Podcasts about flip your life community

Today's guest on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast is Flipped Lifestyle Community Member Jason Atha! Jason Atha came into the Community on fire! He is super active in the Flipped Lifestyle Community forums, he likes to take massive action – he has built a website, he is building his membership out, he's been blogging. And, whenever we see people taking action like this we love to bring them on the show to help take them to the next level! On today's show you'll learn: The process of how Jason has built his online business and presence What Jason is doing right now to create an online audience How to roll out a successful launch via email The few mistakes several people make when people launch their membership site that keep them from getting their first members How to overcome feelings of imposter syndrome so you can take your dream to the next level We would love to have you as a member of The Flip Your Life Community! All you need is 100 people to pay you $50/m online to make $5,000/m, $60,000/y! Let us help you start build and grow a membership of your own. Click here to learn more: https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

Imagine 2000 people paying you $29, $49, even $109 each month! Do the math!  We are talking over $1M /year online! That's exactly what happened to Jeff Twiddy! Jeff started listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast a few years ago, joined the Flip Your Life Community and started taking massive action! We first introduced you to Jeff in episode 104 (listen here: https://flippedlifestyle.com/podcast104) In that episode, Jeff's membership was taking off!  He was making great money, and had created enough monthly revenue for his wife to come home! Then… things got crazy! Jeff's membership has gone from successful to a full-blown online empire of 2000 paying customers! Crazy right!?!? In today's episode, you will learn how Jeff scaled his membership in record time, and how he's truly living the Flipped Lifestyle with his wife and kids! If you have an online dream, you do not want to miss this episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast! In this episode, you'll learn: How Jeff built a seven-figure membership How to use what you know to create the life you want Jeff Twiddy's advice for people who want to start an online business We would love to have you as a member of The Flipped Lifestyle Community!  We believe you have God-given talents and experiences you can use to start an online business!  All you need is 100 people to pay you $50/m online to make $5,000/m, $60,000/y!  Let us help you start a membership of your own.  We offer a FREE Basic Membership to give you the tools and resources you need to find your online business idea and get started. Click here to learn more: https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Imagine 2000 people paying you $29, $49, even $109 each month! Do the math!  We are talking over $1M /year online! That's exactly what happened to Jeff Twiddy! Jeff started listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast a few years ago, joined the Flip Your Life Community and started taking massive action! We first introduced you to Jeff in episode 104 (listen here: https://flippedlifestyle.com/podcast104) In that episode, Jeff's membership was taking off!  He was making great money, and had created enough monthly revenue for his wife to come home! Then… things got crazy! Jeff's membership has gone from successful to a full-blown online empire of 2000 paying customers! Crazy right!?!? In today's episode, you will learn how Jeff scaled his membership in record time, and how he's truly living the Flipped Lifestyle with his wife and kids! If you have an online dream, you do not want to miss this episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast! In this episode, you'll learn: How Jeff built a seven-figure membership How to use what you know to create the life you want Jeff Twiddy's advice for people who want to start an online business We would love to have you as a member of The Flipped Lifestyle Community!  We believe you have God-given talents and experiences you can use to start an online business!  All you need is 100 people to pay you $50/m online to make $5,000/m, $60,000/y!  Let us help you start a membership of your own.  We offer a FREE Basic Membership to give you the tools and resources you need to find your online business idea and get started. Click here to learn more: https://flippedlifestyle.com/free

Hey y'all! On today's podcast we chat with Flip Your Life Community members Steve and Rebecca Newlin. A few years ago they got into raising kids. But not the human kind of kids - goat kids! On today's show Shane is going to help Rebecca and Steve create an amazing member area where goat farmers from around the world can learn, connect, and talk about their kids, plan a launch that will flood goat farmers into their new membership, and set the price for their goat farming membership along with a launch discount offer.

On today's podcast we help Flip Your Life Community member Tim Madison turn his web development skills into an online membership. Tim is just starting out but he's already built a website and starting to create courses for his future members. He's a little unclear about who he's going to serve. Shane helps Tim answer some important questions that anyone can ask when starting an online business. Shane helps Tim find a great domain name for his membership site and teaches him how to start a successful YouTube channel!

Welcome to today's Flipped Lifestyle Podcast!  In today's episode, we help Flip Your Life Community member Roz take her health leadership business to the next level!  If you want to launch a membership of your own, listen to today's show!

Chris and Ivy Newport started their membership inside The Flip Your Life Community, and grew it to a quarter-million-dollar business in record time!  In today's Flipped Lifestyle Podcast we detail how they did it, and exactly a real couple built their 6-figure membership on the Internet!

Imagine 2000 people paying you $29, $49, even $109 each month! Do the math!  We are talking over $1M /year online! That's exactly what happened to Jeff Twiddy! Jeff started listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast a few years ago, joined the Flip Your Life Community and started taking massive action! We first introduced you to Jeff in episode 104 (listen here: https://flippedlifestyle.com/podcast104/) In that episode, Jeff's membership was taking off!  He was making great money, and had created enough monthly revenue for his wife to come home! Then... things got crazy! Jeff's membership has went from successful, to a full blown online empire of 2000 paying customers! Crazy right!?!? In today's episode, you will learn how Jeff Scaled his membership in record time, and how he's truly living the Flipped Lifestyle with his wife and kids! If you have an online dream, you do not want to miss this episode of The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast! Enjoy! Shane & Jocelyn

In today's show, we answer questions from the Flip Your Life Community, including: How to outsource vital tasks in your membership site, lead generation using public limited time challenges, and the pros and cons of offering lifetime memberships!  Enjoy today's Q&A with S&J!

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Q&A w/ S&J!  This is the podcast where we answer all of your questions about memberships! In today's show we discuss: Whether or not you should open and close your memberships. How to use monthly special promotions to sell more memberships. How to warm up a cold email list and improve your email marketing. How to bust through sales plateaus in your membership. Whether or not you should put a sign up / sales button on every page of your website. How to make amazing courses for your online membership business! We also celebrate some amazing success stories from The Flip Your Life Community! Enjoy the show! Shane & Jocelyn Flipped Lifestyle™ Membership Masters™ Flip Your Life™

  On this week's Flipped Lifestyle Podcast we welcome back one of our favorite guests and Flip Your Life Community members - Teresa Perleberg! We first shared Teresa's story on Podcast 191 - click here to listen! On that episode, we learned that Teresa was building her membership business around needle felting! What is needle felting? Needle felting is a process which uses barbed needlesto interlock wool fibers to form a more condensed material. Click Teresa's Site to learn more: https://bearcreekfelting.com/felting-101/ Teresa not only provides the sheep wool to her customers, she teaches them how to needle felt the wool into AMAZING creations! In episode 191 we helped Teresa improve her engagement and retention in her budding membership business. And WOW did she take action! Teresa now runs a $250,000 needle felting empire from the plains of North Dakota! In today's episode, you will learn: How she grew her quarter million dollar business! How partnerships were the key to taking her membership to the next level! How she BOUGHT A SCHOOL, and what she plans to do with it (it's INCREDIBLE)! We know this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast will inspire you to take your membership to the next level as well! Enjoy! -Shane & Jocelyn Flip Your Life™   Ready to start your online membership business? We can help!  Click here to learn more: https://flippedlifstyle.com/flipyourlife

