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You guys know how we always say,
“Throw the mud on the wall and see the ones that stick?”
On air with us today is a Flip Your Life community couple who did just that!
We are super excited to welcome two huge action takers on the show this week, members of the Flip Your Life community’s international circle, Tita and Vincent Mangala.
Tita & Vincent, originally from the Philippines, moved to Ontario, Canada a few years ago. They are both financial coaches, but Vincent primarily works as a service technician.
They want to create an online business together in order to have the freedom to spend more time with their family and build a lasting legacy.
Vincent has already created several websites and looks forward to monetizing them, but more isn’t always better, especially when you have to invest time and money to grow your membership site.
Join us as we help them decide which of their websites they need to focus on and how to effectively consolidate their content through context.
Tune in, this might just be the same steps you’d need to take your online business to the next level.
You Will Learn:
- Understanding how different niches can fit together
- Why content & context is important in building your membership
- How to market to a group segment that needs it
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
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 a family trip to Holiday World in Santa Claus, IN. Holiday World is somewhere that I (Jocelyn) have been going for a very long time. I started going there, I think in the 80’s when it was Santa Claus Land — it is now Holiday World. We take the kids up there occasionally. We haven’t been there in a couple of years, but we decided this year that we were going to go up because I had gone to my 20-year high school reunion.
The kids love it, and the whole trip was just an awesome fun time. That’s one of the biggest differences, I think between before and now when we travelled. When we use to travel, it was like you had to do it in certain times of the year. You had to do it on weekends, when everyone else had to do it.
We always plan our trips now in a way where nobody else is there, or where half the people that are normally there are there. It just saves you so much stress and time.
To remove that stress makes the trips more fun, which lets you have more memories and Can’t Miss Moments, and that’s just not possible without the Flipped Lifestyle.
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 Tita and Vincent decide whether or not to merge all their websites into one.
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, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. We are super excited to help another Flip Your Life community couple– we’ve got a couple on the show today– to help our community members take their online dreams to the next level. We are super excited to welcome to the show today, Tita and Vincent.
Hey, guys, welcome to the program!
Tita: Hi!
Vincent: Hi, Shane and Jocelyn! How are you?
Tita: Thanks for having us.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it is great to have you. You guys are from the Philippines originally, and that is somewhere that we have visited before, so it is exciting to have you on our show today. We love having our international friends join us always.
Shane: So, we’ve got a lot to dig into today. Maybe one of the longest discussions before that we started recording that we’ve ever had on the show because I think you’ve set the world record for how many things that you’ve started online.
Jocelyn: Most people, they don’t start things.
Shane: That’s right. You guys started everything. You threw all the mud on the wall.
Vincent: Like mushrooms.
Shane: That’s right, that’s right. Just throw it out there and see what grows, right? It’s just absolutely amazing. We’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about. First of all, tell us a little bit about your backstory. Jocelyn had already mentioned you guys are from the Philippines, but you’re not living in the Philippines now. So, tell us a little bit about just where you’re from and how you guys ended up where you are today.
Tita: In the Philippines, I was a Math teacher and we immigrated here to Canada, the four of us, three years ago and we are residing here in Toronto as permanent residents. Both of us are licensed financial coaches in Ontario. My husband is doing part-time because he is working full time as a service technician. On the other hand, I am not on a fixed schedule because I’m more dependent on client calls.
My husband has so many websites, he has three websites online and he’s is helping me to create my own website, which is the tatiskitchen.wordpress.com.
On my Tati’s Kitchen, that is more on Filipino recipes that I’ve learned from my mother and some I made on my own, and I also searched some recipes, and it’s not yet monetized. I don’t have an e-mail list for that.
It’s just like for me, my original plan for Tati’s Kitchen was just a legacy that when I grow old, I could see the ingredients and the recipes that I did. If, in case, I forget some ingredients, I could go back to it, something like that.
Aside from that, we have another website which is financialcouple.com. It’s more related to what we are licensed as financial coaches and to help other families, if they have financial problems. For my husband, his website is–
Vincent: My website is memovingtocanada.com. I started it when I was in Singapore where I worked as a service technician as well. I tried to document my application for being a permanent resident in Canada. I have gained some followers through that. When I came to Canada, I made meetups for all my followers, and we gained more friends and got acquainted with other families as well. That’s why we have this website, memovingtocanada.com.
