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Need ideas to improve membership conversion?
Join us as we help today’s guest with strategies on how to improve his membership conversion.
We’re super excited to introduce, DriveStaff Founder and Technology Recruitment Firm President, Paul Cameron.
Paul has been an IT Headhunter since 1998, and has delivered tons of speeches as a Job Search Coach and Motivational Speaker.
He is also the Author of “Turning Interviews into Offers through Advanced Selling Techniques,” that teaches applicants easy-to-learn techniques to give them that edge to land their dream job.
Thanks to almost 20 years worth of training and experience, he has become a widely established industry expert helping thousands upon thousands of job seekers get hired faster.
He created SpeedUpMyJobSearch.com in 2014, a website that provides job search resources, employment opportunities and community to provide support for applicants young and old.
Paul has most of the puzzle pieces in place, but we’re going to help him analyze the rest of the pieces even further.
Join us as we share our best tactics to incorporate testimonials into his website, strengthen his sales chain, and get his online business journey to the next level.
Buckle up coz this might just be what takes to flip your life too!
You Will Learn:
- How to strategically use your testimonials
- What is a sales page
- What is an offer page
- Sale Funnel vs. Sales Chain
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Paul’s Membership Website
- Flip Your Life community
- Flipped Lifestyle Patreon Page
- Flipped Lifestyle YouTube Channel
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!
Patreon question of the week from our Q&A with S&J YouTube series:
This week’s question is from Rebecca. Rebecca says, “Do you plan your content for the entire year? How far ahead should I batch?”
Click here to hear the answer to today’s featured question!
And if you would like to watch all of our Q&A with S&J videos, head on over to flippedlifestyle.com/YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
To ask a question for the Q&A with S&J YouTube show, you can do that over on our Patreon page at flippedlifestyle.com/patreon.
Click on the image to Listen on iTunes:
To learn more about working directly with Shane & Jocelyn in their Flip Your Life community, visit: https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife
Join HUNDREDS of entrepreneurs from around the world pursuing the Flipped Lifestyle online!
Success Story of the Week:
Today’s success story comes from Valerie.
This is not actually a success story in terms of making progress for my business, but my husband and I have decided to follow in Shane and Jocelyn’s footsteps, and downsize into our version of a Freedom Home. We’re going from a large two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with an office to a one-bedroom, one bath apartment with no office. I’ll be giving up an extra bathroom, and my beloved little office. Deep breath. But we will be saving about $500 a month, and it is in a quieter location with a pretty view, and trees and a private access to a lake and trails. I’m having a little anxiety, about moving into a much little space, and especially giving up my my office/work space/introverts getaway– But I know we have to make sacrifices now to have what is really important to us later. Now, we just have to be sure we make the most of it.
That is an awesome story, Valerie. We are so glad that you shared that in the community, and congratulations on taking such a huge step and really going all in with your online business.
We would love to help you write the success story for your online business.
At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Can’t Miss Moment:
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is having an Easter egg hunt at our house.
This was really fun because there was some people doing a fundraiser locally. They were trying to fund an adoption, and they kind of just put out on Facebook, “Hey, we’re going to be delivering Easter eggs if you’re interested.” I thought, well, that would be fun.
We had this huge Easter egg hunt like all around our house. So, when we got up in the morning, it was like the Easter Bunny had came, and hid all the eggs everywhere. It was just a really cool experience to be able to afford to pay for a little magic in the holidays, and kind of enhance that experience for our kids.
Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!
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. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey y’all, on today’s podcast, we help Paul take his job search website to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on, y’all? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is awesome to be back with you again today. We are so glad that you tuned in to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. This is the place where we help you figure out what to do next in your online business. No shiny objects, no gurus, no gimmicks; just real people, real businesses, and real conversation. We’re super excited to have another member of our Flip Your Life community on today’s show.
Jocelyn: But before we get started with today’s guest, we are going to read our Patreon question of the week from our Q&A with S&J YouTube series. This week’s question is from Rebecca. Rebecca says, “Do you plan your content for the entire year? How far ahead should I batch?”
To hear the answer to today’s question, you can click the link in today’s show notes, and if you would like to watch all of our Q&A with S&J videos, head on over to flippedlifestyle.com/YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Shane: If you would like to ask a question for the Q&A with S&J YouTube show, you can do that over on our Patreon page at flippedlifestyle.com/patreon. That is P-A-T-R-E-O-N.
