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I left my teaching position with Chicago Public Schools after giving a decade of my life to the profession. I departed for multiple reasons, including a family move, the need for a challenge in my career, and the desire to escape the grind and stress. Back then, I didn't know many teachers who wanted to leave teaching. I was the outlier, and people were shocked when I made my departure. I was a standout educator with strong student and parent relationships, and my test scores and student growth were always through the roof. Wind the clock ahead; I've been out of the classroom almost longer than I was in it. I've spent the second decade of my career working in edtech (eSpark Learning and Discovery Education) and in the last five years building educators 2 educators. Back when I left the classroom, we were all stressed. Yes, parents were demanding. Yes, we had a few students who made our classroom hard to manage. But we faced nothing like what teachers are facing today. Covid, plus social media, plus technology, plus a mental health crisis, plus a downward economy… I've spent the last ten years traveling the nation, visiting school districts of all sizes, and building an educator network of over 70,000 educators. I talk to teachers, coaches, and administrators every day. And today, I'm going to tell you WHY teachers and administrators are leaving education in a steady stream.   Important Links: www.educators2educators.com www.carrieconover.com Free 30 Day Membership: https://e2e.mykajabi.com/offers/zc7dCKMt

Join Coach and Andrew as they break down a very competitive 8 game NBA DFS Main Slate for DRAFTKINGS, FANDUEL, AND YAHOO for Monday 5/3/21. Coach and Andrew discuss their favorite NBA DFS Picks, locks, and fades. They go in depth with lineup build strategy along with a game scripting analysis during this NBA DFS podcast! Check out a Trivia Question at the end to WIN a free 3 Day Membership to Coach Talk!Check Out Our Partners @ BetUSBetUS Homepage - https://cutt.ly/cfV9Gr8BetUS SportsBook - https://cutt.ly/lfV9JpXCheck Out Our LinksWebsite - https://dfscoachtalk.com/Twitter - https://twitter.com/DFSCoachTalkFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/DFSCoachTalkInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/dfs_coachtalk

This episode is released to commemorate My Best Life Now's 1st anniversary! Wow, this year has gone by so fast! ------- This month's focus is on "Relationships That Thrive", so I invited relationship coach Robyn Zaval, from Raising Greatness Coaching. She is also the creator of OnlyTheInspired.com coaching platform which was launched in September 2020. She shares her journey as she discovered her life purpose, realized the value of coaching, saw the vision for OnlyTheInspired.com and her passion for coaching. She also shares some relationship lessons she learned along the way. Sit back and enjoy the conversation! REIGNITE your life! Take action to serve your dreams. A 5 minute baby step moves you one step closer to the life of your dreams! Today is the a beautiful day to live your best life now! --------- Robyn's Gift: OnlyTheInspired Offer: Sign Up To Get A Free 30 Day Membership https://onlytheinspired.com/life-reignited/ --------- Robyn's Favorite Song: "If Today Was Your Last Day" by Nickelback Robyn's Favorite Books: "Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action" by Simon Sinek "Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant" by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne "The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts" by Gary Chapman Robyn loves all things Brené Brown. Brené's books include "The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are", "I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough"", "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead" and "Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts." https://brenebrown.com/downloads/ Robyn's Favorite Healthy Snack: Jennie's Organic Coconut Bites with Cranberries, Chia Seeds, Goji Berries & Chocolate -------- Life REIGNITED Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1OvhxpUTgRroYSRQM60llt -------- Happy 1st Anniversary My Best Life Now!

Episode 137   This episode will help you redefine how you feel about weight loss and ALL of the things you think you "should" be doing to feel confident and amazing in your body.    My guest is Tanja Shaw, Founder of Fit + Vibrant Over 50.  Tanja is a sought-after life and weight loss coach, host of the Fit and Vibrant You Podcast, founder of Ascend Fitness + Lifestyle, a holistic health coaching studio in Chilliwack, BC, and Fit + Vibrant Over 50. Tanja has built a credible reputation for helping 1000s of women get to their happy, healthy weight permanently, naturally and without the obsession so that they can LIVE their life. Topics discussed: Accepting your body and not being complacent Loving your body and still want to get better How to use the scale without judgment Mindfulness around your thoughts and eating Celebrating your wins without food to avoid self-sabotage Not using exercise for weight loss The two things you need to let go of if you want long-term change The Top 3 things you need: consistency, simplicity, and routine You can listen to the Fit + Vibrant You Podcast (on iTunes, or where you listen to podcasts).   To learn more about Tanja and her services, please visit Tanja's:    website: https://www.tanjashaw.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanja_shaw Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tanjashaw   To learn more about Lori and her services, please visit Lori's:    website: https://www.lorimassicot.com    Instagram https://www.lorimassicot.com   Join Elevate, a 30-Day Membership for Women Over 40 who want to live alcohol-free.       

In this video Jeanette Larsen of Growth Unlimited provides ideas and resources for combatting this stealthy, debilitating condition that can lead to more severe and even life-threatening illnesses.If you find this broadcast helpful, please subscribe to our Podcast, and visit www.growthunlimited.org for more ideas on “It's Your Life—Have it Your Way!”  We also invite you to subscribe to our YouTube Channel by visiting https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-OZ7Duf6bQcsgHghMG11NQ Want to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

In this video, host Jeanette Larsen of Growth Unlimited provides a list and examples of what can be noticed in people at risk for or suffering from Crisis Fatigue.  Since knowledge creates awareness and the ability to take steps to resolve the situation, it provides another way for you to Take Control of Your Life!If you find this video helpful, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, and visit www.growthunlimited.org for more ideas on “It's Your Life—Have it Your Way!”  We also invite you to subscribe to our podcast My Life-My Way on iTunes or your favorite podcast stream. Want to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

In the midst of the pandemic and other major world events that have occurred during the past few months, experts are noticing a higher level of depression and anxiety across populations.  Similar to what has been seen in traumatized people, but not meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), this phenomenon has been named CRISIS FATIGUE.  In this presentation, Growth Unlimited's Jeanette Larsen discusses the problem and sets up a series of broadcasts to give viewers ideas of what to do to avoid being caught up themselves and offers suggestions on how to help the people you love avoid the problem. If you find this broadcast helpful, please subscribe to our Podcast, and visit www.growthunlimited.org for more ideas on “It's Your Life—Have it Your Way!”  We also invite you to subscribe to our YouTube Channel by visiting https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-OZ7Duf6bQcsgHghMG11NQWant to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

Founders of our nation and leaders during the last 244 years made great sacrifices to build our country to its current status of world leadership. They all gave up a great deal for the dream they called Freedom.   Today we face as great a threat to our happiness and basic freedoms they worked so hard to guarantee.  This special 4th of July edition of My Life-My Way addresses how we, as American citizens, can show the same kind of patriotism our founding fathers showed.If you find this broadcast helpful, please subscribe to our Podcast, and visit www.growthunlimited.org for more ideas on “It's Your Life—Have it Your Way!”  We also invite you to subscribe to our YouTube Channel by visiting https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-OZ7Duf6bQcsgHghMG11NQWant to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual 

Society's influence on our beliefs and values has heavily impacted our ability to make changes in our daily lives.  In this podcast, Jeanette talks about how this impact occurred, how it affects us today, and what we can do to avoid its impacting our futures.Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

In this episode, Jeanette talks about how the values, beliefs and principles we have can obstruct our ability to make lasting and effective changes in our lives.Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

In this podcast, Jeanette Larsen talks about the 7 Life Stages theorized by psychologist Michael S. Broder, PhD that people go through as they grow up and addresses how choosing behaviors that return us to some of the earlier developmental stages of life can either serve our needs well or be a detriment to what we want to change for the better.Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

How ready are you to make changes you want to make in your life?  In this podcast, Coach Jeanette Larsen talks about Psychology's Transtheoretical Theory which identifies qualities we have which categorize our readiness to make changes in our lives.Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

This podcast explores a problem people have that stops them from committing to making the changes they want to make in their lives.  It addresses some of the reasons the problem exists and offers potential solutions that will help you overcome the problem and take control of your life.Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

Feel the need for a change?  If so, you are not alone.  Especially after the world events of the past few months, a vast majority of people worldwide feel the need for some BIG changes in their lives.  Problem is, we're dealing with information overload that makes it very difficult to know what to do.  Instead of making the changes they we need to be made, lots of us are struggling with what choices to make, and how to make them.In this series of 5 podcasts, Jeanette Larsen will discuss the problems we face, and the principles of  effective change.  She will show us how Psychology's Transtheoretical Theory explains the process, and how we can maximize our ability to make effective changes.This podcast is the introduction to the series, helping define the problem and addressing some of the issues we all face.  Listening to the podcast and completing the short FREE assessment following it, will give you insight into where you currently are in the process and point out a direction you may want to go to take control of your life!Want to Learn More about Committing to Change?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

Every day a new page of history is written. Are we teaching our children how to ✅examine it, ✅respond to it, ✅be impacted by it, ✅lead others through it, ✅LEARN FROM IT? No one would argue with the fact that 2020 has been an unprecedented collection of new days of history. Are we engaging our children in the treasured task of being shaped by history and simultaneously shaping it? I want my kids to be leaders in tomorrow's pages of the past. If we want them to be effective, loving leaders, NOW is the time to take our role seriously.Click here to go to Val's blog post on this episode, which contains all the links to Resources for You and Your Family as you Become a Social Studies FamilyWe’ve all heard the quote by Winston Churchill saying, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." I would suggest that when we hear that quote we often fail to pay attention to one key phrase, “LEARN FROM” – "Those that fail to LEARN FROM history, are doomed to repeat it.” Reading some facts in a textbook about a past event, cramming lots of those facts into our brain while we study for a test, and then quickly forgetting those facts, that is not LEARNING FROM history. That is more like window shopping through history – taking a shallow little scenic tour but not going in and experiencing it, allowing it to impact our perspective, shape our worldview, affect our decision-making, form our character,and compel us to lead others toward truth and good deeds.These are the things that I want history, including current history-in-the-making to accomplish for my kids.Well, my friends, I tell you all that to explain why I brought a history guy onto the podcast this week. It’s because I believe that LEARNING FROM history with our children is an important part of intentional parenting to build strong kids who become strong leaders who shape history. At the end of this blog post, be sure to use the link to a FREE 90 Day Membership to the Notgrass History resources site!Can we have a heart to heart right now? In recent days, a series of tragic racial scenarios emerged in the news followed by peaceful protests and dangerous, destructive riots, yet the interview fits perfectly with this important time.These current events, that have been heavy on all of us, are reshaping my heart and what conversations I am having with my kids in hopes that it shapes their hearts, in hopes that the world we hand off for our children to lead, will be a place that they’ve been equipped for the challenges at hand. How do we do this? Listen to Raising Loving Leaders, episode 39 to find out!CONNECT with Val: www.PracticallySpeakingMOM.comPublic announcements & Resources Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PracticallySpeakingMom/

Many of us feel life dissatisfaction because we don't have the respect or recognition we feel we deserve for what we do.  Every one of us has the potential to achieve the kind of respect and recognition from other people that we deserve.  Sometimes we just need to fine tune the process.  This podcast discusses the implementation of a plan that will help us take control of our lives and the way others perceive us--by helping us understand how to maximize the potential we were given in our lives.Want to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

The increasing rate of mental illness is alarming.  Particularly since in the host's experience, the vast majority of people who seek the services of a Mental Health Therapist are not suffering from true "Mental Illness".  Instead, they are struggling with the inability to make life what they want it to be because they lack the skills necessary to achieve their goals.  This podcast discusses the reasons for this problem and provides insight into what people can do to "Have MY LIFE--MY WAY!"Want to Learn More about Taking Control of Your Life?  We invite you to join us for our 8-session training on Committing to Effective Change at a special reduced introductory price including a FREE 90-Day Membership to our new Growth Community called GROWTH UNIVERSITY!  Check out this Limited-Time Offer!  Go to https://www.thegrowthuniversity.org/plans/52948?bundle_token=c0e81f83778b364fa3ed9c1401e903d3&utm_source=manual

When I first joined TikTok, it was filled with young people doing funky dances, funny video memes, and random interesting videos. But when I began posting conscious content, the algorithm changed, and that's when I found Andrew. In this podcast we dive deeper into his spiritual awakening journey, vibration, and living an authentic life. He's awesome! You can check him out below: https://www.instagram.com/andrewaltimari/ Tiktok: @antwwon Dive deeper! Spiritual Ascension Guide: https://www.wokeandwealthy.co/pl/130028 Spiritual Mastery training group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/238108246777861/ Free 14 Day Membership for conscious living: https://www.wokeandwealthy.co/try Free 10-Day Enlightenment Mastery Course https://www.wokeandwealthy.co/enlightenment-mastery-course-with-christopher-tan-sign-up  

Today I pose the question: Did you think you'd be further ahead in life? Well sometimes we don't stop to think about that. In this episode we explore and look back what we wanted for our lives and if we have accomplished it or if we fell short. Don't worry it's not too late, we can start today to make goals for ourselves and If we apply all the lessons from this segment we will definitely get there together.Today I pose the question: Did you think you'd be further ahead in life? Well sometimes we don't stop to think about that. In this episode we explore and look back what we wanted for our lives and if we have accomplished it or if we fell short. Don't worry it's not too late, we can start today to make goals for ourselves and If we apply all the lessons from this segment we will definitely get there together.Audible Free 30 Day Membership: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB86OYE?...

Traveling can take a toll on your fitness if you don’t make an effort to make smart choices and keep fitness top of mind. This is why we have Cha Rae Smith and Michelle Stoltz from Fitness Sisters on the show today to talk about staying on track with health and fitness goals while traveling. Cha Rae began Fitness Sisters to keep herself motivated when fitness started falling by the wayside with her busy schedule. Michelle is a founding member and admin. Fitness Sisters began as a Facebook Community that offered support for women and their fitness goals. They have grown beyond that, and Fitness Sisters is now a one stop shop for support, accountability, and motivation. They even have an app coming out soon. Show Notes [02:54] Cha Rae started the Fitness Sisters Facebook group in order to help her become more fit. The group grew organically and grew to about 5000 members in a year. The purpose is to offer support and encouragement with fitness goals. [04:04] Cha Rae is a busy mother of three with a full-time job, and she also goes to school. [04:12] It felt like she didn't have any time in the day for fitness or proper nutrition. She was going backwards with her fitness goals. [04:47] She wanted to show her children that there is always time in the day to make progress towards your goals. [05:15] Fitness Sisters is a place for everyone to connect, support, and relate to each other. [06:05] There is the private Facebook group which is women only. Men can like and support the main page. [07:35] Michelle is an admin leader for Fitness Sisters. [09:03] Prepping for meals when on vacation. Find a place to stay with a kitchen. [09:26] Start the day with a healthy breakfast made at wherever you are staying. [10:40] You can have a bonding moment at the table planning the day. [12:07] Find items that are healthy and still taste good. Watch those carbs. [14:53] Keep in mind that the reason you do what you do is to be healthy. Have fun in moderation. [16:25] Have one workout day while on vacation. Get a national gym membership. You can also make fitness tasks like using the stairwell (make the elevator off limits) and walk while sightseeing. [19:45] Fitness Sisters has an app coming out soon! Links and Resources: Free Audible 30-Day Membership and Audiobook Fitness Sisters Fitness Sisters Facebook Community Fitness Sisters HSG Facebook Page @FITNESSSISTERS3 on Twitter Fitness Sisters on Instagram For pictures, tips and more, be sure to check out our Fly with Chris and Di Facebook page and signup to download a copy of The Best City for You. Please take a moment and subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. It will only get better from here. Don’t miss out on future episodes where we continue to share tips and tricks to get the most out of your vacation.

