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Need ideas on how to transition your career expertise into an online business?
Listen to how we help today’s guest do exactly that by talking about the fundamentals and strategies of starting her online business.
This week’s guest is Flip Your Life community member and Public Relations Expert, Cheryl Tan.
Cheryl used to be a television news anchor and reporter. She had been in the media industry for nearly 20 years and started her company in 2014 in order to help businessmen and women gain media attention they want.
Clear instructions and expert strategies, Cheryl gives even the most overwhelmed clients with fresh insight.
Join us on this episode as we help Cheryl figure out the right avatar to build her membership, discuss how she can grow her content and find her rhythm on her first membership launch.
Let’s get this started!
You Will Learn:
- How to batch your content to make it easier for your members.
- How to use your members’ questions to grow your content.
- The advantages of having core beta members on your launch.
- Topics you can focus on for your podcast.
- 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 our trip to Clearwater Beach. We decided to go down to the beach because our kids love KIDZ BOP. We heard on Channel 77 that they were having a concert and I thought, “Oh, that sounds like fun.” We had a great time at Clearwater. Our kids loved the beach. It’s awesome that our kids get to just see the ocean. It’s not just about buying the concert tickets or buying the seats on the beach… it’s just the experience of being out there.”
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show!
If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we help Cheryl take her online public relations 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. Great to be back with you again this week. For those of you who may be new to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, this show is a little different than other online business podcasts that you’re used to. We do not bring on experts or gurus selling books or anything like that. We bring on actual Flip Your Life community members, real people running real online businesses and we help them take their business to the next level. I am super excited for our member that we are bringing on the call today because this is one of our members. We have actually met in person. We got to hang out with this person a few weeks ago in Chicago at a conference and we just know she is going to have some great questions today and we’re going to have an awesome discussion about online business. Our guest today is Cheryl Tan. Welcome to the show.
Cheryl: Shane and Jocelyn, thank you so much for having me on the show. It was really, really nice to meet both of you in person.
Shane: I know. I love being able to put pictures like we actually have pictures with you, so we can put them with your podcast and that’s amazing. You know?
Cheryl: Oh, yeah. That’s nice.
Jocelyn: Yeah. That’s one of my favorite kind of guests – that are people we have met in real life, and we hope to meet some of our other guests in real life. So, it’s been a lot of fun just getting to know you. We’ve actually joined your membership, which I’m sure we’ll be talking about.
Shane: This might be the first for Flipped Lifestyle. I don’t know if we’ve joined anybody else’s membership right now but once you launched, we’re like, “We’re in. We got to do this.”
Jocelyn: Yeah. So we’ll talk a little bit more about that as the call goes on. But we always start out by talking a little bit about where you’ve been before we talk about where you’re going. So, quickly tell us a little bit about you, your background and your online business.
Cheryl: Thank you so much for this opportunity. So, it starts off actually on television. My whole adult career has been as a TV news journalist. And two years ago, in 2014, I decided to do one of the scariest things I’ve done as an adult is to switch careers and leave television news to start my own company. And I did what I think a lot of people do is you go into consulting, doing what you know.
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: So, I figured I would help businesses figure out how to get media attention. So, I worked one-on-one with clients, and it’s great. I’ve got some clients right now and I still do that with private clients. We help them get media attention. We help them make their mark. But it was maybe about a year or so ago. A friend introduced to your podcast and I was listening and I’m like, “This is really, really interesting,” how you can help more people…
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: With your expertise by flipping the model a little bit. So, that was in my head. And it took me a little while to figure out how to make that part happen online. But I just launched, again, with the help of the two of you. I launched an online PR Public Relations Training Academy just a few weeks ago. And, that’s where most of my questions will focus on, this PR course online right now.
Shane: Yeah, so basically what we’re talking about here is what a lot of people do is they do a one-on-one business when they do something. And, we ought to say the real world, I mean that’s hilarious. But like – it’s like, in physical life, you know what I mean? Like not online.
Cheryl: Because people on the internet they don’t exist…
Shane: They’re not – they don’t exist…
Cheryl: No, they don’t.
Shane: Yeah, everything – it’s figment for imagination. But the – but like we talked about, like scaling and being able to say, “OK, I’m giving every person the same knowledge. Why would I not just create a course and then just answer their questions?” That allows me to scale and do things I bet. It was so funny because we worked with Cheryl in the forums a little bit. We were trying to get a beat on what she was doing and what she wanted to do and how to scale this. And, we actually went and listened to her – she talked at that podcast movement. And, we went and showed up and we were like, “Let’s go listen to Cheryl’s talk.” And, like it just hit me like a ton of bricks when we heard you in person. I was like, “I know what Cheryl has to do.” Like, this is what we have to do. And like, we agreed like, with Jocelyn I like grabbed her when she coming offstage and we’re like come over here a minute. We got to talk to you.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and I actually sort of fleshed out some of our goals as well. Like, while listening to that. So, Shane was like furiously writing notes about what you should do. I’m furiously writing notes about what we should do.
