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Not getting enough traffic on your website?
Learn more about optimizing your website look and feel as we listen to today’s guest.
Asking next level questions this week is returning guest and owner of DentalTutor4Me.com, we have Cathy Middlestetter.
Cathy creates content and shares her expertise to help dentistry students prepare for their board exams. Her reach and membership community has grown quite a bit since the last time she was on the show.
Cathy is ready to try something new and maximize her website’s profit-generating potential. We’ll help her analyze her site to find the right look and feel that would impress her audience.
Makes sure you have your pen and paper ready, there’s going to be a lot of information bombs that’s going to help you take your online business to the next level.
You Will Learn:
- Basic understanding WordPress themes
- Why you should add a “Most Popular Post” category on your site
- Difference between categories and tags
- Quick autoresponder tips
- Sales funnel vs Sales chain
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Cathy Middlestetter’s Website
- Cathy’s first interview
- Eye Dropper
- Loom
- Success Story: Tommy – The Cruise Dudes
- Flip Your Life community
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!
Success Story of the Week:
Tommy runs a brand called The Cruise Dudes, and these are two of our original members from one of our original Flip Your Life groups back when it was just in beta. The Cruise Dudes guys showed up. We met them, we’ve built a great relationship with them over the years, and watching them grown their brand.
They decided that they were going to release a digital magazine called Seawind, which is celebrating the cruising lifestyle, basically, and they just review cruises and do stuff like that.
They just launched last week, and they came into the success forum to share this subject line, “75 Sales in 48 Hours.”
Tommy says, “Our digital magazine app, Seawind, launched Sunday afternoon on both the Apple store and Google Play Store. This morning, I reviewed the reports, and we’ve had 75 sales between the two platforms. Most of the purchases were from North America, but we were getting purchases from Europe and Asia, too. Over the next two weeks, I have interviews on a few travel podcasts and vlogs to promote the digital magazine. To say we are excited is putting it mildly. We are ecstatic.”
Seventy-five sales in 48 hours, that is absolutely incredible for any kind of launch, and we just couldn’t be more proud of those guys for sticking with it, keep on going, and keep it grinding and keep trying to find what they can sell. That is why a lot of people don’t succeed. They will try one thing, it didn’t work the first time; “Well, it wasn’t a miracle, I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t hit the homerun, so I’m done.”
A lot of people in our community, what’s so awesome about the Flip Your Life community, is they just keep swinging and hitting and swinging and hitting until they make themselves hit that home run. These guys have really hit a homerun; I think this is going to really take off for them. Good job, guys, we are extremely proud of you and it’s just awesome to see what you’ve accomplished 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:
Alright guys, this week’s Can’t Miss Moment is our new deck.
So we just built this deck or dock and it is awesome. It’s like 1250 sq ft, it is just a massive deck, awesome outdoor space for us to be able to entertain and hang out with the kids.
We were out there the other day. Jocelyn and the kids were out on the lake. We got a little ladder on the docks to get in and out and swim. I was standing on the porch, watching them swimming, and I just felt extraordinarily blessed that we have been able to create our life the way it is right now. All this, all because we found the opportunity in online business, and we relentlessly pursued that and made it happen.
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 Cathy take her dental tutoring business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Great to be back with you again this week. Super excited today to be talking to one of our amazing Flip Your Life community members. We’re going to dive in and help them with a few questions that they have right now for their online business.
Our guest today is Cathy Middlestetter.
Cathy, welcome to the show.
Cathy: Hey, you guys, thanks for having me.
Jocelyn: It is great to be here with you today. Thank you for being on. Let’s start out by telling everybody a little bit about you and what you are doing online.
Cathy: Okay, great. I’ve got a website called dentaltutor4me, and it’s only about a year old, but I’ve been building content for that. I teach students how to pass a particular board, how to put a filling in a tooth. Doesn’t that sound exciting? But really, it’s detailed, it’s very specific. Our patient has to be able to chew food, right? Anyway, just being able to do that is a rather difficult procedure.
I’m creating content for that, not only lectures and quizzes and the things that will help them with their written board. But also how to pass the actual hands-on placement board. I will do some videos on placement. I was just talking to my brother the other day. He just couldn’t believe the quality. I’m pleased to say that I’m pretty impressed myself. I just have a little iPhone, and I set up a little stand, and shoot the film right there.
Shane: Awesome.
Cathy: So, it’s really cool. Yeah.
Jocelyn: That is awesome. I love that because I actually just had a filling put in my tooth not too long ago. I have the old style, 1980s metal fillings.
Shane: Mercury fillings.
