Flipped Lifestyle™ Podcast

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FL297 - How To Find the Confidence to Try Your Side Hustle Idea Jul 09, 2019

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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 marketi…

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FL296 - Fearless Pricing Strategies for Online Entrepreneurs Jul 02, 2019

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In today's episode, we help Evan overcome her fear of charging for her products. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all! On today's podcast we help Evan overcome her fear of charging for her products. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, super pumped, cannot wait to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community today about growing and building their online business so that they can find the freedom they want in their life. Our guest today is Evan Garrapy. Evan, welcome to the show. Evan Garrapy: Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Shane Sams: We already changed Evan's life before the show even started. Because I asked Evan before we got going, I said, "How do you say your last name?" And she said, "It's really hard, it's Garrapy." And I said, "Oh, it's like therapy, but Garrapy." And she's like, "I've never thought of that!" Evan Garrapy: So helpful. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, we'll send you our bill for that later, right. Shane Sams: Exactly. That was worth the call, worth the call. Jocelyn Sams: All right, well we are very, very happy to have you on the show today, and I'm really, really interested in what you do. So let's talk a little bit about that. Tell us about you, your background, and about the website that you started. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. In 2007, after my grandmother passed away, my dad's mom, I got really interested in researching family history, because I realized there were so many things I wanted to ask her, and I would never get the chance to. And one of them was about her German heritage that she was really proud of. And I just felt like, I didn't write anything down, I didn't ask her questions, so I scraped up enough money to buy an Ancestry.com account, and I taught myself over the next, what is it now, 2007, 12 years I guess, how to trace my family online. And I've learned a lot, so I started a website to teach other people how to do the same thing. Shane Sams: That's amazing that you say that, and I want to dig deeper into your background too, like what you do outside of the online world. But I have tried to do the Ancestry.com thing, because I'm kind of like ... Everyone thinks, because we work online, that we know everything about computers, and every website. Jocelyn Sams: False. Shane Sams: This was false. So my mom one time, we got one of those DNA kits, and my dad got one. I tried to get on there and figure out how to start ... In the commercial it's like, "I clicked the leaf and I knew that Alexander Hamilton was my second cousin." That's so stupid because that is not how it works. Evan Garrapy: Not quite. Shane Sams: Once you get in it, you just get overwhelmed and confused. I couldn't figure it out, I gave up. I tapped out. So that's what you kind of do, right? Evan Garrapy: Exactly. I kind of compare it to that last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they're in that big ... The warehouse with all the crates. All the answers are in that big warehouse, but you would never know where to look unless you already knew where they are. So I just kind of teach people how to navigate the warehouse. Shane Sams: That's amazing. That just shows ... We were talking off air about how, I'm like, "No one's ever done anything like this. This is an amazing niche." If you just keep figuring out things that you've figured out how to do, you will eventually figure out how to start an online business. It's just going to happen. Shane Sams: Tell us more about your background too, like what's your actual background, what do you do for a living? What led, what's the nutshell version of how you ended up where you are today? Evan Garrapy: I am technically an attorney. I don't always like to admit it but yes, I'm a lawyer. I realized pretty quickly out of law school that it was probably not a good fit for me, and I was really bummed out, because you obviously spend a lot of time, a lot of money, blood, sweat and tears to become an attorney, only to realize, whoops, I made a mistake. But at that point it's not easy to switch because of all the money and time, and all of your experiences in this one area. But my mom heard you guys on a podcast, and I want to say, was that on Dave Ramsey? Were you all on there? Were you on that one? Shane Sams: I don't think so. Maybe somebody talked- Evan Garrapy: You were on something that my mom heard. She even told me about you guys. Shane Sams: Maybe somebody talked about us on Dave Ramsey. We need to look that up and see if it actually happened. Evan Garrapy: It was something my mom heard, and I looked you guys up, and I started listening to your podcast from the beginning. And truly, this sounds so sad, but I was so miserable that I would cry on the way to work. But I would listen to you guys, and it made me feel better. Like I had hope there was something I could do eventually. Shane Sams: Wow. Jocelyn Sams: Good, that makes me feel better. Shane Sams: I thought you were crying because of it. Evan Garrapy: No. Shane Sams: Like "It made me cry, you all were so mean." Jocelyn Sams: I know, I was like, no one has ever cried over our podcast before. Shane Sams: What you're saying is, you hated going to work, but this gave you hope that yes, there is something else. Evan Garrapy: It did. I probably said that in a weird way, but it was some of the only hope I felt like I had. I really was down, I was like, I ruined my life. That sounds so dramatic, but I really just didn't know what I was going to do. Listening to you guys gave me an out, and I've just been kind of slowly working at it in bits and pieces, and started to take it really seriously, just this year. Shane Sams: Awesome. That's why we do this show though, honestly, because I was there. I hated going to work. I had no hope after some horrible things that happened to us, or to me specifically, at work, and I was looking for something different. Because I felt the same way, like I went to college for this, I went to two Master's degree programs to be a teacher, and a coach, and coach football. Jocelyn Sams: And that's not even anywhere near what Evan's done. Shane Sams: Near what you did. And I had been teaching for nine years, so to even think about switching was overwhelming, you know what I'm saying. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so many of the people listening right now, there may be somebody listening in their car right now thinking, "Oh my goodness, this is me." Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: So I'm just so glad that you've taken the next steps, and you're trying to overcome that. Shane Sams: You said something really interesting there, I kind of wrote a note here as you were telling your story. You said you figured it out after you got out of law school, right. So what pushed you into law school? Did other people say, "You should be a lawyer, because doctors and lawyers make money"? What even pushed you down that path in the first place? Evan Garrapy: People did say, they always said I should go to law school. Common thinking for a long time was, "You're a great writer," or, "You kind of like to argue," which I don't actually that much, "And so you should go to law school." And honestly, being a lawyer isn't about writing, and I don't like confrontation, so not a good fit for me Shane Sams: Yeah. It's so funny though, how we get- Evan Garrapy: And I did think I could make good money. Shane Sams: It's so funny how we get those things in our head though, right. Like one person, one time, says, "You should be a lawyer," and you're like, "Yeah, I'm so lost in my life, and I have no clue what I want to do, so I'll do that." And then you get to the end of it and you're like, "That is not what I should've done seven years ago, what the world told me to do." Jocelyn Sams: That's what I did in high school. I was in the FBLA. I won an award at a competition about computers, because you know, nerd. But anyway, I was like, "I'll be in business and do something with computers." Shane Sams: So she went to be a computer programmer and all this stuff, and then just wank, opposite direction. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, absolutely. Shane Sams: It's just so funny how common that story is, that we find almost everyone seems to come into the community like, "I thought this, someone told me this, so I did that, and now I don't want this any more." That is such a common story, of everybody really. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Shane Sams: Because none of us know what we're doing in our 20s. We're just kind of like, "Well my advisor said," or "My mom said," or "My dad said," and then we end up looking up going, "I wish I had looked in the mirror and said, what do you say?" Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: But you get a do-over now, you can do what you want. You totally have that freedom. Evan Garrapy: I do. Like you said, I am grateful I went to law school, because I met my husband there, so I need to put that in, but I should've thought more about what day to day life is like as a lawyer. Shane Sams: What kind of law do you do? Evan Garrapy: Right now I'm doing consumer bankruptcy law. Chapter 7, Chapter 13. Shane Sams: So it's all positive and sunshine and rainbows, it sounds like. Evan Garrapy: There's happy people, nobody's ever crying at all, not stressful at all. Shane Sams: Yeah, I know. Well let's do what we can to change the narrative and get you away from bankruptcies. Jocelyn Sams: So you wanted to be an attorney, right. Shane Sams: So you wanted to be an attorney. Although attorneys do have a good racket. We were talking off air about, lawyers do make crazy money. Because we have this trademark attorney, and if I look at his email in my inbox he charges me somehow. He's got like a retina scanner. "You looked at the email, that'll be $5.95." "What?" And if I email him I get a bill right back, it's like $39.24. It's just so silly, it's like they charge by the letter or something like that. Evan Garrapy: Yeah. Certain types of attorneys can definitely get away with that kind of thing. I'll tell you, my local county prosecutor job though, I think they were offering maybe starting at 38 a year. Which after law school is not that much money, with the loan. Shane Sams: That's for sure. That's like your monthly payment on your law school loan. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. Shane Sams: Right, exactly. So tell us a little bit more then. We know why you want to get away from that job, but what are the positive benefits that you see? Like if you can get this online business off the ground, flip the script, and change your life, what are the benefits you're wanting to get out of your online business? Evan Garrapy: I want to build something that I can really be proud of. Everyone's actually impressed when you say you're a lawyer, but I'm not that proud of it. Not to sound bad, but I really want to build something that helps people, that I can be proud of and have freedom over my life. I'm kind of freedom-obsessed. It makes me feel really panicky thinking about someone else being in charge of my time. Shane Sams: Me too. It drives me insane. It gets to a point where ... I drive Jocelyn crazy because she likes schedules, but I don't even like appointments. Evan Garrapy: Me too, I know. Shane Sams: Other than these podcasts, no appointments. You're not allowed to get on my calendar for any reason. Jocelyn Sams: And I love appointments. Shane Sams: Jocelyn loves appointments. Jocelyn Sams: As many appointments as possible. Shane Sams: She likes her rigid schedule. Evan Garrapy: I'm the same. My husband is the Jocelyn in our relationship. Jocelyn Sams: And speaking of which, speaking of charging people for stuff, I always say that I'm going to charge people for wasting my time. So if I come to the doctor's office, and I sit there for an hour, I'm going to send them a bill for my time. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Evan Garrapy: I want to do that too. Shane Sams: And this is a really ... To piggyback off of that, what a worthy thing, to be able to make sure that people can find out who they are, where they came from, and complete their story. Evan Garrapy: Yes. Shane Sams: Or even think ahead to the place where it's like, "I wish I had asked all those questions." Well now we can make sure those questions get answered and exist before it's too late. Evan Garrapy: Exactly. It just fills you with a sense of pride. If you go back far enough, really we're pretty much all related. So it makes you think of the world in just a totally different way. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, exactly. Shane Sams: That's amazing. that's an awesome mission. Jocelyn Sams: So I'm actually a little bit obsessed with your business topic right now, and I'll tell you why. And I've mentioned this on the show before, but I'm a true crime nut. Evan Garrapy: Oh yeah. Jocelyn Sams: I love listening to True Crime podcast, and one of the things, I know this is really kind of weird, but anyway- Shane Sams: I think Jocelyn is planning her exit strategy. I'm just saying. She's listening to all these crime things like, "That's how that guy got away with it, hmm." Jocelyn Sams: It does look a little suspicious. If something happens to you, it will- Shane Sams: Her computer searches are putting her in jail if anything ever happens to me, I'm telling you. Jocelyn Sams: That is not true. But I do like to look up information about serial killers and things like that. Anyway, the reason that I'm really obsessed with this ancestry information is because one of the cases that I follow, actually many of the cases that I follow, have been solved using DNA, by people's family members who have submitted their information to police databases and stuff. So anyway, that got me thinking, "I don't really know that much about my family. So anyway, murder shows have gotten me thinking how I need to know more about my extended family. Shane Sams: Right, so she's been researching. Evan Garrapy: Yeah, I know the case you're talking about I think. Shane Sams: So you may have a customer, not just a coach, on this call. Evan Garrapy: Great, perfect. Shane Sams: I'm just saying, she maybe joining you. Jocelyn Sams: Let's jump into, what do you have so far? What does your site look like, do you have anything for sale yet? Evan Garrapy: I don't have anything for sale, but I have a blog with probably, I don't think there's even 20 posts I think. I have an opt-in set up with a free e-book. I have a small social media following and a YouTube channel, and I have a mailing list with about 60 people on it. Shane Sams: That's awesome though. Jocelyn Sams: That's a great start. Shane Sams: When did you start that actual blog? Evan Garrapy: I started the blog last year, but I didn't do much with it, just a few posts. Then this year, really only getting serious in January, even ha…