Shane: It was awesome. It was so great.
Jocelyn: It was just like a very cool moment.
Cheryl: So, it will – was still cool for me because I did. I stepped off the stage and you two came at me and it was like a moment of clarity though.
Shane: Yeah, it was.
Cheryl: I guess I’d been toward this but hadn’t really gotten there…
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: But, when you said it, it made sense. So, when I got home, I created the course.
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: I did it in like three weeks. And, it was up.
Shane: That’s why it’s so important why we always say, you know, people are like, “Well, how good are your courses and how good is this and how good is that?” And, we’re like you don’t really understand how this work. It’s so important to have a community where you’re talking to people. Because, you know, we went back and forth with different messages in the forms, we talked a little bit, we worked through the process. It wasn’t like that moment you said anything that was totally that one miracle statement that made it clear. We had worked through all this and then that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back, you know what I mean? It was like…
Cheryl: Right.
Shane: That’s what we’ve got to do. So, it’s important to have those discussions. You don’t just come in and figure it out in a day. It’s more like let’s go back and forth. Let’s research. Let’s talk. Ah, this could be our angle and then all of a sudden something works online. So, tell us a little bit about where you’ve started. You just launched this membership, you’ve got a few members in there.
Jocelyn: It was awesome.
Shane: Which is awesome. That’s a huge turning point. And then, you’re starting to kind of nurture them now, correct?
Cheryl: Yeah, yeah. And so, you’re exactly right. I haven’t really publicly announced it. This may be the most public announcement that is in this just…
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: I have a list of about 500 people and I shared it with them. And I mean, really not even in a hugely public way. I just said, “Hey, I’m starting something new and I got members.”
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: About five of them.
Shane: That’s good. Now, this is like a beta launch…
Jocelyn: That’s true.
Shane: Basically, is what this is.
Cheryl: Exactly, and I know I can feel it that I’m just testing the waters. So, I’m really not so confident and I’m not throwing it out there…
Shane: I understand.
Cheryl: So, it really is a beta – beta launch. And so, I’m really just trying to figure out what to do right now.
Shane: Perfect.
Cheryl: I’m trying to figure out if it’s a good offer. I’m trying to figure out if I’ve got the right targeting.
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: All of these things. And so, well I’m also trying to figure out content. Like how do I get attention to this course without saying, “Hey, I have a course out here.”
Shane: Yeah. But, you’re doing it the right way. Because, number one, you did step out. You did launch when it wasn’t even totally finished. You just worked – kind of have like the outline and what it was going to look like. And we always recommend let five to 10 people in it first and let them kick the tires, you know what I’m saying? Make sure that everything’s working. Figure out, you know, your payments messed up or if it’s actually taking their payments? Does your order form work? Does the forums – can they get to log in? Like, it’s good to have a few of your really core people to test that for you. Where I’m going to get mad if something’s broken. And then, you go in and you fix it and now you can launch it back out and we’ll do like a really big thing. If you’ve got 500 people in your list, even though some of them might not be right perfectly aligned to this, I’m pretty sure we could find 20 people with a nice, solid email campaign for us to live that launch. So, you’re right on track with everything.
Jocelyn: So, I think that we sort of skipped over a little bit, you know, exactly what your membership is. So, just in like, you know, one minute, tell us a little bit about that.
Shane: Who do you help and what do you do?
Cheryl: This should be a long time to figure out. So, I’m happy that you’re asking it now because it really did take probably every bit of a year to figure out this piece of who I’m trying to serve. So, I figured out that what works really well for this membership, it will serve people who are doing things amazingly well in their businesses and in their communities. And, they can’t quite figure out how to get attention to their causes, their companies. They can’t get that media attention. They can’t figure out that piece of the puzzle.
Shane: Like get in the newspaper, get on that…
Cheryl: Right.
Shane: local TV session, whatever, basically.
Cheryl: Exactly. So, they’re not exactly sure even what they don’t know. I get a lot of questions like, “Where do I start”, “Who do I reach out to?,” “What do I say to these journalists?” So, this course is designed to answer those questions. People who are passionate. So, they start out with doing great things. It starts out with being really good in their businesses and giving back to the community. And those folks are the people who really can thrive in this community because they have the basis of what makes a great story. They just are not quite sure how to make that outreach.
Shane: Gotcha.
Cheryl: They don’t know who to reach out to, they don’t know what to say and then the answers are within this online course.
Shane: That is so awesome.
Cheryl: And in the community as well.
