Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Need ideas for your online marketing strategy?
Listen in as we help today’s guest with strategies for online marketing to grow her online business.
Asking next level questions this week is an educator who truly believes that learning can be a blast, Flip Your Life community member and someone we’ve met in real life, Jacqueline Cushman.
Jacqueline lives a simple and cozy life with Audrey, her lovely 8 year old daughter, in Bloomington, IN. She has a bachelor’s & master’s degree in journalism and education, with a wonderful day job at the local university.
She has been working in the education scene for more than 20 years, exposed to countless programs and resources that only fuels her drive to discover and create more fun ways to teach children.
After brainstorming with a friend, she decided to try and make online activity planners available for out-of-school programs and families. She is the proud owner of LessonZest.com, a place where you can find tons of amazing and engaging learning activities.
She had officially launched her website in August 2016 and has had a successful kickoff. Fully live and with over 20 members, she wants to keep her community growing and is interested in reaching out to large enterprises that would benefit from her existing content.
Join us as we help Jacqueline effectively target her expanding audience, we’ll share insight on finding the right VA and how to print course materials.
Get ready for some next level flippin’!
You Will Learn:
- Avoiding the content trap
- The advantages of Ad Targeting
- Jocelyn’s 2 pronged approach
- Setting up discounts & pricing tiers
- Why it’s better to have a VA
- Our take on printing course materials
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Jacqueline’s Website
- Elementary Librarian
- US History Teachers
- Flipped Lifestyle Patreon Page
- BarkBox: Bandit’s Favorite Thing LOL
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 Moments:
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is getting our new puppy, Coco.
My family always laugh at me because Bandit, of course, was our “free” dog. He has now cost us probably thousands of dollars. He went from just hanging out around our house like you could see his bones, and he is now receiving a BarkBox subscription every single month.
We didn’t want him to be lonely. Shane thought it would be a good idea to get Coco, and Coco is actually a purebred chocolate lab, and we got her from a breeder in town. She has been just the most adorable thing ever.
My reason for this being a Can’t Miss Moment is not only is she adorable and our kids love her – it is like the joy of their life right now – but also because dogs are expensive. I don’t know if we could have afforded dogs before. We have spent so much money on vets and doctors and dog houses, and kennels and cages and toys. I’m not exactly sure if we could have even gotten those, especially a bred dog like this that cost a few hundred dollars ourself.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thank you for listening!
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.
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we help Jackie take her education membership to the next level.
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.
Shane: What’s going on, everybody. Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. For those of you who may be new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, this show is a little different than other online business podcasts. We do not bring on experts or guests. We bring on real people running real online businesses, actual members from our Flip Your Life community onto the show, 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 tricks to take your online business to the next level as well.
This is a great episode. We are always excited to talk to all of our members on the air, but we love it when we get to talk to people who we have actually hung out with in real life.
Today’s guest is someone that we have met in real life. She’s been to one of our live events. It is Jackie Cushman. Jackie, welcome to the show.
Jacqueline: Thank you, guys! I’m so excited.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s been a while since we have seen you. We got to meet you in person, like Shane was saying. It was a lot of fun back in Chicago in the summer. We look forward today to diving in and helping you take this thing to the next level.
Shane: Just a little behind-the-scenes footage here, for all you guys out there, we’ve scheduled this podcast a couple times, and we keep messing everything up. Somebody messes up, or something, and we finally are on the air. Everything doesn’t work perfect here in Flipped Lifestyle, and sometimes you just totally miss an interview, and that’s the way it works.
Jocelyn: Or you have a broken microphone, like today.
Shane: Or you have a broken microphone. Before the air, we were trying to do this, and I’m like, “Oh no, my microphone is totally broken.” Jackie’s hanging on, and I’m throwing wires on the bed trying to find a wire that will actually work.
Jocelyn: And we’re trying to find a wire because we just moved, and there are stuff everywhere still.
Shane: I’m wearing my son’s headphones because I couldn’t find my headphones. So, just being here today is a miracle, Jackie.
Jacqueline: You’re making it happen.
Jocelyn: Exactly. Taking action, that’s what it’s all about, right? Alright, well, we want to start out. Of course we know a little bit about you, and what you do. But we want to let our listeners know a little bit more about you. Give us a little bit of background information, who you are, and what you do online.
