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Our guest this week probably has the most mind blowing backstory ever
Today’s guest our good friend and Flip Your Life community member, Shon Gerber.
Shon has been married to his amazing wife for 24 years, has 3 biological children and 4 more born from their hearts (that’s 7 equally amazing children!)
He is a retired Air National Guard Lt. Col. who started as a Weapons Systems Officer flying B1B Bombers and later on, lead teams of highly skilled military hackers on missions to expose information security gaps and then train personnel on how to best address them.
As a Cybersecurity professional with 15 years of IT Security Field experience, he is now the Chief Information Security Officer for one of the largest private companies in the world.
Shon is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, and has achieved the certification for Legal Issues in Information Technology and Security… he is ALSO a Commercial Pilot and Instructor.
Basically, a nerd-ninja-wizard.
He created wordpresssecuritydaily.com to help others protect themselves from hackers and other online security related issues. He believes that through his membership, he can reach these potential victims and give them the necessary tools to defend themselves from these threats.
So, tune in as we talk about how he can target the right audience with the right ad using objective keywords to attract them into the membership.
We’re really going to flip through insightful topics in this episode, so get your pen and paper handy!
You Will Learn:
- Steps to take to sustain membership growth.
- Building a discoverable brand.
- How to get the correct objective.
- Targeting an audience with Google Keywords.
Links and resources in today’s podcast:
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 down to Florida and visiting the LEGOLAND Hotel, LEGOLAND amusement park and LEGOLAND water park. The kids had been badgering us for months. Somehow they had saw a YouTube video of people going to LEGOLAND and they were dying to go there. And we finally said, “You know what? Let’s just figure it out, let’s get down there, let’s go stay in the hotel and let’s have fun. So, we went down to LEGOLAND.”
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 Shon take his WordPress security website to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. I am super pumped for our guest today, because he’s a guy like me. He’s really energetic. He loves life and he’s got lots of catchphrases like me like boomshakalaka – that’s what I say. But, he’s got some catchphrases…
Jocelyn: I may not even talk at all.
Shane: Jocelyn may not make it through this show, but I want to welcome our guest today, a good friend of ours and a Flip Your Life community member, Shon Gerber. Shon, welcome to the show, baby.
Shon: Giddy up! How you guys doing?
Shane: I was sincerely – I told y’all so before we got on air, I was like, “Please let Shon say giddy up somewhere in this interview” because just – you are such a great encourager in the community. And like I love it when in the success forum we get a lot of people every day. They’re having like something looked good, or they made a sale or something like that. And, always – look, there’s always, look, there’s always a boomshakalaka for me and a giddy up from Shon when we do that. So, we really appreciate that, we’re at.
Jocelyn: Yeah, we’re so excited you’re here. Shon is one of my favorite members. I love all of our members, but I especially love Shon.
Shane: Shon makes us smile, baby.
Jocelyn: He’s always so enthusiastic and just loves on everybody. So, we’re really excited to have you here today. Before we get started, tell us a little bit about you, your background, your online business.
Shon: Yeah, I’d love to. And I also want to put the compliments back on you guys. You guys make it – it’s awesome to be a part of this team, because it’s great to work with you all. I’ve been so excited to be actually be able to talk with you all today.
So, but a little bit about my background and my family, I’ve got seven kids of which I’ve got four of them that are adopted from different places around the world…
Shane: OK.
Shon: I got three from China, one from Uganda and then three biological children. Been happily, wonderfully married. My wife and I brought on 25 years so I’m very blessed in that regard.
And I’ve been – my background from a standpoint of where I’m at today is I’m a retired military. I used to fly B1 bombers for the military and then moved into hacking. And, I was a hacker for about 10 years and led a group of hackers for that time and we got to do really cool stuff like hack in the facilities and also get to physically break into them and all legal, which is good and it was a blast – a couple of little fun…
Shane: So, this is like hacking – this is like hacking for hire. They hire you to hack them to find the security loopholes, basically.
Shon: That’s exactly it, yeah. We got to do – there’s nothing better than running through a building at two in the morning singing your own theme music and do those stuff – so, it’s great.
Shane: That’s hilarious, man. You have the most fascinating like background story and Shon’s grinding right now, getting his online business thing put together. It just always amazes me to hear like, “I’m working full time, I’ve got seven kids, I’ve got four adopted kids”, but you’re still finding the time to build your online business, to invest in yourself and try to make a better future online.