Alright guys, let’s jump right in with our guest today. We are super excited to welcome Paul Cameron to the show.
Paul, welcome to the show, man!
Paul: Hey, thanks for having me.
Shane: I love it when we get to have people on the podcast that we’ve actually shook hands with and hugged and had dinner with in person because we had the chance to hang out with you in our Chicago live event, and it is awesome to get you back here on the show and catch up, man.
Paul: Yeah, definitely. It is really exciting for me to be here, so I appreciate you having me.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it is great to talk to you and to dive in and help you to be able to move your business forward a little bit more. You’ve done a lot of things since the live event in Chicago, which is awesome, but before we get too far into what we need to work on next, let’s tell the audience a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online.
Paul: Sure, sure. And first, if I can just say, I really appreciate what you guys do. This is a great show, and your forums are amazing! I just want to say that real quick because you guys really do a great job.
Shane: #wedidnotpaypaultosaythat. I had no idea you were going to say that, but thank you very much.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. That is just important to hear. Yeah, I’m a recruiter, a headhunter, if you will, and no we are not offended by that term. I’ve been recruiting for coming on 20 years now. From the very beginning, one thing I’ve always done is give seminars and things to the local job clubs on resume writing and interviewing and social media advice, that kind of thing to kind of help them through the job search process. And back in 2014-ish, I run my own recruiting company since 2002, and in 2014 or so, I started listening to that Pat Flynn podcast.
Shane: Who’s that guy? Never heard of him.
Paul: He kind of talked me into putting all that stuff onto a website, and I’ve been working on that all that time trying to teach everybody all this stuff that I teach them at the local job clubs. I was kind of the crossroads, do I keep going? Do I not? Then you guys came on that show. We’re talking about that live event in Chicago right when I’m thinking, do I do this, do I not? And then you guys were coming to my hometown. Well, for Pete’s sake, I need to go check this out and see it, so I kept it going, and been working on it ever since.
Shane: Awesome, man, you’ve done an amazing job working hard at it. I can remember you at that event. You could really feel you at the crossroads. When it was your turn for Hot Seat– when we do a live event for anybody that has not been, we bring in 12 to 15 people. Each person gets a turn on what we call The Hot Seat, where we really breakdown where you’re at. I can remember that angst. “What do I do? Where do I go? What do I do next?” We all hit that spot in our online business. Not just once. We get that way sometimes. Right now, we’re like, “What do you do with this part of the business? What do we do with this part of our business?” That is kind of just a part of the journey, and so many people turn back. It is awesome that you kept going because that keeps the door open for success.
Paul: If you guys are at that crossroads, please let me help you. Please keep doing this.
Shane: Actually, that’s not a crossroads we’re at. We’re actually, like, we should do this and only this, is what we’re thinking about.
Jocelyn: Yeah, we got a lot of stuff going on right now so we’re trying to figure out our direction as well.
Shane: Yeah, what are we going to do with our education businesses. We have a lot of other things going on that we don’t even talk about on the show. We trying to figure out how can we change the most lives, and it might be right here 100% on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. That is kind of our mission.
Jocelyn: Alright, with that in mind, let’s go back to what is your why? Why do you want to do what you are doing online?
Paul: Well, for one, because it can help a lot of people. I’ve been doing these seminars for a long time, and so many job seekers out there, they don’t even know what they don’t know about job search. Little things like the font on your resume can get your resume automatically deleted if you are using the wrong size, or little things like that that they need to know. But then on top of that, just kind of selfishly, I’ve been recruiting for a long time, and it is a full-time job. It is seven days a week, you’re making calls at 8:30, 9 o’clock at night, weekends.
Literally, I’ve gone on one vacation for one week over my entire career. That was for my honeymoon. Even then, I was standing in the back of the church with the groomsmen in that little tiny room, where they should be saying, “Hey, you sure you want to do this?” And I’m on the phone making a placement. You know?
Shane: That’s a hilarious story.
Paul: I need to be able to take some time off.
Shane: As long as you weren’t doing that during your honeymoon. That would have been really terrible.
Paul: Yeah, that would have been a little weird. I need to be able to take a vacation with my family, and just have some time. I need someone to help me to do that.
