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We’re so excited to have one of our most active members on air with us this week!
On her 4th time guesting on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, we have the author of the ultimate parenting book called, “Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life with Your Young Child,” Karen Lock Kolp, M.Ed.
Karen is a blogger & podcaster who specializes in helping parents understand their young children.
She shares her personal life lessons with her audience, and is driven by the passion to guide us parents through our everyday parenting challenges.
Her husband, Ben, helps in processing the audio content for the “We Turned Out Okay” Podcast and is her biggest supporter.
They’ve already gone a long way from when they first started out online, and now need help to grow their parenting community even more.
Join us as we share our own experiences on making mistakes, learning from it and how Karen can benefit from embracing these likely mishaps online.
If you’re feeling discouraged and nothing is going the way you want it in your own business, make sure to tune in and gain the insight that will help take you to the next level!
You will learn:
- What to do when things don’t go according to plan
- Stepping away from Spotlight Syndrome
- Keeping your audience in the loop
- The beauty of a smaller email list
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Karen’s website
- Karen’s 1st FL episode
- Karen’s 2nd FL episode
- Karen’s 3rd FL episode
- Useloom
- FL YouTube – Disney Cruise
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:
This week’s Can’t Miss Moment is a really, really good one. We got to take our kids on a Disney cruise. We went on a cruise down to the Bahamas with our kids. We got to go to Disney’s private island which is Castaway Key. We got to go to Atlantis, which is that big resort that you see on TV all the time. I’ve always wanted to go there just to see it in person. And we got to go on a Disney cruise, and it was just the best experience I think I’ve ever had on any trip.
We just decided to go, and we went. We had the best time. Isaac, when he was coming back, was like, “Dad, that was the best trip ever. I can’t believe I got to actually do something like that.” He said it was like all the things he had ever seen on YouTube.
Everyone in our family had a really good time, and the best part about it is it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We’re already planning on possibly going on another in the near future. That is truly amazing. I couldn’t have even dreamt of this when we were still teachers. Now, our online business allows us to have these types of opportunities, which is amazing.
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. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey, y’all! On today’s podcast, we help Karen take her online business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family 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, everyone? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. For those of you new to the show, welcome. This is the place where we help you figure out what to do next in your online business. No shiny objects, no gurus, no gimmicks, just real people, real businesses, and real conversation.
We are super excited because we have one of our most active, most engaged, and one of our favorite people in the Flip Your Life community today. We have Karen Lock Kolp on the show.
Karen, welcome back to the program!
Karen: Thank you for having me again. This is so valuable and so fun, I love talking to you guys.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s great to have you back again. Let’s start by telling everyone just a little bit about you, your background, and what you’ve been doing so far online.
Karen: Alright, well, I help parents of young children worry less and enjoy more. I do that with a podcast and a website called, “We Turned Out Okay.” So it’s weturnedoutokay.com. The reason I do that is because when my children were young– they’re teens now. But when they were young, despite the fact that I had a master’s degree in early childhood education and undergraduate degree in human development and family relations, I was the most worried, upset.
I thought around every corner lurked a stranger waiting to kidnap them, and food was always going to poison them, or they’d be deathly allergic to something. I’ve got these two perfectly normal kids, and I was a wreck. A little further along, and I know if you’ve heard me on the show before and you’ve heard me talk about this, but about six and a half years ago, I developed a chronic illness and only after I developed that did I think about online as a place to serve people with their young children.
I love this because I don’t have normal use, for example, of my hands, but I am still really, really able to help people, and I can help them not be as upset and worried as I was basically.
Shane: Your podcast is awesome, too. I always tell this story. I’ve told you this before, but we have a girl in the community. She runs our content, she does our shownotes. Her name is Avygail. She lives in the Philippines. It was so funny because when we hired her and then she started working in the community, she realized that you were in the community, and she fangirled you.
She totally freaked out because she listens to your podcast, and it just shows no matter what limitations we’ve got, no matter who we are, we all have people we serve, and you don’t know who you’re going to touch when you start a podcast or start a website. You just don’t even know it, or how your paths are going to connect with those people, and it’s just an awesome thing that you’ve done because you have a really cool podcast.