Jacqueline: Okay, great. My name is Jackie, and I live in Bloomington, IN, home of Indiana University which is actually where I work full time. I love my day job, I’m very grateful for that. I have an 8-year-old daughter, it’s just the two of us. We live a nice, small, little life here in Bloomington.
About a year and a half ago, I started brainstorming an online business with a friend, someone who is actually working for Audrey’s school running their after-school program.
She was doing some really cool stuff, and I was asking her where she got all of her ideas. I was assuming she was going to say some company that offers curriculum for this type of program, and she said, “Nope, I just do it myself.” And I know how much time that takes from having a little bit of experience in that, so I thought, “Oh, It’d be really cool if you could put these lesson plans online for other programs.” That’s kind of what I did, and so the activities that are online– it’s like a database of activities, or I call them lesson plans a lot, but they are more like activity plans. There are for, what are called, out-of-school programs. An out-of-school program, it is like an after-school program, before school program, or summer camp.
Shane: This is like at our school, currently, some parents work until 5:00. They have an after school thing. They don’t call it daycare, but your child can stay after school for an hour until you can come get them basically, because you’re at work.
Jacqueline: That’s exactly right, and of course they need to have activities for these kids to do, aside from the homework help. If they’re like, “Oh, we want to do some cool stuff for Valentine’s Day,” then they can search my site, and all these activities will come up about Valentine’s Day, and Science activities, crafts, stuff like that. It will give them some photos, some videos and instructions of how to do it. And then they can take it from there.
Shane: Sometimes, that can devolve into turn on the TV or throw a coloring sheet in front of them. Also, you might now have a trained person running that program. It might be someone just trying to make an extra $25 an hour for a couple hours after school.
Jocelyn: That’s probably a little generous in the public school.
Shane: Yeah, probably. I meant like an extra $25 for the two or three hours they’re there. Anyone can pick them up and use them, basically.
Jacqueline: Exactly. Any adult who is fit to work with children can take it from there because you’re right, the employees of these programs are not generally teachers or anything like that. Obviously, very capable people, but people that do need resources to help them.
Shane: I know you’ve sold these to other places besides schools. You said camps, I guess summer camps and stuff like that. Is that also another segment of your market?
Jacqueline: It is. Since I just launched this last August, the summer camp market is still a little unknown to me. I’m just now kind of marketing to them. I’m not really sure how that will go. Most of my clients are after-school programs. I know I’ve talked about this with you guys before, my variety of audiences and who to focus on. I have two disability centers that have signed up, which is great. And I know we’ve talked about the homeschool population maybe being a good fit. It’s kind of all over the place.
Shane: That’s okay, though, because this is something that has actually creeped up in the forums in the Flip Your Life community a lot, lately. I think people get confused about an avatar. You have to focus and in your mind, you have to say, “I’m going to focus my energy on selling to this market right now,” but other people do show up. Other people are going to come and buy stuff from you that you never even expected before. Just because you’re selling to schools doesn’t mean someone that is in a homeschool area or a homeschool wouldn’t want your school stuff. Or you might be selling a weight-lifting program for basketball. But what if the football guy says, “Hey, I’d love to do that program, too,” it doesn’t matter who wants to throw money at you. Give them a target.
Jocelyn: Alright, well, I think that it’s a very interesting market. I think that there are a lot of different directions that you can go especially with the summer camp season coming up. I think there may be like, daycares that might want this kind of product, so I think it’s very interesting, and I think there are a lot of different directions that you can go with this.
Shane: And the marketing is so seasonal. I think that is what’s so powerful about yours. Sometimes, content can be like feast or famine. You have a big three months out of the year, but yours is basically, no. Every day, somebody is somewhere after school, or at camp, or in a day care, or somewhere. You’ve got the resources for every day of the year. It’s just a matter of getting it in front of the right people at the right time, sort of.
Jacqueline: Yes, absolutely. Since it’s my first year, it’s definitely learn by trial. Things will pop up where I haven’t thought of like, “Oh my gosh, everyone is having spring break camps right now. I need to put something out there to reach out to them.”
Shane: Right, and I remember at the live event, you were kind of frustrated because you fell into the content trap, is what I call it like. You were just like, “I’m just going to make more content.”
Jocelyn: I know how to do that.
