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**Before anything else, we would like to apologize for the relatively low audio quality of this week’s episode. Although technical issues do happen sometimes, it’s still going to be the same fun, information-packed online business podcast channel y’all enjoy and love.**
Need ideas on setting up your sales funnel to target & segment your audience?
Listen in as we help today’s guest narrow down her target avatars and segment them to maximize her online business.
Joining us on air is a Certified Tour Professional, currently serving her second term as a Board Member of the U.S. Travel’s Experience Network (previously known as the Attractions Council), we have Flip Your Life community member, Sally Berry.
Sally has been in the tourism industry since her college years. She has worked for small attractions, dealt with family-owned attractions, and has been working for a world-class museum for over six years.
Her extensive knowledge of where to go, who to see and what to do while traveling has led to her receiving multiple prestigious awards — national recognition for her networking and national awards for her knowledge.
She is so well known in their community, that she would regularly receive calls from small destinations as well as the local tourism commissions.
Wanting to do something new, she explored the possibilities online and found that it had huge opportunities for growth and monetization.
She joined the FYL community, studied the courses and in a few months was able to create theattractionscoach.com.
With the website in its infant stages, there is a lot to be done.
Join us we help Sally narrow down her target avatars and segment them to maximize her reach — that, and a whole lot more.
Tune in and let’s get started! 🙂
You Will Learn:
- How the Flip Your Life community helped Sally in starting her website
- Tips on how to transition from your regular job to a full time online entrepreneur
- When to start segmenting and targeting your avatar
- Tips on writing the “About You” page for your website
- And 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:
We’ve been taking drives out in the country after we dropped the kids off. Just a good 15-20 minute drive, we’ve got the radio off, and we are just talking to each other about what we are going to do that day, sharing ideas that we have to grow our online business. Maybe we’ll run out and try to catch the sunrise over one of the hills here in our little town in Kentucky. It’s just been a really neat thing to be able to stop and smell the roses, I guess, and not have to be in such a rush to get somewhere. I can remember how hectic mornings were when we worked our normal day jobs.
We could barely even see each other. Sometimes, one of us would just sleep in a little bit while the other one got out of the house and wouldn’t even see each other in the morning. Now we get to spend this quality time together, and start our day always on the same page.
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 Sally take her tourist attractions coaching business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. For those of you who may be new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, this is going to be a little different than the other business podcasts you probably listen to. We do not do interviews with online experts or bring on guests promoting their latest and greatest courses, books and other materials. We bring on actual members of our Flip Your Life community, and we help them answer their questions that they need to get answers to, to take their business to the next level.
Super excited for our guest this week because she has a very interesting niche. We loved when she first came into our community, and told us about this because we have never even considered that this was even possible to do. But, man, what an interesting story you are about to hear today. Our guest on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is Sally Davis Berry. Sally, welcome to the show.
Sally: Well, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s great to have you today. We are excited to talk to you about your business. It is not something that we typically talk about on the show. It’s a little different type of business, and I just really found it fascinating like Shane was saying earlier. We look forward to dive in. Let’s go ahead and get started. Tell us a little bit about you, your background, and all of this.
Sally: Sure. I have been in the tourism industry for most of my adult life, and actually some of my jobs at college were in the tourism industry, and I just didn’t realize it at the time. The tourism industry in the United states is actually one of the top five industries. There is a lot of folks that are employed by the tourism industry, either directly or indirectly. My expertise is actually in the attractions. When you travel somewhere, the things you do, all the things you look forward to doing, the experiences, the actual facilities where you go.
I’ve worked at some smaller attractions, family-owned attractions, and I currently work at a world-class museum. The tourism industry has been a lot of fun. What has happened in the last couple of years is that I’ve gotten some national recognition and some national awards for my knowledge, for my networking, and for some of the programs that I put out there. I’ve started to get calls from either destinations looking to have me help their attractions in their specific destinations, or destinations themselves looking for help.
I realized that there might be an opportunity for me to start looking for something else to do. I really love the job I have, but really at this point, I’m sort of at the ceiling of what I can do here. I see this online business as an opportunity for growth and taking my knowledge and my skills to the next level.