Karen: Oh, thank you.
Shane: I’m the paranoid parent in our relationship, Jocelyn would attest to this. I sleep with a fire extinguisher by my bed. I’m like, if there’s a fire, I will fight my way through the fire with this fire extinguisher to get to the kids. I totally relate to everything that you talk about.
Karen: I just have to say, regarding Avygail. The point when I found out about Avygail, I was at a real low point. I was at a sort of, “Why am I doing this? Is anybody really listening to me?” kind of moment, and to find out about that, it breathed new life into, not only me, but I feel like the podcast and one of the successes I wanted to share with you guys since our last conversation is, I have done some challenges. Avygail was one of the people who took me up on one of them.
Shane: That’s what I’m talking about.
Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Karen: That’s been super fun.
Jocelyn: I want to say, just talking about that, I was listening to a podcast the other day, or I might have read it online, I can’t remember. But anyway, the people we’re talking about, maybe if you can’t afford to support the person that you’re listening to, if you can’t afford their program, service or whatever, leave them an iTunes review, open their emails, click their e-mails. It helps with deliverability to other people.
That’s the same for us. If you enjoy something that we’re doing, let us know, and the best way to do that is by leaving us a review. The same for Karen, because we read every single one of those. They do mean a lot to us. It’s just a way to give back to the community even if you, at the moment, can’t join their membership or buy their product or whatever.
It is a way to give back to them and to encourage them, because maybe you are at a low point like Karen was. Maybe that person needs that encouragement that day. I would just encourage you– anyone that you listen to that you enjoy, including us– we would love it if you would leave us a review and let us know about that.
Shane: I know people that literally have thousands of listeners who have given up on their podcast because nobody would reach out. But they’re listening, and they know they’re listening, but they’re not reaching out, they’re not connecting on Facebook. Forget buying the product. There’s just not that connection there. There has to be– what’s the word? I can never say it.
Jocelyn: Reciprocity.
Shane: Reciprocity. I can never say that word, I don’t know why. But if there is no reciprocity, people lose energy, people lose drive. That thing that is really helping you will go away.
Jocelyn: That’s what I do on my bad days. If I have a bad day, and we have them, you know, not all the time, but we have them sometimes. When I do have one, I go to our reviews, and I look at them, and I read reviews of people saying, “Hey, your podcast means a lot to me. Thanks for doing it!” And then I say, “Oh, I’m making a difference in somebody’s life.”
I think everyone needs that, so I know it’s not really completely relevant to what we’re doing. But it just reminded, you saying that, of something I read recently and I think it is so important for everyone to recognize and to pay it forward.
Shane: Yeah, be a participant. We want our listeners to participate. I don’t care if you join our community necessarily, but participate. Go to your blog when you do a podcast episode, leave a comment. Leave an iTunes review, or just shoot them a message on Twitter and keep them encouraged.
We had another one the other day. We did a public Q&A. We’ve only done a couple of those. We’re going to start doing a lot more of them, and someone was like, “I can’t believe I just got my question answered by Shane and Jocelyn of flippedlifestyle.com.”
Jocelyn: We got such a kick out of that. We were, like, “That’s awesome, that’s so nice!”
Shane: Yeah, that was a big deal. They didn’t join the community, they didn’t do anything, but they were just like, “Wow, that was awesome!”
Karen: Yeah, yeah.
Shane: And it encourages you to just keep going.
Karen: I’ve got to say this, too. The last time we spoke, you guys were encouraging me to try a Facebook Live. I remember Shane, you were like, “Sometime in the next month, tell your people on your e-mail list that you’re going to do this, and then do it.” From that has come something else that’s really cool. I feel like it’s a part of this discussion that we’re having right now.
What I did was I decided to start a Facebook group, a We Turned Out Okay Facebook group, but it’s a closed group on Facebook. Any free challenge that I offer– I’ve since built a paid challenge but the free challenges, I always do a Facebook Live in there, along with the free challenges, and I’ve actually started doing a weekly Facebook Live, just talking about what am I grateful for. I always have five things that I’m grateful for, I ask the people who attend what are they grateful for, I talk about what’s coming up on the podcast, I answer a question or two.