Shane: Yeah, I think, what’s funny is that you say that we can look back at times in our life where we were like just grinding like that. When I first got my college football coaching job, I called Jocelyn. Jocelyn and I dated for seven years, for anybody that doesn’t know this. We met each other in college, we were together forever, and we went through the two years where we wouldn’t even admit that we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
And then we went just forever, and people were like, “Are y’all ever going to get married? You’ve been together for a long time.” I had just got back from a coaching job in Alabama, Jocelyn was living in Lexington, KY, and I got this job at West Virginia University. When I got hired, the coach basically told me, “Hey, welcome to the team, but you are going to have absolutely no free time until about February.” And this was May. He was like, “The only weekend that we have off between now and then is on July 3rd and 4th, and for the 4th of July, and then we are going to work basically from 7 AM to 11 every day throughout the whole football season.”
He tells me this, so I called Jocelyn, and I’m like, “You know, I got the third free, we might want to get married, because if we don’t do it now, we’re probably not going to be able to do it for until next year.” We really had this nice logistical conversation of, “Let’s go ahead and get married.”
Jocelyn: “Does it make sense? Yeah, it makes sense logically.”
Shane: I was like, no romance. I have no story about getting on my knee or anything, but I say that to lead to what you are talking about. We couldn’t even go on a honeymoon because we were working. We got married and drove 13 hours back to West Virginia because I had a staff meeting the next day. And we went on our honeymoon like sometime later, I don’t even remember when it was. We went to Niagara Falls for a day or two.
But yeah, man, work will kill your honeymoons and your vacations. We’ve got to flip your life, Paul, because you need some time off, brother. You need a second honeymoon or something, I don’t know.
Alright, let’s talk about traffic. What does your website actually look like now? How does the business look? Are you getting visitors everyday? What are your email sales and things like that look like?
Paul: I get roughly 70 to 100 people coming to the site everyday because, again, I run a recruiting company, so everybody that applies to my positions, and everybody I’m talking to through the day, they get responses for whether we are going to go forward or are we going to reject them. Every single email points to speedupmyjobsearch.com to try to help them with their search, whether we can place them or not. We do get a good amount of traffic.
Shane: How many emails are you getting a day? Is that 70 to 100 emails, or 70 to 100 visitors a day?
Paul: Visitors, visitors.
Shane: Are people opting in to anything right now? Okay, so how many emails do you think you’re getting a day?
Paul: Well, from the site itself, I would bet I only get 5 or 10 opt ins in a day. But every person that emails me to apply to a position, they are essentially opting in to my email list, so I am adding somewhere between 30 and 60 people a day to my auto responders.
Shane: Alright, but just Speed Up My Job Search is 5 to 10, basically?
Paul: Yes, right just from the website itself.
Shane: Which is not bad, 5 to 10% is not terrible for an opt in. Now you’re having trouble, though, getting people there to buying into what you are selling though, is that correct?
Paul: Yes.
Shane: Okay so these emails are not necessarily converting into sales, then, basically?
Paul: Correct.
Shane: So where are you getting most of your sales?
Paul: From people who have seen me speak live. We were talking about before when I went on the air, I’ve got a roomful of people sitting across town waiting for me to show up to give another presentation. The people who see me, they can ask a couple questions, make sure I know what I’m talking about, then they join the site from there.
Jocelyn: But there’s a limit to how many people you can speak to obviously, because you are only one person.
Shane: There is only about how many things you can go to live.
Paul: It doesn’t scale, exactly.
Shane: Okay, well that is some good background. The good thing is, we call it The Chain. We have a course in the Flip Your Life Blueprint area of our community, and there is a master class there called The Sales Chain. It is a little bit different than the sales funnel. The sales funnel is like that path that you guide people down to buy things. We look at each part of the chain though to see where the weak link is, and to me it looks like your traffic’s good, your opt ins aren’t bad, and it is just a matter of getting that conversion down, so we’ve got to figure out how to kind of make the online experience more similar to your speaking experience, and if we can do that we might be able to improve your conversion, okay?
Paul: Yeah.
Jocelyn: All right, Paul, so we know a little bit more about what you are doing online, what you are doing in real life. What is your question for us today? How can we help you to move this thing forward more?
Paul: Well, one thing. I’ve heard you guys say a number of times that testimonials can be a huge help, and I don’t remember which podcast it was, Shane, you said to somebody, “You go get me one testimonial, I’ll go get you 10 members.” Okay, well, I’ve got testimonials. How do I leverage these things better? It’s not like I’ve got six or seven, I’ve got over a hundred testimonials. At this point, I’ve just littered them all over the site. They are in every single email and autoresponder I’ve got going out. But they are not helping right now. How do I use those better?