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In today's episode, we celebrate Eva's first five-figure month and help her hire a virtual assistant. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's show, we celebrate Eva's first five-figure month and help her hire a virtual assistant. 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's great to be back with you again today. Super excited to bring you another amazing success story from The Flip Your Life Community. We've got a great guest today, Eva Klein. Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Eva Klein: Thank you so much for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today. You have been posting success stories for quite a while now, and I can't wait to get into exactly what you've been up to. Shane Sams: This is a good one. This is a big one, y'all. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and especially with your life circumstances because you have recently had a new baby, right? Eva Klein: Yes, I had my third son. Well, I have two daughters and now I have a son who was born in September. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: Hey, that is incredible. We are definitely going to dive a little bit deeper into that. Before we do, tell everybody a little bit about you and your background and what it is you do online. Eva Klein: Sure. I am as I said married with three kids. I live in Toronto and I am the owner and founder of mysleepingbaby.com, which is a pediatric sleep consulting business where I help exhausted parents get the sleep that everybody in their family needs and I specifically work with parents that have little ones in the zero- to five-year range. I'm actually a lawyer by training and I got into this business kind of by accident after my ... When my middle child was born, unlike her older sister who was a really easy-going, happy-go-lucky baby who, of course, was a naturally fantastic sleeper. My middle child, was born two years later, was the complete opposite. She was extremely difficult, cried nonstop, and of course, sleep did not come naturally to her. Eva Klein: I've always really needed my sleep and so as the months went on and the sleep deprivation really kicked in, I was legitimately suffering. I had no choice but to actually open up all these sleep books and figure out what the heck to do so I can get my sanity back. On my own, I managed to not perfect the situation, but I managed to make it more ... I made it more manageable for myself. Eva Klein: I remember she was about four or five months and here in Canada we have 12 months of maternity leave. I was on maternity leave, and I thought to myself, "Gosh, I should launch a side business. I should ... I love what I'm doing. I love sleep. I would love to help other families. I should become a sleep consultant and just have it as a side hustle where really it's just gonna be some fun money where I get a new client and I go buy a pair of shoes. I'm not giving up law or anything like that. I mean, that would just be crazy. That would be insane. Shane Sams: Come on, who does that? Right? Eva Klein: Yeah. No, seriously, why in my wildest dreams would I ever do that? There's an ongoing theme of, "Man plans, God laughs." That was plan number one. Plan number one was I'm gonna launch a side business, keep it is a side business." Thankfully my boss had allowed me to go back to work on a part-time somewhat flexible arrangement. I'm working from home and what not, which was great. That plan quickly changed where ... When I launched my business ... This was 2014, like September of 2014 when baby was one, and someone had posted in this big mommy Facebook group that I'm in that she was looking for a sleep consultant recommendation. Eva Klein: I had just completed my certification myself and I had had a lot of volunteers that came from this group to help me complete the certification. I had messaged all of them on Facebook and I said, "Guys, check out this person's post. Can you recommend me? I helped you. Can you tag me? Can you recommend me?" I had, I don't know, over at least 10 or 15 people recommending me, and then within 24 hours, because of that single Facebook post, I had four people call me and book one-on-one packages with me, which was about $1600 in revenue. From one Facebook post. Shane Sams: Wow. Isn't it- Jocelyn Sams: Then the wheels start turning, right? Eva Klein: Yeah, yeah. That was where I'm going, "That's a lot of shoes." Shane Sams: That's a lot of shoes. That's a closet full of shoes, y'all. Eva Klein: Yeah, or one really, really expensive pair of shoes...I probably don't even need. That was when I immediately took a step back and I said to my husband ... I said, "I can actually ... I think I can make real money here." I said, "Look at what just happened." He looks at me and he goes, "All right. Go for it." Shane Sams: Wow. Eva Klein: "Do what you need to do. You've got my blessing. Go run with this." The plan changed from, "This is gonna be my fun side business", to, "This is something that I would love to build up so I can do this one-on-one coaching full time, and then when I'm good and ready, I'm gonna leave my job." Of course, I'm in control of everything, so I'm gonna leave when I'm good and ready and when I feel like my business is big enough ... For now, I'll just continue hustling on the side when I'm not working and when the kids are asleep and then decide when it's the right time for me to make the big move. Shane Sams: Okay, hold on one second before you get into that. Let me unpack a little bit of this first, okay? Eva Klein: Yes. Shane Sams: You basically decide you're gonna do something that you're untrained to do and- Eva Klein: Well, no. I got my certification. Shane Sams: Right, that's what I'm saying. Eva Klein: I did spend. Shane Sams: Before that, right? Eva Klein: Yeah, the entire ... Sorry, I forgot to mention this, that I'm not just ... I didn't just have a couple of kids and decide to become ... To call myself an expert, because the baby at the time was five or six months and I had another six months of maternity leave and she was now sleeping well, I was able to spend the next six months doing my certification online while she napped and while she slept. Shane Sams: Okay, so you went and got certified through like an organizing body or- Eva Klein: Yes. Shane Sams: Experts or whatever? Eva Klein: Exactly. Shane Sams: You are not a trained medical person. You are not a trained psychologist or sociologist- Eva Klein: No- Shane Sams: Per se, you are a lawyer who experienced something in her life, and then went out and got some training in that, but not like a full-blown PhD degree, whatever. You went to a certifying body that it does help you perfect or master what you've already figured out on your own, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: You started a business basically by participating in another person's Facebook group it sounds like. Eva Klein: Yeah, yep. Shane Sams: You went into this Facebook group, participated, gave people advice, helped people in the group, and then when the time came to charge for it, these people were kind of like your testimonials, right? Eva Klein: Yeah, totally. Shane Sams: For everyone listening, if you're looking for a business model, I'm not saying go into baby sleeping, but I'm saying that's the classic thing that people are like, "How will I ever get a testimonial?" Well, you go help people for free. "Well, how will I ever ... I'm not an expert in this. I didn't go to college for it." So? You could probably get certified in whatever you want to do, right? Eva Klein: Yes. Shane Sams: There's so many paths that can lead you ... You didn't even expect to end up here when you started this- Eva Klein: No, no. Shane Sams: Let alone having a full-blown business and not being a lawyer anymore. Eva Klein: It was shoe money, that's what this was. It was fun side money. Shane Sams: Maybe everybody out there that's listening, that you've been sitting on the fence and you won't get in the community and do the courses and start ... Maybe you just need some shoe money, right? Maybe you just need a few more skins for your kids on Fortnite, right? Yeah, so maybe you just need a smaller goal, and when you get into it, you start making money, you realize ... We hear this story all the time. People come in, they start ... Even for a side hustle ... Sometimes it might not be shoe money. It might be car payment or insurance, whatever it is. Shane Sams: Someone just wants to make a little extra money and then they look down and they can pay their mortgage and they're like, "Whoa." That's like real money that we can actually spend on our life to stay alive and move forward and maybe even make life better. It's just ... I just love your story, how it started out as, "Yeah, I want some shoes. Whoa, hold on a second. That's like a lot of money there." Eva Klein: A lot of shoes. Jocelyn Sams: All right. You're going along, you're doing your day job as an attorney. You are doing this side hustle as a sleep consultant and- Shane Sams: This is pure one-on-one coaching, right? Eva Klein: Yes, all one-on-one coaching. Shane Sams: At this time? Okay Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jocelyn Sams: What happens next? How do you decide to take this sort of to the next level? What did that look like? Eva Klein: I didn't. I went into that ... Remember, there's an overall theme here, "A man planned and God laughs." My second plan, which was, "I'm gonna quit when I'm good and ready", that fell from the wayside when my boss pulls me into the office one day and says, "We need you back full time. Full time, we can't have you working from home anymore because the nature of the job is changing and we need you. There's gonna be more team work involved." At the time, my kids were three and one and that meant ... I mean, I thought that my world was crashing before me because I wasn't ready. I was about six months in to doing this side hustle. I was not ready to be quitting my job and to have to continue to build my business while working full time, not at home, I mean, it would have been impossible. Eva Klein: Plus, given that my three-year-old was already in school, it would mean we would have to pay for a nanny, which would be a massive added expense to cover before and after care. I was- Shane Sams: At this time you're not making anywhere near your salary I assume? It's not- Eva Klein: I was- Shane Sams: Or maybe- Eva Klein: It was growing. Shane Sams: Like equivalent after taxes? Eva Klein: Yeah, it was growing, but then when I sat down with my husband and we figured out, "Okay, if I were to keep my job and work full time, but then we're dishing out all this money for all this added extra child care, we would need a full-time, Monday-to-Friday, eight-to-six nanny to cover the before and after care. It would be a lot of added expenses. Given that my business was growing and that my job I guess really wasn't, then the next plan was, "Okay, I'm not gonna do this job full time because it's not gonna work. My next plan is I'm going to say goodbye to this job and I'm gonna continue to grow my business while I continue to look for something else part time." Eva Klein: That was ... Are we on plan number two or plan number three that basically didn't end up panning out? That was the next plan. It was ... Listen, it was very, very scary because it was not what I personally had planned, but again, that's just an overall theme here. That's often how life ends up working out and- Shane Sams: Sure. Eva Klein: So I was looking for something part time and I actually had a number of leads, but then as ... It takes a little bit of time for people to get back to you and interviews and whatnot, but as time was going on, my one-on-one coaching business just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger because I had even more time now to be able to dedicate to hustling and going on all these other Facebook groups and kind of growing my I guess Facebook brand if you can call it that way- Shane Sams: You're following, growing an audience of some kind, but before- Eva Klein: For sure- Shane Sams: You were kind of ... I don't know what the right word is. You were kind of like siphoning an audience off here and there of places you were participating as an audience member, but as you had more time to put into this, you started ... I mean, it's like seeing someone around the local place all the ... It's like Norm on Cheers, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like, "Oh, there's Eva. Oh, there's Eva. She's in every group I go to." Eva Klein: Yeah, yeah, "I've heard about her", and then all of a sudden it's, "Oh, my baby is sleep" ... I started getting referrals from people that, "Oh, you helped my friend with her baby and now I'm gonna hire you because I need help, too." Before I knew it, I didn't have time for a part-time job because I was ... My hours were filled up with all this one-on-one coaching. Shane Sams: We had a very similar experience, actually, because of the nature of teaching. We had like six to eight weeks off in the summer, right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: Now, I say off. Jocelyn was a longer contracted worker as a librarian, so she was in like throughout July getting the library ready for a book, and I was coaching football every day, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: It was probably ... Instead of our normal nine-to-10 our day it was a four-hour day or whatever, you know? Eva Klein: Uh-huh. Shane Sams: As our business grew, we went about a year ... That last ... Probably two to four months of the year is where we really had massive growth in the first year, and it was like as we had more time, it started growing faster. As we started getting ready to go back to school, we looked at each other and said, "Man, if we can do this part time, what could we do full time?" We weren't ready yet. That's why we actually went back into our school year that year and we taught for a couple more months before we looked down and the money started getting crazy and we're like, "Why are we here? We shouldn't be here." It was that moment where you turn the corner that would probably have hit anyway if you had just quit earlier. You know what I'm saying? If you had never- Eva Klein: Yeah, but I don't have- Shane Sams: A part-time job or whatever, but you don't realize it till you get there or something. Eva Klein: I didn't have the guts that you guys had to be totally honest. I needed other circumstances to kind of ... I needed the stars to align differently for me because I think to be totally honest, it's very, very scary if we're to get up one day and say, "Oh, okay. I'm quitting my job", so- Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's really just a mindset thing. Your mindset wasn't there yet. Eva Klein: Yeah, no it wasn't. Jocelyn Sams: It takes a while to get there. I think sometimes people don't really get that or they ... I guess they don't recognize it in their own life. Maybe they've been listening to this podcast for years and they think, "Oh, well, these people have something that I don't have." No, it's just that we were able to wrap our mind around it and figure out that it was possible and that it is something we could do. Shane Sams: Also, too, a lot of people ... There is a lot of motivation and inspiration stuff. People look for that. Like, "I want to be more inspired. I want to go listen to somebody and be more inspired or be more motivated." A lot of times it does take a catalyst. It takes an outside force to push you so far out of your comfort zone that you can't help but make a change or you have to. In your case, you had no choice. It was like, your time or you're not. Shane Sams: In our case, it was like this really cruel experience from a boss that made me like hate my job and hate the people that were over me so bad that I was ready to get out. I was not there before that. Before there, I was cruise control, retirement when we're 55, whatever. Just like, "Let's go." It took a catalyst to even force us down a different path. You had a catalyst that kind of made you make a decision you weren't ready for, but that's kind of like how all of our decisions in life ... Like, are you really ready to get married ever? Are you really ready for the first kid? The second kid? The third kid? Right? Eva Klein: No, never. Shane Sams: I mean, you're never ready for it, and we need those kind of pushes to ... That's why we surround ourselves with great people who will push us, 'cause sometimes we don't have catalysts in our life. Listen, some people are listening right now, their job's secure, they're comfortable, that's why they're not hungry enough to go out and build the thing that they've got this dream, but- Jocelyn Sams: They kind of want something else. Shane Sams: Yeah, they kind of- Eva Klein: I would tell those people, "Don't quit your job. Don't do something drastic. Start something from the side and see where it takes you." Shane Sams: Exactly. Eva Klein: That's all that you need to do. That is ... It's a risk-free move and I happen to be fairly risk averse when it comes to these types of life decisions. If it happens to be ... If I had told my husband, "I don't want to go back to work. I just want to do sleep consulting full time", he probably would have given me his blessing, but I don't tick like that. I needed to do things my way, where I'm going to go back to work and have my steady paycheck, but then hustle like crazy on the side, because that is technically as risk free as it gets. Shane Sams: It's kind of like the story of the farmer who's working hard and planting seeds and it's been dry for months and months and months or whatever. Someone ... His neighbor's like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm preparing for rain." If you start your side hustle, if you get the thing ready, if you do a couple of things, just experiment and have some fun and have some shoe money, if and when the catalyst comes, at least you'll be ready for it. You know? Eva Klein: For sure. Shane Sams: That's why we always have multiple revenue streams. We've got different ... We got a couple little side businesses off of our side businesses because you just never know what's gonna hit and you never know what's gonna hit you. If you're risk averse, it's actually crazy to just be all-in on one thing like a job. Why not have a side hustle? Why not have your own thing? Why not have something else to kind of protect you from all these contingencies? Eva Klein: Right. Jocelyn Sams: You go back into work. They're like, "Hey, come in full time." You're like, "Yeah, no, I'm not doing that." Eva Klein: Not happening. Jocelyn Sams: Keep building up this consulting thing. What form has it taken now? I know that's probably about the time you came into our community, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Well, so 2015 was the year of, "Well, Eva, so you're not going back to law. You're actually doing this full time? Wow, that's crazy. Good for you." That was 2015. 2016 was, "Okay, what's next?" I've ... This is ... I haven't looked back. I'm not going back to law ... I mean, not at this point, anyways ... I'm pretty full time when it comes to all this coaching, but there is ... When you're working in the dollars-for-time type of business model, there is a maximum amount that you can make, really, 'cause there's only 24 hours in a day and- Jocelyn Sams: You can only raise your prices so much. Eva Klein: Exactly. It's exhausting because when literally you don't work, you don't get paid, and so it's a very stressful situation to be in. Beginning of 2016 was when I started to try and figure out, "Okay, what's next? How do I expand my brand? What do I do?" I thought about maybe adding some extra service providers under my brand and maybe adding in some night nurses or maybe training some other sleep consultants, but that didn't really excite me so much. I'm gonna be totally honest, I came across your Forbes article, where it was talking all about how you guys made money selling digital products. That's when I went, "That's it! That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create an online sleep program. That's it!" It was like, "Huzzah! That's what I'm gonna do." Shane Sams: You're the first person that's ever said "huzzah" on The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Eva Klein: Really? No one's ever said that before? Eva Klein: No one- Shane Sams: No one's ever said it. I say it personally 'cause I love that word, but never heard it on the podcast, so ... Eva Klein: I was so excited because this was the first time that I had ... I was toying with so many ideas in terms of expanding, and none of them excited me. That was when ... That was my real aha moment. "Okay, this is what I'm doing next." I'm just warning you, when I tell you how long it took me to launch, I'm gonna give you guys a mini heart attack, because I know that you're all about put a couple of things together and launch. I did the complete opposite where it took me a year and a half, and it's not because I was slack. It was because it took me months and months and months to come up with all the content and another year to film it and put it together and do ... It was beyond ridiculous. Edit the videos and then add headlines underneath and subtitles underneath the videos. It was a little bit ridiculous, or a whole lot. Jocelyn Sams: Not to mention that you're also like birthing babies during this time. Shane Sams: Yeah, right. Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: You had a few things going on in your life. Shane Sams: Children are being born, things going on. Eva Klein: Yeah, it was- Shane Sams: Kind of put a damper on it. Eva Klein: It was insane, but anyways, long story short, it beta launched in December 2017 and fully launched in January. It's been running now for just over a year. Shane Sams: It's so funny, 'cause I remember the aha moment that I had, too. I was riding a lawn mower, listening to a podcast, and I heard a guy talk about a PDF that he was selling for $49. People would pay him and he'd email it to them, right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: It never ... I just remember telling Jocelyn, "How did this never occur to me before? Why do we not see the thing ... We're already ... We're teaching people, we're saying the same things over and over", and sometimes it just takes like an example, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: Someone just asked me the other day, "Why do you guys podcast?" It was like a little round table discussion, right? There was different answers, "'Cause I love this subject matter", there was this that and the other. I said, "I want to show people what's possible." If you can't see what's possible, it can't click, right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Shane Sams: If I'm frazzled 'cause my baby won't sleep, which I've been there, terrible, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: If I don't see you holding a baby that's sleeping and you're like, "Look, I've figured this out. This baby just slept for nine hours", whatever, I don't know it's possible, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: It's amazing to me that it just clicked and you attacked it and you built this course. Even if it took you 18 months, like errors, I mean, in theory, Flipped Lifestyle took us, what, two years to get to before we actually ever had a course or anything. We had talked about it, but people don't see that. They only see the moment after you launch, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: I mean, you only get to experience the rest of your life. You can't worry about ... What did you always say about trees? Like the ... Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's like there's a saying. The best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago, the next best time is today. Shane Sams: Right. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to do it as long as you do it. Jocelyn Sams: Just get started. Shane Sams: I know there's one more layer to this. We're gonna talk about that in a minute with the membership and things like that, but when you launched your course and you start selling your course as you start moving out, 'cause you still do coach, right? You still do- Eva Klein: Yes, yes. Shane Sams: Okay. Did you feel relief? Did it feel better? Were you like ... Did you see like a path forward now where you could start moving that sliding scale? Like, "Okay, well, right now, 90% of my revenue is this, but man, last month was 10% of my courses. Man I could see now I could get a thousand people to buy this course and it's gonna start moving that bar chart down." Right? Like, it's gonna start- Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: Yeah. Well, what happened after you launched your course? Eva Klein: Well, I think the biggest ... I mean, I launched ... Yeah, I launched it immediately as a membership and I think the biggest sigh of relief was that I had all the ... I had this extra revenue that meant that I could justify not taking on as many one-on-one clients that month. Shane Sams: Yes, and it's a little bit more predictable, right? You could- Eva Klein: Yeah- Shane Sams: It's like, "Oh, I've got 50 members. I'm probably gonna have 48 next month at least, and I'll go get a couple of more." It's like, "Can I hire a virtual assistant? Could I actually do that without worrying about someone bailing on me or a launch not going good or my courses not selling or a one-on-one client leaves?" It creates more stability in your thing. Shane Sams: Now, obviously, this was about a year ago, right? This was like December of 2017? Eva Klein: Yeah, that was when I beta launched. Shane Sams: You've been doing this for about a year now, with coaching and memberships and courses running side by side, right? Eva Klein: Yes. Shane Sams: You recently had a huge win, you had your first five-figure month, correct? Eva Klein: Yes, yes. In November ... I should mention the baby was three months, two and a half months at the time, yeah, was my first five-figure month. Shane Sams: It's actually grown since then, we talked about a little bit. Eva Klein: Yeah. Yeah, and then January it was still a five-figure month, but a bigger five-figure month. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that is so awesome. What was the sentiment in your house? How did you feel? What was your husband saying about this? Eva Klein: My husband was just ... I think he was just also relieved that I finally got there, 'cause he knew it was just a matter of time. Shane Sams: Yeah. It's funny how that works, isn't it? Like at first you're like, "Can I make any money doing this?" Then you're like, "Wow, that's a lot of money. That's not just shoe money." Then you're like, "Wait a minute, this could actually pay our bills." Then you're like, "Where does this stop?" At that point when you start asking yourself like, "Where does this stop?" And it just keeps growing, it kind of ... I don't want to say you get numb to it, because when you hit your five-figure month it's like, "Whoa, five-figure month." Shane Sams: I mean, there's a lot of lawyers not making five figures a month. I'm just saying, and there's a lot of people in the legal industry not making that much money. It's like ... It does kind of get an almost expectation, like "No, I can scale this. No, I can do this." You get more confidence as you go forward on through these milestones. To me, the first money we made online always was my most exciting moment. Even more than massive numbers that we've hit in the future, you know what I'm saying? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: It was almost like your husband expected you to do it, and you kind of expected to do it. Now it's like, "Okay, how many people can I help? How many people ... How much money could we make?" Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Eva. All of this is awesome, obviously, but I know that there are probably a few people out there saying, "Okay, well, this is all sunshine or roses, and is it this easy?" Tell us a little bit about some things that have happened along the way that maybe made things difficult or some kind of obstacle that you have had to overcome along the way. Eva Klein: I guess ... I hate referring to my third child as an obstacle, because he's so cute, but let's be real. I mean, babies take up time, and as you guys always say, you've got either time or you have money. Those are your two main currencies, no pun intended. I think until I had him ... My girls are seven and five, so throughout a lot of this process they were either in school or daycare or something and I was able to have the full work day to commit to my business. Eva Klein: When I had my baby in September, that changed, and he happens to be, thank God, a very easy baby, but it does take up time and it does mean that even though this is what I do for a living, he's only five months and his sleep ... He's not sleeping 12 hours through the night just yet. It's just not expected for a lot of five-month-olds, and so because of that, it's obviously challenging. It hasn't been ... Not challenging ... It hasn't been possible for me to get everything done that I used to be able to get done before he was born. Shane Sams: Yeah, and that's ... We always joked when I was sitting in the locker room. I remember this one time this guy had ... He had two kids and he was going to three, and we always joked that he was going from man-to-man to zone coverage, which in football is harder. It's a lot easier to pick your guy and run beside him. It's a lot harder when there's another one moving around and you gotta figure out where the third one is and like ... It's just like you still got all these responsibilities that already existed. You do have another huge responsibility that's just come into your life and you don't get to ignore that, right? Eva Klein: Right. Jocelyn Sams: People out there, and Eva included, with three or more children- Shane Sams: God bless you. Jocelyn Sams: I mean, props to you because I'm struggling with two kids, okay? I just ... I don't even know how it happened. Especially when they start getting older and they're involved in different activities. How in the world do you get them there? That's just the only question I have. Shane Sams: It's amazing, though, because you actually have ... There's a really good piece of wisdom there. As your pie gets thinner ... Each slice of the pie gets thinner as we move through life, right? It doesn't matter if it's a kid or a new job or other responsibilities. Maybe an aging parent. Your pie is always getting cut thinner as you go, right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: We all try to keep doing all the things that we're doing or try to do all the new things and that's what we want to do, but what you said was, "I can't do it all. I just can't. I've got it" ... There are trade-offs and things we've gotta do to delegate, to let things go, to make the most important things happen. Talking to you off-air a little bit, that's what you've been doing. You've been ... You've still been making things happen. Your business is still growing, even though you may not be doing all the things that you want to do yet because you do have a new baby. Jocelyn Sams: You put together all that infrastructure and you started it years ago, because you sort of baby stepped this thing along the way, you're now able to have this growing business that is sustainable that maybe even just a couple of years ago, you might not could have had. You had your baby a couple of years ago, it might not have happened. It's just the way everything worked out, and because you got started and took the steps that you needed to take, now you have something that is a legitimate business. Shane Sams: Well, listen. It is ... I am always amazed when people come in and have these incredible success stories of just taking what life gives you and going forward and doing whatever it takes to reach the next level, even when you got things in your life, like a new baby or a bigger family or a job that's changing. When we read your posts in the forums and we said, "Wow, five-figure month." That is absolutely incredible. Before we go any farther, we just want to say congratulations. You are awesome. Eva Klein: Thank you. Shane Sams: You're amazing. You inspire us 'cause- Eva Klein: Thank you. Shane Sams: You've got the kids, you're killing it. Eva Klein: Thanks so much. Shane Sams: What we really want to do for the rest of the call, though, is see how we can help you grow this even more. See how we can help you get more free time back with your family, and see what your next steps are. What questions do you have for us on how to grow what you've already created? Eva Klein: Yeah. My first question has to do with hiring a VA. For very obvious reasons, my business is getting bigger and the amount of time that I have is shortening ... Is lessened because of my baby. It was just a very obvious next move that I needed some help, outside paid regular help with my business. I have someone that I'm gonna hire on for about five hours a week and I'm just trying to figure out I guess what specific tasks ... Like how to prioritize the tasks to give her that I'm no longer able to do. Eva Klein: For example, so I'll tell you the main things that I was able to get done before the baby was born that I just have not been able to do on a regular basis or at all to begin with. Before the baby came, I was blogging every week. I have not created any new content since he was born. I was posting on social media every day. That has not happened. I still post on social media, but it is not regular because of sheer time. I have been able to still email somewhat regularly. I mean, that's been my main priority, but the new content creation and as you guys like to say, showing up ... Show up in social media ... In email and social media. I think I have been sort of showing up in email, but I haven't been showing up in social media nearly as much as I could or should be. Eva Klein: I'm at this point trying to figure out if I got someone for five hours a week, how do I figure out what are the most important tasks for her to be doing? Shane Sams: I would be really careful adding back in things that you have not been able to do because what we have always found is ... Like let's say we are crunched for time. Let's say something happens. For example, right before we did our live event last year in Nashville, we basically had a complete turnover of staff. Over like a two-month period, we lost four people, okay? Jocelyn Sams: We fired two people, and then two people quit 14 days before the event. Shane Sams: Out of nowhere. Right. We were kind of scrambling. We had all this capacity that disappeared over a week or two period, right? What we did was, we said ... We basically sat down, pulled out a notepad, and said, "What can we do if it's just me and you and the people we have left?" We found that we got all the things that really needed to be done done, and all the things that kind of went to the wayside, we didn't really add 'em back 'cause they didn't help us and we still grew the business and we still succeeded. We had kind of created a bunch of jobs for other people that didn't even ... Were not even necessary. Shane Sams: I would really evaluate more so what you should be doing, which is probably the things that you've held onto at the fringes when you got ... If you've got like one hour a day, you're gonna do the most important thing, right? I don't know if I'd start at the things you're not doing, and just think about the things that you know grow the business. For example, when you do launches, you do webinars, you do email launches, what do you do that gets the most members? What do you that grows the membership? That's the goal now is ... Right now, you're ... Part of your business is memberships, part of it's the coaching. Shane Sams: We might want to slide that membership farther up so we'll grow revenue and get time back as we lose one-on-one clients. What does that? Is it social media posting? Maybe it is, but it's probably not because your business grew without it, right? Is it blogging every week? Maybe, maybe, but it might be blogging really, really good once a month, okay? That means freeing you up to do something more prolifically, which means that person that comes in might need to do something else like maybe they can handle your schedule for your one-on-one client. Maybe they can handle some of the marketing and some of the ads and some of the stuff like that. You really need a task list of everything you're doing right now, and then you need to say, "What can only Eva do? That's what Eva should do." Right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: That person's gotta take over other stuff. Be very careful whenever you hire someone to just give them a bunch of tasks or try to ... Or you realize you're not doing something and you give them all the tasks back because they may not ... You might not even need those tasks, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: What do you think think is the most important ... If you could do three things every week, what would those three things be? Like you didn't have time to do anything else, you have no help, you've got six hours this week to work. You can get three tasks done. What would you do right now? Eva Klein: Well, I guess number one is I have to respond to my one-on-one clients' emails. That's absolutely mandatory because that's the service that they're paying for. They're paying for daily email support from me when they're utilizing their sleep plan. Nobody else can do that except for me. I think the second thing is regular emails. Giving emails, having a VA write my emails doesn't sit well with me. I'm sure there are people that do it, but it doesn't feel authentic, so I need to be the one, especially because I get very personal in my emails. I talk ... I give over personal anecdotes about my kids and- Shane Sams: I'm with you. Yeah, I- Eva Klein: It would be very strange to have somebody else- Shane Sams: I would rather someone actually do our blog posts or our podcast rather than write our emails, 'cause those come from us. Eva Klein: Right, exactly. Exactly. Shane Sams: Right, so one-on-one response to the client, emails to your list, I assume to sell more stuff. Eva Klein: I guess the support within my membership. People are posting questions every single day and they are expecting expert feedback from me on their specific situation, so nobody else can do that except for me. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so then that leaves some other things such as customer service. Is that something that you think that you'd have your VA do? Shane Sams: Are you doing ... You're doing all that right now I assume, like- Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: "I can't get logged in, I can't do this, I can't do that." Okay. Eva Klein: I guess customer service I could give to her. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's one thing I would definitely offload. One way that you can do that, and you can start now, is by moving to a ticketing work system. The reason I think this is important is because right now you can answer the tickets and the good thing about the ticketing system is that it will save those responses so that when you hire someone they will be able to search and see responses that you have given. Shane Sams: Do you use a ticketing system right now? Or is just a contact? Eva Klein: No. No, I don't. They just contact me through email. Shane Sams: We use Zendesk is what we use. Jocelyn Sams: There are other ones out there. Shane Sams: Yeah, it doesn't matter- Jocelyn Sams: That are totally fine. They are relatively inexpensive to use. You can have one user usually for around like $5 a month. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's super cheap. Eva Klein: Oh, okay. Shane Sams: Like Jocelyn said, the main reason to do that is just so like as you hire other people or other people are doing it, they have like a bank of easy to get to responses so they don't have to come up with new answers every time. Eva Klein: Also if you have turnover in staff for any reason, all those responses are still there. You can go in and look ... See what people are responding-' Shane Sams: Everybody gets a little number so like they can say, "Oh, this is referencing ticket 3947382, just like you would if you called your insurance agent or whatever. That's one thing. Jocelyn Sams: I would go ahead and start doing that now. Shane Sams: What else are you doing? Jocelyn Sams: Before that person even gets started. Eva Klein: What else am I doing that you're saying I could give to someone else? I mean, the one-on-one ... The actual consultation that I do with my one-on-one clients, to actually sit down and come up with a plan, that's only me. I can't give that to anyone else to do. I am posting. I am showing up on social media, I'm just not doing it regular. Shane Sams: Does that make you money? Eva Klein: I think it does. In other words, I'm actually on my Google Analytics page right now and social is the second ... No, hold on. It's the third-most popular way that people get to my site. Shane Sams: What's first and second? Eva Klein: First is organic, and the second is just a direct link. The third is my newsletter. No, the fourth actually is Facebook. Shane Sams: O'kay. I mean, I would probably have her spend maybe a little time scheduling, but I'd be careful with that. Jocelyn Sams: That would probably be a back burner item for me, honestly. If you have extra time ... Say you're at four hours and 30 minutes and you have extra time, then that would be something you could do. Shane Sams: You're still gonna have to create the posts, I'm telling you. You're gonna have to create 'em and she can schedule 'em. Jocelyn Sams: The way that I've done it in the past and something you might want to consider is I have written out a big spreadsheet of posts and I used to have my VAs go in and schedule. I would just write them all at one time and then they would come in and schedule them. Shane Sams: There's all kinds of tools like ... You can ... Like, MeetEdgar is a tool that will allow you to fill up ... That you could take one day, do a hundred posts, and they'll keep recycling through stuff. If you've got 50 blog posts, you could put them all in MeetEdgar in one day and they would just post to social media for you over time and then just start over. We do that on my U.S. History site. We have like 150 memes, funny things about school, and it just keeps recycling through 'em twice a year. People still share 'em and laugh 'cause they don't remember the last time it got posted, you know? Eva Klein: Right. I guess I could have her ... I guess I could have her do that. Shane Sams: Well, sure she could. Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. Shane Sams: Absolutely. Absolutely. Jocelyn Sams: When you have a limited amount of time, like when you're hiring someone and you have a limited amount of time such as five hours a week, I would just put together the priorities, and that's what that person works on. Customer support, that's probably gonna be your number one priority because you want to make sure people who are paying you are happy. You start there, and if you spend three hours a week that week on customer service, then you only have two hours left to do whatever else. If you spend one hour that week on customer service, you have four hours left to do everything else. Shane Sams: I would even push back a little bit ... I'm looking at your list here. I do think as long as you have a one-on-one business that is gonna be only you, unless you hire another coach on your staff, right? I do fully agree. It doesn't mean someone couldn't do your marketing emails better, but like I get the emotional connection to writing your own emails. That's ... We do that, you know what I'm saying? I would have a hard time letting that go myself, okay? Shane Sams: I would push back about supporting your forums and your membership because that is a limiting belief that will stop you from scaling eventually. What people want from you is not always exactly you live, they just want an answer to their next question, okay? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: You could train this person. If she spent ... I'm assuming ... Is it a woman? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: I keep saying "she", I don't want anybody hating on me on Twitter 'cause I'm just assuming things, right? I'm assuming that she could do customer service and go into your membership and like, for example, someone asks a question that's clearly answered in one of your courses, you don't need to answer that. You just need someone to say, "Hey, Eva answered this in module three." What you need is someone who learns your course inside and out. The person you hire needs to watch all of this and know it and know where these things are, and that'll help her in customer service. It'll also help her in your ... You could turn that over, which would allow you to do what I would say is more important, which is creating that content again. Creating those blog posts, creating that prolific, really good stuff that's free to draw in more members, to share on social, to email your list, m'kay? Eva Klein: Right [crosstalk 00:42:25]- Jocelyn Sams: Just remember that it doesn't have to feel icky, because I know that you have a lot of personal contact with these people and you feel like they want to talk to you. I totally get that because we're in the same position, but where I have ... What I have my assistant do is she ... She doesn't post as me, she posts as herself, but she will go in and she will answer people's questions. She'll say, "Hey, so and so asked this question a couple of months ago and this was the response that Shane or Jocelyn did." Or, "Shane covered this in the module about your idea. Here's a link to it." Shane Sams: Just like your one-on-one capped and you felt that, right? If you ... The point of the membership is to give people a community, not to give them you, 'cause then you have hundreds of people that can help each other, not just you, 'cause we don't have all the answers, either, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's to bring together dozens that ... If you've got someone who's had three kids and been through your course three times and they're still a member of your community 'cause they're on their third baby, they're gonna be able to help probably in your group just as much, right? Or if you have a customer service person that's trained to know where everything is, 80% of those questions are gonna be answered. Shane Sams: Now, what our assistant does ... I just got a message from Kathy the other day, she said, "Hey, you need to post on this." Sometimes Jocelyn will drop me one or I'll drop her one, 'cause it's like something that we haven't ever talked about, right? Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: Maybe someone said "huzzah" for the first time, whatever. We'll go in then and now we've got that answer, so the next person that comes up with that, our assistant can point them back to it. If you don't do that now when your membership is young and growing, what'll happen is you're gonna hit another number. It might be 200 instead of 20, like with one-on-one coaching, but there will be a number where you're gonna look back and go, "I can't answer any more questions. I just can't do it." Shane Sams: You're gonna have to do this eventually no matter what, and that mindset hurdle might need to be jumped now when there's less people instead of more. Remember, you feel like you've promised them your whole soul and presence, but that's not what most people expect. They expect an answer and a solution and a result. However you deliver that in your membership is gonna help them. Eva Klein: I think the main challenges I have with having someone else support ... Answer questions in my community is because unlike with your business where there technically isn't a wrong answer, as long as you do something with your particular online business, something is better than nothing, right? Versus with my people and my business, there is a wrong answer. You could put your baby on the wrong schedule, which could make things worse. Shane Sams: That's not a question- Eva Klein: That's the issue. Shane Sams: That's not a question they would answer. For example, I'm just gonna make something up here. This is probably not related to anything in your program, but I'll just talk to you about what we did, okay? One of the things that Jocelyn did with our kids was she would keep them awake and not let them go to sleep with like a wash cloth at certain times. Jocelyn Sams: After eating. Shane Sams: After eating. Jocelyn Sams: When they were tiny babies. Shane Sams: When they were tiny babies. Regardless if that's right, wrong, or indifferent, we learned that from a book, okay? The answers that can be answered by your courses that already exist are not ... It's not your assistant answering the question, it's you. They are not giving them the wrong answer. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and like ... Okay, here's the thing. In your business and our business and everyone's business, everyone thinks that their situation is unique. Most people's situations are not unique. Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: 90% of the questions we answer are the same. Shane Sams: Same questions. Jocelyn Sams: Stuff we answer over and over and over and over again. Shane Sams: This is true in every niche that we've ever encountered. Like 80% of the things you're telling people are probably something that someone else has already asked you or you've made a course for it. Jocelyn Sams: Your assistant is not giving an opinion. Your assistant is pointing someone to a question you've already answered. Shane Sams: That's right. This might not happen exactly perfectly right now, but if you ... We've created systems to track all of our courses when we've answered questions. We've got a sheet of all the questions that have ever been answered on a member call, right? That like if someone says to me something that does have a very right answer like, "How do I install Paid Membership Pro?" There is only one answer to that in WordPress, right? That does have a direct answer. There's no way I would answer that question 'cause I answered it once. Now it's in our spreadsheet and now our person can say, "Go listen to this member call at the five-minute mark. Shane and Jocelyn answered that question." Shane Sams: The fear here is that you're not answering the question, but the truth is you are answering the questions. Jocelyn Sams: Someone else is just pointing someone to your answer. Shane Sams: To your answer you've already done, and you'll find ... I would bet if you went and looked at every question that someone's asked you, you would find common thread, right? Things that ... Another thing, too, is a really wise mentor told me one time, "Don't rob people of all their problems by spoonfeeding them all the answers." You have to get people in ... You may have a course that generally talks about the topic they're dealing with that might not be the exact perfect specific thing to them, but that's okay, because only your client has all the variables anyway. You're just trying to give 'em the general practice that's the best and they're gonna tweak to get where their answer is. They're gonna have their aha moment through your answer, right? Eva Klein: Right. Shane Sams: Just try to move away from that a little bit. I would much rather you get some of that time back and not be answering the same questions a hundred times so that you can go create amazing content or something to get you found by hundreds of more people who need your help. If you could help 2,000 families get through this, but you've created artificial limits that cap you at helping 200, there's gonna be 1800 families that never get helped by you and your program. Does that make sense? Eva Klein: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of direction as far as your virtual assistant goes. I think we have time for just one quick little thing else. What else did you want to ask about today? Eva Klein: Yeah. I would love to get some direction from you both on how I can I guess better perfect my I guess you can call it the elevator pitch, the way I describe and really market the program, because I'm not quite convinced it's as good as it could be because I do get quite a bit of people that come to my webinars and who open up my emails and follow me on social media. While I recognize it, it can take a long time for people to buy in. A lot of the time when I ask people why they haven't joined, it's because they're not convinced that this general program can help them with their specific issues. They're convinced that they need specific one-on-one help from me because, as you said before, they're convinced that their situation is unique and different from any other situation. Shane Sams: Sure. Eva Klein: How do- Shane Sams: What's your 30-second pitch now? Go. Eva Klein: My 30-second pitch now is that the ... My Sleep Bible Program, it's an audio/visual step-by-step online sleep program and community to help fix your little one's sleep challenges for little ones ages four months to five years and keep them sleeping. That's in essence what the pitch is. Shane Sams: I would focus probably ... The only thing I hear wrong with that probably is the getting the baby to sleep is not the result they want. They want to sleep, and the baby is keeping them awake. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I heard also in that, the nuts and bolts of your program, people don't care about that. People care about, are they going to get the result that they want for their problem. Shane Sams: Yeah, so it's more like, "Has your baby ever kept you up all night 'cause he or she won't sleep? Well, this program will put your baby to sleep all night- Jocelyn Sams: So you can get the rest you need. Shane Sams: So that you can feel rested at work tomorrow. That's what they really want to hear. All they need to hear ... They don't need to hear step by step, hold you by the hand ... Some of that's important sometimes. You can use it in different contexts, but they basically just want to say like, "I'm tired. I don't want to be tired no more. Wait, Eva, your program makes my baby sleep so I'm not tired anymore?" That's where you gotta focus all your ... The next step is fears and obstacles. Your FAQ is more important than your elevator pitch, right? Your FAQ answers all of their objections. That's where ... Don't worry too much ... This is just to get people to come to the door, right? Eva Klein: Yeah. Shane Sams: It's just, "Man, you're tired. I can fix that. I'll see you at my webinar in an hour." The webinar answers all their questions, like all, all their obstacles, all the things where they would say, "Yeah, but my baby's different." Not really. "Yeah, but my schedule won't let me do these things." Yeah, not really. You're just answering all of these things. "Yeah, but if I don't work directly with you" ... "No, trust me. Try this, then I'll work with you if it don't work." You're just answering all these questions as you kind of spiral down the rabbit hole. That make sense? Eva Klein: Yes. Yes. Okay, so I kind of need to add much more on to my FAQ section and just make the elevator pitch a lot more simple and straightforward? Shane Sams: The farther we go down this path in online business, the more we realize that our webinars need to be short and our Q&As need to be long because that's where the money's made. Same thing with yours, too. Eva Klein: Short webinar, long Q&A. Shane Sams: There you go. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Eva. It has been a great conversation today. I feel like we've been on here like 10 minutes and it's been like a really long time, but it's been super fun. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing about all your successes and I can't wait to see what happens next for you. Thank you so much for being here today and for sharing with us. Eva Klein: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, guys, and thank you again for creating The Flipped Lifestyle Community. I wouldn't have my online business if it wasn't for you guys, so thank you. Shane Sams: All right, guys, that wraps up another awesome talk with one of our real Flip Your Life Community members. We would love for you to try out The Flip Your Life Community as well. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can join right now for as little as $19 a month. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife to check out all the great programs we have to help you take your life and business to the next level. Shane Sams: Until next time, guys, 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: Eva's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