It’s been the most rewarding part of this because people are coming into that group, and they are like, “Thank you for this,” or they are saying, like, “I am so glad I got to connect with you,” or they’re sharing pictures. I didn’t believe it when you guys told me that six months ago that this is what I should be doing. But I am so glad that I tried it because it’s worked out really, really well.
Shane: Isn’t it funny how something that you had a fear of doing, you just needed someone to be like, “Just do it, get over it,” right? And then this thing that you had this terrible fear you do became a weekly thing that you do every week. It’s like, now it just becomes commonplace, and that’s how most of our fears are in business and in life. Once you just get over it and go forward, people do really like that connection.
One thing that I’ve been doing lately is, I’ve got this thing on my computer called Useloom. It’s like a really, really fast screencapture software.
Karen: Yes. I love Useloom.
Shane: Yes, Useloom is amazing. You click a button on your Chrome browser, bam, you record a screen video and it gives you a link already on your clipboard. You can just do it. I’ve been responding to people’s e-mails. It’s faster for me. I’m a talker, you all know that. It’s faster for me to click the button, say I’m going to click a word. People flip out when you send them a video, when you talk to them live. It’s just a great way to build your brand doing these live videos and things like that. Alright, we could talk about this all day.
Karen: I know, thank you, guys, for that.
Shane: Let’s turn back to what we’re here for. Let’s build your brand. Let’s talk about building your brand right now.
Tell us what’s going on right now, and how we can help you today.
Karen: Okay, right now, I have, for the last, maybe two, three months, I’ve been working towards building a masterclass. A master course, the sort of thing that happens once a week for six weeks. I’ve been really enjoying the building of it. I went to my email list a few weeks ago, and I sent out a survey basically saying, “What are the two most important things that you need to know about this particular topic?” Which, for me, is helping your child navigate the choppy social waters of life without getting dragged under yourself, or without losing your mind.
A lot of parents, they just freak out. I do, too. When your child gets called a crybaby or something like that, or one sibling hits another sibling because they’re fighting over something that’s a social thing, it can be so heartbreaking for us, it can make us think back to our own childhoods, it can just bring up just so much awfulness.
I sent out this survey, and I got really, really good heartfelt wonderful responses, and I basically built the master course from those responses.
In the process, I took one small part of that and I built a free mini-course. Basically, a lot of these issues start with sharing, like, sharing of resources. Kids don’t like to share. They will exclude other kids, they will fight, whatever.
I did this three segment mini-course just about sharing, and I’m going to offer it as a lead magnet, basically, to bring people onto my e-mail list. All was going incredibly well, I’m releasing these things in real time, it’s super fun, lots of engagement. I’m answering people’s questions. It’s great, it’s great, it’s great. The launch was scheduled to start this past Monday, and it did because it all went up automatically. We lost our power on Sunday night because we had a big tree smash into our electrical wires.
Shane: Isn’t that just the way it works? Everything online’s working perfect, and there’s a tree going through my front window.
Karen: Yeah, I had no internet access until yesterday. As quickly as I could, I did Facebook live yesterday. I wasn’t even able to really plan out e-mails or anything like I would ordinarily do. It’s just been such a huge mess. I’ve not had anyone sign up for the course. I’m feeling like, God, so deflated.
Shane: So instead of a launch, this is more of a– you ever watch those videos of the SpaceX rockets, and the first few tests, they were like, “There it goes.” And it lifts like 10 feet off the ground, and then it explodes.
Karen: Yes.
Shane: Right, it was like, “Yeah, look at that,” bam! Destruction, death, fire.
Karen: Exactly.
Shane: Okay, so let’s talk about that. Alright, so first of all, did you pre-sell this or did you just make it first off of the feedback?
Karen: I’ve not made it yet. I’m in the middle of the pre-sale.
Shane: Perfect. So this is the pre-sale?
Karen: Yes, it closes on Monday, and the first class is Tuesday. And I should say, I do have one person who signed up, she’s in my community. She has signed up through the community. If you’re in my community, you don’t have to pay anything for any courses. All that is included within your membership. And then I did, today, have somebody join the membership, and I believe it was at least in part because that way have access to the class.