Shane: When you say you’ve got them all over the site, is it like text, or what is it?
Paul: Most of them are text, I had a couple of them, when you guys talked about video testimonials, I got two video testimonials. I’ve got recorded – a bunch of audio testimonials.
Shane: So, it’s just littering them all over the site right now, though, right? There’s not a strategy that you are using?
Paul: Right.
Shane: Okay, let us pull up your website real quick, and look at it, okay?.
Paul: I think it looks cluttered. I don’t know.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean, just kind of glancing at it, there is a lot of information on here. Like, there are a lot of things to click.
Shane: Oh my gosh. Information overload.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s a little bit confusing, I think. You might want to simplify that, and you only want them to have one thing to do. Usually, it is join your email list.
Shane: Yeah. Also, when I look at your site, you just told me, “Man, I’ve got testimonials littered everywhere.” When I land on your website, I don’t see a single testimonial.
Paul: Oh really?
Jocelyn: I see a lot of text.
Shane: I see a lot of text, I see a lot of want-more-job-interviews, I see a video of you speaking, asking yourself, I’m scrolling down, I’m below the fold now, completely one scroll. I have, “Here is a better question, leadership job? Yes.” I see one blue link that says, “Click here to see our reviews.”
Paul: Okay. That’s in that big white box.
Shane: That is a big white box right there.
Jocelyn: Yes, your site looks fine as far as the aesthetic of it. That is fine, but I think there is way too much text. We need to simplify significantly.
Shane: Like when you think of a strategy, our strategy with Flipped Lifestyle, for example, is the one thing that we definitely want you to do, we want you to listen to our podcast. Right? Well, above the fold, prominently, is a “Click here to listen to our podcast. Click here to subscribe to our podcast,” and every post on our site has a post podcast play button. If you are going to feature anything as a strategy– and there is a lot of different strategies. Testimonials are a strategy, features and benefits are a strategy– if you are going to feature testimonials, you’re going to have to put on here, when I hit your homepage, I need to see a video that says, “Learn how Johnny got a job through my membership, and now makes $75,000 a year.”
Jocelyn: I even like what you’re saying up top. “Want more job interviews immediately? Join us so we can show you how to get them.” Well, how do I join you?
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: There is no button here. There is nothing that tells me what to do.
Shane: Wouldn’t it be awesome if that said, “Want more job interviews immediately? Listen to how Johnny got five interviews in a week,” and you have a testimonial from a guy named Johnny who, “Man, I signed up for Speed Up My Job Search. I implemented all these things that Paul taught me, and before I knew it, I went from no-job interviews to one every day, and then I got the job that I’ve always wanted.”
Jocelyn: And then there needs to be a button right there that says, “Sign up for our free–”
Shane: “– Whatever.” Exactly.
Paul: Okay.
Shane: The problem with your front page is it looks more like a sales page. Not just a sales page. This is what we actually call in our trainings, the offer page. A sales page has testimonials and features and benefits and all that. The pitch and the money and all that stuff comes on an offer page. If I were you, I would change the front of your page more to like a blogroll, and I would write a testimonial. I would take all those hundreds of testimonials that you have, and I would create blog posts.
I would schedule those out, and I would have those just rolling out every day. You know how when you log into Flip Your Life in the membership area, we always have that weeks’ success story of the week? Stuff like that. That gets people motivated. That makes it more real, and it features those testimonials. You may have hundreds of testimonials, but I don’t know where they are.
Paul: You don’t see them.
Shane: You don’t see them.
Jocelyn: As an aside, sort of related, I would also get rid of the Google ad on the side because it is just a little bit of a break in your thought process, I guess. When I scroll down, I see round things that go inside of a window. The reason I see that is because I’ve searched Google for it, like a cover for a round window. But that has nothing to do with job searching, do you see what I mean?
Shane: This is a big mistake that people really make because when people first get into online business, they hear about Google ads, and they hear about affiliate links in Amazon. We all try these things, and people make money like that. But if you’re deciding to make money through a membership site, or through a digital product, you don’t want them to click ads. You want to them to stay on site. Why don’t you put an ad for your membership there? Or, like Jocelyn, on her website, has a little thing in her sidebar. It scrolls through testimonials.