Jocelyn: Which unbeknownst to me, it contained mercury. So one day, I started tasting some metallic taste, and I’m like, “Okay, this is odd.” I started looking it up online and of course, I convinced myself that I had mercury poisoning, which I don’t think I really do.
Shane: Because if you read the internet long enough, you’re going to find something wrong with you.
Jocelyn: But now, I have the new filling. I had that one removed and I had a new one put in, but it is so super sensitive, so I have to have it redone. I would love it if my dentist might have watched your training.
Shane: I also love this, too, because we always talk about niches, how people are always coming to us, and they’re like, “Well, if it’s not one of these three or four things, I can’t sell anything, or I can’t do any content, or I can’t do anything.” You’re like, “I teach people how to put this specific kind of filling into a tooth,” right? And pass the test to be able to go do that publicly.
When Jocelyn said, “I just got a filling,” you excitedly went, “Cool!” It’s kind of like what I would do if I saw a great movie trailer. Like, “Star Wars is coming out!” “Great filling, that’s what I’m talking about!” It just goes to show that everybody’s got a niche.
Jocelyn: Yes, you can sell anything. What was the article we saw yesterday? This guy that was selling farts in a jar?
Shane: Oh, yes! Oh, I can’t believe we’re saying this on the actual air. A guy got in trouble for some reason– apparently, it’s illegal. He was passing gas in a jar and he was selling them. And people bought them! People actually–
Cathy: Oh, no.
Shane: — Yes.
Jocelyn: I’m not sure how this came up.
Shane: I don’t know–
Jocelyn: This just goes to show you people, you can sell anything.
Shane: You can make money on the internet doing anything. You get fillings in teeth, farts in a jar, the Venus flytraps. I mean, you name it, we’re doing it. All right, let’s bring this back around here, guys. Okay, that’s a total tangent. Let’s not focus on the guy that got arrested for the jars. Let’s focus on your business.
You’ve got three really good questions. We were actually talking a little bit off the air, and we got really deep into them. We were like, “No, let’s wait, let’s save this for the recording.” So let’s jump straight into your questions about your website and about your sales funnel. Go ahead and start with your question about dentaltutor4me.
Cathy: Okay, well I’ve heard you look at websites before. I thought, is there any way you could look at my website and just kind of give me some tips about the look and feel of the website. Are my categories okay? Oh, I’d like to show out to Chris and Kathleen, they helped me a couple weeks ago. Gave me the idea of maybe changing some of my categories.
Shane: These are other members of the Flip Your Life community you’re talking about, right?
Cathy: Correct, yes.
Shane: Alright, so let’s look at this. I am at dentaltutor4me.com and for everybody listening, we’re going to just explain what is going on here to you. If you want to check out her site, we will have a link to that in the show notes, and you can kind of see what we’re looking at or what she will change it to.
I want to explain to everybody that you’ve got a lot of good content on here, you have sold things, too, as well.
Cathy: Oh, yes, yes, I have some members. Yes. I do.
Shane: Yes, so that’s awesome. You’re doing a great job with what you’re doing. But it is always important quarterly, or at least maybe once or twice a year to look at how your site looks and make sure everything is optimized correctly. Jocelyn and I are actually doing this right now for Flipped Lifestyle. We are going to be changing the look and feel of our website in January.
Cathy: Wow, okay. Cool.
Shane: It’s just really important because you can sometimes get more sales just by moving some buttons around, right? The first thing I see is you are still using a really basic theme which is something that we do recommend in the beginning.
Jocelyn: There is nothing wrong with that.
Shane: Nothing wrong with that. I know people that are still using 2015, and making money off of it. The only thing I would say is the way that this particular theme is laid out, your opt in is pushed below the fold.
Cathy: I was wondering if you would see that. Okay. I felt that same thing.
Shane: Yes, you’ve got scroll down to get to it. That’s usually a no-no.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and just something simple like your box, the Sign Up text is below the box. I see the name and the e-mail, but I don’t see what I’m going to get. I would put that up above. I think it’s too many words. “Sign up here to test your dental anatomy knowledge with a free quiz.” Maybe just put, “Free dental anatomy quiz.”
Shane: Or what’s that test called? Not the bar, but the–
Cathy: The FDA Board, is that what you mean?
Shane: Yes, the board. Yes. You could call it That Board Quiz.
Jocelyn: “Free FDA Board Quiz.”
Shane: Yeah, that way you’re actually saying really what your product is. It’s just more specific. Like ours would be, “Free online business quick-start guide,” that’s what we offer on flippedlifestyle.com. It’s very clear, not only what we’re selling, but what our opt-in is about.