Shane: I know how to do that. I remember when you first joined, you kind of redid your website. I’m like, “Okay, why’d you do that? It was fine the way it was.” And then you made more stuff. And I was like, “Why do you keep making stuff?” And then you came to the live event, and you’re like, “Okay, what content should I make next?” And we’re like, “I don’t know. Sell what you’ve already made.”
Jocelyn: How about none?
Shane: Then you’re like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I should do that.”
Jacqueline: Yeah, the first thing you said to me, the first sentence was literally, “Stop making content.”
Shane: I know. We had a ban. It was like a blanket ban on you creating anything for a couple months. After we stopped making all the things, tell us what happened after that. Tell us how many members you have right now, and you’ve already given us a little bit of a background on it, but tell us where the business is from that standpoint.
Jacqueline: Okay, great. Yes. The first live event that I attended with you guys was in July in Chicago, and as you know since a lot of us is school-based, August is the really busy time. I think I got a little bit of a late start in targeting the after-school and before-school population, but I got in early enough to have a pretty good launch. I think I’d launch August 1st. I think as of right now, I probably have about 40 members.
Shane: Awesome, awesome.
Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s amazing.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I’m so excited. Most of them are annual, which I was kind of anticipating some monthly. I offer a monthly and annual, but I think 36 of them are annual members.
Shane: Wow. That makes sense, though, in a way, because yours going to be almost a B2B thing in that regard. The individual’s not going to look for that program. It’s going to be the school providing the stuff for a teacher, or something.
Jacqueline: Yes, and that’s really what it’s been. It surprised me. The clients that did sign up were mostly schools or organizations. Very few individuals.
Shane: For sure. It’s just so awesome that that happened that way because you did so many of the things that are right, but a lot of times in online business, we get fixated on things like making our website look beautiful, and can I change this, and can I change that? Well, if I just keep making blog posts, or if I just keep making podcasts, or I just keep making content, or what if one more lead magnet? Really, it just comes down to, “Hey, would you buy something from me?” And once you do that, and you get some money, now, you’re like, “Okay, how can I reinvest this? How can I go double down on this, and how can I get more of these people?” That’s where the real fun starts, you know?
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah, I think I had a little bit of the build-’em-they-will-come attitude. I’m going to make it so good, everyone is going to want it.
Shane: It’s a beacon on a hill. It’s the lighthouse on the shore. It doesn’t work that way.
Jocelyn: Yeah, you have to meet people in the middle. You have to go to them a little bit. Alright, well, you’ve done a lot of awesome things. I mean, clearly, this is a great concept. I mean, people are joining, you have members, which is great. But what can we do right now to help you get to the next place that you want to be?
Jacqueline: A lot of my clients– well not a lot– but a handful of them are from programs that all of us are familiar with like YMCAs and 4H’s and stuff like that. I’m interested in seeing if I can sell to them, sell the program to them on a more regional or national level. Like I thought it would be so cool if I could reach out to the Boys and Girls Club as a national organization, and say, “Hey, I have this resource that would be great for all of your clubs. Would you be interested in signing up on behalf of all your affiliates?” I’d known nothing about that. I don’t know if people in this kind of business do that, or if it’s feasible, and I kind of wanted to see what you guys thought.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that that is a great strategy. It sort of sounds like what I do with the school districts for Elementary Librarian, and I think that’s another place you could go, as well. But I think that certainly, groups like the Boys and Girls Club of America, maybe the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, things like that, after-school type programs that kids would be involved in, I think that is a great logical place to start. This is one of those rare businesses I think that we can easily see multiple applications for one product.
I think a lot of times, people think that they have multiple applications for one product or service, but normally, you need to go just down one or two paths. I think for you, it’s going to be a little bit tricky because you’re going to see all these opportunities, and you sort of have to concentrate on a few at a time. I think that this could be fairly easily accomplished with maybe some ad targeting. You try different ads to the same product to different groups of people.
Shane: This might be something where you need to get a VA or someone who is doing sales calls for you. You can do ads, and then the leaders, and maybe the Regional Boy Scout of America for the Southeast sees it, and contacts you and tries to filter it down. Or you can just go hunt for whales. Sometimes, it’s not about fishing. You don’t just try to catch one fish, throw it in the bucket, one fish, throw it in the bucket, one fish, throw it in the bucket. You have a harpoon, clearly. You have something that multiple groups are interested in, and if you could get one state’s YMCA organization, or one state’s Boy Scouts to join on, all of a sudden, you have 60 customers. We just got a check the other day for $6,000 or something from one of our school products.