Every 10 seconds, a new testimonial quote pops up. What if that was where that featured sponsor thing was? You might get five cents off that click, but if they click on that testimonial link and go to your sales page and join, you’ve got a monthly member. I think if we’re going to build a strategy around testimonials, then we have to revamp your homepage, and that is the main thing. That is what is going to make them click. Everything is, “You can be Johnny, too. You can be Sally, too. Listen to what she did. Listen to what he did. How can I help you as well?” Make sense?
Paul: Absolutely.
Shane: It’s interesting when you get someone that is not in your business to look at your webpages and your business. Because people will tell you, “What do you want me to do?”
Jocelyn: I think even just cleaning those few things up and simplifying a lot, that is going to help a lot with your conversions on your page, I think.
Shane: Also, anybody that is trying to do something, whether you want to put a sales button up, or a click here to subscribe– I just clicked on your blog link in your menu. I have landed on the blog page. I still see no testimonials. I don’t see any testimonials, but this page is different. There are elements of your website that are always going to follow every page, no matter where somebody lands on your site, like certain sidebars, that menu at the top.
Once again, if you are going to feature testimonials, put them in places that are on every page. Like in your sidebar, or in your menu. You can have a thing up in your menu that says success stories, people are going to click that. Over in your sidebar, you could have 10 success stories. You know how people have ‘The Last Featured Post’, ‘Our Popular Post’, whatever. You can have ‘Top 10 Success Stories’ and pick your 10 best clients you’ve ever have hunted a job for, and tell their story, get their testimonial. And people will click on that because it is in your sidebar.
We have a little thing on Flipped Lifestyle that says ‘Most Popular Posts’. Those are kind of the most popular posts, but I picked them arbitrarily based on numbers, but I put them in the sidebars. I could change them if I wanted to. I could say, ‘Our Most Relevant Posts’, or ‘Our Best Posts’. Whatever I put in that sidebar is always the top traffic getter on our site.
Jocelyn: You just always need to think when you are designing your pages, when you are designing your blog post whatever, what is going to get people to the next step? What is going to get them to either read another post and get to know me better? What is going to get them to a give me their email address so that I can further market to them?
Paul: Okay, great.
Shane: Okay was that overwhelming?
Paul: I’m writing as fast as I can.
Shane: We are not bashing your site. We’re kind of bashing your site, but a little bit.
Jocelyn: No, it looks great! It looks great. I just want it to be simpler so that people are so overwhelmed when they get there.
Shane: More strategic, more strategic. What do you want people to do? Right now, your sidebar has got 47 links. I don’t even know what to do.
Jocelyn: Make it obvious. Our six-year-old daughter should be able to come to your site, and say, “Oh, this is the button I should push.”
Shane: Alright, do you have any follow-up questions to that?
Paul: First of all, I thought I had a ton of testimonials that was just overwhelming people, and you couldn’t see them at all; that tells me a lot right there, but I’ve got a big button that says, “Get started.” My thinking is, that would be obviously what they would click on. But you are not seeing that, so I’m wondering, is there a better–
Jocelyn: I think that maybe there is too much friction there. What I mean by that is, get started how? Do I have to pay something for it? It should say, “Free–” something. You want to give somebody something for free so they can get to know you better, see if they like what you have to offer, then try to get them to buy something.
Shane: Also, the color of that button, this is strategic, too. You have to interrupt the pattern. The color of the button there blends in with your background.
When I click on your blog post, your blog feed, there is a huge, red, bright subscribe button. You know what I’m saying? Granted, it’s a terrible subscribe button because it doesn’t give me anything for it, it just says, “Subscribe to our blog.”
That needs to say, “Get my free job-hunting survival kit,” right here. But that button is so much more obvious than the one on the homepage. I would probably click that button just because it stands out from the rest of the page. You don’t ever want to blend in. It can match, and you can have colors that complement each other. When we started Flipped Lifestyle, Jocelyn does our colors because I’m colorblind. She picked this big bold orange, as one of our colors, and that is the only color that we used for links and buttons, because then people know, everything that is clickable on our site, it really stands out from everything else.
Jocelyn: I think this is relevant for a lot of people. It’s just a good lesson, and keeping things simple, and making it painfully obvious what you want people to do. No matter what you do or what you think, you think it is so obvious but when somebody comes to it, they don’t know what to do.
