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Need ideas on content management based membership to plan out your online business?
Listening in on today’s episode might give you ideas as we help our guest plan his online business.
Our guest this week is the creator of Executor Help Network, Atty. David Harris.
He has been listening to our podcasts since 2014 and had joined the Flip Your Life community to start his own online business.
David has been practicing law for over 20 years. He primarily works on estate planning, probate and trust administration, where he helps the person in charge of the deceased person’s will understand the probate process and provide them with clear instructions to navigate through it.
A couple of years ago, he had an idea of starting his own online business, an online community where people could go get information and access to tools that can help them through this life event.
We’re going to help David work on the foundations needed to turn his idea into a feasible and sustainable online business.
We’ll also be sharing our insight on how to proceed with a domain name, what a content management based membership is and make an online business road map.
Don’t miss it!
You Will Learn:
- Shane & Jocelyn’s insight on Domain Names
- The importance of nailing down your offer
- Advantages of a content management based membership
- Creating an online business road map
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned on 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 actually a special one. It is recording Can’t Miss Moments with our children, Isaac and Anna. They are at home today with us. They are not feeling well today. They were home from school and we thought that it would be fun to bring them on and share some Can’t Miss Moments with you.
We wanted to just ask them questions, and see on the spur of the moment, what they think. They are starting to get older and they are starting to kind of realize that we have a little bit different lifestyle than other people.
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 David launch his online business.
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. Super excited to have another Flip Your Life community member on the show so that we can help them take their business to the next level. For those of you who may be new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, we are a little different than some other podcasts that you may have listened to. We do not bring on guests or experts or anyone promoting any other products. We bring on real people starting, building, and growing real online businesses and we help them take it to the next level. We’re super excited today to help a great Flip Your Life community member, David Harris. David, welcome to the show, buddy!
David: Hey, it’s good to be here. How are you guys?
Jocelyn: Oh, we’re great. It is great to talk to you because you are a person who is from my same area where I grew up. Well, you are not from there. We just talked about it, but David, he lives in southern Indiana. That is near where I am originally from.
Shane: Western Kentucky and southern Indiana are like this blended– there is no border really. You don’t know where you are when you are over there.
David: Yes. Except for the accents.
Shane: They’re little bit different across the river. A little bit different.
David: You cross over, you get an accent.
Jocelyn: Yeah, they are a little bit different. But we do a lot of different things in southern Indiana. There is a theme park there that we go to fairly often, sometimes we go over there and watch fireworks.
Shane: So next time we go to Holiday World, we may be calling you up for lunch, buddy. I’m just saying.
David: All right.
Shane: You’ve got to show me somewhere to eat in Evansville, you know what I mean?
David: Yeah, I’ll take you around all the good spots.
Jocelyn: Alright, so we learned a little bit about where you are in the country. But tell us a little bit more about you, about your background, about your business so far, and what you’re planning to online.
David: Okay, well as far as backgrounds goes, I am an attorney and I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years, and every time I say that I cannot believe it has been 20 years. But I’ve been practicing 20 years, and I primarily practice in the area of estate planning and probate and trust administration, and kind of that area. A couple years ago, I had this idea for an online business. I started listening to podcasts like Pat Flynn, and all those guys, and I was totally fascinated by the idea of having an online business. For literally about three or four years, I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing an online business.
One of my ideas was to set up a website and sell a video course or something for people who are having to administer an estate. Like there is somebody whose parents have died, or something, and they are trying to figure out, “Oh what am I supposed to do? Where do I start?” Ideally, a person like that would go to a lawyer. But a lot of people don’t. They want to try to do it themselves. But they really have no idea what they are doing, and I thought this would be a perfect thing for a video course, or something.
Shane: We were talking a little bit off air. Jocelyn and I were talking about your thing this morning, because they were driving down the street, and he saw this attorney billboard it was like, “Probate,” and I was like, then, that is what David tries to do for people, yeah? But it got me to thinking though, some people can’t afford to hire a lawyer to help them be the executor of the will. It is something that really is kind of frightening because, I bet that most people don’t even know that they are someone’s executor like their parents, or it falls on them because maybe no one named an executor.
A couple million people a year die in the United States. A lot of those people have wills, a lot of them people have kids, and this is happening to a lot of people where they don’t teach you this in your junior year at high school all. “Okay, how do you be an executor of your will?” It’s like a checkbook, they don’t teach you how to balance a checkbook either.
David: Yeah, the Executor 101.
Shane: Yeah, there’s no class for that anywhere. I don’t remember that even at college.
Jocelyn: There are a lot of people out there that maybe had to do it before, but then there are a lot of people who have no idea what they are doing. Maybe their parent or grandparent or whomever, maybe they unexpectedly die, and this falls on them, and they have no clue what they’re doing. I mean I know I wouldn’t have a clue what I would do.
Shane: Yeah, and it is scary, too, because what we have got more into over the last six months or so as our business has grown, we’ve looked more into estate planning. Who would deal with that? What if something happened to us? Who would be the executor? Our children are eight and six. I think it is a fascinating niche, and this is something real that affects real people every day of the week, and you could really help a lot of people who couldn’t afford to get legal help.