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FL295 - How to Launch an Online Course or Membership Jun 25, 2019

Show notes

In today's episode, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Super excited to be back with you today. We've got another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show, and we are going to help them take their online dreams to the next level. Want to welcome Crystal Harper to the program today. Hey, Crystal. How you doing? Crystal Harper: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Shane Sams: And I'm super excited to have Crystal on the show, because Crystal is one of our private mastermind people. We've been working with her for a few weeks, now. And she has taken massive action and made massive progress in her online business, and we're ready to get to the next level, and go to the next steps. Jocelyn Sams: All right, it is great to have you here today, and I look forward to everyone else in our audience knowing more about your business and what you are up to. So let's start out by telling everyone a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online. Crystal Harper: Okay, well I got my bachelor's degree in psychology back in 2007. And back then, I was planning on getting my PhD in clinical psychology, but I actually had a daughter right after I graduated, so I decided to take time off from school. I became a waitress. I wanted to be on my daughter's schedule during the day, so her dad watched her at night, and I worked at night. But when I turned 30, and my daughter started first grade, I decided to go back to school for my teaching certification, thinking that I would be on my daughter's schedule. But once I was in the program, I realized that wasn't really the case. So I started thinking that working in the classroom wasn't really what I wanted to do, so I decided to go back to school again and get my Master's degree in e-learning, which I will graduate from in December. Crystal Harper: So I've just kind of been on the fence of where I'm going. And then I ran into you guys, beginning of April, and I just felt like that's where I needed to be. I've just always wanted to own my own business, but never knew how I could possibly do that. Yeah, like I said, I just found you guys and the rest is history. Shane Sams: It's funny, because Crystal, when she says, "I found you guys," here's what she actually means. So Crystal finds our podcast, signs up for the membership, buys a ticket to Flip Your Life live, and she went to our private mastermind, all within a week. I'm watching this happen, as the week's going on. Monday, I see ... Like, "Oh, we got a ticket to Flip Your Life live. Whoa, they joined the community. Wow! They signed up for private coaching!" What is going on here? So you dove into the deep end. Jocelyn Sams: You went all in, Crystal. Crystal Harper: I did. Jocelyn Sams: I like that. And you're also our people because I like how you're like, "Okay, so I started out to work in education, and then I decided I didn't want to work in education." Shane Sams: Pivot. Crystal Harper: Yeah. Right? Shane Sams: All right, like, "Fork in the road, go left. I don't even know what's right. Let's just go left." Jocelyn Sams: Oh, that's sort of the way we were. We were kind of like, "We want schedule flexibility. Let's be teachers." And then we're like, "No. Let's not." Shane Sams: That's not as peachy as you think it is. You Know? Crystal Harper: I know. Shane Sams: But it is really important for people to take that lesson, though. Just because you've already invested a certain amount of time into something doesn't mean you have to keep going down that road if you don't want to do it. And when you realize you don't want to do it, you don't just finish something. When we quit our jobs, I sat down and gave my letter of resignation to the principal. Right? And he looked at me and he goes, "How long have you been teaching?" And I said, "Nine years, going on ten. This'll be my 10th year," if I was going to finish. And he goes, "Nine years." He goes, "You've got all that retirement in, and you're just going to give that up?" And I looked at him, and I went, "Yeah, but I've got 18 left. I'm not just going to finish the last 18 years to retirement because I've got 9 in the system." You don't do that. I realized I don't want to do this, so I'm going to pivot. You know? Crystal Harper: Right. I mean, and it's all a learning experience, too. Shane Sams: Exactly. And I know there's a lot of people out there that probably know your story. Like, "have lived your story." Didn't know what they wanted to do, they were waitressing, being a waiter, doing stuff, just kind of floating around. Went back to school, and now this sucks, too. "That's it, I'm getting a new degree." Go to another direction, and that's where it brought you today. Shane Sams: But tell us about e-learning, though, because this is going to be ... I mean, this is where we're going to go with your online business, but tell us a little bit about e-learning. What does that mean to have a degree in e-learning? Crystal Harper: Well, it's e-learning and instructional design, is what the actual program is. So I'm really learning how to design courses online. So I can actually even work in the back end and just design courses for teachers, or I can teach online. So pretty much the business that we've came up with is teaching teachers how to learn how to teach online. Shane Sams: Exactly. Crystal Harper: Or showing them how to teach online. Shane Sams: And giving them that path. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: A few weeks ago, we had a guest on. Her name was Gina, and she is an online teacher. She teaches English to Chinese children. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: But she needs to ... It's different teaching on the internet. It's different teaching an online ... It's different creating an online course, than doing something live, in front of 30 students. You got to know how to transition. And there might be a lot of teachers out there in the future who never walk in a classroom, because they are going to be teaching from their home, on the Internet, and they've got to know how to actually manage that process. Crystal Harper: Yeah, and I've realized that especially since starting this business, that there are so many different opportunities to teach online that I didn't even realize while I was going through the program, but just doing all of the research, I mean, there's so many opportunities. Shane Sams: Well, tell us a little bit about your journey so far, though. This was not your first idea. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: Right. What did you kind of dabble into before we started actually working together, and I was like, "No, don't do that. You can do this"? Crystal Harper: I was just thinking about starting a business to help teachers learn how to work with technology better in their classroom, which I thought was a great idea, but then after talking to you, you kind of discouraged me of that. Shane Sams: Well, we started researching it. It's always about the research, and nobody was really looking for that. Crystal Harper: And I had even ... Yeah, I know. And I had even tried to find other people that were doing it, and I realized that there weren't. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so usually when that happens, it might make you think, "Hmm, this might not be the best idea." Shane Sams: If nobody's selling anything, and nobody's running ads about the thing, there's probably nobody making money with the thing. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Jocelyn Sams: And it doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, it just might mean it's the wrong time for it. Crystal Harper: Yeah, that's true. Shane Sams: So tell us about your business right now, though. Now, what have we created? Now, what's amazing is, is just a few weeks ago, you had absolutely nothing. Right? And tell us what we're doing now. What's your idea, how it's evolved, and what you've actually already created? Crystal Harper: Okay. Well first, I created the course. It took me almost, probably about three weeks, where I just created three different modules. So the first module is telling teachers about what opportunities they have to be able to teach online. And then the second module, what you helped me create, Shane, was the Harper Method. So I teach teachers, step by step, how to design their own online course. Shane Sams: We have an onboarding call in our Voxer program, and we were like, "Well, what is this going to look like?" And we started ... Something happened, and we were talking about some kind of weird acronym, or something. And I was like, "What if your name was just an acronym?" And we just made up what the H, the A, the R, the P, the E, and the R were. Right? Crystal Harper: Yeah. Shane Sams: And by the end of this call, we were like, "I think we just invented a whole thing." It was like, "You are now the ... " Wait, trademark. "The Harper Method: How to be an e-teacher," basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and education loves their acronyms, anyway. So it's perfect. Crystal Harper: Yeah, it seemed to work out. It seemed to flow well for me, and it makes me look a little more original because as I did the research, there are a lot of people out there who are doing the same exact thing. Shane Sams: Which is a good thing, though, because that means there is a market and you just got to get your piece of the pie, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: What is the Harper method? What did we come up with? Tell everybody about the Harper method. Crystal Harper: Okay. H starts for helping you understand your students. So, it's analyzing the characteristics of your students and their learning styles, just to determine what type of class that you're going to be teaching. Shane Sams: Okay. Crystal Harper: A is assign objectives and learning theory. R is resources, selecting and preparing your resources and strategies. Shane Sams: Okay. What's the P? Crystal Harper: P is participation, just you determine assignments, assessments, and feedback of how your students will be participating. E is evaluate. So, you evaluate your course that you've designed and look at where you need to improve. And then R is revision and repetition. Shane Sams: Awesome. Crystal Harper: So, you just go over what you've evaluated and repeat the process. Shane Sams: And here's what's funny, that didn't exist before our meeting. And now you've created the actual Harper method. We have modules and courses that actually teach this to e-learners to help them become better. And I always tell people this. They're like, "Everybody else looks so official and everyone's got their accreditation and certification." Here's the deal, somewhere at some point, every one of those certifications that you see anywhere, someone just sat in a room and made it up. All these acronyms, all these things that we have. Common Core and all that was just people who made stuff up. And you clearly have the expertise in this, because you have a degree in it. Jocelyn Sams: And I was going to say, it sounds very professional. To me I'm like, "Oh, wow." Shane Sams: "The Harper method". Jocelyn Sams: That sounds very legit. Shane Sams: That's like hardcore. But like you can go out and create these things. My favorite is like coaches. There's this coach named Brendon Burchard. And he has high performance coaching and getting a high performance coaching certification's a big deal. But that dude just made that up. He didn't go get accredited by Yale or anything. He just made it up and he started selling it. And it's like yeah, he created a system, you learn it, and it will help you be a better coach. Right? Crystal Harper: Right. Shane Sams: All you've done is created a system that will teach people who are not e-learners or not e-teachers to go be e-teachers, and you have every right to do that because you've got the expertise to do it. That's amazing. Crystal Harper: Right. And it's funny because even going over the other models that are already out there, I feel like my model, I kind of ... Not made it better, but I tweaked things a little bit to where ... I can't. I'm sorry. Shane Sams: Go ahead. Go ahead. Jocelyn Sams: You're fine. Crystal Harper: Well, you know how just things continually get better when you look at something, you can see what could make it better. Shane Sams: Sure. Crystal Harper: So, I just kind of looked at what's out there and I tried to make my model flow a little bit better than what I personally have seen. Shane Sams: And the difference there between you and everybody else, okay? Anyone who doesn't take action, is you actually created this thing. There's probably 100 other people that looked at that same thing and said, "Well, I could do this better." But they never made the thing and you did. And that's why you've given yourself such an opportunity to go be successful and get your course out there, and actually start selling it and become this expert where people come to you to learn how to be like an e-learner, right? Crystal Harper: Yeah. It's pretty cool. Shane Sams: It's amazing. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Crystal. So, you got your product kind of outlined and where is it at right now? You have already been working on it. Have you completed it? Have you sold it? Where are you at right now? Crystal Harper: I did complete it. At first I put it on Udemy and I haven't made any sales on Udemy. But I have also put it on my website. So, I started up my website. I've been building my social media. That's mainly what I've been focusing on the last week or so is just building up LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest. Shane Sams: So, basically you're following the Flip your Life blueprint. It's amazing how things happen when you do that. You created your course. You put it in a third party market just so it's for sale, just in case. You've built your website and your social media, you're building your platform, okay? You're creating infrastructure that will support this and now you have to take it to the next level and just find people to buy the thing, right? Crystal Harper: Right. Right. Shane Sams: So, tell me about your e-mail list. You've actually got that out there, too. What's happening with your email list? Crystal Harper: Yeah. I made a few opt ins or lead magnets, and put them ... I have blog posts. I wrote out, I have a bunch of blog posts going all the way through October, but I put lead magnets on the blog posts and then on my website and people have been opting in. So, I got my first email a little over a week ago and then I got another one, and then I realized that ... Going back a little bit, I didn't have a lead…

