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Here’s the deal:
Life can (and will) throw curveballs in our general direction when we least expect it.
Things that are beyond our control, things that hurt and things that make us feel disconnected from everything else.
And as if that’s not enough, this often happens when we’re already pretty overwhelmed.
Nevertheless, we don’t stop there…
NO, we endure the challenges with everything we’ve got.
WHY?
Because we have the capability to persevere, to look for and find hope, to choose courage, to find peace in our faith — to emerge victorious in our darkest hours.
By now, y’all have probably noticed that we’re going off our usual style here, and we’re very happy that you did, because that means you’re paying attention, and you’ll be glad you did.
You see, we’ve already recorded more than 180 podcast episodes. We’ve heard some really exceptional men and women share their finest hours, as well as recount some of their biggest trials, but none quite as inspiring as our guest, Sandra, has today.
Sandra’s story has moved and touched us so much that we laughed, ached and cried while recording.
We learned so much from her today and you will too, it’s going to get super interesting and super inspiring real quick.
Here’s her story…
Sandra is a 34 years old Singaporean, who studied her music degree in the United Kingdom, married a Malaysian and lived in his home country for 5 years, and has always worked as a school music teacher.
She struggled to conceive a child for many, many years. They’ve tried different fertility treatments, but was unsuccessful.
Unfazed, she decided to dedicate her time and talent as a Worship Keyboardist to create something that would help and bless others.
She searched for ways to do so, and later found out about the online business scene (because Sandra just ain’t the kind to idly sit by and do nothing).
She listened to several podcasts, dived deep into all the free content she could find, later joined the Flip Your Life community, and started building what she now calls, “The Inspired Keys Academy.”
She poured thousands of hours of hard work, creating content and leading her community, things were going great, she has been quite successful with her eBook sales as well.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better…
She and her husband moved to Australia.
New country. New house. New climate. Not to mention, their furniture hasn’t even arrived yet, and then…
PREGNANT.
Sandra became pregnant despite all the new changes in her life!
Can you believe just how miraculous that is?
But now that she’s expecting, she lost all interest in online business and kinda let it slide to the back burner, that doesn’t mean she’s lost her entrepreneurial spirit though. She was able to set up her own piano studio at home, where she teaches kids one-on-one, and months later had given birth to a healthy baby boy.
Okay. Now, let’s try that again…
New country. New house. New climate. YAY! Pregnant. New piano studio at home. OH MY GOSH! Just gave birth.
It doesn’t stop there…
10 days after childbirth, Sandra got diagnosed with breast cancer.
Let that sink in for a moment, that’s the curveball right there.
Like anybody receiving this kind of news, she broke down and cried.
Factor in post pregnancy hormones and you’re in for the craziest emotional roller coaster ride ever.
But here’s the thing that cancer didn’t know, Sandra is probably the closest thing you have to Wonder Woman.
With a “Never Give Up” attitude and her strong faith in God, Sandra was able to brush the dust off her shoulders and started counting her blessings.
- Remember that online business she put on the back burner? Well, it continued to earn her an average of 700 AUD a month. It was automated, so she wasn’t even doing anything, how much more would she have earned if she kept growing her community?
- She thought about how blessed they were, that they found out about the cancer after the pregnancy, rather than during, because it would have hurt the baby… or worse, they might have had to consider an abortion.
- She felt incredibly blessed to have migrated to a country that has amazing professional healthcare, where she can receive her treatments and kick cancer in the butt.
These realizations made her feel God’s presence even more, and how she couldn’t have possibly come up with such decisions by herself.
What’s the takeaway?
She took one grateful step at a time, one day at a time. She found courage and hope when she thought there was none, she let herself heal and evolve, and did so with such grace and unfaltering faith.
She found peace beyond any mortal comprehension.
How?
She strengthened her relationship with God, surrendered her worries and found hope in his perfect plan (Romans 8:28).
Having shared this with everyone, we can’t help but feel that Sandra’s interview is also here for a greater purpose: To reach, touch and inspire others, to commit to making their lives better, take action to change what they can, to have courage to accept things they can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.
We hope this helps you see, how even in the most turbulent of times, there are and will always be miracles. We pray you find comfort in knowing that the Lord is present in your life regardless of your circumstances.
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!
You Will Learn:
- Sandra’s inspiring life story & online business journey
- Overcoming internal and external obstacles
- Tips on how to get back in online business post-hiatus
- Getting your members engaged in your community
- How to survive toddler apocalypse AND build your online business
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Sandra’s Membership site: Inspired Keys Academy
- S&J Interview on The Smart Passive Income
- 31 Days to Better Worship Keyboard Playing
- Want to send Sandra a message? Click here send us an email, and we’ll forward it to her: shaneandjocelyn@flippedlifestyle.com
- MainStage (music software)
- Learn Scrivener Fast
- Flip Your Life community
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.
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 share how Sandra made over $700 a month in passive income while raising a newborn and fighting breast cancer.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright, let’s get started.
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again this week. Super excited! I cannot tell you how excited I am about today’s guest. We’ve tried to get this interview together 4 or 5 times, and we keep missing each other or something goes wrong.
We’re actually talking to someone in Australia today, and the time zones are totally so out of whack we could never get this thing lined up, and then even tonight, we were both texting each other and emailing each other, about an hour before the interview, and we’re like, “YES! Nothing could go wrong!”
Jocelyn: Except…
Shane: Except! Hold on, this is the Flipped Lifestyle we’re on. Except, 30 minutes ago, Anna Jo goes, “Ah! My stomach’s burning!” and I’m like, “Are you feeling sick?” and she’s like, “No! I dropped boiling lasagna on my stomach!” and I’m like, “WHAT?!”
Jocelyn: So, she has a sports bra on because she’s been to cheerleading practice and she had nothing on her stomach.
Shane: Yeah, so 30 minutes ago, I’ve got Anna Jo laying down (and I’m) putting burn cream on her. And that’s not all that happened, as she was getting up from dropping boiling lasagna on her stomach, she hit her bowl and glass shattered everywhere.
Jocelyn: On the tile floor.
Shane: So, here’s Anna Jo with boiling lasagna stuck to her stomach in the middle of a glass minefield, like she’s in Die Hard and trying to get through the glass and she’s crying…
Jocelyn: She’s crying because she thinks that I’m going to be mad, because the bowl was broken.
Shane: She’s like, “Do we have anymore of those glass bowls? That was my favorite glass bowl!” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh! We’re going to have to cancel this, for the 49th time as we’re heading to the emergency room with boiling lasagna and glass feet.”
Shane & Jocelyn: But NO! We’re here.
Shane: It’s 9:30 at night, and we’re super excited to finally get our guest on the show.
We wanna welcome, Sandra Chen, one of our amazing Flip Your Life community members.