David: Yeah, and a lot of people don’t necessarily need an attorney. One of my hitches for getting real clients is, look. If somebody has died come on in and see me, and what we might do is we’re going to sit down for about an hour, maybe longer, it depends, but we will sit down for a little bit of a time, and by the time you leave my office, you’re going to have a roadmap of exactly what you need to do. And you’re going to be able to do most of it. You’re probably only going to need me to do one or two things. Now, if we have to open an estate or something, you are going to need me for more.
But I can usually give you an instruction handout to just go to the bank, call the life insurance company, do this, do that. But people, I think, are just afraid of lawyers or something because they just don’t want to do it. I think one of the other things that happened a couple months ago is, my friend called, and his mom had just died, and he said, “I don’t know what to do. Am I supposed to probate something? Or am I supposed to tell the court that I’m doing something?” I said, “Let’s go to lunch, and talk about it.” We sat down for about an hour, and all these meetings, all these conversations, like that, they always go the same way.
I back them up, they’re always completely confused. I back them up, I talk about asset ownership, and how, you know, look, don’t worry about wills and stuff, but really, where things go depends on how you hold them. I give them this kind of lesson on asset ownership. Then, we go from there. We start looking at, okay, here’s what I’ve got, okay here’s what you need to do. It’s the same conversation over, and over, and over again. I just kept thinking, “I could do a video of this, and just hit play, and call me in an hour when you’re done watching it.”
Jocelyn: Yeah, it kind of reminds me a little bit of what we do, because we answer the same questions over and over and over again, which is fine. But it lends itself a well to courses, and things that you can do, and then you can be available to answer additional questions, and that is it very much exactly what we do.
Shane: Most teaching online, when you start an online business, whether it is all courses, or whether it is courses that lead to a membership where they have access, you are not as much of a teacher as you are a tour guide. There is always going to be a limitation a little bit online. Someone will come to us, they will ask is something, and we’re like, “Okay, this is what you have to do, but you are going to have to go hire the expert to carry it out.” But people don’t even know where to go, they don’t even know who to hire. Like you said, there’s some things they can do themselves, there’s some things they need to hire someone to take care of. Just telling them that is going to save them hours, and emotional pain, and money.
David: That’s a big part of it, too, is the time savings. A lot of times, I’ll get people who called, and they’ve already spent three months just going back and forth, spinning their wheels, and finally they come to me, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I can do that in about 20 minutes.” It is just because I’ve done it for 20 years. I’m not special, but I know what to do, and I know the language, and I know who to call and I know what to say when I call them, and I have the form letters to send out, and all that. Again, it’s the difference between spinning your wheels for three months, or in this case, joining my membership site and getting the instructions. It would take you an hour.
Shane: Also, ramping past the learning curve is a whole other ball game of why other people go online. They want to go faster. Before we get into your questions here, because we’ve got some great questions today that you submitted before we got on the air, I want you to kind of go back and challenge something that you just said. It’s that you said, “I’m not special, it’s just that I’ve done it for 20 years.” But your experience is your unfair advantage.
That is what you have over all the other people out there, is you’ve been doing this 20 years, you do know this, and you can help, and your experience by listening to podcasts, by learning about this online world, to maybe able to scale something like this into some kind of course or membership, is also an unfair advantage over all the other lawyers who are not doing it. Everybody out there does the same thing online, when you become a teacher online. First you make money by what you do. You are a lawyer who does probate and estates and things like that. Then you make money on what you know, and how you help other people.
That is what we do online by teaching people things. Really challenge as we go forward, if you could help a thousand families a year seamlessly get through a very painful process, that they are not emotionally even ready for, that is life-changing. That is miraculous. This is not just, “I’m a lawyer, I’m teaching people how to do something legally.” It is, “You know what, these people just had a horrible situation, I can get them through it from right here in southern Indiana no matter where they are in the world. I’m going to do that.” Okay?
David: That’s a good point, because you do take for granted what you know, and you sort of figure everybody else knows what you know, that is not the case.
Jocelyn: Exactly. I think this is a really exciting idea for a website. It is not one that we’ve heard very often.
Shane: A lot of traffic, a lot of search traffic. I’ve done some research on it, and man, how to execute a will has thousands of searches.
Jocelyn: I’m excited to dive in here, and see what you’ve done, and what we can help you to do next. Tell us a little bit about that. What do you have so far?
David: Okay, so far I have very little. Although, I will back up and say I do have experience and a little bit of knowledge about setting up websites. I love technology, and I’m kind of a geek that way. I’ve actually set up a couple of niche websites, and I’ve used AdSense and that kind of thing. I made a little bit of money online, but I’ve let those website go to the wayside, because it was more like a hobby.
Shane: Were those WordPress?
David: Yeah, yes. I was very comfortable. I’ve got a hosting account, and I’m very comfortable setting up a WordPress site and doing a theme and stuff. My design sense leaves a lot to be desired, but I know enough technical stuff. I can deal with domain names and stuff like that. Okay, I’ve got a domain name which, as you guys know, I posted in the forums. It is okay, but it is kind of unwieldy. I still haven’t found one that I really, really like.