It was because a school district coordinator called and asked us, “Hey, we want it for all of our schools.” And then Jocelyn and I talked about it, and we’re like, “We should just call the school districts, and pick the 50 biggest school districts in America, call them.” What if two of them join? That’s like, 20 grand. Because that’s what you’re asking: should you just go to the national organization or the regional organization, and say, “Well, why try to get every Boy Scout troop, when I can ask the leader of the Boy Scouts to buy it for a hundred troops?”
Jocelyn: And I think yes, that is certainly something that you could do. I think that you could also put a more passive way of doing it as well. What I do right now for Elementary Librarian is, I have a page that is called ‘District Discounts’, and in my FAQs on my site, I say, “Do you do District Discounts?” Yes, I do. Click on this page, and check it out. If teachers or after-school program people are on your site, and they say, “Oh, this person accepts school purchase orders.” “Oh, they do district discounts, let me pass this information along.” In my opinion, that is stronger than a cold call. I mean, cold calling, you can do it. It may work great, it may not work at all.
Shane: And I would say, you don’t need to do it, even though you’re like, “It’s my baby, I know everything about it, I can tell you the URL to every lesson plan,” you know what I mean? That is something that you would need to get someone else to do because if you go down that rabbit hole, you’re not going to do anything else. You’re going to have to create marketing funnels for each type of organization. If an after-school program comes to you, and they need the information about buying for the whole district, that’s totally different than the regional Boy Scouts for Kentucky calling you, and saying, “This would also be great for us.” You can’t send them to that exact same page. You’re going to have to have à little bit different marketing for each path into your membership, but you could totally do that. It’s just shooting for whales instead of fishing for little fish.
Jocelyn: I think to summarize that you need to have a two-pronged approach: you need to have a passive approach where you have information on your website for people who are interested to possibly up-sell themselves to a bigger package, and then you also maybe have a VA who does some cold-calling for you so that you’re not stuck in the middle of that. But you can also talk to them. Like if they are interested, then that VA could set up a call with you so you could actually sell this.
Shane: I think to do that, you’re going to have to discount pretty good to make it really attractive. If you called the Indiana director of the Boys and Girls club, maybe that’s the regional director for Indiana and Illinois, and you called them, and you’re like, “Hey, you’ve got a lot of people volunteering. I have A-to-Z, easy-to-follow, after-school activities for these kids that are coming to your clubs. Any volunteer could pick them right up and do them, it would be awesome. I’d love to send you some, and you can sample them for one of your clubs. Then if you would filter this out to all the Boys and Girls clubs in Illinois and Indiana, I would give you a 50% discount per club.” You’ve got to make it sound really attractive to big groups like that because 50% off of 100 Boys and Girls clubs is still a lot of money.
Jocelyn: And when you’re doing big pricing like this, I like to have tiers set up. For Elementary Librarian, I have a tier for three to five schools, they get X discount; six to ten schools get Y discount; and then 10 to 20 schools get Z discount.
Shane: There is a point where you’ve got to give a quote.
Jocelyn: Then, I have a price that I will not go below. My price that I will not go below, for instance will be like $99.00 per school per year. But sometimes, you’ll have people come back and say, “Well, we can’t do that.” What I’ll do is I’ll make other arrangements. I won’t go below. My floor is $99.00 a year, but I will give you half a year for $49 per school. Do you see what I mean? You have to kind of play with it to fit their budgets. Sometimes, there’s a situation where we have $2000. Your quote is $4,000. We can’t do it unless you come down to this price.
Shane: And it’s not a negotiating thing. They just don’t have it in their budget.
Jocelyn: What I’m saying is, find a way to make it work.
Shane: Yeah. You never want to turn down two grand, or 10 grand, or five grand, or whatever.
Jocelyn: Especially at this point. Eventually, yes, you will have to make some hard choices like that. You can’t just give your product away. But I’m just saying, find a way to make it work. What I do, like I just said, I will half the year. I will give you six months for half the price.