Shane: An important thing to remember here is, we get these things on a railroad tracks, and we say, “Oh, this launch has to happen between Monday and Monday, and if it doesn’t happen between Monday and Monday, it’s not going to work.” We just had this conversation in our private mastermind forum with someone last night. They were doing a dollar trial launch, and it didn’t go well at all.
They were like, “What do I do? This was a failure. I ran the whole week, and it didn’t work, and it worked for everybody else, and it didn’t work for me,” and you know what I mean. It’s the same thing I hear from you. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I had this launch, then a tree fell on my house, and I didn’t have internet, and it didn’t work.” It’s still your launch.
Who says it has to end on Tuesday? Why can’t you just send an email out or do a Facebook live that says, “Hey, guys, this tree hap fell, and I didn’t have any internet, and I totally got off the rails on this thing. I’m going to do a special deal. I know a lot of you want in on this. I’m going to move this one week out.” And just relaunch it next week when you have internet.
Karen: Yeah.
Shane: No one’s holding it above your head.
Jocelyn: There are no rules, there are no police for this.
Shane: The one that does want to do the challenge and the other girl that joined the membership because she probably wants to do the challenge, they’re not going to get mad at you. They’re not going to quit and demand their money back. Just send them a message and be like, “Hey guys, we’re going to push this back one week because we need more people to sign up.”
Jocelyn: “I had a tree fall on my house.”
Karen: Yeah, yeah. And they know about that in my e-mail group. I’ve created a private group for the class, for the master course, and the image right now is of this gigantic tree.
Shane: Nice. Perfect.
Karen: If it’s still there when it’s Christmas time, I’m going to put Christmas lights on it because it’s a huge, big pine tree lying flat on our yard. Anyway, they do know about that. It wouldn’t be completely out of left field if I did do that, and I actually think that’s really something to consider.
Shane: Jocelyn and I talked about this. We learned about this– when did we learn about spotlight syndrome? Somebody did a speech on it sometimes. We were learning about it at a live event. It’s called spotlight syndrome. We think that everybody sees everything that we do. The good and the bad. We think they see all our mistakes, and every person in our audience. But really 90% of the people don’t really see 90% of the things that you do. That’s just the way it is. It’s the old 80/20 rule.
It’s no big deal to pivot, it’s no big deal to change, it’s no big deal to react on the fly. The people that would get upset were probably not going to be great customers anyway.
Karen: They weren’t going to do it anyway.
Shane: I’ll tell you a great story about this. Last week, you know this Karen. We had a member call scheduled for last Friday.
Jocelyn: Well, I had changed it a few days ahead of time.
Shane: Jocelyn had changed it. Jocelyn went into the calendar. Jocelyn’s like, “I changed it. I got this under control.”
Jocelyn: No, I did. I changed it, but what happened was, our VA, she had already scheduled the e-mails before I changed the date on the calendar, and I neglected to tell her that I changed the date on the calendar.
Shane: So this was a total communication breakdown, right? The reason was our kids were having Trunk or Treat at their school. Of course, we had to dress up for Trunk or Treat, and give out candy.
Jocelyn: And the school is super last minute, so they told us a few days ahead of time.
Shane: Alright, so we were like, “Okay, so let’s just move this member call.” Jocelyn moves the member call on the calendar, we forget to tell our assistant. She doesn’t stop the emails. What happens on Friday morning? All the emails go out, 60 or 70 people show up in this room for a Flip Your Life member call, and everyone’s like, “Where are Shane and Jocelyn? Should we call 911? They’ve never missed a call before.”
And like, “You think something happened to them? Is everything okay?” We’re getting e-mails, somebody sent me a Voxer message. I’m standing there dressed up like a this character from a book called, “Dogman.” I looked like a police chief, I’ve got a fake mustache on, I’m listening to this call, handing out candy, and I look over at Jocelyn, and I’m like, “Everybody’s at the member call.” And Jocelyn’s like, “They are?” And we realized the e-mails went out.