Jocelyn: Generally, for me, less text is better than more text on something so small like that. You just want to keep it really short and to the point. I would look at the button, too, that says ‘Submit’. Sometimes you can change that to other things like ‘Get it Now’ or ‘Go Now’.
Shane: Or ‘Instant Access’.
Jocelyn: And I would like for your button color to be a little bit more vibrant. That’s called a Call to Action color.
Shane: It kind of blends in with the rest of your color palette.
Jocelyn: I love your color scheme, it looks very nice. But I would like for there to be one color that’s sort of like pops out away from the others.
Shane: And again, if you go to flippedlifestyle.com, you’ll notice something really quickly. Every button and every link on our website is orange.
Cathy: I saw that.
Jocelyn: I think orange will be a good color for you as well. I think that’s a good action color for that scheme.
Shane: That’s our Action color. We even do it like sometimes, in our e-mails, we will change link colors to orange every once in a while if we really want to try to get our click rate up for that e-mail or something. It stands out, it’s our color, that means ‘Click’ when you’re on our website.
Jocelyn: If you’re super nerdy like me, and you want to make sure it looks good with your colors, there are things that you can find online, they’re called complementary color charts, or something like that. You can actually take your color that you’re using if you know the hex code for it. If you don’t, there is a Chrome extension. It’s called Eye Dropper. You can install the Eye Dropper, you can go and get the hex code, you can put that hex code into the complementary color chart and it will tell you colors that would look nice with your color scheme.
Cathy: Oh, I like that!
Jocelyn: I like that a lot because it’s really important to me for everything to be harmonious.
Cathy: Me, too.
Shane: Me, I’m like, Jocelyn hates it when I design any pages on our website because I’m like, “I want this to be bright yellow so everyone will notice it!” and she’s like, “That’s not even one of our colors.” I’m like, “It doesn’t matter! Bright yellow!”
Jocelyn: Well, Shane is color blind, too.
Shane: I’m colorblind, so I really can’t see all the colors anyway.
Cathy: Oh my, okay. Well, it’s a good thing you have Jocelyn.
Shane: It is. Without her, I would look very funny getting dressed every day. Another thing I would say, too. Let’s go back to the theme itself. I think this is something that people don’t really get about WordPress. When you’re using WordPress, it’s the skeleton of your website. When you have content, that goes in one place. Your theme is like a jacket that you put on. Just like you can take your coat off and go put on another coat, you can change themes in and out on WordPress.
You can actually go in and get a preview. If you go into the WordPress dashboard and click on themes and ‘Add New’, there’s a lot of free ones that have different layouts and do different things.
Cathy: I thought this would make everything disappear, and I was afraid to do anything different. Thank you, that gives me a little more confidence.
Shane: Yeah. It can break things. Sometimes when you go to one theme, and then you come back to the new theme, you may have to go in and, like, “Oh, well it made this text a little bigger. I’ll just change that real quick,” or something like that. But it won’t do anything to just crush your website when you’re just switching from these basic themes. And there are a lot of free ones. It’s not like you have to give a developer $3,000 to install a brand new theme for you.
Jocelyn: I would love to see a menu on your site. I see one over on the left, but you have to scroll a lot.
Shane: I don’t think this theme has a menu. That was the main reason. See where it sees Menu, Home, About, Contact? I would love to see your website have a menu at the top or above the fold and the opt-in above the fold. I think, to do that with this particular layout, you’re going to have to get a different theme. There is a course. We have a WordPress course inside of the Flip Your Life Blueprint, and if you go in there, I actually do change the themes a little bit so you can see exactly where to do that, but you can find a lot of free ones.
Jocelyn: And also what happens when you change the theme.
Shane: Yes, I change it back and forth between two themes, I think, to show that.
Cathy: Okay, I have missed that one. I have not seen that. Okay.
Shane: Yeah, Check that out.
Cathy: You’ve got so many courses. It’s amazing how many things there are, and I get lost a little bit sometimes. But thank you, I’ll look for that.
Shane: It’s funny because everyone comes into their entrepreneurial online journey at a different spot. If you already have this website done, you’re going to immediately go to the next course. You’re going to skip over that. But we always recommend people, even if they’ve just started building their website, go take a look at that WordPress course because it’s basically the Everything You Need to Know About WordPress Before You Get Started. If you did miss anything, it’s a good refresher course.
Cathy: Yeah, and I have gone back and re-watched some things, just because of that, I forgot the first time. It was a year ago that I’ve watched some of that. Alright, great!
Shane: I think that course alone has 25 videos.
Cathy: Yeah, it does.
Shane: There’s like 30 other videos in everywhere else. It’s good stuff.
