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Need help on online business basics?
Listen in as we discuss online business basics with today’s guests and help they start their own based on what they are already doing.
In this episode we have Brian and Mandi Stephens, a couple we met at Funnel Hacking Live a few months ago.
Brian and Mandi are from Texas, have been married for almost 17 years now, and are blessed with two wonderful kids – Adrian & Gavin.
Between the two, Brian is the expert in Internet Marketing, he has seen the huge potential to earn a sustainable income online. He also loves to do photography among other things.
Mandi is a dedicated Special Education Teacher, whose love for teaching stems from caring for her daughter who has autism.
Although new to the idea of online business, she has found inspiration to create her own membership site so she can help others communicate with their special needs child in a creative and fun way.
Join us as we help this amazing duo go through the basics that will help them lay the groundwork to get their online business idea started.
Everybody has to start somewhere. Tune in and this just might be where your “START” begins!
You Will Learn:
- Getting your online business started
- Building your online presence using Facebook
- Setting expectations and role organization
- Why you should attend LIVE events
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Brian’s Website
- FL 140 – Ryan & Hannah, the Australian couple-preneurs
- Elementary Librarian
- Screw the Nine-to-five
- John Lee Dumas’ Website
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:
Patreon Question of the Week from our Q&A with S&J YouTube series. This week’s question is from Bridget. Bridget says, “How do I improve conversions on my autoresponder? I am getting traffic and emails, but people are not buying. Help.”
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 Leah, and I tried to get Jocelyn to read this one on the air, but she totally refused because she said, “This ain’t me.” She says, “Here you go, you read the subject line.” So Leah writes, “ERMAHGERRRD–” ermahgerd, you know like the meme, “… MY FIRST SALE!” in all capital letters with a giant exclamation point.
“I lowered the price of my eBook a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running Facebook ads to get clicks in order to reach target later for my membership site, which has been simultaneously growing my email list little by little. I’m offering my e-book and my autoresponder I am thrilled that I finally sold one. I just sent a text to my husband, ‘Made some big money online. Ten bucks. Giddy up!'”
Good job, Leah, that is awesome. Leah has been sitting on the edge waiting for that first sale ever since she joined the community, and she just threw the snowball off the mountain to start the avalanche. We’re really proud of you, Leah. Great job!
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 rearranging our home office.
We basically spent a couple of full days this week just moving things around in our office, and the reason why is because we had our desk over in an area of the room where it was like kind of just dark, and not a very fun place to work. We were all cramped in, and some people kept scratching the wall with their desk chairs I’m not going to mention any names here.
Now, we just have a lot more light and we have this amazing view of the lake now. We can see all the way across to the other side. The trees and all the leaves are starting to pop in to play now that it is spring, and summer is almost here.
It was just amazing to say we have the power to stop doing anything for two or three days, no more worrying about work, no more worry about anything else. Everything is batched up, everything is ready to go, and get this room the way we want it. It is just a blessing to have that kind of time freedom because of our online business.
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 Brian and Mandi start their online business from scratch.
Shane: Welcome to Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We are pumped to be back with you again today. We are so thankful for everyone who listens and subscribes to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. For those of you who are new to the show, 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 conversations. We are thrilled to have another member of our Flip Your Life community on the show today.
Jocelyn: But before we welcome today’s guests, 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 Bridget. Bridget says, “How do I improve conversions on my autoresponder? I am getting traffic and emails, but people are not buying. Help!”
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: And 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.
Now, let us jump into our interview with our Flip Your Life community member, and see what questions they have for us today.
We are super excited for our guests today because we just got to hang out with this couple live down in Texas. We went to a live event. We went to Funnel Hacking Live a couple weeks ago, and we met up with these guys. They were like, “Hey, Shane and Jocelyn,” we were like, “Oh, Brian and Mandi,” and we just hung out and got to talk a little bit, and enjoyed the conference together. When I left the conference, I said, “Man, we’ve got to have those guys on the show.” So I sent them a message, and we got this thing on the calendar, and we are super excited today to talk to Brian and Mandi Stephens from Texas.
Brian and Mandi, welcome to the show!
Mandi: Yee-haw!
Brian: Thank you, glad to be here. This is awesome.
Shane: I love the yee-haw.
Jocelyn: Yeah, there’s nothing quite like it, yee-haw.
Mandi: Thank you, I’m Texas girl through and through.
Shane: Hey, listen, you will not find any other podcast where, within a minute, you’re going to hear a ‘y’all’ and a ‘yee-haw’. I mean, I’m just telling you. You are in the right place.
Mandi: You’re welcome, Shane.