Shane: Go ahead and share that with everybody. What is that domain name?
David: It’s executorhelpnetwork.com. Originally, I was going to do this. I started to listen to you guys when you first started, I think around 2014, and you guys were doing products back then. That is what I envisioned for this, was basically a series of video courses that you would buy and download and watch at your leisure. When you guys moved to a membership model, I started thinking, well, why not do this as a membership? People would sign up for about a year-long membership because that is about how long it takes. I could just upload all the videos to it.
Whenever I want to change a video, you just swap it out, and you could do a forum, too, and people could put questions In the forums. I’m looking at membership site, is what I’m thinking about doing. I’ve got the domain name, I’ve got the website set up. It is basically just a wireframe. It’s got a landing page, and that’s about it. I know the problem– and I fall prey to this– of people putting out content, and just kind of messing around with pictures and sidebars and stuff like that. What I really need is a product. Everybody sort of skips over that. “Oh, I’ve got 10,000 blog posts,” yeah, but there is no real product there.
Jocelyn: You’re not selling anything.
Shane: Yeah, you have an amazing hobby blog, is what we tell people when we see that. But you don’t have a business.
Jocelyn: I think that as far as the naming goes, we will go there first. I’m more of a person who feels like branding is a little bit more important than Shane does. He’s like, “It doesn’t really matter,” and it really doesn’t, but if you want to change it, I did throw out a couple of ideas here in the forums, and I was just going to go through those. I thought of maybe ‘Executor Answers’, ‘Executor Assistant’, or ‘Assistants: The Educated Executor’. There’s a couple of ideas for you just to get the wheels turning. I don’t think it is of utmost importance. It is really not going to make or break you, either way. But if you want it to be something that is a little bit more ‘brandable’, you might think about something like that.
Shane: I think with the domain name, the thing we tell everybody about domains, is you can bring it something totally different than what your domain name says right now. You can always change it later. I think having ‘executor’ in that title is awesome, no matter how you do it.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think most people understand that. Shane was asking me today, like, “You know what probate means?” I’m like, “No, not really.”
Shane: Right, exactly.
David: Nobody does.
Shane: But people will say, when the judge goes, “Hello, Jim, you’re the executor of your father’s will. Have fun.”
Jocelyn: People get that.
Shane: People get that. I think that domain name wise, move forward, and change it later, if you want to. The content of your posts and things like that is what’s going to be much more important. What you title blog posts, what they’re about, how relevant they are to search results, and we can look at that search queries on Google’s keyword tool, and see what people are actually looking for. Let us worry about your blog posts more than we worry about the actual domain. If we have to change it later, we can, okay?
David: Okay. I mean one of the problems is just the word ‘executor’ by itself as just a huge. It is unwieldy, and difficult. I mean how many syllables are in that word.
Shane: Well, let me ask you this, how many domains a day to you actually type in? Most people just click on things from a search engine. That is kind of what people do, is they just click on Google search results anyway, so no one is going to be necessarily typing that in.
Jocelyn: Yeah, don’t worry so much about that. I feel like you probably have your avatar nailed down pretty well. If someone who is having to be an executor, maybe they don’t know what they are doing, right?
Shane: I kind of like the name actually myself.
Jocelyn: I think that is okay. The next thing that we need to nail down is the main offer.
David: Right. I’ll give you guys a little plug here. I feel much better about this question than I did even like two weeks ago. I love January 1st, fresh start and all that stuff. I’m one of those guys that has resolutions– but, I’ve been thinking about this idea for so long, and I finally got to a point, unlike, “Look, you’ve either got to do this or put it aside.” It is kind of like the gym membership. Either use it or cancel it. In January, I thought, I’m going to join Flipped Lifestyle. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, and we’re going to do this thing. The big problem I’ve had is there’s so many things in my head.
Okay, I’ve got to do videos. Which video do I do first? How many videos do I need? What kind of videos should they be? Do I do articles? Do I do blog posts? What about my tools? I plan on putting spreadsheets on the website that people can use. There is all this stuff fluttering around inside your head, and it’s just kind of overwhelming. That was kind of my first question is, what is my roadmap? How do I even get started with all this, and I joined Flipped Lifestyle, and it really lit a fire under me. For the last week and a half, I’ve really been giving this a lot of thought and writing things out. Now, I actually feel a little bit more. I’m still going to ask the question, but I actually feel like I have more direction. Just joining Flipped Lifestyle has sort of helped me to just get all those random thoughts, and put them on paper.
Shane: It’s amazing when you get in there, too. It gets us fired up, too, because there’s so many conversations going on in there, anyway. I was doing the math the other day, and something like every response in Flipped Lifestyle, every topic is an average of six replies. It’s like, when you throw it out there, you’re like, “What do I start with?” You can even just like put “What do I start with?” in a forum post, and then it is like, “Yeah, start here.” You just start that next thing, and start that next thing, and you just keep going. Let’s talk about your roadmap here on the air, though.