Shon: Oh, Yeah. Really what it comes down to is I’m an executive level in a multi-billion dollar company that’s global right now. And, most people would think, “Hey, you’ve got it. That’s what everybody dreams for.” But you guys have lifestyle. That is what I want because bottom line is I still come to work every day and I have to do that and…
Shane: Right.
Shon: …I want to be able to spend time with my kids, like I see the wonderful pictures that you guys put up with your family and I yearn for that because I don’t have that right now. And, I want to build a back-up plan like a – or a golden parachute for my family, so if anything ever happened to me at least to the minimum, there’s potentially something there for them, too. So, yeah, it’s a huge burden for me that – I would want to get this done.
Shane: Well, I know you’ve worked really hard lately. Shon participated in one of our exclusive members only Masterminds. We take about 10 people for a month, they join our Mastermind. We actually Mastermind with you every week and help you make big things happens in your business. And, I know you’ve just recently taken a lot of action. You’ve got your website up, you’ve got your content rolling out, actually even launched a podcast and got that membership area rolling and now we’re ready to start moving that towards monetization in your business.
So, quickly tell everybody what your website is about. What your online business is going to do and then we’ll jump into some of your questions about it, OK?
Shon: You bet, that sounds great. Thank you. Yeah. Been part of that Mastermind has been incredible. I highly recommend that to anybody. It was well worth the time and the money spent, way beyond. It took me way – maybe farther than I ever could have tried to do on my own. So, I thank you guys for that.
But, my business is wordpresssecuritydaily.com and it stood up because of – for developers, Web designers, and online entrepreneurs who are – deal with WordPress security. And also, just for online security and security in general that deals with the online world.
I’ve seen too many of my friends have been hacked and I’ve got – my information’s been hacked and I see what – all the struggles that they go through and I wanted to put something out there from an expert on how to help protect themselves, and WordPress especially. I mean, there’s over 30,000 sites that are hacked a day.
And like, a lot of the stuff is stuff that if they just would easily configure things, they can really protect themselves. So, I have a strong desire to help people with that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and I think that’s awesome. We were hacked back in 2015 and I know for us it was a very stressful time and…
Shane: So traumatic, gosh.
Jocelyn: Just a lot of it probably could have been prevented. So, I think what you’re doing is important and it is relevant for people who are in online business and maybe even people who just have websites or…
Shane: Blogs or anything.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that is definitely something that’s relevant. So, let’s go ahead and talk about – you talked to a little bit about how you or like the website that you started. So, where are you at right now like after our Mastermind? Do you have a product for sale like what’s going on in your business?
Shon: OK, so my product that is – we actually started a podcast and based on your guidance and input, I started this podcast. I always thought of it but it – you guys helped me kind of coalesce and get that in my brain and what I needed and we – I started up some videos, training videos, specifically on helping WordPress entrepreneurs on how to secure their site. And, it ranges from the simple to the more complex. Now, I will say that I’m not a huge developer by trade and I would end up probably insulting people who are really good developers. That part is not there.
However, what is there is to help a 90 percent of the people out there that are struggling with WordPress security. And, of that, these are developers that may even not understand why you can configure your WordPress security in a certain way. So, it’s a huge benefit, it’s a lot of videos, there’s a lot of how-to and also in the same sense is, by being part of my membership, they get part of me.
I mean, I’ve got over 15 years of the experience just in IT Security alone. And that’s really rare. And my cost – to have me as a consultant individually in the corporate world is extremely expensive…
Shane: Right.
Shon: …versus being able to help via all with WordPress.
Shane: It’s installing a security system in your home. You don’t have to do it. But, you’re leaving yourself kind of vulnerable and we know firsthand that we left ourselves totally vulnerable when we did that. So, you’re kind of like going to show people how to lock all their doors, seal all their windows, how to get those alarm bells on so you know when something’s going wrong. And, like you said, it’s not like you’re in there coding, it’s just how should your plug-ins be setup, what’s a good plugin, what’s a bad plugin, how can you avoid that risk? Right?
Shon: Yeah. When I was hacking into government systems, I mean, realistically the stuff you see on TV where they’re putting a super secret code or whatever that might be, in most cases, we hacked in just because of people had bad passwords or they had bad account access and they didn’t know what they were doing. And, that’s what we leveraged. It wasn’t this super secret hacking technique that occurred. So…
Shane: Right.
