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Everyone has at least one amazing teacher in their life.
Right?
You know, someone who went above and beyond to help you see your potential.
The person who pointed you in the right direction to find the missing piece of the puzzle.
This might be your parent, a sibling, a friend, or it might, quite literally, be your school teacher – it could be anyone!
But just as someone sparked change in your life, isn’t it just absolutely mindblowing how YOU have touched other people’s lives too?
Think about it.
With or without you knowing, you’ve become a “teacher” and shared your wisdom, experience or maybe expertise to flip another person’s life for the better.
Now, you probably don’t even remember all the people you’ve helped.
Probably because you didn’t feel like you’ve done something big enough to elicit change.
This is a problem.
Why are we so obsessed with acknowledging only big changes when even a little bit of change goes a long way?
We often say,
“Celebrate all your successes, yes, even the little ones; because no matter how small you think that is, it will prepare you for even greater opportunities.”
The same thing applies to change!
Don’t just brush off the small changes when it has the potential to lead you to your greatest achievements.
Which is also why you being “the teacher” is no coincidence.
Every life you touch, every problem you help solve, takes the world one step closer to another piece of the puzzle.
Embrace your every opportunity of being “the teacher” for the people around you.
Great things await those who accept and pursue their passion.
Which brings us to this week’s guest, we have a professional percussionist who has pursued the education scene in hopes to spark positive change in the way we educate our children.
We have Mark Taylor on air, and this is his story…
Mark is a husband, and father of 2 teenagers and a pre-teen.
He has played drums and percussion for a living, where he has gotten the opportunity to tour the UK, Europe and the United States.
He had also found teaching to be his other passion at age 40, thanks to his children.
Mark is also part of the National Association for Primary Education in the UK which helped him understand the issues surrounding people involved in education, not just the amount of work and stress closely tied to this profession, but also because of certain limitations in the school system makes it difficult for them to deliver the kind of learning the children deserve.
His podcast, Education on Fire, launched in December 2016, where he helps fellow educators discuss ideas and share resources online.
But having the freedom to pursue his passion for music and teaching doesn’t come without a price.
You see, time flexibility can be a double-edged sword.
When you agree to one opportunity, you will have to turn down another, simply because you can’t be in two places at the same time and exert the same amount of effort to accomplish two different tasks.
Being a father, professional musician, primary school teacher AND a podcaster is no easy task.
Pursuing his music or teaching career will have its own benefits, but he has found great interest in podcasting and how it can help him have the freedom to spend more time with his family.
He has already found a good audience through sharing his insight as a primary school teacher on his podcast, so how can that help him make money online?
If you wanna know how we helped Mark, then don’t miss this episode, we’re going to dive deep into several fantastic points that will help take his online business to the next level and it can help you too!
You Will Learn:
- The concept of opportunity & opportunity costs
- Why people will listen to you
- Refining your avatar
- How to trigger a response from your audience
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
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 even read yours on the air! ?
Success Story of the Week:
Alright, guys, we’ve got an amazing success story for you today. It is from longtime Flip Your Life family member, Ben Landers and he says, “I crossed the 200-member mark this week,” and he’s got like the little emoticon that’s like shocked with his mouth open at the end of his subject line.
“What’s up, Flipped Lifers? I just want to just celebrate a pretty big milestone. I announced my price raise two weeks ago, and since then my membership has been selling like hotcakes.” It sounds like a good southernism.
“I just hit 200 yearly members this week.” That is awesome. “I’m super pumped about this, and so glad to see the last three years starting to pay off. Thanks to Shane and Jocelyn and the FYL crew for the help, advice, encouragement, tutorials along the way. Hearing about all your successes has been super motivating to me, so I hope I can return the favor. You can do it!” Wise words from Mr. Ben Sanders. You can do it!
We would love to help you write the success story for your online business.
At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Can’t Miss Moment:
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is our kids, Isaac and Anna, making their first money online.
It was $24.76 on their YouTube channel, FL Kids. If you haven’t checked it out or subscribed yet, we would love it if you would do that. They love getting new subscribers. They think that it was like the most amazing thing ever when they get subscribers, and/or comment. So, if your kids want to check it out and leave them a comment, we will be sure to show that to them.