Shane: Well, and that’s so funny because people ask it, like, we’ve been in Forbes and helping them post and like all these major things. People come out to us and like, “Oh, how did you get into that?”And we’re like, “I don’t know.” Like, we don’t even know. Well, like I mean, they just – we got – we, really, we just got on one thing and we got through another like – but there is a process. Like if I look back in 20/20 hindsight, I could probably figure out this process of – well, we did this. Then that led to that and then that led to all these things, you know? And, I think it’s amazing what we love about your membership is you really do say, “No. You start here. A, B, C, D, E, F, G then you go get to put, you know, feature in Forbes on your inner byline or whatever, you know what I mean?
Cheryl: Right, and for sure…
Shane: So, that is very cool.
Cheryl: The two of you had all the pieces in place. And, that’s why the Forbes and the Huffington Post articles came because you did all those pieces and it worked into your favor and got the attention of those journalists.
Shane: That’s amazing. Awesome stuff. OK.
Jocelyn: Yeah. So, we’re looking forward to jumping in and answering some of your questions about what you need to do next. So, let’s jump into your first question today. What are you struggling with right now in the business and how can we help?
Cheryl: I would say probably the first thing is overwhelmed. So, I have the members and I’m reaching out to them one-on-one, and I’m talking to them and seeing how I can help and we’ve had one member call that is – has been recorded and is now in the membership. But, I guess I’m trying to figure out, what I’m supposed to do next. Like, what the next step is.
Shane: I think the biggest thing right now is – you know, it’s so easy to go looking six months ahead and like, how am I going to get these 100 members and how am I going to manage a 100 members. And how am I going to do this, and how am I going to do that? Really, the main thing you got to do when you first launch a membership site is you’ve got to just really talk as much as possible to the people that do sign up originally. OK? Not only because, you know, you – as I’m not saying this nebulous thing that we’ll do a survey and figure out what they want. It’s just to let you get into that rhythm. If you’re in a rhythm, you’re not overwhelmed, you know what I mean?
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: So, if you’re talking to them, you’re getting information, you’re asking them their questions and really just help them one question at a time. Just like we do in Flip Your Life, you know? Everybody comes in with these big, grand, you know, meaning of life type questions. And, we’re like, “No, here’s your next – where you step.” This is put your foot in front of your other foot right now. If you’ll just get into a flow for the next two or three weeks of helping those members one-on-one, because you can do it now. You’re going to find a lot more clarity and it’s going to come down. Don’t worry about creating 16 courses and relaunching the whole membership to this list and things like that. Right now, let’s just focus on the people that you’ve got.
Jocelyn: Yeah. And I would say like two things that really help me out a whole lot are batching things in groups. So, like for all of your content for the next month, let’s go ahead and write that as far as like your blog goes or, you know, if – I think you’re doing a podcast, right?
Cheryl: I am.
Jocelyn: So, yeah, go ahead and start batching some of that. OK?
Shane: Like this week get six of those done or something.
Jocelyn: Yeah, also batch your emails. So, you know, that you’re going to send emails out to your members every so often, you know, if it’s maybe once a week, if it’s every other week, if it’s every month. Whatever it is, go ahead and get those batched up. Something I defer only to librarian is I wrote a year’s worth of emails. So, my virtual assistant, they go into a spreadsheet and they get the text from that particular month. Now, there are some things that go into it live like I do put some things from the forum that have been discussed recently. Like, that’s one of her responsibilities. But, she has an email, she has the procedures, she knows exactly what to do, she goes in there and gets in. So, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about every month. I don’t have to sit here and say, “Oh, no, you know, it’s the 10th, what am I going to put in my member email and that’s already done.”
Shane: And so – so basically what Jocelyn’s saying here is you’re probably overwhelmed not because of the membership. You’re probably overwhelmed because you’re like, “Crap, I’ve got to record a podcast. Crap, I’ve got to get that thing launched. Shoot, I’ve got to send an email out to tell everybody there’s a podcast. That gone, I’ve got to email my members and tell them to come to the member column.
Jocelyn: And, it can be overwhelming.
Shane: And, that is overwhelming. But, if you can remove all of the stuff that can be batched over a week or a two? At least, buy yourself six weeks of clarity. Now, you don’t have to be overwhelmed for five weeks.
Jocelyn: So, now that’s not hanging over your head. You now have time to think about how can I serve my members. How can I talk to them and find out what they need to know and that can also help with your content. So, if you’re struggling with coming up with things to write about, ask your members. You know, what are you struggling with right now and what could I help you with, write a response that goes in your membership but use part of that response as…
Shane: In your blogpost.
Jocelyn: Part of your content.
Shane: Yeah, like so that’s got – what we call that – our – what we do is we call it a content explosion. Like we always start at our forum every day. OK? We’ve stopped trying to think of ideas for blog post or podcast or anything else. We start with our people. And, we say, “OK, this is a great question, so go write a blogpost about it.” Or, “This is a great question, let’s talk about that on our podcast.” We don’t have to – we’ve removed overwhelmed because we stopped saying, “Man, I’ve got to write a new email and a new blogpost and do a new podcast and do everything.” No, I don’t anymore. I pick one thing and I turn that same thing into everything. Does that make sense?
