Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Need help choosing the direction of your online business?
Listening in on today’s episode might give you ideas as we help our guest navigate through his business and get a clearer direction for it.
Joining us on air this week is FYL community member, Kevin DeWit.
Kevin is a father who has always been fascinated with music, so fascinated that he had learned and developed his music mostly by himself.
He became the family’s sole provider after losing his wife to cancer and has since been raising his wonderful kids on his own.
He has 2 children, a son with autism and a daughter, diagnosed with Asperger’s.
Time constraints and other demands from working full-time as a Network Engineer are slowly burning him out, so his goal is to make it online and get the freedom to be there for his kids.
He created KdWMixingMastering.com, where he offers mixing, mastering and audio restoration services to people (mostly artists) who need help in achieving that professional sound.
His music-oriented business has a lot of room to grow, but the frustration from its current lack of stability has led him to consider shifting skill sets.
He has the IT know-how that may earn him his family’s needed income online, although he isn’t exactly as passionate about it as he is with music.
Torn between two skills and pressed for time, we’re going to help Kevin weigh in his options and explore the possibilities of scaling his online business.
Everyone in the business has gone through this phase where they are presented with a fork in the road. Everybody has to decide at some point, and sometimes all it takes is a little push in the right direction.
Tune in and learn how today’s episode can help you navigate through yours.
Don’t miss it!
You Will Learn:
- How to set an effective hourly rate
- The value of time vs. money
- What “Price Anchoring” is
- How to turn good content into more opt-ins
- 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:
Today’s can’t miss moment is clearing off our schedule and taking our kids to the doctor. The past couple of days, the kids have not been feeling really well, and we were waiting around to see if we really needed to take them to the doctor. Today was the day that we thought we needed to do that. Sometimes it’s kind of hard because we did have a couple of podcasts that we needed to record today, and we had to move those around and we don’t like to do that. But it is so nice doing what we do now to actually have the flexibility to do that. We don’t have to find somebody to fill in for us, we don’t have to ask a boss or anything like that. We can just say, “Hey, I’m very sorry, we need to reschedule.” Our community members are so awesome. They are totally understanding of that.
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 Kevin choose a direction for his online business.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. So glad that you’ve tuned in to learn more about your online business, and how you can take it to the next level. If you are new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, welcome. We are so glad that you tuned in. We are going to be a little different than some of the other online business podcasts you are used to. We don’t bring on guests or people selling new products or new books.
We bring on actual online business owners; members of our Flip Your Life community, people out there doing it in the real world every day, and we help them on-air take their business to the next level. We let you listen in so that you can pick up tips and tactics for your own online business. We are super excited to welcome another one of our Australian contingent to the podcast this week. Our guest this week is Kevin de Wit. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Jocelyn: Yes, we are very excited to talk to you today. Just another example of how Australians are taking over our lives. We just keep getting more and more in, and we love our Australian friends. We have a lot now.
Shane: I was talking to Kevin off air right before we got on here. We got a great “How you going?” And that’s my favorite ‘Australianism’. I’ve actually started saying it to people here in Kentucky, but they kind of look at me funny. Then, I had to say, “How y’all doing?”
Jocelyn: My favorite Aussie-ism is, “No worries.” I’ve taken that up. I say it all the time.
Shane: Do the Australians realize, Kevin, how you have the greatest catchphrases on the planet Earth?
Kevin: No, we have no idea. To us, it’s just natural.
Shane: Well, I will tell you right now, it’s awesome when other people here it, you know what I mean?
Jocelyn: Yeah, Australians, they shorten everything. Everything is a nickname, I guess you would say.
Shane: Like ‘sunnies’ for sunglasses, and stuff like that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, well, we know a lot of them now, so it’s pretty cool. All right, well we’ve already established that you are from Australia, which is awesome. But tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what you have a doing online so far.
Kevin: I’m a single father. I lost my wife quite a few years ago to cancer, and I’ve got two children. Unfortunately, I’ve got some problems with the both of those. One is severely autistic, and the other one has got a mild case of autism, so I’ve got a lot to deal with with that. I am working full-time in the IT industry in a high-level corporate sort of thing as an architect. I’ve also got a passion for music and I’ve attempted to start an online business in the music side of things for probably 3 to 4 years now. I have a handful of clients. It is not successful to the point of really climbing in the business. I’m running it as if it is a business, but it is really not making any money to really–
Shane: It’s more of a breakeven kind of thing, is that what you are saying? This is like a service-based business, basically. You mix music, right? People send you a song, and you remaster, edit, or do things like that?