Shon: …if you understand the basics, that can help you out a lot.
Shane: Cool.
Jocelyn: Yeah, awesome, OK. Well…
Shane: So, all this is in play. We’ve got a podcast, we’ve got content, we’ve got a membership area, we’ve got a product. So, now, we have to get members. That’s what this call’s going to be about today. So, let’s go ahead and jump into your first question for today’s show.
Shon: Perfect. So, my question I have for you guys is, is what’s you know the next steps we think you recommend that I need to take, to build this to get sustained growth and – in the membership model, or another model? I’ve got the infrastructure in place, things are ready to go but how do I take it to the next level? What are your recommendations on that?
Jocelyn: OK. So basically, you have a lot of the pieces already in place.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: So, basically what we’re working on now is getting more people -like – mostly the marketing side. Right?
Shane: Yeah. People have to discover your brand at this point. And like, this is where a lot of people freeze because it’s like, “Well how do I do that?”
Well, it’s like we always say, it’s going to be time or money. The time component is you keep building content. You’re going to have to have a steady flow of content that never ends. That – it’s a true marathon not a sprint mentality right now. Your podcast has to keep rolling, no matter what. Your blog post need to keep coming out no matter what. You need to keep finding new things to add to your community. That’s an ongoing task. But what’s easy about yours is you know who to target, entrepreneurs who use WordPress, right?
So, you need to go ahead, I think, and invest in ads, like right now, you don’t have to wait for it. I’m don’t – I’m not saying you got to go out and spend a thousand dollars a month. But, if you need a steady stream of eyeballs, seeing these things you’re creating, going into your sales funnels, even if it’s not huge amounts, so you can start improving every week on your systems.
Jocelyn: And, I do agree with that. But I would like to back up just a little bit more before we start investing in ads and say that you’ll – you do want to make sure that your low hanging fruit things are done on your site. What I mean by that is you want to make sure that opt-ins are visible and easy to find on every single page, every single blog post that you have them in the sidebar, you have them in the text…
Shane: In posts.
Jocelyn: …in posts, like make sure you’re getting people’s contact information, so that would be the first thing I would say to anyone who already has their site established that got content rolling out on a regular basis which Google really likes, and you need to make sure that you’re also using those Google keywords when you’re creating your content. So, make sure that you’re using the language that people are searching for when you make all those posts. And, that’s as simple as just using the Google keyword planner as your write your post or to use the SEO plugin. I mean there’s a lot of different ways to do it. But, just make sure that you’re doing those simple things before you start branching out into paid advertising.
Shane: Right. And, then since you’ve already got your opt-ins up, and we got your email funnel setup correctly, you should be pretty good to where – you’ve got a way to get them in the door and all paths lead to your membership. So, we just need to make sure that we’re advertising.
That’s going to be key to you Shon is, are you going to sit around and field-of-dreams this, if you build it, they will come, I hope. Or, are you going to take action and make an investment in yourself now, like you’ve been doing, to say, “Look, I’ve got to get this in front of a thousand people. I’ve got to get this in front of a thousand people, I’ve got to see how they react to it. And then, I’ve got them – get in front of another thousand people after I make some changes and then I got to see what they did. And then, I got to see another thousand people.”
That’s where it all comes down to it, the rubber meets the road. This is not, “Field of Dreams”. If you build it, they ain’t gonna come. You got to get them.
Shon: Right…
Shane: For you – so, that’s…
Shon: Yeah.
Shane: …that’s where you are right now, man. It’s just go get the people. Your ads would be really easy, too. Because it’s like target people that like WordPress. The only people that like WordPress on Facebook as an interest are probably using it, right? So, like target big things that use WordPress like maybe you run ads at AWeber and Mailchimp users. Because they’re probably all using WordPress. So, that’s where your thought process is going to have to go, “How do I find – one – people using WordPress; two, entrepreneurs using WordPress?”
Jocelyn: Have you tried any ads so far?
Shon: I have. Based on your guys’ advice, I went out and launched Facebook ads last week.
Shane: OK.
Shon: And, I will admit that was a scary endeavor. Just in the fact that, because I’m not a marketing major. But the ads when I did them, I planted them a little bit and learned a lot out of it. And, I think it got in front of a lot of eyeballs, but from a conversion standpoint, it wasn’t as I had hoped. But I’d realize I ain’t going into it. So, now I – I don’t know what I’m looking at so, I’m trying to understand a couple of that.