In today's episode, we help Brenda take her art business to the next level. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brenda take her art business to the next level. Greeting: 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. We are super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life Community on so that we can help them take their business to the next level. Now a lot of people ask us, "How do you pick who gets to be on the podcast? Which members come on? Is there an application process, is there something else that you do to let people come on the show?" Well, really, honestly, it's action takers in the community who we bring on to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, and we look for people who are asking great questions in the forums, and we really look hard at our success story forum. And we had an amazing success story that we wanted to share with you today. Shane: Flip Your Life Community member, Brenda Mullard said, in her subject line, "So much can happen in a short amount of time." I was like, "Oh that's interesting, let's open that up and read it". Brenda said, "Hi everyone, I was reflecting on what has happened with my business since Flip Your Life Live, and I thought I'd share my success and all that has happened. So much can happen in such a short amount of time, just about four months. When I left Flip Your Life Live I had a website and membership that was literally broken. I mean it was open to everyone and anyone, but it wasn't working. I was frustrated, sad, and disheartened after our working dinner at Flip Your Life Live, but I thought I would just hire it out and get it all fixed. The quotes were thousands of dollars. I looked at myself and said, 'Wait, um, what?' I thought to myself there was no way I could afford to do that." Shane: "So with the help of my new crew, that I met at Flip Your Life Live, I changed my website theme to a new theme, I learned the new theme builder, and redesigned almost all of my webpages, over 100 pages of content. I created new opt ins, a sales funnel, and an email sequence to bring people through the process. I've added more regular lesson plans, presentations, posters, and resources to my membership. I've batched blog posts ahead of times and free downloads for the next few months, and I'm ready to go. I ran my first sale, and I raised my prices. I now had eight members in the Visual Art Academy Membership and excited to add more. As much as I feel like things move slowly, looking back, I realized I have really moved the needle. I feel like I have a very solid foundation created now, and the next move is to try to get more eyes on what I have to offer." Shane: "This is what I need to learn more of, and I'm about to throw my ... as I try to throw my fear aside. So even when you don't think you have a whole lot done, then stop and reflect a little bit, and you'll probably surprise yourself." Shane: So we read this amazing success story. Jocelyn: I was so excited. I was like we have to have her on the podcast. Shane: We've got to have Brenda on the podcast. She's taking action, she came to the live event. We got to have her on, so Brenda Mullard, welcome to the show. We have you on the podcast now. Brenda: Well thanks so much for having me, you guys. Shane: That was an inspiring success post, by the way. And I actually noticed something about your account too when we were reading this right before we came on air. I looked at your, your stats are over like under your name, you know like where it has the topics, replies, and coins and things. And what I love about this is you have six times the replies as topics started. And what that really tells us is not only are you taking action, but you're also like talking to other people, answering other questions, and helping other people sort out their problems too, so we're super glad to have you on the show today. Brenda: Well thanks. I know I appreciate it when people answer my questions or just give me a little bit of a boost, and you can do this, and so I really try to do that for everybody else in the community too. I think that's really important. Jocelyn: Absolutely, I love that. This is one of those shows where we have actually met Brenda in real life, which is awesome. She came to our event not too long ago, in last September in Nashville, and has done just some amazing things, and we're just really excited about all of the things that you're working on, and the action that you're taking, and all that kind of stuff. So now it's our turn to kind of give back to you and try to help you take the next steps in your journey, but before we do that, let's talk a little bit about you. Tell people about your background and about what you do online. Brenda: Okay. Awesome. Well, I have three kids. I'm married, I have one husband. My kids are 17, a daughter who we are getting ready to send off to college next year, so we're getting all the applications and scholarships and all that kind of stuff going. I have a 14-year-old son who's a freshman in high school, and an 11-year-old son who is in fifth grade. I have been in the arena of art education for the past 20 years, and so I have moved within the past year from just a regular classroom into teaching part-time, but then also taking on an integrated arts program at one of the middle schools as a fine arts coordinator. So I kind of have two part-time jobs which are really actually two full time jobs, as well as my family. Brenda: And then we kind of joke because my mom is ... I have an elderly mother who has a lot, a lot of health issues, and so we kind of joke that she's our fourth child, because I cook, clean, shop, do everything that I do for my children, only she just doesn't live with us. So, having that on top of everything is pretty, it's a pretty crazy busy life right now. Shane: So I would say that that probably has a lot to do with why you're trying to build this online income that's more manageable, more passive, more controlling would be safe to guess? Brenda: For sure. Yep. I, to be able to have the flexibility of a schedule and to have more time to do the things that I feel that I need to do, versus what I have to do, would be just phenomenal. So, yep, that's exactly why I'm working on doing this. Shane: How did you first discover that online business even existed, or decided you wanted to do it? We all have different stories, because this world is kind of hidden from people, when you're in the 9 to 5, or even when you're in a government job or an education job or something like that. How did you discover online business? Brenda: Well, about oh, I would say 14ish years ago, when my son was born, I kind of got exposed to working smarter not harder with my artwork, and so I was using my artwork and putting it, putting it on greeting cards, through a few different companies, and doing things like that, and all of the sudden realizing like oh, I made 42 cents today from selling two cards that had my design on it, and I designed it once and it sold multiple times. Just that idea that I could make income from content, or things that I produce, and then it's used over, and over, and over, and over again by multiple people, and you continuously get paid through that was really the first kind of exposure that I had. Brenda: And then when I found you guys, I had tried doing some online, my lesson plans and things all on my own, and I probably for like two years or so just kind of waded through the whole internet business courses, process of all different things, and until I figured out and started learning from the community I just got a better idea of what it all took. Because people that do this online business entrepreneurial stuff, when you first begin, you don't understand how much goes into being successful in a business. Like you always use the iceberg scenario and that's so true. You only see the very top when people are really, really successful. You don't see all of the different layers and all the different work that goes into getting to that top peak. Shane: But that's what you hear when you first discover it, right? Everyone is like, "Oh, I read a book, and I started a blog, and the next -" Jocelyn: And they're making millions of dollars. Shane: "And next thing I knew I had my own jet." Brenda: Right. Exactly. I quit my job after five months of all this stuff, and it was so easy, and anybody that's, anybody that's actually doing it knows that that's not true. Shane: Especially in the beginning. There is a ... What's it called? A dynamo, is that what it's called? When like the energy takes over and it just keeps running or something like that. Jocelyn: Yeah, that's something, I don't know. Shane: Science, yeah. Physics. Brenda: Ignorance, ignorance on fire. Shane: Ignorance but right, its like something happens when, I guess momentum, like there is a point where you'll get momentum where things get ... It's like a fire, you stoke the fire and it keeps burning. You just throw another wood, you don't have to like, it's harder to start the fire than it is to quit going. And like there is a point of that, but man those first, that first two years is really like you've got to decide that you're in it to win it or you're not going to win it. You know? Brenda: Right, right. Jocelyn: Okay, so tell our listeners what your business is. Brenda: I have a website, and membership, that has secondary art education lesson plans and classroom resources for art teachers. Shane: Okay. Jocelyn: Okay, awesome. Shane: And you actually have a following online. You have a Facebook group? Brenda: I do. I started a Facebook group about, about a year and a half, two years ago. It's called Art Teachers Teaching Art, and actually, Shane, you gave me that title, which is awesome. It has over 6000 members in it right now, and it is a super, super active community. I mean I, I have probably if somebody posts a question, or is looking for something in there, I have six or seven people that immediately jump on and answer that question. It is a free group, but it is a super active, and it's really, really good group. Shane: And I usually, I talk to a lot of people about building an audience through some kind of group or something, a page, whatever it is they manage, and we always pick, everybody's always well what should I call it? And people want to brand it and stuff, and I'm like, "No, what would people search for?" People would search for Art Teachers Teaching Art. They would not search for the Fantabulous Artsio Community or whatever. They wouldn't look for that. You've got to name that, that's, naming is really important and sometimes simple is the best. And Art Teachers Teaching Art is pretty straight forward, but you know what everyone in the group is doing. And when people find it they're like "Yeah, I shouldn't join that, because I'm not an art teacher teaching art, so I'm going to back out of this one." Brenda: Right, and it started out with, I just started the group, and I literally started it out with just art teachers that I knew. I mean I threw it out to six art teachers that I knew were on Facebook, and that I knew personally. And within a year and a half, I've got over 6000 members where people have spread it to other people, and it's just kind of spread like wildfire across the masses. So that's pretty cool to think about that from people all over the world. Shane: And the key is now though ... We talked about this a little bit off air, which we're going to get into some fears, and obstacles, and some other things that are holding you back in your business. You've done the hard part, you've gotten 6000 people to pay attention to something you've created for free. And the key is where, somewhere in there, there's 100 people that want to pay you monthly. You just have to convince them why and we'll talk more about that. Jocelyn: Okay, so before we get into all that, I do want to talk a little bit about coming to the live events. So you attended our live event in 2018? Brenda: I did. Jocelyn: And I want to talk a little bit about what made you decide to do that, and by making the decision, what changed about the way that you were approaching your business, or like how did it benefit you in other words? Because we're starting to sell this thing again, there are probably a lot of people out there listening thinking, "Oh, you know, I don't know for sure if I want to do this." You know, "I have to take time out of my life," and all these types of things. Shane: It's not cheap. Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean. Shane: It's not cheap to make a trip like that. Jocelyn: There is an investment involved, and I just want you to talk a little bit about why you made that decision and what happened after you made that decision. Shane: How, this success story was clearly sparked by people you met at the live event. All these things and people helping you, so how did that kind of change things for you? Brenda: Absolutely, so wow, this is really hard to talk about, but literally when I, I signed up to go, I thought this is going to be the make or breaker. I have this website ... And I had paid to have it fixed and changed, a while ago, and little to my knowledge that it wasn't fixed and it was still broken. It was open to everybody, so I was in a point where I was super frustrated. I didn't know the next steps, even though we have the great community, and we have all the courses and things in there. I just felt way overwhelmed and way bogged down, and just didn't really know where to go from where I was at. And so I kind of thought all right, I'm going to go to this event. I've been to live events before, I know that I've always learned something, and usually there's a sit and get kind of things, where you go in, and you sit, and get information and then you take it home and try to implement, but the way this was set up, being a teacher myself, I loved the way that it's taught. Brenda: There's questions, and then you do it. And so that was a huge part of how I think the success kind of started rolling. I also met people that I had talked to in the community online. A few of them we had had phone calls back and forth and things, but I think meeting those people in person, and having them be like, "Oh, this is what I do," and then show me, because I'm very visual. I'm a very visual learner, and so to have them actually sit down and show me some of the things that they were doing, where like keyword search and all these other things was so, so helpful. It was so helpful to me, and after our working dinner, realizing that my website was literally broken. Like I, and my membership was open to the world, anybody could get in, anybody could see anything. They could download everything and - Shane: Didn't we talk about this like - Brenda: We did. Shane: Walking back to the elevator? Yeah. Brenda: We did. Shane: I remember this now. Because you were like, it was you, and who were you with? Kathy? And like ... Brenda: Kathy, yep. Shane: Yeah, Kathy Martin. Brenda: Kathy and Evan. Shane: Yes, Kathy and Evan, and we were walking back to the elevator, and I was like, "Brenda, what did you get out of the working dinner?" And you're like, "Yeah, everything's broken. Everything, everything. Start to finish." And I was like, "Oh, well, that's, well at least you know now." I do, I remember that conversation. Brenda: Yep, yep, yep. You were like, "Okay, well we got to fix that." Shane: "We've got to fix that. We've got to do something about that. That might need work there." And I love how you're not the only person who's said to me, "I got to the point where I was so frustrated and overwhelmed I just was about to quit. And this was my moment." And then clearly when you put that line in the sand, after the live event, you didn't go the other way and quit. You kept going, right? Brenda: Right. Shane: You changed your price. You got some members. You fixed your site. You know? Brenda: I do. Shane: And it's always amazing to me when I hear these stories that come out of live events, especially like ... It's not just us promoting Flip Your Life Live. Yes, we want everybody to come, it's awesome, but the reason we put the event in our schedule, and our calendar for everybody else, is because we know that the three biggest moments in our life came after we went to a live event. Like that's what changed the game. Jocelyn: And it wasn't something magical about the person who was hosting the event - Shane: Or even the information. Jocelyn: Stuff they were talking about on stage. That type of thing wasn't the magic. And so yes, I'm telling you that Shane and I are not the magic, okay. That's kind of weird to say, but like that is not the magic of going to live events. It's just all of those connections that you make. It's having that anchor on your calendar, just knowing that you're going to this event, and you don't want to show up and have nothing done, or nothing to show for it, and I think just by taking that step and doing that, I think it's fair to say that you think it has been a, it's made a huge impact on your business. Shane: And I, and it's also to just like the reason our event was changed, like Brenda you said we take action. How our event works is we do a live, we do a session, Jocelyn and I do a quick training, 20 to 30 minutes. We open the floor for the entire room for 20 to 30 minutes for questions. Make sure that everybody gets what we're talking about. And then we have a mastermind session immediately where we implement the thing that we just talked about. Even if it's just getting the plan in place and we did that on purpose, because we knew what really changed the game was taking action on what we learned at the live event. And we didn't like those sit and get things either, because you go home, you've got a 16 page notebook full of notes, and you don't know what to do. You're just more overwhelmed. Shane: But if you learn, take action, learn, take action, learn, take action. That's when your website gets fixed. That's when you get some members. That's when these other things happen that happen in your story. You tell it in the forums. Brenda: Right, and the crew that I sat with at the working dinner, I don't, I don't know exactly how we all kind of came together. We had been talking in the community prior, and Joanne and I had been friends back and forth online, and it just, it all just came together that night, and those group of ladies had surrounded me with so much support. Once they saw what had happened, and what was going on, it wasn't like oh poor Brenda, it was oh shoot, now what do we do to fix this? Let's help her fix this. Shane: Yeah, I love, the we word that you just used is amazing. Like we, how do we fix this together, right? Brenda: Yeah, and it was totally, it was a we. I did not ever feel like it was a me. When I got home and started trying to find someone to help me with fixing my website, and adding a new theme, and all this other stuff, I had, I have over 100 pages of content, and I was quoted between four and $6000 just to have five to seven pages of my website transferred over into a new theme. And I thought there's no way that as a teacher I'm going to be able to afford that. There's no way, and so that's where I had to roll up my sleeves, and I had the same crew of ladies rallied around me again, and were like this is how we've done it. This is what you do. Jump on, and they sent me videos on how they've done it and it was just, it was just the fact that I never, and I still to this day, do not feel alone. Brenda: We are, we have a Voxer group that we kick each other's butts, and we hold each other accountable, and we help each other when we need help, and it's just ... It's an amazing group of people that I would have never ever, ever met if I wouldn't have gone to the live event. Shane: And that's what I love is like, it's like I love, that's the iceberg. We already talked about it a little bit earlier, but you just said, "Man, I've got this amazing group of people now, and we got to the live event and we all just ended up together." But before the live event you were in the community, you had seen each other in the forums, you had talked on Facebook, maybe connected an ad at each other. And then you get to the live event, you all gravitate, "Hey, Kathy." "Hey, Joanne, hey Brenda," and then you kind of end up together. And it feels like the universe pulls you together, but it's all of this stuff you had done before that. All the frustrations, all the overwhelm, all the questions in the community, all the replies in the community, all the logging in and just seeing Kathy's face and recognizing her. You know what I mean? Brenda: Yep. Shane: And that's what leads to that moment where you're in the battle together for two days. You get it done, you help each other, and then all of the sudden the relationship deepens, and that doesn't happen unless you get in person live. All these other things are amazing. We've created this support network because we know what it takes to get people together. It is different when it's live. It just really is. Jocelyn: Yeah, that's, I just love it because the whole reason that we do this is to get people who are like-minded together. The people that you were in a mastermind with are the people that you talk to on Voxer. Those people have what's called a growth mindset. I've been reading a lot about this mindset stuff lately, and the people that we surround ourselves with in our everyday lives oftentimes have a fixed mindset. If you would have told someone, maybe a friend of yours at school, "Hey, my website's broken," then they might have said, "Oh, well, that website stuff's crazy anyway. Like why don't you just give it up, just close it down?" But the people with the growth mindset say, "Oh no, we can fix this. We can help you fix it, and it's going to be amazing when you get finished." It's just surrounding yourself with those people, meeting them in person. It's cool to talk online, but meeting in person is just so much more impactful in my opinion. Shane: And there's no end game to this online business thing either. You don't just succeed and make it. Something good doesn't just happen and it moves on. Even today when we were getting ready for your call, like Jocelyn was, we had like two calls today, so we were like, "Hey, who's on the schedule today?" And I'm like, "Oh, it's Brenda." "You know, remember? Yeah, Brenda. Remember? Yeah." But like we know you. I know what you look like. I've talked to you in person. I stood there at midnight, after four hours of everyone masterminding, and talked to you about your site being broke. Shane: It's a different level than when we interview somebody that we haven't met in person. And it's just cool to see everybody triumph. There's one thing I love about our community, and we've researched a lot of communities. We've been a part of a lot of communities, and the one thing I'm most proud of about the Flip Your Life Community is just how everyone tries so hard. Not just for like themselves, but each other. And I just, I really feel that coming from your group. And even just seeing your interactions that I'm not a part of. And that is amazing. It's amazing. Brenda: Honestly you guys, Jeanette and Kathy, and Joanne, and I, the four of us are like tight. Ever since we're that, that's our Voxer group and I don't know. I seriously do not know how I would have ever made it without them, and I still, I still I don't know, because every day we kick each other's butts. It's awesome. I love it. Shane: That's what people don't realize. If you don't have that, you don't make it. Just getting everything you did before that moment, then now that you have that, you have everything you need now to make it. You're going to make it. It's just, but you couldn't have done it without all that frustration, all that hard work, and without surrounding yourselves with these people. Jocelyn: And you know people are always asking about masterminds, like how do I get in one? How do I create one? But the thing about it is like you guys did what it took to get together in person. It was facilitated by our event, but everyone there made the investment, everyone there traveled to the event, so you know those people are in it. They're going to do what it takes to get to the next level, and that's the kind of people that you want to surround yourself with. Shane: But it really is true ... Every day we get up, we look at each other and we're like our job. People think that our job is to teach them how to do online business. That's part of our job, I guess. And then like, and how to help them figure out what to do next, but that's a part of our job. The way we actually view Flipped Lifestyle, the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast and the Flip Your Life Community, and Flip Your Life Live is, our job is to give everyone the opportunity to go succeed on their own, because they don't realize that they have the opportunity. We just got to put it in front of them. Shane: And but if we can do a live event, but if you don't come to the live event, you don't have a Voxer mastermind after the live event. You don't have these ladies in your life, and that's really what the live event is. It's the ultimate opportunity to give yourself a boost to actually succeed. Brenda: Right, exactly. Jocelyn: All right. We - Shane: Ooh, okay, all right. Jocelyn: We've gone, we've gone on and on about how amazing Flip Your Life is. Flip Your Life Live. And if you're not coming, you can find out more about that at flippedlifestlye.com/live. Shane: Good segue. Good segue. Jocelyn: We'd love to see you there. And let's jump into a little bit about what's going on. Okay, so we talked about your success story. We talked about how you have some people in your membership, which is awesome. Shane: And you've actually pulled the ship around and fixed the broken things, right? Brenda: Yep. Shane: That's always good. Jocelyn: All right, and so that is past you now, which is awesome. It's always good to get past those technical things. Let's talk about what is going on as far as growing the membership. What types of fears, or mindset issues, or obstacles, are holding you back now? Brenda: I feel like I, I've really created a really good foundation. I have lots of content, I've got opt ins, I've got sales funnels, I've got my email list, I've got my Facebook group. I have all the right things, I feel like, in place. Clearly I can always add more opt-ins and things like that, but every week I publish a blog post, with usually an opt in and a catch to it, and then brings them back to the website. And so I guess I'm looking for ways to well, obviously grow the membership, but I feel like there is a missing link somewhere to where I'm not getting enough fresh eyes on my website, or the people that have been involved with the Facebook group just aren't purchasing. And just finding out why they're not joining the membership, or what is it that I'm missing that I need to add or do, or change, or whatever to change that so that there are more members coming into the membership. Shane: All right, so I am pulling up Art Teachers Teaching Art, the group, right now. Let's see, is it private? Brenda: It is. Shane: Okay, hold on. So I'm going to hit join group, could you approve me? Brenda: Yep, let me see if I can do that right now? Shane: Don't hang up. We're - Brenda: No. Shane: We're live, folks, right here on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Admins have got it. I don't think I've ever, I don't think I've ever joined a Facebook group live on the podcast, so this is a first. Brenda: I don't think I've ever okayed a member on a podcast either. Shane: All right, so what I want to see is, I want to look, while you're looking for that. Brenda: Yep, there you are, I've got you. Shane: I got me, all right, here we go. Brenda: You're on, you're in, you're in. You're in like Flynn. Shane: All right, so I'm looking at the group here. And what I'm seeing is what I thought I would see once I got in. So I'm going to count one post, let's see, you were doing a Facebook live. I see a quote, two, three, four, five, six. I'm six posts in, I see no promotion. I see welcoming art people, seven. I see a good start question, starter with some comments. Okay, so I'm 10 posts in before I saw the first thing that said anything about adding packets to the art thing, and it's a link to Teachers Pay Teachers, which is a third party marketplace for lesson plans. Okay? Brenda: Right. Shane: Now that was on, let's see, that was about, looks like about four days ago. Three of four days ago. Now I'm going to keep going back, I'm going to keep scrolling. I see you're just giving, you've got a lot, there's so much value here. There's just so much conversation going on, you're this, you're doing a great job leading this community. People clearly feel a part of it. But I have to go all the way back to, oh gosh I'm back into December. We're recording in January. I'm still not seeing another promotion. So what I'm getting at here is you're not promoting the membership enough. You're leading your community, you threw something to a third party marketplace, but you're not doing the thing that actually builds your business which is getting more members. Shane: That's where we got to look at is your promotion strategy for the membership. I had another Flip Your Life member, her name's Jennifer, that I was working with in our private mastermind group. And she had this really huge fear holding her back of ruining her third party market sales, and she didn't want to promote her membership, because she was scared she would ruin her one off sales. And I was like, "You've got to get over that. Like the thing that builds your business is building your business, not building the third party marketplaces business." And she, so basically she did a mindset shift in eight weeks, she added like 300 people to her membership. And you may know Jennifer from the live event, of course. Brenda: I do, I do. Shane: Yeah, exactly. So what I'm saying is, this is a decision to promote your membership every day. Does that mean you have to post about it in your Facebook group every day? No. But it's just a decision, I'm going to promote this thing relentlessly until I have 100 people in it. And how we do that, we can talk about strategically, and make a decision, but you're just not promoting it. Jocelyn: It doesn't have to be a big spam fest. You don't have to go in there every day and be like join my membership. You can do it in ways that are more subtle than that. And that's the way that I always like to do it on Elementary Librarian, and especially if you have been ... Okay, so if you've had this group for a long time and they're not used to a lot of sales pitches, you don't want to go in there every single day and hit them over the head with this thing, because that's going to kill your group. But what you want to do instead, is making sure that you're giving them plenty of value. Shane: Which you are. Jocelyn: And I know that you're already doing that, and then you're going to go to them, and you're going to be subtle about selling. So yes. So the way that you're going to do that is you are going to present something to them of value, and you're going to say, "Hey, if you like this free thing I have much more of this in my membership, and you can find more information about how to join that here." Shane: Yeah, you've got to move them not to the quick, I gotta a couple sales on a third party marketplace mindset to, "Hey guys, here's a free thing. Click here to get it for your classroom." And you've got to move these 6000 people to 6000 emails which get automated emails to sell them your thing. Right? Brenda: Right. Right. Shane: And you've got to have some kind of regular promotion, that you do live, probably for the next, I'd say two quarters. I would go at least like 24 weeks in a row, of every week. One night doing a live webinar, and at the end of your webinar you sell your monthly membership, period. And like - Jocelyn: That's a great way to get emails, so just in your group say, "Hey guys, I'm having a free training on ... " Make sure that it's the people that you want to attract to your membership, so I think that we had talked a little bit earlier that you do more middle and high school ages, is that right? Brenda: Right. Jocelyn: Okay. Shane: But you're getting a lot of requests that you think a lot of the people in the Facebook group are elementary, correct? Brenda: There's a, there's quite a few that are elementary, but it's a lot of K through, like K through 8, so they do, some have to do some of the intermediate lesson plans, but also a lot of elementary as well. Jocelyn: What I would do, if I wanted to attract primarily the people who teach upper grades, is I would say, "Hey guys, I'm having a free training for upper grades art," and some relevant topic. I'm not very artistic, so I can't really throw any examples out there. But like maybe something to do with Valentine's Day. Shane: Calligraphy, I don't know. Jocelyn: Yeah, like something. And so that way it tells people hey, this is for people who teach upper grades. Does that mean that no one else will register? No. But it's a good way to get relevant people on your email list. Shane: It's stuff you've already created. Jocelyn: Because it's a free training, they're going to tell their friends about it. And you can even suggest that. Like, "Hey, do you know anybody else who can benefit from this training? Let them know about it," and they will proceed to share it. But I would call it a training, rather than a webinar, because teachers don't know what a webinar is." Shane: Yeah, and you're going to have to be prolific at this. Like that's what you're missing. You've been consistent, you've worked through the struggles, but you're not being very prolific, and your promotion of all this cool stuff, no one knows all this amazing stuff you have, because you're not telling them about it. Jocelyn: And just because you posted about it six months ago in your Facebook group, doesn't mean that everybody saw it. And there's been a lot of people who have joined since then. Shane: Yeah, you really do have to get, and this is for everybody listening to this show right now. If you don't have a mindset of daily promotion, your business will not grow, and when I say daily promotion there's a lot of ways to do that, but you've got to say, "I'm going to give myself a raise every day." Every time someone joins your membership you've got to raise that day. How many, how long do we have to wait at our normal nine to five jobs for somebody to give us a raise? But if I go get five members at $50 a month, I just gave myself a $250 a month raise. Shane: So you've got to give yourself a raise every day, and that means maybe every day you promote this free training that happens every Sunday night for the next 24 weeks. And maybe you rotate it, do what Jocelyn said with the secondary people, because you can get them in now. But for your elementary stuff, you can do a great promotion. You could say, "Hey, this is the webinar, this ones for K through 6 only." So you get all those K through six people in there, that are looking through this stuff, and then because there was a lot of K through six teachers, elementary school that are teaching art. And so all of them show up for this one, and at the end of it you're like, "Hey guys, here's the deal, if anyone joins tonight, not only do you get this great rate on my monthly membership, but I'll let you personally request a lesson plan and I'll create it for you." Shane: And they'll tell you all of this new stuff you need to create. They'll tell you exactly what they need, as you fill in the gaps in your content, and you'll be like, "Oh, these five people joined and they all five gave me a great idea for my next five packets that I'm going to create." So they just tell you what to do, and then that's going to make the next person buy better, because they're going to, you're already going to have then what they ask. You can do all these different ... You can rotate, like one week do the upper, next week do the lower, and that way your webinar's different every week. And you just every day, "Hey guys, I'm doing this training on Monday. Don't forget to register tonight," and you just do that every day in your group. It's really passive. Shane: Maybe you give them a free resource for registering. "Hey guys, anyone that registers for my training, even if you don't make it, don't worry, I'll send you a replay, and I'll send you this free thing that's only found in my community." And you just constantly grow that list, and you transfer these people from Facebook to your audience, to the webinar, to your membership. And then you just get real prolific. You just say, "I'm going to do this. It's 24 weeks of my life to set up the foundation of the rest of my life, and I'm just going to knock it out, and I'm going to run on a sprint, and then I'll throttle back and we'll do some things that we grow a little more passively." But that's really the only component you're missing. That missing link is prolific promotion of all this amazing stuff that you've already created. Brenda: Okay, that sounds terrifying to me, but I'm going to do it. Shane: Scary. What's terrifying about that? Honestly, what's the, what's the scary part? The work, or the promotion, or the what? Brenda: No, definitely not the work. The promotion part, yes, is a little bit scary. But I've had some pretty mean people send me messages, or send me things, of just something that they didn't agree with, or something that they didn't like about something, or something that they had seen and didn't agree with, and people can be pretty brutal when they're hiding behind a computer keyboard. So part of doing something live like that for a group of our teachers, I mean I have to think in the grand scheme there are maybe one or two that are just rude and mean, but in the grand scheme, there are going to be a lot more that won't be. Shane: I actually discovered a really good tool to deal with people like that. It's called the door. So what I do is when anyone, if I read a sentence and it starts getting really mean in one of my Facebook groups, I just show them the door. Like you're, this is your group. You're in charge. Just drop the ban hammer and bye. You're kick, just kick them out forever without remorse. Nobody will even know they're gone. Brenda: I have done that within the group, but I've had people send me the private messages too, that is just like crazy horrible things that people say, which I know it happens to many people and it's happened to you guys. I know that for sure, but it's just that fact of you could have 100 people telling you this is awesome, and it's that one person that says, "You suck, and you should get out of the profession now," and you know. Shane: Someone told you to retire, that's awesome. I've never heard of that one before. Jocelyn: Here's the cool thing about the electronic world, is that we have the capability of blocking people now. If someone does send you a hateful message, just block them. Shane: And do it, and don't read the whole message. The second that I recognize someone's being a troll, and hateful, and not being constructive at all ... Like this morning I got an email, and this, this lady had, what she did was she went to our web page and she signed up for a free trial. Well she started the process, but she didn't finish it. We have a trigger, like after three hours, if you haven't finished the form, that it sends you another email. Well she sent ... The email went out, somehow the timing worked out where she finished the form right after that email went out, and then she saw the email. She wasn't like hateful about it. She was just like, "Hey, I think there might be a problem with your automation because i got both these emails." It was super nice, but I've had other people that are like, "I know this isn't a real person, and I hate you and you're the devil- I just hit delete. Shane: As soon as I feel that negativity, you just got to get rid of it, because if you don't it will eat at you, like we're all human. We evolved in ways to go run from danger. The scary things matter more, and it's like you can't let that eat you alive, and the best way to do is just to ban them and let them go. Jocelyn: Yeah, and one thing that I have done in the past, when I still used to answer customer service, and when I check my own email and stuff like that, I would do something that I would call the worst case scenario. I would just imagine what's the worst thing that someone could say to me, and maybe it's something that somebody has already said to you. Well, first of all, like Shane said, if they're being a troll for no reason but just to be mean, then kick them out immediately. But if they do have something to say, that you feel like you need to respond to, write a message before you even get that message, or that email. Jocelyn: What I used to do is, the example I always use is when I raised my prices for Elementary Librarian, because I didn't just raise them a little bit, I raised them a lot. I pretty much more than tripled my prices. And I knew that one of the things that people would say is, "Hey, this is too expensive, why did you raise the price so much?" So what I did, is I wrote out a response before anybody even said it. That way, if I got that message, all I would have to do is just copy and paste. I didn't have to think about it, and my mind had already sort of dealt with that worst case situation, and that's something that really helped me. Shane: Like if you come up with, come up with what are the ten worst things anyone's ever actually said to you. Jocelyn: Or even like the three worst things. Shane: Yeah, the three whatever, and then just like, you probably have a couple of examples. Go and just type a response out to that person, whatever they used to say and deal with it. And now just never deal with it again. It's been dealt with. And if there's 100 people just like them. Jocelyn: And I'll say always remember the screen capture rule. You don't ever want to say anything to anyone that can be used against you. Just remember that people can screen capture, so I'm always very cordial. Thank you for your email, I understand. Shane: 99% of the time we don't write back though. I can't tell you how many people in my Facebook, our Facebook page, I'm just like delete and ban. Delete and ban. Because it's just not worth it. You're not going to change their mind, nine times out of 10 they're just trolling. Jocelyn: Like they're never going to become a customer, most likely, so block and move on. Shane: I can usually tell the per- I've had a couple incidents where people wrote me, and I started reading the first couple sentences, and it was definitely hate, but it was almost like desperate help me hate. And there's a difference in that, and just you all suck, and talk funny, and you're from, you're hillbillies from Kentucky, why would anyone listen to you? Stupid crap that people say, compared to someone who's lashing out because they're frustrated. Shane: And you've probably heard that, maybe they are frustrated because they can't pay your prices, or because they wish they had the ethic to go out and put this out there and sell it. That actually is jealousy. But ban hammer. Ban hammer. Shane: Or you, and what you could do too is, you know like pay someone 50 bucks once a week, to go through all of your messages before you read them, and delete the bad ones. I mean, just find someone, give them 50 bucks and say bye. Delete all the bad one. Now you go in after them and check all the messages, and you only get to see the good ones. Jocelyn: Yeah, we've done, we've done that in the past. It's totally okay to do that. But just know that you don't owe anything to anyone. The only person that you owe anything to is your paying customers and that's it. If somebody is complaining about something free, or some type of value that you're giving in your group, and it's not good enough for them, then don't let the door hit you on your way out. We don't have time for that. We don't have time for that kind of negativity. Jocelyn: It's just like this podcast. We give, give, give. We do not have any commercials, other than sometimes we mention a URL for our own stuff, but other than that we have no sponsorships. We have no interruptions. We bring you content once or twice every single week. And we ask for nothing in return. I mean, the only thing we ask in return is please start a business, or please make some, take some type of action. Shane: Right, exactly. Jocelyn: That's the only thing that we ask from our listeners. And so when people complain, we're just kind of like whatever. Shane: Jocelyn had a good point up there to though. Where you do want to listen to the complaints and the negativity is if a paying customer finds something wrong. You've got to be able to not associate that with anything personal, it's for some reason they feel let down and we've got to address that. Now, it's still going to come up sometimes, half the time where that's going to be like okay, that might be unreasonable, or that might not be what's happening, they're just confused but we still have to, we have to address paying customers because they pay. But that's a different kind of animal. But in that free group, if someone's going to complain that you're going to give a free training, and get email opt ins and sell something at the end of it, come on bro. Jocelyn: And they don't have to sign up. Brenda: And they can leave at any time. They can turn it off. Shane: Yeah, it's not like you're holding them hostage. Ha ha, I got you in the group. Like you can't get out. Everybody grab your markers, art class, go. Shane: I know that that's an easy answer to a not easy thing, because that is ... It's not like you're just going to walk out of here with a ban hammer strapped over your shoulder. And you're just like ready to kick people out of your group. But you're awesome, you've got something that people bought. You found members. That means there's 100 more members, let's worry about those people a lot more going forward than the negative people and just do it. Shane: And here's another thing too. If you'll do what I told you to do for the next 24 weeks, like what is that? Two quarters? If you'll do that, I promise you by about the fourth week, you're just going to be over, you're going to hear all the things you could possibly hear, and you're just going, it's going to become so much habit of just doing this every week, and it's just over, and you just grow your business and you're not going to care. When 10 people join at your first webinar, and then 10 people join at your second webinar, and then someone sends you hate mail, you're like, "I got 30 members now, I don't care." Right? Brenda: Right. Shane: That's where it'll just all go away. Jocelyn: Okay, Brenda, we have had a lot of fun talking to you today. We want to know what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about in this call? Brenda: Well I am going to grab a calendar, and I am going to map out one live webinar, or training, a week with probably three or four different subject areas that I'll touch on. And then I'll be able to do those lives and then repeat those lives at different times, and with tweaks, and everything, after I kind of figure out how to do the first couple of them. Shane: That sounds, hey listen, that's ... Being prolific in that way is going to grow your business like you couldn't imagine. The first couple might be hard, but then it's going to be like this is working. This is working. And don't forget I have a webinar training in the community, so like it's got a Google Drive sheet, you can download it, and I have every slide with notes on what should be on that slide. Jocelyn: And you can just edit it. Shane: You can just edit it, and fill it in, and make your webinars that way. Brenda: Perfect. That's awesome. Jocelyn: All right. I see here that you also have a bible verse that you would like to share with our listeners. And tell us what that is, and you can go ahead and read that. Brenda: Sure, it's Isaiah 40:31. And it says, "But they that weighed upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. Shane: That is a really good verse for entrepreneurs. Because sometimes it feels like you're waiting for a while. But then you figure out you're on the eagles back and everything's okay. So good stuff. That's a great thing. Brenda: Yep, and I'm surrounded by eagles. Shane: Oh, she's got them eagles out. They're listening right now, you know that, right? They're going to hear this podcast. We're going to give them a shout out. Real quick just give a, give your group a shout out. Who are they? They've all been on the podcast I think. Brenda: Yep, yep. Joanne, Jeanette, Kathy, and I'm going to even give a little shout out to Evan, because he's helped me quite a bit too. Shane: Evan Burse, the man, the myth, the legend. Good stuff. Brenda: Yeah, another fellow artist. Shane: Another fellow artist. He is. And he's over at the cartoonblock.com. All right, listen Brenda, thank you so much for being so transparent, so open with your fears, your struggles, your frustrations, and really just giving us all an insight on how to get through those things because they don't go away, and we really are better together when we're all walking down this entrepreneurial road. Thank you so much, and I cannot wait to see how your webinar series goes. Brenda: Thank you so much guys, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Shane: All right guys, that wraps up another great episode with one of our Flip Your Life community members, and man what an awesome discussion we had today with Brenda about Flip Your Life Live, and the impact that it had on her life and her business. Shane: We would love to see you at the next Flip Your Life Live, this September 2019, in Lexington, Kentucky. You can learn all about that event at flippedlifestyle.com/live. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-Dlifestyle.com. Tickets are selling in an amazing rate, and VIP tickets are almost sold out. So make sure if you plan on attending, or would just like to look at it and try and attend, that's flippedlifestyle.com/live. We'll see you there. Shane: All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Brenda'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! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, we help Melissa take her writing business to the next level. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we help Melissa take her writing business to the next level. 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 be helping another one of our amazing Flip Your Life community members take their business and their life to the next level. We are super excited today to welcome Melissa Webb to the show. Melissa, welcome to the podcast. Melissa Webb: Well, thank you so much you guys. I am so excited. This is such a big deal for me, and I can't thank you enough for having me on. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I have been, seriously, waiting for this podcast for weeks, because I have an amazing story to tell about Melissa. We actually have not met Melissa in real life just yet, but she did sign up for one of our coaching calls. We do a limited amount of one-on-one coaching, and Melissa had signed up to talk to me. Jocelyn Sams: This is kind of interesting because I do a lot of calls in the evening because my kid is doing gymnastics and it's in another town, and it really isn't a long enough amount of time for me to drive all the way home, so I sit in a parking lot while I wait for her. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. This story's amazing. I forgot about this. Oh, guys, buckle up. This is the best story ever. Jocelyn Sams: This is actually my first evening call that I had done since we started doing the one-on-one calls. I thought, "Hey, I'm going to have something to do while I'm sitting here waiting. This is not the worst thing, make a little money and hang out and talk to somebody in our community." Like, "Pretty good night." Shane Sams: She does it in a parking lot because in this little, small Southeast Kentucky town, literally, the only place you can get enough Internet to make a call is in the Walmart parking lot, so that's why she's sitting in a parking lot making this call. Jocelyn Sams: This is pretty much as like Podunk, small town as it gets, okay? Shane Sams: I love it! You said, "Podunk." Jocelyn Sams: This is, okay, I just want to like also say that this is not even a Super Walmart, okay? This is like a- Shane Sams: It's an old school Walmart- Jocelyn Sams: Old school. Shane Sams: It's like 1987 Walmart is what we're talking about here. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Okay, so I'm sitting in the parking lot and I just connected up to Melissa, who's in California, right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. I just connected up to her in California. I go to the parking lot and I find a place to go, which is underneath a big light pole, so I think, "This is fine." Let me just say also that I have sat in this parking lot, literally, like hundreds of times, completely uneventful. Jocelyn Sams: I go and I connect up on this call to Melissa. I park in the middle of the parking lot under a big light pole. We had, seriously, been on the call maybe about 60 seconds when this, as I call it, van full of rednecks pulls up beside me. When I say beside me, I mean like within probably 50 feet. Not even that. I'd say about 20 feet from me. Jocelyn Sams: Not only was it a van full of rednecks, they have the doors, like the side doors are all open. They are yelling at someone in a pickup truck across the parking lot, and not only are they yelling at them, this crazy woman gets out with a baseball bat, a baseball bat. You cannot make this up, and starts waving it at this man in the parking lot. Shane Sams: A fight breaks out in a Walmart parking lot, led by a crazy woman with a baseball bat and it's a van full of rednecks versus a pickup truck. Jocelyn Sams: I could nearly, I could almost reach out and touch them. I'm on this call, that someone has paid for, Melissa has paid for, and I'm like, "Uh ..." I don't even know what to say. Because I'm just like, when on earth are you in this situation? It's not like anything has prepared you for this situation. Shane Sams: Yeah. Has anyone else ever had to ... You had to move your car. You had to move it. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so I'm like, "Uh, okay. I know this sounds really weird, but like there's these people beside me ..." Shane Sams: There's a street fight breaking out next to me, Melissa, and I got to go to the other end of the Walmart parking lot. At this point, Melissa's probably like, "Maybe I signed up for the wrong first step." Jocelyn Sams: No, listen. She was like so nice to me. She's like, "I just want you to be safe." Shane Sams: Melissa, what were you thinking when Jocelyn was like, "Hey, look a street fight just broke out between this woman with a baseball bat and a dude in a pickup truck, so could you give me five minutes-" Melissa Webb: Oh my gosh. Shane Sams: ... "and start the call?" Like what were you thinking at this point right now? Melissa Webb: I was thinking like, "Okay, I could totally write a story here." Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: You couldn't make it up, because nobody could imagine something like that happening. Jocelyn Sams: No, you can't make this stuff up. Melissa Webb: Totally, so from my perspective, it was fantastic. Like I have told this story so many times because on my end, so here I was, I put down a good chunk of change to like have some valuable time, one-on-one with Jocelyn, and so she was right. Like 60 seconds in, she's asking me some questions, I'm giving her some feedback and then she's like, "Um, hang on just a second. There is a person wielding a bat next to me." Shane Sams: Wielding a bat. This is- Melissa Webb: I'm like, "Jocelyn, just call me back." Like, "Drop the phone, go. Go be safe." Like, "Go take care of yourself." She's like, "No, hang on just a second," and like I hear the phone like fly out of her hand, like probably into the passenger seat. The car's moving. Shane Sams: Oh my god. Melissa Webb: I'm just like on the line, like hanging on. Like, "Is she okay? What's going on?" All of a sudden, like I don't know, seconds go past and she comes back on, totally collected herself. She's like, "Okay, that was interesting, so that's what we were talking about." Shane Sams: Task switching at its finest right there. Jocelyn Sams: Oh my goodness, so- Shane Sams: She's also simultaneously texting a friend of hers- Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: ... to dial 911 to call the police because there's a fight breaking out in Walmart's parking lot. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, because I'm on this call and I've already been like, "Hold on just a minute." I don't want to be like, "Hold on, let me call the cops." Jocelyn Sams: Being the like ever-present professional that I am, I get on my computer and I typed to my friend on text, because her uncle is like the Police Chief of this town. I'm like, "Can you please call the police and tell them to come?" The police do come. They talked to the people. No one was arrested because, I guess, no like physical ... Shane Sams: She didn't swing her bat. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Apparently, so no. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and they're like, this whole thing, they're like yelling profanity. I mean, this was like, you cannot make this up. I mean, you just can't. Melissa Webb: No. Shane Sams: The moral of the story is if you want to be on the most entertaining coaching calls in the history of the world, be a part of The Flip Your Life community and you might grab one of these street fight calls with me and Jocelyn. You know what I mean? Like- Melissa Webb: Oh my gosh. It was awesome. Shane Sams: She sent me a message- Melissa Webb: I was awesome. Shane Sams: She sent me a message- Melissa Webb: It was awesome because it all ended well. Shane Sams: Yeah, no doubt. Nobody hit the ... Broke our windshield with a baseball bat to prove they could swing it. Like, the funny thing was that Jocelyn also text me. She sent me this weird text. Shane Sams: It was like, "Talking to Melissa. Just called the police on a big woman with baseball bat." I'm like, "What?" Like, how ... I didn't even know what she was talking about, so I didn't hear this story 'til later, and oh my gosh. I laughed for hours and hours and hours about that call, so ... Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so there's never a dull moment. Shane Sams: We decided to bring you on the podcast for surviving the street fight at Walmart. Jocelyn Sams: Well, I just wanted to say that I did over-deliver for this call. We talked for a really long time because I felt really bad about this. Melissa Webb: It was the half hour session and she gave me a full hour. Shane Sams: Oh, I love it. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: See, that's how you- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It all turned out okay. We talked through some stuff. I think that we had a good ending, and you've actually had some successes since, so I can't wait to dive into that. Let's kind of bring this thing back around a little bit. Tell everybody a little bit about you and like your background and what you're doing online. Melissa Webb: Oh, absolutely. I do have to say I'm very happy to know that you're recording this in the safety of your own home. Shane Sams: Right, exactly. Melissa Webb: Okay, so yes. A little bit about me. As anybody might see on my Instagram profile, I am a bold believer and I am a very happy wife of pretty much the world's must supportive husband. I hear people talk about not having that. I'm so grateful I have that. I am a loving mom of three spectacular boys. Our youngest is now 15 years old. Melissa Webb: I am a very passionate teacher, especially when it comes to writing. I will geek out over course standards and things of that nature. I am the creator and owner of WriteOnWebb.com. I am a huge fan of home schooling moms everywhere, they are the unsung heroes. Jocelyn, you are joining those ranks, girl. In the spring of 2019, I'm also going to be a published children's book author, super excited for that. As of January 11th, 2019, I will be unemployed. Jocelyn Sams: Wow. Shane Sams: That's crazy. Because that's happening in like what? Three weeks? Is that what- Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: Yes, wow. Now, are you unemployed or unemployable? There's a difference there, you see what I mean? Melissa Webb: Oh, good. Shane Sams: Unemployable is like, "I'm going to go make my own money and not work for anyone else." That's like what unemployable is, correct? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: My mom and ... Jocelyn's grandfather, I tell this story all the time. When we quit our jobs ... Like he's an old guy, worked in the coal mines. Didn't really get it, what we were doing. Right? Melissa Webb: Yeah. Shane Sams: One time, we went home and he reached over and slipped me a 20 in a handshake and he pat me on the shoulder and he goes, "I know you're not working now, son, so there's a little gas money to get home." I'm like- Jocelyn Sams: Which was so sweet. Shane Sams: It was so sweet, I was like, "Do I want to break this guy's heart?" Melissa Webb: So sweet. Shane Sams: ... Or just be like, "Thanks, papa," you know what I mean? Like I just took the money. He didn't realize I was unemployable, not unemployed. Does that make sense? Melissa Webb: I love it. Shane Sams: Awesome. Melissa Webb: I love it. It was by my choice, in fact. I've been a teacher for 26 years and I have worked for an amazing charter school, Julian Charter School in San Diego area, and love it. I'm happy to be leaving on excellent terms. Shane Sams: Awesome. Melissa Webb: I'm actually kind of switching hats. I want to be a vendor of theirs, so I can still support their home schooling families in the area of writing. It's all good, it's just I kind of feel like I want to throw up and jump for joy at the same time. Shane Sams: For sure. It's a big change. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: Any big change like that is going to be, not disruptive, but just like riding a new wave. Right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: It's going to be scary to go out and do something different. Does your online business, this Write On Webb, it's supporting home school co-ops and home school teachers for writing, or is it bigger than that? Like what's ... Or is it a bigger, broader scope than that? Like what exactly is Write On Webb? Melissa Webb: I directly work with home schooling moms, who want to teach excellent writing but they're, honestly, they're overwhelmed. With the whole Common Core and course standards, all students are supposed to understand the difference between persuasive and expository and narrative and then understand what descriptive is, and then all of the subcategories under that. It's a lot. Melissa Webb: It's what I love to teach, and so I actually am happy to teach it, so that they can take something off their plate. They know that everything I put out for them ... I use Teachable to house all of my lessons, so I have all the videos are embedded in that. I think the biggest difference that people love about what I'm doing is that I create a community of these young writers in grades three through eight. Shane Sams: Got you. Melissa Webb: They love that. Like the kids, like I have a joke of the week every week. It's a Q&A time and we go live. It's the one thing that in a home school environment, if a family is not using co-op for things like that, then who's their audience? Melissa Webb: The child needs an audience and as great as mom is, that's a tough one. You need other children to be around and you get that in a traditional class, but when you're home schooled, it's like that missing piece, and I provide that and have so much fun doing it. Shane Sams: That's awesome. We just started home schooling about two weeks ago. Melissa Webb: I know. I'm so excited for you. Shane Sams: It's been really, really good but really, really challenging. Not hard. Like there's nothing been hard about like ... Like hard is laying bricks or building a ... You know what I mean? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: It has been ... You got to be more intentional. You really got to control your schedule. There is a lot more responsibility feeling to it, right? Melissa Webb: Oh, yes. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? Writing was one of the things Jocelyn was worried about. Like getting that writing experience. Like we live in a small area. Shane Sams: There are some people working together, but it's not like in a bigger city or like a San Diego where you're going to have these co-ops, you're going to have these schools, you're going to have all these resources, so we've definitely turned toward these virtual type things for different subjects, like what you're doing. Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: There's millions of kids being home schooled. Like people don't realize how many people are actually being home schooled out there. You know? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: This would even be good ... This is like, this could even be supplemental to kids who are struggling with writing in regular school though too, right? Melissa Webb: Absolutely. I've actually started from my monthly live courses, I've created stand-alone versions so that people can do just that. I've already had a few sales of that. I think you're absolutely right. Then in the summer, I usually do ... I actually did a, I did a really fun book club last summer. I did invite Isaac, by the way. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, okay. Shane Sams: Oh, you did? Was it virtual? Was it an email? Okay. Melissa Webb: I was like, "Hey, Isaac should join." For some reason, you were busy or something. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Okay. We will definitely look for that this year. We get a lot of messages, Melissa. Melissa Webb: You think? Shane Sams: You can imagine what our inbox looks like and all that. Melissa Webb: Oh, I can only imagine. Shane Sams: We may have missed that one. I love that, because you've got so much opportunity to make money year-round with something like this, and you can just- Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: ... kind of pass through different seasons of different people's calendars and make that happen. Melissa Webb: Yes, well, okay. In the forum, which, okay, can I just say how much I love your forum? Because it is gold. I just, I have to say, so at first, people will, obviously, want to listen to your podcasts, because your podcasts are just free value. Melissa Webb: I heard you first on Pat Flynn, and I haven't stopped listening to you since. That was like, I don't know ... The one I heard, because I think you've been on a few times, was back in May 2017. I think it was his number 265, I think. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, that was- Melissa Webb: Anyway, yeah. I started listening, I haven't stopped. At first, I was like, "This is awesome. It's all free stuff. This is really great." You are so generous as individuals. Like you can just tell it's from your heart. Melissa Webb: I was just gobbling up all of your free information and making huge progress until finally, I was like, "I really love this forum that they're talking about. I like the idea. I want to get in there and check it out." I'm going to tell you, like people don't get how much they're missing. Like not only do you have your blueprint, which has like all of the video lessons embedded in there ... That's where I got my idea. Melissa Webb: Like, I was like, "Ah, I love how they have this here. They still have live components, but they have all these resources that I can go to on my own time and my own schedule." Then, I jumped in and started talking to other like-minded people, and amazing, amazing. Then I heard, do you remember Cory Doohan? Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Melissa Webb: He was on your number 190. He was the auto detailing expert. Shane Sams: Yup. Melissa Webb: Yeah. He and this other guy Nick Robishaud and then another gentleman by the name of Mike Henry. We all put together a Mastermind and we still meet. It's been like eight months. We were just figuring it out, how long it's been. It's been eight months. We meet every other week- Shane Sams: Wow. Melissa Webb: ... in a Zoom room. We hold each other accountable- Shane Sams: None of you knew each other beforehand, right? None of you knew each other before the forums. You met each other like in the community and started getting together and all that. Melissa Webb: Yes. It was your community. Yeah. Shane Sams: Isn't it cool though, like to have like ... We always view like everything ... We try to always view it like a ... When we say community, we don't just mean like, "Oh, you're in our online membership." It's literally like a community. Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: You've got your family, you've got your friends, you've got your extended network. We really, like we even call our live event, the big one that we do every year, we call it the Flip Your Life family reunion when we talk about it. Like we don't actually call it like the live conference or some business thing, we call it the family ... "What time's the family reunion? Yeah, we're starting at 3:00." Like we actually talk about it like that. Melissa Webb: Oh, absolutely. Shane Sams: It's amazing how many of these little pockets of Masterminds do happen. They're all over the place. Jocelyn Sams: Probably some we don't even know about. Like I know that there's one that meets in Ohio. There's several ladies who get together. Shane Sams: One up in Cleveland. Yeah, that group. One in California. You guys are meeting online, virtually. Jocelyn Sams: There are a bunch of people who do like Zoom calls and things like that. I mean, we would love to know about these. Maybe we should start a discussion in the community. Shane Sams: Yeah. We need to get a list of all of them. Like it's crazy how ... Jocelyn and I always talk to each other about like, we talk to, yeah, we actually had someone on the podcast though today that lives in Saudi Arabia. Like what are chances that two people in Kentucky would connect on a business call and a podcast with someone on the other side of the planet. Shane Sams: Then we hear about you guys meeting each other, and like one's in California, one's in Canada, one's over here, one's over there. It's like these connections would never happen in some random course. It's happening because this community is a living, breathing, actual place for like-minded people, family-focused entrepreneurs to connect. Shane Sams: Yeah, it blows our mind every day when we hear stories like this. There's a funny story about Nick Robishaud. Nick came to our live event. I don't know if you know this story. I don't know, did he tell you about what happened in the moderator thing? Did he tell you guys about- Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay- Melissa Webb: He was so stoked about that experience. Shane Sams: We have moderators in our community, people who are really active. They're in there, they're helping a lot of people. We give them a few perks to help us kind of just moderate and manage forums, just like any community would have online. Jocelyn Sams: In September, one of the things that we offered for our moderators was when we had our live event, we had like a little special- Shane Sams: Like moderator meetup, but with us. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so we met them like before we met everyone else, just as like a little perk of, to say, "Thank you for being a moderator." Shane Sams: I'm standing there, and we have a lot of moderators so it's hard for me ... We have, there's so many people we have to manage, it's hard for me to remember every single person, every single minute. Nick walks up to me and I don't really recognize him. He's got a thing on that says "moderator." It says "Nick Robishaud." Shane Sams: Like sometimes, like our assistant will hire a moderator and then we'll find out about it later, and then we'll talk to them. It's like all kinds of different ... Jocelyn Sams: We're giving out these invitations, so when people checked-in, they got a name tag that said "moderator" if they were a moderator, and then they got an invitation to tell them where and when to go to the party. Shane Sams: Nick comes up to me, goes, "Hey, Shane." I'm, "Hey, Nick." I thought he might have been a brand new moderator or something like that. He goes, "Shane, listen. I feel bad." I go, "Why do you feel bad, man? We're here to have a good time." He goes, "No, man. Let me tell you something." He leans in and he goes, "You see, I'm not really a moderator." I go, "What?" I go, "What do you mean?" Shane Sams: Now remember, this is only for moderators. There's 20 people in this room, all by ourselves. I'm like, "Did this guy beat up a guy in the elevator and take his pass?" Like, "How did he get in here?" Jocelyn Sams: The funny thing is, we never would have known. Shane Sams: I never would have known if he had never said anything. Jocelyn Sams: We never would have known. Shane Sams: I would have found out later, but he goes, "Yeah, man," he goes, "I got to the sign-in table, they handed me my name badge and they handed me this envelope. I open it up and it's got my name on it and it says 'moderator.' I thought, 'Oh, no. They've accidentally put me on the moderator list.' I went over to the side and I called my wife and I said, 'What do you think I should do? Do you think I should tell them or do you think I should just go to this party so I can hang out with Shane and Jocelyn?'" She was like, "Go to the party." Shane Sams: He just went with it and he just walked in and he was like, "Yeah." He goes, "I just, I'm sorry. I just could not pass this up. I had to come up here and talk to you guys." Jocelyn Sams: We laughed so hard. Shane Sams: I laughed so hard. I actually was so impressed that he did that, because that's exactly what I would have done. Like I would have totally went over to Jocelyn and like, "Look ..." Jocelyn Sams: You would have no conscious about it. Shane Sams: I would have had no conscious about it. I wouldn't have asked her, I'd have told her, "We're going to this party because we got in." He came upstairs, and we hung out. If anyone ever makes a mistake, they give you the key, walk through the door. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: It was absolutely- Melissa Webb: Gosh. Yeah. Shane Sams: I actually opened my computer and I made him a moderator right there. I just said, "All right. Now you're really a moderator, so you're here legally, Nick." Melissa Webb: I love it. I love it. Well, and when Nick was telling us the story, because it is like the best story, he was saying like at one point he was like, "You know what? I know if this happened to Shane, he would totally go to this party, so I'm going." Shane Sams: 100%. Without- Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Nick, he's one of my introvert friends. I had this conversation with him. We talked about being an introvert and all the different challenges of it. Awesome person. So glad that I had the opportunity to meet him in person. Shane Sams: You got a good group. I would keep that group together as well. Jocelyn Sams: They are amazing. Shane Sams: Okay. All right, let's turn back to you now. Let's talk about your business. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so we talked a few weeks ago and- Melissa Webb: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: We talked about some different things that you were working on, and we talked about kind of what next steps you were going to take. Let's start there and talk about like what were you doing before? What have you done after? Then, we'll sort of get into your next steps. Melissa Webb: Absolutely. When I talked to you, one of the ... Well, one of the issues that I was having at the time and I know a lot of people struggle with this. I had so many ideas going around in my head that I really didn't know what to do, like in what order. Melissa Webb: Lots of people will tell you, "Just write it all down." Okay, great. Now those ideas are out of my head but they're still staring at me, glaring at me on this piece of paper. I still don't know what I need to do first, second, third, fourth. Again, the list felt like it was 20 ideas deep. Melissa Webb: What I loved about our conversation, Jocelyn, is that you were ... It was so, it seemed so simple to you to be able to just say, "Okay, so out of all of these things, it sounds like first we're going to want to help you grow your list, but before we do that, let's take a look at your Google Analytics. You just, you had these few steps for me to do. Melissa Webb: One of the things that I had said is that, I really wanted to grow my home schooling audience and I wasn't sure really how to that. Obviously, I did the Facebook things and some of the social medias. You had also suggested putting things on my website, some free giveaways, things that would really draw a person in. Melissa Webb: That whole thing about it's important that, you have to realize if people don't know you, they don't trust you, and they don't like you yet. You need to let people know you, trust you, like you. I thought, "That is a great idea. I'm going to put some things on there that are just like those giveaways, and that the course comes with an exchange in email." I did all of that. Melissa Webb: Then you suggested I start listening to like podcasts of home schoolers, so I started looking at some of those. Then I was like, "I really want to find out ... I don't want to just, out of the blue, go to these people and say, 'May I be on your podcast? I really want to bring value to you and to your community.'" How do I ... I just felt so lost. I really appreciated that you gave me some steps in doing that. Melissa Webb: That's where I am right now, is where I really want to continue. The question that I have or the advice that I need is if I were to approach a podcast host, what could I offer or suggest that might interest them in having me on? Jocelyn Sams: Okay, we will get into that, for sure. I want you to talk about, a little bit, you posted a success story. We talked like, I guess it was about a month ago. We're recording this in like mid-December right now. Talk about your success story. You did these things. We talked, you did the work, and what happened? Melissa Webb: A lot happened. I actually, since we talked last time, I have gone up in 50 ... I have 50 new subscribers and so my email list has grown. I ended up doing another ... I just have to tell you, so Jocelyn, you motivated me to like work, work, work, work, work. I think I put a few success stories in there, so I'm not even sure if there's a specific one that you're talking about. Melissa Webb: I most recently did the KingSumo giveaway, where I was giving away books. I got more people that way. I mean, the whole thing, the whole idea, and you guys are so big on this, is it takes action people. Like you can't just think it and want it, you have to do it. I've just been doing. Like since we got off the phone, I stayed up another four hours that night, you had me so motivated. Jocelyn Sams: I love that, I love that. Shane Sams: Basically- Melissa Webb: Everything's off like crazy. If there's a specific one you want to know about, you just tell me, but I just don't stop. Shane Sams: Basically, what happened was, you talked to Jocelyn. The big thing was, is growing your list. One of the strategies she talked about was, well, if you go out and go on 20 of these podcasts, we'll probably get a bunch more emails. Right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: You started ticking off all the other ideas, like putting thing actually on your site, they can opt-in when they find the site. Going out and offering some kind of benefit or opt-in or something like that. Low and behold, you did that and your email list actually started growing. Jocelyn Sams: The one that I was talking about specifically is the one where you talked about getting 10 new members in December. Like that's crazy. A lot of people think, "Oh, December is so busy. It's Christmas time," whatever. You said, "No. I'm not going to use that as an excuse. I'm going to create some type of value for these people and pitch them something." Low and behold, what happened? Melissa Webb: I did. I got 10 more. I now have 70 students- Shane Sams: That's amazing. Melissa Webb: ... total in my online writing business. Shane Sams: It's cool because, like after you talked to Jocelyn, like all ... These things are cumulative. That's what people really don't realize. I think that's what Jocelyn's trying to get to. Shane Sams: Basically, if you do these five actions steps and you just get them done, regardless of it's the right order or the wrong order, the end different order, doesn't matter. Things happen. Like if you had 10 members, you add 50, 60 something, you added one-seventh of your membership in one month, right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: Well, like what if you do that again and again and it keeps getting cumulative? Then you start going on podcasts, and then it starts all adding up to where you get this snowball effect, this avalanche happens where you make things happen, right? That's where we go back to the 20 thing list that you had. You were paralyzed and not doing anything, looking at the 20 thing list on paper, right? Melissa Webb: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: That's where most people really fail when they try to change their life, is they see all the things and they get paralyzed, when really, if you'll just do some of the things, you'll move forward and things will happen and that cumulative compound interest effect happens until you get to the point where you can do whatever you want. Shane Sams: I talked to ... I had a call this morning with somebody else in the Flip Your Life community and we talked about that exact same thing. They were paralyzed, they were frozen, they weren't doing anything. They were like, "Why is nothing happening?" I'm like, "Because you're not doing anything. You've got this giant list, you've got all these things, but you're not enjoying the compound effect. Shane Sams: " Then they said, "Well, wait. Well, how much time you think we're going to put into this? How much time did you and Jocelyn put into it at the beginning?" I said, "Well, we worked from 7:00 to 5:00. We came home, we went back and forth with the kids. We stayed up 'til midnight. For seven days a weeks, 365 days for the first year, we did not get good sleep or any good rest, but now we sleep in as long as we want to." Because the compound interest is coming to fruition. We're getting that effect later. Shane Sams: That's what we told them, and I told them earlier, and that's exactly what you're saying now. It's like, "Oh, I was paralyzed, and nothing was happening." "Oh, I got, a log jam broke free after this call, and now I got 10 members just like that." That's what we want you to do next. Melissa Webb: That's ... Yeah. Shane Sams: Let that loose and get even more members. Melissa Webb: That's exactly what she did for me. Like that whole paralyzation, like that's the key word, you hit it on the nose. I felt paralyzed. Melissa Webb: Once I started doing one thing, that is the amazing thing that I would say to anybody else. "Don't really worry with the first one or two, three things that you start. Just start, because that will motivate you to do whatever's next. Then when that ball starts rolling, it just goes. Just do not, do not stop." Shane Sams: This, just, Jocelyn and I are like two ends of the spectrum. Like she's very much like order and I'm very much like chaos. Sometimes, when we get stuck, like Jocelyn has like ... Almost dies, because I'll just go do anything. Shane Sams: Like the other day, we were frozen in a conversation talking some different things about membership offers. Like how we were going to move some things around in the membership itself and we were totally paralyzed. I sent an email to the list and said, "We're going to do these three things." Jocelyn goes, "Have you even made the order forms for those? Have you even made the page for those?" I was like, "Nope, but now the ball's rolling." Shane Sams: Like we just ... Like it drives her crazy when I do that, but sometimes that's the only way you can get past the impasse is to just announce and say and do and, "What if it breaks? What if doesn't?" Shane Sams: What was it last ... Oh, last year, when we sold the live event, I sent an order form out and I didn't connect it to anything. Jocelyn was like, "You know we have to have a survey for these people, and we have to figure out their dietary restrictions, and have to do all of these things." I'm like, "Ah, whatever. We'll do it later." Then it got it unstuck. Like we had to launch it out or it wouldn't work, right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: Yeah. It's so scary to do that, but if you don't, oh my gosh, you'll just sit there forever and wonder, "What if?" as you look back on it. Melissa Webb: I totally agree, and I think too that the live component is so huge. Because, like I said, I'd written my list. I'd written my list many times, but talking to Jocelyn and then like sharing my success stories in the forum, a live person encouraged me. A live person said, "Go do this." Melissa Webb: I think that a lot of people, if all you're going to do is just go read a book and go study under some other great coach, that's fine but until you get that live person who cares about you ... Jocelyn cared. Like I could tell her sincerity was authentic. She was like, "Melissa, this is going to be great. You're doing awesome." Like it was so motivating. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I don't even know that it's that you always have to talk one-on-one, because some people might not be able to make that investment right now, but there is something that you can invest in to get you to your next step. Maybe it is just joining a community like ours. I mean, I would love to have anyone as part of our community. Shane Sams: Or getting in a Mastermind where you see other people doing it. It might even be telling you what to buy sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: Maybe it's buying a book, maybe it's going to an event. Like there's different kinds of investment for different stages of your business. If you're not doing any of them, I got a spoiler alert, you're probably not going to make much progress. You have to invest time, you have to invest money to be able to move forward in anything that you do. Shane Sams: That's why we did home school. Like we would have probably never done it, especially when we did it. Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: Because we actually brought two experts on the podcast who had written a book called 5-Hour Home School Week. It was, how do you pronounce their last name? It's Kaleena and Aaron ... Jocelyn Sams: Oh, I don't know. Shane Sams: Oh, it's Amuchastegui or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: They're on the podcast. Go listen to it. It's already aired. Melissa Webb: They were great. Shane Sams: Yeah. We actually brought them out and talked to them for two hours. We needed to hear and see someone else do it. Like, we need that. It's not like we're just sitting here figuring everything out on our own, right? We draw as much inspiration from other people as they do from us. Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: That's just a part of it. Let's go back, let's circle back around to this question about the podcast. Because this was a very interesting question because we always ask people about fears and obstacles, and then we talk practically about what to do next for business. This is the ultimate question that, basically, rolls all of that into one. Shane Sams: It's like, "How do I approach someone else to be on their platform?" Because that in itself brings all of your insecurities, all of your doubts, all of your disbeliefs to the front. Then on the back side, it's also like, "Then, how do I use that opportunity without being a selfish user, and I'm just using someone else for their audience?" Right? Melissa Webb: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: It's like, "How do I overcome the insecurity? How do I deliver value for the audience? Then how do I ..." Selfishly is not the right word but I'm going to use it, just because it's close enough. Basically, "Pitch my thing at the end." Does that make sense? Melissa Webb: Yes, yes. That's exactly where I am. Because by nature, I'm a giver. Like I can be almost too generous. It's so funny, in our Mastermind group, Corey is constantly saying, "Melissa, you're not charging enough. Melissa, you're in this to make money." I'm like, "Okay, okay. Well, let me just make a straight tutorial." Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly, yeah. A lot of people have that situation. We live in a culture where people think, "Oh, well, all information is free online." Well, I mean, that is true to an extent but- Shane Sams: It's not curated correctly. It's not organized. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. You are delivering value to people and so there has to be some type of value exchange. Shane Sams: Always remember this, okay? Melissa Webb: Okay. Shane Sams: No one succeeds alone. The people ... The big online viewers that make it look like it's all about them. I don't know, like the Gary Vs and the Tony Robbins. It looks like it's all about them, but none of them succeeded without some kind of reciprocal relationship helping them all feed into this loop that keeps everybody kind of moving forward. Like you can't ... That person can't grow their podcast without great people on their podcast, right? Melissa Webb: True, true. Shane Sams: You can't grow and go into new territory without someone introducing you to other people. Correct? Melissa Webb: Correct. Shane Sams: Just by going on their podcast, you are already helping them because it is really hard to carry solo shows. It's really hard to be the only person every day talking by yourself. Like even people that look like they do that, that have their own show where it's just them and they're just talking, they've got a team behind them doing research, helping them write the script. It's not just one person alone and they're growing forever. Does that make sense? Melissa Webb: Absolutely. Shane Sams: That's how you've got to approach first asking to be on other people's platforms is, hey look, this person is more than likely looking for really interesting, really helpful people to come on their show. They're looking for people that want to help their audience, because that makes them look good, and it is a status thing. It is an ego thing. It is a, "Hey, I can't do this alone. I need guests." Right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: One reason that we do our podcast the way we do it is because after about 40 solo shows in the very beginning of our podcast, we realized that we would not be able to do this forever. Like we could not just come up with topics and write scripts and do it just me and Jocelyn all the same ... There was no way that's how this podcast was going to work. Shane Sams: At the same time, we didn't really want to bring on like expert guests and just rehash the same podcast that everybody else is doing. We thought, "Hey, people ask us great questions in our Flip Your Life stuff. Our coaching clients, our members ask great questions. Why would we not just have them on, let them ask their question, and we can talk, and it's going to help them too?" Shane Sams: You coming on our podcast helps us because we don't have to sit for six hours and script a podcast. We just get to tell our stories and talk about our relationship and then help you move forward. We need you to help us create good content. Melissa Webb: That's a great point of view. Yeah. Shane Sams: You're helping the podcast as much as they're helping you, basically. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Melissa Webb: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Like as long as you're not approaching it from a selfish point of view, just go to them and say, "Hey, I have some really cool content, and I can help people teach their children at home how to write better." Shane Sams: Yeah. Melissa Webb: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: I feel like you're already in that frame of mind in that you want to give to people, so just take that and run with it. Jocelyn Sams: I just encourage you to look at other people in your space. What podcasts have they been on? That's a good place to start looking and say, "Hey, this person teaches home school writing, and they've been on podcasts x, y and z, so I'm going to go and say, 'Hey, I do something similar to this person.'" Or maybe have them introduce you, if it's someone you know. Shane Sams: Being strategic is not being selfish. Like that, people confuse that. They get really confused and like, "Well, if I'm ... This is all about me and I'm being so strategic. I've picked, I've identified these hundred targets, these podcasts that I'm going to reach out to because I know they've got home school families listening, and it's going to put me in front of the right people." No, like that's the reciprocal, working together agreement. Shane Sams: That podcast introduces you to the home school people who get value from you and really appreciate the podcast host that introduced them to you, so they come back and listen to the next episode to find more help, right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: Everyone wins in that feedback loop, every single person. The listener wins, because they get the information they need to solve their problem. The podcast host wins, because they created good value for their audience and they introduced them to the right person. Then you win, because you get to go and put your stuff in front of people who pay you so that you can not have to go do another job and can keep creating resources for them. Shane Sams: Then that person comes back to listen to that person's podcast again next week, where they introduce them to a new person, which provides values, which helps them solve problems, which makes them come back and listen again. Being strategic is not being selfish. It's the way that we all help each other. Like society needs that, we have to do that or it just doesn't work. Melissa Webb: I love that. Shane Sams: Go out and ... You almost owe it to the podcast person to ask them to be on their show. Right? Melissa Webb: That's fantastic. Yes. Shane Sams: I think where people get confused is it's like the podcast host ... Well, a hundred people ask them to be on, they only have 10. Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: That's not because they don't care about what you have to say. It's because they can only record 10 episodes a quarter. Like there's a limit in time, that's why you strategically and tactically have to go out and ask 50 people to be on their podcast to get on 15 of them. Right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: It's not because you're being rejected. That's just the limitation of time. We can't have every single person on our podcast from the community. We can only have 52 people a year on this podcast. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and then that's where you have to start getting into systems. Like our system is we look for people with success stories or people that we know in-person, people that we've talked to on coaching calls. We look for those types of people because we know that they'll make a good guest because they're actually doing what it takes to get to the next level. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: They probably have those types of systems too, but just look for one, look for podcasts or opportunities where you can provide value and then you can get value in return. That's the way the world works. There are going to be a lot of people who don't take you up on your offer, and that's fine. Jocelyn Sams: Like there are thousands of people who listen to our podcasts every week who have never paid us a dime, and that's totally fine. Like that's just the way that it works. Then there are some people who are going to find enough value in what you do to want to give you some type of monetary exchange, and that's fine too. Shane Sams: There's other kinds of value too. Like there's other ... Like we don't, like not everyone will pay you, right? Some people will listen to you and some people will use your stuff, which might give you a testimonial. Some people might ... Shane Sams: I did a think recently where I wanted to speak at an event. I emailed our list and I just asked them to go nominate me to speak. Like, "Hey, you may not be in the community. You may not buy anything from us, but if you enjoy our podcast and you want some reciprocity, would you please go nominate me for this, or go do it?" Like, "I give you free content every week, you go do this for me." Like that's just the way the world works. Shane Sams: I think the world makes us feel like we're not supposed to ask for anything, because like bosses don't want people to ask for raises. It's like, "Don't ask for what you want. Don't be an advocate for yourself. Don't do that." Like that's what the world tells us to do, but that's not really how we should do it, because that doesn't really help in any way. Shane Sams: Some people are ... There's going to be some podcasters that are like, "Hey, I have a $500 fee for my podcast." That's the reciprocity they want. Maybe you're like, "Wow. They have 100,000 home school listeners. Maybe that's worth $500." Right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: It's not just an exchange of information pool. That's called a negotiation. That's what they value. Maybe you should pay it. You know what I'm saying? Melissa Webb: Right, right. Shane Sams: There's lots of different ways that people build in these relationships. You just have to figure out, strategically, what works best for you, and don't feel selfish about. Like why would you not want to be on their podcast? Does that make sense? Melissa Webb: It's such a great mind shift for me, when you shared it in that perspective. That's fantastic. Shane Sams: Yeah. Don't feel like you're bragging about yourself or that you're like, "Oh, I don't want to ... What do I have to offer them?" Well, an hour of your time. You don't get that hour back, so that's really valuable. Okay? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: Now, on the podcast, what you have to do is your part is deliver the value, right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: Deliver the value and then don't be afraid to tell people their next steps. So many people want to get their pitch right when they go on the show. Like at the end, "I got to spin everything back to my pitch. I got to spin everything back to my opt-in. I got to spin everything back to make sure that everybody who listens goes to my site and give me an email," but that's really, that's not how you do that. Shane Sams: You deliver value for that person and help them. That's what takes people to want to go to the next step, and they'll like and trust you, and all that good stuff. Melissa Webb: Well, and that's true from a consumer point of view as well. You've had amazing people on your podcasts, and I've never gone to their site because they pitched it. I've always gone because I think it's valuable. Melissa Webb: Like that would be the reason why I would go somewhere else, so that's something that I certainly want to keep in mind as I do the same thing. Like I'll offer the value that makes somebody want to go there. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. The people who are most willing to buy from you, they will find you whether you give a URL or you don't. Shane Sams: That's true. If you'll go back and listen to almost any podcast we've ever done anywhere else, we never, almost never talk about ... Like spin things back to what we're selling or anything. We don't even say ... Like sometimes I've ... When was ... Shane Sams: I was on Michael O'Neal's podcast. I did an interview on that for a second time. I forgot to even tell our URL or our anything at the end. Like we just had a conversation for like 45 minutes, and we talked. I totally forget. Shane Sams: I got of the call, I looked over at Jocelyn, I went, "Did I tell anybody about our website or anything?" We're like, "Nah. Forgot it." People wrote us and said, "I heard you on this specific episode and I sought you out." If you're delivering enough value, that will happen automatically. It's not about your technique or, "How do I strategically, tactically get the most opt-ins off of this?" It's like be yourself, tell your story, deliver value and people will come. They just will. Melissa Webb: I love it. Shane Sams: Yeah, and you got to convince them to join your email list, when they get to your website, right? Melissa Webb: Got to have a call to action. Shane Sams: Yeah. Actually go out and say ... I'll tell you a different way to even find the podcast. Go find the 50 home school podcasts that you genuinely think you can help the most. Don't look at their audience size, don't look at their social media following, don't do any of that. Right? Melissa Webb: Okay. Shane Sams: One thing we do do is when we're trying to go on an interview ... We do try to find people that have over 50 episodes because we know that person's in it for the long-run, because 90% of all podcasts stop at episode 30. Okay? Melissa Webb: Wow. Yes. Shane Sams: Look for people who have actually been in it, and are in it, and are staying in it, because you don't want to just jump on anything that might not be there in a year. Jocelyn Sams: One that comes out regularly. I mean, you don't want one that comes out once a week and then like- Shane Sams: Last episode's been out six months ago, or anything like that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah. Yeah, so make sure people are consistently creating content before you go on it. Then, look for the ones you think you can help the most. Don't just look for the biggest ones. Okay? Melissa Webb: Love it. Shane Sams: Yeah. That will make it ... It'll make it a whole lot easier to pitch your stuff. Jocelyn Sams: It'll just make it feel better for you. Like that you're really in it for the right reasons. Melissa Webb: It will. 100%. Jocelyn Sams: All right, we have had a lot of fun talking today. We've had some crazy stories. This has been a very unusual episode, but I hope it's been fun. Shane Sams: Very interesting. Yeah, it's hilarious. Jocelyn Sams: We always ask people before we finish the episode, what is one thing that you plan to work on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Melissa Webb: Well, without a doubt, we're going to end this call and I am going to go find those 50 home schooling podcasts that have had at least 50 episodes themselves, and ones that I really, truly believe that I can bring value to their audience. Shane Sams: I think that is a tremendous goal. Based on your track record, Melissa, I have no doubt that you will go out and make that happen today. You may just be calling us in a week going, "Hey, guys. I'm on 10 podcasts. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to help a lot of people." That is awesome. Shane Sams: Melissa, we appreciate you for coming on the show. We know how hard it is to go on a podcast and share your story and be transparent. We also know how important that is for all of our listeners out there to hear not just us, not just experts, but just other real people who are out there making this thing happen. Shane Sams: I have no doubt that your story is going to inspire a lot of people out there in our audience. We have another inspirational thing to share with you. Because Melissa is going to share our bible verse today. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration from the bible for our life and our business. We know that a lot of people in our audience do as well. What verse will you be sharing with us today? Melissa Webb: I'm going to be sharing Psalm 118:24. I have to say this, before sharing it, that it's like such a blessing that we are given the ability to have our own thoughts. We're not puppets, that we are allowed to believe what we choose to believe. I just think that's one of God's greatest gifts. Why not choose those positive thoughts? Melissa Webb: For years, I have just made it a very intentional first thing that I think as I'm waking up, as my eyes are opening. I just claim this verse every single morning. "Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Shane Sams: Love it. Jocelyn Sams: Love it. Shane Sams: Absolutely love it. I actually, when I'm feeling bad ... It's funny. We all grab onto different verses, but I can't tell you how many times when I'm in a bad mood, that's the verse I always fall back to. Melissa Webb: It's an awesome one. Shane Sams: Just to be grateful. Just to be grateful that we're alive and things could always be worse. Let's be realistic, right? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: Man, today is the day. Rejoice. That is an awesome verse. Listen, Melissa, thank you so much. Melissa Webb: Thank you. Shane Sams: Cannot wait to hear you on all those other podcasts and to share this with our audience out there as well. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I can't wait to see this success story. Definitely come back and let us know how it goes. Melissa Webb: Thank you. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That was another great episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Another amazing conversation with a real life Flip Your Life community member. Maybe you're out there right now and you feel alone. Maybe you're looking for that forum, that community, that group, that Mastermind, just like Melissa was and you need some help putting that together. We would love to help you do that inside of the Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: You can join the Flip Your Life community right now for free over at FlippedLifestyle.com/free. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle.com/F-R-E-E. We would love for you to start your Flip Your Life journey today, and maybe someday we can share your success story as well right here on the podcast. That's FlippedLifesyle.com/free. We cannot wait to meet you and talk to you inside. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That is all the time that we have for today. 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. Melissa Webb: When you guys have talked about numbers, like I used to think I needed like 10,000 people to find me. Shane Sams: No. Melissa Webb: Then you guys one time were talking about like, "Do you guys realize, you really don't need that many people?" If I had 250 people ... Because I don't want to be huge. I like the community piece. Shane Sams: Yup. Melissa Webb: If I had 250 people paying me $100 a month, yeah, so much for teaching. Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Melissa Webb: I never made that much in teaching. Shane Sams: That is an amazing statement. I love hearing people say that. "If I just had x people ..." Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: ... "Paying $5 a month, I could put my child ..." Jocelyn Sams: It's such an eyeopening thing. Like people, when they finally realize that, I mean, there are like seven to eight billion people on the earth. Like you don't need that many of them. Shane Sams: That was the biggest epiphany. That's what really, I think, is the formula that really led to our success is us in the car one day, and me looking over and just saying, "We only make like $5,000 a month." Like, "What if we had a 100 human beings send us $50?" Like, "That literally would be as much as we're making now killing ourselves at work," right? Melissa Webb: Right. Shane Sams: That's the formula. How much do you want to make? How many people times what dollar amount makes that happen? What value can you provide to earn that money? Melissa Webb: Yes. Shane Sams: If you can figure that out, you win. Like you're going to succeed and it's going to happen. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Melissa's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, we help Shira grow her membership site for behavior analysis professionals. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we help Shira grow her membership site for behavior analysis professionals. 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. 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 on another member of the Flip Your Life community. And we have a huge success story to share with you guys today. We are super excited to welcome Shira Karpel to the show today. How you doing, Shira? Shira Karpel: Hi, guys. I'm good. Thanks for having me. Shane Sams: Shira told me to pronounce her name just like the Masters of the Universe Shira from our childhoods. So I tried to do that as best as I could. Jocelyn Sams: From, as our children say, the 19's. Shane Sams: From the 19's. Back in the 19's. Jocelyn Sams: One time they said to us, you were alive in the 19's? Shane Sams: Isaac asked me the other day, he said something like hey, Dad, how old were you when they invented electronics? Shira Karpel: That's hysterical. Shane Sams: That's hysterical. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well, we're happy to have you today. We're really excited about your story. You had written into us not too long ago to let us know that you have been a part of our community for a while, and you've been using our resources to grow a membership site for behavior analysts. Is that correct? And so what I want you to do is tell us a little bit about that. How did you get started in this? What's your background, and what is your business? Shira Karpel: So behavior analysis is the science of behavior, and it's looking at how the impact of the environment affects behavior. There's so many applications to ABA, which applied behavior analysis. The most common application is with kids who have autism, who might be getting 20 to 40 hours a week of ABA therapy, and that's an intensive application of ABA. So I would say that's the most common application of ABA. I got into ABA, I have a masters in education. And then I went on to get a board certification, which is another degree on top of that. So I'm BCBA certified. And I've been training and practicing ABA here where I live. And as a BCBA, that means that we assess children who might need either behavior therapy or ABA therapy. Either that's because they have autism, or they just might need some help managing their behavior, either in a classroom or at home. Shira Karpel: So we do the assessment. We would do supervision, and then we would very often put a team in place who carries out programs that come from us. So we would create the programs that are individualized for the student. And then there would be a therapist who's there daily carrying out the programs. And everything we do is data driven. So she'll be taking data and recording data, and then we'll review the data to make changes and updates to the program. Shira Karpel: So that's what I've been doing as a career. And then we got to the point where unfortunately, there's a huge need for ABA therapists and BCBA's because of the need for children who have autism and other difficulties. But we found that there was only so much time in the day, and even if we would hire more therapists and have more staff, the amount of work that would take of us to scale just wasn't going to be worthwhile. We don't like charging families an extra amount of money so that we get a cut of what the therapists are doing. It just doesn't seem right to want to scale in that direction. And then I kind of came across this concept of online business through another therapist's website that enlightened me into this idea. I never thought that my field could actually do something like that. And started the website maybe about a year and a half ago. Our website is howtoaba.com. And that's where our blog lives. Shira Karpel: And the blog is geared towards training other AB professionals, just giving them good tips. We also share a ton of free resources. So every blog has its own unique opt-in. So there might be, for a blog that's talking about one topic, we create an opt-in for that topic specifically to help them. Shane Sams: Super smart. Shira Karpel: Either a data sheet or a resource or a worksheet or something that's very specific so they opt in to that. So we get a lot of good traffic on our free resources page. So we've been doing that blog. And then we also found that a lot of professionals, because of the way of getting into the field, a lot of it is hands on training. So there are courses that you take, but a lot of it is just exposure in the field, and a lot of people feel untrained or unprepared or really just thrown in without being totally prepared. Shira Karpel: So we found that sharing our resources was something we wanted to do to the greater community so that people can come together and help each other and feel more prepared once they are working with a kid, because you often are on your own. You don't really have another support system where you're working. So then we started a membership about a year ago. And the membership is called the Behavior Resource. Beyond the free resources that we offer on our blog, we actually offer the real programs that we use in programming for the children. We share that with all of our members. So they're able to download if they're teaching a topic with a student. They could just download that program, and it has everything you need, the data sheet, the explanation, all the criteria that we're required to have on a program description. Shira Karpel: And we also offer monthly continuing education webinars, so we are certified through the international board to provide continuing education units. Shane Sams: Love it. Shira Karpel: So we do that once a month. Currently, we're only able to provide them for people who attend lives because of just the requirement. We're hoping to get to the point where we can create quizzes for each one, and be able to know if people watch them. But maybe that's like a software thing we want to look into. I'm not really sure how to do that. Because we do store the recordings in the resource, and people watch the recordings, but they can't the continuing education for that. And I know that that would be a big attraction if people could get the units for the recordings. Shane Sams: So how much is the membership? How much do they pay per month? Shira Karpel: So we have three options. For $12 a month, you get access to all the downloads, like the program descriptions, the graphs, data sheets, anything like that. For $19 a month, you get all of that plus any recorded video or live video. And then we have a yearly, which is 199. Shane Sams: And how many members do you have right now? Shira Karpel: We have 87 plus 48, whatever that is. Shane Sams: So you have over 100. Shira Karpel: Our current members. Jocelyn Sams: So like in each category, yeah. Shira Karpel: Yeah. In total, we service 178 have come in and out the door. Shane Sams: Awesome. Shira Karpel: We have a high retention rate. Not a lot of people cancel. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Shira Karpel: Yeah. We have almost 140 current. Jocelyn Sams: So let's kind of back up just a little bit. You do have a business partner, right? Shira Karpel: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Now, is this someone that you have worked with in the past? What's your relationship with your business partner? Shira Karpel: Right. So when I got into the field, she was really the one who trained me. We kind of worked together for about six to eight years, building our Toronto business. And a lot of the resources, she's trained me on, or she's created, or we've created together. And so when I came up with this idea, I thought she would continue to do that and offer more of the mentorship in the community, and I would do a lot of the marketing and settings things up from a technical perspective. Shane Sams: That's amazing. So this thing is really young then. You just launched it this year, correct? Shira Karpel: A year ago. Shane Sams: And then when you were blogging, did you start blogging with the idea of an online membership or an online business, or was it basically like okay, let's just blog and then let it grow. What brought you to Flipped Lifestyle? Did you try something before that? How did you end up in the Flip Your Life community? Shira Karpel: The Toronto business had a blog, and that was more to drum up local business. Shane Sams: Yeah. Shira Karpel: And it was around for a long time, so it did get a lot of good hits. So I started on that blog, and then when this became its own entity, we decided to give it a new name and move the blog over. So already then, we had the intention of starting the blog with the plans for something. I really struggled with how to turn this into a business, because I don't feel like ... I tried some other online resources and how to sell online and all that stuff, and a lot of what people said was you have to give people a solution to their problem. And I didn't feel like I could bring people from A to Z and say I'm solving your problem now. You can leave. I didn't feel like I could sell them a course, and at the end of the course, they would have a solution to their problem. Shira Karpel: So I had tried that before I came to you guys, and I offered ... I launched a webinar, and I offered, I think, a four to six week course, and we're going to take you through ... I don't even know what it was. But I didn't feel good about it, because I didn't feel like I gave them the solution. Because at the end of the day, they're still in the same job. They're still in the same profession. They still have the same struggles, and they just need more resources. So then I kind of came across you guys, and I felt like what you offered in terms of the membership solution was really a great solution for me. I also like the idea of ... I feel like I'm providing a lot more value than even the $19. I do feel good about what they're paying for it. I don't feel like I'm ripping anyone off. I don't feel like they're paying too much for what they're getting. I feel like it's something I would have paid a lot of money for. Shira Karpel: So when I found you guys, and you kind of pushed me to do this community idea, I just feel good about it, and it seems to be working. Shane Sams: How many ABA professionals are out there? Do you know that number? Jocelyn Sams: Is this something that's mostly a Canadian thing? Is it an international thing and pardon my ignorance on this, I just don't know anything. Shira Karpel: It's an international thing. The board is located in the United States in Florida, and it's becoming a lot more common. There's lots. I don't even want to guess the number, but I would say hundreds per year. Shane Sams: But this has greater reach, too, right? Anyone it seems like in special ed could use resources like this like in schools, like teachers. For example, like what you're saying about the programming sounds very similar to what elementary school special education teachers use for their behavior problems. Shira Karpel: Right. Shane Sams: Not behavior problems, but behavior therapy, right? This has reach that trickles down through the professional into the school system and these resources can even be deployed through other people under the supervision of someone, like an ABA professional, basically, right? Shira Karpel: Yeah, for sure. And the other thing is like in countries where they may not have access to a BCA or an ABA professional, there's a huge need to access good resources, because there's countries in Europe and Asia and everywhere. We're actually getting a lot of those where they don't have someone who's able to provide that supervision. Shane Sams: Okay. First of all, congratulations. You sent me an email a little while ago, and I read it, and I read it to Jocelyn out loud when you sent us the email because you said something very interesting. You've been in the community for a while. You're not super active in the forums or anything like that, but you're there. You're listening. You're taking action. You're going forward. And you've built this amazing business. This is amazing. This is just the foundation of what could easily become 1,000, 2,000 person membership that you're serving one to many. And you're really throwing your pebble in the pond and causing a massive ripple because you're training the professionals that train other people that help all these kids. Shane Sams: So if every one of those people reaches 100 kids, like oh my gosh, what is the impact of this business? And it's not like a course where you're just like watch the course and move on, you're like literally helping them throughout their whole struggles, throughout their journey. You've kind of opened the door and asked questions, which is what we do. That's our job. Shane Sams: We realize this, too. You can't just solve someone's problem with a course. What you really can do is solve someone's next step. But you have to have a dialogue back and forth to know that person's next step, and that's kind of what you've done here is you've created this bank of resources, which is basically a bank of next steps. You've opened the door for communication so people can clarify next steps. And you've created this thing that could just go out there and help as many people as possible. This is a world changing business you guys have created on top of the fact that you've successfully created financial gain from it. And that's what it's all about. That is exactly what my business is all about. Shira Karpel: Right. When I first came into the community, I was really struggling with whether I should create this resource for parents or for professionals, because I felt like parents also need some sort of support and help and all of that, but professionals, you know, there's that attraction of helping so many more people. And on one of our first calls, I think you, Shane, encouraged me to start with the professionals, and you said just do it. Do it for three months, and then reassess. And we had members. So I just kept going. Shane Sams: That's how it works. Shira Karpel: And I like the idea that we can affect so many more people. Shane Sams: I love how you said that because my brother and I were actually ... my brother lives in Cincinnati, and I'm down in southeast Kentucky. The only way we ever talk is we play Xbox together a couple nights a week. Jocelyn Sams: Nerd alert. Shane Sams: Yeah, Jocelyn, she just called me a nerd. You didn't hear that. But anyway, we were talking and hanging out, and I was talking the other day, he was like how many people listen to your podcast, how many people do your stuff, how many people listen to your lesson plans and all that stuff. And I got to thinking about my US history site. I got to thinking about Jocelyn's elementary librarian site, and we were trying to do the math of all the people that had read our articles or listened to our podcast. It's insane to think about how many students have literally read our lesson plans in the country and around the world and how many people have heard our message and our podcast. Shane Sams: I think one of our Forbes articles is over half a million people have read it. You just don't realize, and it doesn't really settle in until you look down, and you say, I have a ... I mean, what was it 170 something professionals have been through this thing, and those 170 people have probably touched 50 to 100 kids in the last year or whatever, and these numbers become exponential how much influence you can make in the world sitting in your office in Toronto. Jocelyn Sams: But the thing about it is if you never would have made a decision, and you never would have gotten started, none of this would have started. You could have been sitting here saying, oh, well, I don't know which avatar to choose, so I guess I won't do anything. Shane Sams: I'll just stay paralyzed right here where I am. Shira Karpel: Well, I did that for a long time until you pushed me off the cliff. Shane Sams: I'm good at throwing people off the cliffs. I'm not the best at parachutes. That's Jocelyn's job in our relationship. That's why we always do the member calls together. So I can throw people off the cliff, and Jocelyn can throw in a parachute on your way down. But your parachute opened, and you were in total control of the landing now, and that is amazing. Jocelyn Sams: The good news is you got past the mindset struggle of I don't know what to do, so I'm not going to do anything. You got past that. But let's talk about maybe something else that you've overcome along the way. So when everyone gets started, there's a number of mindset problems that we have that make us think either we can't do this, or we shouldn't do this, or something like that. So what is a mindset issue, a fear, or an obstacle that maybe held you back in the beginning that you've overcome. Shane Sams: Or it could be something that maybe you ... maybe there was a roadblock between you and your business partner. That's another dynamic that comes in here. After you got this launched, you got your first members. What else kind of tripped you up along the way? Shira Karpel: Well, I will say that part of my hesitancy in choosing to launch is definitely a little bit of imposter syndrome, which I probably still struggle with, because part of me going into the professionals was well, what if somebody comes and says, no, you're doing everything wrong, or you don't know what you're talking about, and who am I to be telling other professionals how to do their job and all of that. So that was scary, and sometimes opening my emails sometimes and just waiting for somebody to respond and say how dare you recommend this, or why would you say that? Shane Sams: Which will happen eventually, if it's not already. Jocelyn Sams: Oh yeah, it's going to happen. Shira Karpel: Yeah, but you know what, I'm still waiting. I haven't gotten anything like that. The feedback we've gotten has been so positive in the way people respond to say, wow, you've helped me in my profession, and I feel so much more equipped, and the feedback has just all been positive, which I know may not last forever, but that's okay. Jocelyn Sams: No, definitely won't last forever. Shane Sams: And even if it does, that's a good example of how few and far between it is, but how the one out of the 100 can impact us, right? Because we don't get that many either. We say that jokingly all the time, like it's coming. It's really literally one in 100 messages that you get. Shira Karpel: Yeah. So that's great. And in terms of like ... I would say the struggle with having a partner. It's been great. We've done great at dividing and conquering. We get along really well, and we really set out our intentions from the beginning. We knew what we wanted out of this. But it's difficult because we are both very limited with time. Our schedules are very different. So any time we want to do any kind of live webinar or marketing or even recording videos on our blog and our YouTube channel, it's been very challenging. We can only really, at this point, get together, not even once a month, we're able to find time to get together and record videos. Even if we batch them, it gets really tricky. Shira Karpel: So time is a huge issue in terms of having time for both of us to do things together in terms of marketing and doing videos and that kind of thing. Shane Sams: Sure. I totally get that. That's actually a struggle for us. The partnership dynamic we don't get into a lot. Because we haven't really had a lot of people with partners on the show. But even Jocelyn and I being married and living together, it's hard for us to coordinate that perfect time where we're both dressed, and we're both ready, and the lighting's right. That's a huge struggle coordinating, you know what I'm saying, like getting everybody on the same page at the same time. But there's also something interesting you said there about you're so limited on time, but you're still able to build a business of over 100 members. Like that's insane. That's a big thing that people worry about, like well, I've got a job, and I've got a family, and I've got all these things. Well, you guys did it, so why can't anybody do it? It doesn't make sense why some people say ... some people say there's no time, and that's a non starter. But even saying I've got limited time, at least you're spending some time on it, and you're doing it, and it's growing, and you're making it happen with what you have. Jocelyn Sams: And you didn't make it a roadblock for you. You didn't say well, we're not able to record these videos, so I guess we'll just wait until we have more time. No. You'll never have more time. Shane Sams: Right. It was a speed bump, not a road block, basically. Shira Karpel: I will say it does get draining, because at this point, it's been a year. I have three children. Shane Sams: Yep. Shira Karpel: I don't have Sundays with them. I'm usually working on my business because I work full time during the week. My evenings are really taken up by my business, but I am a little afraid that I'm going to burn out at some point soon. So that's concerning. Shane Sams: Well, that's what we're here for. That's why we're talking today. We're going to figure some of that stuff out. Shira Karpel: Yeah. And the nice thing about the membership is it has been somewhat low maintenance. Once the professionals are in, they do ... and we've taken surveys and everything. They are using the resources. They're not always asking a ton of questions. So I guess one of my struggles is maybe I just feel like I have to put more in, but maybe there's just enough there, and I don't need to be so worried about it. I don't know. Shane Sams: I think that probably spills back into the imposter syndrome, because you feel like ... Jocelyn Sams: You need to prove yourself. Shane Sams: Yeah. That's a good way to say that. You need to prove yourself all the time, like you keep flooding resources and keep doing all these things, which keeps you going, which eventually like burns you out. You know? Jocelyn Sams: People are probably happy with what you already have. You just have this personal thing where you think you have to provide more for them. Shane Sams: Yeah. I love the imposter syndrome question, too, because I actually used this analogy with someone the other day. They were really struggling with imposter syndrome, to the point where it was like they couldn't move forward, right? They were like no, I'm an imposter, right? I'm not the best at this. Who am I to teach this? Right? Shira Karpel: Right. Shane Sams: What I said to them, it was like my son, Isaac. Isaac plays basketball. We're in a small area. We're in Kentucky, so everybody thinks they know how to play basketball. But you know, he's got a coach who's on this team. And it would be kind of like saying only Steph Curry, the greatest three point shooter in the history of the NBA can shoot my son how to shoot a three pointer. Like it would be like that guy saying, well, I'm not Steph Curry. I'm not the best at this. I can't teach this kid how to do it. And we know on that level, that that's not true, right? He can teach my kid how to dribble. He can teach my kid how to play defense. He can teach my kid how to shoot a three pointer, because Isaac is behind him in the journey. And like that's what I always go back other with coaching even. Shane Sams: Me and Jocelyn are not Fortune 500 billionaires, right? There are plenty of people with bigger online businesses than us by choice or by ability, you know? But that doesn't mean we can't help everybody else who's getting started, who's growing, who's building the thing, and I feel you're getting there, and you still struggle with it a little bit. And we do, too. We struggle with imposter syndrome, too, at times. When we did the live event last year, we really struggled with live event. We were like, are we really the people that should be doing this? But we did it. It wasn't the biggest live event ever, but we thought it was the best, but there was some imposter syndrome there. Shira Karpel: I work here in Toronto, and although it is an international certification, I don't know how people practice in other countries, so is my stuff really going to be helpful for them, do they do things differently in other places. Shane Sams: The good thing you've done though is you're letting them make that choice. And that's actually how you beat imposter syndrome is you put it out there, and you don't choose for people what's the best information for them. You're like this is what I offer. Here it is. On my history site, all the time, I get messages that are like, this is not the quality of stuff that ... this is not good enough for my class. But then I'll get a message the next day from another person that'll say this is exactly what I was looking for. So it does it. There's no real answer if it's good enough or bad enough. It's just that person it was good enough for them. This person, it was not good enough for them. But I'm here to give you a choice, right? And that's what you're doing. And I think you guys are wrestling with that really well. It's pretty awesome. A lot of people never make it to that point, Shira, where they are brave enough to bust past through imposter syndrome to launch. So kudos for you guys for getting through it. Shira Karpel: Well, thank you. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's jump into some questions about how we can help you guys get this thing to the next level and grow it. What can we help you with as far as that goes? Shira Karpel: Okay. So I'm struggling with how to phrase this to in the marketing. Because like I said, I don't feel like I'm solving an actual problem, that people come in, they get their problem solved, and they leave. In a lot of my copy and marketing materials, I'm not sure how to sell it so it sounds like I am solving a problem. So I struggle with that. Shane Sams: This one is actually kind of easy. It's that you sell the support, not the content. This seems like a field, based on what I know about education and also medical stuff, a lot of times these people are working with these kids alone, or they're working in an office where they're alone most of the day, and maybe they've got a team. Maybe they're in a school. Maybe they're in something. But this is such a hard field. Let's be realistic. Shane Sams: It's working with kids. There's some behavioral problems. It can be frustrating, and you're alone a lot of the time in the execution of it, or at least with one or two other people. So it's like that's usually how things like this are marketed best is you're not alone. You're going to have leadership. You're going to have community. Don't focus so much on the resources. Use that as more of a ... what do we call it? Gravy or icing on the cake. Shane Sams: Not only that, we've got everything you'll ever need resource wise. So there's a real tendency for people to only want to promote their content and what people can download. But people don't care about that. They don't care about the stuff. They want the stuff, but what they really care about is that they have support, and they feel supported. Jocelyn Sams: And really, truth be told, they don't care so much about you, not in a negative way, not saying that you're not important. But they care that they get their questions answered. And one of the coolest things that you can market on this is that you have ABA professionals from all over the planet who can help answer their questions. Shane Sams: Yeah. I would be willing to bet if you looked at those 100 and something people, some of them are going to be close to each other, and they don't even know it. They're might be two people from Florida in that list. Just knowing that there's people from however many states. We have members from 25 US states and four Canadian provinces, like all over the world. Just hearing that information is not marketing spin or anything like that. It's hey, you're not alone. There's people around you going through this, and we can connect you to a bigger world, and you can get ideas that you're not getting, because your states doing one thing, and our province is doing the other. That's where the promotion needs to really focus on. Shira Karpel: The reason I think I've been hesitant to do that is because there isn't a lot of activity happening in terms of community and questions and I'm not ... we're not engaging that often, which I expected to, but we're not getting a lot of people, I think, wanting that part of it. I think they're happy to go in and get the downloads. Shane Sams: Sure. But perception is reality. Let me take your example. When you sent me your email, you don't usually use the forums a lot. I don't know exactly what you've done in the courses or anything like that, but I would assume you're so busy with your membership that you're really not getting in there a whole lot, right? But it's kind of there. And the one thing you pointed to in this whole conversation was man, I remember that one time I needed this one thing answered, I needed to be pushed off the cliff, and I asked Shane, and he told me, and I did it, and look what happened. Like that one thing is worth it, right? Shane Sams: And a lot of times, we say people come for the content and stay for the community. But in some places, they come for the community and stay for the content. It doesn't matter what they do when they get into it. You gotta speak to people where they are when they're trying to find the solution. And the frustration with most people is they're all alone creating all these resources. They're all alone with this kid. They're all alone in this setting. Shane Sams: And they don't even know that that's the real problem. They think they just need to go download a worksheet, right? But really, what's driving them is that aloneness, is that need for leadership, is that need for community, is that need for someone to just make it easier for them, right? And that's what you're providing really. You're not really providing downloads. You're providing ease of use. You're providing a little relief from that loneliness. Jocelyn Sams: A place for people to ask questions. Just because they're not asking questions doesn't mean that the place isn't there for them to ask questions, right? Shane Sams: Yes. Sometimes, that's their security blanket, you know what I'm saying? Shira Karpel: So even though it might not be me personally engaging. Shane Sams: That's right. Shira Karpel: All that stuff that's in there would still be considered support and community. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: It's the way you're presenting, even the worksheets and stuff ... or not worksheets. I say worksheets, but all these tools and resources you have for them to download. Even that can be presented in more of a you don't have to do this by yourself. We're going to help you with these resources. So now, it's not, we have 4,000 downloads for any project you do. It's like no, we thought about you, and we knew you would need this. And we made this for you, and we put it in one place, just like a library made just for you and all the people around you that are like you so that we can all go in together, and do this together. Shane Sams: So that's how you ... one, that pushes you out of the forefront a little bit because you don't have to be I'm Shira, and I'm the person who knows all the answers. It's just no, we got a place where we're all finding answers and creating answers together, and it's there for you when you need it. You may only need it once a month. But it's there for you when you need it. And that's going to tap into that loneliness a little bit and show people, like that's the problem you're solving is you're making it easier, and they're not alone. You're not answering all of their perfect technical questions basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and it's actually a big benefit. When I still had Elementary Librarian, I would say you have the support of hundreds of elementary librarians. It's not just me. It is my website, and I created it, but I created it for you so that you would have an opportunity to get input of hundreds of librarians. I don't have all the answers. But here's a bunch of people from all over the planet who are all doing the same thing, all going the same direction and all here to support each other. Just because they didn't ask 10 questions today doesn't mean it's still not a place that we can all support each other. Shane Sams: I have an old Facebook group for football coaches about a very specific football topic. And it's amazing, it keeps growing years after I ever started it. What happened last week, or probably the last two or three weeks, I noticed that dozens of people were joining. I think over 100 people have joined since November 15, just out of nowhere, randomly. Shira Karpel: Wow. Shane Sams: But here's what happened, as people started losing, and their seasons started ending, they're left with questions. They're left with wow, did I do my best this year? Man, we were five and five, what is this, what is that. So what did they immediately do? They immediately started seeking out like minded people, groups for football coaches, so they could go in and have somewhere to go talk about this stuff. They weren't looking for the answers. They weren't looking for the solution for next year's problem, like the playbook that would change their life. It was just like man, I've gotta go surround myself with people who might know what I can do to do better, right? Shane Sams: And it's kind of the same thing here, like that's how you gotta market. That's why we market the community way more than our courses. If you go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife right now, that's our sales page for what we sell. Go look at it. We do not list our courses. We don't even list it, because we know that what people really need to know is we do have a plan for you that's step by step. Here's the broad swipe of what it does, and we have a community of literally thousands of people from all over the world working to build a better life for their family with online business. That's what people really need to know. Shane Sams: The content's there. I don't gotta list all the content for you. It's there when you need it. It's like a supermarket. You go in and get milk if you're out of milk, right? But what really is there is twice a month, me and Jocelyn are going to be there on a premium member call. The forums are open 24 hours a day seven days a week, and there's a huge bank of resources to go pull a book off the shelf when you need it. Shane Sams: So that should help your marketing a little bit to be able to present that, and maybe even lessen some of that imposter syndrome. Shira Karpel: Yeah, that helps. That does clarify things for me, makes me feel better about it. Shane Sams: Is it overwhelming a little bit? How does that compare to what you were doing to present it? Were you presenting this as all the resources or as you and your partner as the expert? What were you doing before? Shira Karpel: I think we were presenting it a lot as the support, like we're providing support. Like what we say is resources, community, and support for AB professionals. So the resources was first. But we were always including the community and support. I guess I felt like if I was claiming to provide support, then I should be there more often providing actual support. But I guess it's still considered support, the fact that they can go in and get what they need. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely, yes. And that's the thing is you just have to frame it in the way you want your people to think about it. Shane Sams: What we have realized with Flipped Lifestyle, even, of course, Jocelyn and I lead the Flip Your Life community, but what we noticed as the community really exploded and really grew to the point where we couldn't possibly answer every single question was that it really didn't matter as long as people got an answer to their question. Like that's the goal, right? That's the goal is to point people in the right direction. Shane Sams: So one thing we've even strategically planned out is how we can hire more support in the community to make sure people get the answer. Jocelyn just this morning, we were talking about this, and she was like look, I don't care if it's our courses, or we find it for them on Google and point them in the right direction, like that's the point is to help people figure out what to do next. So we've even thought about 24 hour support, maybe, like have people in the community forums, like three shifts, eight hours a time, hire people around the world to where there is always someone there to help them find an answer. Shane Sams: Because it doesn't matter if it comes from me and Jocelyn. It just matters that they find the answer, right? And that's kind of where you are at, too. It doesn't really matter if you answer their question even. It's like is the answer there for them. And a lot of times, it's going to be, so you don't have to worry about it. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's talk about where we're going, as far as like members. What's your plan to continue to grow the membership? Shane Sams: Let me ask you this. Are you planning on replacing the other business with this, or is always going to run side by side? Shira Karpel: I think I will continue ... I don't plan on leaving my job. No. I would like it to continue and this to be more of a side thing. Shane Sams: All right. What if you had 5,000 members paying you $20 a month, then what? Shira Karpel: Um ... Shira Karpel: That is really tempting, I would consider it. Shane Sams: Right, right. Shira Karpel: Like I said, it's not demanding a lot in terms of maintenance of the membership on me right now. So other than the technical things, like updating the website and making sure that everything is working. I don't feel like the members are time consuming. Shane Sams: Okay. So what is ... you said earlier, you were feeling like you're getting a little bit burnt out though. The marketing thing is easy. We're going to take action on that, just change some copy. But like, how do we prevent you from becoming burnt out, because I feel like you're feeling it. You're looking ahead, like man, I got three kids, I'm working full time, and I'm running an online business. You can't do everything all the time forever. Where are you feeling the most burn out? Shira Karpel: Right. So I feel like for the past year, I've been trying anything and everything, which is great, because I've been learning so much. But I can't figure out what is that one thing that I should just do more of, and that's kind of that switch that I can just increase or decrease. Shane Sams: Where did you get the members? Where did the members come from? Shira Karpel: That's the thing. I don't really know. I use Convert Kit, so I can see if they've signed up from my email list, if they've been on my email list prior to them joining a membership. Sometimes they haven't. Sometimes their first thing in Convert Kit is the membership, and they just joined. And I don't know how they came across the sales page. I do Facebook Ads, but I find it to be very overwhelming, and I can't quite figure out how to track conversions, because once they pay through PayPal, I feel like Facebook loses that conversion at some point. It can't track whether the payment went through once it goes to the PayPal page. Shira Karpel: Sometimes when I promote the next webinar that we're doing in the membership for the CEUs, sometimes that brings in a lot of new members, if I send out an email to my list, saying, oh we're doing this month's topic whatever. That will bring in a lot of people. I've tried doing a one dollar trial. I've tried doing a coupon code. I've tried doing a weekend flash sale. We've tried doing ... live webinars, I know, can be effective, but they're just so time consuming. Shane Sams: For sure. Shira Karpel: That I don't know if it's something I could commit to doing on a regular basis in terms of sales. So I want to find what that sales thing is, and once I figure it out and put a proper system in place, I feel like I'd be a lot more comfortable. Shane Sams: So there's a thing there you're kind of getting a little crossed. There's a difference between what causes someone to join, like a dollar trial, a free trial, a webinar, whatever. There's a difference between that and where they come from. You have got to talk to these people who are in your membership and figure out how they found you, because that's where the funnel starts. We did a survey recently, and we found out that probably 80% of people who find us heard about us in another media, like either one of our ... we've been in Business Insider and Forbes, like articles. We've probably done probably near 100 podcasts in the last couple years, other people's podcasts. And that's how people find us is we go get interviewed. Shane Sams: So our strategy for next year starts there. We have got to get on more interviews, because that's the best way to grow our brand, right? So you've gotta know where these people are coming from. It may be search. If it's Google search, then you can probably pinpoint how they're searching for you and then run ads toward that, and then you don't have to worry about all these live webinars and stuff. You may just be able to drop them straight to your page. They realize it's there. But you've gotta figure out where they come from before you figure out what makes them convert. Shane Sams: That's a different part of the chain, you see what I'm saying? Shira Karpel: Okay. Shane Sams: And you're kind of talking about them in the same vein, like oh the dollar trial makes them come, or the webinar makes them come. But that's not totally true. It's where they're coming from is the most important thing, you gotta figure out first. So that's probably really your next step is maybe a good survey. Shira Karpel: So I do have a survey that I've sent out to the members. Not a lot of people respond. I only have a couple responses. And a lot of them came through a free webinar, which I do have a free webinar that's recorded. Shane Sams: How did you promote that though? Shira Karpel: So the one that was recorded, I had a Facebook Ad going to it for a long time, and they could just opt in and just see it whenever they wanted. The ones that are live also was promoted through Facebook. Shane Sams: And how many members did that produce? We don't know that. Shira Karpel: That's the thing, I don't know. Shane Sams: So we gotta figure that out. That's where you've got to look at in isolation is how did someone get to that webinar. It's even back one beyond that. Was it the Facebook Ad? Did you send an email list about the webinar? Because some of them came from there, which probably just came from general blog traffic. We're not going to be able to figure that out right here at this second, but that is what you have to know, because that's what's going to eliminate all this nonsense. It's just oh, most of my people come through search. Okay, then how can I capitalize on that? I'll create an ad that goes to an evergreen webinar from search. If it's from Facebook Ads, well, I need a Facebook Ad that goes to the evergreen webinar that does this. And like you've gotta know where they're coming from. And the only way to do that really is to talk to those people. You gotta figure out a way to stir them up. Maybe do a live thing. Don't do a survey. Like hey, I'm answering questions live. And one of the questions you ask, maybe 20 of them show up. Ask them, how did you hear about us? I'm looking at the chat right now. I'm going to read them out. Shane Sams: And just let them participate in that way to get some kind of data, and then anyone that joins in the future, I would do exactly what Jocelyn does. Record a quick video. There's a tool called Use Loom. U-S-E L-O-O-M. And it's a browser extension. You click a button, you record a video, and it emails them. Every time someone joins, turn that on, say hey, welcome to the community. How'd you hear about us? Email me back. Jocelyn Sams: And you will start to see a theme. Shane Sams: A trend. Yep. It'll appear quickly. Jocelyn Sams: That's what you need to do more of. Shane Sams: If you can get 20% of the people's data on this, you'll know pretty much the rest of them true. So if you can figure out how about 20 or 30 of them actually came to the community, you can kind of guess it's probably going to be close. Shira Karpel: And I'm finding out how they found our blog, not necessarily the membership. Shane Sams: How did you hear about us? How did you find out that we existed? Period. Because that's where you've gotta focus your ... right now, you've got a big flashlight that's spread out wide. And you've gotta laser beam down on the one thing that really matters the most and hammer it, like a nail. And that's what we're trying to figure out, where are people coming from. That's where ad dollars go. That's where time is spent. That's where the funnel starts. And then you start working, on well, the dollar trial works better than the free trial or the year works better than the month, or should we raise our price, probably. $19 is really low. You know what I'm saying? Shane Sams: There's actually a video in the Flip Your Life community called the sales chain, which goes through this step by step. And it kind of shows you. It's a 30 minute video. So you might want to go play that in the background. Jocelyn Sams: All right. It has been a great conversation today. I loved learning more about your business and what you guys are doing and your next steps. Shane Sams: And we're super proud of your success because you should really pat yourself on the back. Not everybody gets to 100 members, and that is awesome. Shira Karpel: Well, thank you. Shane Sams: That's the springboard to 1,000 members, which is life changing. Okay? Jocelyn Sams: So let's think a little bit about your immediate next steps. So we always like to ask people at the end of the show based on what we talked about here today, what is something you're going to work on in the next 24 hours to move your business forward? Shira Karpel: So I think I will look at my sales page and try to make the copy sound more like we're selling the community and the support, and I will have to figure out where people are coming from. Shane Sams: And that's a process. But hey, the process has to start somewhere, right? Shira Karpel: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Well, thank you so much for sharing your success story with us today, and we cannot wait to see what happens in the future. Shira Karpel: Well, thank you guys so much for playing a part in our success. Shane Sams: Hey, guys, that wraps up another amazing interview with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Man, Shira and her partner did amazing stuff because they took action. They were decisive. They didn't know the right answer. They just knew it was in front of them, and they took action, took the steps, and they went forward, and they made it happen to build a membership over 100 members. Imagine what you could do if you had 100 people sending you money every single month. You could build a business where you can work from home, work for yourself, and change your family's future. We would love to help you just like we did them inside the Flip Your Life community. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/flipyourlife, all one word. And you can check out our community. Check out all of the great courses that we offer to help you start, build, and grow an online business of your own. Shane Sams: Thanks for listening today, guys. We'll talk to you next time. Between now and then, get out there. Do whatever it takes. Flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Shira's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, we help Rocio transition her freelance business into an online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast we help Rocio transition her freelance business into an 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. 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 today's show, and we love shows like this because it's someone we have actually met in person. We're going to be celebrating a little bit of a success story today too, so let's welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Rocio Baeza. Rocio, welcome to the show. Rocio Baeza: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Shane Sams: We practiced. We've had a lot of hard names lately on the podcast, and we had to practice this one for a little while. Jocelyn Sams: I know, which is actually really cool because that means that our audience is from all different places. Shane Sams: Everywhere. That's right. Jocelyn Sams: They are of all different nationalities, and we love that. We think that is amazing. We had to figure out how to say this name because, poor Shane, I mean he especially butchers this kind of thing. Shane Sams: I'm pretty much going with ... You say it. Say it out loud. Say it yourself. Rocio Baeza: Rocio Baeza. Like you said, Shane, like rodeo but with an S. Shane Sams: Rodeo. Yes, exactly. It's so much more beautiful when you say it. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. There you go. Shane Sams: When I say it, it sounds like some butchered redneck with a bunch of rocks in his mouth. You know what? It is what it is, and that's how we're going to go with it. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. We need to know a little bit about this name and where you come from, so tell us a little bit about you, your background and what you've been doing so far in your day job and online. Rocio Baeza: Sure. A little bit about myself, so I'm based in Chicago, and I am a wife, a mom of two. My professional background is in the cybersecurity space. For the last year I've been doing freelance work, so basically picking a project with tech companies where I help them figure out, all right, what do they have to do around security to protect the information that they have, and also, how do they get started and what are all the steps that they have to do in order to put together a cybersecurity program. Shane Sams: You also do some compliance with the GDPR stuff? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: You do that too? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: What do you do in that, just make sure that they know what they're supposed to be doing with their data to be compliant with the European laws? Rocio Baeza: Yes. A lot of the cybersecurity work, my experience has been that it's usually driven by compliance, so an organization has to comply with a specific law or regulation, think HIPAA, think GDPR. I've focused work around GDPR since it's the acronym that we've all heard since May, and it's something that I realize that organizations are going to need help in the area. Since this is just released, I figured it would be a good way to more or less ride that wave. Shane Sams: Sure. Yeah. It is so new. I was reading an article just the other day actually where all this stuff with Facebook especially where our data has been compromised, and they're just hammering them. I would not doubt that America's about to pass something like GDPR because Facebook has been so hammered. I was watching a tech company CEO the other day. I think it was Salesforce's CEO, and he came out and said, "It's over. We've got to do something like GDPR based on this last thing that happened with Facebook." Shane Sams: This privacy, handling people's data, all that stuff is going to be a really big deal going forward in the future, and you've done the right thing. You've jumped on what's on top of mind, and that's really, really important. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I love that. I want to go back just a second to we were talking about before the podcast, you said that your family's originally from Mexico, right? Rocio Baeza: Yep. Jocelyn Sams: Did they move here before you were born? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: You moved to California? Is that where you're from originally? Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I was born in California, but I was raised in Chicago. Shane Sams: Got you. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. I love that. I think honestly being bilingual could be an unfair advantage for you as we move forward. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I've talked to people about this in the past, and there are a lot of Spanish-speaking people in the United States. Shane Sams: Spanish business owners who might need some of this. If you're not focusing a little bit on that, that might be a good little angle to pick up extra people as we build out more passive income streams and freelance streams and things like that. Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I never connected the two dots there, so yeah, it's something for me to consider. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, for sure. Shane Sams: What is it, Hispanics are like, what, 30 million people in the United States? Jocelyn Sams: I don't know. Shane Sams: Or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: It's crazy. Shane Sams: I'm not sure if that's the right number. Someone's going to send me a hate mail on that one, but I'm positive that there are hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking business owners who do not even realize they're not GDPR compliant, would you say? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: Now, did you do anything before you freelanced? That's what's really interesting to me. Did you work in corporate? Rocio Baeza: Yeah. Shane Sams: How did you get into freelance? Because freelancing is a kind of flipped lifestyle. We always talk about online business. Jocelyn and I love online business, but we help all kinds of people create online businesses and freelancing and being a virtual assistant and just doing other things using the internet that's not selling courses. How did you get into freelancing exactly? Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I got into freelance when I got laid off about a year ago. Let me walk you through how I got there. Coming out of school, I entered the corporate world. I was basically doing IT work, product management work for about seven years. It was during that time that I got involved with helping with security audits, and that's something that I just fell into. My manager at the time, he needed some help with that. It's something that was new for me, and I said yes. Rocio Baeza: Through that process, my company at the time decided to invest more in the data security space. They brought in an experienced person, and she basically became my mentor. She mentored me. She showed me the ropes in the cybersecurity space. Once I felt that I had reached the ceiling at that particular organization, I entered the consulting space. After being seven years working in the corporate world, I transitioned over to working for a consulting firm, a local consulting firm here in Chicago where I was basically helping other organizations with very specific cybersecurity projects. Rocio Baeza: I did that for two years, and we reached a point where the sales pipeline dried up. I found myself being at a crossroads where I was laid off on a day, and I did not see it coming. I did not have a backup plan. Shane Sams: Wow. Rocio Baeza: I realized hey, I could either scramble and try to get another job at a company. Luckily for me, the job market in the cybersecurity space is very good, so I didn't have concerns that I would be able to get a job after being laid off, but I also realized that hey, I could try to do something on my own. Rocio Baeza: My manager at the consulting firm, he allowed me to see everything that happened behind the scenes with sales, how do you win a client, how do you build relationships, how do you structure a project. It was these baby steps that I said, "All right, let me take the courage to see if I can do this on my own. I think that I can, and if I can't, then I'll just find a job." Shane Sams: Amazing. Rocio Baeza: Yeah. That's how I made it to the freelance space. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I love that. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: May I just say that if I had lived in a city when I first got out of school, your job would pretty much have been my dream job because, I don't know, I love everything, like technology and IT. When I was in college, that's really what I wanted to do. I started out in computer programming. I know that many people who listen to the podcast probably would totally get this because I'm a bit of a nerd, but I mean, I just love that kind of stuff. Shane Sams: Jocelyn used to work at a computer lab when we first started dating, and I was like, "You work at a computer lab? What do you do?" She's like, "Oh, yeah. I help people check their email and all this stuff." Jocelyn when I first met her worked two jobs. She worked at Toys"R"Us and in the computer lab. She put together bicycles, believe it or not. Jocelyn Sams: Really did. Shane Sams: She would go to school during the day, put bikes together in the afternoon, and work in the computer labs at night. Needless to say, we didn't have a lot of time to go out on dates and stuff, so sometimes I would go pick her up from Toys"R"Us, and we would go sit in the computer lab. She would sit at her little desk, and I would just sit at a computer over beside her. That's how our romance bloomed. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Rocio Baeza: Nice. Shane Sams: In the dimly lit, musty computer lab of the engineering building at UK. Jocelyn Sams: Actually, it was the chemistry and physics building. Shane Sams: Chemistry and physics, that's right. Jocelyn Sams: But we were way before our time, I just want to say, because we used to chat on Instant Messenger. What was it called, the one that we used? Shane Sams: We used, it was the MSN one. Wait, no, maybe it was AOL Instant Messenger. Jocelyn Sams: I can't even remember. Shane Sams: No. It was MSN. It was the one that used Hotmail. I'm pretty sure. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I can't even remember what it was called, but like ICQ maybe? Shane Sams: It was ICQ. That's what it was, ICQ. Jocelyn was ... Jocelyn Sams: We're dating ourselves now. Shane Sams: Yeah, I know, right. People are going to be like, "What are these people talking about? They don't even know how to use modern computers." Jocelyn lived on the third floor in our dorm, and I lived on the second, and we would talk, like instant messaging on ICQ. Jocelyn Sams: But we were way before our time, I'm just saying. Shane Sams: Way before our time. Jocelyn Sams: Nobody else was doing this. Shane Sams: I remember one day we did this for weeks when we first started dating, and we would just sit there and talk back and forth for an hour or two hours at a time. Finally, it was just like, "You know we're in the same building, right?" Literally, we're 100 feet from each other. But now it's funny because we text each other in our house. I'll be in the living room, and Jocelyn will be in the bedroom, and I'll be like, "What are you doing?" She'll be like, "I'm reading a book. What are you doing?" "Making the kids some Cheerios." Jocelyn Sams: No. I actually like talking via text because you don't argue as much. You can't talk over each other, so it works really well actually. Shane Sams: It removes the emotions from everything. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It really does. Yeah, that was, as my kids say, back in the 19s. Shane Sams: Back in the 19s, turn of the century. Anyway, let's get back on track. Jocelyn Sams: We'll get back to the 2000s, okay. Rocio Baeza: Okay. Shane Sams: Okay. First, that's amazing that you had the courage to do that, and I love the mentality of hey, if it doesn't work, I'll just go back and do what I was doing before. That's exactly the conversation that Jocelyn and I had when we quit our jobs. We're like, "Look, worst case scenario, we go teach again." Kudos for you for even having the courage to go freelance and flip your life in that way. Shane Sams: Now as you've joined the Flip Your Life Community and you've gotten into the Flip Your Life Community, it's more about building a passive version of this, correct? That was your goal was to build some kind of courses or DIY or a membership community based on where local businesses or small businesses could do this without a consultant. Is that what you're doing now? Rocio Baeza: Yes. I think it's important to say that in the freelance space, so you don't really know when your projects are going to trickle in. You might have a sense depending on how active you are with sales, but at the end of the day the timelines are being controlled by the client- Shane Sams: Got you. Rocio Baeza: ... and by the urgency of the client. With building an online business, I want to smooth out those edges so that I had more predictability as to how much I was going to be able to bring in. Shane Sams: Yes. That's why when Jocelyn and I started Flipped Lifestyle and we started teaching online business, we have focused so much on recurring revenue. We get actually knocked for that quite a bit. We get messages all the time like, "Why do you talk about recurring revenue so much? Why do you talk about membership so much?" Shane Sams: It's not just selling digital products. It's even in freelance services, having a steady, consistent monthly fee from somebody. Because if you can't predict your income, you don't really have a steady income. You're making money. You're working, but you can't look ahead and say, "Well, I know my rent's going to be paid next month. I know I can invest in more ads. I know I can invest some time into sales processes," because you can't look ahead and say ... You don't know month to month what you're making. That's why it's so important to create that stable, predictable income. What is your domain name right now? Rocio Baeza: Yes. The online business is GDPRStandUp.com. Shane Sams: Okay. GDPRStandUp.com. Now, you started working on this, I think, maybe about, let's say, six months ago, give or take. You started building the site in the community, putting things together, getting everything outlined. Then you came to Flip Your Life Live, but you did not have this thing launched before Flip Your Life Live, right? Rocio Baeza: I had a website, but I did not have a virtual community that I can open the doors to. Right. Shane Sams: What made you want to come to our live event? What was important for you to be there for that event for the launching and the next steps in your business? Rocio Baeza: Really, I just wanted to be around people that had a similar goal and a similar mindset as I do. I thought that it would be fun going out to an event where I'm looking to educate myself, motivate myself. Just from the way that you guys would describe the event, it sounded like it was going to be very different than the conferences that I would go to back in the corporate days where you basically, you fly into a nice hotel; you're basically in a room for the whole day. You're listening to people speak, and you have this overload of information, but then you fly back home and then everything continues as normal. Rocio Baeza: The way that you guys were promoting the event, it sounded like it would be an opportunity to be around other people that wanted to build an online business and provide us with that space and access to you guys to help us move forward. Shane Sams: Okay. I'm going to plant a question here. Was it different? Was it what you thought it was going to be when you got there, and what did you think about the event? We love hearing this just because we're trying to always be better ourselves, and we want to make the event the best thing possible for our members. What did you think about the event, and was it different? Rocio Baeza: I loved it. We hadn't checked out of the hotel for the event when I had already told my husband that I was going to come back for next year. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I didn't even get an opportunity to tell him how awesome it was, but I told him, "Hey, we have to budget for this for next year, so I'm just letting you know." Shane Sams: What was your favorite part about the event? Was it the content? We had work sessions where we had 30 minutes in between each content session where we were actually putting things in place. We had a big six-hour working dinner where we all built websites and launched products and did that. What was your favorite part about the event? Rocio Baeza: My favorite part was the Q&A after each of the sessions. Shane Sams: Awesome. Rocio Baeza: I liked that it was learn, ask questions and then do in the breaks. By us having the opportunity to ask questions based on our challenges right now, I felt like it was very helpful so that whenever we had those 20 to 30 minute breaks we could put it into practice what we just learned and what we just got guidance on. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely, yes. Well, one thing, I want to back up just a little bit because you told us something before we started talking. You were actually getting ready to have a baby before this event, right? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: And not just a little bit before this event. The event was in September, and you had your baby in August, right? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. The first question that I have is, did you know that you were pregnant when you bought the tickets? Rocio Baeza: Oh gosh, I don't remember when I bought the ticket, but- Shane Sams: It had to be January. Jocelyn Sams: They went on sale in January. Rocio Baeza: January. Then, yes. Yes, I knew that I was pregnant before buying the ticket. Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. I love how you operate because you're kind of like us. You're like, "You know, one-month-old baby, I totally got this." Shane Sams: I got this. Rocio Baeza: Oh my gosh. Shane Sams: Nothing. You did something pretty drastic to make sure that you could be present and at the event though, correct? Rocio Baeza: Yes. What happened was I basically ended up changing my birth plan so that I would be fully present for the Flip Your Life event. Some background here, right now I have a daughter and now my son. My daughter, she was born as a C-section. My doctor said that my son would also have to be delivered as a C-section because blah, blah, blah, that's how you do things here in the US. I remembered it took me a long time for me to recover after the birth of my daughter. I felt like a zombie, and it was very difficult for me basically to get back into the rhythm of things. Rocio Baeza: I realized that if I was going to have a C-section with my son plus my five-year-old plus being a wife plus having my business, it was going to be very difficult for me to be mentally present at the live event. So I ended up firing my doctor, and I found a doctor that was VBAC friendly where they were open to trying delivering the baby naturally so that my recovery time would be smaller and I could actually retain the information at the event. Shane Sams: You had your baby in August, and you came to the event in September, correct? Rocio Baeza: Yes. That's correct. Shane Sams: This is getting way personal. Did you go into labor, or did they induce it on a date or something like that? Rocio Baeza: No. I went into labor. Yeah. Shane Sams: But you planned all this out and like, no, I am firing my doctor and changing my birth plan so I can be at this event and learn how to take my business to the next level? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, my friend. Shane Sams: Is there anybody listening to this right now feeling bad? I feel bad. I was like, man, I should've been working harder for this live event now. Gosh, that's insane. That is an amazing story. Jocelyn Sams: Somebody changed the way their baby was going to be born to come to this event. Shane Sams: To give that baby a better future. That's what it really is, right? You were dedicated like, no, I'm going to do this because I have to. What forethought and planning. So many people are like, "Well, you know, I just can't. I don't have time to plan all this out." You're like, "No, no, no, no. You don't get to say that to me because I changed my birth plan to be at a live event." Shane Sams: This is where we're going with this, tell them what happened after the live event because that's the most important thing. All right, so you had your baby after changing the birth plan. You came to the event fully present and ready to work. You asked questions. You listened. You did the work at the event. What happened when you went home? Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I went home. I knew exactly what are the things that I need to focus on, and I basically said, "Hey, the members aren't going to come to me. I have to go out there and find them. I have to form a beta group so that I can build more momentum here." I would say it was two to three weeks after the live event that I was able to form a beta group with five paying members, and that's how I launched. Shane Sams: Wow. That's amazing. I don't know how to say this without sounding bad about it, but Jocelyn and I talk about sometimes why we actually love our podcast. It's just amazing when I hear a real person with a real family who's really going out there and hustling in her freelance business, makes huge life decisions with the future of her family in mind, and then goes and takes action and it works. Shane Sams: When we get to hear these stories on our podcast, it really inspires us. That is an amazing story of accomplishment, not only just the courage to freelance and the courage to make that decision with your baby and actually take charge of your life, fire the doctor, get on an airplane, go from Chicago to Nashville just to be at a live event, and then to come home and actually take action. You just really deserve that beta group success, and you deserve everything that's going to happen in the future. Shane Sams: Some people want that success. There's a lot of people listening right now. I'm talking to you in your car or on a treadmill or wherever you are right now, you want this story to be yours. You want the result to be yours, but this is what it takes to do it. What she just said is what it really takes to make it happen. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. There are people out there who make excuses. There are a lot of people out there who would say, "Oh, I'm pregnant now, and my baby's just going to be a month old. There's no way that I can go to an event. I'll wait until next year. I'll just go next year." We did have one person who was pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy, and she didn't end up coming. Shane Sams: There are circumstances, of course. Jocelyn Sams: We understand that. I'm not trying to say if you have that kind of circumstance that that's a bad thing, but there are so many people who would let that be a roadblock. And I love it because you just said, "You know what? I'm not going to let this stop me. I'm going to figure out a way." Jocelyn Sams: The people who figure out a way are the people who make it, and the people who are going to say, "Well, I have this excuse, so I'll just wait until next year," or "I don't have the money to make this investment," or whatever, find a way. If you really want something to happen, you will find a way. Shane Sams: I heard a great thing on a podcast the other day where someone said, I can't remember what I was listening to, but they said, "There's a difference between a reason and an excuse." Sometimes there are reasons that delay things, but if we're all honest to ourselves, 80% of things that we use as a reason are actually excuses. Shane Sams: Just being able to take action after the event, it's one thing to do all the work, build your website, go to the live event and come home and do nothing, which is what probably half the people do anyway, but man, you just did it. You got your beta members, and now you know what we say. If you find one, you can find 101. There's other people out there, and you found five. Rocio Baeza: Yes. I found five. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. And not to mention, you still have a newborn. It's not like you came home from this event and was just like, "Okay, well, I'm going to get started. My baby, don't need to worry about him." You still have him. He's still a newborn who probably doesn't sleep well. Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: You launched your beta group with a newborn baby in the house. I'm sure someone's listening right now, and they're like, "Man, I'd start this online business, but I've got a newborn." But here, you can do it. Rocio did it, right? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: I mean, anybody can do it. Rocio Baeza: It's very hard, very many sleepless nights and frustration, but yeah, it's doable. It may take longer with a newborn, but it's definitely doable. Shane Sams: I'll tell you another thing too, and I really want to get into your questions. I want to take this to the next level for you, and we want to help you get this to where it needs to be. But I want to comment on what you just said was very interesting. You're like, "A lot of sleepless nights, a lot of frustration, but it's doable, and it's worth it." Shane Sams: Everybody always tells us, we talk to people, and we hear all of the reasons or excuses. We hear a lot of the reasons, and a lot of times it is young children. Well, first, Jocelyn and I also did this, we had an 18-month-old child when we started our business. We were still very much in the sleepless nights, the terrible twos and all that stuff. You've got two examples right here on this mic, us and you. If two people are doing it and you're not doing it, that's a choice. That's not a reason. Shane Sams: Another thing is, there is never really a time where that frustration and stuff stops. You just replace one phase with another. We're in a very frustrating time of parenting right now ourselves with our 10-year-old and our seven-year-old. It's just all of a sudden it snuck up on us. We felt really confident, I think, last year, and then they changed. Our 10-year-old boy, his mindset, his attitude, the way his brain is processing things totally changed. Our little girl, she's about to turn eight, and it's totally changed. Shane Sams: I would say actually I've been more frustrated as a parent in the past six months with our kid and not being able to figure out what buttons to push, but they know exactly what buttons to push in us because they're thinking now. They're getting strategic. They know what they're doing. I think I'm more frustrated now than I was in that first six months of their life. Rocio Baeza: Wow. Shane Sams: If you're waiting for the right time or your kids to get a little older or things to get easier, I'm telling you from experience right now, you might as well start because it's not going to get an easier. It's just going to get harder. That's not an excuse that you have little kids. It's not an excuse that you got a 10-year-old. You just got to do it anyway or it's never going to work out in the first place. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well, you've had a successful launch after the event, which is awesome, and you are serving your members, I presume, in this beta launch, right? Rocio Baeza: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. The question that I have for you now is, what can we do to help you take this thing to the next level? Rocio Baeza: I would say I'm having a hard time finding the discipline to consistently do the things that are super important. I know that I need to find the discipline to build that consistency and just repeat it so that I can continue to serve my members but also grow that. I think the things that are tugging at me are things like dealing with the newborn, picking up my six-year-old from school, getting her ready in the mornings, washing bottles, doing client work for my freelance business. Rocio Baeza: I find myself creating a checklist of all the things that I have to do. I knock one or two out, but then I'm pulled in all these different directions. When I come back to my to-do list, I usually scratch off that to-do list. I create a new one, and I find myself moving, stopping, moving, stopping. I want to be able to build that discipline to do things more consistently. Shane Sams: This is a hard part of entrepreneurship, and you know this from your freelance gig too, right? You're already feeling that there. It's even harder in online business because at least with the freelance thing, you got to show up for somebody. You're talking to someone. You're moving with people. Sometimes online business can feel really separated, and it's harder. Our brains have not evolved correctly to deal with all this online stuff that we do. Shane Sams: We can't really separate or we can't really keep it in our mind that those people are real sometimes because we only interact with them virtually. It can be harder to have discipline there because there's not an expectation. We don't feel the same expectation in the online business as we do offline or in our family or in our kids. When the kid's crying, you have an expectation to go to their room, but when you know someone's in your forums or you know someone's in a Facebook group or you know they're watching your course, you don't always feel that same tug. Shane Sams: What we've had to do is build in consistencies, build in one thing at a time brick by brick that we do. For example, last year I decided that I was going to email our list every day. That was my goal. I'd say I've succeeded at that goal at least 80% of the time this year. It was the same reason I actually set that goal was I felt all these things that I was having to do, and you said, "I've got this big to-do list. I only get through two of them." Well, that's because two or three of them are actually the only important things. You just have to pick which ones are important and forget the rest. Shane Sams: This year what Jocelyn did really consistently was Jocelyn was in the forums pretty much every day. She also, what do you use to send welcome videos? You do something. Jocelyn Sams: Bonjoro. Shane Sams: Yeah. We use that app called Bonjoro, and everybody that joins Jocelyn sends a welcome video. We picked these two things. She was going to welcome people and be in the forums, and I was going to email our list every day, to contact our list. We just didn't even care if any of the other things were right or wrong because there is no right or wrong. There is no right or wrong answer; there's just an answer. There's just an action step. Jocelyn Sams: I think going a little bit deeper into that is that we had basically two objectives for this year, and those objectives were to get more members, which Shane did by emailing and reminding people to join, and we also had the goal of keeping the members that we already have and making sure that people feel welcome. Jocelyn Sams: One of the things is when you join our community I don't want you to feel like you're just another member to us. I want people to feel like we see you; we know that you joined, and we appreciate you. Those are the things that we decided to focus on for this year. Does that mean that other things aren't important? No, but there's only so much that we can do, and we have to figure out- Shane Sams: There's only so much bandwidth. Jocelyn Sams: ... what are the priorities. What are the two or three things that you have to do, and everything else is just a bonus. Shane Sams: Also too, that's an interesting way that you said that, like what are the two things you have to do? What are the three things you have to do? We get this question a lot, what are my priorities? What is the right thing to do? We don't actually approach it that way. We just say, "What are the two things we're going to do?" I'm not saying that emailing all the time is right. I'm just saying I knew that it was something I would do. Shane Sams: Jocelyn's not saying that hey, these welcome videos are the exact thing you should do and because you heard that on your podcast what you should do. It's just a thing we picked, and we decided last year, right, wrong or indifferent, we weren't going to write a to-do list that was that long. We weren't going to look down at a to-do list every day of 14 things and say we didn't get 11 of them. That's just making yourself feel like a failure. We were going to pick the two things that we knew we would do every day, and we were going to do those. Once we built that capacity, we might add another thing. Shane Sams: Next year, I really, really, really want to add YouTube videos every day. I just want to wake up at 6:00 in the morning, do a 15-minute YouTube video every single day, and that's the thing I add, and then I'll write my email. I think I can do that now. Jocelyn Sams: We did pepper some of that in this year. We tried some of that out. We still post on social media. There are still other things that we do, but we primarily do the two or three things that we set out and said, "This is our priority for this year." Shane Sams: Yeah. It's also people get so caught up in their to-do list. You're caught. You probably feel bad because you're not getting these other things done, and it's starting to weigh on you, right? Rocio Baeza: Right. Shane Sams: But people need to think about what they need to do in more categorical terms and not worry so much what's right and wrong. Because if you think about this, okay, I have an online business. There's really only three things that we have to do. One, we have to promote it. Two, we have to create content. That's just a part of it. Three, we have to interact with our people. It doesn't matter how I do those three things. Okay. Content, well, should I podcast or YouTube channel? It doesn't matter. Should I blog or should I write books? It doesn't matter. Jocelyn Sams: Whatever you'll do. Shane Sams: Just do content. Promotion, should I email my list every day? Should I run Facebook ads? Should I run YouTube ads? Should I go on other people's podcasts? It doesn't matter. Pick one that you're promoting. We promote by going on other people's podcasts, and we promote via email. That's just it. I know we'll do that, so we do it. Should I do webinars? I don't know. Will you do it? Didn't do it. Pick one. Shane Sams: Serving your members, like Jocelyn serves our members by being in the forums. I serve our members by sending them valuable content and motivation in an email. It's the categories that matter, and it's that you're doing things within the categories, not what you're doing. Shane Sams: The problem is you've got people like Gary Vaynerchuk and all these other knuckleheads running around out there telling you to work 80 hours a week, and if you don't do 100 social media posts, you're a failure. And if you're not on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, if you're not on all these things, and that makes people like us feel bad, make you feel bad because you're not achieving ... You're not ticking off the to-do list. That's all a mirage anyway. That's all fake. That's all what they present to the public world. Jocelyn Sams: What I would ask you to do is to identify the two or three things that are most important to you. Maybe it's growing your membership, so you need to figure out a consistent way to do that that makes sense for you to do and that you know that you will actually do. Maybe it is serving your current customers, so you need to figure out a way to do that consistently. Shane Sams: Usually, pick one thing, and until you've mastered it into a habit, don't worry about all the other stuff. You just got to pick the thing that will serve them best. Jocelyn Sams: Then everything else is just a bonus. Does that make you feel a little bit better about being spread too thin? Rocio Baeza: Yes. Shane Sams: Let's talk about your categories though. Let's talk about you, okay? Rocio Baeza: Okay. Shane Sams: Okay. I gave three things there. These are the three things we think are the most important, promotion, content creation and retention. Those are the three big things that you really have. What really is the one thing that you could do to promote your business that you like to do, like to get new people to discover you and to keep reminding people to join your membership? Rocio Baeza: Yeah. I would say doing live short videos on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where my avatars would be hanging out at, so that would be one area. Then the second area for promotion, it would be just running ads. Before I started GDPRStandUp.com, I initially was trying to build a virtual community to serve the entire cybersecurity market. Looking back, that was a very dumb approach. I was trying to serve everyone, but at the end of the day I wasn't serving anyone. Rocio Baeza: It was through that trial that I figured out how to do a Google ad campaign, and I was able to set it up. I ran a few ads, but I've never actually tried that for GDPRStandUp.com. As you're asking me how can I promote my community, Google ads is definitely something that I learned how to do, but I haven't implemented that for GDPR. Shane Sams: Okay. Let's imagine this. You're going to take one day a month and work on Google ad. Then three days a week you're going to do a 15-minute LinkedIn video. That's 15 minutes, let's say, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and one day a month you just got to block it off, go get alone in a coffee shop somewhere and get your Google ad for the month set up. Let it run. You're not going to work on it every day. You're not going to look at it every day. You're going to set it and forget it until next month. Then you're going to evaluate and change. Shane Sams: Now look what we've done. We've got one day, and then we've got a commitment for a 15-minute LinkedIn video on something topical that you can talk about for 10, 15 minutes. This is totally like when I say 15 minutes, I mean you get a piece of paper and pencil, you write down three bullet points you want to address about a topic, and you turn the camera on and just talk. Jocelyn Sams: The way that I do it is on Post-it notes, and I just stick them to my computer. Shane Sams: Okay. This is just content right now. There's promotion, done. That's what you're going to do. That's what you're going to do. All right, now what about content? What other content are you creating beside these videos? Do you blog? Do you do videos, podcasts? What do you do? Rocio Baeza: Yes. I am now doing podcasts. The idea is record an episode, get a transcript, convert that into a blog post. Shane Sams: Perfect. That's what we do. Rocio Baeza: Yes. It took me a while to figure it out and see how simple it can really be, how you can create an explosion of content just doing things strategically. Shane Sams: What is your recording schedule? Do you batch these? Rocio Baeza: Yes. It would be once a month I batch four sessions at a time. Shane Sams: Okay. That's cool. Let's just do that. I think you're feeling a little overwhelmed. It might be better to do every two weeks do three. Because what's going to happen is every month you're going to do six, you see what I'm saying? You won't have to do so many at once. You can just do three and then three and then three. Eventually, you're going to get so far ahead that you can actually take two weeks off and start doing it less again. Shane Sams: What I want you to do is, all right, let's go back. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, let's say you're going to do a LinkedIn video. Every other week on Tuesday and Thursday, just record some podcasts and make it real consistent. That's all you're going to do. That's the only content you're going to create. That's it, period. Shane Sams: You can take those videos from LinkedIn and embed them on your site, but that's it. Don't do anything else. Don't worry about what everybody else says you should be doing, you should be blogging, you should be YouTubing, you should be doing ... You're a podcaster. Just do that for a while. Rocio Baeza: Okay. Shane Sams: Then retention, how are you serving your members? Rocio Baeza: That's rolling out a course on a weekly basis. Shane Sams: Why weekly? Are you just not done with the whole course yet? Rocio Baeza: I am not done with the whole course yet, and I figure that weekly would be a good way of just providing value to the members and holding myself accountable of building a product or a set of products. Shane Sams: When does that end? Rocio Baeza: When does that end? I don't have an end date yet. The interesting thing with GDPR, Shane, is it's still very new. It's something that I'm still learning, so I'm learning. Shane Sams: How many courses? How many videos do you have so far? How many videos do you have? Rocio Baeza: So far I have about eight. Eight. Shane Sams: Okay. You're going to get to 12, and then you're going to change it to where it's a Q&A every two weeks. The Q&A questions will become your content. That'll still be relevant, but you're going to stop trying to figure out what people want. You're going to just let them ask you, and then you're going to tell them. If they ask you a question that you don't know, you'll say, "I'll look that up, and at the next Q&A we'll talk about it." You see what I'm saying? Rocio Baeza: Oh. Shane Sams: I feel like that's where I see your energy drain now. It's coming from what's next, what's next, what's next, and that's overwhelming everything else because you're trying to figure all this out in your course. There has to be an end date on your course. You've got to have the basics covered, and then you've got to figure out what people need. That's why we do Q&As. Rocio Baeza: Got it. Shane Sams: Because I can't guess what Rocio needs. You've got to ask me what you need. Rocio Baeza: Got it. Shane Sams: Once you ask me, I know, and that's no energy on me. If I spent eight hours today trying to guess what you were going to ask us, my energy would be shot for anything else. But I just showed up, and you asked me, and now we got an answer. That's where you've got to get to. Shane Sams: Let's cut it off at 12. Anybody that joins, they can go start taking those 12 courses, and then use Q&As to ask them anything else. That way you got an end date for all that content. Now, if you come up with something and if you see somebody asking you, if you have 10 people in 10 straight weeks ask you the same question, what should you do? Make a course. Rocio Baeza: Build a course. Shane Sams: That way when they ask it the next time, you just say, "Hey, click this link and watch the course." Jocelyn Sams: But for the most part people over-complicate this. You think that you have to come up with some amazing piece of content for a community every month. Chances are they don't even know what's in there to begin with. That happens to us all the time. We'll say, "Oh, well, did you know we have a course about this?" People are like, "No." Shane Sams: No, but they freak out, and they're like, "Oh, that's amazing. I can't believe it's still there." Jocelyn Sams: But people love the Q&As. They have an opportunity to ask a real-time question. You answer it. There's no preparation on your part, and people just show up. It's awesome. We've been doing it for a long time now. Shane Sams: Okay. That's your to-do list, those three things, period. Rocio Baeza: Okay. Shane Sams: Let's go forward with a little clarity, and let's commit to trying this for six months. Let's see how things grow, and then we'll make some pivots and change and evolve as we go. Now it's not about, you don't have to find discipline. You just have to decide what you're going to do and do it, and if it doesn't work, we'll just go back and do something else. Okay? Rocio Baeza: Wow. Okay. That sounds like a plan. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Well, we have had an awesome chat with you today, and we would love to know in the next 24 hours or so, what are you planning to do based on what we talked about here? Rocio Baeza: I'm going to make a list of the last four courses that I'll be recording, and I will create a schedule as to when I will be creating it so that I can make that mental shift to just focusing in on the Q&A. Shane Sams: That is an awesome plan. All right. Before we go, we love to share a Bible verse with everyone out there in the Flipped Lifestyle audience. Jocelyn and I get a lot of inspiration from the Bible for our life and our business, and we're super excited because Rocio has a Bible verse that she would like to share with you guys today. Rocio Baeza: That Bible verse is Proverbs 29:1, and it says, "For people who hate discipline and only get more stubborn, there will come a day when life stumbles in and they break, but by then it'll be too late to help them." Shane Sams: That was a perfect verse for today's discussion as you were actually wrestling with discipline. I think, hey, now we're going to have the discipline and do the things we got to do and keep moving forward, right? Rocio Baeza: There you go. There you go. Yes. Shane Sams: That's a good job. Well done. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in again today to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. What a great talk that we had with Rocio, and I loved how she used Flip Your Life Live as the catalyst not only to get everything prepared but to take action afterward and launch her online business. Shane Sams: We would love for you to have that kind of inspiration, that kind of motivation on your calendar as well, and you can do that by joining us at Flip Your Life Live 2019. It's going to be in Lexington, Kentucky from September 19th through the 21st, and you can find out all of the information about Flip Your Life Live at flippedlifestyle.com/live, flippedlifestyle.com/live. Go there right now, check out everything that we're going to be doing there. Shane Sams: It's going to be an amazing event. We're going to have people from all over the world, all over America there, family-focused entrepreneurs building a better future for their families. That's flippedlifestyle.com/live. We can't wait to meet you in person this September. 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 Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Rocio's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, we help Kahkshan choose a direction for her online business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Kahkshan choose a direction 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. 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 on to the show, and we're talking to someone literally on the other side of the planet today. So let's welcome Kahkshan Ali from Saudi Arabia. How you doin'? Kahkshan Ali: Fine, thanks. Great to be here. Thanks so much, Shane, Jocelyn. Shane Sams: We worked about 30 minutes on pronouncing your name. Even though, we've talked forever. You're so good to me when we talk on coaching calls, 'cause you just let me butcher your name 'cause I'm from Kentucky and I can't speak. Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, no, it's fine. You guys actually said it very well, so thank you, I appreciate that. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, awesome! We love talking to people in our international community. We have people from all over the world, and we love to travel, we love other cultures. We're fascinated by them, so we just love talking to you every single time, and we can't wait to dive in here with you today. Kahkshan Ali: Great! Me too. Jocelyn Sams: All right, let's jump in and talk a little bit about you. Tell us about you, your background, and what you're doing so far online. Kahkshan Ali: Okay. Well, I'm actually a dentist, and I was really interested in doing something online for a couple of reasons. I know there's a lot of information available on the internet, but I felt that trying to come up with a course for moms and parents with young kids. Having something all in one place with some fun videos and some things that are a little bit more interactive. I wanted to try and do something like that just to be able to educate and help people, because I get questions anytime I go to like a dinner party, "Oh, you're a dentist. Oh, do you mind?" So it's like, "Okay." Kahkshan Ali: So I thought it'd be nice to maybe try and provide some valuable information online. Which, is where everyone is going nowadays. Shane Sams: So this is basically, this is a career offshoot type path that you've started with. So there's multiple paths that people start with online business. Some people, they go really into the passion. Some people, they go really into the hobby. Some people, they go into entertainment, but a lot of people, this is how we started out, we looked at our work. 'Cause it was where we knew the most information about a topic, period, when we started. I was a football coach. Jocelyn was a librarian. It was just a natural way to say, "Hey, I know this. I'm trained in this. I can create content fast, and I can try this out." Shane Sams: Probably in the dentist office, just like it is when we go anywhere in a business setting, when people find out what you do they think that you have all the answers. Then they always ask you the same questions. I would guess you were getting the same questions from every parent and every kid, and you're like, "Man, I could totally make a course about this, and tell everybody what to do with their kids and their dental hygiene", right? Kahkshan Ali: Right, exactly. Yeah, the same thing. I thought to start off it would be easier and, as you said, faster. Just because this is my field of expertise. I've been a dentist for 25 years now. So I thought this would be a good place to start, and then could move on after I did this to see what else I can maybe try. 'Cause I do have other hobbies, and other passions and things. I do love dentistry, but then the future, there's so many other things that there's so many other possibilities when you're doing online digital courses and stuff. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. I want to go back just a little bit further, because people who are listening to this might be thinking, "Okay, well, she doesn't sound like she lives in Asia." So you have a very American accent, so tell us a little bit about that. How did you get to where you are now? Where all have you traveled and lived in the world? Shane Sams: How long have you been in Saudi Arabia too? Kahkshan Ali: Well, I've actually been working here for 20 years, but my family, we've been living here for about 43 years. So we've moved here when I was in fourth grade. My dad got a job. He actually had two options. We were in the states, so that's why I have the American accent, 'cause we actually moved from America here.- Shane Sams: Since you were four, right? Kahkshan Ali: So we lived in the Midwest. Shane Sams: You were in fourth grade, right? When you moved from here? Kahkshan Ali: No, actually I was born in Pakistan, and we moved to the states when I was three and my dad was getting his training. He was an otologist, so he was doing all his residencies and stuff. So we lived in Illinois for three years, Massachusetts for a year, Buffalo, New York for a year. Then when my dad was done with his training he got a job offer in either Louisville, Kentucky, believe it or not, or Saudi Arabia. I actually wanted to move to Kentucky, because I wanted horses. My dad's like, "Well, if we move to Kentucky, you can maybe have a horse." I'm like, "Oh yeah!" Kahkshan Ali: We were just planning to move here just for two years, just to kind of try it out, and also be able to travel and see other places and stuff. My parents ended up ... We liked it, and we've been here now 43 years. So I've been going back and forth between the states for all my training and education, and stuff like that. I actually have been living and working for the last 20 years here. Shane Sams: Wow, what an amazing life experience to be able to bounce all over the world like that. I remember when we first met you and you first joined the community, and every time you would post, or we would leave a message, or we would talk on a call, it would be like, "Where are you now?" 'Cause you were just like bouncing back and forth from the United States over to there. You were traveling so much for trainings and conferences,- Kahkshan Ali: Oh, that's right. That's right. Shane Sams: ... and other stuff, I never knew where you were. I just assumed we were talking in an airplane in transit somewhere, basically. Let me ask you this. We're gonna go some different directions later in the podcast. You did pick this direction, and you said something very interesting, 'cause you wanted to go in and just start doin' something, and figuring it out. So many people won't do that, because they want to pick the perfect idea, but what have you learned since you just got started? Shane Sams: You started with the dental thing, you wanted to go, there's other things you might go into. You might push this a little more down different directions, but how has it been a benefit for you to just get started even though this wasn't your quote/unquote home run, final idea you may ever do? Kahkshan Ali: Well, what's been so great is that you guys have so much information available on your website and everything. So that was one of the things that's really been helping, because as you said, I'm thinking to do other stuff later, and partly maybe even do some coaching. You can use all of the material and everything really for anything. Once you get all the tech stuff out of the way, and how to setup and do one course, then you can just do other courses even if they're in different subjects, or something. Kahkshan Ali: So to me, that's what's been so beneficial, because even though I was starting off trying to figure out what I wanted to do, now I've just realized that for someone like myself, some people already know exactly what they want to do. They want to stick with it, they've got their business, but for someone like myself, who really was still trying to figure things out, this has been so helpful- Shane Sams: Just to start and basically figure out all- Kahkshan Ali: ... just to start, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: ... the tech, and all the courses. 'Cause the building blocks are the same. It doesn't matter what you're doing online. You're gonna create a video, you're gonna create a handout that goes with the video. Once you know how to do that, it might take you a few months the first time, but then it takes you a month the second time, right? Kahkshan Ali: Exactly, and you guys have everything. You've got how to do an ebook. How to, as you said, the funnels. How to do WordPress. Everything is here in one place. Which is amazing, because before I was trying to find things all over, and it was getting really frustrating. So when I came across Flip Your Lifestyle, I'm like, "Oh my gosh! It's all here in one spot!" It was awesome. I was like, "Yes! Finally!" It's such a timesaver. Shane Sams: How did you come across? There's a little delay to you guys in the podcast today, 'cause we're so far apart. So we may talk over each other a little bit. We'll try edit it out, but that's okay. How did you find us? Just listen in on another interview, or in an article, or like ...? Kahkshan Ali: It was an article I was doing on Google search. I don't even remember what words I had typed in. Something came up about 'Oh, there's these two teachers'. I think there was a couple articles in some of the news. I was reading the article, and it said, "Oh, Shane and Jocelyn. They've been doing this for ... And they were two teachers, they've quit their jobs, they're doing really well financially, and their lives have totally changed." I thought, "Oh, wow! That's really great. That's the great success story." It wasn't just one article, there was several places, 'cause you don't wanna be ... Kahkshan Ali: Obviously there's so much out there, and you're like, "Oh, is that really true? Is it something that's gonna work for me? Is it just working for them?" And that kind of thing. There was multiple places where I was finding information about you guys, and I'm like, "Okay, so this sounds good." Then when I went to the website and I saw it, I'm like, "Ah, okay. This is the real deal." Shane Sams: It's amazing to me that we live in a world ... I'm actually preparing a talk for something I plan on speaking at next year, and it's about rural opportunities; because in Kentucky, and in a lot of rural places around the world really, the world is changing so fast, a lot of old legacy industries like coal, and fossil fuels, even just factory based things, a lot of things are changing and leaving, and being replaced by robotics and all of this stuff. There's a really big void. People don't understand that there's, or that people don't see opportunity because all the old ways are changing, right? Shane Sams: One of the things that we're talking about lately is, guys, we live in literally the most remote place in Kentucky. We're surrounded right now by a forest and mountain. I'm looking out my window, I don't see other buildings. We are as rural as it gets, right? We have this ability to create, right here, we're connected to the internet, and reach out and someone on the other side of the planet in Saudi Arabia, can find us, connect with us, and work with us. The same thing where you are, you are in another country, but you literally could have a thousand clients in America, and it could all be done from your living room. Shane Sams: It's just amazing that we live in a place where you can find each other, we can connect with each other. You can research and make sure each person is legit, right? Kahkshan Ali: I know, exactly. Shane Sams: All that opportunity is just out there if people would just take it. Kahkshan Ali: Well, I think that's what I also really liked was like in the beginning when you're doing the blueprint that you guys offer, what I loved was that the first thing you did was having the big goals, and dream bold dreams. You really have to have that right mindset, and start taking that action. You have to go through that step first. It's really easy to kind of poo-poo, and be like, "Oh well, you know, do I really need to do that? I'll just move on. I'm gonna just move on to the tech stuff. Let me just ..." Kahkshan Ali: So I really like the fact that you had that as the first part of the blueprint. I thought that was so helpful to write everything down. It really gives you that clarity of what you really want to do. Shane Sams: You can't hit what you don't aim at, right? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: So you gotta aim first, basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yup. You gotta know your destination before you can decide on the journey to get there, and I think a lot to times, like you said, people skip over that step and it's so critical. Let's talk a little bit about that. Let's dive in to what you want. What is your ultimate goal with starting this business? Shane Sams: Because you are a dentist, you've had a great career. You're within a great career, right? Kahkshan Ali: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: So by any stretch of the imagination, or anyone looking outside in, professionally you're successful. What makes you want this to be your next step, and where do you want it to go? What is your destination? Kahkshan Ali: I'm actually planning on leaving dentistry in about a year and a half. The reason being, it's been a great career, I've really enjoyed it, but I've been working in a hospital as an employee. Which is great, but I've got an eight year old daughter, I feel like she's really missing out on mom spending more time with her. She's really saying it, and things like that. So to have that freedom, to be self-employed, to be able to spend more time, and to be able to work from anywhere in the world, that's what I was looking for. I thought, "What can I do that gives me that capability?" Kahkshan Ali: That's the reason that I'm actually trying to get courses and other things, to try and make a passive income eventually. So that's my primary goal when I joined Flip Your Lifestyle, was to figure out how to do it, get all the steps, and then hopefully make that a success. My daughter, like your son, I think you were saying, she enjoys ... She's like, "Come on, let's do some YouTube videos, mom." So she enjoys that kind of interaction and doing that stuff with me, and I thought, "Well, that's really nice that's something we can do together also." So building on that. I thought, "Why not?" Kahkshan Ali: So that's what I'm planning to do, right now, as I said, to do the dentistry. First of all because I do want to give something back to people, and just I know that there's a lot of sometimes misinformation, or people just don't really know where to find it. Just like that's what I liked about your website was everything's in one space. I'd like to build up, hopefully, and have everything in one place. One location for people to be able to find answers quickly, easily, and in a bright, more video format versus just reading. Shane Sams: Sure. Jocelyn and I were talking about this. We were taking Anna Jo to her cheerleading team's practice last night, and we were talking on the way like, "What is the real appeal?" It is making money, and it is doing all those things, but the universal truth for everybody in the world is time and control of that time; and like you said, control of that location. That's really what the value is of what we do, is we get to work from anywhere. We get to work from home, and we get to control that time with our loved ones. Last week, my mom, I got a phone call, and my mom had fallen and broken her back. When we got there, me and my oldest brother got there first. Shane Sams: We found her laying on the floor, and she was paralyzed. She was completely paralyzed. She couldn't move. Kahkshan Ali: Oh my god. Shane Sams: Yeah, and this was a Monday. It was crazy because for the last year Jocelyn and I have been wrestling with starting a homeschool for Isaac and Anna Jo. This was the first day of homeschool. We had just- Jocelyn Sams: We finally pulled the trigger, and then the very first day- Shane Sams: The very first day. Jocelyn Sams: ... we get a call two hours later that his mom is laying on the floor. Shane Sams: It was unbelievable. Kahkshan Ali: Oh my gosh! Shane Sams: We had just finished with our second lesson ever, and my mom called me on her phone and said, "I've fallen. I'm in the floor. My back's ... Something's wrong." So I throw on my sweatsuit, I race over there, find my mom. We call an ambulance, we take her to the emergency room, and they're like, "Her back is broken. We have to drive her to this other hospital. It's about an hour away. You can't go with her, we'll meet you there." I went with her, and I ... Was I there for three days, Jocelyn? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I think you stayed three days. Shane Sams: Yeah, I was there for three straight days. On the way there I shot a message to our assistant, said, "Cancel all of our calls, we've got an emergency." Then it hit me as I was driving back on the fourth day here. Where I kind of made the tag, and I traded out with another one of my brothers so that I could come home and whatever. Then when I got there, as soon as I got there, I went and got a hotel room. Didn't even think twice about it. That was like the home base for everybody to take a shower and go back and forth. I stayed with mom one night, and I realized driving home, online businesses and self-employment gave me the freedom to stop and take care of that, right? Shane Sams: It could've been a disaster. It could have been scheduling work. It could have been not having enough money for the hotel room. It could have been all of these things, but all of the stuff that we did five years ago, where you are now, figuring this out. What direction are we gonna take? Led to that moment, where not only did we have so much control of life that we could homeschool our kids, and work from our living room, but when someone needed us, we could be there. That was our big goal, and our bold dream when we started. Was to be able to be there when someone needed us, right? Shane Sams: It's just an amazing thing to see. We always hear that over and over again. It doesn't matter how much money people want to make, or what their goals are, it always comes down to that. My eight year old daughter needs me. I wish I could be there more for my mom and dad. If there's not a motivation to make online business work, that's it. That's what you gotta move onto to make it happen. Kahkshan Ali: Exactly, yeah. When you're being asked of your why's, I think that's what really it is for most people, is having that freedom of time and being able to, as you said, to be there for your loved ones when you need to be. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Well the cool thing is, that you know where you're going as far as you have a goal, you have a destination in mind. So let's talk about actually getting there. I know that you've been doing a lot of training, and that you're just preparing and trying to figure out what you wanna do. Let's talk a little bit about what's holding you back right now. What kind of fear, or mindset struggle, or obstacle is holding you back and making you kind of paralyzed from moving forward? Kahkshan Ali: Originally it was that whole perfectionism, it's just so hard to get rid of. Kind of like, "Oh, well, it's gotta be perfect, and I've got to do everything perfectly. If it's not perfect I can't move forward, and I'm just gonna stay paralyzed, basically, unless I figure it out." So that's what was originally was holding me back, just trying to do everything just the right way. Instead of just saying, "Okay, you know what? I can take some action, even if it's imperfect action, but that's what I need to do to keep moving forward." Jocelyn Sams: I think that that's really interesting, because I feel the same way, and I think that this is partly due to ... I don't know if I want to say our upbringing and our education, but in the education system that I grew up in, and I assume you probably did too, it's like everything is graded. So you know how close you are to perfection. Does that make sense? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I was just thinking about this. As you grow up, and you're in school, you make an A, and I don't know if you're anything like me, I assume that you probably were, you want to get all A's. You want to make sure that you're checking all the boxes, and you're doing everything correctly, right? Kahkshan Ali: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Then when you get into entrepreneurship, or starting to build a business, there is no checklist. You can find a checklist, but it's not necessarily right. You get into a situation where there are a lot right answers instead of one right answer like you've grown up to know your entire life. I think that's hard for some people. That's hard for me, because I like to know the expectation, and work towards the expectation in the structure that has been set out for me. When you get into this stuff, there is no structure set out for you. So you sort of have to pave your own way. That's hard for a lot of people. It's hard for me. Shane Sams: It's also like, look at your background. You're a dentist. You kind of need some perfectionism there. Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, exactly! Shane Sams: "You know, I got like four of your teeth straight, but this one's a little crooked, but you know, it ain't gonna matter. Kahkshan Ali: Right. Oh my god, I know! Shane Sams: "It's just gotta be done."- Jocelyn Sams: And there's probably- Shane Sams: That doesn't work there! Jocelyn Sams: ... there's probably some ambiguity in dentistry, just like there is in everything else, but for the most part there's probably a set set of procedures that you follow for the most part, right? Kahkshan Ali: Exactly, and I love doing cosmetic dentistry. That's my favorite. It's just so gratifying to have people who hated their smiles, weren't smiling, and it's just tremendous. I'm so picky about when I'm doing that kind of work. So then to come to this, and be like, "Okay, now what do I do?" Shane Sams: There's a fundamental thing there you said about that word ... I've never thought about this, but this is fascinating what Jocelyn just said, 'cause I never thought about that either. We always have this perfection that we're trying to push up to in society, and then when you're an entrepreneur, that goes away, and you get to define it, right? But that word cosmetic, cosmetic, you do have to go into that perfectionism. You gotta get it as close to perfect as possible to make it look good for the person. Kahkshan Ali: Right. Shane Sams: But what we do online, and what we do to help people solve problems is not always cosmetic. Sometimes it's really fundamental. Some people it's cosmetic, "I've got to do this", but for my mom last week, it was like, "Oh my god, let's not end up in a wheelchair." That's mission one. Well, mission one is don't die. Mission two is don't end up in a wheelchair. Mission three is, can she get up and walk around her house by herself? When we're solving big problems, sometimes that's where the perfectionism doesn't have to be there, it's just, "What's the next step? What's the next improvement? How can we get a little better each day, and then how can we help someone else get a little better each day?" Shane Sams: We do this all the time because we're talking to you today about we're getting ready to fork that road in the direction, right? We got a message last night from a member of the Flip Your Life community who just went over a million dollars. They crossed over the dollar amount and said, "I just made my first million dollars online- Jocelyn Sams: Which is amazing. Shane Sams: ... through the Flip Your Life community." So their next step is something totally different than your next step.- Kahkshan Ali: Exactly. Shane Sams: The cosmetic person is totally different than the fundamental person who just needs a change, right? Our job as leaders, and your job when you start leading people is just to say, "Hey, what do they need from me? What's the next step for them? That's what I got to give them. I don't need to give them my version of perfect, or the world's A+, 100, or anything else, it's just the next step. If you can do that, you can make an income for yourself, you can spend more time with your daughter, and you can help a ton of people. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we're definitely going to work on overcoming that, and knowing that perfectionism is one of those things that really, most of the time, is just an excuse for people not to move forward. So knowing that, what else can we help you with to help you move this thing forward? Kahkshan Ali: For me, honestly, at this point I probably need a little bit more help with tech stuff, but that's why I've got that coaching I'm getting from you. It's just fabulous, I can just pick up the Voxer, and call like, "Help me. I can't figure this out." Shane Sams: It's awesome that you're in the all-access program too, 'cause we talk over an app called Voxer, which is Asynchronous communication back and forth. When you're dozens of timezones away, that's really beneficial. Kahkshan Ali: Although I'm not sure if Shane appreciates it, I think it was Thanksgiving, I'm like, "Shane, I hope you're not at dinner yet, but ..." He's like carving the turkey. Shane Sams: I love it. I love it 'cause I was bored waiting on dinner. So I had something to do. Jocelyn Sams: We work all the time, because we love what we do. So it doesn't really feel like work. Sometimes you hear from us on holidays ... Shane Sams: I rode to practice last night, and I was looking at my schedule all day with homeschool and everything else, and I looked at my schedule, and I said, "When am I gonna talk to all the Voxer people?" And Jocelyn goes, "While driving to practice." I'm like, "Oh, yeah." So I just penciled it in, in the car. Kahkshan Ali: I think, for me, now would be like the course is almost finished, and then just to learn, because even now when I'm reading stuff on the website, and looking at all the different information you have I'm just trying to actually how to get the sales funnel, how to get people to it. For me, that's like the next area that I'm not really too sure. How do you get that membership list? I understand that you want to try and get people's emails and stuff, and get a list so you can send them more information. I think that's, if I've got it in my mind, if that's the correct steps. Kahkshan Ali: I think for me that's, right now I just want to learn all the ... as we were talking before, just learn all the steps. Just 'cause it's totally new to me, this area, just be able to on that once first short, whatever course, just get it out there and start just finding out. In terms of, I'm not so worried about whether it's working or not working, but just to know that there's actually people out there who I'm reaching. Even if it's a small number to start off with. Shane Sams: I love the way you asked that question, because, and this is true for everybody, it sounds like you're really confused about what even to ask for help next, right? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, kinda. Shane Sams: And that's okay. So many people think they got to figure it out, but they can't even figure out what they're supposed to ask to do next. It's kind of like when you go, you probably see this in your dentist, you go to the dentist, and you're like, "My tooth hurts, I think. Something's hurtin' in my mouth. I don't know what's goin' on." And they don't even know what to ask you, like, "Hey, do you think it's a cavity, or could it be my jaw muscles are tight and causing tooth pain?" They don't know what to even ask, and then that's why you have us! Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, exactly! Shane Sams: 'Cause what you're saying, you got to the point where you're like, "I kind of want to know people are looking for this, or whatever." But what I really heard, 'cause I've heard a thousand people ask me that same question in that same way, is, "I've got to figure out how to go find people for my product, because eventually I'm probably not gonna sell this dentist product, but if I have the skill of creating traffic and driving it into a sales funnel, I know that I can sell that other thing too." That's really where you're at right now. Kahkshan Ali: Yes, yeah. Shane Sams: The basic flow of everything that goes find a problem you can solve, create the solution, or at least outline the solution that you know you can create, right? That's the faster way to it, but whatever. Then create the product, and then you go find existing traffic who is looking for your product. Then you create something that you can throw in front of them to make them stop, right? Imagine there's a road going by, and you're like, "Man, everybody in the car driving on this road is exactly my perfect customer, but the problem is they're all going 80 miles an hour past me and they don't even see me." Shane Sams: So we have to figure out a way to insert a red light, or insert a stop sign, or least put a yield up to slow em' down enough to take a glance in our direction. That's where you're at now is that, "How do I get in front of existing traffic? How do I go out and say, 'Where are my people already hanging out? Where are my people already searching for information, and how can I do something to stop them?'" If the same reason there's big trade shows, and ten thousand people will show for a ... I don't know. Jocelyn used to go to trade shows for commercial dishwashers. Jocelyn Sams: It was super exciting. Shane Sams: It was exciting. Jocelyn Sams: Actually they were food shows and they were kind of exciting. Shane Sams: Yeah, it was. Jocelyn Sams: 'Cause there was food everywhere. Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, food shows I can ... Yeah, I'd like some food shows. We just had a chocolate ... I couldn't go to it, and I was so bummed, but they were having this big huge chocolate expo here in Riyadh. Shane Sams: You can just eat all day, you know what I mean? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah. Shane Sams: Then over in the corner of the chocolate expo was Jocelyn's commercial dishwasher example. Jocelyn Sams: Which, was clearly the coolest space. Shane Sams: Clearly the coolest space. Basically she knew that there were people there that owned restaurants that needed that dishwasher, and she was the marketing coordinator. So that's where the traffic was, and now she's gotta figure out a way to make some of that traffic stop. Well the first thing she's got to do is be in the arena. So she goes and buys a booth. She puts her dishwasher in, then she's gotta figure out a way to stop them. How do you get the people that are literally walking by to stop and look at your thing? Shane Sams: That's your next step is find where those people are looking for this stuff, right? It might be YouTube, it might be Google, it could be podcasts, it could be a thousand different places online, right? Then you have to figure out how to make them stop and look at you. That's where promotion, ads, and things like that come in. Anytime you get your product then the next step is find your people. I love that this time of year ... Football coaches are a weird creature. They're so busy from August to November, they're like, "Nothing matters but the football season." Shane Sams: Well last week a hundred people joined one of my football groups on Facebook. You know why? They all got beat, and they're playbooks didn't work. So guess what they're doin' right now? They're looking for Facebook groups about new playbooks. I know where they are, I just have to get them to stop, and that's kind of where you are right now. So that's what we gotta do next for this particular business, is figure out where people are looking for this information, and how can we get in front of them? Kahkshan Ali: Well, that sounds ... Yeah, as you said- Shane Sams: How does that sound, honestly? Kahkshan Ali: That sounds awesome, because as you said, even just the terminology for me, when I hear you talking about, "Okay, well we've got get traffic into the sales funnel", I'm just like, "Okay, all of that stuff ..." I'm getting a little bit used to hearing a little bit more, but when I first had joined I'm like, "Sales funnel?" I'm going, "Funnel?" All I could think, honestly, it just sounds so ... It's kind of embarrassing to say this, 'cause I feel like I'm an educated person, but I thought of, I'm just like, "The only funnel I know are funnel cakes at a carnival." Shane Sams: They're delicious, by the way. Kahkshan Ali: I'm like, "Funnels?" Or like, "Tornado funnels? I don't know. What is a funnel?" Shane Sams: We put the fun in funnel. That's what me and Jocelyn do, right? It is confusing, all those terms. That's why we use analogies so much, because it is really hard to wrap your brain around what ... I didn't know any of that either when we started. What was it, six years ago now? We didn't know what sales funnel was. We didn't know what email marketing was. We use all these terms, and throw them around like they're easy now, but nobody's really ... you're clueless on it. Even from that trade show example, most people have not been to a trade show, but everyone's been to a local carnival, or an amusement park. Shane Sams: There's people there wanting to spend money to have fun. So what is the guy at the dart booth with balloons do? "Hey come over here! You wanna have fun! Five dollars, you can throw five darts at the balloons!" Or the guy you by, it's like, "Five bucks, two shots, hit a three pointer. If you hit one you win a basketball." That's what you're doing is you're going where people are already ready to do what you want them to do, and then you just say, "Hey! Look over here." That's all marketing is. It's getting people's attention, but you want to get the right people's attention. Shane Sams: If Jocelyn took her commercial dish washing booth to a football coach's clinic, she set up over in the corner, and she was like, "Hey, head coaches, come over here and look over at my booth!" She would never sell a commercial dishwasher at a football clinic, right? So you just gotta pick the right place you're trying to get traffic, or you don't listen to everybody and say, "Facebook's the greatest thing ever." Well, maybe not for your audience. Google's the greatest thing ever. Maybe not for your audience. So we got to pick the right place, and find out where your people actually are, and then we create the quote/unquote sales funnel that funnels them down to your product. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, once we get that research, and you figure out where you're gonna go as far as finding people, what is your next step after that? Kahkshan Ali: I feel that this is really gonna help, because I'm planning on getting certified in high-performance coaching through the Brendon Burchard group. I'd actually like to then use all the stuff that I'm learning to probably set up some courses for my clients, because other than just the actually one-on-one coaching calls that I would be doing with them, I'd like to have an area for them to go and ... Oh my god, I'm just coming up with this idea right now, actually. I'm having a sort of A-ha moment, which is great talking to you guys. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Kahkshan Ali: Yeah. I'm just like, "Oh my god, I'm getting like ... Oh this is awesome!", because I've been going through the coaching, I've been getting a lot of training done and everything. You don't even have to take notes, but I find that little missing piece for me, I'm also a visual person, and I really enjoy looking at YouTube's, tutorials, and videos. I've got lots of things, I've signed up at Udemy. So for me, if I was a client, I think I would really like to have a place where modules are set up with some of the information that I'm getting from my coach, I can review it and see stuff visually, and really be able to master that material even better. Shane Sams: Yeah, and who do want to coach in your coaching practice? In High-performance ... What is it called, High-performance ...? Kahkshan Ali: High-performance Coaching, yeah. Shane Sams: High-performance Coaching is from a guy named Brendon Burchard, who's a really great speaker, and he trains people with really evidence-based, scientific-based processes for coaching people in any field. Whether it's business, or whatever. Who are you wanting to coach when you set this up? Kahkshan Ali: I want to coach people who either want to change careers, or they're at a point in their lives where they want some change. 'Cause for me personally, that's what happened, and also some of the other people that I met who've gone through the coaching program, things just weren't feeling right. There's another lady that I know that's done the coaching also. She was a successful musician. She works in an orchestra in one of the cities, so all that was well and good. Just like myself. Professionally I'm happy, but as I've said, I want to move on now to something else. So to have coaching available for people who really just need some clarity as to what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Kahkshan Ali: I also don't really feel that it's ... For me personally, it can happen, 'cause I'm talking to a lot of younger people also. I don't think it necessarily is people who are older, who are mid-career, or end of their careers. I think even for younger people nowadays, there's so much opportunity out there. It's kind of like the shiny ball syndrome. It's like, "Oh, I could do this. I could do this." Even just to help the younger age group. Shane Sams: So basically take a younger person ... Basically you've done this for 20 years, and you're like, "Man, I want to do something different, but what if I could catch somebody before they were doing something different, and they could make a different choice, or whatever." You want to have a 30 year old person make that decision instead of a 50 year old person make that decision. Kahkshan Ali: Yes, and really be able to help them make sure ... There's so much pressure that comes sometimes from parents, or family, or society, just whatever, things we've built up in our minds. I just want to really make sure that people, when they're choosing what they want to do, that they really, truly are happy and passionate about it. It can really help them be able to choose everything. It's not just looking at, let's say, a good income. You can make some great incomes, but then you might still be a nine to five employee. Is that what you want? Kahkshan Ali: Everyone's different. Everyone's comfort levels are different with different things; or do you want a lifestyle like the one that we're pursuing with doing digital. Just to be able to give them the choices and help them to get that clarity, and pick what they really want to do. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. I guess the question that I would have is, where does this fit in? Is this something that you plan to do soon, or are you going to try to finish your other project first? Kahkshan Ali: I'm actually gonna try to finish the other project first, because my training is not gonna be happening till April. Shane Sams: And we're talking right now in December of 2018. Kahkshan Ali: So in April of 2019 I'm gonna be getting certified. I'm not gonna be able to do any coaching until the certification process is over. Shane Sams: But you really want to be prepared out of the gate 'cause you're working on this stuff right now. This has been about a six month process. You're learning all the tech. You wanna finish learning everything, and then get onto the point, right? Kahkshan Ali: Right, and just like you said, if I learn how to do sales funnels, and marketing, all that stuff how to get traffic so that when I do set up the next course, all that stuff I'll be able to do that much faster. Shane Sams: Okay. This is a good example then of putting the thing you want later until you're ready to actually go get it, and doing what you do now. I would set a goal at least eight weeks out from when you know you're gonna get certified and be confident. This is more, I wouldn't call what you're wanting to do Coaching as much as Mentorship. There's a difference. Mentorship, Coaching, and Consulting are three totally different things. This is more of a mentorship thing, it's letting someone be able to get that 20 year head start based on your wisdom, right? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah. Shane Sams: Before you do that. So you should probably set a goal about eight weeks out. Which would be what, February-ish? Of, "I need to transition, not away from this thing, but this thing needs to be on its own and done so that I can start building everything up." 'Cause you don't want to wait until you're ready to something to do something, you want to have the foundation built. It's like you don't show up for the first game and just go out and try to play, you practice it before the first game, right? Kahkshan Ali: Right. Shane Sams: So you're ready for the first game. Maybe that would be a good goal to set here towards the end of this podcast, is look, let's finish learning all the things you need to learn. Let's create an eight week plan from now that says, "Okay, I'm gonna learn these remaining skills that I want to learn. I'm gonna spend X time on each one of them, and then at this point this thing is gonna go into more of an automation, not back burner, but side burner kind of thing. I now have learned everything that I need to know. I go finish my certification and then I launch the next day." It's not like, "I wait till June." Shane Sams: It's like, "I got it in April. My website's set up. My thing's set up. My payment's set up. I've started already writing blog posts and building traffic for it, and I am now ready to take my first customer immediately." Right? Kahkshan Ali: Yeah. Shane Sams: If you plan for that then out of the gate you can go get those first four or five clients, you're ready to rock, and you can start promoting it from there. Kahkshan Ali: That's great, thank you, because I would have been like, "Oh, okay, well ..." Then that's that perfectionism part coming back in, like you gotta just do it in a certain way, and, "Well, I can't do anything until I finish my certification." Kind of thing. Shane Sams: That's like saying a lawyer doesn't get know what law firm they're gonna work at until after graduation. They all know! They've already been hired! 'Cause they just tell them, "I'm graduating whenever." So same thing here. What's the saying? You gotta prepare for rain. You got to plant the seeds now so when it rains the seeds will grow, and it's gonna rain sometime in April. Jocelyn Sams: All right. We've had a very interesting conversation today, and I can't wait to see what you do next. With that in mind, let us know what is the one thing that you plan to do within the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today? Kahkshan Ali: I think for me, the next step really would be to go back to the Flip Your Lifestyle blueprint, and I just want to review some of the stuff regarding sales funnels and the marketing aspect. Also, how to find where my people are. Shane Sams: There is a training in there on traffic. Kahkshan Ali: Yes, exactly. Shane Sams: There's another one about researching first. There's a key word research video, and then the traffic video. So you can go through it in that order. Kahkshan Ali: Yeah, and then there's that sales funnel master class you guys have too. I want to do that in the next 24 hours, review all that information, and then to Voxer you, and be like, "Okay, now what?" Shane Sams: That's what it's there for! Awesome. Well, listen, this has been an amazing conversation. One thing we love about you is you are an action taker, and you are patiently unstoppable force moving forward. You're a patient unstoppable force moving forward towards your goal, and that's really what it takes to succeed. It's gonna be one of those situations where you're eventually gonna get to a tipping point, and people are gonna look up and go, "Wow! An overnight success!" They're not gonna realize, "No, it took a long time to be an overnight success!" Shane Sams: So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, just being so open and transparent, and just sharing your journey with everybody else 'cause I know this podcast is gonna help somebody out there that's listening. Kahkshan Ali: Well, thanks so much for having me, and yeah, I hope that someone who's just starting out like myself will be able to realize that this is a great community, a great place to get all that help. So thank you so much. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Hey look, maybe you're like Kahkshan, and you don't know exactly what to do next. Maybe you can't even figure out the questions that you need to ask to take your online dreams to the next level. Well, we can help you inside of the Flip Your Life community. Not only do we have amazing courses covering almost any topic in online business, but we also have a super active community forum. Jocelyn and I do two live member calls every single month, and you can come in and get the help you need. Shane Sams: You can ask the questions that you need to ask, or maybe even get the help coming up with the questions you need to ask so that you can do what's best for your family. All you have to do to start a 30 day free trial right now is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/free. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle.com/free, and you can start your free membership today and get the help you need to take your dreams to the next level. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that is all the time we have for now. So until next time, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye! Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, S&J resume their recap of 2018, the good, the bad, and the future. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we recap 2018, the good, the bad, and the future. 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 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, 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 this is part two of our 2018 year in review. On Tuesday this week we did part one, and we talked all about all the things that we got to do this year that were good. We really focused on the highlights of 2018 for us, and I hope that that inspired you to go back and look at your own year. You know, sometimes we forget how good the year really was, and we forget about things that we might've done like last January of February. I've got a friend of mine, and he always goes back to Facebook, and he looks all the way back into each month, then he writes down all of the great things that he did. So that he can kind of remember like, "Man, this was a great year. Yeah, there was one or two things that kind of stood out that might've not went right, but man look at all these amazing things that we did." Shane Sams: So go back and look at all the good things that happened to you this year. It's really important to kind of reflect back on that. Jocelyn Sams: I saw this thing on Facebook the other day where every week you're supposed to write down the best thing that happened that week, and then you put them all in a jar, and on the very last day of the year you get them all out and you read all the cool things that happened through the year. I thought that was a really good idea, even for us, because we just are typically not very good about just looking back and remembering all the good things. Shane Sams: But we also know that it's not all sunshine and rainbows out here in the adulting world, and there were some things, there are always things that go wrong, or go bad, and it's also important to remember those as well because you can reflect back and look at the mistakes that you made, look at the things that kind of went off the railroad tracks and ask yourself, "Did I have control over this? Are there things that I could do differently, or landmines that I can avoid in the future so that next year can be even better." That's what we're going to focus on for today's podcast is we are going to first look back at some of the bad things that happened. Some of the things that we did wrong, because we make a lot of mistakes, and we want to share those with you guys as a part of our journey and a part of your journey too, and let you know that you're not alone. Shane Sams: You're not the only person messing up this online business stuff. Just today, I was trying to create the sales page for Flip Your Life Live 2019, which is on sale now at flippedlifestyle.com/live, and I had two tabs open and they were both the editor on the sales page. I accidentally saved the one I was not editing in, and I basically erased six hours of work writing copy for this sales page, because I closed all the tabs and everything else and I lost it. And I didn't know how to get it back, so I had to sit down and do the whole thing over. So lest you think Flipped Lifestyle world is a mistake free world, you are wrong. It is not. We've made a lot of mistakes, and we want to talk about some of those today, and we want to also talk about the future. Some goals that we have for this year individually, as a couple, and some goals that we have for you and your future, and the future of your family as well. Jocelyn Sams: Before we jump into this, what we call the bad things, I do want to preface this by saying that a lot of these are what people would consider to be first world problems. So if you're listening to this expecting that we're going to go into something really crazy bad that happened, you know I'm really ... Shane Sams: Some of them are. There are some bad things in there. There are some catastrophes as well. Jocelyn Sams: But I'm really happy to say that most of our problems are the first world kind, but they're still problems nonetheless. I think sometimes people wanted to shove those under the rug. Shane Sams: Or trivialize them or something. Jocelyn Sams: Oh that's not a big deal, but they can be a really big deal, and we'll kind of jump into that a little bit more. It can affect you physically, it can affect you mentally, which affects other areas of your life as well so I just wanted to kind of throw that out there. I don't want to get emails and say, "Well, you think that's bad. Well all this happened to me." We're not trying to say that our life is bad or anything like that. For all intents and purposes, we have an extremely blessed and fulfilling life, but there are things that do go wrong. Shane Sams: The stresses do add up, especially when there's a lot of little things happening at once, and we're going to try to explore some of the causes for these stresses, and these bad things that happen in our business, and hopefully that will give you guys some insight into how to deal with some of these as your own. So one of the biggest problems that we had last year, probably as a couple. This one's probably of the marriage variety, and I'm sure many of you will relate to this whether or not you're in business with your spouse or not, but Jocelyn and I found ourselves not on the same page many, many times. Jocelyn Sams: Most days. Shane Sams: This year. I think we were most of the time in the same book, but definitely at times we were not even in the same chapter. That caused a lot of tension. We had probably the most marital tension that we've had in our relationship since we started our online business this year because so much changed so fast last year. We sold one of our businesses. Prior to 2018, Jocelyn and I had Flipped Lifestyle together, but we each had our own kind of things going on as well, and that kind of spread out the, what would you call it? Tension? Or spread out the opportunities for us to work together, I suppose. It created, I guess a little more individuality in the business, but once we stopped or sold off everything else, and focused all of our energy on Flipped Lifestyle, all of our energy on the Flip Your Life community, it kind of pushed us into this mold where we were used to making decisions about certain things on our own, and now we had to make every single decision together. Shane Sams: That's a business, that's life, that's parenting, and it happened so fast it created a new kind of friction in our relationship. Jocelyn Sams: I think at the beginning, like when we were starting out, we had teeny, tiny kids for one thing, who didn't even sleep through the night and all that kind of stuff. Some of you guys can relate to what I'm talking about right now. We had full time jobs. We were trying to do this thing in the evenings, and on the weekends, on breaks, and we were basically just in survival mode. We were just making it to the next day. Shane Sams: We didn't even have time to argue about things, because there was no time to argue. It was either make a decision, or don't make the decision. Jocelyn Sams: I think also at the beginning that our mission was really clear. Our mission was to make enough money to leave our jobs. Once we did that, I don't know that we've ever done a really good job since then redefining our mission, because ... Shane Sams: Or our goals even. What's the next level look like? Jocelyn Sams: I just, I don't know even know that I knew what my life today would look like. I guess it's hard for me to look in the future and say, "Oh well, I'm at this level. Now I want to go to this next level," because I don't even know what that looks like. I think it's just kind of hard. It's like we have these sort of intangible goals, or goals that we don't really talk about. Like maybe Shane has different goals than I have, and because we haven't done a good job of talking about those goals, for whatever reason, we just have a lot of tension because our expectations just aren't lining up. Shane Sams: Yeah. It's like, it's crazy what you said about what your life could look like, because now we've kind of stretched to the point of the end and the edge of our imagination what life actually could look like. Because when we were establishing our dreams we were like, "Man if we could just make enough money to quit our job," right? Well I can picture what that looks like. Jocelyn can picture what that looks like. You can picture what that looks like. I need this much money to quit my job. But then you quit your job and you're like, "Well, I wonder if I could pay my house off in a couple years?" We can picture what that looks like. You can picture what that looks like. Okay, and then what? Maybe I can find my forever home, my dream property and I can have the place that I want to grow old and retire at, and sit on the porch and look at the sunset. Jocelyn Sams: And go on so many trips a year. That was always our thing, and now we're there. So it's like, now what? Shane Sams: What's next? What does that look like? Because there's only so much stuff that you can really buy. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were like, "Man, if I had this much money I would do all these things." I was kind of laughing because I was like, "No you wouldn't. That's not what you would do." That would be so unfulfilling what they were kind of describing. There has to be more to that. That's really why we sold off our other business, and got rid of some other things that we were doing, because the mission of helping other people do this, other people working from home. Other people controlling the future outcomes for their kids, like in education, or just in their lifestyle, that really gave us a lot of purpose. But even that, we don't know what that looks like yet. Shane Sams: We're still evolving, and still learning what the Flip Your Life community could actually be, and the impact that it could actually make. The stories that we hear are incredible, and some of the things that we kind of think this should look like are happening. We've talked about, on the podcast, how people are sending it in. They've quit their jobs. We've had multiple people now tell us they've made over a million dollars because they've been a part of the community, or listened to the podcast. We've had people, even recently, just we've only been home schooling now for a month, and we've had people say, "That gave me the courage to try it." You know, so it's like all these things are happening, but we don't really have a firm grasp of what we really, totally want that to look like. Shane Sams: That is not resolved, would you think, that's not resolved. Would you say that's resolved? Jocelyn Sams: Definitely not. I mean, we kind of talk through it sometimes, but I don't know that we've had an official thing where we say, "Okay, this is what we want, and this is what we're going to do to get there because ... Shane Sams: This is the clear vision for the future. Jocelyn Sams: I just think it's still a little bit cloudy right now, so that's something in 2019 that I think really needs to be a big goal for us. Just figuring out what are our goals, and now it's more in terms of ... Shane Sams: Impact. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. How far can this thing go. It's not so much about financial gain for us, I mean that is a part of it always because we're not a charity organization, but it's like when you reach a certain point, that's pretty much what you have left is what impact can you make in the world. I think that's the point we're at, and we just sort of have different, what would you say, like different ideas of ... Shane Sams: Different paths to the same city on the hill. You know? What does it actually look like, and one thing that we struggle with a lot too is our roles in our marriage, in our business, in the schooling of our children, in our parenting because we just both have a lot of different opinions, and we're both very different people. There's no manual for the way that we've chosen to live our life. You know, one of the crazy things about the community is how many different people are in there, and how all the marriages look different. All the businesses look different. All the parenting looks, like everybody's doing everything differently. Shane Sams: Some people choose to really allocate roles. We've got friends who one spouse takes care of the kid, the other spouse is the CEO. That's both ways. We have couple friends where the wife is the CEO and the husband is managing the house. We have friends and community members where the husband is the CEO and the wife is managing. It's amazing watching people do it in different ways. We have people like us where, you know Jocelyn and I really strive for dividing and conquering our life in every area. So when we say we're in business together, we literally say, "Okay, here's all the things you do. Here's all the things I do." We run this business together. When we say we're going to parent together, well I handle certain things and she handles certain things. We divide that up. Even our house, home school. Shane Sams: We've been doing that lately. I'm focusing on these subjects. Jocelyn's focusing on these subjects. We're thinking about outsourcing some of the subjects. Math, need to hire someone to come in and do that please. Jocelyn Sams: Please. Shane Sams: Because it's hard y'all. It's hard to do math, especially that fourth grade stuff. But we're really doing it that way, and there's really no manual for it, and when there's an opportunity to argue, or there's an opportunity to go left or right, it's really hard to make that call because we're completely in unchartered territory, it feels like all the time. So I don't know where this is going except just to caution you. One, be careful what you wish for, right, because it's going to happen if you work hard enough to go get it, and two, be prepared for a lot of change and uncertainty as you pursue your goals in 2019. Understand that confusion is a major part of success. If we knew that going into it, I think we may have been able to maybe avoid some of these pitfalls a little bit in the last year, but it's really hard to prepare for anything until you go through it. It's been interesting. Shane Sams: One thing that really changed though was after the live event. We were really, really, I don't know how to say this without saying, we weren't at each other's throats, but we were really frustrated with each other a lot because of all the moving parts that were happening until the live event happened, and then I think we got a little bit of clarity and we could look back and say, "Holy man, we accomplished something there. How did we even do that, and what could we do going forward if we were more on the same page, had a clearer vision, and could get some of that tension out of the way?" Jocelyn Sams: I just want to say that, I think for the most part, we do a pretty good job of navigating this. I mean, as you said, there is no manual for this. We're just sort of going into it blindly, and doing the best we can, and I think overall we're doing a pretty good job. We're staying afloat. It doesn't mean that everything's always perfect, and that we never argue or fight or anything, obviously, but it just means that for the most part, I think that we're going the same direction. We just have different, we have different ideas about what should happen. I think we're both sort of controlling people, which is hard sometimes because you want to do things your way, and I want to do things my way, and sometimes we're like, "Okay do it your way," and the other person's like, "Okay do it your way." Jocelyn Sams: But a lot of times we're like, "No it's going to be my way, or we're not doing it." That causes problems sometimes too. Shane Sams: I think we're both, there's a problem too with entrepreneurs, we're kind of both relentless. We dig in a little bit, and what's crazy is, this is something that we've probably just realized in the last month. For anybody out there with getting your spouse onboard with your online business, or anything else you're wanting to do in life, we're kind of both, have realized that we're both a lot of times right. There's way more than one right answer. Success is so easily defined in multiple ways, and it's not like we're trying to pick the right thing. It's just we're trying to pick a thing, or maybe which thing we do first. Which thing we do second, and that's where the confusion comes in. Because maybe at the beginning of 2018 it was more like, "I think this is the right way." Jocelyn was like, "I think this is the right way." Shane Sams: There was a tug of war over that, but now, especially after the live event we've been more like, "Man there's more than one right way. Look when you were right here. Wow you were right here. This would've been right if we'd done it this way." Maybe we both tried a way, and they both worked, right? We were starting to realize that it's really just more important to come to consensus, have a clear goal, have a destination. If you can agree on that, the ways you get there kind of melt away because if you take enough action it's going to happen for you. Jocelyn Sams: I think a lot of tension too comes from the fact is, that as you said earlier, we have to make decisions about all the things. So, people who work nine to five, and then they just parent together, and they have a relationship together. You only argue about those things. Theoretically, you won't argue about your business unless you work at the same place because that person doesn't have a dog in that fight. But because we do everything together, that makes it that much more difficult because we both have different ideas about everything. We have different ideas about work, home schooling, parenting, our relationship, whatever. It just makes it that much more difficult. So one of the things that we kind of talked about earlier in the year in 2018, was taking some of the stress off of us by hiring people to do some roles in our business. Shane Sams: That's what I'm feeling, more than anything else, as we kind of wrap up this year is decision fatigue was a major theme this year. There was so many things going on, it was overloading our brain, and the only people we've ever had to offload, and download all of our problems to was each other, right? So it started becoming this bounce back and forth feedback loop of all the bad things, and all the decisions, and everything was becoming extremely overwhelming. We just relaunched the live event, and we were commenting just this weekend about how easy it was because there were no decisions to be made. It was all kind of like, "Oh, well here's what we did last year. Let's just do that again." It just worked so much more seamlessly. Shane Sams: That's what I've really learned from going through a very difficult and stressful decision filled year, is that once you do something once, it becomes a lot easier on the backside. If we would just stop reinventing the wheel it would become a whole lot easier. When you go to your job, when you go to work with somebody, a lot of decisions are made for you. Like when I went to school, it was decided when the bell rang. It was decided when we went to a staff meeting. It was decided what we were covering at the staff meeting. Heck it was even decided what I taught in class. I had a curriculum map, but now every single day is so full of decisions. If we don't offload some of those, it's going to lead to a short circuit and overwhelm. Jocelyn Sams: So at the beginning of the year, well really even before that for me, but we started realizing we have made some poor hiring decisions, but instead of saying, "Okay let's fix this," well we sort of did say that. But instead of saying, "Lets try to find the right person," we said, "Okay, well these people aren't doing what we want them to do, let's hire a manager for them." Because that makes sense. Shane Sams: Let's hire more people for that person to manage, and I think in our heart we were like let's offload a lot of these decisions. Let's offload a lot of these tasks, and we started looking at all these other "successful gurus", and they were saying, "Build your team. Make it huge. If you want to really run a company, you're going to have 20 employees." We saw other people that we thought were "successful" then when we dug below the surface they weren't as successful as we thought. They had hired 20 or 30 people, and well that has to be what our success looks like. We're so stressed out, that's the solution is to go hire as many people as possible. Jocelyn Sams: One thing that we realized that we really dislike, and still to this day dislike, is managing people. We just don't enjoy it. We want to do the creative, fun visionary part of our job, and we don't want to manage people to get stuff done. We just want them to get stuff done. So, to make a long story short, we decided to hire a couple of different people in 2018 to help us. So one of the things that we did is we hired someone to help out in our community, and then we also hired a manager to manage all of the staff members. I just want to say that these people are amazing. The people that we hired. There is nothing at all wrong with them. Shane Sams: Great people. Great people. Jocelyn Sams: They did a great job for us, and I don't want to take anything away from them, but it was not the right choice for us to hire anyone. We needed to go back to the basics and figure out what we were doing before we started just hiring people to fix problems. Hiring people to fix problems does not fix problems. Shane Sams: No you should fix the problem first, and once it's working, then hire someone to take if off your plate. That's probably the lesson that we really learned, but we don't hear that in the business world. None of us know that. None of us in high school are trained on how to hire people, how to fire people, how to fill your team correctly. None of us are taught that in college. You have to go through that and almost figure it out on your own a little bit to know exactly what you truly need. We've actually cut our staff down to like three people now, and our small and mighty team is infinitely less stressful. Our business is growing faster than when we had a sales person, and a community manager, and an editor, and customer service, and a manager for all these people, and a project manager to manage the manager. Shane Sams: Right? It just got so convoluted so quickly, that it actually slowed us down. It actually caused more stress than it eliminated. So that was a really bad thing that happened this year was we just hired too many people too fast. Grew too big too fast. Listened to too many "experts" tell us that we had to have a team, and we'd see someone on a YouTube channel saying, "I've got 100 employees," and then we would say, "Well maybe we need 100 employees, and that's what will eliminate all of our stress and tension because we won't be doing it." But that's not true. That's not what happened. Jocelyn Sams: For us, more people is more problems. Now, I'm not going to say that's true for everyone. There are some people who love managing a team. I have a good friend who I go to Mastermind in Cancun every March with. She loves managing a team. That's her favorite part about what she does, but for us, it is not. We do not enjoy that part at all. So what we did is we decided okay, we're going to scale down to three amazing people. Shane Sams: As few people as possible. Jocelyn Sams: Who absolutely know how to do their job. We communicated our expectations to them, they understand what we expect, they do what we expect, and everyone's happy. So that is how we solve the problem. It was a very long, difficult, and expensive lesson that we learned. Shane Sams: Yeah. Tens of thousands of dollars. Jocelyn Sams: Again, I don't take anything away from the people who were working with us. If they are listening to this, they did a great job. They did what they were supposed to do, but we ... Shane Sams: It just wasn't working for us. Jocelyn Sams: We had to take a good, hard look in the mirror and say, "What is wrong in this situation." It wasn't them. It was us. Shane Sams: So I guess our lesson here is, and this is a lesson that we want to pass on to you is this, the first lesson from this podcast was get on the same page with people you're working with. Whether it's your spouse or somebody else, so that you all have a clear destination. The second lesson that we learned here is don't hire people unless you've got it figured out. You know, everyone always comes to us when they're stressed out in the community and they say, "Well, I'm just so stressed out. I can't do everything. I need to hire somebody." Then we ask them deeper questions like do you even understand the systems in your business? Shane Sams: Because we didn't when we started hiring people and that was a mistake. Do you have all of those systems documented? Because we didn't, and that was a huge mistake in our business. Now as we've learned that, we're telling you if you don't know where you're going, and know what you want people to do, and can clearly tell them their expectations, and have documented things that show them what you want them to do, it's not going to work. Hiring people is not a magic bullet. It is not. It causes as many problems as you have now, they're just different problems. So which problems do you want? That's what you're going to have to ask yourself when you're hiring people. Don't think for a minute that your success is totally determined by people that you hire. Shane Sams: Because it's not. Everybody's going to tell you that. Everybody's going to tell you you need all these gatekeepers, and you need all these things for positioning, and if you try to get a client, and you don't have five employees, and you don't have a secretary, and you don't have an assistant that they're not going to hire you. Don't listen to all those things. We listened. We made the mistakes. We went through it for a year. Spent tens of thousands of dollars on it, and we're telling you right now, go slow. That's how you avoid the basically 2018 problems that we had. Jocelyn Sams: On that same note, during the summer we talked about this extensively in our post live event podcast that came out probably in October of 2018, but right before our event we had several different things happen. So we parted ways with our manager for a variety of different reasons. Our editor and customer service person, they kind of had, I don't know some kind of crisis mode in the summer. They were unhappy. We were unhappy. Just no one was happy, so ... Shane Sams: We had to let them go. Jocelyn Sams: We parted ways with them in the summer of 2018 for a variety of reasons. Then, so you know we're approaching this live event. We have just a very few people remaining on our team at this point, and we're trying just to survive until the live event. We know that things aren't really working the way that we would like them to work, but we're like, "Okay we have this event coming up in September. Let's not make any more changes. You know we've already had to let two people go months before this event. We really need to just keep the ship moving forward until this event is over." Shane Sams: Hang on. Just get into the parking space basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. We had a lot of pressure on us. We needed to perform at this event because this is our first one. Our first big event. We want to make sure we do a good job for these people who are coming, and we just really, really want to stay focused. Well, things were going okay until about two weeks, like two weeks to the day before this event, we get a notice from two more people and they're like, "Yeah, we're out. See yeah." Shane Sams: These were people that had already had jobs at the event. It was like, they didn't even put in a two week notice. They just left. That was our last customer service person. That was our, we had another person on our staff that was handling like customer relations, some community management stuff, sales. Jocelyn Sams: And things before the event. Shane Sams: Things before the event. Yeah. They had things they had to create, and it was just gone. So it basically came down to me, Jocelyn, and one person. Jocelyn Sams: And Kat. Shane Sams: And our Kat, our assistant. Yeah, our executive assistant. The manager of the whole thing, which was awesome because Kat's like 15 people in one. She's amazing, but it just was crazy because all of that happened. And you're standing there looking going, "Well we built this thing and we can never do it without them," but we still pulled it off, and it still worked great. It kind of taught us that lesson that hey, you don't need everybody that you think you do. But that led to additional stress, which led to lots of stress eating. We've been really healthy and good all year, and all of a sudden it just all fell off the wheels and we were like, "We need comfort food as much as possible." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so it's funny because the only people who started and ended 2018 that worked for our company is me and Shane. Shane Sams: I never thought about that before, but that is true. Jocelyn Sams: So, I mean, things just it went crazy, you know? We're heading into this event, and all these people are quitting. We're having to fire people, people are quitting. We're having to just basically just survive, I mean from day to day and figure this out. We're still trying to put finishing touches on speeches, and get people's shirt sizes, and make sure the shirts are getting there on time, and make sure that we have all the stuff for the event. Shane Sams: While being married, and parenting, and getting ready for back to school. Just all the madness of life, though it was crazy. Jocelyn Sams: So like a lot of people, I think, I tend to eat my feelings. You know, if I'm stressed, I'm going to eat a lot of food. So we had been doing so good. I started the ketogenic diet back in April of 2018. I was just doing so well. I had lost 17 pounds, and then all this stuff happened. So by the time the event rolled around, I mean I had gained back like five or six pounds. That is not good at all. Shane Sams: Yeah, our health kind of went down there. We kind of let that go, and it's funny because what I've realized from this, what I really learned from that episode was you're going to break somewhere. In your relationship, you're going to break. Yelling at your kids, you're going to break. Your business is going to fail. You're going to break in your health. If you just keep pushing against the wall, you go too far beyond. Jocelyn Sams: Something's gotta give. Shane Sams: Something's gotta give. So that was pretty bad. Our health, I feel like I'm, I started out the year really healthy feeling good about myself, and kind of ended the year not feeling so good about our health. So I'm going to do better next year. Jocelyn Sams: We're trying to get back on the wagon. Shane Sams: We're going to get back on the wagon. We're going to do the New Year's resolutions, so everybody jump back on the wagon with us and we will all exercise, and eat healthier, and be less stressed next year. All right, so another thing that we decided to do this year, because why not do some kind of drastic life changing thing on top of all of the other drastic life changing things, is we started to home school our kids this year. We've been wrestling with this decision for about a year now for a whole lot of reasons. We talked about this on a podcast recently a couple weeks ago about making the decision to home school, why we wanted to do that. We decided to just pull the plug and go for it. We were going to wait until 2019, going to wait until the second semester, but Jocelyn and I are not very good at waiting for things. We kind of want to see how things work. Shane Sams: So we started home schooling and amazing and a catastrophe all at once. Literally the first day of home school, we woke up. Everything was going great from like nine to 12, and I got a phone call at about 11 o'clock am from my mom. Actually it was my mom's cleaning lady. She had come over to help mom clean up the house, and my mom had fallen and broken her back. So, right in the middle of the day we took our kids out of school. We had just sent the letter to the superintendent. Everything was rolling. We had this massive catastrophe. Mom was laying on the floor paralyzed, in massive pain. I ended up going to the hospital with her. We rode to another city that was about an hour away. Met her there, and I ended up staying over there for like four days. So all of this fell on us right in the middle of managing home school, managing our business, and Jocelyn was kind of just like, I don't think I saw you. Jocelyn Sams: Kind of stranded. Shane Sams: Yeah. For like a week. Jocelyn Sams: It was funny because I really, so we took a vote. Shane was determined that we were going to quit school after Thanksgiving. I was determined that we were going to wait until the Christmas holidays, which was only like a few weeks in between those two things. Shane Sams: We landed somewhere in the middle. It was a pretty good compromise actually. Jocelyn Sams: We took a vote. We did go back after Thanksgiving, but then the next week he's like, "We got to do this now." I'm like, "Well, let's take a vote. Who wants to do it and who doesn't?" Well it was three to one. Jocelyn Sams: I was the one in favor of holding out. Shane Sams: We don't normally give our kids equal votes in everything, but in this we wanted to make sure that they were ready to do it. Jocelyn Sams: So, here I am, and of course I wanted him to be there for his family, but I'm like, "You're the one who wanted to do this, and now I'm here by myself with them for like three days trying to figure all this out." So you know, it's just one of those things. I'm like, "Is this a sign universe, I don't know." But it's worked out okay. I mean we're still kind of getting a feel for it and figuring out ... Shane Sams: It's only a few weeks down. Jocelyn Sams: What we're going to do. Shane Sams: It's a totally overwhelming experience to home school your children. It's good. The kids have done great. I used to ask the kids all the time when they would get in the car from the bus stop, I would always say things like, "Hey, what'd you learn in school today?" They would both literally just say, "Nothing. I don't know. I don't remember." They didn't remember anything. I've continued doing that since we've started, and they actually, every day tell me some amazing thing they've learned, or they remember. So they're retaining things better. They're both much more well rested, and kind of more laid back a little bit because they're not so pressured to be at school at 6:30 and all the stuff that goes with that. Shane Sams: So its been a good experience, but its been really, really hard, and that on top of it, like Jocelyn said, "What's the universe trying to tell us here?" Sometimes I think the universe throws you a big curve ball when you're on the right path. It's like somethings trying to scare you from a better future. Scare you from moving forward, and I was questioning it that way too. Like oh my gosh, this massive thing happened. I got to help my dad. Got to help my mom. All my brothers are pulling together. We're trying to work this thing out, and thank God my mom did have surgery and she's walking on walker now a few weeks later. So just a miraculous healing in our life and her life there, but man it was really, really hard. That was really, really probably like the most stressful week. The least amount of sleep. Jocelyn as the reluctant hero did an amazing job that week, but it was just really, really touch. Shane Sams: So I'd say my moms injury and that experience was bad, but a lot of good things came out of and everybody's going to get back on the right track. Sometimes you just got to deal with that stuff. Don't let it hold you back. We didn't send the kids back to school just because something bad happened. We fought through it, we toughed it out, and we're going to be home schooling next semester. Something bad may happen again, but it's just like your business. Just like everything else, you can't let a few bad things, or a really, really bad thing stop you from moving forward. Jocelyn Sams: All right, switching gears a little bit. We're going to talk a little bit about something that some of you guys probably understand, and that is loneliness. I know that sounds really crazy. I mean I'm probably talking to like thousands of people right now, which is crazy. You know we have an amazing business, we have an amazing community. We have so many things that are going right, but sometimes this life can be very, very lonely. I say that because, especially in my personal life, there just aren't a whole lot of people who can, first of all, wrap their head around what we do. It is very confusing to people in this area. They don't understand working online. They don't understand decisions that we make. Shane Sams: Or like thought leadership, and having a podcast, and some people don't even know what a podcast is. Jocelyn Sams: A lot of people around here, it has never occurred to them to even think about doing something outside of their nine to five. It's just ingrained in them that this is what you do. You do this until retirement, and you ride off into the sunset, you know? Any alternative way of thinking is just something that people, a lot of people in this area, just do not understand. Shane Sams: And shy away from, you know? People have pulled back away from us, because of the way we structure, I guess our business, our marriage, our life. You know, when we pulled our kids out of school, I got word that someone was like, "I can't believe they did that. Why would they do that? Are they too good for the school? Is the school not good enough for them?" This was someone I know personally, and is really somewhat close to me. So things like that happened this year, even in our business relationship, we had some friends really withdraw and pull back from us. It's like the bigger we got, the more successful we got, the more some people pulled back. We feel like people are constantly coming and going in our life now at a pace that's like not natural. Shane Sams: You know, people come into our life. We're really good friends for a while, then they flare out and go away, or people come into our life, and we go different directions, and it's just it ends really fast. Normally that happens, like oh high school, college, business, and these relationship stay and were stable for a long time, but it's harder and harder to do that in our life now. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I think that we're just, we're having to learn a lot of things the hard way. It's just like we had to learn the hiring process the hard way. Now we're having to learn that sometimes people want to be friends with you because it benefits them in some way. I like to think that we're not that type of people, you know I mean ... Shane Sams: There's reciprocity in all relationships. You're going to be friends with people who do benefit you, but ... Jocelyn Sams: If that's the only reason your friends with them. Shane Sams: Yeah some people want to use you for different reasons like that. You know, when someone hasn't called me in years, and all of a sudden they read an article about us in Forbes, and all of a sudden they're like, "Hey, love to take you out for dinner and catch up old friend." That really isn't, and a lot more of that's happened lately. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we just have to, you know we just find ourselves being really overly cautious if someone wants to hang out with us, or whatever. We're like, "Okay well why? Do you really want to be friend with us, or are you trying to get information from us, or whatever?" Shane Sams: We understand that some of that's a part of the deal. When you know something someone else doesn't know that's part of life. But it's just this year has probably, we've probably talked to and interacted physically, and virtually, with more people than every other year of our life combined. I would say that's probably true, wouldn't you? Just live events, online, everything. The size of our audience. Everything like that, but then at the same time, it's like our real relationships have shrunk. Our old relationships have faded away, and it's like it's become lonelier, and lonelier this year, which has probably compounded the problem of the tension that we've had trying to work together on everything. So now we really are all we've got in a lot of ways. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's been tough. It's been a lonely year, but we've also developed more relationships with some people too, being closer with them than ever before, but they're not here. They're far away, so it's like hard to ... Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, no I mean we have combated that in some ways. Like we go on trips with people now, which is really fun. We've done some things like that. I think last year we did not really travel a lot, which is how we meet a lot of the friends that we have. We didn't do a lot of that last year because our kids ... Shane Sams: Just so busy. Jocelyn Sams: And our kids had a hard time what in 2017, so we kind of shied away from going away for too long in 2018. So I think some of that definitely plays into it, and I think that also people change. I mean I think people even not in this space have that happen too. People just drift apart, and come back together from time to time. Shane Sams: It just happens so much faster now though, than it used to in our life. That's what got me is like I had to get used to this year, things will change every three months. Like everything in our life changes, it feels like, almost every quarter because we are in a fast paced business. We have so many of these things, moving parts, it's just that's what's hard to get used to from a mindset issue is that the more successful you get, the faster things are going to go, and you better be ready to deal with it. You know the loneliness stuff wasn't the only mindset stuff. We had a lot of old issue creep back up this year. One was uncertainty. You know, for four or five, about four years there we felt very certain in what we were doing, and then this year was just packed with uncertainty. Which is good, it pushes you forward, but it can cause some problems too. Shane Sams: We had a lot of comparison, well I would say that, Jocelyn probably didn't. This was probably more on me, I really fell into comparison syndrome at the beginning of this year especially. Was I doing what all these other people I saw were doing? Was I as successful as someone else? Was the definition we had written for our success as good as someone else's success, and I think that led to a lot of friction and bad decisions on my part. Just a lot of doubt, like can we pull these big things that we're trying off? Is the next level out of our reach? We couldn't even imagine what the next level looked like before, and now we're getting a glimpse of what it could be. Is that even possible? Are we up to the challenge? Who are we? What is our, I don't know, what is the definition of what Shane and Jocelyn, and the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and the Flip Your Life community is? Shane Sams: We struggled with all these mindsets, and a little bit of imposter syndrome. Like who are we to be on stage for two straight days, right? And teach all these people, like all of those doubts that we thought we had put in our rear view mirror really creeped back in. It was just crazy how everything compounded, but you know what? Overall 2018 was a great year. Our business grew. We made some major decisions for our family. We watched the Flip Your Life community grow bigger than we ever could've dreamed possible, and you know it was just really good to think back about all the good things, the bad things, and just kind of absorb all of that so that we can get ready to do great things next year. Shane Sams: That's really what we do when we reflect back on last year, is we prepare for next year. So 2019 we are expecting some great things, and that's what we're going to wrap this show up with is looking ahead a little bit to the future. Jocelyn Sams: All right, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming year for several different reasons. One of the things that I am really looking forward to is exploring some new options for creativity. I mentioned earlier in the show that I've been, for lack of a better word, a little bit bored with what we're doing. Not because of anything to do with our members, or anything like that, it's just because we do the same thing a lot of the times every single day. I'm looking into doing some different things like learning about some other business models. I have considered learning about selling physical products. One of the things that we are really working on right now is investigating different types of work from home opportunities to share with our members. Those are anything from working as a service based business, and not necessarily becoming a business owner, or like creating a digital product. Jocelyn Sams: We want to start to explore some of those types of opportunities to let people know that there are other things that you can do from home. I have also even considered doing some brick and mortar marketing, like looking into some of that. So those are just some of the things that we are considering for the upcoming year, and ultimately what that means for our members is that we are going to be looking at making some new courses, and some new materials. For some of you guys who maybe you've been listening to us for a long time, and you think you know that sounds really awesome, but I don't really want to start a website, or I don't know what to make as my digital product. Well these will be some opportunities for you if you are in that position, and you want to work from home but you're just not sure what to do, we're going to be looking at some other ways to help you. Shane Sams: And another big focus that we've been talking about in the last couple weeks for our business, for our family, for everything is saying no a lot. We spent a lot of energy in a lot of unfruitful places last year. We chose to do a lot of different things that really didn't pan out, or really didn't you know they looked like great opportunities going into them, and we didn't want to say no to what we thought could be a great opportunity so we did them and nothing happened. So we're going to really pick and choose our opportunities a lot better this year. We're going to say no as much as possible. We're going to stop trying to do what other people who we perceive as "successful" are doing, and not chase so many shiny objects. Shane Sams: Whether it's hiring new people. Whether it's going to speak at certain events. You know, we're not going to go out and pursue all these opportunities. All the opportunities that we have is right here in front of us, with our community, with our people. The more opportunity and success that we create for our members, the more opportunities for success that we're going to create for ourselves. So we're really going to say no to a lot of things this year, and just zero in and focus on the things that we really know work. We're going to take all of that energy we save by saying no to all these shiny objects, and we're really going to put it into our family. One of the things that we are going to do more of this year is we're going to travel with just us again. Shane Sams: I think our kids are a little bit older. The last time we went on a big trip our daughter kind of had a freak out, and I think we're past that stage. I think we're over that now, so we already have a couple of trips just for us, me and Jocelyn, on the calendar. We're really going to focus more on getting back to each other, and focusing on each other. Not just in a business, not just in a life capacity, but as a married couple. That's really, really important to us to do that. We're going to take that extra energy from saying no to other things, and focus it on our kids. We're pulled our kids out of school now. We are home schooling, so really this is the year that we're going to learn that process. It's not going to be perfect. Shane Sams: It doesn't have to be. We really don't know what it's going to look like by the end of 2019. We don't even know what it's going to look like at the beginning of 2019, but we're just going to take that energy and push it right back into our family, and figure that process out this year. One of my personal missions for 2019 is to stop looking at what everyone else is doing. You know we used to do this in the beginning. We used to not look at anybody else, we did our way, and the farther we've gone, and the more complicated, and the more complex our business has become, we started looking outward again, and I'm pretty sure that caused more confusion than it actually cleared up. So we're really focusing right now on what do we want everything to look like? Shane Sams: What do we want to create? What do we want to make? What do we want our email list to see when they get our emails? What do we want our courses to look like? Everyone's telling us don't do this. Stick with digital products, that's what got you here. We're kind of like no, we want to do physical products. We want to do service based businesses. We want to do all of these other things, and we're going to kind of get back to doing it our way, and stop, I don't know, like almost asking permission from the people who are "more successful" than us to tell us how to do things, or what our things should look like. That's really what we want for you in 2019. We want you to stop looking to the world asking permission. We want you to stop worrying about what other people are doing, or if you can do something, or if you can't, and we want you to take action. We want you to go out there and make 2019 your best year ever. Shane Sams: We want you to take charge of your life. To build the business that you want. It doesn't have to look like the business that Jocelyn and I created. It doesn't have to look like anybody else's business out there. You don't have to chase the gurus with their Lamborghini's, and the big people getting off their private jets. You just have to create the life that you want next year, so that you can give your family the future that you want them to have. So one of our goals is to expand the trainings in our communities. To help more people figure out what their work from home, flipped lifestyle looks like. We want to make our trainings, and our community more accessible to more people than ever before next year. We want more people to be able to take our courses, and take all of these new trainings that we're adding into the community, so that they can build the life that they want. Shane Sams: We want more people in our community. More people talking in our community. More people asking questions, and connecting, and creating mastermind communities locally in the real world through the Flip Your Life forums. Just like we knew going into this year we were going to have to change some of our content. We knew we were going to have to change some of the things that we were doing in our marriage, and parenting, in our kids schooling, in our business, we know that means we're going to have to make some big changes in the Flip Your Life community to continue to grow. So in a few weeks, we are going to announce some big, big changes to how the Flip Your Life community and the Flip Your Life blueprint work. Those changes are going to impact every single person that hears this podcast. We're not finished with it yet. Shane Sams: We don't know exactly what the end product is going to look like, but we know we are going to make some huge changes in the Flip Your Life community. They're going to make it more accessible, that are going to make it more affordable, and it's going to make starting your own business easier than ever before. We know there's a lot of reasons, a lot of hang ups, a lot of things in your past that are holding you back from going out there, from taking action and building the life that you want. Really chasing that flipped lifestyle. We know there's things that are holding you back from working from home, from taking control of your life, and from changing your family's future. We want to remove all of those obstacles from your path. Shane Sams: The changes that we're going to make to the Flip Your Life community next year are going to give you the opportunity to do so. If you want it, it'll be there for you. If you don't want it, you'll find an excuse, but you're going to have no reason not to take advantage of everything that we have to offer inside the community next year. So you'll have to stay tuned for that because that is a subject for another podcast. We are going to wrap up this podcast right now. Jocelyn and I are packing right now because we are kicking off 2019 with a couples trip, without the kids, just us, and we are heading down to Florida for a week of sunshine and warmth so that we can relax a little bit and really enjoy the first week of 2019 together, and get our plans kicked off and going in the right direction. Shane Sams: So we have to finish loading up our suitcases now. We've got a flight to catch tomorrow, and we will be back with you again next week for another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We'll get back into our normal format where we're talking to a Flip Your Life community member and helping them take their online dreams to the next level. Stay tuned. We will be having more solo episodes like this next year, and we will be announcing all of the changes inside of the Flip Your Life community very, very soon, but until then we want you to kick off 2019 in the right way. Set a big goal. Dream a bold dream. Get out there and take action. Let's do whatever it takes this year to flip your life. We'll see you next time. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Ticket Information & Sales Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