David: Okay, so yeah, I’ve got my domain name, I’ve got the hosting setup. I’ve got a basic wireframe of a website. What I want to put on the site are videos, some articles. It will pretty much be evergreen articles. I don’t necessarily want a rolling blog. I’m okay with adding content, but really what I want is articles that you can read. “Okay, I’m having trouble figuring out who the beneficiary of this life insurance policy is. What do I do?” “Okay, here is an article about how to go about finding that.” Then, I’m going to put tools on it.
I use Excel spreadsheets for accounting and inventories and that kind of thing. I’m like, well, I could put these up there and people can use them. I guess, my thought is, until I get a certain number of those, and that is kind of one of my questions is, how much stuff do I need to put up there before it is built out enough before I can say, “Okay, the doors are open. Let’s set up the payment processing, and let us set up the on-boarding, and all that.” How much stuff do I need? I was thinking maybe 10 videos, 10 articles? I don’t know.
Shane: Okay, here’s the best way to think about that, okay? This is one reason why we prefer the membership model. We call it the membership model a lot, but we what we really prefer is a content management based membership. For us, we managed our contact with forums. When we create courses, we just put the video and the resources in a forum post in its own forum. It becomes a topic and it becomes a forum. The cool thing about starting a membership site like this is you can create that infrastructure.
You have to work backwards. Okay, well, how do I host this video? Well, I’ve got to have the forum. If I don’t have the forum, then I can’t host the video. So, what is the next step? Create the forum. Well, if I want people to join to get access to forum, they’re going to have to pay me, and then I’m going to have to protect the content. I have to install my membership protection next. Now, we say, “I actually have a forum that people can join, and give me money for. Why would they join?” Because there is content in there. And then finally we say, “Why would people stay?” Because of community and leadership. That is what we provide in the general forum area, where we can talk to our members. If you look at that roadmap, it is actually completely backwards like you said from what everybody else does. Everyone else builds their websites, starts writing blog posts, creates YouTube channels, Facebook pages, all this. Six months later, they never built anything for anyone to give them money. If we will do that first, we can populate it as we go when we’re ready to open the doors at it again.
Jocelyn: I think that there is ways of doing that that is marked, that makes you kind of do it all at the same time. What I mean by that is, as you create content for your membership site, take a part of the content, make it free content, and use that to generate leads.
Shane: Into the paid content. Take your spreadsheets you just give us as an example. The spreadsheets probably have instructions, or whatever, on how to use the spreadsheet. Let’s say you’ve got your website good, let’s say you go ahead and build your product, which is actually a content management-based membership with a protective plug-in, like WishList, or Paid Memberships Pro. That is there, it is ready. Now, once we have a way to take people’s money, and we have a way to get them into our stuff, we have to populate it.
You take the first spreadsheet. What happens day one of this process? Let us, just for this example say, “Well, it’s this spreadsheet. It is Spreadsheet A.” Okay, they need to have this, day one. What you do is, you record a video using Spreadsheet One. You create a blog post about why Spreadsheet One’s important like the accounting thing: you got to manage the money, you’ve got to know where it is going in and out, you’ve got to know who is getting the money, whatever. At then, at bottom it says, “Members get a copy of this spreadsheet, and I will help you use it.” They join your membership.
Like Jocelyn said, you take that piece of content you’ve already got, you put it in your membership area. It is protected content, and then you just show people how to use it, and why it’s important, and they will buy to get access to it, and for you to help them in their specific situation.
David: I guess one of my questions though is, at what point do I even have a membership area? How much stuff, and I’m asking you a question you really probably can’t answer.
Shane: As soon as you create the area, it is ready. That is why it’s so important especially in a situation because some people are going to join you just to ask you a question. If you have a way where people can ask you questions and you can answer them, a.k.a. deliver content, the membership’s ready to open the doors. We’re saying, it can be opened day one, and then as things go along, you can put things in it. We have another client who has a dog training membership. We just had her open the membership, straight up.
There is a forum area where people can go in. We just got a puppy, and we’re like, “Okay, my dog peed in its crate, what do I do?” We go ask her that there. She makes a video about that question, and put it into her content area. From now on, when anyone asks that question, she can refer to the video. But the membership area was there, the doors were open, she was ready to do the coaching and she populated her content as she built out her membership.
David: Yeah, I think the way I was looking at it was I need to have at least a minimum number of, for example, videos. I need to have at least 10 videos that people can access, and I need at least a couple articles, and maybe a couple spreadsheets or something. If they are going to come, and join the membership, and they plunk down their credit card, and they pay me, and they get in past the membership wall, and there’s nothing there–
Shane: Okay, you need three videos. Go. That’s it.
David: There you go, that’s what I need.
Shane: It really is so arbitrary, and so simple. Use that.
Jocelyn: I think that people get too hung up on that. Just tell people, as they are joining, set out a beta price, and say, “I’m just getting started, I want you guys to help me to develop this, and so as a result, I don’t have a ton of training in here right now. But I want you to tell me what you need, and I’m going to create it for you. So, make it a positive.
Shane: Or you do what doesn’t scale at first, and then you just sell your membership as, “I’ve been a probate lawyer for 20 years. You don’t need to go ask somebody $500 an hour, come into my membership, it is $99 a month. Join my membership. I will help you through the process.” Then as you develop, you know the order you think it goes in, but now online, they will be asking you different questions. You can populate those areas over a month or two over your first couple clients.