That’s just life. I pulled out my phone, and I did a video, and I was like, “Hey guys, here’s what happened.” I dropped it in the forums, we sent an email out with that video in it, and I just said, “Hey guys, crap happens, I’ll see you Monday.” We did a member call Monday, all the same people showed up, and the world kept turning, and world kept turning. Everybody was laughing about it, it was a good time. Did one or two people maybe get a little upset, I don’t care.
Karen: Yeah, I mean, you can’t do anything about it, right?
Shane: Exactly.
Karen: Can I just say, I was one of the people in the chatroom on that Friday, and we were waiting for the calls. People are like, “Should we sing something?” I started doing the lyrics to, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” and somebody else was singing all this stuff, it was hilarious.
Shane: I saw that, and I went back and read all the messages.
Jocelyn: He was cracking up.
Shane: I was dying laughing because people were just like– there was a lot of inside jokes because some people do funny things at all of our member calls. It was hysterical! We looked at it, and I think 12 new members that had joined in the last week showed up. You’d think, “Oh, all our new members, what a great first impression. Hey, guys, welcome to the community, we’re not here.” But none of them got mad, nobody cared. They thought it was funny because it’s just life. It happens.
Karen: Yeah, I mean that video was so great, too. But in a way, I’m trying to connect this to my own situation. What I felt was like, “Oh my gosh, they’re just like me, they’re people, too. These things happen. Let’s make it feel light rather than heavy,” and it made me feel even gladder to be in your community because you guys are so professional.
I’ve been in this community for two years, I’ve never seen anything like that happen. The way that you handled it made it all better. You’re sort of giving me hope that if I do this, if I implement what you’re saying, maybe people will feel that way about me, too.
Shane: Real mistakes, like, not just fake stuff where people send an email with a mistake, and say, “Oops, I forgot.” But when you actually show people that you’re a real person, they’re actually a lot more empathetic and engaged with you. This is just one of those moments where life got out of hand.
Jocelyn: For the one percent of people you make mad, 99% of the people will be like, “Oh, she’s a real person, too, and this makes me feel better about her.”
Shane: Yeah, I would send an email out that just said, “A tree fell on my house…”
Jocelyn: Take a picture of it.
Shane: I’m opening that e-mail. Put the picture in the thing, and be like, “Guys, I have this thing, it totally got screwed up last week. I’m pushing this back until next week, and I’m going to give everybody a chance to join again.”
Jocelyn: And just say, “I’ve had so much excitement about this, and so many people asking questions. I just want to give everyone a chance to be able to get involved.”
Karen: Oh, I love that.
Jocelyn: Use really positive language.
Shane: Spin your disadvantages back to advantages. You’re a master at this because you’ve lived it in your life. Everything in online business is that something’s going to go wrong, that’s what people have to understand. There is always something that’s going to go wrong.
We’re buying rental houses. We bought this house this week. I was doing the inspection yesterday, and everything was looking good, the roof was good, the house was good, right? So, alright, let’s test the water pressure. The guy turned on the sink, and the people who had hooked in the sink, they didn’t tie it together, and the pipes exploded down, and it flooded and all the water was going into the floorboards into the basement.
Karen: Oh my God.
Shane: The realtor looked over at me, in fact, turned the water off real quick, looked back at me, and I just started dying, laughing. Because guys, we’re inspecting a house. Something’s going to go wrong, right?
Karen: Yeah, yeah.
Shane: And that’s just what’s happening here.
Jocelyn: I would encourage you to post maybe your e-mail in the community before you send it out, and maybe let people give out some suggestions or just look over it and say, “Oh, yeah, that sounds good,” or, “Maybe you should change this to this.” That’s a good opportunity to do something like that.
Shane: Don’t just send an e-mail, put it on Facebook, do a Facebook live. Send an e-mail, put it in your community, write a blog post about it. You need to explode every channel you’ve got where anyone can hear you so that everybody gets the message.
Jocelyn: And just remember also, don’t just send one e-mail. I think that a lot of times, people think I’m sending one email I launched. Okay, well, what if it was the wrong time of day, and people hadn’t opened it? What if it had a headline that maybe people were just, “Eh, whatever. I wouldn’t open that.”