In today's episode, S&J talk about 2018, the good, the bad, and the future. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we recap 2018, the good, the bad, and the future. 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 and happy new year on this January 1st edition of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Jocelyn and Shane here, all by ourselves today. We do not have a guest for this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. This is just a solo show with me and Jocelyn, and we wanted to recap 2018 and start looking toward 2019. We're going to talk about all the things that happened last year to us, the good, the bad, and then we're going to transition a little bit to talk about the future for the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and the Flip Your Life community. Jocelyn Sams: We don't really have much of a plan for this podcast, to be perfectly honest. We just sort of opened up a Google Drive document and did a brain dump of all of our thoughts, so who knows what this is going to turn out like. It's just something we felt like kind of talking through and just sharing with you guys as we think back on the past 365 days and also to the future. Shane Sams: The reason we're doing this is, one, we really want to stress the importance to everyone who listens to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast of reflection and looking back on what you did right, what you did wrong, and bringing that all together to make good decisions going forward in the future, and also to let you guys know that a lot of things do go good in our business, a lot of things go good for our family, but we've had a lot of bad things happen, too. Sometimes, we don't get the chance to really talk about that a lot on the podcast because it's so focused on helping the Flip Your Life community and all the people in it succeed. We don't get to really show you that part of our journey. If you follow us on social media, you do get to see a little bit of that, but we want to let you know that things are not always perfect for us. Jocelyn and I are just like you. We're normal people, we're married, we have kids, and we have all the stresses that go along with life, just like you do. Shane Sams: We wanted to just share some of that and let you know that you're not alone when you struggle on this journey. Every day we get up, there are things that go good, there are things that go bad, and we have to react to all those things. We wanted to share some of that with you guys in this episode and let you know how that goes. Shane Sams: All right. We decided to start with the good. We looked back and wrote down all of the highlights that happened over the last year, and there were quite a few of them. It's really important to latch onto those. Every Sunday, when Jocelyn and I journal together, we actually ... The first thing we do is write down 10 good things that happened in the week prior because we want to start off anything we're doing, planning with a good frame of mind, and to let ourselves know, "Hey, don't focus on the negative things." There are a lot of great things. There's usually more good things than bad things, so we wanted to start this podcast off that way. Shane Sams: The most recent good thing that happened to us actually happened yesterday. Jocelyn and I were taking Anna Jo to cheerleading practice together. Isaac was staying at his grandparents' house, he was chilling out over there and didn't want to drive and sit in the car with us. We took the time to go grab something to eat, drop her off, do a little cheerleading, and hang out, and we got a message from a Flip Your Life community member. This is the first message of this type that I've actually gotten directly from a member. We kind of know some stories of some other people that have done some great things, but this was the first time a member had ever reached out to us and said, "Hey, guys. I just wanted to let you know that my husband and I have went over the million dollar mark in our online business since we joined the community." Shane Sams: This was the first time a Flip Your Life community member had literally wrote us and said, "Thank you guys. You helped us make a million dollars." It was really overwhelming in the car. We couldn't even comprehend that. It's one thing for you to hear about somebody online making a million dollars, because we all ... If you were working, making $40,000 a year, it would take you dozens of years to actually get to the point where you actually had made a million dollars in your lifetime. Then, when you start an online business and you make a million dollars yourself, it blows your mind because it's just almost a number that you can't even comprehend until you see it actually happen. Then, for someone to write in and say, "You helped us make a million dollars," that's life-changing. We can't wait to see what the future brings. Shane Sams: It was really just mind-blowing. We didn't even really know how to respond to it in the moment. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. The cool thing is that these people actually live kind of close to us, so we're actually going to go hang out with them and celebrate this, which is really cool. Yeah. Shane Sams: If you ever make a million dollars, let us know. And contribute it to the Flip Your Life community, we might fly in and have lunch with you, but you're paying because you made a million dollars. I'm just saying. I'm not paying for that one. Jocelyn Sams: Oh, goodness. Yes. That ... It was just so cool. I don't even really know what to say about that. I'm just kind of at a loss for words when I think about the impact that our community has had. It's just really cool. Shane Sams: A million dollars is a lot of money, and it makes me think back a little bit, Jocelyn, to last year when we were selling one of our businesses. In 2017 ... What month was that? Was it August that we sold elementarylibrarian.com? Jocelyn Sams: I think it was July, actually. Shane Sams: It was July. In July of 2017, we sold elementarylibrarian.com. It was our first big business that really took off and was really successful. We did that. It was over a million dollar contract. I remember thinking about that number, that million dollar number. Here it was. In one day, you sign a contract and someone deposits a ton of money in your account. The reason we did that wasn't just to make the money. That business was very passive. It made a ton of money. We could have just kept it and kept it going. The reason we sold that was because we wanted to go all in on Flipped Lifestyle, all in, changing people's lives, helping other families do what we did, replace your income, quit your job, work from home, have the freedom to make choices in your life. Shane Sams: When someone writes you in and says, "Hey, I started my business," or, "Hey, I quit my job," or when they write us in and they say something crazy like, "Guys, you helped us get to a million dollars. You helped us experience a million dollar moment, and you helped us not just change our future or our family's future, but make a generational change. We're going to be able to go out and build something that might leave an inheritance to our children's children." That's really overwhelming, and it's also really fulfilling for us to know that we made the right decision. Shane Sams: When we sold this passive income cash cow that was kind of our safety net for a while and really made us feel comfortable about what we were doing, but we said, "No, we're going all in on Flipped Lifestyle," and a year and a half later, someone writes you in and says, "We just went over the million dollar mark," it's just really inspiring, and it really keeps us motivated and pumped up to keep going and keep helping more people. We may not help everybody get to a million dollars, but if we could help everybody start something that would give them margin in their life, make their life easier, then going all in for Flipped Lifestyle was really, really worth it. Shane Sams: Also, on a personal note, one of the things that Jocelyn and I discussed was would we even be able to replace the income from elementarylibrarian.com if we sold it. It's really hard to build one business to six figures or seven figures or to sustain you and your family and be able to create an income. Could we do it again and again and again, and especially could we do it with Flipped Lifestyle because there's so much competition, there's so many gurus out there that are just dominating the landscape and spending all this ad money and doing all these things. A year and a half after we basically went all in on Flipped Lifestyle, we've tripled revenue, almost 2,000 people have joined the Flip Your Life community, and it looks like there might be no end in sight to how far we can take this thing and how big we can make this brand and how many people we can actually impact. Shane Sams: We're seeing so many more people join from all over the world. We just recorded a podcast this morning with a Flip Your Life community member in Saudi Arabia. To even think about that a year and a half ago or two years ago or five years ago is just absolutely mind-blowing. It was really good to see, at the end of 2018, all those risks that we took in 2017 really started to pay off. Jocelyn Sams: Another thing that we did in 2018 is we decided to host our first major live event. We did that just a few months ago. It was a little bit crazy. If you listen to our podcast about post live event, if you listen to that one, we had a lot of crazy things happen. We questioned it a lot. Was this the right decision? I think that, at the end of the day, we decided that we were really, really happy we did the live event. Shane Sams: Yeah. It basically consumed our life from the day we decided to release it, which was ... Jocelyn Sams: January, I think. Shane Sams: Of 2018. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah. In January, we announced it. We almost sold it out in the first week. That was really good that we actually sold out, because we were like, "We're going to announce this an 10 people are going to come and we're going to be on hook for all this stuff, these contracts that we were signing up for with hotels and venues and all this stuff. Shane Sams: To see what happened at the live event, to see all the progress that the attendees made coming into the live event. We did these ice breaker sessions where we had 40 or 50 people who were coming to the live event on and we talked to every single one of them. We saw so many people launch products leading up to the live event, get their business, make their first sales. We had one member that changed her membership pricing model right before the event after a coaching call and she made $17,000 in recurring revenue in one thing. Then, after the event, seeing members take action. We had another member that's added 200 members at $39 a month in just two and a half months since the live event based on what the plan she made there. Shane Sams: The live event was a catalyst moment for us to realize how important community is to everybody's journey. To see 100 people fly in from five countries, 30 different states, just to see us, because we were the only show. We did all eight sessions, we led the panels, we stayed up all night with everybody working at the work session on the first night to get their plans ready and helped as many people as we could get around to. Just to see that community really come together live is just a different feeling than in a forum setting or anything else. To see how close the Flip Your Life community is, and, really, it made us proud of the culture that we've really built in this brand and how we're bringing together family-focused entrepreneurs to a point where they would actually get on an airplane and fly to Nashville, Tennessee, not only just to see us but to see each other and to make progress in their business, was absolutely mind-blowing. Jocelyn Sams: There are so many people, even after the event, who have gotten together. They're in masterminds together, they're working together, they're talking on Voxer, they're meeting once a week. Just to see all that and know that it came from something that we started, we knocked over the first domino and they've kind of taken care of the rest, it's just really cool to see. I've talked to so many people that are like, "Thank you so much for doing this event. I'm making progress in my business that I never would have made otherwise." That just made it all worth it. It was a lot of work and it was a lot of just, I guess ... I don't know if I want to say heartache, but just a lot of ... Shane Sams: I think there was definitely some heartache involved in that because it was a rough deal. Jocelyn Sams: It was a labor of love for sure. I think that, at the end of the day, we can say that we're really glad that we did that. Shane Sams: What one ... I'm trying to speak at an event and one of the topics that I want to talk about is how online business can not only change your life and the individual's life but really communities. It can change world communities. Anywhere you are, if you have internet access, you can reach out and touch the whole world. I don't think people realize that. Flip Your Life Live was kind of the exclamation point on the end of our sentence that said, "Hey, this is real. You're two people in rural Appalachia, southeast Kentucky, where you have really slow internet, you don't have all the resources that some people have in California or on the coasts or in big cities. Basically, you can just get online. You can say something into a microphone, record it, and get it out there, and you can influence people all over the world. You can help people from anywhere. That's just never been possible before, and it is possible now. Shane Sams: We kind of, after the live event, we realized how much of a ... What would you say, responsibility it is to actually do that, not just for us and the Flip Your Life community, but for you. You're listening to this, which means you're somewhere out there in the world with an internet connection where you could download this. If you could download this podcast, you could upload you're own, or you could upload your own course, or you could connect over Skype and be a virtual assistant, or you could download an audio file and transcribe it and make money and help make someone else's life easier. The live event, being in person and seeing how much influence we were having really made us realize this is the craziest time in human history. If you're not taking advantage of it, it's your fault. You've got to get out there and do something, and we've got to do more with the platform that we've built and the responsibility that we've been given. Jocelyn Sams: Lots of people have asked us about the live event, will you be doing one in 2019, and we are going to do one in 2019, which is actually now. The dates for that, this is the first time we've announced that, is going to ... We will have a party on Thursday night, September 19th, and we will have content on Friday and Saturday, the 20th and 21st of September, 2019. Definitely go ahead and get that in your calendar if this is something you're interested in attending. We would love to have you there. We are making plans to have even more people being able to be in attendance this year and we cannot wait. Shane Sams: We have chosen a city for the live event this year, as well. It is going to be in Lexington, Kentucky. We really wanted to bring this event to Kentucky. Kentucky is an amazing place, especially Lexington, Kentucky, to have events like this. It's within driving distance to millions of people, so, for those of you who can't make the flight, you can jump in your car and you can be there in just a few hours. They also have an amazing airport that you can fly right in. There's two other airports in the region, Louisville and the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati Airport. Shane Sams: It's a super easy city to get to. It is by far one of the most beautiful cities in the South, and it's kind of our second home. Lexington, Kentucky, is where Jocelyn and I met, so that's kind of where it all started, so we're taking it back to the place where all of this actually began. It'll be in Lexington, Kentucky, and it was the 19th through the 21st, is that what you said? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: It'll be the 19th through the 21st. We would love to have you guys there. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/live, F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/live, L-I-V-E. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live right now. There is a waiting list up as of today. Jocelyn Sams: But, depending on when you're listening to this, it ... Shane Sams: Tickets could be on sale. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Definitely grab one if you're interested in coming. There is a very big chance we could sell out again. We sold out last year very unexpectedly. Shane Sams: The waiting list is bigger now already than it was when we launched last year. In our surveys, 85% of people, I think, said they are coming back, so those tickets will go fast. We are going to add a few more tickets this year. We don't know the exact numbers yet. We have to meet, I think this week, with the venue to find out the final totals that we can fit in the room. Then, we will be launching that very soon. Shane Sams: Another big highlight for us this year was the 200th episode of our podcast. Jocelyn Sams: 200. Shane Sams: We have been doing this for a long time now, years and years. The podcast has been our primary means of building our audience, building traffic, growing our community. It's just really the heart and soul of every single thing that we do, is the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. To hit 200 episodes ... I read ... The other day, there was an article I was reading that was about podcasting. The vast majority, like 90% of all podcasts that have ever been released on iTunes, it said flame out between 20 and 30 episodes. 90% of podcasts that people launch flame out because they give up, they get tired of it, they get bored with it. It's called pod-fading is what it's called. The podcasts just kind of start and then they fade out. Jocelyn Sams: I like how we just invent words now. What is that called, Urban Dictionary or whatever? Shane Sams: Yeah. I didn't even know that word and we've been doing this ... How long have we been podcasting now, five years at least? Jocelyn Sams: Four years? Five years? Shane Sams: Six years? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I don't know. Shane Sams: Well, we had our other podcast, we had our librarian. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, like five years. Shane Sams: Yeah. We've been podcasting pretty much since podcasting got big and I had never heard this word until probably 48 hours ago. It was called pod-fading. To think that we made it this long and we make our full-time living podcasting now, basically, and we hit 200 episodes, and we're getting close to 300. We're getting very close to 300 now because we've started going to two podcasts a week. That was just a really proud moment for us, that we hung in there, we stuck it out, and the end is nowhere in sight. We're just going to keep going with this because podcasting is the best way that we can get our message out to as many people as possible. Shane Sams: Also, to realize that so many people have found us, not only through our podcast but going into other people's podcast, telling our story. That's how one of our favorite members, Jeanette Stein, found us. We mention Jeanette a lot because she's such an inspiring person in her own right. We've seen what she's accomplished. She came into our community, she was making almost no money online, literally pennies, and I think within about three or four months of joining the community, she had built a membership community of her own and quit her job. She has an amazing story. It's awesome to see how just her finding our podcast changed her life. Shane Sams: Then, we saw the ripple effect of what putting your message out there, making content, can actually do. Jeanette sent us a message this year. It was the picture of a little baby girl named Caitlin from the Philippines. We sent her a message back, we were like, "What is this?" Jocelyn Sams: "Why are you sending us a picture of this baby? I don't know this baby." Shane Sams: We're just ... "I don't know this baby. This is a random baby. Why are you sending this?" Then, she sends us a screenshot from a conversation that she was having with her virtual assistant who lived in the Philippines. Her assistants name was John and it said, "Ma'am Jeannette," because that's how anybody from another country always says mister or miss or sir or madame or ma'am before your name. Shane Sams: They say, "Ma'am Jeanette. We just wanted to thank you for helping us bring baby Caitlin into the world. You see, before we met you, we couldn't afford health insurance. We had tried to have kids before and two of our babies died because we didn't have health insurance and we couldn't get them the medical care they needed. We couldn't get the medical care we needed. Because you hired us, we got health insurance and we were able to go to the hospital and baby Caitlin was able to be healthy and be born and come home with us. We just wanted to thank you for that." Shane Sams: I'll never forget the message that Jeanette sent to us after she showed us this picture and she showed us the screen capture. She said, "You helped me so I could help them." That really brought it home to ... It's not just about the money, it's not just about the entrepreneurship, it's not just about growing the business. Those are all important things. We should think about those things, we should try to make more profits, we should try to grow revenue, but everything we do is kind of like throwing a pebble in the pond. When that ripple goes out and hits someone else, they get to pick up their pebble and throw it farther than you could ever throw it by yourself, and they get to hit somebody else with their ripple. It just keeps going and going and going. Shane Sams: To think that two people from Kentucky started a business that helped someone else start a business that allowed them to hire someone else on the other side of the world that allowed a baby to be born is just really, really overwhelming. That was really one of my proudest moments in 2018, is just knowing that something like that could even happen if you just take action. If you just actually make the first move and you pick up your pebble and you throw it in the pond, the ripple can go out. Until you do that, nothing happens. It's just a reminder for us to keep taking action. We have no idea what good could be done in the future with our business unless we keep taking action, keep trying, keep doing all those other little things that grow the business to allow moments like that to happen. That was really just one of the highlights for us, is to learn that our podcast had done something like that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It was just ... It was very overwhelming. When I realized what she was trying to say after she sent me the picture and I'm like, "Okay, who is this? I'm a little bit confused," and she explains it all to me, those of you who know me personally know that I'm not much of a crier but I might have cried a little on that one. That was just a really cool and just unexpected thing that we just never could have anticipated when we started this podcast. Shane Sams: With that being said, we hear all the stories in our Flip Your Life community, we get a lot of messages from you guys, we see all these messages all the time, but we know that there's a lot of stories out there that we haven't heard. We would love to hear your story, as well. If you have an amazing story from our podcast that you took action and you did something, we have people that write us all the time and say, "Just from listening to your podcast, I got my business started and I'm making my side hustle work and I've got money coming in and I'm getting ready to take it to the next level," or, "This amazing thing happened," like with baby Caitlin, "just from going through your thing." Shane Sams: Those messages really drive us to keep going, to keep bringing you this kind of value and this kind of information every single week on our podcast. It's really the fuel for our fire. We would love to hear your story, so, if you have not told us your story, the best place for you to do that is over on iTunes. It's the easiest place for you to go in, you can tell us how the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is impacting you, your life, your business. All you gotta do is click "write a review," leave us that five star review, and tell us your story. Write in there a paragraph or two about how this podcast, this community, how me and Jocelyn or anybody in it has changed your life or is making your life aim in a different direction and how you're making progress toward your goals. We would love to hear those stories from you guys. All you have to do is go to iTunes and type in the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and you'll find us. Click on it and leave us a review. Jocelyn Sams: I also learned something recently. You can tell Siri, if you're on an Apple product, "Siri, follow or subscribe to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast," and that will actually work. I didn't realize that until just recently. Shane Sams: They can just click the button and say, "Siri, follow ..." What is that? "Siri, subscribe to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Apparently that works. I don't know. I heard this on another podcast. Jocelyn Sams: One thing I wanted to say about podcasting while we're on the subject is that I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. It's something that I really didn't do for a long time, but I've kind of gotten into it recently. We are one of the few podcasts ... I don't know that I've heard a single other one that is not supported by ads or by something. We bring this content to you guys two times a week with no ad support. We are just doing this ... Shane Sams: We don't even do affiliate launches, nothing. We are ... You support us, not only with your encouragement but, in the Flip Your Life community, we are 100% dedicated to you. It's crazy. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I think it's kind of crazy that we've made it this long, we've it 200 something episodes without doing sponsorships. We never say never. I'm not going to say that we are never going to do anything like that. I don't know what the future holds. What I'm trying to say is, if you can't join our community, if you don't have the money for it right now, we get it. Shane Sams: We've been there. Jocelyn Sams: The one thing that you can do, though, is go onto iTunes and leave us a review and let people know what this podcast means to you. Let us know what the podcast means to you. It just really helps us keep going in times that it's hard to keep going. Shane Sams: Yeah. Tell other people about it. If you know other people that are into this kind of thing, let them know that we're here every week, twice a week, one on one helping real people change their lives and helping you change your life and helping you change your family's future, and we can help them, too. Whatever you can do, we'll keep coming to you guys. We really appreciate all those reviews, they really keep us going. Jocelyn Sams: All right. That was kind of some of the business highlights of 2018 for us. We also had some personal highlights that we kind of wanted to go through. We are not typically very good at kind of patting ourselves on the back or really celebrating anything. We're just very ambitious people and we're always kind of looking to the next thing, but we wanted to look back and kind of pull out some good personal memories. Jocelyn Sams: I would say first of all, for me, 2018 was a lot better than 2017 as far as my mental state. At the end of 2017, I had a really rough year. We sold the business and it's the business that I pretty much built from the ground up almost by myself. It was almost like a death. You kind of go through those phases of grief. It was really happy because it was a great website ... Shane Sams: The business had lived a good life. It was like the celebration at the funeral. It was like ... Then it just went post depression, basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I had to deal with some people along the way with the sale and they were a little bit difficult. It was just kind of a bad end of the year for me. I won't say bad but it was just a challenging end of the year. Shane Sams: You underestimate it. I'm going to call you out a little bit here because Jocelyn was in such bad mental state after the sale, and really there was a really, really rough person to deal with. They were heart ... They were just not nice. Jocelyn usually avoids those people at all possible but she had to deal with this person in the company. Physical manifestations started coming. Jocelyn's neck and stuff got so stiff that she would have to ... It would almost twist her head to the side because the stress of the sale and dealing with that person and everything was so bad. Jocelyn Sams: I went to chiropractors, I went to physical therapists, I went to get dry-needling, which is sort of like acupuncture. Shane Sams: You got counseling. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I went to a counselor. I did all of these different things to try to make this physical pain stop and, really, the only thing that helped me, honestly, was I started doing some meditation, which sounds a little crazy and something like I would never do, but that was the one thing that sort of got me out of this just terrible physical shape. I didn't really realize how much stress could manifest in physical problems but I really experienced that firsthand in 2017. Jocelyn Sams: I'm just so thankful that I didn't have to deal with that quite to that extent in 2018, which was really, really awesome. Shane Sams: Another great thing that we did probably for the first time in our entrepreneurial journey is we kind of crossed a line this year where we felt like we had surrounded ourselves with really good people. They always say you are the average of the five people you talk to and hang out with the most. It took us four or five years to really network and meet and find the right group of people that we could surround ourselves with where we knew they were all going forward. They were not perfect people, they made mistakes, they weren't the top achievers financially or whatever, but it was like they were all dedicated to moving their business, their marriage, their kids forward in a really good way, spiritually, mentally, financially, everything. Shane Sams: I fell in with a group of guys who I really talk to almost every single day now. We take a trip every year together, go out on his houseboat. I'm just really thankful that God kind of put these men in my path and helped me see other high achievers, but also see that their life wasn't perfect, and to be transparent enough with each other to be like, "Gosh, man. Today was a rough day with the kids," or, "Not getting along with the old wife over here sometimes," which happens sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: What? Shane Sams: Just to talk about real things with real people and know you're not alone, and to be able to actually trust a group of people in that way, too. Shane Sams: Jocelyn kind of fell in with a group of ladies, too, doing the same thing. They take a trip every year, as well. I think you have a trip in March, don't you? Jocelyn Sams: Yes. I went in March of 2018 to Cancun with a group of ladies. It's something that I had envisioned a while back, actually back in 2016, 2017. I tried to get a group together. It just didn't work out at that time. I happened to go to a conference in late 2017 last year and I met a couple of people there and we just sort of started talking. It turns out that one of them had the same idea, so me being the action-taker that I am, I talked to my travel agent. I'm like, "Look, I need you to help me get this trip together. Let's make this happen," and we did. I meet up with two ladies from Texas, one from Oregon, and one from Kansas. We all got together in Cancun last year, and then we are getting together again this year, which is really, really cool. Jocelyn Sams: In 2018, we spent several days on the beach. We went to an all-inclusive. We did every mom's dream, which is to lay on the beach and chat with other ladies while people bring you food and drinks on the beach. Shane Sams: And your awesome husband was back home with the kids. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: There's no one saying, "Mom, I need this," or, "Mom, take me here," or, "Where's my whatever?" Those words were not said during that time, which was so amazing. We went to the spa, we spent time on the beach, we laid in the pool. We pretty much did nothing on a beautiful Cancun, Mexico, beach and I cannot wait to do it again in about 90 days. Shane Sams: 2018, other than those trips we took with our mastermind groups, was really a good year for us relaxing and entertainment-wise. We got to take the trip of a lifetime to Jamaica. We took the kids to Jamaica after our live event to really just take a week to unwind. We got to go with one of our dear friends, Kat, who many of you know from the Flip Your Life community, and her husband AJ. They had their little baby there. Our kids got to play with their little baby on the beach. We swam with dolphins and we went to this amazing school in Jamaica with all these little kids to let our kids kind of see a school in another country. We just really won a trip that would have never, ever, ever been possible without our online business. If we had been in our old life and our old jobs, making the money we were making, we probably could save up for that trip over a 10-year period. Shane Sams: That was amazing. We got to take a lot of awesome trips to all of our kids' activities. Isaac plays basketball on a travel team and Anna does travel cheer, so got to see a lot of cool places through that. We bought a new car, only our second car ever. Jocelyn Sams: Our second new car ever. Shane Sams: New car ever. Jocelyn Sams: Brand new. Shane Sams: Right. By far one of the craziest purchases we've ever made but we've drove that around, we've wrecked it once, got it fixed. Still driving that. Got a lot of cool travel going on. Right now today, while you're listening to this, we are going to be at the University of Kentucky football bowl game versus Penn State, which is our first New Year's Day bowl game in 20 years. We're huge Kentucky fans. This is actually the best football season of my lifetime and I am a longtime Kentucky faithful football fan, so it's pretty amazing what we're doing today. Shane Sams: Just had some amazing experiences. We bought jet skis for our lake. We have a little private lake behind our house. I don't know if there was a day this summer we didn't get on those jet skis and pull the kids on the tubes. Jocelyn Sams: We had people over constantly. Shane Sams: All the time. Jocelyn Sams: This was party central this summer. Shane Sams: We really didn't get to enjoy our house last year because ... Jocelyn Sams: We were building decks. Shane Sams: We were building decks and docks. It was a construction zone. Shane Sams: We just really got to actually enjoy life, maybe kind of for the first time since we actually quit our jobs. We've done a lot of cool things, don't get me wrong, but this was kind of the first year we felt totally in control of everything. Jocelyn Sams: Nothing was being decorated. The house was finished being decorated, the construction was finished, everything was finished and we were actually able to live in our house, which was a really nice feeling. Shane Sams: It was like the spoils of the last five years. We've worked so hard to build this new life for ourselves. It finally hit. That kind of touches back on it takes a long time to be an overnight success, but then it even takes a long time to enjoy the success that you've earned. It took us 13 months to really get to a point where we could even think about the decision to quit our jobs. It took probably another year almost from that before we really felt secure, not stressed about the whole thing was going to collapse. Then, it took us probably another two years to wrap our brain around what was possible, because what we do now is ... I don't even think I could get in a time machine and go back and explain it to myself five years ago, where we've ended up at. Shane Sams: When you're on this journey and you're looking to the future and you've got these big goals, be ready. Everything is a learning experience. It's like they always say those ... When someone wins the lottery, they spend all their money in a month and they end up right back where they were. You have to wrap your brain around what's possible and wrap your brain around what you've accomplished, and wrap your brain around how to even enjoy it, and then you finally get to a point where you can settle in and say, "This is the new normal." We kind of reached that point in 2018, so that was pretty cool. Jocelyn Sams: One thing I wanted to throw in was an exercise goal that I set for myself. I know this is kind of random, but ... Shane Sams: Jocelyn actually kept a New Year's resolution, y'all. This is amazing. Jocelyn Sams: I did. I normally don't do New Year's resolutions, I'm just not that kind of person, but I was kind of really frustrated with myself in 2017 because I didn't really work out the way that I would like to work out. We were really sick. Shane and I got very sick in the end of 2017 last year. We had the flu. I then got a ... Shane Sams: I had pneumonia. Jocelyn Sams: I got a sinus infection. It was just yucky for a whole month. I go back on my Apple Watch, I have an Apple Watch and I'm obsessed with the activity app. I go back and look at last year and I'm just like, "Oh, my goodness," because I think I worked out maybe three or four days in all of November and December last year. At the end of the year, I was just really, really frustrated with myself and I was like, "You know what? I'm going to set a crazy goal. I'm going to say that I'm going to work out 300 out of 365 days in 2018." Jocelyn Sams: I really didn't realize what a crazy goal it was until I went back and counted my days for 2017. I'm embarrassed to say that, in 2017, I worked out just over 100 days. In 2018, I decided, "Okay, I'm going to work out 300 out of 365," which, when you think about it, there are probably some of you guys listening being like, "Oh, gosh, that's such a lame goal. I can easily do that." For me, that was a huge stretch. That's three times what I did in 2017. Most people would look at it and say, "There's no way this can be done," but I'm happy to say that I did it. Not only did I do it, I beat the goal. I said I was going to work out 300 days. I ended up working out 305 or 306 days. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: I define working out by the activity ring on my Apple Watch. If you don't have an Apple Watch and you want to be more, I guess ... Shane Sams: Aware. Jocelyn Sams: Aware of your physical activity, it is a great way to do it. It really, really motivates me. Shane Sams: Especially when you tag it with your friends and they can ... They finish their workout and it sends you a notification and you're like, "Curses. I was going to take today off but now I can't because someone just did her work." Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. We share activity with several different people and, yeah, it's very, very motivating. I just wanted to throw that out there, that, if you're thinking about doing something, whether it's starting a business, whether it's working out more, whether it is spending more time with your family, whatever it is, set yourself a big goal and don't be afraid of it. I could have just said, "Oh, well, I'll work out 150 days." Well, yeah, that would have been easy. I decided to make it something really challenging, and there were days during this year that I really didn't want to work out, but I was ... Shane Sams: There were also days when you had one minute to go on your activity and Jocelyn would come running through the living room and she would do laps around the bar in the kitchen, and then she would just stop and start doing jumping jacks and the dogs would freak out because they thought it was playtime. I'm like, "What are you doing?" She goes, "I got 30 more seconds. It's 9:00 p.m." and she would knock it out. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I did some crazy stuff this year but, overall, it was really good. Jocelyn Sams: Another thing that I did, on a personal note, is I really started trying to watch my eating in April of 2018. We started doing a ketogenic diet in April. We did really well on that through about July, and things got a little bit stressful, which we are going to talk about much more later, but I had ... I'd say I probably had about six months of pretty good healthy eating and about six months of not. Shane Sams: That wasn't your goal. The goal was fitness last year. Now you can focus totally on nutrition. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. During that time, though, I was really proud to say that I did lose 17 pounds. I have not maintained that. We'll talk about that more later. I did lose 17 pounds, which was really awesome. Shane Sams: Which shows it's possible. Jocelyn Sams: That was one of the goals that I had. I just want to encourage you, if you're listening to this, set yourself big goals. Don't be afraid of it. Worse case, if you don't work out 300 days, well, what if you worked out 250 days? That's still better than 100 that I did in 2017. Set yourself a big goal and don't be afraid of it. Shane Sams: The last of the good things that we're really going to talk about today is homeschool. Jocelyn and I probably started having this conversation maybe at the end of 2017, early 2018. What would our life look like if we homeschooled? Jocelyn and I have kind of freed ourselves from the world, from the system. We make our own living, we don't work for anybody else, we have all this time freedom. Jocelyn Sams: It felt really good until you start thinking about how our life is pretty much still dictated by a school schedule. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: We're not teachers anymore but we still have to ... Shane Sams: We still had to get up at 6:30, gotta get the kids to school. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: Gotta get them out at 3:00, gotta pick them up from the bus. We started feeling really oppressed by this schedule. We also started seeing changes in our kids that we didn't like. Being oppressed by that school ... Isaac would actually come to us and say, "School feels like jail. You're not allowed to go anywhere until they tell you you can. There was a bell that rings. You get to eat at certain times. There was just no freedom." Also, too, God love the teachers in this country but it's just really hard to keep 30 people on pace. They're teaching 30 something kids a day, they teach something once, they give a quiz, the kid gets a 50 or a 60, and they move on without them. Shane Sams: We really just felt like our kids weren't getting what they needed in school. We ... Our personal life and our professional life, even, when we podcasted, when we did anything was totally dictated by the school schedule. Our afternoons were very low quality with our kids. They would come home exhausted. It was a fight to make them do even more homework, even though they had already been at school eight hours a day. Jocelyn Sams: We had to do nightly reading. I was always fussing with them, "Have you done your nightly reading? Have you done your math? Have you studied your spelling?" Shane Sams: All these expectations. These expectations from someone else were just invading the personal time that we had with our kids. Night times were becoming a nightmare because, as our kids have gotten older, they've gotten into more activities, and as older kids' activities happen later. Anna Jo's cheerleading schedule ended up being at 7:00 at night this year. It's 30 minutes away in another town, so she was getting home at 9:30, wasn't going to sleep until 10:00, waking up at 6:00 the next day. It was just this endless cycle of our kids being tired. Shane Sams: I remember looking at Isaac one day and he had deep, sunken-in, tired eyes, dark, dark bags under his eyes from this sleeping schedule, from all this madness, from the stress and all the expectations of school. He was starting to feel really bad about himself and we just had to do something different. Shane Sams: As you heard last week on the podcast, we reached out to some experts, we talked a lot about homeschool and if it would be right for us, and, really, should entrepreneurs homeschool, what were we going to do, when would we work, when would we teach them, who would teach them, how would me and Jocelyn balance that and our relationship and everything else, because we were used to having all this time free in the mornings. We decided to pull the trigger. Jocelyn Sams: After a lot of back and forth, we had considered it many times before, we backed out for a variety of reasons, and, finally, we just decided, "Let's give it a shot." Worst case, we go back to what we're doing now. Shane Sams: It was crazy because you wouldn't think ... You would think two people who were schoolteachers who had total time freedom would have the easiest day of homeschool ever, but it was really hard. We didn't know exactly what curriculum we were using, we had differences in opinions on how we were going to structure the day. The first day of homeschool went really well. The first two or three hours, the kids did their work. They sat there with me while I worked on some stuff. I helped them with some things. Shane Sams: Then, we had this disaster strike. My mom fell at her house and broke her back. We've talked a little bit about this on the podcast before. Right in the middle of the first day of homeschool, we get this call that my mom is laying on the floor paralyzed. I leave, I go with my brother, we find my mom, we call 911, we get her to the hospital, we had to take her to another hospital an hour and a half away. I end up staying in another town for four straight days with my brother and my dad and my mom as she's having surgery, all while we're in our first week of homeschool. Shane Sams: Kind of looking back now, it was probably the best thing that ever happened because one night, Isaac came with me to stay with my mom overnight in the hospital. What an amazing experience that was for him. We didn't have to worry about going to school the extra day. It was kind of one more thing off of our plate. Even though it's hard, even though it's a challenge, even though we are nowhere near figuring it out, it's been a really good thing so far, and I can see how it can be a good thing in the future. Does that mean our kids will never go back to school? I don't know. They may want to when they get to middle school or high school. Shane Sams: It was just really cool to find the courage to do that because we were scared. Don't you think you were scared to do it a little bit? Jocelyn Sams: I'm still scared now. Shane Sams: Yeah. I know, right? It was terrifying a little bit. We wanted to do it but it was almost like quitting our job. That's the only thing I can even compare it to, is I don't know if it's the right thing but the only way we'll know is to try. We may fail miserably. Actually, quitting our job might have been easier, because, if we failed miserably then, we could just go back to work. If we do this for five years and we screw up our kids, they're pretty much behind forever. That's kind of terrifying to say out loud. It's not really true, but that's the only thing I can really compare it to. Shane Sams: We will finish up the good stuff with we are homeschooling now. We're going to travel a lot more with the kids, we're going to do a lot more with the kids, we're going to spend even more time with our kids coming up here in 2019. We're really excited to where that part of our journey takes us. Shane Sams: We are going to tell you more about 2018. Coming up next, we're going to talk about all the bad things that happened. We're going to get into a bunch of mistakes that we made that we really want you guys to hear, like hiring and firing employees, building your team. We had a massive amount of turnover this year and we made a lot of mistakes in the hiring process that we want to share with you guys. We want to be really super transparent and clear about our relationship. Jocelyn and I had our moments, let's say. Jocelyn always says ... What is it you always say? Jocelyn Sams: Usually, we bring out the best, and occasionally the worst. I think that might have been opposite in 2018. Shane Sams: I think it might have ... Yeah. I think usually we brought out the worst in each other but occasionally we brought out the best and it was really good. We're going to talk about some marital strife in the Flipped Lifestyle headquarters, Sams household this year, but all good things that made us grow, and some of the things aren't even resolved. Just that struggle that we all go through and working together and what that kind of looked like. Jocelyn Sams: People ask about that all the time so that one should be really interesting for people. Shane Sams: Yeah. We're going to get into more detail than we've ever gotten in that. Shane Sams: We're going to talk about some severe loneliness that Jocelyn and I both felt this year. We've really reached a new level of let's say notoriety in our business. We lost some relationships this year and we wanted to talk about how there is a price for success. There always is a price that you have to pay and it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We want to get into that a little bit. Talk about some mindset struggles, everything from doubt in our own abilities to boredom, and also just some different things that kind of went wrong in the business and in our life in 2018. Shane Sams: We also want to talk about the future. Jocelyn and I have huge, huge plans, not only for ourselves in this upcoming year but for you. One of our main missions in life is to make sure as many families as possible have the opportunity to start an online business, to start a side business, to work from home, to change your life and your family's future. That is a passion for us. It's almost like our mission in life is to be able to do that, to get our message out there to as many people as possible and make it accessible. You go out there and you see all these people selling $10,000 courses and all that. Every day, we say, "How can we make this more accessible and more affordable to more families?" We've got some huge announcements that we're going to make about Flipped Lifestyle and the Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: We are going to do that on Friday. We're going to cut this one off. We're already 50 minutes into this part of the podcast, so we will continue this discussion, our 2018 review and a look into the future, 2019, on Friday. Make sure you tune in to the podcast for the rest of that. Shane Sams: Don't forget to head over to flippedlifestyle.com/live and get on the waiting list or check out all the information about our live event for next year. We're going to have a lot more about that coming up in the next couple weeks so make sure you get the preview. Tell us your story. Leave us a review over on iTunes. We want to hear how the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, how our message of hope and freedom, and how our community online has impacted you in the last year. How did our podcast inspire you, motivate you to even think about or dream about it in your car on the way to work, a different future for your family? Go leave us a review over on iTunes. Tell Siri subscribe to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, then click over and leave us a review. Shane Sams: We will continue this discussion, which should get very, very interesting, on Friday. Until then, get out there and do whatever it takes. Take action, Flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye.   Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Ticket Information & Sales Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Should I launch my course without finishing up my email sequence? I already have an audience that gave me the course idea and content. I just haven't done the autoresponder side." Question Two: "What if you launch and can't get your next month's content out in time or decide to pivot to something else?" Question Three: "I'm selling my courses a la carte, but I'm wondering if I should quit that and only do the membership?" Question Four: "Can you please give us a quick rundown on how you go about planning your video courses? And how long does it take you to research and prepare your outline per video?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I just got my first paying member! I got the notice as I was feeding my baby, and I'm so glad I didn't drop him when I read the message!" - Rocio "I have 232 people who have registered for my webinar! I call that a success. As I wondered what topic to pick for awhile, Shane told me to just do it. I think his exact words were something like, "if you can't make a home run just try to get a base hit." So, I picked something I thought my people would like and took action. Take action people, stop analyzing and just do something." - Janet CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