Shane: I think this to be very helpful to talk about on air. So, we just ran ads for a few days. How much did – just answer my questions as we go through, OK? So, we’ll do it just like we do in the forums. How much did you spend on your ad?
Shon: $70.
Shane: OK, we got $70.
Shon: $10 a day.
Shane: We got $10 a day for seven days.
Jocelyn: And what was your objective?
Shane: Which objective did you pick?
Shon: My objective was conversion.
Shane: OK, conversion.
Jocelyn: OK.
Shane: So, do you have the pixel installed on the “Thank you” page? What kind of conversion, sales or emails?
Shon: The pixels’ installed it was just on the page, and it was just trying to get exposure to the site. That’s all it was.
Shane: OK.
Shon: It was – I’ve been – I didn’t get any emails or anything.
Jocelyn: OK.
Shane: OK.
Jocelyn: Your objective probably should have been website clicks…
Shane: Website clicks.
Jocelyn: instead and what’s going to happen when you do that is that your pixel is going to see those people who click onto our site. So, your ad to your cold audience – that means people who have never heard about you before – generally, it’s going to be to something totally free. So, they don’t have to opt in for it.
Shane: Right, like a blogpost.
Jocelyn: So, it might be a…
Jocelyn: …a top five list. It might be a checklist. It might be just something that they can click on your site they can read, they can get without having to opt in just to get to know you. Right.
Shane: So, let me ask you this, what did the ad look like? Tell me that, real quick.
Shon: It just – it had a picture of me. It had a picture of the blog post or the podcast title with the pot padlock and a WordPress symbol and it was based on just three essential things you can do to secure your WordPress site. And…
Shane: OK, who did you target?
Shon: And…
Shane: What was your targeting?
Shon: I targeted the WordPress designers, developers, AWeber, Amy Porterfield, business owners…
Shane: Yeah.
Shon: …that kind of thing …and about 200 people.
Shane: Yeah, here’s what you done a little wrong right now. That’s too widespread. There is a big difference between a WordPress developer and a person listed in the Amy Porterfield’s podcast, OK?
One, there’s a – maybe a lot of business people over here, maybe they’re looking at Facebook ads, that’s why they’re following Porterfield, maybe they want to do a webinar. These people over here are hard coders working with Genesys things, breaking down the things.
That’s not – even though you wanted more people, you’ve went way too broad. What you should have targeted maybe if – was pick one interest or two that were really super related like if you’re going to pick Amy Porterfield, maybe you picked Amy Porterfield and Smart Passive Income – with Pat Flynn.
So, now you’ve got the same group of people. Or you put WordPress developers, WordPress coders. You do a different ad for that because you’re kind of showing it to a lot of random people. You see what I’m saying? You got to like niche down and show it to like – like I would have picked like – I would have picked WordPress. And I’d would have typed in WordPress into the interest and see what you’ve got. Maybe it says “WordPress” and you just picked that. Anyone who’s liked WordPress, we like WordPress. I like that myself.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think it also depends on who you’re trying to get onto your site. I mean, if you wanted to be more developers, then you probably need to target people who like specific themes. People usually aren’t going to like a theme unless they’re – have something to do with it.
Shane: They’ve got a theme – like a Genesys. Or that…
Jocelyn: Maybe you’re targeting plugins that only developers would use.
Shane: Yeah.
Jocelyn: You see what mean?
Shane: Yeah, you’re just casting too big a net and your net has too big a holes and all the fish is swimming through the net. You see what I’m saying?
Also too, like Jocelyn just…
Shon: Yeah.
Shane: …like Jocelyn just said, I think this is still an avatar problem a little bit. I think you’re going to have to pick one or the other. Are you doing entrepreneurs who use WordPress? Or are you doing developers? Because developers are totally different people and they’re going to react to different ads than our entrepreneurs with WordPress.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that the issue, Shon, is that the targeting is not tight enough. When you’re doing Facebook ads or any kind of ads, the targeting is the most important thing. The other things are important like what you say and what the picture is, all of those are important. But the most important thing is who you’re targeting and what you’re trying get them to click to. And, if you are showing the perfect ad to the wrong audience, nobody’s going to click it.
Shane: Yeah. I think too. I like your ad. I think your ad is good. It’s three quick tips to secure your WordPress website, right? But, like, devs don’t care if their site’s secure, they just care about designing it and getting it coded. And then, they hand it to the owner. But, me, I would. You know what I mean? I would care because I don’t want to lose money because I’m an entrepreneur.