Kevin: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah, it is all done online, but it is service-based. I really enjoy doing it and I’d love to keep doing it for where it’s successful, but it has obviously got some scaling limits because it is reliant on me, unless I was to just to start hiring staff to do–
Shane: It’s like time for dollars, basically.
Kevin: Yeah. I’m sort of looking for the next step, whether that is to grow that or to at least have something else under my belt where they can be something that’s a bit more passive that’s not quite me doing everything as well.
Shane: What do you mean, you’re in the IT industry, you’re an architect? Does that mean you design software systems for corporations, or anything like that?
Kevin: My technical title is a network architect. I design the networks that run all of the computer systems. For very large enterprise organizations, I work for a consulting company. We go in and we design networks to run all of their computers and their data centers and everything else.
Jocelyn: That used to be what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Shane: Was a network person? When I first met Jocelyn, she was working in a computer lab at the University of Kentucky, desperately wanting to design systems. I was like, “Why would you want to do that?”
Jocelyn: Because it’s awesome.
Shane: I just wanted to touch on your personal story, and just want to thank you for sharing something so emotional, like the loss of your wife. Also, just with your kids. I just really want to commend you for taking charge and making your life the way you want it, and still pushing forward even though you do have challenges. You are trying to build something else. You are trying to build a bigger life. Is the reason you want to go into online business and away from the tech side of stuff, is that because of those circumstances in your past, or because of your children? Why do you want to add another layer of responsibility and another layer of obstacles in your way as you try to build this online business, when you already have so much on your plate?
Kevin: Yeah, in a way it is, but it is also because it was a passion of mine, and it was something that gave me something outside of the family issues and the work. There was a point in time where it felt like everything was about my children, and about everything that was set up, plus everything was about my work, and there was not really anything for me. That music side of things was something for me at the end of the day, when everybody was eventually asleep and everything. It was something for me to do instead of just sitting there watching the TV. It was something I loved doing. That sort of grew into thinking, “Okay, surely I could make money from doing this instead of just doing it as a hobby.” That is where I tried to do it.
I want to take it even further now, that’s why I have obviously joined your membership, and I’ve come into this way because the job side of things is going to become a bit too much, as you can imagine being in the higher end of them, the IT side of things, the demand and the skills that you need is very complicated. It is quite demanding and I’m constantly getting pressure from work to work more hours, or, “Why can’t you work after hours?”, “Why can’t you work weekends?”, “Can you come into the client’s sites everyday?” I’ve been fighting with them for a long time. Because I’m at a senior level, I’ve had some flexibility to work from home as much as possible so that I am here when things go wrong, or something like that. Or if I’ve got to make urgent personal calls, I’m not sitting in an office surrounded by people that are listening and all that sort of stuff.
That pressure is getting a lot, and I guess I’m getting to an age now where I’m getting sick of answering to other people, and I’ve got a taste on the side as it is of being my own boss, having some flexibility there. It is not about not doing the work. I’d still be happy to do the work, but what I would like to do is obviously be my own boss, and have my own business to take over, and get rid of that other side of things. Then I’m only accountable to myself and my family and not to other people that aren’t really involved in my personal life to have to commit and make money.
Shane: Work is pretty awesome when you choose the work you want to do. It is not so much work anymore as much as, “Yeah I’ve got to do this, but I’m building it for me instead of building it for somebody else.” You’ve got some great questions here. We’ve been talking to you in the forums just a little bit, and I think we’re going to really be able to see them in a good direction here. I just want to know about the service-based business a little bit more because that’s how so many people start online. They get on Fiverr, or they get into a freelancer marketplace, or maybe they set up their own thing, but it is like, “Hire me, I will do something for you, you will send me X dollars.” When a musician sends you these songs so far, and you remastered the songs, you do mixing and mastering for them, what generally are you charging for that? Just give me a little bit of quick background how that works so that we can have some context when figuring out how to scale it.
Kevin: Yes, I definitely charge them for it. The business itself changed, and keeps changing because I kept trying new things. When I first started. The direction I took was I did put it out there and start offering it for free just to get the business rolling, get some clients on board, test the processes out, and I learned a lot from that. I noticed that I was really good, and I do get some clients that lasted. But I ended up stopping that, because I started to get too many, basically what I call ‘tire kickers’. I was getting flooded with people wanting to use the free service, and then disappearing, never to be heard of again. The work was getting way too much. I thought there is so much demand, surely I could start charging now.