Cathy: And the categories, they look okay?
Shane: Yeah, I think so. Categories are so niche-specific. I base my categories on what people search for.
Cathy: Okay. See, I thought they needed to be one word or two words. Are you saying they can be like a short sentence?
Shane: Yes, like, Becoming a Dental Assistant.
Jocelyn: Yeah, but like very short.
Shane: Someone is going to search for that, and what’s good is every time you make a post in that category about that topic, it’s going to say your website, “Become a Dental Assistant,” that’s going to get indexed. That’s going to help Google understand what that post is about. It will show up in more search results that way.
Cathy: So when I’m writing a post, and click several categories, am I doing that wrong then?
Shane: I wouldn’t pick more than two. Maybe three every once in a while, but I wouldn’t do more than two.
Cathy: Oh, okay. Well, all right.
Jocelyn: Here is another thing you can do: you can also do what’s called ‘Most Popular Post’. It doesn’t actually have to be the most popular post. You can choose the ones that you want to highlight.
Shane: That’s what we do, if you look on the side of Flipped Lifestyle.
Cathy: Yeah.
Shane: There are five or six posts that I really want people to pick. It is our most popular post now because I put them there early on, and that is where most people click on.
Cathy: Okay, got it.
Shane: Categories, you have to think how you actually use categories in real life. Categories are like when you walk into the library– well, Jocelyn might be better at this, but Jocelyn, what would be a category in the library be like? It’s not just fiction and nonfiction.
Jocelyn: Realistic fictions, biographies.
Shane: Mysteries, the business section. You walk in, you see Business and Investing. That is a category. Things could end up in both things, like let’s say you have a yoga and mindset book.
Jocelyn: Which has nothing to do with dental aspect.
Shane: Nothing at all, but let’s say someone had a yoga and a– what’s that meditation yoga, Jocelyn, you were talking about the other day?
Jocelyn: Oh, restorative yoga?
Shane: Yeah, restorative yoga, which is like a way to clear your mind and do yoga. That would fit under two categories. That would be in the fitness section under yoga, but it could also fit in the mindset section of mental health. But it wouldn’t really fit in a lot of other places. The tags in that book particularly might be, “Downward Dog,” and all the poses and stuff like that.
That’s what tags are for. Tags are like little stickers you would put on pages in your book to keep up with where things are. Like an index almost. But the categories are pretty much like one or two max, and you’re good.
Cathy: Okay, got it.
Shane: So that looks good, we’ll talk about more themes in the forums, if you want to, and we can click back and forth and find those, okay?
Cathy: Sounds great.
Jocelyn: Alright, Cathy, I’m excited to see what kind of changes you made to your website, and how it starts getting just optimized and ready for more visitors. Let’s talk about what else we can help you with today.
Cathy: Okay, this question has to do with my autoresponder. I just want to hash it out. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. I’m sorry, Shane, I know you’re the type that says, “It ain’t got to be perfect, it’s just gotta be done,” and I love that quote. But I’m teaching students and I really need to have my spelling and all that, my ducks in a row. My autoresponder, I am focusing now on the expanded functions dental assistant. The FDA. My lead magnet as I’ve already said is the dental anatomy quiz, which we’re going to the title of, which I love that idea.
My second email that goes out is about 30 flashcards for a freebie. Then, as you guys teach in your course, my fourth e-mail is an e-book that I have for sale at a discount, and it’s talking about how to prepare for boards, and one short chapter on the salary of an FDA. Does that sound okay so far on my autoresponder?
Jocelyn: I think, absolutely, yeah.
Shane: You’re basically welcoming them with your first e-mail. Second thing we tell you usually to do is to give away something really cool for free, and I think someone studying for this test would love. Printable flash cards, I mean that makes sense. Then the e-book is basically like an introductory offer, a quick thing to try to identify anyone that is buying something from you, basically. Let me ask you this: has anyone bought that yet?
Cathy: I just put it out there. It took forever to do it because it turned out to be more of like a 25-page instead of a shorter one.
Shane: That’s okay, that’s okay.
Cathy: Oh, good.
Shane: Yeah, that’s perfect. I would say that’s fine right now, let’s see if we can get people buying it, okay? That’s that e-mail. Then what’s next? What happens after the e-book?
Cathy: Number five, as you’ve said in your course is the introductions about how you have a short window of opportunity here, so I found a timer, and I have that out there, and that went out also this afternoon.
Shane: That’s to push the e-book, right?
Cathy: Yes. And then number six is my Lexus. I’ve actually given away a free module with a short, 15-minute video lecture, a study guide to go with that lecture, PDF, flashcards to go with the lecture, and a quiz, and I’m valuing that at about $59.00 and that is a freebie. How does that sound? Does that sound alright?