So, let me go through this real quick and ask you two more questions. How many clicks did you get through to your website? Do you know that?
Shon: Well, so, I virtually started off wrong with audience network which gave me a lot of little clicks, right? And, I changed that. That was like up to 250 clicks, which I had a bounce rate of about 80 percent. And it reached…
Jocelyn: Yeah, they don’t convert very well.
Shon: Yeah, they don’t count. And then when they shut that off and I went to just Facebook ads specifically and Instagram ads, it got like three.
Shane: Yeah.
Shon: So, that told me that was wrong, so that was good. But…
Shane: This is a total targeting issue. And it’s an also an objective issue. If you pick website clicks, they will optimize for website clicks and get you more clicks for people who would click through. If you’re going for conversions, it’ll optimize for people who buy things or people who give you an email.
Jocelyn: And so for people out there who are saying, “OK, what in the world does that mean, it optimizes?” Basically, Facebook looks at who is interacting with your ad and they are going to show it to people who are like that person. OK?
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: So, if you’re telling it to optimize for conversions but you don’t really have a specific conversion setup, then Facebook is not going to know who to show it to.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: So, it’s a better use of your money if you can tell Facebook, “OK, I want it to go to website clicks and only show the ad to people who are like this person who’s interacting with this.” And then, the beautiful thing about using website clicks is that you can have the pixel on your site. Facebook will see when these people visit your site, then you can show them another offer and say, “Hey, would you like to opt in to receive this?”
Shane: So, like a thousand people click to your page to get the free thing you advertised, right? It doesn’t matter if they give you their email, Facebook is going to pixel them and track them and say, “John Smith went to Shon’s website.” So Shon sets up ad number two which says, “Hey, thanks for stopping by my website, here’s a free thing. Give me your email.” Shon then gets the email and then uses his automation in his email marketing to sell things to this person. So, it’s a very layered approach.
But, here’s the deal, back up. If your targeting is wrong, this ad – there’s nothing wrong with your ad. The ad sounds beautiful, the ad sounds right. I’ll show you how to secure a WordPress site in three steps. That is so on point, with what you’re trying to do. But, the problem is, you targeted everybody. So, you targeted nobody. You see what I’m saying?
Shon: Yeah, that’s – yeah and I thought I was targeting down honestly.
Shane: Yeah.
Shon: And that actually helps out immensely.
Shane: Yeah, I don’t care about numbers. Like I’ve ran ads that have targeted like 10,000 people. And we’ve made thousands of dollars off of those ads because it’s the right person for the right thing. You know what I’m saying?
Like, yeah, if people are liking security plugins like LifeLock and stuff like that, or what – I don’t know. But, like if we can figure out some plugins or something that’s really security-related that maybe only someone who’s scared of getting hacked would actually press like on.
Jocelyn: Maybe people who’d like LastPass, people…
Shane: Yeah, exactly.
Jocelyn: …who like one password
Shane: People who are security-centric, that’s the things we need to target that are saying, “Wait a minute, if this person likes WordPress and LastPass, which is a password encryption tool, then that’s a person I’m probably going after because that’s a person that cares about the security of their WordPress website. Does that make sense?
Shon: Yeah, totally.
Shane: Yeah, so…
Jocelyn: Yeah, and I wonder if you don’t need it to make it a little bit more painful of a thing that you’re solving? So, instead of like three tips, maybe say something like…
Shane: “Three ways to stop getting hacked. Are you sick of your password login that keep getting hijacked? I’ll show you how to prevent that from ever happening again.” Because that’s a huge problem, is the WordPress login gets hijacked. Right? That’s going to happen to people and they’re not going to know why.
Jocelyn: Yeah.
Shane: But, if you can hit that pain point in your ad, oh man, they’re going to click.
Jocelyn: I just want to make sure that we’re really covering the pain something that people are experiencing.
Shane: By pouring salt in the wounds. Don’t be preventative. You want to be – you want to treat their symptom. Don’t try to prevent something. Yeah.
Jocelyn: So, you can use the same thing that you’re using before. I just think you might need to change the language around this a little bit more so that it hurt…
Shane: And then the timing of the targeting.
Jocelyn: …so that it’s solving the problem more. So, be on the lookout though. I’m working on a Facebook ads module for Flip Your Life right now. And, be on the lookout for it.