Shane: Imagine when you are going into your site. Imagine when you’re going into your site, someone comes in for the first time, they come in through the front door. You should imagine that they are basically in a room with four white walls. One wall has instructions on it right by a door with a big red sign that says, “Exit.” There’s no other color in the room. I would know where to go. I know what to do when I’m in that room. In the next room, has another door which is the next door you want them to go through. Does that make sense? It’s got to be that painfully clear when you are building a chain. That is why are numbers look like this: 100 people a day. 10 emails a day. That is pretty good. But then, they get lost. They get totally lost, they don’t know what to do next. We can fix that pretty easily. I think if you just switched your blogroll, and started doing posts every week about success stories, that would immediately fix your homepage without having to redesign anything, and then we can work on some sidebar stuff together.
Paul: Okay, absolutely.
Jocelyn: All right, Paul, I think that gives you some good direction on what to do with your website. What else can we help you with today?
Paul: Well, that was an enormous help. A help by itself by the way, but the other one really was because, I feel as though everything you guys have suggested, I feel like I have tried this. I put it in here, and I’m trying to get to the point where I need to try something new, which obviously I will hear, or how do you know when you get to that point in your website where it is, like, “Okay, I need to tap out here because I’ve done everything I can do.”
You guys suggested splintering websites, and I splintered it, and I created six courses in there. I created a 10-day challenge and got testimonials on that from people landing from taking the challenge. Consistent content on YouTube, you talked about on one of your podcasts, and I’ve put a YouTube video out there. At least one or two every week for over a year. I’m grinding this thing as hard as I can. At what point do you change the message?
I feel as though– to use an analogy, Shane– I feel like when I’m talking to jobseekers, I’m telling them, “Hey, I can show you a better way to do this.” I feel like the way they are receiving it, is I’m trying to tell them, “Hey, I’ve got this great way to ride a bicycle. And they are saying, “Yeah, I already know how to ride a bicycle, thank you.” The reality is, behind the curtain I got this Formula One race car that will get them there. But I feel like I’m trying to talk people into helping themselves, and what point do you call it, kind of thing? Try a different project.
Shane: You said two things that are very interesting. You said, “I’m walking up and telling these people how to ride a bicycle, but I’ve got this Formula One race car.” Well, tell them how to ride a Formula One race car. Don’t tell them how to ride a bicycle. You know what I mean? Those people who are trying to ride the bike or think they’ve got it aren’t your customer. Number two, this works in real life when you are at these live events.
There is something there that you are doing that can be created in an online thing that you are not doing online right now. I actually think the analogy is like this: it’s almost like you are walking up to people, and you are saying, “Hey guys, I’m going fishing over the next town. I will see one Saturday,” and then you walk out and leave. But you did not give them a map to get there, you did not tell them how to get to the pond, you did not tell them where to meet you at, and that is what your website is. In person, you are saying, “Let’s go fishing, here is the map to get there, and here’s my cell phone number if you need to call me to ask for directions.”
On your website, like you’ve said, you’ve got all the stuff thrown up on the wall, but you never went and cleaned it off and made a nice neat path for the stuff that was working. I don’t think that it is the stuff that you are doing. It is the fact that you are doing stuff that nobody knows about, and it doesn’t matter how good your product is if nobody can figure out what it is or how to get to it, basically.
Jocelyn: You are getting ready to go and talk to people today. I would just encourage you that while you’re there, to think about, “Okay, what about my message, or me being here is connecting with people? What are people saying? Oh, I get that. That is what I like. That is what I want to see. I want to see more of it. What is that secret sauce? What is that magic that you are creating at those live events that you could possibly recreate on your website?” And I think that really, honestly, it’s just a numbers game because if you are getting about 100 people on your site a day, if you are getting 5 to 10 opting in, those numbers are good. There are very few people in this space that are doing those types of numbers.
Shane: Yeah, that’s 300 or 400 a month of emails just from our online web presence.
Jocelyn: So, I think what needs to happen then is that you just need more people coming in. You need more people opting in, and if they are not converting on the back-end, then something is wrong with your offer.
Shane: I really, really want you to go in and watch that sales training video that says the sales training again, too. The sales funnel in the sales chain are very similar.
Imagine you’ve got a long chain, and you’ve got your ads, you’ve got your free content, you’ve got your opt ins, you’ve got your sales page, offer page, your conversion stuff. What we have to do is figure out the weak link in the chain. Let’s compare the live event to this real quick, online okay?
Number one, we have a live event, or we have your website. We’re getting traffic to both. You’ve got people at the live event you’re going to speak to today, and you’ve got people coming to your website, okay? There you go. Now, we’re getting contact information at the live event, I’m sure, from who’s going to be there and we’re getting contact information, we’re getting 10 emails a day, 300 a month just organically off this website.