Shane: You guys have a lot going on. You have the kitchen website, which basically, just to recap, it’s your ingredients, your recipes, and what you told me off-air was you started doing it, too, because there were ingredients not available in Canada that were available in the Philippines, so you’re helping people come up with ideas to replace certain ingredients to still be able to cook their recipes even when they can’t get everything.
And then you have financialcouple.com, which by the way is a great domain name. I don’t even know how that was available because that is a ridiculously good domain name. You’ve got that because you guys are actually licensed financial coaches. You’re helping people just figure out how to get out of debt, how to save for college, how to set up emergency funds. Kind of a Dave Ramsey kind of thing.
The one that does have traction, has an audience, and has been monetized is basically helping immigrants who are moving to Canada. That’s pretty much the summary of where we are right now.
Vincent: Yes.
Shane: Alright, that’s good. That’s awesome.
Jocelyn: Generally, this is where we ask, “Why do you want to start an online business?” Or, “Why did you start this particular online business?” I guess my question to you guys would be, since you have so many sites already, what made you decide to jump in and start all these different websites?
Shane: Was this originally just so you could journal all of these things that you do, or was it like, “Hey, I think we can make money online. Let’s try.” Why did you do all this in the first place?
Vincent: When I was in Singapore, it was about in 2012, I learned about blogging from Pat Flynn, and I heard you guys having a podcast with him. I was trying to create a website that I can monetize. Since I moved to Singapore, I have this — Ben Alagnam. So, Ben Alagnam is mainly for Singapore tourist workers coming from other countries going into Singapore. I had an idea of having memovingtocanada because I was applying for the permanent residency.
That was the time when I had a lot of followers coming in who are also applying for the permanent residency. I always listened to your podcast since 2013, I think, 2014, around there. Then, I tried to listen and I found out that you can have a membership site. I tried to get a website that can be our bread and butter.
Since I’m working in Singapore away from my family, I need to have that so that we can be together. When I was approved in Singapore, we went together to Canada as permanent residents, and that was a very good event that happened to us. When I went here, I was thinking, maybe I can use that website to have an online business. My job now is a service technician. I have to trouble every day, and I have to go to East and West of Canada. I need to have a business that can help us be together with my wife, and at least I will be here all day with them.
Shane: Man, that is an amazing story. It blows my mind, too, because this is one of the coolest calls we’ve ever had. People are like, “I don’t know if I can do the internet thing, I don’t know if I can make it happen.”
Well, one, congratulations to you guys for crushing it because you guys are flying all over the world, moving from the Philippines, to Singapore, to Canada, to all over these places, you’ve got kids and you’re still making time to try these online business things. You’re literally throwing four or five things on the wall. You’ve tried one, you’ve tried a second one.
We see so many people that are not doing all these things. They try once, and maybe after two months, nobody gave them money so they quit. I just want to really acknowledge that right here on the air that you guys have done amazing things so far just building some things and trying some things. Forget the audience, forget that monetization. That’s amazing, but I also love this conversation we are having now because here you guys are, you’re a 14-hour difference in time zone from us all over the world. We’re in Kentucky. You all started out in the Philippines and the reason we do this is because we want to spend more time with our families. We want more stability in our life. We want to be in control of our destiny, and that is so universal and everyone listening, everyone has that opportunity if they would just make it a priority, and make it happen. Just really, really cool, and that’s awesome guys.
Tita & Vincent: Yeah, thank you!
Jocelyn: Okay, you guys have a lot of different sites, a lot of stuff going on. What we want to know next is how can we help you to move forward? I know you guys are kind of wanting to consolidated or maybe consider just an alternative to what you are doing right now. How can we help you to move that forward?
Vincent: Since we have memovingtocanada.com, and this website is already a membership site, but it is not monetized yet for subscription, we were thinking that if we can consolidate tatiskitchen.com, finicialcouple.com in one membership site where the members can go in and log in and they can see if there’s a financial blog post for Canada and cooking ingredients or maybe we can add more products catered for immigrants that are going to Canada. That is our question, if we can consolidate, or just leave it as is.
Shane: Alright, so basically, you’ve come to the point where you’ve realized, “Maybe we shouldn’t have started so many sites.” We did that. We’ve been to that point. We actually had a lot of monetized sites and we started closing them down because it is a lot of work to manage a whole bunch of different sites, and we have one membership site and everything lives in that one place. You can market that to different people.