Sandra, welcome to the show!
Sandra: Hello guys! Thanks for letting the lasagna wait while you checked with me first.
Shane: She’s okay. Listen, I took her upstairs and I cleaned her up, and she had a little red mark and a little blister, I got the burn cream on her and I’m like, “Are you better?” and she’s like, “No!” and I’m like, “Is it burning?” and she goes, “No, now, I’m cold and I hate being cold.” and I’m like, “You’re welcome!” Geez, parenting at night here at the Sams’ household.
But I am really proud of this show, guys. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, open your ears and be ready, because Sandra has an amazing story and you’re going to be inspired today. You’re going to learn a lot about online business, perseverance and it’s just going to be an amazing, amazing show.
Jocelyn: Alright, before we jump into all of Sandra’s awesome online business questions, and she has some different questions…
Shane: Different questions than most people. We have not seen her questions, so we’re doing this on fly guys.
Shane & Jocelyn: We’ll see how this goes!
Jocelyn: So before we jump into to all that, we wanna know a little bit more about your story. Tell us about you, and where you come from, because I know that’s kind of an interesting story, and then we’ll get into some other things too.
Shane: Yeah. Normally, we kinda say this is the elevator pitch, but we really wanna go deep. So, let’s rewind to where you were when you got started in this game and maybe how you found us, and how you started making money online.
Jocelyn: And people may be wondering, “You don’t sound like an Australian.” So, what’s up with that?
Shane: Yeah, right!
Sandra: Okay, I’ll start from the day I was born.
Shane: Alright. Yeah! Back in 19… No, okay.
Sandra: Nah! Okay. So, hi guys, I’m Sandra and I’m a Singaporean. I don’t even know if there are any Singaporeans listening to the show, I suspect there must be.
Shane: We actually do have quite a few people in Singapore. I looked at all the stats, and we have a lot of people in Singapore that actually listen to the show.
Sandra: That is awesome! Well, I have yet to meet you guys, but I would love to.
My story is a little crazy. In 2012, my husband, who is Malaysian, and I moved to Malaysia and we lived there for 5 years. What happened was, I was working as a music teacher in a school, just like a lot of the listeners of the show – teacher and everything. We were married, we were childless, so I had a lot of free time. As you know, how it’s like when you’re married and you don’t have kids, so we kinda just delved deep into our own work.
When I’m at school, I like what I do, but I do feel like there’s not a lot of control, and I want that control that having an online business offers. So because I had so much free time, whenever I cook or clean, I would listen to a podcast, because I just like getting things done –like multitasking, I guess. And then I first found out about Pat Flynn through his YouTube video about the whole podcast on how to start a podcasting, and I started listening to the Smart Passive Income. I heard that episode about you guys, and I’m like, “Wow! That’s so cool! These guys are teachers!” I’m sure a million people have said that, and then I heard your podcast episodes, and I’m like, “Wow! I really like their episodes a whole lot!” because I just resonate with you guys. I didn’t want to spend money yet, because I wasn’t making money online, so I just pretty much tried to listen to as many episodes and lean on as much as I can from other people’s questions, and applied it on my own online business which I tried to begin. It’s all a very scratchy process really. I just started out with a YouTube channel because I played the keyboard at church, and I happened to really, really like doing that. We called this, “Worship Keyboard,” and I’m the worship keyboardist and I was practicing the songs that we were gonna play on Sunday, and then I decided, “You know, I might as well record videos of myself practicing, or even playing the finished product -the polished version of it- put it online and see if it blesses anyone.”
Interestingly, there are people who watch it and that became producing videos and helping people, teaching specific topics on worship keyboard. The whole “teaching people how to play worship keys” things started my online business, which I called, “Inspired Keys.”
Shane: I remember the first time… because there are hundreds of people in our community, you know, but I can vividly remember when people come into the community. I remember when you first started asking us questions, and talking about what the next level looks like for this, I mean, “Yeah, people will want to watch videos, but will they ever pay anything?” and this is one of those niches where I’m like, “This is legit out of left field!” because like you said, “Would people watch this? Well, what are they going to pay for?” and I remember us hashing that out a little bit. “No, playing worship music is a unique niche that hundreds of thousands of people are doing in churches every Sunday.” If there are nuances to it like, working with the worship leader, working with the pastor, playing the songs in certain ways at certain times, there’s all sorts of nuances to it. I remember thinking specifically, “Wow! That’s cool! Who would have ever thought that could be a niche that could do something.”
Sandra: I suppose it was also Pat Flynn who was asking about, “What’s your superpower?” and things like that, and at the end of the day, it’s not even the superpower, but what’s really your passion.
Shane: Yeah.
Sandra: And I discovered in those few years, that I really, really liked playing worship keyboard, it just made me the happiest person on the planet, It made me the happiest during that part of the day. I think I found what I was going to focus on for my online business. I believed this would last for more than just a few years, I think it could be for a very long term.
So, I decided, “Okay! Let’s start this YouTube channel.” Things kinda grew from there. The YouTube channel is called, “Inspired Keyboardist” that was when I decided… Ugh! It was such a long name, and eventually changed it down to, “Inspired Keys,” just because it sounded cooler and you know, that kind of thing.
I was kinda fickle minded about what I should call it and everything, but yeah, I’ve moved beyond that.
Jocelyn: That’s a good little mini lesson right there.
Sandra: Yeah!
Jocelyn: Just decide on something and move on.
Shane: Yeah! Just pick something you like.
Jocelyn: There are people out there listening to this podcast right now, you know I’m talking to you!
Shane: Oh yeah! You’ve got 14 domains, and you’re staring at them. You know, like the boards and the mysteries when they’re trying to figure out, who did it. You know?
Jocelyn: And you keep saying, “If I could just figure out the perfect name, I can move forward in my online business.” Do it today! Let’s do it!
Shane: Yeah, it doesn’t have to sound cool, just listen to Sandra.
Sandra: Actually, guys, I make all the classic mistakes. I did create inspiredkeyboardist.com, I had everything there. I’m talking about hundreds of hours of hard work, just putting content on it, until the day I decided, “I’m going to call it, ‘InspiredKeys.com’” I switched it and then it was like pure madness, because I had to migrate everything from keyboardist.com to keys.com, and it was just a nightmare. I still have stuff, like broken links, people going, “Why doesn’t this link work?” and I say, “I know! It’s probably still inside keyboardist.com…”
Shane: I think I’ve mentioned this before, the first thing we ever really started was a blog called, “Toddler Apocalypse.” Ironically, it’s things like, your daughter dropping boiling lasagna on herself while breaking a bowl… it was dad blog about my kids being crazy. When we started Flipped Lifestyle, we were like, “What are we going to do with Toddler Apocalypse?” and we said, “Eh! Let’s just absorb it into the website.” So we migrated all those pages in there, and people will still send us comments like, “This story’s hilarious, but where are the links? What does this have anything to do with making money online or online business?” and we’re like, “Eh! It doesn’t, but it’s there.”