55 in December! That's sweats and back porch weather y'all! Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Should I launch my course without finishing up my email sequence? I already have an audience that gave me the course idea and content. I just haven't done the autoresponder side." Question Two: "What if you launch and can't get your next month's content out in time or decide to pivot to something else?" Question Three: "I'm selling my courses a la carte, but I'm wondering if I should quit that and only do the membership?" Question Four: "Can you please give us a quick rundown on how you go about planning your video courses? And how long does it take you to research and prepare your outline per video?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I just got my first paying member! I got the notice as I was feeding my baby, and I'm so glad I didn't drop him when I read the message!" - Rocio "I have 232 people who have registered for my webinar! I call that a success. As I wondered what topic to pick for awhile, Shane told me to just do it. I think his exact words were something like, "if you can't make a home run just try to get a base hit." So, I picked something I thought my people would like and took action. Take action people, stop analyzing and just do something." - Janet CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we discuss, should entrepreneurs homeschool their kids? FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast we discuss, should entrepreneurs homeschool their kids? 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. And we have a very special episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. For those of you who've been listening to our podcast for a long time, you know that normally we do not have expert guests on the show. It's usually a member of the Flip Your Life community who comes on the show, gets a consulting call. We do that on air and we share it with everybody so that you can benefit from the conversation. Actually, the only other guest who's ever been on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is Pat Flynn, from the Smart Passive Income podcast. Shane: And this one came out of nowhere. Jocelyn sent me a message the other day because we have been discussing whether or not we were going to take our kids out of public school and homeschool them next semester. Jocelyn: We've been discussing it for a year. Shane: Yeah, we've been discussing it off and on forever, and the other day a friend of ours sent us this book. What's it called, Jocelyn? Jocelyn: So it's called The 5-Hour School Week. A friend of mine just kind of randomly sent it to me and said, "Hey, you might be interested in checking this out," because she knew that this is something we've sort of been tossing around for a while. Jocelyn: So, you know, I downloaded it, being a former librarian. I had to jump online and get that thing. Shane: And Jocelyn devoured it and read it in like 30 minutes or something like that because she can read way faster than us. Jocelyn: A little longer than that. Shane: We decided that this was actually a really big issue, not only for us, but for other entrepreneurs out there because as we built the Flipped Lifestyle and we define the Flipped Lifestyle, and we teach other people how to flip their life, a big part of that is freedom, especially time freedom and control of your schedule. That has been a really big problem with us over the last couple of years as entrepreneurs, people who work at home and have total control of our life, it's really been difficult to send our kids to school, where they're in this structured environment and they're sitting in rows and they're on the bell schedule like a factory. Shane: Then also, having to work our schedule around getting up so early to go to school or even if we want to take a trip, wrestling with do we pull our kids out? Do they get behind? Do we have to ask permission to even do that? As we've talked to other entrepreneurs, we realized, especially with people that already work at home or want to work at home, that this is a major problem. Shane: So we reached out to the authors of this book and asked them if they would come on to the show. not only to discuss homeschooling, discuss entrepreneurship and how that all fits together, but also to answer some questions from entrepreneurs in the Flip You Life community and that's what we're going to do on the podcast today, is we're really going to wrestle with this question. Should entrepreneurs homeschool their kid, and if they do, how does that work? What does that look like? That's a really scary proposition. Shane: So without further ado, let's stop talking. Let's invite, let's welcome our guests to the podcast today, and I'm actually just going to say your first names. Jocelyn: We'll let you guys say your last name, okay? Kaleena: Sounds good. Shane: And I am good at butchering names and I want you guys to say this. So we have Aaron and Kaleena. Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: What is it? Say it again? Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: All right. We have Aaron and Kaleena- Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: Amuchastegui. Okay. Welcome to the show, guys. Aaron: Awesome. Thanks so much for inviting us to come on. You know, from you guys getting to talk about what you do and we're really excited to be able to share with you and your community. We're entrepreneurs as well, and we had to do some crazy flips in our life too, so we're super-excited. Kaleena: Yeah, super excited. Shane: I do want to stress that we are not affiliates, we're not getting any benefit for this, you know, financially. Jocelyn: We've met them for the first time, like a few minutes ago. Shane: Yeah, exactly. So we are literally here just to help entrepreneurs in their journey and to help people who are really struggling with this question about homeschooling. So if you could, you mentioned you were entrepreneurs, tell us a little bit about your background as an entrepreneur and then maybe you could go into that decision-making process that led you guys down this homeschool route. Kaleena: Yeah, absolutely. Aaron: Sure. We've been entrepreneurs for almost 10 years now. So originally we were full-time workers. I worked for a residential home builder. Kaleena worked for various offices, different things like that. Back in 2009, that was kind of that first moment of quitting our jobs to become entrepreneurs. Part of that was what everybody wants to try for, is trying to get more freedom, more life, more things like that, but our first couple of years of that was we thought that we were going to get a lot of our time back, but our first few years of entrepreneurship was just really, really long hard hours. Aaron: The businesses that we had chosen, there was 50 and 60 hour weeks and we were buying and selling and flipping houses and doing construction. Kaleena ran a big real estate brokerage. It was a really good experience for us, so we started, after a lot of hard work, we got the money and the finances that entrepreneurship was supposed to bring, but we hadn't quite figured out that freedom part yet because we were working and working a ton. Aaron: Then several years ago, we kind of had those years where there's nannies raising our kids, working way too much around the clock, and just kind of came to these, this kind of different experience where we started to, as entrepreneurs, that way working too much. Our marriage wasn't really going very good, we had nannies raising our kids, they were going off to school and we were really, really unhappy. Then we had kind of some really come to moments. We started adjusting that, changing that business, had to get recycled and back in 2013 Kaleena said, to kind of take a different angle. Kaleena: Right. Shane: You mean when you made it financially, everything didn't work out perfectly? Kaleena: Yes. Exactly. Shane: Come on, that's what everybody thinks, though, right? Once you get that. Aaron: It's so heartbreaking, though. Kaleena: It's super heartbreaking. Aaron: Like when you finally make it to what you think you're supposed to get to and you're still like, "Wait, we're still miserable." That's a sad, sad moment, really. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: You know what though? That's a part of everyone's journey that we talked to that's made it is ... I think we were actually kind of fortunate in this regard in our journey because Jocelyn used to work in corporate, like the ladder. I mean, you're climbing to the top and you kind of get to a point and you realize, "Wait a minute, you mean if I get the promotion I'm still not happy?" and I did college football coaching and football coaching and things like that. So we kind of had these 70 hour work week experiences before we became entrepreneurs, and I think that kind of tempered how we walked into entrepreneurship. Now, granted, we had the 70 hours weeks when we were working full time, raising kids, trying to build a side business, right? Kaleena: Yep. Shane: But you do realize on the other side of that that it's not just the money. The money can create some opportunity, but it's the time. That's really what you got to get back or everything kind of falls apart. Jocelyn: Yeah, and it's just like part of the whole value. You realize that money is important, but time is even that much more important. Kaleena: That's true. Jocelyn: So it's kind of crazy. It's like a journey. You have to go through the journey to get there to understand that, I think. Shane: So as you're doing this with nannies raising your kids and things like that and you have this come to Jesus moment, like, "Oh my gosh, this is not what we want." Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: How old were your kids in 2013 when that kind of happened? Kaleena: So we have four children all together and I had three girls that were three and under. So I had a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and a newborn and when things really kind of hit the head, we had just had our third baby. She was maybe like a year, year-and-a-half old. Really, we just kind of self-imploded. Our marriage was failing. We were both making six figure incomes, but we were miserable, like I've never been so discontent in my entire life. Kaleena: So it's just those moments that bring you to your knees that you're like, "Okay, we've got to change some stuff." So Aaron went on this mission in growth, like a growth mindset kind of mission, where he started reading Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. He read the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Aaron went on this new mission and I started really scaling back my work. I started hiring people, which we hadn't done. I'd been carrying like 30 to 40 transactions at a time completely by myself. Kaleena: So we started outsourcing some of that work and getting rid of the nannies, and me stepping back into the role that I knew was going to make me happier. So that happened over the course ... I mean, it took a lot of work. I don't want this to sound easy. It took time. Like we were probably a full year in to some serious, serious life changes and business changes when we had this epiphany that things weren't ... We weren't being taken to the level we wanted to be taken to because we couldn't get our kids there with us. Shane: Love that. Aaron: Yeah you know, when we made that first shift to go from 70 hour work weeks to trying to live a four hour work week lifestyle, we made those big changes over that six months to a year, and it really started working. We really started to find where I could travel for work and do things that we could no longer do in California, and then I had a chance to open up - I was doing all these deals again in Texas so I talked to Kaleena and I said, "Hey I need you to open up a brokerage account." Like hey, we've got our family back, we've got our lifestyle back, but now I'm paying 30,000 a month in commissions to other people, I need to go open up a brokerage account. Aaron: And luckily she was super smart and just said, "You know what, we're not gonna work together now. I'm not gonna choose to go back to that lifestyle, we'll make up the money some other way. But I want to raise our kids." Aaron: At that time we weren't homeschooling yet, it was just as entrepreneurs the best lifestyle for us was for me to be running a business and for her to be able to focus on the family. But still at that time she was taking the kids to school and going through that process. Kaleena: Right, and essentially what you were talking about, that 70 hour week but with my kids in school. Shane: That's amazing, and for us we've kind of come to a point about the school discussion. When we quit our jobs, we went into it working together. But we've kind of set some limits in that place, we were working like, during the kids' school hours. So, we'd take the kids to school, we would work from - I don't know. We'd come home, we'd go to the gym, we'd come home, we'd work 10 to 2:30, and then go pick the kids up. Shane: But then we started asking ourselves, is that really what we want for our family? Do we want to drop the kids off and not see them all day? Do we want to have no say in their education? And we realized, I think in the last year, we traded our freedom back to society. Because we are just locked into this school schedule and school cycle now, and it really came to a head this summer when we had to write an essay to get permission to miss a week of school to take our kids to Jamaica. Shane: And I'm sitting here like, what's a better experience? Getting on an airplane and flying to another culture, or sitting in a classroom? And why am I having to write a five paragraph essay to get permission from anybody? We have total control over our lives. We control our finances, we control our schedule, we control everything. What have we done that we've given all our freedom away again? Jocelyn: If that wasn't bad enough, then my son missed a week of school, which was excused by the way because we got it excused from the school, but then he misses a week of school and he gets a little bit behind. And one of the teachers has the nerve to say to him, "Well if you weren't spending so much time in Jamaica, then maybe you would've learned this material." Jocelyn: And I'm like, "What?" Kaleena: Ugh. Shane: Like that is not an either or, you know what I'm saying? Like, life is not either or, even though society wants us to think that way. Kaleena: Right. Shane: Why couldn't we do that and then get caught up and then do something else, or if we had - Jocelyn: Or why wasn't that considered a valuable learning experience that you went to another country, and experienced things that most of these kids in this school may never experience in their lifetime? Why is that not... Shane: And you could bring that back to share it with the other students. Kaleena: Yes, exactly. Jocelyn: Yes. Aaron: I mean, you've read the books so you know, that's the whole basis of the five hour school week, and where that five hour school week came about. It was the same issues of dropping the kids off at school. Kaleena: Right, it was like, "Hey, we're refusing to jump through the hoops of life. We're not entering the rat race. We refuse, as adults, to live this way." And yet we were sending our kids right into that Shane: Oh my gosh. Kaleena: -same rat race that we were rebelling against so strongly. Shane: I'm so glad that you said that, because we literally had this conversation probably about two weeks ago. Jocelyn: This is what our entire brand is about. Our entire brand is about putting family first and not living the way that the rest of society says to live, yet that's exactly what we're doing every single day. Kaleena: Every day. Shane: I got to thinking about our lives. We come home, we've worked hard to build this life for ourselves, in the morning we get up, we go to the gym, we work on what we want to work on, we don't work when we don't want to. I play a little Xbox in the morning I ain't gonna lie. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: We've kind of built this thing to do what we want to do with our life. And then our kids are just locked into this, every 45 minutes. Like Pavlov's dog a bell will ring, and you will go to the next place, and you will learn what you learn. And if you can't keep up with those other 30 kids that were randomly put in your classroom, because they're your age, and you get behind, you're screwed. Shane: It just really doesn't jive, not only with what we're doing, but really what we should be doing. Schools were invented 100 years ago to provide childcare for factory workers in Chicago and places like that, and also to train people to work in those same environments. I'm just not sure that's the way the world is anymore. Shane: I heard this story, Jocelyn told me this quote the other day that said, "A time traveler came to the future, and was so confused by all the things that he saw. He saw iPads, and the internet, and space travel. And he felt really scared and uncomfortable, but then he went into a school and said, 'Thank god some things haven't changed.' " Kaleena: Oh man, yes. Shane: That's kind of where we find ourselves, at a crossroads. Are we really pursuing freedom if we keep putting our kids in this environment? Jocelyn: We've been wrestling with this forever. Another part of it for me is what you talk about in the book, you talk about how you get what's left over for your kids. They give their best hours to school, and by the time they get home, we're tired because we've been working all day. They're tired because they've been working all day. We don't really spend quality time together. Jocelyn: And what's sad is, we spend more time with our kids than probably most of their peers' parents spend with them, and still it's not even quality time. Sometimes it is, but not always. Kaleena: Right well a lot of the time I'm guessing it's staying on top of them to get their homework done, I'm guessing you're having to urge them to get that reading in, even though they just sat in a desk for seven hours. Jocelyn: Yes. Kaleena: So you are having to now work for the school system and really be kind of a command sergeant, and instead of getting to love on your kid and pour into their life, instead you're like, "Get that reading slip done, make sure that homework gets done, even though I only get to see you for four hours tonight." And let us squeeze all that in to this teeny tiny bit of time we have. Shane: Also, then you take them to their sports, or some activity at night time. Jocelyn: Yes, we have extracurricular activities. Kaleena: Yep so do we. Jocelyn: My daughter, she does an all star cheer team, and it's 30 minutes away from our house. So by the time we drive the 30 minutes she has practice for two hours, and we drive back. That's over three hours of time. How in the world are we supposed to do reading at that time? Shane: And then she goes to bed at 9:30 and we have to get her up at 5:30 AM to go to school because they tell us to be there at 6:50, or whatever. Kaleena: And what about if cheer is her passion? What about if she is going to make it as a professional cheerleader, and you're having to squeeze her passion into that teeny tiny bit of time. Because she spent so much time focusing on stuff that does not fill her up. If she was at home, she could be perfecting and mastering cheer. Or perfecting and mastering where her passion lays. That's the biggest disadvantage, that our kids are spending time on things that are not going to add any value to their life. Kaleena: We are spending 40 hours a week with our kids teaching and shoving things down their throat they will never, ever use. Shane: Yeah, and like. Go ahead. Aaron: We had a couple big moments of that, where it was like hitting us, what are we really doing? I was speaking at a conference and I was on stage telling people about the four hour work week. I said, "Hey you guys work too much. This is how you can work in just a couple hours a day and finish your work day and be successful. Know that the five people you hang out with the most are who you're going to be like, so only hang out with winners." Aaron: And a lady stood up at the end and goes, "Hey that's great. So how does this apply to your kids in school?" And we were like... Jocelyn: Ouch. Shane: Uh.... Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: Yeah, and I was telling people, "Hey do this, this, and this." And we were sending our kids off... and we had a big moment that night where we were like, "Whoa!" We had experimented with some different things, but that was a big moment. Aaron: And then just like another evening, going to bed again after school, and extracurriculars and we're telling our daughter, "Hey you need to go get your reading done." And she's in tears, like, "Why? I actually earned a free pass from something else so I don't have to." And we're like, "No, you have to." Because we were brainwashed, too. Aaron: And then we tell her, and we lay down in bed and we're like, maybe she's right. What are we doing? We've done everything we're supposed to do. We've checked the boxes, and we got successful, and Kaleena is still a stay at home mom at that time and we're still not even getting enough time with our kids, and not doing it, and really starting to push, you go, hey there's something really wrong here. Kaleena really started educating herself on it. Shane: And I want to stress here some really important facts. Because I know people that - this podcast is going to be controversial. I know it is. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Yup. Shane: But we have a really good school and a great community. We have really hard working, dedicated, good teachers. Jocelyn: Who care about our children. Shane: Who love our kids, and they work within a system that they don't always have control over. And also if you look at the entire span of human history, it is a miracle in the United States, it is a miracle in the United States that every child does even get to go to school, good or bad. Kaleena: Absolutely. Shane: It is an absolute miracle of humanity, if you just look at it throughout history. Shane: However - and the opportunities that we have to be entrepreneurs, to work on the internet, to build a life that we want, and even to educate our child at home, is all built on the fact that that was available for the past hundred years. That being said, somethings wrong. Something has changed in the way that we're all living that has to be corrected. And the system that we're using now is just not working - for our kids, for families. For anybody. Especially for entrepreneurs who do have that freedom. Shane: One of our things is travel. Whether we're speaking, we do live events around the country. Whether we just want to take a trip for educational purposes, or fun. What happens when you want to travel during the week? What happens when you want to get away for a couple weeks in the winter to keep from getting Seasonal Affective Disorder? All these things that you can take into account, you've still got school to contend with. It is trapping you there just like a 9 - 5 job or like a rat race. Shane: What about your kids who are having their creativity stifled? What if your kid hates math? But they can grasp it, they can do the math that they need to do. But what if they are musically inclined and they're only getting 20 minutes of music a day? Shane: Isaac is taking coding in one of his classes, and he's really disappointed because he's cycled out of the coding class, and he was really getting into it. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you mean that opportunity disappeared because they can't get everyone through because they only have 12 computers?" Like, what if he wants to keep doing that? He stayed at home sick today and he's up there coding right now. Shane: Where are those opportunities for that? That's where we kind of are at right now. Can we pull this off? Can we do this? But that leads to a whole other set of questions. Aaron: We should say, too, that we absolutely loved the school our girls were going too, too. And the teachers loved our kids. It wasn't that the school we were going to was broken, the system was broken for us. Kaleena: Yes. Aaron: It wasn't a good match for who we wanted to be and what we were trying to do of excelling to these different levels. Then that basis of what you said, the whole idea behind the five hour school week is you can spend an hour a day doing all that normal schoolwork stuff, and then the rest of the day is whatever they want. For travel, or focusing on coding. One of our daughters took coding classes for a while, too. And being able to find that passion. The little details with some focus, they can do all the stuff that everybody else has to do in school, and then they can spend the rest of that time they've saved now on stuff they love. Whether its cheerleading or soccer, whatever. Shane: We've kind of noticed too that school is - and this goes back to there's a problem with how the actual thing has evolved - school's not realistic. It's not realistic to how life actually works. So we can get into the life skills, and balancing checkbooks, and all that's fine. We all have jobs to teach our kids that stuff to. Shane: But when you put 30 people in a room and you teach a lesson once, and you expect all 30 to be able to get there in one class, that doesn't happen. That's not realistic. People learn and grow on their own path. Our son came home the other day and it broke our hearts. I was sitting there talking to him and I said, "Are you okay, did you have a bad day?" And he goes, "I just feel dumb." And I go, "What do you mean?" And he goes, "I'm not understanding area and perimeter, and they only talked about it one day and we went on to something else. But they keep testing me on it." And I'm like oh my gosh, he got to watch the guy do it on the blackboard. But if he was at home, he could watch the lesson over and over until he got it. Jocelyn: And that's how these guys got started, like I know reading in your book that's what was a light bulb moment for you, right? Helping somebody with a math problem. Kaleena: Yeah, so it's interesting. We went on a trip. We started hearing people speak about unconventional education ideas. In fact the vice principal from our private school was leaving to go start an Acton Academy which is an entrepreneurial based school that goes from kindergarten all the way through high school. It's a really incredible program. Shane: We looked at it, we almost thought about moving to a city that has an Acton academy. Jocelyn: Yeah one of our friends, her children go to one. Kaleena: They're incredible. So he's leaving this school, because he's saying, "I have kids and I can't actually send them to the school that I'm a principal at." And so I loved and respected this man. So we were hearing from him, other entrepreneurs were homeschooling their children, and I'd started reading some new material, like Free to Learn from Peter Gray. And so we started slowly tiptoeing into this new territory. Kaleena: So we were like, we're going to pull our kids out of school for a week and go to Yosemite. And I don't care what the school's going to say, we're just gonna go do this. So we're gone for the week, we forget the kids' homework. We think it's going to be a catastrophe. We have this beautiful family vacation. The girls, and we, learned so much together just about the park, about nature. We're doing open air bus rides, and all the things. We're doing campfires with the rangers. We are learning in real time, and making incredible family memories. Kaleena: And so then after a week we get home, and what's waiting for us? A week's worth of homework. And just the fear, and the anxiety sets in and its like panic in my house. And so I start unloading the car and Aaron's like, I'm gonna sit down with the girls, we're gonna knock out homework. Kaleena: Our oldest, Maddy, is stressed. She has to learn long division. They're gonna go over long division this week and she hasn't done it, and this is so terrifying. No exaggeration, Aaron sat there for two hours with all three of our girls and knocked out a weeks worth of work, including teaching Maddy long division. Where she could just sit and independently do problems. Aaron: Its such a fun conversation with you guys, because you guys could've written a couple chapters of our book. Kaleena: Right. Aaron: The same problems you guys are talking about is what's there. We discovered some of it by knowledge, some by seeing it. Those couple hours when we got back, it's the four hour work week principles. If you're really focused and you have no distractions and you're going to the task at hand in the most productive manner, you're gonna be able to finish a whole bunch of stuff in a short amount of time. Aaron: One of the big problems with school like what you said, is that they teach in one method. Which is going to be slower than the fastest person in class and faster than the slowest person in class. So it's really only the perfect speed for a few of the students. And it's only in that subject. So it's not the most efficient way. Aaron: The most efficient way to learn is as fast as that individual can learn. Maybe this kid has to go over perimeter and area ten different times, but in this other subject they get it like that. And so the way we have it set up is that it's that quick focus and then - I take Maddy back to school the next day. We drop her off and she's relieved. We got to pick her and and we go, "Hey how was your day today?" And she goes, "Dad, I was the only one that knows how to learn long division, they didn't even get to it this week." Shane: Wow. Isn't that crazy? Aaron: It is. Shane: You know what's funny though? You still had to deal with all the stress and anxiety. She was so worried about this artificial deadline or consequence that society and the school had placed on her. It's subconscious, they don't know they're doing it. This fear and anxiety was over nothing. Shane: Where is the joy in just, holy crap I know how to do long division. That's miraculous, that we can do these mathematical things, and that's gonna pay dividends down the road. But she got to - what if she had just entered that weekend with, "Oh we just went to Yosemite. Hey what are we studying this week guys? Long division? Cool, let's figure that out." Instead of, "Oh my gosh if I don't learn this tomorrow I'm a failure." And all these consequences, and all these bad things. Shane: You got the result, but you had to deal with all the problems. When you could've just eliminated the anxiety and the problems. Kaleena: Right. Then the problem continued, because for the next three to four weeks the school was still going over long division and Maddy had mastered it and was bored out of her mind. Shane: And that's our daughter's problem right now. She's having the opposite problem. In her class in her grade, not that she's any more smarter or more capable than our son, but she's younger and she's the faster speed right now in her topics. Jocelyn: And she says she's bored. Shane: And she's bored out of her - she doesn't want to go to school. Jocelyn: Basically during a big portion of the day she takes accelerated reader tests, which I don't really have a problem with accelerated reader or anything like that, and I'm not saying anything bad about her teacher. Her teacher is catering to those who haven't mastered whatever it is she's trying to teach, and so because my child has she spends her days reading books and taking tests on them. Kaleena: Right. Oh I know. Shane: She's reading easy fun books and doing nothing. So it's just this weird environment. I go back to, school is not realistic of the real world. Shane: When I wake up every day, I'm looking at the next thing I've got to do to grow our business, to improve our marriage, to help our kids, to help the people in our community, to record podcasts for our audience so they've got something to spur them. I'm always looking at the next thing, there's never a time where I just stop and I'm like, I gotta wait for everybody else to catch up. Shane: That's not real, that's not how life actually works. Looking at how school functions - how old are you guys? Kaleena: I'm 36. Aaron: And I'm 38. Shane: Okay, so I'm 40. Jocelyn's about 30, so we're the same age. We talked to somebody a couple weeks ago, we talked to a guy who was like 31. Right? When we had a live event a couple months ago we had over a hundred people that had flown in for a conference that we put on. There was everybody in that room from age 30 to 60. Shane: But you go to school, and it's the only 18 years of your life where you're trapped with people who are the exact same age as you. And now the schools have become such bubbles. The seniors are kept away from the sophomores. And the sophomores are kept away from the freshman. Everybody's compartmentalized and even the arbitrary - deadlines are one thing - but these arbitrary, weird deadlines, like if you don't figure this out on time, not if you don't do something on time, it's just not real. It's just not the way the real world actually functions in 2000 and whatever. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: It's completely unrealistic and totally inefficient. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: It's the least efficient way to learn, is the way that they have it set up. It absolutely takes the fun out of it because they are forced to learn for a certain amount of time, all the time. It is so much less fun whereas instead of being excited about learning long division, it's like checking a box. Kaleena: Yep. Jocelyn: Exactly. Aaron: By doing classroom time less, now when they do learn, they want to. They love it. Because they aren't forced to do it all day long, they're choosing to more and more often. And they're getting to choose what they learn more. Kaleena: Right, we're not learning for a grade and we're not learning to pass a test, we're learning for the sake of learning. Which is totally different. This isn't me shooting down education, I love education. I think learning should be a life long journey. From the day that we're born, until the day that we die, we should be learning something new every single day. Not stop when we get a degree, not stop when we get all A's. It's absolutely crazy that we say, get that bachelor's degree and you're done. We're done learning? Are you kidding me? It's crazy. Shane: School's over. Jocelyn: That's just our natural tendency as people, especially as children. That's their natural tendency, to want to learn. Kaleena: Yeah absolutely. Jocelyn: And I think that sometimes in school we kind of stifle that. If we'd mastered whatever it is that we're teaching that day, read some books and take some tests. You know? Kaleena: Yep. Jocelyn: While that is learning... Shane: It fills the time to find something else. Aaron: Yeah, fill the time. Kaleena: Yeah, fill the time. Shane: Okay so let me go back real quick, and then we have bunch of questions. One of the great opportunities we have because we have an audience is, we reached out. This is a hot topic. I want to stress, too, that Jocelyn and I, we do work together in our business. You guys have divided this up. Shane: We both have been successful in our different business pursuits. But we have friends that homeschool from every economic status point. So there's no restriction, we always kill excuses. That's our number one mission in our podcast. Shane: Anyone listening to this, I don't care if you're just starting you entrepreneurial journey, I don't care if you've made it, I don't care if one of you is an entrepreneur and your spouse isn't, I don't care if you're both entrepreneurs, this is one of those things if you want to do it and it's important to you, you'll find a way. And if it's not, you'll find an excuse. So we just want to slam that door shut, and if anybody's thinking that right now, "Well that's great for you guys to talk about this. Shane and Jocelyn got this big podcast. You guys are doing real estate and stuff." No, there's no excuse not to do this if you want to. Okay? Shane: So when you guys made the call - just real quick before we get into a bunch of questions - where did you make the call? How did you make the call? Did you do it in the summer, Christmas time? Just out of nowhere? What was that conversation? How did you execute that? And how did you end up where you're actually homeschooling? Kaleena: Yeah, so a lot like you guys. We talked about it for over a year. Aaron was ready on week one. The minute I started the conversation, Aaron's like, "Pull the trigger, let's go, I'm in." Shane: "I'm ready to go right now. Let's do it." Jocelyn: He's with ya. Kaleena: Right, yeah. I, however, sat in a whole pool of fear for a decent 18 months. Freaked out. Like, my kids are going to be home all day, every day, and - Jocelyn: You're my soul sister. Kaleena: Yes. Like, I don't have a college degree. Yes, I built an amazing real estate brokerage, but what am I going to teach them? Am I gonna mess them up? How are they gonna socialize? If there is a question out there, I had it. And I was terrified of it. Jocelyn: Do you live in my head? Because I was reading the first chapter of your book, I'm like, "I'm pretty sure she was at my house this morning." Shane: Jocelyn, she gets this book, she just walks in here and goes, "I'm calling these people, we're talking to them, they're going to be on the podcast." And I was like, "Oh, what? What are we talking about?" Kaleena: What are we talking about? Exactly. Kaleena: So Aaron was ready, and I sat in and sat in it, and we had in incredible summer. So we ended the school year and it was pretty miserable. We went into the summer and we were living our best life, and we are living to the highest of our abilities. We're traveling, we're killing it at business, we're killing it at parenting, our marriage is thriving, and it's the middle of August and I'm writing a tuition check to send my kids back to school because I'm terrified of like, what are they gonna say? What are my friends gonna think? What's going to happen? Kaleena: So I put them back into school in September, mind you I get elected as the PTA president this year, I'm super involved in our kids' school. I volunteer, we're huge contributors. That's the other thing. You're like, "Oh my gosh all these people that depend on me, what are they gonna say? How are they gonna feel?" Kaleena: So we go from September into November and it was miserable. I can't think of very many weeks that I wasn't going to bed crying, our children- Aaron: She was so caught up though, like caught up in the moment. As soon as school started again, they were all 100 percent back in it. She was there, it was the long days, it was doing all the extracurriculars, it was setting up fundraisers and things like that. I could see that it was killing them. Kaleena: We were falling apart. We were self imploding, literally. Every day I was dropping them off and it went against everything that was in my gut. Shane: This is November right now for us- Jocelyn: I know we were feeling the same way. Shane: And when you said that, I thought to myself that is the exact experience that we have had. Jocelyn: We seriously hate it every day. We hate it. Kaleena: I know. I do know. Aaron: We ended up - it was an accidentally pushing it a little further... I saw what was going on so I scheduled three weeks of vacation in November. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: So it was coming up to November first and we realized that I was on a business trip somewhere, and Kaleena is getting ready to write the November check and realizing that they're only going to be at school four or five days that month. Kaleena: Right. We had a couple of business trips, and we decided to mix in going and seeing the volcanoes in Hawaii as an educational piece. So we were gonna be jumping across the country for three weeks and the kids weren't gonna be in school. Because there's also Thanksgiving holiday. It's parent teacher conferences though, and Aaron's in Florida working, and I just call him on the way to parent teacher conferences and I said, "Unless I get a different feeling, I think I'm pulling the kids out right now." And he's like, "I've got your back, I support you, I'm so proud of you..." Whatever. Kaleena: I walked into parent teacher conferences, and the first one was for our oldest, Maddy. And she was a fourth grader. And the teacher said, I'll never forget this conversation because it just solidified what I was doing that day, she said, "Your daughter is incredible. She's so amazing, all A's, the kindest girl in the class, helps people that are below her." All the things you want to hear as a parent, and then she followed it with- Aaron: Reading at a seventh grade level. Kaleena: Right, she's a brand new fourth grader reading at a seventh grade level. And then, I can still hear it in my head, "But, we need to push her a little bit further. We need to get her where she's reading at an eighth grade level. Let's just push a little bit more." Kaleena: And I just kept hearing, "But, but..." And I'm sure she went on and said a lot of things, but all I heard was "but." And I'm like but, nothing. She's having anxiety attacks every day that I'm bringing her to school and she's an all A students. But you want more? Kaleena: I just looked at her and she was like the nicest, sweetest, kindest, great teacher. And I said, "Thank you so much. Maddy's not coming back, I'm starting to homeschool." Jocelyn: Hmm, ouch. Kaleena: Right? And then I did the same thing - honestly the kindergarten and first grade teacher, she was like, "We wish we could do the same with our kids. If there was a way we could make that happen we totally-" Shane: I'm sure everybody had an opinion. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Everybody's all in or thinks you're absolutely nuts. There's very few middle ground to this. Shane: Yeah. Jocelyn: We're used to this. Kaleena: Yeah, you know exactly. Jocelyn: When we decided to quit our jobs in rural, south Kentucky in the middle of the school year, people thought we were absolutely nuts. Shane: People thought something had happened, people came up to us like, "Is your marriage okay?" Kaleena: Right. Shane: "Is one of you getting indicted for something?" We went home one time to Thanksgiving that year and Jocelyn, God bless him, her grandfather came up to me after dinner and we were getting ready to drive back home across the state. And he reaches out, he's old school, he's an old coal miner guy. He was going to shake my hand before I leave, and I looked down and he had put a 20 in my hand, and he goes, "Now son, I know you're not working now, so you need some gas money." And I'm like, "Bro I made last month as much as I made in a year teaching." But he didn't get it. Kaleena: Oh really. Shane: They just- Kaleena: Right no, they don't get it. Shane: If you do something weird like homeschool, like be an entrepreneur, do something to change your life even as radical as, we shouldn't work 70 hours a week because it'll affect our marriage, but isn't it what we're suppose to... Those things really get to people. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Shane: And they don't understand it or have the wherewithal to go do it. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: So I could totally see - this is crazy too, I haven't had this moment in a while. Because we've been rolling now for six years doing what we do, right? But I remember when I read 'The Four Hour Work Week', when I read these other books about entrepreneurship and when I found people that had the guts to go be successful, or at least try and fail. Right? Shane: I remember thinking, "I want that." Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: And, "maybe I'm not to the point now where I can go all in, but I want that." And when you said, "She's not coming back." It just made me, again, feel that I want that. I want to have the guts to say that. I think we're- Jocelyn: If it were up to Shane this would've happened, probably year ago. Shane: You know what's funny though? Until both us are at that point, I think that's how marriage works. Kaleena: Right. Shane: The reason I don't do it is because we are not there yet, and that's an important part of the dynamic is you both gotta get on the same page. Kaleena: I think for me, I needed it to hurt that bad. Shane: You need a catalyst. Kaleena: I did, because, mind you this is us living our best life, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Just like entrepreneurship, homeschooling is the same. There are days when you are digging in deep, and you better remember those worse days that were behind you. I'm sure you thinking back at working for the school system. I'm sure you - Shane: What we look back on, for us, the nutshells version of our story is our son was being abused at a day care center. They were locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time to punish him in the dark. I found this out one morning, and was stuck between a rock and a hard place because I'm a teacher, there's 30 kids in my classroom, I have to be there. There's legal ramifications if something happens and I don't show up. Shane: So I dropped Isaac off somewhere where he could not stay for more than a couple hours. I asked my boss for time off, and my boss told me that I would have to handle my personal problems after work because she knew my son needed me, but my job needed me, too. That's the moment. Every day it gets hard, every day I think about that, I am like, "I'm not ever going back" Kaleena: Yes. Shane: That's where we are at school. When my kid is downcast, shoulders turned, saying he feels dumb, I can't send him there anymore. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: That's what you have to reach back for. Kaleena: Yeah. It needs to - I'm really grateful for that pain, I am, because it is what reminds me that this is why we're doing it, this is why it's different, this is why we chose this lifestyle. The timing was perfect for us, even though it felt like a long drawn out process. Aaron: A lot of biggest decisions, we do wrestle with them for a long time. Even when it was entrepreneurship, it was six months or a year of telling Kaleena, "I need to start my own business, I want go do this and and be..." And when our second daughter was born six weeks early and I was staring at her in the incubator, that's when I was like, "Oh man, this is my fault, Kaleena was working nights, I was working days. I need to do something better for my family now." Aaron: There are a lot of those moments where we think we want to go, and we're learning, and it takes that bigger catalyst to go, here's the moment. And Kaleena was so close, and then it was putting them back in school, those feelings every morning were still there. The big catalyst of going, "Hey your daughter's perfect, but let's push her really really hard." And it was like, yeah. Shane: We've coached thousands of people through our community, and we've seen so many people succeed, so many people fail. Everybody's in between, like every journey. But the people who really have that catalyst are the ones that we find really make it the fastest, because... it's not just something you want. I want a lot of things, but I'm not gonna go do those things. Jocelyn: It works better when you don't have a choice. Kaleena: Yeah, absolutely. Shane: Even something as simple as, we encourage people to do all of their videos live because you have no choice but to get it out. You can stop on a recording. But you can't do that when there's people watching. Kaleena: Yep. Shane: When our kids are watching, when our spouse is watching, when we're watching each other, it just pushes you to a whole new level. So we've talked a lot about some definite benefits, especially for entrepreneurial people who want that freedom lifestyle doing homeschool, but like everything in life it's not all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of times when you make decisions, it's not that you're really even making a decision on which one's the best. Which set of problems do I really want to deal with? Kaleena: Yes. Shane: So what are the, just from a general- Jocelyn: What are the challenges, let's not say problems, let's say challenges? Shane: -yeah the challenges, the negative things that arise when you choose to homeschool? Shane: How long we got? Kaleena: Right. No, that's not true. But I love that you say that's it's a different sort of - it's different challenges. Kaleena: Your kids are home all day for the most part, so just start there and really let that sink in to what that is. Your kids are home all day. So we've talked about all the pros that come with that, the cons are, if you're anything like I am, I'm an incredibly busy person separate from just being a mom. I have my own passions and my own stuff, so it's about finding a balance that works for our family. I think that's probably the number one challenge, is that not only are my kids living their best life, but that I'm not sacrificing my best life so that they can have theirs. Jocelyn: Yeah. Kaleena: Right? This isn't supposed to feel like, I'm giving up my life so that my kids can live their best life. This is supposed to be as a family, we are performing at the very best level that we can perform at. And if I'm not taking care of me and I'm not living into my best self, then all of that kind of falls apart. Jocelyn: Yeah. If I'm being really honest that is the number one hold back for me, that is the reason that I have been dragging around on this for approximately 12 months is because - we talked about this during the break, we just had a break a few minutes ago - but really what it is for me is that I am a very ambitious person myself. I am very interested in business, I want to do the business we are 50/50 partners, we do everything together. Jocelyn: While that's awesome, I can just see that my kids being at home all the time... when they want something and they're at home, they say, "Mom, mom, mom, mom." That's who they want. They know that I'm gonna do whatever it is they want me to do to get them off my back. Shane: Also that's biological, I think, to an extent. You know what I mean? Kid goes to mom. Jocelyn: Yeah. I'll be super honest, that is a huge concern for me because I don't like where we are right now because I feel like I have very little, I guess you would say, genuine interactions with them. It's all about "Get your homework done, get a bath, get ready for bed." Shane: "Get ready for this thing we have to drive you to." Jocelyn: Yes. It's like I have no time that I get to spend with them, so that bothers me. But it also bothers me, the thought that, what I feel is my God given reason for being on this earth, which is to help people figure out ways to get out of their daily grind, I feel like I need to be equally there for my children and equally there for that. So that's really hard for me. Shane: And you're also an introverted person. You recharge by being alone, and now we're having less alone. Kaleena: Yes, absolutely. Aaron: I think one of the challenges, too, is we talked about needing unschooling. Changing the old train of thought. The old train of thought is that the kid need to sit in a desk for eight or ten hours a day, and needs to be working the whole time or they're just being lazy. Right? Kaleena: Right. Aaron: So we have a lot of people that Kaleena coaches, and they get started doing it and go, "Well I do the curriculum and he finishes it in the first hour and then he just wants to go play all day." And we go, "Yes, exactly, and then you're supposed to let him." Kaleena: Right. Aaron: And then the parent is like, "Wait" and you have to unschool that and it's sometimes it's a challenge to them, they're like "Wait what do you mean?" Part of the problem is that old belief, when you do start to get those genuine experiences with your kids. After they finish that, it's like, what do you want to go learn about now? What do you want to go do now? When they get to see that they're in control of so much more of that, whether it takes them an hour or three hours to finish it and then they get to start having more control of their life. Then your time is a lot more of the genuine conversations, "How are you doing?" That sort of thing. Aaron: A change in mindset is a challenge for a lot of people. Shane: We have to remember, we both went to public school, we both got to this point. We have a friend who has a podcast called We Turned Out Okay, and it's hard even if you want to break free from it to break free from it. Because you start thinking about, well look at all the best memories of your life, they were kind of forced upon you because you were at school, but some of the best memories of your life are at school. That's just real life, its hard to let go of that. Jocelyn: I think it's to a lot of the known vs the unknown. This is something people struggle with with entrepreneurship, too. Your current life is not great but it's what you know, it's something known. Shane: And it could be very good, it's just not the highest level you could achieve. Jocelyn: Yeah, and the unknown is this new thing. Whether it be a new business, whether it be a new schooling method, whatever. Sometimes people just cling to what they're already doing because its something that they know, it's like they don't have to think about what could happen or what might not happen. I think that comes into it as well. Kaleena: I also think that it's a lot of work. It's like, you are having to be incredibly intentional with this lifestyle. In the same way that you're intentional about being an entrepreneur, you are going to need to be completely intentional about how your kids are learning. Now, that doesn't mean that all the work falls on you. Kaleena: Here's some really quick hacks, because Aaron talked about unschooling. There is this period for kids who are sitting in a school system, in a traditional classroom and have been for years. Like, my oldest sat in a school for six years from the time she was - we started early preschool. Right? Full day early pre school. Kaleena: We have to untrain that behavior, so is there this six month to year long period depending on how long your kids were in school, where literally you're gonna have to de-school them. Just breaking down those habits, those habits that I kind of feel are unhealthy habits, we had to break those down. Kaleena: I'm gonna tell you the easiest way to do that is just let them play. Give them freedom and let them step into being kids again. We really try to overthink it, I think, as homeschoolers. Like, they've gotta learn this, or we've gotta keep up with what their friends are learning in school, what they were learning when we pulled them out. That is not the point here. We are not pulling them out of school to teach them what they were just learning. We are trying to breed something different than what the school system was breeding. Kaleena: We want something different, therefore we have to do something completely different. So it's like literally taking a deliberate jump in the opposite direction. So if you can stay with that mentality in the first part of it, it really really helps. Shane: That's an amazing tip by the way. That blew my mind. That just crushes - it's taking the con, or the negative - Jocelyn: The challenge. Aaron: It takes the pressure off. Shane: And flipping it on its head, it just removes all those obstacles because we are all socially conditioned for a hundred years, five generations of people basically in a society, that your kid does this at this grade to 18 and this must happen, or you fail. And that's where all these challenges come from. These ghosts, we call them ghosts in entrepreneurship when we talk to people like, don't invent ghosts. Its not that we're inventing ghosts in this situation, we've been told the ghost stories our entire life. Kaleena: Right, yep. Shane: And when we want to do something different, we still remember the ghost story that's been told like it's real. And it just becomes this haunting this that one, keeps you from going into the forest in the first place. Or, two, keeps you anxious and terrified when you're passing through. Kaleena: Oh absolutely. Shane: Okay let me ask you this, what was the biggest mistake you guys made at the beginning? Because the beginning is the hardest part. Kaleena: Yes. Shane: Once you get past the beginning, y'all, it's alright. You can figure it out. So you're not going back, you tell them this, you show up Monday morning and you're like, "Oh wait, we're home, what do we do?" What's that biggest mistake the first few months that you guys made? Kaleena: So honestly going back to what I just said, it was really I planned too much. I put this really big expectation on what it was supposed to look like. So my plans was, because I had seen all these commercials all over the TV for like, K through 12, homeschool your kids at home, it's free. We're gonna give you a stipend, just sign up for our government assisted public school. You can school at home. And I'm like, perfect. That's awesome, they're gonna do all the work for me and I get to have my kids at home. Right? Kaleena: Okay so I'm sure there's a lot of good for those programs for other groups of people, and some of them might work like that and be awesome. The one in California was, you need to log, I think it was a minimum of five hours day. They were keeping attendance. You had to pass standardized testing. So I had this very grandiose, original thought of what my homeschooling journey was gonna look like and on day one it blew up. Because it wasn't what I wanted. Kaleena: So here's what I did that people think is absolutely crazy. I just took the next six months off. I would get up on a Monday and I would ask my kids, "What do you want to learn?" And then we would write it on a white board, and then we would go learn those things. And I literally kept it that easy. Kaleena: And if we had a trip coming up we would learn about where we were going. If they would ask me a question when we were driving down the road, I would hand my 11 year old my phone and I would say "Google that, let's learn about that right now, let's answer that question." Aaron: You guys did a lot of Khan Academy. Kaleena: Right. And we would play around with different curriculums and different apps and stuff that were out there. So, Khan Academy is great and it literally takes you from preschool, where you can get a masters, they take you all the way through college on Khan Academy. Every program, every class. Amazing teachers. The whole thing. Kaleena: So I'm looking at that, I'm looking at Adapted Mind. We're doing some time for learning, I'm downloading apps. I'm familiarizing myself with programs that are out there, and I'm just kind throwing them at my kids. "Hey try this, how does this work for you?" And I set up, I made this thing called the buffet of learning, where I would just set out their computers every day, and set books and activities and things, and just let them pick, what do you want to do today? What are you gonna do in your hour today? Kaleena: And we just played. I didn't put a lot of conditions on that. I wasn't trying to see a result, I just wanted to get to know how my kids learn and what they wanted to learn. Shane: I love it. Aaron: Yeah. Kaleena: And it changed everything, really. Aaron: So much of the book is trying to encourage people to find their way. Try this, then try this, try this. Your situation might look a little different than ours. Kaleena can individually tell people, break it out. But a big concept at the beginning was learning life skills, the stuff they don't really teach in school. The value of money, making good risky decisions. There's a lot of stuff out there. So when we go on the trips to Canada, converting Celsius to Fahrenheit and things like that. Aaron: So part of that mindset, too, was the shift in going, alright let's learn some life skills too. When you do go on those trips, when you go to Jamaica, things like that. There's still other, worldly things that they get to learn. So it was a lot more of a focus on learn all that stuff while she was experimenting with the book work balance. Shane: It's amazing. This sounds like, it's the flip your life blue print. It's exactly what we tell people. People always want to come into the flip your life community, and they say things like, "If I can get my idea and I can get my product and it works then I will continue," or, "If I just had the exact plan and I knew this is what I need to do to be an entrepreneur I would do it." That's big objection. Kaleena: Right. Shane: That's not how it works, that's not how business works. You have to try it and get crushed, or try it and succeed and fail. You have to go out and do. One of the things we encourage people to do is, your idea doesn't matter in the beginning, you just have to go do it to learn all the foundational stuff. And then your next idea gets better. I heard one guy say, "When you start this you're going to suck, but if you're doing it you're going to suck less, and eventually you'll suck so little that you'll actually be kind of good, and then you'll get to great. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: That's kind of like what you're saying here. Our big thing is, the only thing we've talked about lately is what curriculum are we gonna use? What product are we gonna sign up for? Shane: That's not even the right question at all. You won't know until you try. Kaleena: That's the thing is you won't know and here's the other thing, what works for you in September, it may no longer work for you in May. It is constantly evolving and changing. You have to just be, in the same way that you're flexible with your business and you're constantly listening to the client and figuring out what the trends are setting. All the things, right? And then you're also doing the same thing with your kids, going oh this is what we're into. Kaleena: So our oldest Maddy, when we started this, was all about coding. Coding, coding, coding. Building web pages, marketing, she was so interested in it. So we found Hackingtons - it's like a hacker lab. So we would take her to classes at Hackingtons and she would learn how to code through them, and she would come home and she would do Minecraft. She would do all these different things to learn how to code and perfect that skill. Kaleena: And after three months of just passionately coding, she's done coding. She was just done. And I couldn't believe it, I was like "What? No you're gonna be a master coder, you're gonna build the best websites and the best apps. And you're gonna become a millionaire doing it. What do you mean?" And she's like, "I'm done with coding, I'm not really into it." And she started sewing. So I bought her a sewing machine and she started sewing. Kaleena: Because she was 10 and she's trying to find her way, and if we provide this environment for them then instead of finding their way at 30 or 40 or never like so many of us, we are providing this environment that maybe when she's 18 Maddy's gonna know what she masters, what she's passionate about, what she's so good at. And she's gonna be, 10, 15, 20 years ahead of all of her peers. Aaron: The old mindset was push and push and push them. Now if next month she decides she doesn't want to sew anymore, like right now if there's a hole cut in anything we go hand it to her and say, "We need you to fix this." Or her sisters say, "We need Maddy to go sew it." Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: She's good. And Maddy's also started a bunch of little business that have been successful. She's a total entrepreneur at heart already. But the big part is, next month if she wants to do something different, instead of getting discouraged and going, "Oh she doesn't follow up with anything." It's like going, "Okay, let's see what's next." Aaron: They did TaeKwonDo for a couple years, they loved it, and all the sudden they were like, you know what I think we want to do dance or something instead? And as parents we're used to going like, "No you have to keep going." Now we try to understand and we're like, "Alright cool, let's find your passion." Aaron: Because as an entrepreneur, and as adults, if we didn't like something anymore we wouldn't do it anymore. Kaleena: Right. Kaleena: How many times have we drawn businesses, Aaron and I had seven failed business before we had a successful one. What if we had just stayed in those failing businesses instead of walking away from them and starting it new? Like you've just gotta keep throwing it at the wall. And it isn't about being lazy, and not pushing my kids for excellent. It's actually the exact opposite. It's really encouraging them to step into who they were created to be. Kaleena: I think that that's a thousand percent about the environment. They just need our support. They need us to facilitate that. It's not about doing it for them, that's the last thing you want to do. They need to - Shane: It's also not like, "Stay in your lane." There is a point where some of that's valuable, like okay I do have to push past something that's hard. Kaleena: Right. Shane: That's not the same thing as losing interest. Totally different. Kaleena: Yeah. Whenever I think that this is, "Oh I don't want to go through it because it's a challenge," or, here's the other big one, "I don't want to go through that because I'm scared and fearful of what's on the other side." Whenever I think it's fear based or challenge based, there's a little more motivation. Right? Like you just know your kids, or hopefully you know your kids. That's what- Shane: Or you will. Kaleena: Or you get to know your kids, I guess. Because I didn't. I didn't know that fear was driving my kids in so many areas. It's like learning that, learning how your kids respond to certain things and then providing the correct amount of motivation and the right environment so that they can learn. Shane: So what you're saying is, in reality, that the fear for us is - and this is a weird fear for us because literally we both have masters degrees in teaching children. Jocelyn: Yeah. Shane: Like honestly, she's elementary, I'm high school. You would think that we'd be like, "Oh we got this." Jocelyn: We got the teaching part. Shane: But the fear part, really for us is, we sit and think back to kind of where we were teachers and we were teac

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I'm a Certified Infant and Child Sleep Consultant and I have a membership to help parents get their little ones asleep for babies ages 4 months to 5 years. Many parents have asked me to create a program for newborn babies. My main concern with doing a sleep program for newborns is that I can't really talk about *results* in a black and white manner, the way I talk about results for older kids because they're newborns. While there's lots that parents can do to establish healthy sleep habits from day 1, there's still so much in the air when dealing with newborns. So a parent could easily purchase this newborn sleep program, follow everything, and still not see any results. If I were to move forward with this product, how should I take this concern into account?" Question Two: "I'm thinking about downsizing my job to help free up more time to focus on this community and my online business. Thoughts?" Question Three: "Do you have any tips for how to approach people to become a podcast guest?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "First I want to give a huge thank you to Shane and Jocelyn for all of the hard work they put into FYL Live. It was at this event that I was able to finally see the mission and vision for my business clearly. Once I got clarity on these important foundations everything started to click. Before I even left the live event I put together a plan for promoting my online membership community. For 3 days in a row I promoted it and I created more than $800 in new membership sales in just 10 days after the event." - Amanda CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

On the road for a cheerleading competition.Clyde and Belle (our elves) are traveling via tea pitcher of course. Can't touch em due to the magic after all! Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I'm a Certified Infant and Child Sleep Consultant and I have a membership to help parents get their little ones asleep for babies ages 4 months to 5 years. Many parents have asked me to create a program for newborn babies. My main concern with doing a sleep program for newborns is that I can't really talk about *results* in a black and white manner, the way I talk about results for older kids because they're newborns. While there's lots that parents can do to establish healthy sleep habits from day 1, there's still so much in the air when dealing with newborns. So a parent could easily purchase this newborn sleep program, follow everything, and still not see any results. If I were to move forward with this product, how should I take this concern into account?" Question Two: "I'm thinking about downsizing my job to help free up more time to focus on this community and my online business. Thoughts?" Question Three: "Do you have any tips for how to approach people to become a podcast guest?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "First I want to give a huge thank you to Shane and Jocelyn for all of the hard work they put into FYL Live. It was at this event that I was able to finally see the mission and vision for my business clearly. Once I got clarity on these important foundations everything started to click. Before I even left the live event I put together a plan for promoting my online membership community. For 3 days in a row I promoted it and I created more than $800 in new membership sales in just 10 days after the event." - Amanda CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we help Christal take her virtual assistant business to the next level. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast, we help Christal take her virtual assistant business to the next level. 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 who 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 is going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. We're super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show so that we can help them take their business and their dreams to the next level. Our guest today is Christal Allen Harrahill. Christal, welcome to the show. Christal H.: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Jocelyn Sams: It is great to talk to you, we saw you not too long ago at Flip Your Life live, which was awesome. If you've watched our highlight video, you may even see me chatting with Christal a little bit at the event. So definitely look for that. But yes, it is great to have you, we are really excited to talk to you today. Shane Sams: How awesome was Flip Your Life Live by the way, was that not amazing? Christal H.: It really was, I was so amazed at the organization of it and how much I actually got done while at the event. I've been to a lot of conferences in the past and that was rare. Shane Sams: Yeah, we tried to make it a working event because we looked back at all the live events we had ever been to when we were planning and creating Flip Your Life live. That was what we said to ourselves, we looked at each other and we're like, man if you don't get anything done, what's the point, you're just going to a party, and you can have a party at the house. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly, I mean it's nice to get all the information, but then if you don't do anything with it, what was the point. Christal H.: Exactly. Shane Sams: We were talking before we actually started recording. We just released the highlight reel for Flip Your Life Live, which you might have seen that on social media or somewhere out there in the internet sphere. But we were talking about how we got emotional, 'cause we were like oh, I miss everybody. Like it was so fun, like where is everybody. Shane Sams: So luckily there will be another Flip Your Life Family Reunion next year, we'll be all over that. Christal H.: And the food was amazing by the way, I'm still missing that hot chicken. Shane Sams: Oh man, we're southern people, and when we get that southern food going, we're not holding back. Jocelyn Sams: When you come to a live event in the south, you've gotta have some good southern food. Shane Sams: Yeah, you're not just getting wraps from some takeout joint. We're going southern fried chicken and hot chicken, all that good stuff. Jocelyn Sams: So if you come for nothing else, come for the food okay. Shane Sams: We actually went before we planned the event. We drove down there to taste the food. Jocelyn Sams: Because it was very important to me. When we went down there, I was like there will be no frozen biscuits or nothing from a mix. These things have gotta be homemade. Some of these people have never had biscuits before. Christal H.: That's right. Shane Sams: The chef that ran the hotel, he's like, you want me to do what. I'm like we want grandmamma's southern biscuits, you are not a grandmother, he was a dude. I was like, you're not a grandmother, but I want it to taste like my grandmamma made them biscuits. Jocelyn Sams: And y'all I got a good southern pallet here okay, you better be making those biscuits from scratch, and they had better be appropriately salted and they better be good. Shane Sams: So the dude walks out in the thing and his first try at a grandmamma southern biscuit. He actually made this, looked like a cake, it was like as big as my head. He made this giant biscuit and he was like, I was just trying to mess around and get it right. Then he made like some other biscuits at the thing. Shane Sams: But he had made this huge biscuit, he was like man I never made a biscuit like that before. He got it right though. Jocelyn Sams: We actually went down there, we drove four hours to taste these biscuits. Shane Sams: We drove four hours to taste the biscuits. Jocelyn Sams: To make sure they're all right. Well that's a lot of talk about biscuits. Shane Sams: Let's drag it back around here. You wanna try a Flip Your Life biscuit, you gotta be at Flip Your Life live next year. Jocelyn Sams: We gotta bring it next year, we gotta make sure these are good again. Shane Sams: I know right. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, well I'm sure the listeners would like to hear about something more than southern biscuits. So let's start talking a little bit about you. Let us know who you are and a little bit about your background and what you are doing right now online. Christal H.: Well, my story really begins in my previous career in higher education. Towards the end, I found myself driving myself to the emergency room for the second time in two years. That really was my wake up call. I was under a lot of stress and I just found myself in a toxic situation. Not to say anything bad about higher ed, it was just a very specific situation. Christal H.: I love higher education, I'm always an advocate for it. But that really was my wake up call that I had to make a change, and I had been feeling that it was no longer a good fit for me anyhow. I've always wanted to be in business. So I took a step out on faith, and I started a personal concierge business, where I would literally drive around town and take kids to ballet practice, drop off dry cleaning, and then I also had a client who was in town, but I worked for him virtually. Christal H.: So after a couple of months, almost nine months of doing the business as I just described, I realized that the driving around part of it wasn't really the best way to make money. I decided to transition that to where I only work virtually so I could stay in one location and serve a lot more clients. My general virtual assistant business was then born. But as I just mentioned, it was general, and I served a lot of different clients, I had a personal chef, I had a virtual CFO, I had franchise consultants that I served and it was a great learning lesson, but I finally came to the realization after a lot of research and soul searching that I really needed to niche down. That came in the form of serving realtors and managing their transactions. Christal H.: That's what my virtual assistant business looks like today, and in the meantime, I also married my neighbor and had a baby. Shane Sams: Throw that in there, just some minor stuff by the way. Christal H.: Just the minor things, you know. Shane Sams: Did you say you married your neighbor? Christal H.: I did, my husband and I, it was just one house in between us and we lived next to each other for six years without paying attention to each other. Shane Sams: One day I went to a barbecue and there was Jim standing there and I said hey, I should have married you. That's a crazy story, how did you guys meet? Christal H.: He sent me, I guess he noticed me walking my dog every now and again, then one day our street was repaved and we all had to park like a couple blocks away and we found ourselves walking next to each other. Then probably about a couple months later, I came home from work and found a basket on my door and it was a gift basket from him. It was like fruits and nuts and sweets and I went next door to thank him and it started from there. Jocelyn Sams: The rest is history. Christal H.: The rest is history. Jocelyn Sams: Well at least he didn't tell you his printer was broken because that's bad news. Avoid those weirdos. Shane Sams: Yeah that's how I got Jocelyn to hang out with me. Christal H.: Oh, that's how you got Jocelyn. Shane Sams: She was walking in the dorm and I saw her and I was like whoa, that girls' ... she was walking up the stairs and I was walking down the stairs. I was like holy smokes that girl's good looking and what's your name Jocelyn. I was going out with my friends and she was going up to her room and I didn't get to talk to her there. I left and I couldn't stop thinking about her and then a few days later she walked like into the dorm. So we did the classic hey, what's your major and all that good stuff. Shane Sams: She goes computer science, and I'm like, my printer is broken, you're a computer person, you should come and fix this for me. But she got in the room and the printer worked. It was broken, but I thought- Christal H.: But you were quick on your feet with that answer, that was pretty good. Shane Sams: But moving on, I'm glad you threw Jim in there as a p.s., that whole story. Jocelyn Sams: All right, and you've got a new baby, which is awesome. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Christal H.: Yes. Shane Sams: Let me ask you a couple follow up questions real quick. What was the stress and the health problem. Was it a panic attack, or like what. Christal H.: It exactly was that and I had never had one before. So if you've ever had one before, you think you're having a heart attack. The chest pain is intense and I was driving home from choir practice, and I had almost made it home and was literally like a couple miles away from the nearest hospital and I ended up calling my grandmother and just saying hey just stay on the phone with me until I make it to the hospital. Christal H.: But yeah, it was a situation where I basically just, like I said it was toxic and I really at that point in my career hadn't really learned to use all of the maybe the resources and tools at my disposal, and didn't really have the support system that I needed to get help in that situation and didn't really ask for it as much as I should have. It was tough, it was really tough. Shane Sams: It's amazing what we do to ourselves in the modern world like falling into societies norms and getting in lock step and doing these things where we push and we push and we push and we push ourselves until the point where we literally get sick. We feel like we're dying and it's all because of stress. It's because we get so caught up in the momentum that we can't stop ourselves and we feel out of control. Shane Sams: I was reading a book the other day and it was talking about how in the modern world we're so stressed all the time by all of the expectations and social media and the internet and all these things that are really powerful tools that have made our lives better are also kind of slowly killing us because no matter how good we do, we can now see people all over the world. Shane Sams: So we will always be able to find someone doing better, which makes us feel worse and gives us more stress and then all of a sudden we have a panic attack and it was talking about how the stress hormone cortisol that we're all releasing into our bodies more often than we ever have in human history. That's what makes you old, and that's what makes your body fail, and it's just all because of this crazy rat race that we put ourselves in. Even in the last 25 years because of how fast society works now. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah I saw this quote on Facebook actually this morning. One of my friends has posted it and it said, survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life. It is not meant to be how you live. Christal H.: Oh wow, that's powerful. Shane Sams: How many people right now listening to this podcast are just living in survival mode every day of their life. That's what me and Jocelyn have really talked about a lot lately with our mission for Flipped Lifestyle. Shane Sams: It's always been about online business and then it expanded past that. Things like even service based businesses like you're doing with this personal concierge, this virtual assistant stuff. But really it's just about taking control of your life and being able to work for yourself, work from home, and get some of that life back so you can live a few hours a day not stressed out. Not freaked out by everything because if you don't ... if it doesn't kill you, it's at least gonna make your life miserable. That's not good because we only have one life. Christal H.: Amen. Shane Sams: This personal concierge business, this is brilliant. You're amazing, ever since the first time I ever talked to you. We had a coaching call a few months ago and even just me seeing you in the forums and your posts, it's amazing what you did to build to the point you are now. You said this is too stressful, you're in higher education, it's probably a pretty good job. Christal H.: Right. Shane Sams: You got benefits, you got things like that, it's not like you were digging ditches. But it's the same thing for us. We had good education jobs, tenured, all that good stuff. But you said this is too much and then you went and you invented this job. This personal concierge where you're literally doing these errands for people, but you built a business out of it. Shane Sams: So many people want to jump straight to the full blown like impressive income and it's all perfect. But you're like no, I'm gonna create something new, I'm gonna get in my car and drive around. My dad always told me if the economy ever went bad, he's like we'll just start washing people's cars. We'll go to people who still have jobs, and we'll wash their car right in the parking lot. We'll bring a bucket of water with us. Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes we'll play that game. We'll be like if everything falls apart, what will we do. We just kind of play that game, there's no way we could go back to regular jobs now. Shane Sams: Oh no. Christal H.: Same here. Shane Sams: But like you just invented this thing, but then you evolved it, and you went to the next level and you said okay, now I'm gonna be a virtual assistant. How did you find gigs for that, 'cause I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that are like hey, I can do that, I can be a personal concierge or I could be a virtual assistant. Did you go to Upwork or other places like that to find gigs? Christal H.: No I didn't learn about Upwork until some years later, oddly enough. So I just networked within the city. So even though I knew I wanted to work virtually, yeah, I networked locally. I went to Chamber of Commerce and other ... yeah- Shane Sams: It's a hustle. Christal H.: Meetup and other networking events and just- Shane Sams: See man, there's so many people listening to this right now and if Christal's not your role model at this point of the podcast, I don't know what you're listening to because you're sitting there listening going, man I wish I could change my life. But I don't know what my digital product would be. Shane Sams: Well, how about don't do a digital product. Go to the Chamber of Commerce, or go up and down Main Street, knock on every door and be like hey, is there anything you'd like to outsource to me, I'll even pick up your dry cleaning. Christal H.: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you know we're trying to talk about this more and more now because I feel like this idea of "passive income" has become so romanticized, especially in this space. People have this, I don't know, like vision of going to sleep and making millions of dollars overnight while they're asleep. Shane Sams: I'm sure somebody's doing that. Jocelyn Sams: While that is possible- Shane Sams: Like it or not. Jocelyn Sams: While it is possible, like it's not the only way to make things work. Christal H.: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: I just love what you're doing and I love that message that if you really want to make something change badly enough, you'll make it happen. Shane Sams: Yeah, I actually told a guy the other day, we were talking to ... he was trying to get to that point where he had some things he wanted to do. He's one of our all access mastermind clients, and he had this big thing he wanted to do and he wanted to get there and he wanted to choose his life. That's kind of where you are now, you're kind of like man, I've got some choices now, because I put in all this work. Because I went through this process. Shane Sams: I've got this online business idea, I've got this expansion idea, I've got an idea or two to create some passive income and start scaling. He wanted to get to that point, but he wanted to skip all those things you've already been through Christal, like me and Jocelyn have already been through. Shane Sams: I told him during our first session, I said, until you change your life, you don't get to choose your life. Christal H.: I love that. Shane Sams: That's what you did, you said, I'm dying from stress, and I've gotta make a change. So you physically went out and hustled your way into a change. Then you changed it again to make it even better, and now all of a sudden these choices are opening up before you, but it didn't happen until you made that decision to change, and change your life and do something different. Christal H.: It really didn't, and there were times where I thought, is this really gonna go anywhere, and it was definitely scary to transition to working just virtually, because I wasn't connected to the online virtual world the way that I am now. I didn't have a Rolodex of people to reach out to, so you're right, I really did have to go out there and hustle. Christal H.: It ended up with me eventually working as Natalie Egdall's executive assistant, and then through her I heard of you and Jocelyn and then got connected with you, and then used your tools and the membership community and the live event to help my dream of helping other people do what I do. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so lets sort of walk down this path a little bit. So we've told this story of you had a bad experience in your work, you started doing some side jobs like in real life. Kind of branched out into the virtual world, and so where are you today. What iteration has this taken now? Christal H.: Sure, so right now I still have my virtual assistant business where I serve only realtors, and I have six clients that I serve and I do that by managing their transactions. Then obviously I'm working, my side hustle is building the membership community for virtual assistants who find themselves not being able to have enough hours because they're general and they haven't really looked at a specific industry. So I can help them learn how to get in this business of serving realtors. Christal H.: Then also, working with stay-at-home moms who want to bring in income into their home or maybe they just want more than the title of mom. Sometimes I think women, we feel bad for wanting that. I wanna encourage women that you can do work that matters and have some self-fulfillment in addition to being a wonderful mom. Shane Sams: Yeah, for sure. I love the way you've niched down because a lot of people do wanna be a virtual assistant, there's a million different ways to be a virtual assistant. We have virtual assistants that are editing our podcast, we have an administrative virtual assistant who's like our right hand woman, and she's making everything happen behind the scenes. Shane Sams: We've had project managers, we've had all these people who work for us virtually, and I love even, like you think well how is Christal only gonna serve realtors. Well there's 1.1 million licensed realtors in the United States, according to this thing I just pulled up. Christal H.: You got that right Shane, that's right. Shane Sams: You only need like 10 of them. Jocelyn Sams: And it's a really good living. Christal H.: This is true. Shane Sams: Like this is an awesome thing, and also it's controllable. That's the difference in the economy now and in the past is, you had to go to work for somebody 40 hours a week in the past. But you can build the life you want, like you just said, at home. Because what if you just got 10 hours a week that you were helping realtors and it helped your family move the needle a little bit financially, like you said, gave you that fulfillment. Shane Sams: Maybe your kids are about to graduate high school, then it's wow, I can turn that into 20, 30 hours a week after they leave. Jocelyn Sams: There are so many people out there who want to do something different, but they don't necessarily want to be a business owner. They don't necessarily want to be a CEO in charge of- Christal H.: Right. Jocelyn Sams: Different people. I love this because it just gives people opportunity where they might think, well there's no other opportunity out there, I have to go to this nine to five, no, there are other opportunities. Shane Sams: Not everyone's gonna be a course teacher online. Like that's a good goal to get to, but man do not ever discount the ability to control your life through service based work on the internet. Christal H.: Absolutely. Shane Sams: Out of those 1.1 million realtors, I'd say some of them haven't sold anything. Christal H.: This is true. Shane Sams: There may be some realtors' people in the industry right now that are working in the industry and thinking wait a minute, you mean I can just serve the realtors, stay in the industry. What a selling point if you're a realtor and you're having trouble with the sales part. You know the industry, you know. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: You could go serve them through their transactions. Christal H.: That's right. Shane Sams: In any niche you're in, there's some way to serve someone virtually. With the marketplaces we have now, like Upwork.com and things like that, that's a great entryway into online business and building your own thing. You're awesome Christal, so. Jocelyn Sams: Well we're very excited about this subject. Like I said, we're rally trying to talk more about services and less about just things that are, I guess you would say intangible. Shane Sams: Also, the combination of the two, which is where we're getting to in your business like you've done the service thing. You're not gonna stop just doing the service thing, but you have this education thing now where you can help other people do what you're doing, you can help them make money like this virtually through these real estate offices. That's where your courses and stuff are going now online, correct. Christal H.: That's correct. Shane Sams: Okay, Christal, tell us a little bit about what your product offering looks like right now. Christal H.: Sure, so right now I have a couple ways that people can work with me. They can work with me through a strategy session, where I take 45 minutes of their time, and we take a deep dive into their business and they leave with an action plan. Or what they can do is work with me through my membership community, which is where I have the TC, which is the transaction coordinator, master class located. Christal H.: In that master class, they will, after taking that course, they will know how to start the foundational work of the actual business. Which means, how to find realtors, how to set up procedures for your business, how to charge, different documents and resources that they should use when starting their business. Checklists, community, I give bi-monthly coaching calls, so that's really the most important way that I'm excited about serving people is through the membership community. So I just need to grow that because I'm so excited about it. Shane Sams: Okay, now have you done strategy sessions with people? Christal H.: I have and I love them Shane. Shane Sams: How much did that cost? Christal H.: They're $137. Shane Sams: Okay, that is amazing. So that's ... this is the whole gamut of nine to five to hustle and grind in a service based thing, to learning how to do it and making a living for yourself, to coaching, which you've already got people doing it. I hope everybody's taking notes. You all need to pull over wherever you are right now. If you're on a treadmill, get off and go- Jocelyn Sams: If you're on the lawnmower- Shane Sams: If you're on the lawnmower, get off. Now, you created a course before you launched the membership, correct? Christal H.: That is correct, I did have a beta group. So I had a beta group of six people and I had a very small email list at the time, I think of like 33 people or something, plus a YouTube channel. I launched the beta group, and got six people to sign on before I'd even created the class. I literally hadn't even created the first lesson yet. Shane Sams: There's presell. Christal H.: Yes. Shane Sams: We got it, you must be going through the Flip Your Life blueprint right now. Christal H.: Yeah, you guys taught me. Jocelyn Sams: You've been listening, I like that. Christal H.: I have been. Shane Sams: How much was the course when you sold it? Christal H.: I just did it for $55 each. Shane Sams: That's fine, yeah that's perfect. Gosh you got six people to get ... you made 300 bucks just for recording some videos, is that not amazing. Christal H.: It was, yeah. Shane Sams: And you had a list of 33 people? Christal H.: A very small list, and to be honest with you, we'll probably talk about this, but my list is not that big right now. Shane Sams: Right, so basically, let's see, what is the percentage on that Jocelyn, this ones math. Jocelyn Sams: That's math, I can't do, you know that. Shane Sams: Let me do some math here, divided by 33 equals ... you converted 18% of your list. Jocelyn Sams: Which is pretty darn good. Shane Sams: So you can go get 1,000 people on the list. Christal H.: Yes, I need to do that, you have to help me do that. Shane Sams: We will do that. The membership it's how much right now? Christal H.: So the membership will be $57. Shane Sams: And this is brand new correct? Christal H.: That is correct, I just launched it three weeks ago, and as of right now, I don't have any members in it. So it's $57 a month. Shane Sams: Then what was the deal you offered for the launch? Christal H.: So the launch, I offered the beta members that monthly price of $19 a month for the six beta people, then $57 for everyone else. Shane Sams: And no one has took that yet, correct? Christal H.: That is correct, and I do have to tell you that I honestly haven't really promoted it as much as I'm going to and I know I should have. But I think I got to a point where I was really grinding and staying up late. This was also during a time when my baby was young and he would wake up during the night to feed. Christal H.: So I was pretty exhausted, and I told myself when I went to Nashville, that after leaving that event, I would absolutely launch the membership community. Then I just needed to listen to my spirit and just be quiet for a little bit. I know it sounds kind of counterproductive, because I had all this momentum leading up to your live event, and I learned so much, and I really did implement some things. But I just needed to listen to my spirit and just be quiet for a bit. Christal H.: I did, I took time and I went to bed early and just really took care of myself the way that I probably should have been doing before. Shane Sams: That's perfect. Christal H.: Yeah Shane Sams: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. I love that mentality, that's the counter of what everyone else says, like work all the time period. That's what you got away from. Christal H.: Yes, exactly. Shane Sams: You've actually created freedom in your life to be able to choose that, and really everyone has that choice, they just don't acknowledge it. I love it, I love that, is that why I was looking at your form here. You launched this, when we're recording this it's November, you launched this, was it in October that you launched it? Christal H.: It was. Shane Sams: But the deadline was like December something, right? Christal H.: Yes, that's when I told the beta group that they had to use their coupon code. They had until the end of the year. Shane Sams: Yeah, perfect, so that's why no one's took it by the way. If you'd made it 72 hours, someone would have already bought. That's just the way it works. So when you start sending emails out, like before December 31st, especially these people that have already bought the course. Jocelyn Sams: They will jump on board. Shane Sams: They will jump on board. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: Humans do not do anything until the deadline arrives. That's how we are. Until we have to disrupt stasis and the status quo we're not going to. Christal H.: Okay, yes. Shane Sams: So you pushed that deadline out so far, that's why that. But I love that, once again, we might just talk all day. These are good decisions you're making, like you don't have to be ruthlessly efficient and ruthlessly productive and ruthlessly moving forward at all times in your life to make progress. What an amazing lesson you've learned through this whole journey. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you have a lot of amazing things in place already as we have mentioned. Let's talk a little bit about what is kind of holding you back a little bit. So talk about, maybe it's a fear, maybe it's some type of mindset issue or like maybe even an obstacle that's holding you back. Christal H.: I know that I struggle with marketing to my tribe. I think that comes in the form of knowing that this is a business that you can't leave your nine to five on Friday, start on Monday and make a five figure income for that year. It doesn't happen that quick. You do have to put some effort and some time into really making it happen. Those are only the people who I wanna serve with that type of mindset. Christal H.: But how do I communicate that to them in my marketing, also, there were some lifestyle changes that I had to make when I transitioned to virtual. Like for example, I had to work on getting rid of credit card debt. I went to try to pay my car off, the kind of personal decisions that I've made that allowed the virtual business to be more obtainable, because I didn't have so much debt weighing me down, for example. Christal H.: But how do I communicate and work with people through that without taking complete responsibility for them to do that. Shane Sams: Yeah, there's a couple things here. One, you have to let go of that word responsibility for other people. Jocelyn and I always say that it is our mission to give people the opportunity to change their life. This in the beginning wasn't the way we would word that. We said we want people to change their life, but we realized that no matter what we did, we could always lead that horse to water, but we couldn't make it drink. Shane Sams: In reality, we could take the 20% of the people that would take action, and then take the 20% of those people and you can keep dividing down. There's always gonna be a minority of people that make it. Because honestly, not everyone is willing to do what it takes to change their life over time. It's not as important for you to take responsibility for other people, or convey that as much as it is for you to realize it's not up to you if they succeed. It's only up to you to provide opportunity. Quality of opportunity is all that matters in the world, we all have it, we all make choices, and we all have choices every day. Shane Sams: Until that person decides not to buy your course, but to take action and try your course, they're never ever going to make it anyway. So anyone teaching online has to ... I'm not gonna say you go as far as letting go of the outcome that people get. Because we really do wanna study that and see how we can improve the possibility of a good outcome. Shane Sams: But you've gotta let it go totally or you're not gonna be able to move forward. 'Cause you're gonna take it so personal when people fail, and I'll tell you right now, the majority of every niche will fail, that's just the way it is. But the people listening to this, and the people listening to you have to decide is if they're going to be the one that fails, because that's their choice. Christal H.: That's true. Jocelyn Sams: With all that being said though, there are some things that you can do in your marketing to help people to draw that line, and that's something that we're gonna be working on in the very near future. You can tell people, hey, I'm giving you all of this opportunity, but if you haven't made up your mind to do it yet- Shane Sams: Don't take it. Jocelyn Sams: Then, it's just not gonna be right for you. So in other words, you can say things like, if you're coming here looking for the easy button, this is not it. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: You've gotta be overt with that. You can still present the dream because you have to present the dream. You have to show people what's possible or they'll never attain it. Jocelyn Sams: And back it up with evidence, other people who have done this. People you have helped yourself. Show people the evidence that it is possible, it can be done. But there's nothing you can do to make something happen. I could meet with you every single day for the next month, and if you haven't made up your mind to do something, it's still not gonna work. Shane Sams: It's like climbing Everest, or running the four minute mile. You see the guy do it, but still a minority of humans will ever go up that mountain. Still a minority of humans will ever run the four minute mile. But it is possible, there are steps to get you there, and then you're gonna need a little bit of good fortune, and you're gonna need some help along the way. But it's possible, and that's really what you're trying to tell people. Shane Sams: I got this amazing email I wanna real read quick. I was trying to look for it here while Jocelyn was talking. I pulled it up, actually posted this on Facebook. 'Cause I got a very similar ... this might help you with the verbiage of how to respond to this. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: I got an email the other day and it said, "Hey Shane, I have a question for you about your Flip Your Life community. You have a 30 day free trial. In that 30 days do you think someone that has no clue how do to this type of stuff, can start something and get it up and running and make money in the first 30 days. The reason I'm asking you is, me and my wife live paycheck to paycheck. I've seen all you and Jocelyn did, my big worry is that I'll try this, and when it's time to start paying for things, I won't be making enough money to cover the monthly fee." Shane Sams: So this is the exact question you're talking about. This is the, you think I can do this, is this the magic button, is this the magic pill. Am I gonna be making plenty of money to cover all my business expenses and be making a profit in 30 days. Shane Sams: So here's my answer. The very first sentence says, no period. Like it just says no, like not hey thanks for your question, it's just no, that is not possible. I go on to say, it took me six months to make our first money online. From our experience, the vast majority of people will not make money in their first month. But I do know this, you could and if you don't start, one month from now, six months from now, 12 months from now, you definitely won't be making any money, because you never got started. Christal H.: That's right. Shane Sams: We bought our first courses by having yard sale, canceling cable, we stopped eating out, we sold our house, we shopped at Aldi instead of Kroger, we resold clothes. I've even heard of people giving up all of their hobbies and free time to take a pizza route or driving for Uber to make the investment in their online business. Shane Sams: The free trial exists to get you started, to get you involved, to get the ball rolling. There are months, maybe years of success, failure, trial and error after that. No other expert will tell you that, but me and Jocelyn will. Victory is long fought, hard earned, but well worth it. Shane Sams: So I challenge you with this, if this is important for you to change your life, to really learn this, to do this you'll find a way, and if not, you'll find an excuse. Half the battle is shedding the belief in your past limitations, we hope to see you inside, good luck. Then I put a little P.S., everyone who has ever succeeded online at one time lived paycheck to paycheck. Shane Sams: So you can see- Christal H.: That's good. Shane Sams: We don't shy away from this. We make it a part of everything we do because it's the truth and that's our most important thing we can do when we start teaching someone is to tell them the truth. So that's how you handle that Christal. You don't sugar coat it. Jocelyn Sams: And you can say it in a nice way. I mean you don't have to be like, if you're here looking for an easy button, get out. You don't have to be rude about it, but there's ways of saying things that lets people know that hey this is not easy, it is going to require some work, but here are the testimonials, here are the people that we've helped, and they will tell you that it's worth it. Jocelyn Sams: So yeah, it's just a mindset thing, it's a mindset thing for your audience. You just have to let them know hey, I want you to understand that this is not something that you can just do overnight. Shane Sams: The fear here Christal, really, and a lot of people go through this when they're teaching online especially. The fear here is that if the people that are listening to you discover that one person or ten people failed when they tried this, that it makes what you're saying not true, and it makes it not possible, and it makes it not real and we feel like we're lying. Shane Sams: In some ways it's a confidence issue, 'cause we look back when we do succeed at something or when we do learn something and know something, and society beats us back of bragging about that. We don't believe what we've accomplished. It's like you look down and you think how in the world did I create a top personal concierge service by showing up at a Chamber of Commerce, and then walk around town and convince people to let me be a virtual assistant, and then expand to a worldwide market and be able to do this from home. Shane Sams: Like how did I do that, and we wonder was it luck, did I do something special, is this possible for other people. We get scared to tell people the truth, that it was really hard and it was a big fear and that's what you've gotta get through. The more honest you are, the more successful you'll be when it comes to online business. Christal H.: Okay, I can do that. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we talked about some of the mindset issues that have to do with your audience and even yourself, like in moving this thing forward. What else is going on that we can maybe help you move past to get to the next level? Christal H.: I have had to realize and acknowledge that I'd been having these moments of entrepreneurial loneliness. I don't know how to get over it, it's not constant, but I do feel moments where I feel really lonely in doing this. Shane Sams: Do you feel like that's holding you back. Is it making you question things, are you saying to yourself ... is it making you question if you want this or is it making you not motivated to build your business, but you know it's worth it, you're just like, man I'm lonely and I'm not motivated, how is that specific thing stopping you? Do you think that's what lead you to the point where you needed a little break? Christal H.: I think it is, and I think it's the latter description of I love it so much. I love teaching and those strategy sessions, they really are my favorite because I really get to work with people one on one. But I do realize that it's hindering ... the loneliness, those feelings, it really is hindering my motivation. So it's not like a long run of motivation, it comes in spurts I have found. Jocelyn Sams: I totally get that because I'm right there with you. Where do you live, I can't remember? Christal H.: I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, well we live, of course, in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky. Shane Sams: Literally in the middle of nowhere, if you found nowhere and went to the middle, that's where we live. I'm looking out our back window right now and there's nothing but trees and water. Jocelyn Sams: I feel the same way sometimes, I am an introvert, which means that I get energy from being alone. But, sometimes I do like to talk to other people and I was actually talking to a friend of mine last night. My daughter, she's on the cheerleading team, and they got a bid to a competition called the Summit, and it's like a really big deal. I was looking for people to tell about it, and I was like, I don't really have anybody. I told Shane about it, and I told my parents about it, and then I was like, well who else do I talk to. I don't even have a friend to share this with really. Jocelyn Sams: I'm just saying that I go through this too, and it is like a really hard thing because there are very few people in the world who do what we do right now. There are even fewer people in our local area, so this is definitely something that can be concerning. Shane Sams: When you have your own business, when you have your family, the older we get the more responsibility that we take on, our circle shrinks. Like when you're a kid, your circles' huge until you're in your 20s, but then you get married and your circle shrinks. Then you have kids and your circle shrinks, and all these things that start taking a piece of the pie, especially working on a business take up a lot of time. Shane Sams: That doesn't leave you time necessarily to go get that social interaction. But the good thing is, you can build this into your business and into your life because once you take control, once you work from home, one you're self-employed, you're one choice away from changing the dynamic of how your day goes. Christal H.: That's true. Shane Sams: You're doing some of the things I think already that would help with that. Like going to live events, maybe that's something you need to schedule more of. Get out and do those things. Maybe some of the old things that you did before, like getting out and going. Working in a coffee shop instead of working at home. Finding out where some people you know hang out and work out there where you have a chance to run into people. Christal H.: Yeah. Shane Sams: Go back to those Chamber of Commerce, maybe even doing local workshops at your library for free to let people come in and give you that ... maybe you do a bi-monthly once every other week interaction for free just to serve your community and let people come in and create leads for yourself. Christal H.: I like that, yeah. Shane Sams: You'll be able to work with people, maybe scheduling more one on one calls, maybe promoting that a little bit more. That's one reason why I started our all access thing. The way our all access mastermind works is, we use an app called Voxer. People get it on their phone and literally they can send me and Jocelyn a message in real time. But I love that program, and the reason I wanted to do it is because I love to talk to people. That's my favorite thing on the planet. Shane Sams: I get to talk to like 30 people every day. So it kind of dulls some of that. Our friends really live all over the world. Jocelyn talks to people in Michigan, Australia, like, that kind of- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you should see people in the stores. Last night I went to Lowe's, I was looking for some Christmas stuff to put in my house. I was playing out Voxer, and my friend from Australia, Kat, I was playing her messages, and people were just looking around like what is that. Because in the middle of Kentucky, you don't hear a lot of Australian accents. Christal H.: Exactly. Shane Sams: One reason we did that was because we couldn't find masterminds here, we had to solve that problem. The way that we talked to our masterminds is on Voxer 'cause we don't have time for one on one meetings, we don't have all four get together on a zoom and do a hot seat. Shane Sams: We can talk to each other whenever we want. I wake up every morning, I got a buddy of mine, he sends me a message every day and he's like my brother from another mother. I get it every morning, but we've created these systems in the last little bit to kind of fight that loneliness. Because that is one of the drawbacks, when we trade our problems in our life for a new opportunity, what we're really trading it for is a new set of problems. Shane Sams: That's how life works, you're not really getting rid of anything, or reaching Utopia, it's do I like this set of problems better than this set of problems. Can I overcome this set of problems and this way of life more than I can overcome these problems. Shane Sams: So there's all kinds of things that you can do to combat that loneliness, but the first thing you have to do is realize that it's just part of the deal. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I would say also take some personal responsibility in it. I think sometimes when this happens, we'll sit back and be like oh, woe is me, I don't have any friends. I know this because I do it, oh you know nobody's coming to me, whatever. Well maybe I need to be more proactive about it. This is something that we try to do. We do things that other people won't do. Jocelyn Sams: I can remember one time we were over in western Kentucky visiting my family and there were some people who we were like acquaintances with online, and they live just a couple of hours away. We reached out to them, we were like hey do you guys wanna meet us somewhere and like just hangout and get to know each other, because we had never met before. So they were like, well we would love to, but we can't leave right now, so can you maybe come to us. Jocelyn Sams: We're like well, I mean I don't see any reason why we can't. So we drove like two hours out of our way. Shane Sams: We stopped in a cornfield and had to stay at a random Super 8 because we were so tired coming home. Jocelyn Sams: But that guy is now one of Shane's best friends. He talks to him every single day. So we took an opportunity, we took a chance, but we didn't know for sure if it was gonna work out, but it did and because we took that chance, now Shane has a really good friend. Shane Sams: And going out of your way to connect with people and talk to people. Another one of the people that we met online actually through the Flip Your Life community, I met him, talked to him, we had a lot of similar interests, and we started going really out of our way to see each other. We would fly to places to meet at live events, just 'cause we knew he was gonna be there. Shane Sams: I've got a four hour drive here in December that I'm gonna make just to hang out with him, I may drive there and drive back just to see him in real life. But, that dude flew to our live event, and was literally the MC that introduced us. But it's like getting up and changing the dynamic is always the right answer. Shane Sams: I think that's what Jocelyn was saying like, that loneliness is totally 100% in your power to fix, and no ones gonna come running to your door to be like, I heard you were lonely. I'm here- Jocelyn Sams: Let's hang out. Shane Sams: Let's hang out. So if you don't fix it, nobody will. Christal H.: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's why we're so passionate about going to live events and actually meeting people in person, because there's no substitute for that. I'm not just saying that 'cause I want you to come to our event, but I do because it was awesome. But I want people to go to events and meet up with people because that's where you're gonna find your people. There are people that we've met all around the world that we still talk to to this day. I mean we've met them years ago. Shane Sams: I would venture to say actually the only friends ... let's draw a line here. There's a difference in friends you go to church with, or the parents of your children's friends. Isn't that how all of our friends end up, we only see people that are the same age as our kids, right. 'Cause we go to practice and we go to all these things. Once you have kids they just consume every aspect of your life. Shane Sams: That's your like who your acquaintances right, but your business friends, your entrepreneurial friends ... I'd say every person we talked to on a daily basis is somebody that we've had to get on an airplane and drive to and meet. Christal H.: Wow, okay. Shane Sams: 'Cause they just don't get it, nobody else is gonna get what you do now, except those people. Like you guys, like the Flip Your Life community, those are the people we interact with now because they get it. They understand and some people just won't. Jocelyn Sams: You get to a place where you really have to guard your friendships too. Because you don't wanna be around people who discourage what you're trying to do or they're overly negative. I'm not saying that we shut those people out of our lives, but that's something that really, really brings me down. Jocelyn Sams: If I'm around people who just don't get it or they don't care about what we're doing or they don't understand what we're doing, that makes it really, really hard for me. So I'm still friends with those people, I still love them, but honestly, I don't spend a lot of time with them because I need to be around people with that big vision who totally understand what we're doing. Shane Sams: Going down that a little farther and it's so interesting, that's why I love talking to our members, because your journey and our journey is pretty much the same, and I think that's where you're gonna have to ... like people go okay, I have this full-time job, it's killing me, or it's not conducive to my life. I changed my life and I would say if you go back to your job, toxic situation or not, jobs in the past you've had you weren't as lonely because you go to work with people every day. Shane Sams: So when you make that change, I guess loneliness is just a phase we all have to go through if we're gonna make it. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: You just have to have those strategies in place to fix it because it's part of it. Christal H.: That's helpful. Shane Sams: So what do you think that you could do in the next two months to remedy some of this? Christal H.: Well I already know one thing that I'm gonna do for sure, I'm gonna add a personal coaching service on, where we do Voxer just like you do with your group. I think that would be wonderful to have a group of people who I work with and they have access to me via Voxer and I can shoot ideas to them and support them. I think I would really thrive in that, that would be great. Shane Sams: Yeah, you could even offer that for 50 bucks a month right now until you get to so many people, then you can raise the ... you're gonna have to raise the price later because when you have hundreds and hundreds of people vying for your time eventually, which you will, right. Gotta slice that up because you can't talk to everybody every day. Christal H.: This is true. Shane Sams: Every day. But yeah, that would be a great thing to rollout like right now. What about in-person, 'cause you live in a pretty big area. Christal H.: I do and- Shane Sams: What are the opportunities there where you could be like, man I can get out twice a month and go to X. Christal H.: Right, and I think it's actually a couple of things like you mentioned. It's going back to how I got started and that's doing networking in person and really finding some opportunities to teach workshops, I really like that idea. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely, and that's an unfair advantage that you have, like you've had that prior experience. Really latch onto that. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: Moral of the story is, don't build yourself a black and white online business, no gray, it must be all courses, it must be all this. Like build the life and the business you really want to experience every day. Shane Sams: Kind of step back and say am I really building what I want, or am I building what I heard some expert build or told me to build or this is what worked for that person. We have total control to build anything, any life that we want to build if we'll just do it. Christal H.: Yes. Shane Sams: You don't have to follow anybody's rules, right. Christal H.: Yeah, I think it's like the old ways, they kind of seep back into your mindset sometimes. It's hard to get those bad habits and that bad mindset out. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's so important. I know probably some people are thinking, wow, what a first world problem, like you guys don't have any friends. But it is a first world problem, but first world problems are still problems. If you don't get past them, you won't move forward in your business. Shane Sams: So get out there and just do it. Christal H.: I will. Shane Sams: I want you to schedule, we usually don't tell anybody what to do at the end of the show, we ask them what they're going to do in the next 24 hours, but I'm gonna tell you what to do. You should go right now and look for something in person within the next week and put yourself on your calendar. That way the ball is rolling. Because if you put it on your calendar, it's real. Plans don't matter unless they are on the calendar or have a deadline. Christal H.: That's right. Shane Sams: So just go out there and try to find something to kill that loneliness and find those people to surround yourself with. 'Cause if you don't, it will kill your business. Christal H.: Okay. Shane Sams: Because you won't like your business, and we don't do things as humans that we don't like. Christal H.: That's right, yeah, I can do that. I'll make it happen. Shane Sams: Wow, I'm serious we could talk forever, Christal is Christal H.: Yeah, this has been amazing. Shane Sams: Amazing conversation and I love it when we get to talk to people that we know so well, 'cause we have interacted with you so much it's just, man so much truth can come out when people are just sharing their experience and being real. So thank you so much for being so real and just transparent today because I know this particular episode of the podcast is gonna help a lot of people. Christal H.: Well thank you. Shane Sams: Before we go, we always like to share a bible verse, and we are super excited today to let Christal share a bible verse, Jocelyn and I get a lot of inspiration for our business, for our life, from the Bible. Christal has an awesome verse that she would like to share with you guys today. That gives her a lot of inspiration too. Christal H.: I would like to share Proverbs 3:5-6, and this particular scripture really I can lean on it no matter what I'm going through in my life. It reads, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." Shane Sams: Love it, that is so powerful and I just love the verse. Just cling to it in those moments where you're just feeling inadequate. Jocelyn Sams: That's why we ain't never alone baby, Jesus' is with us. Shane Sams: That's right. All right guys, that was a great talk with Christal. What an inspiring story of someone who was in a bad situation, made the choice to change her life and continues moving forward, making progress, and evolving into a life that she really, really wants. Shane Sams: We would love for you to experience that journey too, and we'd love to help you do it, inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can start your 30 day free trial right now at FlippedLifestyle.com/free, that's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle.com/free. We'd love to help you get started, we'd love to help you come up with an online business idea, we'd love to help you find customers for that idea and create products to sell them, we do all of that inside of the Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: We will see you there, until next time, get out there and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Christal's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I'm just starting out, so what should I focus on? I would really like to get a beta launch for my membership up before the Christmas holiday. I'm planning to post on social media everyday. Create a worksheet as a lead magnet for getting people on my email list. Work on getting my website up and running (from scratch). Does this sound like the correct order?" Question Two: "How do you launch a membership site to your email list when you haven't emailed them anything in the past couple months?" Question Three: "I have a question about an introductory offer. I'm confused about whether I should create a product first (I know that you've mentioned "product first" philosophy), but I've also heard you say about having an audience and finding out what THEY want. I've been focusing on building an audience and getting email subscribers so that I can ask them what they want. I do have a product available, which is career coaching calls, but should I create a digital product now (I have an idea of what I'd like to create) or wait until I have feedback from an audience so I create the right product?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I asked for feedback on my sales pages about 2 months ago and got some great feedback and Jocelyn asked some really powerful questions. I changed one of my sales pages based on Jocelyn's suggestions and CHA-CHING. Four subscribers in three weeks!" - Stephanie CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