Those two links in the chain are strong, they are working. We can always make them stronger. Here’s the next link of the chain: the sales pitch. The sales pitch online happens on your sales page and your offer page. The sales pitch at your presentation in that chain happens at the end of your presentation, or whatever – at the back of the room. “Meet me in the back of the room.” What you’re telling me is that the sales chain is strong at the end of the presentation. You’re making sales in the person, but you are not making the conversions online. So, now we stop. That is the weak link in the chain so far. That is the only thing that matters right now on how we fix this whole all problem. Now, the whole question becomes, why? Why is the link weak on this sales funnel? Because your online sales funnel and your live sales funnel are just sales funnels. They are just two different sales funnels. Why is it strong? Now we need to analyze, Why am I my making sales in person? What am I doing?
You said something interesting to me, I can’t remember if it was off air or when we had already started recording, but you said, “Man, people are there. They can ask questions.” Does your sales copy have a huge Frequently Asked Questions? Do they have a button that says– instead of saying yes or no, you’ll buy this or not. Like, “Yes, I want this,” or “No, I don’t,” why not change, “No, I don’t,” to, “Send me an email. If you have any questions, I’ll personally answer them for you.”
That’s the thing that we’ve got to look out and figure out, how to we mimic the live sales funnel in the online sales funnel. We make that link in the chain strong, and now we start making sales. Then like Jocelyn said, we go back, let’s dump more traffic into it because it’s actually converting. Okay? So that it has but we’ve got to fix. Testimonials are all a big overarching part of that because they are going to drive people down each link of the chain.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I definitely don’t think that you are at a point to throw this thing out the window. I think you’ve got some good things going on here. We just need to figure out exactly where the– I don’t want to say the broken thing is, but the thing that is not working.
Shane: The weak link is all we’re trying to fix.
Jocelyn: And we need to fix that and move on.
Shane: Yeah. What do you charge for your membership here? It’s like 20 bucks a month?
Paul: Twenty bucks a month where they don’t have access to the forum. The people would do have access to the forum that is $49.00 a month.
Shane: Yeah, it’s 50 bucks a month. If you’re getting 300 emails, man, convert 30 of those a month, you know what I’m saying?
Paul: I’m converting one every three months right now.
Shane: I know, but that is what I’m saying though. What we’ve done in the last 30 minutes is we have totally put the magnifying glass on one place in your entire sales chain that we’ve got to fix. The conversion is where the problem clearly is. There might be a problem driving people… we need to look at your autoresponder off-air in the forums. I need to see the numbers of your open rates and your and your clickthrough rates because there’s another link in the chain there for that autoresponder.
We might not be getting people from the opt in to the sales page, but if that link is weak, we’ve got all the testimonials we need to prove it. We can fix that link in the chain, and then fix the next link in the chain, and all of a sudden we’re getting one a day. There we go.
Jocelyn: In this case, your product is obviously something that people want. It is probably a marketing issue.
Shane: I think that the biggest issue is clarity of message, like we talked about on your website. And we need to just look at the chain. It is not your opt in, it is not your traffic. It is the next thing. It is probably either the autoresponder, or the sales pages, sales copy, and we can fix that because all you have to do is mimic what you do at your live events. Do you film your live stuff?
Paul: Yeah, we put every new presentation in here.
Shane: I’ll tell you what would be very neat to do. If you could get someone to go to a live event with you. I’m sure after the event, you go down and talk to people and close sales and things like that. It would be awesome if you had somebody off in the background, and you just put a mic on yourself, and you just filmed all those conversations. You figure out why people were signing up. You go back and listen to these conversations. What questions are people asking you, and just say, “Man, if I can just answer those questions on my sales copy, I might have something here.” Okay?
Paul: Well, yeah. Absolutely.
Shane: Listen, man, that was a great conversation. We are absolutely running out of time, but dude, that was deep stuff. Stuff we’ve never really got into, but man, just some eye-opening stuff into your business today, man.
Paul: You guys are amazing. Absolutely amazing, thank you.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that we can make some good progress on this. We just need to work on it, something that you do all the time. I know they you are really good about posting action plans. Keep that up, let us talk about it in our community, and hopefully we can help you with this thing forward even more. Speaking of action plans, we always end our calls with asking our guests what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so based on what we talked about here today?