Shane: And the last thing I really want to say on this is these conversations always get people fired up, and say, “Well, I’m going to go do this now! I have a plan.” But then they abandon all the other things that actually made them their money. We have a district strategy, but we also have an individual teacher strategy who is searching in Google or looking around. You have to think of all that people that will walk in your doors. You can bet all your chips on that big whale. You can’t just spend all your time doing that because in the same time, you could have picked up 100 other people in the net. Don’t put everything into this. Just make it your next path into your membership.
Jacqueline: Yeah that is great and I like that you mentioned having a VA because, yeah I do have a full-time job, and obviously calls like this need to happen during business hours. I can always take an hour off during the day to do that, but that is very limited. What kind of VA do you recommend? I’ve used Upwork like you guys have recommended for a lot of stuff, and that has been great. But can you find that kind of VA?
Shane: Oh yeah, you can find Americans, and that is usually good for something like this.
Jocelyn: Especially with calling, because they don’t have an accent. They understand the Americans. They live in America, they understand Americans like our system of government and our system of social programs. They just live here. For something like this, I would definitely look for some kind of salesperson. Yeah, but there are freelancers doing sales calls on there all that time.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it is even a situation where for something like this, you may be cut even find someone locally. Maybe somebody who does sales for a living. Maybe if you know somebody who is doing a really outstanding job selling something in your area, maybe they would want to pick up a part-time job making these calls.
Shane: You can even incentivize it. You can just say, “You know, I’m going to pick you X dollars. But per member, I’ll pay you 50% of their first month,” or whatever. In any kind of sales situation, we always try to incentivize it because people will go through the motions if it is just like, “I will pay you X dollars a call or X dollars an hour.” Well they are not trying to sell it. But if you show them what is in there, you teach them how to sell it, and you say, “When they ask this, answer this,” they really want to follow up and close on that sale because, “Hey I’m making X dollars an hour but every time I sell one of these I make 30 bucks. If I can sell 10 of these today, I will make 300 extra bucks.” It does not hurt you because it is a recurring membership. So what do you care if you give them the first month? You get the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and so on. I would definitely incentivize that with some kind of commission.
Jocelyn: I think that also a good strategy for you might be to try to find some in-person type of events. I don’t know if maybe there is a conference.
Shane: For after school stuff, I’m sure there has to be.
Jocelyn: Maybe there is a local type thing. I find it in the education space, these kind of events are still really powerful. Just to get in front of people, talk to them, meet these people who are in charge of these large organizations, I think I can be really beneficial for what you are doing as well.
Shane: If you get a booth space at a conference where all these after-school programs go to, then those regional directors are going to go to these, and they are going to walk out by your booth, and be like, “What is this?”
Jocelyn: And you could have a big sign that says, “Multi-site discounts available.”
Jacqueline: Yeah, I definitely need to do that, and there are a lot of conferences that would be a good fit. My hesitation is, of course, expense, and they are so expensive to go to. But I know, it’s like time or money, like you said.
Shane: It is, and this is a mentality that we have really shifted on in the past six or seven months. One, it’s a tax deduction. These are business trips and the more money you make, the more deductions you are going to need eventually. But also, too, you are not spending money. You are investing money. If you spend $5000, and go to a trade show, but you get one organization to pay you $20,000, who cares? Not only do you get to write the $5000 off, but you made money on money you already would have been paying taxes on anyway. There is a point where you say, well I can’t just spend all the money.
But, you have to think of stuff like that as, what is the return? What is the risk reward, and how is this an investment? How is it saving me money on taxes? How is it doing all these other things for my business? Then, if you just recorded a video of your tradeshow thing, you could put that out as an ad. There is all kinds of ways that you can repurpose that where it is not just, “Oh, I lost that money.” That is what I think people think when they start spending money on business. Because what happens in our life? You spend your money on the mortgage, you don’t it back; you go spend on groceries, you eat them. But that is not how it works on business. You can think of money in the same way.
Jocelyn: You are in a really good position as far as where you are in the United States. There are a lot of urban areas near you. They are within reasonable driving distance.
Shane: Yeah, I’m sure Chicago is going to host an event like this at some point.
Jocelyn: Indianapolis, and you’ve got Louisville, there is a lot of places that are fairly close to you. Look around for different regional events that you can go to as well. That can help you get started.
Jacqueline: Yeah, definitely I have most of them on my calendar, and I think I just need to make them a priority. Luckily for me they’re all in the spring.