I would actually take your real people in real life and overlay this, and say, “Okay, not only do you get me and we get to meet, and we get to talk about this. I’m also going to set you up in this area, and I’m going to set answer some of your questions there for X months.” It’s the same thing as my real-life relationship, it’s there.
Jocelyn: That way, you already have some people already in the area. They can start talking, start asking questions, so that when people come in to join, they are like, “Oh, this place is already active. Cool.”
Shane: Then what those first three videos– we’re just going to make it up, okay– is you need to look in the mirror and say you’ve been doing this for 20 years, what happens generally in the first month of someone being an executor? What do they need, and how can I deliver it in three training modules that are no longer than 30 to 45 minutes each? That is what you create first.
Jocelyn: And, beyond that, how can I chunk that into small 3 to 5 minute segments that you might release on YouTube, you might release on your website, and have transcribed. Those are types of content that you can use to give away for free to get people to come, and then generate leads to give you their email address.
Shane: The more advanced stuff, you start populating your content, and your course areas.
David: well, let me ask this. On the forums, I’m a little gun shy about doing a forum. I think it will be great to have some very, but I’ve got a couple concerns about it. One of which, this is probably a unique concern to me which is, lawyers have to be really careful about giving out legal advice. We all hear the horror stories in law school about, “Oh, I said something at a cocktail party to somebody. The next thing I know, I’m getting sued for malpractice.” We had to be real careful, and there is a fine line between giving legal advice and giving legal information. For starters, I can’t market this as something like, “Well, you have access to a lawyer. Come to my forum, ask me a question, and I will answer your legal question.”
Shane: We’ve had this happen before. We have another person in our membership who is a lawyer, and he is a divorce attorney, okay. He was doing the exact same situation. This is how he resolved the problem in his business: There is a lot of concerns on this, too. We have other people that are in medical-based niches, where you got to be really careful what medical advice you are giving out. Everybody is exposed to liability. It is America. We sue people. You have to be really careful about what you do.
But what he did was, basically, I think, if anyone in his state, he determined it was okay, they were paying him for legal advice. It did not matter what he charged them. But he didn’t even want to give them legal advice. What he really started doing was, people would go in, and he had a question area. It wasn’t really a discussion forum, or what I did, or what you did, or what anybody did. It is just, “Here is where you ask questions.” This can be something as simple as comments under your training videos. You can actually let people ask questions. That is a form of community. It does not have to be an open Wild West forum area. Then what he did was, he never answered them directly. He used the question to frame general topics for his videos.
Jocelyn: Or to create more content, basically.
Shane: Exactly. Instead of saying, “Hey Jim, you should do this,” he would take the concept of, “Okay, my dad died, and me and my sister are fighting over the house, and I don’t know who gets what money, or whatever.” You wouldn’t say, “Hey, Jim, this is what you and your sister should do.” You could say, “What if–
Jocelyn: “We had a situation similar to this.”
Yeah, “What if this happened? What if the son was the executor and the sister wanted her share and–,” and you can just create a general subject that is informative, and generally tells people what to do that can be released in time into the community whatever you want to put it, right? Then you can say, “Go here, watch this video. I’ve answered something similar to this.
Jocelyn: Yeah, like, “This is an example that is similar to your situation.”
Shane: Yeah, and of course we are not attorneys, and you are an attorney. You’ve got to figure that out. But that was his plan to get around that basically.
David: That was kind of my thought, too, was if I’m going to have a forum, I’m really not going to answer people directly. It will be more like, I did a video, you should watch this video, this video, and this video. Those will steer you in the right direction.”
Shane: Exactly. A community area like that is still important because whenever anybody has a problem, they don’t want to feel that they are alone, and they can talk amongst themselves.
David: Exactly, and there is certain help that they can provide each other. I mean sometimes, you say, “Well, I’m having trouble with this.” And somebody else can say, “Oh, I had that. Here is what I did.”
Shane: Exactly. Of course, you just have rock solid terms and conditions that people sign before they come in. I would start every video with, “Hey, this is a general example of what to do in this situation. Always consult your attorney first.” You know what I mean, if you want to see what to do in your state or whatever?
David: How long would you leave that disclaimer running on the video?
Shane: Not long. Have you ever heard the radio, where at the end will be like, “This thing will make you puke and have diarrhea. You might go blind.” But it’s like– you know what I mean?
Jocelyn: I would just flash it up on the screen really quickly. I mean, I think that is fine.
Shane: We had another person in the medical field. She is a nurse who does an online business. She has hundreds of members. What she does is, she has a flash of the words at the beginning, and she comes on and says it at the end. It is just to cover yourself.
Jocelyn: That way, you don’t lose people at the beginning, like you don’t want people to be, “Oh, this is so boring,” but then you still cover yourself. I think a lot of times, though, we invent problems that don’t even exist yet. I understand that you need to be careful about it, but at the same time don’t let that be a roadblock to moving forward.