Jocelyn: It’s about lifestyle.
Sandra: It’s a little bit of a mess there.
Shane: When you got into the community and you kinda figured out, “This is the direction I wanna go,” you said something that was really interesting to me earlier, and then we’ll talk about how you started actually monetizing this thing, okay?
What was it that turned the corner of, “You know what? I need to invest in training, get into the community, start surrounding myself with like-minded people” Where were you at the time? Were you in Singapore at the time or were you in China?
Jocelyn: Malaysia.
Shane: Err… Malaysia.
Sandra: No, there was never China.
Jocelyn: Sorry, we’re getting confused over here!
Shane: I’m getting confused. You were somewhere in the vicinity of Asia.
Jocelyn: You’re a very international person, Sandra!
Shane: Yes, exactly. I barely know where you are right now, okay?
Sandra: I’m about to conduct a whole wide country thing. (laughing)
Shane: Exactly! But what made you think, “Man, I need to go do something to take this to the next level”? Because that’s a huge hurdle in a lot of people’s journey.
Sandra: Personally, I think I’ve gotten so much benefit from you guys that I felt like I really should pay you guys some money.
Jocelyn: (laughing) We won’t turn it down, Sandra!
Shane: Yeah! I’m not sending it back, I’m just telling ya!
Sandra: Right? So many episodes out, and I was just analyzing other people’s questions and your answers, and taking all the advantage I could from them; I felt that what I really needed was your training on how to start a membership site, so I decided, “Yeah, that makes sense.” The model made sense and everything, I had time, I didn’t have a kid yet, I’ll just join your community and ask questions, watch your training videos — that really was the turning point, I think.
Jocelyn: So, what happened next? You got into the community… I know that you’re very active in the community, we’ve talked in there several times, so what happened next?
Shane: How did you start making money? How did you turn it into a membership site? What did that look like to create the income that you’re making monthly today?
Sandra: Okay. It started with my first product, which was an eBook, and it’s called, “The 31 Days to Better Worship Keyboard Playing,” and I sell that on Gumroad.com and that’s really good. I still sell a few copies every month. When I decided to do a membership site, that was when I just did it and tried to sell some. I tried to tell my audience about it, and some people jumped onboard. It just kinda slowly happened.
I think all this happened a year ago. So, that started around early 2017 or maybe late 2016.
Shane: Gotcha! So basically, what you did was the classic kind of way the membership works is:
You start creating a digital product, maybe it’s an eBook, maybe it’s a course. You were creating digital products and you didn’t even know it, with your YouTube videos and your trainings. You were showing people how to sell these things and you just take this content, put it into a place that’s protected. You start charging monthly access, and all of a sudden this little community of friendship around this common thing happened!
I’m sure there are other people who are playing worship keyboards, they come in and there’s only one or two of you in each church, right? So, you’re like, “Oh! I found my people!” and they just stick around and go through the trainings and learn, and start to relate with each other.
Sandra: My membership site is called, “Inspired Keys Academy,” and in that membership I house training videos on how to play worship keys. I break it down to a few topics, of course, I get my content from the questions that people ask me regularly and I’ve just got step-by-step videos.
It’s a lot like the Flipped Lifestyle-style of training videos. It’s all housed in the forums and things like that. Besides that, I also let my members ask me questions in the forums, the problem eventually became that I couldn’t really keep up with the questions and we’ll get to those questions later.
Shane: I like it! I love it! Giving you a preview to you guys who are listening in right now, she’s gonna drop a bomb on us. We might get a question that we’ve never had before and we’re going to be like, “Oh my gosh! What do we do?” I’m excited about this.
Alright. One thing about your story that really fascinates me… and this is so interesting, because there’s a large difference in being an entrepreneur without children and an entrepreneur who has children, because children can change everything. So, let’s go forward a little bit and tell us a little bit about having your child last year.
Sandra: Yeah, sure! Actually 2017 was a bit of a crazy year, there’s just so much that happened, I don’t even know how to begin. I shall just start!
The things is, one big thing about this whole online business endeavor was it all started because I struggled with fertility. My husband and I, we tried -ever since the day we got married- to have children and I never got pregnant. So, this is a really deep, but very real problem that I was struggling with. I felt like I had to just get my mind off trying to get pregnant, by doing something fruitful with my time and my skills — online business was it. Instead of just being obsessed with trying to get pregnant and the stress that comes with it, I delved really deep into online business. I made sure that instead of worrying, I would invest my time and energy in online business. So, actually it fueled my whole online business endeavors and efforts, and that was good because I got a lot done when I didn’t have children.
Until I got pregnant, miraculously, early 2017! So, that’s amazing. We know this is a miracle from God, because we tried a few fertility help and I never did get pregnant from them. This time, when I did get pregnant it was just natural, we didn’t even try very hard. So, I wanted everyone to know that God is real and God does miracles!
Shane: That is unbelievable! Amazing.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it’s such an awesome story. I love how even though things were not working out for you, you still felt like you needed to make a contribution to the world. I think there are a lot of people out there, in a similar situation, and they just think, “Okay. Well, I’m just going to sit around and feel sorry for myself.” I love how you didn’t do that.
Shane: And how you channeled your energy somewhere amazing. You know?
Jocelyn: Yeah! I think that’s just such an awesome story.
Shane: How did that feel when you found out that you were pregnant? Did you fall out of your chair? Like, “Oh my gosh!”
Sandra: Well, I was holding onto the test kit and I was shivering. Of course, I sent my husband a photo of it, and he was out of the house. We were like, “WOW! This is amazing! It can’t be real, but yes it happened!”
Thank God the pregnancy went well. Everything was smooth. My baby’s born and he’s healthy, all that’s amazing.
Jocelyn: What month was he born in?
Sandra: He was born in October, 2017.
Shane: Oh wow!
Jocelyn: Okay. So, he’s just a little thing.
Shane: Yeah, he’s a baby-baby.
Sandra: 4 months. He is tiny. Yup! So, this is also gonna be a question I will ask you guys about. How did you survive and how do you maintain your online business with a 4 month old, right?
Shane: You and our community manager, Kat, are going to have to get together and jam, because Kat’s just… she’s got a pretty new baby too.
Jocelyn: I’m sure they talk a lot.
Sandra: Oh cool!
Shane: Let me ask you this before we go on to your story. Hang on to your seats, is all I’m saying because… Before we go on, what was it like being pregnant and working on your online business, taking care of your marriage, and you have other things going on, and you’ve got your online business, and you’re pregnant? Was that a struggle or was it just like you were so pumped up from this miraculous thing in your life, that you just kinda roared through it?