Jocelyn: I think that’s good. I would value it at a little bit higher, honestly.
Shane: Yeah, for sure. That’s a $99.00-value more than likely. In our course, we teach, give something else away crazy good right before you pitch in your emails because you really want to blow their mind right before you really ask them to join your membership, or any course.
Jocelyn: And I might give that one a few days. Sometimes we say, wait one day and send another e-mail. I might give that a couple of days because that’s a lot of stuff to get through.
Shane: Yeah, they might have to consume that, too, that’s a good point.
Jocelyn: You might even do an e-mail in between that just says, “Hey, did you have a chance to watch my training? Do you have any questions?” Something like that.
Shane: Yeah, that’s a good idea.
Cathy: I like it.
Shane: See, there’s flexibility there. Every niche is different. This is just a baseline. I love what Jocelyn said there. Anyone listening, if you’re giving something to someone, and then you’re immediately going to ask them for something later, can they get through the material before you ask for money?
Jocelyn: I’m thinking, with that particular offer, or that particular bonus, I think that it’s going to be difficult for them to get through that.
Shane: They’re going to watch a video, study, do a quiz. You see what I’m saying?
Cathy: I see. Yes, I do.
Shane: I love the follow up. That could even be a, “Hey, what’s frustrating you? What’s your biggest challenge with the last module?” Really try to engage with people there before you pitch. I love those kind of e-mails. That’s our most fruitful email in ours. We have an e-mail that says, “What’s frustrating you?” I personally answer those, usually with videos. I find the people who reach out to that e-mail, they’re your best leads because they’re the people you know need help right then. That might be you, but that’s you pitching it personally to people.
Jocelyn: There is a little thing that we use, it’s called UseLoom. It’s like Google Chrome extension, and you can record a screen capture video, a video of your face, or a video of both.
Shane: It happens real fast. You click the button, you record, it gives you a link, you email it to the person. It’s almost faster than typing but it’s a great for sales stuff because it’s you, and it freaks people out when you email them.
Jocelyn: And they know it’s you.
Cathy: Okay.
Shane: They know it’s you and not just an assistant because you’re actually on video. Let’s add an e-mail there after that one, and then your pitch email will then be the next one where you’re like, “Hey, look how cool that thing was. Now, come in and get the whole shebang and make sure you pass your boards.”
Cathy: That’s the final part of this question was, what should that email look like? Because the pitch, all in e-mail, has got me stumped. I really don’t know what my verbiage should be on that, but you’re giving me some already, I’m making some notes here.
Shane: Here’s what you want to do in your pitch email. There is a lot of different ways to do it. I don’t want anyone to listen to this and think, “Well, it has to be done this way, or it won’t work.” Normally, generally, it’s just like your sales copy on your sales page, but without the price. You want them to click that link. Remember, the whole point of our e-mail autoresponder is to train people to click links to cool stuff. You’ve already done that with these huge awesome things you are giving them. Your goal is to say, “Now, look at this next awesome thing. Click here to learn more.” That’s kinda the point of that pitch e-mail is click here to learn more.
There will be times down the road where you can use prices. Usually, if people don’t respond to the ‘Click Here to Learn More’ email, maybe they open it, but they don’t click on it, I’ll go ahead and send later on down the road. I just added some trials and stuff into our autoresponder because I want people to see the price then. Clearly the stuff in it wasn’t enough, I need to show them how much it costs.
But you really don’t want to show them the price first because too many people will say no. You need to convince them on your sales page that it’s good. That is goal: show them what’s inside. Outline it. “This is everything I teach.” Make a promise. “I know this will help you pass that board. Click here to pass your boards.” Maybe it’s not ‘Click here to learn more’. It’s “Click here to pass the FDA boards.” Make a huge promise. Tell them about the result, and how you’re going to get them the result. Let them click through the sales page, and they’ll find the price and decide if they want it at that point.
Cathy: I see. Okay, I’m making notes like crazy. I know this is recorded but it’s still helpful.
Shane: When you write it down, you remember it, right?
Cathy: Yeah, that’s right.
Shane: I think you’re in great shape on your autoresponder.
Jocelyn: You’ve come a long way. When we’ve looked at your stuff in the past, you were just getting started. Kudos to you for doing all these courses and getting it all figured out and getting this far.
Shane: I remember when you made your first sale and I told you, 90% of people never make it to that point. I mean, 90% of people just don’t get there because they don’t start. That is what we always tell everybody. If you just get started and get it in there, everybody has got an idea. But until you take action on it– you’ve taken massive action and actually made money, and now you see it. You’re like, there is a potential here, there is a market here. We’re going to make this happen.