Cheryl: I love that. Yeah. I absolutely love that.
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: It makes it so much easier as you’re creating content, too.
Shane: Oh, so much easier. Like I don’t think we’ve actually had to have any kind of brainstorming session about content in probably almost a year.
Jocelyn: Yeah and we’ve also had a lot less were arguments.
Shane: About what we’re going to be talking about…
Jocelyn: Yeah. Because, I mean, now we just answer our members’ questions. So, like it serves a lot of purposes. It serves to create content. It serves to promote the membership because we only talk to our members on our podcast. And, it’s a great testimonial. I mean, we can use this in multiple different ways. So, that’s the cool thing about it. But, the other thing I was going to say, you know, I said I was – I had two things. The first thing was batching. The second thing is procedures. Like, just have your procedures down. Repeat them over and over and over. This is what we do all the time when you start getting overwhelmed, fall back to those procedures. It takes a long time to create them and it’s not always fun. But, once they’re done, they’re done. And, you can just kind of back more, I’ll autopilot that way.
Shane: Also, I think entrepreneurs that are online are the worst people on Earth about reinventing the wheel every week. But, it’s like every week, you want to like write a new blogpost. Every week, you want to do a new webinar. Every week, you want to do this. Like, just do the same thing over and over again. Because, not everyone is going to hear it the first time, you know? So, like don’t get overwhelmed thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to create all this new content and all this new stuff.” Well, you just made a part of your course for five people. There’s 495 people on your list that have never seen that. We just have to tell them about it. So, I think content in your public facing business needs to be batched. But, I think you’re too consumed with how much content you need to put into your membership. You just need to tell…
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: You just to keep telling all those other people there’s stuff already in there and I’m in there. And, I’m the content…
Jocelyn: Well, I’ll tell you a little secret Cheryl. And, this is the same as – for people in our membership. I joined your membership probably a couple of weeks ago and you know how many courses I’ve watched? Zero.
Cheryl: Mean.
Shane: She’s there to ask you questions, what to do next…
Jocelyn: I’m there to talk to you and, you know, mostly, yeah. And I think it – you know, it’s not because I think that it’s bad information or that I don’t need it. I probably do. But more importantly I want to talk to people and, you know, we use our content in Flipped Lifestyle to refer people back to.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: So, like if somebody asks us a question, most like, you know, that’s a great question, check out this training course, you know…
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: I talk about this specifically in this training course. Once you’ve watched it, then come back and comment on it and tell what me think you need to do next.
Shane: That’s called – we call it “just in time learning,” basically. Like…
Jocelyn: Yeah.
Shane: If you’ll notice when you join Flipped, the first thing we say is not go watch this video. The first thing we say is, “Go to the general forum and ask us a question right now. Tell us about yourself in the introduction forum and then go to the general forum and ask us what are you struggling with right now.” Because then, we save time by saying, “Hey, we’ve got a video about this. Go here.” If we don’t have a video, then I can answer that specific question…
Jocelyn: Or, we can quickly make one…
Shane: Or we can quickly make that training based on something someone actually asked for. We don’t figure it out. No wasted time. So, that’s where you’re at right now is…
Jocelyn: Does that make you feel a little better?
Cheryl: It does. It really does. Because it helps me think about the content I’m supposed to create.
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: As opposed to what I really need to do.
Shane: Exactly because…
Cheryl: And I can stop you…
Shane: And…
Cheryl: That totally can stop you.
Shane: And, it can be different from what people actually want. We all think we’ve got all the answers. We do but unless someone’s asking the question, it don’t matter what you’re answering. You can say – I can say all the answers in the world but if it’s not what that person needs right then, they’re not going to get a result and they’re not going to care, and they’re not going to join and they’re going to quit.
Jocelyn: And, that’s the beauty of doing the membership site’s the way that we do them because you don’t necessarily have to have a 1,000 courses or, you know, hundreds of modules about this or that. I mean you start in like hand and it’s nice but – and, you know, I said that I hadn’t watched any of your stuff. That’s not to say that I never will. I’m just saying I didn’t start there.
Shane: Right. So, back to your original question. We at – like we went off there a little bit. But, then like if you go back to the original question it’s like – you were talking about like the content and the overwhelm. There’s really no reason to be overwhelmed because your only content you need to create is, “Hey, member one, what do you need next?”, “Hey, member two, what do you need next?”. Member three, member four and member five make all those and the next 15 members that come in will probably need that, too. You see what I’m saying? And, you’ll build your avatar that way so when you relaunch, you’re ready to go.
Cheryl: So, I have another question related to content. As far as the content that you put out there to bring attention to your membership or to your brand, or your podcast. What kind of topics do you focus on then…
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: As far as Facebook posts or that kind of content that’s not in your membership.