Shane: I am grateful for you guys.
Jocelyn: Well, going to live events is one of my favorite things because we get to hang out with our members, our listeners, just people that know about us, and we get to talk to them, and learn more about them. You guys, like everybody else that we meet, you have an awesome story. You were telling us a little bit before we started recording, about how you discovered our podcast, or discovered us, and we kind of interrupted you, and said, “Well, wait just a minute, let’s talk about that on air. But before we launch into that, let’s give our audience a little bit of background about who you are and where you are from.
Brian: Okay, my name is Brian Stephens, of course. My background comes about 10 years ago. I saw that there was some potential in internet marketing. I actually found it through a young’un Corey Rudl.
Shane: I’ve heard of him before. I’ve heard that name,.
Brian: Yeah, he was kind of a rock star in the beginning phases of where everybody really started working from home and everything, and really started getting that internet connection. Anyway, he taught me a little bit about Internet marketing. Well, at the time, I just needed money, I needed it fast, and I got involved in the oil field, really big paycheck for really terrible hours. I just didn’t have any time to invest in it. A couple years ago, I got out of the oil fields. I wanted to get back into this.
I wanted to work from home, I missed so many things, so many events, so many birthdays, and Christmases. I thought, “Where do I go?” I started listening to podcasts, and this is where you guys actually come in. I was listening to several podcasts, and I heard you guys interview a few times. Through screw the 9-to-5, and through– I believe it was John Lee Dumas, were you guys on that show?
Shane: Yeah, we’ve been on that a couple times, actually.
Brian: Okay. It seems like I heard you guys interview. I love you guys’ personalities. I’m a Christian, of course. We really like that you guys had some scripture, and those Can’t Miss Moments meant so much listening to those because I was missing so much. I saw that there was potential, and I wanted to do something. I really wanted to do something with my wife, and that is how we landed on you guys, listening to podcasts, and seeing what you guys do. My wife being a teacher, and I’ll let her tell a little bit about herself.
Shane: Mandi, where you on board with this online stuff when Brian first started talking about it, and rediscovered it a year and a half ago?
Mandi: Well, when he would talk to me about it, a lot of the words didn’t make sense. I didn’t have the right vocabulary, by any means. At the ClickFunnels event– they call technobabble– and my eyes would kind of glaze over, and I was like, “Yeah, okay, honey that sounds great.”
Shane: Sounds so familiar. Where’d I hear that before?
Mandi: We went to the Clickfunnels event, and I learned some more of the Internet marketing vocabulary. Now, by no means do I completely understand it, but I understand more of what he is trying to tell me and it doesn’t seem so much like a foreign language anymore. Whenever he talks to me about this stuff, I kind of understand it now. I wasn’t all in. I just wasn’t.
Brian: Not even half then, really.
Mandi: But when we met you guys, and he was like, “They do the whole online business thing, and she used to be a librarian, and she sells lesson plans.” And I was like, “Really? She sells lesson plans and she makes money online selling lesson plans? Really?” You know.
Jocelyn: There was a point where we met you guys. The first time this was earlier in the week at the conference, and I just kind of like, “Oh, hey, how’s it going?” And the next thing you know, Mandi shows up behind me at the session, and was like, “Hey, I want to talk to you about this, this, this, this.”
Shane: She goes, “Is this true? Is my husband telling me the truth, here?” Because all these other people are making money being life coaches, and things like this. At those conferences, you find a lot of people that are like, “I’m a sales expert.” They are selling selling. But, then like, “You mean, that person does something different?” I could see the spark behind your eye, like, “She’s hooked. She’s in, now.”
Mandi: Oh my goodness.
Brian: I was so excited that she saw you guys. I sat down, we saw you guys from across the room, and I told her both your stories. You are both teachers, and made it happen. You’ve got to understand, like it wasn’t long ago, my level of excitement for Internet marketing was, I was coming home going, “Mandi, were going to make $1 million, I’m going to get off the oil fields, and this is going to be awesome.” I’m still very excited about it. But it is one of those things where I have levelled out a little bit. I understand it takes some time, and for me, it is more about freedom now. With her, I think that’s what it’s turned into. It is one of those things where she is like, “Oh my gosh, I can work from home.”
Shane: “This is real, this is real.”
Brian: Yeah.
Mandi: Yeah. Going back some of my background, Brian and I have been married almost 17 years now, and we have two kids, Adrienne and Gavin. They are absolutely amazing. Adrienne has autism, and she is 16 now. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, you know. Working with Adrienne, she was our first child, and so it was just like, took her to the doctor, and they said, “Oh, she is just in a phase.” I was like, “Okay, you’re the professional,” and realized, this is not a phase. Something is going on. Pretty much had to teach her how to talk again and learn to communicate with our daughter who couldn’t use her words.