Sandra: I think this is going to be very different for different people. I’m sure there are some people who can function very well when they’re pregnant and everything. Now, what happened was, I discovered I was pregnant on the week after we landed in a brand new country, because we just migrated.
So, we just migrated from Malaysia to Australia. That’s right. We’re talking like, our stuff hasn’t arrived, we’re sleeping on the floor and we have a brand new climate to adjust to, and “Oh wow! A positive test! Wow. Okay.” Right?
Shane: What is going on, World? You know what I mean?
Sandra: Of course, I wasn’t complaining because I’ve been trying for 7 years and I did get pregnant, so yay! But you know how I was fueled to do online business because I was trying to get pregnant? Well, because I got pregnant, I kinda completely lost interest in online business. I blamed it on the hormones, I think it might still be them. Basically, I haven’t paid any attention to my online business, which was horrible! I’ll be very honest, I never logged in to the Flipped Lifestyle community, I felt like I was wasting my money and I really shouldn’t continue in the Flip Your Life community. Can you believe it?
Shane: Because you weren’t working on your stuff. Is what you’re saying right?
Sandra: Yes. Perhaps I should even add that, you know how I was a music teacher in a school? So, that was my job forever ever since I graduated. I’ve always been employed in a school, teaching like as a music specialist teacher.
Shane: Yeah.
Sandra: But ever since we moved to Australia, it’s not so easy being employed in a school. So, I started my own home piano teaching studio. In a sense, that was a major career switch as well, because I went from being employed to also being self-employed as a piano teacher, teaching one-on-one all the time. I actually really liked doing that, so I spent most of my time really building my piano studio. So, there’s just so much going on! We’re talking about a new country, new things as being a woman – like from woman to a mother (being pregnant with hormones, everything going crazy and puking uncontrollably), and also…
Shane: (laughing) This podcast has had some serious disasters. We’ve been vomiting, we’re throwing boiling lasagna at people, there’s glass pieces on the floor. I mean, this is like a Dwayne Johnson movie is what’s happening here right now.
Sandra: It’s real life. Yeah, so it was crazy. Here’s a brand new career thing. I’m starting a brand new studio, teaching people, finding students to come into my house so I can teach them piano. That took up a lot of my time and I was teaching, and advertising my own piano studio. Online business just completely fell to the wayside.
Jocelyn: You know what? That happens sometimes.
Shane: Yeah, that’s okay.
Jocelyn: It happens here! 2017 was really a hard year for me. I’ve mentioned it briefly on here, but we had just moved into a new house at the end of 2016, like in December. We just had a lot of things going on, we’re trying to remodel, we’re trying to run a business.
Shane: And when we say remodel, we mean, “REMODEL.” Every square inch of this house has been painted, changed, built, whatever.
Jocelyn: Painted, light fixtures changed…
Shane: We sold a huge part of our business. The first business that we were ever successful at.
Jocelyn: I thought at the time, “This is going to make everything better,” and it did make a lot of things better, but then… I don’t know. I just still didn’t have that fire that I’d have for so long. I’m just saying that I can understand what you’re saying, because when you do have so many changes going on in your life, it’s sometimes hard to get excited about things that you don’t necessarily have to do.
Shane: I would say there was probably, even in our world, a two to three month period there at the end of 2017, where… it’s kinda hard to hear it in our podcast, because we do batch these ahead of time, and we get a lot of them done at once. Sometimes you’re not in real time with us, unless you’re in the community.
But there was a two or three month period where we were the same way. Everything on the business was on the back-burner. Nothing was getting done, and that just happens. I think people feel guilty when that happens, or feel bad, but that’s just life.
Jocelyn: “Oh, life’s won, it’s time for me to give up.” No! That’s when you have to go back and say, “Okay, how can I fix this and keep pushing?”
Shane: You think that it went to the back-burner, but your entrepreneurship just changed – you evolved. You change with the situation. You adapted and overcame your struggles, because you started this new entrepreneurial journey where it was totally entrepreneurial. Now, you’re in your own home, you’re teaching and running your own business. I think if more people would do that, they would not give up. They just have to realize, they’re evolving. Right?
Sandra: Yeah. I guess it’s good that everyone can hear how messy things get.
Shane: Now, on that note, let’s go after the baby’s born. I know you’re on these huge slings, back and forth, you’re moving. You’re migrating, your miracle baby, your highs, the lows, the pregnancy, the baby’s here… Now, tell us what happened next.
Sandra: Okay. This is crazy, but just when things got “Yay! Gave birth and everything is awesome.” I got diagnosed with breast cancer, 10 days after childbirth.
(silence)
Jocelyn: Wow.
Shane: Yeah.
Jocelyn: So, “Here’s a new house, here’s a new job, here’s a new baby, and oh by the way…”
Shane: “You have breast cancer.” I mean, nobody can say, “I understand,” unless they go through that. But as parents, we can have empathy and we can feel that. I can imagine in my head what it would feel like for someone to say that to us. What happened in that moment? Was your husband with you when that happened? How were you feeling when all that kinda crashed down on you?
Sandra: It’s like everyone’s story when they were first told that they’re diagnosed with whatever cancer. It’s usually you’re shocked in horror, lots of tears and stuff, but I think getting that kind of news when you just gave birth is extra crazy. Just because your hormones are completely out of whack, I was lactating and I was like “Wow!” here I am, milk just flowing out and tears flowing out. It was just crazy, I was a complete mess at the hospital. Tons of people staring at me like, “Why is this girl crying like crazy?” So yeah, it was just a huge mess. What ensued after that was just definitely a lot of just seeking God, thinking about what’s going on, what’s going to be happening, looking ahead at what kind of treatments schedule I need. At this point, which would have been about 4 months since the diagnosis, things got settled because I’ve gotten used to my schedule now. It’s like once a week, it’s not that bad, really. It just that the news sounds terrible, and even though it wasn’t Stage 1, it was between Stages 2 and 3 because my lumps was pretty big, thank God I’m responding well to treatment. The dust settled, but initially when you hear the news, it’s just extra crazy when you’re hormonal.
Shane: Yeah.
Jocelyn: Especially when you have just a teeny-tiny, newborn baby.
Shane: Yeah! Imagine… For everyone who’s ever had a child who’s listening right now, can you imagine? All the tiredness and the stress, on top of this mental blow of, “You’ve got breast cancer.” It’s a fight to raise your baby, when it’s a newborn.
Jocelyn: There are no instruction manuals.
Shane: Exactly! At that same moment, I would assume there would have had to be a moment where you were like, “Look, I can’t let this get me. I’ve got to fight this for my baby, for me…” Did that happen pretty quick? Was there a moment where you’re like, “No, I’m not going to let this beat me. Let’s go! Let’s go to war with this thing, it’s good to go.”