In today's episode, we help 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 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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

In today's episode, we help Dan determine next steps in moving forward and growing his online business that teaches birth professionals about how to effectively operate a successful small business. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show we help Dan take his birth consulting business to the next level. Shane Sams: Welcome to The Flip Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your host, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright, 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 today, we're super excited to welcome another member of our Flip Your Life community onto the show today to help them take their business to the next level and really, really especially excited today because we have a great friend of ours, someone who's been in the community for a long time, hung out with him in person numerous times and can't wait to help them today, Dan Dekker is on the program. Dan, what's up, man? Dan Dekker: Giddy up, giddy up, let's make some money. Woo! Jocelyn Sams: That's probably the most energetic introduction we've ever had. Shane Sams: I always love talking to you 'cause I know it's gonna be entertaining, especially when you do something like this. When I was reading your form that you filled out to be on the podcast, I love how ... Where it said like talking about your family, and you put three offspring. And I'm like, "Only Dan's putting offspring instead of children on the show, man." But Dan's got an awesome story, awesome business and we've had a lot of good times with Dan. So we're gonna ramp up everything that's going on in Dan's life today. So, Dan, tell us a little bit about you and your family and your online business. Dan Dekker: Well, first of all I like to pretend I'm from Kentucky but I wasn't actually born there so unfortunately I don't really have that accent. But yeah, my wife and I, Rebecca, started ... She started an online business 4 or 5 years ago and it really took off. I'm kind of in this weird spot where like, yeah, we flipped our lives, we have an online business that fully supports us and our family now, which is totally awesome. Shane Sams: Amazing. Dan Dekker: And now I'm kind of starting my own thing so it's this weird mix of, I've seen it happen and was sort of along for the ride but for myself I'm kind of starting from scratch and having to do it all myself, which has been definitely a learning experience. But I have my business degree. I always did accounting work for different businesses up until four years ago when I quit to do mainly the accounting and helping with our website full time and to watch the kids full time. So, I did that and now just recently ... Well, I should say our business is a childbirth-related business. My wife started it. It gives education materials to childbirth professionals. So for the last 4 or 5 years we've been dealing with these childbirth professionals on a regular basis. Dan Dekker: And that's where I kind of came up with this idea after meeting with all these doulas and midwives and childbirth educators, and realizing that a lot of them were really good at their jobs, were great at dealing with moms and families that are having babies, but they weren't all that great with the business side. You know, they get lots of training about how to help deliver a baby but no one tells them how to run a business. And so that's where this idea came from and that's what I'm starting as. It's a training class, kind of starting with the very beginning, for birth professionals to train them how to run a small business. Shane Sams: So, Rebecca's business ... She is an expert in the birth and babies field, right? Dan Dekker: Right, yeah. Shane Sams: And her main priority is getting the research and the information to these nurses, doulas, you know, midwives, people who are helping people have a baby, right? Dan Dekker: Correct. Yeah. Shane Sams: And you have been kind of on the backend doing the accounting, taking care of the book work so she can focus on the research and getting this content to her audience. And as you were doing this, you were like, "Wow, that person is the best midwife ever, but, her books are in shambles and she has no idea what to charge or how to collect money or do anything like that so she can't sustain her business which would let her help other people, basically." Dan Dekker: Exactly, yeah. Rebecca kept getting questions from people 'cause they see her running a successful business and she starts answering these business questions for them just 'cause they don't know where else to turn and she was able to help with these questions, so yeah. Shane Sams: And I'm sure it's like many businesses, you know? Every field has its nuances, right? There's like, certain lingo, a certain tool, certain things you buy that some other businesses wouldn't buy, right? And you wouldn't understand exactly how to write it off or how to file it under your taxes or do things like that. But you guys literally have been in this field now for so many years that you're like, "Yeah, I know all that stuff." And you just wanted to turn that into kind of a course and hand it out there, right? Dan Dekker: Yep, that's exactly it. So ... And yeah, just last night we launched the class a couple of weeks ago, and just last night I had my first webinar so- Shane Sams: Awesome. Dan Dekker: It went really well. Shane Sams: Now, let's back up a little bit, let's talk about this. Dan Dekker: We don't need all the details. Shane Sams: Let's go back into the details here. Jocelyn Sams: Well, first of all, before we get into all that, I just wanna say that I feel like this fits into a little box all too conveniently. So, can you talk a little bit about how you arrived at doing this? Because you didn't start out doing this birth business thing. You were gonna do something totally different. So, can you kind of take us down that road a little bit and like what made you decide to go this way? Shane Sams: Yeah, what was your first idea that you kind of had a couple of months ago? Dan Dekker: Well, if you back up even a little before that, it was on a member call or somewhere. We were talking to you guys and we're like, "Hey, we got this one business, Dan's thinking of starting his own business, should we do it?" And you guys were like, "No, don't do it, just go all in with the one business." Shane Sams: Stay in the field, right? Dan Dekker: And then we went to a business conference and Seth Godin was speaking there and he had a Q&A and so we were like, "Hey Seth, we got this one business that's going good. We're thinking of starting a second one." He was like, "No, you shouldn't do that either." Jocelyn Sams: So, naturally. Shane Sams: See, Seth agrees with me as always. Jocelyn Sams: So, naturally, you decided to do what? Dan Dekker: So, I just went for it anyway, yeah. Shane Sams: I did not listen to Seth Godin or Shane and Jocelyn. Dan Dekker: I got a lot of good advice and then I ignored all of it. Shane Sams: That's how most people do man. So, tell us about that business and what happened, okay? Dan Dekker: So, I started a travel website. Since we flipped our lives and we don't have ... We've so much more free time and we really love traveling ... So that's been a big thing for us. My family is still in Michigan. So we go up there several weeks a year and we've been using all this time we have now to travel 'cause we can work from wherever. So I'm like, "You know what? I'm gonna start a site helping families learn how to take these longer vacations, basically." So, I did that, I got a website up, I wrote some articles. Worked on it a little bit and just went totally nowhere. Jocelyn Sams: What? You built it and people didn't come? Shane Sams: I know, right? Dan Dekker: That's right. Yeah, they lied in the movie Field of Dreams. Shane Sams: He's a liar, that Kevin Costner, you should never trust him, ever. Dan Dekker: Sketchy. Shane Sams: He's sketchy, man. Dan Dekker: So, yeah, I did that. I had a Facebook group. I think the only ... Like, actually I had to tell Rebecca to join my Facebook group. I'm like, "I have no members. And even you haven't joined." Shane Sams: I love it. Dan Dekker: But yeah, it was a big flop in the end of it. But, I'll tell you the nice part was when I had this new idea, all this stuff that I learned from the first one, like- Shane Sams: That's right. Dan Dekker: Setting up WordPress, setting up ConvertKit, which is our email provider, all those things ... I wasn't intimidated or worried about all of that. I was just like, "You know what? I'm just gonna work on the class and I can stand up a website and do all of that real quick." So that was the one good part about it. It got me- Jocelyn Sams: So you- Dan Dekker: Past some of those initial hurdles. Jocelyn Sams: Learned things by making mistakes. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Hmm. Very interesting. Dan Dekker: That's right. And I actually tried something and failed, but I learned something. Shane Sams: That's okay. And I like ... What's cool is, you know ... Here's what ... We like to watch ... In the community we see this happen all the time. When you're doing the travel thing ... Like, once you decide to do it, we're onboard with it. We're like, "Okay, if you want to do it- Jocelyn Sams: "Like, we support you." Shane Sams: "We support you. Whatever you want to do, man." You know? So it's like, "Watch the WordPress course, do the thing, do this, and we'll be here when you're ready to pivot, okay?" And like, as you're doing these things, I remember you come back later and we start talking again about how kind of like the travel thing's not going and this. But like, it's not that we didn't want you to start a business, right? We wanted you to start a business, but to capitalize on all of the things that you already had in place. You know, you have these skills 'cause you've been working on the business. You've been doing the accounting. You're like the master of the backend of this business that you and Rebecca have created. And she already had an existing audience, which is the most powerful thing. The most unfair advantage that anyone can have when they're starting out is if they've not made a dime, is they have an audience to market something to. Dan Dekker: True. Shane Sams: And that's kind of what we really wanted you to do was like, "Man, take advantage of the advantages that you have. Don't just seek something brand new." Because that's the hard, hard, hard road. And what you want to do in online business is you want to hit something and then go back and hit it again. And you want to find that nail and hammer it some more instead of just starting from scratch every time. 'Cause we see that happen all the time in the community. Someone will get the shiny object itch and they'll be like, "Hey, I travel. I'll take pictures and do the same thing. I'll make a travel blog, right?" Like, they all- Jocelyn Sams: That's not to say that's a bad business- Shane Sams: It's not. Jocelyn Sams: It just maybe wasn't the right fit for you. Dan Dekker: No, and definitely the thing that surprised me most about a travel business is I felt like I was pressured on vacation to do all this business stuff, you know? Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Dan Dekker: Like, we were going, for example, into Memphis for spring break and I'm like, "Alright, we gotta hit all these like major attractions in Memphis or else I'm like not doing my job. And I'm like, "That's not what vacation's about." You know? Jocelyn Sams: And a lot of people [crosstalk 00:09:44] might not know, but we have a YouTube channel and we do some travel reviews. Just more as like a lifestyle type thing. Shane Sams: But I've started like blocking off three-hour windows for like, "Okay, guys. I've got everything written down we're gonna get at the hotel. Alright, go play on that playground for 25 seconds." You know, and like- Jocelyn Sams: We really do this. Shane Sams: Like ... 'Cause I record a lot anyway. And our goal is to get a film crew to come with us. That's our ultimate goal. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So eventually we're gonna Shane Sams: That may workout next year, you know? Jocelyn Sams: Have the whole ... Yeah. The whole crew come along with us. And like, you know, they work some. Dan Dekker: 'Cause it is super distracting. And you're like ... And the kids want to do it so bad. They want to see themselves on YouTube. Shane Sams: Show their friends and stuff. Yeah, it's annoying when you get there. Dan Dekker: Okay, so let's fast forward a little bit. Okay, so the idea re-materializes. We kind of pivot. We reached out for you and like, "Okay, maybe I should focus on what I'm really, really good at and market it to all of these people who have already bought things in this space." Jocelyn Sams: We're on a member call and you're like, "Should I do this?" We're like, "Yes!" Shane Sams: "Yes! That's what we want you to do." That's what we're talking about. If you'd asked Seth, he would have told you the same thing, okay? Dan Dekker: Yeah. Shane Sams: Alright, now ... But, even though ... I love this story. This is amazing. Even though you've been in The Flip Your Life Community for ... I don't know how long- Jocelyn Sams: Like pretty much since it existed. Shane Sams: Three years or something like that, right? Even though every time you all do something, we talk about it, it always happens and works and explodes and goes crazy. Which I know y'all have another big win that I'm gonna ask you about in a minute. But like, you still hesitated. I felt this hesitation coming from you of getting in this and like, "Okay, I can make this course. I can teach these people. I can help them create sustainable businesses that throw the pebble in the pond and the ripple is a lot of babies are healthy and born and families are happy and they're not worried." But you were just ... What was the hesitation to launch? Even just a couple of weeks ago? Dan Dekker: I realized I had ... I struggle with doing some of these new things. If I don't know exactly what to do, it's like just enough to stop me from fully going through with it, you know? Shane Sams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Dekker: Like the best analogy I could make is ... I don't play many video games, but when I used to, I knew these people, they'd play a game one time and they move on to the next game. And like that was never me. I'd play one game and I'd learn it and then I'd play it like a hundred times. And I'd do it slightly different every single time, you know? Shane Sams: Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, oh yeah. Dan Dekker: And that's kind of what it is with me, you know? Like, when I worked in IT company, we had this special software and I learned the software and I got so into it. I became like the office guru. I went to conferences for the software and everything, you know? Like, that's me. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I get you, man. I get you- Shane Sams: You and Jocelyn are the same soul. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, I really do. No, I love that. I love to refine. I love to make things better. Like, that's who I am. Dan Dekker: But then it's like, "Okay, but I have to go learn all this new stuff. I have to learn how to use Zoom or like do a webinar", which I'd never done before. And that's where I just almost subconsciously hang myself up. So yeah, I spent most of the summer just trying to design this PowerPoint to get it ready to record to make a class. Shane Sams: Alright. It's all good. This is the perfect segue into where I'm going with this. Okay. So Dan is totally stuck and Dan comes to Flip Your Life Live in Nashville. Jocelyn Sams: This was like three weeks ago. Shane Sams: That's right. So Dan comes there and the first day we had a long day of learning and Q&As and Masterminding and just working together. And the first night we had a working dinner, which was from seven till 11 o'clock. Everybody, the entire conference, was in one giant room. We ate dinner and we all just stayed in there until we almost collapsed working on whatever we were taking action on. Jocelyn Sams: Literally almost collapsed for me. Shane Sams: Literally. Jocelyn almost did collapse. She actually went to bed right before me and I was like stumbling up the stairs about to pass out. And then we had to speak all day the next day, too. So it was madness. But anyway, so I'm walking around helping different tables. And I sit down and ... Across the table ... There was a round table, there was about eight people there. Dan was directly across. I mean, we couldn't have sat more perfectly across from each other. And when I sat down, I was going around and I was talking to a couple different people. And I think I helped someone else at the table first. And then I look over and I make eye contact with Rebecca, Dan's wife, who is sitting beside him. And this is no lie- Dan Dekker: I did not know this part of the story, by the way. Shane Sams: No, this is no lie. So Rebecca ... I make eye contact with Rebecca first. Rebecca was already ... We had kind of talked before the event a little bit on some member calls and stuff and she was working on a book. She kind of knew what she was going with. They were getting ready to launch a live event. She kind of knew what she was doing. But I looked at her first and she leans back behind Dan and she looks at me and I could just see in eyes and she kind of shook her head like, "Get him, Shane. Get him. No mercy. No sugar. Tell him how it is." Jocelyn Sams: This is the beauty of working with your spouse. Dan Dekker: Oh my goodness. Jocelyn Sams: I totally get this, you know? Shane Sams: She knew it. She set you up, dude. And so then my eyes kind of snapped back to Dan. And he kind of like leaned back like, "Oh, gosh." Jocelyn Sams: "It's coming." Shane Sams: "It's coming." Dan Dekker: It's like in school. I looked down, like, "Don't make eye contact." Right? Shane Sams: Right. And I ... So Dan ... I can't remember what we said first. But we said ... I said, "Dan, what's up with you right now?" And you were like, "Well, I've got this course and I think I'm gonna launch it in like January and I'm gonna get- Dan Dekker: Moving my vacation to January so [crosstalk 00:14:48]- Shane Sams: Perfect ... Yeah, February, right? I'm gonna be putting it off. Jocelyn Sams: And if you know anything about this podcast, if you're a frequent listener, you know that this is not gonna fly with us, okay? Shane Sams: This is not going well. This is not happening. And so I look at Dan, I said, "Why don't you launch it next week?" Just ... His eyes get real big and bug-eyed. And I'm like ... He goes, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah. Just write an outline. Sell it. You got an audience. Pre-launch it, tell 'em what it's gonna be. Tell 'em it's a beta and they'll get to work with you. And you'll do the courses live over the next few weeks." And the look ... I wish that the photographer and the video people were at that table at that moment just to capture ... 'Cause Rebecca just is like leaning back snickering while I'm telling you this. And she's sitting there shaking her head. And so what were you thinking when I was like, "Dan- Dan Dekker: I probably had a glazed [crosstalk 00:15:35] look like, "What excuse do I have? Is there a reason that I can't do this?" You know? Shane Sams: And was there an excuse? Dan Dekker: Of course not. Shane Sams: There was not. So what happens next? So you go out and ... How did you launch the thing? What did you do after the next week or two? Dan Dekker: So your challenge was I think start the waitlist before we left the conference and launch a week later. And so the conference was on a weekend or at the beginning of the weekend. And so we spent the drive home ... We composed some emails and I set some stuff up on Sunday. 'Cause I had to like switch my ConvertKit account to the new website and get the domain going, all that stuff. So there was some technical junk I had to get out of the way. Dan Dekker: Well, we got the email ready. And then Rebecca knows her people and says, "You know what? If I send it Sunday night, no one will read it. So I'm gonna send it Monday morning." So we launch Monday morning. We got I think about 60 people the first day join the waitlist right away. I ended up with like 80-some over that week. And then ... And I'm losing track of the days now. And then it was just over a week later I finally ... I got everything set up to actually sell it. I had to set up a payment plan and all that stuff. So a week later I sold and the first day I sold 20-some and by last night, you know, someone bought 30 minutes before the class started. Shane Sams: Oh, that's amazing. So you got how many? Dan Dekker: 35. Shane Sams: How much did you charge for that? Dan Dekker: The class is listed at 150 and I gave them 50% off their part of the beta group. So that's awesome. Shane Sams: So you sold 35 people- Jocelyn Sams: And that's- Shane Sams: Let me do some math there. Yeah, hold on- Dan Dekker: A little over $2500. Shane Sams: Woo-hoo!  That's amazing. And you've got buyers. I mean, you've got people in hand and they're gonna buy the next thing. And maybe you can offer coaching. And maybe this evolves into like the group thing where you get a monthly recurring revenue off of this. And now you guys have this whole second thing of income. Jocelyn Sams: And let me just ask you. Like, how much of the actual course work do you have done? Dan Dekker: Well, I had had to teach one class, so there's one class done. Shane Sams: Exactly- Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so- Shane Sams: You had nothing when you sold it, right? Dan Dekker: Oh, not at all. I mean, I made the joke to Rebecca. I was like, "Alright, what did we promise these people?" So I had to go to my own sales page and see what I promised to like fill out the PowerPoint, you know? Jocelyn Sams: Oh, Dan. We have done this so many times. Shane Sams: If I had a nickel. If I had a nickel for every time I said that Jocelyn before a member call. Jocelyn Sams: You know, I want people who are listening to know that it's not being like dishonest or anything. You are going to create the course. Like, I feel like sometimes people are like, "Well, you know, that's really shady." But people [crosstalk 00:18:03] know that's the reason you're discounting them because the course isn't finished. You're going to finish it with their assistance. Shane Sams: And like what Dan said a few minutes ago was, you know, "I spent all summer working on this PowerPoint." Right? But like when you sell something and they're showing up in a week for the first class, you don't have all summer to make the PowerPoint. You gotta go. And then you gotta just ask them questions and let them ask you questions and answer their questions. And that's gonna build the content. It's gonna be a better course than what you ever could have created- Jocelyn Sams: The beautiful thing about- Shane Sams: All summer on a PowerPoint. Jocelyn Sams: Doing it this way is that people will ask questions and you will answer those questions as things that you never would have even thought of. Dan Dekker: Right, yeah. When I had them sign up, they got a thank you or welcome email and it said, "Hey, reply to this email and let me know what your big problem you're having is." So I got a lot of great feedback right away by doing that. Shane Sams: Yeah, how did the first course go? Did they ask questions during it, too? Like a lot of questions? Dan Dekker: Yeah, I spoke for like 45 minutes and then they had questions for like 20 minutes at the end. So ... Shane Sams: That's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's- Shane Sams: Did anybody ask something you had not thought of? Like during either those emails or the thing? Or did they ask it, maybe you thought of it, but it was like, "Oh, I was gonna teach that four weeks ago but they asked tonight"? You know? Dan Dekker: There was definitely some stuff I fleshed out more. Like ... It was able to ... I could tell what their actual problems were rather than just more guessing what their problems were. And so it wasn't for this class, but a lot of them had problems like knowing how much money to save for taxes. I'm like, "Alright, we definitely need to really flush out this whole tax session while saving money for taxes." Shane Sams: Well, that might have been a- Dan Dekker: "I don't know how much save?" To, "I'm behind on my taxes. I'm trying to catch up and save and all." Shane Sams: So that might have been a throwaway line in one of your PowerPoints, but now it's like, "Wow, that might need to be a whole course." Jocelyn Sams: That needs to be a whole course. Yeah. Shane Sams: You know? Dan Dekker: Yeah. At least it's gonna be the majority of that session, and it's all about taxes and stuff. Jocelyn Sams: So I just really want to pull this thing out for people who are listening right now. Like, if you're sitting there trying to finish your course or your membership area or whatever it is, if you are spending months and months and months doing this before you have customers, chances are you're not even giving them what they really want. So then when you try to launch it and they're saying, "You know, I don't really want this", well, the reason why is because you didn't develop the course with your people in mind and with their help. So that's what we're trying to say is that just go for it. Like, what do you have to lose? Shane Sams: And also, too, there's something else I want to unpack here a little bit. This is not just, "Rebecca had an email list", okay? This is the same exact thing as, "I know where my avatars' hanging out." They were hanging out over with Rebecca. Like, you knew where these people were. It's no different than if you knew they were in a forum, if you knew they were on Facebook, if you knew they were on Twitter. And when you launched, you just had 80 people on your list for this specific product. 