When she started school in a preschool program for kids with disabilities or PPCD, her teachers were like, “You know, you are really good with this stuff. You’re fabulous with this stuff. You should be a Special Ed teacher.” And I had always wanted to be a teacher, but I hadn’t really ever thought about Special Ed. It got my wheels turning. So I’m a Special Ed teacher now, I’ve been teaching for seven years. What I didn’t foresee was how stressful it was going to be to teach kiddos with special needs, some of them very severe, and then to come home to it, too. I never really get to turn the teacher off because when I come home, I have to help Adrienne with her homework.
Brian: Because I can’t.
Mandi: And thank God that I can. I understand all the math that she is doing because she’s very half functioning, and taking almost all regular classes. But it is hard on her, and it is hard on me, and so it is very, very stressful. That is why this is looking so fabulous to me right now because this could be my way to just only have to be teacher sometimes, and not all the time 24/7.
Shane: Well, thank you for sharing that. That is an amazing part of your story. Just being so vulnerable here on the air because I think people feel oppressed when they are in that grind. Especially, when you add a variable, like a special needs kid, there is no time off. You can’t turn the time off. A lot of people just can’t get that. Even in the online business space, where some people just aren’t dealing with stuff like that.
It is amazing now that you might be able to use, not only your talents, to stay home and do that but to help other people. Years and years in the classroom has taught you all these things. You have a special needs child at home but you deal with a lot of other special needs children. You kind of seen everything. You have now this experience where you can help other people with their kids, or help other teachers deal with kids in their classrooms.
Jocelyn: Yeah, that is a super cool part about it, that is why we love to do what we do. It is not just about making money online. That part is obviously important too, but it is more about how many lives can you affect. It is pretty cool when you start to think about it. We have members all over the world. When I think about that, I’m just a person from rural Western Kentucky, where there is pretty much nothing but coal mines. People from Malaysia listen to my podcast. People from Iran.
Shane: We talked to an Australian couple last night in Vietnam. That is who we talked to last night. They are an Australian couple who moved to Vietnam to do mission work, and live there. And then they were working there, and then they were starting an online business to make sure they did not have to go back to their 9-to-5, and so they could start a family. I think that you do this two years from now, you might have stories like that like you helped some special ed teacher keep their job because they were about to quit but you made it easier.
Or something like that. Or even maybe, you helped parents at home who don’t know how to teach the math to their kid. But you can help them modify that. There is someone out there that, if you do this, your ripple effect is going to go farther than you could ever really think.
Jocelyn: I think that is important to bring out because a lot of times, we are really focused on the actual business part of online business. But, really there is so much more to it than that. I think that people don’t always understand what type of an impact that they can have. I was saying, I’m nobody special, necessarily. I am just somebody who wants to take things, and show other people what I do, and how to do it. That means something to other people.
Shane: Another really important part of this whole story that we just talked about, too, is you can read about online business, and you can read about people doing good in the world, and you can listen to podcasts and you can see it on video. You can even here it word of mouth. But when you went somewhere, and in the flesh and blood shook someone’s hand and it was like, this person is real, that was kind of the turning point. Part of our message is always, “Go and see people live, go and shake hands.”
Jocelyn: There is no substitute.
Shane: There is no substitute for it no matter how much you make or do online. That is kind of what made it real for you, right?
Brian: Yeah, we can see the difference just going. I mean, it gives you this excitement about taking action. For me, like I said, it’s been about the freedom recently and for my wife for me, I mean, man, there is nothing greater than meeting all these people, seeing that it is not just about the money to all of them. Yeah, it is great. You have to have the money to have the freedom, but that is what it is about for us. The freedom, spending time the kids and stuff. That is what we saw, that was really more the excitement than anything.
Shane: Whenever I sit at a live event, I look around and it is like– when the live event starts on Wednesday or something– and I’m like looking around going, “There is 1,500 people in here that are not at a 9-to-5.” That is pretty much proof in the pudding without talk to a soul.
Mandi: And Shane, I will let you know, I do not miss work. I don’t at all.
Shane: Neither do I.
Mandi: I’ve got so many days built up, it’s not even funny, but I missed work to go and this is why. I missed work to go and support my husband. That’s why I went.
Brian: She was going to be my wingman.
Mandi: I went to be his wingman because I am super duper outgoing, and he is not so much. So he was like, “If you see Tony Robbins, you’ll just walk up and be like, “Hey, what’s up, Tony?” And I was like, “Okay.”