Cathy: Yes. I have the dental anatomy course. What I keep telling some of my closest friends is that — this side course that I have — dental anatomy is the same all over the world. I actually had somebody from the UK the other day become a subscriber. That’s just huge for me. And people from California, and just this past month, I’ve had a Michigan, two people from Georgia, somebody from Portland, OR. I just can’t believe how they’re finding me organically, just like you said they would, and it’s pretty cool.
Shane: One, it’s because you started. Starting is the key. If you don’t take action, you can listen to our podcast for the rest of your life, and you’ll never make it out until you take action and start, it doesn’t happen. The second thing, you have delivered consistent effort. Some people are like, “Well, I don’t have 70 hours a week to work.” That doesn’t matter. If you’re working one hour every two days, as long as it’s consistent effort, eventually, something good is going to happen. That’s what’s happening.
You’ve got a great question I want to get to here next. I don’t think we’ve really even talked about it on the podcast before so it’s going to be a good one. What I love about your autoresponder though is that you’ve got it in place, you’re doing it, but always remember most of your sales are not going to come from your autoresponder. It’s important because you do want that passive sales machine working in the background.
But the main purpose of your emails is to maintain the relationship so that we can do things like launches, live webinars, open and close our membership. I think those are some things we are going to have to add on to you going forward to really get people in the door, and you want to invite these people who are opening your emails to talk to you in a live setting. Or maybe even on an evergreen webinar setting where we can really close deals.
Let’s get these numbers good, but don’t think that that’s the only thing you’ve got to do. I don’t want you to spend all your time on that autoresponder because you’ve already got a good one in place.
Cathy: You’re right, and your training on this even says that there is a 5-10% conversion, which isn’t a lot, so I realize that. I realize that this is an ingredient to the big picture.
Shane: I look at sales off of our autoresponder when I do our numbers every Thursday, but what we really look at is open rates because that’s engaged people. Opening clicks. When was it when we had that webinar? Two weeks ago? Something like that?
Jocelyn: Something like that.
Shane: We just did a live webinar, and we did a huge amount of sales. Thousands and thousands of dollars in sales. But these are people that have been opening our emails. They’re engaged. Even though they just showed up for that webinar, maybe they’ve read four e-mails in a row. Maybe they clicked, “What’s frustrating you?” and I replied to them, and they showed up and bought. I’m using the automation so that when I actually show up live, when me and Jocelyn are sitting in front of the microphone and we’re there, we maximize our profits. That’s what you’re doing all this for.
Jocelyn: And it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. I think some people think, “Oh, well, I have to commit to have an open house every week.” You can do it once a month. I mean, that’s 12 times.
Shane: Jocelyn and I, what we’re doing is we take all of our automation, and we’re funneling it to a couple live Q&As publicly each month. Twice a month, we get on, we answer people’s questions about the community, and they join. But it’s because they’ve been listening to the podcast, reading our blog, opening our emails. All of that happens at that moment because we’ve set up this automation to work for us when we’re not there.
Cathy: Yeah, okay. Great.
Jocelyn: Okay, Cathy, we are making some great progress on your business so far. What else can we help you with?
Cathy: Well, I’ve taken the course that you have in the member’s area on the sales chain, and I have some weak areas. I actually have just realized after listening to the course that what I thought was a sales page is not a sales page. I have an options page and an order form page. But I really need your input on, can you describe my sales page for me? I think that is what I was actually going to link to my ads and things like that. I just a little more info on that.
Shane: Sure. Okay, let me explain the difference between a sales funnel and a sales chain. We have two courses in the Flip Your Life Blueprint. One masterclass covers the sales funnel. The sales funnel is the process that people go through from the time they discover your brand until the time they buy something from you. That’s a sales funnel. A lot of people know about that.
We have another process that we use called the sales chain which has a few added elements, and that’s just like what we analyze to make sure that the sales funnel is working, and we just look for weak links.
Cathy: Yeah, and it’s detailed, very detailed.
Shane: It is detailed, very detailed because if you know your numbers– if you know how many people are opening your emails, you know how many people are clicking links, you know how many people are showing up for webinars — when you know those things, you can improve it.
I just did an analysis for one of our sales funnels… We have an evergreen webinar up. Everything looked good, I was looking at our chain, I looked at the ad, it was getting clicked. I looked at the page, we were getting registrations and opt ins. I looked at the next part. People were showing up and I got all the way down to the very end and our buy rate was terrible. But it was because the order form was not detailed enough. I changed that thing, and within 24 hours, I got a sale off of that sales funnel.