Shane: Alright, so here’s…
Cheryl: More attention grabbing.
Shane: So, this is what we do and this is our philosophy. And, we keep screwing this up, how Jocelyn said it, but we were in the car the other day talking about this. And I just – this blew – Jocelyn like – everyone saw, I would just drop the mic. Like I call them Jocelyn bombs. Like I actually go hashtag Jocelyn bomb, whenever she says it. Because she’s like, Jocelyn is…
Jocelyn: I don’t talk very much but when I do talk it’s usually worthwhile.
Shane: But, when she does, it’s the universe explodes, Big Bang stuff, you know what I mean? But like, the other day she said, “You know, it’s not about constantly providing value for free. That’s not what it’s all about.”
Jocelyn: It’s about proof that you have provided value for other people.
Shane: Exactly. So, like what we focused primarily on now is we just show success stories. We have 300 and something success stories from when we’re live and counting. So, it’s like we just say, “Hey, Jeff did this and he got a 100 members. Go listen to his podcast where we talk to Jeff.” And, it’s like just help these people get results and then talk about those results, talk about what they did to get those results. Something that we’re about to debut in our podcast is we’ve been sending surveys to our success stories and we purposefully ask questions and say, “How did the community help you? How did Shane and Jocelyn help you? What was the biggest thing you did to help you achieve this success, like a launch of 30 members or something”, right?
Cheryl: Right.
Shane: And that’s the public facing content that we want to show people is this works and people are getting results.
Jocelyn: So, basically we’re focusing on social proof for our social media…
Shane: Our blog…
Jocelyn: Yeah.
Shane: Everything.
Jocelyn: Yeah. Any type of like public facing stuff, we’re focusing on either member questions which, again, points back to our membership because we’re serving our members. Or we’re focusing on some type of social proof. So, we might do an iTunes review. We might read a success story that someone has. It’s all pointing back to the success that we’ve helped our members achieve.
Shane: And also you say to yourself, “Well, yeah, but I’ve only got five members so far. We’re going to work with them. It’s going to take me a little while.” The thing about talking about results is a lot of times you can even interview someone on your podcast who you know followed the path you’re talking about. Like you know someone whose story got picked up in the local paper. Got picked up on the local TV station then all of a sudden they’re sitting on the Today Show, whatever. Like, you can seek out those people who have had the success story with the plan you’re putting out there like this is what you did to see, this is what I say to do. And, you can interview them and talk to them and reinforce your plan even before you have a lot of other – your success stories from your membership start rolling out. Which, I know you and I know that’s going to happen fast, you know what I mean? So, I – that’s how you kind of do it at first. It’s like, find guests like that. Or bring on guests and show them what to do next and as people start seeing you helping people take next steps, they see how these results play out over time, they’re going to want what you’ve got.
Cheryl: You’ve just read my mind, by the way. Because my next question was going to be about the podcast which I revamped after we met in Chicago whereas before it was just about business and entrepreneurship. But then, as we talked and we – I got clarity on where I was taking this business and this podcast, I started interviewing as you had mentioned entrepreneurs who had figured it out, how to make connections with reporters.
Shane: Who had been in media like you found them out…
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: And, yeah, I figured it out how to – and I didn’t necessarily help all of them. But, I’ve known them for a while, some of them. And, they’ve figured it out. They have figured out how to become media darlings…
Shane: Right.
Cheryl: In the sets.
Shane: Exactly.
Cheryl: And, I’m just – I was just trying to figure out how to use the podcast to bring attention to the community and I think you just answered my question.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that’s perfect. I mean, like on social media, you know, you could post – make one of those little pictures like up in Canva quick tip from so-and-so.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: And, you know, put that person’s tip and link to the podcast. That’s perfect place to get your podcast out there.
Shane: And, like we were in Business Insider recently, right? So, Business Insider took this massive interview that we did and they started cutting it up into smaller article and stuff like that. They did what Jocelyn says like quick tips from Shane and Jocelyn on Productivity. Then like, a month, a week later they released another article it said quick tips from Shane and Jocelyn on, you know, making money online. Or whatever it was. And like, so that’s what you could do with all this content. You interview someone who has made it to Forbes or whatever and you say, “How did you get there? What happened?”, “Oh, well I got in this local paper, my story got picked up” – you find these people with this – the narrative that fits your program, right? And, then you just say, “Well, that’s exactly what I teach.” Well, as you’re talking to them, it’s going to be natural to say, “You know, that was a great thing you did there. Going to that local TV station because the local TV is an affiliate of NBC which opens you up to their whole brand.” – you know, like you start having these conversations and you will automatically be positioned as the expert because you’re going to know why they got there even if they don’t. And, you’re going to be able to convey that to your audience.