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FL294 - The Power of Having a Brick & Mortar Business AND an Online Business Jun 18, 2019

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In today's episode, we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all on today's podcast we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your host, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again today. Really excited about today's guest because this is going to be an interesting show. We've been talking a lot on the podcast about different ways to live the flipped lifestyle, different ways to take control of your life, to be able to make your own money to become and stay self employed, offline, online, work from home, work in your office, wherever it may be. Shane Sams: And this episode is going to fall squarely in the middle of every one of those possibilities because we have someone that has flipped their life through their brick and mortar business, but now they want to scale it online. There's all kinds of, we're at a fork in the road and there's 47 prongs on the fork. So we're going to dig into this a little bit today and see if we can make sense out of it. We want to welcome flip your life member Jennifer Dixon to the show. Jennifer Dixon: Hey guys, thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: We are very, very happy to talk to you today. Jennifer is one of our more active members. We see her over and over again on member calls- Shane Sams: Asks amazing questions and I was telling her off air before we started the show. Set a new world record for amount typed into the podcast intake form. I mean we're talking to some multiple paragraphs here folks. I mean it was impressive. It was very impressive. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so let's just end this podcast now and maybe you should write a novel. Shane Sams: It's prolific that's it, that's right. You just to write a book and it'll be so prolific that no one won't be able to help but purchase it. Jocelyn Sams: Like podcast done that is like a record. Shane Sams: That's a record. We'll see y'all next week. Bye. All right, so first of all, before we get started tell us about your background. How you ended up doing what you do now in your brick and mortar business. Right? And then maybe a little bit about how you found us and then we'll jump from there? Jennifer Dixon: Okay. So you all can tell me to speed it up or slow it down because as you can tell, I'm not great at brevity. That might be the Southern roots. I don't know. We just go slow. Shane Sams: We'll edit you out, it's okay. Jennifer Dixon: All right, so I got into yoga about 10 years ago. I was really active and running, I was training for a marathon at the Disney marathon, actually with my sister and doing crossfit at the time. And I herniated a disk in my low back and I went from being able to sling weights around and run for hours on end, which I used to love to do, to basically being bedridden. I went through eight rounds of four epidural shots in my back. I wasn't even 30 at the time. And the next step really was surgery is what the doctor had said. And I was not willing to do that. My Dad's had back surgery and I am not a huge fan of the ramifications of that. So, my boyfriend now husband at the time was like, "Why don't you try yoga?" And I was like, "Yoga is for sissies." Famous last words. Jennifer Dixon: And he took me to my very first heated power class, and when I was getting into the studio, I had to use the handles to get out of my car, my back was hurting so bad. And by the time the class was over, I could touch my toes and my back didn't hurt. And ever since then I basically practice nearly every single day for this'll be, I think my 10th year. And yoga's given me my life back, it's legitimately saved me from living a life full of pain. And that's how I got into it. I got certified right away to teach. I didn't really ever think I was teaching, I had a very, very lucrative career in the energy industry. And I just did yoga and taught yoga on the side because it was fun. And then lo and behold, I got laid off of my very lucrative position. I think you talk about that there's not really jobs security when you're working for somebody. And boy is that not the truth. Two weeks after coming back to work from having my first child, I was laid off. It was divine providence, I know it's totally a God work, because my husband was laid off Wednesday. I was laid off two days later Friday. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh, woah that's crazy. Jennifer Dixon: That's when you know God's got his hands into something. And it was funny, they had this box full of tissues on the table and I think they were prepared for this emotional breakdown. And I was like, all right, God, I have no idea what you're doing, but all right, give me my severance. What's my insurance? And then we moved home in two weeks. And I sat around on unemployment for about six months and I interviewed and interviewed. And at the time I was working 60, 80 plus hours a week, traveling everywhere. And that was really cool before I had a baby. But then once I had a baby, and the baby didn't like bottles she just wanted to nurse, and she lost all this weight in two weeks. I didn't want to do that anymore. And I found a yoga studio for sale. And I kind of laughed at first when I first saw it because I was like, we can't live off of that. Famous last words. Jennifer Dixon: And at the end of unemployment I was like, all right honey, this is still there. Maybe this is what we should be doing. And my husband, he's a saint. God bless him I'm so lucky. He's like, whatever you want to do honey, whatever you want to do. And that was three years ago this month. Yeah. Shane Sams: So you basically bought an existing yoga studio that had clients already? And you just kind of picked up and started teaching and then you grew this into a way to make a living and kind of control your schedule, control your life. And you've just got this place now and you've built a community up there and you have plenty of members and things like that? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Well, I'm not going to say we have plenty of members. We can always grow. I do have a fantastic community. The best thing about it is I have a group of teachers that love to teach, and they love to work and teach for me in the community, it's unlike any other yoga studio I'd ever been in, which that was kind of the things that I wanted when I took over the studio is a lot of times yoga studios are not known for being like tears is the joke that I like to use. You know, where everybody knows your name, and that is exactly what the studio is. You come in, we get to know you. We get to know about your family, we celebrate your successes. It's a very tight knit community and I love that part of it. Shane Sams: Sure. But the challenges of the brick and mortar, how big is the area that you live in? Like how big is the town you live in? Jennifer Dixon: Chattanooga. It's pretty good size. I think- Shane Sams: Pretty good size. But you probably have a lot of competition. I'd say there's other yoga studios and other gyms and things like that? Jennifer Dixon: Exactly. Shane Sams: The problem with brick and mortar is sometimes you hit up against like geographic boundaries of how many clients you can have and there's a lot of overhead I would assume in something like that correct? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Shane Sams: Like you said there are coaches and staff and things like that. So did that lead you to say, hey, wait a minute, maybe there's another way to make money online or like what got you into thinking about like online business? Jennifer Dixon: I was thinking about trying to come up with another peg of income, you've got to have multiple pegs if you're doing this on your own. And my two pegs I do teacher training and the yoga studio we were still struggling to create margin in our lives. And I was listening to another podcast where you guys were on. And I think it's hilarious because you talked bad about your accent but I love it because it just sounds like home to me. Because I'm just a few hours South of you. Shane Sams: I need to put that on a T-shirt. Shane and Jocelyn sound like home to you. Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, you all sound like home. It just sounded like my people, and I immediately signed up for your podcast after listening to that one, and kind of binged listened to it. And then one day, I guess it was funny because I've never thought of my life being flipped. It was a Friday. I was at the zoo. I can't remember if my son, yeah my son must've been born, I'm not sure if it was when I was pregnant or when he was born, but I'm pretty sure he was new. I was at the zoo with my daughter and you sent out an email about asking for a question or something. And here we were looking at the chimpanzees, my daughter's were making monkey noises and I sent you an email and you responded right away. And I was like, holy cow that's- Shane Sams: Shane and Jocelyn actually talk to people. That's a miracle, right? Jennifer Dixon: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And sometimes we even send a video like just to make sure people know that it's really us- Shane Sams: We jut like to mess with people basically, we just like to freak them out while they're at the zoo. Jennifer Dixon: I love it. No, I was like, whoa. And I think that was a Friday and I signed up for the membership that Sunday. So that would've been a year ago actually. Really recently. Shane Sams: So there's the first lesson for today's podcast y'all is be a real person and actually communicate with your audience and people will buy your stuff. Jennifer Dixon: Oh yeah, that's true. I signed up like that, after the first webinar I was like, I'm in- Shane Sams: I remember when you came into the community too because I can remember, you are on every single Q and A that we do. Which is awesome. Jennifer Dixon: Nearly. Shane Sams: Almost. But I remember the first couple of questions you had were basically like the theme of what we first initially talked about was how in the world can something like what I do become an online business? Because it wasn't about certifying other yoga instructors or anything like that. It was how can we just make the... If you look at a bullseye, you've got a bullseye in the middle. That's kind of where your brick and mortar business lives. And it's like, how can we create circles of income that span out from that and still do kind of the same thing right? Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Shane Sams: So what path did you choose to go down? What did you start creating? How did that go and kind of bring us up to speed with where you are now with the online stuff? Jennifer Dixon: Sure. So right when I joined the community, I also decided to rebrand the studio because the studio had been around since 2010, and it had a different brand and I wanted to make it mine. And so this was a year ago in the summer was just one heck of a summer. I rebranded, redid a website, all that kind of stuff. And at the same time shot my very first material for a course, which I was going to put into a membership. And at first I titled it the Mommy Bounce Back program because my son was about a year. And this will go into probably a question later on. I'm not like a typical yoga person. And as long as I'm breastfeeding, I'm going to hold on the last 10, 15 pounds of momma weight, that's just my body everybody's different. Jennifer Dixon: And I knew that if I marketed to the women that were, at least my thought was if I marketed to women who had had babies either recently or were never able to successfully get in shape postpartum, then I would look real to them because I was legit there. And so I created, I think it was almost five hours of material, different videos, full length videos. And to me a full length video at the time was a minimum of, I wanted to do an hour and my dad was the one who was shooting the videos. He was like, maybe you should do a 45 minute one. And in my head I'm like no way. And so we did like one 30, one 40 and then two 60 minute videos. And then I did a lot of little drills and I did it in Kajabi at first because that was easy. And I'm not a tech person. And I sold, I can't remember, I sold five, I think I sold five. Shane Sams: That's amazing. Jennifer Dixon: I was pumped, yeah I sold five, and then it was like crickets, and it was bad crickets. And then a friend of ours offered to help me market it and all that kind of stuff. And I think I sold one more at a really, really discounted price and then nothing. And so I shutdown Kajabi because I didn't want that monthly fee. And I just started trying to like what you guys talk about, be really prolific with my content creation. So in the summer, like right around when I was filming all this, I upped my blog post. I'm posting three times a week, I'm writing that stuff every three times a week. I'm doing live things on Facebook for the studio and for online at least weekly. Jennifer Dixon: And then I started doing things on YouTube at least weekly. And then January happened and I was like, man, I'm so tired of living without margin. So I've got to make this work. I was up really late with my husband dealing with stuff and I said, honey, we've got to make this online stuff work. That's the only way we're really going to scale if I want to do this and this is what I want to do. And ever since then it's just been, all the ponies are running. Shane Sams: Right. So basically then this is very common, people do this. They create the product, they sell something, it's exciting. And then it's like, we ran out of people to sell something to, so basically you've turned all your energy toward trying to build an audience, right? Like trying to get YouTube subscribers, get followers, get the blogs going on. Let me ask you this is the thing still for sale though? Are you still selling the thing you created to these new people? Because you've been creating an audience now for six months regardless of how big it gets or is. Did you just stop selling the thing all together? Jennifer Dixon: Yes. I did, and I'm laughing until I forget which one of those, because I signed up for flip your life live, that was like part of that conversation with my husband. I was like, I've got to make this work, I'm going to this training. I know it's a lot of money. We're going to figure out how to do it. And so I don't remember which training it was Shane, but you were no sugar Shane, I guess. And you said, "If you got something, put it for sale," and you said Udemy which I didn't even know about. But like that day after the phone call or maybe the next day I had my course back up on Udemy. So it is for sale. Shane Sams: It is for sale now. Okay, good. At least it's for sale somewhere. Because I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I don't remember where building an audience leads to not selling things to them. That was the disconnect I was finding there because you made all this content and that's where you got it to go. You know what I'm saying? Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Shane Sams: Well that's a good. There's a lot of…

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FL293 - The 3 Key Components of a Successful Membership Site Jun 11, 2019

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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 got…

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FL292 - How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome Jun 04, 2019

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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…

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FL291 - How to Build a Business While Fighting Anxiety and Confidence Issues May 28, 2019

Show notes

In today's episode, we help Chad grow his new membership site. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Chad grow his new membership site. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show so that we can help them grow their online business and change their family's future. Today's guest is Chad Bostick. Chad, welcome to the program. Chad Bostick: Hey guys. So happy to be here. Man, I've been a long time listener of the show for many many years and I was honored and shocked that you guys invited me to the show and just super, super pumped to be here. Shane Sams: Well listen, man. We reward action takers in the community and we watch those forums like a hawk, looking for success stories, looking for great questions, looking for people that are following through with their action plans and you earned your spot on the show today, man. So we're glad to have you. Jocelyn Sams: And I loved your success story. This is the reason that we chose you to be on the show today, because Chad put out that he got his first paid member and that's something that's really exciting and that we always celebrate here on the show. His success story says, "I'm out of town for work so I didn't think I would make much progress on my business this week, but while I was waiting for my flight Sunday evening," He had been to an event, "I followed up with one of the folks that showed interest at my live speaking engagement. We've exchanged emails a few times this week and last night he said he tried to sign up for my membership but the site wasn't working. He asked my permission to PayPal me money. I said yes." Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing. Someone was literally like, "Can I just throw money at you? Because this is awesome." That's what it's all about. Jocelyn Sams: It reminds me of that meme that says, "Shut up and take my money." Shane Sams: Right, exactly. Chad Bostick: It was so odd because I didn't even know how to respond. Somebody literally was like, "Shut up and take my money." I sat there and there was all of these negative thoughts in my head. I should say no, I'm not ready yet, I'm not a real entrepreneur, I don't know what I'm doing here. But instead, thank God I have Gmail so the Gmail client on my iPhone had responses built in at the bottom and one of the responses was sure. And so I just clicked the button. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh, that is a great story man. What a first sale story. That is awesome. Jocelyn Sams: I love that. That is awesome. And in the back of your mind you're thinking, "My sales process doesn't even work. Why do you want to give me money?" Shane Sams: That's amazing, man. Chad Bostick: Yeah. Shane Sams: Well listen, let's back up. We're going to get deeper into that first sale and we're going to talk about the next hundred sales as well, but before we do that tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us where you come from, what you do and the life outside of this online business pursuit. Chad Bostick: Absolutely. My name is Chad Bostick. I'm married 14 years to my beautiful wife Shauna. We have two kids, two daughters. One is nine and one is two, and so we've kind of got the whole range of kids here in the house and it's awesome. I am a software developer. Grew up as a software developer and have been a very technical person inside the software development space for many, many years. The last 20 plus years. Chad Bostick: What I struggle with my entire life has been anxiety. I have had really, really difficulties in creating relationships and talking to people and speaking up and it really held me back in life and in my career. When I first got my first programming job back in the 90s, I kind of lucked into it and it was awesome and it was great and I had a lot of fun, but then building my career and moving up took a lot of effort that I didn't know I was going to have to put into it. I showed up and I was a good employee, I did a great job, but after five years of the first company I worked at I found out that I was one of the least paid people in the entire organization and it was really soul crushing. Chad Bostick: There was a lot of other obstacles that I overcame but after a while I figured out that what I was really missing were soft skills. I didn't have confidence, I didn't have a good communication style, and I had no leadership skills whatsoever. So I worked on those, I developed those, and then my career started taking off and I started getting job offers, I started moving into management positions or being asked to be moved into management positions even though I said no for many many years on that. And then I've had amazing opportunities to work at big Fortune 100 companies and really small awesome niche companies in a lot of different areas and work on some amazing projects, work with some amazing people, and yeah. That's what I'm doing. Jocelyn Sams: That's really interesting Chad, and I can actually relate to your story in a lot of ways. First of all I'm really into computer stuff and I would even go so far to say as I'm a little bit of a nerd, or a lot- Shane Sams: A lot of a nerd. I used to ... Our first dates when we first started dating in college, Jocelyn worked at the computer lab as the person who helped people with computers and I would go sit beside her at the computer lab. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and what was funny is that I started out in college, my plan was to become a programmer. I used to program years and years ago. Chad Bostick: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: In the midst of all this one of the computer science instructors accused me of cheating. I think I might have mentioned this on the podcast before. I did not cheat but she accused me of cheating and after that I just couldn't even think about programming any more. It really affected me that much. Along that line I also suffer from anxiety. I've been dealing with it for probably my entire life, but the last couple of years it's been really bad, so I can definitely relate to you on several different levels. Chad Bostick: Yeah, the struggle is real. It's not fun at all when you get those anxiety attacks. I was so bad, guys, that back in my teens and in my early twenties, it was so bad that I couldn't even go to my family reunions and have conversation with my aunts and uncles and cousins because they felt like strangers to me and I didn't know how to open up to them. I didn't know how to just relax around people that weren't my best friends, and I had very, very few best friends. So it was ... That anxiety held me back in not just work but a lot of life opportunities as well. Shane Sams: You said something like you turned down some opportunities to grow in your actual job, like your nine to five. You were offered jobs and you said no to them over and over, is that what happened? Chad Bostick: Yeah, so at one point I had a boss who we ... I was in the oil and gas business at the time, working in the IT department at an oil company, and it's very cyclical. When it's hot it's hot and when it's not it's not. There's a lot of ups and downs and I didn't have a good way to grow my career so my career was growing through attrition. As everyone else was leaving or getting laid off I was doing a great job and I was sticking around, and then I was being offered these opportunities to move up into a senior developer position, into a lead developer position, into a supervisor or manager position, and I was like, "Whoa. That is way too stressful for me. I'm just going to sit here in front of the computer with my headphones on and stare at the code all day because that sounds like ... First of all it sounds like a bunch of meetings, which is boring, and second of all it sounds like a lot of responsibility of dealing with people problems instead of technical problems." That really stressed me out. Jocelyn Sams: All right. Listen, I totally get that- Shane Sams: I'm sitting here nodding. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, I'm sitting here shaking my head. Shane Sams: She's rocking in her chair right now. Jocelyn Sams: I totally get this because honestly, I've said it many times, I would rather work with things than people any day. And it's not because I don't like people, I mean obviously I talk to people for a living, that's part of what I do, but I just don't like managing people. It's just not my thing, it's not what I enjoy. I would prefer to sit on a computer all day long than to interact with people in a work type setting. Shane Sams: The problem is there's different ways to make money. I heard a speaker say one time there's three main ways people make money. One is with your muscles, you actually do things, you build the software, you build the house, you do the thing, right? But those are the lowest paid employees. And then the next one is you make money with your mouth. Like you're the manager, you tell people what to do, you talk, you do those things. Or you make money with your mind, you're like the entrepreneur who's creating and running the company. And the problem is if you get stuck in the muscles then you never move to that next level where you make more money, and then you never get to have a chance to go to the third level where you can make even more money, like owning your own online business. Shane Sams: I can see where that fear almost of success or responsibility could hold you back a little bit. How did you break through that, get out of that? Chad Bostick: First of all, in the software development space, it's a really really hot industry and not always the case that the manager makes more money. In some cases the software developers make more money than the manager. I've had several software developers work for me over the last eight to 10 years, that they were in a niche and they had a skill set that was very, very hard to find and they named their price and we were like, "Shut up and take my money," because we need this job done. A few individuals got to name their price and got whatever they wanted to. Chad Bostick: But when I was moving into management it was really difficult because I really said no for three or four or five times before I finally kind of just took a look at my life and was like, "You know what? Am I getting into the same patterns as I was before?" One of the things I was struggling with wasn't really the money because honestly guys, I felt blessed to have the job and I felt like not worthy to have the job in some cases. I did not graduate college. I was a college dropout. But I started writing code when I was 10 years old because it was fun and I don't feel like English is my first language, I feel like Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is kind of my first language because that was ... BASIC programming was what really grabbed my attention when I was a 10, 11 year old. Chad Bostick: It was a struggle for me to accept that job because on one hand I didn't feel like I deserved the job that I had, and get the money that I had, but on the other hand dealing with people problems just seemed like an insurmountable task. I would fail at it on my first day. And it turned out that wasn't the case and I had a knack in it. I just needed to practice my skill sets and get more comfortable in that area. Shane Sams: Yeah, that's what happens with most fears. We create this story that tells ourselves we can't do this, but then we go do it and it's fine. It's taking that leap from one side of the cliff, I can't do it, to the other side, okay I'm going to try it and then I'm good at it, is what most people really really need to do that. Shane Sams: So you've got this good job, you've started moving up in your career. Why online business? Why then do you want to pivot now and go down this entrepreneur path, which is a whole different set of challenges and problems than even climbing that corporate ladder? Chad Bostick: Yeah, that's a great question and it's not now that I want to make the change. I actually started down the online path 15 years ago and I had a lot of starts and I had a lot of stops and I had a lot of successes and I had a lot of failures, and I feel like this is something that I've been seeking and searching for for over a decade and I haven't quite figured it out. And it frustrates me because I'm a smart guy and I know how to get things done technically. I know how to build a website, I know how to set up all the funnels and all that kind of stuff, but just turning it into a business is not a skill that I've ever learned. It's not a skill or a collection of skills that I've really figured out how to practice. Chad Bostick: The reason I wanted to get it was just the freedom in so many ways. It's not just about the money for me. It was the freedom to work on the projects that excited me. I worked on a lot of projects over the course of my career that ended up kind of being the same thing over and over and over and just not really exciting. I worked on a lot of projects where I did not have a lot of empathy for the customer space. It was just like an area where it's like, "Okay, we're building this thing, but I don't really know who's going to use it or why they're going to use it." And just the project cycle of our project spins up and you work on it and then our project spins down and then the next project spins up and down. That project-based work has just kind of drained me over the course of the years. What I want to do is get into a business where I have freedom and flexibility to work on the projects that excite me, to work with the type of customers that excite me, and to have that freedom to work anywhere in the world however I want to do it. Shane Sams: I love this part of your ... We have a form that we fill out for everybody that's on the show and it says, "The nine to five is slowly killing my soul." You have this really matter-of-fact way that you say things, and it's really matter-of-fact all the way. You get to that sentence and it's like now stop, we're killing my soul. Like, and- Jocelyn Sams: But I think that so many people can relate to that. There are so many people listening to this right now that are like, "Yes. I totally get that." Shane Sams: It's almost just finding a purpose. Every project has to have a purpose. I'm the same way, I get bored really really easily, especially if someone else hands me something to do. Even if I like to do it, if someone tells me to do it, it just hurts me somehow because I don't feel like I'm flexible and free. Jocelyn Sams: It's because you're the rebel. We just read a book recently, it's called The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. It's a really interesting book. Shane is called the rebel. He doesn't want to meet other people's expectations and sometimes he doesn't even want to meet his own. Shane Sams: Yeah, I just want to get out…