  Because bathrooms need Christmas trees too! Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I'm just starting out, so what should I focus on? I would really like to get a beta launch for my membership up before the Christmas holiday. I'm planning to post on social media everyday. Create a worksheet as a lead magnet for getting people on my email list. Work on getting my website up and running (from scratch). Does this sound like the correct order?" Question Two: "How do you launch a membership site to your email list when you haven't emailed them anything in the past couple months?" Question Three: "I have a question about an introductory offer. I'm confused about whether I should create a product first (I know that you've mentioned "product first" philosophy), but I've also heard you say about having an audience and finding out what THEY want. I've been focusing on building an audience and getting email subscribers so that I can ask them what they want. I do have a product available, which is career coaching calls, but should I create a digital product now (I have an idea of what I'd like to create) or wait until I have feedback from an audience so I create the right product?" Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I asked for feedback on my sales pages about 2 months ago and got some great feedback and Jocelyn asked some really powerful questions. I changed one of my sales pages based on Jocelyn's suggestions and CHA-CHING. Four subscribers in three weeks!" - Stephanie CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we catch up with former guest Daniel Hulsman after his membership launch. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we catch up with former guest Daniel Hulsman after his membership launch. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flip 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. You ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flip Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. I am really pumped up today because we are welcoming back a former guest, who was previously on the show. He's now launched his membership, launched his business, actually has customers, and this is even a more special former guest, because he is our favorite former troll. It's our good buddy, Daniel Hulsman. Daniel, welcome back to the show, man. Daniel Hulsman: Hey, Shane and Jocelyn. Thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. We are happy to have you. Jocelyn Sams: ... here, again, today. We have some exciting stuff to talk about, some, kinda, hard stuff to talk about. We just got a really good conversation brewing, today. So we're really excited about this. We've been following along with you after your membership launch. You've had a few ups and downs, I would say. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Just a few. Shane Sams: Now, let me get everybody caught back up 'cause I think this is airing somewhere around December, January. I'm not exactly sure. So, Daniel was on the show back in July of 2018. It was episode 212. Right, Jocelyn? Jocelyn Sams: Yep, flippedlifestyle.com/podcast212. Shane Sams: So the interesting story behind Daniel even appearing on the show is Daniel didn't come to the Flipped Lifestyle community or podcast in, what I would call, the normal way. Daniel actually sent me some scathing hate mail at one point. Daniel Hulsman: Oh. It wasn't that. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: It gets worse every time I tell the story, though. You know how it goes. Jocelyn Sams: In his defense, it's not the worse thing we've ever gotten. Shane Sams: It's not the worse thing we've ever gotten. Daniel Hulsman: It was definitely saucy. Shane Sams: It was saucy? It was quite the criticism. Okay? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: As I'm known to do, I like to engage with people online whether it's via email or fan mail or not-so-fan mail. Right? I actually got into a great discussion with Daniel and, kind of, challenged him to come in and actually look at our community, check us out, see how everything's going. Anyway, long story short, I've even invited him on the podcast. I said, "I'll tell you what. Come on the podcast. We'll talk about it," and we did. Right? Daniel's been a member, now, for a while, in the Flip Your Life community and just an awesome guy, just a great heart, and I am so glad that we became friends and that we got to be doing this online business stuff together. Shane Sams: So, long story short, we talked to you about your business and all that good stuff. Tell everybody a little bit, real quick, about your business, the nutshell version and, kind of, what's happened since you've joined the Flip Your Life community since that podcast. Tell them just a little bit about your business and where it ended up at, at this point, today. Daniel Hulsman: Sure. Yeah. So, in a nutshell, I run a website called Video Game Music Academy which is a resource for new and aspiring composers looking to break into the video game industry which is something that I wanted to do when I was younger but there was never any resources. So I decided to make one in ... I believe we talked July 1 when we recorded that episode. On that day, I was just starting off with a 21-day challenge then at the end of that, I launched my membership website. Daniel Hulsman: So on July 1, I had no plan to launch a membership website. On July 21, I launched a membership website. Jocelyn Sams: It's, kind of, funny how that works. You know? A lot of people who know us, they're like, "You know what? I didn't really plan to have an online business but, then, I talked to you guys and y'all have one. Shane Sams: It's funny when people talk to use. They'll come to use with a timeline. They sometimes say, "Yeah, I'm thinking about doing this three months from now." Jocelyn Sams: We're like, "Yeah, I know." Shane Sams: We're like, "What about three days?" Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, that kind of insanity was very motivating. I like that aspect of the challenge when it seems a little bit crazy. So, yeah, the kind of insanity of that short timeline was a great motivator. Since then, I'd say that my website has gone from what you really could've called a hobby, 'cause it wasn't really producing in any meaningful way, to a business where I've got an LLC now and I think that launch gave me a little over 30 members. I launched again for another week, and now the membership part of the website has 58 paying members. Shane Sams: Amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Wow. That is awesome. Shane Sams: That's awesome, Dude. That's like a high. Right? Now, everybody thinks ... Let's look forward. One, congratulations. That's amazing. All right? We're proud of you for doing that. There's a lot of people listening to the show right now that wanna reach through and grab you and take your 58 members for themselves. Right? Shane Sams: It's hard. It's hard to launch a business. It's hard to build a following and it's hard to convince 58 people to give you money every month. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: I'm sure that that was, kind of, of a high like one of the craziest best days of your life kinda deals. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I know that I was so excited when I saw this success story come in. You know? I check our community, pretty much, every day. When I saw that come in, I was like, "Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy." That was awesome. So, we're so pumped. Then, real soon after that, tell everybody a little bit about what happened. Shane Sams: What happened ... Now, so you got members. You've got this active community. You've taken the leap from hobby to business. What happened next? How did it go next? What's happened since that day? Daniel Hulsman: Well, I got hit with what I think I described in the membership community as soul-crushing lack of motivation. Shane Sams: Don't sugar coat it now. Tell me how you were doing. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. No. Yeah. The soul was definitely under the heel of the boot there. I don't know what it was. Part of me suspected that ... One thing about me is that when I have a big challenge, that excites me, but when I see that I can attain the challenge, when I see that it's doable. If I've done step one and I see that I am capable of completing step 10, then it becomes a big demotivator for me. It's not as exciting anymore. I think that was part of it. Then another part of it was just that I, kind of, got hit with a little bit of the overwhelm, a little bit of the imposter syndrome. It's like all three of those things, sorta, hit at once. Daniel Hulsman: I, kinda, went into a slump for a few weeks really ... right after I'd launched my membership site. It was really tough to get things done and to decide what the best thing to do was. It was really hard to dig myself out of that. It took me about a month, I think, to really dig myself out of that completely. Jocelyn Sams: I love the conversation that came out of that in the community because I feel like there were so many people who jumped in and just said, "Hey, you're not alone," and I really loved that because you're not alone. In fact, I was thinking about that earlier today because one of the things that we did that was really big, recently, is we had a big live event. We thought, "Oh, this isn't possible," and we had this big build-up toward it. We did the event, and now we're, kinda like, "Okay. Well, now what?" Shane Sams: Like you pulled something off that you really- Jocelyn Sams: You really shouldn't have been able to do. Shane Sams: ... really shouldn't be able to pull off. At least, that's what we're taught. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: You know, it's like we do that and then you're like, "Whoa." Then, on top of that, you're still working full-time. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, and it was actually interesting. Usually, you expect, when you get a launch and paying members, that that extra money would feel pretty good. But, in this specific case, I was transitioning between two teaching jobs. So my one contract ended at the end of July, and my next contract started at the beginning of September. So I ended up having a month where we just lost my income. That was the money from the website, really, started coming in which was great. It was really needed at the time ... super helpful but, at the same time, it also dulled a lot of the excitement because, instead of feeling like icing on the cake, it felt more like a patch on... a big hole. So- Jocelyn Sams: Well, thank goodness for the patch, though. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Without the patch, it would've been massive panic attack. Shane Sams: Yeah. You know, it's crazy what people forget when they think about starting a business, being self-employed, or even moving toward that kind of mindset and lifestyle, is just because you're doing that and just because you're succeeding in one area, you still got work. You still got family. You still got kids. All those things are still there and every time we add something, it cuts us a little thinner. You know what I'm saying? It's like in "Lord of the Rings," when he says, "I feel like butter spread too thin on toast," or something. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Shane Sams: That's what happens, especially early on, not just when you start building the online business, 'cause it's easy to get distracted when you're building everything. You know how you get in those modes of creation where you lose track of time and you look up and it's six hours later and you've built something. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: It's, kind of, like that when you're building the online business but, then when you launch and it goes out there, now you've actually added one more thing on your plate. Right?- Daniel Hulsman: At least. Shane Sams: ... and we just keep getting ... At least ... and we keep getting sliced thinner, and thinner, and thinner. That can add to the overwhelm. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Oh yeah. Felt like it. That's for sure. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I think that this is part of just being, I guess what you'd call a budding entrepreneur. It's because you have all of these things going on. You still have all of your personal life things going on. You still have all your work things going on. Then, you also have the membership community and once you've sold something to someone, you can't just be like, "Okay, guys. Take a little break. See ya." It doesn't exactly work that way. You have to be there for those people, too, which is really cool but it's also a little bit scary when you have so many other things going on, on all the other burners and you're like, "Okay, well, now what?" It's a weird middle ground between starting out and having, I guess what you'd call, a big business where you have people to help you. Shane Sams: So where are we now? So we've got the soul-crushing motivation kicked in. We all had a pow-wow about that in the community. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn's been like my personal cheerleader, among a lot of people but- Shane Sams: Exactly. So we've gotten to the point where we're, kind of, grinding forward and moving, but where are you right now, just mentally and emotionally when it comes to the business and everything else? You're back in the classroom. You've got your new job. You've transitioned there. Right? So, at least, some of those spoils from that monthly membership feel a little better now. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: What's happening that's, kind of, stalled you out right now in your business and causing confusion? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. So, I just opened up the membership again and closed it on October 31. It was open for about 10 days, and got my new members in. So it's only be about a week since I closed the doors, and I know that this is a very critical time for the new members, and also know that I really want to kick things up a notch in terms of content creation inside of the membership community in terms of educational resources. I also know that in January I'm gonna be doing another quarterly challenge or just that 21-day challenge that I use to ... it's been my main source of leads that have turned into sales. Daniel Hulsman: So I've got all these three different things. So I feel like I've got ... I really want to make sure I'm nurturing the community. I really wanna make sure that I'm preparing the website to scale a little bit more, and I also wanna make sure that I'm not just going to assume the funnel is going to be similar in January. I've gotta feed that funnel for the next challenge because I've now put my current list through that same challenge twice in the past six months. So I need to get new people coming in, new people on the list so that I've got more fresh blood in the challenge to go down that funnel towards the end. Daniel Hulsman: On top of that, on the personal side of things, I've transitioned into a new job which is still very high energy. Beginning a new teaching job is tough, learning 500 students' names and blah, blah, blah, a lot of things that go with a new teaching job. I also have some things going on in the family that I'm not gonna go into, but it's been tough on the family and good news, on the positive end, we have our second son. He's gonna be due in early February. Shane Sams: You got about three months, then. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: You're like a quarter away from having another human in your life. Jocelyn Sams: And I love how you work, Daniel, because you're, kind of, like us. We're like, "Oh, we have a three-year-old and an 18-month-old. Let's start a couple of businesses. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, sounds like a good time. Like, yeah, totally doable. You know, sometimes, people are the way that they are is, like, you have to have a lot of things going on in order to get things done. I feel like you're probably one of those types of people. I think I'm like that too. Jocelyn Sams: I remember the only time in college that I got all A's was when I had 18 hours and two full-time jobs ... no, two part-time jobs. Sorry. So it ended up being like a full-time job. Then I had 18 hours of course load. Shane Sams: The only time in college I got all A's was the semester I met Jocelyn, to impress her. Jocelyn Sams: 'cause we went to the library all the time. Shane Sams: Once I felt like I was in, I just, kinda, slacked off a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: Which is so true. Shane Sams: I'm listening to ... going back to the soul-crushing motivation moment. Right? Even over the last two months, when you were talking earlier about feeling spread thin, man, I don't blame you for feeling ... You should feel spread thin a little bit, Dude. You've got your day job. That's taking bandwidth. You've got things going on in your family life that you gotta deal with. You got a baby coming. Dude, that's like on your mind three months from now. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then you've got this business that was, just for some more background for the listener ... it was just a Facebook group and some challenges. Right? Now, it's like this public Facebook group, this free opt-in email list, these challenges, this membership area, new content, promotion. You went from two things to 20 things overnight. Right? It's very, very oppressive. Entrepreneurship, in general, and life, in particular, is oppressive. It's really, really, really hard. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: You can't feel upset about yourself for, maybe, taking your eye off the prize here and there or getting that soul-crushing motivation because, honestly, humans are not made or equipped to deal with this very well. Jocelyn Sams: I'm just gonna put it this way. Right now, I feel like you're in survival mode, and you know this means because you have another child. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Yeah, I got a three-year-old. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Yeah, so you know what this means. Survival mode is when you don't even know how you got to work. You don't even know what you did while you were there because you're so blasted tired from not getting any rest and just, basically, sleepwalking through life because you have to. It's out of necessity. Shane Sams: Like your brain won't turn off. I bet your brain won't turn off right now, very well. Will it? Daniel Hulsman: You have no idea. I had just got home from teaching all day, and I just had a chaotic last class. So my brain is like firing in 20 different directions right now. Jocelyn Sams: Well, there's some good news. So you work for public schools. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So the good news is you have some breaks coming up. Daniel Hulsman: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: That's good news for a couple of different reasons ... first of all, because you get a break from these crazy kids, but second of all because you're gonna have some bandwidth back to concentrate on some things that you really need to concentrate on. I feel like that is the thing that is really missing, right now. I just feel like you don't have that bandwidth there. Jocelyn Sams: What I'm trying to say is you're gonna have to really take advantage of these breaks. What I mean by that is getting some rest, but I also mean you're gonna have to, kind of, push the pedal to the floor a little bit in this business, I feel like. Shane Sams: Yeah. That's what, kind of, is the bad part of what we all do. Right? We're all trying to build a better life for our family. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Shane Sams: But that's hard-won territory. It doesn't come easy or everyone would just go do it. Right? There's a lot of times where we need that personal cheerleader like you were talking about, Jocelyn. You go post in the forums and 20 people rally around you to lift you up. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Then there's another part of us that just has to say, "Life is manufactured of facts and these are the facts that I'm dealing with right now and no matter how I emotionally feel, I factually have to figure out a way to deal with every one of these variables. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: And that sucks. That really does, sometimes, suck. It really does, especially when things are swirling around us in all aspects of our life. Jocelyn Sams: And some are just completely out of our control. Shane Sams: And some are really good. I think that's what people discount is ... sometimes the good things overwhelm you to the point where it breaks you. You know? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like the baby coming or all these different things, like a business taking off. Right? Those are good things but, factually, they're also hard things and overwhelming things. So planning, like Jocelyn said, and resting are probably your two biggest things that we've gotta do next for you. Or you're just gonna break, 'cause you're just gonna try to get up everyday and juggle and you can't do that. Daniel Hulsman: You two get me. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I really get you because I have a feeling that we're a lot alike. So- Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, I feel that same thing. When you're- Shane Sams: I got 20 years of experience dealing with people like you, Daniel. So I think we can figure this out. Jocelyn Sams: I also know that, because we are alike, that you are way too hard on yourself. I know that because I'm very hard on myself. If I let one little thing fall through the cracks, I just can't handle it and I feel like that you're probably my soul brother on that. Shane Sams: It's easier, sometimes, to just turn that thing off than it so keep it going. Like you just lost a membership and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. No." Right? It's just like- Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: Flip the switch. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, it's really easy to find all sorts of things to fidget with, especially once you've just built a website that could be a lot better. I found a lot of ways to not move the needle in terms of- Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Daniel Hulsman: ... my member experience. Then, it just got to a break point with that or, one night ... I think it was like one a.m. or something ridiculous like that I was up because I was up. I was just finishing all of the things I had to do for the day. I sat down at my laptop and I opened up the membership community because I had been, kind of, avoiding it 'cause I'd been feeling so cruddy. Then I just, kind of, laid it all out there. Then, once I did that, I felt like I had a path forward, but it took a lot of pain to get me to that point where I felt like I could push myself through and pick it up. So, like you said, I know myself pretty well, especially having gone through these last three months and I wanna be really careful and really deliberate in terms of what I plan for myself. I feel I really wanna be prolific, but I also wanna not overwhelm myself and shut down. Shane Sams: That's a good point, man, 'cause I do say a lot, "The key to really hyper success is being consistent and prolific." Right? But, man, in the times where you're overwhelmed or tired, the prolific thing has to go to the wayside. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you do have to figure out the bare minimum things to be consistent with and take that step back so that you can go take two steps forward and not feel guilty about it. Right? Even in a membership, you feel like it's like constant growth. There might be a time where you don't open the doors for a month or two, and even if you do have a little attrition, that's okay because you're just finding your equilibrium again. Right? Maybe there are times where you ... maybe you don't open a challenge and you do something different. Maybe you change the way you interact. I do this with a lot of people who have Facebook groups. I join groups. Right? Everybody in the community, I usually jump into their groups. I'm a member and I can, kind of like, spy on what's happening in their Facebook. Jocelyn Sams: See if you're really doing what we tell you to do. Shane Sams: See if you're really doing what I tell you. I'm in your group. One, your group is fascinating, video game composers. That's, kind of, my third-wheel house. Right? I see you doing a lot of things in your actual Facebook group that really seem like they should be reserved more. You know what I'm saying? For paid customers ... that's a way to get some bandwidth back is change the way you're interacting with your free customers. Change the way you're interacting with your audience, in general. Right? Shane Sams: I would rather you step back and get bandwidth back and become consistent at fewer things, even if it slows the growth a little, than to be so prolific that you burn yourself out. That's not gonna help you, your family, or anybody going forward. Jocelyn Sams: So, I'm glad that you jumped into that because that's, sort of, the same thing I was thinking, too. At this point, I think we need to give you some homework and, more importantly, I think that we need to give you some permissions. What I mean by that is permission to not do some things. Daniel Hulsman: Okay. All right. Shane Sams: So, what are the things in your business? Let's just forget about the life stuff right now, because life stuff is much more organizational and there's so many things you're negotiating with other people. Right? Even your kids and your spouse and everybody else- Jocelyn Sams: Let's go with things that are completely under your control. Shane Sams: Completely under only Daniel's control. He's the only person that is even involved, which would be the video game academy. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. The Vide Game Music Academy. Shane Sams: So, what do you think are three to five things that you have to do right now or everything will collapse and fall apart? What do you think those things are? Daniel Hulsman: Ah, Geez. Shane Sams: It's usually the things that have been overwhelming you the most, like in the last week. Daniel Hulsman: I think it's stuff because I feel like this doesn't feel like everything will fall apart, but I feel like this will make everything slowly grind to a halt, later and this what I'm talking about is new free content creation to feed the top of my marketing funnel. I started this whole membership site journey with a pretty sizeable email list. I started, I think, with 26 hundred people on my email list that I had been building up for years. Now, it's even bigger which is great. But it's also something where I wanna make sure that I'm putting people in with content and not just the challenge. I don't know. That's my intuition anyways, but... Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Let's stop right there for one second. Okay. My first question to you is how long have you been sending people this content? How long have you been creating content, in other words? Daniel Hulsman: On the one hand, so I've got my blog which ... and the Facebook group, and there, I've really not been doing much in terms of content generation over the past year. So an extremely minimal in terms of the 21-day challenge. That, I did it in July and I did it in October. That was the second and third time I've done the challenge, total. Then, through those 21 days, not only are people interacting online in the community, but they're also getting emails from me with writing prompts or they're getting tips for composing and things like that. So they're getting content. Shane Sams: All that's already done. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, all that's already done- Shane Sams: Real time. You're just repeating that process for people. Correct? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. I'm repeating it and I'm tweaking it a little bit, too. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: So do you feel like you have to create more content on your blog and the Facebook group to get more new people ... to get more in the challenge? Where do you think you need to create this content? Jocelyn Sams: And what's on your website now? Daniel Hulsman: Sure. So, yes, to answer that. I do feel like my blog is almost inactive. So I feel like I need to get people to the website and basically give myself ways to interact with people who've never encountered my brand, other than that 21-day challenge in between the 21-day challenges. They have them quarterly so that's two months in between there, and I feel like- Shane Sams: Okay stop. Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Shane Sams: I'm gonna give you a permission here. Daniel Hulsman: All right. Shane Sams: You don't need to create any more content right now because creating content is high bandwidth work. Okay? Jocelyn Sams: You've gotten all these people without doing that. Shane Sams: Well, and you've got other content, now. You just said what you actually need to do, which is promote existing content. Okay? You just said, "I've got all these people who I need to bring in new to interact with my content." Well, that's really what you need to do. Promotion is lower impact because promotion is really just starting an ad and letting it run or sharing in different places content you already have. Shane Sams: If you had a list of 14 places online that were great places to share all your content like Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter ... things like that ... then, all of a sudden, instead of sitting down and creating content and figuring it out, you just say, "Oh, that was a good blog post I wrote back then. I'll update it for five minutes and then I'm gonna share it in these 14 places. I'm done for the day. Right? Shane Sams: If you can make a process, and systemize sharing old content, that is a lot less energy than, "I have to create all this content." Right? It's a lot easier to tell the same speech to a new audience than it is to write a new speech and find a new audience. Does that make sense? Shane Sams: So, right now, you could probably just eliminate new content creation- Jocelyn Sams: For now. Shane Sams: ... for now, and just say to yourself, "Man, I just need to promote some of my best stuff. What if I just took my three best posts that anyone's ever reacted to, and I just rotated those and shared the crap out 'em every three weeks, for the next three months, that's going to bring in more people. That make sense? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. That makes sense. Shane Sams: So let's just eliminate creating content for a while. Does that mean we're never gonna come back to it? No. Three months from now, you're gonna be in a different state. Well, three months from now, you're gonna have a baby. So six months from now- Daniel Hulsman: I'll be in a very different state- Shane Sams: Well your brain- Daniel Hulsman: Tired is the state. Shane Sams: Yes. Once you get past that, and start sleeping for six hours. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so there's one. Jocelyn Sams: Then, we have the promised land of summer which is music to an educator's ears. Shane Sams: So, does that make you feel a little relief that you don't have to do that? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, it does. That's a lot of noise that I can put away. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, and let's put that on the back burner until summer because summer is when you have a big chunk of time. You can work on things more. You can batch it up. Shane Sams: For people who are not teachers, that might be our weekend. It might be your vacation time. There's always times that you can block off for new content creation and then promotion's a hundred times more important anyway. So, there's one thing. What's another thing that's overwhelming you? Daniel Hulsman: Creating course content within the membership community. Shane Sams: Okay. So how are you doing that now? What's in there right now? Just ballpark, how many courses? What's in there? Daniel Hulsman: So, there are three video courses that I put together in there, so far. I will skip over one criticism that you've already given me the podcast episode I was into last week. That was about ... you mentioned how much time you can sink into a slide show. That's been a real sticking point for me where I've gotten stuck working on slide shows and making it perfect when, really, I could just talk and either pay someone else to make the slides or just make them stupidly simple with just like an outline and not worry about the animations and what things look like. Jocelyn Sams: Could you do this? Could you have your people meet you live and say, "You know what? Today, we're gonna talk about this particular topic, and I'm going to answer your questions."? That's no preparation for you. You can record it on Zoom and have it there. That's content for your community. Shane Sams: Yeah, the hardest part about content is the preparation. That's where the mental bandwidth and space really comes from. Right? You gotta plan. You gotta get a organized thing, whatever, or you could just say, like Jocelyn said, "Here's the topic. I know you have questions like, 'Where do you submit your music to get it to the video game companies?'" Maybe you just talk about that topic. Right? Jocelyn Sams: That's no preparation. People ask the questions for you. This is what we do. If you guys haven't noticed, this is what we do. Shane Sams: We have found, too. I haven't made a course in, like, a year and a half because ... We do trainings, where we talk to people because it's way more beneficial and people can take action way better when you just answer their questions. Right? So it's better for your member. It's better for you. I'm not sure if you ever really have to create any more courses. You could just have a conversation once a month with your members. That gives them a huge reason to stick around. Instead of going 10 hours, it's one hour of your life. Daniel Hulsman: The one trick with that, and I agree with you. I think actually found a solution for this trip-up here. But the one trip-up here is that I am personally not a working composer. This is something that I wanted to do and saw a hole and so I started educating myself and piecing things together. In terms of some of the expertise that people may ask me about on those live calls, I don't have it. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well, how about if you have a special guest on? Daniel Hulsman: That is what I have done, actually. I was feeling like I should do something like that, but I was really anxious about answering the questions myself. So I'm gonna try to do these monthly. I'm doing industry expert calls, so I'm having them come on. Jocelyn Sams: I think that's perfect. Shane Sams: People are there to actually ask the questions, too. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep, yep. Yep. Shane Sams: I will say this, though. Just from a mindset issue, anyone who's holding any kind of member calls, you're never going to have all the answers. Jocelyn Sams: We definitely don't have all the answers. Shane Sams: If you listen to alot of our member calls, you will find many times where we say, "I don't know." It's the most powerful three words you can say in the human language. Anyone who says they've got all the answers is lying. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: There's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know, but I will find the answer for you." Jocelyn Sams: You know what the beautiful thing is. A lot of times on our member calls, we won't know the answer. Then there will be other people in the room that are like, "Hey, I had this experience, and this is what I found out." They'll talk to each other, and you can say, "Hey, Jane said that she did x-y-z. Shane Sams: You can also do this like this. "Hey, I don't know the answer, but I know a guy who does. So how about next month, I get him on here or her on here, and we'll talk to them about it." Then they're like, "Sweet. I'm paying another month 'cause I wanna come back when you get that next special guest." Right? Jocelyn Sams: That's part of the allure ... is that you probably have industry contacts that they don't have. Shane Sams: Look how low-energy this could be right now. All right. "I don't have to create any content anymore." There's bandwidth back. Jocelyn Sams: I find somebody to help me answer questions that I don't know the answers to. Shane Sams: I systemize promotion where Monday, Wednesday, Friday, these are the tasks that I do with old content. I'm done. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: I stop thinking that I've gotta create a training every month, and I just literally schedule one hour of my time to do expert interviews or one-on-one calls. I still think you should not be scared to go by yourself. Okay? Even finding a guest requires bandwidth. Okay? So if you can go one month with a guest, one month without, you buy yourself all that bandwidth back. Okay? Shane Sams: So what's next, what's the third thing that's just ... other than that? Jocelyn Sams: What about interacting with your group? We, kind of, talked about that a little bit earlier. Is that something you would say? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, I've got a pretty tech-savvy group on a pretty not-so-attractive ... or even super ... it doesn't even work that great, forum website. It works. It is like if you saw, "Pirates of the Caribbean," the dinghy ship that he comes in on at the beginning of the movie that's slowly.. Yeah. It totally got him there. You know? And it's getting people there. Daniel Hulsman: It's also something that I've gotten feedback on and that it has taken some time in terns of me troubleshooting it. So, to drive to my answer here, I would love to make the website work work a little bit better so that I don't have to spend as much time troubleshooting things or fixing things when I ad more people in January. Shane Sams: So, have you researched any solutions for that? Daniel Hulsman: I have. A couple of them, I've tried, and shouldn't have and undid those. Jocelyn Sams: You're not alone. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. You know? That code doesn't look that scary. I'll copy and past things and see what happens. Jocelyn Sams: Have you ever broken your website at least once? You're not a real entrepreneur- Shane Sams: You're not alone. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Backup your website, people. Back up your website, people. Backup your website. Just like there's a learning curve. There are times when I think something's broken, but it's not actually broken. So It's just a lot of things have come up, but I've fixed a couple. There are a couple that I've not been able to fix. There's one big one that I'm ho[ping a buddy of mine is gonna fix for me tomorrow. So, I'm trying to get there. I've got actually a tool I'm really excited about that's gonna help me fix the look and feel without me having to actually code anything, which is great. Shane Sams: This is interesting. So ... and this is important for people to remember ... Sometimes there's no solution besides grind. Right? This is an issue that you're just gonna have to get past or, I promise you there's stuff in our forums that break. Like there's one thing that was happening to our moderators. Every time something happened, it would knock them back in the normal participants. Right? It's bizarre. It was terrible, though, because the moderators would log in and everyday you had to turn them back into a moderator or they couldn't do that they were doing. Shane Sams: Here's the deal. We found out it was a glitch within the software itself and there was no fix for it. Now, we could've said to ourselves, "Well I gotta fix this. I gotta change everything. People are complaining about it." Whatever, or we could say, "Here's the deal. When it happens, we're going to turn your moderator light back on." It's someone human is just gonna have to touch that thing. Okay? And we get someone to program it and fix it. Shane Sams: Just accepting the warts and all of the things that we use, because no system is perfect. Everything's got glitches. Everything screws up all the time, and it's just true. That's a fact. Accepting that can give you a little bit of bandwidth back, even when it's frustrating. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Just knowing that, eventually, you might evolve into something different will be fine. Jocelyn Sams: I know that you are dying inside. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. It's like all, Daniel hears is a fork on a chalkboard with the words that are coming out of my mouth. Jocelyn Sams: I totally know that that is what you're feeling right now because this is what I feel when he says this to me. Shane Sams: But, in reality, you just gotta accept it and you gotta move forward with what you got because ... and I always challenge Jocelyn 'cause she brings these issues to me, as well, all the time. I always look at her and I go, "How many members do we have? How many people have actually complained about it?" Nine times out of 10, that's a single digit percentage. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: So, unless 30 members are like, "This is terrible," it may not be as big a problem as you think it is. It's just something you're latching onto because it feels good. Jocelyn Sams: So, for right now, we're asking you to be like Elsa and let it go. Shane Sams: Let it go. Daniel Hulsman: Wow. That just happened. Shane Sams: That just happened. Daniel Hulsman: Did you just frozen me? Shane Sams: I just frozen you. Daniel Hulsman: We are parents. If it's not obvious, we are parents. Jocelyn Sams: Parent life. Shane Sams: Anyone with a child in the last ten years knows what we're talking about. Okay, so let's just look at these three things. The list can keep going. This gives us a framework. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Getting bandwidth back, in those first two things, gives you a lot more bandwidth to deal with that third thing. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Really, it's just about listing all those tasks out, Dude, one at a time and saying, "What can I control? What can I not control? What can I let go of? Do I need to do anything else besides just keep hammering what worked?", which was doing the challenge, getting more members, doing the challenge, getting more members, dong the challenge, getting more members, doing the challenge, getting more members. Anything else, really, probably, just needs to be let go because you've got so much else going on. Shane Sams: What happens is you get to a critical mass point where it's like, "Man, I've been doing this long enough, now," and it's working, and you look up and you're like, "Oh, wait. I may not have to go to that job anymore," or, "I may be able to let something go," or "Maybe I ought to turn this over to somebody else 'cause I can afford to hire somebody." Then it starts getting easier. Right? Jocelyn Sams: So, basically, for everything, you just need to ask yourself, "Will this move the needle?" That's not a hard question to ask. Shane Sams: Or, "Will it remove a little bit of this weight off my back"? That's an important question, too. You know. Entrepreneurs are all success-driven, but, man, sometimes, it's just like, "You know what? It ain't worth it and I'm not gonna deal with it, and I need this off my back 'cause it's stressing me out. So I'm just not gonna do that thing." When you do that, you get lighter and everything else becomes good again. That's where we want to get you to ... is that place where everything's good again. Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Yes. Still, I feel anxious. Jocelyn Sams: Well, Daniel, if you're anything like me, and as I said before, I suspect that you are, you will probably always feel anxious. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: You felt better in the first two answers. Then the last one, you're like, "Oh, anxiety." Daniel Hulsman: Well, it's that feeling of disbelief. It's like, "If I really let those things go, it's really not gonna fall apart." All that's going through my head right now is if I'm not creating content in the way that I've got stuck in my head ... If I'm not sending more emails, if I'm not doing that kind of stuff content-wise for my members, am I really going to keep growing the number, or is the trend number gonna grow? Shane Sams: May not grow as fast. You know what I'm saying? It it's really bothering you, take your calendar and figure out a week where you can block some content creation and, at least, you'll offload it onto that calendar and you'll know there's a point where you'll come back to it. Jocelyn Sams: Things like content creation, that has to be batched. You hear us say that all the time. You have to get it. Maybe during Christmas break, choose one day and say, "Okay, I'm gonna spend this whole day making content, and then I'm done." Shane Sams: And it's over. Then you not gonna worry about it. Just schedule it, and it's done, and it gets it off your plate. Even then, it doesn't always have to be done. There's days we don't create content. Shane Sams: I email people most days, but I think yesterday, I didn't send any emails out. I might've. I can't remember. You know, some days I wake up and I'm like, "Man I got a lot of other stuff going on. My son's got this. My daughter's got that. Me and Jocelyn gotta be somewhere. We're gonna have three podcast recordings." It's just like, "Man, something's gotta give." It has to. Can't do it all. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Shane Sams: So, it's just about getting to that point where this is all a slow roll forward. That's what being in business for yourself really is, and, as long as you keep moving forward, sometimes you can slow down. Sometimes you can speed up. I read a great quote the other day that said, "Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward." Daniel Hulsman: Oh, I like that. Shane Sams: Isn't that a good quote? That's, kind of like, where we're at is like, "Just move forward right now until you get the energy back or other things clear up in your life or your work to give you enough bandwidth to focus more on the one thing." It's not a race. It doesn't matter when you get to a hundred members. It just matters that you get to a hundred members. If I get there in six months and you get there in 12, well, 12 months from now, we're still sitting around going, "Hey, good job." We both got to a hundred members, but don't put so much pressure on yourself to succeed so fast. Another thing, too, that ... the highs and lows, man, like dealing with the dopamine rush is part of being an online ... You just got your first taste of the high. Right? Well, the next high will be higher 'cause something's gonna happen and you're gonna have another breakthrough, and all of a sudden, 200 customers show up. Then the crash after that's a little bit harder. Right? Shane Sams: It's like last year when we sold out our live event in a week. We were like, "Oh, best thing ever." Then, literally, a week later, we're both in this existential crisis of life, like, "What are we doing?" You know, like- Jocelyn Sams: Like we find things that are wrong. If things are going well, we're like, "Oh, well this one thing's not," and it's just like something totally ridiculous. We're like, "Why do we do this?" Shane Sams: Our brains are always seeking that ... our brains hate change, whether it's good or bad. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Jocelyn Sams: Subconsciously, people always try to get back to the status quo. Shane Sams: And we don't want you to go back to the status quo. You've come too far to turn back now. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Awesome. Okay, well let's zero back around. This is deep conversation. A lot going on. A lot to unpack here, as the gurus like to say. What do you think your focus should be? Usually we ask 24 hours, but because you've got so much going on, and we've got about six weeks left in the year ... or seven ... What do you really, really the one thing that should really get your attention in those next seven weeks? What do you think that is? Daniel Hulsman: I think I should not create content on the blog. I should not deliberately not think about that and deliberately not beat myself up for it. I guess what I need to do is I really need to repurpose existing content and, maybe, that's externally for non-members and, internally for members, I need to just loosen up. Make things a little bit more casual in terms of the content like the monthly calls things. That works well. Even, we've got this chat thing that we run Discord for gamers, and it's a Discord server. It's like a chat server. I drop audio files, of me just talking, in there. People love that. So just like doing that, just me talking, answering a question directly, and posting ... kinda like you're doing now in the forums. It's like I saw a question I might post a video response. Like doing that kind of stuff. Keeping it a little bit less formal, but a little bit easier for me to just bang out whatever I can. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. I love that. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. So, I guess- Jocelyn Sams: People will find value in that. Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Whenever I've done that, people have really enjoyed that. That happened one day where I just got in there and was just typing responses quickly. I guess someone was in the middle of a negotiation, and they wanted advice. Everyone else was in there. It was like, "This is gold." I was like, "Oh." Shane Sams: There you go, man. Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Great. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So there's the training, right there. Shane Sams: Let me challenge you really quickly to do one more thing too. Okay? Daniel Hulsman: Sure. Shane Sams: When are you gonna do your next challenge? How far away is that? Daniel Hulsman: January 1, it should start, keeping schedule. Yep. Shane Sams: I really wanna challenge you. You just, basically, had three categories. You had non-members. You had members. Then you have your challenge coming up. Okay? I really wanna challenge you to only spend about four hours a week on your online business. Now, when I say that, I don't mean like the little thing you just said where you were chatting with them and dropping in thing. That sounded fun to me ... like you were, kind of, geeking out about doing that. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Yep. Shane Sams: You were talking about something you love. I'm talking about actual work. Jocelyn Sams: Like work that feels, kinda, heavy. Shane Sams: Work that feels like work. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Divide that up however you want. Right? It can be an hour on non-members, an hour on members, an hour on your launch, then an hour for something else each week. Okay? Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Shane Sams: Really, really challenge yourself to put four hours on the calendar and don't work past that on this online business. Okay? Really discipline yourself to do that. The other stuff's fine, like if you're just sitting around, watching a TV show, and you're like, "Hey, I wonder what's going on in this work group?" Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: That's different, totally different. That's fun stuff, but put it on the calendar. Stick to it and every other minute of your calendar, give to all these other things that are coming. You got a baby coming. You got other things. You got work. You got all these other things. Jocelyn Sams: You have a very pregnant wife who needs your help. Shane Sams: Yeah, right, exactly. That's important. Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Shane Sams: Even like coming home today. I know we had this podcast. Just communicating that you need 30 minutes of quiet or whatever to recharge or letting yourself know that and take back some of the time. You'll find it's gonna be like putting a magnifying glass on those four hours. Jocelyn Sams: And you will automatically prioritize because you have no choice. Shane Sams: You have no choice. You have to cut things out in that way. All right? Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Shane Sams: All right, man. Daniel Hulsman: All right. Shane Sams: Daniel, I'm so thankful that you came on the show today, that you were super transparent, and you got a lot of stuff going on. People always wanna think that, "After I launch and make my money, everything's gonna be okay," but that's, actually, when it gets hard. Jocelyn Sams: It also gets super rewarding. There is something good on the other side. It's just like you have to go through some pain to get something beautiful. Shane Sams: Yeah. When it ends up being 500 members and life looks really, really different and things really, really get to the point where you're in control again, it's gonna feel a lot better. I told someone, just the other day, this. When you get your business going, the first thing you have to do is change your life, and that's really, really hard. Right? It's really getting everything in place to change your life, but after you do that, you get the choice of what the rest of your life looks like. It feels so out-of-control when we first launch, when we first make money, when things really start happening 'cause all these moving parts enter our life that weren't there the day before the launch. Right? Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Shane Sams: Eventually, somewhere down the road, you it a point and you're like, "I have a choice. I have a choice to do anything I want with everything else for the rest of my life," and it was totally worth it. You're almost there, Dude. You just gotta keep going. Okay? Daniel Hulsman: Sounds good. Shane Sams: All right. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That was a great, great conversation with Daniel. We cannot wait to see what he does next in his online business and we cannot wait to see what you do next in your online journey, as well. We hope that you would allow us to be a part of that journey inside of the Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: You can start a 30-day free trial to the Flip Your Life community, right now. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free. If you're out there. If you're grinding, and you feel like you're alone and you need some support and you need some help, like Daniel did that day when he felt that soul-crushing lack of motivation, everybody rallied around and picked him up. Jocelyn came in and cheered him on. We would love to be that for you, as well. So go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and start your 30-day free trial today. Shane Sams: All right, guys. That is all the time we have left for this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. We cannot wait to be back with you again next time. Until then, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Daniel's Website Flipped Lifestyle Podcast 212 Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Per the new autoresponder suggestions - we should now immediately deliver a link to the product on the thank you page and up sell. My question - For the up sell should it be our normal 50% off the first month of online training offer or should it be something exclusive, not to be found or offered anywhere else?" Question Two: "I know we talked about PASPY at Flip your Life LIVE but are there any specific words or phrases that you use when you are selling on video to get people to buy?" Question Three: "Should the main opt-in on my website be broad to cast a wider net (and appeal to more people) or should it be very specific to catch only those who are my super target audience?" Question Four: "My husband and I are adopting a baby, so in about a month I'm going to have a newborn for the first time. What do I need to do for my business now so that it keeps running while I'm focused on the baby? I'm at a stage where I'm trying build an audience and get members." Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I decided today was the day that I would be raising my membership price from $29 to $39 a month. I also did away with the $10 trial membership after today. I had 4 people join the membership rate at $39 a month getting in while the getting was good." - Brenda "In the last 4 weeks, I've been booked for three speaking engagements totaling almost $16,000!" - Jen CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Cold outside. Hot coffee in hand. Book in my lap. Good dog at my feet. What great Saturday mornings are made of folks.   Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Per the new autoresponder suggestions - we should now immediately deliver a link to the product on the thank you page and up sell. My question - For the up sell should it be our normal 50% off the first month of online training offer or should it be something exclusive, not to be found or offered anywhere else? " Question Two: "I know we talked about PASPY at Flip your Life LIVE but are there any specific words or phrases that you use when you are selling on video to get people to buy?" Question Three: "Should the main opt-in on my website be broad to cast a wider net (and appeal to more people) or should it be very specific to catch only those who are my super target audience?" Question Four: "My husband and I are adopting a baby, so in about a month I'm going to have a newborn for the first time. What do I need to do for my business now so that it keeps running while I'm focused on the baby? I'm at a stage where I'm trying build an audience and get members." Success stories mentioned on today's podcast: "I decided today was the day that I would be raising my membership price from $29 to $39 a month. I also did away with the $10 trial membership after today. I had 4 people join the membership rate at $39 a month getting in while the getting was good." - Brenda "In the last 4 weeks, I've been booked for three speaking engagements totaling almost $16,000!" - Jen CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we help Jeff find a profitable niche. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we help Jeff find a profitable niche. 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? Alright, let's get started. Shane Sams: What is going on everybody. Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to back with you. Again, today this is our favorite day. It is recording day. It is a day we get to sit down with another member of the Flip Your Life community and help them take their business to the next level. And we're really excited today because this is another member who we have met in real life, Jeff Slaughter. Jeff, welcome to the show. Jeff Slaughter: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Shane Sams: Let me tell you something, Jeff makes a mean chocolate bar. I'm telling you. He made some chocolate for our live event. Man, it was good. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we were very fortunate that he brought a lot of chocolate along with him. He shared with everybody in attendance, which was awesome. My favorite were the ones with the little, it was the lip print, I think. I think they were some kind of salted chocolate. I don't know, they were really good. Shane Sams: When we met Jeff, he was like, "I'm a chocolatier." I'm like, "Man, that's a fancy way of making chocolate, but I like it." That's good stuff, man. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Well, thank you. It was a lot of fun to be able to share that. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, well let's talk a little bit about ... Well, first of all, how did you get into making chocolate? Tell us a little bit about you, your background, your family and what you're doing online. Let's kind of just smash all that in here. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Well, we moved to Europe in 1998 to serve in missions and landed in France and a couple years later, moved to Belgium. Was doing various mission projects there and wanted to start an online business to kind of help our funding. Jeff Slaughter: So I started one about Brussels and in doing that, I learned a lot about Belgium and Belgian chocolate. And became interested in ... Why is it such a big deal in Belgium? How do you make that? I discovered an online course I could take. Took a three month online course to learn how to do it. Was in Belgium at the time so I could get all my supplies and chocolate and just spend a couple years doing it as a hobby and then when we come back to the U.S., we would do it as a fundraiser. Shane Sams: To support your missions? Like that's what- Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Exactly. It was a great way to ... Kind of a great conversation starter as you saw it, Flip Your Life Nashville. It's interesting. It's not something a lot of people do and it was related to where we were. So it's been a really fun thing to do. It's definitely a side hustle. It's seasonal. I live in Louisiana, it's very hot and so- Shane Sams: The chocolate melts. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: Right. Jeff Slaughter: So you have about five or six months out of the year where you can do it without worrying about it melting in your car. I do continue to go back to Europe. I'm there now about four months a year. Shane Sams: Doing missions still? You still doing missions? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Our daughter started having children and my wife felt the call to be a grandmother. So we moved back to the U.S. and based here in Louisiana and I travel back and forth. What I do now is I do worship conferences all over Europe and digital media conferences for churches and ministries. So when I'm there, that's pretty much what I'm doing, going from country to country doing these conferences. Organizing them and making them happen. Shane Sams: Do you have just one child? Jeff Slaughter: We have three. Shane Sams: Okay. Jeff Slaughter: We have a daughter, who has two birth children and a foster daughter. And then two sons. Shane Sams: Well, you are busy. You are jumping back and forth across the pond chasing grandkids. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. In fact, I just got my ... Jocelyn Sams: Making Belgian chocolate in Louisiana. Shane Sams: Making Belgian chocolate when you can. Jeff Slaughter: Uh-huh. Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, well you have a very interesting life here Jeff. Shane Sams: I know, right? Let me just give you some context here. Meeting Jeff in person, he's just this sweet, good, kind-hearted, normal guy, right? And then like, "What do you do?" "Well, I fly over to Europe, I make chocolate." It's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I feel like you are short changing yourself, you know? You're just like, "Ah, yeah. I kind of just make some Belgian chocolate on the side." Jeff Slaughter: That's not how- Shane Sams: "I fly to Europe a couple times a year. I live in Louisiana, whatever. That's just what I do." Jeff Slaughter: It is an interesting life. I was in healthcare marketing before Europe, for 12 years. In a way I feel like I flipped my life on April 1st, 1998 when we moved to Europe. Because I had left what had grown to be a grind to me and was entering something that was life to me. Jeff Slaughter: And it still is 20 years later. I'm still enjoying it and all, but now ... I want to get into position to be able to support ourselves and not have to worry so much about retirement. Although, I don't plan on retiring until I'm in the box. Jeff Slaughter: I need to do something for the future. That's why I'm wanting to do something online that's substantial that we can build an income that will support us and let us continue to do what we're doing in Europe. Shane Sams: You know what's amazing about what you just said, and people really miss this sometimes I think, when we say, "Flip your life." Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: Flip Your Life doesn't mean make a million dollars online. It doesn't mean get famous online or anything like that. What it means, is taking control of your life and being in control of your future. Now, you said you did that when you went into something that gave you life, right? It doesn't matter how much money you're making if you wake up every day and you know that you're living a life of purpose, and that's what you did. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: And when you know you've got control of tomorrow, that's what flipping your life means. When we flipped our life and quit our job, we had made a lot of money the month before, but we actually had no clue if we were going to make money the next, the month after that, during February and the slow months. When we did it and we were home that first day, we looked at each other and said, "Honestly, we'll never go back. I don't care if we're broke, if we can just pay the bills, we are staying right here in freedom." Shane Sams: I love when you said that about you felt like you already flipped your life and now you're just looking for a little more control of the future. And you want to support your missions. Jeff Slaughter: Right, exactly. Shane Sams: Without having to ask other people to help you do it kind of deal. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. I mean, support raising isn't easy and you tend to lose some over the years with attrition. I just feel like I can figure out a way to make it happen on my own. Shane Sams: That sounds like a membership. That's what it sounds like. Jeff Slaughter: It does. Shane Sams: You lose a little on attrition, you got to go find more, you know. Jocelyn Sams: Well, let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing so far. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: You have the chocolate business and I presume that's something you do locally, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Although, I do have an online presence. I have about 400 email addresses and I sell online. I do some markets, although markets aren't that great for me. Shane Sams: You sell the chocolate online, not how to do the chocolate online? Jeff Slaughter: Right, I sell chocolate. I'll just make it and sell it. Christmas is a big time of year, Valentine's kind of ... Probably from about November through April, Easter, are my biggest sales months. I also do workshops. I go out and do workshops in homes and church kitchens and what not. I've done parties before. That kind of thing. Just trying to be creative in ways I sell it. Jeff Slaughter: But not in stores yet. Not really at that level of production yet to make a lot to be in stores. The profit margin is a lot smaller because you have to give up 30 to 40%. Shane Sams: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And I personally can attest that the chocolate is very tasty, so if someone is interested in checking out your chocolate site, what is that URL? Shane Sams: Okay, it's www.chezslaughterchocolate.com and Chez Slaughter is spelled C-H-E-Z, Slaughter as in S-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, there's not a lot of times people come on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast talking about something called "Chez", okay? Shane Sams: Chez chocolate. Jeff Slaughter: People usually say, "Chez" and the funny thing about that- Shane Sams: Oh, that's all we say down here, bro. Jeff Slaughter: I know. Shane Sams: People would be like, "Chez chocolate, Chez Slaughter? Who's that guy?" Right? Jeff Slaughter: People have called me Chez. Jeff Slaughter: It's actually a play on words because it's a French word that means house or place and so basically, it means slaughterhouse chocolate. Shane Sams: That is great. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, okay. That's pretty cool. Alright, well, it is really tasty so if you guys want to check that out, definitely do that, alright Shane Sams: Tell us about your other online business. Jeff Slaughter: That's my Christmas play business. Shane Sams: Tell us a little bit about that. Jeff Slaughter: Sure. When you guys announced Flip Your Life Live Nashville back in January, I was so excited to be able to come to something like that, I signed up as soon as I could. I loved the Facebook group that we had. Because it really pushed us towards being prepared to come and actually make something happen. And make something happen before you came. Jeff Slaughter: So many conferences you sign up for, you just go and sit and wait for words of wisdom to fall out. But this one was really ... You know, vintage Flip Your Life is, no, you got to roll up your sleeves and do the work before you come. Then when you come, it'll be more worth your time. Jeff Slaughter: I knew I needed a project and I wasn't really to commit to something ... the big idea. So I decided, well I have this Christmas script I wrote. I've had it on my website for a few years. It's never really gone anywhere. Let me put the Flip Your Lifestyle spin on it and see what I can do. Jeff Slaughter: So, that's what I did. I followed how you guys were teaching with Facebook advertising. I redid my website. Basically, started advertising mid August and it went through into September and during that time, I got about 200 downloads. I had 800 landing page views, 200 downloads. I've sold 8 scripts so far. Shane Sams: Amazing. Jeff Slaughter: So, it's not a huge amount of money. Not a huge amount of scripts sold, but, I guess it's about 4% of the script downloads, converted to sales. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Jeff Slaughter: What I learned is that ... I mean, this was a very small project, but I took what you guys taught and was able to get through it really quick and learn a lot in the space of six to eight weeks. That really taught me a lot. I now know I can take on something bigger and push it through easier and more confidently because I just took the steps of just doing a small project. Shane Sams: Amazing, and these are Christmas scripts for churches to do a play or things like that? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Well, it's Christmas play. It tells the Christmas story through the eyes of the innkeeper and his family. It kind of brought them to life, basically just told the Christmas story through their experience. Shane Sams: How does- Jocelyn Sams: And it's called Christmas at Bethlehem Inn, right? Jeff Slaughter: That's right. Shane Sams: Yeah, I love this story because you took the first step that most people won't take. And I'm really calling anybody out there right now that's listening to this in their car or at the gym or maybe on a walk, and you're not taking action because you're looking for the perfect idea, you're looking for the home run and you're sitting there saying yourself, "Well, if I just knew what to do." Shane Sams: But that's the thing is none of us know what to do. The only thing we can do is try. And we encourage so many people when they come to the community, like, "What's your idea?" "Well, I got this but I don't know about it." And we're like, "Do it." Because you're going to learn the process. You're going to take action. You're going to move forward. You're going to figure out all the stuff so that the next idea, which is probably the better idea, is going to be easier, faster to implement and you're actually going to give yourself a chance to succeed. Shane Sams: I think that's what people really ... Most people only see success on the other side. They see us and they're like, "Okay, well you had this business and it worked." Well, did you see the four things we tried before that failed? That's what everyone listening has to do. If you don't ever try anything, you'll never know if it does or doesn't work. And that's really all we're trying to figure out is. If it does or doesn't work. Shane Sams: It's like the light bulb. Edison didn't just be like, "Well, this one is good." He had a thousand of them that failed until he figured out the one that did work. And you got to go into online business, you got to go into self employment thinking to yourself, "I just have to start and take step after step and when I take two steps back, take three steps forward and get back on the wagon and go try the next thing." Because sooner or later, something will work and the people that get rewarded online, are the people that start. Shane Sams: So kudos to you dude, for just starting something even knowing that it might not be the home run. What if it is? What if a month from now and it's Christmas and like, "Whoa, I sold a hundred of these things." You never know and now you're ready to take the next step as well. Jocelyn Sams: Well, the beautiful thing about that business is, it's there. You have that script, it's always there. So even if you do decide if you want to move onto something else, you've already done that work. It's just going to continue to work in the background, which is really cool. Shane Sams: Hey man. Jesus' birthday comes around once a year and there's always an innkeeper in the story last I checked. Shane Sams: That's evergreen content at it's best. Jeff Slaughter: Exactly. Shane Sams: Right? Jeff Slaughter: What I learned was that if I ... You know, I sell the script right now for $97 and it comes with four bonuses. I just got two more sales on Saturday, which is really funny because they came within three or four hours of each other. And I was like, "Okay, it's the end of October. People are getting nervous about not having anything. They're making their decision." Which was sort of interesting to me. Jeff Slaughter: Basically, it's costing me about $40 as script to market it and to pay a fee to Gumroad to host it. So now I know for every $40 I spend, I'll make $50 or a little bit more than $50. Shane Sams: Hey, I'll trade 40 for 100 every day of the week. I'll do it every time. Every single time. Jeff Slaughter: It's a great lesson, it really was. Plus, I'm connecting with people and seeing my play live, which is important to me on a personal basis, more than the money really. So it's all good. Jocelyn Sams: Alright Jeff, well you have a lot things already in place, which is really cool, but I understand that you're wanting to maybe think about where you're going to go in the future. Would you go in a different direction? Or do you have a different plan? So let's kind of dive into that a little bit. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Well, I did a website. I had website about Brussels for several years and this is back in 2008. Never really got off the ground. Made maybe 70 or 80 dollars in Google ads. I've done the Christmas side. I do the chocolate. So I've learned a lot over the years, but now I don't feel like I've hit a home run. I want to hit a home run with online business. And I don't want to just continue ... This has been 10 years I've been working on different things and I really need now to find something that will create substantial income. Yeah. Shane Sams: So you want to ... You're looking for the home run, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: Well, let me ask you a question, okay. A lot of people say this, like, "I want substantial income. I want to do this, I want to do that." But until you define what the home run looks like, you're never going to be able to hit it, right? What is a home run? How much money a month do you need for you to consider it like, "Wow, home run, I'm comfortable. I can support myself, my missions." Things like that. Shane Sams: What does that look like? Because you already have the attitude and the mentality, that Flip Your Life mentality, of, "I'm going to live life on my own terms. I'm going to go to Europe and be a missionary for four months. Even if I have to go raise money. I'm going to sell chocolate." The other time .... Whatever, you're kind of doing some that part, but what does a home run look like financially? Jeff Slaughter: Well, I like what you say when you say, "You know, you just need a hundred people paying you $50 a month to make $5000 a month. That's really what I want to do. That would be my big goal. And if I reach that, I would dream bigger, but right now that's the goal and that's reachable. Shane Sams: That's $60,000 a year for anybody out there that's bad at math. You know, it's just a hundred people, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right? Shane Sams: We just have to create something that's valuable enough and is built in a way that will keep them paying that month after month and year after year. Jocelyn Sams: But I just want to say as an observation, I feel like you're sort of shortchanging yourself. Shane Sams: 100% Jocelyn Sams: Because the things that you know and the experiences that you have, I feel like that you already have everything that you need. I don't think you need a new idea. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: And the mindset issues that's holding you back is I think you're ... You said something very earnestly in that last statement is like, "You know, I've been trying for 10 years and I've not hit the home run yet." It's almost like you want the home run but you don't think you can hit it. You know what I'm saying? Shane Sams: I used to tell my football players, they be like, "Coach, we want win Friday." And I'm like, "Really? Because you don't act like it on Wednesday. You know? Okay, because we're at Wednesday practice, you're not really paying attention. I'm just saying." Like the guy that's sitting over there, like do you feel like you can do this? Honestly? Jeff Slaughter: Well I think that would be my greatest fear and that I can't and that I'm going to continue doing this for another 10 years and go, "Wow, Shane and Jocelyn, it's been 20 years." You know? Shane Sams: Alright. Let's get into the business questions here and let's figure this out. Okay. What do you think you should do next? Okay, you've done these things. I feel you going up very seasonal because your life is kind of seasonal. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But I feel like you need to, instead of trying to run from that, I almost feel like you need embrace that. Jeff Slaughter: That's good. Jocelyn Sams: Because that is your life. That's who you are. Why are you trying to go against it? Let's go with what you already know, okay. Well, you have a chocolate business, which is good in, say the winter months. Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: Why are you not teaching people how to make chocolate by the way? Jocelyn Sams: Yes, I was going to ask the same question. You have an unusual life experience. You are an American who lived in Belgium. Who has that experience? Shane Sams: Yeah. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: Also too, you're a missionary who has actually supported his mission through fundraising, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: I know ... I can kind of see where this is going and it's going to be one of those weird shows where ... Usually, we're like be laser focused, go crazy on one thing and hammer down. But I'm almost like, "Man, what if Jeff had ... " So you know how we say, "You can get a hundred people to give you $50 a month", what if you had 10 things that gave you 10 people for $50 a month, right? Jocelyn Sams: It's the same thing. Shane Sams: What if you had a chocolate thing and it was ... Okay the chocolate business is big during this time. What if you taught missionaries how to do fundraising better, right? What if a hundred missionaries paid you 9.95 a month? What if a hundred- Jocelyn Sams: What if you ... Shane Sams: What if 100 people paid you $9 a month to learn chocolate? What if a hundred people ... Then what if people bought your scripts? Jocelyn Sams: What if people bought an Easter script? What if you wrote an Easter script? Jeff Slaughter: I have an Easter script. Jocelyn Sams: There you go. Shane Sams: That's what I'm saying. You've got all these assets. Assets are the most powerful thing in online business, that's what people don't realize. When you look at unfair advantages, when we look at you and we look anybody else, we say, "What are the assets this person has?" Shane Sams: One of the assets me and Jocelyn have is we've lasted in the game now in online education longer than most people have. We've been here for six years now and we've got a good audience. We're killing it. What we've done more than anything else and anybody out there, no expert can match us at this, is we've answered more questions for more people than probably anybody else in the industry. Shane Sams: Because we have member calls. We have Q&As publicly. We have Facebook Lives, YouTube Lives, everything. Right? What we realized this year is that we've got 1200 questions that we've answered on video that have never been released publicly. So we've been cutting those up and putting them on YouTube. That's an asset that nobody can match. Shane Sams: Any competitor can come up to us right now and say, "We're going to be like you guys. We're going to try to compete with you guys." And we're going to look at them and go, "Yeah, but we have a thousand videos that are coming out on YouTube in the next month. Can you do that?" Shane Sams: That's what you've got to look at. Sometimes everybody ... Listen like, "What are things I do have that I can bring to the table right now?" Sometimes that is ten different courses or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: And I just want to say this too, like I've said this before on the podcast, if you want to make serious money, you have to solve a serious problem. So look at the things that you're already doing. Look at the experiences that you already have. What is a major problem that someone has that you have the experience to solve? I feel like you already have all these tools. I feel like you're making this way too hard. Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: Yeah. Sometimes when we look for the home run, we're looking for that perfect pitch, right? Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: And it never comes. They're all just right down the middle so just swing, swing, swing and keep hitting them, right? You know, you hit 10 singles in a row as a baseball team, that's going to do more than any single home run could ever do. Because you're going to drive in more runs than a single home run could ever drive in. So you may just need to keep swinging. And just swing better at the right time of year, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Yeah, I think you guys are right. I think that the problem I have is overwhelmed with all the different things I do. Shane Sams: Well that's organization. That's all we have to do is figure out your calendar. Jocelyn and I always look at our calendar for us and our avatar. And we want to make sure that we're matching up with our avatar and what they're thinking about, right? Shane Sams: When we promote our membership, we're going to promote different things at different times of the year. So next month, we're recording this in October, we're going to promote Black Friday stuff. Like, "Hey, I have a video, I have a course about Black Friday sales." We got a podcast that we did about Black Friday sales. What am I going to promote publicly in November every year? Black Friday stuff, right? How can you maximize Black Friday? Shane Sams: In January, what are we going to ... We're going to push our goal setting thing. I'm actually ... I've had our goal setting course inside of the Flip Your Life community. I've turned that into an e-book. We took the transcript, cleaned it up. Put in some workbook type activities, going to throw in some pictures and that's going to be a book basically that we release around that time. Jocelyn Sams: On Kindle or some other third party marketplace. Shane Sams: Kindle or something like that. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Alright. Shane Sams: Okay? And we're going to promote that when our audience is thinking about it. What's cool about your thing is one, what is someone who wants to get into making chocolate thinking about throughout the year? I don't know. What is someone who's a missionary thinking about fundraising throughout the year? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: What is someone who's wanting a play, a Christmas play, a other play. Maybe you can do something for VBS, right? Vacation Bible School. You have all these assets in your brain. We just have to organize them and bring them out at the right time and that's going to take some planning ahead a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: And when you're thinking about it, if you are a person who has a lot of interest, like Jeff does, then think about what is it that really lights you up? What is it that you're just dying to work on and you want to help people with? Maybe you find yourself dreading working on one those. Don't work on it. Work on something else. Shane Sams: As we've learned ... Dawson was getting onto me the other day about this. I've been getting into this online book publishing stuff, because I think it's a really good lead tool, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: But it could be a great money making tool. We have a friend who released 30 or 40 books on Kindle and she makes her living like that now. As I was looking at it, she was like, "Why are your old football things not in Amazon?" Jocelyn Sams: So he's obsessed with making all these new Amazon books and I'm like, "Dude, we already have content." Shane Sams: You legit have three books you've already written. I've got two playbooks. I've got a January to March weightlifting manual and then I've got a summer time, or an August installation. Like when people start practicing. Basically, I have something that can be sold for at least seven months out of the year and I've just never thought to put it out there. It's an asset that I'm sitting on that could be making me money. Shane Sams: Sometimes those assets are in our head, not created. We need to figure out for you to do. So sometimes when people get into this thing and we really know what they should do but we got to figure out how to do it, I like to roll forward and fast forward a hundred days, okay? I don't want to think about what your audience is doing next month, because you've already had this Christmas thing that can be sold next month. And you've got chocolate going on right now too, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: The back end that you need to be thinking out is 90 days from now, 100 days from now, like in February, what is someone thinking about that you know you can help them with that thing, right? Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: So what would that be? Either a missionary or a chocolatier or another play. What's happening in February in your world? Jeff Slaughter: Well, I mean, you know people are thinking about Easter. I don't know the percentage of churches that still Easter type pageants, presentations and all that. I hear people say that those things are kind of not as popular as they once were with the more contemporary services and things like that. So, don't know what the response would be to something ... To an Easter play. Shane Sams: Well listen, there are tens of thousands of churches, you only need a hundred of them- Jocelyn Sams: Probably hundreds of thousands. Shane Sams: -to buy your product, right? Every year. So it's not like you have ... It doesn't matter what the big churches are doing. Somebody wants it. There's a hundred churches in America that are doing an Easter play. Jocelyn Sams: And if you already have it done, what do you have to lose, you know? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: Now, what you need to be thinking about is, "Okay, my goal was a hundred people to pay me 50 bucks." Right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: But you sell your plays for 100 bucks, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay, so you only need 50 people that month to buy your Easter play. What if, in February and March, each month you sold 50 plays? Then you made your five thousand bucks. Right? And then you can re-market your Christmas plays to them later, okay? Now, once you figure that out, what happens after that in your life? What are people ... What is someone in your space thinking about in the summer. Shane Sams: This might be something you need create. It might be something like Fundraising for Missionaries Community, right? You were good at that, dude. Jocelyn Sams: So I think what- Shane Sams: Chocolatiering. When would you sell that? We need to lay this out in the calendar and then what we've got to do now, 100 days out, is create the thing that's going to happen in 100 days so that when you get there, it's ready and you can, in the back side, work on the next hundred days to get the next thing ready. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: I think what would be beneficial at this stage, is to print out a calendar with just blank months on it. Not days or anything. Just kind of write out, "Okay, what does my calendar look like?" You know, what does a calendar look like for people who are making chocolate? What does a calendar look like for people who are missionaries? What does the calendar look like for people who are doing plays in their church? And sort of just look at it and say, "Okay, what do I already have that I could put out there?" Or- Shane Sams: What do I already know that I could create something for before we get to that point? Right? Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: Then it's project based. It's AAA, BBB, CCC. If a hundred days from now it's Easter, then what you should be working on now for the next hundred days is ... The day you get to February 1st, you turn on your Easter promotion and it rolls. Right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: You give market to all your emails list that have bought your Christmas play. Anybody that's bought that, anybody that's been on the list for that you start putting ads out for churches and pastors and things like that. If they need a play, you're ready to go. Right? Shane Sams: And then what happens after that? That's what you work on then. We're always working on the next thing. That's what me and Jocelyn do. Yesterday we planned out the next eight weeks. The next two things we're working on are our Black Friday stuff. We'll be done with that this week. Then we're going to work on our affiliate program that we're going to roll out next year. Shane Sams: Those are things that we know we're going to be doing next year, but we're already doing them now so that when we get there, we're ready, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: If we can get four or five of these things rolling ... There's nothing wrong with piecing that stuff together so that you can market. Jocelyn Sams: I don't think it's the right answer for everyone. What I don't want to happen is for people to think, "Oh, well, they're saying I have to start order for businesses." Jeff Slaughter: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And that's not necessarily true. But for you, because of the way your life is, because you have so many varied interests and you just do so many different things, I think it just makes sense to you. Do you feel that way? Jeff Slaughter: I do. I mean, I think that's probably been the reason why I haven't moved forward with anything because I'm ... I don't know what you call it but just having so many things that I do, just creates this barrier, like which one do I focus on? Shane Sams: Any plan will work. As long as the plan happens, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: And sometimes some people do need to go this route in your ... This may be why you're stuck as a listener if you're listening to this podcast right now, because you're trying to get so laser focused you can't do it. Or your thing is so niche, that it really is seasonal. Shane Sams: There are seasonal businesses. We have friends in western Kentucky and every year they open a Halloween costume store. They only open it for two or three months. It is really seasonal. They tried it for opening it for a year one time, but it was just so seasonal it really worked really well in those couple months and there was no reason to do it any other time. Shane Sams: Then in the other parts of the year, they found other ways to make money. Like making t-shirts or doing something different. Right? Sometimes, businesses are just like that. Sometimes, people are just like that. But you don't have to fall into the shiny object camp, just because you have multiple interests. As long as you're focused on working on one thing at a time to execute it correctly until it's time is done, you can still make plenty of money. Shane Sams: It's okay to think, "I need a spring, summer, fall and winter business." And just do those four things. There's a lot of people that do that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I think that's totally fine and I think the next question that we need to address, because I'm just thinking if I'm the listener listening to this show, then my next question, and probably Jeff's next question is, "Okay, well, where do I start? How do I know what to start with?" Shane Sams: You start on the next thing. That's why the calendar is so important. Jocelyn Sams: That and also really defining what it is that you want. What is it that you want? What makes you happy to work on it? What makes you excited to work on? If you think of two or three things you're interested in and one of them you're just kind of like, "I really do not want to do that." Then that probably isn't the logical place to start. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: Yeah. Have you ever thought ... Let me ask you two questions because you've not went down this road and I want to know why. Why have you not taught people how to make chocolate? Okay, for one thing. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: Because you could literally just film yourself making chocolate and create a YouTube channel that people would watch, you know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: Do marketing for it. Shane Sams: Because you're already doing it, right? Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. Shane Sams: And then, why ... You have clearly been a successful, organizer and fundraiser for abroad missions. Why have you never thought to create a community to teach other missionaries, a paid community, on how to teach them how to fundraise? Because I would say that's really hard to do. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Well, with the missions, I worked hard in the beginning then really the thing that I've done the best is just keeping really in touch, close in touch, with our supporters. With lots of newsletters and emails and that kind of thing. My retention rate has been really high over the years. I haven't gotten a lot of new supporters over the years, but I've retained many of them because of my communication skills and commitment to stay in touch with them. Shane Sams: Don't you think a 25 year old missionary would need to know that? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? You got a guy struggling but he's called to be overseas on mission. He's struggling to make money and keep money because he gets over there and he gets busy and he doesn't know how to organize it all. That's a powerful thing to mentor. And yes, that's worthy of charging for. Dave Ramsey charges people to get out of debt. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: Right? If a guy can pay you 29 bucks a month and he can go out and make and retain 2500 bucks a month, that's a no brainer investment that he should make to get your wisdom. To get you mentorship. To get your advice. Right? Jeff Slaughter: That is, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah and I think that, again, I think that you're shortchanging yourself. You think, "Well, this information is okay, but will people pay for that?" Yeah, they will. Shane Sams: If you frame it right. Jocelyn Sams: We think that what we know and the things that we are good at, we think they come easy to everyone but that is not necessarily the case. Shane Sams: How many missionaries have you personally known, that got into it and five years later, they were out of the missionary field because they couldn't raise the money? A lot. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah and a lot of them struggle on the field no matter what. Shane Sams: Wouldn't it be amazing, if a young missionary, who was trying to fundraise, had a resource center that he could go to that literally told him what to do in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December every year that literally gave him template and schedule of when he should send things out. You got those in his inbox and told him what to do. It was all automated and he had a guy that he could reach out to, in a Facebook group to talk to, who's been there and done it. Wouldn't that be valuable? Jeff Slaughter: It would be. Shane Sams: Yep. Jeff Slaughter: It would be very rewarding personally. Shane Sams: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Alright. Let's jump into the other question. Shane Sams: The chocolate. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Have you ever considered jumping into the chocolate as far as like teaching people how to make it, or teaching people how to market their business? Things like that. Jeff Slaughter: Well, I have. And with chocolate, I guess the thought there is that it would be ... I guess my thought is that it's a very small niche. I've looked for ... You guys have suggested look for books on Amazon to see if people are publishing books. Really there have been none about making chocolate at home or that type of thing. Except one just came out. So maybe it's going to become a thing now. Shane Sams: Okay, when I type in how to make chocolate in Google, there's 961 million results, okay? There are four advertisements How to make chocolate on the top of the Google results. There is a website- Jocelyn Sams: If people are advertising, spending money, they're typically making money. Shane Sams: That's right. There is a website called ... I'm not going to pitch another chocolatier online. I'm not going to tell you the domain but I'll put it in the chat later. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: There's an ad on the top and he's got an academy to teach people how to make chocolate. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Jocelyn Sams: You are a guy who has lived in Belgium. Jeff Slaughter: I know. Jocelyn Sams: You know how to make Belgian chocolate. That is a skill that not everyone has. Shane Sams: That's like going to a dojo in Japan to become a ninja. You're not like the guy who's taking karate down in the shopping center, right? You went to a dojo. You learned how to do the dojo. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: you know what I mean? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: You have an unfair advantage that no one else can ever claim. Learn how to make Belgian chocolate from a guy who lived in Belgium and he's a trained chocolatier who has actually made money selling chocolate. Jocelyn Sams: And makes money selling it. Jeff Slaughter: This is true, yeah. Shane Sams: Right? And even just like ... what if people could make chocolate and go down to their local farmer's market and sell it on the weekends. You know how many people do that? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Now, there is a difference in making chocolate. Some people say, "Oh, you make chocolate." They think I'm going and getting the beans and roasting them and doing all that. I don't do that. That's for someone who's really serious about and almost scientific- Shane Sams: Let me tell you something, 90% of these people are not searching for that, okay? Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: Alright. I just did another search in a keyword research tool that I have, okay. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: How to make chocolate at home is searched- Jeff Slaughter: Oh, really? Shane Sams: Listen. Is searched for 681,818 times per month. Jeff Slaughter: Wow. Shane Sams: Not per year, not per decade, per month. There's over half a million people looking for that stuff. So massive audience there and maybe they just want a recipe. Maybe this just ends up being a recipe book. Jocelyn Sams: But I think it could be a cool lead in. You teach people how to make a Christmas recipe or something. Then you say, "Hey, did you know that you can make money selling your own chocolate? Here's how." Shane Sams: You could even talk about ... This could even become a course in your ... There's crossover with your missionary stuff. Like, "Yo, I make money selling chocolate. It's great for fundraising. I do little things like this to get to know people and build relationships." Jeff Slaughter: Mm-hmm. That's true. Shane Sams: There's so many searches for this. I mean, it's just the way to do it. The next steps probably are for us to get you organized. That's what we need to talk about in the forums, on member calls. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: In the community. Hash that out. Create a really good plan. You know, get in there and get into the planning guys, the calendar guys and say, "Hey, this is what I'm doing for the next two months. This is what I'm doing the two months after that." Really get that spelled out so that you always know the next thing you work at. Even if you shift gears, you can go work on the next thing and start creating all these assets, in a year from now, everything looks totally different. Jocelyn Sams: Usually at this point, we ask people, "Okay, well what's your action step?" But I'm going to tell what your action step is, okay? Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: You may have to think, your action step is going to be to get really clear about what it is you want. And you kind of told us a little bit about that but I want you to really think about it. What do you want? Shane Sams: Paint your life picture basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Then you're going to think about all the skills that you have, that we've talked about here today and you're going to think about which one makes you excited to work on. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Which one has a good search volume? Which one is ... Something that you think you can work on for a sustainable period of time. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: And that's what we're going to roll with. We're not going to think about it. We're not going to say, "Well, you know, I kinda want to do this, but I kind of want to do this." No. We're going to choose something and we're going to move forward. Shane Sams: So what will happen is if you've got that core thing. All these seasonal things, I really feel them ... I don't know, you said it would be really fulfilling to help other missionaries do what you've done, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: I'm not saying that's it, but it's more like instead of your just one thing, it's almost like that's your sun and all these little things that you're creating seasonally are just rotating around that, right? Jeff Slaughter: I see. Yeah I see. Shane Sams: It's different than what we normally say, "Go straight ahead, be one thing." You're still going to have an anchor product, right? Something in this mix is not seasonal, that might be it, right? Shane Sams: What you're going to do is create all these other things to take advantage and leverage all these assets and experiences that you have and that's going to keep lifting that boat higher and higher, so that you've got stability plus big things happening throughout the year. Okay? Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Well, what's so interesting about this is that it actually just makes so much sense. And I think that's the problem is I had been trying to find the one thing and for me personally, it's just not one thing. Shane Sams: Yeah. It's hard for us to ... You know this Jeff. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: We work with so many people every day, right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: And people on the podcast don't always get to see what's happening in the Flip Your Life community, at our live events and things like that. We do harp on a lot of people. A lot of people don't have the life experience to pull it off or the focus to do it. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. Shane Sams: To be able to do multiple things or have different things rolling in the background and kind of roll through things throughout the year, right? Jeff Slaughter: Right. Shane Sams: But you do. You do. You need to tell people that. Jocelyn Sams: And you've already proven that. Shane Sams: Sometimes that's a good thing to do. You know? We can pull off multiple things at once because there's two of us. And we've been doing this for six years and we've helped thousands of people. So we've seen every angle of it, right? We can pull off a couple things at once. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Shane Sams: Some people can't and we're going to tell you exactly what you need right now and this is really what you need to do to go forward. Right? Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. It's been great. Shane Sams: Alright guys, great call today. Jeff, man, we've made some major progress in your business. This was a super inspirational call, but we want to get into some inspiration from the bible right now. Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I draw a lot of inspiration from the bible in our business and our life. And we are super excited because Jeff actually has a scripture that he wanted to share on the call today. So Jeff, take it away. Jeff Slaughter: Okay. My scripture comes from Proverbs three, verses five and six. And it says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths." Jocelyn Sams: I love it when the verse goes so perfectly with what we've been talking about. I mean, I don't know that you could've picked a more perfect one. And this was ... You chose this before the call. Jeff Slaughter: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: That is so awesome. Shane Sams: It's like trust him in all the things. Jeff Slaughter: All your ways. All your businesses. Shane Sams: And all the paths, right? And that's what we've been talking about the past forty-five minutes. Jocelyn Sams: And that's the thing it's like God made us all. We're all unique. We all have different gifts and talents and sometimes he gives us multiple gifts and talents. Jeff Slaughter: Right. Jocelyn Sams: So maybe it's that we need to serve people in multiple ways. Shane Sams: Boom! Jeff Slaughter: And I feel today you guys have just given me permission to be who I am, rather than trying to find this person that's not even existing inside me. Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Shane Sams: Somebody out there listening to this right now, is feeling the same way and they're going to go home and take action because you were transparent and you were open and you helped us today, Jeff. So thank you so much friend for being here. Jeff Slaughter: Awesome, thank you guys. Shane Sams: Alright guys, an amazing call with Jeff today. Man, we really got some great focus and clarity and we know exactly what he is doing next in his online business. Jocelyn and I would love to help you with your next steps as well. Whether you're starting, building or growing an online business. We have all the training, community support and coaching that you need to take your life and business to the next level. Shane Sams: We want you to get access to all of that right now absolutely free. You can try one month free in the Flip Your Life community. Right now if you go to flippedlifestyle.com/free that's F-L-I-P-P-E-Dlifestyle.com/free. And you can get a 30 day, all access trial to the Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: Not only will you get to get in there and get access to all that great stuff but you'll get to hang out with me and Jocelyn on our next live member call. Come and ask your questions and we will help you take it all to the next level. That's flippedlifestyle.com/free. We cannot wait to help you. Shane Sams: Alright guys, that is all the time we have for this week. We cannot wait to see you next time. Until then, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Shane Sams: Guys one thing we are super proud of is Flip Your Life Live. You heard about the great progress that Jeff made at this year's live event. We want you to have that experience as well. We are doing it again next year. Flip Your Life Live 2019 and we want you to be there. Go get on the waiting list right now so that we can notify you as soon as Flip Your Life Live tickets are on sale. You can do that at flippedlifestyle.com/live. Get on the waiting list, get on the newsletter so we can keep you updated. So that you can be at next year's life changing event. That's flippedlifestyle.com/live. We can't wait to see you there. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Jeff's Chocolate Website Jeff's Christmas Play Script Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