Shane: You don’t have to immediately have to buy booth space and stuff.
Jocelyn: Be a presenter.
Shane: Yeah, try to be a presenter. Or Jocelyn and I sometimes, we just crash conferences, we don’t even buy tickets. If we are in town, and we know there is a big conference that we don’t really want to go to–
Jocelyn: Just show up at the hotel.
Shane: We just show up at the hotel, and we just walk around and meet people.
Jocelyn: That’s called unconferencing.
Shane: It’s unconference. Plus, sometimes, the content is terrible. You don’t want to go to listen to anybody, but there is a lot of cool people there. We have made business contacts doing that. We unconferenced one in San Diego one time. We were just in San Diego, and there was a conference.
Jocelyn: We were having our own event.
Shane: Yeah, so we just went over to it, and we met two or three people like two years ago that we still talk to you today on Facebook and stuff.
Jacqueline: Okay, I’ll do that.
Shane: Yeah, just get your feet wet and see if you can meet some people.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that also being a presenter is a great thing for a lead magnet. You give away something little afterschool packets. “Here is an example of some of my activities,” and your presentation could be called ‘How to Have an Awesome Afterschool Program’, or something like that.
Shane: It is going to take that if you want to go hunt for whales. It can’t just be a sales page, it can’t just be an ad.
Jocelyn: And those things don’t hurt.
Shane: Those things don’t hurt. But you are going to have to get to where the big dogs are. You’re going to have to have someone calling these big dogs. Basically, figure out, if I call 100 organizations, how many of them buy? Then that is what it is worth.
Jacqueline: Thank you, I totally agree. For the many times, I’ve been in contact with you guys, I feel like I think I know what I want to do, but I kind of need someone to just push me.
Jocelyn: You need somebody to push you of the cliff.
Jacqueline: Yes, yes, do it.
Shane: A lot of times, we find that when people come to us. They need to write all this stuff down, and we’re like, “Why didn’t you just do that?” And they’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t just do it.”
Jocelyn: It is so simple yet so complex.
Shane: Usually, that is our first mission when we start working with people. Jocelyn is like, she feels them out and figures out what they’ve got, and she is kind of talking to them. In my mind, it is like she is leading them to the edge of a cliff, and then I sneak up behind them, and push them off. That is kind of the way we look at it. If you want to do this, both hands on the back, we are shoving you into the space.
Jacqueline: That is so you guys. I would definitely second that. That is very true about you guys.
Jocelyn: Alright. Awesome, well we had a really good conversation so far. I think we have time for maybe one other question. What else can we help you with today?
Jacqueline: Okay, I think this is a short question, I hope, and I think many other people have this problem. All of my activities are online. Everything is web-based, and people can access it through their computer, tablet, or phone. I just recently did a handful of interviews with current clients to see what they were liking, and what they wanted to see improved. Overall, the overwhelming thing that people were requesting was some sort of printable form of each activity so they could print them out.
I think that is a great idea. I think I even know the answer to my question. Of course, I am just worried about people joining, and then just printing everything, and then being done. One way I can solve that by having memberships that are longer than just a month. I don’t know, I just want to see what you thought about that. Is that something I should do, or is that kind of giving away?
Jocelyn: This is hard. I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve had this dilemma myself. I think that usually, the best answer is always to do what is best for your customer. Sometimes that is hard because we know that–
Shane: It’s going to add the work, it’s going to that expense.
Jocelyn: –There are going to be some dishonest people, okay? It’s going to happen. But more often than not people are going to be honest about it. Some things that you can do are, I have considered it making an easy download for my annual members only. What that means is right now, you have to click a bunch of times to get to all the resources. That is partially because it is more organized that way. But it is also partially because it is harder for people to download everything.
Shane: It would take you hours and hours to sit and download everything.
Jocelyn: I mean, theoretically, is it possible? Yes.
Shane: But day to day, you can login, and get what you want in seconds. But if you wanted to try to steal every single documents, well we’ve made it a little cumbersome for that. And I don’t think, in four or five years of doing this, I bet 3% of anybody has ever done that.
Jocelyn: Well, I wanted to do my numbers a while back, and I looked at the cancellations after one month. That does not guarantee that they did steal all the material. But I just looked to see who cancelled after one month, only 6% of my membership was cancelling after one month.