That is when I started moving to the charging way. They basically will contact me, or place an order online. I’m still thinking of better ways to do how I do it. But they contact me and then we set a price. They send me the songs to mix and master, and then I do the work, and then we go backwards and forwards a few times with them, listening, doing revisions until they are 100% happy. Depending on whether they pay it all upfront, or whether it was a deposit, and pay a bit later sort of thing, we get the final payment, and then I send them the final products, and then they go away, and hopefully come again another day to work with me again.
Shane: Like, if I was going to call him, let’s say– I mean I know this is totally general– but if it was going to be a five-minute song, let’s say that you put– I don’t know, what is an average amount of hours you would put into one of these songs, maybe? Four or five, maybe? What would you charge me for that if you worked four hours on my five-minute song, what would you charge me?
Kevin: Well, that is where the problem is. Well, at the moment, it’s a flat rate, and again the business has changed so many times. I’m trying to find that sort of sweet spot between what the clients want and what I need. In the past I’ve changed a flat rate that has been advertised on the website. Right at this second, I don’t actually advertise any prices, so they’ll contact me by email or phone.
Shane: So, it’s got to be a quote then, basically?
Kevin: Yeah, sort of. But I give an official quote. We give a quote over the phone.
Jocelyn: What would be a typical rate? What’s the last one that you quoted for instance?
Shane: Yeah, what would be an average rate basically? Yeah, the last one you did?
Kevin: I’ve got one just yesterday that signed up. He is a regular client, comes back every now and then. That was AU$250.
Shane: Okay, and how many hours did you work on that? How much effort did you put into that project?
Kevin: It depends on the song. The problem is, some of them can be easy, and some can be really complicated, so it can be anywhere from 4 to 10 hours, but that can be staggered, too. You’ll do a bit of work, and then, I’ll go away and have a break from it, and listen to it in the car next morning, and then do a bit more work. It can be sort of staggered. Plus, it’s got to be staggered at anyway. I’ve only got so many hours a night to work on it.
Shane: The reason we ask that is because when we get into what you’re going to do, what you’re pricing, Jocelyn and I always aim for a target and an hourly rate. It is called an effectively hourly rate. If you can say 5 to 10 hours, you are basically making somewhere between $25 and $50 an hour when you do this service-based thing. But like you said, it is fairly unpredictable, you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into every single time. But that gives us a good starting point to say, “Well, wait a minute. Can we increase that hourly rate somehow when we start going passive, when we start figuring out what we’re going to do online?”
Jocelyn and I actually set a target for almost anything we do now to make $1000 an hour. If we are going to put an hour into work, how can we scale that in a way that can produce $1000? Does that make sense? Can we create a sales page that will sell a training that we can make $1000 off of if we sell 10 for $100?
Jocelyn: There’s a variety of ways to do this. When we used to do one-on-one consulting, we would charge a rate per hour. Well, then we wanted to increase what we were making. Instead of doing an hour, we did 30 minutes but we just charged more for the 30 minutes. Really to the person, it wasn’t that big of a difference. But we were charging $200 for one hour, we changed it to $200 for 30 minutes. It is the same price, but we were making more per hour. That is what we are saying here is that there are different ways to do that. Another way is you can hire more people to help you increase the capacity. There are different ways of thinking about that.
Shane: My point is, as we go into these questions– because I’ve read your questions, but from a mindset standpoint, but I want you to do is stop thinking about this as, “Okay, I’m going to get this quote and then figure it out,” or “I’m going to try to adjust this as we go.” We’ve got to start thinking in terms of, what do you make per hour at your current job, and how can we make doubles on that online an hour? The starting point is not what it ends up being. It is, “No, I’m going to work backwards from how much I’m going to make an hour. Does that make sense? That is the mindset mentality you’ve got to shift here because this is so nebulous.