Shane: You’re my people, Mandi, you’re my kind of people.
Jocelyn: Yeah, you guys could hang together.
Shane: We could hang.
Mandi: Let’s do it, let’s do it.
Shane: Yeah, that is awesome, guys.
Mandi: So when he told me what you guys did, my wheels started turning. It was during one of I think it was sales copy or something, which was absolutely Greek me. I was just sitting there, thinking, and so I started looking around the room. I kind of felt a little bit stalker-ish, if we’re being honest here, because I started looking around the room to find you guys because I was like, “Babe, I’ve got to talk to Jocelyn.” I’ve got to figure this out, I’ve got to talk to her, and he was like, “Wait, what?” And I was like, “Okay, look over there, is that her right there? Is that her?” And he was like, “Yeah,” and so I just got up and took off, like literally ran across the room to come and talk to Jocelyn–
Shane: That is a hilarious
Mandi: –For the 30 seconds that I had before the session started.
Shane: I do that all the time. That is my thing. If we are at a field trip with the kids the other day, and we were at this big gymnastics studio, and Anna Jo is really good at gymnastics. We were like wanting to get her more work, not just the place she’s going now. I was like, “I’m going to go talk to the owner of this place and see if I can get her in,” and she goes, “Of course you are.” I just like walk over and just like, “Hey, do you own this place?”
Jocelyn: Darn, extroverts.
Shane: So let’s transition here a little bit because what is funny as you went to the conference as a Brian’s wingman, but I think he might be about to become your wingman. Let’s tell everybody about the idea that you’ve had now: to build some kind of online business, and just tell us a little bit about that, and then ask us your first question to see if we can help you on that next step, okay?
Mandi: Well kind of what I’ve been rolling around in my brain, and let me get into the why real quick. Teaching Special Ed, like I said, I had to do individualized lesson plans per student per day. That is a lot of planning, and there is no ready to collaborate with, and so it is just all on me. Then, I have to do IP goals and org meetings, and all of this stuff takes a whole, whole, whole lot of time, and I don’t get any more time than the regular teacher does to do all this stuff. Then, I have to make tools for my kids to use in the classroom. I don’t get any more extra time. I actually have less time because when one of my students flips out in P.E., I have to go get him and calm him down.
For me it is a little bit about saving time, and not recreating the wheel because a lot of Special Ed teachers are definitely guilty of re-creating the wheel when you can just find something that works for you, tweak it a little bit, and run with it. One of the things that I’m really good with is helping my non-verbal students to communicate. A lot of times, that looks like talking with pictures, and so I will have a picture at snack time. I will have a picture of goldfish, a picture of Cheerios, and a picture of fruit snacks, and I will say, “Okay, what do you want for a snack?” And then they will have like a little strip. It has a picture on Velcro that says “I want, and then they will pull whichever snack they want and put it into the sentence to say, “I want Goldfish.” It is a way of giving that child who does not have a voice; a voice and a way to speak in a way to communicate. The way that I’ve been taught to do it, and the way that I do it, they can come up to Brian, who doesn’t have as much experience with it as I do, and he can look at it and figure out how to communicate with that child. It is not something that you have to have specialized training for, it is just simple and easy, it just takes time to make it all.
Shane: You just have to have the tools, basically.
Mandi: Yes, yes. Just making things that are already pre-made, so a teacher can just go in, print it out, laminate it and get busy. And get working with those kids.
Shane: So this is an as much like modifications for lessons, as much as it is creating a bridge between the adult, and the special needs child to allow them to understand each other so that she can facilitate all the learning, all the educating, anything even at home, is the child wanting to watch the TV? Play a game? Eat food? It’s just creating tools to better communicate with the kid.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that this really goes beyond school, too. I think that this could have a lot of home uses but the thing that I would say is, and I don’t know you may have already thought about this, I would definitely sell it as a system. Meaning that you would have to have videos to explain how you use it, because even though it seems obvious to you, to other people it is not.
Shane: That is the curse of knowledge. You may think that it is ABC, and I may be looking at it, and it looks like Arabic writing. You’ve got to be the translator for the translator, basically, when you create this.
Jocelyn: And particularly for the home market, I think that it is more relevant to the home market to have that system rather than it is for the school.