Shane: Yeah, we call that ‘fighting ghosts’. Sometimes people have a straight and narrow path as clear as a bell. Get on the road, and punch it to a hundred. Then they start inventing potholes and obstacles. “What if I turn the corner up there, and there is a speed bump?” “What if there is not?” That is something you can navigate as you go, I think.
David: Yeah, I think it is almost a joke because really if somebody is going to sue you for something the fact that you splashed a disclaimer up there is really not going to be big defense.
Shane: I think if you keep it general, and you are answering questions, and that is another argument in your space for a course, you might want to lay this out like Month One, Month Two, Month Three, Month four, Month five. It is a membership model, but it is spread over a few months of what you should do because they are taking a general course, general principles. It is not direct advice to them..
David: That actually leads back to the forum issue, which is the other concern I have about forms is, I’ve seen forums. There are different places where people can ask legal questions, and I’ve looked at them. The types of things that people put on forums, the type of questions they ask are very difficult. First off, they don’t they don’t phrase the questions very well. It is very obvious they don’t know what they are talking about.
It would be like, if I’m putting up a question on a football forum, you would probably look at it and go, “What are you talking about? This is gibberish.” It’s almost like they don’t even know what to ask, and it is always so very fact specific. It is almost like I can’t answer. The answer to that question is, “You need to go see a lawyer.”
Shane: I want to stress to everyone listening, don’t do things like us, or gurus. Just because it worked for one person that doesn’t mean it is right for you. We have some people that don’t even have forums. They just have course material. But people pay month after month to get the courses. We have some people that don’t even have courses, they just have a Facebook group, and people pay to be a member of it.
The point is, can you deliver content? Can you have conversations, and can you protect both and charged for them? If you can do that in any structure, you have a membership-based website. That is why I think that for you, maybe questions under direct videos would be better. Then it is asking questions about that situation, which is a lot easier for you to create follow-up content in.
David: Okay. Well, can I clarify then? What I was thinking what I would do is, again I would do a sort of minimum number of the videos. I had 10 in my mind, for some reason. Then I would do 10 articles. There is two spreadsheets that are the primary ones you use. I was thinking, I will get those set up. I have two spreadsheets, 10 articles, 10 videos. Once I get those done, I will do those, that will be Step One. I won’t do anything else until I get those done. Then once those are done, I will go ahead and I’ll upload them.
I will do the video hosting, I’ll get everything all squared away on the website, get that all kind of setup before I open the doors, and then once that done, then I will open the doors and I will start trying to bring in. But it almost sounds like you are saying, “No, don’t, don’t do that necessarily. Maybe go ahead and set up a forum, and open the doors and let the people from, and let the questions come in, and then start.”
Shane: No, no, what I’m saying is, set up the place that is going to host content and conversations. Set up the protection and the charging methods for that.
Jocelyn: Which is super quick, actually.
Shane: It’s super quick, takes like a day or two. Then, create the product that goes on the shelf.
Jocelyn: But what I want you to do at the same time, which this is kind of advanced that a lot people don’t think of, I want you to chunk that product up. Chunk that video in a way that you can share it freely. That is going to bring people to your site. Have some type of thing or them to download maybe as a worksheet that goes along with that video, or something like that in exchange for their email address so that you can then communicate with them, and then later on down the road, when that membership is ready, which theoretically should be now, that will have people that are interested. That you know are interested that they have been to your website.
Shane: Let’s say you’re going to do those first 10 videos like Jocelyn just said. Don’t go back and create a bunch of new blog posts. You are just going to take those first three videos, chunk them up, and release them in four-part series in your website for free.
Jocelyn: You could even have them transcribed.
Shane: Yeah, you are doing two things at once that way. That way you are not like, “Okay, I’ve got my product. Now, I’ve got to write a bunch of new blog posts.” No, you just released the first three steps.
Jocelyn: You need something for Google to find so that people could find you basically.
David: Okay, okay.
Shane: You can just push that out after the product is ready to sell.
David: Yeah, okay. That is one thing I was thinking, was that one video, what would be a full video that would be behind the membership wall that the members could view at their leisure, that is exactly what I was thinking was I will transcribe the audio, and then once that I do that, I can edit it and do a post. For YouTube videos, I would just cut out a big portion at the middle. I was thinking for a time, at this point, the lead magnet would be the Excel spreadsheet and the video that goes with it on how to use it.
Shane: Maybe. You will have to look at that as you go.
Jocelyn: It might be a little too much. We need to talk about that more in the community.
Shane: Yeah the lead magnet for this is more like the first seven days of being an executor. This is forest for the trees, here. You got to step back to, “My dad just died,” day one. Day two, “We plan”. Day three, “We bury them”. Day four, “Life starts moving on”. Day five, “Oh crap, the judges just told me I was the executor”. What happens the next seven days? That is your lead magnet
David: Okay. I actually maybe have that, because I did a video called, “First Things First,” and it is what to do immediately after somebody dies. People get worried about the wrong thing. It is more like, “No, go get the locks changed on the house. Forward the mail,” this kind of stuff.
Shane: That’s your lead magnet.