I do think that in this case, you’ve got to look at all the things you’ve started and say to yourself, “Are these things related enough to live in the same place?” If you look at Flipped Lifestyle, when you go in the Flip Your Life community, and you join our membership, we have 50 courses, we have multiple forums, lots of different topics are happening. But they’re all related. They are all sequential in steps and things like that.
What I’m afraid of is this: the memovingtocanada site, that’s for immigrants. That makes sense, that’s the process that everyone is going to have to go through to get into Canada. And a lot of people move to Canada, and that’s a great thing. But the kitchen site is only for the Filipino cooking, right? That’s your expertise. I’m not sure that one is a great fit inside of the Canada site.
I also think the Financial Couple thing, if you focused only on Immigrant finances, if you did courses for people moving in, how to get on a good financial footing, how to stay out of debt, how to navigate the Canadian economy compared to the economy they came from, that actually does, I think makes sense to go in there because you are immigrants, you’ve done it and that makes you in a perfect position to lead.
Jocelyn: I would just ask; which site is getting the most traffic? Which has some good people coming to it now?
Vincent: Memovingtocanada.blogspot.com. That’s the site that is having great traffic. I did that when I was in Singapore, and there is a lot of followers and readers in there. That’s why I made my own memovingtocanada.com, my own domain name, because BlogSpot is just free. I made it like a lead magnet from memovingtocanada.blogspot.com, and then if they want like a community, they can go to the domain, the dot com.
Shane: That’s a wise choice. This is a really common thing that people mess up online. They try all these things, and they’ve got this one, or they want to keep them all. But then something gets traction. You have traction on one of your websites. It is monetized, it has a following, it has an audience. I really think you guys should focus all of your talents and all of your energy right there. Your BlogSpot is fine for your recipes. That’s just a personal project.
You guys are a couple that’s working together, you’ve clearly got a good relationship to grow that. If you would put all your talents, all your energy into the immigrants moving to Canada website, you can still talk about all those things you like. You can still talk about, “Hey, did you know that they don’t have all the ingredients from your home country? But here are five things that work great in all recipes. Replace this thing with this thing,” whatever. You could still have a whole course on immigrant couples who are for finances. This is the immigrant’s guide to finances in Canada.
That can be a part of your Canadian theme. But you’re going to find out that if you put all your energy into that one thing, the one thing that’s got traction, the one thing that matters, you’re not going to be dividing your focus. You’re not going to be separating. You’re going to be working together toward a common goal. That was actually a mistake Jocelyn and I made early on. We looked back and we wish when Elementary Librarian had got that one thing working, we thought, “Oh we figured out a system. We can do this multiple times.”
Yeah, we did and it worked. But we would have probably been better off if we had just focused on one thing together because that’s an unfair advantage that both of you be going into it at one time. Do you think that, Jocelyn?
Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s the way that I would approach it for right now. It doesn’t mean that you can never work on those other projects again. It just means for right now, you go all in on that project, and see if you can make it work.
Vincent: Okay.
Shane: What reservations do you have about that because why do you want to have multiple sites? Because that is a valid concern. Why do you want to start the kitchen site? Are you just trying to use every skill you’ve got to create more monetization, or was it a personal choice? You guys just wanted your own things? What was it that made you want to have all the sites independently?
Vincent: Our goal is to make one website as specific for a niche. We are trying to do that. That’s why, like a cooking site, and then we want to try the financial site. It’s in one niche specific to readers.
Shane: Right, exactly. That’s another mistake that people do make because they niche down too far. Or they try to do 10 different niche markets. When the niches are related, they can be in the same place. That’s the beauty of the membership. Jocelyn and I teach a lot of mindset, a lot of time management. We teach about email marketing. Those could be separate niches.
But they make sense in the context of our membership to all be talked about together. The same thing is, here, take the things you’re already doing and apply it to the thing that’s working, and you’ll get so much further. I love the idea of the financial courses living in the Moving to Canada, and you’re teaching good financial practices to the immigrants who are moving into Canada.
Moving from another country, you’ve got to learn how the financial system works, exchange rates, and maybe they are sending money home, you know what I mean. How do they do those things? If you put it all in one place, that’s fine. But then take the kitchen website. That is so specific to Filipinos, the way you’re writing it right now.