What we do is we send it out again. If people didn’t open it, we change the subject to send the exact same email again. If they did open it, and they didn’t respond, we send them a reminder. Make sure that you’re doing a reminder series after.
Shane: The fortune’s in the follow up with these launches.
Karen: Now that I’ve got internet back, I can do these things. I’m also going to record a bumper for this week. I’ve got two podcast episodes this week, and I’ll make sure that something goes out at the very beginning of them to say like, “If you thought you missed out, well, a tree fell out of my house, so you didn’t.”
Shane: Exactly. And I think that once you do that, it’s going to shake the nest a little bit and a couple more people are going to fly out of it. That’s what we really want. I would reach out personally to the people who are in your community first, and say, “Hey, guys, I know you were looking forward to this challenge that was going to start Tuesday, but because of this, I’m going to push it back one week,” and it’s going to be cool.
Jocelyn: “Yes, and this is going to give more of you an opportunity to join us.”
Shane: You said you’d already done the first module, or something like that? Maybe just send them people ahead of time, “This is what we’re going to be doing next week. I wanted you guys to be able to go ahead and take a shot, look at it.” That gives them what they wanted, and then you can just go ahead and start with everybody else next week, too.
Jocelyn: Depending on the numbers you have, I would even encourage you to send some personal messages to people. If people are opening, they’ve clicked through maybe two or three times, you’ll probably have a small sample size by that time, send each of them a Useloom video, and just be like, “Hey, so and so, I noticed that you were interested in my program, and I just wanted to know if you had any questions, just let me know. You can just reply to this e-mail.”
Karen: Oh, I love that. That’s definitely something that I will do.
Jocelyn: When you have smaller numbers at first, that’s actually a benefit for you because that’s some ways that you can touch people personally. That, when you start to scale, it’s harder to do. Take advantage of that. Those of you out there who have smaller lists, take advantage. Do things that you can’t scale right when you’re still small.
Shane: We get so many e-mails, it’s almost impossible for us to respond to every email, right? But with filtering, some of them filter through and we can still do those videos, right? But really, you can just pop on Useloom, and probably knock people out. Boom, boom, boom, boom, like Jocelyn said.
If you go find out that 40 people clicked on that link, would it really take more than an hour to send them a one-minute video?
Karen: Yeah.
Shane: That’s something that you could do to really bang this out over the next week, and say, “Hey, let’s do this.”
Jocelyn: People love that. They love when they get a personalized response. We still do this. We don’t do it for everybody because we can’t, it’s just not possible. But we still do this. Shane sends people a video, and they’re like, “I can’t believe it’s actually you.” But they see him there on the screen saying their name, they know that it’s him.
Shane: You can’t fake video. Some people have their virtual assistants are writing back as them, and it sounds fake. I told Jocelyn one day, I said, “You can’t fake this. I’m recording this.”
Jocelyn: People are shocked. They’ll write back and be like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that you actually answered this!”
Karen: Okay, along the same lines– well, sort of on the same lines, if I’m talking about breathing new life into this launch, is there a way that I can use Facebook ads to do that, or should I be thinking more on trying to always bring new people?
Shane: You can target your followers and upload your email list. I would go out in front of that tree that is laying in your yard before they cut it out, and be like, “What’s up, guys, this is Karen. This tree fell on my house. I had a launch going last week, and we’re redoing it again. Click the link to learn more, but I just want to let you know, anybody that missed out–” bam, and then just target the people that follow your page. Put it in your Facebook group.
Jocelyn: It definitely won’t hurt.
Shane: It won’t hurt.
Karen: Cool. Alright, that will be sort of a warm traffic thing?
Shane: Yes, that would be a warm target thing.
Jocelyn: I will send it to your list, and we could include your Facebook followers, things like that.
Karen: Yeah. That is a great idea. I love that.
Jocelyn: Include your website traffic, too, so that way, people who are listening to your podcast as they come into your site, you can retarget them, too. Yeah, there is no wrong answers here. Just do all the things and see what happens.