But if I didn’t know how to analyze my sales chain, I wouldn’t know how to fix that problem. I would be changing colors on my website thinking that would make improvements, when really, it was the order form. That’s what that course is actually for. Let’s go back to the next part: sales page, options page, and order form. Jocelyn, help me out here. The sales page is basically there to tell people about the result you’re going to get, the benefits they’re going to get.
Jocelyn: I want to focus mostly on the results and people that you have helped get results in the past, that’s really important.
Shane: Basically, results, testimonials, it’s convincing people that they can do what you’re trying to convince them they can do. That’s what a sales page does.
Jocelyn: And other people do a lot better job of that than you will do.
Shane: Exactly. So you’re going to have a testimonial up there of someone that took the course, or did it, or whatever.
Jocelyn: Video is best, if you can get it. You can incentivize people to create videos for you. I’ve done that in the past. I have offered them a $400.00 product in exchange for creating a video for me.
Shane: Yes. If you don’t have video, you can grab someone’s picture, you can put a quote. If you don’t have a picture, you can just put a quote. I like to put testimonials quotes near our buttons. If you look at one of our sales pages, it’s got a picture of a member who has quit their job, and they’re right there by the button. Testimonials, results, benefits.
Now, when they click that, like, “I want in on this. This sounds great. I want this result.” Click ‘Yes’ on the sales page, they go to the options page. The options page is more for like benefits and features. If you look at our options page, we actually have a sales page at the top, and I have one page where the options page is on the bottom. I’ve combined them. I’m testing that. You read through all the results and stuff at the top, that’s our sales page. Then it goes into our options. Then you have features like, “These courses are involved. You get access to this community, you get XYZ, live Q&A calls,” whatever.
That’s what the options page is for, and it shows the different prices you have whether it’s monthly and annual, or maybe you have different levels of different prices. Once they click that, they go to your order form. That process needs to be results and testimonials, features and benefits and options, buy. I present it in the course as three different pages because I’m a big believer in momentum. I think there is a big argument to make for click momentum. If I click the first button, I’m more likely to click the next button, and I’ve already clicked two, you might as well click the third one.
But you can put them on the same page two. For Flipped Lifestyle right now, our sales page and options page are one big long page. But that’s the difference in those three things. We have a course in the community, if you just watch it and do exactly what it says. I think that course has also three bonus courses where I actually show you a sales page, I show you an options page, and I show you an order form.
Jocelyn: I like to put an FAQ on my sales page, also. The purpose of an FAQ is not necessarily to answer questions. It’s to overcome objections that people may have for purchasing.
Shane: That would definitely go before you show them the options. You don’t want them to see the price in the options until they’ve made the call like, “I want this result. The things you’re offering, the benefits sound great for me and my life, I’m ready, I’m in, show me the rest.”
Cathy: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Shane: That’s what that’s for. I think the big things that I would say to you just from this conversation are: go watch that sales chain again, and go through it and really take it step-by-step and look at your links. Then go to the sales funnel training. That is where the sales page, options page and order form videos are. They are in the sales funnel training. Just do what it says, and it will work better.
Cathy: Alright, sounds great. Thanks, guys.
Jocelyn: Alright, I’ve really enjoyed this chat with you today, Cathy. I hope that we have given you some ideas to help you take this thing to the next level. We are unfortunately about out of time, but before we go, we always ask our callers, 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?
Cathy: Oh, there’s so much. But I really feel like I need to make sure that my opt in is above the fold, change that– I’ll tweak it and I’ll possibly shop for a theme with a menu at the very top because I do feel that it’s hard to see. I think I will definitely want to do that today.
Shane: Awesome. Love it. Hit that navigation stuff, and once you do, I think that’s good because that’s actionable. You can do it, it’s over, check it off the list, and it’s going to make you feel good, give you some momentum. Then just hit the training area, watch those courses, start working on those pages, and we’ll take this thing to the next level, okay?
Well, Cathy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
We’re so thankful for our members because it’s so important that you guys come on the show and are open, and just talk about these things so that other people out there can learn, other people can hear that they’re not alone, that they’re not the only one trying to figure all this stuff out. We’re just really thankful for you and everybody else that comes on the show, and lets us do that. So, thank you!
Cathy: Thank you so much.
Shane: We can’t wait to help you in the forums.
Cathy: Okay.
Shane: That was another information-packed call with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Hope that you got a lot of benefit out of our answers to our guest questions as well. If you would like to become a member of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business.
Jocelyn: All right, it is time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were still working at our normal 9-to-5 jobs.