Even though there are Filipinos you’re talking to that are going to be drawn into Canada, just tell them about your kitchen website from there. Don’t make it a big part of this website because most of the people that are coming aren’t interested in cooking; they are interested in getting into Canada, getting their family on a firm, financial footing, and being able to become permanent residents and staying in the country.
That kitchen thing might be out of the orbit of this thing that is becoming the center of your business world. Does that make sense?
Vincent and Tita: Yes, it makes sense.
Shane: Okay. See, do you see that kind of like, “Okay.” Was that disappointing to you? What are you experiencing right there? It sounded like you were kind of sad.
Tita: No, it’s because the tatiskitchen is actually my own website. it’s like a personal website for me.
Shane: It’s your baby, it’s your baby.
Tita: Yeah, something like that.
Shane: Right, exactly. Jocelyn actually has something similar to what you’re doing that she has started lately, and it’s kind of her thing. But it’s totally outside of the Flipped Lifestyle thing, but maybe she can tell you what she started.
Jocelyn: I’m in the process of working on something. I’m not going to reveal it just yet because I’m not quite ready to do that.
Shane: Top secret!
Jocelyn: But I’m kind of wanting to start writing and more for just personal enjoyment than for monetization. Am I going to monetize? of course, because that’s what we do. But it’s something that I just want to do, it’s something I feel like I want to talk about. That is why I’m going to be starting something new. There’s nothing wrong with writing for enjoyment, and even trying to monetize it.
But what we’re trying to say is just, don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole. If it’s something that’s not going to work well with your other site, don’t try to smash it in just for simplicity’s sake. Continue to work on it because you want to work on it, then monetize the other site. Work together to really push that other site forward.
Shane: That’s what I got out of this conversation from you guys. I think a lot of people listening feel the same way. We all hear these things like, “Focus on the one thing.” Even here, we told you, put the finances and the immigration stuff in one place. That’s amazing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do other things because you want to be able to do other things. I loved what you said earlier about, you’re creating this blog as a legacy: a legacy for you, when you’re older, a legacy for your children.
When Jocelyn’s grandmother passed away– when your grandparents passed away– you know how everybody gets mementos and things from her house, right? My grandmother, when she passed away– so bizarre — but I actually have a giant wooden fork and a giant wooden spoon. They are four feet long. But she got them in World War II in a deployment in the Philippines.
When I walk into my grandmother’s kitchen, I always saw those hanging over her couch. And when my grandmother passed away, they were like, “Is there anything that you want from her home?” And I’m like, “I want the big fork and spoon.” It was just synonymous with my grandmother’s house.
Jocelyn has this little box of index cards from her grandmother, and it’s got all these recipes and stuff. Those are handwritten, aren’t they? They’re like all handwritten. That’s a legacy item, and that is what your blog thing is. There is an amazing reason to create that blog outside of the monetization. And eventually some monetization may come from it anyway. That’s something you’re doing for you, and it’s okay.
I think sometimes, we try to think, “No, I must only do things that make money.” That’s not true. We need to leave legacies, enjoy our life, and all those things, too. Keep doing the kitchen thing, but definitely consolidate your stuff into that one website.
Vincent: And Shane, can we just put a link for the cooking thing in the memovingtocanada? Just a bit there, maybe some are interested in that?
Shane: It’s your site. There’s no rules. One thing that we do in the Flip Your Life community is we have regional groups. The United States is broken up into six groups. The northeast, the southeast, the Midwest. Then we have Asia and Pacific, Middle East, we have Australia, because we have members all over the world, right?
You could go ahead and start filtering people, like, “Where are you from?” And some people might be from Japan, or Hong Kong or they might be from the Philippines or wherever they’re from. As they are moving in, the people in the Philippines could have their own forum.
That way they can talk in their language, they can go talk in their customs and whatever. You just have ads in that forum that say, “Hey, are you having trouble finding ingredients? Check out our kitchen website.” That way, you actually only market it to the segment that needs it and the other people, if they find enjoyment in cooking and things like that, you got it, too.