Shane: On that note, you said some really interesting things here. I love this because your avatar and your product very are malleable right now. We’re kind molding the clay. We see some shape forming but we exactly what it’s going to look like. I think that is where we need to spend a lot of our time right now. Okay. You said some really interesting things as I’ve listen to this conversation, and I wrote them down. When you describe your avatar, which you are the avatar, basically your first year of teaching is, you were the avatar. Is that these phrases. You said, “It is all on me.” “There is no collaboration.’ “I am all alone.” You actually said those three words. And then a few minutes ago, when you were telling us your story about you coming home from school, and you are saying, “Here I am, I just lost my communication with my child. I did not know what to do. Thank God I know how to do the math because I have to explain to them how to do the math. I keep hearing this theme over and over and over again of, “It’s all on me. No collaboration. I’m all alone. And what you are saying to me really sounds like a community driven product. This is not just the tools, and the danger here is, you spend the next six months of your life creating thousands of tools for no reason. Because you know what tools you need. You don’t exactly know what tools your community is going to need yet. I think that what you are really going to focus on going forward with this is, I’ve got to take all these other people who are all alone, who are not getting collaboration, who feel like it is all on them. You’ve got to give them leadership and community. That is what you are selling first. The tools are how you lead them. Oh, you can’t figure out what the kid wants for dinner? Then use these images that I’ve used. Print them out and let them point or modify them. Make sure you are thinking about that going forward. It is not just a this massive, “I have 4000 things that you can print out and show your child.” It’s, “Are you alone?”, “Do you feel frustrated? Are you overwhelmed? Because I was too, but I figured it out, and I’m going to help you get through it.” Does it make sense?
Mandi: Oh, yeah. You are making me tear up, so knock it off.
Shane: Okay, okay. Well, we cry here at the Flipped Lifestyle. It is what we do. I think that anybody starting out needs to think about that. It is not just the content. Leadership and community are what matters. That is how you change people’s lives, and this is definitely one of those life-changing areas. A membership and a forum with some kind of way to communicate is what you need to build first, probably.
Mandi: Okay.
Brian: Okay. One thing I will add it to this, too, I know her, and I’ve seen how she works. There are teachers that love their jobs. There is not a lot of teachers that necessarily love the students, and she goes in and she loves her students. I really see the impact of her loving them makes. What I’m getting at is the impact that a program like this would have, it depends on who is teaching it. If you have passion for it, it is going to show. She is one of those. She loves these kids; she wants to see the impact both through the parents and the teaching faculty. It makes a big difference that she actually cares. Just seeing her sitting here tear up, know that she can make an impact.
Shane: That is who you should target.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think that that is part of your community building also. Because you need to get up there and tell those stories. When I was first starting Elementary Librarian, that was something that I did. The way that I did it was through blog posts, but that is not saying that is what you have to do. You can do it through video, if that is something that speaks to you more. Like, you need to tell these stories because that is how people are going to start to relate to you, they are going to want to interact with you more.
Shane: It’s also how you are going to be magnetic. First time we had this conversation, it’s like, “I have these tools that can help everyone, that everyone could use in their classroom.” But then we realized, well if there are four special ed teachers, maybe only one of them actually is like Mandi, that wants to take this to the next level and is passionate about this. One of them might be punching the clock, the other two are kind of like in the middle, they like their job, but sometimes they don’t like the kids. It is frustrating to them or they don’t want to get any better, they just want to come and go home, whatever. But the content that you make must ooze with who you want to read your content, it must also scream at people you don’t want to go away. Because if you are going to be magnetic and you are going to draw in people that buy stuff… Well, a magnet, if you flip it around pushes it away. It repels on one side, and it draws in on the other. When you start an online business, don’t get into this wishy-washy. Like, “Hi, all special ed people with special needs children. I have the printouts that you can all use.”
Jocelyn: “I have all the solutions.”
Shane: “All of the solutions. I am a robot, just hit my nose and I will print.”
Mandi: Sure don’t have all the solutions, no.
Shane: Exactly. And you’re going to have to say that, and say, “But these are the things that I do have, and what I do have is I have a love for kids. You have a love for kids, and I want us to collaborate.” I think that if you could use that word every time you put in your marketing because teachers understand that word, and the people who don’t have collaboration are going to run into something that gives them that kind of collaboration.
Jocelyn: Yeah, this really reminds me a lot of how I started with Elementary Librarian because librarians have the same type of situation. It is not exactly the same, in that we do all the individualized instructions.
Mandi: Oh yeah.
Shane: But they are alone.
Jocelyn: But what we do have to do you are completely by herself, usually are the only person in the building. You teach kindergarten through sixth grade in some cases. Those age levels are very, very different. You have classes scheduled all throughout the day, back to back. You have very little time to do anything else that you have to do, and not only do you have to teach these classes, you also have to reshelve books, and repair books, and check books in. There is a lot of things that you have to do. I feel like this is sort of the same type of thing that I was going through. Honestly, all I did was just get on the computer. I’m a writer, so I like to write things. And I just typed, and I said, “Hey, this week I’m dealing with this, and this is how I deal with it.” And that is what made people be like, “Wow, this person gets me.”