Cheryl: Love it. Love, love, love it.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that that is a very logical place for you to start. I mean, it makes a lot of sense as far as doing it that way. You could certainly buzz up the content that way. Another thing I was going to say is you need to pick some of your – what you feel are your better podcast. And, you know, there’s always like a few real gems that stand out to you. So, if you say to yourself, “Like wow, that was a really good podcast.” Create a specific opt-in bonus for that. So, maybe the person was talking about getting on their local television station.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: So, you might just do like a quick checklist, “Things to Concentrate On When Trying to Get on Local TV” In that way, people can give their email address for that specific thing when you link to that like say from a Facebook post or a Twitter post or whatever
Cheryl: That’s perfect. I will definitely do that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and, you know…
Shane: Does all that make sense?
Jocelyn: Don’t feel like you have to do that for all of them.
Shane: But, just the best ones, yeah.
Jocelyn: Yeah, like the best ones…
Shane: 80/20 rule it.
Jocelyn: And then some of the opt-in bonuses will be relevant for multiple podcast.
Shane: Another thing that’s really important for everybody listening on this show is Jocelyn and I have a very different mindset when it come to our brand and like our podcast, our videos and everything else. You know, everybody does fall into that trap. I’m going to interview entrepreneurs. Or I’m going to do what so-and-so did because so-and-so got a lot of downloads or whatever, you know what I mean? Like you have to come up with something that is easy to do. You have to be smart here on how you’re doing this. You can’t start a podcast and go interview Timothy Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuck, they’re not going to come on your podcast or anybody else. But, you can look in the local paper and see a great story of someone like in your case, Cheryl. Hey, this is an entrepreneur who found their way into Forbes. And, then you just Google them and you’re like wait a minute, that person also appeared in the Winchester Times Tribune. Or whatever. And that, that just totally links them, I can get this person on my show very easily, you know what I mean? Everybody out there who – in any kind of brand, you’ve got to create content that is not copycat, that is unique but it’s also easy for you to get guests. Easy for you to talk about and easy for you to become the expert. One reason Jocelyn and I don’t want to bring like expert guests really on our show, we kind of dabbled in it. And then, we were just like well we want to be the experts. Why would I just bring someone on to promote their stuff? I want to – this is my show, it’s our show. So, you’re doing the same exact thing here. This motto will make it easy for you to find the right guest, the right avatar and let you talk about your membership in a natural flow of the conversation where a random entrepreneur pushing his book, you may never even get to mention that you get people in the news, you know?
Cheryl: Right, right.
Shane: So, you’re right on the right track.
Cheryl: There’s a lot to do. I got to tell you, there is a lot to do. But I love the clarity because it helps me with the focus. It helps me know that I’m kind of going in the right direction.
Jocelyn: Alright Cheryl, I hope that that gave you some good clarity on those questions. What else can we help you with today?
Cheryl: Well, this I know is a step, I’m not quite ready for yet but I’m kind of chomping up a bit. I don’t want to do some Facebook ads but I also want to know when it would be prudent to do so. When is the smart time to try to figure that whole thing out.
Jocelyn: Well, we do recommend that you have a retargeting pixel on right now, have you already done that?
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: OK, good.
Jocelyn: OK, good. Because even – just for everyone out there. Even if you’re not ready to run ads yet, the retargeting pixel will save audiences for 180 days. So, you know, when you’re thinking about doing ads, if you think you might do them in the near future, go ahead and place that pixel on there. So, that Facebook can know who is visiting your site, OK? So, that’s the very, most important thing.
Shane: And, I think for ads for you what I would do right now, usually when people are in their beta period and they get five to 10 members, OK? Some people get 20, some people get three. You know what I mean? it just depends what you get on that first pass. I do recommend that you don’t use ads at that point because…
Cheryl: OK.
Shane: You need to not be overwhelmed and if new people are coming in and if you’re trying to manage an ad and if you’re doing all this stuff, that’s just one more thing you have to worry about, right? So, I would go two or three weeks here, maybe the rest of this month and I would get just a little more comfortable with your members. Talk to them, get a little more information, kind of get ready to open the door back to those other 500 emails. That’s probably the next step we need to do is to go finish that list. Like, we need to get in the forums, develop a strategy where you’re going to have emails, a live webinar, we’re going to do a real opening day thing, get 20 more members out of that list. OK? At that point Cheryl, I would go ahead and run ads. I would have ads. We’ll figure out how we’re going to do it whether it’s automated webinars, live events, live webinars or…
Jocelyn: Or to a podcast.
Shane: Or to a podcast or something like that. We’ll plan that strategy. But, I think that once you’re comfortable enough, 80/20 here, with your membership and you kind of feel the wheels turning, we need to turn it on. Because you will never improve it if it’s not running. And, that’s the big thing people make the mistake is. Well, when I’m ready I’ll start my Facebook ads. When I’ve got everything perfect, I’ll start bringing more people in. But that’s like saying, when I’m ready I’ll have kids or when I’m ready I’ll buy a house. You ain’t never ready. You might as well do it anyway and just figure it out as you go.