Jocelyn: That is perfect because I will tell you that you know people in this generation, our generation, who are getting ready to start having people die in their lives, if you haven’t already, that is the first thing we’re going to do. I’m going to go onto Google and say, “What do I do? Somebody just died.”
Shane: “I’m an executor, what happens next?” Stuff like that. You’re going to treat the symptom. You are going to make them comfortable. It’s like if they checked in the hospital, you don’t know what is wrong with them yet. You’re the doctor, you know the disease, you know the cure. But the first thing you do is you admit them, you take them, put them in bed, you get them comfortable. Then we start treatment. That spreadsheet’s a part of the treatment.
Jocelyn: I think you are getting too far ahead of yourself.
Shane: Yeah, for sure. If I was going to make a bulleted list of how to start a membership right now, I would always do this first. The very first thing we would do is work totally backwards. Infrastructure. There has got to be a place for them to go, a place for them to give me money, and a place for them to deliver content and conversation. I start that. The next thing I do is product. I’ve got to have content in there, because content draws people in, leadership our community makes people stay for the long-term. That is your 10 videos. The next thing I’ve got to do is be able to sell the thing I just created. I would do my sales pages next. Then, the next thing we would do is content to get people to discover us.
Jocelyn: If you are smart content creator, you are going to do it all at the same time. You are going to create your content with the mindset of, “I need to use some of this to give away.”
Shane: Then, after we create some content for people to find us, we will take a piece of content that we’ve already created that is one step past the free stuff, that would become our lead magnet. In reality, you could do that first things first video. You’ve already got that as your lead magnet. You just need to write blog post-centric to getting people to that. Then you can worry about marketing.
Jocelyn: Maybe choose three or four different topics that people would want one to know relating to that lead magnet, and those will be your blog posts and then that lead that can be for all of those posts, does that make sense?
David: Yeah, yeah.
Shane: That is the roadmap basically, is infrastructure, product, sales copy, lead magnet, content that goes to your lead magnet. Once you are there, you can start running your ads and marketing like crazy.
David: Okay. I had one and two flip-flopped. I was thinking, let me do the product first. Once it’s built, then I will build the place to put it. Otherwise, I felt that, well, I’ve got a website that is sitting there for the next month while I’m trying to build these products, and it is just sitting there.
Shane: We always say ‘product first’ because of that is the mentality we want to have. But as we have evolved, and as we have now seen hundreds and hundreds of people launch memberships through our community, we’ve realized, if the infrastructure is kind of part of the product, and people don’t really view it that way, and if you go ahead and say, “Here is the storefront, here are the shelves where I set my product,” as you make the shelves, you can go in and put it on the shelf.
It’s a lot easier to manage it. It grows more efficiently. What we don’t want is people to go create 20 blog post. That is not what we’re talking about. It is like what you said, it’s the wireframe, it’s the skeleton, it’s the racks that the product hangs on. Gotta have those first so we have a place to put things as we make them.
David: Okay, alright.
Jocelyn: All right, David, this has been a really interesting conversation about a business that I think is actually just really cool and I think that you have a lot of potential with this. We always end our calls by asking people based on what we talked about today, what is one thing that you will take action on, say in the next 24 to 48 hours to help move your business forward?
David: Well, I think what I will do, since I need to go ahead and flush out the website in terms of putting a place to put these videos and stuff, I’m going to, in the next 48 hours, I think you guys have a video on how to do a membership site like with a BuddyPress.
Shane: Yeah, it’s bbPress, BuddyPress, and Paid Memberships Pro is what we usually recommend to start with.
David: Yeah, I think I’m somewhat comfortable with forums, but it’s been a while since I’ve set one up so I’m going to review that video. Then go ahead and put up the bbPress forum in the site that I’ve got.
Shane: That is a delivery platform and I love that. Go ahead and get that set up, and then what we can do, too, is start a second post where I can go in with some of that research that I did when you first joined. We can start flushing out what the order of everything– you’re going to know it more than me about your content for the actual product. But while you set that up, I can do a little bit of research to maybe guide you how you are going to release that for your free content, too, okay?
David: Okay.
Shane: Awesome, man. Well, this is a great conversation. Just another example of a niche that no one would think about because it is not what you hear online for an online business. I think you’ve got a lot of potential here, man, so we look forward to helping you build this thing up and take it to the next level.
David: Alright, sounds good.
Shane: What a great call for one of our Flip Your Life community members. We would love to have you in our Flip Your Life community as well. If you would like to become a member of the Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can help you with your online business, too.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of our show and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were working at 9-to-5 jobs still. Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is actually a special one. It is recording Can’t Miss Moments with our children, Isaac and Anna. They are at home today with us. They are not feeling well today. They were home from school and we thought that it would be fun to bring them on and share some Can’t Miss Moments with you.
Shane: We wanted to just ask them questions, and see on the spur of the moment, what they think. They are starting to get older and they are starting to kind of realize that we have a little bit different lifestyle than other people. Isaac always asks me about the Flipped Lifestyle, and what is going on with that.
Jocelyn: And, just so you know, we did not practice these answers. We don’t know what they are going to say.
Shane: First, I’m just going to get them to say hi. So, Isaac, say, “Hey, y’all.”