Shane: Probably half of them didn’t steal it, and the other half probably tried and didn’t get it all.
Jocelyn: We talked about this all the time. Are we more worried about the 94%, or are we more worried about the 6%?
Shane: Don’t worry about your digital product download. Now, let’s address the other part of the question. If your people want printing materials, then you can offer it for them. They are going to have to pay for it. You are going to have to pass the cost on. That is what we do on US History Teachers, we do not offer printing materials.
Jocelyn: But for Elementary Librarian, people beg for a printed book. Even though they could print the materials themselves, they wanted me to print it. I went to a local printer. I priced it, it is really expensive. The book itself, just to print it as like $30. That doesn’t even include my added cost of shipping, I pay somebody to send them out for me, I mean I charge $79 for the book because it is that expensive.
Shane: But it is a book for a whole year. But even that book refers back to the website to go get the resources.
Jocelyn: And I will only let you purchase it if you are a member.
Shane: Like, I would never totally print one giant volume that gives them everything. They are going to have to go get some of the resources.
Jocelyn: Always refer back to the site.
Shane: Now, what I think what you could do that is a little different than what we do– this skill can go for anybody, like if you are training people for real estate, or and you know someone is teaching a class that they have start 30 students or anybody that is teaching anything in a work environment, or in a classroom environment where they are going to have people in the room with them, you could sell workbooks. How you could do that is like, let’s say there’s 20 days after school in a month. You could sell a February workbook.
Let’s say that the Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington calls you and says, “Hey, we have about 35 kids here every day. They are coming after school. We would really like the first part of that day to be activities. We’d like to get a workbook for each kid. How much would it cost us to order 35 workbooks?” Those workbooks would have each in them the activity, but the activity would be done once the kid uses the workbook.
You could do that, and all you have to do is go to a print company, and say get what you would put in it, and say, “How much would it cost me to print one of these?” If it costs one dollar per book, for each month, then you say okay, there is 35 that is $35 to make those books. But then you can charge them a membership fee plus $65. And now, they are a member, that organization is a member, they can get the digital downloads when they want them, they are still paying the monthly costs, but you up-sell them, and you charge them like double to get them the print package. It really just becomes a tier. They can choose digital only, or they can choose workbooks at X dollars per workbook. I would just say double the price. If it costs you a dollar, charge two per workbook. You can offer that. It is just a matter of setting up systems.
Jocelyn: Probably, where you are, there is probably a variety of printers who may be willing to work with you on those types of packages.
Shane: We only have one were to companies.
Jocelyn: We only have option.
Shane: But, the good thing about this is, that is totally automated. Most of the print companies could even ship for you or you could get online, and see if you could automate the orders.
Jocelyn: Or you could do what I do. I hire somebody locally to ship them out for a flat fee per shipment.
Shane: We go to the print company once a month, we never see the books.
Jocelyn: No, I don’t even do that. I pay the invoice online, and that is it.
Shane: We haven’t even been to the print company then in months. You can totally automate the system. Offering more options like that, it doesn’t really cost you anything. It’s just a matter of setting up the system to say, they pick the books, make the order.
Jocelyn: If that is what your customers are asking for, if I have a lot of people asking, I try to do what they want.
Shane: That might be a good idea, too, for you because I would say, if you’ve got volunteers, they aren’t going to sit down and print all that stuff out. The director of the Boys and Girls or the YMCA is not going to have time to do it because they are so busy.
Jacqueline: That is a good point.
Shane: If you just say, monthly, some smaller organizations want digital only to save money. But then you could say, “Pick a number of work books and we will ship them to you every month. There is your after-school plan. You just turn to the next page.” Does that answer your question about that?
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah, it does. Definitely.
Shane: Now, I would not try to start chasing whales and printing massive amounts of workbooks at the same time I think that you’re going to have to pick one or the other, get it situated first, and then go forward.
Jacqueline: Yes, I agree.
Jocelyn: Alright Jackie, we’ve had a lot of really great questions today. These are some things that we’ve actually never talked even about on the podcast. I think that is really cool. I think people are going to really relate to some of the things that you are saying. We always end all of our calls by asking about an action step. Something that you are going to take action on in the next 24 to 48 hours based on what we talked about here on today’s call.