Jocelyn: And one thing you can start on is to go ahead and start building your polled audiences. I’ve made two little training modules on Facebook so far, I’m working on the rest of them. But, I think that will help you sort of get some clarity and just start thinking about it. Just get your wheels turning about that.
Shane: Which will tide her over from the chomping of the bits and room…
Jocelyn: Exactly, yeah…
Shane: You know what I mean…
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: You’re actually doing a little bit with it, you know.
Jocelyn: So, even though I haven’t watched your training modules yet, I’m telling you to watch mine.
Shane: Hey, listen. She ain’t watching hers until you watch hers. That’s how it works around here, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Cheryl: No, I’m going to watch yours Jocelyn, for sure.
Shane: We’ll watch yours eventually once you tell us what to watch.
Cheryl: OK.
Shane: Yeah. But, that’s what I would say. I would get through this beta period. I would set myself – it’s actually September when we’re recording this. So, I would say we’re at today. You know, October, I’m going to open this up to that list and we’re really going to make a push to get to 25 members, OK? And then, we will in October get the ad strategy ready, get the open strategy ready and we open the doors and we start working toward 50 members, and then we start working toward a member a day and we got some tight targeting we’ve talked about with you that we can really go after.
Cheryl: Yeah.
Shane: So, I think that’s where you’re looking at. You’re about two months away from doing that.
Cheryl: I’m excited. Very excited.
Jocelyn: Alright, awesome. Well, we always ask everyone at the end of our calls, what’s one action step that you plan to take, say in the next 24 to 48 hours based on what we talked about on today’s call?
Cheryl: There’s a lot I’m going to do but the first thing I think I’m going to really focus on is talking to the members that I have. To really hone in on what it is they want to get them some results.
Shane: Yeah.
Cheryl: Depending on each situation, it can be very quick and in other situations, it takes a little bit more massage, more massaging but…
Shane: For sure.
Cheryl: But, to get them some results so I can highlight those positive things happening on social media, on the blog, in the forums even to let other people who are already in there know that it does work. The system works.
Jocelyn: Absolutely.
Shane: Absolutely.
Jocelyn: And I think though sometimes people think well I only have five members, that’s a bad thing. And I understand what you mean…
Shane: That’s amazing, you know…
Jocelyn: But that’s actually a good thing because you really want to serve those people and like you can do things now that you won’t be able to do in the future. You could even, for instance, if you see somebody who has some really low-hanging fruits schedule, Skype call with them for like 15 minutes a week. Just be like, “Hey, look I can’t do this forever but for right now, let’s really work hard to get these results. And, you know, I’m really going to help you while I can do this, while my membership is still small. And I think that most people would be very up for to that…
Shane: Jumping all over that.
Jocelyn: And, you know, Shane and I used to do that, too. When we first started out and we didn’t have a lot of members, there’s a saying in on my business and actually everything, this is, “You do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.” So, for a long time, we offered paid consulting. And, that was our way to like really put our hand on people and say, “OK, you’re going to get this done right now.” And, that was what helped us to be able to get some of those initial success stories so that we could begin to grow our membership more.
Shane: You can also do – take this is right after this step. Because I think that’s going to be pretty easy to get to those five members. And I always say, too like for everybody listening, if you find one member, you’re going to be able to find a 101 members. If you find members, you – there’s 505. I mean, this does scale. Once you figure out – if there’s one person out there that will pay you, there’s somebody else like them with the same problem you can solve, you know what I mean? So, this is – we’re building on this. But take this information that you get from these interviews and these 101’s, put – come to the forums in Flip Your Life, let us know what is happening. And, we can help you develop real time surveys to send back to that 500-person email list based on this people. And, we can start weeding out the people that aren’t the right avatar right now. So, what happens is a month or two from now when we’re ready to open this back up to add up all that big list, and 500 is a big list, 100 percent, that’s a good list. We can go say, “We know exactly who we’re talking to.” Because we’ve been in talks with people in real life, we’ve been using that information to survey the people on the list. And, we’ve really filtered it down to where we know we’ve got 20 to 50 hot people ready to jump in your membership, OK?
Cheryl: Fantastic, I can’t wait.
Jocelyn: Alright, awesome. Well, thank you for being on the show today Cheryl. We really look forward to seeing what you’re going to do in the future, I know it’s going to be something awesome.
Cheryl: Thank you for having me on the show guys, thank you.
Shane: Alright, guys. That wraps up another call. One of our Flip Your Life community members. If you’d 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’re going to move into our can’t miss moment segment. And these are things that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal nine to five job. Today’s can’t miss moment is our trip to Clearwater Beach. We decided to go down to the beach because our kids love KIDZ BOP. If any of you guys have Sirius…
Shane: Small children.