Jocelyn: Absolutely, and I love this. I think that it is just fascinating to me. We go a lot of different places and we are from a rural area. I find that a lot of times, people just don’t understand how to market their attraction or their experience. In real touristy areas, I feel they are better at it because you have to be to make it. But in other types of areas, like where we live, there is virtually no marketing for pretty much anything. I think this as a really huge opportunity.
Shane: This touches on a couple points, too, just for everybody listening. A lot of times, when you first start out in life, you make money on what you do. You have done tourism, you have done promotions of attractions, and things like that, but the real money does lie in what you know. Once you have that experience, and you start getting recognized. You start having people come up to you, and say, “Hey, how did you do that?” Or like you said, calling you from around the country, you start really realizing, “Man, if I could bottle up all of this knowledge and experience, and help people ramp past the learning curve, or take their business or their attraction to the next level, that is where real money exists, and that’s what online business is so good at.”
You just have to figure out how to package that information, and get it in front of the right people. Like Jocelyn said, we live in a small area, but we have a tourism commission. We have a very large waterfall near us, and a big national park. We do have some local attractions. We always are like, “Why are they not doing this? Why are they not doing that?” We had these amazing things here, and nobody knows about it.
That is like I think what you are kind of touching at is, you want to help maybe the local tourism commission, like from our small town, “Hey, here’s how you get the word out. Here is how you get people to stop off the interstate, and come in to see your attractions.” Is that right?
Sally: That’s exactly it, because although I have contacts at SeaWorld and Disney and Universal, those folks don’t need my help. But if a lot of the smaller mom-and-pop, or the attractions that have less than 100 staff that really don’t have the time or the staffing to ifigure out how to do things, either more efficiently, or how to really leverage some other opportunities that they might not be thinking of to become more successful, and to be successful, you round up and employ more people. I think that’s really the space where I can help.
Shane: There is this place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee called Knife Works or something. You think, oh, it’s a knife store. But when you see this place, it looks like a football stadium, and it is just full of all these specialty knives, and guns, and all this crazy stuff, and then restaurants that have petting zoos and stuff. There is all these little themed places that are not necessarily amusement parks; they are those Route 66 attractions that, if they would just spread the word a little more, they could probably double their business if they want to do.
Sally: I was really excited when I found your community. At first I thought, well, it’s really for teachers. But the more I listened to your podcasts, the more I looked at your resources, I realized the things that you said to other people are really universal, and a lot of them I’ve been able to apply and it amazes me. Every podcast I listen to, I think, “Oh, I can do that. Oh, I should do that.” It’s really universal truths a lot of the time.
Shane: We all kind of have the same problems, and we just have to work through them together because there’s always a solution to get to the next level, just sometimes you’ve got to throw a little mud on the wall and get that out there to see what sticks.
Jocelyn: At the end of the day, business is business. The things that applicable to us can also apply to a lot of other different types of businesses. I know that you have a website. It is theattractionscoach.com that you are starting to build up, and we’ve been working on that in the community. Tell us a little bit about that like where you were so far? What do you have done and ready to go out into the world, so far?
Shane: Do you have things for sale? Are you still working on the product? Let our listeners know where you are at in the journey online.
Sally: Okay, yes. I joined your community in May, and it’s actually a bit of a funny story. I set myself a goal that if I could find enough money to get the annual membership, I would do that. In about three days of making that decision, I got a phone call from an organization asking if I would be a keynote speaker, and they would pay me $500.
Shane: Thank the universe. The universe is a funny thing. When you make a decision to take action, things happen. You know what I mean?
Sally: It’s so true. Then, literally two weeks later, I got a $100 rebate from my propane company because I overpaid for the year.
Shane: That is awesome.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I remember you telling this one.
Shane: That is a great story.
Sally: Yes. I joined, and one of the first things I did was use your template to set up a website in 30 days, and followed that. I was able to get my website set up. A lot of times, I felt like it’s not looking right, I don’t like it, but then I thought, “You know what, I just got to get it up, and I can tweak it as I go along.” I took your advice on that. The website is up. I took all your autoresponder course and have gotten some progress on that. Literally, once I signed up to do this call today, I thought, “I’ve got to get this done so I can tell them I did it.” I worked on that.