Shane: Of course be careful with confidentiality. The thing about a business really, we always boil everything down to this: nobody sells anything that does not do one of a couple things. When you sell something. You’re either saving someone money: “Oh, I’m offering you a better value.” Or you’re saving them time: “I can save you time because you’ll learn this faster, you’ll do this faster.” Or you are helping them not be alone because those are the three big pain points. Almost everybody goes through it at some point with everything they do is, “This is too expensive, I can’t do it,” or “I need more money. So this helps me make money,” or “I don’t have enough time, but you helped me save time by doing something for me like mowing my grass.” Or, “I’m all alone in this, I don’t have anybody to go to talk to. Oh, wait. I provide you a place to go talk to people.” Those are the three core areas that, if you can look at your solutions, and build them around, then you can do something special.
I think that what you need to do immediately, like today, is I would start groups online everywhere you can. May be LinkedIn, but especially Facebook right now. Go and create a Facebook group, and call it something like Collaborations For Special Ed Teachers Who Are Alone, or alone in your building, or don’t have any collaborations. You know, just something like that. Be really clear that this is an online collaboration for special ed teachers. Then, you go, and invite every special ed teacher you know, and you ask them to invite every special ed teacher they know. And watch people start coming to this thing. If you can just create a place for them to congregate, and start talking to them, it is going to clarify how to make your content. I bet there is places like that. But I would make one. I would just make a Facebook group, and you be the leader. You are going to post every day in there, like Jocelyn said about what is going on in your day, you’re going to look up articles that are helpful, focus on communicating with the kids, not necessarily the latest and greatest common core standards, or whatever. But you are going to share those things, and curate those things and maybe you will attract 200, 300, 400 other special ed teachers, and you can start to figure out what they want, basically.
Brian: That’s a good idea.
Mandi: Yeah.
Shane: You will be shocked to how fast people will come. I started a football group a few months ago again because I’m about to relaunch one of my football products, within like a week I had 300 or 400 people. I don’t know where. There’s a search engine in Facebook. People look for this stuff. If a special ed teacher goes home and is, like, “I’ve got nobody to collaborate with.” And she just types in, ‘special ed teachers’ what if she finds the group called Online Collaborations for Special Ed Teachers? Where she can go talk, he can go talk and get help. Ah, they’re going to join the group, you’re going to be able to talk to them. You are going to lead them.
Brian: That is good she is really good about the social interaction. I’m really good at the text stuff. We make a good team in that aspect.
Shane: All right, let us talk about that real quick because we’ve only got a few minutes left, and normally we go into more questions but I think since you guys are so at the beginning, we might need to guide the discussion a little bit here.
Jocelyn: We don’t want to give you too many ideas.
Shane: Yeah. I think that right now, what we need to talk about is, what are your roles? When a wife and a husband go into this together–
Jocelyn: –and sometimes when you are super excited about it, and both of you have ideas, then there would be a divide. And we made this mistake. A lot of people think, “Well, you started a lot of businesses, and that is the right way to go. Now, we’re kind of like, ‘Oh, why did we start so many businesses?”
Shane: But then after we got rid of some of our businesses to consolidate. Even when we did that, the mistake we made next was oh, “Oh I will be in charge of ads AND you will be in charge of ads. Or you will be in charge of sales funnels, AND I will do so funnels” we did not split up the roles, the tasks of a we were best able to do, and that causes problems. That is massive conflict, if you are not careful.
Brian: Yeah, I can see that.
Shane: What roles do you think you were both best suited for? I’m hearing that Mandi, you’re a lot of leadership and a lot of content creation. What are you going to do, Brian? On the backside of that while she is building community and thinking about product, what are you doing?
Mandi: He’s going to be the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, making everything work.
Shane: Okay.
Brian: Seriously, I think I’m going to be the guy. I can definitely analyze. I’m going to be one of those people that is looking at keywords that are used. I’m going to be looking at, what are the topics of discussion, where are people going to find other stuff because I’m sure you’re probably going to see people saying, “Hey, I went here and I didn’t find anything,” or “I went there.” so I’m going to be analyzing, and then on top of that, she has no interest in web design or anything like that, so I know I can design a website or funnel, whatever direction we decide to go on that. But yeah, I’ll be the tech guy, and I think with us it is going to be pretty clears going to be pretty clear. Like I said, she is a social butterfly. She has no problem getting on Facebook and making videos, live videos.
Mandi: I’m all about the Facebook live, man.
