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In today’s podcast we are bringing you a flipped podcast to help Joe and Heather take their business to the next level.
Each month we allow one of our audience members to call in and ask us questions about their online business.
We record the call and then share it with our listeners so everyone can learn from the consulting call!
In today’s podcast you will learn:
- About Heather’s blog for women and why Joe wants to pivot from 9-5 into an online business
- How they are learning more about the internet using Jill and Josh Stanton’s Screw U program
- The best way to divide up business tasks when you’re first getting started
- A few ways to narrow down and identify your ideal customer avatar
- How to create balance between work, family and growing your online business
- How to stand out amongst all the noise and create a brand that people will notice
- Tips on choose which products to start creating, and which to put on the back burner
Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!
Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show
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- Check out Heather’s site Sassy Inspiration
- Podcast 26 – Back to Back Flipped Podcasts
- Screw the Nine to Five – Jill and Josh Stanton’s site
- LeadPages – for all your landing page needs
- Ontraport and AWeber – mail service tools
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek – Jocelyn’s favourite book
- ElementaryLibrarian
- The Flip Your Life Community
- Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker – two our of favorite online voices
- Join us in San Diego for the Flip Your Nine to Five Live event March 28-29, 2015
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Can’t Miss Moments
Each week Jocelyn and I share moments that we might have missed if we had not started our online business. We hope these moments inspire you to see the possibilities and freedom online business could provide for your family.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show!
If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all, on today’s podcast, we help Joe and Heather take their online business to the next level. [spoiler title=”Click to View Transcript”]
SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
What’s up guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you as always this week. We have got another Flipped Podcast for you. We’ve been having so much fun recording this podcast we’ve decided to try to start airing a couple a month now. So we’re actually going to bring you another Flipped Podcast. That’s back to back.
We had one last week with Glen and Annmarie Evans. This week, we are welcoming Heather and Joe Filipowicz, I’ve been practicing that name for a while now, to the Flipped Podcast. Guys, welcome to the show.
HEATHER: Thank you for having us.
JOE: Thanks.
JOCELYN: We’re really excited that you’re here and for you to tell us a little bit more about what you do. So tell us.
SHANE: I originally was not excited to say your name on air, though until you explained it.
HEATHER: My story is I loved him very much to take the last name, and I do.
JOE: That’s very true.
JOCELYN: Yeah, I know what you mean. I had a really complicated last name before I got married so I’m actually kind of glad.
SHANE: Jocelyn went the other way. She came over to the single syllable, you know what I’m saying? Well guys, it’s great to have you on the show. We can’t wait to help you with your online business. Before we jump in to all of that, tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what you’re trying to get started and do online.
HEATHER: Well, I’ll start out a little bit. I currently have, it’s a blog, so I would say it’s more of a presence not a business yet, which is what I’m working on. It’s called Sassy Inspiration.
My main driving belief is that every woman, and I do talk mostly to women, has a dream on their heart or in their mind that they kind of push down because all of the other things come up in life, and so I try and tell stories and show stories of other women, and share inspiration to help pull those dreams out of women. The tag line is, “It’s inspiration for every woman to live life with sass.” It’s more of a presence. I have not made any income off of it and that’s why I’m learning. That’s where I’m at.
JOCELYN: All right, great.
JOE: As for me, I’ve been an accountant for the last 20 years now and I think I’m trying to find a way to pivot that into an online business. I’ve been part of the corporate world for a couple of decades now and that’s kind of wearing on me. I’m looking for a new direction so I’m trying to take all the skills that I’ve learned and turn that into an online business.
JOCELYN: Absolutely. So just kind of jumping off that, why do you guys want to flip your life?
SHANE: Like why does online business as that other direction basically?
HEATHER: Well, in the last year, we flipped it quite a bit. I was a nonprofit executive for over 10 years. We lived up in Buffalo, New York, which is where we had lived our entire lives. We love our family very much up there but we really wanted a different lifestyle for our family and we really wanted sunshine.
So we put it all in and we moved our family, we have a son, Logan, who is 7, down to Tampa, Florida. So for a while, I was a learning-at-home mom. Joe has a job here and now, I do work remotely but we really want the next level of freedom, both time, financial, creativity for our family.
JOE: Yeah, I think for me really what I’m after more than anything else is a little more freedom of time, freedom of space, try to be able to structure my days the way I want to have them structured instead of going with some preordained schedule.
I think the other part of my quest is I want to be more passionate about what I do. I want to help the type of people that I want to help. It’s one thing to just transfer skills to a certain corporate entity but I’d rather be able to be a little bit more personable with people and see the one-on-one results in my work.
SHANE: Those are awesome and worthy reasons to do this. That’s the great starting point is when you’re looking for that lifestyle change. I think a lot of people try to jump in it for the money, which the money is there and it’s good, but those are the reasons that are going to keep you driven and keep you going until you do it. I know that you all have been like really pouring yourself into this because we actually kind of met you guys a little bit through a friend of ours, Jill and Josh Stanton, over at ScrewtheNinetoFive.com because you guys are actually taking their course right now to kind of learn this whole process, right.
HEATHER: We are. I predominantly am right now. We jumped in with their affiliate lifestyle program first so we are total Jill and Josh groupies.
SHANE: There you go.
HEATHER: Anything they put out, we buy. Actually, I sent Jill an email and we started to email back and forth, and I knew that Screw U was coming out.
SHANE: She didn’t just say “screw you.” That’s like actually what Jill and Josh call their, it’s like Screw University, like Screw U.
HEATHER: Yeah, so I was actually, Jill and I made the decision to buy into the, she called it the original OGs. We were the first group to go through and get the material before their major launch that they just had.
I’m doing it in my own pace because I’m also working fulltime but it’s a great community. We love Jill and Josh especially because they mirror us as individuals. I’m very much like the Jill and Joe is very much like the Josh. We love the fact that they talk in real people words. It’s really who they are.
It’s very much like both of you, which is appealing to us as well, and that’s how we like to learn. But I will say that the content of Screw U is the kind of content that it’s overwhelming when you think about us setting up a website or linking your LeadPages, and I’m not a technical person. Joe will tell you that but the way they take you step by step through “Click here, do this” it’s so awesome and the way they deliver it, it’s a great community and we just love them.
JOCELYN: That’s awesome. Oh yeah. We love Jill and Josh, like they are our online business soul mates.
SHANE: They are becoming our partners in crime.
JOCELYN: We always say that they are the R rated version of us.
SHANE: Right.
HEATHER: And the kid-less version too.
SHANE: They are the kid-less, R rated version. They are us like five years ago if we went down a different road, you know what I mean?
JOCELYN: Maybe like 10 years ago.
SHANE: I think that’s why we get along good because we’re both trying to do the same thing, helping couples, helping families but we just target, we got this overlap and kind of different vibe at the same time. We’re actually doing a live event with them in March, on March 28th and 29th. We’re going to be hosting a live event. We’re going to kind of combine the Flipped Lifestyle and Screw the Nine to Five communities into one crazy madness day out in San Diego, California. So it’s going to be…
JOCELYN: I’m not sure the universe can handle it.
SHANE: I don’t think so. Kim Kardashian may not have shutdown the internet but Flipped Lifestyle and Screw the Nine to Five may close it down.
HEATHER: No censors at all, that’s for sure with Jill.
SHANE: That’s awesome guys. Thanks for telling us a little bit about your story and about your passions and why you want to do this. We always like to start with why but let’s get into the nitty gritty now because we’re here to help you so just go ahead and throw us your first question and we’ll see if we can help you get this thing going.
HEATHER: So we know that from your story that both of you have different types of products that you have focused on developing, and we are very much the same in that. We will develop different types of products because we’re different types of people, but how have you been able to streamline aspects of your business, either the backend or the day to day, to make it more efficiently when you’re doing two different types of products?
JOCELYN: Well, we’ve done this a couple of different ways. First of all, before we started hiring virtual assistants, we would really do things that we were strong in. Shane would do more like audio-video type of things. I would do more writing and proofreading those types of things.
SHANE: Because I do not do very good at proofreading. I’m terrible at that.
JOCELYN: Or well.
SHANE: Or well, yes, right there. I screwed it up just like that.
JOCELYN: Yeah, that. So as you can see, we needed to kind of diversify and do things that we were really good at. As we have progressed and as our businesses made it along, we started hiring virtual assistants to do those things that either we are not very good or we do not like to do. So that’s really what has made our business along in the last little bit.
SHANE: And in the beginning when we had totally different products, everything kind of flowed like this. We would kind of bounce ideas off of each other. I would say like, “Okay, I think I really nailed something my audience wants.” Jocelyn would be like, “Should I do this or do this?” We would just talk about it in a real general sense and then we would kind of go divide and conquer and do our own product all by ourselves.
We would get out of each other’s way for content creation. Where we would come back together was the, I can’t get my shopping cart button to work right. How do I do this?” or “How do I set up a new list segment in AWeber so I can make sure that I can divide up who has signed up on this list and who has signed up on that list?”
Basically, the technical stuff is where we would come together, and we still do that in a way like Jocelyn today, we were driving home. We actually took our kids down to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for a weekend to just play and have some fun but we always work in the car. That’s our big thing and because we’re nerds and have nothing else to do.
Jocelyn was learning some things on Ontroport that I couldn’t figure out so that when we got here, we could set up some new systems for managing our customer base. So that’s kind of how we do it. When we’re creating content, we divide and conquer but on the back end, we help each other do the technical stuff or train a VA or something like that. Does that make sense?
HEATHER: Yeah. That’s similar to what we are doing now, and we just want to be efficient and smart about how we are setting up from the beginning so that we are not double-backing and changing everything as we grow.
SHANE: I would sit down and talk about what you are both good at, like inventory and actually put it on paper. Like, I’m really good at editing and podcast, video and stuff like that. I know how to do that because I’ve tinkered with it my whole life basically.
So Jocelyn, a lot of times, when we first started out; I would edit her podcast, put together her testimonial videos and things like that. So we would try to do things that we were really good at, tat way, we wouldn’t kind of, because I could do it more efficiently. Does that make sense?
So just divide and conquer, get it all down, and put it on paper to make sure you are not walking all over each other because there is enough conflict in a marriage to not be butting heads in the business too. You really got to be deliberate about knowing who is doing what and when you are not doing it together so you are not punching each other in the face. You know what I mean, that kind of deal.
HEATHER: Yup.
SHANE: All right. Awesome guys. What’s your second question?
JOE: Well, I was curious. I’ve made a false start or two getting my own business up and running. What I keep having trouble with is trying to figure out who I want to serve. What are some tips you might have on narrowing in on that ideal customer avatar that you want to actually serve?
JOCELYN: Well, there are several different ways to go about this. I think what we did at first and we still do today is start with keyword research. It’s kind of, I guess, not really fashionable right now to do keyword research. A lot of people think that because of the Google changes that it’s not really relevant anymore.
SHANE: And we are not talking about SEO, we do not do SEO. What we do is we go to the keyword tools that are online just to see what people are searching for. We want to learn the language of our people. Does that make sense?
HEATHER: Yes.
SHANE: We are not doing it to write content. We are just doing it to learn what people are actually looking for.
JOCELYN: Yeah. So that’s where we would probably start, it’s just by looking to see if people are searching for things that you are thinking about starting a business in, what kind of words are they using, how many searches are there that could show you if it is a viable idea or if it’s not. That is obviously not the only thing that you would look at but that is a good starting point.
SHANE: Once you kind of find out, you see something and you are like, “Wow, that’s crazy, 4,000 people a month are searching for that.” Don’t really get into competition. Don’t worry about the competition because even if there is 4,000 people looking and we used to use to say, “Well, there are so many people doing this and you will never get on page one on Google.” That’s bunk now.
It doesn’t matter because you are going to have so much content. Something you write is going to get in front of the right people. The goal there is just to find the audience but then when you want to niche down within that audience, you got to kind of look at yourself.
Let me go back to my first football product. My first football product was I was a football coach, I was in high school. I was just looking for something that resonated with my team. My team was terrible. We were slow. We didn’t have a lot of athletic ability and all these things that I was learning at football clinics was coming from college coaches or pro coaches and I’m like, “Yeah. All that stuff you say is great when you’ve got the greatest athlete that ever lived to do it.”
When I looked at myself, I was trying to write play books and I was like, “I can’t compete with those guys because they are playing chess and I am playing checkers basically.” So I looked in the mirror and I just said, “What am I? I’m a high school coach who’s got slow kids and they are not very strong, and I got to figure out a way to win with them.” So we did that. We created a system. We turned the program around and then I started going out and I was the avatar.
I went out and I said, “I’m going to find other coaches with slow kids that aren’t very good and want to get better, and don’t need those college coaching programs to do it because they don’t work.” Lo and behold, the vast majority of the coaches were that guy.
Use yourself as the avatar and say, “That’s a great place to start.” What would I look for? What would I need? What’s a question I have? What’s the solution I’m looking for? A lot of times, you are that perfect avatar. Jocelyn did the exact same thing when she created her first lesson plans.
JOCELYN: Back in 2012 when we started these websites, I had been looking for some very specific types of lesson plans forever online and I could not find them. There were lots of lesson plans out there but they were on different sides and nobody had really compiled anything. I was like, “Gosh. This is ridiculous. It will be so nice to have all of these lesson plans at one place.” So it hit me like, why don’t I create that?
SHANE: Because if she’s looking for them, then more than likely, somebody else is looking for them. So that’s basically the two things you should always do at the beginning to niche down is try to come up with an idea, write a bunch of ideas down, research them a little bit, and those ideas are drawn from yourself.
Look at yourself. Be the avatar and then tweak it toward a market that you find. You may figure out, “Nobody is looking for this but they are looking for that thing I stumbled across in my research,” and now you twist your avatar toward that.
JOE: Right.
HEATHER: Good tip. Okay, we are all parents here and as we are trying to balance being parents, being a spouse to each other, both working full-time, and now we are trying to run and build the business, we want to make sure we are setting a good example for our son and we don’t want to have our face buried in our laptop all the time so he thinks that all we do was work but at the same time we want to be able to do this and we have to build it on our free time. How do you create the balance when you are building a business from home or outside your 9-5 with kids?
JOCELYN: This is hard, hard, hard. Still to this day we struggle with this and we’ve been doing this for almost three years now and this is hard. I think it’s one of the hardest things. We have done several things to help us a little bit in this regard because especially at first when you are starting out and you are both working full-time and you are trying to build this online business, it is hard because you don’t have a lot of extra time.
We recognize that we have been there before so don’t think that we are just sitting here saying, “Oh, we know how you feel,” because we really do. What we would do is we would come home from work and we would just sort of trade off. I would work for awhile and Shane would work for awhile, and then we would sort of switch off the child duties. That’s one thing that we did.
Another thing is that, we build in times in our calendar that we don’t do anything. So from 3 o’clock, our son gets off the bus about 3:15, until 7:30 when they go to bed, we don’t do anything online. I know that’s tough when you are trying to start out but we don’t. We turn off all phone notifications. We don’t pick up our computers. Now, this isn’t always. We are not perfect at this but we really, really try not to do it. We just spend that time to them. We dedicate that time to them and we try to put them in bed on time so we can get things done after that.
SHANE: A big thing I want to tell you here too is just to be totally straightforward and totally honest. You are going to have to sacrifice time with your kids upfront to give your kids the life that you want to give them later. There is really no way around that. Can you be super deliberate? Yes. You can plan two hours a day, we don’t work on the online business from 4-6. We are going to be with the kids. What time do you get home from work, Joe?
JOE: Usually around 6.
SHANE: Okay. Let’s say from 6-8, whatever, you know what I mean? That’s family time. We’re going to do it. We are going to turn everything off. We are going to be deliberate but there are going to be times when you’ve got something that needs to be done and you may have to go from 7-8 or something.
It’s hard upfront to say that but it’s true. If you do sacrifice that time now, later on it’s going to be so much more worth it once you make this work that you are going to look back and go, “I’m glad I did that.”
I can give you an example. We just left for four days out of nowhere. It was Christmas break. We’ve been traveling a lot. We actually had been traveling so much and doing so much work, we hadn’t seen our kids in a lot of quality time because we were wrapping gifts, going to grandma’s house, all these things. That’s amazing how much time that takes away from your kids.
We just said, “Let’s go” and we left for four straight days and other than working in the car, we just swam and played with our kids, took them to play mini-golf. Did all those things and we have the freedom now to do that. But make no mistake, when we first started out, there were some times where we had to cut that family time down a little bit to have some more time to get this thing off the ground.
Upfront, I think the biggest thing is be as deliberate as possible. Schedule time with your family but realize if you really want this to work, there is going to be a little sacrifice upfront to make your life better later.
JOCELYN: Maybe that you have to get up a little earlier in the mornings. I know a lot of people do that. They get up at like 4:30, 5 o’clock to work a little bit on their online business because that doesn’t take anything away from your family because most likely, they are not awake.
You can do things on the weekends but the most important thing is just be deliberate with your time. Turn those notifications off. That is such a big huge thing that we have done because your kids, they know you are not spending time with them if your phone is going off every five seconds and you are checking an email or something. There is nothing that you are going to get that can’t wait.
SHANE: And also too, we always tell everybody that the way you spend your time and money is basically a priority list. So if you catch yourself, and we do too, we catch ourselves like, “Oh, we’re spending way too much time on this and not with the kids or each other,” but when you catch yourself falling into that mode, look around at other things in your life and say, “Am I still going golfing with my buddies? Am I still watching that TV show on HGTV or whatever?” I am not talking about Jocelyn’s addiction to HGTV right there, maybe a little.
If you are doing those things, it might not be the business that’s causing the problem. It might be not letting go of those other little things that don’t really matter, and now the business feels like it’s overwhelming you and you are trying to keep a hold of all those things that you love to do for fun instead of doing that. Does that make sense?
HEATHER: Yeah.
SHANE: Just evaluate your time. A great exercise is to literally, there is 168 hours in a week, fill every hour. Actually make a grid that says 168. We have a calendar for that, don’t we? We’ve got a calendar. We’ll put in the show notes to this episode. It’s a grid with 168 boxes and write in the hours you are going to sleep.
Write in the hours, Joe, you are at work. Write in the hours you are going to write for your blog and then write in the hours that you are going to spend with your kids. Once you’ve taken care of those priorities, now write in the TV show and having fun with your friends. It’s amazing when you see it on paper, you are like, Well crap, if I just gave up that hour, I could have spent it with my kid.”
HEATHER: And we also think that for him to see, we talk about what we are doing. We talk about what we are building, we talk about what our why so that he understands why we are doing this, and I think he actually gets it a little bit. I think the more we go on adventures and we do things as a family, and we talk about, “The harder we work, and dad and I are working really hard to build this, we’ll be able to do more of this,” and I think that that hits when we say, “I need to work for a little bit.”
Some days he doesn’t get it. He busts right in but other days, he does. I think that that’s an important lesson for him too. So if we want our kids to think differently, have an entrepreneurial mindset, it’s important for them to see this.
SHANE: Yeah and I would say this too to everybody that’s listening, not just you guys, because we say this to ourselves, we look at each other a lot sometimes when our kids don’t understand. When we’ve got to record a podcast and they’ve got to stay in their bed or whatever. We look at each other and we say, “Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel guilty.”
We keep each other accountable that way and support each other, and you guys have to do it out there too. Don’t feel guilty for trying to give your kid the best life possible as long as that stays front and center. So when you do have to do those things, don’t feel guilty as long as at the end of the day and when all these comes to fruition, you are putting it all back into your family. Does that make sense?
HEATHER: Very much so, yeah.
JOE: It does.
SHANE: Awesome question guys.
JOCELYN: How old is your son? I was going to ask you that.
HEATHER: He’s 7 so he gets it.
JOCELYN: Yeah, our little boy is 6 and we are right there with you. I mean, we do try. We have a little boy who is 6 and our little girl is almost 4. We do try to show them the kind of life that we live and the kind of job that we do, and it’s hard for them to understand but we also do the same thing, trying to get that in their mind.
HEATHER: We moved. We talked about why we were moving and he gets it now. He gets to go to Disney World every month because we are on our way. That helps but he understands why and how, and why we made changes the way we did and we talk about it. I think it does sink in but on a day to day basis, what you are saying is exactly right in terms of scheduling and things like that.
SHANE: You guys just got to take care, I think that’s another thing too. I felt like you felt before. You got to support each other and just tell each other, “Don’t feel bad about this. We’re doing the right thing. It’s hard but it’s going to pay off basically. What do you got next?
JOE: Well, it’s a noisy online world out there. I scan through my Twitter feed and I’m sure things get lost among the noise all the time as I’m going through that. How do you stand out amongst all that noise and put together a brand that’s going to come above all that somehow that people aren’t going to notice?
JOCELYN: We’ve said this before on some other podcast and even on our podcast. It sounds so cliché, but I think that you just have to be yourself. You just have to be a real person. You have to show people that you make mistakes and that you are human, and people are drawn to that. That’s the way we are every single day.
We don’t try to be somebody that we are not here on Flipped Lifestyle or on any of the sites that we run. I think that’s what really draws people in and makes them attracted to you and what you had to sell. There is a book that I quote all the time, you guys are probably sick of hearing it, but it’s called Start With Why. It’s by Simon Sinek. I think is his name.
He always says that people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. That is so true. That’s one of the best books that I have ever read about business or life in general, and that’s just how we really have run all of our businesses.
SHANE: A lot of people that fail online, I think they go out and try to copy other people. We had someone we were consulting with once and they wanted to build a business that taught people how to make money online because of course, that’s every podcast you listen to.
The question I asked them was, “Okay, what is your proof? What are you going to tell them that you made money online?” They were like, “Oh, I haven’t made any money online but I’ve listened to so many podcasts and I know how to do it.” I’m like, “You’re copying.” You’re trying to be someone else at that point when you are trying to do stuff like that. We always want to be ourselves because that’s authentic, that’s true. That’s what people are like.
It’s like my football coaching site. Why do people come to me? I actually had a football coach write to me one time and say, “Why should I listen to you? You are just another high school coach.” He’s like, “Who do you think you are, Nick Saban?” That’s like the head coach of Alabama.
I emailed him back and I said, “No, I’m not but the last I checked, Nick Saban won’t write you back. Now, you got a question about defense?” I didn’t go out there and tell everybody in my audience, “I’m the greatest football coach that’s ever lived.” I said, “I’m like you. I’m a high school coach with a bunch of kids and I’m just trying to win some ball games on Friday night. I’ve got a system that’s helped me do that, I think it can help you too. We are all still learning, let’s do it together.” That’s what made that website grow.
Jocelyn told people upfront she had only been a librarian for three years when she started her Elementary Library site but she created a tribe. She created a place that the Elementary Librarians could go that they had never had before, and she was real and she was honest and she was truthful. She listened to them and she met their needs and that’s what built our tribes.
Same thing with Flipped Lifestyle, we just came out and said. “We’re just a couple of rednecks from Kentucky that figured how to make money on the internet. There is nothing fancy about these guys. Let’s just show you how to do it.” All of a sudden we have thousands of listeners.
So I think the more honest, the more authentic, that’s how you stand out. It does sound so cliché but if you go out there like that person we talked to and you try to be somebody else, you can’t go be Pat Flynn. You can’t be Amy Porterfield. You got to have your own thing, your own spin, your own proof, your own expertise, and once that happens, you are going to build a brand. As long as you listen to your audience and you be yourself, you’ll stand out. It’s impossible. There are too many people on the internet not to be able to find a niche, you just got to do those two things to make it happen.
JOCELYN: I will throw in there too, be sure to listen to your audience. Once you start to build an audience, ask them what they want. “What do you want me to provide? What can I help you with? What problems can I solve for you?”
SHANE: That’s what keeps them around.
JOCELYN: That’s going to keep that conversation flowing always. I do that still to this day, almost three years later, on my Elementary Librarian. I ask questions constantly. “What can I help you with?” or “Here is a situation. What would you do?” Keep that dialogue open, keep it going, and that’s going to make such a difference for you.
SHANE: That’s another good point. I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned this on the show too is like, people are drawn to conversation. They are not drawn to a talking head. People like the back and forth, they like to learn, they like to ask questions, they like accessibility.
They like to give their opinion. People love that conversation. That’s another great way to build an audience, to build a brand is if you are the person that’s accessible, and that accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean one on one times. Does that make sense? You could just be a conversation starter.
Jocelyn is a wizard at Facebook. She can make something on ElementaryLibrarian.com and she can reach 50% of her audience, which is unheard of on Facebook. No ad space, no nothing. She can just ask questions. If you ask the right question and everybody can give their opinion, that’s going to build that tribe. It’s going to give them a place to go.
Be conversational. Be kind of one with your audience. Don’t be above them like you are high and mighty. They are going to be drawn to you and they are going to tell other people about you. It’s just going to grow out form there basically. Did that help? Is that what you were looking for?
HEATHER: I can feel it with Sassy just in terms of like my avatar is me and every single woman that I know that is my friend is always like, “You know, I’ve always had that one dream and I have always thought I wanted to be a blah or I wanted to do this, or I wanted to go there, but I don’t have the money or I don’t have the time, and there is always those fear, fear, fear.”
So that’s where, I always think about what’s that conversation I had with my friend over a glass of wine that the honesty really always comes out and so I try and always when I write, and in time, talk on a podcast, to be able to have that conversation like I’m sitting right across the table from you because I understand exactly how that feels.
SHANE: Right and that’s a great point you just made too, you have to show people that you are in it for them not in it for you. That’s what really sets your audience off. That’s what let’s it grow exponentially is when you are genuinely in it for other people, when you want to help them and that you can show that empathy that you’ve been there.
I tell coaches all the time, I’ve been 0 and 10 before as a head coach. I know what that feels like. I’ve been 10 and 0 too though. But when you tell people, “I have been in your shoes and I know where you are,” and then you show them you care and then you help them, you can’t stop it from growing if you do it right.
HEATHER: We are doing a little bit as what you were talking about the back and forth, and bouncing things off each other. We have ideas for products but I have fear right now of putting them out there. So how do you choose which ones you should create and which ones you leave on the piece of paper?
JOCELYN: Yeah. This one can be tough and it goes back to what I was saying a little bit ago about really being in tuned with your audience. You can do surveys. I have incentivized people to do surveys in the past. Like I’ll give something away to someone who answers a survey and I ask very specific questions.
“If I made products about XYZ would you purchase it? If I made a product about this would you purchase it?” You can ask them questions like that, very specific things, and get them to answer our surveys. You can ask them a question on Facebook. “I’m thinking about making this product, would you be interested?” There is a lot of different ways to do it, but I think that audience communication is always key for me.
SHANE: How big is your audience right now, Heather? Do you have a pretty good listener? Do you have people coming?
HEATHER: I have an average close to about 850 visitors per month to the blog.
SHANE: Okay good. You’ve got some people out there.
HEATHER: Yeah I do.
SHANE: It doesn’t take many to give you good ideas. You could take them on a survey. Say you’ve wrote down five ideas for products, well, send your email list of your listeners or blog about it. Put, “I have five ideas for things. Vote which one you think is the best.” That might be a good indicator since you’ve already got some traction of going on and making that product.
Eventually though, fear has to go away and you just got to make one and try it. We have released products that have failed miserably. It’s not like everything we’ve ever hit has been gold. You just have to back out of it and say, “Okay, that didn’t work. I’ll try the next one on the list.” You are going to have to get to that point eventually but you can kind of reduce the risk by asking your audience, being very deliberate.
One of my best products came from a survey. I basically said, “What is the worst problem you are experiencing on your football team?” I said like, “My players are young, my players are slow, my players are weak and pathetic. My players are terrible. The parents won’t leave me” whatever, all these terrible things, problems that people needed solved and by far, the biggest thing was we were not strong enough.
I said, “That’s crazy, I have been making workout programs for football teams for 10 years.” So I put together a workout program. We sold lifetime updates to it. We had people pay $500 for it, for that thing. It was just because I had an audience, I asked them exactly what they wanted, and once I saw that 60% of the respondent said, “My team is not strong,” all I had to do was say. “Okay, here is a plan to make them strong.”
Same thing with your audience. You’ve got enough people right now to go out and do like a focus group type thing. Ask them what they want, show them your products. Say, “I’ve got these five things. Which one do you want?” Let’s say a 100 people vote for option two, well, then turn around and make a sales page and say, “I’m going to make this and send it back to those 100 people that voted for it. Say, “It’s going to cost $100 but I’ll let you in right now for $75. When they buy it, then you make it. You go ahead and pre-sell it. That will tell you for sure if that product is real or not without even making it.
JOCELYN: We did this all the time. We did this with our first Flip Your Life course. We sold it and didn’t have a single module made, which..
SHANE: It’s an outline, it’s all it was. We just showed our email list what it was going to look like basically andpeople bought it for like, I think it was originally like $300 or something like that. But people bought it and we told them, “It’s not made yet but do you want to be in the first group?” We actually had to turn it off because we were selling too many.
JOCELYN: Yeah. That’s one way that you can do it, you can pre-sell. You can make things as you go, which is actually good and bad. It lights a fire under you to get it done, for one thing, and then also, it gives you feedback during the process, so that’s another great way to do it.
Give some of them away. If you have products that are made already, maybe you have a little, like Shane was saying; a little focus group of a few people. That will give you great testimonials for when you get ready to sell that product. You need good testimonials. So that will give you some fantastic testimonials.
SHANE: We are big believers in pre-selling and I don’t think there is anything wrong with doing that. Create a feature list for the product you think that’s the best one or do your survey and then create a feed. Then say, “This one got a lot of heat. 60% of people said they really liked this one.”
Make a huge outline at everything you are going to put in it. Your dream, what you are going to put in and then put it out there for sale to those people who voted for it. If you sell ten of them, that’s enough to go by it. That’s enough to go make the thing and then once it’s created, you sell it forever and you are done. Now you move on to the next product basically. Pre-selling is a great way to validate points, to validate that.
HEATHER: Awesome.
JOCELYN: I think we have time for one more question. What do you have for us?
JOE: Looking back at where you guys started and where you are today, is there any one thing that maybe you would have done differently to make it go a little faster, a little easier, a little less painful, anything like that?
JOCELYN: There are lots of different things that we could really say.
SHANE: We made a lot of mistakes, we screwed up a lot.
JOCELYN: Yeah, we pretty much. As far as online marketing formulas, we pretty much messed it all but that’s the beautiful thing about it is that it still can work. I would say just for sure when you are starting out to make sure that you are doing some type of lead collection, most likely email addresses.
We like emails because everybody has one. It’s not like something on social media where they may or may not have an account. Make sure that you are collecting emails. You need to be doing all the other things too, like being on Facebook, being on Twitter, being on Pinterest, whatever.
SHANE: But not all of them at once.
JOCELYN: Yeah. Just pick something and head that direction, but make sure you are doing some lead collection on emails.
SHANE: I would add to that too, like she was saying. You need to be doing some social media but you only really need to be doing like one, the one you like the best. A big mistake that I made earlier on was I started listening to so much information trying to learn it all at once. I tried to do it all at once. You just can’t do that.
You’ve got like focus on one thing even now as, we have a lot of VAs, we have a lot of different things going on, a lot of moving parts, but if you’ll look at Flipped Lifestyle, the only thing we focus on is our podcast and the only two social media networks that we mess with are Twitter and Facebook.
We do do some Pinterest because Jocelyn loves it but we are not going to sit here and try to have a YouTube channel, a Google Plus account, Instagram, every single thing under the sun. We tried that at first and it failed. I would say along with collecting emails from day one whether you don’t have a single reader or not and then on top of that is pick one thing and do it really well.
If you are going to be a blogger, be a blogger. Once you’ve mastered the blogging and you’ve got some products going then maybe start a podcast, but don’t try to start a YouTube channel, a podcast. Don’t get the dot TV domain and start your TV show. Don’t try to do everything at once because you are just going to burn out fast.
JOCELYN: On that line, I would just say to set goals and set long-term goals and set short-term goals because I always say, it’s hard to have a map to where you are going if you don’t know where you are going. Always know where you are going. Make that map, set out short-term goals to get there, and you’ll make it happen.
HEATHER: I have to say that you were one of the first people to say, you don’t have to do it all. Joe and I were like, “Oh my God. Thank you so much.”
SHANE: This doesn’t cover it. We love a lot of people online. I think there are a lot of authentic good voices out there. I think Jill and Josh are awesome. We love Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker.
There are some really good voices out there but I would say that 85%, that’s a good round number there for you, a lot of people say that and are only saying it because they’ve got the magic course that shows you how to do that thing. “Of course you need to do webinars for every product launch because I’ve got a magic course that shows you how to do that.” Are webinars important? Yes. Have we used them and made money? Yes. Do you absolutely have to do a webinar from day one? No, you don’t.
A podcast; do we have a lot of reach because of our podcast? Yes. We also pay people to edit them for us. Not everybody can do that. It takes a lot of time to edit a podcast. You don’t need a podcast from day one. There are a lot of people out there that are selling stuff and that’s why they want you to do all those things, but for us, we would just rather people get something online, get really good at it, and have a chance to sell something because that’s how you make money online.
You do not have to do everything. As you grow you add more layers. As you’re growing, focus on one thing and get it done. Don’t feel pressured to do everything else.
JOCELYN: We are glad that we took some of the pressure off anyway.
HEATHER: Thank you.
JOCELYN: All right. Heather and Joe, thank you all so much for being part of the Flipped Podcast today. It was so much fun talking to you all. We can’t wait to see what you guys do in the future.
HEATHER: Thank you so much for having us.
JOE: Thanks a lot.
HEATHER: It was so great, we appreciate it.
SHANE: Awesome guys, thanks for being on the show. All right guys. That wraps up our interview with Heather and Joe Filipowicz. I actually said it right two times during this episode. I’m pretty proud of myself for that.
They did an awesome job, loved answering their questions, and just a great couple with some great dreams and goals for the future in their online business. Before we wrap up today’s episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, we want to close out with our Can’t Miss Moment for the week.
JOCELYN: This week, we took our kids down to an indoor water park down in Tennessee and we just had such a good time. We have been really busy over the holidays, just with the traveling and going from here to there, and just everything that needs to be done that we hadn’t really spent a lot of good quality time with our children.
So we just went and left everything behind and decided just to go on down. We had a really good time just enjoying the water park and trying to use the limited technology even though that’s hard for us because we were big nerds.
SHANE: We always used to go to pools and stuff because you can’t use your technology in the pools but then like the place that we were at was selling these little cases that made your phone waterproof. We were like, “Oh man.” Even in the swimming pool, technology is creeping in.
JOCELYN: But we tried to put it down a little bit. We had a great time and it was just really, really fun.
SHANE: Before we go, we’ve got one more thing we wanted to bring up guys. We are hosting a live event on March 28th and 29th in San Diego, California with Jill and Josh Stanton from ScrewtheNinetoFive.com and those tickets are on sale right now.
There are only 25 of them available. Some of them have already been sold and we do expect this to sell out very, very fast. We would love to see you there. If you would like to join us in San Diego in March, all you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/Live, L-I-V-E and all of the information about the event. It’s going to be a two-day event.
Everybody is going to get direct help and attention from us at the event to take their online business to the next level.
There are also tickets available where you will get our Flip Your Life course and Jill and Josh’s Screw U, which is their course on how to market digital products, create your website, and do all of that. All of that together for one price and get to hang out with us live. It’s going to be an awesome fun-filled day.
We’re going to take a boat out on the San Diego bay on day two and just do all kinds of crazy cool stuff and have a lot of fun. If you would like to join us, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/Live and those tickets are on sale now, but they will not be there in about two days. We think they are going to sell out by the end of the week so make sure if you do want to join us in San Diego, you get yours before they are gone.
JOCELYN: We are so excited about this event. Jill and Josh are amazing and we just have so much fun working with them. We know that you guys will love them if you’re not acquainted with them already. We hope that you will be there in March. It’s Shane’s birthday so come on.
SHANE: That’s right. March 28th is my birthday so this is going to be like the best birthday day ever. So make sure you head over to FlippedLifestyle.com/Live. Read about the event and grab your ticket before they are gone because they will be gone this week. I think we turn it off on the 21st or something like that. Make sure you get there and get your ticket, and we would love to see you in San Diego. That’s our show for this week, guys. Thanks again and until next time. We will catch you all on the flipside.
JOCELYN: See yah.
SHANE: Do you need step by step instruction? Do you need us to help you create your digital product and get your online business started? Well, you can do that. We actually now offer a course called the Flip Your Life e-course where we show you how to create your first digital product in 29 days or less.
All you have to do to get more information on this program is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife, and that’s all one word, and you can check out everything that we do in that course to help you get your digital product created for sale online even if you don’t have a website. That’s FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife. You can check when our next session is starting at that link. [/spoiler]
Ryan says
I absolutely adore you guys, but Shane has to stop saying “Know what I mean” haha. Another great podcast though. Fantastic info.
Shane Sams says
Bwahahahaha…I totally noticed that when I listened back to this episode. You know what I mean? 🙂
Jocelyn Sams says
Thank you, Ryan! This drives me crazy! I am sure I say annoying things, too, but I always get onto him for that. 🙂
Shane Sams says
“And so, and so, and so…” 🙂