Actually, what was helpful is someone else had posted in the forums, their sample email responder. I took what they had put it also what I learned in your course, put mine together. I put them back in the forums, and I know Jocelyn commented, and then Karen also commented. That was helpful. I’m going to do some tweaks on those, so that piece is done. What I am currently trying to finish up are the freebies that go along with them.
The first two are done, so when someone signs up for the email list, we do have that first piece done. I’m trying to finish up the other three that are going to be the result of continuing down the sales funnel.
Jocelyn: I see that you have an opt in area on the site, which is great. You’ve done more right now than probably about 75% of the people listening to this right now. So, let’s go people. Also, you’ve done a lot of great things in just the past few months. That is great.
Shane: Infrastructure is really important to get done, and sometimes that is the big hang up.
Sally: Yeah, it’s not where I wanted to be, but I will say two things. Posting a weekly action plan really keeps my feet to the fire, and I know you looked at them and that people look at them. Even if I don’t complete everything on my weekly action plan, it does push me forward.
Jocelyn: We are watching.
Sally: You guys are taskmasters.
Shane: We are. Get the whips out.
Sally: Then the other thing that works for me was Jocelyn’s voice in my ear saying, “You are either going to have to spend time or money,” and setting up that autoresponder by myself was feeling just so overwhelming and challenging, it didn’t feel like I have the right technology skills. I was able to contact an acquaintance of mine that I know has experience doing this.
She and I did a call last week. I ended up hiring her, and I said to her, “The way for me to work fast is for you to give me a schedule and a deadline. Tell me what you need.” Literally, last Friday, she gave me four assignments, which I got all done. The result is all of that sign up on the website, we just did over the weekend. It was helpful letting myself feel okay hiring someone to move me forward.
Jocelyn: That’s awesome. I wish that people listening and people in our community– I really hope they take those words to heart because it’s so important to. We always say that in the end, action takers win. If that action is going to get you much further ahead, then so many people out there are just saying, “I wish I could put up a website. I wish I could sell things online.”
Shane: “This is hard. I can’t do this,” instead of just tried to do it, and feeling and figuring it out– also, you said you just started a couple months ago with our community. It took me and Jocelyn almost 18 months to figure out what you just spoke out loud. I can imagine the dividends of that is going to pay off for you in 18 months. We did not try to do that. We just tried to bash our heads against the wall and do everything.
Sally: That is what it felt like.
Shane: Exactly, and I still have scars on the head from bashing it against the wall.
Jocelyn: It’s good to talk to you also for really taking advantage of the community. I feel like sometimes people join, and they sit back on the sidelines, and they don’t really dive in. But you’ve really come in, you become a part of the community, people know who you are, and you have really used that. You have taken advantage that we are there almost every single day, and we are helping people.
All right, Sally, you have made incredible progress so far. We want to know how we can help you going into the future. Based on everything that we talked about so far, what is the one thing that is sort of pulling you back right now?
Sally: Well, the one thing that is holding me back, and I did put it in the forums, is I’m currently working, and I really do enjoy my job. I’ve been here over six years. But I’ve really hit the ceiling of where I am, so that’s why I’m exploring this. But while I’m slowly building this as on-the-side, and I want to not only quit my job, but I want to figure out how, when I do get the opportunity to leave, how to make sure it is a smooth transition.
I need some talking points on how, and when to bring this up with my boss, who is wonderful, she is a really wonderful mentor to me. But it’s now time for me to move on to the next level. What is funny is, I did post this as a question on the forum, and the two of you had completely different answers.
Shane: That never happens in our business, I’m telling you.
Sally: I’m looking forward to some more discussion around that. Give me a path, because I honestly think I feel like I can’t do anything until I have a conversation with her, so I feel like I would at least give her a heads up.
Shane: So, you want to let your boss know that you are doing the blog, basically, right?
Sally: Yes.