This week’s episode is a sweet reminder of 'table settings' for the intimate celebrations.  Oftentimes we the to curate every aspect of our celebrations and some of them require strategy. Subscribe, like and share this podcast with a friend and on social media and be sure to LIKE the episode and leave a message or post using the hashtag #kadenceintheclouds. Follow @karenhsthilaire on the social platforms Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and visit her site iwww.karensthilaire.com. Be sure to purchase her first book "The Divine Butterfly: Inspiration On Your Journey To Success" Get Audible for 30-Day Membership trial offer

In today's episode, we talk about how we help Jennifer overcome fears and create a plan to quickly grow her membership by the end of the year. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Jennifer take her education business to the next level. 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. We have a beautiful day in Kentucky and we have an amazing guest. Another member of the Flip Your Life community. On the show today, we want to welcome Jennifer Bradley. Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Jennifer B.: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you guys. Jocelyn Sams: It is great to talk to you again. Jennifer is someone we have actually met in real life, which is really exciting. You guys know that I love it when we have people on that we have met in real life. This is a really good show for me. Shane Sams: And I was telling Jennifer off air, we may know Jennifer better than anyone who has ever been on the show because she's also a member of our all-access mastermind. I literally talk to Jennifer every single day on Voxer. Jennifer B.: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: And we chose Jennifer to be a part of the podcast because she is a community member who believes in posting her success. Shane Sams: And taking massive action in her business. Jocelyn Sams: When we look for people to be a guest on the podcast, we look for people who are really taking action, who are letting other people know about the successes that they're having. And that is why she's here today. Jocelyn Sams: Let's jump into a little bit of that. Start out by telling everyone about who you are and a little bit about your background and your business. Jennifer B.: I'm Jennifer Bradley and I'm from Michigan. I have three little kids at home. Ages seven, four and two. And then I'm married to my high school sweetheart. My business is I'm a speech therapist. I started out selling on a third-party platform Teachers Pay Teachers. I'd just sell therapy materials that I have created. I recently, about a year ago, turned it into a membership platform. I have all of my therapy materials in one area for speech therapists to use. Shane Sams: And how has that gone? I know a lot of people that is a scary transition. They'll go to a third-party marketplace, they'll make a little money online, whether it's putting a book on Kindle or selling something on you-to-me or in another place like that. Then it's like, "Oh, man. If I go offline, how am I gonna find customers?" All that thing. How's your membership going? Jennifer B.: It's going great. At first, it was a little scary. A little bit daunting to have my own website and send traffic there. But I'm really seeing the benefits now because I own it and as a third-party website I'm on there and I have no control of changes that are made. Since I'm always selling one-off products, I have to continuously sell and sell because most of my products range from $3 to $10. Where the membership is growing now, I'm having members and I'm in charge of my own destiny. It's been an amazing transition. Shane Sams: How many members do you have now? Jennifer B.: I have 380 members now. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness. That's insane. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's awesome. Shane Sams: Just think about what you said out loud. We don't get too far into numbers for people, but I'm gonna paint the picture here for everybody. What if you had 380 people paying you 25 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month. That's a crazy amount of customers and really all they're doing is logging into a community and getting access to your resources, right? Jennifer B.: Mm-hmm. Yeah. They just log in. They have access to all my therapy materials that were on TpT. Shane Sams: But we sat down at Flip Your Life Live last year and I worked with you at our table for a little while. You were telling me so many amazing things that I hear from so many people, "Oh, my gosh. I was afraid." You had something making money. This third-party marketplace. It was making good money too, right? Jennifer B.: Yes. Shane Sams: And you're like, "Oh my gosh. What if I stop promoting that? Is that gonna die? Am I gonna give up a good thing? A bird in the hand is better ..." All those fears that we have. I remember we were talking about your promotion strategy and you were still really promoting even the third-party marketplace. I looked over and I'm, "But the membership's making as much money as that. Why would you just not promote the thing that's passive and create stable predicable income?" And we were like, "Yeah. That's probably what I should do." Right? Jennifer B.: Yeah. I needed you to knock some sense into me because I was only pretty much promoting TpTs little one-off sales. Since starting to work with you guys, I have gone up almost 100 members in a month. I needed that. Shane Sams: That's incredible. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. That's awesome. Shane Sams: That's why we love bringing success stories on because most of the time people know what to do and they do just need to talk it through with somebody and see the fork in the road and be like, "Yeah, I've been down this road 100 times. I'm telling you, it's the right thing." But the most important thing is you actually took action on it. That's why you got 100 members in a month is because you said, "Yeah. That's the path I need to go down. I just need to hammer down on it." And that's what we love about you, Jennifer. 'Cause you put in the work. You do what it takes. It takes some risks. It takes a little discomfort at times to make it to the next level. Shane Sams: We were just meeting with our live event coordinator for next years live event. We were like, "Could we double or triple the amount of people who come to Flip Your Life Live?" I looked over at Jocelyn and I said, "This feels really scary. Though, it's probably right." That's where you were. Do I go all in on the membership and leave behind what got me here to get to the next level? And that was scary, wasn't it? Jennifer B.: Yes, it was very scary. Because TpT was a big income for me. To just let that do its own thing without promoting it was a very big jump. But it's been working out really well. Shane Sams: Now, you're full-time online. I know you do go in to the school every once in a while just for a couple hours to keep your toe in the water, but you are full-time online correct? Jennifer B.: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: Well, I just want to first, before we got on, 'cause we're gonna try and help you get to the next level. That's always our goal. There's always a next level. There's always a way to raise the bar. But congratulations for flipping your life because it takes a lot of energy and effort and courage while you've got three kids under the age of seven at home to do what you've done. And we never want to shortchange that. It's so easy to get complacent and it's so easy to always look ahead. But sometimes look back and say, "Wow. I've done something that 90% of people are not doing." And you've done a great job of that, Jennifer, so congratulations. Jennifer B.: Thank you. Thank you. Jocelyn Sams: I think that it's important to recognize that Jennifer didn't wave her magic wand to make all this happen. There was a lot of hard work and energy that went behind it. But I think that in hindsight you would say that it was worth it. Jennifer B.: Oh, yeah. Definitely. I didn't watch TV for three years, but it paid off in the end. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: I love it when people say that because we gave up cable for two years. I remember the day I turned cable back on and I just sat there flipping through the channels and I was like, "I get to do this for the rest of my life now. And I don't have to worry about it anymore." Jennifer B.: Right. Exactly. Shane Sams: What brought you to the Flip Your Life community? Jennifer B.: I heard you guys on Pat Flynn. I had been a part of another membership community to grow memberships. It was a great community, but it wasn't as family focused. It was more technical focused. I liked that you guys had the technical part but also you were a family. You were a husband and wife team. It was very focused on the community and the members helping each other and I really liked that aspect of it. Shane Sams: You know, that's one reason we started the Flip Your Life community in the first place. Because when we were out trying to start our online business, we found the same thing. We found a lot of courses. We found a lot of people telling you how to do things. But we didn't find anywhere where we felt like people were focused on the real issues that were holding us back. The things that held us back were not we couldn't grind though and figure out WordPress or we couldn't grind through and figure out how to take payments for a product. Those are all solvable issues. It was we've got a four-year-old and two-year-old and they're screaming while we have 30 minutes to work. What do we do? We had to stumble through all those problems ourselves and when we decided to start teaching this, we were like, "That's where we need to focus our energy. Helping people deal with the real issues that hold them back. Shane Sams: It's why we love people that come on with three, four, five, six, even seven kids. Because it just proves out there, look, Jennifer has three kids. Jennifer has a life. Jennifer was working. She built a business online. There you go. Why are you not doing that? I just want to encourage anybody that hears this. You can do this while raising a family working full-time. You just gotta take the inspiration and do it. Jennifer B.: That's what I liked. You guys talk a lot about the mindset and the fears. I think that was more my big thing. Getting over that stuff than anything. Jocelyn Sams: That's one thing that we've just really learned through the years of doing this. Usually, things boil down to something that we're afraid of. Maybe it's something that we think we can't do. Or some kind of self-limiting belief is what causes a lot of people's issues. Jocelyn Sams: Let's dive into that a little bit. Let's explore what's going on with you as far as what is holding you back right now? If you were to look at something and say, "I'm worried about something. Or I'm afraid I can't do something." What might that be? Shane Sams: 'Cause the fears do not go away just because you become successful. In fact, they may get bigger and you just have to keep overcoming that next obstacle. That next fear. That next mindset issue every step of the journey. I don't want anyone out there to say, "Wow. Shane, Jocelyn and Jennifer have made it. They're never afraid again." Right? We all have fears that are holding us back. What's challenging you right now? Jennifer B.: I think the fear of overall being judged by selling things or I'm being too pushy and just having that being judged by the speech community. Because it's a smaller community of professionals. So, I don't want to have ... I'm afraid of getting judged about being that pushy sales person I guess. Jocelyn Sams: I totally understand that. I've definitely gone through that as well. I think in the education space especially you can have these types of fears because a lot of people offer things for free because it's education. You have this mindset that, "Oh, nobody wants to pay for anything." Things like that. Would you say that that is part of it? Jennifer B.: Yes. Definitely part of it. Like I should be giving away things for free instead. Shane Sams: What happens here is it's a lot like everything else in our society in 2018 basically. The loudest voices come from the fringes. Right? And when you get the person who's really bitter and is a taker and wants everything free and really doesn't respect. I find that a lot of people that write us hate mail or something because we charge for our products or something like that, they're usually coming from a place of disempowerment and they're really mad and bitter. And they almost feel entitled like someone should either give them everything or maybe they're just frustrated and they can't achieve it and they wish they could have it, but they're not really willing to do what it takes, so they want to complain about it. Right? Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: What we have found is those loud voices from the fringes are the ones that derail us the hardest. We look at our comments all the time. We look at our Facebook posts. We look at the emails that we receive. We look at our ... Even our reviews on our podcast on iTunes. Probably 1% of them are actually complaining or actually negative. But they are so loud and so mean that they just override ... You have 300 and something people paying you money every month without complaining. But that one comment on the webinar in the chat box ... wants to make you just bash your head through the wall. Jennifer B.: Yeah. Exactly. Shane Sams: It's just really important to keep that in context that we live in a world where anybody can scream as loud as they want and holler as loud as they want. But the people who recognize our effort and recognize our work- Jocelyn Sams: And find value in it. Shane Sams: And find value in it. And not only that, have found a way to believe in themself enough to bet on their own life. To bet on their own future with their money and their time. Those are the people we've got to really focus on. Because if we focus on the bad people that are judging us, how can we help the good people that aren't? Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: We struggled through this when we were about to host our live event. We were like, "Who are we to host a live event? Everybody else goes and speaks at live events. You have 10 speakers on stage. We were like, "No, we're gonna host our own. We're gonna speak on stage for two straight days and interact with over 100 people. That's what we're gonna do." We had some negative comments. We had some negative things that we had to deal with. But look at all the good that came out of that live event. Just for you and for other people. If we listened to those negative voices, then we don't get to help all the people that really need it. Jennifer B.: Yeah. That makes sense. Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes it's hard to listen to that voice. Especially when you have these people who are saying, "Oh, well, your product's too expensive." Or, "I don't want to join your membership because it should be free. I can get better stuff like this for free." Well, you know what? That's fine. They're not your people. Shane Sams: Go do it, dude. Jocelyn Sams: Go for it. Do it. Spend your time looking for it. It is out there. But if you want to spend your time and effort doing it, then you're not my customer. I think that it just takes a little bit of time just to get used to the idea. It used to bother me a lot more than it does now. When somebody would be super negative or say something that just bothered me or whatever. It doesn't bother me as much anymore. I think just being okay with everything not being perfect. Shane Sams: And also too, Jocelyn and I are bothered by hate in different ways. I really bow up and want to fight them. I write them back sometimes and I'm, "Bring it. Let's go. I'll joust with you." And Jocelyn, it gets her really, really down. Like, really, really down and doubting. But it does affect us both really negatively. The biggest thing that we've learned over the last couple years is you gotta ignore it. You just gotta ignore it. It's gonna come. You have to accept it, that it's gonna happen. And the more you can delete it, the better. Right? Jennifer B.: Yes. Shane Sams: You just gotta let that go. Because, gosh, you just can't make everybody happy. You know that. You're selling to schools. Jennifer B.: Mm-hmm. And yeah, I'm like Jocelyn in that it gives me doubts. I'm like, I can't be scared to do things. You had told me to send out three emails a week and I thought I was gonna get a bunch of hate mail from people. I think I overreacted about that. So, I'm trying to get my head around the fact that I'm just overthinking. Shane Sams: Once you get over the fact that it's going to happen, that doesn't really make it easier to deal with, but you can create systems. That's the real practical thing that we've done to shield ourselves from it. It's really important once you have enough money to get someone to take some of that off of you. You need a customer service person. Or if you have a business partner, like Jocelyn, before we could afford customer service, I would check the messages first to delete the hate mail before Jocelyn saw it because it was such an energy drain on her. Right? Jennifer B.: Yeah. Shane Sams: And then we have systems in place like Jocelyn, even with me, "Don't write them back. I know you want to, but don't do it. Don't waste energy on that. We've got bigger fish to fry." Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I always say, "Be careful of screenshots." Because if you do get a hateful email and you fire off a big hateful response, then they're gonna post it on Twitter or whatever and say- Shane Sams: And that's gonna create more energy drain. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. "This person's a jerk, don't join their community." You don't want that to happen either. One of the things that I do to deal with this, especially when I was still answering my own customer service a lot, is I would say, "Okay. Well, what's the worst thing that can happen? If I send out this email asking people to buy something, what's the worst thing that can happen?" Well, the worst thing is maybe someone would say, "This is a rip off. It's way too expensive. And this website is a joke." Then I would write a little response to that. And it would say something like, "Hey. Thank you for your email. I understand that you think that the product is too expensive. I totally understand. There are lots of free resources available online. Feel free to use those and I appreciate you writing in." Or whatever. That way, my mind had already dealt with it. Shane Sams: It's a canned response. Sends the same thing back to everybody, so she doesn't have to waste any energy. But she also feels like she answered the person that was mad at her. Jocelyn Sams: For me, I felt like I was prepared for it that way. And really, I only had to send it out one or two times. In my head, I'm thinking I'm gonna get 100 responses that say this and I got two. Shane Sams: Let's put this in context too because sometimes the criticism that we get is harder than we think it is. Right? What's the meanest thing anyone's actually ever said to you in your customer service? What's the meanest thing that you can remember right now, seriously, that anyone has ever said to you? Jennifer B.: It's kind of sad 'cause there's something ... We'll it's not sad, but there hasn't been anything totally mean. I think the worst thing I've heard is, "I don't like your materials." Which I took personally. Which is actually not that mean, so I don't know why I have this weird fear of people being me. But, yeah. It wasn't ... Shane Sams: It's like that fear of something that could happen has almost over ... You can look back and say, "Literally, that has never happened to me." My mom, I was sitting there last night at my mom's house. And it's almost Halloween when we're recording this. My mom was like, and God love her, "Now, you're gonna take the kids' candy up to the hospital right?" I was like, "Why would I do that?" She goes, "Well, they'll run that right through the x-ray machine to make sure nobody's putting razorblades in your Reese's cups. I said, "Mom. Let's be honest here. Do you know any human being, in person, that that's ever happened to?" She said, "Well, no. But I read about it in the paper one time." Right? We laugh at that. You know what I'm saying? We hear that one thing or we imagine that one scenario and it becomes this overriding thing in our life that we think's gonna happen and then it's almost real. And then keeps us from doing something that could cause that. Right? Jennifer B.: Mm-hmm. But yeah, I like that idea to pre-make your emails. I feel like that would make me feel better. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. It's just one less thing to think about. You just know that if that situation happens, you have a response for it. You don't even have to think about it. You can just put it outside your mind. Shane Sams: And your brain will deal with it. Jocelyn Sams: One thing to remember is just that people ... There's always gonna be someone who doesn't like you. If everyone likes you, then you're probably not polarizing enough. You need to find someway to make it, not controversial, but just let your real personality come out. If you're not doing that, then people probably aren't really connecting with you. Shane Sams: We had a guy write us in one time and I'm reading verbatim his email that says, "Well ..." It was basically helping ... We were just doing a webinar. We were trying to ... We wanted to help people learn how to make money online. We were doing this webinar and I'm sending an email out to our list and I get a replay back that says, "Well, aren't you guys fancy. So basically, the goal in life is to sloth around the house all day on your laptops while other people work their butts off and live their life for you. You are possibly the least inspirational and most phony entrepreneurs I've ever seen. You are elitists bragging about being elitists while attempting to make more money off others. You guys are gross." Shane Sams: That's an actual email. Jennifer B.: Bad day. Jocelyn Sams: Who reads their hate mail on the air? Nowhere but the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Shane Sams: But that guy sent that around and was so bitter and hateful and he didn't look up and say, "You know, these guys have 4,000 posts in their success stories forum." Think about that. He was so blinded by his own bitterness that he just had to be hateful instead of realizing that we had something that could possibly help him. That's what you've got to ... Your materials not only are helping teachers have the better work experience, helping them be happy at work, helping them be happy at home because they're not spending time on lessons, and think about all the kids and people who are gonna be impacted over the years by all the lesson plans that you're putting out there and everybody out there who's doing something with their life and putting things out on the internet, you're bringing value to the world. Never let those negative voices hold you down. Okay? Jennifer B.: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Jennifer. We've talked a little bit about what's going on inside your head. What can we help you with as far as working on the nuts and bolts of your business to help you move it forward? Jennifer B.: I am the type to see something and want to do it. So, I buy too many courses because I want to prefect this and I want to perfect that. I'm just everywhere with everything and I don't know where to focus my time. Do I focus my time on blogging more? Do I focus my time on creating ads? Do I focus my time on Instagram or email marketing or ... I'm all over the place with what I should do next I guess. Jocelyn Sams: All right. I feel like probably a big part of the problem is that you're not clearly defining what you want. A lot of times, people, they want all the things. They want to try to concentrate on all the things. And we have a tendency to do this sometimes as well. But what you have to do is say, "Okay, in this year, I would like to do X. And then you back up and say, "Okay, well how am I going to do that?" Jennifer B.: Okay. Shane Sams: What do you want right now? What do you want to spend your time on and where do you want to go? The easiest thing to do is set a member goal or a money goal. Right? Then how do I get there, or how do I want to get there? What is your next goal right now for you? Jennifer B.: My goal would probably be I would love to have 500 members by the end of the year. Yes, that's my goal. Shane Sams: We've got about two months to get there. That's good. Ambitious goals are what you need. You want to stretch. Right? Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: How do you want to get there? If you said, "Man, any path I pick will work. Anything I do will work because if I put the effort into it and I've got a plan, if I execute the plan, it will work. What's your easiest path mentally to get there? Jennifer B.: Probably for me probably more Facebook ads or Instagram ads 'cause I know them decently. It's an easier way for me to, I think, to advertise I guess. Shane Sams: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So, really that means that you think that you need to either promote to your current audience or grow your audience. Which one of those would you say is accurate? Or both? Jennifer B.: I think grow my audience. I recently got an email from somebody telling me that she was so excited to join. That I need to promote more because she didn't know about me. I guess that's them telling me. I feel like I need to get my name out there a little bit more. Shane Sams: Okay. This is a very similar place that we found ourselves earlier this year. Okay? I just want to go back to what we just said because it's really important for anybody out there listening about working backwards. You said 500 people. And then we said, "What's the best way to get there?" You said Facebook ads. Right? And then that led to an anecdote that proved it in your system. You have a person that told you, a customer, that was, "Wow. If I'd known about you sooner, I'd have done this." And you've been in the game a little while, so you've got plenty of things that you've already done that you can go ahead and promote. It's not like you've gotta reinvent the wheel every day or create new blog posts or create new content. You just have to activate all this amazing stuff you've already got. Shane Sams: But working backwards from the goal, your plan is basically, "Okay, I need to get 100 more members. I need to promote my most popular stuff to new people on Facebook." That's it. That's all you have to do for the rest of the year. You don't have to create anything new. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You've just gotta go do that. Jocelyn Sams: It may also mean some repurposing. What I mean by that is can you create a short video about one of the things you've written a blog post about and post it on YouTube? Jennifer B.: Okay. Shane Sams: Our priority list always goes in this order. We look at every task and we dive down into tasks. Yesterday Jocelyn and I were planning out November and we said, "What is our goal for November?" Well, we have to get our Black Friday sale ready, which we're gonna be selling our videos from Flip Your Life Live, the video package. We said, "Okay, what do we have to do? What are all the tasks that we have to do to get that done and repurpose that content into a product?" So, we're wrote down all those tasks. But then we look at those tasks ... For us, the next step is for me and Jocelyn is we say, "Okay, who's gonna do what?" But for you, you're just like, "What order am I gonna do the tasks." Right? Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: But back up a little bit. Before we decided that was the thing we were doing in November, we had four other things that we could do that would do different things. Like making YouTube videos, making podcasts, doing all these things. We always give them little ... We draw little icons behind them. We say, "This one would make money immediately. What's the fastest one to make the most money? This one would keep current customers happy. This one would be promotion. This one would be a process that we could delegate. This one might be something that we have to do on a repeated basis." The things that do money always win. Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: When you tell me, "Well should I make more blog posts?" My first question is, does it make you more money? Maybe in the long-term. But you already got blog posts that you can promote. Why not just promote them and send that to your list? Now it's making money and it's promotion. You're ready to go. That's how you have to look at things. What makes me the most money this quarter. Period. Do that. If everyone just makes that decision, your long-term plans will automatically stack up and work in your favor because you're making money as you go. Jocelyn Sams: And be decisive. Usually the reason that people bounce around from course to course or community to community is because they're not really decisive on what they want. Truth be told, they don't really believe in themselves to do whatever it is that they've set out to do, so they think, "Oh, well, if I just take this ads course, this is gonna solve all my problems." No. You already have everything that you need to be successful. Stop hiding behind courses and do the work. Shane Sams: That's a good quote. "Stop hiding behind courses." Jennifer B.: It is, Jocelyn Sams: Well, it reminds me ... Jennifer B.: I have like 10. Jocelyn Sams: Well, I have this friend, I'm not gonna name her as she listens to the podcast, but I have this friend and she texted me a couple weeks ago. This was when somebody was doing a big launch. Everybody's launching this particular product. She messages me. It's a friend of mine, so she texted me and she's like, "Hey. Have you ever worked with this particular individual? Would you recommend this program?" And I'm like, "No." I was like ... Shane Sams: This was $1,000 too by the way. This was not a cheap course. Jocelyn Sams: Nothing against this particular program or this particular person. I don't know anything about them. But I'm like, "No." This person has probably taken 100 courses. They have implemented some things, but I'm like, "You already have all the knowledge, all the information that you need. It's right there. You don't need another course. Stop hiding behind courses." Anyway, that's what I'm trying to say is that you already have everything you need. If you are not taking action, you need to do a little bit of internal work. What is stopping you? What is making you think you can't do it? There's something inside that's making you want to take another path or basically just delay the inevitable. Stop delaying it. Get the work done. Shane Sams: Some people too, we do this all the time, we'll do something and it'll work. And we'll be like, "Whoa! That worked? That's amazing! It worked!" And then we're like, "What do we do next?" The answer is usually, "Why don't we just do more of what just worked?" Jennifer B.: Yes, Shane Sams: This worked. This worked. Why would I not just do it over and over. And I get the feeling that you're like me. Sometimes we get bored with the, with what's working. Jennifer B.: Yes. Shane Sams: But just do it. Just keep doing that. Keep shooting free throws and keep scoring points. Because that's all you gotta do to win. Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes it's easier to look for an alternate path than to stay on the path that you're already one. Shane Sams: Because that require discipline. And discipline- Jocelyn Sams: And it also requires some work. There's some brush in the path. You're gonna have to clear that off. There's some things that you're gonna have to do. But if I just find another path, it might be better. Jennifer B.: I think you guys both hit it. I think sometimes my fear of the getting judged thing and not selling I'm like, "Oh, I'll buy a course to do that. To learn how to do that more." And then Shane, like you just said, I think sometimes I get bored to. I'm like, "Ooh, this course looks good. I'll do this." And I have 10 courses that I haven't taken yet. Shane Sams: Oh, without question. I buy books all the time and I'll read a chapter and I'll get really excited. But then I get bored. I don't even do what the chapter told me to do. Jocelyn Sams: We seriously probably have over 100 books on our bookshelf. We've probably read about half. Shane Sams: The shelf is ending in the middle. Right? And I'm not saying that's not valuable. We get things out of them. But it's ... I bought this book the other day about YouTube. And I know our YouTube strategy. We have a plan for next year. It's repurpose it. We have over 1,000 videos of questions we've answered over the last few years on online business and we want to roll those out onto YouTube individually. We have a live strategy to answer questions from the community. One a day or one every other day. And then put that question as an answer. We'll take that answer, give it to the person who asked the question, who's a member, but then we'll just do it on YouTube, so it's more content. Shane Sams: I know this strategy. I know it'll work. The numbers don't lie. I'm looking at the stats and I'm like, "Okay, well, we'll have 1,000 videos by the end of next year. If all those videos are getting 10 views a day, we're getting 10,000 views a day." It's not hard. And then we just pitch something at the end. That's what we have to do. But I bought this book about YouTube 'cause I'm looking for the magic. When really, the magic is roll up your sleeves and do it and a year from now amazing things will happen. Jocelyn Sams: Imperfect action always beats no action. Shane Sams: That's right. That's right. Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: And the book was so bad. I'm not gonna name names. But this book was, "Start your channel. Create a playlist." There was nothing. It was supposed to be the best book ever. The reviews. All these experts were on the front saying it was the most important YouTube book that had ever been written. And it was literally like, "Start your YouTube channel." That's what the whole book was about. We're always looking for the magic pill, but the magic pill is us. The magic pill is work. Just gotta do it and grind. I'm gonna help you create a lot of Facebook ads between now and the end of the year. Jennifer B.: I know. The things that you've been giving me since I joined your private coaching, I'm like, "This is scaring me." But it's all good. Shane Sams: But it's all worked, right? Jennifer B.: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's all worked so far. Jennifer B.: 100 members in a month. Jocelyn Sams: All right, Jennifer. I've really enjoyed our conversation today about just the different fears, mindset issues and trying to move forward in your business. What is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so based on what we've talked about here today? Jennifer B.: I am going to do the working backwards thing where I'm gonna figure out how I can get another 120 members by December 31st. The specific tasks that go into that. I know it's ads, but I gotta figure out my strategy for it. Shane Sams: The most important question in any ad strategy is where you're sending people. That's something that me and you can hash out in the private mastermind. What are we going to promote? We're not gonna promote 40 different things. We're gonna figure out a good strategy and stick to it and just promote it over time to beat those members out of the bushes. Okay? Jennifer B.: Right. Shane Sams: All right. What an awesome call, Jennifer. Man, that was just some amazing stuff and you have an amazing goal that's gonna take you forward. Before we go, Jocelyn and I love to share a bible verse with all of our listeners. We get a lot of our inspiration in business and in life from the Bible and we're super excited today because Jennifer has a verse that she would like to share with everybody listening to the podcast. Jennifer B.: All right. The one I like is the Proverbs 21:5. It is the plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. Shane Sams: Ooh. That is deep. Jocelyn Sams: I love it. I think that it really echos what we've talked about here today. There is no magic wand, there is no magic pill. If you are going to live the life that we live, you've gotta do the work. Shane Sams: That's such a clear example for all business owners. The plans of the diligent. That means you plan it and then you do the work. Right? But then the plans of the hasty, they're just trying to look for the magic pill and they fail. What an awesome verse. Listen, thank you for sharing that verse today and thank you just for being so transparent. Coming on the show and sharing what you're doing and all the members and really being open and honest with your fears. That's gonna resonate with somebody today. That's gonna help somebody else move forward in their business. That's what we're all about. Throwing that pebble in the pond and letting that ripple out. Thank you Jennifer for sharing your story today. Jennifer B.: Well, thank you guys for having me. This has been amazing. I have some work to do. Jocelyn Sams: All right guys. If you need help building your online business, getting those members just like Jennifer did, we would love to have you inside our Flip Your Life community. The first 30 days are totally free and you can learn more at flippedlifestyle.com/free. We hope to see you inside the community real soon. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time that we have today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We will see you next time. Between now and then, get out there 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: Jennifer's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "How can we build an email list while we are still finishing course content, website, etc?" Question Two: "I have 5500 members on facebook, what strategy should I use to convert them into email subscribers? I have only asked for subscribers once and we got 100. On a typical post, it shows it was seen by 600-750 people and 1300-2000 on live videos. What is a creative way to keep it front of them to continue to get more email subscribers?" Question Three: "How much content should be in place on the website before launching the membership? Currently there is plenty of content on social media places, but not much on the website. I have focused my efforts to make up a minimal product as a lead magnet. So how can I launch the membership before writing much or blogging?" Question Four: "One of the services you offer FYL members are the member call replays. I really value this and want to offer the same for my community. Will you share exactly how you do it, including the tools you use? Is it just Youtube live and vimeo? How do you get the chat under the live video?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Enjoying family time tonight with Battleship on the balcony! Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "How can we build an email list while we are still finishing course content, website, etc?" Question Two: "I have 5500 members on facebook, what strategy should I use to convert them into email subscribers? I have only asked for subscribers once and we got 100. On a typical post, it shows it was seen by 600-750 people and 1300-2000 on live videos. What is a creative way to keep it front of them to continue to get more email subscribers?" Question Three: "How much content should be in place on the website before launching the membership? Currently there is plenty of content on social media places, but not much on the website. I have focused my efforts to make up a minimal product as a lead magnet. So how can I launch the membership before writing much or blogging?" Question Four: "One of the services you offer FYL members are the member call replays. I really value this and want to offer the same for my community. Will you share exactly how you do it, including the tools you use? Is it just Youtube live and vimeo? How do you get the chat under the live video?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we talk about how we helped Blair with a pricing change that resulted in $20,000.00 in recurring revenue. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we talk about how taking one risk made Blair $20,000.00 in recurring revenue. 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 who 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 is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. And man, we have got an amazing success story for you guys. It is going to inspire you to take massive actions. Maybe to go in and take some of those risks that you've been avoiding, and just show you what is truly possible when you're all in, online. Shane Sams: I wanna welcome to the show today, Flip Your Life community member ... Oh wait, hold on. Pause. Blair, how do you pronounce your last name? Blair T.: Thielemier. The H is silent. Shane Sams: Okay. Thielemier. Blair T.: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Tea, like I drink every morning. Tea. Shane Sams: Because I was about to say Thielemier. Blair T.: No. Jocelyn Sams: I can only imagine what you get called. Shane Sams: Wanna welcome to the show today, Flip Your Life member, Blair Thielemier. Blair, welcome. Blair T.: Thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: It's so exciting to have you on today. This is my favorite kinda show, as you know, if you listen to our show very often. I love it when we have people on that we have met in real life. And I have actually spent time with Blair a couple of different times. So, it's really cool to have you on today. Blair T.: Yeah, yeah, so I got to meet you last year in Southern California, at a Women's Leadership Conference. And then, again at Flipped Life Live. So that, was really exciting for me, too. Shane Sams: Yeah, Flip Your Life Live was incredible, because it was just this overwhelming emotional experience, meeting people who ... that weird feeling. It was like the Facebook affect, almost. You feel like you know each other in real life already, and then you're actually in the same place. And our brains have not evolved properly, to handle all these social media connections that we have, or these community connections that we have online, so then it's just a surreal experience, isn't it? To get in the same room with people you feel like you already know personally? Blair T.: And I really loved what you guys did with the Facebook group. Most conferences that you go to, once you buy your ticket, it's like, you don't get to meet anyone til you get there. But with Flipped Life Live, we had the Facebook group, and that, for me, 'cause I didn't know anyone, was really helpful to get to put names with faces, and not feel like I was going in, not knowing anyone. Shane Sams: Now, I really do feel like, that we knew you quite personally before the event, because we had worked together, and we had done some coaching calls. We had talked to you in the forums about some different things that you were doing online. And we kinda made some radical changes in your business. And we say radical changes, but it really was just changing one thing, right? We just kind of switched the way you were presenting an offer. And it led to this massive amount of success that we're gonna talk about in a few minutes. Shane Sams: But tell everybody a little bit more about you, your background, and your online business, leading up to that point where we had that coaching call. Blair T.: Okay, so by training, I am a Pharmacist. It was 2014, and I was pregnant with my daughter. And I got the news that the small hospital that I was working for was facing some budget cuts. And I essentially lost all my benefits and full-time status. So that, led me to scrambling, trying to pick up some different work at local community pharmacies. And through that, and because of my clinical background, they had asked me to do some clinical services for them in the pharmacies. Blair T.: So I did that for about a year. And then, in fall of 2015, I started working with a business coach to build my online business. I had people reaching out to me, asking for help, so that they could create these clinical services in their pharmacies. But I didn't know how to create a program around that. So we started with three one-on-one coaching clients, and then from there, I started building an email list, and building the website that was ... I was blogging about what I was working on, and so that was how people were finding out about MTM Consulting, which is what I'm known for. Shane Sams: And basically, this is just ... it's a way that Pharmacists can add more services to increase revenue. That's really what it is, right? Is that what it is? Blair T.: Right. So, pharmacy's typically seen as a product-based business. Retail pharmacy. And there's only so much you can do, as far as profit margins for medications, because there's laws, and insurance companies, and all that. So what we're seeing now is, more pharmacies adding in services, and becoming a little bit more service-based, like you would have in a physicians office. And these could be weight management courses, they could be ... like, I do genetic testing on people, to tell them which medications and supplements are best for their genetic makeup. Blair T.: So this, is what I've became known for, was people were wanting my advice on how to create these services, and then also, create consulting businesses around these services for themselves. Shane Sams: Interesting. Blair T.: So, yeah. I began by building an email list. And I said, "When I get to 100 members, I'm going to create a course for these people." So, that's what I ... sorry, 100 email subscribers. So, I had a very small list, and- Shane Sams: What year was that? Blair T.: It was December of 2015, when I launched the course for the first time. So, out of the hundred email subscribers, eight people took me up on the beta offer for the equal- Shane Sams: How much was that? Blair T.: $197. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Wow! Blair T.: Isn't that full circle? Shane Sams: I know, right? I know, that's a great trailer for what's to come. I like what you said there. Everyone remember, $197. This is gonna be a magic number, when we get to it later, okay? How did you feel when you got eight people to buy something for $200 ... that's $1,600.00. And for everybody listening, that's just 100 people on an email list. That's not a 10,000 person email list, right? Blair T.: Right, right. You gotta start somewhere, so it's funny, my web developer actually charged me $1,500.00 to build the course, so I actually kind of pre-sold it. And so profitability wise, I only made about $100.00 off of it the first time. Shane Sams: Hey listen, it's revenue. That's a start, right? Blair T.: That's right. But that was the first, the beta test. And then, I created each lesson, each week. It was like a dripped course. And each week, I would create it. I would send it out to them. I would ask for their feedback. And then, by the end of February, we had all six lessons created, and I launched it again. And I got, I think 15 more members join in the course. Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's awesome, because it just says, "Okay, these people do want this. People do want this product." Shane Sams: Yeah. And it's amazing, I love what you said, too, you're like, "Well, I made $1,600, but I only profited $100 off that first beta, right? Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: But now, you've got a course that you can sell over, and over, and over again with the same infrastructure, so when you get the next 15 people, it's all profit. And the next 15 people, you might buy some ads or something, but it starts stacking 'cause you've created something you can sell for two or three years without even worrying about it, right? Blair T.: Right. And then, so these people that had bought the course, really enjoyed it, but they wanted more. The course was very basic about starting a business. So we started from LLC versus sole proprietorship. I mean, we started from the very beginning. And as people went through the course, they wanted more and more specific information about billing for the services, like if the Pharmacist was gonna work in a Physician's office, there's certain billing codes we could use. Blair T.: And so, I thought, "I'm not going to create lesson seven, and then charge them for that. So how do I do this in a way that continues to pay me for my time, in creating these new products?" So, I was working with Natalie E., and she turned me onto the Flipped Life podcast. And she said, "There's these people, they do membership sites. I think this might be the right direction for you to go." Blair T.: And that's how I got introduced to you guys, probably in April of 2016. And we went ahead probably April, May, June, that was the transition into the membership site, so then after that, it was still $197 to join the course, and then after three months, it would roll over to a recurring membership of $27.00 per month. Shane Sams: Now, things ... how did that go, when you first did that? How did it go when you started saying, "Here's the course, and then you get the membership." And then, later on, you raised the price. Didn't you ... you did something radically different. You had a big join fee, or something like that? Blair T.: Yeah, so as we kept building, now we're at 11 lessons in the course. And then, we had forums, and we had monthly member calls. And so, each thing I added, changed the price a little bit, so we worked our way up. By 2018, we were at $997 to join the course, and then $97 a month in recurring, to continue the membership. Shane Sams: So, this was interesting, because this is, kind of, where ... Jocelyn and I, earlier in the year, starting doing more one-and-one work. Right? Where we had some times open in our calendar, where we could come in and really take people ... Jocelyn and I are always on the look for somebody on the verge. They're stuck, right? And there was this moment where you were kinda stuck. And the membership got to a certain point, got to a certain number, and you were only getting a couple people a month, right? Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: So that's what we talked about on our member call. What made you charge a thousand dollar join fee. When did it go from your mind, like, that's what you called it, when we first talked, to a join fee, compared to buying the course. Right? Because that's a huge amount of money for someone to come out, just to walk in the door, let alone, what they're gonna pay monthly, after. What was the thought process behind that? Where did you get that from? Blair T.: I mean, you know, the gurus say, "If you do an online course, $997." Jocelyn Sams: They have to be right. I mean, hello? Blair T.: And that was essentially the reason. I mean, Jocelyn, when I talked to you last November, at the conference, you kinda said, "That's interesting that you're doing it that way." And I was like, "Yeah, eventually, I'd like to transfer to just doing a monthly membership." Shane Sams: What kept you from doing that? That's interesting you said ... So, you talked to her in November. You talked to us in the summer of next year. What was the delay? What was the fear of taking the join fee off? What was keeping you from doing that? Blair T.: So, to me, these people that were my current members, they had paid the $997. And to me, it was almost unfair to take that away, and then, to offer it to other people at just a monthly price. And to do away with that join fee. And I drug my feet on changing that price from November 2017, until September 3rd of 2018, when you and I had the one-on-one conversation on Labor Day. Shane Sams: And it's amazing you say that, because we all get these things in our head. Right? One, that everybody's paying attention. Two, that it's not fair. Three, that, "Well, I can't change anything, 'cause everyone in the past got it one way, and no one in the future will ever get it differently." Right? 'Cause we struggle with that, too. Jocelyn and I just had a conversation this morning about some changes that we're throwing around, for our membership. And we had that same conversation. "Well, what about everyone that's paid this? What about everybody that's done that? What if we make this available in this tier, and we don't make it available, and it's been available for everybody else, what's the incentive to keep moving forward?" These are always conversations that we have in our head, and it's almost like we're afraid we're gonna break something. Shane Sams: But your case is very interesting, because when we went through the numbers, your membership was stagnating, literally. It was like, no one was joining. What was it? Like, single digits, right? A month, or something like that. And we said to ourselves, when we look at these numbers, we're like, "Man, this massive wall that you have built around your castle, is literally preventing," ... you dug a moat. That's what I told you, on the call, around your castle. You're like, "Man, look at this city on the hill. Look how awesome this is. But now, no one's allowed in." Right? Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: And we keep adding value, over time, which is just a natural evolution of all of our products and membership, and we feel like we've gotta keep charging more, and keeping more people out, when really, the more awesome your stuff gets, it's almost like it should get more accessible. Right? And that's kind of what we talked about on our call, is how do we make Blair's membership more accessible? So I told you, I said, "What if we just dropped the join fee, all together?" And I remember, you gasped, on the call. But there was a catch, 'cause I wanted to address that real fear you had about people who had paid more. Right? Shane Sams: So what we decided was, this thing was really valuable. It was an amazing opportunity for pharmacies to make more money, and it really was worth a lot of money, so we were gonna double your monthly price, right? So all the old people, who ended up paying the join fee, that's fine, but they were paying a little bit lower price, because they've been with you longer. They deserve a lower price for being loyal, right? But now, the new people get in cheaper, up front, but it's actually charging what it's worth, $197. So, go back to that call, how did you feel about that, after we worked out this ... it's not really a compromise, but a solution to that problem? Blair T.: So, I knew I wanted to talk to you before Flipped Life Live, 'cause there was definitely some shifts that I felt like, it wasn't working. We were stuck on 40 members, and I felt like the whole year, we were, like you said, we were stagnating. And, it was that mindset, exactly what you said, that I felt like I was, somehow, taking value away from the other members, if I was technically decreasing the price to join, but increasing it, if you look at it over, say, a year. And when you reframed that, and made that shift for me, you said, "Now you have the infrastructure built. When you first started, you were really one-on-one. It took a lot more of your time, and so that made sense for you to have that. But now, you've got the infrastructure in place. You've got the team members in place. Now, you want to let these floodgates open, and let people in, because they deserve to be able to have access to this information. So when you said that, it was a total shift in my mindset. It's like, "I'm actually cheating all of the people that are on the other side of the drawbridge in my castle." So that, was really what I needed, to make that change. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so you did change, and rather quickly, too. So, you had this conversation, I think, on Labor day. Our event started on the ... what was it? The 18th, the 19th of September? Shane Sams: I think it was the 19th, was the first day of the actual event, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: So basically, there were two weeks in between this span. So tell us what happened in those two weeks. Shane Sams: I'll tell you what happened first. Blair's like, "Yeah, I think I could do this by new year. By the end of the year," or something. And I'm like, "No." Jocelyn Sams: No, that's not gonna work. Shane Sams: "You're gonna do a webinar in two weeks, and you're gonna come to Flip Your Life Live, and I'm going to announce, on stage, the results. Good or bad." So, how did that go over, when I said that to you? Blair T.: So, you gave me 13 days, 'cause you were like, "Do it on a Sunday night. That's a good time for people." And I was like, "Okay," so the Sunday night before Flipped Life Live, is when I planned the webinar. And I had done some live webinars in the past, but not really the same structure as this one, so that, was really helpful. You helped give me a framework to use for the webinar. And so, I did the webinar. I actually had shot a YouTube video, calling it the Drawbridge Special Webinar. Jocelyn Sams: You're welcome, for that. Shane Sams: Yeah, right. Blair T.: I talked about this- Shane Sams: My mouth can come in handy, every once in a while. Blair T.: Yeah, so I talked about my business coach from Kentucky, who's making me change my prices. And this was gonna be a really good opportunity for people. And I was very open and transparent about why I was changing my prices, and what I was doing, and what I hoped to achieve from this. So, it just blew me away, the results I got, and the response I got from that webinar. So, we registered about 300 people. About 135 people showed up live. And about 50 people took me up on that initial offering. Jocelyn Sams: Whoa. Blair T.: The initial offering. Shane Sams: So, let's do the math here. So it's 50 people, basically, times $200 a month. 50 people who couldn't get in before, because they had this big $1,000.00 wall. Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: And really, these people were already there. They're there. Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: You were keeping them out. But now, you opened the door, and out of nowhere, in one webinar, you've got $10,000.00 in monthly, recurring revenue, night one of the change. Right? Blair T.: Right, so I- Shane Sams: How did that feel, compared to the eight people at $200.00 a month? 'Cause remember, it was $197 for the course. So, we're full circle. You take this $197.00 lifetime course, and you've evolved it into a $197 per month, recurring revenue business. So what were you feeling when you got off the webinar? Blair T.: Oh, I was blown away. I mean, we had, that night, probably about 26 people join that night, immediately after the webinar. And then, the next day, another 24 or 25 people trickled in. And so then, I waited til Wednesday to ... 24 hours had passed, and then, I had sent a Facebook message to you, and was like, "We added 50 members off of that webinar." You were like, "Oh." Shane Sams: Oh, we were celebrating. I honestly- Blair T.: Like, I was just real calm about it, like, "Oh by the way, we added 50 members Sunday night." Shane Sams: I was sitting on the couch, and I distinctly remember this. Jocelyn was going from the kitchen to the back room. I don't remember what she was doing, but she was leaving the room. And I was sitting on the couch. I had my feet propped up, and we were getting into everything, and I yelled, "Oh my goodness." And Jocelyn's like, "What?" I'm like, "Look at this." And I flipped it around, and showed it to her. And man, I mean, we were ecstatic, because that's just awesome, because I mean listen, it's scary to change your prices. Right? Especially something you've sold in the past, because you did get people. I mean, even a couple a month, you're getting people, hey, they paid two grand, there's two grand in the pocket, right? They're $100.00 a month members, so there's a couple hundred bucks a month. Like, it's kinda working, even though it wasn't growing where you wanted it to, so that's a scary proposition. Especially when you've got it in your mind, all the gurus are doing this. Right? Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: But you did it. I mean, it was crazy how fast you moved, once we got off that call, to make all this happen. So how much of that actual fear I was going to call you out on stage, and actual excitement like, "Wow, this might actually work. I might as well try it." What pushed you so hard, to get it done so fast, besides the deadline of, "I'm showing up at Flip Your Life Live." Blair T.: Right. And I think it was you two saying, "What's the worst that could happen?" And that's something that I really struggled with. Like you said, I didn't want to do this until the first of January of 2019. But having that deadline that you were going to ask me about it at Flipped Life Live, and I only had 13 days to put it together, and then I was gonna see you at the end of the week, it was really what I needed, to give me that push. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and you didn't need three months to get that together. You did it. You made it happen. So this story isn't over, though. So, once you get to the live event, I remember the night of the dinner, you were like, "Hey, so I have this replay. Should I send it out?" I'm like, "Yes." Shane Sams: "Should I let anyone else watch the Drawbridge Webinar?" Jocelyn Sams: "What do you think, is this appropriate to do?" I'm like, "Send it out immediately." So, tell everybody what you did then. Blair T.: Yeah, essentially, it was at the working dinner at Flipped Life Live, and you were like, "Yes, you have to send it out. Do it right now." And so, I did. I sent it out at ... it was like, 9:00 at night or something, and Nikki was sitting beside me. She was helping me with the copy of the email. And it was one of those things that I probably wouldn't have sent it out, if I hadn't been there, and you guys had been telling me, "Yes, you need to send that out." So, I think we got another two or three people who weren't able to attend live, that watched the replay, and then joined the Academy after that. Shane Sams: So, you just sat there and got a $400.00 raise. Like, I always say this. I always reframe monthly memberships into this, is who just can give themselves a raise? You can't just walk into your boss and be like, at a nine to five, and go, "Yo, boss. $400.00 more a month, right now. Let's go." Jocelyn Sams: Like that's gonna happen. Shane Sams: Literally, that's what you did. That's what you did at that table, was you said, "I'm gonna give myself a $400.00 a month raise. And I'm gonna do it right now." And bam, it worked. And then, since Flip Your Life Live, you've been a part of our All Access Mastermind. And we've been pushing you to do more webinars, do more live things, do more things. And I think your revenue, pretty much, has grown to around $20,000.00 in a monthly recurring revenue now, correct? Blair T.: Right, right. We're right about $20,000.00 a month in revenue, so- Shane Sams: I love how casually you said that. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you just throw that out there. Shane Sams: Like, literally two months ago, you were like, "Man, everything's stagnant. I've got some people in there, but nobody's doing it." Now you're like, "Yeah, we're at 20, heading to 50 by next month. Whatever." Blair T.: You presented with a unique struggle, because I had already set my 2019 goals, and my 2019 goals were to get to $10,000.00 a month in recurring revenue. And so, pretty much, we blew that out of the water by September. Shane Sams: So, whenever you need to move ahead with something in your life, you just come over and talk to Shane and Jocelyn. That's what she's saying. Blair T.: Right, right. Jocelyn Sams: Basically, that's what you're trying to say. Shane Sams: That's what you're trying to say. We skipped over something. My favorite part of this whole story ... And of course, well, we'll talk about it in a minute. But my favorite part of this whole story, and I can't remember exactly when you told me this. I don't remember if it was on Facebook, or on Voxer in the Mastermind, or maybe even when we were together, live. It may have been at the live event. After your big ... the webinar, the 72 hours, whatever, you get this $10,000.00 a month, that you didn't have the month before. Right? Whatever. You told me you woke up ... 'cause you still work in clinics, and do things like that, right? You still go- Blair T.: Yeah, like one or two days a week. Shane Sams: Exactly. So, you still do that. And I remember you said you got up, and your husband looked over at you, and he said ... tell us what he said. Blair T.: So yeah, I think I sent you, in a Facebook message, because I was actually at work whenever i was telling you about the results of the webinar and stuff. So, I was at work, and I said, "Oh, by the way, this morning, my husband, when we were getting ready, and I was about to walk out the door, he was like, "So, are you still going to work today?" Shane Sams: What an amazing question. That is awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, Shane was so pumped about that. He talked about it on the stage at the event, because he was so excited. So yeah, that is awesome. I love that so much. Shane Sams: "Are you going to work?" Isn't that the question that we all wanna ... anyone who's starting an online business, that's the moment you wanna get to, is that moment where you say, "When is my last day at work?" But it's not even like, "If you choose to do," ... Like, I've got a buddy, he's got an amazing online business. He's built it into a half million dollars in revenue a year. Great profit margins. He's doing an amazing job, but he really liked his job. He really liked what he was doing. He stuck with it a couple more years, but it was like, he always had the option, at any time he wanted, to say, "I don't have to do this." And isn't that really the point we're getting to, it's like, it's not necessarily if you do, or if you don't. It's, "I have the power to choose," like you could've literally said, "Nope. Not going anywhere today." Or you could say, "Hey, I'm gonna keep doing this, 'cause I want to," or whatever. There's all kinds of reasons we have for the way we live our live. But that's just an amazing power to have, is to say, "I don't need the other people. I don't need the employer. I can choose to stay home if I want to." Blair T.: Absolutely. And I think it makes me a better Pharmacist. It makes me better in my community that I'm here because I wanna be here. And I really enjoy, I personally identify with being a Pharmacist, and so, it's optional for me. And now, as the membership is growing, and I'm getting more busy, it might be that I'm forced out of being able to go to my job and work, because this other thing, my members, need me more. Shane Sams: Well, and also, too, what you really identify with, 'cause for anybody that doesn't know what our All Access program is, we talk every day, literally, through an app. But it's like messages. It's like a running conversation that never ends. Right? And what I always feel from you, is what you really care about, is serving Pharmacists. And that's really where your passion is, is helping these Pharmacists do this thing that you teach. And before, you were doing a lot of good in the real world, as you had very few members. But now, you have so many members, the good you can do, is kind of shifting that way. Right? So, it's not really a choice of doing one thing you love over another, it's making the most impact, where you can make the most impact. And right now, that's starting to look like your membership. Blair T.: And that really resonated with me, too. When we changed the prices, I took that risk. I had always increased my prices, so it was very scary for me to decrease that price, and take that risk. But the reason I did it, and the whole reason behind everything, was I wanted more people to have access to that information. Shane Sams: And you've gotta be careful, too. There's a very bad problem, especially in online marketing right now, called Vanity Pricing. Everybody's telling everybody, "Charge 1,000 bucks. Charge 5,000 bucks. Charge what you're worth," right? But that doesn't take into account ... that's a lot of ego-driven pricing. And that doesn't take ... one, you should charge what it's worth. The value of it. Right? But that doesn't take into account the actual market. It doesn't take your mission into account. Shane Sams: One thing we talked about at Flip Your Life Live a lot, was mission. And your mission was to get your message to as many people as possible. Well that, requires you to remove barriers. Right? So, you've gotta find that sweet spot between making great income for yourself, and reaching the masses, which is what you wanted to accomplish. You know what I'm saying? So, you've gotta be careful with all ... yes, we are for raising prices when ... And you did kinda raise your price. 'Cause you raised the monthly price. You just lowered the barrier to get in- Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: And killed two birds with one stone. Blair T.: Right. And it was the right move, and it was the right thing to do. And now, with the extra revenue I have, I'm looking at putting on some in-person events for women in Pharmacy leadership conferences. Jocelyn Sams: I love that. I think that's a great idea. I wanna dive into something that we were talking about before we started recording, because I think a lot of times, people think, "Well, Blair, she's making great money now. Everything is a breeze, and she's walking on Easy Street," right? Shane Sams: I'm walkin' on sunshine. Jocelyn Sams: So, let's dive into that a little bit, and just talk about how have things changed? And what are you going through right now, as you're trying to level up again? Blair T.: So, Shane and I were talking about this on Voxer the other day, and I just said, "I feel almost more pressure now that I have this huge responsibility, that I want to continue making this better and better for people, but now that the revenue has multiplied, now the opportunities are multiplying, and I have to be very intentional with what opportunities I'm saying yes to, because there's an opportunity cost for every decision I make now, so it almost feels like there's more pressure. Shane Sams: Sure. And I love the way you frame that, because that's not how you presented it in the conversation the other day. But we were talking back and forth, and you were like, "Okay, I think I'm gonna do this, now. And I think I'm gonna do this now. And I think I'm gonna do this." You kept telling me, every message you sent me that night was something new. Right? "I'm gonna redesign my website. I'm gonna redesign my sales page. I'm gonna go do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna go do this." And I remember, 'cause we went through this. This is a true thing that will happen when the launch finally turns that corner, and oh my gosh money, right? You know what I'm saying? And it's like, Mo' Money, Mo' Problems. I literally said that to you on Voxer. I was like, "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems, Blair." Shane Sams: At first, in many of our decisions, we start our online business, we've got a fork in the road that we've gotta take. It's a right or a left. And we think, if we take the correct road, it will straighten out, and we move on railroad tracks straight ahead. Right? Shane Sams: But the problem is, if you take that correct path ... you know, if you take the wrong path, you'll get a dead end, you've gotta go back through the fork, and go take the other path. But if you take the right path, up ahead is a better choice. So, you might have three ways to go next time. "Do I go left, do I go right, do I go straight." And then, if I take the correct one there, I go forward, and two of those paths may be right. You don't know. Then there's five choices, and 10 choices. And it's like the farther you go, the more choices you have to make. And it can get really, really overwhelming. Shane Sams: But in your case, you are on a path where we have an offer that converts, and we have a great promotional tool that is still converting, 'cause every time you do a webinar, you get more members. Right? Blair T.: Right. Shane Sams: And I kinda remember us speaking to you, to this, "Let's just stay on this path for a little while. All of these other forks in the road are fine, but let's just keep going on this path, or we'll eventually take another path. We can choose that other path." Those opportunities are not gonna go anywhere. Right? Roads don't disappear. And we'll just keep hammering the nail until we get to a certain point where we can start experimenting more, and the risks aren't as big. They don't matter as much. So how did you feel when I was like, "Blair, stop looking at all the paths. Just keep doing what you're doing until we double it again." Blair T.: Yeah, I mean, that's what I needed to hear, because I do get into this content creation, new products, new ideas, and I start thinking about, "Oh, I could add this, and then I could add this other thing." And you were like, "You've got this one thing that's working, why don't you see how that plays out for the next six months, before you do anything else? Before you add anything else." And I was like, "You know what? He's right. He is definitely right." Jocelyn Sams: And I think a lot of what it is, is that we're not sure of where to go next, once we get to that point. And because of that, we start looking at things that we can control. That we know how to control. "Okay, well I know how to control what my website looks like, so let's start tinkering with that, because that makes me feel like I'm doing something," but it's not really moving the business forward. And I say this because I do this, too. Okay? When I'm not sure what to do, I start saying, "Well, this sales page is converting at X percent. I really want it to convert at Y percent." You know? And when we start doing that, we start really taking the focus away of growing, and making more people aware of your product, and serving people in the way that they need to be served. Shane Sams: And what I'm guilty of, is something along this same line of what y'all are talking about, is you made a ... even though, it was a simple decision. It was really just, hit delete three times, and change your price. Really, honestly, and then present it a different way. It was a dramatic decision. It was a major moment. And there's a high to that. There's a dopamine hit that hits the day after a $10,000.00 monthly recurring revenue launch. Right? And you think to yourself, "What else could I change? What else could I do dramatically, or drastically, that could cause something like that to happen again?" Because you're looking for that spark, right? Shane Sams: And really, it's like peaks and valleys. Now, it's time to grind, and consolidate those gains, and make it work again. Over, and over, and over. Just keep hammering it, and keep doing that same thing. Be consistent, be prolific with that thing, 'cause eventually, that thing will probably level out again, too. And then, we have to make another decision, right? Just like at first, we you had this big join fee. It didn't kinda work for a while, but then it just stagnated. Right? All things eventually do that, but we wanna jump to the next thing so fast, 'cause we want that high again. That's why people get addicted to affiliate launches, and things like that, because it feels so good, and you're trying to get to the next hit as fast as possible, when really it's just like, "Why don't I just start stacking bricks, and building a higher wall," right? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I think this is a particularly relevant message to us today, too, because I mean, I'm just sitting here listening to us say this, and I'm like, "Oh, we've just been talking about this all morning," like, "What if we change this? And what if we change that?" Well no, we don't need to change anything. Keep moving forward. Stay on the path. When you start hammering the nail, and it's not all the way in yet, you need to keep hammering it. Shane Sams: And I'll tell you another thing, and Blair, you can speak to this. Things that sound hard, become easy and mundane as soon as you do them, right? It probably sounded like a mountain when I said, "All right, two weeks, we're gonna launch a webinar. You're gonna change your price, you're gonna do this." Then, you did it, and the webinar's done. And you can pretty much turn it on whenever you want now, like a light switch, right? So, doesn't it feel easy now, compared to how hard it was when we first talked about it? Blair T.: Yeah, and maybe there is something to that. It's like, "Oh, it's almost too easy, so I need to make it harder on myself. I need to spend more time doing this, or that, or creating a new product," or whatever. So, I think it's a mindset thing, too, is ... And like you said, the dopamine rush of, "I did this thing, and it worked. And I achieved my goal, and it was amazing." And then, there's the, "Okay, well now, what's the next challenge?" Because I'm a person that, I like to set goals, and I like to achieve them. And I like to challenge myself." So though, I do struggle with that. It's not necessarily shiny object syndrome, but more like, "What's the next thing that I can get to?" Shane Sams: I like how you basically just flippantly rolled past this ... in your sentence, you said, "Yeah, it's almost too easy to do a $10,000.00 monthly membership. It's just too," ... I could just imagine, that was three months ago, this happened. It wasn't like ... actually, it was two months ago. It wasn't an eternity ago. But like, man, things get easier, but it doesn't get easier, as you get more and more in your business. And the lesson for everyone who's hearing this, 'cause we're talking some high dollar stuff here, right? But the lesson for anyone who's listening to this, maybe doesn't have their idea flushed out yet, or maybe is really overwhelmed with the tech, and getting their website set up, or maybe they just don't understand how to do a sales funnel, or marketing. The thing you're at, is where Blair was. It's where we are. That's just the thing that's in front of us, right? Getting out your idea is really hard, until you get the first one. And then, it becomes easy. And setting up a website is really hard. Until you do it. I could have a website up in 30 minutes, right now. The first website I set up took me probably 30 days. Okay? Shane Sams: But it just, every step you take, when you look back on it, does become mundane. Does become easy. And the key is, just doing it, and figuring it out, even if you fail a little bit. I mean, you have this model for a year or two before you finally changed the one thing that made the difference. But now, you know what to change. So going forward, it becomes easier. Jocelyn Sams: And the thing you have to do, is make up your mind that you're not going to be stopped. You can find an excuse to stop you, or you can decide, "No, I'm making this happen no matter what." And then, it doesn't matter what comes up. You have to do it. It's like, where we are now. We can't just say, "Oh well, this online business thing is pretty hard. We're just gonna stop doing it." No, that's not an option, because this is how we make our living. So, you can decide. You just have to make that decision, and everyone has to make it at some point. Are you going to make this happen? Or are you not? Shane Sams: Right. Blair T.: Right. It took me three years to become an overnight success. Shane Sams: It's a Blair bomb. You just dropped a Blair bomb now. Three years to become an overnight success. Yeah, it's so funny you say that. And I wanna get to what you're doing now, because we always wanna move people forward. But I send an email out this morning, to our list, because that's how I roll. I send emails out to our list. But Jocelyn actually had the idea for it. Jocelyn's been doing a lot of stuff on social media, and we were talking this morning about my email. And we decided to send out a fill in the blank. So, the fill in the blank was ... I sent it to everyone who was not a member, had never joined the community, and I said, "I have not joined the Flip Your Life community, because of," blank. Right? Shane Sams: Well one message in particular, and I hope you're listening right now, 'cause I'm pretty sure you listen every week, and I know who you are. Just listen to us. It was a fill in the blank was literally like, "Oh, I can't do this one thing, I can't do that." It was a 14 paragraph, four point novel. Jocelyn Sams: Manifesto. Shane Sams: Manifesto, that they wrote back to me. And it was just excuse, after excuse, after excuse. And stuff like that, gets me really fired up. So, I hit reply, to email this person back. And I basically said, "Look, you just sent me a bunch of excuses," and I straight told this person, who I've seen post on our Facebook page, and has replied to some emails before, I just said, "You are not going to make it, as long as all those things are on this list. And there's nothing we can change, to take those things off your list, because they're fears, and obstacles, and things that every single one of us have to deal with. Shane Sams: And I started going point by point, and I showed him how me and Jocelyn overcame every issue that he had wrote down on that list. And we made it. And we had all the exact same obstacles. The difference was, we did what Jocelyn just said. We decided- Jocelyn Sams: We decided. Shane Sams: We were not going to be stopped. We made the choice that we weren't going to quit, and he was letting all of those things blow him up. And that's what I love about you, is you said, "All right, I'm at a point where I've gotta make a decision, I'm gonna do something different, or I'm gonna make this membership thing work." And you made a decision, and right, wrong or indifferent, you did it, and it worked. So now, you can make your next decision. Shane Sams: So, awesome discussion, man. Great success story. First of all, before we go forward, congratulations. Life-changing numbers. Life-changing actions that you took are really paying off. And it's opening doors. These doors that are open are overwhelming, but gosh, Blair, a year from now, I have no idea where you're gonna be. You may pass us up, and everybody else that's listening. Jocelyn Sams: We hope so. Shane Sams: And we hope so. Jocelyn Sams: That'll be awesome. Shane Sams: So, totally, congratulations for everything you've accomplished. Blair T.: Thank you. I appreciate that. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Blair. We've had a really interesting discussion today about just mindset, and making things happen. But we wanna know how we can help you move forward now. So what's something that is maybe something that you're struggling with, something that you need to move forward on that we could help you with today, on this call? Blair T.: So, I think continuing what Shane and I have been talking about is ways that I could still offer one-on-one help to my members. So, we do the member call, and we do the forum call. So what he and I were talking about, was doing something along the lines of the Voxer Mastermind, like I've been working with you guys. And so, looking at, "Should I just continue doing the monthly membership? Making that offer right now, and should I put this VIP package thing on the back burner for a little while?" Shane Sams: You know, I was told by a mentor of mine one time, the way you grow a million dollar business, a consistent million dollar business, is you sell people one thing, and then you sell them something else. Right? That's where a lot of people get stuck is, they get that idea, they sell one thing, and then they make it, but they don't have anywhere else for anyone to go. Right? I'd say, in the last year of our business, we've developed different places for people to go. At first, it might've been an annual plan, right? That was higher than LTB of the monthly plan, or Flip Your Life Live. Right? That's another place for people to go. That's why we introduced our All Access Mastermind, which is what we do now, is because that's another place for people to go when they're ready. Right? It's not just get them there, just to sell them something. It's, "Hey, what would be next for the person at my current level? How can I offer that?" So that's really the question that we have to ask is, is that truly the next thing, after your monthly membership? Shane Sams: If it is, then maybe that is what we create, on a small scale, to test it. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I would say two things. First of all, the reason that we started this Mastermind, is because that's what our people were asking for. Okay? So we had people saying, "Hey, we want the opportunity to work with you more closely." And we said, "Okay, well how can we provide that?" And this is what we came up with. But it's a combination of that, and also, what do you want? Jocelyn Sams: So, is this something that you want to do? Or is it something that you feel like you need to do, because someone else is doing it? You have to really look and say, "Okay, is this something I want? Do I have the time to do it? And are people asking for it?" So, it's sort of a combination of all those three things for me." Blair T.: I think that's good advice, too. And so, I think the answer is probably putting it on the back burner until people are consistently reaching out and asking me for more one-on-one time. Shane Sams: What would be, right now, though ... Okay, that's awesome. See, it's amazing to think about that, because it's like, just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should do it. You know? You could totally do this. We've talked about this, how you actually have a couple people that you could totally offer this for. Right? And maybe there is room to beta something like that, but you don't have to, just because you can. Right? That's what opportunities are. Jocelyn Sams: And I think you could even put that word out there, so maybe on your member calls, say, "Hey, I've got a couple of people who have asked me for this. Is this something that other people would be interested in? I'm just trying to get a little bit of interest, and see who all's interested." It could be something that you email out, like you segment people off, and just know that those people are interested- Shane Sams: And you still know how to do it, though, right? You could just say, "Are you interested?" Like, when we did ... when we first emailed out the live event, we just said, "Do you guys want us to have a live event?" And people said, "Yes." Then, we started thinking about actually offering it, but we still know it was on the table. Right? Jocelyn Sams: And you know we baby step everything. I mean, for the live event, we said, "Hey, we're thinking about doing this. Are people interested? And of course, hundreds of people were like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. We're interested." And then, it came time to, "okay well, we think enough people are interested, so let's start crafting an offer." So, we start looking for a city. We start talking to a venue. All these different types of things, we find a date, and then we send it out again and said, "Okay, well you told me you were interested, so now show me that you're interested. Put down a deposit, or pay for this thing." And people did. So, you can do it in stages like that. That's the way that I like to do things. I don't like to just create a whole big thing, and hope that people sign up for it. I like to do it in baby steps like that. Shane Sams: And I wanna stress this, too, when you're thinking about this, this isn't something that's totally easy to come up with, right this second. Right? But when you're asking those questions that Jocelyn laid out, "What do I wanna do? What are my people asking for? And what do people actually need?" 'Cause you know that. They don't. You're the doctor, they're the patient. Right? When you're starting to look for that, it's like the Venn diagram, and that balance between those three things. Sometimes, all people need is to keep going. You've got all these people in this membership, and you've got this thing. Maybe it's as simple as, "I just need to get in there, and keep them going so they keep paying every month." Right? And work on that retention. Shane Sams: So, you said something else about a live event, too. Doing live workshops, or something like that. We gotta figure out that perfect blending of what you want ... I feel like you want to work closer with people. You don't just want a huge community. You want there to be a personal element to it, so maybe you just say, "I'm going to do a personal element. I'm going to set a goal to have this ready in three months, but I'm gonna spend the next three months with these people, and figure out where that intersects of what they need, with what they want, with what I actually want to do, maybe I experiment one person at a time, within this." You see what I'm saying? And then, we answer that question, and we actually build it in the next quarter, or something like that. Shane Sams: And while we're doing that, we go add another hundred members into your membership. And then, it's like, it doesn't matter what you do at that point. It'll work. It's all going to work. Right? It's just finding that sweet spot of what you want, compared to what they need, compared to what they're asking for, that makes you successful. Blair T.: Sounds good. Well, I will shelf it til first quarter. Jocelyn Sams: All right. I like it. Shane Sams: Well listen, Blair, first of all, you're amazing. You're absolutely amazing. You amaze me every day. The action you take is just what's making everything happen in your life. I'm glad that we get to be a part of your journey, and we get to watch all this amazing stuff. And also, too, thank you for coming on the show today, and letting us be transparent, and open. I know it's not an easy thing, to come share success, or even hear someone bragging on you. I know we're bragging on you right now, but you deserve it. And you're gonna do some amazing things going forward. And I know a lot of people are gonna be inspired by this episode, and go take some action. So thank you so much for being on the show today. Blair T.: Thank you for having me. And thank you guys for everything you do, and putting on the Flip Life Live. I think that was such a great event, and it really gave me a reset point, and something to strive for, to achieve my goals before I got there. Jocelyn Sams: All right guys, you heard it from Blair. Flip Your Life Live 2018 was amazing. If you are interested in getting on our waiting list for the event in 2019, we are in the middle of planning it right now, and we would love to see you there. If you would like to learn more, head over to Flippedlifestyle.com/live to get on the waiting list. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there 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: Blair's website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "If someone loves people empowerment, what are the possibilities online? Can you be a life and/or business coach without certification? If yes, how is the best way to do this building an online business from scratch?" Question Two: "First, what is the best month to run a membership drive to teachers now that school has started? Second, my new membership area launched a few months ago. I have one customer that is downloading everything possible. I sent her an email thanking her for joining and asked if we could talk to get feedback on how we could better serve her. She agreed. Is there anything particular I should ask to keep her instead of having a monthly subscriber quit after she gets it all?" Question Three: "I'm having trouble defining my avatars' "problem". Their "pain" is really more of an aspiration. My business, Undersea Naturalist, is focused on helping my avatars' learn about and appreciate marine life. They would have been folks who were fans of Jacques Cousteau's TV shows." Question Four: "We are planning on launching our membership. Right now we are adding content month by month, would it be strange to have a yearly purchase option or should we stick to a monthly purchase option?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Chilling in the lounge, waiting for our flight. Had an amazing week, but ready to be back in the bluegrass!   Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "If someone loves people empowerment, what are the possibilities online? Can you be a life and/or business coach without certification? If yes, how is the best way to do this building an online business from scratch?" Question Two: "First, what is the best month to run a membership drive to teachers now that school has started? Second, my new membership area launched a few months ago. I have one customer that is downloading everything possible. I sent her an email thanking her for joining and asked if we could talk to get feedback on how we could better serve her. She agreed. Is there anything particular I should ask to keep her instead of having a monthly subscriber quit after she gets it all?" Question Three: "I'm having trouble defining my avatars' "problem". Their "pain" is really more of an aspiration. My business, Undersea Naturalist, is focused on helping my avatars' learn about and appreciate marine life. They would have been folks who were fans of Jacques Cousteau's TV shows." Question Four: "We are planning on launching our membership. Right now we are adding content month by month, would it be strange to have a yearly purchase option or should we stick to a monthly purchase option?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we help Janet overcome obstacles and set goals to focus on increasing membership revenue. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all on today's show, we help Janet take her Spanish education business to the next level. 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 is 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 real member of the Flip Your Life Community, a real person out there starting, building and growing their own online business so they can change their family's future. We're here to help them take their business to the next level and let you guys listen in so that you can take your online business to the next level as well. We are really, really excited today because we have Janet Jimenez on the podcast. Janet, how are you doing? Janet Jimenez: Good. Thanks for having me. Shane Sams: Did I say that right? Jimenez or Jimenez? How do you say it? Janet Jimenez: You're pretty close to it, it's Jimenez. Shane Sams: Okay. Janet Jimenez. How do you spell that for me? Spell that out for us. Janet Jimenez: Okay. It's got a J, J-i-m-e-n-e-z. Shane Sams: So before I got on air, I just went straight Kentucky, uneducated redneck on Janet. I said, hey Janet, I'm going to introduce you as Janet Geminiz, and she was like, no, that is not. Jocelyn Sams: except you're not, 'cause that's not my name. Shane Sams: Except you're not because that's not how we pronounce that at all. Janet Jimenez: Well, I thought for a big sports fan. You would know how to pronounce the last name there. Jocelyn Sams: No, actually. I probably would have because I like to talk about how I did take four years of Spanish in high school. Unfortunately that was 20 years ago and I remember very little of it, which is sad, but I do remember that. Shane Sams: Jocelyn is amazing because she can read it and understand it, but not always speak it in like, so we'll go places where there's like Spanish speaking and she'll kind of know what's going on. But she doesn't ever use it so I can't even imagine how good she would be at it if we just dropped her into a Spanish speaking country for a year. She could probably be fluent. Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. To just be immersed and then you'll pick it up. Jocelyn Sams: yeah exactly. I love going places though and just trying to see if I can read things. A lot of times I can still read. It's just the Kentucky Spanish that I learned, I don't think the speaking was always very accurate. Shane Sams: That's where we know the Geminiz not Jimenez, you know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: Well my teacher her parents were from Puerto Rico, so I mean hers was really good but just trying to learn it was kind of hard. All right, well let's jump in. I love these kind of podcasts because we've actually met you in real life, which is super cool. Shane Sams: Janet is also a member of our all access mastermind. So we get to talk to her quite a bit over the phone. Jocelyn Sams: And I love talking to people that we have met in real life because you just already have a rapport with them, which is really cool. So let's jump into a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online. Janet Jimenez: Sure. So I am a mom of six. I have five children plus a stepson. My husband is from the Dominican Republic, so an island in the Caribbean and a Spanish speaker and I am a teacher. I have worked as a teacher for 13 years in Spanish immersion school, so that's basically elementary school in Spanish. And I have a business that sells educational resources to busy bilingual and Spanish teachers. Shane Sams: And what is your domain name? Janet Jimenez: Oh, it's spanishprofe.com. Shane Sams: And that's p-r-o-f-e? Is that right? Janet Jimenez: Correct. Shane Sams: What does that mean? Janet Jimenez: It's just like professor but I guess it'd be- Jocelyn Sams: In Espanol? Shane Sams: in Espanol. Janet Jimenez: Yeah in Espanol exactly. Shane Sams: I want to go back here real quick because I always do. You have six children, right? You have five and one and you're still building an online business and working full time, correct? Janet Jimenez: Yes. It is chaotic, but it's getting done. Shane Sams: And your online business actually does make money, correct? Janet Jimenez: Yes. More than my day job. Shane Sams: That is amazing and I always point that out because the biggest thing that we hear from people is well, you don't understand how busy I am and I know that worked for you guys, but it doesn't work for me because of X, Y, Z excuse. And most of the time the excuse is family stuff, work stuff. I just don't have time to do this. But we've got somebody here that's making money, working full time, raising six kids. So anybody out there listening, six or below, you lose. Janet wins every time. I'm just saying. Jocelyn Sams: I need to know a little bit about how you met your husband because there's some gaps here that I need to fill okay. So He's from the Dominican Republic? Janet Jimenez: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: You are from where? Janet Jimenez: I'm from Minneapolis. Jocelyn Sams: And so how did you get interested in Spanish, is this?- Shane Sams: How did you meet your husband? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Janet Jimenez: Well I was in high school I was exchanged into Argentina and then I kind of got the travel and live abroad bug from there. And then in college I studied abroad in Spain and in Brazil. And then I wanted to keep traveling. So I had a friend, she's Dominican and I was visiting her and she is actually married to my husband's half brother. So that's how I met him through my friend. Shane Sams: Where do you live now? Janet Jimenez: Just outside of Minneapolis. Shane Sams: Is your goal someday maybe to go back to the Dominican Republican and live? Janet Jimenez: Yes, so we are building a house there. Shane Sams: Oh Wow. Janet Jimenez: We are hopefully moving there for a while. We have one way plane tickets for June 13. Jocelyn Sams: Oh wow. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness. Janet Jimenez: But nothing has been totally determined yet. But yeah, we would like to have our kids grow up at least for a few years in the Dominican Republic so they can be fully bilingual. Right now they speak and understand some Spanish but not up to our expectations totally. Shane Sams: This just turned into an episode of House Hunters International. It's like you're going there, you're picking your house you're getting ready to move, the one way ticket. You're never coming back. Jocelyn Sams: We love House Hunters International. We watch it all the time. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's like our favorite show. Janet Jimenez: Yes. That is a fun show. Jocelyn Sams: I hear wonderful things about the DR. I have a friend who lived there for a while and I mean she just loved it. Shane Sams: How was the internet compared to the states? We were just in Jamaica not long ago. Which is a Caribbean nation. It's like, no, the Internet was really, really good. Like way better than Mexico or other places we've been abroad. How's the internet and then the infrastructure in the Dominican Republic? Janet Jimenez: Actually the internet installed in our house there was faster than my internet here. Shane Sams: Wow. Janet Jimenez: Yeah. And they do have fiber optic in some of the neighborhoods. So it's good. It's perfect. Sometimes though the electricity does go out but there are backup plans for that in the Dominican Republic. Shane Sams: Isn't that amazing though that this online business that you're building, you can just pick it up and take it with you and not miss a beat as long as you've got the Internet where, as a lot of people they have the nine to five job, that's all they do. And if they moved to a new place or if they want to go abroad and want to do something, it's like gosh I've got to find work when I get there and this, that or the other. But man, if you just build this online business, you can just leave and you just show up and it's like nothing is different. Shane Sams: We have some friends in California and they're taxes and the housing costs and everything is going up so high they've been looking at other places around the country. And I was just talking to my friend the other day and he was like, man, we can just move and it's like nothing changes when we get there. Janet Jimenez: Yeah exactly. That's one of the main reasons I got into online business and then I guess the only thing we have to consider is our kids and moving at appropriate time during the school year. But besides that, yeah. It's awesome that you can do whatever you want. Shane Sams: What brought you to the Flip Your Life Community? What brought you to what we do online and our courses and things like that? Janet Jimenez: Well, I connected with you guys just because you were teachers and since I am an educator as well I felt like we're on a similar path and then just you selling resources or educational resources is what I do. So I felt like it would be a good fit for me. Shane Sams: Did you ever look into anything else or did you just want to go straight into digital products? Janet Jimenez: I actually had a previous business online, but I kind of changed directions. I wasn't in love with that idea I guess. Shane Sams: You weren't passionate enough to kind of keep it going. And this is something that you really feel strongly about. You want it to go deeper into and it was. And it's something you clearly have expertise in 'cause you teach it, right? Janet Jimenez: Yeah. I mean what I do now is what I've been working in for the last, I don't know, 13 years. So I really like it, the subject matter and my previous business I was doing well but it wasn't what I liked. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I just want to dive into that just a little bit because I was talking about this yesterday on a YouTube video actually about how your first idea is not always the idea that you're going to go with. And I just love that you said that. I think a lot of times people think, well if you're doing well in the online business space it's because you waved your magic wand and fell into a vat of money. No, that's not how it works. You tried something, you decided you didn't want to do it for whatever reason, you changed direction and now the thing that you're starting to do is starting to have some traction. Shane Sams: And then that thing before. I bet it was easier the second time you set everything up and tried something different, wasn't it? Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. I mean I was able to develop all the skills of blogging regularly and social media and all those skills could be instantly transferred to my new endeavor. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah so I just wanted to kind of talk about that a little bit because I think that sometimes people think, well, if I try one thing and it doesn't work, then it's over. And that's not true. Shane Sams: It's funny because out of all of our friends who are in the online space and then all of the hundreds of people who come through the community, if I'm sitting here realistically saying off the top of my head who succeeded on the first thing they ever did as a couple or as an individual or as an entrepreneur. I can't think of a single person where they just jumped in and they made it on the first thing. They may have made some money, they may have done okay. They may have done this, I may have failed, but whatever that first scenario is, almost every single person I've ever encountered online eventually evolves into something else. Janet Jimenez: Yeah I think people just learn and are able to pivot and go where they want to. Yeah. That first idea isn't set in stone and you can change and do whatever you want whenever you want. That's the beauty of the internet. Shane Sams: Just like you're getting ready to move to the Dominican Republic. Whenever you want. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, so your specific thing, is that used in classrooms, you said it was bilingual kids or is it for homeschool people? What's the market that you're going for before we jump into all your questions? Janet Jimenez: Sure. So my resources are used by the teachers. So it is resources that the teachers use in the classrooms. Shane Sams: Okay. Perfect. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about what you have going on so far. So I know that you're selling in a third party marketplace. Shane Sams: Where's your income coming from? Jocelyn Sams: Yeah how many resources do you have? That type of thing. Janet Jimenez: Okay. So I have been a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers a third party marketplace for educational resources since August 2015 and I have I think over 320 resources posted on there. Shane Sams: And you didn't start that way. You just kind of built it up over time, right? Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah, no I started with like two and then just keep on, keep on swimming, keep on adding more resources. Jocelyn Sams: So then you also had- Shane Sams: Finding Nemo reference there. Jocelyn Sams: You also have a website then, right? Janet Jimenez: Yes. And then on my website I have products. Most of my products listed for sale on a one off stores. So you could just purchase the same as you can in the third party marketplace and a membership with all everything packaged together and curated. Shane Sams: Now this is the newest part of the program though right? Janet Jimenez: Yes. All the same materials just packaged differently in different places. Shane Sams: And if I remember correctly from the form that you filled out for the podcast, the third party marketplace that you started first represents about 75% of your income. It's like 20% is on your single seller one off store. And then we've already got some members in the membership. It's about 5 to 10% right? Janet Jimenez: Yeah. Just about that. Though in the last month since attending the live event, my members have increased. I think I went to the live event with 11 or 12 members and I now as of this morning have 34. Shane Sams: Whoah! Wow! We got the percentages shifted. That's the live event, Flip Your Life LIVE, it's all Flip Your LIfe LIVE, every bit of it. Jocelyn Sams: Let's speak to that for just a second. Shane Sams: How did that happen? Jocelyn Sams: Not to make this like a total advertisement for Flip Your Life even though it kind of is. Like, what do you think was the big catalyst from that? What did you learn there that you kind of brought back and said okay, I'm going to change the way I'm doing things and make this different. Shane Sams: 'Cause that's like 300% growth for your membership in two months. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah I feel like you say that so casually, like oh yeah, like I just grew this membership. Janet Jimenez: No, in one month and two days, Shane. In one month and two days. Shane Sams: That's one month. You just kind of were like yeah tripled my membership in a month. Janet Jimenez: I honestly haven't done that much but what I have done is made a few small changes to my website. So I made that join button, a different color that popped kind of like websites and then I changed the header and worked a little bit with Shane on the wording on the header on my website and then I did my first Webinar as well. So just small things. Shane Sams: Don't undersell yourself. That's a lot. That's more than some people would do in their online business in the next three months because they're just scared to change anything and like we had a working dinner at Flip Your Life live and I sat at Janet's table with her and I remember looking through your stuff and we had our screens there and there was another member sitting beside us in a similar space and we were looking back and forth and going over each website. And just calling attention that you offer a monthly membership like that was a big deal because I'm looking at your site and I'm like, does anyone even know you have this membership right? And you're talking about adding a join button, making it pop, changing your header, even changing your language just to hey buy my products to hey join the membership. Things like that. And then doing a webinar like showing up live. Shane Sams: I mean if everyone listening would just do something live and promote it once a month, you know their business would grow. So I don't want you to like shortchange yourself because those are also scary actions like changing your website to where it's kind of working. I don't want to mess, I don't want to break it, but you change it and try something new and even just showing up live like that's a hurdle that most people don't really get over. So don't shortchange yourself there. You did a great job at that. Your actions are ... Even the small ones made the huge difference that added to your membership. Jocelyn Sams: I think really the biggest lesson or takeaway here is just the momentum that you gained from that event. I mean, do you think that's fair? Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean I think just being with other people who are doing the same thing I do makes me realize that it's more possible and I can get where I would like to. Shane Sams: Awesome. And how intense was that day that we did that working dinner? Because it could be started at like 8:30 in the morning and we all walked out of that room at 11. Janet Jimenez: It was a long day, but it was definitely worth it. Shane Sams: Awesome. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's jump into a little bit of what's going on now. Let's talk about a fear, maybe an obstacle or a mindset issue that is currently holding you back, like you're making some progress, but as all of us do, we start taking a few steps forward and then we're like, oh okay. I'm a little bit scared. Let me take a few steps back. So let's not do that. We want to stop where we are and help you to move forward. So what is holding you back right now? Janet Jimenez: I think just putting myself out there. So like I said, I did my first webinar and that was my first ever video or live anything. So just kind of putting a face to who I am and also within my space I am not a native Spanish speaker. And for some that is a big deal. For others they don't care because they just want the resources and don't care who made them as long as they're good. Janet Jimenez: So I think that's kind of my biggest hangups right now is putting myself out there and so people know who they are working with. Shane Sams: Yeah. This is something we hear a lot of and this was a huge fear for us when we were getting ready to launch this podcast. Because every other podcast who are in the space is either from New York or from California and they've got this millennial cool vibe or whatever. And we're like man, we're from Kentucky. We talk funny, we're from the south. And there were like no other really southern sounding people in the online space and we're like, who's going to listen to us? People are going to hear us and immediately turn it off because we're not this uber hip, millennial, former employee of Google or something on the coast. Right. And what we decided, we were talking about it before we ever recorded the first podcast and we said man, we need to just embrace that and we need to just forget about all those people. Shane Sams: If they don't like what we have to say, that's their problem because they're confusing intellect for dialect and they're going to miss something that could change their life and there's going to be millions of people that could hear this in the south. There's 40 million people in the south. They may love it and they want somebody like us and as you said that kind of even the truth kind of came out and how you were saying that. Some people, it's a really big deal, but a lot of people don't care. And that's where all of your mental energy, all of your passion, all of your power needs to go to is those people that don't care. 'Cause I'd say there's a lot of people teaching Spanish that are not native Spanish teachers. When I was a teacher in high school, three doors down was the three Spanish department or whatever, like three classrooms for Spanish. Shane Sams: And I think only one of those out of the three teachers was an actual native Spanish teacher. One of them was just like you. She went overseas, got the bug when these Spanish speaking teachers came back and got educated as a teacher. So I would say embrace that and turn that around to oh, I wonder if somebody will care to, I don't care if you care and I'm going to find the people that absolutely do care. Jocelyn Sams: I think it's all about finding a way to make that a positive. So just tell people straight off like hey, I'm from Minnesota. And I started traveling abroad and I love the Spanish language and the Spanish people so much that I decided to become a Spanish teacher. And I love what I do. I'm so happy to do it every single day. I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but I'm so glad that I was able to immerse myself in this culture. I was able to learn this language and I was able to bring that passion for it back to my home state of Minnesota. Shane Sams: You could even be more overt on sales pages and even in your normal content, because you could literally just say, "I'm not a native Spanish teacher, you're not a native Spanish teacher, but we are both teaching Spanish together" and you could just call it out and be overt. And that way the people that get to your page or see your ad never click it, that don't care, and the people that do, do because there's millions and millions of people out there that don't really ... That doesn't matter as much as you think it does to, and they'll actually identify better with you because of those exact reasons. We have another member in the Flip Your Life Community who she works with bilingual parents like you situation where you have one person speak Spanish natively. One person doesn't. They're raising their kids together bilingually. Shane Sams: And that's something that she talks about in her brand is this is the way it is and if you don't like it, don't worry about it. Right? This is the way I teach it and if that's not for you, it's just not for you and if you embrace that, I bet you your brand would grow even more because you would call out that identifier instead of kind of being like generic bilingual Spanish speaking education. You're just, whoa, I'm in your face. I'm not a native speaker and you're not either. Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes our fears about these things, they come from something that we are self conscious about. I know this because I speak from personal experience, that's what I worry about. I worry that somebody is going to say well, okay you have a funny accent or you don't say this word right or whatever. Jocelyn Sams: Those are the types of things that I worry about when instead what we should be worrying about are the people who get us and they love us and we just had to push the hate aside. It doesn't matter what you do. You could be the most perfect version of yourself that you think you could be and somebody is not going to like it. So be totally yourself and the people who don't like it, they'll go and listen to someone else. Shane Sams: Even in this episode today, I on air called out ... I thought her name was Geminiz. That's just a part of who we are and I'm not going to sugarcoat it or hide it for anybody. There's probably somebody listening to this right now going, well, I can't put believe he couldn't pronounce her name. Why would he even say that out loud? I would never call out my fault and they're going to stop listening maybe, but you know what, that's not our Avatar by don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya. You know what I mean? It's just a part of the deal. And if you embrace that, I think your brand will actually grow faster. Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean working with bilingual kids, our goal in the end is that they speak both languages fluently. So, since I can do that being a native English speaker, I think that that speaks to the resources and the angle for all the educators I work with. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah and I've actually worked with a mindset coach on similar things to this and what she told me is that you need to tell people what you want them to think. So I actually did this before our live event. That was one of the things that was really hard for me because I have a hard time putting myself out there too even though the people who were coming to this event, I mean they obviously know us. They obviously love us or they wouldn't have been traveling to Nashville to see us. But I was still just having a hard time. I was like what if I'm not what these people think I am or whatever. So I just did a video and I said, look, these are some things that I'm struggling with right now. I just want you all to know that really nervous about meeting you because I'm afraid that I'm not going to match up to your expectation of what you think I'm supposed to be. Jocelyn Sams: And even that, just saying those words, it helped me to think, okay, these people know that I'm nervous about this. And now we can move on. I think sometimes just saying it and telling people what you want them to think. I think that you guys are gonna feel this way, but what I want you to know is that I'm really nervous about talking in front of you and it's going to be a little bit hard for me because I have to expend a lot of energy and there are a lot of people in the room. Shane Sams: Have you overtly, Janet have you overtly blogged about this? Have you ever wrote a blog post or anything that's like I'm not a native Spanish teacher, but I teach Spanish, something like that. Have you ever overtly done a video or a blog or anything like that before for? Janet Jimenez: No, not for, no. Jocelyn Sams: I think sometimes even just speaking those words or writing those words is helpful. Like even if all of your audience doesn't even read it, just knowing that you've addressed it and you can just- Shane Sams: And it can just stay on your blog or you can share it at any time in point. Janet Jimenez: Okay. Maybe I will. I will add that to my to do list. Shane Sams: I would also love to see you add this to your Webinar. One of the biggest things that we can do in any sales webinar is help people overcome the fears and objections they have, to buying our products. Right? And I would guess that some of the people listening to your webinars on your email list or reading your blog are exactly like you. They're native English speakers who went and learned Spanish, maybe they traveled abroad they came back, became these teachers and they struggle with this as well. And if you would address that in your sales presentation, right? It would probably just put people at ease and would also be a definer. Let's say 50 people show up on your Webinar. Let's say 25 of them are native Spanish speakers who speak English and 25 are native English speakers who teach Spanish. Shane Sams: If you just addressed to this, who cares if those other 25 people check out? You now know exactly who the people are that you want in your membership. Right? So that could be a very powerful thing to address in your sales presentation is like anytime ... I was reading a copywriting book the other day 'cause I'm just a nerd and I sit and read about copywriting all the time. It said something very interesting about talking about yourself and it said, be very careful when you're talking about yourself. You don't want to be bragging about what you do or what you've done or anything like that. But the general rule of thumb is it's always okay to speak of yourself and about your fears in a negative light. Anything like that. If you talk about, man, I worry about this. It almost always makes people relate to you more and makes them even more receptive to your sales message when you get there. So that might be a way to really blow up those webinars and improve them too. Jocelyn Sams: And people they appreciate vulnerability. Like everyone has something that's vulnerable about them. So when you show them, hey, I'm a real person who has fears and I have vulnerabilities, people like that. It's like why you're drawn to anyone that you're drawn to. You don't want to think that the people that you follow are perfect because that's like an unattainable standard. So show people your vulnerability, show people your fears a little bit and they'll be drawn to you that much more. Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean, no one is perfect. Everyone is improving. Yeah, I think that's a great idea to show what my hangups are and maybe I'll attract more people just like me. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Okay. So we have talked about your mindset struggles. What else is going on in your business? What can we help you with to move it forward? Janet Jimenez: So I am trying to balance out my income streams. Kind of make them a little bit more equal. So that since I have a large family, I can rely on the three different income streams just than heavily on the one the Teachers Pay Teachers. I would like to increase those other income streams. What would be the best route to do that? Shane Sams: Yeah. So you have three things. There's different advantages and disadvantages to each of your revenue streams. Okay. And this is true for any online business. So you have a third party market that's like you sell your stuff on someone else's store, right? So it's like you're putting your stuff in Walmart or something like that. That's a great way to make money because usually those third party marketplaces have bigger audiences that are already looking for your products. Okay? So that's one way you're making money. Another way you're making money, is your own one off store. That's another great thing. It's like opening your own store on the corner or in the shopping center, you've got your own place. People come in, there are some disadvantages there. You're controlling all the overhead. You got to get traffic to it and all that good stuff. Shane Sams: And then the third way is you got this membership, this recurring revenue where the steady income comes from. And it's like, okay, every member, I get stacks on top of each other, but I've got to get people to kind of commit to it, right? So your gut instinct I'm hearing in all of your questions is how do I kind of balance those out? 33, 33, 33, whatever, right? Where it's like, okay, if one goes bad and one goes good, it kind of works itself out. But that's intuitively where most people go to. But in almost every situation that we've seen or coached over the last few years, it's almost always better to actually put all of your effort and energy into really blowing up one. And the one that creates the most stable income is that membership. Okay? And other avenues are actually used for different purposes. Shane Sams: So let's take the third party marketplace, what we do in our education businesses with a Teachers Pay Teachers or there's another one, I can't remember what it's called offhand. That's almost where we get discovered. We want people to find those lesson plans. We actually lowered our prices a little bit and then we re geared all of our downloads to where it has a link back to our sight, right? And we want people to find us there and that's great. We promote that still, we use that still, but we don't want to rely on that as income because what if they shut the store down? What if you can't promote correctly or they show somebody else in the search results? You don't get to control their algorithm. You can't control anything on that. The same thing goes for your actual website where the individual lesson plans are. Do you have all those in like a store? It's just a storefront where you click on them and go through on your website? Janet Jimenez: Yes. On my website yeah. There is a storefront and then also the place where you would join the membership. Shane Sams: Right. So what we did in that regard is we realized we had a storefront at one time where you could buy lesson packs and things like that. But it was kind of like all on one or two pages. And we were like, man, we're getting no traffic on this. So we actually wrote a blog post for every individual lesson, especially on US history teachers but we had a link to buy the product, right? So that way we wanted to have a better SEO strategy for each individual plan to help people find our stuff better. So, even our individual sales there, were still promotion. There were still SEOs still something that we could promote. Like I could share a link to that blog post that was like let me tell you all about Abraham Lincoln lesson plan 101 or whatever. And then at the end of it they could get the plan if they wanted. It was descriptive, right? And then we focused almost all of our energy on growing our membership because that's that steady predictable, long term revenue that you can look at, and you can even see now that you're getting 30, 40 members, you're like wow, that's pretty cool that most of those people are going to pay again next month. And I don't have to worry if I make individual sales. I don't have to worry if somebody finds my site every month. Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. It's very rough in the summers just because my income goes from $4k or $5k a month to like $600. Shane Sams: And that's 'cause of the one off sales and nobody buys those one off sales? Janet Jimenez: Exactly. Shane Sams: So what you can do is, with the membership is you can get annual sales, you can get monthly sales and they keep paying through those months and that dip is not as bad. So it makes more sense to just focus totally on the membership. Jocelyn Sams: And I'm okay with people buying things one off. Are you sending them an email sequence once they buy something from you just say hey, I have a membership. You paid X dollars for this product, but for only so much a month you can get all of these products? Janet Jimenez: Yup. So when they open my product before they even see the product, they see the advertisement for my membership. So yes, that's the first page they see before they see what they purchase. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. That's good. I like that. Shane Sams: But if you were bringing, if you were inviting everyone that made an individual product purchase to an actual live training every month, right, and you were really like, okay, let's see, last month I sold 100 one off products. This month now let's all come to a webinar I'm gonna do a training. It's going to be free for you guys and then you sold the monthly membership. This is another mistake people make too. We've done this in the past, so I don't want to say it's always wrong, but trying to sell that annual, trying to get that big hit, trying to get that whatever. We would much rather stack monthly members and give ourselves a raise every day. Like every time we get a new member to the Flip Your Life Community or on one of our other websites, I look over at Jocelyn, I snap my fingers and go, we just got a raise today 'cause that's one more person paying me every single month, right? Shane Sams: If I have a $50 membership and I had 10 members in the month, I gave myself a $500 raise this month. Right? And who gets to give their self a raise? Most people are like, I don't get a raise. I get like a 3% increase a year. You can give yourself a raise every day when you're giving yourself a monthly membership 'cause now you're going to get that money again next month too. So if you could rejigger your funnel that's a good Kentucky word, rejigger. If you could rejigger the funnel and you could say, hey, everything that happens, whether it's on Teachers Pay Teachers, on my individual one off sales or even on my email list is funneling to that live thing where I pitched the monthly membership, unlimited access. I'm going to help you all that. You get really excited about it. Shane Sams: And you're going to start saying, okay, 10 more members, 500 more dollars, 10 more members, 500 more dollars, 10 more members, and all of a sudden you look up and it's like $10,000, $15,000 a month because you keep adding people on top of what's already there. Instead of saying, hey, you bought something and now you're gone. Jocelyn Sams: But on the flip side of that, I do think that it's important to offer the annual membership to purchase order sales. Are you doing purchase orders sales right now? Janet Jimenez: Yeah. So I have had a few purchase order sales as well. Jocelyn Sams: That's another thing that you can really push even on the webinars. So once you get done pitching the monthly membership, the people are kind of like, well that sounds great but I can't afford that. Then you can say, oh well you don't have to because your school can pay for it. That's your next step. So once they come to your Webinar, once they open your emails, once they reject that monthly offer, then you go back to those people and say, oh by the way, did you know that I accept purchase orders? Shane Sams: So a purchase order for everybody listening to that is how government institutions buy products. So a school or even like city hall before they can buy something for their employees, they have to create a purchase order. And this is actually in a simple form, it's an objection. So there's a lot of objections people have, like, I won't buy that by myself. Well, in any online business or anything you sell, could their company pay for it? Could the government institution pay for it? Is there another way to get somebody else to pay for it? Another way that a lot of people are like, well, I can't necessarily buy the annual plan, but I'd love to save the money. Or they might say I can't afford your monthly price. Well they could finance it on their credit card. That's a purchasing objection that you can overcome by saying, hey, there's other ways to pay for this besides just straight cash out of your wallet that you open and stick in an envelope and mail to me. Okay. Shane Sams: So always be thinking about why people are saying no. And that's what Jocelyn is saying here. If they're saying no because it's their money, in your space, is there a way they can spend someone else's money? Because a lot of people do you have access to do those things? Janet Jimenez: And then also thinking I get about 60% of my traffic is actually coming from Pinterest to one off products. So, I was trying to think of a way, be it a pop up or something that kind of once they're on a product that would kind of pop up and say, did you know that you can access everything for this price? Shane Sams: Yeah. My favorite way to do this is to actually make it a button beside product that costs the same as the price. How much do your products cost? Janet Jimenez: Well, it varies, but anywhere from a dollar to $20, but the majority are $3 to $5. Shane Sams: So what I would do then is probably put, there would be three options on every page in your cart. So like if you actually go to our website, flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. You'll see this down at the bottom. We've got the monthly option, the annual option and the free option. There's actually a free trial right there beside the other two options, right? Our main objective is to get people to try our membership because you can attest to this. Once you get in the community, once you see how many courses there are and once you get to work with me and Jocelyn, we know people are going to stay, right? So that's what we want. Is we want that free trial by the month, but some people jump in the monthly and the annual 'cause you can save on the annual plan, but a lot of people will just go ahead and take that free option. Shane Sams: So this is the same thing you're doing. Let's say they land on a sale on I don't know like a random worksheet that's $5, right? All right, so it's five bucks here, but then you have a thing right beside of it that says or you could join the monthly membership for $19 a month or whatever, and you can say get everything for this and then you've got the annual plan right beside it. So now they've got three things buy this one time one product, monthly membership or annual plan. You've got all three options on the page ready to go, boom. And now it's like a choice. It's not like oh, there's a popup. This thing's kind of over here. I'm looking at it now. It's like oh, I can get this worksheet this way or I could get it this way or I can get it this way. And just put them all on the same page together and then they've got it's right there in front of them staring them down. Shane Sams: Yeah and if your cart won't support this as the membership product, all you gotta do is have a button that goes to another page that they can order the membership. Jocelyn Sams: And also don't underestimate the power of advertising on your own site. I did this on Elementary Librarian. You know, how you'll go to people's sites and see ads for something on Google or something on Amazon or whatever. Make your own ad. Put a block of graphics or whatever on your site that says, hey, join my membership, so many materials, hundreds of materials for a low monthly costs, whatever. Janet Jimenez: I have that now, but I was thinking of changing it to like for less than a dollar a day or something more attractive to a teacher who is working on a fixed income. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. Shane Sams: Yeah. Anytime you can relate your price to something like in real life. We always call it, especially in the teacher space, we call it the happy meal pricing. If I can get my prices somewhere around what people would pay, like for you with six kids it's like $47 to get them a happy meal. Janet Jimenez: Less than school lunch. Shane Sams: Yeah less than school lunch. Make it relatable to them that's something that sounds affordable. And people will really react to that. But the key is just promote. You can't promote 97 things, right? This was a mistake that a lot of people make. You can't say like an ad for this, an ad for that ad for this. You have to set things up in order like steps for people and you got to concentrate on promoting the one thing the most, if you're going to make it the most important thing. So, if you can just ... That's why you would put the monthly, like if they were to buy a lesson plan, the left option is the one off plan. The middle one's always the monthly membership. Shane Sams: 'Cause that's what you're promoting, right? Like what are they staring? And you put best deal at the top of that one, that way they're like, this is the thing you should buy 'cause it is. It's the most affordable plan to get everything, right. So in all your ads, don't advertise 20 different one off product., One thing membership all over the place. They're going to land on that page through search and through social to get the individual thing. That's how people find individual stuff. They don't look around your website, but when they get to your website, what's your one goal for them to take next? Yes, it's to buy a product, but really is to join that membership. So you've got predictable revenue that you can count on. Janet Jimenez: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right Janet, we've had a great conversation with you today. I think that you've got some really actionable ideas to take advantage of and just run with. So let's talk about one thing that you are planning to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today. Janet Jimenez: Well, I'm going to do two. So I'm going to make a blog post about not being a native Spanish speaker of bilingual students. And then I am going to find out a way to put that buy button next to my one off products so that they know that they can access everything instead of just getting that one product. Shane Sams: That is absolutely amazing. Imagine just putting that button on every single product you have. Just doing that it's got to take ... the action steps going to get people to buy more memberships because it's more available. It's every time they see the button they're going to be able to do that. So thank you so much, Janet for coming on the show today and being so transparent. We're so appreciative and grateful that our members will do this, will come on 'cause we know it's kind of scary to come on a podcast and there's thousands of people listening. But like man, what we talked about today is going to help somebody out there and we're just so thankful that you did that. Janet Jimenez: Yes. Thanks so much for having me. Shane Sams: What a great interview with one of our Flip Your Life Community members today. We hope that you got something out of that that can help you take your business to the next level. Before we close our podcast, we always like to end with a Bible verse Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration from the Bible and we wanted to share some of that with you today. Our verse today comes from Ecclesiastes 11 verses four through six, and it says, "Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud they never harvest, just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother's womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God who does all things. So plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon for you don't know if profit will come from one activity or another or maybe both." Shane Sams: So what is the Bible saying here, guys? Get out there and take action. Don't be afraid. Don't wait for perfect. It ain't gotta be perfect, it's just got to be done. And if you take that mindset into your online business, you will be successful too. And if we can help you be successful in your online business, we'd love to do that. All you have to do is join our Flip Your Life Community. We have all the training, coaching, community, and resources you need to take your business to the next level. You can have a 30 day free trial right now, at flippedlifestyle.com/free. That's flippedlifestyle.com/free. Go there and start your 30 day free trial today. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time we have for today. We are so thankful that you tuned in. Whatever you do between now and the next time you hear this podcast, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life this evening. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Janet's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