'Cause every product is its own niche, right? And 35 people out of those 80-something people jumped on this. Shane Sams: So there's a lot of people out there ... You're sitting there going, "I've got an email list. It's only 200 people. It's only 160 people." That's twice as big as Dan's first list, right? And he's helped 30-something people and now he has buying, paying customers. So don't ... Go find where your avatars' hanging out. Get some of them on a list and launch as fast as possible so that you can start building your core, start growing your business a year from now instead of finally launching, "Where is this gonna go?" Right? Like, this could be a huge thing for you guys on the side and it gives you a second income stream, which Jocelyn and I, you know, one thing we probably don't talk about enough is we're really big on having multiple income streams, you know? That way you got ups and downs. Every business has ups and downs and- Jocelyn Sams: And- Shane Sams: Things can go wrong. And you need that little extra protection in your business for more security and be able to invest things. Jocelyn Sams: And let me just throw in a disclaimer, that's if you already have something that's successful. We don't like you going in 15 different directions if you don't have one thing that's really started to take off yet. Shane Sams: That's right. Yeah, the natural progression is to expand into new things and other things. Like you ... Also, like keeping alignment with the thing that was working. That's really what you have done here is instead of just starting a random new business, you said, "Okay, well, this is in the same vein. We can talk to each other about this. We can understand it. We can serve the same person, but in two completely different ways." And that's how you keep stacking and building on successful ... Like, that's why we added recently ... Jocelyn and I just launched a new program called S and J All Access, which Dan and Rebecca are a part of of. And it's a Mastermind where people can literally send us a message on the phone, right? And we get back to them as soon as possible on the phone. Shane Sams: And we did that because a lot ... Our goal had always been to graduate people, to flip their life and then turn them loose into the wild. But a lot of our students and ... Kept coming back. I mean, like, "Now what? What's next?" Jocelyn Sams: We don't want to leave you. Shane Sams: Right, exactly. So we had ... We wanted to offer a higher ... This was a completely different segment avatar than what we normally teach. But it's in alignment with our brand. So it's kind of like a different business, different product. It's just now we can serve two different people. And that's kind of what you've done. You're serving the same people in a different way. Dan Dekker: Yeah, we've ... I, of course, was hesitant to join the All Access. But Rebecca talked me into it. And it's been awesome. And I was gonna tell you, if anything you're underselling it. Because when we first signed up it's kind of like, "Yeah, this whole walkie-talkie talk to you guys thing." But then day one, you send us this huge form to fill out and it's basically like, "Tell us what Point A is, tell us what you want Point B to be. We're gonna help you get there." And again, I'm leaning back like, "Whoa, whoa. Let's like slow down." But ... Right? It's way more than just talking to you guys. It's like you're helping us set goals and actually find things we're gonna accomplish in this finite amount of time. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's deep-level stuff. That's what we really wanted to get into with that. And I need to sell this more apparently. Dan's telling me we need to get out there. We need to get out and promote this thing. We kind of got it hidden right now. It's like, "Okay, you gotta be a member and- Jocelyn Sams: Well, it's kind of a beta right now, really. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's kind of in a beta. We gotta be a member and there's only like one page you can get to it. So maybe we'll roll that out more. Dan can be our ... We'll use this as our first testimonial, Dan. How about that? Dan Dekker: There you go. Shane Sams: Alright. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So let's get into what you need help with next. Okay, so you had a really super successful launch. And what's going on right now? Like, where are you stuck? Shane Sams: We overcame the launch fear, right? But I'm sure it was replaced by others fears, obstacles, or mindset issues. I remember you sending me the thing, "Okay, I'm about to do this class. And I'm kind of freaking out right now." Right? So like what fear, obstacle, or mindset issue has replaced the fear of launching now? Dan Dekker: Being past that first class was a big one, so I'm really glad to be past there and I'm glad this podcast happened like right after that. So that was good. So I'm teaching two more podcasts in the next two weeks, so that'll happen. After that ... Now, when we emailed Rebecca's list, we didn't sent it to the whole list. We just sent it to a smaller subsection. It was really just a couple of hundred people. So now we've got ... After the first class is done we're ready for the big list. And, I mean, I don't know that my same format ... I mean, it'd be cool to teach it live, but if I've got a hundred people or more in a class, I don't know if doing like a Zoom meeting is gonna work or if I just need to sell them the recordings. Shane Sams: Yeah, I think ... So basically it's like how to push it forward, right? I tell you what we did. And you don't have to do it this way, but what you're creating right now will be good enough to sell by itself passively. Especially since you have a much bigger list now. But, it might be beneficial to do like two more passes at kind of a beta type group and let more people in it. Let more people come through, let more people ... Like, don't rush it, you know? We always say, "Be the glacier, not the forest fire." The forest fire looks spectacular, but then it goes away, right? Well, like the glacier is an unstoppable force that keeps moving, keeps building power going forward. Shane Sams: And when we did Flip Your Life, we did like three sessions in a row over like a six-month period to really get more people in, get more feedback. See what more questions were. And refine our own talk. You know, this first time you do it's gonna be great, but then the second time you do it's gonna be better. And the third time you do it's gonna be really, really good and you're gonna have like probably a hundred people go through this course to help you build it. And then when you sell it, now it's like, "Hey, guys, look. This is what went into this. This is now $500, not $150 to buy this course that you can buy passively." And then you can start putting it into other funnels and things like that. Shane Sams: So I would probably recommend doing two more beta launches and beta groups so you can perfect the system and perfect the courses and perfect your speech. And then it's awesome and you can sell it forever. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Sometimes people have this misperception that, "Okay, I have to go with a small subset, then I have to go with the whole rest of the list." Well, that's not true. Like, go with a small subset. Go with another small subset. Go to another small subset. You know, like make it where you're comfortable. Don't just say, "Oh well, you know, I've already launched once so now I have to launch to everyone." Dan Dekker: M'kay. Jocelyn Sams: Does that seem less overwhelming? Dan Dekker: Yeah. I mean, I really like teaching it live, I think there's a lot of benefit to teaching it live. So to do that ... I mean, this is kind of a sensitive area where like we're trying to minimize the emails Rebecca sends to her list because they didn't necessarily sign up to hear about this. So should we blast everybody and get all those people on a new waitlist? 'Cause all the people who didn't get the first email from Rebecca don't know anything about this class. So I could kind of do like another first waitlist email just to thousands of people? Jocelyn Sams: Yes. I would try to segment somehow. Shane Sams: Yeah, you could send- Dan Dekker: And then maybe only sell a certain number of seats in the first class? Like- Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's what you would do 'cause then you're gonna create more demand. 'Cause there's gonna be a lot of people that can't get in 'cause it'll sell out, you know? I tell you what you could do, too. You know what I'm gonna say about the email list. It's ... They're not gonna worry about it. I would set up a good rotating schedule for this waiting list every two weeks. One day every two weeks on Rebecca's email list where it's like, "Hey, guys. We're opening the waiting list again for Dan's course if you want to run a better business." And let every couple of weeks let more people get on that so you can start kind of filtering those people out as you go. 'Cause new people join the list all the time. 90% of people probably didn't even see the first email. So don't assume that anybody does or does not want that list. Jocelyn Sams: And, you know, if it starts to become a problem you can also put on an opt-out for that particular thing. So you'll see people send emails sometimes that say, "I want to let you know about X, Y, Z. If you don't want to hear about X, Y, Z, click here, but you want to stay on my list." You know? Dan Dekker: Okay, yeah. Shane Sams: Most things have like when they click on "subscribe" it can go to a thing and you can have a menu. And there's like on and off. I think ConvertKit does that. Jocelyn Sams: But I wouldn't worry about it. Like, this is a benefit for them. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: And like if one or two people get mad about it, whatever. Shane Sams: Yeah, you gotta explain- Jocelyn Sams: They can go away. Shane Sams: To them why it's good for their business. And then also focus on their mission. I would say most of the people that do that job are there to really help families and babies, you know? And if they go out of business, they can't complete their mission. And that needs to be told to them over and over and over again. And it's not a get up to the bat and swing and go with it, it needs to be in the autoresponder. Every single person that ever signs up for the list needs to get the email that says, "Hey, we also have business services. Would you like to sign up for this?" Like, it just needs to be added into everything and- Dan Dekker: Okay, yeah. That's a good idea. Shane Sams: And like- Jocelyn Sams: If you- Shane Sams: Lost that fear of ... You should tell them about this. It's important, you know? Jocelyn Sams: If you come to people from a place of genuinely wanting to help them ... And I know that you guys do, just like we do ... They know that. And there are gonna be a couple of people who complain and whatever. But they're not your people. People know that you have a genuine art for wanting to help them move their business forward so that more babies can be born in the way that their mothers want them to be born or like what the evidence shows is the best way for them to be born. You know, that's your greater mission. So as long as you're moving towards your greater mission with a genuine sense of purpose, then people know that. They can just sense it. Dan Dekker: M'kay. Yeah, I like that. I think it's a good idea. Shane Sams: Yeah. And going back to the course itself, I know right now it's a course. Like, we're gonna sell it as a course. And that might be what you do passively to sell it as a course. But there's a really easy way to do recurring off the backend of something like this. So what you could do is I really want you to try to highly value this course at at least 500 to a thousand dollars when it's done, okay? And I know ... He's shaking his head, look at him. If you're watching this on YouTube ... We put the podcast on YouTube now, so you can see Dan going, "Are you serious?" Like, right? Like you- Jocelyn Sams: We're always serious. Shane Sams: Right? So this is a very valuable service. If they do your course, they're probably gonna save thousands and thousands of dollars every year going forward- Jocelyn Sams: Or make thousands and thousands of dollars- Shane Sams: Or make thousands more dollars. Jocelyn Sams: Like, it's really free to them. Shane Sams: So it's an investment is what they're really making in themselves. Not just buying your course, okay? But if you do it three or four times and it's really good seed and it's really powerful, okay, and they got this course, what you sell off the backend is a lower tiered kind of membership that's more like 19 bucks a month. Not really super expensive where you do a once-a-month member call. And that's it, right? There's no more like ... You don't have to add courses 'cause most of this is evergreen. This is financial stuff. It's like- Jocelyn Sams: If it's not it should be. Shane Sams: Yeah, exactly. You gotta keep looking at it and make sure that you're not ... You know, tax stuff's gonna change every year, but the basics are there, right? Jocelyn Sams: Principles are the same. Shane Sams: So off the backend of this 500 to thousand dollar sale you sell this little $19 a month membership and then you just figure out, "Okay, well, I know I'm gonna do one call." Then they can come and ask, "Oh, man, I had this problem this month with my build. Then I had this" ... It's just a safety net where they've got someone to go talk to and go ask a financial question once a month. It's easy, it's a good downsell. It's simple. You could even like get with a local print shop and put together a little paper newsletter. And you could say ... 'Cause that's totally easy to automate. You just go down and give 'em a list and they send it every month for you. And it might cost you a dollar a person, right? Shane Sams: But it's like, it's a little thing from Dan that they get it in the mail, they open it and it's like, "Hey, it's January. You need to be worrying about X, Y, and Z this month." Or, "Hey, it's December. Maybe you should saving some money here and there for this or whatever." And just a little something to give 'me a safety net and a reminder that they're paying you that 19 bucks a month and it's worth it. And you get a thousand people in that and all of a sudden you're talking big money. Dan Dekker: Sure. M'kay. I was hesitant for a membership idea originally. I mean, I kind of like that idea mainly because the goal would be learn how to do it and then you don't need a membership anymore. But I can- Jocelyn Sams: But you do need it. Dan Dekker: See, yeah, the continued questions. Shane Sams: There's always gonna be ... People always have questions and people are always one question away from their next paying you. Jocelyn Sams: And I can see it as even being maybe like an upsell for Rebecca's, too. Like, do you want to join both of these things? You can join this one for X dollars a month, or you can join this one for Y dollars a month. Or you join both for whatever, you know? Shane Sams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Dekker: Yeah. Shane Sams: You can cross-pollinate easily. I think what's gonna happen is I bet you there's a ton of people on that list ... Even though they're birth professionals, even though they're end of the free content or end of the thing they got off the thing ... There's probably some people that probably are like, "I'm very confident in this part of my life." They would buy your thing and not buy hers. I bet you there's people on that list that are in that same boat. And you're gonna be able to now maximize that list better. But you've gotta be able to like ... There always needs to be a recurring component. Either before a product or after a product. Jocelyn Sams: It could be an upsell. It could be a downsell. Like, I see so many different areas of potential with this. Shane Sams: And memberships don't have to look like the Flip Your Life Community where there's hundreds of people and 30,000 questions and all these things going on in there. It can just be, "Hey, for 19 bucks a month, once a month, I'm gonna get on a call for an hour and answer questions." That's it. Nothing else. You could totally do that and it would be just enough for people to pay. It would be worth it. Like, wouldn't you when you were starting out have paid 19 bucks to talk to a professional to tell you something? Right? That could save you a thousand bucks. Which is what you're doing. So ... Jocelyn Sams: Okay, let's not build the entire city right now. Shane Sams: Alright. Five years from now, here's where you're gonna [crosstalk 00:34:23] be at, Dan. Okay? Dan Dekker: So corporate offices. What should I be looking for? Shane Sams: I think ... Yeah. That glass building over on Man o' War looks pretty nice, you know what I'm saying? The blue one? Okay. Jocelyn Sams: So we are getting way down- Shane Sams: Way down the road here. Okay, so let's back up the truck. You know we ask everybody, what are you gonna do in the next 24 hours? What are you gonna take action on to move you toward your next steps based on what we talked about today? Dan Dekker: I don't know. It sounds kind of hard. I think I'm just gonna quit. Jocelyn Sams: That is not the correct answer. Shane Sams: That is not the correct answer. Jocelyn Sams: Sorry. Dan Dekker: Well, I need to teach my next two courses. That's definitely gonna happen. So I gotta finish this first round with this group before I can really do a whole bunch more. But I think the next thing after that will be getting an email ready to go to Rebecca's ... The rest of her list and getting them on the new waitlist so I can plan the second and third class to teach. Shane Sams: You should set the date, too, for when the next course is going to roll out, right? Live, which might be ... Did you say you're going on vacation in January? Dan Dekker: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay, so you'll be done with this one, though. You could do it ... You might be able to do it in December, just to get a few more people in [crosstalk 00:35:39] and get one done before the end of the year. Dan Dekker: Yeah. Maybe early December. Shane Sams: Yeah, 'cause you could schedule it even. You don't have to schedule it one week apart. Once you've done it once, you could do like, "Oh, I've got to do three courses again. Let's do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday in one week." With your next beta group and do it faster. And that way you're not getting into the holidays, right? And that way, when you send the waiting list out you can say, "Look, this is launching on December 1st. If you're not on the list you're gonna miss your chance to get in it." So it creates some urgency to get on that waiting list, right? Dan Dekker: Yeah. I was just thinking. I could pitch it like a, "Get yourself all set up to start 2019 right", or something. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. Shane Sams: Exactly. Perfect, yep. And then what you do is in February you do your third pass when you get back from vacation. And you're like, "Has 2019 not started off the way you wanted it to? Are you freaking out 'cause taxes are in two months? Here we go." Right? I mean, you can get 'em in on that way. And now you're ready during ... The second quarter you're gonna be launching the course, you're gonna have the nice, easy passive income stream where you can start setting that up. And then you can start downselling some other stuff to it, okay? Dan Dekker: Cool. Shane Sams: Love it, man. Jocelyn Sams: Alright, cool. Dan Dekker: Hey, I'll tell you one more part of my motivation for doing this is Rebecca always said, "If you ever start something yourself you can spend that money however you want." So- Shane Sams: Oh, there you go. See? Dan Dekker: Daddy's getting a new subwoofer soon. Shane Sams: That's right. Jocelyn Sams: Yes. Shane Sams: But is she just setting it up where she gets to spend all the other money by herself? Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Shane Sams: I think she's hoodwinked you here, dude. I think she's hoodwinked you. Dan Dekker: She's already thrown out there there's gotta be some upper limit to this arrangement. But ... Shane Sams: Alright. So before we go, we always like to share a Bible verse at the end of our podcast. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of inspiration from the Bible. There's so much business and financial and life advice in that book that you can pull out of it and really take it to the next level. But today we have Dan. Dan is gonna share his favorite verse with us on the podcast today. Dan Dekker: Alright. Psalm 15. "Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from the heart. Whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and cast no slur on others; who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord; who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind; who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken." Shane Sams: Ooh, I love that verse. I was telling Dan when he told me what the verse was gonna be ... I was reading that on Sunday. And that part where it says like, "who does what's right even when it hurts" ... Oh man, if that's not a ... If every business in America would just do that, we would live in a really, really cool place. Dan Dekker: Oh, yeah. It's to do right when it's easy. But doing it when it hurts is the trick. Shane Sams: Alright, man. Well, listen, dude. Great, great time today on the podcast. Cannot wait to see what you guys do next. I love you guys 'cause you're action takers. For example, Dan and Rebecca just launched a live event and they sold it out in 24 hours. Jocelyn Sams: Just amazing. Shane Sams: Which is amazing. Over a hundred people coming to y'all's live event. You guys are just action takers. I know you're gonna do great things. And I know this thing is gonna be a huge things for you guys as well. Dan Dekker: Awesome. Thanks so much. Shane Sams: Hey guys. Thanks for tuning in to today's Flip Lifestyle Podcast. We're so glad that you listened to our interview with Dan and heard us help him take his business to the next level. We would love to help you take your dream, your idea, your business to the next level as well. And we do that inside of our Flip Your Life Community. If you would like to ask me and Jocelyn a question inside the forums or on one of our member calls, all you have to is join, be a member. Show up on one of those calls and we will get to your questions. Shane Sams: Well, you can do that for free right now at fliplifestyle.com/free. That's fliplifestyle.com/F-R-E-E. We've got a 30-day free trial waiting for you and we would love to see you and help you inside of our community. We have all the training, coaching, and community and accountability that you need to make your dream a reality. That's fliplifestyle.com/free. And until next time, do whatever it takes to flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