Shane: Okay, I see what you are saying. Let me ask you this first. This is a big question that a lot of people do ask us like, “How do you deal with your employer?” And it is so different from each industry. Basically, people have different rules, there’s different relationships, and there’s different conflicts. Do you feel like this would be a conflict with your job?
Jocelyn: Have you signed any non-compete agreements?
Sally: No, I have not signed any non-competes, and a lot of the information that I put out is generic, is basic knowledge, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting out anything specific to the organization.
Shane: I would think that it would not be a problem as long as you are not giving advice to another museum in town, that you are a competitor with. I think that would be a problem. If you think your boss is going to be cool with it, I would just go immediately and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing.” It is my same philosophy with everything. I always say, “Be clear, not clever.” I’m a very, very, very, very direct person. I would 100% just say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing. I’m going to do this. It is going to be monetized. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”
I would not go to them, asking if it was for permission. Does that make sense? Don’t come at them like that. If there is no conflict of interest, and there is no problem, then I would just say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing, and it should be cool.” I would tell her or him, whoever your boss is, these are the reasons why it is not a problem. Just be clear and be direct. What do you think, Jocelyn?
Jocelyn: Yeah. I’m still at the opinion that I would let them know that I had something going on. But I don’t even know that I would go into expecting to make this replace my job, that type of thing. I think that is too much information.
Shane: And they don’t need that information.
Jocelyn: I think, for right now, what you need to say is, “Hey, I have decided to start a website based on the knowledge that I have gained in this career. It is not necessarily anything about this particular job. It’s just in general, and the reason that I am doing this is because people have asked me for my expertise. I felt like this is a good venue to put that out there.”
Shane: Basically, you are just answering one question at that, instead of answering the same question over and over, you have a place you can point people.
Jocelyn: I would just approach it that way. If you want to say, “Hey, I’m going to be monetizing this a little bit. I just wanted to let you know that I am doing this,” I think that is fine. I don’t think you need to put everything out there right now.
Shane: Another big thing I wanted to point out here, and you all know this, and we all know this, but some people come to us in desperation, and some people come to us with inspiration. The people who come to us in desperation are the people like, “I hate my job, I have to quit, and I have to just do it now, and it has to work in a month, and I don’t want to tell anybody,” and blah-blah-blah.
Sally: It’s not where I am.
Shane: It’s not where you are. That is good, that is where we want you to be. What my point is, those people start working on things at work on their lunch break, they start slacking off on their current job because they are so fired up to get this new thing because they think it is going to be their replacement.
I just want to make sure that they know, and you know, “I’m never going to work on this with my current job. This does not interfere with anything. This is basically me in my spare time doing this,” and that way you just draw a line in the sand that you never let your current thing interfere with your new thing.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that is a good talking point as well. Whenever I was working on Elementary Librarian as a librarian, I was sure to never log into my website from school. I never even went into my website at school. Just so that nobody could say, “Well, I saw that you were working on this instead of working on your job.” I never left any type of paper trail that I was working on anything. Just to make sure that there is no evidence against you in case anything ever were to come up, but I don’t think that it would.
Sally: Yes, yes that is good advice.
Shane: Let me switch gears back. I think part of your question there was, “How do I prepare for a day when this does replace my income?” Maybe you’re transitioning from the job you have now to that. Was that part of your question?
Sally: Yes, because actually, ideally, I would like to keep my current employer as a client at some level because I think that would be ideal.
Shane: For sure. I think that the biggest thing I can say is to plant the seeds of success as you go forward. One of the things me and Jocelyn looked at, we wanted definitely to have a little bit of money, maybe 3 to 6 months of basic bills stored. That way, we had to be really responsible and live on a good budget for a while because we also foresaw a point where we were like, “Hey, six months from now, we might be able to do this full-time. How do we make sure we have a little bit of a buffer there to give us some transition time?”
I would set apart a little bit of your salary now to save a little bit of that money, going forward. After you say that, maybe even look at your living expenses overall, because anytime you quit your job, unless something really crazy happens, there is going to be a slight little checkmark on the graph where you kind of dip down a little bit on the income, then it shoots up 10 times what you are making before because you are all in. I would just prepare yourself financially for that, look at your expenses. That is what we did. We sold our house, got a nice house, but just a little bit smaller house, and we just made all of our bills go down 10% so that when we had that transition, we were ready. That is what we did was, we looked at it from a personal budgeting standpoint so that we were prepared to handle our finances after we quit our job just in case, you know, there was a little hiccup here in the transition time.