Karen: Yes. Whenever I can, right?
Jocelyn: Just make sure you’re using mostly positive language. We’ve talked about this before on Facebook. You need to make sure that you’re using super positive language. Facebook likes everybody to be shiny and happy.
Karen: Yeah, last time I talked to you guys about that, I feel like Facebook was telling me that they were concerned that my ad had bad language in it or something, and I was like, it really doesn’t.
Shane: Basically, it’s like this. If you’re doing what we do, if your ad says, “Does your life suck? Do you hate your job?” What you really should say is, “Do you want a better life? Do you want a better career?” They want you to use positive language. They have negative language penalties on there because they want Facebook’s newsfeed to be glossy and happy and sunshine and rainbows.
Karen: And once you understand that, it makes life so much easier using that service.
Shane: It’s a lot easier to write at. Alright, so the moral of the story here is things are going to go wrong. If you think you’re going to get into this and nothing’s going to go wrong, you better not get into it, right? Because things are always going to go wrong, and Jocelyn and I have been doing this for five years, multiple companies. I don’t even know how many e-mails we’ve sent out. Things go wrong every week.
Last week, we sold five memberships on an evergreen webinar, and none of the tags were set up right, so nobody got access to the membership. We just took their money, and they couldn’t even get in the door.
Jocelyn: Last week also, we sent an email out to our entire list announcing that we were having a live Q&A, except we sent it to the entire list including the education people.
Shane: Yeah, we sent it to every email we had ever collected ever. It got throttled to spam because we had so many people unsubscribing and deleting it. Man, you can’t do it perfect all the time.
Jocelyn: We’ve been doing this five years, and we still make really crazy mistakes.
Karen: Oh, that is good to know.
Shane: Spin it to your advantage. Be honest, be open with your audience and tell them what is going on, and that will make you more empathetic toward them, with them. They will engage with you and your launch will be fine, okay?
Another thing, I want to really just add this in here at the end before we go to our action step is, you can relaunch. I think people feel like you have one chance to go up to the plate, and swing for a home run. And if you don’t hit a home run, then your entire business is going to collapse and you’re a failure.
People really feel that way. We see it all the time in the forums, and that’s really not true. It goes back to spotlight syndrome. If you launch and the launch is bad, well, like Jocelyn said, maybe it was bad timing. Wait a month. Nobody is going to remember that you launched. Then do it again. Try to learn from it. Even if this launch doesn’t come totally perfect, fall back, regroup, go through your course, and relaunch again in January. Nobody is going to remember. And they might be more receptive.
Jocelyn: Just don’t even talk about the past.
Shane: Yeah, the past is the past.
Karen: I’m doing it again. I’ve already told them, in fact, I am going to offer it again. This isn’t the only time that I’m going to offer this. That’s out there.
Shane: It’s like in Lion King, when that monkey hits Simba on the head, and he goes, “Ow, what did you do that for?” “It does not matter. It is in the past.”
Jocelyn: Yeah. I just want to say, also, to make sure that if people aren’t purchasing, and they are engaged, they are clicking, they are landing on your page, they are not purchasing, I would try to reach out to at least a few of those, and just say, “Hey, I was wondering if I could just get on a quick Skype call with you. I was just wondering if you have any questions about the membership, like what was holding you back? Not the membership, but the product. What was holding you back from purchasing?” Because those answers will give you so much insight on what you need to do in the future.
Shane: Yeah, for your next launch.
Karen: Cool.
Jocelyn: Okay, Karen, this has been a great conversation today. I hope that we have helped you with some strategies for your launch and to improve it, and get even more people involved in your new product. Before we wrap up, we always ask people what is one thing that you’re planning to take action on in the next day or so based on what we talked about here today?
Karen: You know what’s really funny is as we’ve been talking, I mean, you know I’m going to do the things that we’ve talked about. I’m going to go do a Facebook live in front of this tree, for example. There are things that I’m going to do to revive this launch. But the first thing that I am going to do when we are done with this phone call is I’m going to go and give my husband a huge hug.