Sandra: I would say a lot of it came from just my relationship with God. Just staying close to God. I’m very sure God kept me calm and gave me peace that transcends understanding.
A lot of people just look at me and go, “Wow! Sandra, why are you so calm?” and what I know to believe to be true is, Romans 8:28, I know God has the perfect plan for me, so because I know that I was able to pretty quickly move on, because I also receive a lot of emotional strength from God, I think. This is all very emotional, so I think getting emotional strength to move on is key. Yes, it was very hard. Yes, I dealt with it. I cried, I knelt down, I prayed for many hours and stuff. All of that helped, very quickly I just decided, “Okay, you know what? Let’s deal with it! Thank God for treatments, for drugs.” In spite of all that’s happening, there are a lot of amazing blessings that we should focus on. Things like medicare, things like, we can get free professional public healthcare in Australia, things like that.
When I started focusing on how my cancer was found late in pregnancy, versus early in pregnancy, which is where I made have had to decide to abort or to go ahead with treatment and harm the baby, I think that God had to make that decision. I gave birth and then I found out about the cancer. So, that’s so many blessings already! I made myself focus on the positives and moved on, really.
Shane: That’s incredible. I-I… I don’t know. (laugh) I’m not speechless very often.
Jocelyn: That is true!
Shane: I am not usually speeches, but I’m sitting here and I can’t even imagine what that was like. To hear you speak about it with such grace, strength and power is just amazing.
Jocelyn: It’s the way that I think all of us hope that we would handle something like that, if we ever got that type of diagnosis, you know?
Shane: Yeah. It’s just amazing how God works when you think about it. This is a little bit out of tangent, but what are the chances that you would have migrated… well, the chances that you were going to migrate somewhere was pretty high, because you’re moving all over the world. But what are the chances that you would have migrated to Australia, where you could get that healthcare for this miraculous baby, where you were infertile and then get breast cancer where you can get treated?
Jocelyn: I fully believe that there are no accidents. You guys know that Shane and I are christians, well most of you do unless you’re new to this podcast, but I don’t think there are accidents when it comes to that.
Shane: And you said that God has a perfect plan for you. A human could not create that plan that you just spelled out, you know? Just an unbelievable story. So, after this… Basically, you’re holding a newborn and you’re taking chemotherapy.
We talk a lot about outside obstacles, because most of the time, we find that people who get held back in their life are either because of an internal – like a mindset or a fear – or an obstacle that holds them back.
Now, you’ve dealt with this mindset, this fear, this “is everything going to be alright, I don’t know, but I gotta go.” Now, you’ve got this huge obstacle, this outside influence of, “You’re going to have to do chemotherapy.” What was that like?
Sandra: Well, I mean, this was just 4 months ago, but I kinda just pushed it to the back of me and haven’t even been thinking about that. I think you just deal with one thing at a time. I guess it was good that I had maternity leave in the first place, so I didn’t have to work as a piano teacher because everyone thinks that I had been busy with the baby, but actually, I’ve been busy also with treatment, right?
Eventually, treatment just became like a fortnightly, sometimes weekly thing. Gradually, I could schedule my other students in on the other days. I think it really depends, because some people’s cancer is very serious. They can’t do anything, they just can’t function. I also wanna publicly say that God is amazing and miraculous, because aside from occasional tiredness and nausea from the first chemotherapy drug that I got, I’m actually able to function properly. I’m waking up at a normal time, sleeping at the normal times, I’m functioning, I’m eating, I’m having a good and healthy appetite. Everything is pretty normal, aside from the fact that I have on my schedule every Thursday to go for chemotherapy. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Shane: I think that you’re showing an attitude here that’s allowing you to overcome these fears and problems. That’s amazing because so many people get so negative, and so down when anything goes wrong in their life.
Listen to this! I don’t think you just realized what you just said! You’re like, “Yeah. I take chemo on Sundays. I work with my people in the other days. Login, check my plugins on another day. You know? Take care of my baby in the morning.” Just to hear you say that with such normalcy, it makes me feel terrible for ever making any excuse (ever) not to do anything, because that’s incredible.
Anyone listening must be thinking right now, “I have no excuse. What’s my excuse? Oh, my alarm clock didn’t go off. Oh, man I got this TV show I really wanna watch.” NO! Sandra is like, “I got chemo on Thursday, but you know I’m going to work on Friday for three lessons of worship keyboard. Here we go! Come on! Bring it!”
Jocelyn: Yeah, I’m going to fit it in.
Shane: It’s just awe inspiring and amazing. We all have to learn from this, because anything can be overcome. Not in the moment, in the moment, things are hard. That’s what’s amazing! We’re recording this, for everyone who’s listening, in February of 2018. All this stuff just happened to you and you’re able to even talk about it.
We should all aspire to be what you are, Sandra. I’m serious when I say that. It’s just absolutely incredible to hear you tell your story.
Sandra: I can only say that, yeah, the strength comes from God. This peace and calmness comes from God. Deal with it first. Deal with the emotions, the problem, and take things one at a time. One step at a time and you can do it — we all can do it with God’s help.
Shane: Ugh! We need to have a course. You’re going to teach a course. It’s going to be a two minute video in the Flip Your Life community. You’re going to make, “Alright, guys! Here’s how you’re going to overcome anything in life!” If your thing is not “just had a miracle baby and got breast cancer,” you don’t get to tell me I’m wrong.
You can just say: pray, one thing at a time, deal with the emotions, move on, let’s go. Like that’s the whole course.
Jocelyn: I mean, that’s a lesson for us sitting here. I love it! Let’s kinda steer back a little bit to your online business. What was going on in the online business during all of this time?
Shane: Yes, because you told me some amazing things before we got on this podcast, about how cool it was to even though it kinda got in the backburner, even though all of this madness was happening all around you, that thing still kinda kept going a little bit. Right?
Sandra: Okay. Now, the truthful answer with what was happening with you online business (with all that happening) was: Nothing.
There was nothing going on. I never logged in to my own academy. It was crazy. I was the most irresponsible online business owner in the world. Right? Because I couldn’t handle anything, like what Jocelyn said, that you didn’t really need to do. I just wasn’t present for my members, I didn’t log in to the Flip Your Life community, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t listen to any podcasts, I didn’t listen to you guys for months!
Jocelyn: What?! No, I’m just kidding. (laughing)
Shane: Alright, that’s the part of the story we’re going to have to edit out. I’m just saying! No, everything else can go in… Nah! I’m kidding. We’re going to include that, because we’re cool and keeping it real.
(Sandra & Jocelyn laughing)
Sandra: Oh my gosh!
Jocelyn: I’m really joking.
Shane: But this is what amazes me. It was still making some money for you on the backend. Right?