Sally: Okay, that is good advice.
Jocelyn: Okay, Sally, hopefully that helps you out with some of those questions. I know that can be kind of tricky for a lot of people dealing with a day job and a possible online business. Let’s talk about other things that are just concerns for you right now as you are getting started out.
Sally: Okay, one of my questions, when I first thought I knew who my avatar was, I then took your avatar course and realized I actually had two avatars: one are the visitor tourist attractions themselves. The other avatar that I think would be able to use my services are those destinations. Most every destination in the United States has a tourism marketing office of some level or another, and I think they could also use my services to share the information with their partners and to look like the expert to their partners. When is the best time, or how do I start figuring out, once I start building my email list, when do I start to segment and target those avatars? Is it in that email sequence or how do I do that?
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that is probably where I would start. Just have a couple of links in those autoresponder emails, and say, “Are you an individual?”, “Are you a tourism office?” I think that these are sort of parallel in that they will eventually come to the same place.
Shane: Yeah, it is the same course material that is going to help them both, but you are just trying to figure out who is who. Is at the mom-and-pop, or is it the city director of tourism kind of thing?
Jocelyn: Yes, probably, the only thing that is going to be different is your marketing. Everything is probably going to go along the same path of it.
Shane: What this is, is there’s different roads that lead to the same place. Email 1 or Email 2 could ask this question. Another way that you can do this that is really good as you can segment from the beginning. You can have two little boxes over in your sidebar, and in one it says, “Do you own an attraction? Click here,” and the little box under it says, “Are you a director of tourism? Click here.” Whichever one they click gives them a different pop-up. They put their email in, they get their freebie that is related to them, your lead magnet could then be catered to the person who clicks there. Then they get on a separate email list.
They get on a separate funnel. But they all lead to your membership where you are telling them how to promote, how to do this, how to do that, how to market like the big dogs basically. There is two different ways to do it that way. I think that for this specific instance, because the mom-and-pop who finds you through one blog post is going to consider themselves that, and the director of tourism who is like, “Man, I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get more people downtown,” right? These attractions, I’m looking at things on Google to help me do that.
They are going to land on those specific blog posts, and they’re going to want to see them. I would probably do it at the beginning. Two levels: are you an attraction owner? Do you own a small attraction, and you need more visitors? Or are you a director of tourism, and you want more visitors? And they both just have two little boxes over on the side, and it is two different opt-ins, two different lists. Then you can segment more in your email list. “Is your city 10,000 people or less, or 10,000 people or more?” “Does your attraction draw 50,000 people a year, or 1 million a year?” You can kind of let them go down the rabbit hole farther once you get them into your opt in.
Sally: Okay that is great. That is very helpful.
Jocelyn: More information is always better than less.
Shane: For everybody listening, you should start segmenting the second you do anything because even in your avatar, there’s going to be different reasons for them to be there. Just look at a parenting blog. Yeah, it is for parents of kids who are at 5 to 10. Well guess what? Moms and dads will read that. You need to talk and market to them differently. Segmenting early is going to do nothing but help you later down the road.
Sally: Okay, wonderful. I think I know the answer to this question, but I am going to ask it anyways. Should I be setting up a membership site on my website now even though I currently have no email list or anything? Just set it up from the get-go?
Shane: Yes. We’ve always stressed this in Flipped Lifestyle, is product first. It does not matter how many roads you build if they don’t lead to anywhere cool. Every time you do a blog, every time you build a website, every time you build an email funnel, every time you build an opt-in, if it does not go anywhere, it is kind of like you are getting on a road that stops at the end of a cliff. Nice road, beautiful lights, paint’s good. But it just ends at nowhere.
I think you can go ahead and set that up. It will give you a place to put the content that you are going to create, like if you figure out a course and things like that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do coaching ahead of time. You can do, right now, consulting for these attractions to go ahead and start generating income, and start letting people contact you, hire you. You can lead to a consulting page, but you can use the membership now, the community area, the course area to coach those people with the one-on-one calls.