I love what you asked there. You said, “Can we?” We all feel that sometimes we need permission to do something on our own websites. Really, you can do whatever you want. Anna Jo had a fundraiser in May for school, and we needed to raise some money, but we didn’t want to go door to door to sell the cookie stuff. We did a Gofundme, and we just sent our e-mail to our people, and we were like, “Hey, guys, you listen to our podcast. Well, our little girl is having a fundraiser at school, and we’re raising money for a good cause.” It was for poor kids. We were like, “Can we just do this here?” And we raised enough money through our website.
We didn’t ask permission to do that, we just did it. And you can just do whatever you want, it’s your website. It doesn’t matter.
Vincent: Okay.
Tita: Thank you.
Jocelyn: Okay, guys well, this is one of my favorite parts of the show, and you guys are some massive action takers so I know that you will have a good answer for us. We always ask people before we go, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about on today’s call?
Vincent: Okay, so after this call, we’re going to focus more on memovingtocanada.com and blog more about financialcouple there. We’re going to have what Shane had said, we can have segments inside the website for specific readers — that’s what we’re going to do.
Shane: Perfect. Just take your knowledge of being financial consultants. Put it with the immigrant community in Canada to help them get on good financial footing, and now you’ve got a great opportunity to build a crazy cool membership because your membership starts as they are trying to move to Canada. When they move to Canada, they have a reason now to keep paying. Once they get their residency, they keep paying you because they want to learn the ropes of the financial system.
They want to get on good footing and what a great way to keep people in your membership for month after month after month as you help them. Really, this is an awesome opportunity for you guys because not only are you changing people’s lives by helping them move into the country that they want to move into, but you’re making sure they have a strong financial foundation going forward. That’s going to leave a huge legacy for everybody that ever comes to your site.
Vincent & Tita: Okay.
Shane: Alright, guys, well thanks so much for coming on the show again today, and for sharing with everybody in the Flipped Lifestyle audience on your journey. I’m sure that some of the questions that we had today are really hitting home to some people that are listening to this. We just love the transparency of our community. We just love when people come on the show. We want to thank you guys for that, too.
Tita: Thank you, also!
Vincent: Yeah, thank you!
Tita: We learned a lot.
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 our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business, too.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of our show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were working at 9-to-5 jobs, still.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is a family trip to Holiday World in Santa Claus, IN. Holiday World is somewhere that I have been going for a very long time. I started going there, I think in the 80’s when it was Santa Claus Land — it is now Holiday World. We take the kids up there occasionally. We haven’t been there in a couple of years, but we decided this year that we were going to go up because I had gone to my 20-year high school reunion.
Shane: Date yourself.
Jocelyn: Yeah, makes me old. But we went over there for my 20-year high school reunion, so we took the kids up to holiday world on Sunday and Monday. I love going to any type of theme park except Disney on a weekday because they are less busy.
Shane: Disney doesn’t matter. Disney is always busy.
Jocelyn: But I love going on a weekday because there are no lines, you can just walk in and do whatever you want to do, and that was the case on these two days in Holiday World. We had a great time, we got to see Santa because that is one of the things that they do there. We got to ride on some rides, we went to a water park. It was just a great time.
Shane: We stayed in this place, Camp Rudolf. You can rent motor homes, camper-type things. The kids love it. They absolutely love going to Camp Rudolf, and it was just an awesome fun time. That’s one of the biggest differences, I think between before and now when we traveled. When we use to travel, it was like you had to do it in certain times of the year.
You had to do it on weekends, when everyone else had to do it. We always plan our trips in a way where nobody else is there, or where half the people that are normally there are there. When we pulled into Camp Rudolf, it looked like a ghost town. Everyone else had left on that Sunday because they had to go back to work on Monday. We were pulling in when everybody else was pulling out. It just saves you so much stress and time.
Jocelyn: It just saves you a lot of time. I mean, sometimes it can save you money, too. But right now, in our life, we’re just at a point where time is so much more valuable than money right now.
Shane: And the headaches, the stress, too. Waiting in line is frustrating when it’s hot and things like that, and when there’s so much people around. Jocelyn hates huge crowds. She doesn’t like it at all. To remove that stress makes the trips more fun, which lets you have more memories and Can’t Miss Moments, and that’s just not possible without the Flipped Lifestyle.
Shane: Before we sign off, we would like to close off every show with a verse from the Bible. Today’s first comes from 1 Peter 4:10. The Bible says, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others.” Make sure you are using whatever gifts and talents you have in your online business. Get out there, serve other people. People need you and what you know.
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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