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!

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!

In today's episode, S&J talk about lessons learned from the biggest risk they ever took. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we share the lessons we've learned after hosting our first major live event. 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 this week. We've got a special episode for y'all. We do not have a guest toady. We will not be doing a Q&A. We will be doing a lot of reflecting back on the lessons that we learned from hosting our first major live event. Not long ago, about three weeks ago, from the time that we're recording this actual podcast, Jocelyn and I hosted an event in Nashville, Tennessee, for over 100 members of the Flip Your Life Community. We all came together over a three-day period to build our online businesses, to grow our online businesses, and to take massive action on changing our family's future. Shane Sams: It was an incredible event, and it went off better than we ever could have dreamed. But as with any major undertaking that Jocelyn and I take on, we like to look back and reflect on the things we did right, the things we did wrong, and try to make things better, make things bigger as we go forward in the future. So, that's what we're going to do today. We're going to share all of these lessons and things that happened to us over the last year of planning and executing this event, so that you can take some of those lessons, take some of those strategies, take some of those things that we've learned, and apply them to whatever your next big project is for your online business. Jocelyn Sams: And many of you have probably seen our pictures on our Facebook page, and just some of the things that we've posted about the event. You've seen the glossy exterior, but we're going to dive into some of the not so pretty things that we encountered on the journey to get there. Shane Sams: Let's take you back to where the birthplace of Flip Your Life Live in Nashville came to be. Last December, about a year ago now, Jocelyn, out of nowhere, came to me and said, "We need to host a major live event, like a big one. Like, over 100 people, and we need to do it all by ourselves. We're going to plan it ourselves. We're going to pay for it ourselves. We're going to be on stage the entire time, and we're going to go ahead and do it next fall. It's going to happen." Jocelyn Sams: For those of you all who know me, it wasn't completely out of nowhere. I had been to another event in the fall. I thought it was really cool, and I was like, "Hey, this is a really good sense of community. I really think that we need to bring our people together." And we had sort of been, not really against it for a long time, but just a little bit uncertain about it for a long time. Shane Sams: I'm going to vote that I was scared to death to try. This is a total role reversal in this situation, because usually, I'm the one coming to Jocelyn going, "Okay, here's the airplane. We're going to jump out of it. We'll sew together a parachute on the way down." And this was totally out of nowhere, because Jocelyn came up to me and said, "We're going to do a live event. There's going to be over 100 people there. It's going to be amazing." My first instinct was just to freeze up, and what are we going to do? I can't do this. No way. Jocelyn Sams: We talked about it a little bit, and as we usually do, one of us has some crazy, big idea. The other one's like, I don't know, but okay, I'll go along with it. That's kind of the way that it worked here. Shane Sams: The reason that we really wanted to do this, Jocelyn and I have hosted small live events before, more mastermind intimate settings, where we're us and maybe 15 to 20 people in a room. Those went really, really well, and we saw the people that came to those smaller events achieve massive success, take massive action after they left, and made great things happen in their business and for their family's future. Shane Sams: And we have been to so many live events in our online journey, and every single one of them was a milestone for us that took our business to the next level, that pushed us out of our comfort zone and gave us great results. We wanted to provide that kind of experience and that kind of environment for as many people in the Flip Your Life Community as possible. If we kept having small 12 to 15 person live events for the rest of our career, we wouldn't be able to reach as many people as fast as we wanted to. So, we said, hey, let's jump into the hundreds. Let's see if we can get over 100 people to do this, and then watch what happens to those hundred people after the event. Jocelyn Sams: And the cool thing is, based on our experiences that we've had going into different live events and seeing how other people do things, seeing things we like, seeing things we didn't like, we sort of brought all that together and said, okay, well, let's do it our way, Shane Sams: Actually, what Jocelyn actually said was, "We've been to a lot of events, and I'm pretty sure we can do it better. We can make this happen. We know what was good and bad, and we can take it to the next level. We can give people the experience, not only that we've had, but that we have always wanted to have." And that was kind of the mindset going into the planning for Flip Your Life live. We said, let's dream as big as possible. Let's make this as life-changing as possible. Let's not worry about getting speakers and who is famous that we can put on stage. Let's just get onstage, go eight hours a day both days, and teach people what they actually need to learn to flip their life. Shane Sams: That was kind of the context as we sat down in our first planning meetings with coffee, tea, and a couple of notepads, and some pens, to come up with the biggest, baddest, bestest live event that anybody had ever been to. We really wanted to ruin all other live events for people. We wanted to create an event that was so good and so impacting and so life-changing that, when anyone went to any other event, they would be like, "This is pretty good, but it's not Flip Your Life Live." That's how we started the process. Jocelyn Sams: The next step is that, we have to figure out how to sell the same. Because in typical S&J fashion, we're not going to create anything before we sell it. We're just going to have an idea and throw a sales page out there. But before we could do that, we needed to try to start estimating the cost. And as you know, with any big thing, whether it's building a house, whether it is doing anything that involves a lot of money, you're going to estimate it, and probably you're not going to estimate it correctly. So, we start trying to estimate this thing. We come up with a number that we think is going to work, and then we add like 10% to it. Because you know we'll probably go 10% over at least. Shane Sams: At least. We ended up going like 20% over. And as we start doing this thing, we start writing down all of the figures, we're looking at six figures. This is going to cost nearly $100,000 just to open the doors and get people in. There's so many hidden expenses when you're starting a business or any kind of live event. You don't even realize, you have to pay for AV and microphones and cameras and screens and stages and party favors, and all the way down to the candy that people eat on our table. All that has to be accounted for. And we started looking at it and said, hey, how much are we going to have to charge people a to put this thing on and have a presale for it, to see if we can even do it in the first place? Jocelyn Sams: So, we threw it out there in January of 2018 and just said, okay, guys, if you want to come, put your money where your mouth is. Put down a deposit, pay for it, let us know that you're interested. And people did. Shane Sams: Yeah, this is the first lesson in any online business that we want to give you from just doing this live event. Because the live event, really, if you think about it, is a product. That's what we're really doing here. We kind of created this live event that was the product, and we're sort of building a side business around these live events. It's not even really a part of flipped lifestyle anymore. It's more like, this is our live event company, this is our live event business, this is the product that we're putting out there. Shane Sams: And we always let people vote with their wallet before we create any product. Just like a digital product, where you may charge people 100 bucks to get it, we're going to put that out there and say, hey, it costs, almost a $1,000 to come to this event if we do it. Do you want to buy it? And we were shocked, because the darn thing almost sold out in the first week. We kind of looked at each other and said, well, I guess we're on the hook now. We have to make the product. We have all these people that are waiting for it, so they know what the date is. They know when it's going to happen, they know where it's going to happen. We've got to make it happen now. Jocelyn Sams: And here's a little lesson for you, too. We didn't even sign the contracts with the hotel until people had already paid, which is a little bit scary, because you're kind of putting it out there. We did have it on hold, so the hotel couldn't give it to someone else without letting us know first. But I just said, look, we're not signing any contracts until I know for sure that people are planning on coming. Jocelyn Sams: We had all of the initial stuff drawn up and we gave people a date, we gave people a place, and we just said, you know what, we're going to make it work. So, even if this hotel doesn't work out, we'll find another one and make it work. So ,that's what we did. Because, I've known people in the past who have got in trouble. They've signed all their paperwork before they sold their product, and then, on the back end, they were really, really in trouble, owing a lot of money. So, I didn't want that to happen. My goal was to at least break even on this event. Shane Sams: Yeah. The thing about any product that you create, whether it's a live one or something else, too, as Jocelyn said earlier, there's going to be hidden costs that creep up to you, and you may even have to make some cuts to beat the budget later on, because everything costs more. Everything takes more time than you think it does. This is why a lot of people fail in business, not just online business, business in general, because they don't account ahead of time for that extra cost. They don't build in flexibility in their budgets. They don't build it into their goals to make more money than they actually need, and they try to kind of skate by. Shane Sams: That's what Jocelyn was saying about adding 10%, adding 20% to what you think it's going to cost. That's not just in money. That's in time. What we did not account for as we planned this new product, as we planned this new business venture, was the opportunity costs. We tell our kids all the time, if you choose one thing, you lose another, and we didn't realize how much time we would lose in the planning of this event, in the making decisions, choosing what color the banners are going to be, what words are going to go on the signs, who's going to work the desk, who's going to work the tables, all the experience. Shane Sams: Every minute has to be planned with these people, but then you also have to do things like, plan speeches and plan events and plan contingencies. What if something happens? What if the food runs out? What if X, Y, and Z? We got into a huge task last January, that pretty much took us nine months of dedicated attention to figure out. So, as you're planning for your business, whatever it is, whatever your next product is, whatever next thing is, always think about those opportunity costs, because there definitely were some for having Flip Your Life Live. Jocelyn Sams: And to be fair, we did hire an event planner, and she took a tremendous amount of workload off of us. But, because this was the first time we had ever planned anything of this size, of this magnitude, it did take a lot of our energy. She needed to know, do you want these tablecloths to be black or white? Do you want this color banner to be on the table, or this color napkin to be on the table? What kind of flowers do you want? These are all questions that we had to answer. Jocelyn Sams: And, yes, I could have left it up to her to choose it. But we really wanted the very first time that we did this to be an experience that was really representative of us and what we wanted. So, we had a meeting at least once a month with our event planner and sometimes more often, especially toward the end. We were meeting like once a week. And not only did we meet with our event planner. We would do Skype meetings. We have Voxer meetings, we had a few in-person meetings. We also drove to the hotel two different times, to meet with staff, to try food. This is, four hours there, four hours back, to go and meet with these people. Those were just some of the things that we had to do to get ready for the event, physically. Shane Sams: There's a hidden lesson there, too, for any venture or any business. So many gurus and experts are like, hey, you shouldn't be doing that. Hey, that's not something ... You're the CEO, you're the boss. You shouldn't do those things. But no, it's your company. It's your vision. And sometimes you do have to roll your sleeves up and get in the nitty gritty, and you've got to go make things happen. Especially when you're in a training season, when you're in a vision casting season, when you're in a creation mode. You have to put your stamp on these things so that you get what you want on the back end of it. Shane Sams: It's just like, sometimes the manager at a restaurant ... Manager of the restaurant may have to go out and help serve sometimes, because they want it done a certain way, or they're training a new person. You've got to be willing to step in, especially in the first iteration of something, to make it happen. Shane Sams: Next year, when we do Flip Your Life Live again, we're going to try to make it bigger. We're going to try to make it better. We want more people to come to this event and experience this life changing moment, so that they can build their online business, change their family's future, and get into that sense of community. But we're probably going to be able to turn a lot more over to the live event coordinator and be less involved the second time through, the third time through, the fourth time through, because we got so involved in the beginning. Shane Sams: It's an investment. Anytime you start a new project, anytime you do something new, you've got to invest your time upfront, so that you can save time and magnify, and get a return on that time later. That's why we were so heavily involved in the planning and preparation for this live event the first time. Jocelyn Sams: But it wasn't just the planning for the logistics of the event. There was also a lot of other things that went into this. One of the things that was really important to us to do is that, we had interaction with people who were coming to the event, prior to the event. We did that by having a private Facebook group. Shane Sams: We wanted Flip Your Life Live to be an experience. Not just an experience the day you arrive, or the day you attend, or even the day you go home. We wanted it to be an experience from the moment you bought your ticket over the next six, seven, nine months until you got to the event. So, this Facebook group became this little community where, we did so many things with our people. Every month, we did some kind of training with our attendees to get them ready for the event. That was something that we never had before. Shane Sams: When we showed up to our first live event, we were like a deer in the headlights. We had no clue what was happening. We didn't know what we were supposed to learn, what we were supposed to write down, what was our result. We didn't know how to set goals. We didn't know necessarily how to meet people, and we wanted to fix that for our attendees so- Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes people would have a Facebook group for their event, but they would basically just dump you in there and be like, okay, well, here's where we tell you about logistics. Shane Sams: And we're not even going to show up to do anything worthwhile, and sometimes they don't even do logistics. They just say, "There, you can all talk to each other, and we'll see you at the event. Jocelyn Sams: Our goal for the event was not to bring people in and look good on stage and make lots of money. That was definitely not our goal, because we didn't accomplish that one. But anyway, that wasn't our goal, to make ourselves look good or to make ourselves feel better. We want our people to take action, and because of that, it was really important to us to get this Facebook group going, make sure people understood what they needed to do and what they needed to have accomplished before the event. Shane Sams: So, what we did was, have trainings we called prerequisites. It was exclusive for these Flip Your Life attendees. They showed up every month, and we kind of let people take action on each step along the way, because I knew what I was going to teach the very first session we. We knew what we were going to go through over those two days in an outline format. So, if we could get them to the point right before that, we knew that they would have a great chance of success when they showed up. Shane Sams: Another big problem that we have, and a lot of people have when they go to live events is, you're nervous. You don't know anybody. Kind of awkward those first 24 hours as you meet some people and get to know some people. We wanted to make sure that we introduced as many people to each other as possible before the event. So, we had discussions, polls, things like that, in our community group for Flip Your Life Live. And we ran icebreaker sessions where, we got 40 or 50 people on a Zoom call, and Jocelyn and I went through every single person and let them introduce themselves, tell what their online business was about. And we did these random questions like, what's your favorite food, what's the worst job you've ever had? And some of the answers were absolutely hilarious, and everyone had a great time, and it created this sense of community before we even got to the event. So, when we had the pre-live event party, everybody just kind of came in, and everyone's laughing and having a good time and hugging. It was like they knew each other before they went in. Shane Sams: This was a lot of work leading up to this. We had to plan these things into our calendar. We had to make the time to do them, and that was time we could have been spent doing other things, like selling memberships, doing webinars, creating new products, other than this. But once you commit to doing one thing in your business, you kind of have to lose your focus on other things, because you can't do it all, and we were all in on the live event. Jocelyn Sams: Not only did we have all of the pre-event stuff to do, and all of the decisions to be made on what was actually happening at the event, we also had to play the actual event. And that was kind of a really big deal. We wanted to make sure that the content that we were creating for the event was the type of content that people wanted to see at the event. So, Shane was mostly responsible for that, and I was more responsible for some of the backend things that happened behind the scenes. Shane Sams: The biggest problem that we've always had with live events is, the content is terrible. It's not really actionable. A lot of times you get six to eight speakers on a stage, and their main goal is, at the end of their presentation, to sell you a book, or to get you to opt into their list, and they're really just scratching the surface. And we didn't want this to be a scratch the surface event. We wanted this to be a life changing, a momentum building event, for every single person that attended. Shane Sams: As Jocelyn was handling the logistics and making sure that everything was getting done, I locked myself in my room, in front of the computer, and for weeks and months, just started thinking about this content. What was the journey we wanted to take people on? What did people really need to know, that we could teach them within 48 hours, to get them to be able to take action and grow their business afterwards? Shane Sams: It's one thing to have to create a speech for an event. A lot of people are speakers. They go out and they do their speech. They put a lot of effort into that. Some people are keynote speakers, and they go give the big talk, you know, the 45-minute, big explanation. They get onstage in front of everybody and they do it and they're done. But we basically decided we were going to do eight keynote speeches over two days. We were going to deliver everything. We were going to make every slide, write every word, and then get up and do it. Jocelyn Sams: Which is actually a little crazy in hindsight. Shane Sams: A little crazy. I got some good friends who do public speaking for a living, and they just shook their head and like, "You're nuts. You're crazy. I don't know anybody that would try to pull that off." But that's usually what me and Jocelyn try to do. Jocelyn Sams: When people say we can't do something, that's when we try to do it. Shane Sams: Yeah, we try to do it. Jocelyn Sams: I've been working on things for months. Shane's been working on things for- Shane Sams: Weeks. Jocelyn Sams: ... about a month. Maybe days. Shane Sams: Yeah. I was basically, for the first six months of the event, in charge of running the Facebook group. I was doing Facebook Lives, I was doing polls, I was doing questions, I was doing icebreakers. Jocelyn Sams: Figuring out what people wanted to learn. Shane Sams: Figuring out what people want to learn, polling the audience, getting a feel of where everybody was. And probably about six weeks out, I start really getting serious about starting the skeletons of all these PowerPoints. Jocelyn