Sandra: Well, I am very thankful for automation just because I got some stuff in that’s automated. That’s all good. I was making a few eBook sales every month, so that happens with my email sequence. I’ve got it in there in my first 7 emails because I followed the template you guys gave. I sold a few memberships sometimes, so yes, I think for the second half of 2017 I was able to make about $760.00 Australian dollars a month.
Shane: Wow!
Sandra: It’s not consistent, but it averaged out to be about that figure.
Jocelyn: And if you can do that doing nothing in your online business… I mean…
Shane: I know!
Jocelyn: I mean, that’s amazing.
Shane: Yeah. We were talking in the community, you said something so amazing, I think it was in the Success Forum, your subject was like, “I’ve got breast cancer, I haven’t worked on my site in 6 months and I’m still making money,” or something like that. I opened that and was like, “WHAT?!”
You talked so much about how the investment that you made when you could, paid off in such huge ways when you couldn’t, and that’s what online business is amazing for. That’s what passive income really is. We all work in our online business, there’s no such thing as making money for nothing, but you put the work in, the time in and got such a return when things happened to you, and it kept making money. It helped support your family while you were taking care of a baby, getting chemo treatments, couldn’t work, you were still able to keep that money rolling in and it’s because you had invested that time. You had taken action and it was there for you in the future.
This is totally not even on the same level, we were talking about this earlier today, Jocelyn and I both got the flu at the same time with the kids getting the flu after us back in November, and we did not work on anything for like 4 straight weeks. Did we still make money? And we looked up, “Okay. Everything’s normal.” You said that automation, the membership, all that stuff was working behind you. If something does happen that’s drastic, if something does take you away from it..
Jocelyn: You can temporarily put a band-aid on it, until you’re able to come back.
Sandra: That’s correct.
Jocelyn: So, let’s jump into why your back now. Because it’s not been very long, you still have this newborn baby.
Shane: Still fighting breast cancer.
Jocelyn: Yes, fighting cancer. What has gotten you so inspired to jump back into this online business?
Sandra: I didn’t even get to tell you guys that we just moved houses. (laughing)
Shane: I mean, seriously?! Okay. I-I… am officially going to label this podcast as, “Anyone who ever listen to this, if you make any excuse on not starting an online business…
Jocelyn: We’re just going to sit in on this podcast.
Shane: Yeah. You should just stop listening… I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’ve got to do something! Everyone go join our community and start right now.
Anyway, so you just moved. Again. Okay.
Sandra: Yes, we just moved houses. Don’t worry, it wasn’t very far. It was just to a neighboring suburb. We moved, it was crazy trying to juggle everything. Especially with the baby, productivity is at an all time low, but it’s kinda like you guys, we moved to a bigger place. We finally have a little bit more working space. I’m actually sitting in my piano studio, but I’m quite far away from the rest of the house, so I kinda hear the baby crying.
I feel like just being able to have a good space to work, just puts me in the right mindset. It also helps that I’ve given birth and I’ve passed the 4th trimester, the house is unpacked, the boxes have been gotten rid of, I feel like I’m finally ready to take on online business again. That’s why I am back!
Shane: Man! I tell you what. Guys, this ain’t over, this ain’t even close to over, we’re about to get it into that. We’re just now about to get into the good stuff of the online business. We’ve just been so inspired. We’ve cried. I’m sitting here like a mess right now, you know what I mean?
Sandra: Gosh!
Shane: It’s just getting good! We’re just about to take it to the next level. Okay, before we get into your questions, I just want one more time… One, your testimony and your faith in God, is an inspiration. Two, you need to give yourself some credit too, because you have really done some amazing things as a human in the last few months. I just want to thank you so much for sharing that story, because it’s going to inspire so many people and that’s really what Jocelyn and I are trying to do with this podcast. We talk a lot about sales funnels, and making money, and things like that, but in reality, it’s about overcoming challenges in your life and living the best possible life you can live. Not getting stopped. Keep moving forward. I just know that your story, Sandra, is going to inspire a lot of people that are listening to this.
Jocelyn: I kinda feel like we’re in Southern church right now. Like it’s a revival.
Shane: I feel like someone just gave a testimony y’all! Like Altar Call, okay everybody come in front!
Jocelyn: This is the Flipped Lifestyle revival.
Shane: Flipped Lifestyle revival! So, that’s what this is! It’s the Flipped Lifestyle revival.
Sandra: And that’s where I play on the keyboard, right?
Shane: Yes! If you started playing your keyboard right now, this… that would be madness!
(laughing)
Jocelyn: It wouldn’t be on our program.
Shane: Are you sitting at your keyboard right now? No… alright, alright. Okay. But that would have been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, that’s a hard story to tell.
Jocelyn: But I can’t wait to hear the feedback from this, because I know people are going to be just insanely inspired.
Shane: In fact, if you’re listening to this, y’all are going to send us an email. shaneandjocelyn@flippedlifestyle.com and I will forward anything you send to Sandra. I will send it to you and let you see it, and it will be amazing.
Sandra: Thank you! And all glory to God.
Shane: Okay. So, let’s reel it in here. (deep breath) Everybody breathe! Get your tissues out, and wipe off, or dry it up. Okay?
Now, let’s talk about your business. Your back in the mode. You’re ready to go. So, where are you now, and what do we need to do to get that $700 AUD to something bigger and something better, and move that forward?
Sandra: Firstly, things are pretty messy and it’s not hard to explain why. Right? Because I haven’t been present.
I have a lot of monthly members who signed up, who will quit after a month or two, and I don’t blame them because I was expecting the community to be asking questions, posting videos of themselves playing, and getting feedback – little bit like Evan Burse with the getting feedback from your drawing thing. But I don’t know if it’s just my absence or this space is just a very personal space, because not everyone likes people hearing their playing, or not everyone is comfortable getting feedback. No one really took that up.
The forums are very quiet, and people were not staying, I’m just wondering how I can begin to clean up this mess. Do I just send an email to my existing members, those who have not quit? And say, “Hey! I’m back. If you have any questions…” What if my people just don’t have questions? Should I change my membership so it’s not so much that ask your question thing, but it’s just very course-training based?
Shane: Okay. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you offering more courses out in third party markets, or even talking about your course-work more, but I wanna touch on what you said about, “Do my people just not have questions?” Your people has questions.
Jocelyn: Everyone has questions.
Shane: Everybody has questions. They’re there. Now, just like in the Flip Your Life community, just like in the Flipped Lifestyle audience — for y’all listening out there, you’ve gotta go and pull the things out of them. It’s just like everything else. If only 5% of the people in your audience will join your list, and only 5% of those will ever buy, then when you get into your community and only 20% of them are ever going to talk.
The key is to identify people that do have questions and making yourself available, but I want to stop there and say you don’t have to make yourself as available as you think to lead your community.