Isaac: Hey, y’all.
Shane: Anna, say, “Hey, y’all.”
Anna: Hey y’all.
Shane: Anna is being a little bit of a baby. Then, we want to ask them like, Isaac, what is your favorite thing about mommy and daddy where we work at home, when we get to set our own schedule and kind of do whatever we want?
Isaac: So we can play together when you are finished working.
Shane: And what else? What is your favorite part of the day?
Isaac: When you pick us up from school and we get to see you.
Shane: Oh, that’s awesome. Anna, what about you, baby? What’s your favorite thing about mommy and daddy working at home?
Anna: Warming up in the morning.
Shane: Warming up in the morning? What Anna Jo is talking about there is every single morning, both kids come down and climb in bed with us. They usually come down before we are awake. We all kind of just snuggle and hit snooze about 10 times on the old clock. I’m pretty sure that would not happen if we were at our full-time jobs.
Jocelyn: Yeah, we didn’t have time to do that before. I want to ask you guys if somebody asks you, what do mommy and daddy do, what would you tell them?
Isaac: They work on computers and give people phone calls?
Shane: They give people phone calls. That is good.
Jocelyn: All right, what would you say? What do we do?
Shane: What does mommy and daddy do to make money?
Anna: Work.
Shane: We are kind of working, Anna Jo?
Jocelyn: What do we do for work, do you know?
Shane: What is it, Isaac?
Isaac: Sit in a room, be quiet.
Shane: We sit in a room and be quiet? That is when we podcast.
Jocelyn: That is not entirely accurate.
Shane: What did you say, Anna?
Anna: They play on the computer.
Shane: They play on the computer.
Jocelyn: That is all there is to it.
Shane: That is all there is to it, you just play on your computer, and you make money online, baby. That is all you do, right there. Let me ask you this question, guys for our Can’t Miss Moment. Now, Anna was really little when we started doing this. She really doesn’t remember anything different. But Isaac, what do you remember that mommy and daddy did before we started working at home?
Isaac: Daddy worked playing, like, he was a football coach. Mommy was a librarian at my preschool.
Shane: Okay, now we work here. We’ve done a lot of cool things since we stopped doing that, haven’t we? So, what is your favorite trip that you’ve ever got to go on in the last couple years?
Isaac: Anna, go first. I don’t know mine.
Shane: Okay, alright. Isaac is thinking. It sounds like when we are ordering food. Anna, go first.
Anna: I knew that one.
Shane: You knew that one. What is your favorite trip that you’ve ever been on?
Anna: That one with Bandit.
Shane: Oh, we just took our dog with us to your mom and dad’s house. That’s okay.
Jocelyn: I love how we’ve done all of these cool things.
Shane: So you, you’ve been to the beaches and the ocean.
Anna: And Florida.
Shane: You like Florida?
Isaac: I know mine.
Shane: What is it?
Isaac: When we went to Colorado with Grandpa and Nannie.
Shane: When we went to Colorado with Grandpa and Nannie. What was in Colorado that we saw there?
Isaac: The big mountain.
Anna: Huge.
Shane: The huge mountains.
Anna: And the huge tunnel with a mountain on top.
Shane: There was a tunnel with a huge mountain on top.
Anna: And there was a really long tunnel.
Shane: A really long tunnel, okay good. Let me ask you a question–
Anna: And it wasn’t dark in the tunnel.
Shane: They had lights, didn’t they? It was amazing. Let me ask you this. Do you ever want to mommy and daddy to work for someone else again?
Isaac and Anna: No-no-no-no.
Shane: What?
Isaac: Because I like you working here so when we get home we can play with you once all your work is done.
Shane: That is awesome. That is our Can’t Miss Moment today, is recording some with our kids, and giving them a look into this world. It is just amazing to think of all the things they’ve done. They’ve literally been more places in their first couple years of life than I went in my first 20.
Jocelyn: Than we did probably in like, 20 years.
Shane: How old were you when you saw the beach for the first time?
Jocelyn: I was in college when I saw the beach for the first time. I was probably 18 or 19.
Shane: And I think that Anna Jo has been there like three or four times already, and you have two. So that is our Can’t Miss Moment today I hope you enjoyed Isaac and Anna Jo on the show.
Isaac: That was really short.
Shane: We will get you your own show, and you can go later okay?
Anna: Longer!
Shane: Longer. Okay, say, “Bye, everybody!”
Isaac and Anna: Bye-bye!
Jocelyn: Bye.
Shane: Before we go today, guys, we want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspirations and motivation from the Bible. We want to pass that along. Today’s Bible verse is one of my favorites. It comes from Ecclesiastes 11:4, and the Bible says, “He who observes the wind and waits for all conditions to be favorable will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.” Now, what this Bible verse is saying, guys, it’s a very fancy way to say, “It ain’t got to be perfect.”
You can’t wait around in your online business for all conditions to be favorable. You can’t wait for the right opportunity for the clouds and the wind to blow by the perfect chance. You just have to take action, so go out there and sow the seeds and get ready to reap the harvest. That is all the time we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We will see you then
Jocelyn: Bye.
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