Jocelyn: SiriusXM, Channel 77 you know very well. In fact, we sort of even listen to KIDZ BOP when the kids aren’t with us…
Shane: Yeah.
Jocelyn: Because we don’t really realize it’s still on. It’s sort of like white noise now.
Shane: The KIDZ BOP is like they take popular songs and then kids actually sing them and they kind of change the words a little bit to make them more sanitized…
Jocelyn: PG.
Shane: For – yeah, PG for young folks and…
Jocelyn: Some of these songs are actually like really bad. Like the regular version…
Shane: Yeah, so…
Jocelyn: Because I don’t really know popular music because I listen to country music most of the time. So, now as when I hear them, otherwise I’m like…
Shane: Whoa…
Jocelyn: Oh, wow…
Shane: Our kids – I’m glad they’re not listening to the real version…
Jocelyn: I’m glad they cleaned that up.
Shane: So, there is KIDZ BOP.
Jocelyn: So, yeah. So, we were looking on their website. We heard on Channel 77 that they were having a concert and I thought, “Oh, that sounds like fun.” So, of course, they’re usually not coming to Kentucky. They actually are coming to Kentucky later this year.
Shane: But, it’s like in Louisville we’re just three or four hours away and it’s in the cold months. So…
Jocelyn: Well, and it was several months away. And if you have little children, you know, that sometimes they like things for a while and then sometimes they don’t like it anymore. So, I thought, well this would be a great opportunity to go and see KIDZ BOP. So, they were going to be in Clearwater Beach…
Shane: In Florida.
Jocelyn: And, so that’s how we decided to go down there at that time. And, it was a really good time. We went and spent a couple of days on the beach and went to the KIDZ BOP concert.
Shane: And, my favorite part about going to Clearwater Beach on this trip was a – you know, I love the beach. But Jocelyn’s not so big on sand. She’s not – she doesn’t dig the sand pretty much…
Jocelyn: It’s just OK.
Shane: She likes it like one day and then she’s just over it and totally done. But I could go out there and just beach bum all the time. And, so we went out there to play on the beach one day. And, the hotel we were at had these like queen-sized beach beds or something with like big like umbrellas and you got like two beach chairs with them. So, I walked up and asked them like how much were they, well, you know, how could I get one of those. And they were like $200 is – something like that to rent them for the day. And so, I was like, you know what, let’s do it. So, I – we rented one of those. So, we had this big queen-sized bed like sitting right on the beach and these chairs. The kids built sandcastles. They went out and played in the water and Clearwater Beach is just a beautiful beach. If you’ve never actually been down there. And I know that’s something that we never would have done before we started our online business or before we had the income that we do today because we just would never have spent $200 to lay on a queen-sized bed. We would have just put our towels down.
Jocelyn: And, I think that our neighbors in the cabana or whatever you call it, I think they weren’t so thrilled to have us there because…
Shane: That’s right…
Jocelyn: It was a man and woman. They were trying to read their books and, you know…
Shane: Our kids were not being the quietest of folks so…
Jocelyn: Yeah. And we don’t really get to read books on the beach. I think I would like the beach a lot more if I could actually like relax and enjoy it. But, you know what, my kids are at just at an age where you can’t do that but…
Shane: We can’t do that.
Jocelyn: We enjoyed a lot of other things. We got in the pool and just had a great time, so.
Shane: We had a great time at Clearwater. Our kids loved the beach. And, Jocelyn and I talk all the time like when we were kids, like, you know, we didn’t see the ocean very much. Or how were we…
Jocelyn: I had never seen the ocean until I was 21 years old.
Shane: 21 years old. Yeah, and like I had seen it like…
Jocelyn: Or maybe I was like 19 oh – but I was, yeah, I was in college.
Shane: Many, many years. And I had seen it a couple of times but we didn’t get to go all the time. And, I think our kids have been like three or four times now in their short lives. And the last couple of years, we pretty much went every single year. They’ve been to Fort Lauderdale, Clearwater and…
Jocelyn: And, Myrtle Beach.
Shane: Myrtle Beach, yeah. So, we’ve – it’s awesome that our kids get to just see the ocean. It’s not just about, you know, buying the concert tickets or buying the seats on the beach. It’s just to experience the world out there. And, that’s what online business has let us do. Before we go today guys, I want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn, I close every single one of our shows with a Bible verse. We get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the bible and we want to share some of that with you. Today’s Bible verse comes from 1 Corinthians 9:24 and the bible says, “Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run but only one gets the prize. Run in such a way as to get the prize.” Make sure that you are giving every ounce of effort that you are dedicated to making your online business work and run that race in such a way that you will get the prize. And, everything will work out in your online business. That’s 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’ll see you again.
Jocelyn: Bye.
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