This week’s guest is a ‘rebel hibiscus’, Trini-to-the-bone thought leader and influencer in the education space. DR. Nicole K,. Grimes, an Educational Consultant, shares her passion for science and the joy she experiences from teaching and sharing with all who venture into her world.  Follow @nicolekgrimes on Instagram and  @drnicolekgrimes on Twitter. You can request the adventurer @rebelhibscus on IG Subscribe, like and share this podcast with a friend and on social media and be sure to LIKE the episode and leave a message or post using the hashtag #kadenceintheclouds. Follow @karenhsthilaire on the social platforms Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and visit her site iwww.karensthilaire.com. Be sure to purchase her first book "The Divine Butterfly: Inspiration On Your Journey To Success" Get Audible for 30-Day Membership trial offer

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I formed my beta group with 4 members, yay!! We kick off this week, with weekly live lessons and live office hours, running for 10 weeks. What should be my #1 focus here? My head wants to spyder out to do ALL the things, but I want to make the most out of this opportunity to retain these members and grow that. I think my focus should be to be there for my members, teach, answer all their questions, and regularly ask them what they want next. Interestingly, the 4 members are not at all the avatar I had pictured in mind. So I feel like I have to roll with the punches to morph my membership site to what they asking for." Question Two: "I just gave birth to baby #3 6 weeks ago so I temporarily closed registration to my membership to keep my life from getting too crazy. I'm now feeling ready to get back in the game, open up registration and re-launch. I currently have about 50 members and I'm considering creating some kind of affiliate program for a few members who have been in my program for long enough to vouch for it. My question is- how do I figure out a revenue sharing arrangement when people are paying a monthly fee- and some members stick around for a month, while others stay for a year? It's obviously more straightforward when selling a course for a 1-time fee. Also- given that I'm a certified sleep consultant for babies and kids, and given the fact that I now have a 6 week old at home, how can I leverage my current situation to connect with my audience and add value to my membership? In my membership, I've already started giving them regular updates as to his sleep and what I'm doing so that they can follow my journey with him!" Question Three: "My site's mission is helping people learn God's way with money and create financial margin so they can give more generously and start enjoying life again. Product plan is to create courses/lessons on many biblical finance topics from big picture like financial freedom and treasures in heaven to practical topics like tackling debt and biblical investing and generosity. Some will be directly motivational, others may actually be church-style bible teachings. Three brief questions: Do I have to do the get out of debt piece because it's an ‘aspirin'?  Does the word ‘Courses' convert better than ‘Lessons?'  I'd like to eventually charge $49/mo, is that realistic when members may be in financial hardship? Do I have to focus on debt because it is the really hard hitting pain point?" Question Four: "Are there key things you like to do when you are holding a coaching session? I'm offering these for sale and would love to know what are your top priorities for making sure that you help someone who has paid for your time. My top guess would be; LISTEN, ask them what they are having TROUBLES with, ask do they have a SUGGESTION or plan, give your suggestions, make an ACTION plan." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

God has given you another day. Do something with it. Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I formed my beta group with 4 members, yay!! We kick off this week, with weekly live lessons and live office hours, running for 10 weeks. What should be my #1 focus here? My head wants to spyder out to do ALL the things, but I want to make the most out of this opportunity to retain these members and grow that. I think my focus should be to be there for my members, teach, answer all their questions, and regularly ask them what they want next. Interestingly, the 4 members are not at all the avatar I had pictured in mind. So I feel like I have to roll with the punches to morph my membership site to what they asking for." Question Two: "I just gave birth to baby #3 6 weeks ago so I temporarily closed registration to my membership to keep my life from getting too crazy. I'm now feeling ready to get back in the game, open up registration and re-launch. I currently have about 50 members and I'm considering creating some kind of affiliate program for a few members who have been in my program for long enough to vouch for it. My question is- how do I figure out a revenue sharing arrangement when people are paying a monthly fee- and some members stick around for a month, while others stay for a year? It's obviously more straightforward when selling a course for a 1-time fee. Also- given that I'm a certified sleep consultant for babies and kids, and given the fact that I now have a 6 week old at home, how can I leverage my current situation to connect with my audience and add value to my membership? In my membership, I've already started giving them regular updates as to his sleep and what I'm doing so that they can follow my journey with him!" Question Three: "My site's mission is helping people learn God's way with money and create financial margin so they can give more generously and start enjoying life again. Product plan is to create courses/lessons on many biblical finance topics from big picture like financial freedom and treasures in heaven to practical topics like tackling debt and biblical investing and generosity. Some will be directly motivational, others may actually be church-style bible teachings. Three brief questions: Do I have to do the get out of debt piece because it's an ‘aspirin'?  Does the word ‘Courses' convert better than ‘Lessons?'  I'd like to eventually charge $49/mo, is that realistic when members may be in financial hardship? Do I have to focus on debt because it is the really hard hitting pain point?" Question Four: "Are there key things you like to do when you are holding a coaching session? I'm offering these for sale and would love to know what are your top priorities for making sure that you help someone who has paid for your time. My top guess would be; LISTEN, ask them what they are having TROUBLES with, ask do they have a SUGGESTION or plan, give your suggestions, make an ACTION plan." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I am getting ready to launch my membership in the next 2 weeks. My list is about 2000 people and my open rate is typically around 20%. I know this must vary based on how niche you are, but how many people typically covert into customers from an email list?" Question Two: "How do you plan for attrition in your membership site when creating your business plan?" Question Three: "Hey y'all :) what's your opinion on giveaways to build an email list? I feel like it could be a good way to build quickly as long as what I'm giving away is true to my niche. Thanks!" Question Four: "I've been doing weekly blog posts plus youtube videos for a month, there's not much change in my website views and no opt-ins. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to be more patient?" SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS! I received an email from someone this morning with questions about my class, I answered the email and 30 minutes later she bought the class!" - Dan "SUCCESS! I put on some of my social media platforms that Becca & I are going to be offering some courses for photographers this Fall. I got 25 emails within 24 hours!" - Matt CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Family photo in Jamaica!   Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I am getting ready to launch my membership in the next 2 weeks. My list is about 2000 people and my open rate is typically around 20%. I know this must vary based on how niche you are, but how many people typically covert into customers from an email list?" Question Two: "How do you plan for attrition in your membership site when creating your business plan?" Question Three: "Hey y'all :) what's your opinion on giveaways to build an email list? I feel like it could be a good way to build quickly as long as what I'm giving away is true to my niche. Thanks!" Question Four: "I've been doing weekly blog posts plus youtube videos for a month, there's not much change in my website views and no opt-ins. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to be more patient?" SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS! I received an email from someone this morning with questions about my class, I answered the email and 30 minutes later she bought the class!" - Dan "SUCCESS! I put on some of my social media platforms that Becca & I are going to be offering some courses for photographers this Fall. I got 25 emails within 24 hours!" - Matt CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Hi guys I'm really trying to get back onto the online business wagon after falling off for the last month, and posted an Action Plan as such this morning. Beyond the action plan forum, getting a legit accountability partner is something I've mulled around but haven't seriously pursued yet. For someone who struggles with consistency, do you think this (getting an accountability partner) would be worthwhile, and if so, how should I go about finding the right person for that role? Thanks! " Question Two: "You have previously said that you often do a video and then overlay a presentation over it for your trainings. What software do you use to overlay your audio onto your presentation? If it's a mac software, is there' something comparable in a pc?" Question Three: "We have 5000 email subscribers who opted in to receive our free math resource. However, only 8 people bought our one-off product which is a $40 bundle of math resources in our initial autoresponder sequence. What are ways to improve conversion rates on autoresponders? " Question Four: "My husband is starting up a business for basketball out of bounds plays. He's had 30 plays professionally recorded by a videographer of the plays being demonstrated. There will be voice over recording describing the plays and how to best utilize your players in their positions. He has one free play to use as a opt in. Our biggest question moving forward is pricing. He's stuck on how to price the package of 30 plays. Any advice would be awesome. Thanks!" SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS! Just got a speaking gig while on this call. Most I've ever been paid so far. I bumped my fees after FYL LIVE just because. I think the higher fees made me more credible." - Jeff CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

It's Trunk or Treat time! Taking the day off to hand out candy and celebrate reading at Isaac's school! Everyone is a book character. We are cops from "A Day in the Life of a Police Officer" by Linda Hayward! Life is short y'all. Volunteer, show up at school before your kids don't want you there lol!   Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Hi guys I'm really trying to get back onto the online business wagon after falling off for the last month, and posted an Action Plan as such this morning. Beyond the action plan forum, getting a legit accountability partner is something I've mulled around but haven't seriously pursued yet. For someone who struggles with consistency, do you think this (getting an accountability partner) would be worthwhile, and if so, how should I go about finding the right person for that role? Thanks! " Question Two: "You have previously said that you often do a video and then overlay a presentation over it for your trainings. What software do you use to overlay your audio onto your presentation? If it's a mac software, is there' something comparable in a pc?" Question Three: "We have 5000 email subscribers who opted in to receive our free math resource. However, only 8 people bought our one-off product which is a $40 bundle of math resources in our initial autoresponder sequence. What are ways to improve conversion rates on autoresponders? " Question Four: "My husband is starting up a business for basketball out of bounds plays. He's had 30 plays professionally recorded by a videographer of the plays being demonstrated. There will be voice over recording describing the plays and how to best utilize your players in their positions. He has one free play to use as a opt in. Our biggest question moving forward is pricing. He's stuck on how to price the package of 30 plays. Any advice would be awesome. Thanks!" SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS! Just got a speaking gig while on this call. Most I've ever been paid so far. I bumped my fees after FYL LIVE just because. I think the higher fees made me more credible." - Jeff CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we help Court plan his organic content strategy for his youth sport coaching website.  FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey you all. On today's podcast, we help Court take his youth sport coaching business to the next level. 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 as we talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community, and I'm really excited about this interview because this is a guy after my own heart. This is a coach. Jocelyn: Is there something I should know? Shane: A sports coach ... No! Stop saying that. No, no. I mean we're just attuned in our souls in the sports coaching world, Jocelyn, because my heart is only for you, baby. All right, in our podcast today, we want to welcome Court. Court, welcome to the show, man. Court: Hey, thanks guys. This is really an honor to be here. I really appreciate it. Jocelyn: We are excited to talk to you today. We know a lot about the coaching world. We have been sports coaches- Shane: Oh, so deep into it. So deep into it. Jocelyn: Sports coaching wives for a long, long time before we started doing online business, so we totally get it. So tell us a little bit about you, your background, and how you got started with your website. Court: Yeah, so real quick, I grew up playing sports. I played everything. If it had a ball. I played basketball, football, baseball, golf, and when I went to college, I went to Kansas State University and had an opportunity to work with the football team there, and I started as an equipment manager, and I worked up to being a student assistant coach. And I really had a passion for that, and I thought that's what I wanted to do after graduating, but I think Shane kinda what maybe you discovered. The pay was not good- Shane: No, it was not. Court: And I knew I was gonna have to move all over the country. Didn't wanna do that, so I decided to, my undergrad degree was in education, so I became a English and Journalism teacher and I coached football and track for about 13 years. And then about five years ago, I went through a divorce and I realized spending time with my kids, I was spending more time coaching. Practice was going until 7:30 every night, and then my kids were already in bed. Or on weekends I was working all weekend and I wasn't able to spend time. So I stepped away from coaching, stepped away from teaching, and took a new job in the business world doing social media. So I really have a background there in marketing and social media. Court: And then when I started coaching my kid's kindergarten soccer team a couple years ago, I said, this will be easy. I've coached high school. I've coached college. This will be no problem at all. And I realized it was a whole different world, and I'm sure you've probably experienced the same thing. So that's what led me to, I said, other moms and dads need support and help to figure out how to coach their kid's teams. So that's what kind of led me to come up with this idea to start youthsportscoaches.com. Shane: Awesome. Yeah, and it's funny, your story is so- Jocelyn: I'm wondering if you guys are the same person. Shane: I know, right? It sounds so familiar, and because I look back at our journey and where we are now compared to where we've been in the last 15 years, right? And there were really two things that happened to us that I think started our Flip Your Lives journey before we even knew it was started. One of them was exactly what you said when we were like chasing the success ladder, and it doesn't matter if you're trying to be a college football coach and climb the ladder, or if you're trying to be in the corporate world and climb the ladder. Even if you're in like a government job and you're trying to move from teacher to principal or whatever, right? Shane: There comes a point when you're chasing success when you look over and say, I haven't seen my wife or kids in a few days, right? And you start questioning, is that worth it? And I can remember me and Jocelyn sitting down and I had a chance, I had a good friend of mine that recommended me for a job, and I literally had a job at Bowling Green University, right? We were in West Virginia at the time, and I had it. No, I was at Eastern Kentucky at the time, and he calls me, and he's like, you don't even have to interview it. I've already told him you're the guy for the job. You just have to show up. Shane: And this was a big job. It was a good job. But me and Jocelyn looked at each other and we said, do we really want to go down this path? Like what about having kids? What about seeing each other? This is committing to, I'm in this now and it's my full time career, right? Now I'm working 12 hour days, and we decided at that moment that we were gonna go into high school or teaching or whatever to do that. Because we just said hey, I don't want to go and not do, be able to ever see you again. We gotta go a different direction to find some more time. And it's funny because then you get into high school, and you're like, I'm spending more time with everybody else's kids than I am my own kids. Jocelyn: And you're getting paid even less. Shane: Even less to do it, right? Court: Yes, and that's what I figured out too is I think coaching football I made $3,000 a year, but you know it's a year round thing. I mean, it's summertime all- Shane: It's like a $1.30 an hour is what it is. Court: Oh, it's even less than that. Jocelyn: If it's even that. Shane: I mean it's absolutely ridiculous. And- Court: And so yeah it's just not worth it. You don't see your kids. You don't see your family and you're working with other people's kids all the time, which is great, but- Shane: Oh yeah. There's a place for it. I'm not saying that. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn: And you know what? I have a lot of respect for people who do it. Shane: Yes, and I still step up and coach sometimes today reluctantly, although whenever anyone asks me to coach anything locally, like any kind of teams, I'm like, I'm retired. Sorry. I'm not going. But then the other day, I- Jocelyn: No, we end up doing it though. Shane: I ended up doing it anyway. I was at basketball practice the other day, and the coach, his son did something to his tooth and they had to take him to an emergency dentist, and I'm standing there looking around. I'm like, give me the ball. And I coached basketball for two hours. It's ridiculous because once you are a coach, you're the default coach. There's still this old guy that sits in the front of my church, and whenever I walk in he always goes, hey Coach Sams. How you doing? I'm like hey, Bob. Haven't coached in ten years, but whatever, you know what I'm saying. All right, so let's talk about youthsportscoaches.com a little bit- Jocelyn: First of all, I love this idea. Shane had actually talked about it years ago. Shane: Oh yeah. Jocelyn: Like wouldn't it be cool if- Shane: Because I coached tee-ball for the first time, and I thought the same thing you did. These are kindergarteners. It's gonna be simple. I've handled college people with egos and everything- Jocelyn: But then you realize that it's like herding cats. Court: Yes. Shane: Yes, and they beat you into submission mentally by the time you're through with practice. SO what do you use on youth sports coaches, like what are you teaching? What are you talking about? Is it fundamentals of the sports? There's a lot of youth sports. Or is it more like just the mindset of it? Court: Well, this is exactly, I only started this probably a month and a half, two months ago, and so I'm still in the building stage, and that's one of the things I want to talk about is when I started coaching soccer, I did probably like what most parents do. I went to YouTube, and I just started searching for videos, and they were scattered all over. A lot of them were for older kids and didn't really apply to kindergartners. And so, and I would watch other parents struggle at practice not really knowing what to do, and it just basically became throw the ball out there and let's scrimmage for an hour, which it doesn't do anybody any good. Court: So my idea, and this is what I'm debating right now, is there's lots of sites out there where they go a mile deep and an inch wide in one sport, and it's the super competitive teams that travel. That's not what I want to talk to. I want to talk to the dads and moms who are just getting started and they're like, it's herding cattle. I don't know what to do. I need basic drills. I need practice organization. I need to know how to organize my team in the preseason. They've been thrown into this role either voluntarily or someone kind of asked them to do it, and they just need help and guidance. Shane: Yeah. And- Court: So that's where I kinda am, trying to figure out what my model is. Shane: Yeah, that's cool. Even stuff like, one of the key words you said there was organizing practice. Dealing with parents, figuring out who's bringing the juice packs on Saturday to the game, right? Like stuff like that that people just aren't equipped to do, they need somebody to show them how to do that. Jocelyn: I was gonna say how to start your team's Facebook page. Should I start a Facebook page? All of these things, I think are really important and things that people probably leave out. I feel like probably actual mechanics of the game, drills, things like that, those are kind of covered, not necessarily for your age group, but I feel like maybe those other things get kinda left out. Shane: Yeah, for sure. It's easy to find out how to kick the ball into the goal. It's hard to figure out how to handle all of the logistics that go along with being a youth sports coach. Jocelyn: All right, so before we dive into nuts and bolts here, let's talk a little bit about what is going on inside your head as you're starting this. So everybody has some type of fear or something that holds them back. What is yours right now? Court: It's probably a little bit of imposter syndrome maybe that you guys would say, and like I said, there's lots of coaches out there that go really deep into this. My background is, that I think I can bring to the table, is that organization and the logistics that you just mentioned. How to bring in those parents and see the value in it because I worry that people won't see a value and wanna put their money where their mouth is for this type of product. Shane: Sure. It's interesting you say that because whenever you come from a higher level, what we perceive as going down to a level, like we know the value of organization because we've been on a football field with 100 players. If you're not organized by the minute and practice, you've got problems. And that's not what we're saying you're going to bring to these youth coaches, right? But it is block time, organizing, getting logistics. Shane: One of the things that we did on our tee-ball team is, because we had a technology background and an organizational background in sports coaching. I was still a defensive coordinator in high school when I coached this tee-ball team. Is we had a Facebook group that we set up the day that we started coaching that baseball team so that we could coordinate with everybody there, and people loved it, because they knew what was going on. So it was the only team they ever knew what was happening, because we communicated with them, right? Shane: But when we go down, we're like, are they gonna get this, nobody else is doing this. Are they gonna understand? And that'll be part of your marketing is bringing people in in what they do understand, like they understand looking up drills. That's why people go to YouTube and say, they don't type in soccer practice. They type in soccer drills, right? You'll use those kinds of methods to bring people in and then it will be your job to explain the value through your marketing so that they will put their money where their mouth is. Jocelyn: And honestly, I think you're thinking too small. I see this as more of a system that you sell to cities, to organizations who do youth sports- Shane: Oh yeah. We got- Jocelyn: Maybe the churches. Because here's the thing. Shane: Yeah, that's true. Jocelyn: What is the number one problem that organizations have when they're trying to do youth sports? They don't have enough coaches, right? Shane: Coaches. Jocelyn: Okay, so if you could sell this to them as hey, I have this system and all you have to do is tell the parents, okay, we have the whole system. We have practice plans for you. We have organization plans for you. All you have to do is show up and follow this script. Like how much easier would that be? If somebody came to me, as a parent, and said, hey, look. We really need coaches, but you're gonna have to figure everything out yourself. I'd be like eh, no. That's too much to do already. Shane: But how much does Upward Basketball or something need this? Like I coached Upward Basketball last year, undefeated champions. I'm just saying. But anyway, I coached Upward Basketball, but there was a lot of, they did their best. Everybody did so good. It was for the kids. It was for a good reason, but it was confusing. And there was a lot of confusion with coordination and communication and things like that. And Upward gives you some things, but it's mostly drills, right? But it's not how to get your parents together, how to organize practice, how to take them out to pizza, stuff like that. And you could just go to an organization that already has 100 teams and be like, hey. Why don't I just, 20 bucks a team? You got it. Boom, there's two grand. Shane: So yeah, that's a really good idea, Jocelyn. There's a lot of things around this I don't think you're even seeing, and you just have to explain it. You gotta convey it. Everybody says, man, I just wish people would see the value in this and buy it, when they really need to say, it's my job as a marketer to tell them the value and convince them to buy it, right? So- Court: Well, you guys are in my mind. Yeah, you guys are in my mind. I had a conversation with a local rec commission about this, and they were really interested, and I told them I needed beta testers right now to get in and help me figure things out. And they're like, yeah, our parents don't know what they're doing. We tell them just to go to YouTube but they don't wanna coach because they don't feel like they know what they're doing. So you're exactly right. I'm already thinking that. My question is how do I make those sales without just cold calling people. I don't know how to get them into my sales funnel. Shane: I gotcha. I gotcha. So are there any technical things that are holding you back besides mindset? Number one, please don't let imposter syndrome hold you back because you have coached college football, right? You have coached in high school. You know what it's like to organize a large group of people and from a coaching standpoint, and you can really help. 99% of people don't have that experience, right? So you are more than expert enough to do this, right? Even if somebody's listening out there, even if you had been a youth coach for ten years, I remember there was this old coach when I was growing up, and he coached the same basketball and football team every year for my whole life and the whole life of my brothers. He had literally coached the Nuggets for like 20 years in football and basketball in our community, right? Shane: That dude was a pro youth football coach. That guy was a pro youth sports coach, and just having that kind of experience and being able to do it well at a high level is gonna more than make you qualified for the guy who didn't know he was coaching soccer until Thursday, and shows up on the field Saturday. Jocelyn: Well, and not to mention you've also coached youth sports, so you know the challenges. You know what people are thinking inside their head, because you've been there before. If you have had one day of experience coaching kindergarten soccer, you have more days experience than I do. Shane: Exactly. So you're more, don't worry about the imposter syndrome. But is there anything else that's holding you back from a technical standpoint? How was the website creation? Any external obstacles that you're dealing with? Court: Well, like I said, I have a really good background in technology. I have the website up. I have my email sequenced, Leadpages AWeber going. It's getting people into my sales funnel right now. I just started writing a Facebook ad just the other day, and it's not really converting. And so how to get those people in my sales funnel, and who to target on Facebook, because it's moms and dads between, I think I said 26 and 42. I drilled down to parents, but then I also used interests like ESPN and college football, because it would be people who are interested in sports. But I don't know how to target youth sports coaches, those moms and dads who are getting into it. Shane: Yeah. Well what you wanna, let's just go straight into that then. Let's talk about how. One, your site is so new, the first place I would actually start is your organic strategy, not your page strategy. We'll talk about both though, okay? But how are you creating consistent content right now? Do you have, are you putting out blog posts? Are you making YouTube videos? Because without a foundation of organic traffic, you can't do paid traffic, because until you see what's getting traction organically, you don't know what to pour gas on, right? To make the fire bigger. So how are you doing that right now? Court: I've been podcasting. I've batched. I'm up to six episodes. I've released three. I've got it on iTunes. I think I have five or six blog posts, started a Facebook, so yeah, that's what I've been really focusing on. Lead magnets, I have lead magnets on each blog. So that's what I've been doing so far. Jocelyn: Okay. Shane: So you've got a good, consistent strategy of releasing content regularly. Jocelyn: Which is awesome. Court: Yes. Jocelyn: But what I was gonna say is, okay. I don't know what your podcast format is, but what a perfect vehicle to talk to some of these people in these youth sports organizations. Shane: Oh yeah. Jocelyn: Ask them to be a guest on your podcast- Shane: And at the same time- Jocelyn: And oh, by the way. Let me sell you something. Court: Yeah, I just did one of those. Jocelyn: Yeah, exactly. Court: I just did one last week, so yep. Shane: Well, let's talk about this real quick too. Okay so you've got a good, consistent thing on your own terms, but I just went into iTunes and typed in youth sports, okay? And I literally just found probably 100 or more youth, there's youth, winning youth coaching. Actually, this guy's name's Craig. He would actually, I've been on his podcast before. And he's been in the community. Youth baseball edge. Youth baseball talk. Coaching youth soccer. You might want to go and reach out to these people to be on their podcasts, because they're always looking for guests, I'm sure, right? Court: That's a good idea. Shane: So if you could go be on their podcasts, maybe they can come on your podcast. You start building an audience faster because they've already got an audience or they wouldn't be podcasting. They've got somebody listening to them, so that starts magnifying your message, right? Jocelyn: Here's another pro tip for that. Find someone who is a competitor to you and see what podcasts they've been on. Shane: Exactly. So you can type in their name and say, whoa, here's ten more places that they've been. And for example, this coach Carl for coaching youth soccer, random plug for a random podcast on the show. Jocelyn: We've never listened to it, so. Shane: No, we've never listened to it before. Jocelyn: So don't be mad if it's terrible. Shane: But it looks like a lot of these are really focused on developing skills, right? And you're not a competitor to them. You can just call them and be like, no, I just help people organize practice and stuff and organize their team and learn what to do and all that. I've got some drill stuff, but hey, you might find promotional opportunities here or learn more about it. So go out and try and get your name in front of all of these people that are already talking to youth coaches and youth parents, okay? Jocelyn: I think really one of the best things that you can do is to get parents interested and let them know that hey, we offer discounts to youth sports programs, because they become your best advocate. That's what happened to me on Elementary Librarian. I decided I was going to take school purchase orders so that way people didn't have to spend their own money, and then they market it for you, because they don't want to spend their own money. Shane: So your marketing can, when you're talking on it, you're talking to the youth coach, but when you get a youth coach customer, instead of cold calling organizations, well, their youth coach, they're in an organization. Hey, could you tell the director of your youth program that I'd offer a discount if he wanted to buy it for everybody in the organization. And now you're not cold calling anymore. You're going on other podcasts. You're getting customers as coaches, and then you're figuring out through them who they're coaching for, and then that's how you connect with the directors to buy it for the whole program, basically. Court: That's a great idea. So what I'm hearing you say, do you think I need to stay away from the drills, because that was one of my questions is do I even give a baseline of drills for those sports? Shane: What a good question from today's guest. We will get to the answer of that in just a moment. But first, did you know that you can get the answers you need to start, build, and grow your online business too? All you have to do is join me and Jocelyn and all of our other members inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can get all the training, coaching, and support that you need to build and grow your own online business. The best part? You can get started today for free, absolutely no cost to you. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and you can start your one month free trial right away. Shane: Join hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can learn how we've started an online business, replaced our income, quit our full time jobs, and now we get to work from home. You can build a life that you want and you can get started today at no cost. Just go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and start your free month today. Now let's get back to our show and back to our guest's question. Shane: No, you can do that. You can totally do that- Jocelyn: I think you do because- Court: Okay. Shane: I think you have to do that. Jocelyn: I think that's what people are partially looking for. Shane: When I was selling playbooks, I couldn't figure out how to get coaches that were looking for my system, right? But what I did know is that every day at the beginning of every practice in America coaches did drills, right? So I started writing articles about quarterback drills. I didn't coach quarterbacks. I coached the offensive line and linebackers, right? But I would write some basic articles, and that's how people would find me, and then they would realize I was selling the other thing. So that's how you're gonna get some of your traffic is by writing the best five drills for a new coach in soccer, or the best five drills for a new coach in basketball. Shane: And then they will find you and realize you're helping them become a better coach, and even though you're only offering simple drills, you're offering so much more on the other side. Court: Yeah, and that's why I think this membership model really makes sense is because I think parents coach multiple sports. And so my idea is soccer season rolls right into basketball season, and so they would stay for the community, but then have drills for each of those sports, if that makes sense. Shane: Yes, and also too, there's different challenges in being a soccer coach to a basketball coach to a football coach. Even a baseball coach. Rain affects all four sports differently. Practice for basketball is different because it's, like we're on a basketball team with Isaac right now, our son, and it's really hard to find gyms to practice in. That's a totally different challenge then hey, let's find grass to kick go kick the soccer ball on, right? So you're dealing with these different challenges that they deal with in every sport as they go through it. It's a perfect membership model. Jocelyn: Well, and the thing about that is that people help you create your content. Like they start talking about their problems, and you can say, oh, well. What knowledge do I have that can help them solve this problem? Court: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Jocelyn: Yeah, and therefore bring more people into my funnel. Shane: So when you're thinking of your organic strategy, think about what people are looking for first. They're looking probably, their first instinct is probably to look for drills, right? And then you market- Court: Fun drills. Shane: Fun drills. Stuff like that. Then your marketing is to convince them that the next step is your product, right? They know their first step or they wouldn't be searching for it. They're looking for the next step after that, because that's where they get confused, and that's what you're gonna sell. And then your promotional strategy, you've got to go out and find people that already have audiences and get in front of them right? That's where all these other pod ... and you have a podcast so it's really easy for you in this stage in your business to say, hey, let me be on your podcast, then I'll let you be on mine, right? So you can just do a nice little exchange there, build relationships, and you can just grow your audience more organically that way. Jocelyn: I would do maybe like a download of a checklist of some kind, like a youth sport coaching checklist, like things that you need to do. Things that everybody needs to do, like get people's shirt size, find a way to communicate with the parents. Simple things like that, that could be a good giveaway for you as you're starting to go on to other people's podcasts. And then of course, you would have deeper trainings- Shane: About all the things that are on the checklist. The checklist is one page, do all these things. Set up your Facebook group. Okay, wait a minute. How do I do that? You've got a little link at the bottom that says, I'll show you how to do that whenever you download it, you see? And that's how you guide people back. Shane: All right, let's switch back to the page strategy now. So you've already got some ads, you're playing with it, and you started targeting people. So you said you targeted by age. You targeted these parents of kids from 0-12, whatever, right? And then that's the things you're targeting. The next thing I heard you say was a common mistake though. You said, okay, I'm just targeting people that like sports, right? You can't do that because it becomes way too broad and you waste money. I did this with football. I thought at first, hey, I'll target football like college football, NFL. Surely coaches would love those things. Shane: But here's the problem. So do drunk college kids. So do weekend warriors, fans of sport, alumni. And you have to dial down and drill down even more, and youth sports is really not that bad of a thing to look for, because you have big things you can target like USA football, which is the big youth football organization, right? You have, there's soccer organizations. There's other things you can target- Jocelyn: But I would even be careful with that because here's the thing. If somebody asked me to coach, I don't like any of those things on Facebook. I might do it because I love my kid, but I know absolutely nothing about it. I personally like sports, so there's a possibility I might like those on Facebook but probably not. So you have to remember who you're going toward or who you're looking for. I think probably for you, a better strategy would be to get emails for people like offer a lead main, get some emails, and then maybe do a local audience type thing. Shane: Yeah. You could also, too, look at the different Facebook groups that are out there and just join them. There's a lot of Facebook groups. Court: Yeah, I'm in those. Shane: And then you can organically connect with people. But even targeting, trust Facebook's algorithm. People think you've got to go in and get your ad perfect, but sometimes you can just go in and be like, hey, I want people who are 25 to 45 and have kids that are under 12, and then I'm gonna write copy that's about youth sports, and I'm just gonna trust the algorithm to start figuring it out for me, because the algorithm learns. It learns as you go, and the people that respond to your ad, Facebook can look and it can say, wait a minute. These other people are like these people. So I'm gonna stop showing it to the people who aren't clicking and I'm gonna start showing it to people like the ones who are clicking. Shane: You don't have to drill down and get all those interests perfect. You can just start with an age range and the kids, right? You can also start in a demographic, maybe like $30,000 to $100,000. That's usually the youth coach, the youth person who's hustling and driving their kid around, you know what I'm saying? Court: Right. Married. Shane: Yeah, married. Yeah, people like that. Or here's another thing that you could focus on too that I like. It's not necessarily married because there's a lot of single parents, divorced parents who are trying to get multiple kids to different sports. Jocelyn: So just don't- Shane: Those are challenges you could talk about. Jocelyn: Yeah, don't drill down too much, and another thing you can do is add people who are competitors, people who do the same type thing as you do. See if you can add their audiences in. You know those people are interested in youth sports, so. Shane: So basically, you could have two lines here. It's like lines of play in sports. I like that. But one is set up an ad that does target youth sports organizations, like AAU, UA10, UA15, soccer, things like that, right? Upward Basketball. There's a lot of people that like Upward because they're participating in it. Some of those are coaches, right? Target some people by interest, but then set up another ad and just let it go with the age and demographic, and then eventually when you get your email list big enough, upload that and let Facebook go find people that are like them, right? That's the, you gotta try a little bit of all three of those things. You can't just say, I found people that like sports. That's just too broad. Court: Well, so before I added all those sports things, it was like 100 million people. It was a huge number when I just went off of age, some of those demographics. So you say that's okay? Shane: Yes. Court: With it that big? Shane: It's okay, because Facebook will figure it out. Jocelyn: Yeah, once people start responding to the ad, they'll show it to more people like them. Shane: Like those people. Court: Okay, all right. Shane: And it'll actually dial down. And also too, you start a little broad, and then you can figure it out and move it down as you go. Try to find all the major youth sports organizations though, because some of those people, that will at least tell Facebook- Jocelyn: Some of them will like those things. Shane: It'll tell Facebook that those are youth people, but set up a different ad that's just for age groups. You don't have to worry about it. Also, too, on your advertising, you need to be really season specific and not general. Like right now is baseball season, right? There's a lot of baseball going on. A lot of travel basketball going on right now too. Those are the kind of ads that need to run this time of year. When August and September get here, you need to be having football pictures- Court: Soccer. Shane: Soccer, things like that. The swimming in the Spring. That's, January, February, March is like swimming, right? USA swimming. So your pictures need to identify with people what they're going through right now. So you need to be really in tune with the calendar and your ads, because if you've got a picture of someone coaching a ... If you've got a baseball coach at first base and it's the middle of winter, not many people are gonna relate to that. Court: So my kind of tagline or motto, I think, needs to change, because it was kind of experience of coaching you're, make coaching your kids a fun and rewarding experience. Because I want, that was what I was playing on was coaching your kids, but it- Jocelyn: No. Court: But it sounds like I need to change it more to the organization side. Jocelyn: This is, I would say it's even different than that. I would say survive coaching your kid's sports team this season. Shane: Yeah, that's who needs this thing. And it's almost like you're trying, they want to have a fun experience with their kid. Don't get me wrong. Okay? That's gonna be a part of your message- Jocelyn: But that's a vitamin. Nobody's gonna pay for that. Shane: That's a vitamin. It's more like, don't look like an idiot in front of all the other parents, right? How to keep parents from getting mad at you. These are the things that they're really worried about that they need the help with. It's like the, what's it called? Oh, status. It's their status. People want to look competent. Jocelyn: How to run your kid's team like a pro when you have no clue what you're doing. Shane: Yeah, stuff like that. That's your messaging is, that's what you're trying to tell the parent, is ... Now the benefit, the added benefit is you're also going to have a great time with your kid, right? That's cool, but man, when you're overwhelmed and you've got parents yelling at you and you don't know who's bringing the snacks, and you don't know if Johnny's even gonna be there because your communication was terrible. Jocelyn: If you're stressed, you're not gonna have fun coaching your kid. So that is the- Shane: Stress free youth coaching. Jocelyn: Yeah, that's what you're selling is take the stress away. Shane: Yeah. Court: Okay. Very good. Shane: Okay? So where do you think this goes next? What do you think your next step is both, either, just in your promotion or advertise. What do you think you need to do next to kind of take this thing to the next level? Court: Well I think change some of the messaging, but then I need to, I have the infrastructure I bought for the membership side from my sub domain. I need to start building that out, and building the membership, the courses. And then get beta testers in there to help me. And so that's my goal here in the next month before fall sports start is to do that. Shane: Yeah, this is gonna be a process, too, man. It's not, because it's almost like when Jocelyn launched her first lesson plan site, she did one month at a time, and you're kind of, right now, like one season at a time. Because you gotta get some beta for football, get some beta for soccer, get some beta for baseball, the big sports first. Soccer, stuff like that. Then you can start adding maybe some things for some other things. But you gotta go through these seasons, get through this process. That doesn't mean you can't start selling and adding people in, right? You need to start selling it season by season, but don't feel like you've got to have every single sport in the world covered right now. Shane: It's more like the next sport is your focus, and then the next sport is your focus, and maybe you pick up three or four people here, pick up four or five people here, pick up 10, 20 people there. You're good. Jocelyn: But I like what you're doing with the beta testing. Those testimonials are really, really important. Especially if you're trying to sell to organizations, you need some very strong testimonials. Shane: Are you in a, what's the population like in your area? Like where are you at? Court: Kansas City. I mean, I don't, it's huge. Shane: Yeah, yeah. Court: Yeah, there's lots. Shane: Of course. Jocelyn: Yeah, you can get all kinds of people just right there probably to help you pilot this thing. Shane: It might even be good if you wanted to target some ads just at Kansas City and maybe you target and you say, even almost like a speaker thing. Like let me come in and talk to your coaches, right? That would be a really good thing to do locally, because there's probably so many sports organizations. You could reach out locally, not cold calling, like I'm Court. I'm right down the road. I specialize in helping youth organizations get their parents on the level they need to be at, right? So that you have a better- Jocelyn: Or more importantly, help your organization be able to easily find volunteers. Shane: Yes, exactly. Because that's a problem you're solving for the youth director, right? And tell him, hey, I'd love to come in, and your coaches come in, and let me take them through a process for an hour so they'll have a great season you'll have less headaches. And as you do that- Jocelyn: You'll get their questions, you'll find their objections. Shane: Yep, and you'll be able to talk to a lot of parents at once without having to travel or do anything crazy. Court: Right. So what do you think pricing both for beta and for once I get into a membership? What do you think the value is of this? Shane: The value, I think you're probably gonna sell more like season passes than monthly memberships, and it would almost, you would call it a season pass, but it would kind of be quarterly, because the person right now is in the moment. And if, like my brother does this to me all the time, because he runs a youth organization here. He comes up to me, he's like hey, hey. You're gonna coach baseball, right? I'm like what? I hate baseball. But he, that's what happens, you know what I'm saying? Shane: And I'm only think, I'm not thinking about my son's basketball season when I'm doing baseball. I'm in the moment. So it's almost like season pass is now available for the baseball season or whatever, for summer. Season pass available for the fall, right? I'm thinking some kind of quarterly price, and I think maybe you start at like 100 bucks a quarter, or something like that? Jocelyn: Yeah, I think it's gonna have to be fairly low because- Shane: Just to start and see. Jocelyn: People don't really want to do it anyway. Shane: Right, exactly. Court: Right, and that's, that's my thing. Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean- Court: They're not gung ho about it. Shane: But everyone won't be, but there's a million youth coaches. You only need like 1% of them to want it. Jocelyn: So don't make it way inexpensive. Make it something valuable, but make it affordable for people who don't really want to coach anyway, but they're reluctantly doing it. Again- Shane: Like if I ended up coaching a sport that I knew absolutely nothing about. For example, I'll give you a better example. If I ended up coaching one of my daughter's teams, like I know a lot about coaching dudes and guys, right? But if I was in middle school and somebody wanted me to help with a youth girls' basketball team, right? I don't know, coaching girls is not the same as coaching guys, right? That might be some, but I'd pay 100 bucks for that. So you don't need everybody to do it. You just need somebody to do it. Jocelyn: But I think your big money is going to come from organizations, and then I think that later on, there are some upsells that you could do to kind of maximize that customer value, but that's something that we need to save for another conversation. Shane: But think about this though. Even if it's a quarterly thing for 100 bucks, right? All three months for 100 bucks. They're getting access to everything, but you found 500 people, that's $50,000 a quarter, right? So that's still big money, but it just fits in the mindset better of, oh, I can buy this just for my kid's season and then I can get out if I don't want to coach the next sport, right? And that's really what you're looking for. And then they'll come back next year and join it again. Jocelyn: But I can see other opportunities down the road for maybe consulting large youth sports organizations, maybe doing some speaking if that's something that you might be interested in. There are other opportunities. Shane: Also too, I'll tell you one thing that frustrates me, even coaching Upward last year. The guy who ran the organization was a coach guy, sports guy. I was a coach. There was a couple other people who really had a lot of experience coaching. It's really frustrating when you know how to run a team and a coach, and 80% of the other coaches in the league don't. Shane: So there's a huge pain point there to harp on, man, you can find these other coaches who become advocates and evangelists for you because it's like, let's get all these coaches up to speed so that we all have a great year, right? So you've got easy pitch to all these big organizations. Court: So do you think the buyer would be the league, or do you think they would help me sell it to the individual parents? Shane: You would have two funnels. You'd have both. Jocelyn: Yeah, I think you do both. Shane: Because some leagues will want it, some leagues will want to help you, and some leagues won't care. Jocelyn: And some of them will refuse to pay for it, but parents will find you and they will be willing to pay for it themselves. Shane: Yeah, that's right. This is not, don't [inaudible 00:38:17] down too far. You don't have to segment everybody apart. It's the same thing you're selling to everybody. It's just, am I selling it to a group, am I selling it through the group, or am I selling it to the individual? It's like my history lesson plans. I could sell them to homeschool teachers. Doesn't matter, right? I just, so I don't want to, don't pigeonhole yourself into, I only sell to this. John is my avatar, and John is a parent of age 24 to 32. Don't do that to yourself. Just open up all opportunities and try to get the content out to as many people as possible. Court: Very good. Jocelyn: We've had a lot of fun talking to you today. I think that you have a lot of great potential in this site, and I can't wait to see what you do with it. Before we go, we always 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? Court: Well, I think changing that messaging of making it stress free youth coaching, kind of changing the direction of the site and then building those lead magnets around it, and making sure they're sports specific by the season is, and then start writing those ads like we talked about. Shane: Yeah. One more thing I wanted you- Jocelyn: That was like four things. Court: Oh, sorry. Shane: That's okay. He's giving you the order. He's [inaudible 00:39:28]. Jocelyn: No, I'm just saying, I want you to make sure that you're doing it in little bite-sized chunks. Don't overwhelm yourself. Shane: Right now we're recording this in July, right? We're about six weeks from football kicking up, okay? It would be really good to reach out over the next six weeks to all the football youth groups around you and try to get something like we were talking about put together. One, I'm sure they would let you, because all you gotta do is say hey, I coached at Kansas State. I coached in high school. I've done the, and it sets your wheelhouse, because you've got so much football background anyway. It'll be really easy to probably get in with one of those organizations and if they could just get you in front of 20 parents, how valuable would that be? Not only to pitch something, but to just talk about their questions. And kind of get in front of their audience too. So that might be something good you could do after these next 24 hours to set you up for success, okay? Court: That's great. Shane: All right. Court, we've had a great time talking to you today, man. Can't wait to see what you do with your business. Thank you for coming on the show and being so transparent and helping everybody out there get better as well. Really appreciate it. Shane: All right guys, that wraps up another call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. Today's bible verse comes from Luke, chapter 12, verse 15. It's all about contentment. And in the bible, it says, "Beware and guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own." Guys, don't get caught up in what the world says is right. Don't get caught up in what the world says to do. Don't get caught up in constantly chasing more and more and more money. Shane: Your life is built out of can't miss moments. Your life is built out of the relationships that you have with other people, and it's built by the way you serve others through your online business, so keep everything in perspective while you're building your online dreams, while you're flipping your life, while you're living that flipped lifestyle. Build the life that you want, that lets you have those can't miss moments. That is how you find true contentment and true happiness in your life, not by becoming the next internet billionaire, gazillionaire. Not by becoming some Bitcoin investor that thinks he's making hundreds of millions of dollars and getting rich quick. It's about building a business and building a life that you want to live and that lets you be a blessing for other people. Shane: 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: Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I am launching registration for my big conference next week. My wait list is going great-- 600+ people say they want to come, there are 150 spots. Any tips for promoting sales? also, I'm going to use a Membership plugin to take registrations (MemberPress) because then I thought attendees could use that to login at the conference and get their handouts, etc. Does that sound okay, or should I use a specific event type registration plugin, or something like Eventbrite?" Question Two: "First of all, FYL Nashville Live was AWESOME!! Thanks S+J and team for making this happen. Now, on to my question: You have been offering a free month to the FYL Community. If you're comfortable sharing, what kind of results are you seeing? My membership site is ready and I'm forming my beta group. I am considering having a "free" membership tier, as a way to get folks in the door and get to my first paying customer. Do you think this is a good approach to get my first paying members? Or would you caution away from that?" Question Three: "My question - i am planning on running an evergreen webinar "in the background" while I continue to blog, provide value, etc. Any tips on how to running an evergreen webinar strategy? I am using an old webinar that I have done live over the summer on classroom management that I feel would be really beneficial to teachers now school is in full swing...I am planning on using FB for ads and letting my email lists know that I have this webinar going on...would love any tips and advice and how to maximize this strategy. Thanks, ya'll...gotta get back to my classroom ;/" Question Four: "If you had a medical condition and limited energy, how would you prioritize your time for building and running your membership?" SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS: Since the Nashville, I started a waiting list, and yesterday, launched my new class! I have 12 people signed up already. I'm teaching the first webinar one week from today!" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

In today's episode, we help Jen create a weekly webinar strategy to grow her membership! FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we helped Jen take her membership website to the next level. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today as we have another member of our Flip Your Life community on the show to celebrate success and to help them take their business to the next level. We're really, really excited to have Jen Camel on the show today. Jen, welcome. Jen Camel: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today. You have a very interesting business that I can't wait to dive into a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: Before we go there, tell our audience a little bit about you, your family, and what you're doing online. Jen Camel: I live in Southern California with my husband and my two kids. My background was in commercial real estate doing GIS analysis for companies. Then we decided to start a family, and I got pregnant, and I had planned a completely normal delivery. Never even occurred to me that I would have a c-section, but I was one of those 20% of first-time mothers who had a c-section with her first child. Going through that experience made it very clear to me how difficult it is for parents to find good information on VBAC. Jen Camel: As I dive even deeper- Shane Sams: What is- Jen Camel: ... I saw- Shane Sams: What, what does VBAC mean? Jen Camel: Oh, good segue there. VBAC is vaginal birth after cesarean. So I had just collected a bunch of information for myself and after my VBAC realized how many other parents were seeking this same level of information. So VBAC Facts was born. As the website grew and I collected more of an audience I saw how many birth professionals really had a hard time staying on top of the evidence themselves and really wanted a more in depth understanding of what the research actually said so they can effectively guide their clients. Jen Camel: VBAC Facts was really born again when I started my membership site about four months ago. Shane Sams: Let me ask you this ... Okay, this is a big leap here. You went from commercial real estate to vaginal birth education, right? And it was basically because of this personal experience that you had. You had a c-section with your first child, but when you had other children you wanted to have it the natural way, correct- Jen Camel: Exactly. Shane Sams: ... is that what I'm [crosstalk 00:02:40]. Okay. Jen Camel: Exactly, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: You primarily target birth professionals then? Jen Camel: I do. A lot of parents come to the site as well and there's a ton of information online for parents, but I found that birth professionals are really the ones who were interested in diving deeper and were interested in the higher level of analysis that I offer. Shane Sams: Parents are like my wife's had to have a c-section so now you're like looking for information but it's not like you really want to buy something to really dive and get into it. But for the birth professional are we talking midwives, and doulas, and nurses, and people like that? Jen Camel: Exactly. Shane Sams: They want to go farther, right? Jen Camel: Exactly. I do have online classes for parents available for those who do want to dive deeper. But I just found that birth professionals were really the ones who were interested in that level of information. Shane Sams: Jocelyn, when we had our first child, had to have a c-section. It was scheduled. Was it because he was late or because- Jocelyn Sams: No, it was because of his size. I don't know. It's kind of a long story, but my doctor said, "I'm not going to use any instruments because he's just too big." So we just made a decision to do that. My other child, she was breach. Shane Sams: Yeah, so we had to do that. I remember though, you talk about parents like this, I remember I was like, "Oh my gosh, you got to have a c-section. What does that even mean?" I'm a football coach and when a football coach has a game he watches game film to prepare for it. I remember before Isaac was born I was sitting there on YouTube and I was watching c-sections, mildly horrified, but kind of just intrigued by it. I was like, "Jocelyn, come over here and check this out." She was like- Jocelyn Sams: I'm like, "Absolutely not." Shane Sams: She was like absolutely [crosstalk 00:04:26]. It's funny, because you said the birth professionals would be interested in this. I remember after I watched a couple videos it was just kind of like, "I'm over it." That's the surface knowledge that I need to help me go forward. But I could also see it was very scary because you don't know what it is until you have to go through it, right? Jen Camel: Yeah exactly. With parents in particular it's trying to help them eliminate those unknowns so they can go in and they have an understanding of the lay of the land, and what this means for their future pregnancies, and what their future options are so that way they don't feel so trapped in it. Sometimes parents are told once a c-section always a c-section and that's just not the case. Shane Sams: You basically did a ton of research on this. Are you a nurse, are you trained? Jen Camel: I'm not a nurse. Shane Sams: Okay, perfect. Jocelyn Sams: I love that. Shane Sams: I love that, that's awesome. Jen Camel: I'm a consumer advocate. Shane Sams: That's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: I love it. Shane Sams: That's a great way to say that for anyone out there listing who thinks you've got to have some kind of crazy professional degree. It's a consumer advocate, that's an awesome term. Shane Sams: You built this information for yourself. Started blogging, sharing this on your website and it grew into an audience of birth professionals who were leaning kind of on your research and your efforts to curate all the latest facts into a nice, neat package where they could go consume it, correct? Jen Camel: Absolutely. My first step was actually, I went immediately to speaking around the country. I grew the website when my son was about three years old, my second child. I started traveling around the country and presenting a six hour program that I had developed. Then I digitized that program online. Then I had other offerings, other courses, I had handouts. Then I about four months ago decided to just package all of that, except for the parent course, within the membership site. Then I have additional offerings for members. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, I love that idea. I think that it's really cool membership. Jocelyn Sams: We love to start all of our calls by celebrating a win and you recently shared a success story with us our community. Tell everybody about your recent win, what did you share with us in the community? Shane Sams: You just told us about your membership, you launched your membership, how did that go? Jen Camel: Well I was super thrilled to have 17 people join on my launch. Jocelyn Sams: That's awesome. Jen Camel: Yeah, yeah, it was pretty exciting. Then in the last few months it's grown to 33 people. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: Sweet. Shane Sams: That's incredible. How much revenue did that generate, adding a membership to everything? Jen Camel: Total, it's been $7000 over the last 3 or 4 months. Jocelyn Sams: That's fantastic. Shane Sams: Isn't that amazing that you were a commercial real estate professional who had a life experience and you accumulated enough knowledge to be not only an expert, but expert enough to teach professionals about this topic. Now you've created this thing online that can generate $1000s. Is that not absolutely mind blowing that's even possible in this day and age? Jen Camel: It really is and it's super exciting because it just goes to show that if you are super motivated and if you ... I'm just a naturally curious person and that's how this whole thing developed is I was just like, "Well I want to know all this stuff inside and out for myself." Then as I developed products and I had doctors look at it, and I had nurses look at it, and they would verify, "Yeah, you're on course." Then as I would learn how to analyze medical research, which is a massive learning curve, so much opens up for you if you're able to just be willing to learn and also have the time to do it, which is always the consistent struggle. Shane Sams: It's like the people that you're teaching, what's amazing is we think about experts and we put people on this pedestal. But a nurse or a birth professional is kind of a generalist. They're dealing with multiple topics and they don't have the time to dig deep into this one thing, vaginal birth after caesarian section. You have dedicated yourself because of a life experience to doing that. You're serving them. You're helping them give better care to their patients just because you're giving them the right amount of information. That's amazing. Jen Camel: Absolutely. Everyone's busy and when you're working full-time, and you have a family, and you have friends, and you might actually want to have a hobby or exercise, or do something for yourself, there's just not time in the day to stay on top of the mounds of medical research that are published every month. Then you couple that with the political realities of VBAC. We think medical care is like okay, you have XYZ symptom, you're going to be given the risk and benefits of your options, and then you're going to make a decision. The truth is, maternity care is nothing like that. Maternity care there's a whole lot of other factors that impact how those risks and benefits are relayed to patients. For providers and birth professionals to have a solid grasp on the research, it empowers them to be able to have confident conversations with their clients about the latest research so their clients can make truly informed decisions. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Let me ask you this, are you still doing real estate or do you only deal with your blog, and your speaking, and your membership? Jen Camel: This is all I've been doing for the last 10 years is VBAC Facts. Shane Sams: So you basically built this speaking career type business and you put yourself out there with these trainings and now you're trying to transition that into this more membership model, more home-driven kind of business. Why are you making this shift? If you had this speaking, you were kind of renowned as an expert, and your blog took off, what's the point of changing it to digital delivery, membership site, connecting professionals around your trainings? Why are you doing that? Jen Camel: Well when I first started speaking I was traveling quite a bit and it just was really hard to travel so much. Then also, you don't have the time to create, I didn't have the time to create other offerings because I was so busy traveling. Jen Camel: I still travel and I still speak. In fact, this past weekend I was in Florida, but transitioning to the membership site enables me to offer more to my audience. What that looks like is offering a monthly literature review for my audience, as well as flushing out my patient handout series and offering other continuing education trainings online. It just enables me to reach more people and provide a higher quality of information with me not spending so much time traveling. Shane Sams: That's awesome. I'm sure some people would look and say, "Oh you're a speaker, what a cool thing. You get to do that." Jen Camel: Oh it is, it's super cool. Shane Sams: And it is. Jen Camel: It's awesome, it's- Shane Sams: But then they don't realize you have bigger mission, which is to help more people with this thing that you've become passionate about. Jen Camel: My mission is to increase access to VBAC. So every parent who's pregnant after a caesarian knows that they will be able to have a respectful birth. Jen Camel: The truth is, there are 100s of 1000s of parents in the United States right now who are pregnant after a caesarian and they're filled with anxiety and fear because they are told that you either have to have a repeat caesarian or they have to have an out-of-hospital birth, an unassisted birth, or travel 100s of miles to another facility that supports VBAC. Not only does that put parents in a dangerous situation, but it also denies their right to make their own medical decisions about their body. Shane Sams: Wow. What a powerful mission. That's just awesome. This is why I love online business because it just gives you so much power to do that. Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I have a mission to help 100,000 families learn how to start an online business. I love what you said there, just to know it's possible. You don't have to do what the world told you to do your whole life. You don't have to do what society says is a good job. You don't have to go to law school if you don't want to just because your mom and dad wants you to. You don't have to go climb the corporate ladder. I just love how you said that, your mission is to empower people with this knowledge that you didn't have when you entered into this situation and you're using online business to do that. It's amazing. Jen Camel: Yeah well it's the constant stories that I get from parents that drive me and the reports that I get from birth professionals on the political nature of medical care in their hospitals that just continually reinforces how important it is to get this information out there. Jocelyn Sams: I love how you just started it and just didn't really care that you weren't a medical professional because that's a problem that we hear a lot of people say in our community. "I'd love to start my own business but I don't really know anything or I'm not an expert in anything." Well become an expert. That's exactly what Jen did, so I love that. Shane Sams: Were you afraid when you first started? The first time you ever spoke or anything did you have any fear? We usually ask people about their fears and obstacles and you've come ... You're pretty advanced in your business right now, which we're going to talk about here in a few minutes, but did that worry you a little bit where you were "I'm teaching medical people about medical stuff?" How did you get past that? Jen Camel: Of course you are always concerned that you want to make sure you're saying the right thing. You want to make sure you're expressing it the right way and so I had my little test groups of people who would review my materials and when I would present I would have providers, especially when you have obstetrician come up to you afterwards, like this past weekend, and tell me that was the best presentation on VBAC he's ever seen, and he was also a math major before he went into to medical school and he loved how I explained these complicated statistical concepts in a way that anyone can understand. So that's validating. Jen Camel: As I spoke more and I got more and more feedback from doctors, and nurses, and midwives, I knew I was on the right track. Shane Sams: The moral of the story there is hey look, if you're scared that you're not an expert enough go do it enough until you're an expert. Eventually, you're going to do it so much that you just know it inside and out and that was has basically happened with you and your business. It's amazing. Shane Sams: Let me ask you something else here before we get to your question today. A lot of people in the forums this is one of the most common questions that we get in the Flip Your Life community, on the podcast, in any coaching that we do is what about liability, what if I get sued? What if someone does this? What about my disclaimers? What about my terms and conditions? It's funny because the people writing this are usually teaching people how to play an instrument or maybe I had a football coach one time and he was worried about getting sued because he was selling drills. But here you are literally giving people information in kind of a life or death situation. How did you overcome that fear of I'm not going to get totally legally ran over or how did you figure out what to put in your terms, and conditions, and disclaimers? What do you do about that in your business because it is medically related and I'm sure that there's other people out there listening to this that that could help them? Jen Camel: Well there are multiple levels to that answer. The first one is be very clear that I am not a medical professional. I am a consumer advocate and I have that in my bio. I have that all over the place that I am not a medical professional. It's also in my terms of service that it's very clear that I'm not giving medical advice. Even if someone is a doctor, or a nurse, or a midwife in my community forums they're not qualified to give anyone medical advice because they don't know your entire background. I actually went through my terms of service with an attorney and have them go over that with me, so it's just crystal clear that who I am and what I'm doing is I'm sharing information and it is the obligation of the people who are collecting that information or absorbing that information from me to review it, particularly if you're a parent, to review it with your birth professional or your medical provider, and review in their individual situation. What is right for one person isn't right for another and only their medical provider can tell them what are the risks and benefits in their individual situation. Jen Camel: What I'm sharing is more of a higher level information. Then how it applies to someone individually is a conversation they have with their medical provider. I'm very clear about that throughout all of my trainings and my materials is you have to talk about this with your provider because you, as someone who is not a medical professional, may not be able to apply this information effectively to yourself. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's another thing that we have too is like in our terms and conditions ... Another big question that we get, because a lot of our community members succeed and so every month we get people that write us and they're like, "Is it time to quit my job?" We're like, "We give you a lot of information." We point people in the right direction. We do a lot of things for people, that's the one place that we never go is it's time to quit your job because I don't know what's in your bank account. I don't know all of the information in your situation. All I know are these snippets where we can help you take your next step. That's usually where we're at, but you've got to make those big decisions and that's true in every business. For anybody out there worried about the legal stuff, don't let that be a road block, you can figure that part out just like we all have. Jen Camel: Well and talk to an attorney, that's the big thing. Talk to an attorney and understand what your level of exposure is and then decide what you're comfortable with. Jocelyn Sams: All right, you've had some great insights so far. I think this is going to help people a lot who are trying to start out and they have these mindset struggles. Let's move on to your question about what could we help you with to help you get to the next level. What is your question today? Jen Camel: Well I've heard a lot about growing your business with weekly webinars. My question is, how do you structure the marketing? Am I emailing my list every week regarding the webinar with a heads up email and a last minute email? Am I creating Facebook ads? How many emails am I sending after they register and follow up? Jocelyn Sams: That's a great question from Jen today. We'll get to that answer in just a moment. Jocelyn Sams: But first, did you know that you can get the answers that you need to start, build, and grow your online business too? All you have to do is join us inside of Flip Your Life community where you can get all of your training, coaching, and support you need so that you can learn how to start and grow your own online business. The best part is you can get started today for free. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and you can start your one month free trial right away. You can join 100s of other family-focused entrepreneurs from all over the world inside of Flip Your Life community. You can learn how we started our own online business, replaced our income, quit our jobs, and we work from home every day. You can get started right now at no cost. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and start your free month today. Shane Sams: All right, this is a question that we've really not covered a lot on the show, so I'm really glad that you asked that because it can be confusing to hear, "Do a webinar all the time," and you're like, "But who's going to come to the webinar?" How do I get people to the webinar? How often do I promote the webinar? What do I do with the webinar? Shane Sams: It's important to not focus on the actual webinar and to focus on what the webinar is. The webinar is actually [inaudible 00:19:54]. It is a sales tool and you are going to sell on the webinar, but the main thing that you're trying to do is to find people that will buy your product and get them on your email list, right? Jen Camel: Ah, okay. Shane Sams: When you're doing webinars as a strategy, and that can be monthly, that can be weekly, whatever it is, it can be evergreen, it can be live, it doesn't matter. The number one thing you got to focus on is the ad campaign that gets people to register for the webinar because that's an opt-in. You are going to have ads going all the time. If you're going to do this like ... How often do you plan on doing it? Jen Camel: Well I mean I was thinking maybe starting off with monthly and maybe going to weekly. I'm not sure. I'm just concerned about slamming my current email list and so- Shane Sams: Yeah, don't worry about that because the goal is to flood new people in and invite people who are on the list to the webinars, okay? Jen Camel: Okay. Shane Sams: What happens is usually you start a ... Let's say we're going to do one once a month for right now. No, let's do this, let's play once a week to get over that fear of slamming your email list, all right? Jen Camel: Okay. Shane Sams: Let's say you're going to do a webinar every week, even if you don't. It can be the same webinar first of all. You don't have to do a different topic, you don't have to do a different thing every week because remember, if you've got 10,000 people on an email list and 100 show up to your webinar there's still 9,900 people that did not see that webinar, so what does it matter if you promote it every single week? It doesn't matter until they all watch it, so don't worry about that because you're never going to have your whole list show up for the webinar and get bored with it. Shane Sams: What we've found is when we do the same webinar twice we have a lot of repeat people come and see it again because they like going to the Q&A because the Q&A and is always different, they want to see the same topic over and over again. Shane Sams: Basically, if you're going to do a webinar let's say you're going to do it on Sunday night, on Thursday you start ads. You run ads, you try to get them to a page where they register for the webinar, they pick the time, they get the reminders and all that. Then you're going to send followup emails at 48 hours, 24 hours, and an hour before the webinar. What happens is let's say I see your ad on Thursday, I register. "Hey thanks for singing up, we'll send you reminders to let you know there's going to be a webinar." The reminders are, "Hey, we're going to have a webinar tomorrow," that comes out 48 hours before. "Hey, we're going to have a webinar tonight," that comes out the morning of. "Hey, we start in one hour." That's your basic reminders. Now some people do one like, "We're starting," as well. Now, you don't have to send all of those to your entire list every time. That's for the people that registered during that week or whatever. Anybody else on your email list, just send a message out the morning of, "Hey, I'm having a webinar tonight," and then, "Hey, we're starting." Then you can pull in people that are already on your list that way. That's pretty much the flow that we use when we have webinars, so don't over-complicate it. Jocelyn Sams: I like this idea of maybe doing ads too to people who have been on your page, maybe that aren't on your email list, but they're interested in your website. So you could also invite them via an ad. Shane Sams: You can also upload your email list and just say, "Hey, I'm having a webinar," and let them re-register. Right? See what I'm saying? Then you don't have to email people a 1000 times, you get them in another way. They know you. They're on your email list and it's like, "Hey, this is Jen from VBAC and I'm having a webinar this Sunday that you've never been to. You need to be there." Just let them re-register and tag them in some way. Shane Sams: What do you use for your email provider? Jen Camel: ConvertKit. Shane Sams: Oh yeah, perfect. ConvertKit can tag them. Jen Camel: Exactly [crosstalk 00:23:38]. Shane Sams: That's how you reach people without having to email them 100 times every week. You're not going to send the reminders for the webinar to your entire email list every single list, but you can in a P.S. mention it [crosstalk 00:23:53]. Say, "Hey, I'm having a webinar, have you registered for it before?" Jen Camel: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: Find other strategic ways to let them know because that is actually a mistake that a lot of people make with webinars. They'll only remind people that signed up that week. No, why would you have a list if you weren't going to remind them every time you were doing something cool? I send an email out every time I go on Facebook or YouTube Live. I'm like, "Hey guys, I'm going live in 15 minutes," just because I want them to be there. There's other ways that you can get to them that way. Shane Sams: Focus on leads Jen because most of the people ... let's say you get 1000 emails and let's say 100 show up, for easy number. [crosstalk 00:24:32] in that case, you're probably only going to sell 5 to 10. But the point is, you have 90 other interested people who you can market to through your email list, through your other things to get them to buy, through your specials, through your sales, through whatever. It's those other emails that are the real value in doing the webinars because you have leads. Jen Camel: Yeah exactly, exactly. Then what your follow up email sequence after the webinar? What do you recommend? Shane Sams: Usually we just send out a simple one email, "Hey, here's the replay if you didn't come." Then I just let them go into my general auto responder and my general list [crosstalk 00:25:12]. Jocelyn Sams: Depending on how many people are there, how many people sign up we've even started doing some things that don't really scale like sending them personal videos. Like I might send a video and say, "Hey Jen, noticed you registered for my webinar but you weren't able to come. I was just wondering if you had any questions. Let me know." Shane Sams: If you have 100 people at a webinar and 10 of them buy you have 90 people left. What if you sent 90 people a 1 minute video. It would take two hours to do that and you're saying the same thing every time, you're just like, "Hey, Jocelyn." "Hey Shane." "Hey, Jen." But you're actually taking the time to personally do that on video and they see you, that two hours may produce 5 more sales and if you're selling a $1000 product that's $5000. Those little things like that to follow up always usually pay off. Jen Camel: Okay, that's a great idea. Shane Sams: How did you envision this? Where were you stumped on this question? Where did it have you paralyzed or where were you overwhelmed with it compared to what we just said? Jen Camel: For me really I was worried about slamming my list. I was wondering how often should I be emailing my list about these webinars. Then I was also just thinking through the technical back end of setting all of this up in ConvertKit, like if I set up a sequence for people who registered on week one, if the register again on week two ConvertKit isn't going to send them that sequence again. Shane Sams: Right, I see what- Jen Camel: You see what I'm saying? It's just a little bit of those technical details of trying to figure out, well I guess those people would just receive the email that goes out to my entire list that second week rather than ... See, I'd still have to figure out that sort of technical part. Shane Sams: Yeah. Look, there's always going to be a hiccup where some people don't get the email or some people get an email they shouldn't, that's impossible. What you have to do is create something that actually makes sense in your brain. Here's what makes sense, I'm going to get a new person to register. I'm going to remind them the day before and I'm going to remind them the day of. That makes sense. Now, if they opt-in three times for the same webinar and all the sequences get screwed up that's probably going to happen sometimes. Then, in the second tier you say, I'm going to tell my whole list every week that there's going to be a webinar. That's okay, they're not going to get mad, they're not going to unsubscribe if you present it correctly. "Hey guys, here's that webinar." You can also exclude people that have been. Jen Camel: Yes, exactly, yeah I would do that. Shane Sams: You can exclude people that have been if that's really a worry, but I would just remind everybody because they may want to come back, they may want to do it again and you want to keep it simple. How simple is a broadcast on Sunday morning or on Friday night, or whenever you do the webinar? The easier you can make it in your brain the easier it will be when you build it in your tool. Jen Camel: What are your feelings about presenting it live versus having them access a prerecorded webinar? Jocelyn Sams: I think it really depends on your goal, you can do it either way. If it's something that you can do regularly you can do it live. Live ones will get a better conversion typically, but, you can't do them as often because your schedule doesn't allow it. The cool thing about an automated webinar is that you can do it as often as you want, but the conversion might not be quite as high as it would with a live one. Shane Sams: Also too there's a hybrid way. We have a really good friend who does the live webinar, but basically the whole webinar is recorded. He shows up, welcomes everybody, hits play, and then he shows up for the Q&A and answers it live. That removes some fears about a good presentation or a good sales pitch because you can do it really good one, but you're actually there too to help with the sale and the conversations, right? Shane Sams: Listen, there's no reason you can't do both. This is something that a lot of people don't realize. What if you did one live one and then the other two weeks of the month you did evergreen ones, you just played a replay of one you did before? Just be really open and honest, and transparent, this is not live. Put it in big red letters above it, this is a prerecording, but you're here. You can run both so you can get the best of both worlds. This is not really an either/or. It's basically what you want to do. Shane Sams: For me and Jocelyn we really don't love doing live webinars because one of our most important things to us is flexibility with our schedule, that's a value. I would rather get lower conversion rates and just play stuff evergreen, or we've even kind of fallen back to just promoting content like sending people to our YouTube videos, sending people to an old podcast because we just value our time differently. We like live webinars. We try to do one every month or two, but it's not a priority for us. But, if it is a priority for you and you like doing it live ... My guess is you're a speaker so you're going to be really good at this, that you probably would do really, really well for a while doing some live ones and then take the best ones and turn them into evergreen on the backend. Jen Camel: I love presenting. The issue is always time. That's always the issue. Shane Sams: When would you schedule them? When would you- Jen Camel: Well I'm thinking of maybe having it at a different time every week. The thing with the schedules of birth professionals is that often they are very unpredictable because people go into labor and they might have something scheduled and they can't attend. I think also offering people maybe a followup email offering them a link for those who couldn't attend live, a link to the recording. Jen Camel: In the webinar are you offering a special for them to sign up and it's only valid if they sign up then or are you honoring that after the webinar is over? Shane Sams: It would be honored in the replay period. Let's say here's a replay or we're going to honor this for 24 hours, or you could just not even rely on scarcity. Jocelyn and I don't really open and close things. What we do is we have special kinds of offers that we offer on our webinars so we don't have to do the in 24 hours you'll miss out and we may never do this again. Shane Sams: For example, one of the things that we usually sell on our webinars is a quarterly price for our membership. We have a free trial, that free trial turns into a monthly, and then we have an annual if you want to save like 50%. Those just always exist, but the only time we ever really offer a quarterly price is on our webinars, so it's easy for us to say, "Hey, this thing is usually X dollars a month, but here's the quarterly price. It will save you this percentage. This is only available on this webinar." Even if you see the webinar in replay it's still only available on that webinar. That's how we've done that in the past because we hate the launch model. We love scarcity and timing because it does work. But we try to get our scarcity based around more like sales, like Black Friday or there's a reason for it, not we're on a magic webinar and you happen to tune in at the right time, and it may or may not be live, and here's the timer. Shane Sams: It's just easier to offer something that's only available there instead of only available for a limited time, especially in your niche because way to know your avatar, because I never would have even though, "Oh man, what if somebody shows up to the webinar and they got to run out and deliver a baby?" Right, like [crosstalk 00:32:36] concern for your people so if you're like, "You've got 30 minutes," and you're like, "But she's only dilated to 9." Jen Camel: Yeah, exactly [crosstalk 00:32:44] and so that's part of the challenge with the whole scarcity thing is because if someone's at a birth for 36 hours and they miss that window- Shane Sams: God bless that women and family- Jen Camel: Exactly, I know, I know. Offering something during the webinar that is not typically available. I'd have to think about what that is. Jocelyn Sams: It could be like bonuses. There's different options of things you can do. Shane Sams: Do you have your- Jocelyn Sams: You don't have to just discount. Shane Sams: Do you have your speeches filmed or whatever? Jen Camel: Well I don't. Shane Sams: Let me just tell you where I'm going here. If next time you speak have someone record you or record yourself, and get three or four of those, and just put them together in a little package that's not in your membership, and just say, "Hey, anyone who joins on this webinar will get unlimited access forever to these three talks I did." That way you've got a little bonus thing that you kind of keep out of your membership, and there's a reason to keep it out of your membership is you want people to go see you live. Those are out and to reward people for showing up at your webinar you let them have this thing just like if they would have showed up at your life event. That's a little something you can keep back. That's a good tactic for bonuses is to keep something out of your membership that you can use only on webinars and anyone that signs up then gets that and you can't get it anywhere else. That's evergreen, that's just three videos on a page with a link. So they get an email with a link to those and they've got it at the end of the webinar. There's lots of ways to create scarcity besides putting a timer on it. Jen Camel: Yeah exactly, exactly. I'm trying to think of what bonus I would offer in the meantime before I get those three talks recorded. Shane Sams: Well you have your talks prepared. You could just set up shop one day and record them. Jocelyn Sams: Just do a screen capture video. Shane Sams: Are you speaking again anytime soon? Jen Camel: Not until December. Shane Sams: Okay, well just do three little things that aren't in the membership for now. Jocelyn Sams: Just don't make it so hard. Shane Sams: Yeah. Jen Camel: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Do a screen capture video of one of your talks that you did. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's all you got to do. Jen Camel: Okay, awesome. Shane Sams: Does that dispel a little bit of your fears about the webinar process and how it's not as complicated as you think? Jen Camel: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: All right, great questions today Jen. I can't wait to see what you do taking action on these. Jocelyn Sams: With that in mind, let us know what you plan to take action on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about today. Jen Camel: Well I am going to schedule my first webinar and start setting up all that back end. As you know, it's so time consuming to get all of the tags set up and all of your sequences set up. Just to get all of that foundation down, so that way when I want to schedule my weekly webinar it's all ready to go. Shane Sams: Awesome. Hey, you invest your time now and you never have to do it again, right? Jen Camel: Exactly. Shane Sams: Hey listen, you've done so much, we just want to first of all say congratulations on building a viable online business that is making money and you've really flipped your life. You are in total control of your life, you get in total control of your business. We are super proud of you and we cannot wait to see what happens next when you start doing these webinars. Shane Sams: Thanks again for coming on the show, and being so transparent, and just letting everybody listen in today so that they can build their business as well. Jen Camel: It's been my pleasure and I'll see you guys in Nashville. Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Yay. Shane Sams: All right guys, that was another great call with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Remember, you can join right now for free and become a member of the Flip Your Life community and flippedlifestyle.com/free. We would love to have you in our forums. We would love to see the successes that you're having in your online business. Who knows, maybe someday you'll be a guest on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane Sams: Before we close up we like to close all of our shows with a verse from the Bible. Today's bible verse is Proverbs 12:11. The Bible says, "A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense." So just like we talked about on today's show guys, get out there and do the work. Invest the time, invest the effort, invest the money in your business so that you can have success. Don't chase all these gurus, don't chase all the fantasies, don't chase the get rich quick schemes out there. Do the work and it will pay off. Until next time, get out there and take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Jen's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I am looking into buying a new website/business to enhance my current membership. I currently sell a meal plan subscription, this business would do the same, but add more products for me and help me to close the sale to those that may not have bought as the members could pick their own meals and won't have to have them chosen for them. It's a great enhancement to my site, but I don't know if I should spend the money or add the work, when I still have room for growth on my current program. Advice?" Question Two: "My content for my blog also needs to be designed nicely. I do not know how to do design. Write it then outsource?" Question Three: "Talk to me about Evergreen webinars and how I can use them to sell my membership and get more members. How would you suggest I incorporate an evergreen webinar into my current email nurturing sequence for people who have opted into one of my freebies? Or should I have it as a separate freebie, as a separate funnel on my website? Jocelyn, I'd love to hear how you successfully used evergreen webinars for Elementary Librarian " CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