Jacqueline: I think the first thing I will do is actually sit down and look at all of these in-person opportunities that are coming up. And not just national ones, like you mentioned. Maybe stay in regional ones that are little easier for me to participate in and start looking at when they are, where they are, what I can do, and then get myself out there before I miss the window.
Shane: Exactly.
Jacqueline: Time to do so.
Shane: Put a bunch of those in the forums, and we can help you research them. We can talk about them, and maybe we will just, within the next couple days, we will just pick one right now, and say that is the first one I’m going to. And I’m going to start doing it, and we’re going to see what happens. Once that is off the table, that gets the ball rolling on chasing whales and how we can work on may be looking at the print stuff.
Jacqueline: Yeah, great.
Shane: Awesome stuff. Well, Jackie, thank you so much. You are awesome. One of the finest people that we have ever hung out with in person.
Jacqueline: You guys are awesome!
Shane: It was great to be able to catch up, and talk to you, and I can’t wait to get in here, and help you take it to the next level.
Jacqueline: Well, thank you guys, so much. I can’t say enough about you, and I make this kind of a corny joke, but you know that Seinfeld episode where they are talking about a holiday, Festivus for the rest of us?
Shane: Yeah.
Jocelyn: Yeah.
Jacqueline: I was thinking of you guys as like, the consultants podcast for the rest of us. The people who don’t have 20 hours a day, and $4 billion to just do whatever we want.
Shane: Exactly, right. We feel your pain, trust me. It is real world around here at Flipped Lifestyle headquarters. Everyday. All right, well, we will see you in the forums, friend.
Jacqueline: Sounds great.
Shane: Alright, good job.
Jacqueline: Bye, guys.
Shane: Alright, guys, that wraps up another call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. 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 as well.
Jocelyn: All right, next we’re going to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment, and these are things that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal 9-to-5 job. Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is getting our new puppy, Coco. I’m going to be totally honest. I really did not want to be a dog owner right now, but Shane kind of talk me into it. We ended up with one dog. Our dog, Bandit, he came along about the time that we closed on the house, and he has sort of been here ever since.
Shane: He just showed up at our doorstep one day, and he was about three or four months old. We just decided to take care of him because he was living out in the land. He was skinny. So, he got adopted.
Jocelyn: We didn’t want him to be lonely. Shane thought it would be a good idea to get Coco, and Coco is actually a purebred chocolate lab, and we got her from a breeder in town. She has been just the most adorable thing ever.
Shane: She is very cute, but she poops and pees a lot. We were just saying earlier today, it feels like we are kind of back with babies again. Because Coco is so little. She was only like– how old was she when we got her? Six weeks old?
Jocelyn: She was six weeks, yeah.
Shane: We had to get up with her at night, we had to take her outside every two or three hours, feed them three times a day. My reason for this being a Can’t Miss Moment not only just that she is adorable and our kids love her. It is like the joy of their life right now, is dogs are expensive. I don’t know if we could have afforded dogs before because we have spent so much money on vets and doctors and dog houses, and kennels and cages and toys. I’m not exactly sure if we could have even gotten it especially a bred dog like this that cost a few hundred dollars ourself.
Jocelyn: My family always laugh at me because Bandit, of course, was our “free” dog. He has now cost us probably thousands of dollars. He went from just hanging out around our house like you could see his bones, and he is now receiving a BarkBox subscription every single month.
Shane: This dog went from living in a hole off the side of our house when we found him, like a hobo basically. Now he has an insulated dog house with a solar-powered fan for good insulation and a warming platform for him to sleep on and a monthly subscription service. And he has a monthly subscription service where he gets treats and stuff.
Jocelyn: By the way, if you are interested in BarkBox, we will put a link to it. If you want to see a picture of sweet, little Coco, go over to today’s show notes on our website, and you can see her picture and how totally adorable she is. It is amazing how quickly she has grown. She has grown so much in just a couple weeks since we have had her. By the time that this podcast airs, she will probably be almost a big dog.
Shane: Before we go to the guys I want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I close every single one of our shows with a Bible verse. We get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible, and we want to share some of that with you. Today’s Bible verse comes from 1 Corinthians 9:24, and the Bible says, “Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” Make sure that you are giving every ounce of effort that you are dedicated to making your online business work and run that race in such a way that you will get the prize and everything will work out in your online business. That is all the time that 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