I’ve actually felt this way about your forum conversations, it just feels kind of out in the air right now. If we can say, “You know what? I’ve got to make 200 bucks an hour to get rid of this other thing, minimum.” If we know that, we can work backwards on that, deconstruct it, and say, “Well, that is X members paying X amount based on this much work per week. Just from a mindset standpoint you need to be thinking about your, “No, I want to make $100 an hour.” This person that applies for this job, I’m charging a hundred dollars an hour period. We’re going to quote it at six hours, but if it takes eight, they’re going to pay me an extra hundred bucks an hour, or whatever. Okay? Let’s just do that from a mindset standpoint, and then go forward and do your questions, okay?
Kevin: Okay.
Jocelyn: All right. Let’s get into where you are now, and what is your question as far as moving this thing forward, how can we help you with that?
Kevin: At the moment, obviously, the music side of things, the business is up and running. I’m trying to push forward with that. But it is not successful at the moment. It definitely needs something to get it going, if that is the direction I’m going to go. I do have a mentor that is successfully working in the music industry, and I speak to him every now and then. We were having a chat, and talking about the struggles that I was having, trying to get this going. He knows I work in IT, and I’ve actually been helping him with IT. He then suggested, “Well, then maybe music is not where the money is. Maybe you should look at the IT side, and start doing something online with that.”
Then, I started thinking about that as well. That is when I came to this thought process. Okay, I’m going to join this membership, because I need to get an answer of should I continue with the music, or should I start looking at some sort of IT-based membership subscription type thing of something like that online. I guess, when I started to go down that path, I think I got lost and I really did know where to go. I think my last post online after I sent it I thought, “Oh no, these guys are going to think I’m horrible because it sounded so depressing.”
Shane: Oh no, hey, listen, that’s the point of our community. We had those same exact feelings when we started out. We were just being interviewed just yesterday for another podcast. We were talking about the origin of our journey. It was the same thing, man, we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to pick.
Jocelyn: We were just trying different things.
Shane: They were just trying different things. Do we pick what we loved, do we pick what we know, do we pick a blend of them in between? What you’re feeling is exactly what you should be feeling right now because it’s in the beginning.
Jocelyn: I just want to say that with what you’re doing right now, most of the time, it’s not an offer problem. Most of the time, your problem is your target market. It’s, maybe you’re targeting the wrong person, or sometimes it can be a combination of the targeting the wrong person and the wrong offer.
Shane: Or you’re targeting correctly and your offer is right, but you’re just now showing the ads in the right place, or you are not finding those people where they already are. Your website looks great.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think we shouldn’t just toss this out. I think that there is something that could be viable here. I just wonder if, maybe, we need to rearrange a few pieces of the puzzle to make it work better.
Shane: Exactly. This is by talking to people is so valuable in a community setting or just in a coaching environment because hearing you say, “Oh, the music was my escape, the music was awesome, and I love this and I love doing this for people, and it is awesome.” You have testimonials on your website, which are phenomenal testimonials, like great amazing testimonials. You are really doing a service for people. We usually tell people, “Your expertise is a great place to start.” But here, you have something amazing, you have an expertise that is also something you love. You are the expert, and you love it, and you do a great job at it. This is definitely where you need to be at. You need to pursue this music thing. You need to go forward with it. You are going to have a better chance to succeed in this than you are at the other thing because the other thing you are an expert, but you don’t love it. This you’re an expert and you love it, so why not go after this one?
Jocelyn: And I wonder if maybe this could not become a hybrid type situation. We recommend this a lot of times, so maybe you could start a community, or a membership for people who want to edit their own music. I’m just thinking out loud here. You have the training for them to teach them how to do in your way, but at the same time, until that grows, you could also do one-on-one. But I think you need to increase your pricing.
Shane: Yeah, I think that this is definitely a service-based situation, but you know as well as I do, there’s a lot of DIY people out there, and they need an expert to show them how to DIY right. That is going to give you that passive stream that will eventually, probably take over because if you have 1000 musicians who want to make their own music, and you’ve got courses, and you can be their mentor to help them do it– there’s a lot of people doing that around the world– you get 1000 people to pay you 30 bucks a month, there’s 30 grand a month. Then, you can have your hiring clients where you are like, “Okay, now, I’m going to mix music for these people, but we’re going to charge triple,” like what you are changing now basically.
Jocelyn: Had you ever considered that? Has anyone ever asked you for that? How do you feel about that idea?
Shane: The teaching side of things, like, “This is how I mix the song,” not necessarily, “I will only mix it for you?”