Go ahead and maybe get a few clients, generate some money, and then scale it into that membership that you are creating as you go through these one-on-one relationships.
Sally: Okay, all right. One of the reasons I wanted to segment it is because in the membership area, I can see being able to set up individual memberships for an attraction or a destination marketing organization for them to be able to buy a license for 10 or 20. I know that Jocelyn, you’ve done with Elementary Librarian. That is what I thought it would make sense to get them information right from the get-go.
Jocelyn: Yes, definitely. I would start doing that, and like Shane said, just run them side-by-side. Run your consulting side-by-side with your membership. Try to upsell the people from your consulting into your membership. That is a great way to market people to say, “Hey, I’m starting up his membership. If you would like to start, I’m starting a beta. This is a brand-new membership. You can get in for X dollars. I’m eventually going to sell it for Y dollars.” Just something to think about there.
Shane: You tell your membership, that is easy to do, too, for your segments. This is a question that we get a lot, too. Sally, you have been in our membership. You know there’s people in there who are literally just starting, and there’s people with 500 members. But how we handle that is they start their own threads, we can do different forums, like you can have one forum for mom-and-pops, one forum for tourism or whatever, and then you can have another one for large attractions, people who are 100,000 visitors or more or whatever.
The forum format inside your membership community allows you to, not only segment your marketing, but segment your group inside so you can serve each group individually. All the mom and pops can talk and share ideas. All the big attractions– you know what I’m saying. It will take you a couple days to set that up. There is a course in there that shows you how to get everything rolling, and then just let it evolve as you get clients and people come in, and you really start of understanding what they need. You can put it in your membership area.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I just want to clarify this relatively up there that we are not saying that you need to create an entire huge course inside of your membership. All we are saying is get the infrastructure ready, figure out what your people need, what your potential customers and what your customers need, then you create it as you go along. That is what we’re saying.
Shane: Yeah, content gets created as you go. All you needed to have a membership area is a way to deliver content, a way to have conversations, and a way to protect your content and conversations so people have to pay for it. That is it, no matter what any other guru you’ve ever heard says about all this stuff you’ve got to make, and all the stuff you’ve got to have, if you can do those three things: content, conversation, and protect it, you’ve got a membership area, and you just add to it day after day.
Sally: That’s great. That’s very helpful. I’m writing furiously as you are speaking.
Shane: This is recorded, don’t worry, you’re going to have a record of it.
Sally: Thank goodness, it’s recorded.
Jocelyn: Okay, that’s been some great question so far. What else can we help you with today?
Sally: One of the items I have, my action plan list for this week is to fill up my resource or my ‘About Me’ page a little bit more. I’ve looked at some other folks, and I’m wondering what your thoughts are versus should it be written in first person, which is more informal or third person which makes it sound more professional and authoritative?
Shane: I don’t think it matters. Here is our general theory on ‘About’ pages. It ain’t about you, it is about your client. You have to immediately make sure they know the benefits you are offering them, what your thing is. It is more about like what your business is doing. You have to tell them, “Hey, you’re a mom-and-pop person. This site is about you.” It is about getting more visitors, it’s about making more money in your business.
Then, at the end, you basically are just going to confirm that you are an expert. After you say those things and you really make the ‘About’ page about them, you say, “By the way, I’m Sally, I’m an expert, nationally recognized. This is why I can help you.” That is how you transition your ‘About’ page. This isn’t like English class or writing a resume. This is communicate to the people.
Jocelyn: I feel like generally, people in today’s culture are more responsive to first-person writing. It is more informal. It just makes people feel like they can get to know you.
Shane: It’s conversational.
Jocelyn: For a long time, Elementary Librarian was like that, and I think that that is what led to a lot of its success because there was nothing magical on that page. I just talked to people like a real person, and they liked that. That is how I got so many people following me at the beginning.
Shane: It can sound kind of fake. If it is your website, and it’s clear that you are the personality, that, “Sally is a Marketing Coordinator for the museum–,” you know?