Paul: Well, I don’t know that I can identify. I can get it down to one thing, but I am definitely going to make it less text-y, I’m going to really feature those testimonials more, and all of my new videos and blog posts, I’m going to make them about success stories. I think that that is going to be humongous.
Shane: Awesome, man.
Jocelyn: That’s great. I think another thing, just to throw it in real quick here at the end, I would like to maybe see you explore some live video like maybe on Facebook live. If being live is something that your audience really likes, then maybe you need to take some of that magic on to your social media.
Shane: Maybe you need to be doing live Q&A’s once a week for anyone that is on your e-mail list. “Hey, do you have a question about my membership? You got a question about your job search? Come ask me, the headhunter, baby.” You know what I’m saying?
Paul: Yeah, definitely.
Shane: Well, listen man, we appreciate you, dude. It is awesome to catch up and man, just thank you so much for being transparent and letting all of our audience listen in, so that maybe they can pick up a tip or a tactic to take their online business to the next level as well.
Paul: Yes, thank you guys.
Shane: Another awesome call from one of our Flip Your Life community members. To learn more of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can help you with your online business today.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our regular 9-to-5 jobs.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is having an Easter egg hunt at our house. This was really fun because there was some people doing a fundraiser locally. They were trying to fund an adoption, and they kind of just put out on Facebook, “Hey, we’re going to be delivering Easter eggs if you’re interested.” I thought, well, that would be fun. It is one less thing for me to have to do. I called them up, or I actually sent them a message, and I said, “Hey, let me get some Easter eggs,” and then we found out that several other people in our family wanted to hunt eggs, too.
Shane: Basically, we had this huge Easter egg hunt like all around our house. It was crazy because our little cousin spent the night with us, so Isaac and Anna had their cousins here. We were trying to keep them upstairs because the people came at night with flashlights at 9:00, and all the kids were still awake. They were hiding all of the eggs around the house, and they planted these little things in the yard that said, “Happy Easter from the Easter Bunny,” and all these things. Each little kid got their own little handwritten note, and they hid hundreds of Easter eggs all over the place. When we got up in the morning, it was like the Easter Bunny had came, and hid all the eggs everywhere. It was just a really cool experience; one, like Jocelyn said, not have to do that and just wake up and all the eggs were there. Also, too, but just to be able to afford to pay for a little magic in the holidays, and kind of enhance that experience for our kids.
As much as we love our Can’t Miss Moments, there is actually one thing we love even more. And that is a success story from our Flip Your Life community members.
Today’s success story comes from Valerie. She writes as her subject, took the plunge on our, “Freedom home,” and for those of you who may not know, Jocelyn and I, when we first started on our online business, we sold our house to free up enough money to run our online business. We moved into a really small, older house that we called our Freedom Home, which allowed us to basically invest back in our business.
Later on, we were able to buy what we call our Forever Home, which is where we live now. We have a private lake, we’ve got to 30 acres, and we’ve got a house that sits by the water. She is talking about, right now, buying her Freedom Home.
Jocelyn: Valerie writes, “This is not actually a success story in terms of making progress for my business, but my husband and I have decided to follow in Shane and Jocelyn’s footsteps, and downsize into our version of a Freedom Home. We’re going from a large two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with an office to a one-bedroom, one bath apartment with no office. I’ll be giving up an extra bathroom, and my beloved little office. Deep breath.”
Shane: She actually wrote out ‘deep breath’ in the thing.
Jocelyn: “But we will be saving about $500 a month, and it is in a quieter location with a pretty view, and trees and a private access to a lake and trails. I’m having a little anxiety, about moving into a much little space, and especially giving up my my office/workspace/introverts get away–”
Shane: Which Jocelyn can totally agree with because she is totally an introvert.
Jocelyn: I do feel your pain. “But I know we have to make sacrifices now to have what is really important to us later. Now, we just have to be sure we make the most of it.”
Shane: That is an awesome story, Valerie. We are so glad that you shared that in the community, and congratulations on taking such a huge step and really going all in with your online business.
Jocelyn: We would love to help you write the success story for your online business. At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Shane: Before we sign off, we would like to close off every show with a verse from the Bible. Today’s first 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.
TME says
Membership sites are such a powerful online business and making an additional 30 sales a month would have a huge impact on many people. When you figure that is recurring to, things can get exciting pretty quickly. Thanks for sharing this podcast and also for transcribing – I tend to read more than I listen to!