Kevin: Obviously, I’ve got some blog posts there where I give tips and things like that. I’ve had some comments from guys about that they love reading the tips, and things like that sort of comment. I did a survey at one stage about what they wanted offered, and it was really confusing because I was talking about my services. I got quite a few answers about, “Well, we’re not exactly sure what you’re trying to teach me.” I thought, well, I wasn’t actually trying to teach you, I was trying to actually get you to come on and get my services. Yeah, and I’ve realized that. I guess part of my question is about that. It seems to be, what I’m starting to see, is right in my eyes is that the money is in the teaching because everyone wants to do it themselves. It doesn’t seem like anybody wants to pay anybody to do things anymore. Everyone wants to do it. I guess, I should understand that, because I was exactly the same. I try to do it everything I myself.
Shane: Here is where the falls apart a little bit, and this is what being in it for as long as we have has shown us: there are people that want to pay it, but they are the ballers. They are the higher end people. When your prices are so low, you don’t find those people, they don’t come to you, because they think you are cheap. The ballers will pay. But those are the people but instead of paying you $250, they’re going to pay you $2500 to do it really, really good. That’s the big ticket people that you want to go after for your service-based stuff. But there are a lot more DIYers, and one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard– I can’t remember who said this– one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard, especially about online business is, first you make money by what you do.
Then you make a whole lot more money by what you know. That is where the teaching and the DIY stuff comes in, the mentoring comes in, the community aspect comes in, where you get a worldwide audience. You got anyone that can find you can join your community, and learn it themselves, but then you’ve got high end services for ballers, and you go pick up 10 clients a month or whatever, and they pay you $2000 to master something instead of $200.
Jocelyn: This is a classic time versus money. We talk about this all the time of the podcast. People who don’t have as much money, but they have time on their hands, and they want to do their own things, they are going to buy your courses, and memberships, and things like that, whatever you decide to do. The people who don’t have a lot of time on their hands, but they are able to afford to outsource stuff, they are just going to pay to have something done, but they will be willing to pay more to have it done well.
Shane: Yeah, exactly. There is a lot of people that do DIY on Infusionsoft. They want to learn it, and do it. I’ve got a buddy, he loves getting in there, and he does not want to pay anyone. We don’t, we don’t have time to mess with this, so we pay someone a lot of money to do Infusionsoft.
Jocelyn: I like fooling with stuff like that, I’m capable of learning it. But I don’t have time, I need to be concentrating on other things. So, yes, we are willing to pay a premium for someone to come in and do that well for us.
Shane: We pay $3,000 for 30 hours of infusionsoft work. I’m not looking for someone that’s 200 bucks. I know that I want someone to do it right, so I don’t ever have to worry about it. That is where you jack the prices up. Another thing, too, it is called price anchoring. The value of offering services is not always just to get clients. Someone will come in, and go, “Dang, this guy charges $2000 for 10 hours of work. I can’t afford that. But he also offers the DIY option, where he will teach me how to do it myself. I can afford that.” It anchors your membership price so when people do find you, they go and DIY.
Kevin: I guess that was partly the reason that I took the pricing off of my website, because originally I had pricing on their, and it was calling out who the market was for. If I put my prices to high, which I had tried, I put my prices up, it eliminated all of the cheaper end of the market, and I still wasn’t finding the top end of the market.
Shane: And you might not have charged enough. Did you have a membership area to offer the DIY people? They are not chased off that way. They go down a different path. It’s kind of like the fork in the road; everybody comes to you because you’re the mix master. We were saying earlier– I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Cliff Ravenscraft, The Podcast Answer Man– you’re the Mix and Mastering Answer Man. You’re the guy that knows how to do this, but then there is a fork in the road. “Hey, ballers, who want this done right, come here. We will set you up.” “Hey, you don’t have enough money to be a baller, you go over here.” But, that’s fine. Some people have money, some people have time, as long as they are taking action on what resource they have, they’re going to be successful.
Kevin: What you’re saying is exactly where I wanted to be. I haven’t done a membership thing or really got into the teaching things, but I’m obviously starting to think that I need to do that.
Shane: Yeah, I think if you would draw a line in the sand right now… sometimes, it is not what you choose, it’s that you choose. That is how we find so many successful people online. The people that make it, it’s not that they pick the right choice–
Jocelyn: And they don’t do everything right, we don’t do everything right.