The reason I’m going to do that is because he’s the one who’s been keeping my mindset positive. He’s the one who’s been saying, okay, this is what’s happening now. You remember, you’ve got to remember, this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. Just because it’s not working out right now doesn’t mean it will never work out. You’re building an asset, I mean he’s being so incredibly helpful. That’s what I’m going to do first, anyway.
Shane: That’s awesome, that’s what keeps you sane actually to take action. Positivity has been a huge emphasis in our household, and probably the last three to six months just because we’ve noticed our kids coming back from school and they complain a little, they’re a little negative. They’re eight and six. The outside world infected them a little bit, and it kind of infected us a little bit.
We really strive hard for positive language in our house and it’s important to appreciate each other and reward each other for that because we need it. That’s one reason why we created a community and not a course. When you’re having a bad day, you need people to encourage you, and that’s awesome, and I think that’s going to be a great deal. I have no doubt you will take action on everything that we listed here in today’s podcast.
Karen: Well, thank you, guys, thank you for everything!
Shane: Alright, Karen, it was a great call. We want to thank you again for being just so open. That is one thing we love about our community, we love about our podcast, is real people coming on, being vulnerable, showing our mistakes, and we know that’s a hard thing to do. Thank you for letting everybody listen in on our talk today.
Karen: It’s my pleasure. Thank you guys so much.
Shane: Alright, guys, that wraps up another call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. If you would like to become a member of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business as well.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment. These are things that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal 9-to-5 job.
Shane: This week’s Can’t Miss Moment is a really, really good one. We got to take our kids on a Disney cruise. We went on a cruise down to the Bahamas with our kids. We got to go to Disney’s private island which is Castaway Key. We got to go to Atlantis, which is that big resort that you see on TV all the time. I’ve always wanted to go there just to see it in person. And we got to go on a Disney cruise, and it was just the best experience I think I’ve ever had on any trip.
Our kids loved it. I can’t say enough at how awesome a Disney cruise really is. You have to go no matter how long you have to save up to do it. It’s just one of those amazing things. But it was really cool. We kind of decided on a bit of a whim to go on this Disney cruise. I called a buddy of mine, he went with us. He brought his family, too. We got to experience it with them.
It was really expensive. It was triple what a normal cruise costs. It was by far the most, I think, we’ve ever spent on any trip that we’ve ever taken because we had to fly down there. We had to pay for the cruise and it was just really, really expensive. It was awesome to be able to do that and not worry about it, or be able to do that and not make it like, this is our lifetime, once-in-a-lifetime trip, it’s the only time we’ll ever do it, so let’s go do it. We’ve saved up for ten years to be able to go on this trip.
We just decided to go, and we went. We had the best time. Isaac, when he was coming back, was like, “Dad, that was the best trip ever. I can’t believe I got to actually do something like that.” He said it was like all the things he had ever seen on YouTube. That’s what he said to us.
It was just amazing to be able to do that. For those of you who want to see that as well, go to our YouTube channel. Head over to flippedlifestyle.com/YouTube and check our Disney Cruise video. We recorded and document the entire trip and you can really get a view and see everything that we did. We filmed everything. You can check that out.
But, man, it was just an awesome trip. Just so fortunate that what we have created in our business allows us to do these crazy things and give our kids these amazing experiences. I had been barely out of the state of Kentucky before I was 18 years old. Our kids have already been out of the country. My oldest child is eight years old. It was awesome to be able to do that and take the kids.
Jocelyn: We loved the Disney cruise. Everyone in our family had a really good time, and the best part about it is it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We’re already planning on possibly going on another in the near future. That is truly amazing. I couldn’t have even dreamt of this when we were still teachers. Now, our online business allows us to have these types of opportunities, which is amazing.
Shane: Alright, guys, that is all the time we have for today. Before we sign off, we like to close of every one of our shows with a verse from the Bible.
Today’s Bible verse comes from Colossians 3:23. And the Bible says, “Whatever you do, work hard as if working for the Lord and not for men.”
Remember, guys, in everything in your life, there is a bigger picture at stake. You don’t have to please anyone. Just go out there and use the talents, and use the abilities that God has given you. Get out there and use it to change the world, and make something happen in your own life.
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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