Jocelyn and I are in our forums, we can’t answer every single question (of course) anymore. That’s why we have a community manager, we just promoted a bunch of people to be moderators and things like that. So, we got some other people involved to help us help more people.
Jocelyn and I do two member calls every month, where anybody that shows up can ask a question. Right? And you’ve been to these before. There’s like a hundred people, 200 people, however many people show up, we rotate them to different times, but even just showing up twice a month, you would not believe how that fires up the community for the next week or two after that.
We answer like 25,30,40 questions in an hour. We’re just rapid fire, everybody’s talking and having a great time in the chat. If you’ll notice at the end of all our member calls, we give a direct call-to-action right there and say, “Before you log off, go to the General Forum and ask a question, or go to the Action Plan Forum and declare something you learned today that you’re going to take action on.” We get dozens and dozens of posts, and that sparks more discussion for the community.
I think, for right now, I would: One, tell your audience what’s been going on. Be transparent and say, “Guys, look! I’m so glad that you’ve been taking advantage of all my trainings and my courses, but I have been through the ringer. I’ve been through a tough time, and I was not able to pay attention, but I’m feeling better now and I wanna come back, and serve you guys. I’m going to start once a month, a member Q&A.”
Make the first one a really big deal, almost like you’re launching a product. Remind people, maybe get them to register to be there, and to sign up for them to ask questions first. Make it a huge deal, and then make it a monthly regular thing that you’re always pointing toward. Just that, will re-energize and get the community fired back up.
Jocelyn: I think I would just open up a dialogue with them and just say, “Hey, I’ve been currently offering this service. There are not a lot of people taking advantage of it, I was just wondering if something else would serve you better or is there a reason you haven’t tried this yet?” I would just open that up and get some feedback from people. I don’t think anything is really broken, like Shane was saying, I think that you just need to kinda let people know what’s going on and continue to ask them, “What do you want?”
Shane: Yeah. Once you re-engage them, when you do this first live thing back, even if you just get two to five people really fired up again, that’s going to start moving the crowd and getting everybody energized. That’s going to get you people to get feedback from and then once you do that, you’ll know what the next step is, it will be so much easier. So, just re-energize them. Be honest with them. Be open with them.
None of us want to share the bad things in our life sometimes. We don’t wanna feel like we’re making an excuse or something like that, but sometimes you just gotta tell people, “Hey! Life sucked for 3 months, but I’m back! Let’s go!” and everybody will get running back onboard where they were when you left off.
Sandra: Yeah. I feel like another problem I have is I am not able to correctly predict how much I can handle. It all started with when things were good. I wasn’t pregnant yet, I didn’t have cancer yet, and so I started out, “Look! I can handle this forum thing. I can login everyday and I can answer questions,” and then when things changed I couldn’t handle it and then I feel like, “Wow! I am now guilty because I overpromised, underdelivered…” and stuff like that. What is something I can change on my membership model so that it’s more sustainable? Because right now, the reality is, my biggest problem is I am taking care of the baby through the night and with anyone who takes care of a baby through the night, you never know when you’re going to get enough sleep, and I’m also teaching full-time. So, when it comes to online business, I don’t even have a set time that I work on it, because it’s that fluid when you have a baby in the house — and that’s just one baby. I know there are a lot of people listening to this with tons children, I don’t know how you guys do it.
Yeah, what can I do to restructure my membership so that it’s sustainable and I don’t overpromise?
Shane: The biggest thing you have to remember is, you can only do what you can do. Again, I go back to people think you’ve gotta do a lot more than you actually do.
Jocelyn: This is also not a one size fits all. I think sometimes people think, “Well, because these people are doing it this way, this is what I have to do.” No, you need to do what works for you in your life situation. Only you can determine that.
Shane: A great piece of advice that I’ve been actually telling people, that I heard the other day, and we’ve been really telling people this is, “Do what we did, don’t do what we do.” Because me and Jocelyn can do things that anyone starting a membership can’t do right now, like we can hire a community manager, we know that. We can send an email out and have 40 people begging us to be a moderator, and help us, but that’s just because we’ve been building a community for over 3 years now.
You have to look right now, what you just said, “I’m fluid. I’m flexible. I don’t even have a time because I don’t know when my baby’s gonna get crying…” or whatever. You’re going to have to come up with a plan that fits your schedule.
I really think that, #1 you’re going to have to maybe communicate with your spouse, and be like, “Look, I have got to have 2 hours on the calendar when I know I can do this every week.” Okay? You all need to work out a time when it’s like, “Okay. This is guaranteed time.” Barring an emergency, but 99% of the time it’s not an emergency, I need these 2 hours. Then during that time, you’re going to need to batch and do a live call, whatever it is.
Scheduling is really important even in a crazy lifestyle. You know that because you’ve got a schedule around chemo. Right? So, I think that’s one thing you can do right away. Just say, “Look, let’s just get 2 hours back and let’s see what happens there.” and then change the expectations to, “I’m not answering my forum posts everyday, but hey guys, on Fridays from 1 to 3 I’m going to login and answer as many questions as I can.” That’s it. That’s all we fix right now. It’s like you said earlier, one thing at a time. Let’s fix this thing. Let’s see if we can handle that. Once we can handle it, we’ll add something else, then maybe a month from now, it’s a member call.
Jocelyn: I often encourage people whenever you go to your community about this, don’t apologize. Don’t say, “Well, you know, I know that I said that we were going to do this, but I’m going to have to change it. I’m really sorry.”
No, go at it and say, “Hey! I cannot wait to offer you this new thing. This is going to be amazing. I’m going to be able to serve you so much better because of this, and this is what we’re going to do.”
Shane: Yeah. People will realize how much of an effort you’re making. They’ll understand your story. They will appreciate that, and you’ll eventually find your flow. It’s just like doing that first step, maybe you can’t handle checking your forums everyday, so don’t do it.
Jocelyn: And some people might be mad. That’s okay. Just let them select themselves out, and you continue on with the people…
Shane: They will be replaced by people who like the current format. Eventually, no one will even remember what it was supposed to be like in your head before. They’ll eventually be like, “I showed up new, ‘Oh, wow! Sandra has cool trainings and she checks all of these questions once a week? That’s sweet!’” Maybe you do that, so just do that one thing, see if you can handle it. Once you can handle it, add something else and that’s all any of us can do — just keep adding.
I’d say around 2nd week of January, Jocelyn looked at me and she just shook her head like, “We’re going to fast. We’re doing too much stuff. We’re investing in real estate, and we’re doing this in the online business.” and we had to backup two steps because we were overwhelmed. We put too much on us. You gotta do the same thing here. Just one log on the fire at a time, don’t let it burn too hot.