Shane: Yeah, they just make a choice. And I really feel that your heart and your mind is in this. If you just make that choice now, we will figure out what it looks like as we move forward.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean I got discouraged with the music side of things at a point because it just wasn’t working. The people were so unreliable. I even tried this strategy-session type call arrangement, and so many people just wouldn’t answer their phones when they had meetings scheduled.
Shane: Hey, man. We’ve had people literally pay $7000, and not show up for a meeting.
Jocelyn: Yes, we had that happen.
Shane: We had that happen one-time. Something happened, their family had an issue, and they said, “Ah, sorry! Gotta go.”
Jocelyn: Cut my losses, move on.
Shane: Just cut my losses and move on. We were like, “Okay dude, whatever.”
Kevin: I spent so much time on phone, and I just get frustrated because it just wasn’t working. Even the ones that were really keen, and they were doing a signed-up sort of thing. I’d send them a PayPal invoice, and they just wouldn’t pay it and then they’d disappear. I’ve got guys there that’s got an invoice that has been sitting with them for six months, and I keep sending them a thing saying, “I’m going to cancel this invoice.” “No, don’t cancel it. I’m still going to work with you.” It’s like, it’s been six months, man, come on.
Shane: That’s why it’s so important. This is another classic example of you went forward, instead of working backwards. You’ve got to create an offer that avoids those problems. Not try to do those things , and deal with problems as they come. That’s why we always work backwards with everything whether it is creating a sales funnel, creating a new product, creating a new website.
Jocelyn: You’re always going to have problems, but you can minimize them by trying to preempt it, and figure out what the problems are going to be.
Shane: Another mindset issue is, this has not been a failure. You’ve got people to pay you money to do something you like to do.
Jocelyn: Do you know how many people listening to this show are probably like, “Oh, I’m so jealous.”
Shane: Yeah, Like, “What is he talking about?” You’ve got people to come to your website, and hire you. You have amazing testimonials, and I’ll tell you right now, you give me three good testimonials in any niche, and I will go make a million dollars. I promise you. Testimonials and good work and proof is more important than almost anything else in your marketing. You have that. You’ve got all of the tools in place right now to prove your expertise, to prove why you are the guy to tell people how to do this, to prove to ballers why you are the guy that needs to be doing it for them, until you get there. Then, we can create all kinds of systems as you get more clients, you make your courses while you’re serving your clients. Somebody is going to pay you to make your content, to make more money off of passively forever. You have succeeded where a lot of other people would have called it quits, and you’ve built a foundation that you are going to be able to go forward on and build something, okay?
Kevin: Yup, okay.
Jocelyn: Kevin, as we are moving forward here, what I would recommend right now is going to your audience, and start planting a seed. Just say, “Hey, I’m thinking about starting something new, this is what I have in mind. What do you need? What can I help you with? Is this something you would be interested in?” Get a feel for your audience, and see if this is something that they are going to like to do. If you are going to be targeting a slightly different audience, the one that you have right now, there might not be a lot of people that jump on board and are like, “Yes, I can’t wait.” But, I think that in time that will happen. I think it is a good idea just to get some feedback from the people that you already have, and just feel them out, and see if this is something that they would even want to do.
Shane: This can be done even with a small audience. We’re not saying, send out another survey. We’re not saying necessarily, poll a Facebook group. What we’re saying is, you’ve got this feeling from the vibe of the people that you’ve interacted with already, right? You need to start moving just a slight turn in your content away from focusing on, “How can I get so many more clients to, “I need to start releasing a little more of this DIY stuff.” The next person that I do mix a song for, like this guy you just had a contract with, I need to record myself doing some of these things when I come across a little tip, when I’m figuring that out, I need to throw that on YouTube, to throw that on my blog post.
You need to move toward that, and watch: do your opt ins increase? Do you get a little more traffic? Do those things get traction? That is going to guide you going forward. You don’t have to have a big audience, or a big survey, or anything like that to do this. It’s just, the pivot needs to happen from this point forward, not necessarily go back and change everything you’ve done in the past.
Kevin: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. To be honest, I sort of do part of that already. I put tips out, I’ve got YouTube videos of certain things. I haven’t focused a massive amount on it. It hasn’t been my core direction. I actually do have one product. It is a PDF to build a home recording studio, set up a home recording studio. That is for the new person. I’ve tried a few different ways to sell that, and I haven’t sold a single copy.