Shon: Yeah.
Shane: Should be out in the next week or two, man…
Jocelyn: Yeah, by the time that this thing airs, this will be out already.
Shane: And inside the community.
Jocelyn: And so, I think it’ll help a lot.
Shane: So, just to review this before we go on…
Shon: Oh, I had no doubt.
Shane: Yeah, we’re going to go onto the next question but like – I don’t think your ad was bad. OK? It’s just your objective is wrong and your targeting is wrong. So, what we need to do next to fix this, Shon, is we’re going to get another 70 bucks out for another test. We’re going to take what we’ve learned from this ad and we’re going to start that ad again but we’re going to get in the forums and we’re going to break down your targeting. I’ll pop-up Facebook and try to help you find some better interests and likes, OK…
Shon: OK.
Shane: …that we can target. Jocelyn’s training was talk about how to get the correct objective. And, let’s run this again and let’s see if we can get a hundred clicks for that $70 bucks right now, OK? And then maybe turn those into 20 emails or something. You know? And maybe we can turn two of those into members.
So, let’s get in there and really break that down, get that targeting right and if the targeting is right, the ad can be wrong. The ad doesn’t have to be perfect. If the targeting is correct, it just has to be clear, OK?
Shon: Yeah. Well, that’s awesome.
Jocelyn: Alright, Shon?
Shon: And honestly that I’ll be – I was so praying that I would get this out to you guys right away, to this Facebook ad. Because I knew that your help would be immeasurable on this and I thank you so much.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that it’s going to be really helpful for a lot of people. Alright, well I think that we got your ad problem sort of – we’re going to be working on that. So, what else can we help you with today to move forward in your online business?
Shon: So, I know batching content is extremely important to do. The one thing that – I mean I – security tips are awesome and they’re great. But I need to – I also need to kind of get out and in my podcast – have to bring in potentially new blood or how that works. And, so my question is who would be people that I could bring onto my podcast and how would I go out and find these people to see if they’d be interested in getting on it? Because I also – I don’t want to be all about interviews. But I also want to have them real topics they can have but at the same time going to do interviews. How would you recommend doing that?
Shane: Let’s say your show basically is kind of like ours. Like, number one, you want to be the expert, right? So, you don’t want to always be interviewing other people. It’s not like Jay Leno or David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon. We’re not an interview show. We’re the experts, talking to other experts it’s to keep you safe about security.
So, I would just Google like WordPress security experts and just see what comes up. Look in iTunes and try to see if you can type in like WordPress security or online security. And see if you can find some people that have been on other shows. Like what’s the girl’s name that got hacked on Instagram? Charlene Johnson – is that her name?
Jocelyn: Chalene.
Shane: Chalene Johnson, yeah. There’s a girl named Chalene Johnson. She did a whole series, right about the time we got hacked about getting hacked, too. And, she brought on an expert. So, maybe find other experts that have been on other podcasts and reach out to them.
Jocelyn: Yeah. Especially in podcasting, like I think it would be beneficial to find people who are already on podcasts, who maybe even have their own podcast because that’s going to help you with your audience growth a little bit as well.
Shane: Exactly. And then, I would also look for – like type in like “my blog got hacked”. Or, “my WordPress website got hacked”. I bet you there are countless blog posts out there of people like me and Jocelyn or like Chalene Johnson who got hacked. It’s going to be so easy to find guests if you just used the Google. Like what would a title of a blog post like that look like and say – type that in and then go read people’s stories and be like, “This is great, would you come on my show and talk about being hacked?”
And then maybe you can throw in – like what – and then you could just talk about what you’d do to fix it? “Oh, that’s a great idea, we used that, too.” You know what I mean? And, the more that you can interact with people who have been through this, it almost becomes like a testimonial of why they need to buy your service. If you reach out to any blogger who’s wrote a blog post about this, you want 50 percent of them are going to come on your show, because it’s an honor to be on a podcast, right?
So, that’s how I would do it. And, if for anyone out there listening, like for guests, think outside the box. What kind of person do you want to come on your show? Who do you want to interview? If you’ll go in and do a little research, type in to find some blog posts, it’s really easy to find people willing to tell their story. If you find someone that wrote a blog post about it, or already did a podcast about it, they’re going to be happy to tell their story again. And that you should be able to find plenty of guests for that. But, I would still keep your show 50 percent solo shows and about half guests, if I were you.