Sandra: I just wonder if my members might not take on the whole monthly Q&A thing, because I think there are lots of people from many different countries, many different time zones, so even if I do narrow it down to one hour that I’m available, I really don’t know if anyone’s actually going to be available at that time live.
Shane: I think and I don’t know. So, the only solution to that is to do it. You don’t know! Here’s the thing, if you sell it as an event, you better circle your calendar. You better be… this is going to be so much fun, this is going to be awesome! I don’t care if one person shows up to the first one, somebody showed up. You can even ask them, “Why did you show up?”
Jocelyn: We have people get up at 3AM from different time zones to join our live calls. So, never say never. I wouldn’t have ever thought in a million years that people would get up at 3AM to hang out with me, but they do. They do twice a month and it just blows my mind. Here’s the thing, again, one size doesn’t have to fit all. Just because that works for us… maybe what you could do is take questions ahead of time, answer them on a live video and then send it to your members to watch.
Shane: That’s a great idea! Anyone who’s listening, if you ever say, “Well, I don’t think…” or “I’m not sure…” the only answer at the end of that sentence is action. You’ve gotta do it and see if it works. You don’t just do it once, you do it like 5 or 6 times, until you’re like, “Well, that didn’t work.”
Jocelyn: And what you have to do is, find the sweet spot between, what you want to do and what your customers want.
Shane: Also, what you’re capable of. There is a sweet spot, there is something you can do. I love that idea that Jocelyn just said. You can take those questions from the forums, record a video and publish it, but publish it in the forums and make a big deal out of it.
Jocelyn: Send people a link.
Shane: Send people a link to it. There’s a lot of different variables in play here, but until you try it, you’re not going to know if you can handle it. You’re not going to know if it’s what you want to do, and you’re not going to know if it’s what your people will want.
I think we’re at the stage now of, we’re ready to take action, let’s just do something and see what happens.
Sandra: Yeah. I think I better go do that. Speaking of what I’m capable of. Here’s an interesting problem that I have, so in the world of worship keyboard, there’s this really, really high tech thing that uses software to play. The cool sound thing here, in a lot of worship songs, like techno stuff. A lot of it is from this software called, “MainStage,” and the thing is I have used MainStage before, but I’m really not good with a lot of the tech stuff. But because MainStage is so cool, I talk a little bit about it in my videos, and then some people do perceive me to be a MainStage expert. Then I get a ton of tech questions like, what kind of laptop should I use? All of the questions that I actually cannot answer, because I’m so not tech. I’d prefer to teach people the techniques of playing. What notes to play, how to play it in a way that is more ministering, the note and the exact way to play, but not tech. I feel like I misled people with some of the videos that I put out there. What can I do to clarify what I really want to teach?
Shane: Number 1, at this point forward, teach whatever you want to teach. Number 2, you did not mislead anybody, because I promise you, you know more about MainStage than everybody who thinks you’re an expert because they don’t know nothing. You are an expert in their eyes a hundred percent.
Jocelyn: Here’s the thing, what you need to do probably is some research and even if you’re not a super techy person, I know you can do research. Go on Google, find some people who talk about… what is it called MainStage? Find some people who talk about that, find their recommendations, do the research on your own and read some reviews on different ones. Maybe even do a pros and cons of different types of equipment based on your research.
Shane: I’ll tell you this. Never feel guilty for knowing more than somebody else. If I know how to change a tire, and you broke down in the desert, you’ll give me money to change your tire if you don’t know how to change a tire. You have more expertise than that person. This might be something like, if you do learn more about it, you can train people how to do it.
I’ve got a buddy named, Joe Nicoletti, and he has a website called Learn Scrivener Fast. He is the world expert on that software. Period. Anybody, if you’re a write, you’re going to use this software, okay? When he was researching online business, he basically just picked this thing to become an expert at. So, he learned it for about a month, figured out how to do the basics and he made a course. Did he know everything about it at the time? No. But did he learn about it later, and teach a lot of people and built a huge business out of it? Yes.
So, this might even be something… don’t apologize that you know about this thing that you’re talking about, because it might be an opportunity for you to expand what you’re teaching, or if it draws people in and then they learn how to play keyboard from you, at least it drew them in. It’s just another lead magnet.
Jocelyn: If the idea of learning something else, and creating something else, if that seems overwhelming, maybe try to strike up a little affiliate relationship with someone who is an expert in that product.
Shane: Yeah. There might be somebody out there that’s teaching MainStage, charging $500 and they would give you $200 for every sell you made. That’s another way to make money.
Jocelyn: And so, when people ask you a question say, “Hey, I recommend this great course from Joe Smith (or whoever) about MainStage, and he/she can answer any questions that you may have about it.”
Sandra: Cool. Yeah, awesome!
Shane: Alright. Wow! That was… I swear this has been the most intense, emotional roller coaster ride in the history of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Usually we wrap this up with an action step, but I think that the best thing to do here is just to say, Sandra, thank you so much for inspiring us today.
Thank you for showing us that there are no fears, or mindsets, or even external things that can stop us from moving forward, to live the life we want, to give our kids the life that we want to give them, and really just to take our online business to the next level.
Whether we put it in the back burner for a while, or we’re just getting into it, it’s just all about taking one thing at a time and doing what you can do. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today!
Sandra: You’re welcome and thank you guys for your time as well!
Shane: Alright, guys, that wraps up our interview with Sandra. Wow, what an amazing story of just perseverance and getting things done even when life is throwing obstacles at you, throwing fear at you, throwing everything in the kitchen sink at you, and still getting things done.
Jocelyn: I love Sandra’s positivity and just how she just took everything that happened to her in stride, and just keeps coming. What a lesson to us all, just to keep going, stay positive and make things happen every single day.
Shane: We hope that you guys take the lessons from this podcast episode to heart. First is just the importance of taking action, and getting these things done. Investing the time, money and effort into what you can do when you can do it. I think back to when Sandra was talking about how her business still made her 700 AUD a month even as she was going through this pregnancy, even as she had a newborn, even as she was fighting breast cancer. It was because she invested all of that time and effort when she could, so that it could keep going when she couldn’t pay as much attention to it.
The biggest take away that I think all of us can get from Sandra’s incredible story, incredible ongoing journey, is that life is short. Life can throw you curveballs at any time. So, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, if you are able to right now, take action on your dreams. Take action on whatever it is in your mind that you feel like you should be doing, or whatever direction that you feel like you should be going in. Even if there’s fear, even if there’s obstacles, just deal with it. Take it one step at at time and get it done.
Alright, guys, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you again next week. Between now and then, do whatever it takes to flip your life.
Jocelyn: Bye!
Patrick Roden says
Sandra is such a Tonic. Again, Healing is Invoking the will to live in others…
It really doesn’t get better than this episode.
This was a meaningful conversation not to be missed. Lessons on life and business.
Thanks S&J
Patrick Roden