Shane: Here is why. Stuff like that, no matter how good it is, no matter how detailed it is, no matter how awesome it is, that is a calling card or an opt in. To a total beginner, the first book they read is not to go pay for something. We call those people, “dabblers.” If you have 100 people that download that PDF and 10 of them set up your recording studio, you’ve got 10 people that are potential clients. That is pretty much how that works. You’ve got to treat stuff like that as an opt in. What you need is your free content has got to get people to the point where they’ve recorded a song, and it sounds terrible, and they’ve got to mix it and remaster it. That is what you are going to teach people.
All of your free content becomes those first three steps in the process. To get that recorded, to get it to that point, and now, “Join my membership, or buy my courses,” however you do it, and you’re going to become a pro at this. Okay? That is probably why it is not selling. Usually, when we have really good content, that we see it doesn’t sell, it is our best opt ins possible. We just make it free and get emails from them instead, and then market the other stuff later.
Kevin: Yeah, okay. I understand. I started thinking that, but then I thought, if that’s my free product, what do I create as a paid product because I felt like, “Oh geez, where do you go from there?”
Shane: If you set up a recording studio for me, and I wanted to make songs, you came to my house, you put all the stuff on my desk, and you said, “There you go, Shane and Jocelyn, what’s next?” What would I do the very next thing? I don’t know. I’m a beginner. That is what you sell. You don’t convince people to start. You wait until they start, and show them what to do next. Does that make sense?
Kevin: Okay.
Jocelyn: I don’t want you to be overwhelmed, thinking, “Oh, I have to create this 400 module course or something.” You don’t have to do that. We’ve sold stuff off of just an outline before. “This is what we’re going to create. Join now, get the best price before I release into the world, and you can help me create this course.” We’ve done it time and time again. I think as long as you have just a couple of things in the membership, you are ready to open up.
Shane: Yeah, generally what we say about a membership– this doesn’t mean you should do a 10 step course. If you have 10 steps in your niche, in your course that you are going to teach, you give away the first one. You get the number two and three done, you start selling your membership, and then you make the others as you go. They will get done eventually. The people have to join, and go through the first two steps. That gives you time to create everything else. I love your ‘About’ page. Your ‘About’ page, it’s got a picture of you, it’s got all that equipment behind you that I wouldn’t even know how to plug in, let alone use. I think if you are going to make things more teaching, you have to be more upfront. I think that Kevin has got to come to the front of this business.
Every page they land on, they need to see you smiling in front of that equipment. It needs to say, “Hi, I’m Kevin. I’m expert at mixing and mastering music. I can show you how to do it, too.” The branding of this has got to be more based around you. You can tell your story, you can talk about why you love music and it’s your refuge, because that is going to resonate with people. Someone is going to come to you wanting to make music because of a similar path and story to yours. That is what is going to relate, there’s where your members are going to join, everybody is going to jump on board, and then that is what’s going to create the DIY area, and then your professionalism, and you upfront is going to create a ‘Know, Like and Trust’ for bigger ticket customers while you build this to start paying the bills.
Kevin: Yeah, okay. I get that. I was looking at this putting prices back on that page. When I’ve done a Google search, most of the top at search entries, they’re not charging a massive amount of money. They are quite cheap, but they all do have prices. It’s just like, you go there and you just buy the service online, and then it starts. Instead of a phone calls, or an email or let’s talk about it and let quote sort of thing, which is what I was doing.
Shane: I would do that. I would put a price on it only because you want to anchor this by your DIY thing. I would make it very clear that it would be something like $2000 for X hours, whatever you decide is your effectively hourly rate you want to go with. Usually, a good starting point is your day job. Whatever you make an hour in your day job, start there, and say, “Okay, that time is however many hours,” and then with the understanding that they can buy more hours if there is back-and-forth, or a discount. Then streamline your process a little bit. You can say, “I do all these things. But if there is back-and-forth, or multiple revisions, costs X dollars extra.” We’ve got to nail this down to where you stop going back and forth for people, and you have an actual defined service. Even though the sounds are different, that you do first. But if there is extra work on top of that, then we may have to re-quote that. Okay?
Kevin: Yeah, I think I’m going to need to put some options and other than hourly because hourly just doesn’t work with most music artists. They want to know what they are up for. Not, well, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take, and this could cost me a fortune.”
Shane: And we can work on that, we can work on that.
Kevin: I think it would have to be a set fee, but we could put a lot of options into the sale, so if you want to do extra revisions and that sort of stuff, it would charge more.