Shane: Alright guys, this week’s Can’t Miss Moment is our new deck. Jocelyn and I, for those of you who may be just catching up with our story, we just moved in this year, pretty much. But we bought what we call our Forever Home. It is a big house, we’ve got a private lake, and 30 acres around the lake. When we moved in, this particular lake– we’re right on the water, our house sits right on the water, and we didn’t have a deck or a dock.
So we just built this deck or dock and it is awesome. It’s like 1250 sq. ft., it is just a massive deck, awesome outdoor space for us to be able to entertain and hang out with the kids. We got to make it out of that composite material so it never goes bad. We didn’t have to just use treated lumber. And a lot of times when people build a big deck project like this or something, they have to get a second mortgage or they have to go borrow the money to do it, and it was just really cool to be able to go out and pay almost $30,000 in cash for this incredible thing that we’re going to be able to make just so many memories on as our kids grow up and we get to live in this house.
We were out there the other day. Jocelyn and the kids were actually out on the lake. We got a little ladder on the docks we can get in and out and swim, and they were out swimming. I was standing on the porch literally looking out over the deck, over the dock, and out at them swimming, and I just felt extraordinarily blessed that we have been able to create our life the way it is right now because we took a risk and a chance on online business, and we relentlessly pursued that and made it happen.
Jocelyn was saying today in the car– we were driving back today from a family trip. She was basically saying there is no limit. There is no limit anymore. If we can say it, we can probably accomplish it. It made me think about that. Just thinking about that deck, that dock, this lake, and whenever I see it, I just say that to myself. Nothing is impossible if we are willing to do what it takes to make it happen.
The Flip Your Life podcast is not just about our Can’t Miss Moments, guys. We’re all about our members’ success, and we wanted to share a member’s success story with you today. Before we go, we wanted to share an actual success story from the Success Forums in the Flip Your Life membership.
Alright, we are flipping through the Success Forums today and we always have a featured success story, and our team picks this out. We have a community manager named Kat and we have an awesome virtual assistant who works with us in our community, her name is Gracie. They picked out an amazing success story for our featured success story this week in our community.
It’s from a guy named Tommy. Tommy runs a brand called The Cruise Dudes, and these are two of our original members from one of our original Flip Your Life groups back when it was just in beta. The Cruise Dudes guys showed up. We met them, we’ve built a great relationship with them over the years, and watching them grown their brand.
These guys go on cruises. Like, a lot of cruises. Like all of the cruises. They test Royal Caribbean Carnival, all these things, and they’ve really been working how to monetize their podcast about cruising and how to monetize this brand that they’ve got about cruising. They decided that they were going to release a digital magazine called Seawind, which is celebrating the cruising lifestyle, basically, and they just review cruises and do stuff like that.
They just launched last week, and they came into the success forum to share this subject line, “75 Sales in 48 Hours.”
Jocelyn: Alright, Tommy says, “Our digital magazine app, Seawind, launched Sunday afternoon on both the Apple store and Google Play Store. This morning, I reviewed the reports, and we’ve had 75 sales between the two platforms. Most of the purchases were from North America, but we were getting purchases from Europe and Asia, too. Over the next two weeks, I have interviews on a few travel podcasts and vlogs to promote the digital magazine. To say we are excited is putting it mildly. We are ecstatic.”
Shane: And that is absolutely awesome. We are so proud, especially for people who stick with it, and keep going forward, and keep trying new things. They’ve really thrown all the mud on the wall. They’ve really done that to try to find their space, try to find their lane, and now they’ve found something that stuck. They found something that really hit a nerve with their audience, and it’s taking off and going amazing.
Seventy-five sales in 48 hours, that is absolutely incredible for any kind of launch, and we just couldn’t be more proud of those guys for sticking with it, keep on going, and keep it grinding and keep trying to find what they can sell. That is why a lot of people don’t succeed. They will try one thing, it didn’t work the first time; “Well, it wasn’t a miracle, I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t hit the homerun, so I’m done.”
A lot of people in our community, what’s so awesome about the Flip Your Life community, is they just keep swinging and hitting and swinging and hitting until they make themselves hit that home run. These guys have really hit a homerun; I think this is going to really take off for them. Good job, guys, we are extremely proud of you and it’s just awesome to see what you’ve accomplished 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 could learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Shane: Before we go, we like to close every one of our shows with a verse from the Bible. Today’s verse comes from Proverbs 10:2, and the Bible says, “Tainted wealth has no lasting value.” Keep that in mind while you’re building your online business, guys. Always treat every customer with honesty and fairness. That’s 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.
Jocelyn: Bye.
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