Jocelyn: Yeah, if you are strictly B2B, then I might make a case for being more formal. But if you sell to consumers and businesses, I think that it is fine to be first-person.
Shane: Or if it was like a big nameless, faceless company type vibe, but I really feel like this is a personal brand, you are the expert at this. Just pick one. The first person probably works just fine.
Jocelyn: Whatever feels good to you, that is what you should do.
Shane: But I would definitely start out by making it about them. It is about the client. I’m telling you right now, nobody cares what degrees you’ve got, nobody cares about your job history.
Jocelyn: They care about how you can help them.
Shane: Exactly. That’s it. You’ve got to make it about them first. That can be a success story. That is how we wrote our ‘About’ page, was we wrote our story out to make people see, “Man, this is what they did, it is probably possible for me, too.” Therefore, our story is about them. We take them down the path of what we can do for them. Does that make sense? Just think about your client first on your about page, and then worry about yourself.
Sally: Perfect.
Jocelyn: All right, Sally, it’s been a great conversation today. I think we that we have had a lot of good things come out of it. We always end all of our calls by asking our clients, what is one thing, based on what we talked about today, that you intended to take action on in the next 24 to 48 hours?
Sally: I think what I will do is go back to the woman that is helping me out with the website and together, we will create the links so we can have the separate funnels: one for the actual tourism attraction, and one for the tourism marketing organizations, so right from the get-go I can segment those groups.
Shane: That’s awesome, and what you may find by doing that is that you will get more traffic from one or the other. You may even be just able to focus on one right away, and you won’t have to guess anymore about what you are doing. I’d also want to challenge you too, to, after that, your next step will be to set up that membership area. Maybe, after that conversation, get that done, let her do it, and then you can jump back in the forum and we can get your membership set up so we’re kind of ready to open the doors, okay?
Sally: Awesome, but scary. But awesome.
Shane: We like scary in the Flipped Lifestyle community. Well, thank you so much, Sally, for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing with everybody your questions and I know a lot of people are going to get great value out of this call. Like you said earlier, they’re going to find something that they can do in their online business to take it to the next level. We are super excited to help you get your business off the ground and get it going.
Sally: Terrific. Thank you so much for the both of you, and thank you to everyone in the community. It’s a great group to belong to.
Shane: Another awesome call from one of our Flip Your Life community members. To learn more about our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business today.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into our can’t Miss moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our regular 9-to-5 jobs.
Shane: Today’s Can’t Miss moment is kind of a neat one, it just materialized. It wasn’t anything that we planned to do. We talked about an earlier episode where Jocelyn and I go to the gym every morning, and we go and make sure we got our work out in, but lately we’ve been taking the long winding road there. We’ve been taking drives out in the country after we dropped the kids off.
Just a good 15-20 minute drive, we’ve got the radio off, and we are just talking to each other about what we are going to do that day, sharing ideas that we have to grow our online business. Maybe we’ll run out and try to catch the sunrise over one of the hills here in our little town in Kentucky. It’s just been a really neat thing to be able to stop and smell the roses, I guess, and not have to be in such a rush to get somewhere. I can remember how hectic mornings were when we worked our normal day jobs.
We could barely even see each other. Sometimes, one of us would just sleep in a little bit while the other one got out of the house and wouldn’t even see each other in the morning. Now we get to spend this quality time together, and start our day always on the same page.
Jocelyn: Sometimes, we just go out, we stop by the coffee shop, and Shane gets his black coffee with three cubes of ice.
Shane: They know me when I go in the coffee shop, too, they know exactly what I need. They just make it for me without even asking, it’s amazing.
Jocelyn: Or I go through McDonald’s and get a fountain drink because I’m obsessed with their fountain drinks. That is the way I like to start my day. Yeah, it’s just cool because we are not always in a rush, we don’t always have somewhere we have to immediately be, and just get to start the day off in not a rushed and chaotic way.
Shane: Before we sign off, we like to close of every show with a verse from the Bible. Today’s Bible verse is Proverbs 3:5-6. The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; lean not unto your own understanding and always acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” 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 will see you then.
Jocelyn: Bye.
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