Shane: And the hourly thing, I’m not saying that they see the hourly. That’s what you know. It’s like, “Oh, on average it takes me no longer than 10 hours.” Well, I’m just going to go ahead and charge for 10 hours at $200, and if they don’t want it, that is their problem. And then you can do other things like give them credit for future songs. If it took you six hours, you can be like, “Hey, put a deposit down for 200 bucks, I will give you four hours toward your next song,” or whatever. That is how you getrecurring customers. But, they never see the effect of hourly rate. That is just in your head only, okay?
Kevin: The other thing to keep in mind, the trick with a sort of stuff is, the more clients you get and the more work you do, the faster you actually get at it. But when you are working part-time, you are a bit slower with it. You do get into a routine when you get moving, and you start getting lots of clients, and you can start multitasking in a way, and streamline it.
Shane: You’ve got to get to that point first.
Kevin: Sometimes, it’s mostly when the price would actually come down. I mean, not come down, but the margins would be a lot better.
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: All right, Kevin, well, it has been an action-packed conversation today. This has been a lot of information, and a little bit of time. We always end our calls by asking our members what is one thing that you are going to take action on right away in the next 24 to 48 hours, based on what we talked about here today?
Kevin: Right away, I’m probably going to go away and work on putting the pricing back online, and work out what that price is going to be, move it up the scale, and hope that I don’t push away too many of my existing clients. A lot of those guys don’t have much money. The next step will be, to start looking at what my DIY set up will be, and what I am going to teach, and how that will move.
Shane: Awesome, man, well, listen. I think you’ve got a great thing going here. It is so rare to see someone who has such an expertise, and a love for what they are expert in, and that is usually a really good recipe for success. Go start a forum post about the pricing and the DIY thing, and we will help you go through that, and we know some strategies, too, that we can help you with the forums so you don’t alienate your current customers while you are trying to get new customers at the higher price.
Kevin: Yup, it sounds good.
Shane: That was another information packed call with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Hope you got a lot of benefit out of our answers to our guest’s questions as well. If you would like to become a member of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business.
Jocelyn: Alright, it’s time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal 9-to-5 job.
Today’s can’t miss moment is clearing off our schedule and taking our kids to the doctor. The past couple of days, the kids have not been feeling really well, and we were waiting around to see if we really needed to take them to the doctor. Today was the day that we thought we needed to do that. Sometimes it’s kind of hard because we did have a couple of podcasts that we needed to record today, and we had to move those around and we don’t like to do that. But it is so nice doing what we do now to actually have the flexibility to do that. We don’t have to find somebody to fill in for us, we don’t have to ask a boss or anything like that. We can just say, “Hey, I’m very sorry, we need to reschedule.” Our community members are so awesome. They are totally understanding of that.
Shane: Yeah, I can remember, it was a nightmare when we worked for other people, having to figure out a kid being sick. Our bosses gave us hard time sometimes about that, or you’re might be out of sick days, or you couldn’t find anyone to cover for you. A little thing like, “My kid has something wrong with him, has a fever, has to stay home from school,” just becomes this terrible nightmare of totally throwing you off for the entire day, and it can be super stressful. But now, we can make those decisions.
We are the ones in control of our own schedule, and we can take time out to do that to take care of the kids. You can really see that difference when you are self-employed in your kids eyes when they are like, “Hey, I’m sick,” and we are like, “Let’s go get it fixed. We will stay home, we will take care of you.”
Even if we have to work over beside them on the couch a little bit, and get some things done, we can make sure that we are there for them, and that is awesome.
Jocelyn: It’s really nice just to be able to take the kids whenever we need to take them. Sometimes in the past, we would be busy, and we would also be really expensive. We really didn’t want to take them if we weren’t sure what was going on. Now, I feel that we are at a better place where we can say, “Okay, the kids might be sick. Let’s go ahead and take them in even though it is a little bit expensive, and see what is going on with them, and we don’t have to wait around or not go because it is too expensive.
Shane: Before we sign off, I like to close every show with a verse from the Bible. Today’s verse comes from 1 Peter 4:10. The Bible says, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others.” Make sure you are using whatever gifts and talents you have in your online business. Get out there, serve other people. People need you and what you know. That is all the time we have for this week, as always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We will see you then.
Jocelyn: Bye.
Leave a Reply