot of, you just got to believe and it ends up working out. Shane: It's hard in the beginning. A lot of times people will come to us and they'll say that ... Jocelyn always says, "Well, that's great for you. It worked for you, but I don't know if that will work for me." That's one of the common things that we hear and see all the time, and when you were talking about your story there, it's not necessarily just the belief in yourself. Most people, once they get into their content and they start creating these things, the belief in the self and the actual knowledge and actual expertise pours out of you. But for the first six months you don't get feedback. Like you don't get, surveys and listeners and purchasers. There's no reward and sometimes it feels like you're digging a ditch and filling it back up, and then you're digging a ditch and then you're filling it back up. Right? Brad Grey: Absolutely. Shane: And you just ... Until you get to the tipping point, which could be six, nine months down the road ... We didn't quit our job for 13 months. It took us about a year and then in the 13th month we quit our job before we even were close and that was still after sacrificing, selling our house, getting our bills down to an acceptable level where we thought we could take the risk. We did a lot of stuff within that and you don't feel that feedback for months and months, and months. There are a lot of days and long nights where you're going to bed saying, "Man, is all this worth it? Is this going to pay off?" And you know what the ... I'll tell you what's the honest answer is. Shane: The honest answer is you never know. You kept going and you get to the point ... We know if we work as hard as we can and never give up that, something's going to come of it, but I think the lack of belief comes from that. There's no guarantees. You're just doing this work and you're just waiting for some like positive feedback. Jocelyn: I think that sometimes people think that, oh well, this person they don't support me, they don't support my dreams. It's not really from a place of, I guess, anger or hostility or anything like that. It's just from a place of the unknown. That's really hard for a lot of people. It's really hard for me. I don't like not knowing what's going to happen next. I don't think that your wife or anyone else is coming at it like, "Oh, I don't support you because you're a loser." It's more just because they don't know. They don't know what's going to happen, and that's hard for a lot of people. Shane: Is your wife on board now? Bet she's on board now. Brad Grey: Oh absolutely. Yeah. She's on board now. Shane: You just got to prove it. Like that's the thing is like ... Jocelyn, even to this day, I'll come up with some harebrained idea, which is at least like every three hours and she just looks at me and she's like, "Prove it. Prove it. If that's possible, prove it." But then you got ... It always reads. I'm actually about to teach a new training tonight for the Flip Your Life community, for the Flip Your Life members. Each week we do a training for Flip Your Life live attendees to get them ready. We're talking about these phases that entrepreneurs go through in their life. You figure out something, you yearn for more then you learn about it, then you'd go earn it and then you just keep burning it up until it makes it happen. But what's funny about being an entrepreneur, being a business owner is you go through these cycles and they keep resetting. Shane: So like your ... We're going to talk about this in a little bit. You're at this stage now where you've reached this point and you went through that first cycle where you wanted something, you put in the work and you weren't saying anything, you didn't believe it was possible, and you had to keep going anyway. Then it happened and now you see what's possible, but the next level, that's an even higher mountain and it starts over, right? Brad Grey: Absolutely, yeah. Shane: You just keep resetting the process, and that's something that we've really been stressing to people lately is, people will say like, "Well, I'm scared." I just ... I know somehow if I believe this is possible for me, and we're kind of like, that never goes away. If you want in the game, if you want to be self employed, if you want to stay self employed, you want to make money online, you want to work from home, you want to be location independent, snapping the Instagram pictures on the vacation that you've never been on before. Right? You've got to get in the game and that fear stays and that uncertainty stays and that hustle stays and everything just keeps like going on and on forever but once you cross the line it's worth it. Jocelyn: The only certainty is that if you do nothing, nothing will happen. Shane: Right. That's exactly right. And you've done a lot ... I love your story too because it's like, "I am a lurker. Nobody knows I've been in here all this time incognito, making things happen." But you made it happen. You were doing it and you look like an overnight success, but people don't realize there was a moment where you didn't believe. There was a moment where you had to keep going. There was a disagreement with your wife on whether you should do it and like, "am I doing the right thing?" Shane: I remember specifically when Anna Jo was really little, when we started out. There were many nights when we were grinding and I was like, "Man, like I'm losing an hour today that I could be playing with her," or, "I'm losing an hour today while I could be playing with Isaac," but now, I spent this morning ... I just spent two and a half hours of my kids homeschooling. Cool, right? I bought ... I spent the hour then to get the two and a half hours back today. That's really where the investment comes from. That's what overcoming the belief, the lack of belief, the fears and all that comes in is, hey, do it a little bit now so you can have a lot more later. Jocelyn: Okay, Brad let's jump a little bit forward to today. Let's talk about what's going on as far as your mindset or what types of fears are holding you back right now. Brad Grey: All right, currently I'm at about, well, I think 143 I checked right before this call in terms of numbers, my goal by the end of the year is to get to 500. Right now, I guess I'm just stuck. I know that my current strategies for growth aren't going to get me to that 500 mark. Just knowing my numbers and knowing how quickly I can build up my list, so I guess I'm just stuck in terms of how to get to that 500 number and what strategies I need to do in order to get there. Brad Grey: I've done a webinar, one, in my house with my three children. It's really a struggle to find time to have that quiet time to really be able to run a webinar from my house. Again, that could be a mindset issue. I know I was able to do it once, I could probably do it more, but it is a challenge. That's one aspect that's kind ... That I feel as though it's holding me back and just not knowing what direction to go. Like Shane was mentioning before you, you reach this point where you made it over the first mountain and now I feel like I'm at the bottom of the other mountain and I'm not sure which direction to go to get to the top. Brad Grey: I also feel like my niche ... I get concerned that maybe my niche is a little bit too small to get to my dream number or even my end of year number of 500. I know there's 550,000 biology teachers in the US and I have about 5,000 on my list. Getting to that 50,000, I pretty much need every single biology teacher in the country to hit the goal that I want to hit. Shane: Well, let's work backwards here. We'll talk about ... We'll go back to the time then ... Let's talk about that size of the niche problem first. You have a hyper targeted niche and anybody with a hyper targeted niche is going to be able to convert a lot more of their list, than someone who's like in a really, really broad niche because the people that join your email list or join your thing, they are biology teachers. It's not like I'm passing interest in email marketing or I'm passing interest in painting pictures, so I join some artist's email lists to learn how to paint more. It's not a hobby, that is their career. They are this, they need it, they want it. That's why they're in. Shane: So it's not above and beyond the expectation to say you could easily convert 10% of your list, which is 5,000 emails, that's 500 people. That is not like rare air for a hyper targeted niche. When every single human being that joined, pretty much a biology teacher or teaching biology in some way, it's just a matter of giving them more opportunities to buy. You can get 500 from the 5,000 people that have already found you. Okay? Brad Grey: All right. Shane: We see that over and over and over again, so don't let that limiting belief or ... Sometimes we hear these statistics. We usually throw out general things like the 5% rule. Like if you have 1,000,000 people listen and 5% might opt in and 5% of them might open your email, then 5% of might buy, whatever, it just keeps going. We throw that out there as a baseline, but it's not the truth in every single niche. Your niche is temperate targeted. The goal there is focus on those 5,000 and figure out why 136 have joined, and where are the other 464 or whatever it is, that was 364. Figure that out, focus on marketing to them. If you can increase ... Increasing conversions is 100 times easier than increasing traffic and opt ins. So let's just get more of those people out. That is 100% possible. Jocelyn: I would just say too, one size doesn't fit all. You have to remember that whatever your goal is, the reason that you're wanting 500 members I presume is to hit a specific income goal, right? Brad Grey: Yes. I think that's an appropriate amount for me to be able to have more flexibility and I desire to quit my job. Jocelyn: Just remember that there are other ways to reach that goal and one way is to retain more people, another way is to increase your price. There might be other ways of doing it, like selling one off products. There are other things that you can do, so don't feel like you're totally constrained by, "I must fit this exact mold." Shane: Yeah, a simple price increase could bring the number down to 400. You just do the math and you're like, "Wait a minute. It might be easier to get 400 people, so what would the price point be to get that and reach the same financial goal?" Don't get pigeonholed into yourself thinking your niche is small. I'm telling you right now, guys, if you've got 50,000 people doing something, 500 will pay for it, so you've just got to be able to increase those conversions, do more to give them more opportunities to buy and get more involved in the increasing ... Increasing conversions is way more important than increasing traffic. Our list is not huge, Jocelyn and I don't put a lot of effort into like huge ad campaigns and traffic and things like that because we convert podcast listeners into email subscribers, into members really, really well. We do it at a high clip. Shane: Our business has grown something now like 18, 19 months in a row with very little ad spend because we focus a lot on giving people opportunities to join our membership. We say it every week on our podcast, I PS it on every email I send out and like we just focus on converting more people and that's going to produce a lot more income. It doesn't mean that other stuff's not important, but if you start thinking and trying to do the math, "Oh well there's only so many of these people in the world, I can't get there," your brain's going to subconsciously believe that and you won't get there. Brad Grey: Absolutely. I really like your ideas with the changing things up a little bit in terms of mindset, like selling a one off product to my list or just working on retention. That was something. Jocelyn: Just think outside the box a little bit. You can figure out other ways to make this happen, but don't get distracted by a lot of unnecessary things. As far as like what to do next, you already have an offer that's clearly converting, so I think the next step for you is really probably just finding more people. So I would concentrate maybe on some advertising. The good thing about the education space is that it's really easy to advertise and fairly inexpensive because there aren't a lot of people doing it. Shane: And with finding more people means from your list. Like, it's ... All those, there's probably right now 200 more people that will instantly buy your product, if they don't know it's there, so you can upload your list and advertise to those people. You can go in and just advertise straight to your email list about your members. They've already signed up. Jocelyn: A price increase is a great way to do it. Shane: Yeah. Jocelyn: Shake people out who maybe wanted to join but they didn't for whatever reason. Oh well by the way, I'm getting ready to do a price increase. Shane: Yeah, "We're raising prices next year, but you can lock it in now, you've got 72 hours to do it," send that out to your list and you just shake the apple tree. That's how you find more people for your membership is in this audience that you already control. There's other things you can do like on Teachers Pay Teachers. I know you've got individual lesson plans uploaded there, correct? Brad Grey: Yes. Shane: The strategy here for everybody listening at home is, I have a core product that I sell on my own website, but then I find a third party marketplace to go sell my products individually to get discovered, to make extra money. It's a great strategy to boost your income. My lesson plans in Teachers Pay Teachers are structured to make sure they know that there is a ushistoryteachers.com. There's a copyright with my domain on the bottom of every paper, the last slide of every single slide deck and any PowerPoint that I sell on Teachers Pay Teachers always is a sales page for the membership. I've injected sales copy and these things in there to make sure that anyone who buys any resource knows there's another step. There's another place to go get these things, to build memberships. Shane: So just a little bit of strategy. You could probably go out and get 10, 20% more members right now, and then with a little more application you can get in front of the people you already have that already know about you, and let's just convert. Let's get the 300 members out of that list as soon as possible before we ever go to the big task of how to ... You created the biggest mountain possible. You said this earlier, "I have to get every human that's in my niche on my email list by the end of the year." That's not going to happen. When we create these ghosts and these demons that we have to fight it does become oppressive. It does become very hard right to actually do those things. The better thing is to say, "Well, wait a minute, what do I already have available and what am I not doing to maximize that?" That's what we need to do in your case too. Brad Grey: Awesome. Thank you so much. I love some of the ideas that you shared there. Price increase is always get people to jump ship- Shane: Always. Brad Grey: It's crazy to see. Kind of in line with what you've mentioned I think a good transition would be ... I was talking, tossing around in my brain the idea of introducing another curriculum because a lot of teachers at the high school level teach multiple subjects and another one might be, for me, environmental science. I was thinking about ... I think it would be relevant to my current list as well, so I was just curious what your thoughts were on doing that because I know you always hit the nail on the head, hit the nail on the head. Just curious if you think that would be advisable to invest time into creating that or just keep building the current curriculum that I have. Shane: I would not do that yet, because you've got so much more potential on this email list that you've already got that you haven't even tapped into yet. There's at least enough people there to get to 250. It's going to be so much easier to just get really consistent and prolific marketing what you already have to people who are already interested than to hope that they want more and move heaven and earth to create this thing. This is the knee jerk reaction to most people when they hit a plateau, is, "I've got to create something new, this thing's not working as good as it was anymore because whatever," but really it's just you haven't squeezed that rag dry yet. If you just put your effort into that for maybe another year and really zero in and laser dial in on focusing what you already have, it's a lot lower energy, it's a lot easier and you're going to get to a higher point where then maybe you can go hire some support to create the new thing instead of you doing all the work by yourself. Shane: I created most of the trainings in the Flip Your Life blueprint that exists the way it does now, was that in 2016 or 15? Jocelyn: 15. Shane: In February of 2015 I sat down and said to myself, "What are the most evergreen concepts that everyone has to know that even have a chance to succeed?" Like if a family comes in and they want to change their future, I need to know exactly ... They need to know exactly what are the steps to get there. The steps that will always exist. Create an idea, get an Avatar, go out and create a product, market your product. How do you market that? How do you use advertising? How do you do these things? How do you build recurring revenue? How how do you do all that? How do you research to make sure your idea will actually make money in the marketplace? I wrote all these things down and I started looking through it and I took out some of the tactical stuff that was really like, well, this is how Leadpages works today, but then they change in six months. We threw that out. We said, "What are the core evergreen principles that you have to do to make this work?" Shane: I created all that in one month. I created like 30 or 40 courses in one month. I only now update videos when members specifically need them. Does that make sense? I'm doing a training tonight, it's going to be really, really important for the Flip Your Life live attendees, and it's a course that we've been meaning to add. We're just adding on top. We're just a little sprinkle. We'll sprinkle on top of the cupcake. That's the ... We're adding these courses as we go. We don't move heaven and earth but every like five years. Our main goal is to say, "Hey, we've created this amazing thing that we know works. We've seen hundreds and hundreds of people start their business, quit their job, do all these crazy things with it. We just need to tell more people about that." Shane: That's it. That's our job. Tell more people, spread the word, get the message out, and that's what your job is like right now. That's what you have to do, and this actually goes back to that first question you asked about, "Well, I'm having trouble getting this webinar done, I've got a lot of kids, the kids are in the house. I've to find a time when they're quiet, for my audience," and stuff like that. I feel you're at ... You're bucking up against the wall and you really need to just juggernaut through the wall right now because none of that matters. You've been to our member calls and you've seen us in our community, our kids are eating bags of chicken in the background, there's dogs, like my dog has a sledge hammer on her head and if we lock our doors she just keeps ramming it until it opens because she wants to get to us. Shane: There's ... You've never seen anything perfect from us, that includes on our webinars. We were at ... We were doing a webinar one night and it's like pack of dog's was like barking outside or something. This was a sales webinar but it sold just as many as anything else. So do you want to get in a quiet room? Yeah, but you don't have to worry about the kids being asleep. You don't have to worry about background noise. Nobody cares. I read this awesome thing the other day, but like said, "You're so busy worrying about what," like when you go to a party, "You're so busy worrying about what you look like and stressed out and anxious, but the thing is everybody else is so worried about what they look like, they don't even look at you because they're just worried about themselves." Shane: The person that shows up at your Webinar, they're not there for you. They are kind of ... They're kind of there for you. What they're really there for is how can this make my life better? That's what they're there for. They're not ... 90% of their attention is on you, not the baby crying in two rooms away. You know what I'm saying? Brad Grey: You're absolutely right. Shane: Yeah man. It's just like, just do it. We've done it right. I did ... Where was I doing that Facebook? I did a Facebook live the other day on our Flipped Lifestyle page. I was in the kitchen, our assistant was here and she was cleaning and doing something in the kitchen, unloading groceries or something, Jocelyn was talking to her, the kids were walking around playing with the dogs and watching a TV show in the living room, and I didn't even use a microphone. I just turned it on and I needed to do that video, I needed to do it right then it was to promote something so I just did it. Not one person said, "Man, could you tell everyone in the background to be a little quieter." No, they were like focused on what I was talking about and you just got to do it. Shane: You just got to do it. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter it's perfect, you'll make so much money someday you can go buy an office and you can go get a loan and have a quiet room that's soundproof. Right, but right now you just got to kill it. You just got to crush it. You got to be consistent. You got to be prolific and you got to be relentless. I always throw that one in because you can't let stuff like that hold you back. Brad Grey: You're definitely right. Hearing no sugar, Shane. Tell it how it is, is really what I needed right now to help me break through this wall here. Shane: I do that from time to time, except for Jocelyn because she tells me how it is and then I've got to back off because Jocelyn, Jocelyn's it's no sugar Jocelyn, at our house. Jocelyn: Pretty scary individual. Okay. I think we have some good ideas as far as like mindset and just getting ready to go into this next phase of growth. With that in mind, what question do you have for us that we can help you with as you enter this next phase? Brad Grey: I guess what specific growth strategies do you or members in the community seem to be getting the most success with right now? Shane: For us it's promoting live type webinars, like live events. It's the easiest funnel to create to get to consistently work. You basically advertise or promote the webinar. So you would email your list and maybe start an ad with your uploaded list. Again, like let's just target those 5,000 people until we get everybody that we can in the membership. Every week, same Webinar, post it, they go and they register. Some of them show up, you pitch and they buy, and you'd do it again and again and again and again and again, because 90% of people on your list won't show up for this webinar this week. So let's go back and get those 90% to maybe come next week and then maybe the next week and then maybe the next week and doing them live really does make a difference because you're there, they see you're real, you're calling them by name and when you ask them to join, it's like inviting them over. Shane: You also then, they raise their hand and say they wanted more information, you know the hottest people on your list. You have three or four followups to pitch them afterwards just via email automated. So there's nice automation to it, it really only takes a couple hours a week to be able to set up and it's just the easiest way to grow your business. It really, really is. Now, when you get more advanced, you can do things like evergreen webinars where people go to watch an on demand training. So you sell it like Netflix at that point, but if you really want to go to 100 to 500 people, 252 webinars in a row relentlessly and watch your business grow, it will happen. It can't not happen when you're constantly doing the work like that. Shane: So for teachers, your needs are specifically to teachers, you would think about their calendar and you would say, "Hey, these people are off on Sundays and they're probably dreading work on Monday because they've been at the AAU basketball league or the cheerleading or the dance or the baseball park all weekend. They've been doing all these other things with their family and stuff. It's Sunday, they don't have a lesson for Monday. "Hey, come and do a free,"" call it a professional development, speak the language of your people. Talk about a topic to get them through, that leads to the pitch of, "Hey, get in here and get this curriculum, teacher your students, they'll improve, you'll improve. You won't be planning lessons all the time." You can go sell it to them and, hey, maybe 20 show up every Sunday. Maybe you get 20 people on your entire list to show up on every Sunday night. Shane: If you do that, 20 people times 52 weeks in the year, that's 1,040 teachers. 1040 people in your niche from your list that would show up, and hear you give this speech every single week for 52 weeks in a row. If you can convert 20% of those, you would have 208 more members just like that. Jocelyn: This is a really effective thing to do right before the beginning of school. So I would wait until summer is winding down, so maybe like mid July to late July type time. That's when people are really starting to be like, "Oh brother, school is getting ready to start. I haven't done anything this summer. I need to get with it." I've always had a lot of success doing education related trainings right before school is going to start. Shane: Because we're playing that calendar. If you started this on July 15th and you went every week of the school year and what you do then is you just maybe give it a little flavor. You don't have to change the webinar, but you can give it a little flavor, like maybe certain things are taught in biology in September, certain things are taught in November. You can give it a little flavor to make it more relevant with your subject lines and stuff but it's basically the same thing. It's basically like this is how to do this. You can have a couple of webinars if you wanted to do two or three and rotate them. That's a powerful strategy. If you can ever get three or four webinars that you rotate and are all relevant to your list and you're just constantly every month in your list. Then you just grind it out man. You will get more than 20 people a webinar. Shane: 50 people are probably going to show up. If 50 people show up to every webinar, now you've got it 408 or 400 and something new members, which gets you to your goal, 500 members. The moral of the story is, this is probably the best thing that's working right now, and it just ... You got to roll up your sleeves and you've got to do it right. You just got to roll up your sleeves and make it happen, but once you get in a rhythm, it becomes easy. You know what I'm saying? Brad Grey: Right. Like anything else. No, I really like the idea of webinars. Now, I've been thinking about them a lot, obviously. One thing I like is even if people are not showing up, they're at least seeing that you're hosting, one. I think it ups your credibility at least a little bit. Shane: You're top of mind. Brad Grey: Top of mind as well. I also like ... You made a light bulb go off in my head when you said, I have 5,000 people on my list, but you've said it before, over and over again, not everybody's seeing all of your emails and retargeting those people in different ways, even though I'm sending those emails, I can look at my stats and I know that not everybody's responding to the emails but I have the ability to retarget them in other ways too. Shane: You have to plan all your stuff out to support each other. Every Saturday or most Saturdays I send out like a little newsletter to our email list and it has like, it's all the stuff that we did that week. If I did a YouTube video I put it in there, if we had a cool Facebook post that ... We would do a prayer thread every Sunday, if you're not following us on Facebook and you got to flippedlifestyle.com/facebook or facebook.com/flippedlifestyle, we do a prayer thread every week. If our community needs prayer, like we pray for every one of them. We go through and Jocelyn and I read all those and it's just something we do, but we promote that in our email list because you want everything to be a big circle. Shane: If you're on my email list, I also want you over on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, I'd like to have you on Twitter. If you're on Twitter, why don't you follow us on Instagram? Because we want as many places to reach you as possible. Flip Your Life live attendees, we have a special, exclusive Facebook group for them that's outside of the membership. Why do we do that? Well, I need ... If I'm doing a training, I need to be able to post in the Facebook group, send you an email and I'll go post it inside of the community. I know I got three chances to hit you instead of one, and I'm telling you, you got to contact people every day. I don't know if it's on social, I tried to do it on email every day. Shane: You got to contact people constantly. If they unsubscribe, let them go, they weren't going to buy anyway, but you've got to constantly. You can't just say, "Well we're doing our monthly sale and now we're going to have a business." Nope. We're going to sell daily to our list, daily in our ads, weekly on these webinars and daily we're going to promote it. If you do that, you can't help but succeed over time. It just ... Not everybody will do it. There's a lot of people listening right now, you're shaking your head, you're driving in your car down the freeway, you're stuck in traffic, you're on the treadmill, you're sitting there right now going, "Man. Yeah, that's what I got to do." But not everybody's going to do it. The people that do, do it are the people that get to 500 members, that get to quit their job, that get to replace their income. Shane: They get that trade that one hour now to get that three hours back later with their kids and their spouse. You've proven time and time ... Again, you're the guy that's going to do it. You just got to do it, man. Brad Grey: Absolutely. Jocelyn: All right Brad. It has been a lot of fun talking to you. I know that you are an awesome action taker, so I cannot wait to see what happens next in your journey, but before we go, I just want to ask you what we ask most people on the podcast, is what you plan to work on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Brad Grey: I think it's going to have to be just buckling down and starting to schedule out some webinars. I purchased EverWebinar and WebinarJam a long time ago and I've used it once, it's sad. So I have the tools to do the job, I just need to buckle down and just really start hammering through some webinars and maybe create a couple of others to go along with the ones that I already have so I can mix it up a little bit and just squeezing my list and trying to hit them in a lot of different directions in terms of just being top of mind, making sure they know I have a product for sale. Shane: Yeah man, don't be shy. That list exists for one reason, to buy your stuff. That's why you created it. So go out and get it. Don't be afraid to ask your list for money. That's why it's there. That's like not asking an apple tree for an apple, that don't make no sense what's growing on the apple tree? Apples. They taste good. You're not just going to sit and watch them. Like, "Man, I'd love an apple today, but I only pick apples on Mondays." All right? Right now you walk over to the tree and grab an apple. That's what you've got to do to your list all the time. Shane: All right, well listen, Brad, man, that was an awesome chat. Thank you so much man for being on the show today. Thank you for being an amazing member and thank you for shining the light on the lurkers cause there's a lot of lurkers taking massive action in the Flip Your Life community. We see you, we know you're there guys. We know you're doing it and then not everybody's going to be up and just talking about all this stuff they're doing all the time. But man, you've done a lot of great things. I have no doubt that you will do many great things in the future and also I have no doubt that what you share today, it's going to help a lot of people listening right now to take action and change their families future too. Thanks again for being on the show. Brad Grey: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate all that you guys have done and are doing. Shane: All right you all. Thank you so much for tuning in today. What an amazing chat with Brad. He's doing great things in his business and we expect you to take what you learned today and take action and go out there and grow your business so you can change your family's future as well. Shane: Before we wrap up, we want to leave you some wisdom from the Bible. Jocelyn, I get a lot of our information, a lot of our inspiration from the Bible. There's a lot of great Bible verses that are directly related to building and growing businesses. Today's Bible verse comes from Romans 8 verse 18 and it says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Listen guys, whatever you got to do, whatever you got to suffer through, whatever you got to go through right now to build your business, to change your family's future, it's going to be worth it, and it will not even compare to what you're going to see on the other end of this journey. Shane: All the things that Brad went through in the beginning, don't even compare to where he is right now or where he's going to go. All the things that we suffered through when we started our online business don't even compare to the amazing life that we have built today. So whatever you are doing, whatever you are grinding through, whether it's trying to find that idea, building your product, getting that WordPress website set up so that you can build a membership and build recurring revenue. It's hard. It is going to be difficult. You're not going to see the rewards right away, but all of that will not even compare to what your family's future is going to look like. Shane: All right guys, that is all the time that we have today. We would love to have you inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can join Brad in there. It doesn't matter if you're a lurker, it doesn't matter if you're a question answerer or a question asker, whatever you are, we want you in the community right where you're at. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can learn all about the amazing training, forums, community and resources that we have inside and if you would love to meet Brad and meet me and Jocelyn at Flip Your Life LIVE 2019, go to flippedlifestyle.com/live and we would love to see you there. That's all the time we've got for this week guys. Until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Brad's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. Shane Sams: Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, I am so excited about today's guest, because it is just gonna bring back so much nostalgia and my childhood and teenage years and college years back into my brain when we talk about this subject today. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member Matt Davids. Matt, welcome to the show, brother. Matt Davids: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Matt, when I saw you in the community, I knew that you had to come onto our show. Because Matt works in the RPG game industry, which is ... Okay, I guess it's just RPG, role playing games. Shane Sams: Dungeons & Dragons, all these cool things. We're gonna get into this, and I'm gonna be really pumped up about it. It's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so before I met Shane I had no idea what a role playing game was. After I met him, I still don't really know what it is, but he is really, really excited about them and has been playing them for a very, very long time. Longer than some of our listeners have probably been alive. Shane Sams: I think the first time I ever played a role playing game, I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was like ... Gosh, like 12 or 13 years old. I've always been into creative stuff and reading, you know, like science fiction, fantasy novels, Game of Thrones kind of stuff. The game is all pencil and paper and dice, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: I remember the first time I ever played we didn't have any dice because we couldn't afford to go buy the dice. We're just a bunch of kids. Matt Davids: Yeah, I've been there. Shane Sams: So we took hats and we like ... There was a 20 sided dice, so we wrote the numbers 1-20 on paper and we threw them in a hat. Then we had a six sided hat and a 10 sided hat, and that's how I cut my teeth on role playing games. Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it sounds very similar to me, too. I was nine when I first played Dungeons and Dragons, and yeah. I came home from that and I had to make dice, so I just wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a hat. Shane Sams: Oh, love it. I love it. See, I knew there was gonna be some kind of connection in this episode. I just knew it was gonna happen. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I saw Matt in our community and I saw what he was doing, and I thought, "You know what? This is a really cool business first of all, and I know Shane's gonna be really excited about talking to him." So I knew that we had to have you on the show, so thank you so much for being here today. Matt Davids: No problem. Shane Sams: Also, too, we always say that our community is extremely unique, because a lot of other communities it's like sales and life go just until the end of the Earth, right? We have so many different people doing so many different niches and so many different business ideas that it's really cool to see like, "Man. You can actually make money doing this." And Matt is actually making four to five thousand dollars a month off of his RPG business. So without going any farther, without spoiling anything else, tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background, and about what you're doing online right now. Matt Davids: Yeah. Well, I went to college in Kentucky. I went to Asbury, which is in the little town of Wilmore. Shane Sams: When he says little, he ain't jokin. Wilmore is a little bitty place. Matt Davids: Yeah. When the college, and there's a seminary there, when they're in session, the town like ... I think it increases, like triples or something the population of the town I think. So I went there. I kind of had my hopes set on becoming a screenwriter, and I did the starving artist thing for awhile. That really didn't work out too well, so I ... At another point in my life I became a missionary and I went to Haiti. I came back from there and then I've been working in search engine optimization ever since. Shane Sams: Wow. That's amazing. That's another part that's very fascinating about your story, and I feel like the world is changing around all sorts of things, like how we used to view things. You know, like back in the '80s, I'm gonna date myself here a little bit, so anybody that wasn't born in the '80s that's listening, I'm sorry. Jocelyn Sams: Turn this off. Shane Sams: Yeah, turn this off. Jocelyn Sams: I'm just kidding. Shane Sams: Back in the '70s and '80s, Dungeons and Dragons was this taboo thing and they thought all these kids were devil worshiping and all this stuff. I am a Christian, and you were a missionary, and low and behold we played role playing games and nothing got us messed up or off the beaten path, right? Matt Davids: Yes. Yeah. Shane Sams: Now it's just such a part of pop culture. You know, you have Stranger Things where the kids are literally on the show playing Dungeons & Dragons, and then I was just reading the other day that there was this massive surge in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's up so high in sales it's overtaking other board games and things like that, like how it's surging in popularity because we're all online and we all see that this stuff is good, harmless fun, right? Matt Davids: Yeah, oh yeah absolutely and yeah to be clear, you do not have to worship Satan to play Dungeon & Dragons. You do not have to. Jocelyn Sams: There are probably people out there who do but you know... Matt Davids: There probably are. But, you don't have to. Shane Sams: There's a way to get into it that way. I think that's the first time that we've ever had to clarify that someone wasn't worshiping Satan, in their niche. Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: So this is good for all you guys- Matt Davids: Yes, I have never worshiped Satan. I have never had the desire to worship Satan. Shane Sams: Okay back to the missionary stuff, let's refocus. Jocelyn Sams: Thanks for clearing that up. Shane Sams: Alright, so when were you a missionary in Haiti? Matt Davids: I was a missionary in Haiti through 2009 and 2010 and I was there during the earthquake, when the earthquake actually happened. Shane Sams: Wow, like were you in Port de Prince? Matt Davids: Yes I was in Port de Prince. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness. Like what was that like? Matt Davids: Well you know I thought I was gonna die. It was January 12, 2010, about 4:50 pm in the afternoon and there was just a kind of a quiet beautiful day. Haiti in January is beautiful because it's like 75 or something, degrees, and it's beautiful. You know I was working in an orphanage and I was sitting on the second floor of this little building that I lived in across from the orphanage and I just started noticing this little tremor and I heard some of the kids down in the courtyard just kind of getting scared about it and I walked out onto the little veranda and I remember myself saying, I was like, "Don't worry, it's just an earthquake." Well at that point the little tremor became something else. The ground just started shaking, like going just up and down, maybe like a foot and bouncing around, then the whole ground just like moved three feet to the left and I'm watching the orphanage building that's in front of me. It's a very big building, just swaying back and forth. Matt Davids: The wall of the compound, because everybody's in a compound there. The wall of the compound just breaks and collapses. The water tank on my roof of the little apartment that I was in breaks and I get hit with water. And the sound of the earth just going, you just can't imagine, you just can't even hear anything, it was just so loud. And then like, things started calming down just a little bit and I noticed the youngest girl who's in the orphanage, she was three years old and she was sitting down in front of the orphanage building and I'm just watching concrete blocks and things falling around her and I kind of got my wits about me. I said, "Okay, well I guess I'm not gonna die," and so I ran down there and grabbed her and all the other girls had run out into the streets, so I ran out into the street, got them together and I said, "Okay, we're gonna start praying," and I got a big Amen that day. Shane Sams: Wow. That is unbelievable. Like absolutely. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah like I'm kinda speechless on that one. I mean I've obviously never experienced anything like that but wow. Shane Sams: And like I guess the next few days were just like packed with rescues and helping people and all that because it destroyed like 80% of the buildings. Matt Davids: I think it was even more, I think it was 90%. Yeah like, the official death toll was like 350,000 people, so if you can even imagine that. Shane Sams: Gee, man. Wow. Matt Davids: I still can't really even imagine that. Shane Sams: Have you been back since? Or how much longer did you stay after that? Matt Davids: I stayed a few days and then we'd kind of were all, wanted to, the head of the orphanage and stuff wanted to evacuate us and stuff so, I was evacuated at that point and came back to the states but then after a few months I went back and I stayed there for a few months, tried to wrap up some of my work and that. I actually wrote a movie and shot a movie there that kinda went, I did some film festivals with and stuff but- Shane Sams: Wow. Crazy, dude. Matt Davids: But yeah it was something else, it was something else. Shane Sams: I mean, when you've faced something like that, the other challenges in life kind of get smaller, right? I mean when you really see, like true devastation like that, like gosh, you know, and once you put the pieces back together for yourself, because I'm sure that was like post traumatic stress stuff going on there. How did that kind of get you thinking about your future and what you wanted to do with your life, like did things change for you after that? Matt Davids: Yeah definitely. It just kind of really, yeah it kinda made me step back and think about a lot of things and made me take things more seriously and to be more intentional about the things I'm doing, yeah absolutely. Shane Sams: Do you have a family right now? Matt Davids: I do now, I do now. Shane Sams: Yep, yep. So do you have kids? Matt Davids: I do. I'm married, I have three boys. Shane Sams: Okay so were you married then or single? Matt Davids: No I was single. Shane Sams: Awesome, awesome. Well I'm glad you made it back, brother. I'm glad you made it through that and I'm a big believer that God puts people right where they're supposed to be at all times and hey man, if you weren't there, that little 3-year-old girl might not have got picked up and those people might not have anybody to pray with and I just appreciate you for doing that, that's awesome. Matt Davids: Thank you. Jocelyn Sams: And I love how, you said, "Oh yeah we have three boys," but what you didn't mention were how old they are. Tell us how old they are because I can relate to you on this one. Matt Davids: Okay so yeah I have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and then an 8-month-old. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness gracious, you are outnumbered and they are little. Jocelyn Sams: So we also started our business when our kids were super little, so I totally understand what you're going through right now. It is not easy, it's not easy to be a parent of young children anyway, but it's really not easy to try to start a business while working full time and having little bitty children. Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: What does your wife think about the roleplay? Matt Davids: Well she likes roleplaying, she actually has played with us a number of times and she enjoys it. Shane Sams: See, look at this model wife. Jocelyn Sams: Matt, gimme a break, you know. Matt Davids: The business, however, she wasn't really on board for the business. Shane Sams: Why was that? I'm looking at your sheet that says you started like 2015ish, really starting to put these resources together, getting them on Amazon. So are these like, are these roleplaying modules, are these adventures that the players go on, like what are these resources that you are selling or that you started selling on Amazon? Matt Davids: Yeah these are resources that help the game master run their sessions. So I don't really do adventures or things like that. I do some setting kind of material but basically these are, there's a lot of random tables, or different things that help the game master not have to prepare a lot before the session that they run. Shane Sams: Interesting. Matt Davids: So in roleplaying games, just to explain a little bit, if somebody out there is not familiar, there's a group of players, they create characters that they assume the role of and then there's one player called the game master, dungeon master, and they run the session. And so they present the players with obstacles and different things like that throughout the world and so running a game can be a challenging thing so I make resources for the game masters so they don't have to spend 20 hours prepping a session just to hang out with their buddies. Shane Sams: And I always equate when people are like, "What is that?" When they're talking to me about it, I always say it's like, "Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books? Well that's kind of what roleplaying games are. Like the players are all the characters in the book, the game master is kinda like the book. You're the narrator, you're like, okay what do you want to do? Go left? Or go right? Right? So it's like that, that's their job, is to weave the story and then the characters' jobs, the players' job is to live the story and actually change the flow of the story. You're not like forcing them down a path, you're giving them as many paths and choices as possible and I can tell you, I used to plan a game when I was in college and we played like every Sunday night and man, it was a lot of work. Like you had to like, really think about things and be prepared because you never knew what the players were gonna do. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like, you didn't know what to do, left or right or up or down or sometimes they just go backwards. Right? Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: So your resources are not full adventures then, they're not like the story, it's like maps or dungeons or whatever. Matt Davids: Yeah I have dungeon maps, so the game master can just grab a map and kind of fill it and then I have random tables that help cut down the prep of, because you have rooms or you have places and your players always want to explore those rooms and places if you don't want to spend five hours deciding what is all on that one place, you can just use my resources to roll dice and you'd figure out what's in that room. Shane Sams: So this is almost like filler. Like because the big companies, like Hasbro, who owns Dungeons & Dragons, like, betcha didn't know that, folks at home. The same people making the Uno cards are making the other stuff too. They sell the big adventure but you're like the side adventures that randomly pop up, kinda deal. Matt Davids: Yes. Kind of. And just also to fill in extra, just extra flavor or if... I also find a lot of game masters don't even like to run some of the big published adventures. They kinda want to do their own thing but they don't want to spend four evenings planning for two hours with their buddies, so they wanna, they just wanna be able to come in and you can just grab my books and just roll that and just roll dice on those tables and that and you know exactly what your, get items and things right there. Shane Sams: That's amazing, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Okay so tell us a little bit about what you're selling right now. So know that you're selling the books and the resources, but how are you selling those? Shane Sams: All on Amazon? Every bit of it? Matt Davids: No, I'm selling some on Amazon and then there's a third party marketplace for roleplaying games, it's called DriveThruRPG and then of course I have my own website which is, DiceGeeks.com. And it's just the word "Dice" and the word "Geeks" just kinda squished together. Shane Sams: Which is the greatest domain name I have ever said out loud on this broadcast actually. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah we were discussing that earlier. But like that is an amazing domain. Shane Sams: So is the bulk of your income from Amazon? Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. It is just interesting. I want to break this down for a lot of people, because we just went into game speak, we went into the table, y'all. That's where we went right there. But like this is really fascinating how these templates can be applied to all businesses. Like because you're selling, we'll say Amazon is your primary place you're selling. But you have a website and you're kinda selling it in multiple third party market... that's what Amazon really is, right? You're selling it, people are searching for stuff, you're selling stuff there, you're selling stuff on this third party market, you've got your website, that's your thing and you've done this consistently over time and it's built this... A lot of people would love to make $4- to 5,000 doing something they love, you know? Shane Sams: And it works that way in almost every business, like we see, like we have our education websites. We have our website where we clearly sell lesson plans for teachers, we have third party markets, we have this one called TeachersPayTeachers, where we actually sell lesson plans on and you just kind of find all these places. Really, all you've done is you've created a resource that saves people time, which is one of the best things you can do in any niche... if you can save people time, or get people somewhere faster, you are going to make money, okay? So and then you found third party markets and you've built your own site and if everybody would just do that, consistently, they'd eventually make a little money and that feels pretty good at the end of the day to wake up and see that somebody bought your books overnight, right? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely. Jocelyn Sams: So tell us a little bit about, what are the challenges that you're facing right now? So I know that you're making some money on third party sites. What are you doing on your own website right now? Matt Davids: Well yeah, not too much actually. On my own website, you can see the products which lead you to the marketplaces and of course I collect email addresses and I am also, I blog about game master tips, so tips and things like that to improve your games and cut down your prep time. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: And that, the sales there like what would you say is the percentage of traffic in sales that your website is actually delivering right now? Matt Davids: Oh gosh. Shane Sams: Just ballpark it, doesn't have to be perfect. Matt Davids: Yeah probably like 5% or less. Shane Sams: Interesting. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: So what's your greatest fear right now that you're just relying too much on Amazon and these third party markets? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely. Shane Sams: Yeah because if they change the algorithm you could be bottom of the list or. Matt Davids: Yeah I know. Shane Sams: Have you seen spikes like that in your revenue? From a month-to-month basis? Matt Davids: Yes, yeah I definitely see sometimes and then also just like, listening to some self-publishing podcast or whatever hearing people talk about what's going on with Amazon or something like that. I can definitely track when they're changing things, absolutely. Shane Sams: Do you find that, are your sales very seasonal? Like you average maybe four or five thousand, but like, you find like, is Christmas time really big and other times very slow or anything like that? Matt Davids: Not yet and the reason for that is that, I've really just, in the last six months or so, really started getting consistent income. And like I mentioned before, I said my wife wasn't into it too much as a business at the beginning, because at the beginning when I started in 2015 really trying to do something like this, I was going to my day job, coming home, working on this until late into the evening and stuff. And I would make like $5 a month or something like that. Shane Sams: Hard to generate the belief when you're bringing home- Matt Davids: Exactly, exactly, so... Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's a bit of hard sell when you have a new baby, because at this time I assume that you had a pretty brand new baby. Matt Davids: Oh yes, yeah our first son was just a few months old at the time. Shane Sams: You're like, "Check this out baby, I got $5, that's at least three diapers." Matt Davids: Yeah and it only took me a month to make $5. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, listen I totally understand what your wife was thinking at that time. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: She's like, this is ridiculous but the cool thing about it is that you keep going and you keep making sales, which is really good. Shane Sams: Because you had some consistency. I'm looking at your sheet again, it says that you got 10 books for sale on Amazon, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: And you've got four... Matt Davids: Eleven. I just launched one a couple weeks ago. Shane Sams: Oh, prolific. We're getting prolific around here. You've got 49 resources available for free on the marketplace, now is that just to generate leads? Matt Davids: Yeah most, not all 49 are free, but probably, yeah probably 40 some are free and there's a few paid ones that I have on the marketplace. Shane Sams: Right so generally what you've done is you're finding your traffic from these marketplaces and then trying to, and they buy your books and then hopefully they buy more. How big is your email list right now? Matt Davids: My personal email list is getting close to 4,000. Shane Sams: Oh wow that's amazing, yeah. Now is that coming from your website? Matt Davids: That comes from my website, yeah. I've done some Facebook ads just to drive some traffic to a lead magnet. Shane Sams: Perfect. But you've not really sold a lot to them or do you just sell them to the Amazon links? Matt Davids: Yeah I sell them to the Amazon and to the DriveThruRPG links. Shane Sams: Okay gotcha, okay interesting. So your blog is generating leads and you're driving traffic to these third party marketplaces and a lot of your sales are also coming from just people searching for this stuff, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay, so what do you think is next then, like what would make you happier, make you feel more diversified, make you feel safer about your income or even growing or maybe like what's holding you back from doing something like a membership or a recurring revenue type thing? Matt Davids: I think the only thing that's holding me back from doing kind of recurring revenue or membership is that, I can't, I don't really understand the model, like I don't understand what exactly I would offer in a membership and I just, I have a hard time understanding like, community building and stuff. I mean it's just, I don't know, I try to look at it and I try to understand it but it's just hard for me to get my head around some of that. So that's kind of a big thing but you know I did create, I created a PDF on self-publishing, with like a strategy that people could use on the third party marketplace DriveThruRPG and I've tried selling that, I just don't really know exactly how to market that very well, but I mean another thing though is, it's just like, I love creating the books, I love creating the books, so like creating something about, self-publishing or business strategy just doesn't do it for me and so I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well the good news is that if you don't love doing something, you don't have to do it, so that's something really exciting. One thing that I wanted to kind of pull out of this questionnaire, we have everyone fill out a little questionnaire and one thing that you didn't mention is you say that, "I don't know if there's a need for a recurring model in the area of roleplaying games", I found that kind of interesting. Shane Sams: Oh, Matt. Jocelyn Sams: And I think that's a big assumption that a lot of people have that is not necessarily true, it's a story that we tell ourselves. Shane Sams: That's right. And also too like, of course there's hobbies and things like that, but man, D&D is like golf. If you're into golf, you're buying golf stuff. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: And not everyone is going to be into it. Shane Sams: That's right, but if you're into collectibles, you're collecting everything. That's what that game really is, like people buy the miniatures, they buy every book they can get their hands on and it just becomes this passion, right? And that's usually some of the best, like you don't need a new putter, but you gonna buy one when Nike releases a new one, right? Like that's what golfers do. And it's the same thing with gaming stuff, there really is probably a need for this and actually it's very interesting because the game master's job is often the hardest in the game and two, they're the ones who are usually the most obsessed with roleplaying games, they're the ones paying the most attention, spending the most time on it and that's usually the person that you really need to give something recurring, something because they need their fix, you know what I'm saying? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Which is, I would be willing to bet that a lot of people that buy your books buy a lot of the other books, like you have repeat buyers in that Amazon system somehow because they're like "Whoa, this book was cool, I'm gonna go buy five more of Matt's books." Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's all recurring revenue model is, is how you bought the one thing, it was so good you're gonna give me money the next month and I'll send you the next thing. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So let's talk about that a little bit, let's talk about how we can, one, maybe up some of the sales on your own site, but two, create a membership or recurring revenue out of this, okay? Because wouldn't it be nice to know you're making $4- to $5,000 a month instead of, "I made $4- to $5,000 last month." Like that's why we shift to the recurring revenue model, like if I know that I have enough members to give me $5,000 a month, and I know my average member stays for six months, let's just guess, okay? Now that your whole equation changes to the future instead of the past, not, "well the last couple months I've made $5,000 a month." It's "wait a minute, I can predict now that I will make $5,000 a month for the next six months, which lets me buy ads to grow that and get it to $10,000 before I get there." Shane Sams: Does that make sense? Matt Davids: No, absolutely. Shane Sams: And like that's what you really want, is that's why we're so, a lot of people get mad at us sometimes, like some of the only criticism we really get for the podcast is, "man y'all talk about memberships every time." Well like yeah, because that's how you're free and that's how you have predictable, stable income for your family and that's how you know that you can invest into ads and hire people and grow to whatever you wanna become because you've got money that you know is coming in and you don't have to worry about paying your lights. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. Shane Sams: So one, you touched on this a little bit, about the community aspect. Which really surprises me that you went down that path because dude you're a game master, that's all you do is create community every Friday night when your buddies come over, right? So it's like, you're just trying to create that for DMs, like I can imagine like a space of those dungeon masters in a colloquial terms, alright. But you're just, your community would be something where, I would guess that you would come on and talk to these people about being a game master, like these tips you send out or these emails that you're like, "Hey here's a tip or here's a blog post about the tip." You really would just go on live and discuss that with people, right? And share that with people. It doesn't even have to be a big forum, it can be just a Facebook group where you go live every other week or something like that. Shane Sams: But I was talking to Jocelyn in the car on the way back from an appointment we had earlier and we were talking about you and your business and I'm like, this has to almost be like a physical thing if you were gonna do a recurring membership, like because that's one thing in roleplaying games people love is to flip through books, right? Love the paper, love the pencil, love to flip through books, like, I'm almost even thinking like some kind of monthly printed newsletter, where you send them a resource or you send them ideas and you send them maybe even a little worksheet that they get to pencil in some stats or something, right? Shane Sams: And I can see people paying for that, man. If I was a game master and I was really fired up and I was like, "Man, twice a month, I get to go hang out and geek out with other dungeon masters, right? I get to be led by this guy who's wrote 11 books, you know? And then I get that Christmas present in my mailbox once a month, not my email inbox, like a physical printed thing that I get every month. I think you could charge anywhere from $50 to $100 for something like that a month. And it would only take a hundred of those game masters in the world and there's a lot more than a hundred of them, so all of a sudden we're double your income. And be consistent with it. Have you ever thought about doing anything like that? Matt Davids: Yes, absolutely. I've definitely thought about it and that was actually kind of what I had been thinking about, was something that was recurring and that was physical that they could have. Yeah I'm just kind of struggling with the idea of just then producing... cause I can launch a book now on my own schedule, if I had to do something every month, I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things. Let's like, how do I create processes to get that out every month? How do I create engaging content and then how do I find those people that are willing to pay, if you're saying $50 or $100 or something like that a month, where do I find those people because in a lot of the forums and stuff that I hang around in, people are complaining that they have to pay $4.99 for D&D Beyond, which is just launching and just things like that that. Matt Davids: So I just keep kind of struggling with how to make it work, but I mean I think the idea is sound, it's just like I don't know how exactly I can make it work. Shane Sams: Well for one thing, the only people that post in those forums complaining are the people who are cheap, that are freeloaders. Jocelyn Sams: Who are freeloaders. Shane Sams: And that's why they're in the forum, freeloading and complaining. Jocelyn Sams: And you know what? That's fine, like there are always going to be those types of people in the world, it's not a big deal. There are always people who think they should get something for nothing. Matt Davids: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But thankfully, there are a lot of other people who believe in paying, trading money for value. Shane Sams: Yeah you only need 50 people to pay you $50 a month to make $2,500 a month right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: I would be willing to guess that somewhere in the world, as big as this thing is... Jocelyn Sams: Probably on your email list. Shane Sams: Right, exactly, you got 4,000 people who have opted in, who have said, "I want more game materials." Now, maybe 3,500 of those people are cheap and they are gonna complain about it, right? But maybe there's 50 to 500 of them that aren't and they just love the game so much and they're older, they've got good jobs and they just do this as their hobby for fun and they love it, like it's the same thing as the golfer analogy. They're gonna go pay for it, right? And a lot of the people, like, what's that famous show now that's on, it's a huge podcast and they just did a KickStarter to raise money, they actually have a podcast where they play D&D every week and it's like... Matt Davids: Critical Roll. Shane Sams: Critical Roll, that's what it is and they bring in famous actors, these, some of them play, some of them... like these are like, world-class A-list actors that come in and play these games. Matt Davids: Yeah they're voice actors. Shane Sams: They're voice actors, right, exactly. And some of them are learning D&D, some of them are playing D&D, but they do it every single week and that podcast has millions of listeners and they did a KickStarter. They raised enough money to make an animated movie about their game. Listen, there's people throwing money at them just to go make a cartoon. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: There's gonna be somebody that's gonna be willing to pay for this, so you gotta get past that block immediately. Matt Davids: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so as of right now, you have 4,000 people on your list, if 200 of them, that's 5% of your list, bought something from you right now, which is a totally doable number, I mean that's a lot of money. Shane Sams: That's like 200 times, let's say that you charge something like $29 a month, what's 200 times 29, Jocelyn? Let's do 200 times 30. That's $6,000, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So it's like... Jocelyn Sams: So that's on top of the money you're already making for your books. Shane Sams: Yeah this is not a mountain that we have to climb, it's really just like a hill we kind of have to pop over. Matt Davids: Okay, yeah. Shane Sams: Okay? Now as for the logistics, like the logistics is probably as easy as... are you in St. Louis? Isn't that where you work? Matt Davids: Yeah, St. Louis. Shane Sams: Alright you're in a big town, man. There's a print shop somewhere that will do this for you, all you have to do is upload a customer list once a month and the file. Usually it's just go to the local print shop and say... a lot of times, these print shops will actually handle the mailing for you, like there's online places too but... Matt Davids: Yeah there's online places that do it. Yeah I've looked into it, so yeah. Shane Sams: For sure. So I mean just check around, I actually recommend going a little local even if it costs you a little more per unit because it's just nice to be able to walk in, have somebody to talk to, you know? But online's fine, whatever you wanna do. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Basically it's as easy as create PDF upload, create Excel customer list, upload and you do that once a month. And then if you, then it's just about showing up, maybe once or twice a month, maybe once a month, right, just to talk to GMs, give them some tips, let them ask you some questions, right? Be their leader. So it's not like you're, this is not a huge ask in hours. The only hard part is the content, but luckily you have 11 books and 49 other resources online right now that 90% of your list has probably never seen, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So you can just repackage and re-shift around things, maybe it's five resources a month, so that's 60 resources a year. You already have 49 and 10 books, like you could pull things from other things you've already done and put together a nice 10-page newsletter type thing which is more than enough content for a GM to flip through, get a few great ideas, go have a blast over the next four weeks with their friends and then look forward to the next one. Or they're not even gonna be able to use all those ideas in one month, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: So like they've got this library, like I subscribe to this email newsletter that's like, it's all about subject lines and copy and all this amazing stuff and I've got this, what do you call the little things that sit on your desk where you put folders in... just like a file holder or something and I have the last two years of them and I can just go flip through them. I love that file folder. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's like a, how many pages would you say it is? Shane Sams: It's an 11-page, stapled thing on paper and I paid $99 a month for it and it's worth every penny. Like when I get it, it's the happiest moment of the mail of the month, you know? And like that, that's what you're trying to create here, is Christmas every month for these GMs and a nice place they can go talk to somebody that gets them and they don't have to talk to their players and they can just geek out about being a dungeon master for an hour and a half. Jocelyn Sams: And you don't need everyone, you just need a few. To make a really good living. Okay. Everyone's not gonna like it and that's okay. We've talked about that over and over on the show, you know. Shane Sams: And if you're worried about the hours you're gonna put into it, it's really not gonna take that much time every month. Because if you show up for an hour and a half member call, you spend about an hour and a half getting the newsletter ready and you're pulling from resources you created, maybe you create one new thing a month, just to kind of add something, you know there's always something new in that thing, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: And then the rest of it is fleshed out with stuff you've made in the past that's spread out through different books, like, man that's really probably about five, six hours of work a month, to set this thing up. Matt Davids: Okay. I mean it's... Jocelyn Sams: Matt, you don't sound very convinced. Matt Davids: Well I'm just, I'm thinking pretty hard over here. Cause I have thought about it but yeah I'm just trying to go through it in my head again, just trying to see how I could make it work and... Shane Sams: What scares you the most about it? Because something's holding you back, I can feel it. Matt Davids: Yeah, yeah something is. Pretty much for all of 2018, I released a lot of free content on my blog, I put out dungeon maps, city map and a free random table and I was just dumping content and I did a like a Patreon launch for it. If you're familiar with Patreon, and I thought producing that much content, I could get some Patreon followers and I got like a couple. Shane Sams: How much were your tiers? Matt Davids: It was like, $2, $5, $10, $20, and like $50 ones or something. Shane Sams: Right. But see like, look at the difference though. You got all this content and you're asking people to support you and that's fine but man there's a big difference than what's behind the platinum wall. There's a reason people drive by the country club and they want in, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: It's because it's premium and it's exclusive and it's like, you could call it Elite Game Masters and make people feel really - or something - and make people feel really good about themselves and like... Jocelyn Sams: Dice Geeks Elite. Shane Sams: Dice Geeks Elite. Jocelyn Sams: That's pretty good. Shane Sams: Only the best. You could make people apply, like alright you have to fill out an application to even get in, right? And then you can look through them and send them a sales pitch, but it's like, they got to tell you how many hours a week are you playing? How much time do you really put in your game? Right? You know like whatever, you could come up with something fun to make it cool but there's a big difference in saying, "Hey, I'm already gonna make this stuff, if you'd like to come support me, come support me." Then, "I'm making amazing stuff and you can't get it unless you pay at the front door" right? And that's what pushes people, it's why people line up around the block to get the new iPhone that costs $1,200, which really only has two new apps than their last iPhone. It's like they want anything they can get that other people are not getting right then. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like that's kinda what you're trying to create, is some kind of exclusive. This is the elite thing, this is what real, if you're a real G, if you're toying with this, buy my book, but if you're in it for real, come on down. Right. And you could do things for them too like you could tell them, like every month I'll send you a PDF copy of my paperback books. Right. That in of itself... how much do you sell the books for? Matt Davids: Right now they're, the smaller books are $7.99, although I'm gonna raise those prices here and then a bigger book is like 15, $14.99. Shane Sams: So man you could say like, "When you join, every month I'm gonna send you the PDF of this book, right? Cause now it's $29 to email them the PDF and you're gonna get the printed newsletter, right? And that printed newsletter is gonna cost you $5 to ship, so you're gonna be making like $25 a member, every month. So like you've got all this stuff, you're not really putting the extra work in, but you're making it feel good, like a club, like a belonging, like a community, I'm elite and that's why they will give you money for it, right. Shane Sams: Now are we really gonna have to work on this launch? Forums and you need to go through some of the trainings on like, cause this is gonna take a email campaign, this is gonna take a launch campaign, it's gonna take probably some kind of live webinar to sell this thing and get these people in there. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: But once you've seeded, it's gonna stay full and you've got an endless supply of customers. Jocelyn Sams: Okay so let's pump the breaks just a little bit, because I feel like we're getting a little bit overwhelmed, so let me tell you what I would do if I were in your situation right now. Matt Davids: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: So what I would do is I would start emailing my list. Do you email them very regularly now? Matt Davids: Yeah once a week. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So what I would do, is I would sort of put some feelers out there and I would say, "Hey guys, look I'm really excited about something that I'm getting ready to start. I'm going to be starting my Dice Geeks Elite, TM." I'ma trademark that. Sorry about that, Matt. Matt Davids: Oh, no. Jocelyn Sams: I'll send you my marketing bill, okay? Matt Davids: Oh that's great. Jocelyn Sams: Anyway, I would just say, "I'm planning on starting this, this is what I had in mind. What else would you like to see? What are you interested in?" See who's opening that, see who's clicking it, see who's responding. Those are the people that you really want to start targeting with future messages toward that. There are gonna be some people who write you back and say, "This is stupid and I'll never pay for anything." Remove them from your list because... Shane Sams: Bye. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And that's the beauty of being a list owner, okay? But most people are gonna write you back and be like, "This is amazing, I cannot wait, this is what I would like to see you do." Okay? And that's not scary, right? You're just telling people you have an idea and you're asking them what would you like to see? Shane Sams: And then you start dripping out after the fact. Let them tell you, you'll have people write you back, you'll have people complain, blah blah blah. Jocelyn Sams: You could do a survey, you can do a Google forum. Shane Sams: Like get them involved, they can feel like they're... what do dungeon masters love to do? Create things. Help me create this. Then you start sending them back a thing that says, "What if you could get a weekly, or monthly thing? What if you could get all of my books? What if you could get this, that and the other? People are gonna be like, yes yes yes. Whatever it is, right. Once in a while send them a D20. Doesn't matter. Just like, all this stuff's going on and then when you launch, you've got all this hype built up and you'll find those couple hundred people that are hiding in the weeds you know. Matt Davids: Okay. Shane Sams: I just did some math, okay? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Alright. I'm actually looking this up right now with actual public data from a publicly traded company. Alright, so it is estimated that 20 million people in America today have played Dungeons & Dragons. Okay. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: It is estimated that 6 million people in the world play it regularly. I think regularly is once a month on this. Okay. Alright. If the average play group is four people, that means there are 1.5 million people out there running games. You need 200 of them to make $6,000 a month. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: That make sense? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So like don't be afraid. 99.9% of these people can hate paying money for anything. That's true for all people. It's 80/20, right. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: We just have to find the ones that are willing to do it, right. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yeah. Shane Sams: I think you could do it. You got such a great following, you got such a huge product library. And man if you just say, "I've written 11 books about this," that's giving you so much more street cred than anybody else could ever have. You're perfectly qualified, you're perfectly positioned and we just have to put it together and make it happen. Doesn't have to look exactly like me and Jocelyn just laid out, it's just how we would do it. Jocelyn Sams: And you don't have to do all this stuff tomorrow, okay? Sometimes I think people feel like, "Oh if I'm gonna start, I have to go all-in." Basically right now, all you need to do is just gather some information and figure out what people want. That step alone is going to help you immensely. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Yeah and we're recording this podcast in March and you told us off air some exciting news though, you're gonna go all-in on this in April, right? Matt Davids: Yes I am. Shane Sams: You're leaving the day job and you're like, flipped lifestyle, here I come. Now let's grow this thing and ready to go, right? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, yeah. I am ready to do this. I want to work for myself, I want to do what I love and it's just amazing that this time in this place in the world that I have this opportunity, it's just amazing. Shane Sams: Yeah, Matt, to be able to take something that you've grown up with, that lets you be creative, that you're passionate about and actually put food on the table with it. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: That is the opportunity that everybody listening to this podcast right now has, you just have to go out and make it happen. It might take time, remember, Matt's been doing this for what, since 2015? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Right but and you've gotten to the point now though where in a few days you're gonna have total control of your life and your family's future. That is absolutely amazing. Let's just take it to the next level and we'll help you do it. Okay? Matt Davids: Okay. Shane Sams: Alright man, what a great conversation. I am so glad that I literally got to geek out, not only about online business today and I actually got to geek out about geek stuff and talk about Dungeons & Dragons on this podcast, so I appreciate you for giving me that opportunity. Matt Davids: No problem, that's why I'm here, Shane. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah thanks for putting that in his head too, I'm sure he'll start that up again soon. Shane Sams: And I'm just saying, I'm looking for a play group. I'm just saying. Matt Davids: Oh well there you go. Shane Sams: Have a go. I mean I may be jumping into the game here man. Honestly man, thank you so much, just for coming on the show, being transparent. Our podcast is so bizarre, because a lot of podcasts, the guests are used to being podcast guests, but our people, everybody that comes on this show is just a real member of the community, a real person out there with their own idea, their own niche, making it happen, and it's hard to open up, tell everybody, like "oh this is going on and I might be quitting my job next week and I wanna grow," and it's hard to talk about that but I really do appreciate you and all our other guests because without you guys being that transparent, all the people that listen to our podcast can't be inspired, can't learn, can't grow too, so thank you for doing that, man, I really appreciate you for being on the show. Matt Davids: Yeah no problem. Thank you for having me on. Shane Sams: Alright and then we got one more thing. Since you were a missionary, and we always ask all of our guests, would you like to share a Bible verse? And I would guess that a former missionary would probably have a Bible verse that brings them a little inspiration that they might just share with the world, so you have a Bible verse for us today? Matt Davids: I do, I do. It might sound a little negative at first but I can explain it just a little bit. But there's proverbs 18:9, and it says, "One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys." And like I said, you might seem a little negative but just thinking about that and just kind of thinking about where I was when our first son was born and I was working a day job that my wife left her job and because that's what we wanted to do. And just realizing that I wasn't making enough money and kinda just looking at my life and realizing that I was coming home from my day job saying that I was spending time with my family but I was spending an hour on Facebook or an hour here on YouTube or something like that and just the idea that it was just, that I was slack in my work, that I was no better than somebody who destroys something and so, just some things with the earthquake and some different things that happened in my life, it's just I realized that it was time I needed to get to work and really put some food on the table for my family. Shane Sams: Ah dude, that inspired me. When I hang up, I'm gonna go work. I told Jocelyn before I got here, like I think I'm gonna take the rest of the afternoon off but now you said that, I'm like, nah man I'm gonna go write five emails. Because I don't want to be slack in my work. Thank you so much for sharing that verse. That is an awesome and powerful message. Matt Davids: No problem. Shane Sams: Alright guys, that wraps up another amazing episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Take everything that you learned today to heart especially that last thing about being slack in your work. You've gotta put the work in and you've gotta get started and you've gotta keep taking those baby steps forward if you're ever going to get to a successful place. Like when Jocelyn and I started out, it took us 13 months to even be in a position to even think about quitting our job. Matt started back in 2015 and he's just now quitting his job and ready to grow in scale this amazing, passion-based business and you could be in the same place a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. If you get started. If you put in the work. We never sugarcoat anything here on the podcast, guys. It takes effort, it takes commitment, it takes dedication to change your family's future, just like we did and just like Matt did. We know you can do it too. Shane Sams: That's why we make this podcast and that's why we have the Flip Your Life community. If you need help coming up with your business idea, if you need helping taking your next steps in your online business journey, we would love to help you inside of the Flip Your Life community. To learn more about the Flip Your Life community, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's all one word. Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have plans starting as low as $19 a month to give you all the training, all the community, all the support you need to start your online business, become and stay self-employed and flip your life. That's all the time we've got for this week. Tune in next week, we're gonna have another great guest from the Flip Your Life community. Til then, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes. Flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

In today's episode, we help Kevin develop a sales pitch for his online membership. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we help Kevin develop a sales pitch for his online membership. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always come before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is a beautiful sunny day here in Kentucky, and we are super excited to welcome back a former guest on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, a long time member, one of our moderators, and last year's Flip Your Life Member of the Year, Kevin DePew. Welcome back to the show, man. Kevin DePew: Hey, thank you. Very excited to be here. Jocelyn Sams: Member of the Year. Shane Sams: The Member of the Year. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about that in a minute, though. Kevin DePew: I'm surprised by that, yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it was really exciting. We presented Kevin with a special award at last year's live event, and we got to meet him in person for the first time. And it was just a really, really great time. We're gonna get into that just a little bit more in a few minutes, but before we talk about all that, let's get into a little bit about you, for people who maybe have not listened to your other podcast or don't know you. Tell us a little bit about you, your background, and what you do online. Kevin DePew: Yeah. My name is Kevin. I am been doing this online business thing for a little while, I'd say a little over two years we've been doing relaxandlearnguitar.com, we being my wife Vicky, who helps me a lot with this now. We are empty nesters, have had many, many years in corporate America, working with various jobs, mostly with families and children. Vicky worked with seniors for awhile. And I about three years ago just heard you guys on, I think, Pat Flynn is how I found you guys, and the tractor story, and I just kind of from there went, "This is amazing. I think this is something I need to look into." Started listening to your podcast, joined your membership, and it's been fantastic. It's been life changing, honestly. It's been really good. Shane Sams: That's awesome, man. I love to hear that. I love people who like, I literally know every minute of their story online, because I feel like I know everything you've ever done. Jocelyn Sams: And it's kind of hard not to just jump right in, because we already know all these things about you, but I just want to make sure that the listeners know how cool of a person you are. Shane Sams: When you joined the community, remember you had some crazy other idea? Kevin DePew: Yeah, the guitar thing is probably idea number four or five. Shane Sams: What was the thing you were doing when you first came in, though? Kevin DePew: Oh, gosh, it was either a combination of time management or creativity or ... Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: Yeah, it was something about the creativity thing, and I remember you posted in the forum one day, and you were like, "What do you guys think?" Jocelyn Sams: We're like, "No." Shane Sams: I'm like, "Kevin, man, I don't usually say this, but this is awful. This is terrible. You don't even seem like you like this. What are you doing, man?" Then I remember specifically asking you in the forums, though, "Dude, what do you want to do? What do you want to do?" And you literally were like, "Man, I just want to relax, play guitar." Kevin DePew: And now here we are. Shane Sams: And now you have a website called Relax and Learn Guitar. It's funny how that works out. Going back just a little bit, how did it help you to pick something that you wanted to do, not that you thought might work? How did that help? Because you've stuck with this now for a while. We're gonna talk a little bit about your membership growth and the future of your business, but how did that help when you made that transition? Kevin DePew: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, first starting out, it was just in my head a lot, exactly what should I do that people are gonna look for? It was very new to the whole online business thing. It was a good part to kind of learn how to build a website and how to have a lead magnet, so I learned a lot of good stuff there, but when it wasn't taking off or getting any traction, I think what helped the most switching to the guitar stuff is just, I don't have to pretend to be passionate about it. I am, and I want to share that with other people. And when I saw that others were listening and interested and then started getting on board, it just makes it keep rolling. So choosing something that you're passionate about, but I don't think I'll ever get tired of doing. I might get tired of editing videos, but I will never get tired of playing and teaching other people how to play guitar. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, for sure. And you know, I want people to understand too that if they haven't listened to your other podcast, that this thing wasn't exactly an overnight success, right? Kevin DePew: Oh, gosh no. Jocelyn Sams: Because I think sometimes when people listen to the podcast, they're like, "Oh yeah, this person, they started and then it just all worked out." And we've seen so many people cycle through over the past few years since you've been a member, but you have been consistent, you've been coming in, you talk, you ask questions, you get your questions answered, you answer other people's questions. And just that involvement, I mean, I've seen such a transformation over the years, just from you first coming in to now. Shane Sams: Yeah. I've never heard anyone say that before, "I don't have to pretend to be passionate," because all you hear from gurus and experts is, "Fake it till you make it." You known what I'm saying? That's an amazing way to put that, is pick something you don't have to pretend to be passionate about, or that you don't have to pretend you know something about. I think a lot of people do that too. They'll choose a niche just because other people are doing it or just ... My favorite is, "Can I teach business if I don't known anything about business?" We're like, "No, can't do that, because you'd have to pretend. You'd have to fake people out." Or be passionate about yoga, but you hate yoga. You can't do that. Shane Sams: If anyone listening right now doesn't listen to anything else for the rest of this podcast, please listen to what Kevin just said and don't pretend you're passionate about something. Pick something you can sink your teeth into. And you won't always be passionate. Like you said, sometimes it really stinks to have to edit all the videos of you playing guitar, right? Kevin DePew: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: But we just gotta do what we gotta do to get to the part that we like, and that's what it's all about. Kevin DePew: And to not give up, and to change when you need to. You gotta be persistent, or else ... And I've seen that a lot. There's the folks that I've seen, and you've listened to the podcast, or you're inside the membership, and it does look like sometimes folks are like, "Hey, we just got our 200th member." I can look back and realize what that really means. It's a lot of time and a lot of persistence and effort. Shane Sams: Well, you only see the tip of the iceberg. There's a great graphic that I shared on our Facebook page one time, and it was like first, second, and third place, like an Olympic podium. And all the people were taking the pictures of first and second place, but underneath the ground, the artist had drawn a pyramid, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it said things like "Hard work, never gave up, kept going," all those things that go into that overnight success. That's a challenge for us sometimes on the podcast, is to really ... We see the 500 forum posts and the 30 hours of trainings and all the hard work that went into building it, but we have 30 minutes to tell people the whole success story. So it does kind of seem like, "Wow, they waved their magic wand, and they tried it," but it's really there is no magic wand. Shane Sams: So where are you at right now? We're gonna talk a little bit about your progression, okay? Tell us a little bit about last year, because last year was where it really turned the corner. I remember a little bit in the forums, we were talking one time when you had just gotten ... I remember when you first started selling a few memberships, and it would tick up and down in the teens, and you kind of got stuck, right? Kevin DePew: Yes. Shane Sams: And then it really started to grow. You started to do some things. You came to Flip Your Life Live last year. Tell us a little bit about last year and the growth of the business and where you were when you came to Flip Your Life Live. Kevin DePew: Sure. I mean, that was the year folks started first joining, and it was one or two, maybe, a month for the first half of the year really. But they were staying, so I had really good retention. Folks were showing up for the live member lessons that I do. Lots of positive feedback, it was just a matter of getting more people to see what I had to offer. Signed up for the Flip Your Live event and took on the challenge. We did the calls with everybody to kind of get them ready for the event, and all the different pieces of homework, and then you guys had challenged us to have some type of product that we would bring to the event or have ready to launch. Kevin DePew: We didn't really have a beginning level or an introductory offer. I just had the membership, and it was monthly and annual. That was it. When we came to the event, we were probably up to about just under maybe 50 members. Had had some success about a month before with just an email funnel that we had built around having a half-off price for the membership and got probably 10 or 15 people that way. So we had good momentum, decided to make a beginner's course, and that's what we basically had ready for the live event. That and kind of sitting around the tables and working pressed the button to send it out there into the vast internet space and sold a beginner course an hour after we launched it. Shane Sams: That's the live event, right? During the work session you can literally we're like, we're launching this, we'll see what happens and you sold something right there. Kevin DePew: You're like, raise your hand if you had any sales and I was like, yes! Shane Sams: During the event? Kevin DePew: Yeah. Shane Sams: How did that momentum build through those courses? Getting ready...one thing we do is, and we're upping our game a little bit, too this year. We're about to start, we're gonna do weekly trainings getting people prepared. I'm gonna hand-walk Flip Your Life Live attendees through the Flip Your Life blueprint myself. In the community we have lots of trainings and things like that. We're gonna do two cycles of it to make sure that everybody gets that momentum like you're talking about. How did that help you, not only going to those trainings and picking up the pace leading up to the event but having that deadline with a consequence where you had to have it ready and you're like, "I gotta show up at this thing. We've been working on this." How did the live event, was it a catalyst for that? Kevin DePew: It was huge that way just because of having something way out on the calendar and then the monthly accountability of it's not that you just signed up and we'll see you in six months. We got some work to do before we get there kind of thing. Shane Sams: You know it's there. We can see it, it's in a Facebook group or a Zoom call so it's like you can't hide. Kevin DePew: It was very helpful for us cause we thrive with what's the next thing to do, write it down, let's do it. If it doesn't work let's write the next thing down and do that. It was helpful to kind of say have something ready. It did push me, I wouldn't have done that if you guys hadn't said, "Have something ready for the live event". If you've already got a membership it worked really well because the beginner course is now, we've sold about thirty of those and some of those people convert to monthly or annual members so that helps with the momentum of once they were in the beginner course, if they like it, then there's a chance they'll join membership later. Kevin DePew: At the end of the event you're like, there's a hundred days left in the calendar year. What are you going to do with the next hundred days? We very much took that as a challenge to ourselves and sold fifteen more courses, added about sixteen more members, and five more annual members and we increased our, almost doubled our email list. It was just very, very good. Our YouTube channel finally got to the, we're now making a little bit of money on YouTube. We're able to monetize ads there, which takes a while. Kevin DePew: The coolest part was getting involved in a mastermind. We met some incredible people at the live event and we're part of a mastermind now where we talk monthly and those guys have been a huge help to help us continue moving forward. Shane Sams: That makes my heart happy because when we decided to do the live event. The reason we did it, right? What people don't understand the cost and the massive moving of mountains it takes to pull of an event the size of Flip Your Life Live. Jocelyn Sams: I've said it before on paper it pretty much makes no sense. If we brought this into a corporate boardroom they would be like, "Get out of here, we're not doing that". Shane Sams: Go find a better idea. Jocelyn Sams: No ROI. Shane Sams: But it's our boardroom. Jocelyn Sams: As far as monetary goes. Shane Sams: When we did this, we were like, "Why are we doing this?". That's something that Jocelyn and I ask all the time. Why are we doing it? We knew, we knew that we had been to live events and the momentum before and after and the people we met. That's what changes your life. We knew that would happen for people who came to this event because we even structured it in a way that gave people a better chance for that to happen. We have all the trainings before hand to prepare you for the event. We challenge you to do things before the event. We even have icebreakers where we get forty people on a Zoom call and we sit around and have a great time and introduce everybody to anybody so you know people going into the event. Shane Sams: To hear you say that...if one person out of the two hundred people that come this year that happens for? The event's worth it. That is truly a life-changing experience. They're suddenly be surrounded virtually and in real life by people who really care about your business and they are also trying hard to grow themselves so they can inspire you to do that, too. Kevin DePew: And they understand, that's the biggest part, too. They understand what it means to put the work in or to be stuck or to keep going. Big shout-out to Chris and Leah and Lauren. They've been amazing. Jocelyn Sams: That's awesome. That's the whole reason that we did this. I love it. I love it that you guys have just really pushed forward and you're making stuff happen. It's really awesome. Let's talk about where we can go next. You guys had some good success. I love how calmly you say that, "Yeah, you know, we added a bunch of members". Shane Sams: How many members are you up to right now? Kevin DePew: We're at 77 members now. Jocelyn Sams: That's awesome. Shane Sams: 77? That's crazy. You remember the struggle? Kevin DePew: We're never gonna get over 20. Jocelyn Sams: Yes! Shane Sams: You're adding one or two a month for the first month when this thing launched. We were just like, keep going, keep going. You do a couple things that matter and all of a sudden, bam, you're almost to a hundred. And a hundred's where things get crazy, right? Kevin DePew: I'm ready. Shane Sams: When things really, really happen. That's why your the member of the year, Kevin. Let me tell what it was. We didn't tell anybody we were doing this but one thing that we, our community is really about, Kevin's a moderator in the forums, Kevin's just a super-active member and he not only goes in and takes massive action, he helps other people a lot. A lot of people will get up on stage at a live event and they'll give awards based on well this person's got four commas and they're millionaires or whatever. This person, he's made all this money and he did this and that. We just didn't wanna do something so superficial and basic. Shane Sams: When we were in our meetings one day and we said how are we gonna reward people? We really wanna reward people? We came up with this, we have this little running joke a little bit. We call it the 'Flip Your Life Hall of Fame'. Me and Jocelyn have this virtual list we talk about, the 'Flip Your Life Hall of Famers'. We started talking about those people and it wasn't just people who made money or just people who quit their jobs. It was people who really gave back to the community. Shane Sams: We said, let's reward people by how many times they've replied to other people's forum posts. That means you're not just in there talking on your own topics. You're not just in there lurking and reading. You're literally taking time to help another person succeed. We started looking, we keep track of how many topics people start, how many replies they have and we give these things called 'coins'. We could've called them a ton of different things but we figured you flip coins so it just made total sense for the Flip Your Life community. You get coins, you get one point for starting a topic. You get two points for replying to another post and you get other coins for doing other actions. Clicking on trainings, things like that. Shane Sams: Kevin blew the second place person out of the water. We gave an award out for everybody in the top ten. The ten most helpful people in the community. When we were looking at it, it was just like, who's number one? It was you. It was the highlight of the event, giving you that award. Bringing you up on stage and sharing that with everybody because you really have helped so many people. I don't think you understand the ripple that you've caused by throwing your pebble into the pond, inside of our community. I want to acknowledge you here in front of everybody, too, not just the people at Flip Your Life Live cause you deserved that award and, based on what we're seeing in the forums, you might get another one cause you're just crushing it. Kevin DePew: Yeah, I was totally shocked a little bit. No idea you guys were doing that. Shane Sams: Your wife was shocked, too. Kevin DePew: She was. Shane Sams: I think she cried. Kevin DePew: There might have been some tears. It just hit me like, wow. Of course she's seen me, how much I've been on there. But it was kind of, just getting the recognition was very cool. That's not why I did it, obviously. Very neat to get that, that award and to be a part of the event and to be so shocked. Shane Sams: Helping other people, helps you, too though. That's the good thing. We tell people that. The more you help others, the more you will figure things out cause you'll talk through something with someone, like a mastermind in the community and all of a sudden you figure it out. You know what I mean? Kevin DePew: Absolutely. Shane Sams: Let's figure out what you're going to do next. We're sitting at 70-something members, we see a hundred on the horizon and we know that a hundred's when things get crazy and we start getting massive momentum. How can we help you take your next steps? What is it gonna take to get you over that hump, to grow your business, to make things happen. What are you struggling with right now? Kevin DePew: The biggest struggle up until a week ago was, I've been, we've been really trying hard and we have. We've done YouTube Live's every week and then also did some workshops live on YouTube where I run ads to those and was using it like a webinar. Gathering email addresses to get people to sign up for the workshop. Folks were coming to those and they were going pretty well but no conversions. Just stuck there. I felt like, how is it, the way I'm pitching this? Is it the way I'm talking about how to join a membership that's not. It's not aspirin, it's definitely a vitamin. It's not, it's a hobby for people. Kevin DePew: Obviously there's a need for, working with folks over forty to play guitar and have fun with it because there's some who have joined. The webinars weren't really working so great so I gotta shift gears. Shane Sams: Was that an Evergreen webinar you said? Kevin DePew: We're live every week. Shane Sams: Live every week. And it was on YouTube only or you were doing them through another thing? Kevin DePew: It was just YouTube, it was not with webinar software. Shane Sams: You weren't making people email register for these things, it was just you were going live, talking about the stuff and doing it that way. Kevin DePew: Right, I would broadcast out to a list. We got a few emails through the Facebook ads we ran, signed up for. Lauren helped us with the Facebook campaign to have, there was a cold ad and a warmer one and then sign up for this workshop. Like I said, pretty good. What I found though is that the folks that end up joining a membership, if I can 1) talk to them live, even better. One of our things in our auto-responder is a free twenty-minute phone call to help you with what you're stuck with. I've got about nine or ten phone calls and three people have joined right after the phone call. I know that's big. Kevin DePew: I feel like they just gotta warm up to me after awhile. It's a very much, not like a come to one thirty or forty minute lesson and join. We've shifted things to do a challenge. Let's try a five-day challenge. It was a lot of work, did a lot of preparation for that kind of breaking it down, thinking about what's something very quick each night that they could learn, have some success with. It's the curse of knowledge, right? I wanna show them all the stuff, but I really gotta break it down. Sent that out to the list. Also, we're gonna have a Facebook add to that, got some more emails that way. Kevin DePew: Had two hundred people sign up for the challenge. This was just a week and a half ago. About 130 of those folks joined the private Facebook group where the challenge was taking place. I knew it was a good sign on Wednesday of that week, folks were asking how to join the Facebook membership, I hadn't even pitched it yet. Coming to this stuff, asking questions, they were involved. Some of those, of the 130 people, there are about twenty that are actual members that just like it. That helped me a ton. They were in it sayin', "This is cool. Hey Kevin, what's going on?". That was very helpful, too. Kevin DePew: I followed that challenge up with five days of emails. An email each day for five days. Answering questions, dispelling fears, that kind of thing. We got fourteen new members from that challenge. Shane Sams: So you got fourteen out of 120 and you got 200 basically leads. Did you run ads for that or just invite a list and things like that. Kevin DePew: I did ads, I boosted a post. I did an ad and boosting posts and just promoting to the email list. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn loves challenges. She's big on challenges. Jocelyn Sams: I think that it makes a lot of sense, especially for the type of thing you're trying to sell. It's like a hobby product, I think that people do typically have to get to know you a little bit before they're going to go all in with you like that. I think it makes just a lot of sense for you. This is the first one you've done, right? Kevin DePew: Yeah, we've just done one. Jocelyn Sams: I'm assuming... Shane Sams: When are you going to do it again? Kevin DePew: We're planning on one the third week, end of April. We've got, my other life. My full-time plus job is a little nuts right now and we're also taking a week off to go to Florida in April so we're looking at the end of April. Shane Sams: That's good. That's an 11% conversion rate. You converted 11% of the people who came into the challenge. Kevin DePew: It was very positive. If I can somehow figure out how to replicate that... Jocelyn Sams: I like the way that you're waiting a little bit, too though. I think sometimes if you do them too often then people don't really wanna join your membership because you're constantly doing a challenge. If you do it a little less frequently I think it makes sense. Shane Sams: You might need, if you did it once a month you would need two different challenges to rotate or something. Because that way, just the content, just what you're doing. Are you doing these live all five days? You going in the facebook group? Kevin DePew: Yeah, I am. Shane Sams: That's brilliant. I think that's an awesome strategy. Kevin DePew: It's a lot of work and planning a lot ahead of time. Having emails finished and just plugging them into the broadcast, having all the PDFs. Every morning I got an email saying, "Hey, I'll see you tonight for this lesson. Download this PDF and we'll work on it live tonight and I'll answer your questions". Did that for five straight days. Shane Sams: Did they post videos or something of them playing guitar? Kevin DePew: No. That could be part of it. They would just come to those live at night and I'd tell them, make sure you have your, bring your exercise and chords and metronomes and rhythm, that kind of thing. The last night was, here's what song we're gonna learn. The ending, the last one, was an actual song they get the tablature and the print-out for that song. Shane Sams: Isn't that what your friend does, Jocelyn? Who does the fashion stuff, people post in the challenges? Jocelyn Sams: It's more like a course and they post pictures of themselves in a Facebook group, wearing different outfits. Shane Sams: This is the same thing, though. Jocelyn Sams: There's definitely different ways that you can do it but if that works for you, I would do it the exact same way. Shane Sams: The only thing, I don't think your pitch is bad here. I don't think that's the problem. It goes back to the numbers game again. If you can look at this thing and say, okay my baseline is 200 signed up but only a hundred of those made it to the Facebook group. The first thing I would do is, where are the other 80-100 people that didn't make it to the Facebook group. You may need to do something, I don't know where you had the link to the Facebook group but one thing we've been doing a lot lately is putting links like that on the thank you page, not in their email. Kevin DePew: Oh, yeah, I can do that. Shane Sams: Because that email may never make it to their inbox. If they clicked the thing and it says, "Stop. Step One: Join the private Facebook group." That is gonna give you probably forty more people out of that hundred that are gonna make it to the Facebook group which is potentially five more sales. This is probably, I don't think it's the pitch, I think it's just the structure. Shane Sams: The only thing I would criticize you a little bit about your pitch is, I think you're too convinced that this is a hobby. You're too convinced that this is a vitamin and not an aspirin. Your website is called "Relax and Learn Guitar" and when we built this thing and we talked about it and planned it, it wasn't just learn guitar, it was why they're learning guitar. They're empty-nesters. They're stressed out, they need to relax after work and they can't calm down. They have anxiety and this is the thing they've always wanted to do and they've always regretted putting it off. That's where your pitch is. Not just hey, I'll teach you to play "Stairway to Heaven". Shane Sams: That's probably where your pitch needs to go. You're not selling just playing guitar, you're selling getting rid of regret of something you never did and you always felt like you should have and when you come home and you can relax, leave the stress of work behind and the kids and the college payments and all that good stuff, that's where your pitch, I would probably say, needs to go. Jocelyn Sams: I would just ask you, too, are you using testimonials so not about how much people learn about playing the guitar from your courses or your membership but are you really hitting those pain points of hey, I was stressed out all the time. I was sitting at home wasting away watching TV or on Facebook or whatever but then I discovered this course and because of that I found some kind of purpose in my life. Shane Sams: If you could find one, too I think a regret. If you could find someone who was like, man I put off learning this thing, I had, I got one, I started playing with it and I put it in my closet when I got married and got a career and I never touched it again, you know what I'm saying? I'm sure someone in there is like that. That's a big deal. That's a really big deal for people. That's so much, that's so important. Everybody's so into meditation or exercise or all these things, that might be the thing that does free somebody to get rid of all their stress and anxiety. Kevin DePew: Self-care kind of stuff. I could definitely hit the testimonials. The ones that have been pretty powerful aren't exactly more relaxed and more stress-free now. I really hit the ones that I've always wanted to play guitar and now I played at granddaughter's birthday party. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I love that. Kevin DePew: I joined my church worship group, I never thought I'd play guitar now I'm on stage in front of my congregation. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. I love that. We're just throwing out ideas. Obviously you know your audience a lot better than we do. I love those, I think that's great. The more you can use stuff like that the better. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, at the end of, you did a five day challenge, I'm assuming it's Monday through Friday, right? Kevin DePew: Yes. Shane Sams: You start on Monday, you come on the Facebook live, you're teaching them these things. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. On Friday, when you turned on that Facebook live did you do your webinar? Kevin DePew: What do you mean? Shane Sams: That fifth day, that should be your webinar. You should be doing a webinar that day. Kevin DePew: A little. I see what you mean. I did the whole lesson and then I probably did, I feel like I just need to get more comfortable. I maybe rushed through the sales pitch at the end. I try to be more aware of that and at the end of that five day, that fifth day, I did go into kind of the structure you guys did at the live event where you talk about testimonials, people that are in the membership, questions about the membership they might have. I had some written down in case they didn't ask any. A little, but not as much as I should. Shane Sams: I think you should probably restructure. What you should do is call it a five day challenge and then on the fifth day say, I'm putting a bonus lesson in tomorrow. Bonus challenge. I said it's a five day, I'm gonna give you six. Then you show up, or re-structure it like it's a five day challenge but you do it all in four days and you tell them to come back the next day for a bonus lesson and the fifth day I would do your whole webinar, straight up. I would probably go in and change that a little bit. What are your fears you have to overcome? There's an internal, what is the internal fear or the external obstacle that's holding you back that you cover in your webinar? Kevin DePew: Pretty much age is the enemy. We're doing this to prove that you're not too old to be able to accomplish playing and finally learning this. Shane Sams: That's a good one, yep that's a good one. That could kind of be external, like an obstacle because everybody thinks they're too old to learn new tricks, you know what I'm saying? I think you should probably re-insert in there the fear of regret. Don't you wish you had done this your whole life? How much better would your life be, you could be like Andy who played at his granddaughter's thing. You could be like Jim who was on stage and got to worship in a way he never dreamed possible. He didn't even sing before but now he's playing guitar. Shane Sams: Put that in there and attack that and it leads right into it's not too late. You're not too old to do this. That way you can capture some of that in there. If you add the pitch and you change your thank you page to get more people in that Facebook group quick. I'd probably even have some re-engagement campaign for the, after three days anyone who, when you're starting it try to email those people again and get them in there. Kevin DePew: Right. Shane Sams: Then you'll have more people in, you'll have more people participating, and you'll have a true sales pitch that attacks what's holding them back at the very end of the challenge. This challenge has one goal: to get people in your membership. It's not just to get people on your list. It's to get people on your list and then day five I have one mission in life today. I have 112 people, I want fifty of 'em in my membership tomorrow is your plan. I bet you will double sales on your next one, percentage-wise. Kevin DePew: Let me ask you this and I think Jocelyn answered this before. I was going back and forth on, I still have this relax and guitar/acoustic guitar challenge Facebook group and there's still 130 and people have asked to join us when it finished and went ahead and approved them. Why not? You can sit and wait for the next one. For this and I've got, I use AWeber so I've tagged these folks, this is kind of nitty-gritty questions. I tagged them as people interested in the challenge so when I launch this next challenge I'm gonna hit all those people again, they might have been there, they might be members already. I'm still saying here's the next challenge, you should come to it. Shane Sams: There's two ways to do it. You can put everybody in a new challenge or you can put everybody in the same group every time and just build this massive group that constantly does it over and over again. We kind of prefer the second because it's one less thing to manage and how many people joined, fourteen, that what you said? Kevin DePew: Yeah, we had three annuals and eleven monthly members join. Shane Sams: Sounds like to me there's about 86 more people that need to hear that pitch again. Why not just let 'em go through it again? If you rotate 'em you can even say "Hey you may have missed this challenge, I've got a new challenge. You wanna be at this." They'll come back. Then you do your webinar and you can pitch 'em over and over again. Jocelyn Sams: It doesn't hurt anything to just leave them in there. Kevin DePew: I'm gonna go, you said that and I'm gonna definitely want to do this and we figured out let's keep doing this until it doesn't work anymore. Shane Sams: What you've discovered is a lead strategy. You have found a way to get people to sign up for your email list and do a challenge with you. This is not a sales strategy. The sales strategy is when you get leads you pitch them on that live webinar presentation at the end. You were just disjointed. You had your webinar, well this wasn't really getting people to sign up. You had your thing which is getting a lot of people to sign up but you weren't really selling to 'em too hard. Now it's smash them together and get a bunch of leads and pitch 'em, hard at the end. Go change their life in your guitar membership. Kevin DePew: Very cool. I was happy to hear that cause the work I had ahead of time, now I feel like I can change the song basically and use the same emails, use the same posts, change them up a little bit, change the landing page a little big. I've got it all, it's built already. I'm excited about, maybe I can poll the folks that are tagged and say, what would you like the next challenge to be? Shane Sams: Nah, man. Same thing, different song. You could change, you could change the song every- Jocelyn Sams: Do it until it doesn't work anymore. Shane Sams: Yeah, do the same thing. Hammer the nail. Kevin DePew: Stay on track. Shane Sams: Changing the song is genius because you've already got everything done. Now you just play a different song when you turn the camera on. Jocelyn Sams: If it's not broken, don't fix it. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, Kevin. As always, it has been a lot of fun talking to you today. We always like to ask people: what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so based on what we talked about today? Kevin DePew: I would say I can go fix that thank you page to have a link to the Facebook group. Hopefully I would get a lot more conversions there so that's probably the number one thing I would do. Then revamp that pitch at the end of the challenge. Shane Sams: That's perfect. Just those little tweaks are gonna make a massive difference in what you're doing. I have no doubt Kevin DePew will take massive action and get this done. I can not wait to see the results of this inside that success form, inside the Flip Your Life community. Listen, thank you so much for all you do in the community. We appreciate you so much. Thank you for being on the show and being so transparent and sharing a part of your journey with everybody. I can't wait to see what you do next. Kevin DePew: Same, thank you guys so much for everything. It's been a great ride and I can't wait to see where it goes next. Your help and guidance has been huge. Shane Sams: Alright guys, that wraps up another amazing interview with our incredible Flip Your Life community members. What a great guy Kevin DePew is. He is just a shining example of what can happen if you roll up your sleeves, you get to work, and you never ever give up. He was a rock star at Flip Your Life Live. You heard about all the great things that happened at Flip Your Life Live. Kevin meeting people, getting a mastermind together, connecting with other like-minded entrepreneurs, taking massive action before and after the event and getting those results inside of his membership. Shane Sams: We want those results for you. We want you to be at Flip Your Life Live 2019 in Lexington, Kentucky. You can get your ticket over at flippedlifestyle.com/live. That is flippedlifestyle.com/live. Hurry up, the VIP tickets are almost gone and general admission tickets are selling out fast. We want you to be there, you need to get your ticket today so head over to flippedlifestyle.com/live and we'll see you in Lexington. Shane Sams: Before we go, we'd love to share a Bible verse to you guys. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our life and business inspiration from the Bible and we've got a great verse for you today. In Exodus 35:35 the Bible says, "He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers...all of them skilled workers and designers." Shane Sams: You have a God-given talent that you can share with the world, just like Jocelyn created a business around lesson plans. I created a business around football playbooks. Kevin created a business around playing guitar. You do have something that you can offer the world and you can use to make money online, work from home, become and stay self-employed. Don't let those talents go to waste. Get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you next time. Jocelyn Sams: Bye! Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Kevin's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help Mike move from a client-based business to an online membership. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we help Mike move from a client-based business to an online membership. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community, and we are pumped up about today's guest because we have been trying to get him on the show for a while now. Not only is this one of our amazing international members of the Flip Your Life community, but it's also someone that actually we have met in person, believe it or not, even though they had to fly all the way across the world to do it. We want to welcome to the show all the way from Melbourne, Australia, today Mike Giuliano. Mike, what's up, brother? Mike Giuliano: Hey. Hey, guys. Thanks very much for having me. I am also super excited and pumped. And, yes, we've tried to get this going and I'm glad we're ready to go. Shane Sams: Apparently, it's hard to coordinate when you're 15 time zones apart. I don't know. It's like, what is it 7:30 AM there right now, and it's like 4:30 PM, or something like that. Mike Giuliano: It's, yeah, that's right. Shane Sams: So thank you for being the one that had to get up early. I really appreciate that, man. Shane Sams: But listen, we had a great time with Mike last year at Flip Your Life LIVE, him and his wife Pat made the long trip all the way. And we kind of followed along with their journey, because they were posting in the Flip Your Life LIVE Facebook group. Jocelyn Sams: Because they had to leave like days early, of course. Shane Sams: Right, before everybody else, where did you land? You landed in, like, Memphis, and rented a car, like drove over to Nashville, or something like that? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, that's right. So we landed in L.A. and then caught a flight over, and then got to hire a Mustang, so the convertible, that was pretty cool. And got to enjoy the south a little bit. So, yeah. It took us a while to get there, but we were revved when we got there. Shane Sams: So what did you think about the ... what's it- Jocelyn Sams: Had you ever been to the south before? Shane Sams: Had you ever been there, yeah. And then what'd you think about it? Mike Giuliano: Okay, so I've been to U.S. between 12 and 15 times. Never been to the south. First time. I've got plenty of friends in the south. And we loved it. We loved the people, we loved everything about the south. So we have dear friends in Minnesota, and they were shocked when I said, "You know what, I wanna move to the south." Shane Sams: So we have got a conversion. We have someone converting to southern life. That is what I'm talking about right now. Jocelyn Sams: Well we have other Australian friends who came over for the event, and they also loved the south. And anyone who has been to the United States from another country, you know that the south is not Los Angeles or New York, or you know ... The places people typically go in the United States. The south is very different. Shane Sams: I'm super excited that you'll be coming back to the south this year for Flip Your Life LIVE in Lexington, Kentucky, correct? Mike Giuliano: Yes sir, yeah, we can't wait. It's only a few months away, so yeah, it'll be cool. Shane Sams: Well we're gonna get more into that later and talk about your journey, what's got you to this point today, where we're at. But tell us a little bit more about your guys' background, tell us about you and your online business, and what you've been doing for a living over the past few years. Mike Giuliano: Yeah, sure. Over the last 20 years, I've been a digital strategist. So basically that's helping companies grow online. Website development, SEO services, social media, commercialization, reputation management. And I've done work for all sorts of companies. Councils, government departments, Australia Spy Agency, large corporations, small business, it runs the gamut. That's what I've been doing the last 20 years. Shane Sams: What was it like? Can you tell us what you were doing for the Australia Spy Agency? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that one kinda like, piques interest. Shane Sams: That one stuck out to me. I'm like, "Is this, like, covert stuff? Are you, like, classified and sworn to secrecy?" Mike Giuliano: No, so what we've got, it's called SEO, so with SEO I help them do some online marketing. Shane Sams: Okay, good. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't really secretly taping me and I was being investigated here, by the Australian secret service. Jocelyn Sams: So are you ... You don't have to answer this, but are you or are you not coming to the south as part of a witness protection plan? Shane Sams: Is this a spy system? Are you spying on us, is that what's happening here? Jocelyn Sams: You don't have to answer that. Mike Giuliano: Hey, I'll take any excuse to move to the south, so ... Shane Sams: That's right. Mike Giuliano: I'm coming to learn and grow the business. Shane Sams: Alright, so let me ... Okay, so you been doing this for 20 years, you've been helping people at SEO, working in WordPress, working in different development for websites and things like that. And this has all been one-on-one client work, like really intense, really up in each other's faces. Meetings and talking to people, and you're wanting to transition into more of an online membership model, so you don't have to do so much of that time for dollar stuff. Correct? Mike Giuliano: That's correct, yeah. Some of those contracts I've had a few years, some of them a few months, some of them are project by project. But it means that I have to go to the client, I have to be with the client, and I'm locked into their meetings and their terms. So, yeah. So that's why I want to move to a membership model, to have more freedom. Shane Sams: So tell us what your membership model looks like. What kind of service are you gonna providing, in a scalable way, charging a low monthly price? What are you gonna be doing for people to be able to transition into that? What is your new online business, what's it going to look like? Mike Giuliano: So what's happened is, over the years, I've had small businesses contact me when they had their website get hacked. When they've tried to do an update on WordPress and it's destroyed their site. So I know that there's a need out there for small businesses to have the protection that the large companies take for granted, basically, because they've got the marketing dollars to pay for that. So what I've been able to do is, get all my services, so we'll keep your website updated, we'll do your daily backups, we'll do all your plugin updates. Every day we scan to make sure your updating plugins, themes, core files, your security. We provide real time hacking protection. If you're gonna need common site real time backups. Mike Giuliano: So we package that into our membership site and we've got three different levels there. And it makes it affordable for anyone who's got a WordPress site, to have the same protection that the large companies get. Shane Sams: That's very interesting because, just today, I was answering some questions inside of the forums in the Flip Your Life community, and one of the big things that we see a lot is people will start working in WordPress, and they'll get a little freaked out. Not because of using WordPress. Using WordPress itself is really easy. It's almost like using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, or even saving files on your computer. It's just, you know, the categories are kind of the folders, the posts are kind of the ... or the pages are just kind of saved in things. It's really easy to actually create stuff in WordPress. Shane Sams: But that's where they get freaked out. It's when those little numbers by the update buttons pop up and you got a red three, and it's like oh, you need to update this, update this, but then you click a button and everything on your site breaks. Right? Or you get in, like we did one time ... One time we logged in to flippedlifestyle.com, and instead of me and Jocelyn and our podcast staring back at us, it was a skull and crossbones and a terrorist organization, who had overwritten our page. Jocelyn Sams: That was fun. Shane Sams: That was fun. And we didn't know anything about security, anything about updating plugins or- Jocelyn Sams: You learn real fast when something like that happens. Shane Sams: Yeah. We were literally in Disney World, we were walking out the door, the kids were in a stroller. And I looked down at the site and I went, "Uh. Hold on a second." Jocelyn Sams: "We have a problem." Shane Sams: "Something's wrong." So basically what you're saying is, for someone who is scared of that stuff or is not as tech savvy to set up backups, to do those updates and to ... You're just kinda gonna be the one stop shop, click the button, here we go, we'll take care of it for you. Now you can focus on making content or products, or whatever else you're doing on your website. Right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And also on top of that, my experience with the large companies and government departments is, reporting's important. So on top of providing that protection, the backup, we also provide monthly reports. So every month we're gonna give the client an SEO report. So we'll tell them how they're doing with their keywords so they know if they're improving or if they're going back a little bit. We also give them a monthly site audit, so that tells them little things that they can, little and big things that can make changes to their website. So the more changes you make, the better you tweak your site, the better you're gonna rank, and the better usability experience that customers or visitors get. And the more comfortable customers feel, the more they're gonna stay on your site, take that call of action, or purchase that product. Mike Giuliano: And also on top of that, we provide back end and video tutorials as well, just to teach people that don't know certain things in WordPress, how they can accomplish certain things, and improve their site. Shane Sams: So this is amazing, because this membership is very different than a lot of the ones that we feature on the show, because it really is a service. It's not really just a content-based or a teaching or learning how to do stuff. You do have a component like that, like you just said, there's WordPress tutorials that go deeper into using the platform. But primarily, this is a service-based, scalable, monthly membership. So as you grow I'm sure you'll have a team, or I don't know exactly how you're doing this on the back end, if some of it's automated or whatever. But you're basically saying, "Well, for every one of these team members I can have X clients." And that becomes infinitely scalable without you. Shane Sams: And that's really what we're talking about about passive income. About creating a freedom online and creating a business where you're not trading time for dollars. It doesn't have to be log in, watch course, ask questions, or whatever. It can be a service. You can totally take a service that you're doing one on one now, and figure out a way to systemize it in a way where you can grow it. You can scale it, and it doesn't involve you actually touching the keyboard everyday. And that's just a really interesting concept, and I think this is gonna go over like gangbusters, actually. So, good job, dude. Mike Giuliano: Ah, thank you. Ah, thank you. Shane Sams: So tell us a little bit more about how you came up with this idea. When did you start really thinking about transitioning? When did you start thinking, putting the idea together? Or when did you just decide, "Man, I've had enough of this client stuff. I've gotta find something else." Did you hear one of our podcasts? Did you get an idea? Where did that part of this journey start? Mike Giuliano: Well see, this is the interesting thing, but also it's the embarrassing thing. I'm in the digital realm, so I've always heard of people turning an idea into a online product. I mean, me personally, I own over 800 domain names. So I'm big in the marketing sphere on line, but it's always been for clients. Mike Giuliano: So one day I was listening to a podcast, and you and Jocelyn were being interviewed. And I thought, man, number one, I love the accent. And number two, you guys were so candid and honest, and I was taken back by that. So I quickly looked up Flip Your Life and then started listening to your own podcast, subscribed. And my wife used to have a bridal shop, which was about a 60 minute commute. And we actually home school. And so, our whole family would listen to Flip Your Life. And my kids know, if there's one, there's a hundred. If there's a hundred, there's a thousand. So they can recite that. And, you know, they did caught on the southern voice a little bit as well. Mike Giuliano: So, we would listen to you guys every morning and every afternoon. Through rush hour traffic. And that's when you mentioned about Flip Your Life LIVE. I thought, you know what, this is what I'm gonna do. So I looked over at my wife ... We were actually, when we decided to go to Flip Your Life LIVE and heard about it, we were driving to a country location to celebrate our anniversary. We looked at each other and thought you know what, this is the time, let's do it. And we signed up! Jocelyn Sams: So I have to ask you one thing, because when you guys were at our event, you told me that you had gotten Pat to listen to the show, but at first she didn't really love it so much. Tell us a little bit about that. Mike Giuliano: Yes. So she said she couldn't really listen to it because she felt that the accents were a bit strong. And me and the kids love the accent. So for a while she didn't want to listen. But then she didn't have a choice. There's five people in our family, four of us wanted to listen, so we listened. Shane Sams: Love it. Mike Giuliano: But you know what, the voice kept on chipping away at her. Her guard up, and then eventually she thought you know what, these guys actually make sense. Same thing, she saw the honesty come through. And the fact that you guys genuinely care. That's the difference. I mean, you can open up Facebook, open up any website, go to Google, and see ads for heaps of programs that quote unquote teach you how to make money, but they don't care. And they don't really work. Whereas that was the difference, the fact that you guys genuinely care and you're there for the whole journey. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Well, what makes me so happy about that is that you guys cared enough and were willing to make the investment in time and money to fly all the way to literally the other side of the earth to come to our event. And not only did you do it once, but you found enough value in it that you're going to do it again. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's incredible. Jocelyn Sams: And for me, that is just the ultimate, I don't know what you would say, I guess compliment, to what we do, is that you were willing to do that not just once, but you're willing to do it twice. And that just makes me really happy. Shane Sams: Yeah, I've got an awesome picture of me and you and Jocelyn and Pat sitting at a table at the event. And it really ... You know, we took hundreds of photos at the event. And I love all of, I mean I really appreciate every photo that I have with every member and every listener that was there. But that one really did stick out to me when I was looking through it, because every ... I actually have it, I think it's on the sales page right now for next year's event. And I've actually got it in my ... I keep a folder that's the main items from Flip Your Life LIVE last year. And that one just really is the one that reminds me that we really can reach out and impact people all over the world. And that you can. You can help anybody with a WordPress website anywhere in the world. And if anybody listening to this podcast right now, if you'll just pick your rock up and throw it in the pond, you're gonna ripple out and impact somebody, somewhere, that you just could never do if you didn't start an online business. Shane Sams: But I really do love that picture of all four of us, 'cause it just encapsulates everything that we wanted to do with the Flip Your Life community and Flip Your Life LIVE, and that was bring together family-focused like minded people, to really push their business and their life forward. Jocelyn Sams: While we're on that subject, we've started selling tickets for next year. We are almost sold out of VIP right now, and we're still working on selling general admission. But as you were the person who probably traveled the furthest of anyone else at our event, if someone was thinking about should they come or should they not, what would you say to them? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, book it in. Definitely, it's a no brainer. From my personal perspective, it was really what I ... It was the kick in the pants that I needed, to move from having to do work for clients to having the freedom. And now, like you said, we've signed up for September coming up, 2019, and now it's about growing what I've created through being inspired through you guys. And I was, I tell you what, when you were sending out those emails saying, "Okay, we're gonna open registration," I was just hanging out. And being in Australia, I know I'm the last one to get the email. And I wanted to be the first one to book into VIP. As soon as I saw it, I booked it, man. Shane Sams: Nice man, that's amazing. That's awesome Jocelyn Sams: We love it. And we're so glad that you guys came, we're so glad that you're coming back. Shane Sams: We just had a VIP meeting too, Mike, and we've got so many ... Jocelyn Sams: We've got some surprises for you. Shane Sams: We were actually looking at each other over this meeting, with our live event coordinator the other day, we were looking down going, "This is ridiculous, what the VIP people are gonna be getting." So, it's gonna be phat. You're gonna enjoy it. Shane Sams: So once you signed up for the event, now this is where you started thinking about your idea, and you really took some action and started putting this together. 'Cause that's one thing we really focus on with Flip Your Life LIVE, is getting stuff done before you get there. Like, I'm actually, at the very beginning of April, we're about to start going through the entire Flip Your Life blueprint, live with me, with the attendees, to prepare everybody for the event. Everybody always asks us, "What if I haven't gotten anything started? What if I haven't got an idea yet? What if I've not done anything?" Well that's okay, 'cause you're going to get a live walkthrough of the blueprint, and we're also gonna do a business audit, for our more advanced members that maybe already have a successful membership. And we're literally preparing every week, doing these live trainings with the attendees, to get stuff done before the event. So what did you do before Flip Your Life LIVE last year? Mike Giuliano: Before Flip Your Life LIVE, obviously the first thing was to think of, okay, what can I provide, what service or product can I provide to help people in business? And using my skill set for the last 20 years, I came up with WP Safe Care. So first was coming up with that concept. Mike Giuliano: And then the next thing was mapping out, okay, how is it gonna roll out, and what am I gonna offer. Now, what I didn't do is really attend to those early calling sessions being provided, the live sessions. I needed to do more of that. And that's where last year's Flip Your Life I fell a little bit short, and I encourage anyone listening that if you booked in, please please please, do your homework, attend every session and every recording, because it will make your life easier at the actual event. So, yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's what we talked about at the event. You were running the idea by us, me and Jocelyn were sitting with you talking about that. And we were going through that, and I was like, "You've known about this for months, what are you doing? Like why don't you just build this thing?" And you were like, "I know, I know, I know." Mike Giuliano: Yep, I know. It was crazy, and probably because I was sort of stuck in that rut, and having to do work for clients, and maintain the clients that I had. But yeah, even if your listeners take an hour every day to work on their project leading up to Flip Your Life LIVE 2019, it's definitely well worth it. Shane Sams: Now, I know you have taken massive action since Flip Your Life LIVE, because you left with momentum, you got home, and you really really started making this transition to, "I have to build out everything so that I get to leave client work and do this membership site" So, tell us where you are right now when it comes to building this thing, getting it ready for launch. What does it look like now, is it all done, is it all finished? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, so everything's completed. I actually took the files off the site last night, so it is live. I've got a handful of clients that I've been doing this for, testing the system and testing the concept, and that's working really well. So I am ready to go. Shane Sams: Awesome. So we're ready to launch then. That's what we're really gonna talk about the rest of the podcast, is how to get this thing launched, okay? So basically, someone could give you money today and log in and use this service, correct? Mike Giuliano: Absolutely. Yep, it's ready to go. Shane Sams: Alright. See, that's the magic time. That's the product first mentality. Once you get to that point, everything else is just finding people to buy it. That's where that saying comes from, "If you can find one, you can find a hundred and one or a thousand and one." You know? So that's what we've gotta do, is get this thing out there. So what is your ... We might have a couple questions here. We're gonna talk through launching this thing, rolling it out, but ... What is your specific question right now that you might have. Let's just start with the first one. Mike Giuliano: The first question would be, I've got three membership levels. It's what do we call them? So we had a contentious discussion, a heated debate in the household. So I've got three, I've given them certain names, and some people said I should call them Bronze, Silver, and Gold. And other people said I should call them Small, Medium, and Large. So it's, what do I call my three levels? Shane Sams: What do you want to call them? Mike Giuliano: What I have called them is Pinello, which is the $59 a month, and you get a certain amount of service. Arcano, which is $79 a month, and you get a few more things. And then Di Fara, which is $99 a month, and you get some more syncing and some more reports. Shane Sams: Okay, Mike, I'm just a simple man from Kentucky. I don't- Jocelyn Sams: We're both sitting here looking at each other like, what? Shane Sams: What are those words, what do those words even mean? Like, what are those words? I don't ... Mike Giuliano: So, my daughter was the only one who liked them, everybody else hated them. These are three incredible, famous, New York pizza makers. I love making pizzas, I've got a massive pizza oven in my back yard, and that's what I try to do every week, make Napoli style pizzas. So these guys are my pizza heroes. Shane Sams: Those are your pizza heroes, okay. Okay. So, well ... I've never- Jocelyn Sams: This is the first time I've ever seen Shane speechless on this podcast. Shane Sams: 'Cause you're saying those words, and I'm like, "Man, I don't understand the words that are coming out of your mouth." I don't even know what that meant. I thought you were speaking a different language, and I thought, "Man, I thought Australian's spoke English." I didn't know what was going on. Okay. Mike Giuliano: They're all Italian surnames, that's what they are. Shane Sams: I got it, okay. Italian sur, okay. What do you think? What do you think about naming? Jocelyn Sams: Okay, here's the thing. No matter what you call them, people probably won't know the difference. And they're going to refer to them to whatever they feel like referring to them. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is, I think that you are making a big deal out of something that's not really a big deal. Shane Sams: So basically it's, yeah. There is some argument, I think, for clear naming. Our plans are, we have a standard plan, a premium plan, and we used to call it exclusive, but now we changed it to accelerator, or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: But most people probably wouldn't know that. Shane Sams: They still don't know what it means, they just know that one's cheaper and one's more expensive than the other. Right? Jocelyn Sams: And so, if someone wrote in, they might say, "Hey, I'm on the middle plan, or the higher plan, or the basic plan," or whatever. So what I'm trying to tell you is, don't let this get in your way. Call them whatever you wanna call them, and it really doesn't matter. Shane Sams: It will not impact sales. It actually could be a good thing, 'cause people will be like, "Oo, fancy." Right? Jocelyn Sams: But these are the types of decisions that people let stand in their way when they're trying to start selling something, when they're trying to change something. They let little things like this just stop them in their tracks. So you know, you could have been marketing this forever, but you haven't done it because maybe you didn't think the names were a hundred percent right. No one will remember them anyway. Shane Sams: Yeah, I mean basically, the list of services is what people are gonna read. And they're gonna click the price that makes the most sense to them. So, I wouldn't worry too much about the naming. If you wanna have fun with it, it's your business. Have fun with it. If you fall on the more logical clear side of small, medium, large, there's nothing wrong with that either. And anybody out there that's naming anything, I don't care if it's naming your domain name, naming your business, naming your product, naming your course, whatever it is. Just name it. It doesn't really matter, that's not what's gonna sell product. Jocelyn Sams: You can always change it. If later on there's some kind of a issue with it, then change it. We've changed our product names a million times. It's not a big deal. Shane Sams: Yeah. And I don't even know ... The correct technical coaching answer, what I would give you is, "Well, sir, you should split test that. You should have a page where half the people go to, with the fancy fun pizza names. And half with the other names." So there is a merit to that, if you want to do that later. But, bro, I mean it's ... I don't know. I kinda like it. I kinda like the crazy names, myself. Mike Giuliano: Yes. Shane Sams: Maybe your niche can be Pizza Fan WordPress Users. It's only people who know the greatest pizza people in the planet. So, okay. Shane Sams: Alright. So we've cleared up the name issue. So let's go deeper. So what else do you need to work through to get this thing really launched and start promoting this thing hardcore? Mike Giuliano: Okay, so I've three price brackets that I feel are reasonably priced. Just not sure how the market's gonna accept that price bracket. Apart from providing all the security and the updates and backups, we also evaluate by providing the reports. It's a holistic service to help someone grow, but doing graded online business and WordPress site, but doing it on a mass level. So just the pricing bit was the other sticking point. Shane Sams: Okay, so you've got 59, 79, and 99. Mike Giuliano: Yes sir. Shane Sams: Usually I don't really worry about the middle price, 'cause a lot of times people are drawn to it just for what it is. But what is the major difference between 59 and 199? Mike Giuliano: Okay, so 59, you get all the- Shane Sams: I'm sorry, 99. I meant 99. Mike Giuliano: Yeah. So all three of them, you get all of your backups, updates, real-time hacking protection, and real-time backup. You get that with all of them. You get the SEO report and the side order report and you get tutorials with all of them. With the 99, if you're a product-based business, an eCommerce site, we'll sync all your products through Root Commerce. We'll sync it with eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Google products. And we also provide you three competitor analysis. So you tell us your three competitors, and every month we're gonna give you an SEO insider report on those competitors, so you know what they're doing. So that helps you stay sharp on your game. Shane Sams: Hmm. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of value. Shane Sams: Yeah, so what do you get on the middle plan? What's the differentiator in the middle plan? Mike Giuliano: The middle plan, if you're an eCommerce site, if you got Root Commerce, then we do eBay product syncing and Amazon. Shane Sams: Okay. So- Mike Giuliano: We've had clients in the past where they'd dedicate one staff member just to do eBay, or just to do Amazon, whereas we automate this process. The site maintains their products in Root Commerce, and then we sync it with those different channels. Shane Sams: The thing that I'm hearing that kinda scares me with the way you've divided up this pricing is, it almost feels like, hey, all WordPress users can use the 59, but it sounds like 79 and 99 are both really really focused on eCommerce. You know? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: And I'm afraid that you've almost got two products here. That might be why your pricing feels a little wonky. So if I come to you and I'm a WordPress person and I'm selling courses. I'm not even gonna look at 79 and 99. And that's not what the point of having three prices is. The point is figuring out what people can afford, and giving them the value that matches that. So I'm wondering if you shouldn't move all of the eCommerce type benefits up to that $99 level and maybe charge 199 for that. And then do something else for the other two. Like the other two could just be, like 59 for just the protection, or 79 for protection plus reports. And then you've got this big package that says the eCommerce Pro Package, or whatever. 'Cause, right now, if I'm not doing anything on eBay or any of that other stuff, I'm gonna just overlook any other benefits of the other two packages. Does that make sense? Mike Giuliano: Yes, absolutely. Shane Sams: Yeah. So I wonder if you could do like 59, 99 and 199. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I think the 99 sounds a little low for the type of value that you'd be providing with the upper limit package. But the beautiful thing about this type of service is that there are a lot of similar types of service. Not exactly to what you're doing, but people who provide maintenance or different services for WordPress sites. So that gives you a really good place where you can go and look and see what other people are doing in similar spaces. Shane Sams: I can tell you right now, we have paid up to 199 a month just for updating plugins. Mike Giuliano: Yeah, yeah. Shane Sams: We have a business that's doing that, but everyone won't be able to do that. Some people would only be able to pay maybe 59 for updating plugins and stuff. What I'm saying is, you're giving so much value, and some of it might not be relevant to all WordPress users in those other two packages. So you gotta figure out a way to go 59, 99, and something bigger for all that other stuff. And you'll make more money that way, for sure. Mike Giuliano: Yeah, that's gold. That's brilliant. I'm gonna do that, absolutely. Shane Sams: So basically let's say this ... In general, I'm trying to think of a way to theme this for everybody listening. So basically your core service is usually that lowest price. And then your core service plus a bonus is the middle price. So the bonus there is the reporting, right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then the big package usually has extra services. Right? So for example, if you look at our package, we have a standard membership, that's our lowest price. Like 19 a month right now. So you can go in and watch videos and talk on the forums. Right? Okay? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: So our bonus that comes in the middle package, our premium package, which is I think $49 a month right now, is you get two member calls with me and Jocelyn every single month. And you get to actually come ask us questions on those member calls. Right? So see, what we've done is, that applies to everybody. You know what I mean? Shane Sams: Now our third tier has things like access, additional resources, and that's really what this eCommerce really bonus package thing is, right? And what it'll do, you're almost having three options but two products, really. 'Cause that eCommerce people are gonna jump on that last package every time. 'Cause they know the value. So that's really what you're doing with your tiers, is you're trying to figure out a way to get people to move up the ladder, or to buy a different product completely. So you need to package it that way so it's not so much conf ... 'Cause if I was on your website and I just had a WordPress website, I'd be like, "Ah, man, I can totally get away with 59 bucks, I don't even need to think about the other two. I'm not on eBay." Right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, you're right, yeah. Shane Sams: So if you wanna open this up to the masses, you're gonna have to change that just a little bit. Mike Giuliano: Yeah, absolutely, will do. I'll get that done today. Shane Sams: Okay? Alright. So I think we've figured out how we've named your pizza packages, right? We've got some pricing things figured out, we've talked a little bit about how to structure a three-tiered offer. So what do we need to do now to launch this thing? You've opened the doors, right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: So we can't just build it and hope people will come. What's your plan going forward now, to roll this out to the masses? Mike Giuliano: Number one, I'm gonna start providing hints and tips on SEO. So basically providing light coaching on how people can grow their websites from an SEO point of view. So I'm gonna be publishing that on the different social media channels. I'm putting together a report that people can download that will summarize, okay, an action plan of what you need to do. So everything will be actionable items to help you grow your ... That's the whole thing. Helping you grow your business online. So I'm providing that content for free. To get the WP Safecare branding out there, and the packages out there. Shane Sams: I wonder if you should actually say how to grow your business with WordPress. Instead of how to grow it online? 'Cause that's really the goal, right? Is WordPress. Mike Giuliano: Yeah, yeah. Shane Sams: So like, how to grow your business using WordPress. There was a discussion today in the forums actually, like should I build my website on ClickFunnels, should I use WordPress, WordPress scares me. That's really the exact conversation that you're trying to have here, right? Is like, "No, WordPress is awesome, let me just show you how to keep it safe so that you can grow your business effectively." You know what I mean? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, yeah. Shane Sams: What's your opt-in gonna be? What are you gonna be getting leads with? What's the free deal? Mike Giuliano: I'm putting together a free report on some actionable items to move forward with your WordPress. Shane Sams: Security or just using WordPress? Mike Giuliano: From an SEO point of view. And what you need to do to your WordPress site to grow from an SEO point of view. Because that's the foundation. If you're not seen on Google, well, you're not seen. Normally. So that's gonna be the, providing that free report and getting people in like that. Shane Sams: I have an idea, but it might freak you out. Mike Giuliano: Freak me out. Go for it. Shane Sams: I wonder if your freebie should actually not be all of your WordPress training. Mike Giuliano: Yep, okay. Shane Sams: 'Cause all your stuff is SEO, but at the end of your article, imagine if you said, "Oh yeah, you gotta do this, this, and this, oh but by the way, if you're not using WordPress, doesn't matter anyway." You're not gonna be ... You need to use WordPress, don't worry, I'm gonna teach you how to use WordPress completely. 'Cause people sell that. Like actually sell courses how to do that, right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: So if you became this person who was the go-to person to learn how to use Word ... You can learn how to use WordPress and still not know how to protect it and back it up and do all those things. I'm talking about making good posts, SEO posts, the difference in posts and pages, and even deeper stuff. Like sidebar structures and how to use widgets. All the things these videos you've got teaching people how to use WordPress. That still doesn't infringe on your core offer. Like at all. Shane Sams: So I wonder if you shouldn't be like ... You can still write about SEO and write about using WordPress and maybe be like a little news person, who, anytime something updates in WordPress you have an article about it or whatever. You just type up a little blog post about 5.03's release or whatever. Or you have a plugin of the week. Whatever it is. You're just really focused on helping business owners use WordPress better. You can dabble in marketing, dabble in SEO, but like ... Man, if you were sitting there and you were like, "Do you wanna get more out of WordPress? Well, join our free community and get access to a hundred videos learning how to use WordPress." Shane Sams: Now you definitely have a business owner that's interested in WordPress, probably using it, definitely needs your service. And it feels like you're stripping value out of your product, but you're really not, 'cause that's not your offer. Your offer is WP Safe. Right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Shane Sams: So why not just be the ultimate guy for business owners using WordPress? And then bam, secure, secure ... Your list would probably explode 'cause you could ... Like, "Join my community for free. Get access to all of our WordPress trainings." Boom. And now you just follow up with, is your WordPress site safe? Right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Shane Sams: Does that scare you? Does that scare you to let all that content out? Mike Giuliano: Yeah, well it's funny because the video tutorials are part of the packing, but I could take them and make them free and get people in like that. And the crazy thing is, because I've been doing this for so long, I've created training manuals for my large corporates teaching this stuff on how to use WordPress. So I've actually got a lot of the content already. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and you don't have to feel like you have to use every single bit for free, either. Maybe you could use part of it for free and then have the other behind the paywall, and that's totally fine. Shane Sams: Yeah. And it's just the way you present it. All content wants to be free anyway. Everything in those videos, I hate to tell you, is on YouTube, and I could go find it. But I gotta find it. That's the problem. Right? Mike Giuliano: Right. Shane Sams: So your offer is you get to get it not free, but here's what you put in your package. Priority support and content coaching. And they can go ask, "Hey, where's a video about setting up a new sidebar or a specific page?" Oh, yeah. Well, priority support will answer that question for them, but it won't do it for the free level. So you could draw your line there too. If you want help going through the trainings, that's inside the $59 thing. Whatever. But then if you just wanna use it yourself, hey, DIY community, people can get in there and talk to each other. But you have guaranteed people using WordPress. That's amazing. Right? Mike Giuliano: Yeah. Fantastic. Shane Sams: How many videos do you have? Mike Giuliano: Over 100, I think about 125, something like that. Shane Sams: You have 125 blog posts written if you do this too, because every week you could release one training with a blog post, maybe a transcript. And at the bottom it can say, "Hey, we have 99 more of these inside the community." 'Cause they're all spread out among your website, they can dig and hunt, but they're really all in one place with a nice organized system if they were starting from scratch in the community. So they're basically getting curation in the free level, but you can use those as blog posts now everywhere. Upload them to YouTube, whatever. Build your audience. Mike Giuliano: That's fantastic, yeah. That's brilliant. Shane Sams: Love it. Jocelyn Sams: Alright. Well I think that you have some solid direction. I cannot wait to hear bout your launch. When is that going to be? Mike Giuliano: Okay, so I'm gonna put all those things in place. Change the pricing, change the name. Not the name of the levels, but have an eCommerce level and then the other two levels. So I'm aiming to go full on live in two weeks. Shane Sams: Alright. So are you gonna launch, real quick, with a webinar? Are you gonna do just adds to your site? Or are you gonna just kinda slow roll it out, everything's ready to go, and you're just gonna start cranking out content? What's the plan? Mike Giuliano: I'm gonna be running ads. Shane Sams: You're gonna be running ads. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, awesome. Well, I cannot wait to hear more about it in the community. I know you will be posting a success story so we can all live through you vicariously. It is going to be awesome. Shane Sams: And we are going to celebrate massive business ... What do you have? You've got like, what, 16 weeks? No wait, you got about 20 weeks between now and Flip Your Life LIVE. So you gotta be rolling into Lexington, Kentucky, man, like, "Guys. Went on the podcast, dropped a hundred, two hundred members. I found one, and then I found a hundred and one, and then I found whatever and one." Right? We're gonna be celebrating that downtown Lexington this September. Sound good? Mike Giuliano: Sounds good, looking forward to it, man. That's gonna be awesome. Shane Sams: Alright guys. That was a great conversation with Mike, today about his business. Talked about a lot of things we don't get to talk about sometimes on the podcast. Service-based memberships, getting into those price points. And even some of those things that hold us up, like naming. I can't wait to see what Mike does over the next few months. Shane Sams: And we would love for you to take massive action over the next few months as well. And we'd love to see you at Flip Your Life LIVE to celebrate all of the accomplishments, all the things that you're gonna be doing in your online business over the next few months. If you'd like to meet us, meet Mike, and meet everybody else that's coming to Flip Your Life LIVE, this is an open event. Anybody that's listening, anybody in our community, anybody anywhere in the Flipped Lifestyle universe, can come and hang out with us and Mike at Flip Your Life LIVE 2019. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. That's L-I-V-E. And you can grab a ticket to the number one event for family-focused entrepreneurs. Man, it's gonna be a great room, a lot of great people are gonna be there, and we cannot wait to introduce you to our hometown, basically, where Jocelyn and I met. Lexington, Kentucky. It's gonna be an amazing event. We can't wait to see you there. Shane Sams: Alright guys, that is all the time that we have for today. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. If we can help you in any way inside the Flip Your Life community, we would love to do that. But until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Mike's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we tell you how to launch a virtual summit and build your email list. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we tell you how to launch a virtual summit and build your email list. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Shane Sams: We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to bring another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show to help them grow their online business. Shane Sams: And I'm really excited about today's show. We got two guests, two great friends of ours who we've met in person and have worked with in our private mastermind, Gena and Jerry Lester. How are you guys doing today? Gena Lester: We're great. Jerry Lester: We're doing good. Gena Lester: Very excited to be here. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. We are very happy to have you. We are happy that we get Jerry to talk. When they first came on, we were just talking, and we asked, "Hey, you know, is Jerry there?" And she's like, "Oh, yeah, he's here." And we're like, "Oh, is he going to talk?" She's like- Shane Sams: Is he going to participate? Jocelyn Sams: I don't know. And I totally feel you, Jerry, I do. Jerry Lester: Hey, I'm the support. Shane Sams: Hey listen, that's how we all do, right? Sometimes you got to have lurkers that make the world go around. You know what I mean? Jocelyn Sams: Okay, guys. Before we dive in and talk about all the good stuff this episode is going to have, I want you to tell everyone a little bit about your background and what you were doing kind of before you discovered online business, this whole world. Gena Lester: Okay. I am an independent educational consultant. And what that means in layman terms is basically that I help families as they walk through the college admissions process. Gena Lester: And so I help them figure out like what the perfect college list is, how they're going to ... is the school a fit, or a great school for them. Can they afford that particular school? Are their children going to be successful? What they're going to major in, how they're going ... what essays they're going to write, and everything that goes in between that. I help them choose like what classes that are the best for them to take. Gena Lester: And I work with students that do everything from going to Ivy league schools, to learning differences, to everything in between, to schools that are just middle of the road, to families that homeschool. All of those things are included in my services. Gena Lester: And so I have been doing this for ... I've been in education for almost 30 years. And I started out running a private school and then people kept asking me to help them with their students as they were going through the college process. And so I transitioned into my own private practice. And so I've been working with kids for probably about six years now in my private practice offline. Gena Lester: And I knew that I wanted to scale my business and I didn't really want to hire ... like have a whole brick and mortar business, because I thought about that. But where I'm at in my life, it was just not the best option for me. So going and doing an online business would allow me to scale without having to bring in the whole, you know, lots of new employees and things to that effect. So that's kind of how I transitioned- Shane Sams: So basically, you were ... what you're saying is you were trying ... you were saying you didn't want to bring in a bunch of other counselors that you trained- Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: ... to do what you do, to you know, say like they work in a ... I mean not a cubicle, but like offices and you're ... you didn't want to- Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: ... this big thing- Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: ... where just all these people showing up for work every day and you had to manage those people. Jocelyn Sams: And I totally feel you on that, Gena. Gena Lester: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: I'm of the opinion more people, more problems. Shane Sams: Yes. Yes. Gena Lester: Yes. Exactly. Shane Sams: We are in- Gena Lester: That's right. Shane Sams: ... support of small and mighty teams. That's our- Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: ... philosophy. Gena Lester: And it really ... Once you have that type of a business, it ties you down to having to be there to unlock the door every day. Shane Sams: Oh yeah. Gena Lester: And I just really like having the freedom of doing it myself. And so that's why online business is perfect. Because I have more control over my time versus having to be there to unlock the door and clean the toilets for everybody. Shane Sams: Do you right now, like, meet with people virtually in your one on one stuff? Gena Lester: Uh-huh. Shane Sams: Or do you meet with people like in a place? Like how do you do it? Gena Lester: No. I actually started out meeting in a place. So I would ... I work in a co-working space. So I'd come here and I'd meet ... and I still can do that. Shane Sams: Yeah. Gena Lester: But in the last year and a half before I came ... started working toward where ... you know, the membership stuff that I'm doing now, I actually started to transition my students all to virtual because of their schedules. They're so involved, obviously, you know, with your kids, that between, you know, all of the activities that parents and kids are running between. And living in a big city, it can take 30-40 minutes just to drive five miles. Shane Sams: Oh, I gotcha. Gena Lester: Yeah. And so this allowed me not to have any breaks and I could, you know, within from student to student, and then it keeps them, they can sit and eat dinner after football practice and work with me while we're doing that, versus ... and then jump right into their homework. So I see everybody virtually. Shane Sams: So, let me just clarify this for the listeners, okay. You were in education all these years. You started helping kids one on one. You're doing this virtually, like on Skype or Zoom or whatever. Gena Lester: Yup. Shane Sams: Okay. Are you talking to the parents or are you talking to the kids? Like who are you talking to? Gena Lester: No, I work ... my private clients are actually my ... are actually students. So, parents will hire me to sit with their student and take them through step by step the process. So parents can ... I do meet with families as a whole a few times through the process. But typically I'm working straight with the student. Shane Sams: Got you. So like basically it's you ... Like are you telling them how to fill out FAFSA? Are you telling them how to get their grades right? What are you working with the student on? And like how is that going to ... How does that translate into like a virtual, you know, membership or whatever? Gena Lester: Yes. Okay, so basically what I do is because college has become so competitive and especially scholarship money and things to that effect. So, the things that I'm really known for is I am very passionate about helping kids find what makes them unique, what makes them stand out, what makes them different from every other student. Gena Lester: So, I work with them from the beginning to figure out like what their aptitudes are and what their strengths are, where they really, you know, should go as far as their majors and how that ties in to their next steps. Gena Lester: And so then what we do is we figure out those things, then we go into create a college list. I help them do the research and figure out, do their mission, just what their passions and all those things to that ... like do that line up with the college's mission. Because it may not. Gena Lester: And then from there, we go into, obviously, there are different platforms plus every college has its own platform. There's all these deadlines. If they miss a deadline, it's just done. If they miss a scholarship deadline, it's too bad. They can't go back. So I have all the- Shane Sams: So, do you provide accountability to keep them on track? Like you write down the deadlines and you're like, "Hey, Johnny, you've not turned in X, Y, Z." Or whatever. Gena Lester: Yes. I have an online system that they go in and it sends emails to their parents. They have assignments every week. They know what is due, when it's due. Depending ... Now seniors have them every week. Freshmen ... I work with kids that are freshmen. So those kids are just starting ... We're just helping figure out what they need to be doing. Gena Lester: I help them understand like what they need to do on college visits or interviews or essays. Essays are a huge part of it. So I probably edit 100 essays between November ... just the month of October, November. Shane Sams: Wow. That's unbelievable. Gena Lester: Because it's time for that. Yeah, tons of essay editing. Shane Sams: Not scalable. Gena Lester: No. Shane Sams: And it's not scalable at all. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, this whole thing, I mean, I'm really fascinated by what you do. Because I think back to when I was graduating high school or like when I was in high school, and I really had no idea what I wanted to do. Like I was one of the first people in my family to go to college. My dad also went to college. But I was one of the first people to like actually go out and go somewhere totally far away. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I had no idea- Shane Sams: And she was 17 when she went to college, by the way. Gena Lester: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Like a baby. And I thought I was so grown up. And yeah, I had life all figured out. But really, I had no clue what I was doing. Like I just picked the college because I wanted to go there. And I mean everything worked out okay, but it's just now I'm looking back ... You know, I'm almost 40 now. Jocelyn Sams: And you know, like I'm just now starting to do some of the things that you're talking about. You know. What are my attributes? What am I good at? What should I be doing? That type of thing. Like I'm just figuring this out now. And to be able to figure it out when you're like a freshman in high school, I mean that's really amazing. Gena Lester: Yeah. People ... the families always say to me, I where ... I run into people who are, you know, in your stage of life or they've just graduated. And they're like, "Well, where were you, how come I didn't know about you?" And I think that's why it's so ... I'm so passionate about it. Gena Lester: I went into fashion design, believe it or not, when I graduated high school, because I had no clue. My friend was doing it, so I thought, "Hey, well I learned to sew, so that was great." Shane Sams: That's a good reason to pick a major. Gena Lester: But totally not, totally not what I should have been doing. And so, you know, college is so expensive. And if you're a student or your child can figure out ahead of time, they may not know do I want to be a doctor, but they may know, "Okay, I really like the sciences." Gena Lester: And so we find a major that kind of gives them some leeway there. Then they can prepare and even cut a year off of college. They can take some college in high school. Not spend as much going to college, they're not going to lose credits if they transfer, because even though everything quote, unquote transfers, it doesn't always transfer into the degree they change to. So they can lose that. Gena Lester: And then also, kids, if they stay in too long, they get discouraged and they end up dropping out. Then you've got student debt or whatever. And your student's not ... your child's not even finished college. So the whole purpose of this is to kind of keep all of those things from happening. Shane Sams: Awesome. Gena Lester: And then with the online, what I'm doing is I'm actually taking everything that I teach to the students, I'm taking that out of my head, and I've made a course, I guess basically, in there. So a parent can go through and it's designed where a student can sit and watch the classes and go through it on their own. Or a parent can sit and watch it and then sit down with their child and do it. Gena Lester: So, I kind of done it where both parent and child, depending on the dynamic of the family. Shane Sams: I love your story. Because this is the classic how to get into, like, online business. How to scale your business, how to create more ... we say passive income, but it's really just scalable income. Because you have this career, right? You've built up over 40 years in education and six years doing this one on one thing, this knowledge base, right? That only you possibly have. Shane Sams: Like this is unique. Right? Now there's other people that probably help people get into college. But your experience is unique. And you have an opportunity to teach and help other people with your unique experience. And then you decide that this needs to scale, because you don't want to hire people. That was clearly a way you could scale. Right? You could have done that. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: But you want to ... you want to take it online, you want to go online, you want to make courses, you want to spread this out to as many people as possible and facilitate a more one to many instead of one on one approach. And that is exactly how you can grow a business of a thousand customers paying $50 a month or whatever. By going online. Shane Sams: So, like what made you ... Like how did you hear about us or how did you hear about this model. And like what made you say this was what I want to do. I want to create this course, I want to create this community of my own. Like what happened there? Like what was the next step to say, "I don't want the people in the cubicles, I want this." Like what happened there? Gena Lester: Well, I began probably about a year ago, at this point, deciding okay, I'm going to sit down and do that. And being in a co-working space, there's lots of different entrepreneurs here that have different businesses and so sometimes we sit and just kind of, you know, brainstorm with each other, talk about different things. And so I had been talking about my business. Gena Lester: And a friend of mine, one of the other owners here, she was listening to the Profit First podcast. Which we ... is a big thing I do, as well. And I implemented that in my business a year and a half ago, so I love that. And she was ... immediately texted me and said, "Oh, my gosh, you're not going to believe who I just ... I just heard something on his podcast and it's absolutely what you need to do." And so she immediately sent me the link. And so I listened to it. And I was like, "Yes. This is, yes." Shane Sams: Mike ... This is Mike Michalowicz's Profit First podcast, which we did an interview on air. That's where- Jerry Lester: That was the interview we listened to. Gena Lester: And so when I listened to his podcast, listened to that interview and I was like, "Absolutely, they understand education, they get what I'm doing." You know, that type of thing. And there were just a lot of different reasons that I felt really connected with you guys. Began to ... I binge listened to all your podcasts, I think in about a month period. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm jumping in." And I don't even ... I mean, I know I signed up for the trial, but it was ... I don't even like wait for it was over. I think I sent a message to the community person, said I want to do the whole year in this. I'm going to do this. It's ... yeah. You know, and I ... definitely, it's been a road. Because I realized there's a lot more involved than I thought. Shane Sams: Sure. Gena Lester: But, that's okay. You know. So it's been a great, you know, year. I think my year renews in April. So in a year, I'll have been end of the year in April. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome. And not only did you guys commit, we love it when people commit. Not just for financial reasons, but because that means that you're really invested and that you're determined to do what it is that you set out to do. So we love people who make that type of commitment. And also, not only did you join for the full year and the community, you guys also made the decision to come to the event in September. So let's talk just a little bit about that. Like what made you make that decision, and what are some things that have come out of that? Shane Sams: And also, too, like because I love when we do the podcasts, because the hard part on our side is we know your story. Like, right? Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: So then I'm like trying to peel the onion back and reveal your story to everybody. Jocelyn Sams: But it's so exciting. Gena Lester: People- Jocelyn Sams: We just want to tell people. Shane Sams: I know, right. Like I want to just say, like, "Here's all the things that they did." Right. It's hard to do that. Like when you signed up for the event, at this point it was more like you were in the creation phase, right? Like that was kind of the catalyst or the anchor on your calendar. The goal was to do X, Y, Z, before the event. Shane Sams: So, what did you do before the event? What did you create and like leading up to the event, how did you prepare for that? Gena Lester: Well, I started out really ... I had a website. It was on Squarespace, though, so I shifted it over to WordPress, which I did. Tried to do on my own for the most part, but decided I ... I did hire somebody to help me with that. Because I got a little stuck there for ... that probably was a- Shane Sams: Outsource that every time you get a chance. Gena Lester: Yeah. I wish I had done that earlier. But anyway. It was great, because I was able to create what I wanted. And I really liked the flow of how your website looked. And so mine's different, but it still was kind of ... that helped me ... I'm a visual person, as well. So that really helped me to be able to see, okay, this is what I need to do. Gena Lester: And then began to really set up the membership site, set up like the classes. I think, for me, the time consuming has been the classes. Because I ... it's more difficult for me not to ... and I'm getting better at this. But I wanted to not just ... I needed to have more classes in there. Because I felt like what if a senior joins. And they're in the middle of the process and I don't have those classes created. It's going to be stressful. So I wanted to make sure the senior year was completely done before I really launched. And so now I've got almost all of the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior completed. So it was a learning process for the, you know ... Gena Lester: I had to get comfortable using video and audio and feeling comfortable doing YouTube. And so I definitely learned a lot in that respect. So all of that kind of stuff helped me lead up. I had never ... all of my business had grown organically. I had never ran an ad, I had never had to market or sell anything. My business was always just full just from word of mouth. Shane Sams: Yeah, this is a different animal now, though, right? Because it's online. Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: Totally different animal. Gena Lester: Now it's like fun. I'm like, I don't feel awkward ... I mean, I guess I feel a little awkward every now and then. But for the most part, it's like really ... you know, I've gotten more comfortable with it. I've gotten more confident. And I'm like, "Yes, I can do this." Shane Sams: And I bring that up, because ... okay, so I'm just going to fill in some gaps here as we get to the next ... because we ... You have some amazing questions that we want to talk about. And you did some amazing things after the live event. Shane Sams: So we got to the live event, and we have a really strong philosophy in the Flipped Lifestyle, you know, universe, of product first. Like you really want to get something to sell. Like that's our mission. Because if you can't take money and you can't give something of value for the money, you don't have a business. You have a hobby. Like that's it. And everybody else teaches build your Instagram account and build your this and build your that. And like there's nothing there. You don't make any money, you don't do anything with it. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: So you basically get all these products done, you're building this membership community type thing out, you're getting the infrastructure finished. We get to Flip Your Life Live, we get to meet in person, we get to talk, and you joined our private mastermind. And the first question that you basically gave us was, "All right, now who's going to buy this?" Like how do we grow an audience, right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: And your situation was really interesting because, you know, a lot of times we talk about, you know, okay, we can go the organic content route, we can show a lot of ads, we can do a lot of things like that. Shane Sams: But as we worked with you and we listened to your story, I kind of realized that you had a lot of connections with people in the college space, there was a couple other members of the community at Flip Your Life Live that were kind of in your space. And we kind of connected you guys with them. And this, that, and the other. And we kind of came up with this virtual summit idea. Shane Sams: And so, like, first, how did you feel when I said, "Hey, Gena, I want you to host a virtual summit with like 20 speakers. How does that sound?" Like, what did you ... how did your heart explode when I said that to you? Gena Lester: Actually, it did. I was like so excited. Because I knew what a virtual summit was. I had just never thought about doing one. And it, you know, when I ... When you said it, I was like, "Oh my gosh." I mean, my mind went in just a million directions. And so I literally sat down and immediately went to work. You know. And started putting it all together. Gena Lester: And it's funny, because I started a private school back in the '80s for students that homeschool. And at that point, there wasn't anything for them. So this was a way for me to offer something. And I had no clue what I was doing, I just went out there, put an ad, and had 80 kids sign up in the first like week. So I was like, I should find a building. Gena Lester: And so that's kind of my personality. So when you said it, I was like, "Oh, jump off the cliff." And I was like, "I can do this in like three weeks." And Jerry's like, "You probably want to give yourself a little more time." Jocelyn Sams: The voice of reason. Shane Sams: The voice of reason, always. Gena Lester: The voice of reason. So like, yeah. You're right. So I kind of backed out like, because it was right in the middle of Christmas as well. And just when would be the right time for it. And so I was like ... it was the greatest ... It was a genius idea for me. Shane Sams: I love the conversation thread. We talk on Voxer in our private mastermind. Like I can ... like it's funny, like I see the ... It's like a little graph that goes up and down. And like, I know when we've hit a chord, because like the messages immediately get longer. And it's like I can scroll back through. And I'm like five minute, five minute, five minute, five. Like this was a good conversation. You're excited. Shane Sams: Probably explain a little bit, first, what a virtual summit is. And a virtual summit is basically where you get a bunch of experts together and you basically do a ... It's like a glorified webinar, is what it really is. So you're not going to be live, you're going to record all of these interviews ahead of time. But you're going to release them like on a certain day. You could do it live, I guess. If you wanted to. Jocelyn Sams: And some people do. Shane Sams: And some people do. In this case, we decided that Gena would go out and get interviews from all these experts in the field. So it might be in her space it might be like an admissions counselor or someone who was really good at, you know school aid or someone like an expert of the SAT or whatever. Just anything in her space that was related to this summit. And a summit is like bringing people together to speak. Right? Shane Sams: So basically, then all the people involved in the summit will all email any list they've got. Share it anywhere they've got. Run ads to anywhere they got. Drive traffic to one page to register. And the goal is to combine the efforts of as many people as possible to build a huge email list and then everybody gets to share the email list and they can go do what they want with it, like after the event. Right? Shane Sams: And this is a great way to build an email list fast if you have good connections, if you've got some people that you can get to do a virtual summit with. That might even have an audience, and we're gonna talk ... some of the people had really big audiences that you worked with. And then ... but also, it doesn't take a lot of time. But you don't have to put a lot of ads into it. You divide up the resources between everybody. And you don't have to create a ton of content yourself. You just interview people, basically. Shane Sams: So, you have your summit, and you ... how many emails ... like what happened to your email list? How'd that work out? Gena Lester: It definitely blew up. I mean, I went from having zero to having 400 and something. Shane Sams: Oh man. That is absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. 400 emails. Gena Lester: Just by doing the summit. Which was phenomenal. And I will say, you know, we talked about originally sharing those emails. But one of the things I found in my industry was that some of the people were concerned about sharing ... like the people coming in and sharing those lists. So everybody actually asked me not to share them and for me to keep the emails myself. I know. I was shocked. Gena Lester: But everybody totally promoted it. I ... yeah, I was just amazed. And everybody had a speaker page. So they all had a link to a free something, so that then people could go in and opt in to their stuff. And that way if somebody wanted to know about what one person had or another person- Shane Sams: Perfect. Gena Lester: So, it ended up for me ... I think it could be done either way. Because originally that was my first thing. And when I started talking about it, I was like this is what I'm going to do. And then there was just ... I think maybe because of my space, that there was just a concern among everybody, like- Shane Sams: Privacy, basically. Gena Lester: Yeah, the privacy basic. Part of it. So I ended up not sharing those emails with anybody just based upon the speakers' request. So that was kind of amazing to me that that even happened. And they were like ... My speakers were emailing me every day saying I had given them a list of emails that they could send out. A lot of them actually took them and even went a little bit further. They were sharing it on their social media, sending them out to their group. And then asking how statistics looked. So I was able to go in and share and say, "Yeah, the statistics look great, there's a lot of people." I think every speaker had over a 100 views. Shane Sams: Wow. Gena Lester: Which was pretty amazing. Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: That is awesome. And I love how you did it that way. You know, it just goes to show you that you don't have to do things a certain way because other people do it that way. If it doesn't feel right to you, change it around. We do stuff like that all the time. So I love it that you guys said, "Hey, I don't feel right about just putting all these emails together. Let's have everybody opt in separately." I think that's totally fine. Shane Sams: And you created a baseline. Like our baseline was, let's present it like this and see ... and then you see what it's turned into. And that's why you ended up with 400 emails. And like you ... and it's still reciprocal. Like that was ... you found a way to make it reciprocal, though. Because they had the opt in page on their speaker page. Shane Sams: But the cool thing about a virtual summit, people are going to share it. Because it's status. It's like, "Look at me. I'm speaking at this virtual summit." It's like if you're speaking on stage, it doesn't matter who or how many. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Like I'm speaking at this event. So like it just creates this like reciprocity between everybody and there's kind of an ego thing that gets some energy behind it. And people feel good about the content they create. And so like they're going to promote it. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: It's even better than like an affiliate thing. Where it's like, "Oh, you sell my thing for me." No, this is more just, "Let's all do this together and have fun." Gena Lester: Exactly. Shane Sams: And support our industry. And like 400 emails is nothing to sneeze at. Like I'm telling you, like ... I mean if you could convert 10% of that at $50 a month, that's 40 people paying you $50 a month. Like that's good, talk about real money. Right? So I mean, that's an amazing ... I think we had less than 400 when we first launched our first product. It was like under 300, I think. So like a huge business can be built on the back of, you know, 400 emails. Gena Lester: Yeah. And you know, I ended up setting up a Facebook Live ... Facebook group. Where everybody gave them a link, they all ... like I would say, probably about 130 people from the summit joined the group. And then I went live twice a week. Because what I did was I dripped out a different speaker every day. Even though they could see them all ... you know, the members or the people who signed up could go in and watch whatever they wanted at any time. But every day I focused on a new speaker. So I said- Shane Sams: Oh, that's smart. Gena Lester: "This is this speaker and here is their information. And here's a link straight to their stuff." And so then that speaker also then was promoting their stuff out that particular day. I actually figured out how to do Facebook, YouTube, and them inside of a system which was kind of ... the first one was a little rough. But then I figured it out and we got it going. Gena Lester: But people were asking, you know, questions and it was like really interactive. And so those people will still be part of that group. You know, since the summit. Shane Sams: So you're saying that's like 130 additional contacts on top of even all the emails? Or it's at least another channel to get- Gena Lester: Yeah, I think it's more of another channel. I did promote it out. And so they're ... I got to put the link on my Facebook and different things that say even if they didn't sign up for summit, they could come. So I think there are some new people in it, as well. But a lot of it is the same ... the people who were from the summit that joined. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, that's just an awesome example, guys, of you don't have to do it like we do it. You don't have to do it like anybody else does it. And you can just go out and build your list. You just have to find what works for you. If you know 10 people, if you know ... If you're a networker, like somebody who knows people or you've developed a network over years and years, why would you not do a summit? I mean, why would you not work together to move mountains? Right? And go build that email list up. Shane Sams: And you guys are a prime example of how something big can happen really fast, right? Like I mean, it's only a few months. And bam, 400 emails. Went from zero to 400 like it was nothing. So. Gena Lester: Right. And what was cool is that I had ... I wanted to do 15 speakers. And I have a lot of connections in every different like discipline. But then I would speak to somebody and they're like, "Oh, you have to have this person." And so I ended up only using maybe five of my own contacts and so I've already had people saying, "Are you doing this again? Are you doing it in the Fall? How are you going to," you know, so I know that this is something that will happen ... like I can take it and do the same ... now that I've got the system down, I can do it again. I can do it twice a year and still, you know, add to my email list. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Gena Lester: So, that's exciting. Shane Sams: It's like automatic emails without spending money. Gena Lester: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Gena Lester: It was. Shane Sams: You know what I mean. That's great. Gena Lester: It was. Shane Sams: Okay, so first of all, you guys are awesome. I love you guys so much because you don't mess around. You are decisive, you take action, you get on ... you get on a plane or a car and you go to live events. Jocelyn Sams: You don't worry about if it's perfect. Shane Sams: That's right. You don't worry about if it's exactly like the experts said to do it. You know what I mean? Gena Lester: That was ... I edited it myself. And I can tell you, it's not perfect. Shane Sams: Exactly. That doesn't matter. But it worked. It worked. Gena Lester: It did. Shane Sams: Right? And now, we have 400 emails that we get to market to of people that are directly interested in exactly what we're selling. Gena Lester: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you did the summit. You got some emails. And where are you at now? Like what's your ... What's your next thing? Have you tried to sell them anything? Gena Lester: No. So I did on my page, I did put like a link to ... you know, to my EPC campus, but I haven't really used that ... the summit yet as that selling tool. Because I knew that would be the next step I wanted to get them in, and know my content, and know me first. So, yeah. Now I need to launch and I need to get members into my campus. So that's where I'm at now. Shane Sams: So, basically, though, you've got the campus ready. It's just that you've got the sales page ready, you just got to figure out a way to bridge the gap between, okay, I now know about Gena's universe and I am into her product. Shane Sams: Well, you've done everything perfect so far. And I've no doubt you're going to be successful at this. Because you had a real world experience, you had an idea, you turned it into a course. You figured out a way to grow an audience and get emails. And now it's just a matter of marketing it to them. Okay. Shane Sams: So, usually in this case, especially since you have this new email list that's right in the universe, the world ... I keep saying universe today. The world that you're in. You've got them. Like they're fresh. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: The next step, usually with a really fresh email list, is something live. Right? Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: You want to do a beta group. I probably do not recommend getting 100, 200 ... I mean, it sounds great to have a ton of people come in at once. But you don't know yet what's going to happen when people start interacting- Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: ... with the content, asking questions, so- Jocelyn Sams: You need to get a few super fans in to break things. Because they're very forgiving. Gena Lester: Right. Jocelyn Sams: They will be cool with it. Like even if you screw it up, we do this all the time. Shane Sams: Like, they'll say this link's not working, this video won't play. Something, you know, something you missed. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Usually we recommend a beta list of about 20 people, a beta group. Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: Get 20 members ... What are you going to charge for your membership? Gena Lester: I have it at 599 for a year or 54, I think, per month. Shane Sams: So basically like if they buy the year, they save a month or two, basically? Gena Lester: Yeah. Shane Sams: So I'm just going to use ... I'm just going to say 50 and 500. Gena Lester: That's fine. Shane Sams: Okay. So basically, like join and save two months for free. Or whatever. So beta group members probably need to come in cheaper at like a dramatic discount on the first round. Like maybe like even like $25. Like it's going to be 50, but you can get in for the whole time you're here for $25 a month. I would probably go ahead and say $250 and not do like a monthly with that level. Because these are people that will graduate out eventually. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: So, maybe do an annual of like, look, it's going to be 500, I'm going to let you in now for 250. You're going to get everything for the thing, but I need you to come in to help me develop it. You're going to ask me questions, I'm going to make stuff for you that nobody down the chain will ever get. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: And Jocelyn was talking earlier, right before we got on the call, about doing maybe an email launch and then something a little more low key live, because these people are kind of already with you. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so because you have the emails, like I think it's important to kind of indoctrinate them into your universe and what you're planning on offering. And maybe you've done this already, this is something that you've already done. Like have you sent them any emails? Gena Lester: No. I've sent them emails that are strictly based upon the summit. So like these are the speakers, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Yeah. So what I would probably do is just do a little bit of warming up. And what I mean by that is just kind of talk to them. And be like, "Hey, thanks for attending the summit. I am Gena, I want to get to know you a little bit better. I want you to know more about me. Here's a little bit about my background." Jocelyn Sams: And just sort of get into a little bit of that. Talk about some success stories of people that you've helped along the way. Like let them get to know you, let them get to know things that you do, and as you go along, I would probably ... I might even go ahead and pitch them in the email sequence. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But then you can also have something live as well. Like to answer people questions. So basically, let them know, "Hey, I'm here to help you. Here's the way I'm going to do that. And I have a really unique opportunity for you. This membership is very new. I am developing it now. And I know that with your help, it can be something truly amazing. So for a limited time only, I'm offering this beta program. It is available for X dollars for Y amount of time. And you are going to be able to help me create this and make it the amazing place that it is going to be when I open it up to the whole world." Shane Sams: So, basically, this is ... we kind of ... When Jocelyn and I talk about this with any new email lists we create, like if we do a promotion, let's say we get 500 emails. Right? We know there's low hanging fruit there. We know there's probably 20-50 people that would just buy the thing because it was in front of them. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Okay. So what you're going to do now first is scoop them up. Scoop up that low hanging fruit. Like there's people that are just excited coming off the summit. All they need is one little jump to know more about you. Like, "Hey, I'm Gena, I created this summit. I led this summit. I'm the expert that brought all the experts together, because I've been doing this for 40 years and I've been teaching people for six years." Shane Sams: And then the next email, like that's like email one. That's like your ... about you. Right? And maybe you close that one with, "Hey, if you have any questions about the college process, hit reply and email me back right now." Okay. Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: Anyone that emails you back, you immediately offer them to join, okay? Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: One on one. The second email, then ... well, actually, this is exactly like our indoctrination for our webinar we're doing right now. The second email is a true case study. Like an amazing case study. Like this kid would not have went to college if it was not for me. Period, right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Like I helped them. If I had not helped them, they would have not made it. Do you want your kid to go to college? You may need to talk to me. Right? Whatever. Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: Okay? And then the third email is basically just, "All right, I'm opening this up, I'm only taking 20 people. This is being sent to 400 people. You have 48 hours to join. I'm going to remind you tomorrow or the next day." Jocelyn Sams: Once it's full, it's full. Shane Sams: Once it's full, it's full. And what you do is like at 9:00 the night it closes, you send an email that says, "I'm live right now doing a Q and A for anybody that wants to know about my beta program." Jocelyn Sams: And you may be sold out by then. Shane Sams: You may be sold out by then. Jocelyn Sams: That would be cool. Shane Sams: Then you don't have to do the live. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: You know. But you're trying to just scoop up low hanging fruit first. Now, after you get this beta group, you're going to have to go back to this list. You're going to keep feeding them information and good stuff for a while. There will be a full-blown sales webinar, but we can create that in the trainings in the community. Right? Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: So, like that's down the road. Right now, we need to say can we get 10, can we get 20 right now at 250 a year, period. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Let's just get them in there and start breaking things. Gena Lester: Okay. So Thursday of this week, I'm doing the final Facebook live in the group- Shane Sams: Perfect. Gena Lester: ... for the summit. So should I pitch it there? Shane Sams: Yes. Yes. Gena Lester: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: Yes. You should say ... Here's what you should say, okay. "Hey guys! Thanks for attending the summit. This was an awesome experience. All that information is still there for you to get into. Don't forget to log in and keep access." Whatever. "Here's my special thing that I'm doing. I'm about to email this out to hundreds of people." Jocelyn Sams: But because you're here on my Facebook Live, I want to let you know about it right now. This is an amazing opportunity. Shane Sams: You've got the first chance. Gena Lester: Right. Jocelyn Sams: I'm doing this for the first time ever. I'm opening up the doors. And you have the opportunity to be a part of it right now. Shane Sams: And then they'll click a link to a sales page, basically. And you can say, "This is 50% off." I would even say, like ... what do you charge to do this one on one? Like ... Gena Lester: Oh, it depends. I mean, it can ... like for one year it's about ... it's like $3,800. Shane Sams: Okay. You need to tell them that. Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: You need to say, "Look, I charge my one on one clients 3,000," don't say 38 hundred. Say, "$3,800." Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: Say, "I'm going to charge members who join this later over $500." Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: But if anyone wants in tonight, they can get in for this, 250. I'm taking 20 beta members. I'm going to work ... I'm going to work. It's almost going to feel one on one, I'm going to work with you so much over the next few months. Because I really want your feedback about this. And then you try to drop 10, or 20, or 5, or 10 or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: And you say, you know, because this group is so small, because I'm opening it to such a small number of people, you guys are going to have access that other people who take this course in the future will not have, because I'm going to work really closely with you. You're going to help me develop types of materials that you need. And I'm really excited about this opportunity, I can't wait for you to join my community. Gena Lester: Okay. Shane Sams: And then I would probably go back to that group. I would do the beta for like four weeks with 20 people. And get your feet wet managing the community and the ... you know, just all those questions and whatever happens. Just see like ... there's no way you can be prepared for everything that's about to happen. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: You got to go through it. But like for ... I would do a live every week, and just jump on and say something. Like even if it's just, "Hey, don't forget, this is happening on the calendar." Whatever. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Like, keep the live group kind of fresh. And then maybe even come back again and be like, "Beta group two. Wow, what a successful beta group I had." You're trying to scoop up some more people, but it's not as good a discount next time. Gena Lester: Right, right. Shane Sams: Like 25% off instead of- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I think that I believe you're going to sell it out. Gena Lester: That would be great. Jocelyn Sams: Like I think your little updates each week should be like, "Hey, I want to let you know what's going on in my beta group." You know. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. That's true. Jocelyn Sams: Like, "I launched this awhile back, we totally sold out. But, these are some of the things that I'm working on, these are some of the things that my members are helping me to create. And I'm going to be opening again really soon and I cannot wait for you to be a part of it, too." Shane Sams: So you use the Facebook group weekly. And you're emailing these same things to your list, too. Well, after you all close the beta. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: and Facebook, right? And you're going to go on and say, "This happened in my beta group this week." Jocelyn Sams: Or, "This person had a success." Shane Sams: Yes. Like look what's happening. I'm going to open this back up. You just keep saying the date. And then like a month later you do it again, now you got 40 members. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: And off to the races. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And I would absolutely repeat the summit again. I mean, get some more of those leads. You know, come up with a good time that people are thinking about stuff like this. It's nice to know when that time is in your space, but right before it. That's a great time to do it. Shane Sams: I would ask, too, that on the summit, like you probably had more people that could have spoke that didn't, right? Like did you- Gena Lester: Oh, yeah. Jerry Lester: Oh, yeah. Gena Lester: Absolutely. Shane Sams: I would create a new round. And I would not be afraid to do that quarterly. At least like three times a year. I wouldn't do it two times a year. I'd do it at least three times a year. Because- Gena Lester: Yeah, because I was going to say, I can do it in the ... like parents think about it like at the ... especially junior parents, at the end of school year. Like all their friends are graduating. And they're like, "Oh, no. My child's a senior." Shane Sams: Yes. Like- Gena Lester: ... again. And like the early Fall. Like they see their kid. The senior's starting to get ready. So the younger ones are like, "Oh." Shane Sams: And then there's probably the procrastinating parents and the ... their senior year in December, and they're like, "Oh, no. My kid's got to go to college." Right? So like- Gena Lester: Exactly. Shane Sams: There's three perfect places to do this. Gena Lester: There is. Shane Sams: And you can rotate through different speakers, so it's never the same. Right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: And you can ... because your ultimate goal now, that you ... this is how it works. You get a product, you figure out a way to get leads, and then you sell the leads the product, and then you repeat the cycle. That's all business work. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: So you've figured out now, you've got this product that you know is good for people. You know this summit works, right? Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: So, this cycle that you're going to get into is, okay, do the summit, get a bunch of emails, open the door, get a bunch of people in, okay. I may have exhausted those thousand people, but now I do another summit, get a new thousand people. Do another summit. And you just keep stacking, brick by brick, all of these members. Shane Sams: So like you get 50 members out of this crop, right? And then like, okay, let's say 10 leave. You keep 40. Then you do the summit again, you get 40 more. Now you got 80. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: You lose 10, you go to 70. But then you do another summit. You get ... oh, we're at 100. And it just keeps stacking every quarter, or whatever, this way. Gena Lester: Right. Shane Sams: Pretty cool. Gena Lester: Perfect. Shane Sams: Okay. Well, listen. This has been an awesome chat. And I think all you guys got to do is roll this out. And let's put those first members in. And let them break some stuff. Gena Lester: Yes. Shane Sams: Then we put it back together. We see what happens next. Gena Lester: Right. I'm very excited. Shane Sams: It's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, guys. It has been super fun talking to you, today. I'm really excited about all the stuff that you're doing. And I can't wait to hear more about the members that flood in when you put this offer out there. I know it's going to happen. I just feel it. Jocelyn Sams: So, very excited for you. Congratulations on everything that's happened so far. But before we go, we always like to ask, what is one thing that you are going to take action on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Gena Lester: Definitely, I am going to launch the beta group. I'm going to get that ... kind of tweak my sales page, I think, a little bit. Get that pricing. And I'm going to definitely put it out Thursday during my live Facebook group. And then start that email chain. So I think that's like definitely the next step for me, is getting that out there so I can put some people in the community. Shane Sams: Start making some money, right? Gena Lester: Exactly. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That wraps up another interview with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Super proud of Gena and Jerry for everything they have accomplished. We know great things are ahead for them and their online business. Shane Sams: And we know that great things are also ahead for you and your family and your online dreams, as well. We'd love to help you take your next steps in your online journey. All you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife. And you can learn how you can join the Flip Your Life community today. Shane Sams: And we know that one of the greatest catalysts in Jerry and Gena's story was attending Flip Your Life Live. Flip Your Life Live is our family reunion for our community that we have every year. And that is happening in September of 2019. You can learn more about Flip Your Life Live over at FlippedLifestyle.com/Live, we hope to see you there. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That is all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye.   Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Gena's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we celebrate Chris and Ivy's 500 member launch. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we celebrate Chris and Ivy's 500 member launch. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life Community on the show, not just to help them get to the next level, but to celebrate a massive success. Our guest today recently had a launch of their membership and they got over 500 members in the first 48 hours after they launched it. So, we are super ... Jocelyn Sams: Which is awesome. Shane Sams: Go ahead, Jocelyn. Jocelyn Sams: And a husband and wife team, which we love. Shane Sams: We love that too. Our guests today we're super excited to welcome are Chris and Ivy Newport. Chris, Ivy, welcome to the show. Ivy Newport: Thanks so much for having us. We're so excited to be here. Chris Newport: Yeah, we're very excited to be here. So, thanks for having us. Jocelyn Sams: It is great to talk to you guys today. We have been waiting for this show for a long time, because you guys are just doing some really exciting things and we're just really excited to dive in and really talk to you and figure out how in the world you did all this. Chris Newport: We are too. Yeah. Shane Sams: I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa 500? Like a 500 members? Oh yeah, yeah, I need to listen to this one." Chris Newport: I know. I know we keep saying that to ourselves as well. Shane Sams: We'll talk more about this, but like you guys are in a surreal, surreal territory. It's surreal for things to change like that fast overnight, right? Chris Newport: It is, yeah. Shane Sams: We'll dive more into that. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Well, before we get too far down that road right this second, we want to know a little bit more about you guys. Ivy Newport: I'm a creative artist and I've just always kind of been involved in creativity in one way or another, whether it was interior design or making art. It's just been a passion of mine that has just been a common thread throughout my entire life. Chris and I actually met in art school, so we're both artists, and now we're just loving running this online business where we get to provide creative education and for artists all over the world. Our core goal, I think, is just inspiring and guiding others to lead a more creative life. Shane Sams: So when you say that it's like more creative life, like just in general, is this more like doing art as a passion, doing art as a job? What do you mean? Ivy Newport: Yeah, well, we actually have students that are both. I mean, we have a lot of people that are exploring creativity and art in a new way. They might be in a time in their life where they have a little more time on their hands and they really want to explore creativity, and we have a lot of those students. Ivy Newport: But we also have professional artists that participate in our classes, and they get new inspiration. They learn new techniques, they get to connect with other artists in our community. So, we really kind of serve both kinds of artists in the community. Shane Sams: You guys have a very interesting background. You've kind of lived all over, been all over. Give us a little bit more context, like where you're from. Chris Newport: Yeah, like Ivy said, we met in art school in Florida in Sarasota, and we both had this dream of working for Disney. We wanted to be animators and so we both kind of chose the school because Disney recruited from that school. Shane Sams: Which school was it? Chris Newport: But this thing called the internet was taking off back in the mid to late 90s, and I was really curious about it, and I didn't quite get it, but I knew something was kind of happening in the background as we were going through college. And then lo and behold, Disney came calling, went to work for Disney for a little while, for a year, a little over a year, but still this internet thing was taking. Chris Newport: I just kept looking, I was fascinated by it, and I said, "You know what? I can draw Mickey for the rest of my life, or I can jump on the internet and learn everything I can and saturate myself with it." That's really kind of what took us to these different cities. I built my first website. Ivy Newport: Moved to Austin. Chris Newport: Moved to Austin. I moved to New York and then ultimately ended up ... Ivy Newport: In Portland. Chris Newport: Yeah, long story short, we ended up in Portland and continued doing web design, web development, and that's where Ivy started blogging and exploring her passions and getting back to what she does best. Shane Sams: It's neat like reading your story because you see this long process like almost to the next like step, and granted you had a lot going on in life like you're moving all over the place. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Where are you guys from? Where are you from originally? Ivy Newport: So I'm originally from Sydney, Australia. I don't have the awesome accent anymore because I finished high school actually in Connecticut, so I have lived all over the world and it's definitely added to my adventurous spirit, I think, in business. Chris Newport: Definitely. Ivy Newport: And yeah, so go ahead. Chris Newport: If she does go back to Australia, her accent does come back real fast, and I cannot understand anything she says. Shane Sams: That's hilarious. Chris Newport: For me, I was born in Tennessee. I moved to Texas when I was in kindergarten. So I grew up in Texas until I was 18 and moved to Florida. When I first moved to Portland, it was funny, my first meeting of the company I was at, this guy raised his hand and said, "I just want to go on record that Chris said y'all 10 times in this meeting," and over the years it's been funny. I think being in Portland and slowly losing my Texas roots, but yeah, that's what- Jocelyn Sams: That's a sad day. Shane Sams: No, no man. We got to get ... Chris Newport: I know, right? I know. Shane Sams: You need to go post, "Y'all," on your Facebook. Chris Newport: I know. You guys help me keep grounded to listen to your podcast. Ivy Newport: It still comes out. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's funny that you say about her accent, because like you know people always comment on our podcast so like, "Y'all have a really deep Southern accent," but what y'all don't get is we're softening our accent right now. Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: We're trying so hard to like not ... If you came to Kentucky like I would go straight into hillbilly fast. Chris Newport: That's funny. Shane Sams: It'd be like a whole new language. Chris Newport: That's funny. My family is from Kentucky, so I have roots there. My grandparents are actually there. Shane Sams: I always knew I liked you, Chris. Chris Newport: Yeah, see? There you go. I knew I liked you guys as well. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so you go through all of these different things, you guys worked at a a lot of different places, you get into some web development. Shane Sams: Blogging, online business. Jocelyn Sams: And some blogging, and so how does this turn into what it is today? Shane Sams: For first of all, let's back up one second. First of all, tell us what just happened. So, you've got these blogs, you've got these courses, you're kind of doing the email things, and this is a long process of blogging and you built a following online. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then you decide to launch a membership community, right? Chris Newport: Yeah, that's one of the things that listening to you guys for gosh over two years now I think and you guys discussing memberships, and it's something in the back of my head we wanted to do but we didn't have the foundation yet to do it. We didn't have the platform in place for it. We kind of had this one password access to all the classes. It's really one of those scrappy things where we, in our initial launch, what, four years ago when we first launched, five years ago, when we first tried launching, I had a team in India building this thing. It was on WordPress, and it was getting really slow because the team in India was- Ivy Newport: Basically broke. Chris Newport: Yeah, we broke it yeah like the first hour we launched. Ivy Newport: It was bad. Chris Newport: I hit update and broke the entire site. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: No, I've never done that. Chris Newport: Right. So, we literally started from scratch. We went to someone else's website and I just said let me look at the code. I was like okay, they're on Squarespace let's just build this thing, get it launched and see if it works. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Chris Newport: And lo and behold, it worked, and it worked really fast. We kind of kept that thing going where it's just you just keep growing and the snowball effect and you just know where you need to go but it's finding time to get the thing in place to set it up properly. So, really it's been two years of just making sure we got the right platform in place, setting up the WordPress, getting everything in place. And then yeah, once we had it ready, it was ... That was the journey itself getting it set up, but once we had it in place I knew we were ready to flip the switch. Ivy Newport: I think also I feel really connected to our students and I kind of sensed that they may want something like this. I think they were ready to hear from us on a more regular basis in a subscription format. So, it just felt right. I'm kind of the emotional one, so I go with my gut and my emotions on things and Chris is thankfully so incredibly technically savvy. So, when we kind of aligned his logic and my emotion, we knew it was the right time. Shane Sams: We're the opposite. Jocelyn's very logical. Chris Newport: That's funny. I see you guys. I know that's funny. Shane Sams: I'm emotional. I'm all gut, I think we should go left, and she's like, "You sure?" Chris Newport: I know. Shane Sams: So, basically like what drew you like ... Okay, so let me ... All right, so you go, selling courses, selling courses, selling courses. People are like, "What are these people talking about membership? Like what?" Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like why, and then you start thinking well maybe we should go that way. Maybe we should coalesce this audience into a community. Maybe we should stop doing one-off sales and get people to pay every month. Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: Yes. Shane Sams: What was the draw to that though? And like what was the tipping point where you were like, you know, this way takes all this energy, this way might not? Chris Newport: It does. Ivy Newport: I think that was a huge part for me being the one that kind of is, you know, out in front of the camera and producing in that way. It was extremely draining to constantly be like, I got to come up with another class. I got to come up with another thing, and every month we were running like crazy people trying to make the numbers match up so that we could pay for our bills and stuff. When Chris started listening to you guys and talking about membership for what we were doing, it just made a lot of sense just to have a little bit more of a stable lifestyle for our family. Chris Newport: Absolutely. Shane Sams: We call that living launch to launch. Ivy Newport: Yes. Chris Newport: Yeah, and that was really oh my gosh, in the beginning- Ivy Newport: It's exhausting. Chris Newport: When we first launched Ivy's first class even that in itself one, I mean that was an amazing launch and we thought, "Oh, that's amazing," and then you realized, "Oh, that's one launch. Oh, people are going to keep coming back." They're not just going to keep reading that email over and over that you sent once. So, we really had to iron out that rollercoaster. I think between obviously listening to you guys, have fun, reading books and gosh, everything in between trying to figure out how to navigate this up and down rollercoaster and how to smooth out those peaks and valleys. Ivy Newport: I think we also realized soon, pretty quick as we started this journey, that I couldn't be the only one making classes. So, what's been another kind of facet of the businesses that we've now hired or have been doing this for now what about three years, hiring other teachers to come onto the platform and we get to launch them and they teach classes for us too. So, that's been really ... Well, it takes some weight off of me producing, but it also has been so wonderful to help other women artists launch online businesses too, which has been cool. Jocelyn Sams: All right. The next question that I would ask is, is this your full-time thing? Are you doing anything else right now? Chris Newport: No. It's been four years of yeah, us doing it. Ivy Newport: Us full-time. Chris Newport: Yeah. When we launched four years ago, I was still doing some consulting. I just left, I had a kind of in between job where I was hired by one of my clients. I just recently left that. I was consulting to help iron out these peaks and valleys of launching these classes, and once we ironed those out, I was able to kind of step away and really, that's kind of the point where I think, Ivy approached me and said, "You know what? This is working, but I think us together would really take us to the next level." Shane Sams: But you've been kind of stressful, but because you're like, okay, it's January, we just had a launch. Okay, February we have bills. So we have to have another launch and launch ... Chris Newport: Yeah. I think those first two years yeah, had a lot of like, oh my gosh, what are we doing? Ivy Newport: It was a lot of ups and downs. Chris Newport: Where is this going? What are we doing next? And oh the sale. Oh, it's Black Friday, I forgot about those. Quick, get the email or buy. Cyber Monday oh gosh, I forgot about Cyber Monday. Shane Sams: That's hilarious. Chris Newport: There was a lot of that. And then I think the last two years was really balancing that out where we had a schedule in place, we knew where we were launching other teachers, and we could kind of estimate pretty well what we're going to make each month. Shane Sams: But it's still kind of a roll the dice. Chris Newport: It really was. Yeah, because we had a couple months there where we had a couple of teachers but it was like, oh this isn't going to go well, and we were dependent on that, and we had. Shane Sams: Another problem is you can't plan ahead. Chris Newport: Right. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: Now, like if I say you know I would really like to hire someone. For example, like last year we kind of did an experiment we were like let's bring in a sales guy to sell our live event out, right? He'll follow up on leads and he'll do some things like that and it was really easy to make that call and just say yeah we'll try it for a year, because we can predict our income. We can totally do it. Shane Sams: I can tell you probably within a couple of grand what we'll make six months from now. Our numbers are pure. When you launched the membership and you get 500 and something people and you're like ... This was just last month y'all, like we just record ... This is not in the moment. We're still like, you know, whatever recently, then the next last month or two. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Now you're like, "Wait a minute. At least 90% of those people are probably going to pay me next month," right? Ivy Newport: Right. Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: How did that feel, like when you realized that? Chris Newport: It was amazing. I mean, I think we just kind of both looked at each other like this is- Ivy Newport: I think we're both in shock still. Chris Newport: We're still in shock. Ivy Newport: It's like a dream. Chris Newport: I think in the forum I said, because, like I said, I have everything kind of planned out for the month and I thought maybe 300 might buy in for the first month, for the entire month, and we blew that out in 24 hours by far. Shane Sams: Yeah. Have you reached the first renewal date yet? Chris Newport: Not yet. Next week I think, yeah. Shane Sams: The glorious day that will be. Chris Newport: I know. I know. Yeah, I'm looking at it. I just can't believe it. Shane Sams: I was telling you guys before the show like we launched ... When did we launch Flipped Lifestyle? Jocelyn Sams: The membership? Shane Sams: Yeah. I don't remember when the membership was. Jocelyn Sams: Maybe 2015. Shane Sams: 2015? Jocelyn Sams: Maybe, Shane Sams: Anyway, I know it was on the 24th. You know why I know it was on the 24th? Because even like three, four years later, there's still like a spike on that day. That was almost like, you know, like 200 people in the next 48 hours joined or whatever right? Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: We still see that. It's like my favorite day of the month. I don't have to work, like I know I'm not doing anything today. Chris Newport: Because it's selling out. I know. I know. I love it. Every time we get a new member, I always mention we get a pay raise. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Chris Newport: That's a pay raise. Shane Sams: I always tell people, give yourself a raise every day, every time. Chris Newport: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ivy Newport: That's right. Shane Sams: Brick by brick baby, just give yourself a raise. Chris Newport: It is brick by brick. It really is. I think even this whole journey is just brick by brick. Ivy Newport: Definitely. Chris Newport: Yeah, so it's been ... Yeah, once you put it in place, and we went through the ups and downs of me wanting to throw my computer out the window a couple times setting it all up. Yeah, it's so great to see it all working. Jocelyn Sams: All right, guys. Well, let's talk a little bit about how you got there. Meaning what have you overcome along your journey? Like what kind of fears or mindset issues did you have, and how did you work to overcome those? Shane Sams: Especially moving from a launch model that was proven even though it was high energy and hard, to this brand new all in membership model. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Well, for me definitely some of the fears I've had to face are just kind of getting over the vulnerability of being on camera and being out in front of this audience of students. I'm definitely like a pleaser personality I guess you'd say, and so I worry about disappointing people. I worry about not making quality stuff. I always have a really high expectation set. Ivy Newport: So, that's definitely been challenging, and Chris has been such a great, you know ... I think Jocelyn mentioned Shane being her lightning rod sometimes, and he is that for me as well and he will kind of absorb any of the negative comments because you guys know being out there online, you get the occasional negative comment or whatever, and it can be hard because you are putting yourself out there. So, getting over that and just pushing through that fear is for sure a big thing for me. Ivy Newport: And then in terms of switching from the launch model to the subscription model, to me it's almost more intimate connection with the students that I need to serve them on a higher level month by month and really connect with them in a different way. So, I think that adds a little bit of pressure. I mean, I'm super grateful for the cash flow, but I know I want to keep my connection with them really strong. Just kind of meeting that goal every month for me is a little bit scary, but I'm ready for it. Chris Newport: I'm always amazed at Ivy pushing through some of these obstacles or overcoming some of her fears. She's just always been able to put herself out there, and I've just always been impressed with her. Shane Sams: That is the biggest difference in a membership, you know. If you buy my product and you leave with my product, bye. I hope you come back. Ivy Newport: Right, exactly. See you. Shane Sams: This is kind of like dating. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: Like when you have a membership, you're in a relationship. Like you are. Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: Yes. Chris Newport: It's true, this is a friendship. We got each other's back. Ivy Newport: Right. Chris Newport: I got to be there for you because you're there for me every month when you pay your membership, right? Like there is a different mindset to it for sure. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Chris Newport: We've been talking about that like gosh, why do we feel this what I know ... Ivy Newport: We both started grinding our teeth again. Chris Newport: Yeah. Like we're not stressed but what is this thing that we're feeling? I think and to your point Shane, yes we were- Ivy Newport: The responsibility. Chris Newport: Yeah, it's like we were launching all these classes. But you know, it's like that one-off, right? You don't really have that deep connection. Ivy Newport: It's a deeper commitment. Chris Newport: Yeah, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. And I think sometimes it's hard because like our customers don't always keep up their end of the bargain. For me, I feel responsible for that. Like if people are paying for their membership and they're not doing anything like, I feel like it's my fault. Ivy Newport: Right. Chris Newport: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Even though it's not my fault. Ivy Newport: Yeah, I hear you. Shane Sams: But it's hard not to do that when you are in a relationship, right? Because relationships are built on reciprocity, right? I give you the opportunity, you give me opportunity, we help each other like ... Ivy Newport: Sure. Shane Sams: And it does weigh on you when you've got so ... Because like, I don't think we're evolved to recognize, you know, I got 500 people depending on me now. You know what I mean? Who want me to help them with their hopes and dreams and their futures and their creative outlets like whatever and that can be very overwhelming, especially in the beginning. Shane Sams: It's why some people ... Some people, we always trade one set of problems for the other. Every choice you make is not getting better. It's just trading a set of problems that you like better for the old set of problems, and some people are so comfortable in their set of problems that they're afraid to change. So you feel comfortable in your high energy launch dopamine rush. Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: Crash and then do it again that we're like, "Yeah, but at least I know this." And then you get to the other side and you're like wow yeah there's responsibility, yeah I got to show up a couple of times a month for member calls, but my energy dropped and now I can focus more of that energy somewhere else. So, it was kind of worth the change, right? That's the hardest part like about making the switch. Shane Sams: Sometimes I feel like it's easier for us to convince people that have nothing to do this than it is for us to convince people who've made money in another way to do this. And then of course they get to the other side and they've got 500 members and they're like, "Wow, I got ..." They're like, it's harder for us to move people from that end of the spectrum than it is just people starting out. Ivy Newport: Yeah, it makes sense. Chris Newport: That does make sense. Sometimes I think too the journey of it all. It's easy to you know, we did launch this under a month ago, but gosh, the journey to get here and overcoming those obstacles along the way. I mean, once you overcome that one hurdle, you get to the next hurdle and you overcome that hurdle, the next thing you know, you've built something that's pretty amazing. Shane Sams: What was the biggest obstacle like technically, like you had to overcome? Chris Newport: Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to begin. I mean, I can tell you a story. When we were launching, we had the emails teed up to go out at 3:00 a.m. for this membership and I hadn't fully tested the eCommerce side of it yet. I was like, "Oh, it's WooCommerce, it's kind of plug in with membership, everything worked great right?" Chris Newport: Then I was testing it and it was like 2:00 in the morning and so the emails are going to go out in an hour and I kept telling Ivy, I was like, "I don't think it's working." It's canceling the membership like two days later, and I was just worried. I was just, "Oh my gosh, I don't think it's working," and I started to do some more research and this one line in this entire document said this email or WooCommerce subscription is not compatible with the membership. I just threw my hands up and I think, "Oh my gosh," so I turned everything off. I shut it down. I went to bed. The next day I woke up and magically pulled it all together. Shane Sams: When you say you turned it off, like you canceled all the emails? Chris Newport: Yeah, cancel the email, I sent the email, it didn't go out. Ivy Newport: We didn't launch. Yeah. Chris Newport: We were going to launch it on Thursday, we usually- Ivy Newport: We had to delay the launch. Chris Newport: Yeah, we usually send emails out on Thursdays just to any kind of sales oriented thing. Shane Sams: What was it I did last year, Jocelyn, when I started the ... I started I set up the order forms for the live event because I just didn't want to wait for the person who helps us. I don't think anyone got tagged. Nobody got an email. Chris Newport: Oh no. Shane Sams: It was basically like Jocelyn was like, "Wait a minute, you sent the email out with the sales? I'm like, "Yeah, we sold like 50 tickets." She's like- Jocelyn Sams: I go, "That's great. But we don't even know who's coming." Chris Newport: Oh no. Shane Sams: I had no way to search, there was no way to do anything. I didn't connect the emails right. Jocelyn Sams: We had to go through and manually give everybody tags. Chris Newport: One by one. Jocelyn Sams: Oh my goodness. Shane Sams: Just the other day, I set up a new membership tier for Flipped Lifestyle. One of the things we really are trying to do is democratize working from home, like we want ... I get so sick of all these thousand dollar, $10,000 courses. Real people can't afford that and those people are just trying to get money off that first sale. I want people to be able to get access at least to our courses for like a good affordable price. Shane Sams: But I set it up and I tested it with someone who wanted it, and I don't think anything happened. They didn't get a username. They didn't get a password. I think they actually got an email that said username and password, like the words, and so you know. Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: You have to have a sense of humor, that's for sure. Chris Newport: You do. I know. Even then, even when I tested it the next day and okay it's working, the email went out at 3:00 a.m. I think I went to bed at 2:00 a.m., but I woke up at like 3:05 a.m., you know? I was like, "Well, I can't go to sleep." And we had like four sales, five sales. I was like, "Okay," I'm just watching it and making sure it's all working. Yeah, that's just nerve wracking. Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, but the funny thing is, though, most people would have done what you did. They'd have freaked out and bailed, right? And they would have waited for the next month to launch. Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: The important thing to remember is that it did eventually work and you only had to stay up till 3:00 that night. Now you have 500 members. Chris Newport: Yes. Ivy Newport: Right, it was all worth it. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah. If you lose 20 and you gain 21 next month, you grew right over like once you made it through the problems. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: So many people give up before the problems and like I love you all's story, because it's like a lot of people hear these stories and like there is always context behind launches, right? Like any kind of launch is what it is. It took you years to get to this point. You blogged first, you tested email marketing, you sold some courses, you sold a lot of courses, you had launches, you didn't have launches. Even eight years later, when you finally turned on the membership, something still broke because it changes. You don't ever figure this stuff out. Chris Newport: That's so true. Shane Sams: Just keep going forward. Keep doing it, and sooner or later, you look up and you've got 500 people paying you $50 a month or whatever, pick a number 25, $100. I don't care what your membership is, it's just the income. Ivy Newport: Right, exactly. Chris Newport: Exactly. Shane Sams: Your family's going to eat, you're going to serve and it's going to be awesome, right? Ivy Newport: Absolutely. Shane Sams: If you don't want to work tomorrow, well you'll have renewals or you know I would highly recommend renewal day taking the whole day off. Ivy Newport: That's a good idea. Chris Newport: That's a very good idea. Shane Sams: Don't even look at the numbers till about 8:30. Ivy Newport: I'm going to force Chris to take the day off because he never takes a day off. Chris Newport: Yeah, she's always on me about that. Shane Sams: It's hard to take a day off when you're in what we do. Ivy Newport: It's true. It's true. Chris Newport: It is. It is. Shane Sams: Jocelyn said the other day, she said, we were both just working all the time and looking for the next thing to do, and like we got bored one day and Jocelyn just goes, "Oh, passive income sucks." She's like, "I'm going to go do something," and she just like started working on stuff. Chris Newport: Isn't that funny, that the passive side of it sounds like it is ... I mean, it is a different type of passive, right? It's, you work so hard for it. It's a different type of work. And I think that's one of the things I enjoy most especially after consulting for so long and the dollars for hours that I was just trying to get rid of that, and to be here now it's ... To do what we enjoy and to work so well together, yeah, it's just a lot of fun. Ivy Newport: It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Chris Newport: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, for sure. No, that's really exciting. I'm so excited for you guys. Ivy Newport: Thank you. Chris Newport: Thank you. Jocelyn Sams: Let's talk just a little bit about looking back, how did our community help you? You guys have been members for a little while now, and I shared about your success story posts which is how we select people to be on the podcast. But tell us a little bit about like how did you go through the courses and like how did the community support you? Chris Newport: Yeah. I think for me was well I mean to back it up even just to the podcast. When I was listening, when I heard you guys on Pat Flynn after studying so long of just email marketing and everything and just we're doing these things but then when you guys discussed ... Something you guys said and everything just kind of gelled for me. When I joined the Flipped Lifestyle Community I think I jumped to the email marketing and the sequencing and the oh gosh, the sales funnels. Shane Sams: Right. Chris Newport: That in itself I think to me really just coalesced everything that I think that we are ... We were doing a lot of things email marketing, lead magnets, but we didn't know they were lead magnets, we just add, "Hey, subscribe to get your free video." Ivy Newport: We didn't have the strategy. Chris Newport: We didn't have the strategies behind any of this and what just for us you know setting up, understanding Facebook ads at a deeper level, understanding what a cold, warm, and hot lead is, and how to tailor your message to those audiences specifically. Jocelyn, your video on uploading our subscriber list into Facebook ads was game changing. Ivy Newport: Oh yeah, that was huge. Chris Newport: That was just one of those moments when- Ivy Newport: That blew Chris's mind. Chris Newport: I was like, what? You can do that? You can actually target people? Shane Sams: You can open these emails and still advertise to them? Chris Newport: Yeah, oh my gosh, it just floored me. I jumped on that probably the ... Out of everything we did that was probably the first thing I implemented was just took our email list and uploaded it to Facebook. What it did was allowed us not only to send these emails out for our prelaunch and early bird specials, things like that, but we could target those people within Facebook and get recurring revenue from that as well. So it was just- Ivy Newport: We saw the impact right away. Chris Newport: Oh my gosh. Shane Sams: Imagine all the people that hadn't opened one of your emails in months, but then they saw the ad and they remembered. Chris Newport: Oh, yeah, we had people all the time. Like, I didn't get the email. And I go and check and they're like oh, it's because you unsubscribed, you know. Just because they unsubscribed doesn't mean they don't want to follow you anywhere else. It just means that they choose to follow you on Facebook. Shane Sams: That's why we like ... When we took courses when we started, we would always find things in pieces. It was like we were on a scavenger hunt, right? That's what online business felt like to us. When we created our community, we were like we need a path, we need like a ... That's why we call it a blueprint, but it's really like a path right? I love how you said I jumped ahead because you were already up to that point. You'd already been to things like you knew who you were selling to. You knew what your products were. Ivy Newport: Right. Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: You get to this point where you're like, "Well, wait a minute, you mean someone can discover me and I can actually hold their hand all the way until they buy something?" Chris Newport: Exactly. Shane Sams: And then like all those people that discovered me before that I've lost track of, I can go find them again? It's just following this. That's the biggest lesson we try to teach inside of the community is you got to have a strategy, you got to have a plan, and if you have a plan and you stick to the plan, the plan eventually turns into a 500 member launch, right? Ivy Newport: Right. Chris Newport: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: And now for next month, the plan is easier because we have momentum, like a huge momentum now moving forward, and it's not as ... And you know what strategies work, so like you could rinse and repeat this once a quarter. Chris Newport: We do talk about that a lot. It's like we enjoy this now. We know, okay we're going to set this cold lead, and we're going to drive them to that lead magnet and they're going to get to know Ivy even more, but we're going to come back around and run a warm lead ad because we know they went to our website, we know who they are, we can target them in a new way with a new message, and we just know it works. That's just I mean- Ivy Newport: We can communicate with them so much more effectively too. That part's really fun. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's interesting, you said something very interesting there, we enjoy this now. Ivy Newport: It kind of felt like- Shane Sams: That implies that while it was fun before, there was stuff that was not good. Ivy Newport: It felt a little random. Chris Newport: It did. Ivy Newport: It was kind of like shooting in the dark, and now I feel like we have a lot of clear vision of how we want to communicate, how we want to drive our consumer and what their experience is going to be. Chris Newport: Yeah, and to share one other story. Once I got all excited about uploading our subscriber list, I went back and set up cold and warm leads in Facebook. The great thing is, Ivy is so prolific with the content creation that it was really easy for me to just pick this video and this content. But setting up the cold and warm leads and then drive them back to the website, in the first two months we generated over 2,500 new subscribers to our list. Chris Newport: So, it was one of those things that's like oh my gosh this works. This is amazing, and it's all because of the Flipped Lifestyle blueprint, it really is. Like what you said Shane of, there's a lot of stuff out there, but it's like oh my gosh I think I know what they're talking about Facebook from this podcast but I don't know exactly how they implement it. Ivy Newport: Kind of piecemeal. Chris Newport: I don't know what cold, warm, and hot leads are. I don't know any of this. I don't know what it means. Then to have that step by step process in the Flipped Lifestyle blueprint really helped everything come together for us. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome. Data nerds unite! Chris Newport: Completely, completely. Shane Sams: Jocelyn is definitely the ... Jocelyn basically organizes everything and then she makes me create something. We love listening to you guys talk because it's like Chris was like okay I'm going to structure all this, I'm going to set all that. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Ivy is prolific. You create the content. I'm going to make all this in this order. Ivy Newport: It's a good combo. Shane Sams: It's just a miracle when you get on the same page. Ivy Newport: Totally. Chris Newport: It is. Shane Sams: Staying on the same page is the hard part. Chris Newport: Staying on the same page. Ivy Newport: Yeah, that's tricky. Jocelyn Sams: That's where we are right now. Some days are better than others. We'll put it that way. Shane Sams: I'm on page 34, Jocelyn's about 57. We're just no. Chris Newport: That's right. Right. Jocelyn Sams: All right guys. Again, we are like super proud of you. It's been just a really exciting journey so far for you. And we're so excited to have you in our community. So, we're getting ready to come up on the one month, I guess anniversary of this thing launching. Chris Newport: Yes. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I know that you guys have some big plans for it. So, let us know kind of what is happening next, and what can we do to help you get there? Ivy Newport: Well, it's tricky. I feel like we're still really trying to fully embrace what's going on with the subscription. I mean, basically, we've started an online magazine and that is kind of the experience that we're delivering to the students every month, which is really awesome. I hope that we'll be able to expand and bring in people to contribute to that and have other artists come on and contribute to the magazine. But honestly I'm trying to just still wrap my head around it. Chris Newport: I think, to Ivy's point too, yeah because she's doing a lot of the work to keep this magazine going smoothly. It's part of the monthly membership they get access to this online magazine, online journal, and it does require quite a bit of her time, a lot like launching classes and so our goal and I think in the short-term is to start bringing other artists, other creative minds on to contribute on a monthly basis, which will help I think scale us a little bit more but also just I think what we talked about earlier too is hiring and letting go. Letting go of some of the things that we do on a daily basis, the editing, the video content, creating the websites, creating the classes- Shane Sams: Are you still editing everything? Are you still editing? Ivy Newport: Oh yeah. Chris Newport: Oh yeah. We are two person show. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay. Yeah, okay. It's going to be very tempting to try to hire all the people. You probably shouldn't do that, right? Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: You really want to go slow now. It's kind of like, there's kind of a mentality here like of winning the lottery, like what happens to all lottery winners. They win a million dollars, they spend it all, right? Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: When you do the next one, you go to the next level. We've done this multiple times. Like we hit a next level and we're like, wow, let's go, and it's always a mistake every time you go too fast. So, I think your heart's in the right place but your mind's got to slow down your heart, right? And it's like, okay, getting rid of little low level tasks that anyone can do that you literally could replace someone in a minute is where you probably need to start. You should not be editing your own videos, like you just shouldn't. Even if you think you're the best at it, right? It doesn't matter because no one knows that, right? Like 85% of what you think is the best is perfect for everybody else. Ivy Newport: That's true. Shane Sams: Get rid of a few of those tasks right now. Ivy Newport: Yeah, that would help. Shane Sams: But try to keep doing what you've done to get to this point for the next three to six months. Don't take your foot necessarily off the gas with the journal and the magazine, or even like get ready for that next open and close or that next, you know, quote unquote you know, "Hey, don't forget we have a membership in three months," or whatever, you know what I mean? Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: You should not pull back now even though it's tempting to do so. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Chris Newport: That's good advice. Shane Sams: Because I've been there and last year Jocelyn and I hit a big plateau and we were like, or a big peak, and we were like, "Let's hire all the people," then like 12 months later, we were like, "Let's fire all the people." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, pretty much. Chris Newport: At my last job, I was managing 20 employees I think it was at that time, and yeah, there's a lot of hesitation on my end of hiring. Ivy Newport: Yeah, and even with the editing, I'm such a control freak about what I want people to hear and how you know, because I'm teaching online, so I want them to make sure that they're getting the right parts. I'm always worried someone's going to edit it and cut out some point I had. I don't know. It's like a fear. Chris Newport: Yeah, we are perfectionists, and I think it just comes from our design and ... Shane Sams: Stop watching your own videos. I'm serious. There's no reason to now. You know what I mean? Ivy Newport: That's true. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I very rarely listen back to this podcast. Just because I know that if I do, I won't be satisfied with it. Ivy Newport: Right. You just got to let it go. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, and not only that, here's another thing you're going to find that's really cool. Just like you know how in your marriage you kind of, for good or bad, you lose filters, right? Because you kind of know the other person is going to forgive you if you do some stupid. If you say something bad, it's like your kids. Like your kids will fight back with you and talk back with you, but it's just because they know that you love them. There's more forgiveness in a relationship, right? Whereas, you know, like any one-off interaction like if somebody holds you up in a line at the ticket booth, you're going to be mad. You're going to be like, "What are you doing? You suck at your job." Shane Sams: You go to a fast food restaurant, you're all mad because they won't do this whatever like ... I feel like everybody gets frustrated because it's like a one-off interaction and you don't really care about the person. But like if the same thing happens when you build a true community, the relationship is great because you get to serve them, but they're also more forgiving. Ivy Newport: That makes sense. Shane Sams: It's why you can be like we did a member call this morning, I mean we were at our kitchen table, I was in a sweatshirt, I had no shoes on. I mean we were just talking to dozens of people and answering questions, right? But if I was going to do a webinar, I probably wouldn't show up like that because it'd be new people. So, you can probably kind of let yourself go a little, not let yourself go, that's the wrong word, but like don't worry so much. Just worry about being delivering value and not as much about what it looks like for your community. Inside the community is much more forgiving than outside of the community. Ivy Newport: That makes sense. Chris Newport: That's a lot of truth. Yeah, yeah we never really thought about that. Ivy Newport: No. We're just super hard on ourselves. Chris Newport: We are. We are perfectionists. Jocelyn Sams: It happens. It happens. Chris Newport: Yes. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I feel the same way, so I totally get it but I think for right now like what you guys need to do is just concentrate on serving your community, delivering what you promised them, and looking at trends. So, let's see what's happening for the next few months, how many people are staying, how many people are coming in new, and you know let's like kind of refocus on what goals you want to have for the next six months to a year. Shane Sams: Yeah, because if you try to like just keep pouring people in, which is good, I mean there's nothing wrong with that you know, but like Jocelyn said, you really need to know now like what does it look like three months from now? That's going to be important, right? Like, what does it look like six months from now? Do people stay that long? Shane Sams: Once you figure that out, it lets you kind know how hard you have to work to get new members you know, because growth is not hard once you establish a good baseline. If you have 500 people, they're all not going to quit next month, just not going to happen. Chris Newport: Right. Shane Sams: Now, will 50 of them quit? Maybe. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay? So, it may drop from was round numbers 500 to 450 whatever. Yeah, but now you only need 51 like it's like you know what I'm saying like you don't ... Maybe it drops 20, now you only need 21 or 20. So, like you're really just in a keep the momentum moving mode and resist the urge to just pour gas on the fire, get to ... You could but I mean, like, you know, keep making new stuff. Like this journal thing, have you released one single issue of this journal yet? Chris Newport: Yeah. Ivy Newport: Yes, we have. Shane Sams: Okay. So people kind of have a standard for that then, right? Ivy Newport: They do. Chris Newport: They do. Shane Sams: Don't feel like you have to push ... Chris Newport: Yeah, that was our ... Ivy Newport: It's kind of high. Chris Newport: Yeah, that was a big one, that was one of those we went from we'll give them less than a month or a live Q&A too. Ivy Newport: I'm like crazy idea. Chris Newport: Ivy is like, "Hey, I'm thinking about doing an online magazine," and I kind of looked at her- Shane Sams: What all is in it? Is it just like a magazine or what? Ivy Newport: So, I love to write. Yeah, it's kind of like that, and it's articles on creativity, it's writing prompts, it's sketchbook explorations, then to close it out, there's one lesson, video lesson, from me. There's curated music, curated resources. It's like a little mini magazine. Chris Newport: That's a lot. She did a good job with it. Ivy Newport: It's a lot, but I love creating it. It's just I think ... Shane Sams: The good thing is that you don't have to promote it now, it's a part of the membership right? Ivy Newport: Well, and part of what we did to get I believe this affected our launch is that we allowed access to all of our subscribers, all of our email list into the journal, so on the 1st of January, everyone got access to that brand new magazine and then- Shane Sams: But you just launched it. They've seen one episode of that, right? Ivy Newport: They've seen one episode, yeah. Chris Newport: Right, right. Yeah I was busy finishing it all up, and then Ivy had this hot idea to go, "Hey, why don't we give it to everyone for free?" Like, "But I'm not finished yet." Ivy Newport: I'm like well, hurry up. Shane Sams: That's a good line. Chris Newport: So there you go. So, it definitely lit a fire to get it done. It was a great launch, because just letting everyone get into it and have access to that first launch. Shane Sams: How long does it take you to create it? Ivy Newport: I would say maybe two to three weeks. Shane Sams: You can't always make the thing you've done in the past the standard especially when you've only done it once. Ivy Newport: Yeah, true. Shane Sams: I'm pretty sure that if you thought about it, you could figure out a way to create a version of that in one week. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: It might not be as big as the first one. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: But you can't just be like, I promise you that thing is not the reason 500 people joined. It's a part of the reason. Ivy Newport: Sure. Shane Sams: But in your mind, you put so much energy in it you think it's like, "Whoa, if we don't do this every month, no one will ever ..." you know what I mean? Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: I wonder if you could even think about it in terms, what if you split that in half, and like half of it came one month and half of it came the next. I don't know if that actually structurally would work. But I'm just saying like, sometimes that even works better because people ... Ivy Newport: Right, deliver it out in chunks. Shane Sams: Yeah. There's a different way to do that. Ivy Newport: Sure. Shane Sams: Be careful. One of the biggest problems people have what we see when they go into their membership and they get a launch and they get a bunch of members is they want to really over deliver, which you should, but always remember you're 10 steps ahead of the game as the people that are paying you, and what you can do in a month, they can't, right? Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: It might not even be possible for them to consume that. So, maybe find a way to kind of let that thing evolve. I'm not saying go up or down or less time or more time you enjoy, but don't feel married to anything in your community. We've done all kinds of stuff in our community and you probably don't even know they're gone, right? Shane Sams: Honestly, it's just like member calls like we do two member calls a month. That's pretty much it. That's what we focus on. We've done workshops in the past, we've done big challenges in the past, we try things, but we're not going to just sit and you know ... We don't have to add things, like what we do gets people moving down the path. Jocelyn Sams: I would just about bet that if you cut out that part of it next month, most people probably wouldn't even notice. Shane Sams: Yeah, seriously. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's not saying it's not worthy. Like we look at everything in like 20, 20, 20 like 20%, right? When I view our membership, I think about five things like okay, member calls are like 20%. 20% of the people probably come to that and like that, another 20% only look at our forums, another 20% only watch our courses, right? And it's like another 20% just like to hang out with everybody else. They don't even care if they talk to me and Jocelyn. It's true. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: If you think about it that way, it keeps you from getting too hyper all in on like one deal. You know? Ivy Newport: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I don't want to burn out producing it. So, it makes sense to think about it. Chris Newport: Yeah, and definitely always keep my eye on that one because Ivy definitely likes to deliver. So like I said earlier, we're already starting to think of how can we pull others in to help contribute in different ways. Ivy Newport: What do you guys think about opening and closing memberships? Do you think there is any advantages to building that sort of, I don't know, that exclusivity or anything like that? We've seen other people do that. Shane Sams: I think it's fake. I think it's fake. I think it's totally fake. Most people who do that it is fake. It's like, "Oh, it's open. It's closed. Get on the waiting list. Oh, but you get on that email three days later," you know what I mean? Chris Newport: Right. Ivy Newport: Right. Shane Sams: I don't want to stop people from giving me money, and I can create urgency in other ways. We can do sales, like I can ... We have a quarterly offer that we only release on like webinars. The only time we ever do it is when we do a live webinar or a live Q&A, right? It's cheaper, it's a little bit less expensive, it saves you some money if you invest. We like to reward people that commit to us. That's an offer that we would only open here and there, but the membership itself the monthly membership, we just keep open. Ivy Newport: Got it. Okay. Shane Sams: Just because, I'm a big believer in sending out an email every day and asking people to join every single day. I'd rather them join every day. I was telling you guys off air I had a strategy I wanted to share with you guys. So, this goes back to the renewal date, and it kind of goes back to this open and closed deal, right. It's not about opening and closing it, it's about promoting it and what you said was the 4th, was it the 4th? Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's your day, right? That's the launch? Ivy Newport: That's our day. Chris Newport: That's our day. Shane Sams: Okay, so the 4th is going to be awesome, right? If you really thought about it, couldn't you do a webinar every week and just pick a different day of the month for 30 straight whatever's, like 30 straight weeks, and then every day would be like that? Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: You know, and it's like just promote and leave it open all the time and get every day to be amazing like that, and don't open and close it. If you're really opening and closing it for a reason, like I can't handle an influx of this many people. Ivy Newport: Got it. Shane Sams: One, your membership should look differently because you should be able to handle as many people that come in, okay? You got to strategically plan it that way. But you know the second thing is I mean, do it. If you say I want 20 people a month and I cannot take more than 20 people a month because I don't feel comfortable with more than 20, open and close. Open it every 4th, and forget about it. But if it's digital and it's a community and people want to get in, you got to open back, right? Chris Newport: Let them in. Yeah. Ivy Newport: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense too. Jocelyn Sams: There are different ways to structure it too. If you want people to come in on, say you lost a bunch of members and you want people to come in like you can offer bonuses. There are other things that you can do aside from just saying you know the card is closing in X hours. Shane Sams: Yeah. You could say like for example we have all of our videos from Flip Your Life live last year right? And then Flip Your Life live this year we'll have more session recordings and all this other stuff. We could get on a webinar and like we don't put those in the community because we really want that to be like an exclusive thing that live event people get right? Chris Newport: Right. Ivy Newport: Sure. Shane Sams: But we could use those as a bonus to say look if you join today quarterly price is going to save you 15% or whatever and we'll throw in these videos that are not available to anybody but the live event attendees and people on our webinar. That's something that you can hold back if you wanted to create scarcity and some urgency. That open, close thing though just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, it's like we're closed. No, I don't want your money and you're going to have to wait 30 days to succeed. Ivy Newport: Yeah, totally. Chris Newport: We keep adding new members every day, so it'd be definitely difficult to shut it off right now. Shane Sams: I like to give myself ... We like to give our family a raise every day. Ivy Newport: There you go, yeah. Chris Newport: Yeah. That's pretty nice. Shane Sams: I love waking up and three people joined overnight and I didn't do anything. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's what it's all about, you know, and just build it. I think people keep open and close too because they like the adrenaline dopamine, crack themed rush. It's like you do get there is a high coming out of a webinar where hundreds of people join. It's sometimes hard to create that but we're the glacier. We're unstoppable, 500 years before you stop us. I'm not a prairie fire. I don't want to burn out. You know what I mean? Chris Newport: No. Ivy Newport: That's right. Chris Newport: Yeah. We have some ideas about how to create a little bit more, like you're mentioning, create some urgency or getting people kind of offering some unique items to kind of get them to join us in the membership. Ivy Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: In your marketing, you can create urgency every day, you can only create scarcity in a limited amount of time, right? Chris Newport: Very true. Shane Sams: If you rely totally on scarcity, it's going to be very hard for you to continuously grow. You have to rely on urgency but not scarcity. So, that's just the path that we kind of ... Chris Newport: That's interesting. I always say, I think maybe we might have put those two together I think over the last few years. Ivy Newport: Yeah, I think we have. Chris Newport: Yeah, yeah. So, getting them a separate makes a lot of sense. Jocelyn Sams: All right guys, it has been a lot of fun talking to you today. We are so proud of you, and we cannot wait to see what you do next. But before we go today, we always like to ask our guests, what's just one thing that you plan to take action on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Chris Newport: I think we're going to try and pull back a little bit on the membership as far as the journal. Ivy Newport: On the journal? Chris Newport: Yeah, yeah. Ivy Newport: Yeah, maybe. Maybe we're going to rethink how we're delivering the content and maybe space it out so that it can be a little bit more doable for us in production. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: I would challenge you to say, "I have one week to create this." Ivy Newport: Uh, okay. Chris Newport: Oh, that's a good challenge. Shane Sams: If I could create this ... Ivy Newport: I have to sleep, right? Shane Sams: You have to sleep, yeah. Seriously build your limits and then try to do it within those limits. Ivy Newport: All right. Shane Sams: Imagine if you had to get it out in a week, like you literally had to do it, or 500 people would be disappointed. Like, what would make the cut? And then do that and then see if anybody notices. Ivy Newport: That's a good challenge. Shane Sams: Do it for a month and see if anybody cares. Ivy Newport: All right. Jocelyn Sams: Just remember, it's your business like if something is not working for you. If you're not liking something, change it. If people don't like it, then they will quit, but chances are the entire membership is not going to say, "Well, because you didn't deliver this magazine, I'm out." Ivy Newport: Right. Ivy Newport: Yeah, that's great. Chris Newport: Very, very good advice. Ivy Newport: Yes, thank you. Shane Sams: All right guys, what a great conversation. Listen, we are so proud of you and like the launch was amazing, but where are you guys at right now in your membership? Chris Newport: Yeah, like you said, it's been an amazing almost month. As of this recording, we are now at 783. Jocelyn Sams: Whoa. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah, you guys are going to be ... So your goal is 1,000, which means you got about two weeks. Chris Newport: I know. I know. Jocelyn Sams: Guys better hurry up, right? Chris Newport: I told Ivy, wouldn't it be great if we get to 1,000 before we get on the call? Shane Sams: But you're going to get there eventually. That's what matters, right? Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. Chris Newport: Yeah. Shane Sams: Listen, that's amazing. That is absolutely life changing. Know that we will be here to help you continue wrapping your brain around that as we go. Ivy Newport: Thank you guys so much for having us, and it's been so awesome to talk to you. Chris Newport: Yeah, thank you guys. And thank you for everything you've done inside the community. The things we've learned have been able to apply to our business has just been astonishing to us, so thank you. Ivy Newport: Yeah, so grateful. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. We are so proud of Chris and Ivy's success, but the main reason they are successful is because they get in the community, they look at courses, and they take action on what they've learned. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking man that would be amazing. Man, I would love to have 500, 700, 1000 members paying me every month. Shane Sams: It won't happen unless you get started, and we would love to help you get started with your online business too. To join the Flip Your Life Community, all you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We would love to help you get started with your journey today. That's all the time we have for this week. Until next time, do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today’s show: Chris & Ivy's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife