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Need ideas on how to transition from one-off product sales into a membership community?
Listen in as we help today’s guest transition her business into a membership model.
We’re so excited to have someone on air that really understands the triumphs and responsibilities that go with being a teacher, our good friend, JoAnne Westbrook.
Joanne lives in Missouri with her three children and husband. She started off teaching in 1995, and later received bigger district level responsibilities as a principal-superintendent.
Over at www.JoAnneWestbrook.com, she has created numerous posts that provides support to others who may be overwhelmed by the grind, or are just simply wanting to consume some well-organized content.
Having married a teacher herself, and with more than two decades of experience and expertise as an educator, JoAnne’s goal is to help fellow teachers be successful in their careers as well as achieve a balanced lifestyle.
She has recently launched an eBook that had brought in her first few sales, as validating as this is, she now has to think of other ways to monetize her blog.
Join us, as we help her transition towards a full-scale membership community model that will turn sales into something bigger, predictable and sustainable minus the pressure of launching new one-off products every month.
So much learning to be done, now let’s get started!
You Will Learn:
- The phases of the Flipped Life Cycle
- How to get your spouse onboard
- One-off products vs. membership
- How to create and sell monthly member challenges
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- JoAnne’s website
- Flip Your Life community
- 5 Tips for Getting Your Spouse On Board with Your Online Business
- How to work together, without killin’ each other
- 3 More habits that will make you successful online
- Jada Sellner’s website
- Get Your Pretty On
- Simple Green Smoothies
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!
Can’t Miss Moment:
Today’s can’t miss moment is Isaac designing his first video game. We have recently relinquished control of one of our MacBooks, and he has been using it a lot. He has started to play this game. He is now even starting to design his own worlds on it.
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!
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thank you for listening!
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.
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we help JoAnne take her lifestyle coaching business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. For those of you who may be new to our show, welcome, we are so glad you tuned in. You’re going to notice a big difference in our podcast compared to other online business podcasts right away. We bring on real people with real online businesses, and we help them take that business to the next level. We are super excited to bring a great member of our Flip Your Life community onto the podcast today, JoAnne Westbrook.
JoAnne: Hey guys!
Jocelyn: Hey, thanks for being here today. We’re excited to talk to you about your business.
Shane: And we are super excited because we’re going to give you some no-sugar today, JoAnne. We have been excited to get you on the show for a while, so we can lay the smack down, and really take this thing to the next level. Let me give everybody some background. JoAnne is a great friend. We’ve worked in online business together, and we banter each other about sports teams.
I love it when Kentucky and Missouri play in anything. I get to harass you on Facebook about it. But you have been really grinding at this online business thing for a while now, and recently, we finally got some traction. If you could just tell everyone a little bit about you, where you’re from, your family, and then tell us about your online business journey and where you are today.
JoAnne: Alright. Well, I am living in rural America here in Missouri. First and foremost, I am a mom to three great kids, or actually I should say young adults now. They are 24, 22, and 19.
Shane: Yeah, those are not kids.
JoAnne: I know.
Shane: They don’t get to be kids anymore, JoAnne. I’m sorry.
JoAnne: I know. Yeah, they are in college, and actually my eldest graduates from grad school next month, my middle one graduates from Mizzou, and in December and then my youngest is a freshman in college playing a little golf. I’m kind of at a point where I am in the empty nest land, and I have a little more time on my hands there, so that is kind of nice where I think that is when I’ve been able to get a little more traction with the online stuff. I’m also married to a coach and a PE teacher. In the school zone a lot around here, and of course I’m in education. I’ve been in education since 1995, started off teaching, and I’ve been a principal and superintendent, and district level positions. I had a pretty vast experience in education world. I first heard you guys on back on Pat Flynn back in– golly–
Jocelyn: About ’14.
Shane: Yeah, about ’14, something like that.
JoAnne: Yes. I have been listening to Pat for a while, and you guys came on. It was just like an immediate, “Oh my goodness, they’re my people. And they talk like me! I love you!”
Shane: They say, “Y’all.” Finally, somebody.
JoAnne: They say, “Y’all,” and it was just a refreshing because your story, I would just see that. I would see schoolteachers just struggling just with a grind and they get burned out, and it just spoke to me in so many ways – your story. I have been like a loyal devotee ever since– I think I was in your first class or course.
Shane: You were, you sure were. You are an OG Flip Your Lifer. That’s right, you are. You are big-time.
JoAnne: I got a lot of traction. We started there, but I have not been the star student. I feel like I have been the student that you’re like, “Come on.”
Shane: “Turn in your homework,” “Where’s your homework? This is the third late assignment in a row.”
JoAnne: “Detention, because you are not doing your job.”
Shane: You had listened to Pat, and then you started taking action. But I always felt like– and we’re blunt because we’re friends, I’m just going to be blunt. I’ve always felt like you’ve been the two-steps-forward-a-step-and-a-half-back. Two steps forward, a step and a half back. You started taking action, you know, “These are the people that I can relate to, I’m going to do this.” You come in, you take a lot of action, and then you did that for a year or two, really. Why do you think that happened there for a couple years? Before we got to the recent success, which we will talk about in a minute, what was the reason for that? Why do you think?
JoAnne: I think part of it was maybe a lack of confidence, lack of putting myself out there, and I don’t know why that is a deal for me. As an administrator, obviously, I speak in front of people all the time. I put myself out there. It’s not like I don’t deal with the public. I don’t know if I was just scared of the sales part of it, or just having the confidence to make a sale, maybe.
I’m not quite sure there. I just never really have the confidence to totally go for it. I got my blog going, I put out an e-book– that is one of the things that we did in the original course — and got some traction with that. Started building my email list and all. I think part of it, too, I wasn’t totally with the right product at that point. I wasn’t quite sure. I made this product for teachers about classroom management and I thought, “Oh maybe that is going to be my niche because I kind of know that.”
But I just wasn’t happy with it. I just didn’t feel like it was right, and I don’t know. I like it but I’m just not into it. I wanted it to be like when I hear you guys talk, your passion just seeps through everything that you talk about, and I was like, “I don’t feel like I have the passion to back up what I am doing here.” And so I kind of wandered around a little bit with some different things.
Well, my undergrad was music so I thought well, maybe I should do music education stuff, or maybe I should do stuff to help teachers interview. I kind of just wandered around and this no man’s land for a while, and would kind of start something but then not really finish it. I can’t give you a really great reason why. I think maybe a lack of confidence, and a lack of, “Oh, this is it, this is my moment, this is what I feel like I need to do.” I just felt like I wasn’t really finding my groove, and not that that’s a great excuse. I can’t sell something if I don’t love it.
Jocelyn: A lot of times people get caught in this trap. We hear this a lot, actually, because people, they want to do something online, they are not really sure what it is, they don’t really have the time or don’t really want to make the time to invest to really jump all in and figure it out. They just sort of dabble in it, and try to figure out what they want to do.
JoAnne: And I was totally use-the-time-as-excuse person because I would always be like, “Oh my gosh, I just come home, and I’m zapped.” Yeah, my days are hard. It is hard being a principal-superintendent. It’s hard, it drains you. You guys know teaching, it drains you. You come home and… I was just making excuses, I think, and finally I’m like, I either just have to do this or quit because, I just was like, “This is an expensive hobby.”
Shane: Yes, yes, yes. Listen. This is a hobby that will break the bank a hundred percent.
JoAnne: Yeah, all this stuff got on, and I’m like, seriously, either do it or don’t.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and that is why I feel like at the very beginning, when you first were in our course, the mindset and the finding the time, that exercise is the very first thing that we do, and the reason for that is because if your mindset is not right, and you are not devoted to putting the time in, you’re probably not going to be successful. I think that sometimes a lot of people sort of glaze over that, and they don’t really pay attention to that. But that’s really probably the most important thing when you are getting started.
Shane: We always tell people, if you’re going to own a business, I don’t care if it is a pizzeria or a website about making pizza. You have got to be all in. You can’t be a dabbler, and possibly succeed in this. You’re not the only one. We’re not picking on you or anything, but it is like, a lot of people do this. They dabble for a while, and then they quit. Then they try something new, and they dabble for a while and then they quit.
Jocelyn: But the problem is they go from expert to expert to expert instead of looking at mirror, and saying the problem is not with the experts.
Shane: The problem is me.
JoAnne: Well, see, that’s a problem as an educator that I always have. We’re lifelong learners. And I like to consume everything, and I can. I know you all preached at me like, “No, you got to stop.”
Shane: Well last week– I know– JoAnne comes in the forums last week, and she was like, “All right guys,–” what was it you were trying to do? Oh, no, you were like, “Alright guys, my Audible credits are ready, I’m done with my last book. And what are the next five books that I should read?” And I got on there and I was like, “Stop freaking reading books. Go do something.” I banned you from anything– I even told you, stop listening to our podcast for a week or two. Just stop, stop everything.
JoAnne: Oh, you can’t make me do that now.
Shane: Okay you can do that one. But basically, like, you’re in this loop. We have a course in our Flip Your Life community now, and it is all about this cycle that people go through. We call it the “Flipped Life cycle”. And what it is, is people yearn, they have a dream, they are yearners. They want to do something online. They see other people do it and they want that for themselves. So what do they do next? They learn, they start consuming all this information. But what happens is, you get stuck in this endless loop of yearning and learning, and yearning and learning.
JoAnne: Oh, I’m the hamster right there. Yes.
Shane: Exactly, and what you have to do is, there comes to the point where you have to say, stop dreaming, stop learning, start doing. And you move over, and you start grinding, and working, and then you make money, and you become an Earner. And then you make more money and you start burning it up, and you become a Burner, and then eventually, you got to jump back over, and become– what’s the next level?
I’ve got to dream about that, and then I’ve got to learn about that, but then I’ve got to stop learning, and I’ve got to go do something. It is just this endless loop that we take people through, and we always see people get stuck in that yearning and learning side, and I feel like that is exactly where you are.
JoAnne: Yeah, it was like, “Okay, jump off the cliff, or don’t.” That was kind of where I was at with it.
Jocelyn: Exactly, and just so everyone else out there knows, you are going to hear a lot more about those words that Shane was just saying.
Shane: Yes, the yearning, the learning, the earning, the burning. Those are the phases. That is the Flipped Life Cycle. That is the entrepreneurial journey that never ends unless you get stuck. That bad thing is, some people get stuck on your side, right? Other people get stuck on the other side, and they find something that works, and they hammer it into oblivion, until they just grind themselves out, and they quit, too. People don’t realize that this is not a, “I made it,” sport. You don’t ever make it. There is always the next level, there is always something new every day, and you’ve got to keep taking action on the stuff that you learn, on the dreams that you have, or you are not going to be able to grow. Because if you are not growing, you’re dying, basically.
JoAnne: Well, and that is kind of where I am a pretty competitive person and I’m just not a quitter.
Shane: No, you’re not. No, you’re not.
JoAnne: You know, I just can’t let this go. There were times I wanted to, and something that you and I have talked about– I reached out to you, I don’t know, gosh, it’s been in last year. I sent you a personal message in the forum, and I’m just like, “Okay, look, I’m down, my husband does not support me. Not that he doesn’t love me, and all those things, but he was just like, “Seriously, why are you putting all this time into this?”
Shane: Well, you’re spending money on tools, and you’re not really making it back. There is no ROI.
JoAnne: Yeah, yeah, It was all these things were caving in and I reached out to Shane, and I’m like, “Okay so short of divorce–” I know not an option — “I’ve got to get him on board. I want him to believe in me, and I want to show him.” Then I got the no-sugar Shane comes out and I get a 10-point bullet list of, “Hey, you have got to show him you can make money. And you’ve got to do these things, and this is what you’ve got to do. The proof is in the pudding.”
Shane: The proof is in the pudding. Nothing works better than proving something. You have to take action to do it. When I started this, and I’ll be the first one to say. Jocelyn was the one who 10x’d it. She was the one who put the pieces together and made it really take off to the next level. But until we made that first $0.11, and until I prove to her that this wasn’t just people on a podcast making up stories, these people were really doing this and when I showed her, this happened, that is when she got on board. And then went to the next level.
Jocelyn: I’m just a very logical person. You can’t tell me about things. I have to actually see that it is true, and I think that there are a lot of people out there who are like that. Once you finally do see that, then it is cool.
Shane: And you can’t get mad of your spouse. People have dreams, and they are like, “Why aren’t they getting this? It’s not happening.” Well, they’re not consuming the information you are. They are not hearing these stories. They are just seeing the aftermath. They’re seeing the bad stuff. I’m trying really hard and nothing is working, they’re not hearing the good stuff, and you have to show them some good stuff before they get on board. Anybody right now whose spouse is not on board your online dreams, that is just it, that is just part of it. That you’ve got to accept that, and you’ve got to prove it to them if you really want to get them going in the same direction as you.
Jocelyn: So let’s sort to roll with that because recently, you did do a little bit of proving to your spouse that this thing was possible. Let’s jump into that. What made you decide that this is the time I have to make something happen, and what did you do, and what was the reaction?
Shane: Let’s go immediately. I really want to talk about you starting this Facebook group. I remember, this was a part of that conversation that you and I had on the private chat of what to do, what should I do, what are we doing next. I remember it’s so funny hearing you talk about passion and the things you tried at first. The four or five things didn’t work but you kept going. Throughout this whole conversation, you keep talking about, “Man, teachers are burned out.” You know how it is being an educator. Man, you know how it is this industry is. And it is so funny because you started moving toward this Teacher Lifestyle business. Tell us a little bit about why you started that, what did you do, and tell us about how that kind of blew up.
JoAnne: Yes, so I’m not even sure what prompted me. It may have been something that I heard. I was trying to figure out a way to prove that possibly my idea would be valuable to start a product. Like when I had a product, would there be in audience, how am I going to prove that this is viable? So I thought, well, I’m just going to start a Facebook group, and I called it Teacher Lifestyle. I put it out there, I put a few posts, or whatever, and it just like blew up quickly. I got 1000 people, 800 to 1000 people really–
Shane: Like within a
JoAnne: Yeah, you send a message. You were like, “Woah!”
Shane: I was like, “What is going on?” Because you sent it to me in the forums, and I joined it because I wanted to watch it and see what was going on. And every time, I saw 200, 400, 800s. I was like, “What?!” But it was so clear, what it was. You had this amazing image of a happy teacher in the classroom, and doing other stuff and then like the name of it was so clear, and not clever. It was just Teacher Lifestyle. What was that about? Your description was so laser to the point. It was just, “Teachers, your life balance is screwed up. Let’s fix it.” It was just like people just resonated with it so fast.
JoAnne: They did, and I think that is probably what gave me the confidence to go forward with the product. Now, I think there is like, 2300-ish in there. But what’s been great is I can go in there anytime if I have an idea or whatever, and I can post a poll or a question and say, “Hey, what do you think about– or what would you like to see,” and I can get great response quick. You know, I feed the group. I try to post daily in there, and they respond to them. I make myself available to it. It’s not just like I put it out there.
Shane: You are doing what didn’t scale right now, and you have to, you have to at the beginning.
JoAnne: Right, there are challenges with that, I would like to get those people all on my email list which is a whole different topic. But I think that whole Facebook group thing gave me the courage and just the confidence to think, “Okay, maybe I’m seeing these things, I’m watching, and so maybe I can put together a little something and just see if it sells.” Actually, my goal had to put it out end of January, 1st of February. Well, I don’t know. I think I just got nervous, I got stagefright. I had most of it made, and then I got the flu, and then I’m like, “Oh, I’m just gonna wait.” It was like I were to make every excuse in the world.
Shane: And I knew you had this done. I knew you had it done. I literally was sitting on the couch, me and Jocelyn were sitting there watching like, Shark Tank or something, and I looked over and I said, “JoAnne Westbrook.” And Jocelyn just looked at me like, “What?” When you post that about those books, I was, like, she’s got a product. I know she’s got something to sell. Just go freaking sell it.
JoAnne: I know.
Shane: I remember vividly.
JoAnne: Yeah, whatever I put in the forum, you were like, “Just sell something!” Then I tried to use E-Junkie or something, and I had a disaster. Tools! I’m not so techie. I’m techie enough, but some things just drive me insane. I was trying to use E-Junkie to put it out there. That was messing up. Again, that was another thing is making me just want to say forget it. And then you got back on there, and you said, “No.”
Shane: Find some way to do it. I don’t care if you’ve got to take a PayPal button and email it to them manually. Just do it, just do it.
JoAnne: And so, I did. I put together this thing. I called in the Teacher Thrive Pack, and basically what it is, it is meal planning, exercise planning, classroom printables, organizing for yourself, for goals. The printables you could use for students, parent notes, different things. My thought was, what if you had meal planning, exercise planning, meets, Teachers Pay Teachers/Pinterest-had-a-baby kind of thing. Just all those things–
Jocelyn: I’ve never heard of it described that way.
Shane: That is the best product description I’ve ever heard in my life.
JoAnne: Yeah, it’s kind of like a squirrel all over the place. I hear people talk about getting on Teachers Pay Teachers all the time. Any time, I would post anything about food, that was one of the big things that got a ton of people– well, not a ton, but a ton for me– on my email list. I would post meal plans for the week, and boom, they wanted it. I was like, “Do they want stuff about food or they want stuff about school?” The group kind of help me narrow things down a little bit. That is what I put together, and I just put it out there. It ended up being 29 pages, like a PDF.
Shane: This is kind of like an $0.11-moment coming up here. We’re finally, after all this time, trial and error, starts and stops, two steps forward two steps back, you finally sell something, and what happened?
JoAnne: People bought it within like in their first hour.
Shane: That’s amazing. How many did you sell in the first hour?
JoAnne: Oh, gosh, I don’t know, like three or four. Nothing earth shattering. I’ve sold like, maybe 50 bucks worth at this point.
Shane: Okay but let me tell you something though.
JoAnne: But that’s 50 bucks.
Shane: Listen, number one, that is real people, right? And if you take your 50 bucks and you look at our first 11 cents, the first thing you sold was 500 times more than what we sold on our first product. I mean, that is incredible though, and it’s just like you pulled the trigger.
Jocelyn: What would you tell yourself now, like starting out, would you say, “Put something for sale sooner?”
Shane: Yeah, if you could go back and talk to you two years ago, what would you tell yourself?
JoAnne: Quit being a chicken and put it out there. I mean, it is just ridiculous. I am my own worst enemy. And most a lot of people are like that. Like you say, it does not have to be perfect and I get caught up in that really bad.
Shane: And that is what so important. The first question people always ask us about Flip Your Life is about, “What courses do you have? What does the plan look like?” And that is all fine, that is all good we can talk about that.
Jocelyn: And there is new one coming up soon.
Shane: And a new one coming out soon, so just be ready. You don’t make it without your community. You don’t make it without friends and colleagues and being surrounded by the people you want to average out to be like. If you are doing this all by yourself, there’s negativity, people don’t believe, you keep failing, you keep reading books, you keep being stuck, and that is what we want, that is why we go to live events. That is what we want to hang out with people all the time with online business. Because we’ve learned the same thing that eventually, it’s just going to be somebody pushing you off the cliff because you won’t jump.
I think that is why Jocelyn and I did have a little bit of an unfair advantage when we started out, because I was able to get Jocelyn with me quickly, so I had a business buddy. Jocelyn had her business buddy. Sometimes you ain’t got a business buddy because nobody does this. Go downtown where we live, and ask anybody about Internet marketing. It ain’t going to happen because everybody here is coal miners and railroaders and they just don’t do that stuff. I think having a community is what kept you
JoAnne: Right, well, I think I am very similar to where you all live, yeah.
Shane: That is what I love about the Flip Your Life community is because, a lot of times, it is not even us pushing people. We see other members pushing each other. It is just amazing to see all that come together, and then someone gets the spark and now we’ve got something we can start a fire with.
Jocelyn: Alright JoAnne, whether you believe it or not, you’ve come a really long way. I mean there a lot of people who will never make it this far, so congratulations on that, and for getting your first few sales. I know that felt really good, and just kind of validating for everything you have done so for. Let’s move forward. What can we do next to help you make more sales and to just keep this train going?
Shane: You’ve got an audience, you made a little money, you’ve got a product that you know does work, so what do you think you should do next, or what is your question?
JoAnne: I guess my first question, as I’m going towards my next month here, because really, when I put it out in March, it was after even March 1, which was crazy. I should have had it out before then. This month, I want to have it out before April starts, you know? Because there are those people who want to be organized and have their month ready to go.
Shane: And people get paid. Payday is important.
JoAnne: Right, yes. Exactly. I want to get that out there quicker. I’m literally selling them gum rolls, so they’re one-off products. I had one person suggest to me that had bought one. She was like, “Why don’t you do a yearly discount for teachers?” because teachers tend to like that kind of thing at times. Just sell the whole yearly subscription to it. I’ve had this in the back of my mind. I’m like, “Should I just keep doing the one offs? Do I transition this into a more of a war a membership kind of thing? I don’t want to get ahead of myself too much but I’m kind of on the fence of doing one offs or turn it into an even bigger resource. Like, create a community type thing. I’m not really sure on that part.
Jocelyn: I don’t think that this is like a black and white issue necessarily. I don’t think that there is a right or wrong. It is just really, what do you want, and what does your audience want? I mean if it is something that they want time and time again, then I would definitely have a recurring portion to it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all.
Shane: And I also think that you need to look at how this started. Success leaves clues. I’ve seen two huge clues here. Number one, you made content for two years, and didn’t draw anybody. But the second you opened a community about this topic, people flocked to it. And then you sold a one-off product and someone asked to give you more money on a recurring basis.
Jocelyn: That is a clue.
Shane: That’s a clue. Those are two big breadcrumbs to get Hansel and Gretel back home. You really need to think about, okay, why was this good for them, and how can I do this for them every month? I think that what I am hearing about your audience is, they just don’t want to be alone. They want something coming. They want to be led by you. They want someone who understands their plight. They want somebody who has proven that they can help them even in a small way. And if you create this on a recurring model, that gives you more consistency. You are not having to sell them every single month or anything like that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I wouldn’t even be opposed to maybe having like a paid Facebook group because this is something that people are used to dealing with from you. Maybe that is a part of their purchase.
Shane: You could put your content on your website, but maybe you do challenges like, “Cook these 20 meals this month. This will help balance your lifestyles, make dinner quicker,” whatever, and more healthy. You charge a monthly subscription for that, but you do a new challenge each month.
You’ve got your big group, and when they join, you add them to your private group. Teachers are not tech savvy, and Facebook groups do work very well for this market. You’ve got to look at your market, and if they can’t use computers, they’re not going to be able to figure out a lot how to log into your forums. This is what Simple Green Smoothies, what is her name? The girl that does that?
Jocelyn: I think it is Jadah Sellner.
Shane: Yeah, Jadah. That is how she does it. What was the one you do with clothes, Jocelyn?
Jocelyn: Yeah, so there is one that I’ve done with clothing before, and they do like a monthly challenge. She gives you certain outfits to wear, and then people come into the private group, and they show pictures of them wearing the outfits, or how they styled them.
Shane: What accessories they used, whatever. That is what you’ve got. You’ve got the document that shows you what to do. Then they take pictures of their meals, or they take pictures of them watching TV with her feet propped up, and say, “Nope, I’m not working tonight on lesson plans or whatever.” You just create this environment where everyone is in a community, and you are just leading them. You just are telling them what to do in the paid part. So I think, to me– don’t you think, Jocelyn? It sounds like your people want this community more than they want your content.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think maybe you could even do a lead in like a free group, maybe do the first X days of the challenge, in the free group, and then say, “Hey, we’re going to continue this over in our paid community. If you’re interested, you can join us here.”
Shane: Like all of your challenges could literally start, like, the last three days of the month, and then people join them in the free community. But then, “Hey, the challenge will continue here,” and they pay to be put into that Facebook group. Some people even start a new Facebook group every month. You might start a Facebook group called the Teacher Eating Challenge, or whatever.
And then you let everybody in that group, that group stays the same, you just leave all those people in there, they can keep doing what they want for right now. Next month might be the Teacher Running Challenge. We’re all going to run a 5K by the end of the month. Then you join that, and then you move on; you join that and then you move on. I’ve seen people do that very effectively.
JoAnne: I just wanted to say like, in the Thrive Pack that I have now, I have one piece of it, the fitness part, I have three different printable things. Two of them were more like a walking challenge, and one of them was an ab challenge or something. I have some of that built-in there, so maybe I could feed off of that–
Shane: You need to strip that thing down to where you don’t have actually give the plan. That thing tells them all about your challenges, and you just rotate your challenges every 3 to 4 months.
Jocelyn: Yeah I would love to see you maybe try to ramp up one for the summer. Okay, you’re going to be out of school, so let us use this time to try to improve your well-being.
Shane: Or you can totally, right now, do a summer bikini challenge thing. “Let us get in shape before summer break.” I would go ahead and relaunch this one, like we talked about in the forums, but then, that is another great thing about the challenge model as a recurring membership. You can do two challenges at once. Maybe some people don’t care about eating, but they do care about running.
Well, start a running and eating challenge at the same time, and you get 100 people instead of 50 to join in. And then, what you do is, you sell a year package that says, “Hey, these challenges are $15 a month. The winner gets $100 Amazon gift card,” or whatever. “Or you could just join for $200.00 And you get every challenge all year long no matter when I run them.
Jocelyn: Yeah, this is the girl that I follow, it’s called, “Get Your Pretty On.”
Shane: Get your pretty on, that is what it is.
Jocelyn: That is what she does. You can join the charges one-off, or you can purchase all of them for a year. She has really been pushing the yearly thing lately. So I always check out what she does for sure. Also, Simple Green Smoothies does really good job of that. Don’t get overwhelmed with that challenge content. The way and that I do these sometimes is that I will read them out in a spreadsheet. I will just write emails, it will be real simple, maybe one-paragraph email, and I just write them all have one time. I write the entire challenge, and then I will go and schedule them out.
So that if you’re going to post in a Facebook group, that is fine. You can have those scheduled. If you’re going to email them, you can go ahead and put that in your on email autoresponder. It is not something that you are constantly having to come up with that same day.
Shane: Challenges are a great way to get emails. A great way to get emails. We talked about how to convert these people over, maybe these first two challenges, you do for free but you have to sign up on the email list. Then you automate the delivery,
You have your Facebook group, there’s a link to the Facebook group in each e-mail, and all of a sudden now, you have the ultimate opt-in because it is the community, it’s exactly what they want, it’s a great challenge, and it pumps them up for the next one because they get a result for free. So that might be how you can just go forward converting people into your list.
JoAnne: Got it. That’s one of my big fears. I just heard you talk about somebody’s Facebook group just totally getting shut down and they lost everything and I’m like, “Oh my god, I would die.”
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s so rare though.
Shane: It’s so rare. It can happen but sometimes your niche demands that you use a certain tool. Another reason I think that is an advantage when you do challenges where you start different groups, like you would have a group called the January 2017 Challenge, the March 2017 Challenge. That’s what it is. It’s a private group, you add people as they pay. That way, even if something happens to that group, the next month is going to be different challenge.
People have to pay to get back into the other challenge. You can start as many of those free groups as you want right now. People do this all the time, and we’ve seen people charge 25 bucks a month and have 1,000 people join their challenge. I mean, it’s crazy.
JoAnne: That would be great!
Shane: It would be great. That’s going to happen, I’m just going to visualize it for you right now, there’s eventually going to come a point where you have a thousand people at $25 into your challenge.
JoAnne: There you go. There’s one thing I didn’t mention, and can I just throw this in super quick? This group is like a mix of teacher-y things and lifestyles, but I threw out this post the other day about the 10 Teacher Questions You Must Be Able to Answer in an Interview. I got major traction that.
Shane: Here is what I think that is. That is a challenge JoAnne. That is a segment of your audience. That is not the end-all, be-all. Let’s say there’s 200 people that want to lose weight, and there’s another 200 people that want work-life balance. And there is another 200 people that want to get a freaking job. When would you run that challenge? When would that be great month to run the challenge? When does a principal interviews teachers?
JoAnne: Probably now. Between now and through May.
Shane: Exactly, May. Run both challenges in April.
Jocelyn: I almost might do that one for a free one, just for lead generation, because if you can get those people into your funnel–
Shane: Oh my gosh, you’ve got teachers that are about to be stressed out because they’re going to get a job.
JoAnne: Yeah, I noticed in my website, I’ve got 500 hits on that post in one day, which I know it is not big for some people, but it’s good for me.
Jocelyn: No, that’s great!
Shane: But that is a seasonal challenge.
JoAnne: Right, it is not an all-year thing.
Shane: Right, but now, you will have it for next year once it’s done.
Jocelyn: Here’s what you need to do. On that post, you need to make sure it is optimized for opt ins, meaning you need a little box on it like a graphic of some kind that says, “Join my new teacher challenge!” or “How to get a teaching job challenge.”
Shane: Join my teacher job interview challenge. That is a way every year you know for sure you’re going to get hundreds of emails in a month.
Jocelyn: What I would do is I would just go ahead and automate that. Are you using Aweber?
JoAnne: Yes.
Jocelyn: Just make that a separate list, and just make the autoresponder all that. That way, you don’t have to constantly go in and be like, “Okay, the challenge is starting.” It is a totally automated thing. On day one, you get your resume together. On day two, you think about the answers to the following questions.
Shane: Your goal is to create 12 challenges. One a month that are evergreen. Every year people need jobs. Every year and the summer, right before the summer people are going to want to lose weight. You need to figure out when people want to these challenges. This year we make 12 of them, and next year, you do them over and over year. Evergreen passively. That is how we’re going to roll this thing out.
Jocelyn: Alright, JoAnne, these have been some great questions, and we’re really proud of you for just getting something out there, getting those people in the Facebook group and getting them to purchase. I mean that’s awesome, you’re doing a lot of things right. I think you don’t give yourself enough credit sometimes for what you have done. That’s really awesome. We are super proud of you. We always end our calls. Unfortunately we are almost out of time, but we always end by asking people what is one thing, based on what we talked about today that you are going to take action on soon?
Jocelyn: Well, I think it would be setting up planning for April, and then at least setting up one challenge as we go forward into April. And then also set up an option where in people want to purchase my product, for a yearly subscription and make a network.
Shane: I think all that is amazing plan. You are on the right track, that’s what I wanted you to hear, more than anything else is something is working now. Let us just magnify it. Also, thank you for sharing your story because people try to hide all the bad things, or they try to hide how long it took them to be successful, and I think that when people hear your story, a lot of people listening are going to hear themselves. They are going to see, “Keep going, keep going, keep going.” Something good is going to happen, and man, when the good things happens, that is when the avalanche starts. Let’s see if we can get more people into that email list and paying you for these challenges, okay?
JoAnne: Okay.
Jocelyn: Alright, thanks for being here today, JoAnne.
JoAnne: Thank you.
Shane: What a great call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. We would love to have you in our Flip Your Life community as well. If you would like to become a member of the Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business, too.
Jocelyn: All right, next we’re going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of our show, and these are moments that we were able experience that we might have missed if we were working at 9-to-5 jobs, still.
Today’s can’t miss moment is Isaac designing his first videogame. We have recently relinquished control of one of our Macbooks, and he has been using it a lot. He has started to play this game. He is now even starting to design his own worlds on it.
Shane: Yeah, Isaac has a goal in life that he wants to create video games. He just loves video games. We kind of have a different philosophy, I think, on technology that a lot of people do. We have a lot of friends who are just like, “My child gets to touch anything with electricity in it for 30 minutes.” We don’t give our kids eight hours a day of screen time but we kind of just open the door for them to learn technology, to learn how to use electronics, iPads, tablets, Macbooks, things like that. This game is he is playing is called Roblox. For those of you with kids, I’m sure you’ve heard of this game.
One night, I discovered, not only that there was a thing called Roblox studio, where the kids could actually go in and you can make your own games, and Isaac took this– kids are so smart– he was figuring it out just pressing buttons basically, and learned how to make this big elaborate game, but also, too you can monetize the game. There is this currency in the game cold called Robux. You pay like five dollars, and you get 500 Robux.
You can spend it to buy items in people’s games. Well, I find out that in the game, if you build games, and use things that cost Robux, the company gives you 10% of the profit. If you sell something that cost $10 in Robux, you get a donor back in currency. And I thought, oh my gosh, what a great way for our child to learn that he can create something, and produce it, sell it, technically online, and get a return back of some kind of currency. We do that everyday whether we’re giving away lead magnets for e-mails or we’re giving away products for money.
Now, he is learning that lesson doing something he loves. Isaac is so into this game that I’ve actually got a good friend who is a professor at Full Sail University down in Florida, and we’re going to take him and give them a tour of the videogame department. It is just so cool to see an 8-year-old think about things like, “I want to do this with my life, I want to produce and put things out there and get money back.” I wouldn’t even have time to sit down and install the game for him if I was still working for someone else.
Jocelyn: Yeah, we would love to just encourage any type of technology, any type of learning to do with technology, any type of entrepreneurial spirit. We’re all for that and again we don’t let him sit on that all day long but we’re cool with them learning those types of skills, and applying them.
Shane: Before we go today, guys, we want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible, and we want to pass that along. Today’s Bible verse is one of my favorites, and it comes from Ecclesiastes 11:4, and the Bible says, “He who observes the wind, and waits for all conditions to be favorable will not sow; and he who regard the clouds will not reap.”
Now, what the Bible verse is saying guys, it’s a very fancy way to say, “It ain’t got to be perfect.” You can’t wait around in your online business for all conditions to be favorable. You can’t wait for the right opportunity for the clouds and the wind to blow by the perfect chance. You just have to take action. Go out there and sow the seeds, and get ready to reap the harvest.
That is all the time we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We will see you then.
Jocelyn: Bye.
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