Shon: OK. Well, it’s that’s helpful, very, very helpful.
Jocelyn: Alright, awesome. I think that we have time for maybe one more question. So, what else can we help you with today?
Shon: Last question I have is – OK, so right now my site is setup just to sell a product. But the overall goal is to be a membership site. Its infrastructure is built that way. It’s ready to be setup as a membership site. As I’m planning my goals out, where do you see this is as a membership site, how would it be useful in that regard, versus just products?
Shane: Well, I think that it could be almost like one of those stock tip membership. You know, for one thing I think it’s called WP Security Daily. Right? Daily. Maybe the daily component isn’t your public facing thing, that’s more of a weekly podcast or whatever.
Alright, maybe the daily thing is you get up every day and you write a little email newsletter, just like the stock guy would, like the hot stocks of the day. But, you’re writing a little summary of what happened in WordPress security in the last 24 hours. Maybe, you create a members-only newsletter or maybe you only post these security updates in the forums. Like you just make a forum post in your membership community, people have to go login every day to go check out the latest news or whatever that’s happening in WordPress security. You know, that’s a 15-minute task, basically every single day or just do it at night before you go to bed. Right? So, that could provide some value to keep people updated on what’s going on.
I almost think this sounds more like a service-based thing though. Where maybe you could figure out a way to – even just updating plugins and stuff like that for people. Maybe you can get some VA’s and train them how to do that. Maybe you could offer a special service to your members like, “Hey, we will do a monthly audit for members of your WordPress site. We’ll go in, we’ll take a look at everything, we’ll check these five specific things.” And, for you, that wouldn’t be able to scale very big fast unless you hired people. But, you could talk…
Jocelyn: But you could start out with only yourself.
Shane: Yeah, totally. You could totally do that where you’re just like, “Hey, I got 30 members paying me 50 bucks a month. And I just check one a day.” I mean how long does that take? You know what I’m saying?
So, I think service – this might be a service-based membership that does have that backbone of your content behind it. Or people could come in and ask questions. Like that’s going to be a huge benefit of, “Hey, guys. I can’t log into my website. And I know I’m typing in the password, what should I do?” People like to have a place to go ask that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I would say that would be sort of an add-on component over the services because I would think this would be something that you wouldn’t really need daily unless you’re having a problem probably.
Shane: Right.
Jocelyn: I mean I don’t think I personally would look for it unless I was having a particular issue.
Shane: But, I would like to have – yeah, I’d like to have a place to go ask the expert, like Shon, like Jocelyn was saying. But, maybe also too it would be nice to know that someone checked my site once a month for me. And make sure nothing was wrong.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I would definitely pay for that.
Shane: Like that’s a no-brainer to pay for. You would just have to be really specific about what you offer though. Like, we check these 10 things, if something else is wrong – sorry. You know what I mean? You’ve got to be really clear about your expectations.
Shon: Yeah, and to that point, I’ve actually been – at my job, I get called in by other parts of our company that deal with WordPress asking me to go through the contracts to look at from a standpoint of how should they secure it, so I mean, there’s different ways that could be – this could be leveraged definitely.
Shane: I think that – here’s how your flow would work. You’ve got this great podcast where you want to keep it entrepreneurial. You know, you could even talk about a little like leveraging WordPress in your business and with that drives home why it’s important to keep it safe. So then, you have content that’s like, “Hey I’ve got this five-video course that you’re going to lose thousands of dollars if you don’t watch because somebody’s going to hack you.”
So, they come in for the content, they secure their site. But then, on the back end of that you say, “Hey, stick around, keep paying monthly. All members get a free WordPress security audit once a month and we’re available in the forums if you have any problems – like you can’t log in.” You’re going to bring up these problems that people could have. You know, like your site all of a sudden you log in and it says “terrorist propaganda” or people are changing your pictures in your blog post or you’ve got ads all over your site. You’re going to have to bring these up but just talk about how you check those. And I think you could definitely get some people on board to just keep them safe.
Yeah. There’s companies that do that now. Like our company – our server company, we pay for some stuff where they watch our stuff for us and monitor it. So, I think you could totally get a, more beginning entrepreneurs on a bootstrap budget. To say, “Hey I don’t want to get hacked. So, Shon will keep me safe.” Does that make sense?
Shon: Yeah, totally. Thank you so much.