In today's episode, we help Luke grow his audience to get more consistent membership sales.  FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we help Luke take his education business to the next level. 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? And 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 today's podcast, on today's show. And we're going to celebrate some big wins with them and help them take their business to the next level. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member Luke Reed. Luke, welcome to the show. Luke: Hey. Thanks for having me. Jocelyn: It is great to have you today, Luke. And we are super excited because just a few minutes ago before the show started, I heard some gentle mooing in the background. And we determined that this is the first ever cow appearance on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane: Yeah. [inaudible 00:01:08]. As we talk to Luke, and he is standing outside in a cow pasture apparently, right now. You're going to hear some mooing. Our dogs are in the house. They may come in and start barking at the cows mooing through the microphones. Jocelyn: And you know what, it kind of surprised it's taken us over 200 episodes to get cows on the podcast because- Shane: I know. Right? We lived out in the country. Jocelyn: Kentucky. Shane: We have a cow pasture. We should go out, Jocelyn, to the cow pasture next door. And maybe our cows could talk to Luke's cows. That would be amazing. Jocelyn: You can never have too many cows on a podcast. Right? Luke: Why don't we try it, see? Shane: Where are you and why do you have so many cows surrounding you right now? And should we be worried for your safety? Luke: No, I am perfectly safe. But I'm in the middle of a cattle ranch, so there are cows about 200 yards away from me right now. Shane: Nice. Okay. Well, if they charge, you let us know and we'll pause the recording. And we'll edit out any trampling that happens. Okay? Jocelyn: If this whole cow thing doesn't work out for you, we need to know a little bit more about what you're doing online, so tell us a little bit about you, your family, your background, and your online business. Luke: My online business started as many of your members, after listening to Pat Flynn and hearing your story on Pat Flynn's podcast. And I heard your story, and it just sounded so real. It really resonated with what I wanted to do and the freedom that I wanted to try and build for my family. I really took off after listening to that. I'm in the education business, so I was able to model a lot of what I've done after what you started with, with Elementary Librarian and US History Teachers. And it's gone pretty well. In, let's see, it's been just about exactly one year, I found a business partner to do the curriculum side of the business. And we built the website and put together the curriculum. Now we've got our first few sales already, so it's gone pretty quickly. Shane: Tell us a little bit about your family and where you're from. Where are you at? What is your background? Like you said, you're in the education field. Tell us a little bit more about that. Tell us about your wife, kids, stuff like that. Luke: Okay. I'm in Central California. I was born and raised in a little town smack dab in the middle of California. Grew up here and went to school here. Got my degree at the most recent University of California campus, which opened just as I finished my bachelor's, so I went on and got graduate degrees done. My wife is the reason that I'm now renting a house in the middle of a cattle ranch. Her father is a rancher, so she grew up raising cows, working cows. And it turns out that her dad and herself, they have a genetic mutation that causes heart failure, early onset heart failure, so part of my reason for wanting to do the online business is that. I want to be able to have freedom to spend more time as my wife goes through the health problems that she's dealing with. Luke: And we've got two little boys. Our older son is our biological son. And then our younger son is adopted, so we just recently finished that adoption process, so got two boys now. We really like the bigger family. Two kids is just so different than just one. Shane: Oh, yeah. My father-in-law always used to tell me, and I'm sure this is going to offend someone out there who only has one kid. My father-in-law used to tell me when we had our first kid. I was like, "Yeah. I'm a parent now. I'm a real grown up." Right? That's how I felt. He'd just laugh at me. And he would go, "You've got one kid. You're not a real parent until you have at least two." And I used to get so mad at him for saying that. Jocelyn: But then after we had two we're like, "Oh, he's kind of right." Shane: We were like, "You were right, bro. Pops, come on, man. You were right." It's hard. Jocelyn: It's true. Shane: I can't imagine going to three or four. I can't even fathom that. Jocelyn: I can't either. Two is good. Shane: I'm not tough enough for that. I know I'm not. I am not man enough to go. I'm running man to man coverage right now. I do not want to have to go to zone. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn: A couple of things kind of struck me about what you were talking about. First of all, that you live in a cow pasture in the middle of California. People probably weren't expecting that. Shane: People are like, "Wait. There's cows in California?" Jocelyn: There are because I've seen those commercials about cheese. Luke: Yeah. The happy cows. Jocelyn: That's right. Happy cows in California, so Luke's cows are happy I guess. Another thing that you said that kind of struck me was that you are in California, which means that it's like 6:00 AM there. Right? Luke: Yes. Well, 6:20 now, but yeah. Shane: You're doing what it takes to get up and make this online business thing happen. That's why we love you, Luke. That's why we wanted to bring you on the show too, just because I know you're doing the work. And I know you're dedicated. And your why is so powerful because you've got this really real threat in your life to the health of the person that you love. And to be able to say, "Hey. It would be really cool not to go to work," and be able to come home, and to be able to work with your wife, around your wife, and spend more time with your wife as she deals with these health problems. That's a really, really powerful way. Jocelyn: Right now you're still working. Right? Tell us a little bit about that. Luke: Right. I have a job as a lab coordinator, instructional lab coordinator, actually at the school where I got my degree. I finished- Shane: What's your degree in? What is your degree in? Luke: My degree's in chemistry. Shane: Chemistry. That's right. Luke: I work as lab coordinator there. And it's actually a really good job. It's very flexible. Working at a university is pretty friendly towards the workers. There's not a lot of hostile environment of get more work done and make us more money. But it is still a job and you have to go there. You have to be there. You have to do what other people want you to do. If I can move on from that at some point, I would really like to. And that's the goal. Shane: Awesome. Jocelyn: Lately we have been making some changes to our podcast. And what I mean by that is that when we started the free trial in our membership, our members started growing, so we have a lot of people in the membership now. And when we first started out, it was sort of just like a perk for being a member for so long that you got to be on the podcast. But now that we have so many members, we can't really do that anymore. So what we've decided to do is, we look for people who are posting success stories regularly. And the reason that we do that is because we know that those people are doing the work. One of the ways that we know Luke is doing the work is because he is posting regularly in that success stories thread. And recently you told a success story to us that I would like for you to share with the listeners. Shane: It blew our mind when we read this because this was like the epitome of online business. Right? This is why you do it. Tell us a little bit more about that success story that you shared. Luke: Yeah. It was my first online sale. And it was for an annual subscription to the lesson plans that I've made with my business partner. And it actually happened while my wife was in the hospital recovering from a blood clot that lodged in her kidney. So we had been there. Let's see, we got there on a Thursday. And they got her in, they got her into her room. Got her pain under control. She was there for four days. And on that fourth day, I had gone to my parents to see my kids, take a little break from the hospital environment. And as I was there relaxing, I heard notification come through on my phone. I went and checked it. Thought it was just going to be another email. And I pulled it up, and it says, "You just received a payment, $397 for an annual subscription." Jocelyn: Yay. There was a celebratory moo. Shane: Instead of celebratory mood. [crosstalk 00:09:44]. The cow is happy. You're happy. We're happy. The listeners are happy. This is the best podcast we've done in weeks. Amazing. Yeah. When you saw that, did you feel like the magnitude of, I have spent the last four days taking care of my wife in the hospital, and in the background my marketing, my website, my social media, everything kept working for me? Even though I couldn't pay total attention to it, even though I could only check it here and there from the hospital room, did it hit you? Like man, if you could make your whole living like this, then all of these things, your kids getting sick, your spouse getting sick, you would be able to deal with those things instead of business. Luke: Honestly, it didn't hit me. That was the reality. But what actually hit me was pretty much complete freak out moment. This can't be right. I don't know what's going on. I think I need to contact this guy. And he probably wants- Jocelyn: Somebody accidentally typed in their credit card numbers. Luke: Yeah. Yeah. I think what I really realized instantly was that, oh my goodness, I've got a horrible problem with fear of success. And it took me another day and a half to settle down and be okay with the fact that somebody sent me money. And then it started to sink in. Oh, this works no matter what you're doing. Shane: Did you tell your wife? Did you call her immediately and like, "I just made a sale"? What was that? Luke: No, actually I waited until I was ... I processed it and I was over the initial reaction of this had to have been a mistake. And I told her a couple days later, and she was feeling a bit better. She could handle some news at that point. So it wasn't until a couple days after it happened that I told anybody. And then she just kind of looked at me like, "Okay. Well, you've been working on it, so there you go. What's the big deal?" Shane: Right. Exactly. You know? Jocelyn: I'm reading through some of the things that you wrote here. And I love what you said. It says, "Anyone who says they don't have time for online business doesn't want it badly enough. If I can use the time waiting for my wife to be out of surgery to answer questions and work on blog posts, anyone can find some time." Shane: Wow. That's deep, man. Jocelyn: That's very profound. Shane: And it's also powerful because we've had family members get sick. And their spouse had to go to work to be able to pay for their bills, to be able to do ... And they literally, someone has to go and sit with the spouse while their husband or wife had to go to work. Right? And it's just incredible to hear that I can sit in the hospital, in the room, and work on my business while taking care of my spouse. My family member can go to surgery. I can take care of my things, but be there when they wake up for surgery. And these opportunities that we have to take control of our lives are just amazing. And we have to take advantage of them because 20 years ago, people didn't have that opportunity. Right? Luke: Yeah. Yeah, it is quite an opportunity. You can do it anywhere, whatever's going on. If you can sit down and focus for a few minutes, you can get something done. It's quite an opportunity. And it would be a shame to just let it go by. Jocelyn: I totally agree. You clearly don't struggle with time. That's something that a lot of people say that they struggle with, so that is really cool. Shane: Well, first of all, congratulations for everything that's got you to this point, and on getting that first sale, especially such a big sale. I think back at our 11 cent moment. The first money we ever made online was 11 cents on an ad click, and I thought that was the greatest thing ever. And you're dropping $400 bones in your back account like nothing. Right? But I want to go back and just point out you have been an active member in the Flip Your Life community. You post your success forums. You post your action plan posts. You go in there and ask questions. You did a workshop with us. You worked with us. We worked with you one on one a little bit in coaching and call environment. And you've really put in the effort and the investment to get to that point of that first sale, because I don't want anyone out there to listen and say, "Well, he started a website, and someone found it. And he got lucky." Right? Shane: Because Luke did not get lucky. Luke put in the work. He put himself in the right place at the right time so that someone could find that product and make that purchase. You need to just look in the mirror and say, "I deserve success," because you're putting in the work. And some people get really overwhelmed when people send them that money and think, "Wow. Do I deserve this? Am I expert enough? Is this really me?" And then imposter syndrome kicks in. And we've got to kick that to the side right now because if you can get one person to give you $400, then you can find 100 people to do it. You can find 1000 people to do it because there's more people out there just like that buyer. And it's just amazing watching your journey. And when we see these success stories in the Flip Your Life community because Jocelyn and I know all the background. And I just wanted to really bring that up because the listener may not know that, that you've done the work. And you deserve this, and you deserve everything that's about to happen in your business going forward. Luke: Thank you. Yeah. It's definitely a lot of work. Everybody hears the polished side and sees the stories. But yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into it behind the scenes. Jocelyn: Definitely. For sure. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit. You've already overcome so many things to get to where you are now. But let's talk about what is going on inside your head, or maybe something else that's holding you back right now. Do you have any fears or mindset issues, maybe something else that you think is keeping you from reaching the next level? Luke: You know, I think there is some of the imposter syndrome. Every time I sit down to send an email out to the list, I struggle with that because my business partner is actually the one who does all the teaching and does all the curriculum. She's the one with the experience. And when I send the emails, it's hard because I feel like I'm saying things that aren't really from my background, so I feel that imposter syndrome. That's a challenge. Communicating to these people, I have about 300 people on the email list now. Sending emails to them, I get so nervous every time I sit down to do that. Shane: Interesting. What are you sending? And this is really good because a lot of people pick a niche where they're not necessarily an educated degreed person and you get to do this. I have a master's degree in that subject. That's not what's happening. A lot of people pick a niche because they know a little bit about it. They do research. They learn more about it and they become a teacher in it. Right? What are you sending people? Just like, hey, here's a cool resource. Are you just relaying information from your business partner? What's in these emails that's making you so nervous? Luke: It's just relaying resources for the teachers to use. And of course I've got high school teachers that are signing up for the emails. Sharing resources, sharing stories from my business partner's past and experience, sharing blog posts that we put up, just things like that. And I can't tell you why, but it just really feels like it shouldn't be me sending the email. I think that's what it is. Shane: Basically because you're not the teacher when you send the teacher stuff. Even though you're just literally relaying information from someone else, that freaks you out a little bit because you're afraid people are going to be like, "Well, the person that hit send is not the actual expert." Right? Luke: That's correct. Yeah. Shane: This reminds me. Okay. Let's say you're walking down the street. Right? And I see you. I'm new in town and I'm lost. So I pull over, I'm like, "Hey, buddy. How're you doing?" You walk over and say, "Hey, man. I'm just out walking my cows. Moo." And I'm like, "Hey. Can you tell me how to get to the next town?" And you're like, "Sure. All you've got to do is go down this road, take a right, and go this way." Right? Or maybe you don't know where it is, so you pull out your phone. And I don't have a GPS, so you pull up your map. And you're like, "Okay. Here's a map I got for you. So you go down this road, you go left, and you go straight." So you give me those directions. Right? Shane: Wouldn't it be ridiculous if I looked up at you and said, "That's great. But are you a cartographer? Did you make that map? Did you literally draw that map that you just showed me? Are you a member of the Army Corps of Engineers that built these roads that get me to the next town? Are you really an expert at that?" That would be ridiculous. Right? But that's what you're doing. You're like, "I'm not the guy that drew the map, so I can't show anyone how to use the map," and you're not even involved in the expert enough. And you can even be honest with this and be like, "Hey, this is Luke. Here's my business partner," whatever. You could even make up a persona if she doesn't want to identify herself. And be like, "She wanted me to send you this thing." You could even put a buffer zone in between. But don't ever be afraid to relay information, to curate things and give it to people because nobody cares. They just want the answers. They just want the solutions. Jocelyn: And I think probably the story that you're telling yourself is that somebody's going to ask you a question you don't know how to answer. Shane: Ooh, that's deep. Jocelyn: Or somebody is going to say, "Hey. Who are you to say this to me? You're not even a teacher. You've never even been a teacher." Is that part of it, do you think? Luke: Oh, yeah. It is. Definitely. Jocelyn: Yeah. Sometimes you have to kind of dig underneath the surface and figure out what's really going on. And I think that might be what it is. What you have to do is, you have to rewrite that story and say, "If I don't know the answer to a question, or if someone says, 'Hey, you're not a teacher,' then you're going to tell them." Hey. I don't know the answer to that question, but I'm going to find it for you. Or no, I'm not a teacher. But my partner, who works with me, is and she's an expert in this area. Shane: Yeah. That's also, we invent problems before they happen. And then our mind has to deal with them. And that's a problem, and that's something that me and Jocelyn really fight against is what ifs. What if someone sends me a question that I don't know? What if someone calls me out? They send me a reply and they're like, "You're not even a teacher. I can tell"? What if? What if? But until it happens, it's not really a problem. We can prepare for that. Like Jocelyn said, you can have the script ready. You can rewrite it in your brain. But until it's a problem, don't make it a problem because we have enough problems to deal with in online business and any kind of venture, that are real, that we have to deal with today, to invent problems that may never even exist. Jocelyn: And that's something that is really effective for me. I was just saying to go ahead and prepare for that. It's something that I've done a lot. When I was doing Elementary Librarian years ago and I was raising my prices, I was raising them from $89 for the full year, which is insane, to $400 and something for the full year. And I knew that when I did that people were going to be upset, that they weren't going to like that because they're used to paying this price. And now they're going to have to pay a new price. Jocelyn: One of the things that I did is, I wrote a response because I knew I was going to have people say, "Hey. Why did you change this price? This is bad. I don't like this." I went ahead and wrote a response to those people. I had not even increased the price yet. But I knew that I was going to have a problem with doing it because I perceived that people were going to be upset. And how many times did I have to use that script? Maybe two or three, maybe. But it made me feel better to know that I was prepared if someone had that response. Shane: Your brain kind of dealt with it. You just kind of dealt with it. So maybe you could write down the four things you think someone ... What are you afraid of that people are going to send to you? Like, hey, are you even really a teacher? What's your response to that? And then categorically like: Why should I pay for these things? You just write a response for that. Maybe if you just do two or three of those, you've got them in your back pocket, and then you can say, "Now forget about any other ghosts that I'm imagining. I'll deal with them as they come." Right? But at least you'll have a couple responses to the big one. And you can just kind of move on. Luke: That's a good idea. I like that. I had not thought of doing that. Shane: Yeah. From talking to you so much in the community and on member calls and in our workshops and stuff, I feel like you and Jocelyn are kind of on the same wavelength. You know? Jocelyn: I'm sorry, Luke. Shane: Yeah, right. Yeah. But I don't deal with things like Jocelyn does. I'm kind of just like, "I don't care. I'll just deal with it when it comes." Like that, but that's how I mentally deal with, because I have the same struggles. I worry about people doing this. I worry about people thinking that. My solution is just ignore it until it becomes a problem, and then fight it then. But I think you're more of the, hey, I want to be prepared for this. I want to dot my Is, cross my Ts. So maybe think of the four big things you are afraid of, that you think people are going to call you out for in that imposter syndrome. Go ahead and write a quick two paragraph email for each one of them and have it ready. And then forget about the rest until you move on. Luke: Okay. I will do that. Jocelyn: Okay, Luke. We talked about some fears and obstacles that you're having in your business right now. Let's talk about how we can help you grow more. What is your question for us today? Luke: I think my question kind of centers around sales. I had the first annual sale. And then there was a bit of a pause. And then a few more sales came in. Now I've got actually three annual members and five monthly members, so it's growing and it's moving. But it's not as quick as I'd like it to be. And I'm struggling with knowing what's next. What lever do I pull next to get things flowing more effectively? Do I do more ads? Do I send more emails? Do I do a bit more of everything? What should my focus be? Where should I put my efforts? Shane: What a great question from today's guest. We'll get to the answer of that in just a moment. But first, did you know that you can get the answers you need to start, build, and grow your online business too? All you have to do is join me and Jocelyn and Luke and all of our other members inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can get all the training, coaching, and support that you need to build and grow your own online business. The best part, you can get started today for free, absolutely no cost to you. Shane: All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and you can start your one month free trial right away. Join hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can learn how we started an online business, replaced our income, quit our full-time jobs, and now we get to work from home. You can build a life that you want, and you can get started today at no cost. Just go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and start your free month today. Now let's get back to our show and back to our guest's question. Shane: All right. The interesting thing about your story, Luke, is where you're at because you've been doing this now for a while. You finally made the first sale. You finally made the second, the third, the fourth sale. You're getting some traction. You're getting that monthly recurring revenue going. And even though you feel like you've been in the game for a while, and you want things to accelerate so fast, you're just at the beginning. Everybody thinks the beginning is the day that they sign up for the Flip Your Life community, or start their website, or make their first product. But all of that other stuff is just preparing you for the beginning. I kind of think of it like an athlete. An athlete start ... Our kids play sports. Anna Jo does gymnastics and cheerleading. Issac does basketball. They're both really young right now. They're just in lessons to learn how to do the flips and learn how to shoot the free throws and learn how to do the lay ups. They're just starting to play in their first games and do things like that. Shane: And then they're going to go to middle school. Then they're going to go to high school. And let's say that some day they get to go and play in college. Right? Well, really the first day of your career as an athlete starts there. All that other stuff has been leading up to that moment to get you ready for your actual career. And that's kind of where you are now. But the problem is we want it to happen now fast. You want to go straight to the NBA. Right? You're like, "I'm ready. Let's go pro, coach." But it's like, it can't happen that way. You've got to kind of look at yourself and say, "No. I'm still in ... This is the beginning. This is the true beginning, the foundation of my business." Shane: It's not like you're going to be able to pull a lever and just wow, 500 members in the next three months. What we've got to do is, we've got to figure out a progression. We've got to figure out drills, those everyday things that you do to start adding this thing brick by brick. And I say that only to get you ready for this mental shift of, I've got to be happy with being the glacier and not the forest fire. I want to be a slow moving thing that adds something every day to my membership. Maybe it's a little bit of ads. Maybe it's a little bit of promotion. Maybe it's a Facebook Live. Maybe it's an email, whatever it is. But we've got to get you mentally shifted to now growing slowly because the turtle always wins the race every time you read the book. Shane: We don't want to burn out. We don't want to get 50 members and then it dies. We want to build an everlasting, long running, stable, successful business. That's what I want you to be really focused on first is that mental shift of, it doesn't have to happen fast. It doesn't have to accelerate, especially now because this is really your first step, is getting these first few members. Next year is where you might make a 10X growth. You know what I'm saying? That's what we found. We were steady Eddie for the first year. And then month 13 is where we accelerated. Right? And I don't want you to go into this thinking, "Why do I not have 100 members? I'm a failure. Why didn't everything grow? Why didn't everything happen?" It's because this is really just the first step. Jocelyn: With that being said, there are definitely some things that you can do right now to grow this thing already. And I imagine that you're already doing some. You're clearly ... You said you have ads on Google. You have Facebook. You have Pinterest, which is great. But I think right now what you need to do is figure out a way for the people who are already at your website to kind of spread the word for you. And the way that you do that, especially in this education field, is to find a way for them to share you without, first of all, blatantly asking for it because nobody likes that. And second of all, a way for them to increase their status. Jocelyn: The way that I used to do this on Elementary Librarian is that I would offer free trainings. It would be something that they wanted. For instance, right now is back to school time, so for librarians, I made a webinar about open house, some tips for open house, things that you can do. It's very timely. It's relevant. They want to share it with another librarian. It's totally free. It's something cool. It's something that everyone needs, so right now is the perfect time to do that. I'm not saying that open house is the right answer for your audience. I'm just saying find something that they would think is really cool and they would want to tell their friends about it. Shane: We grew our history business Facebook page to almost 5000 people, not by sharing cool lesson plans, not by running ads to sell them things, but we developed a strategy about two years ago. And we just made a commitment to we are going to share a funny meme every day that only a history teacher would really get. Right? And the result wasn't, hey, I want to grow my Facebook page to 5000 teachers. It was: Hey, what can we do to get people to share this page that are probably US History teachers? You have to focus on the steps and not the result. Everybody gets so into goal setting. And everybody writes their goals and puts their post-it notes on their mirrors and all this crap. Nobody ever does anything because they say, "I want to quit my job," instead of saying, "Hey, if I did X, Y, and Z every day, I would eventually get to quit my job." Everybody says, "I want to lose 50 pounds," instead of making a commitment to working out and eating healthy every day. Right? Shane: I'm going to eat ... I'm going to only drink water every day. If you did that, a year from now, you would look very different. Right? Same thing here. If you make a commitment to two or three actions to grow your page, to grow your site, to do what Jocelyn said, to give people status. The reason we picked memes is because people love to share funny stuff because then someone says, "Hey Bob, thanks for being funny and sharing that meme with me." They get the credit for it. Right? You've got to think outside the box and quit thinking about your content. And think, "How can we share? How can we grow? How can we do what it takes to get more eyeballs?" Because more eyeballs equal more money. Right? And then put the daily things in place and say, "I'm going to share a meme every day. I'm going to do like Jocelyn said. Maybe we'll do a free training once a month." How involved is your partner? Is she doing things live, or is she just making content? She doesn't want to be on camera, or what does she want to do? Luke: Primarily she just makes content. I don't think she really wants to be on camera. Shane: Okay. Then what you want to focus on is stuff like blog posts. That could be very interesting for teachers. So instead of a live video training, maybe you get her. Say, "Hey. Would you write me a blog post? Five tips for blank." Jocelyn: Maybe it's about new standards come out all the time. I don't know for sure if there are any new science standards right now. But maybe it's a guide to new science standards, something that people need and something that they would feel good about telling their friends about. Shane: And then maybe you could have her send you funny things that she sees about teaching because I'm sure she's in teacher circles. Your business partner's around people. They're probably sharing stuff with her. Just be like, "Hey, if anyone sends you anything hilarious, send it to me." And then what you do is, you take it and you kind of fudge it to whatever your people are. What we do is, one of the big things is, I can't wait until back to school, said no teacher ever. Right? What we do is, we say, we just take that same meme and we'll change the picture of it a little bit. And then we'll put, "Said no US History teacher ever." Or we'll just kind of bend it a little bit over to our thing to kind of focus our message in, and make sure that it's history teachers [inaudible 00:32:58]. Shane: One of the things I shared this summer was we had Independence Day, July 4th. Right? People share American flags and something like that. And I put a British teacher sent me this, and it was a British flag. And it said, "Happy Traitor's Day," or something. I don't remember what it was. But it was just like something that only a history teacher would actually laugh at and share. Think of things outside the box. You've done so much content work now. And you guys are really focused on education and curriculum. Now you have to build a tribe. If you sent a thing to all these email lists, you've got 300 emails. Right? Are they all biology teachers, chemistry teachers, science teachers? What are they? Luke: High school biology teachers. Shane: Right. Send them an email that's funny. If you see one of these memes about biology teachers or something. I'm sure there's something funny about a dinosaur or something you can figure out and find. Right? Don't be afraid even to email all 300 of those people this funny picture just to brighten your day. And it says something funny. And then put, "Forward this to all of your teacher friends," because there's probably more than one science teacher in the building. Do the same thing on social media. Find a strategy that lets people want to share your stuff, and not just, hey, I have a lesson plan for tomorrow. Jocelyn: But the big key for me is to do it in a natural way. You don't want to say, "Share this with all your friends." Don't do that. Luke: Especially on social media. Jocelyn: You want it to be something that they're going to share on their own without being asked to do it. Shane: Yeah. Jocelyn: All right. I would start there. I think that is a great way to grow your audience, mostly just by serving them. Think about what they want, what they need, and what they would be willing to tell their friends about. Shane: What ideas have you guys had, have you had, to grow your audience? Forget about sales right now because if you focus on audience growth, the sales will come. Right? Forget all the ads. Forget all the promotions. And forget all the flash sales and Black Fridays and all that stuff. How have you thought to grow your audience in this space based on what you've learned about them in the last year? Luke: You know, honestly, I don't think there's been a real focus on how to grow the audience. It's been on content creation and ring ads and the technical side of the website and some blog posts, but no real focus on: How do we grow an audience of high school biology teachers? Shane: Right. And that's what you've got to figure out next because if you don't get more eyeballs, then you can't possibly have hands attached to them that can reach for their wallet. Right? Luke: Right. Shane: Ads can be a part of the strategy. There's nothing wrong sometimes with promoting stuff that's not necessarily sales related like a good blog post that only a biology teacher would care. Those are things you can promote to create awareness, to get more people on your list. And then once you get people on your list, you can sell to them. But no audience, no growth, no business. Jocelyn: Just knowing you like we do, because you've been part of our community for a while, you're willing to do the work. You just need to focus on promotion now. Shane: Yeah. I think the main thing here is, and this is the lesson to take away. What could you do every day and every week and every month? And if you just did it consistently, you would have no choice but to grow your audience. Things that we've chosen in the past, like our daily thing was a meme. Our weekly thing was a piece of content. And our monthly thing was an ad campaign or a webinar. That's something we've done in the past. And it's like if you just do that every day, every week, every month, and you just say, "Hey. This is the path. I'm just going to do this. My business can't help but grow." Six months from now it's going to look really different. You're going to have 3000 people on your list instead of 300 because you did those things. Shane: Think about: How can I get more people to like our Facebook page? How can I get more people then to click something to give me an opt in? And how can I do that every day, every week, moving forward through this year to build this audience that will create explosive growth next summer, or as we go along? Right? Luke: Okay. Consistent, steady growth of audience and a little less focus on making more courses and more material and more content. Shane: Yes. That's always. Anytime anyone says, "Should I make another course?" We usually nine times out of 10 say no because you've got tons of curriculum. And also too, she's making the curriculum, your business partner. You know what I'm saying? You don't even have to worry about that. You just need her input so that you can get creative and say, "How could I do X every day?" And maybe it's a five minute thing. Maybe if you schedule it on Sunday night and just something happens every day. But every day, your biology teacher audience has an opportunity to share something. Because if you don't give them the opportunity, they can't do it. If you're not doing something every day, they can't do it. That's why I email my list every day, because if I email my list every day, and I give them value, and then I give them a link to click and make them pitch something ... Or to pitch something, they then have an opportunity to go join the free trial or buy something from us. Shane: If I don't do it that day, I did not give anyone an opportunity to buy something from me. If we share a meme every day on our history site, well, every single day all those history teachers have the opportunity to share that. I think one of our last posts got like 1000 shares. And it's because we gave them the opportunity to. Really, you've just got to give people an opportunity to become a member of your audience. And then you can give them an opportunity to buy your product. Luke: Okay. Seems so straightforward when you put it out there for me. Shane: It usually is. People want the magic button. They want the magic tool. They want the magic whatever. But really, it's like if you just did these things consistently and prolifically every single day, your business couldn't help but grow. You couldn't help but lose the weight. You would overcome the obstacle if you just did it step by step over and over. And also, that mindset shift of be patient. It's not time yet for that growth. That growth usually happens at a tipping point. You get the snowball. You roll it down the hill. It looks like a snowball. It looks like a snowball. Whoa, it's getting bigger. Whoa. What happened? All of a sudden, now it's like 2X, 10X. It's an avalanche. That's kind of what online business has to do to run its natural course. Luke: Huh. Okay. I'll stop looking for the avalanche. Jocelyn: Exactly. Shane: Yes. Jocelyn: Well, you can look for it, just not right this second. Shane: Yeah. The avalanche isn't caused by the avalanche. The avalanche is caused by the gust of wind that blew the first snowflake into the snowball. Right? And that's how the avalanche starts. Or it's the guy that yelled, and it echoed and it rumbled. And then it all came down the mountain. That's what you're trying to do right now. Jocelyn: But keep doing what you're doing because I think sometimes people are constantly looking for something new to do. But you're doing a lot of the right things. You just need to do more of the right things. Luke: Okay. Yeah. That's been another one of the shiny object syndrome. It's like, okay. Check mark. Got that one. Sale made. What's next? Shane: Yes. And like really, that's usually where most entrepreneurs fail because what you should say is, "I got the first sale." And then you got three more. What caused those sales? Do that every day for a year. That's all you've got to do. That's why we switched our business model to this free trial thing because we were like, "Okay. What if people got in our membership? They would see how awesome it is and they would stay." Right? The answer was let's just let everyone into our membership for free for a month. And then they'll see how awesome it is, and they'll stay. And that's what happened. Shane: But now it's commitment though. You can't ... If you're going to do one thing, you've got to do one thing. We've got a sales page up, but you can go in there for free and you'll see what it's going to cost the next month. But everything's free. Everything points to the free. Everything does that. Whatever caused that thing, hey, I ran an ad that got this, that did this. I shared something that got shared that did this. Just do more of that. Find what works, find the nail and just hammer it until it stops working. And then you find something new. Shiny object syndrome says, "That thing worked. I wonder if something else will work too." [crosstalk 00:41:22]. Jocelyn: And we deal with this too. We were just talking about this the other day. Shane: All the time. Jocelyn: Shane's like, "What about these 18 things?" And I'm like, "Well, the business is not broken right now. Let's just do more of what we're already doing." He's like, "Oh, yeah." Shane: Right. I'm just passing on Jocelyn bombs. She told me that two days ago. Right? Jocelyn: Yeah. Sometimes I think we try to invent problems, even though we really don't have any problems. You're getting members. You're getting paid members. You don't have problems. You just need to keep it going, grow more. Shane: And also too, it's like a mentality of it's now or never. It always feels like that, doesn't it? In your online business, it's like, if I don't do it in August, I'll never do it. If I don't do it in July, I'll never do it. If I don't do it in September, I'll never do it. I'm getting sales now. I need more sales now, or it's going to all fail and go away. And it always feels now or never. But that's not really it. It's just like: What's the strategy this month? It might change a little next month, but it's going to be the same things with different content. Right? You've just got to get that mentality of one step at a time, baby step it, keep going forward. Okay? Luke: Okay. Jocelyn: All right, Luke. It has been a fun conversation today. I have loved the mooing especially. 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? Luke: I think what I'm going to go and do is sit down and face my imposter syndrome and find out. Make some templates. Make some emails, some responses to questions that I'm afraid of having in my inbox. And just let my mind be okay with the fact that they may come, but if they do, I'm ready. Jocelyn: Exactly. I love that. I think it is a really important strategy even if no one ever asks the question. And they might not. At least you're prepared. It just makes you feel like you have a mental check box that you've checked off. Luke: Yeah. It sure does, so I like that plan. Shane: All right, man. Jocelyn: All right. Thank you for [crosstalk 00:43:14]. Shane: We've got another call. And I've got one at my door, so we're going to jet. You take care of those cows, and we'll talk to you soon, brother. Jocelyn: Bye. Luke: Thank you. Bye now. Shane: All right, guys. That was another great interview with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Before we go, Jocelyn, I always like to share a Bible verse at the end of all of our podcasts. Today's Bible verse comes from Proverbs chapter 13, verse 11. And in the Bible it says, "Wealth from get rich quick schemes quickly disappear. Wealth from hard work grows over time," so do what it takes to build a stable, successful, growing business. Put in the work. Make the investment. Don't look for the get rich quick schemes. Don't listen to all those people out there that tell you, you can do it fast. Build your business so it will be there for you and for your family in years to come. Until next time, do whatever it takes to get out there and take action. Jocelyn: Bye. I hear some gentle mooing in the background. Shane: I do hear gentle mooing. Are you near a cow pasture by any chance, Luke? Luke: I live in a cow pasture. Jocelyn: That's fantastic. Shane: I think that's a first on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Mooing. We've had dogs barking. We've had kids walking in eating bags of chicken. We've never had a cow. Never had a live cow on the show. Good job, Luke. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Luke's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Question: What is the best way to do a beta launch for piano lessons? I plan to have around 6-8 lessons finished when I launch. Each lesson has multiple videos and worksheets? I'm thinking $19.99/month for Beta and $29.99/month for regular members. Then having a discounted annual price." Question Two: "I'm worried my niche is too vitamin-y...while sustainability in and around the home is important and something more people should be doing, it's not necessarily a requirement. How do I make a pitch that's more aspirin-y? - try to appeal to any money-saving tips (even if there's only a few of those) in order to draw people into the site/mindset?" Question Three: "I would like to begin adding products inside my membership. What is considered enough at the beginning phase because I do not want to overwhelm my members with too much! Also, I'd like to have beta testers, but I don't know how I should go about asking them to become testers. What are some offers that I could entice my subscribers to become testers? Thank you!" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

This is a very special episode, we celebrate our FIVE YEAR anniversary of quitting our jobs to work on our online business full time.  We asked our Flip Your Life Community a question:  Imagine, Shane and Jocelyn are travelling back in time and are talking to the Shane and Jocelyn from 2013. (Stay with us...) They're standing in a room together and it's right before they quit their jobs. What would YOU want to ask the five year into the future S&J if you could be in that room? We answer those questions on today's episode.  Question One: "How did you ignore the endless amounts of personal/household to do's and actually get work done?" Question Two: "How do you just go for it and know that there's not a steady paycheck coming anymore? It's so much easier in some regards to keep this as a side hustle while getting guaranteed pay from a company...How did you know it was time to QUIT?" Question Three: "With everything being so new to you at the time.... How did you determine what goals to set along the way? Did you find that your goals were too conservative, too crazy, focused on the wrong things?" Question Four: "What would you do different when starting from square one to bring in $$$ quicker?" Question Five: "What mindset did you each need to have to make the transition in the beginning? What mindset did you need right after you quit? What did you do immediately to develop systems, processes, etc to keep money rolling in and increasing over time?" Question Six: "What is the way you WISH or fantasize about REALLY quitting your job? Like do you wish you could have told them how horrible they were for keeping you from your kids and that you are going to do everything in your power to make sure no one is a teacher again and say I quit and throw glitter at them as you walk out." Question Seven: "What has the transition from a Full Time J-O-B cost you, that you never anticipated? Examples: physical, social, emotional, family, relationships, perspective? How did you cope with those consequences, or how are you accepting that?" Question Eight: "You know what I'd love to hear from 2013 S&J? Where they would hope to be in 5 years and how that compares with now. I think as I set goals it's be helpful to hear others' reflections of what they were and weren't able to accomplish and what they couldn't even imagine." Question Nine: "What did you say YES to in the beginning, that you would say NO to now?" Question Ten: "What TECH would you have spent more time adopting in the beginning to grow faster? What TECH would you get rid of now that you shouldn't have used in the first place?" Question Eleven: "What were the unexpected outcomes that 2013 S&J didn't even think would happen? What was the biggest worry/fear in 2013 that had absolutely zero impact on anything?" Question Twelve: "How do you continue to make progress and smash through roadblocks in business? What tips do you have to stay CONSISTENT and keep growing step by step?" Question Thirteen: "Did you worry about paying for insurance vs. your employer paying for it? What about retirement and all the tax stuff your job usually takes care of for you? Is it as scary as it sounds (asking for a friend ;))" Question Fourteen: "How has investing in coaching helped YOU TWO get to where you are? Looking back, do you think it's necessary for success?" Question Fifteen: "What is the biggest challenge you overcame, before making money and gaining traction?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Hi guys! My question is whether or not I need to optimize all pages on my website for SEO--for example my landing pages, sales pages etc. I ensure that I optimize all blog posts etc, but Yoast SEO is telling me that my SEO and Readability is bad on these other pages, but I'm not sure if it matters." Question Two: "I had mentioned my use of a TOUR instead of a WEBINAR and it worked, and someone suggested I shared what I did. You agreed. However, I don't know where would be a good place to share because that particular thread was in the Success Stories and I am not sure how useful it would be there. So where would you suggest that i share that for more people to benefit from it?" Question Three: "I am about to take a break from promoting so I can focus on taking care of my students. After 3 months of HARD WORK with webinars, facebook ads, live events I am closing my summer with almost 100 members/students :) SUPER HAPPY!!! Now what? Should I focus on preparing for the next promotion? Focus on creating systems to scale more? Should I focus on webinars? or Free Facebook live? So much to do! Gracias" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

In today's episode, we help Laura get new members and also retain current members in her education business. Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. In today's podcast, we help Laura take her online education business to the next level. Shane: Welcome to the Flip Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sam. 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 Flip Lifestyle Podcast, it is great to be back with you again. Today, super excited to be with another member of the Flip Your Life community. This is a great episode, because this is a success story episode. This is a story with someone who has flipped their life. We're talking to Flip Your Life member Laura Keybart today. Hey, Laura, welcome to the program. Laura: Hey, thanks for having me, today. Jocelyn: Yes, we are so excited to talk to you, especially with this awesome success story. We look for cool success stories to find people to be on the podcast. This one was one we did not want to miss, for sure. So before we jump into all that, we want to know a little bit about you, your family, and what you're doing online. Laura: Okay, sure. So I have a wonderful, supportive husband who has been behind me every step of the way that I've been going through this journey. I'm a step mom, I love dogs, I'm a distance runner, always running marathons, training for something. I've always got something on the calendar. We love traveling, we love planning vacations and different experiences around running events like those. So while I run while he watches football or visits a history museum. Shane: Me and your husband would get along, dude. Like, if he's watching football, I just went to Philadelphia, and I hit like five history museums. He should have went with me, I'm just saying. He should have went with me. Laura: Yeah, yeah. Well, when I ran the Washington DC, the Marine Corp marathon, he was hitting the museums and visiting those places. So yeah, it works out. Jocelyn: Cool, cool. Laura: So I just completed my 18th year in education as a teacher. I taught english/language arts, which is reading and writing for, oh gosh, 15, 16 years, grade 6th through 12. The past couple of years, I was an instructional coach working with teachers at a local school district. Most of that was great, I love teaching and working with kids and teachers. But, it's kind of the same thing that we all experience. We become fed up with terrible bosses, all the crazy workplace drama, mind numbing, ridiculous meetings and committees that go nowhere, and you start just kind of looking around. Laura: What else could I do? I went through that. Is there something remote I could do? Something online I could do? Maybe I could teach myself how to code and build websites? Which, that was a joke, I tried that for a month. That's not me. But what could I do so that I have a purpose, I can serve people, but I can also bring in an income that I can live on? What options are there? So I started listening to podcasts around setting goals, and working remotely, maybe even working for yourself. I would listen to all of these podcasts while I was doing my long training runs. That's about the time I stumbled upon your podcast, it was maybe around episode, I don't know, 40 or 50 or so, starting binge listening. I thought, okay, that makes sense. This whole thing makes sense now. I think maybe I could do that. Maybe one day, I can quit my job. That sounds crazy, but so was running 22.6 miles. That's ridiculous too. (Full transcript at flippedlifestyle.com)  Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Laura's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "What do you do if nobody buys during a sale ? I held a 24 hour flash sale last week and nobody bought . My back to school sale starts today and I am freaking out that no one is going to buy . I emailed my list of about 1600 people posted on Facebook page and my Facebook group Fingers crossed I am panicking for no reason" Question Two: "Should I do a google ad to my webinars? I've been doing them to my website." Question Three: "I've been doing Facebook advertising for 2.5 weeks now. After some trial and error I've been generating 40-50 landing page views a day with a 16-18% conversion rate. Today things hit a lull - have spent half my daily budget and only have 8 landing page views but a 40% conversion rate. While that conversion rate is amazing, I'm surprised there have been so few landing page fews. Is Facebook running out of people to show my ad to? FB says my audience is 'fairly broad' but it shows only 13,000 in the audience. I know the training says my audience should be bigger but this is what I've been able to come up with so far with children/youth/worship pastors and a couple of related ministry magazines. Is it possible to exhaust your audience reach?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "After a bit of a break, I'm getting ready to promote and launch the beta version of my membership at 15/month (my goal is to have it launched by Nashville)! How long of a time or how many members should I have in my first beta group before I move to the next group, or would it no longer be a beta group after the first round of members? Would it make sense for the next group to stay at the next price point, or should I start playing with price with the second group in?" Question Two: "My website has had the white screen of death for two days. I've had people working on it who have discovered I have not been hacked (yaaa!) but the problem is my theme. Until I figure out a solution, it's been switched over to Twenty Twelve. But, ALL of my pages are listed at the top of my home page! Even ones I don't want seen. What should I do to hide them until the theme issue gets resolved?" Question Three: "I have a new site setup on Wordpress and Genesis Framework. Is this all I need? After that is there a basic tools list I'm not finding? I've been aiming at affiliate marketing but am discovering I need thousands of page views each day for that to work." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Hi Shane and Jocelyn! I have completed: - my first month of lesson plans (in the members forum) - completed building my website - I have a opt-in lead magnet on my homepage with thrive leads - I have created the first few emails for my autoresponders - I have completed the sales page, options page, order page, and thank you page I am now working on the facebook ads in the blueprint. I don't have anyone on my email list and do not have any members. What is the next step to launch? I am ready and want to launch this week!" Question Two: "I have a developer working on my site and he told me it would be done by the end of July. I told my email list the price would be going up when the new site is ready (that was the last week of July). Now my developer needs until the end of August. I already sent out that one price increase email. Now I don't know if I should increase my price before the new site (with new capabilities) is up or wait and resend another price increase email when it's ready. Also, this is my busy Back to school season, so not sure what to do." Question Three: "I feel like I'm riding a yo-yo right now between working in the business and working on the business. I feels like I go one month when we are super productive doing what we need to do to bring members in and then as a result the next month I'm covered with getting those new members off to an excellent start. Any tips on how to figure out how we can be consistent with both all of the time?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I get demotivated by success. Is that weird? What do I do with that? I feel overwhelmed about what to do next now that I have members in my site other than creating new course modules. The other is that, over the years, I've suffered from a drop-off in motivation when I hit a new peak - almost like I've convinced myself that the challenge is gone because I can see that I'm actually capable of achieving my goal. I know intellectually that that's stupid because I've hit step 1 of like step 10 in my long-term goal, but I have trouble using long-term goals as motivation and experience a motivation dip after I accomplish something good." Question Two: "I feel like I am dealing with an emotional rollercoaster right now. I have an new amazing website, my course creation is moving along nicely and I have my new member site ready to open. I am now ready to launch my membership site and, I realised yesterday that I am fighting a mental block. I am fighting fear that I am going to spend a lot of money on ad's for my webinar and no one will attend. I have a thriving off line business but this is my first time to take it online. Just need help battling the mind." Question Three: "Can you talk a little bit about how you move current monthly members to annual members? I am curious about timing and I'm not sure if I should do this with my technology limits. I believe that with ThriveCart I would need to cancel their current membership and have them re sign up as an annual. Any ideas?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Thinking about doing an evergreen webinar, does it have to be recorded live the first time and then turned into the "evergreen" sequence?" Question Two: "What are the kids up to? Just wondering how life looks when you're working at home with kids?" Question Three: "I'm considering offering a one month free option like you do. I'm thinking, because my topic handles such deep emotional issues (such as how they have learned to cope with past abuse or emotional neglect), it would provide an opportunity for potential members to feel more confident that they can trust me and the group. Does this make sense as a way to go? Are there other things I should consider before throwing this out to my audience?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

  Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Shane - I just read your post about the Mastermind group you're part of. Can you talk a bit about how it's structured and functions? How often do you meet up? Do you focus on 1 person each time, etc? How do you hold everyone accountable... Thank you!" Question Two: "Still working on my product, a business class for birth professionals. All about how to setup a small business and how to do basic accounting and bookkeeping. Any good domain name ideas?" Question Three: "How much time should I wait between product launches? I just launched my first product (mommy bounce back program)—it's only sold 4 :( but I have ideas to do a program for seniors and then another product to supplement my brick and mortar business—so just power yoga you can do at home. The question is I don't know if I should even bother getting those videos recorded, or if I should double down on the marketing. (I'm currently spending about $10/day on FB ads targeting my audience of around 4K and a look alike audience around the U.S.)." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "Here's my questions... I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I have a LOT going on right now with my business. I'm excited, nervous, and stressed all at once. A lot of stuff is about to take off. I'm piloting a new in-person workshop for nurses this weekend (it's sold out!), and I'll be rolling it out to my Instructors next year. My childbirth class has 30 Instructors signed up to train to teach it in November. I need to finish my book before Nashville, too. I just need some words of encouragement." Question Two: "Hi Guys ... I finished my product revision and bonuses and started advertising on Facebook over the weekend. I'm selling a Christmas play script and four bonuses for $97. I'm targeting worship pastors and children's pastors right now - those were the only groups I could find in the FB audience. So far, I've spent $15.00 and have had 31 clicks to my website with three of those people submitting their email address to read the script. So far no sales, but I'm not surprised as it often takes time to make a decision to choose a Christmas play script and it often has to go through committees or pastoral approval. (I am running a drip campaign to follow-up with them.) My question is this: so far, each script download has costs me $5.00. Is that normal? No idea what my actual cost per lead will cost until people start buying. Maybe it's too early to know whether or not the $5.00 per lead is worth it?" Question Three: "I was recently approached by a publisher about writing and publishing a cookbook the traditional route. The publisher is distributed by a large, familiar company, so I'd have the opportunity to be in all of the bookstores, big box stores, etc. On one hand, I like the idea, because it gets me out in front of a different audience and is a way to get my name out there and give me even more authority than I already have. On the other hand, it's a ton of work, for sometimes little pay (depending on the advance that is negotiated and how long it takes you to start earning royalties) and I've heard that in many cases all that you ever end up getting paid, is the advance. Do you have any advice for me?" CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: “I keep hearing people talk about minimum viable product. What does that mean and exactly how minimal are we talking?” Question Two: “I have grown my email group to 3000 and my Facebook group to 12000. You have inspired me to create a membership site, I have one paid course. Do I include it in my membership? And if my lead magnet is a five day email course, how do I send an email nurturing sequence if they're already being hit with 5 days of emails?” Question Three: “I have gone through most of the training videos, and I love them. I am launching my membership site for parents of children with Autism who are looking for daily activities they can do with their children at home and behavioral tips to help manage their children's behavior. I currently have two small products and one course that I sell to my list of about 1500 people regularly. I was thinking of creating one month of lesson plans and selling it as a one-off product, since my list is used to this, and then launching my membership at the same time. I have two questions: Should I launch one month of lesson plans first and then offer the membership OR should I launch it at the same time? Next, how much should I charge? CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "One of the things that has been holding me back is concern about legal issues. So, I have two parts to this question: 1. How do you protect yourself from concerns over copyright issues? If a course offers advice that is similar to other information someone puts out in a book, for instance. Can the person sue you for copyright infringement? I'm obviously not copying anyone else, but there are times where my advice may parallel someone else's advice. So, how similar is too similar? 2. Also, I have trademarked my business name and submitted my ebook for copyright, and I'm wondering what other legal issues I may need to consider." Question Two: "I was wondering if you could delve into the topic of creating urgency with your offer versus always being open? I know you guys advised me last time to become prolific with my webinars and one-dollar-trials, but there's so much emphasis on creating urgency as a means of pushing potential members through the door and converting them to paying customers. It almost sounds like becoming prolific with my webinars and creating urgency are two conflicting strategies and I need to choose one over the other. How does one figure out the right strategy for them and rectify these two seemingly important yet conflicting strategies" Question Three: "The last two months, none of my almost 30 members have attended my monthly Q&A member calls. I'm going to email my members and ask what they want the call to look like or if it's just a scheduling issue. Do you have advice on ways I could structure the call? I did it similar to how you have yours set up, but in Zoom. I wanted to give them some ideas of what it could look like in order to get them thinking about what they want." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

  In today's episode, we help our Flip Your Life member Nicola to refine her message and get more website traffic. You may remember Nicola from Episode 160 of the podcast! Her online business, Forever Young Autobiographies, focuses on helping folks write their life story, get it self-published and preserve their key memories to pass on to the next generation. Having braved Facebook live for the first time Nicola is looking at maximising the impact her content is having. She wants more traffic to her website and to build her email list faster. In this episode Shane and Jocelyn help Nicola strategise ways to refine the message on her website and figure out how she can get more visitors. You Will Learn How we all struggle with technical issues and what we can do to move past it How laying out a blog is just like laying out a newspaper! Tips for what matters the most on your website, especially that one sentence at the top Learn why you aren't getting as much traffic to your website as you would like How to get prolific with your content Don't forget to look out for the "Jocelyn bomb" in this episode! Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Nicola's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y'all next week!

  "Here's three lessons I leaned from crashing and wrecking my hundred thousand dollar car." In today's episode, Shane talks about his crazy car wreck story that happened this week. Find out the three lessons that Shane learned from crashing and wrecking a hundred thousand dollar car. Learn why life is not what happens to you, it's how you deal with it. Hear how realising that bad things are going to happen to all of us can help you mitigate the potential for disasters. Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!    

  "If I'm being really honest, the thought of hanging out with over 100 of our members for 3 days makes me extremely excited and...extremely nervous." In today's episode, Jocelyn talks about a mindset issue she is having with the upcoming FYL Live Nashville event. Jocelyn talks about her biggest fears for hosting a live event. Hear what Jocelyn's mindset coach suggested will help her move past those fears. Learn why she may disappear from time to time! Discover why Jocelyn says that "I like to think of Shane as the Salt and I'm more the Pepper!" Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!    

  Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Question One: "I don't have a lot of spare cash to invest in traffic (like Facebook Ads) for my online business. How can I grow my business without spending lots of money on paid ads?" Question Two: "Should I stop running Facebook "like" ads?" Question Three: "How often should I be emailing my list? I'm a little confused on the best strategy to convert email subscribers into members." CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

In today's episode, we help our Flip Your Life members Sarah and Ryan push past a plateau with their membership. Sarah and Ryan are a couple who've been married for 22 years and have 7 kids (who she home schools)! A few years ago Sarah started a blog to share their experiences, sidetrackedsarah.com and now she and Ryan run a successful membership website. They are currently dealing with hitting a plateau in their membership and aren't sure how to boost their numbers. In this episode Shane and Jocelyn help them strategise ways to take their membership to the next level. You Will Learn How to push past a membership plateau when you feel stuck at a certain number of members How to more effectively communicate your value to your customers to improve membership sales and retention How to tell if you have a marketing problem or a content problem How to manage a price increase and push past the fear of emailing your list too often How to plan out your membership promotions for each month Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Sarah's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Success Story of the Week: Today's success story is from Stephanie. Stephanie says, "I'm excited to share I shipped my first subscriptions out today to my first 5 subscribers!  I did a Facebook live about it, which was about 20 seconds, and it's getting great traction so WIN-WIN! Getting this business - an online food subscription business - up and running has required a LOT from the perspective of certifications, inspections, insurance, contracts, you name it. Plus the usual marketing and back-end technical stuff. I'm happy with where I'm at and have such a clear picture for what's next.  I'm most excited to start get amp-up with creating content and MARKETING more heavily! Thanks to everyone here and S&J for the content. Shane said something in one of the master classes about "do AAA, BBB, CCC; not ABC, ABC, ABC" and that has been what I've aligned to over the last month and it's really paid off. I was spreading myself to thin to really make headway and now I'm in a great position to make this business pay off." Stephanie, we are proud of you! We would love to help YOU write the success story for your online business, learn how https://flippedlifestyle.com/free Can't Miss Moment: Today's Can't Miss Moment is planning our live event in Nashville, Tennessee with our live event co-ordinator. The very first FL live event was planned entirely by Jocelyn! This time we are grateful to have our live event coordinator handle all of the details and make sure the event goes off without a hitch! We have a few tickets remaining if you would like to join us in Nashville. Head to flippedlifestyle.com/nashville for more details. Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y'all next week!

In today's episode, we help our Flip Your Life member Allison Lopez. Allison has a career in education as a teacher, and an instructional tech coach as well. She also has experience working in IT consulting before. She had transitioned from one career into a teaching career because that is where her real passion lies. Having this experience, Allison wants to help other people make a career transition into teaching based on her knowledge and experience of the process. This is why she created her website, seconcareerteachers.com. She is currently dealing with some challenges to move her online business forward like time management, mindset issues, and specifically finding the right audience for her niche. Join us in this episode as we help Allison with strategic ways to find her perfect avatar by putting herself in their shoes to find out what they are looking for and where they hang out. [Tweet "If you've done it, and someone else hasn't done it, you are an expert and you can help them"] [Tweet "If you're finding excuses about something, then it's really not that important to you."] You Will Learn How to effectively find your audience in places where they hang out How to use strategic keyword research to find what your avatar is looking for How to find time to work on your online business How important your "WHY" is to help you focus on moving forward in your online business The importance of dealing with mindset issues first before anything else Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Allison's website Flip Your Life community 30-day trial Success Story of the Week: Today's success story is from Melissa. Melissa says, "I would never talk to someone the way I talk to myself. Over the past two weeks, I've been busy with my family and many fun end of the year activities. Late at night I'd crawl into bed with heavy eyelids and a battered spirit. I tried, but I just couldn't get it all done for my website. There weren't enough hours of the day, and I got really down on myself. I found myself talk being some of the most discouraging conversations I've ever heard, and it was all in my own head. Never, not ever would I speak such defeating statements to a fellow entrepreneur. I recall hearing Shane and Jocelyn speak of this and suddenly I knew, truly knew what they had meant. I can see where a person might want to throw in the towel, but sometimes life is just that busy. Step 1 - sometimes life is just going to get in the way Step 2 - forgive those moments of self sabotage. Instead, i engaged in my family time festivities and thoroughly enjoyed those can't miss moments. Yay for me! Now Step 3 - back to work." Melissa, we are so proud of you! This mindset shift is so important for anyone who is starting a business. You can't let negative talk get in your way, and I'm so proud of you for recognizing it and changing that pattern. We would love to help you write the success story for your online business. At the end of today's show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community. Can't Miss Moment: Today's Can't Miss Moment is a final trip to Toys R Us. Most of you know that Toys R Us is in the process of closing all of their stores. Shane had the opportunity to take the kids to Toys R Us one last time because who wants to miss Toys R Us closing? The kids got to buy one final toy, and that was a good time.   Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family!

  "How can I be sure my idea is going to work?" In today's episode, Shane talks about finalizing your online business idea -- overcoming any fears, obstacles, or doubts about your idea. Your business cannot go forward until your idea is finalized. You might have an idea figured out, and are looking for your next idea. You might have too many ideas and could not decide which one to commit to. You might have external factors, fears, or obstacles that prevent you from deciding on an idea. Shane talks about the reasons that get you stuck when deciding on an idea, and the steps to take to overcome these obstacles and move forward in your online business.   You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 222 - How To Finalize your Business Idea Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!    

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  From Eva: "There are some loose screws with my sales funnel and I'm hoping you could pinpoint what might need improving. I'm feeling very stuck with my membership and not sure how to move forward and grow it further. My site has tons of opt-in opportunities offering freebies. I have an active Facebook and Instagram group with lots of followers. I have an email list of over 1,700 subscribers. I have an automated email nurturing sequence for any new subscriber. I've been emailing my list every 2-3 days and often posting the email copy on my social media platforms, each of those emails and posts has a pitch about my membership somewhere. I started doing keyword research to properly name and describe my YouTube videos and blog articles. I do a Facebook Live every Friday, answering one mom's question posted in the FB group- I always promote my membership on the FB live as well. I then upload the video to YouTube, create a blog post out of it with freebie opt-ins and send it to my email list and social media following. I've been doing monthly webinars on Facebook Live, promoting a $1 trial for 5 days of my membership, where I get anywhere from 5-15 people opt-in for the trial, and half of those people usually stick around for at least a month. The vast majority of my members come from the $1 trials. Almost every time I post in my members-only Facebook community, I remind them about the quarterly and annual membership options. So as you can see, I'm really doing a lot here but can't seem to figure out where the funnel is breaking down! Please help. From Janet: "Question about sales pages. How long does it need to be? I've seen many that have tons of copy, testimonials, etc. It a super long sales page more effective than a shorter one?" You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 221 - Sales Funnels + Sales Pages + Sales Chain CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Sometimes people think that they are unmotivated, when in reality they've never really defined a meaningful end goal for what they're doing." Today's episode answers a question from Jonas: How do you motivate yourself to produce content when you are brand new and no money is coming in yet?" In this episode, Jocelyn talks about the secret of motivation, the type of motivation that could get you going, and how to stay motivated so you can Flip You Life. You can also check the video of this episode on YouTube here: FL 219 - How to find motivation Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Progress is better than perfection...  And ANYTHING is better than NOTHING. In today's episode, listen how these words of wisdom was demonstrated and experienced by Shane in a pretty drastic situation (hint: almost getting hit by lightning?) in his quest to improve his stand up paddle boarding. You'll have to hear it for yourself! 2 Facts of Life: The day ain't over It's a new day The second part of today's episode talks about an important mindset to have when things don't necessarily follow your set schedule or plan. Real life things can derail us sometimes, but having the right mindset and optimism can get us back on track. Let today's episode motivate and inspire you, to help you Flip Your Life!   You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 218 - Progress is better than perfection + The day ain't over Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  My product is priced way higher than my competitors' ($39/month, $300/year), but as a result I'm not getting sales. I ran a massive discount for this week only to match my competitors' prices ($9/m, $99/y) and am happy I got a bit more sales (7 monthly, 7 yearly sales at it's almost the end of discount week), but going forward plan to continue selling at my high price, but with the $1 dollar trial for 2 weeks. What can I do to convince people that my membership has value compared to my competitors'? It's terrible not getting sales for weeks at a time because of the high price, and significant number of people have dropped out after the 2 week trial because of financial reasons. And because my niche is on a volunteer basis, people do cancel their memberships because of reasons like "lack of time" when they stop serving in church for the season. - Sandra I have a question about retaining my monthly members and upgrading them to a quarterly or annual membership. As of now, I've managed to upsell a handful of my members to an annual membership, but for the most part, most members leave after 1-2 months when their baby or toddler is sleeping beautifully thanks to my program! I've been trying to communicate the message that babies are always going through transitions, milestones and regressions- and therefore, you should upgrade your membership so that you know what to do during every single change and keep your little one's sleep in tact. However, for the most part, the message falls on deaf ears. I really tried to increase the amount of times I repeated this message. It just seems to be a really tough message to get across. One idea I had was to send out a monthly newsletter summarizing what they can expect of their baby at that age in the sleep department, and what potential issues they can potentially expect down the road (hint hint- don't cancel!) Any other concrete advice or ideas? - Eva You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 217 - Offer + Pricing + Internal & External Marketing (Q&A w/ S+J) CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

People don't want you to do something because they're too sacred to do it (themselves) sometimes.” In today's episode, Jocelyn talks about how to explain your business success to family and friends without alienating them, and how to deal with the ones that are negative towards your success in what you do. Flip Lifestyle Podcast listener asks: How do you explain your business success to family and friends without alienating them?” You can also check the video of this episode on YouTube here: FL 215 - How to explain your business success to family and friends without alienating them Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

What do you do when you don't get those miracle mornings? Sometimes life gets in the way and derails us from starting our well-planned day perfectly, and there's nothing we can do about it. What should we do when that happens? Tune in on today's episode where Shane talks about a very important skill entrepreneurs (or anyone else) should have to deal with situations like this. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 214 - The most important thing an entrepreneur needs to succeed Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  I would love your thoughts on the optimal content plan for starting out. - Jennifer Do you have a course or can guide me to learn how to make a cover template/thumbnail for my YouTube videos (like you have)? And if there is something else I should be doing that can be automated each time I upload my daily videos? I have already been using the free version of Tube Buddy. - Cynthia I need to make videos -- both lectures & labs -- where? Thinking about putting up a whiteboard in my very cluttered office and just showing me and the whiteboard. Thoughts? - Monte I am actually encouraging my 13 year old to start a YouTube channel, any tips on how to name a channel and how to title the video? This will help me too. - Maribel I am reactivating a site that has not been updated in a few years, and am ready to get it up and going... I stopped right before really doing any promotion. What would you recommend using to deliver my content (video courses)? I was using Zippy Courses Plugin, but that no longer is being updated, so I need to change those video's over. And I have a free video course for my lead magnet as well... would you do that as an email course? Or use some kind of course platform? - Stephanie My plan is to do 2 month-long series over the summer on 2 things specific to my niche. I'm wondering, how do you feel about series of episodes dedicated to one subject? In this case July will be about “how to handle weeknight chaos with little kids“ and August I'm doing a month long Back-to-School Boot Camp. July is typically a pretty slow month in my niche, I thought the weeknight chaos thing would be interesting for them, but I am wondering if 4-5 shows on one subject is too many shows? - Karen You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 213 - Content + YouTube + Holidays! (Q&A w/ S+J) CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Our guest this week is someone who wants to help new and aspiring composers succeed in the video game industry, the man behind Video Game Music Academy, Daniel Hulsman. Daniel is a 33-year-old father of 2, living in Boston with a huge passion for music. He received his Music Education degree from the University of Delaware, but due to the economic crash, (Hint: Most art-focused people's careers suffered) he had to shift careers and find a job that can support his family. He had worked for several corporations that allowed him to learn more about marketing and management, which he has found useful when he started building his own website: VGMacademy.com Daniel currently serves a public charter school as a Music Teacher for the past 4 years, all while managing a choir that records professional video game soundtracks twice a year. (Recording professional video game soundtracks? Oh, you mean, THE COOLEST JOB EVER?!) Ultimately, his goal is to create a stable, recurring stream of income online so that he can focus on his family, especially since his children are both still very young. But here's the thing, his website isn't gaining as much traction, and sales are mostly from selling semi-related products -- y'all know how frustrating that can be, right? So what does he do? Daniel sends us some hater-ade, a long email detailing his doubts, frustrations and surprisingly his hope that maybe - just maybe - we could help him become a successful online entrepreneur too! We can tell a troll from a critic, and this man was no troll, he really wanted something better for his family's future. How would you respond to someone with this sentiment? Well, look no further because this week's episode is all about how YOU can turn a critic into a customer, why you are not for everyone and why that's okay, and how to dispel that voice saying you are not expert enough. This podcast interview is PUMPED y'all! So much action, insight and real-life struggles, it's far too good to miss! ;-) [Tweet ""The next step is always the most frustrating." - Shane"] [Tweet ""You are not for everyone, so find the people who fit your mission." - Jocelyn"] [Tweet ""Capitalize on the things you already know versus starting from scratch." - Shane"] [Tweet ""Your struggles are just as valuable as someone who's got it all figured out." - Shane"] You Will Learn: The difference between a troll and a critic How to turn a critic into a customer Are you expert enough to lead? Understanding your mission online Plus so much more! [Tweet ""Being part of a community bring out your strengths & helps make up for your weaknesses." - Jocelyn"] [Tweet ""Focus on the things you can solve, instead of getting bogged down by the things you can't." - Shane"] [Tweet ""Do not be selfish with your gifts; your gifts are meant to be shared with others." - Jocelyn"] [Tweet ""Giving people the opportunity to change their lives, gives them a chance to succeed." - Shane"] Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Daniel's website FYL community FL 200 - Goodbye Grant Baldwin: The Speaker Lab Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y'all next week! Can't listen to the podcast right now? Check out the transcript below. Jocelyn: Hey, y'all!  On today's podcast, we help Daniel decide if he's expert enough to start his online business.

If it is important to you, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse." In today's episode, Jocelyn talks about what you should do if you're having trouble finding time to work on your online business. Flip Your Life Community member Fatima asks: How do you manage your time with everything else going on?" You can also check the video of this episode on YouTube here: How to start a business when you don't have time CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

How much do you charge or ask for the value of what you actually provide? Are you selling yourself short? Your digital products might be undervalued by the price you are charging. YOU might be undervaluing yourself. What are you really worth? A successful life doesn't happen by accident! If you want to make great things happen, you have to do these 3 things. Listen in on today's episode to learn how successful people think, take action and achieve great things! You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 210 - What Are You Really Worth? + 3 Tips for a Successful Life Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!   You can connect with S&J on social media too!    

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  Should I pre-sell a membership before membership area is ready/setup with "special pricing"? Or just launch and say that things are being added daily? (It is a teacher/education niche) - Janet I've gotten a bit behind in promotion of my Launch - Online Training Workshop - promotion. It's scheduled for 6/24, I was planning on doing the 2weeks of promo email, Facebook ads and Google ads. I'm concerned about delaying the launch versus giving enough time for promotion. What do you think would be best? - Jennifer I've written about 75% of my book. I'm going to self-publish. What would a realistic timeline be to complete a book, tweak it and get it ready, and get it out to the public? Is January 2019 a good deadline to get it on Amazon and being sold? - Rebecca Can you talk about how I should think about YouTube for: YouTube Lives, my Launch Webinar (embedded into a LeadPage), monthly Member Calls. Do I used the same channel profile for all of those? For YouTube Lives, do I use a "reusable stream key" link, so I can use the same one each time? Do you use an encoder? - Jennifer Shane, you mentioned Dan Kennedy's quote that it's easier to find new audience than to write a new speech when it comes to doing weekly webinars. How does it work if we want to do weekly webinars on the same topic on YouTube Live though? Say you guys do "How to start an Internet Business" webinar every week. It'll be the same content every week! I know the value is in the interaction and Q&A, but why would people still bother to sign up for the next run of the same-titled webinar if they could just watch the replay and learn the contents? Wouldn't this be a case where it might be necessary to "write a new speech"? Also, there's 1 thing I don't get. I do YouTube Lives for my webinar. I'll announce when my webinar will be (say, coming Monday 9am) but anyone could watch the webinar without needing to opt in, since it will be available for anyone's viewing (since they could just click that "Live" video from my YouTube page). I know I want the emails, but I don't get why anyone would want to opt in if they could just join us as a general YouTube subscriber? - Sandra I paused all my auto-webinars during my spring membership drive. I need to re-start them, but I'm not happy with my current auto (Recorded) webinar software, EverWebinar. I recently left WebinarJam, and I'd like to leave EverWebinar, too. Any suggestions for which software to switch to? Is anybody else using anything that seems to work smoothly for doing automated, recorded webinars? - Rebecca You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 209 - Launching + Ebooks + Webinars (Q&A w S&J) Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Our guest this week is a man with the passion to design landscapes that are beautiful, eco-friendly AND easy, FYL community member, Ben Hale. Ben and his family live in Ohio, where their house sits on a half-acre lot. He has a degree in microbiology and works full-time at his corporate nine-to-five job. It is his goal to make it online to provide for his family and share his passion for eco-friendly and hassle-free landscaping, he created AestheticEcosystems.com but could use some help with his promotion strategy and branding. Join us as we help Ben with his online promotion and marketing strategy while diving deep into how to target the right avatar with promotions and optimized branding principles. If you need insight on how to promote and rebrand your business, then you should not miss this episode! [Tweet "Find a way to do it and take action! - Shane"] [Tweet "If you're putting more time into the work side of your life, then something else has to be smaller. - Jocelyn"] You Will Learn: How to work on your online business without disrupting your priorities at home Social Media Promotion: Debunking a major myth How to target the right avatar Fixing promotion strategies and branding issues How to pivot your online business Plus so much more! [Tweet "Your avatar will either search for what they care to know or what they need, so give them what they want. - Shane"] [Tweet "Change what needs to be changed, as long as it serves your customers better, they're not going to mind. - Jocelyn"] Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Ben's Website  FL Time Management Lifehacks  Flip Your Life community  Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free Success Story of the Week: Today's success story is from Lynda and Kevin and it says, "Finally, our first video." "We've been talking about video for a while now, but we struggle with equipment and other issues like fear of the camera, etc.  We finally invested in some better equipment and made a video of one of the recipes in our newest cookbook. After overcoming some tech issues, we dove in and made a great video.  I quickly picked up editing skills, and cut it mostly together the same day. We still have a couple of things to add. We're really happy with what we did. The best part though was involving our 16-year-old in the process.  I named him assistant director, and really took some time to explain the equipment and our process.  I put together a quick shot list, was turned out to be super helpful, and our son was able to help us move from one thing to the next.   Overall, it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, and we conquered some of our fears in the process.  We loved how our son took to it, and feel we gained miles of progress with just this one video. We can now see how this will work in our business and we're supercharged to make 100 more." Lynda & Kevin's Website: http://kevinshealthykitchen.biz/ Great job, Linda and Kevin, we are so proud of you, and we cannot wait to see what you do next! We would love to help you write the success story for your online business. At the end of today's show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community. Can't Miss Moment: Today's Can't Miss Moment is working at our church's Vacation Bible School. So, Shane and I volunteer each year to work at our church's Vacation Bible School and this is something that we've been doing for a really long time, probably almost 10 years. It's really cool because when we worked at school before, even though it was the summertime, we still had a lot of stuff going on and it was just really stressful to think abo...

You're not broken because you're an introvert... ...a lot of successful people are introverts, we're just a little bit quieter about it." In today's episode, Jocelyn talks about some of the challenges of being an introvert and an entrepreneur and how to overcome them. Flip Your Life Community member Trista sent in this question: I'm very interested to hear strategies for overcoming my introversion. I'm a teacher, and that trade has been one of my toughest challenges to overcome. At the end of the day, between interacting with hundreds of teens and standing before an audience, I've always felt so exhausted and stressed. This 10th year I opted to teaching virtually, and now I'm even more out of practice from speaking publicly." Jocelyn provides some great insight on this question, as well as debunking some myths about introversion like: All introverts are shy Introverts don't like people Introverts can't be front and center in an online business Jocelyn also talks about the importance of personality tests, and mentions a free online personality test called Personality Max that she took, where she openly shares her test results that you can check out here: Jocelyn's Personality Max™ Report Join us today to have a better understanding of introversion -- the myths, the truths, the nature of an introvert -- and how introverts can be successful entrepreneurs as well. You can also check the video of this episode on YouTube here: Being an Introvert and an Entrepreneur   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Dealing with haters in your online business? This episode talks about how to overcome the fear of criticism, and ignoring the voices that hold you back (including your own). Listen to a real life example on how one of our members had her first hater in her online business, and experience actually ended up making her money! Learn social media marketing in this social media marketing course and Q&A! We've packed this tutorial with social media marketing tips for small business, and updated everything for 2018! It's time to create your social media marketing plan, watch and ask questions in the comments! This stuff is working NOW! Watch and take your social media marketing to the next level. Get your FREE Social Media Sales Funnel Template you can download NOW to take your social media marketing to the next level. Get it Here: FREE Social Media Sales Funnel Template   You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 206 - How HATERS Make You Money + Social Media Marketing Course   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Grill the hotdogs!" - Shane This is an actual online business advice for one of today's featured questions. Listen in and find out why it's important. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  "I wanted to ask your opinion about my lead magnets. I came up with three lead magnets and plan to choose one from the list below and record the training video or write an ebook. Which one do you like better? I feel option 1 and 2 provide a lot of value even for a paid content.1. Questions to ask during the first three dates to see if you could be a good match to find your dream husband in short time. 2. Ice breakers and questions to ask during the first date to find your dream husband in short time. 3. Tips on clearing your mind and lifting your spirit to find your dream husband in short time. - Svetlana "I have a question about my lead magnet and opt-in sequence. Currently, the lead magnet is a set of 6 short science videos about one topic, which would be equivalent to one lesson plan. I'm wondering if six videos is too much information for them to process in the first email. Should I give them just the first video as the lead magnet, and then divide the rest into two follow-up emails? Also, for the WOW bonus, they're getting 4 sets of video lessons (4 topics; each has 6 short videos). Should I give away this much? Or change it to one set of video lessons about one topic (which would be 6 short videos)?" -  Jennifer "Please help me figure out how to start! I really want to teach parents how to use audio books and read alouds to make parenting easier and why how books trump technology. I want to teach them how using the right books can help make parenting easier because of bonding, character building, and getting to tackle important issues with their child through fiction. Is this even a good idea? I am struggling with the pain point and if people are searching for a solution. I am thinking the symptoms are disconnection, feeling too busy, feeling like you are failing as a parent, using screens to keep kids busy, etc. Can you help me get see a direction to go with this?" - Danae "My question today is about free Facebook content and lead magnets. I do understand the aspirin and vitamin analogy but I'm still struggling with what to giveaway in social media, and lead magnets, what to give away in e-mail and what to hold for paying customers only for my particular industry. I get more diet related questions from people than anything, yet the workouts/personal training are what I consider the core of my memberships." - Carla You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 205 Lead Magents + Opt ins + Hotdogs? (Q&A w/ S&J) Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!       Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

Joining us this week is the proprietress of MomKnowsCollege.com, Flip Your Life community member, Lea Saccoman. Lea is very passionate in serving her membership community. She leads and supports moms of high schoolers who need help with the college planning process. This includes a Facebook group where she coaches them directly, answering questions as to what they should know and what they should be doing to get their kid into college. She also has training videos, tools and other resources that are useful for planning and organizing each step in the process. Having done all that, she now wonders what her next focus should be, how to tie it all together and grow her online business. In this episode, we'll help Lea prioritize tasks that are critical to her membership's success and conquer those self-sabotaging mindset hurdles. Tune in to get that push you need to move yourself and your online business forward! [Tweet "“Our goal is to show our kids what's possible, that there's opportunity & freedom for them as well.” - Jocelyn"] [Tweet "“Better is better than best.” - Shane"] You Will Learn: How to stop self-sabotage Jocelyn's prioritization system Critical tasks that keep your business running The 4 things every entrepreneur should focus on Plus so much more! [Tweet "“Stop thinking about it so much, just go and get it done.” - Jocelyn"] [Tweet "“The most important accountability partner you have is your customers.” - Shane"] Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Lea's website Flip Your Life community Asana Headspace Bonjoro Sandra Chen's FL podcast episode Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free Success Story of the Week: Today's Success Story is from Carolyn Lincoln. Carolyn writes, "My Beta launch ended at midnight with not one membership as I'd hoped, but seven.  As I put in a redirect to send people to a waiting list, another slipped in making it eight members. Yay! So now the work really begins to make and keep them happy. I have a call set up for today at 1:00 and I have more plans to. I hope to do a bigger launch for the membership in the fall after getting it organized and more success stories, too." Carolyn's Website: https://playtobehave.com/ Way to go, Carolyn, we are so super proud of you! Carolyn has been working on her membership site for a little while now, and she has done great work and is bringing people in to figure out what they want, solve problems for them, and make this available to lots more people. We are super proud of you for those eight members and we cannot wait to see what you do moving forward! We would love to help you write the success story for your online business. At the end of today's show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community. Can't Miss Moment: Today's Can't Miss Moment is welcoming our amazing new Flip Your Life moderators!   One of the things that we have done recently in our community is we have appointed people to become moderators because Shane and I are having a hard time keeping up with all the post ourselves. We still do comment on a lot of them, but we knew that it was time to start bringing in some help.   One of the things that we do is we look for people who are especially active in the community, and also regularly posting success stories, and we appoint them to be moderators of the community.   There are many benefits to being a moderator. One benefit is that we have a private Facebook group for moderators only. Another benefit is that we do a quarterly success call or a quarterly Q&A with moderators only,

Outsourcing is the key to taking your life and business to the next level. In today's episode, Jocelyn talks about tips for outsourcing your life to free up time for your business! What is holding you back from outsourcing your home management? Do you find yourself answering with these statements? "My parents didn't do it, so I shouldn't do it." "I'm lazy if I can't manage my home and my business (at the same time)." "Only rich people could afford this." Or thoughts along these lines? The (outsourced) person won't do it my way. I don't wan't anyone to see my mess. I would never let someone else touch my laundry. Well, you are not alone because these are the very reasons Jocelyn struggled with in the beginning. Listen in as Jocelyn debunks these myths and mindset issues, as well as share tips on outsourcing in your home to help you take your online business to the next level. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: Outsourcing Secrets (Start at Home!)   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!    

Your job is NOT safe. Do you ever think “What would I do if I lost my job?” You should. You could lose it at any time. Let me explain why, and show you a better, safer way to earn a living. Most people think that you just need to get a good job, and you can live happily ever after. It is super risky to get employed by just one person and have everything on the palm of their hands, you don't have real control of your life.   Work for yourself Give yourself the power to succeed or fail. The only people we could count on are ourselves. True security and safety starts with learning how to do this with the right knowledge, support, and tools. We have a great advantage living in this age because we have the Internet. There will always be people who want to give you money online, out of the 4 billion people with access to the internet. We can help you do that. Have you experienced someone not showing up for a scheduled appointment? As an online entrepreneur, your time might be very limited and valuable, but the reality is things are not always going to work out as you want them to. In this video, Shane shares an important mindset and attitude to have when someone pulls off a NO SHOW on you.  SHOW GRACE Have grace and empathy, everybody's time is finite and valuable Sooner or later it could happen to you Don't think that your time is much more valuable than anyone else's time REDEMPTION Always offer people a chance of redemption We all make mistakes You're going to need a second chance too someday “Do unto others what you want them to do to you” MOVE ON QUICKLY Have a “Rain Plan” – always plan what to do in case the person does not show up and your appointment does not push through Don't wait around Do something productive instead Don't let other people disrupt you Don't let circumstances ruin your whole day HAVE PERSPECTIVE Don't be driven by ego Respect other people's situations You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 202 - Your Job is Not Safe + Dealing with NO SHOWS Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!  

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. YOU'LL WANT TO HEAR THIS! Shane shares a SUPER hilarious experience to illustrate a point in answering the second question in this episode. It's seriously one of the funniest moments ever recorded in a member call. (HINT: Urinals) Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  "I was hoping to get your opinion about membership activities for my business. Besides membership calls what else can be done? I don't want to coach my clients directly as it can become time consuming." -Svetlana  "I'm at KETOCON now! Hoping to connect with some Keto Influencers...any tips?" -JJ "I would love some suggestions on what to do with my paying customers to keep happy and engaged through the summer...since they arent using my lesson plans." - Kathy You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 201 - Membership Activity & Engagement Strategies + MORE! Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

The  200th episode is finally here. Can you believe that it's already been four amazing years since we've started this podcast? Thank you so much for supporting the podcast and listening to us each week! This episode marks a huge change for The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, our family, and our business. Brace yourselves. We have three huge announcements that you shouldn't miss. They could have a huge impact on you and your family's future! It's GOODBYE to the old and HELLO to the new on today's show! Listen now or read the transcript below. Enjoy the show! - Shane & Jocelyn Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/free You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Transcript: Jocelyn: Hey, y'all!  Welcome to the 200th episode of the Flipped Lifestyle 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 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. Shane: What's going, everybody?  Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.  It is great as always to be with you again this week, and we are so happy to be celebrating our 200th episode.  That's right! This is episode 200 of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast with Shane and Jocelyn, and by far, this is the biggest, most audacious, craziest thing we've ever done on the show.   Jocelyn: And that's saying something because we've done some really weird stuff over the past six years.    Shane: We've done some weird and crazy things, and we are confident that this is going to be one of the biggest and awesomest things we've ever done.  We have three huge announcements that are not only going to change everything that we're doing professionally in our business life, but they are going to change everything for you and your family, too.   Jocelyn:  Some of you may be wondering why on earth we titled the 200th episode, "Goodbye.”  Are we stopping the podcast? No, we're not stopping the podcast, but we are saying goodbye to some other things in our life, in our business.   Shane: So don't worry, we're sticking around.  We're going to keep coming to you every single week and helping you flip your life with online business.  And just like we're sticking around, we want you to stick around for this entire episode. You're going to want to listen to every single minute because as we say goodbye to the past, you may be saying hello to your future.  So sit back, relax, you may want to take some notes because this is going to be an awesome ride for the 200th episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Jocelyn: Alright, before we reveal what it is we're saying goodbye to, we're going to talk a little bit about our last 200 episodes.  It's been a wild ride! We started out as two people from Kentucky, just behind some microphones, and here we are 200 episodes later, which is pretty cool.   Shane: And it's always good, whenever you're making huge changes to your life or to your business, to kind of take a breath and sit back and look back at where you've been because that's always the foundation of where you're going.   So for those of you who may be new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, or maybe you've been listening for a while, but you weren't with us since the beginning, our story starts back in 2012 when we were school teachers.   Jocelyn: We were like many of you.  We went to work. We came home.  And for all intents and purposes, we were happy enough.   Shane: And then one day we found out our son, Isaac, was being mistreated at his daycare center and I asked for the day off to go deal with this situation.  My boss was extremely cruel to me, told me that I could handle it after work and basically said,