Shane & Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s great.
Brian: I think the lines will be clear-cut. I’m going to be developing probably all the backend stuff, all the website, design and graphics. I actually have a heavy history in graphics so that will be any problem.
Mandi: I’ll just make sure it looks pretty.
Brian: Yeah, she also has no interest in any of that stuff.
Shane: Are you going to manage the social page and the social group like you’re going to actually structure those, or is Brian going to set all those up, and then you come in and take all that over?
Brian: Oh, I’ll probably be structuring it. She will be the one who actually is the interactive one of course just getting on there, and actually doing the videos. I can see it being one of those things where we discussed beforehand. There are times where we are trying to dig into something, and I sit down with her and say, “This is what you need to do.” Just a side note, she does something on the side. It’s a very socially active business. I’m constantly trying to give her advice. “You should try this and that.”
Shane: That can get you hit, man. I’m just telling you.
Brian: It can.
Shane: Yeah, I don’t think I even say that anymore. Sometimes, I would tell Jocelyn to do this because I’ve learned a valuable lesson over the years. It’s that, “No, I don’t get to tell Jocelyn what to do.”
You’ve got to be careful, with all the curse of knowledge that you’ve got, even though you know what you think she should do, if she is going to be in charge of content, and she is going to be in charge of leading the community, and she is going to be in charge of all that, you better get out of her way, bud, because that is going to grow the business.
Brian: Good advice.
Mandi: Shane, you and I, we’re going to become quick friends.
Jocelyn: Yeah. It can get a little bit dangerous. Well, guys, we’ve had an awesome conversation here with you. I think that you have a lot of exciting stuff coming up, and I think that you are really going to be able to help some people with your content. Before we go, we always ask people, based on what we talked about here today, what is something that you plan to take action on, like really, really soon, like in the next couple days? Just as the result of a we talked about?
Shane: And I think on this once specifically, since have a couple, I think I need an action step from both of you. I’m just saying, because we need a clearly defined the role for both of you in the next 48 hours to make sure that we get the ball rolling, and that you are getting that bigger effort. Because both of you are involved.
Brian: I guess for me it would be getting the Facebook group set up. If you’re just saying me, I’d be setting up Facebook group, and probably looking at ideas on potentially what crowd we’re going to attract, what type of avatar, compared to what type of domain name we need to be looking at. I don’t necessarily think we need to purchase anything yet. I just think it would be a good idea to start looking and doing the research. That is where I’ll be at; I’ll be doing the research on like I said keywords and trying to find what kind of domains are available for this type of crowd and what kind of websites looking at other peoples’, and comparing them.
Shane: Alright, slowdown. You’re going to make a Facebook group. That is your goal for the next 48 hours is to make a really good Facebook group with a really good graphics and not do anything else except make that Facebook group. After that is done then you can do all that other stuff okay.
Mandi: Thank you, Shane. He gets so excited and I’m like, “Hey, babe, we need to finish one thing before you start on another.”
Shane: Well, let me tell you what happens in my house when that happens. We were on Pat Flynn the other day, and I actually got this on Pat Flynn’s show, we’re going to be on his podcast. It’s probably out by the time this comes out.
Mandi: Oh, awesome.
Shane: But I was getting hyper on something, too, and Jocelyn looked at me and went– on air, this is going to be on the show, –she goes, “Woah, boy! Woah.” She straight whoa-boy’d me right on Pat Flynn’s podcast.
Jocelyn: That is how you know you are in the South.
Shane: That is how you know you are in the South and somebody woah-boys you. But I’m going to have shirts made that say #woahboy and put Flipped Lifestyle under it.
Mandi: We’re going to need those, okay?
Jocelyn: This is the story of my life.
Shane: So, you’ve got the Facebook group. That is what you are going to do. Mandi, what about you Mandi, what do you think you should do in the next 24 to 48 hours?
Mandi: I will be going in and inviting all my special ed friends, and getting them to invite all of their special ed friends.
Shane: Awesome. I think that you should write the description for the Facebook group, not Brian.
Mandi: Oh, yes. Most definitely okay, let’s get into that real quick. Brian is a very eloquent speaker and a good writer. Grammar and spelling, not so much. So I will also be editing everything that he does.
Shane: There you go that’s what you need to do.
Jocelyn: I feel your pain on that one, too.
Shane: There is a really neat way to combine your efforts there, too. You love Facebook live, you are a social butterfly. You are very extroverted, I can tell.
Mandi: A little bit.