Sams: Mostly because I was driving him crazy that, if he didn't get started, saying I was going to kill him. Shane Sams: I need the pressure of a deadline, also, let's be realistic here. So, we created all of this content back and forth, talked about it. Then, we practiced in the car while we were driving. That was the only time we actually had to do it, because the closer we got to the event, the more it consumed our life. It got to the point where, about eight weeks out it, was literally the only thing we could work on in our business. We could barely do anything else but member calls and jump into the forums everyday. Customer service suffering. Things started falling apart in other part ... Shane Sams: We would have pages and pictures crash on our website, and we'd be like, "Leave it. We'll deal with it after the live event," because we had to get all this content done. We would drop the kids off at school, and on the way home, I would start going through the PowerPoints on my computer and figure it out. Or, we would go to Knoxville or go to Lexington, the shop or to eat or to do something, and we would read through a PowerPoint on the way there, and we would have these disagreements about what we were going to say, and what we're going to talk, and how we wanted to be. Some of these car practices ended up being me slamming the computer and throwing it in the back seat and being like, I'm done. I can't deal with it anymore. Jocelyn Sams: This totally happened numerous times. Shane Sams: Numerous times. Jocelyn Sams: But let me just say- Shane Sams: Because there was so much pressure to deliver, because we were the only people on stage. Jocelyn Sams: I'm sitting here on the outside kind of looking in, and I know a lot of you are probably thinking, oh, well, you know, you work from home. You had to plan an event, whatever. Well, lest you think this planning process was perfect. So many things happened against us during this time, especially right before the event. We had our event in late September. In early August, Shane got rear ended. This was our brand new car that we had had for approximately four months. Shane Sams: Yeah. A guy crashed right into me. There was a cop chasing a boat. Some guy had stole a boat and a police officer was chasing him, so I pulled over because this guy pulling a boat was going by me at 100 mile an hour. I saw the police car, heard the siren. I pulled over, and the guy behind me was just rubber necking the cop, and the cop saw him hit me and had to break off the hot pursuit of the guy that stole the boat, and come back around, had to be the witness for our event. Jocelyn Sams: You can't make this stuff up, people. Shane Sams: I was sitting in the vehicle, and I wasn't really hurt or anything. It just kind of jarred me, and I sat there and just looked down, because we just bought this brand new Lincoln Navigator. The guy comes up and he goes, "Are you all right?" And I'm like, "Physically, yes. But just, before I go look at the damage on this vehicle," because- Jocelyn Sams: I just need a minute. Shane Sams: I need a minute to kind of take my breath away. So, that happened. Jocelyn Sams: We're trying to come up with all of this stuff for the live event. We're trying to make all the final preparations, and now we're having to deal with the insurance companies. We're having to deal with the car repair, and all these different types of things that you have to deal with. But we're in the midst of planning this huge event at the same time. So, that was one thing. The next thing that happened was that, we had some staff turnover, actually a lot of staff turnover. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Jocelyn Sams: We had a couple of staff members who were very unhappy, and we just weren't meeting each other's expectations. So, we kind of moved apart from them. Shane Sams: This was critical. This wasn't just people answering tickets, or easy to replace people. This was our main customer service person and our main podcast editor. We just decided that we had to go part ways. Right in the middle, like two months, three months out from planning this huge, the biggest thing we've ever done ... We've already sold all the tickets. We've already got everything in motion, there's no turning back. We don't have a podcast editor. And for those of you listen to our podcast, we have to have a podcast or we don't even have a business. Shane Sams: That's why all these people are coming to our event. We don't have anybody in customer service. So, I go into full time mode, trying to get somebody to edit this podcast. [crosstalk 00:24:02] Jocelyn Sams: I'm answering customer service tickets. Shane Sams: Jocelyn's answering customer service tickets. We're planning the live event. She's doing logistics. It was just an absolute a mess. Then, like two weeks before- Jocelyn Sams: 14 days. Shane Sams: 14 days before the event, out of nowhere, our sales guy and another customer service person quits out of nowhere. They just totally quit. Jocelyn Sams: No notice. Just, we're out. Shane Sams: Didn't even put in a two-week notice. They just said, "Today's my last day. I'm done." And it just happened all at once. So, now we're just looking up going, okay, well, this is it. We just got to [crosstalk 00:24:34] Jocelyn Sams: We're in. We have no choice. We have to get this done. And a lot of people, I think, at that point, would just go into their shell and say, woe is me. This business thing is not for me. I'm hanging it up. I just can't do it anymore. But we didn't have that option. We have this live event coming. We have a business that has to run. We have no choice. So, I told Shane, I said, when life gives us lemons, we don't make lemonade. We start a lemonade stand. Shane Sams: She literally said that one. I remember when the second people quit, and she said that. I was just like, yeah, we do. Because I was really down at the time. I was like, man, this is totally soul crushing and overwhelming, not just because of all the work that we have to do. But thing that Jocelyn and I really believe is that, this is our mission. This is why God put us on this earth and has had given us all of our life experience, up to the point where we launched our podcast, was to go out and help people, and to help people free themselves and find financial independence and change their family's future. Shane Sams: And we say to ourselves every morning, we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, who needs us today? Those people at that live event aren't coming for entertainment. They're coming because they need us to help them take their next step. You don't listen to our podcast just because we talk funny and say silly things sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: Some of y'all probably do. Shane Sams: Some of y'all probably do, yeah. But you're here because, you have a desire to make a change in your life, and you need help doing that, and that's what we're here for. So, there was no turning back. There was no shutting it down. We just had to suck it up and move forward. We really did go into a huge, stressful grind there for that last month, that started really affecting even our health. Shane Sams: It's probably the most stressed out ever been in my entire life. I don't get stressed really easily, and when I do get stressed, I usually get over it pretty fast. But I started having some health problem, because of the stress coming into this live event and running the business and doing customer service and editing my own podcast, and all these things that hadn't happened in years. Shane Sams: I actually suffered hearing loss a few weeks out from the event. It sounded like I was underwater. I would look at Jocelyn, and I couldn't hear what she was saying, and started getting some medical help, had someone look in my ears, and started researching it. And apparently, if you have too much stress for too long, it can actually affect the hairs in your ears that help you hear. And I started slowly hearing worse and worse and less and less, and I realized that it was from stress. And I had to take a deep breath and take a step back about a week before the event, and start doing some things that would help me not be as stressed. It was crazy. Shane Sams: As soon as the live event was over, two, three days later, Jocelyn and I were on vacation. We took the kids to Jamaica for a week to have some fun and just get away from work and just relax. Two, three days into this trip, it was like I could hear again. It was like I came up from underwater, and it was just because that stress lifted off. And it really made me think like, man, we need more redundancy. We need to protect ourselves better and we need to have better systems in place to manage our stress. Jocelyn Sams: And for me, I had been doing really well. I was on a new eating plan. I had been doing it since like April. But once all this stuff started happening, like in July, my eating started kind of moving a little bit toward not so healthy. And right before the event, I had put on like four or five more pounds that I had lost. That was a little bit frustrating for me, because I was really trying to move toward a goal and I didn't get it. Jocelyn Sams: And at this point, we're just sort of looking at each other thinking, okay, this is hard. This is really hard, and it's frustrating to know that we're doing all this work and we're basically not making any money off this event. This is a break even event at best, and we're doing all this work. Is this even worth it? We started really questioning it. Shane Sams: Then, we started looking, what was happening to the people who are coming to the event. We started looking at their businesses, at their wins. People were posting success stories in the Facebook group that we set up for Flip Your Life Live before the event even happened. People were quitting their job, people were launching their memberships. People were doubling, tripling, selling more and more. Shane Sams: I remember, one of the attendees, we did a quick coaching call with her. She was coming to the event. She wanted to jump on a coaching call with us before the event to get a little bit of advice. She wanted to take action before she got there. We sat down and talked to her for a few minutes, and she launched a webinar. I told her, you've got to get this event done in 12 days. You got to plan the webinar and do it, because I want you to launch the Sunday before the event. Shane Sams: She goes out and takes action on everything we had talked about in the Facebook group, everything we'd done, prerequisites, everything we had done on this call, and she had a massive win and created like $9,000 a month. Not at once, but a month, in monthly recurring revenue, before she even got to the event. And we started looking at all these success stories and all this action and all this activity, and we realized that Flip Your Life Live had become their anchor. It became that place, that thing that they were driving toward, that motivated them, that gave them the will to go take action and do things. They didn't want to show up at the event with nothing done. Shane Sams: They wanted to be prepared for the event, because they knew it was going to be epic and change their life, and they wanted to be ready for that. When we started seeing all of these crazy things happening in all these peoples' lives, we realized it was totally worth it. It was totally worth it to give all of these people, over 100 people, from all over the world, 30 US states, five different countries, an opportunity and a goal and a chance to succeed. And really, it was the thing that we had been missing in our business. All this time, we didn't even realize it yet. Jocelyn Sams: That's what kept us going, guys. Those messages that said, hey, I'm doing this because of this event. I'm taking action because of this event. I'm hitting my goals because of this event. That's what keeps us going. And if you ever think to yourself, oh, well, I listened to this podcast, or I subscribed to this blog, or whatever, and I've thought about emailing the person or leaving them or review, but they don't need to hear from me. They do need to hear from you. Shane Sams: Yeah, we need it. Definitely. That's what keeps us going. Jocelyn Sams: We need to hear from you. Other people need to hear from you. They need to know what is working, based on what they're telling you. Because, some days, that is all that you have, is just what other people have to say, just to lift you up. So, I just encourage you. It has nothing to do with this, right this second. But if there's somebody who encourages you, who says something to you, who makes a difference in your life, let them know about it. Shane Sams: Yeah. Send them an email, go just shoot him a Facebook message, leave them a review. Do something and just let them know, because they may be having a really stressful day, and they need you to pick them up. It's kind of circular. We know that a lot of people rely on us for that motivation, that encouragement, that hope, that there is a better life for their future. But we rely on that feedback, as well, from you guys, to let us know that what we're saying is being heard, and people are taking action on it, and that people are out there and changing their life. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so back to the story. At this point, the preparations are pretty much over. Well, I say that. I'm pretty sure Shane was working on the speaking on the way there, on the way there. Shane Sams: I think I was working in the car, on the way there, because I kept having more ideas, and I was changing things. Literally, two of the presentations, we didn't even have time to practice, because ... We know our content so well, we didn't really need to, and half of what me and ... We're totally ad libbing this podcast right now, by the way. Jocelyn Sams: We have an outline. That's it. Shane Sams: We have an outline, but we're just going back ... That's what we do is, we're just so much better when we're playing off each other. So, we didn't need to rehearse it as much as some people would have to, I think. Jocelyn Sams: All right. We have, at this point, got all of the preparations done, most of the content done, and we're now starting to get ready to go. We've Band-Aided customer service, we've Band-Aided podcast editing, we've put Band-Aids on all these things. We've figured it out, because that's what we do. That's who we are. And at this point, we have to start the real work, which is packing. People, we brought the entire house. One of the things- Shane Sams: Literally, we brought ... All the furniture and stuff people saw when they walked in was from our house. Jocelyn brought all of our pillows, and was putting them in chairs around the hotel, around the check-in areas, that said, hey y'all. It was stuff from our actual, decorations off the walls. Jocelyn Sams: And one of the things that a lot of you who were at the event will notice about our live event coordinator, Amber, she's very good at this type of thing. She really wants people to feel at home and at ease, and she really wants it to be like us. So, one of the things that we decided to do was, to get things from around our house that we could sit around kind of as props. So, you might've seen the little state of Kentucky with a heart on it, and we had little signs that said, welcome, y'all, and a little coffee sign, like, coffee is always a good idea. And all those things actually came from our house. Jocelyn Sams: So we had a huge box of stuff, just packed up, just for decoration. We had all of the items, like the promotional items, the pins, the shirts, the backpacks, all of the little things that you got when you checked in. And that thing was a laptop sticker, by the way. We gave the sticker, and I don't think anybody knew what it was. Shane Sams: People were like, "Sweet, a sticker." We're like, no, it goes on the back of your computer. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. We need to put one on ours, too. Anyway. Shane Sams: No wonder nobody knows what to do with them. They're not even on our computers yet. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. So, we brought the entire house. Shane Sams: We're new to the swag. We're new to this stuff. Jocelyn Sams: Not only do we have to pack all of the stuff for the actual event, we had to pack all of our clothing and all that kind of stuff for one trip. But, also had to pack my kids, because they were staying with Shane's mom and dad for a while, and we were also going to Jamaica the next week. I knew that, if I didn't pack everything, then it will be really hard when I got home. So, not only did I pack for one trip, for me and the children, and Shane packed his stuff. Shane Sams: We also had to pack all of it again for Jamaica. Jocelyn Sams: We also had to pack for Jamaica. Shane Sams: For the vacation. Jocelyn Sams: So, this was a lot of work to do in the days leading up to this. Shane Sams: And it's a total first world problem. We know some of this are first world problems first world problems, but first world problems are real problems, y'all. Anything that's adding to taking away from your time, or planning on top of everything else, and you're stressing out, and you're thinking, like, oh, man, I got to be in front of 100 people. We've got to run the show, and there's all these moving parts. So many moving parts. It really takes a toll on you. Shane Sams: You guys know this. We all get up every day and we take our kids to school, and we go to work, and we go to practice, and there's three kids, and they're going every which direction, and then you've got your in laws or your parents or your brothers or your sisters or your friends, and everybody's always pulling on all of our time. There's only so much that anybody can handle when you're doing all of these things. So, it can be really, really stressful in the moment. Jocelyn Sams: And everyone has hundreds of moving parts every day, that you have to manage. Everyone has this, but this is like that times about five, because we're trying to prepare for this event. We're trying to get our kids together. We're trying to make sure customer service is being answered. We're trying to make sure we have enough content to last us while we're gone, all of these little things. Jocelyn Sams: Make sure that we have all of our vacation documents, make sure we can find our passports. It's just all of these little nuts and bolts that have to be turned, that are all coming together in like one or two days. So, it's a lot to have to deal with, especially when you're on stage. You got to make sure you have all your clothes. We had to try on our clothes several times, make sure we didn't clash. All of these little things that you have to do. Shane Sams: Yeah. Most of our date nights for the two months leading this event were, trying on clothes and standing in front of a mirror, so I would know if I matched ... Not matched. What do you call it? Jocelyn Sams: It's coordinated. Shane Sams: It's coordinated. We had to coordinate all of our clothes together. Jocelyn Sams: We had to coordinate all of our clothing, make sure they didn't look bad together. So, we get to the event, and we finally got all this done. We get there and everything is pretty much ready to go. We got there on Tuesday. Everything started on Wednesday. What do we do the first day? I can't even remember. Shane Sams: We got there on Tuesday, and we saw Amber, and we had a little meeting, to make sure that everything was going smooth, and that everybody knew where they were supposed to be and what times they were supposed to be there. And at that point, things just kind of started rolling. We had done the preparation, we had done the work. Everything was ready to go. The first thing that happened on Wednesday was actually a pre-party. We had a big party for everybody. We had a bluegrass band, and we kind of rolled in, and they had surprised us. Shane Sams: The bluegrass band learned the Flipped Lifestyle theme song. So, that was playing live when we walked in. Everybody had a great time, and we went around and just hugged and met everybody, and we all had just a great time at that event. I remember, we went to bed that night, on Wednesday, after the party, and we had so much fun and we saw these people and we kind of looked at each other and realized, we have to be on stage eight, nine hours a day. Because, not only were we doing all of the content in these 30 to 45 minute teaching session, but we did a Q&A with S&J live after every single presentation. Shane Sams: So, we were on our feet eight, nine hours a day, answering a dozens and dozens of live questions about the content we were teaching. That was something that we had never seen any expert do at an event, other than maybe a question or two. But we went deep and answered 10, 11 questions for every single session. We were preparing for that. We were getting ready to be on stage. Shane Sams: I've been up late at night before a lot of big ballgames when I was a football coach, or maybe we had a big thing going on in our lives. And I remember being nervous and remember not being able to sleep. But when we laid down that Wednesday night when we were getting ready go on stage, I think we both just kind of passed out. I slept so well, because I knew that people were already changing their lives. We were going to get on stage and change some peoples' lives. Our content was true and sound and battle tested over hundreds of entrepreneurs that have been through our program before, and that we were going to be able to just really help people move the needle. Shane Sams: We woke up the next day and my most ... The thing I was worried about the most was, it was our first introduction, that they would play the music at the right time. I remember, that was what was stressing me out more than anything was, oh, man. They got to hit our theme song at a certain point, so it looks good on video. Yeah. But other than that, we just got on stage and it just rolled. The content came out of our mouth. The questions were awesome, and we answered a bunch of questions. And I don't ever remember feeling stressed during the actual content of the event or anything like that. Jocelyn Sams: My favorite part probably was the hair and makeup application. One of the things that I did for the event is, I hired someone to actually come to the event. She was dedicated to me, with hair and makeup, and- Shane Sams: She did take a little time to dust me up a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: Shane got a little man glam. Shane Sams: I got a little man glam going, I'm not going to lie. You're under the lights. You don't want the sheen. You don't want the glowing skull blinding everyone in the first row. Jocelyn Sams: I'm now obsessed with hair and makeup. I just want to say that is one of my new goals, is to have someone to do my hair and makeup, at least for my videos and stuff like that. Because it was so amazing to just wake up and let somebody just make you look good. Shane Sams: Yeah. The event just rolled pretty peacefully, because of all the work that we did. And so many people came up to us and they said, oh, we loved the content. We love the Q&As. We did mastermind sessions where people worked on the things that we actually talked about. We didn't just do content and teach you what to do. People also had a workbook that they filled out while we were doing it. Shane Sams: We answered their questions, and then there was like a block of time to sit down and do the thing, like the take action, to take the next step. So, the whole event was just rolling. The first night, we had a working dinner from 7:00 to 11:00, where Jocelyn and I were in the room. All the attendees were in the room, and everybody was just working on their business and taking action and making things happen and getting things done. Shane Sams: Then, the last day of the event, we actually wrapped up with a priority session, where we taught everyone in the room how Jocelyn and I go through our priority list, from a week to week or month to month basis, and figured out and put on the calendar for the next seven days what everyone was going to work on, so that we could leave the event with a great momentum. And it was kind of over before we knew it. We didn't want it to end. Everyone was having such a good time. We were having such a good time, that we kind of wished we had planned it maybe for an extra day or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: And a lot of people ask me, "How did you like it?" Because, I am an introvert. It is hard for me to manage my energy ever those days like that. I thought it was great, actually. The time that we had built in ... We built in time for people to mastermind together, which meant that we got a little break, and could just sit and kind of decompress for a few minutes. That really saved me, I think, just from having to talk the entire time. It was hard, doing all the content. You don't often see people do that, and we really felt it was important for us to do that this year. And my back hurt the end of it. I was like, oh, my back hurts. I'm not used to standing up that much. Shane Sams: For carrying Shane all this time. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's right. No, I'm just kidding. But for me, really, the hardest thing about it was that dinner. The dinner was awesome. We got to talk to so many different people about their businesses, got to answer so many questions. But that was a little bit hard for me, when you sit down at a table with like seven other people at it, during a normal conversation, everyone will talk to each other. But during this particular situation, everyone wants to talk to you. So, that was kind of hard for me to manage that. It made me really exhausted at the end of that long day. Shane Sams: That's probably the one thing, logistically, I wish we had done a little differently, just because it was ... Jocelyn and I kind of divided and conquered, and I'm usually Jocelyn's heat shield in situations like that, where I take most of the conversation so it's not draining her energy. But at this event, we kind of separated so we could talk to more people. But it was really hard to talk to everybody and have deep conversations. With 100 people in the room, it's just really hard to get into that. So, that's probably the one thing I think I would change a little bit, just to make it better, not only for the attendees, but for us as well, managing our energy, and being able to keep up with everybody. Jocelyn Sams: But overall, it was amazing. I felt good the entire time. I really think I was less nervous than Shane was. Shane Sams: I was nervous in the very beginning, but it was like a ... It was running out of the tunnel for a football game nerves. That was the exact feeling I used to feel before we came out of the locker room on Friday nights or Saturdays, to have a football game. And I kind of liked it. It was kind of awesome. You know? Jocelyn Sams: But I think what it was for me is that, in this situation, you guys who were there, you already know us, you know our faults, you know our flaws. So, I didn't feel like I needed to hide anything, and I think that was really cool for this type of event, because- Shane Sams: We could be real. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and everybody does know us so well, and that was kind of cool. So, the event was awesome. I can't say enough wonderful things about it. Shane Sams: One of my favorite things, too, what we did at the event is, we did kind of an award ceremony where ... One of the things that's different about Flip Your Life and different about Flipped Lifestyle is, we've really built this up on our expertise, on our advice, but also, on the community. That's what we wanted to create when we started Flipped Lifestyle, was a community, a worldwide community of family-focused entrepreneurs, people who really had their priorities in mind. They wanted a better life for their kids. They wanted a better marriage at home. They wanted more control over their life. Shane Sams: Not this superficial, materialistic view of what online business or success should be. But really had their priorities in place, and wanted to go on a mission to help their customers, and change the world, and get their message out there. To see that community form, and to watch our community and how much they help each other. It's not just me and Jocelyn answering every single question. Usually, someone will post a question in the Flip Your Life forums, and there's nine people that have jumped in to help before Jocelyn and I even get to read it. So, it's this real community of people helping each other, and we wanted to kind of reward and give back to the people who were really serving other people in our community. So, we started looking back at the last year, at all the replies. Shane Sams: Like, who had replied to the most forum posts, who had helped the most people, who had encouraged the most people who had answered the most questions, we wanted to give awards for that. So, we brought 10 members onstage, and we gave them a stone that was engraved with Flip Your Life put on it. Because one of our big themes for the event was, throwing your stone, taking action, skipping stone across the water, and watching it ripple out, and that ripple effect changing peoples' lives. That's how Jocelyn and I get up every day, is we're going to throw our stone and hit somebody, and ripple it out and, and really impact as many people as possible. Shane Sams: And who knows, where that ripple is going to go to? So, we gave everybody this engraved stone for the Flip Your Life community, and we got to name our member of the year. It was Kevin Depew. Kevin is an amazing member, and far and away, other than me and Jocelyn, he's replied to the most people in the Flip Your Life community, and helped as many people as possible. And not only is his business growing, but he's helping other people as well. That was kind of my favorite part of the event, was just being able to give back and reward some of those people for being awesome community members, and just being excellent servant leaders inside of Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: So, that was cool, that we got to do that, and just meet all these people in real life, who we feel like we know, and we know their businesses, and we know their families, and we know what they're all about, and to really be in the same room and give each other a hug. That was just one of the best things for me about the event. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so we told you a little bit about how we felt about the event. So, let's dive into a little bit about how our attendees felt about the event. One of the things that was really important to us is getting feedback as soon as possible ,in order to have the best event for next year. So, we sent out a survey on Monday. The event finished on Friday, and first thing in the morning on Monday, attendees got a survey. Shane Sams: We were blown away by the responses that came back, because 99% of them were absolutely 100% positive. We had a think to kind of rank the event, five, or four, or three, two or one, and nobody ranked it under a four, and almost every single person put it a five. It was life changing, best event that they had ever been to. We got dozens of testimonials in text and on video from the event, of people saying how much it really impacted them. Not only that, but just some confirmation about the things we had done. Shane Sams: So many people commented on the icebreaker sessions to introduce them, and how comfortable they felt when they got to the event. People loved the prerequisites and all the things that we did to get them ready for the event, and how the content was world class, and it really helped them make some epic decisions about what they were going to do next. Then the feedback that we got about the things that we could improve was so constructive. Sometimes people will go in and, there's some negative people that just say bad things to say bad things. But all of the constructive feedback that we got, we really shook our heads and we're like, yeah, that could have been made better. Shane Sams: We could do that next year in a different way. And it was just really amazing to see, not only the outpouring and gratifying to see that we had done a good job for these people that came to the event, but also, that they were really invested and talking about coming next year. Something like 88% of all the people who filled out the survey said they were coming back next year. And that just really made it all worth it and made us realize, hey, we had done a good job, and this was actually something that our community not only needed, but really wanted us to continue. Shane Sams: We always viewed Flip Your Life live as the Flipped Lifestyle family reunion, not as much the business conference for Flip Lifestyle. And that was really the feedback that we were hearing back from all of these people who filled out the survey. Jocelyn Sams: I've got some news for you guys. A lot of you have come to an event for the first time at Flip Your Life Live, and you're pretty much going to be ruined from all other live events in the future. Shane Sams: That was the goal. That was the goal, like, you're going to go ... I bet some people have already signed up for it. It's like, man, that was cool. I'm going to do another one, and they're going to get there and be like, wait, where's the Facebook group? Where's all the people talking to me? Where's all this interaction with the people on stage? What's happening around here? So, yeah, sorry. We apologize in advance for doing that. Jocelyn Sams: And what's funny about surveys is, a lot of times, there's such conflicting feedback. Some people were like, oh, this was really cool. And other people were like, yeah, I didn't really like that. So, it's just funny. You just have to look at all of the different responses and figure out, what are most of the people saying? Shane Sams: Someone said they didn't like the chicken. And we're like, you're in Tennessee. That's Southern fried chicken. What do you want us to put on your plate? I guess because it wasn't grilled or something like that. But those are the kind of comments, you're kind of like, okay, well, next year, we'll have some grilled chicken with the fried chicken. We'll have a couple options. We actually looked at like four or five things we really wanted to improve on, because we didn't do everything perfectly. Shane Sams: One of our goals that we always have is, to be as accessible as possible. That comes from, a guru told us one time, at a conference, yeah, once you start getting enough people listening to your show and doing things like that, you got to make yourself not as accessible for positioning. That's just not who me and Jocelyn want to be. That's not who Jocelyn and I really care to be known as, as the un-accessible experts on stage. So, we tried to make ourselves as accessible as possible. We're really open with talking to everybody. We tried to walk around, hearing masterminds and talked to as many as people as possible. Shane Sams: There was over 100 people at the event, so it was almost nearly impossible for us to talk to every single person individually. I know some people didn't come up to talk to us. We couldn't get over to talk to them. While, that's something we hope that we can do better, I think we're going to do a better job next year of communicating, because we do plan on growing the event. We do plan on selling more tickets. And we don't want anyone to think, hey, there's going to be a line where, you get to come and talk to us for 10 minutes, because if we [crosstalk 00:51:11] Jocelyn Sams: That would be the entire event. Shane Sams: That would be the entire event. It would just be a table where, everyone wrote rotated through. That's not what we're doing. We want to really set up the event more of a one to many approach. Jocelyn Sams: And the people who were at this event are amazing. It's not just about talking to us. We want to talk to as many of you guys as possible. But I think, sometimes, what ends up happening is that, you guys listen to us every week, and you feel like you know us. You feel like we should be best friends, and maybe we should. But it's hard when there are 100 people, 100+ people, who- Shane Sams: Who all paid money to get in the door, and deserve great content, and things like that. Jocelyn Sams: But they also think, hey, let's be besties. And I'm like, uh, just met you. You know? Shane Sams: It's not even that. It's like, we can sit and answer everyone's question. I'll tell you what was really surprising. We probably got there, I think we counted there was 48 different people, I think, asked a question. But that means there was over 50 people that didn't. But we had at one session at the end, where we were like, this is the last Q&A, if anyone wants to ask a question. Shane Sams: When you go to a live event or when you come to Flip Your Life Live, make sure you're taking advantage of every opportunity you have to step up and ask a question. We were at the party for probably about an hour, and there were some people that didn't get to come up ... didn't come up to us and talk to us. So, you got to take some initiative, too, at live events, and make sure that you make things happen, that you want to happen, or they're not going to happen. Shane Sams: If we could do it over again, we would probably position certain events differently, one, to make sure that everybody did have a chance to come by. We did have a picture session at the end, and Jocelyn and I took like 50 pictures in a row with everybody that came, as many people as possible, that came to the event. The Q&As, if we structured them just a hair differently, where we could get through to some more people, or maybe we could offer people an opportunity to write a question and we can answer some of those, because not everyone wants to step up to the mic and be in front of people or on camera. Jocelyn Sams: We're considering maybe adding a VIP option, where you would have more opportunities to spend time with us. So, there are different things that we're considering for the future, to try to address this issue that several people did bring up. Shane Sams: Another thing, no matter how well you think you plan or have the logistics figured out, you're still making estimates and guessing, especially the first couple times you do anything. One of the mistakes that we made, one night, I think we ran out of food, and Amber and Kat were running in the back going, "Make some chicken fingers and french fries. I don't care what you do! Put it on the bar. We got to get some food out there," because we actually ran out of some of the food at one night. So, there's things like that, that we learned, logistically, that we're going to get better at. Shane Sams: That's another lesson for anybody making any kind of product. You can't guess everything. You've just got to do it and see what happens, and then you make it better and better and better, and you let it evolve. So, we're going to get better, we're going to evolve. And we're not going to be satisfied just because we had such an amazing feedback. We want to take it to the next level, as well, next year. Even though this live event is over, we want to always improve everything that we do. Shane Sams: You would think, after the event, that we collapsed. But Jocelyn and I are all about the can't miss moments. We're all about living life. It's not just about changing lives, not just about work. It's all about our family and our future and our fun, and really experiencing this amazing world that God gave us. Most people would look at me like I was crazy, and Jocelyn, like she was crazy, if they knew what happened after the event. We left the event and drove from Nashville back to our home in Kentucky, like five or six hours. Jocelyn Sams: On like 11:00 PM Friday night. This was late, late Friday night. Shane Sams: Yeah. We got home really, really late, and collapsed into our beds. But we had to go to Jamaica, so we had ... We were going on vacation. We went with Kat and her husband and her daughter. Kat is our right-hand woman in the Flip Your Life community, has been forever now. She's one of our best friends in the world, and we had planned this trip together. We were flying out Sunday, but I actually went to the University of Kentucky football game the next day. Jocelyn Sams: This was Saturday. Shane Sams: Saturday. So, I woke up, got in the car, went to the game. Jocelyn drove the kids to Lexington, Kentucky, where we were flying out of the next morning. So, I went to the hotel after that, we got up the next morning, and went on this 24-hour trek. It took us forever to get down there to Jamaica. We took the kids, went on vacation, had an amazing time. The kids got to see another culture. We swam with dolphins. [crosstalk 00:55:34] Jocelyn Sams: We needed it, because the kids were sort of, not really on the back burner, but they were maybe on a side burner for a while, as we were trying to clean up this huge mess. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. I'd say the last one. We probably didn't hang out with the kids for a week or two. And we were up front with them, and told them, guys, Mommy and Daddy have dreamed big, planned big, and we're going to go do something big, and we're going to make it up to you on the backside of this. But every day can't be eight hours here and eight hours there. We had to pick this. If we want to do this great thing to give you the life that we want to give you, we all have to make sacrifices. So, we planned this trip with them to kind of make it up to them after that. Jocelyn Sams: Jamaica was amazing. I think it was the perfect exclamation point to just an awesome week, and just a nice reward for a lot of hard work. And that's something that we typically don't do a very good job of, is rewarding ourselves. So, I think that this was a great opportunity to say, hey, we put in the work, and we made it happen, and so now we are going to have this awesome vacation. Shane Sams: And as we finish up this podcast, kind of recapping everything that happened at Flip Your Life Live in Nashville, it really got us reflecting back on our online journey and how we got to that point. How did we go from the very beginnings of Flipped Lifestyle, to this point where we're onstage in front of 100 people from all over the world, helping people change their lives? There were a lot of reasons why we did Flip Your Life Live. We talked about those earlier, to help people, to really cement that community that we've created over in the Flip Your Life community online. We wanted to bring that offline and just to help people mo

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 would love some tips for making sales videos. I like the script, but I look so stiff on video or super hyper with a bouncing head. LOL. Any tips?" Question Two: "if doing a joint webinar, what is the best way to pitch products - repeat the webinar and do a separate pitch each time or just pick smaller products so attendees can just choose what works best for them? we do NOT want to try to bundle and split payment... too complicated" Question Three: "How is the free trial going vs. a $1 trial? I'm concerned people won't take action if they don't have skin in the game." Question Four: "To get the most out of my ad spend, could I run an add to two closely related topics/pain points for my niche... So when they click on the ad, they can opt in to one of two webinars (instead of just opting into one). Is that a thing? Do people do this? Like instead of deciding to register or not, it would be... Which one WILL they register for? Trying to get more out of my ad spend by offering two webinar options from one landing page. " SUCCESS STORY: "SUCCESS! I crossed the 20-member mark (and briefly had 21). I think adding webinars and member calls is next. - Paul"

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!

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!

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!

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.