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FL290 - How to Overcome the 5 Biggest Fears Holding You Back from Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur May 21, 2019

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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…

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FL289 - Lead Generation for Beginners May 14, 2019

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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…

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FL288 - How To Make Money Podcasting May 07, 2019

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In today's episode, we welcome back Mark to celebrate his success and help him determine his next steps. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we welcome back Mark to celebrate his success and help him determine his next steps. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online and now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, it is great to be back with you again today. Really, really excited about today's guest. This is someone who's been on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast before. It's someone we have met in person at one of our Flip Your Life live events, and it's someone who's doing some amazing things in the online business world. Our guest today is Mark Taylor. Mark, welcome back. Mark Taylor: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me back on the show. Shane Sams: Now, remind everybody where you live at? Because it's definitely not Kentucky from the sound of your accent, you know what I'm saying? Mark Taylor: It's not. It is the UK, but it's not the University of Kentucky, which I think we were talking about last time. Yeah, I live in a village called Rode, which is about 60 miles just north of London over here in Great Britain. Shane Sams: I think it's amazing that you live in a village. We don't have villages, we've got towns, I wish we had villages. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, we've definitely not used that word, village. But I am quite obsessed with the UK actually. I think we might have talked about this before. I've actually traveled there once and I would love to go back again some time. Shane Sams: I think we're going to come soon Mark. Mark Taylor: Great. Shane Sams: They're about to pass all those laws. Jocelyn Sams: About the visas. Shane Sams: Where we've got to have visas now, the United States people to go to the EU, but I know England's going to let us in once they get out of there. They're Brexiting. Mark Taylor: Absolutely, I think everyone will be welcome. Shane Sams: We'll just come to England, we'll just hang out with you. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so I love British culture, I'm kind of obsessed with it. I'm a big tea drinker. I drink English Breakfast every morning, so I feel like I have a real kinship with you. Mark Taylor: Yeah, sure. I do the morning breakfast followed by the mid-morning breakfast, followed by lunch, followed by afternoon. Shane Sams: Second breakfast, third breakfast and tea. Mark Taylor: Yeah, sure. Jocelyn Sams: Believe it or not, southerners, we are big tea drinkers. It's more iced tea usually but I do drink a lot of hot tea. Mark Taylor: Yeah, love it. Jocelyn Sams: All right, well let's jump into a little bit of background for the listeners, for people who maybe have not listened to a podcast with you on it before. Tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background and what you've been doing online. Mark Taylor: I obviously live here in the UK. My background's in music. My passion is music, I'm a professional musician. Moved to London and went to music college and studied there and I've had the great honor really to play with many of the UK's leading orchestras and organizations. Through that I've had the opportunity then to become an educator, teaching drums, teaching music and played all over the world and extensively also through the UK. Mark Taylor: What's been really exciting is I've been able to transfer that passion into my online world through Education On Fire. I live here with my wife and we've got three children and we have a really lovely life. We talk a lot on the podcast about the ability to have that sort of balance in life and I've always had that. My wife and I decided always that we wanted to split the childcare and that she spends a lot of time and we've always managed to do that, being freelance and a musician means that we have a little bit of control of our schedule but of course, if you're not actually away touring or you're not away working then you don't quite have the financial freedom that you might have, which is where some of the online ideas came from, in terms of trying to monetize the sorts of things that I was doing. My life really fits into that three pattern really. It's music playing, music education and then the music and the online education, through Education On Fire. Shane Sams: The last time you were here, which was, what was that podcast? Jocelyn Sams: It's 189. Shane Sams: All right, for those of you who want to catch that episode, it's at flippedlifestyle.com/podcast189 but we talked a lot about your podcast, Education On Fire. Now at that time it was more just a passion project, right? It was just something almost like a hobby that you were doing because you had something in your life going on that you really wanted to get involved in the education space, correct? Mark Taylor: That's exactly it. I had three children going through different parts of the education world and as we know in the media, and the kind of thing, education's got a bit of a downer at the moment. There's lots of testing, lots of people taking their kids out of school and homeschooling. You're not quite sure how it fits in with the modern world and the passion project really came from the fact that because I was going into schools delivering music workshops, I was also seeing some fantastic teaching going on, some fantastic ideas and things being very creative. Mark Taylor: What I wanted to do was just really to flip that slightly and the podcast came out of, I want to share inspiring, creative ideas that people were actually doing, so yeah, it was literally a passion project just to support my kids and to support other teachers and people involved in education to feel like, ah there's great stuff going on over there, maybe I can copy that, maybe I can replicate some of these things and actually make my school a different environment based on what I'm hearing from other places. Shane Sams: Yeah. But like all passion projects, they take time. There eventually comes a point when you're like, okay, if I'm going to be putting so much time into this I'm going to need to monetize it. We need to figure out, well how can this not only support the passion, not only support the listeners and not only support the kids, but how can it support and my family a little bit better? That's the gist of the last episode. We talked about that, tell you a little bit about what's happened since episode 189 when you came on, what did you do differently after that episode and how have you grown the original podcast? Mark Taylor: It was really your input and your suggestions. I wasn't sure what to do, where to head, even where to structure my thought really and you said, speak to your audience, see what it is that they need, see who they are, which is something I found really interesting because I thought well, of course, they're teachers, they're people working in schools. I did exactly that, I tried to get some information, ask some people who were listening that I knew and they said, "Well actually some of us are teachers but actually, some of us are parents and actually, I really enjoyed sharing some of this stuff with my adolescent children because actually they're struggling sometimes and actually were quite interested in the fact that you're talking slightly differently. You're talking about things that are outside the box or things which aren't restrictive. You're talking about being creative and inspiring. Mark Taylor: I thought, well that's really interesting but what I do from there? I could create the odd bonus episode but my Education on Fire podcast, as it originally was, was themed seasons, so if I was talking about English or talking about PE, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to fit that in, bar the odd extra episode. Luckily, the platform that I was using, I was chatting to them about it and they said, "Well, you can have a separate feed and why don't you actually niche down even more and actually create more than one podcast?" Mark Taylor: So out of that came Learning on Fire, where I basically share conversations with people who are successful partly, but really about living life on their terms. They're fulfilled in what it is that they're doing. Some of those interviews are multi millionaires and some of them are actually just people living their dream, doing everything in a very small way, but they've actually found a way of creating the life that they want. Just through a series of questions and a conversation, we get to hear a running theme often, about people following their passions, the sort of advice they've been given, exactly where their journeys went. Actually whether it was in a straight line, which of course we know is very rarely the case. It just veered off and so from that, this brand new podcast opened up and I essentially just found myself running a network of two podcasts. Shane Sams: You accidentally started a podcast network. Mark Taylor: Yeah. Shane Sams: I don't think anyone's ever done that on the show, man. You just accidentally fell into that. Mark Taylor: Exactly. Yeah, I just thought that running one podcast was so much work that the easiest thing to do was to start another one. Shane Sams: Oh right, exactly, it's so simple. Jocelyn Sams: Totally logical. Shane Sams: Yeah, we've had to do that in past though. One thing we started doing, especially on our YouTube channel, flippedlifestyle.com/youtube, take you right there on the redirect. But we actually had to divide up our stuff a little bit because Flipped Lifestyle is very much helping people start podcasts start their content, start their business. Do the next level things, and we thought that the travel stuff would compliment it, but we found the people that were watching our travel videos were not always interested in the entrepreneurial space. So we actually re-categorized the place on our blog just for those, our YouTube videos, it's got its own playlist where we just put all the travel review videos. We really don't even talk about those much on the show because it's related enough and you think it's related enough but like you were saying, maybe I'll throw in an extra episode for two different segments and you realize nope, I'm just going to start this over here and go a different direction. Once you get your workflow, it's not that bad, right? Mark Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because I think inside my mind I went from being just sort of a passion project and doing something on the side, to people suddenly taking a bit of notice and saying, well actually you've got a network so therefore you must have something to say. Of course, as soon as you start generating more podcasts and there's more show notes and more blog posts, all of a sudden your website looks quite authoritative. Shane Sams: That's right. Mark Taylor: All I was doing was the same stuff. All I love doing is chatting to people and sharing their stories. It grew and grew and grew and I was really lucky, at the same sort of time I was involved in a charity called the National Association for Primary Education and I loved being involved in that because not only are they trying to support teachers and parents and everyone involved in education really, from birth to 13, they also have, because they're a national organization, they do have conversations with ministers, they have a certain amount of influence, as much as anyone does on policy and where education was going. Then I thought this is great because I'm actually able to talk at that level, I'm also able then to talk to teachers and schools and now I've got this Learning on Fire podcast, which is for parents and their kids. Mark Taylor: Then they were just wanting to grow their audience, their membership. They wanted to get their message out there and they said, "Well, you're already doing this kind of thing." I said, "Well, yeah I am really. Why don't we just combine the whole thing?" Two was fine, but why not have a podcast network of three? I said, "Let me produce a podcast for you and then we've got all these things then running through this network." Then they said, "Well that's great." I said, "It is quite a big time commitment and it's really going to need some professionalism really, just to make sure we can keep the regularity and equality going." They said, "Great, well how about we sponsor the whole network and then we can get our message out through the stuff you're already doing and then you've also got our individual message by the podcast you're producing specifically for us." Education on Fire effectively then became a three podcast network all in the space of a few months really and then it's almost like a full time job, but also it's part of my professional playing and my teaching as well. Shane Sams: That's incredible, and it's also because really this all came from just a discussion, a simple question like I'm doing something, I'm creating something, how can I make this something that becomes professional and makes money? Well, you grow your audience, you get multiple channels, multiple segments, a big organization takes notice and they're willing to give you money to be the advertiser on the show. Now you get to make cash from doing this podcast, which is incredible. Tell us a little bit more, you came to Flip Your Life Live last year. You won the award for the longest travel person. No, it wasn't. Jocelyn Sams: No, the Australians. Shane Sams: It was really close, there were some Australians. We had some Australians, you were from England, so you were the European representative of Flip Your Life Live last year. But you had some things that were going on before that, how did that play into getting the sponsorship and professionalizing this network to where you are making money. You're talking about living the dream, you're getting paid to podcast, that's pretty incredible. Jocelyn Sams: To talk about something that you love talking about which is really cool. Shane Sams: That's right, exactly, so how did that play into everything? Mark Taylor: Well, I think part of it is like you said. It was a passion project that moved in, and what's really exciting is I was kind of doing what I was talking about, which is that you don't know where these things are going to head. Follow your dream, follow your passion and see what happens. I was getting to meet so many amazing people. What Flip Your Life Live really did for me was the fact that it just made me think about how you can combine the two. It's not like if it's a passion project, that's okay but don't really talk about it. Or your professional life is like this and you don't really talk about it. It was the fact that there were so many similarities in everything that was going on. In terms of if I want to grow my audience I want to do this, if I'm thinking about email marketing, if I'm thinking about social media, I'm thinking about how to build a community. Mark Taylor: All these things were going on within Flip Your Life and then through the…

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