Shane: Yeah, little bit. What you should do is to do this quickly and to capitalize on both your skills, you should record a Facebook live, and explain why you are making the group and that should be the first post. Brian, you should listen to it. You are a good writer, you should write that description from what she said in the description. Not transcribe, but you were just going to summarize what she said, but then you give it back to her to proofread it so you don’t spellcheck wrong, okay?
Brian: Okay. yeah.
Shane: You need to talk. Don’t just type. That is where your skill is, okay? Alright guys, that was a great conversation. I think that you guys have all the energy. You’ve got a great idea, and now, it is just a matter of just doing it, and executing it, and we will be there for you guys to help you every step of the way. We just wanted to thank you guys for sharing some deep personal stuff here on the show, and just inspiring others that, man, we are all in a different place in the the journey. Some of us are yearning for more. Some of us are learning how to do it, some of us are earning money, and some of us are just burning it up. But we are all going through this Flipped Lifestyle thing together, and it is great to have a great conversation with you guys today on the podcast.
Brian: Yeah, thank you guys so much for your time. This has been awesome. I just appreciate everything you guys do, and I love listening to your podcast. It is really cool to be on it.
Jocelyn: Yeah, thank you so much. It was awesome to meet you guys.
Brian: Yeah, good to meet you guys, too.
Shane: Super call today with one of our Flip Your Life community members. We would love for you to be a member of our community as well. If you would like to join our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can show you how to join today.
Jocelyn: It’s now time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment. These are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our normal 9-to-5 job.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is rearranging our home office. It does not sound like a very fun task, and I don’t know if you guys are anything like us, but it is taken as like three days to rearrange a room, and we’re still not finished. If you’re out there moving, or rearranging something, we feel your pain. We basically spent a couple of full days this week just moving things around in our office, and the reason why is because we had our desk over in an area of the room where it was like kind of just dark, and not a very fun place to work. We were all cramped in, and some people kept scratching the wall with their desk chairs I’m not going to mention any names here.
Shane: That was me. It was all me. I’m the bull in the china shop.
Jocelyn: But we moved the bed to the other side where our desk were, and then we moved our desk over to where the bed is. Now, we just have a lot more light. We have a lot more natural light coming in. We have a lot more room, no one is scratching the walls or the doors. That is always a good thing.
Shane: And we have this amazing view of the lake now. I don’t know why we put our desks over in that corner. Probably because it was my idea, and Jocelyn wanted to do it in the first place anyway. But now we can see the lake behind our house. It is beautiful. We can see all the way across to the other side. The trees and all the leaves are starting to pop in to play now that it is spring, and summer is almost here. And it is just an amazing work environment but also it’s a Can’t Miss Moment because we just stopped working for a whole day or two and said, “Okay, we’re not going to do anything else.–
Jocelyn: Or three.
Shane: Or three, “–and to get this desk moved. Get this bed moved.” We’re going to rearrange this room, we’re going to start decorating the walls now in here, we have this giant Flipped Lifestyle emblem that someone had made for us out of metal, so we’re going to hang that behind our desk. We’re going to take a picture of that when we get it up and show it to you. And we’ve got all of these success stories and things like that, that we’ve printed out and that people have sent us over the years that have been through our program. We’re going to start hanging them. We cleared an entire wall for that. So we can hang them in our office. It was just amazing to say we have the power to stop doing anything for two or three days, no more worrying about work, no more worry about anything else. Everything is batched up, everything is ready to go, and get this room the way we want it. It is just a blessing to have that kind of time freedom because of our online business.
As much as we love to share our Can’t Miss Moment with you guys, there is something we love to share even more, and that is a success story from one of our Flip Your Life community members.
Today’s success story comes from Leah, and I tried to get Jocelyn to read this one on the air, but she totally refused because she said, “This ain’t me.” She says, “Here you go, you read the subject line.” So Leah writes, “ERMAHGERRRD–” ermahgerd, you know like the meme, “… MY FIRST SALE!” in all capital letters with a giant exclamation point.
Jocelyn: All right. Leah says, “I feel like I’ve been waiting for-e-ver for this–”
Shane: For-e-ver. Ermahgerd.
Jocelyn: And it says, “I lowered the price of my e-book a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running Facebook ads to get clicks in order to reach target later for my membership site, which has been simultaneously growing my email list little by little. I’m offering my e-book and my autoresponder I am thrilled that I finally sold one. I just sent a text to my husband, ‘Made some big money online. Ten bucks. Giddy up!'”
Shane: Giddy Up, baby. Good job, Leah, that is awesome. Leah has been sitting on the edge waiting for that first sale ever since she joined the community. And she just threw the snowball off the mountain to start the avalanche. We’re really proud of you, Leah. Great job!
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 go today 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.
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