Jocelyn: Shon, this has been a great call. It’s a lot of great questions. And we always end all of our calls with our members by asking, “What is the thing that you’re going to take action on, say in the next 24 to 48 hours based on what we talked about on today’s call?”
Shon: Oh, I know by no doubt, I’m going to be getting into the Facebook ad and making those changes. So, I can’t tell you guys enough how this is wonderful. This is just going to change everything. So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, is get the ads, get the – change it from what I had, change the language on it so that it’s a little bit more inviting in the way of getting hacked aspect. And, yeah, that’s the plan.
Shane: So, go start a forum post as soon as we get off the call here. And, I want you to name it “Facebook Targeting for WP Security Daily”. And let me get in there with you and do some keyword research. I’ll do some interest research with you. We’ll come up with a nice targeted list and we’ll see if we can improve that like immediately, dude, OK?
Shon: Oh, man. Dude, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, sorry. I’m just fired up.
Shane: Hey, you’re awesome, man. Listen, Shon, I just want to say to you that it is amazing how hard you work. And, for anybody out there listening, you have no excuse. This dude’s working full time, seven kids, and he buckled down in a month and built out his entire infrastructure for his website. And now, a couple of months later, he’s already testing Facebook ads and we’re about to really get into monetization. Like you are an inspiration to us as well that we don’t get to make excuses. Life is what we make it. And, whatever we prioritize is going to get done. And I know this guy right here, prioritizes his family, and he prioritizes his business and I have no doubt that you’re going to make it happen, man.
Shon: Amen. Well, I want to tell you thank God for the both of you because honestly if hadn’t listened to that podcast with Pat Flynn we never would have been here together. So I thank God everyday for you, you and your family and thank you so much for allowing me to be on your podcast.
Shane: Awesome, man. We’re glad you came on and if you want to catch Shon, you’ll find him in the forums over at flippedlifestyle.com. Thanks for coming on the show, man. We’ll see you in the forums.
Shon: Thank you guys so much.
Shane: Super call today with one of our Flip Your Life community members. We’d love for you to be a member of our community as well. If you would like to join our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can show you how to join today.
Jocelyn: It’s now time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment. These are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were working at a normal nine-to-five job.
Shane: Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is our trip down to Florida and visiting the LEGOLAND Hotel, LEGOLAND amusement park and LEGOLAND water park. The kids had been badgering us for months. Somehow they had saw a YouTube video of people going to LEGOLAND and they were dying to go there. And we finally said, “You know what? Let’s just figure it out, let’s get down there, let’s go stay in the hotel and let’s have fun. So, we went down to LEGOLAND.”
Jocelyn: And, if you’re not very familiar with the LEGOLAND Resort Hotel, it is a new hotel, fairly new. And, it is very pricey during the summer. In fact, I believe that it was somewhere around like $400 a night to stay at this hotel. So, it was a little bit crazy. Before we started our online business, there is no way on earth…
Shane: No chance.
Jocelyn: That I would even consider staying at a place this. But, the kids were begging to stay there. They really, really wanted to. And so, because of our online business and the freedom and flexibility and the income that we now have, we are now able to do things like that. And, we don’t have to really think about it that much. We just do it.
Shane: Yeah, the resort was amazing. It sits right on a lake, this beautiful lake. It’s got all kinds of like unique things inside of it. There’s millions of Lego blocks for the kids to actually play with. And actually go out and just have fun with. The place is decorated like it’s built out of Legos. And now the amusement park was just so fun for kids especially for kids who like under 12 years old.
So, if you want to check out all of our adventures at the LEGOLAND Hotel Resort, and LEGOLAND amusement park and waterpark – head over to the show notes into – onto today’s podcast and we have a video of all of our adventures there. And we have a full review of the hotel if you want to check out everything that happened in LEGOLAND.
Before we sign off, I’d like to close every show with a verse from the bible. Today’s bible verse comes from Philippians 4:6, and the bible says, “Do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.”
And we want to point out on this episode with this verse one thing we do do in our Flip Your Life community is we have prayer threads every week. So, if you need some prayer or you’d love for us to pray for you, let us know that. We would love to do that for you. And don’t be anxious. Go to God and he will take care of anything that’s bothering you today.
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 then.
Jocelyn: Bye.
Denice Powell says
Very good! Listening to others who have completely different businesses yields benefits–I have 4 pages of notes! 😉
Shane Sams says
Ha, Awesome Denice! 🙂 Make sure you take action!