All you have to do is go to flkids.tv, and it will take you directly to their YouTube channel, so Isaac and Anna Jo have created this awesome YouTube channel where they play video games, they go on trips.
It’s a really positive channel, really fun channel. We’re working on growing that but we were really surprised to see that like last month, when we pulled up the analytics, we put ads on all of their videos, and Isaac and Anna Joe’s video’s got $24.76 and I always think back to the first money that we made online, which was eleven cents.
We got an ad click for eleven cents, and that was kind of what sparked our obsession with making money online. And here, our kids are 9 years old and 6 years old, and just because they’re creating content, just because they’re taking action, just because a nine and six-year-old are doing stuff, doesn’t even matter if it’s good stuff or right stuff or wrong stuff, whatever it is, they’re taking action. In one month they made $24.76, and we actually let them go spend that.
They went and bought some toys and some games on their iPads with it and they learned, “If I put in the work, then I’m going to get the reward.” So what an awesome experience or an awesome example. Anybody out there that’s not taking action, our nine-year-old and six-year-old made money last month on the Internet.
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!
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 Mark figure out how to make money podcasting.
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 to welcome a guest today from across the pond – I think that’s how they say it. All the way from North Hampton, United Kingdom, Mark Taylor.
Mark, welcome to the show!
Mark: Thank you so much for having me!
Jocelyn: Yes, and a fun fact about Mark, we’ve actually been on his podcast before.
Shane: That’s right.
Jocelyn: We are happy to have you today and I’m very excited to talk to someone from the UK. I was telling Mark just a few minutes ago before the show that I’ve been there one time, so you know, that clearly makes me a United Kingdom expert.
Shane: She’s just starting the anthropological United Kingdom cultural center over here in Kentucky.
Jocelyn: I love everything about the UK. I love to talk to people from there. It’s just really fun. I’ve been to London once and I’m dying to go back because it was just a really cool city.
Shane: We’re a little scattered today, Mark. I’m just telling you because Jocelyn and I woke up this morning, my eyes kind of peeled open and I saw the sun and I was like, “Wait a minute, why is the sun out?”
Jocelyn: The sun is not usually out.
Shane: The sun is not supposed to be out when we get up because we’re trying to get our kids ready for school. Then Isaac leans up, he had crawled into bed with us last night and he said, “Do we have school today?” And I looked at him and I said, “Yes, you do. But it started an hour ago.” So we, uh, we started our day about an hour late, and we’re just now getting into the swing of things, you know what I mean? But it’s OK because we’re with you, Mark. And we’re going to take your online business to the next level. It’s just like when you get derailed sometimes in your online business, you just get right back on the railroad tracks.
Mark: Absolutely!
Jocelyn: All right, Mark, let’s get started on our conversation today. Let’s talk a little bit about you, your family and your background.
Mark: I’m a professional musician. I play drums and percussion for a living, so I get the opportunity to do the thing I love the most, which is just an awesome thing that I get to work all over the UK and I’ve done lots of touring through the UK and also been to Europe and the States as well. That’s part of my professional career.
Well, I also do a bit of teaching drums and percussions when in schools because I really sort of like getting kids to be able to learn from the experience that I’ve gotten and see the joy in their face of the fact they’ve just been able to learn through the processes that I’ve done over the years.
I’ve got three children, so we’ve got a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old and it’s really through their learning and their schooling, really that I got into what it’s like to be a child in education. Plus, my teaching as well, and that sort of made me realize that despite my passion for being a percussionist, which I love, it’s the soul of what I do. I’ve got a real deep-rooted passion about schooling and education and how children learn and how they want to be, which I’m sort of really passionate about trying to create the environment for them, where they can just thrive rather than feeding onto some of the pressures that there are, where I sort of go on that professional-family-joint thing.
Shane: That’s amazing! It’s so cool because I hear your story about how you’re a musician, and your passion and you’re doing these things. But then I know some background that the audience doesn’t know. You have a podcast that’s actually called, “Education on Fire” and it’s more like how we can make schools better, what’s education look like in the modern world.
Tell us a little bit more about your online world. We know what you’re doing offline. Tell us more about that passion. Why you’re taking that online?
Mark: I was very lucky. I was asked to join the National Council of the… National Association for Primary Education here in the UK. The thing I started to really realize was that lots of people, especially teachers and people involved in education, they’re quite down on the fact that we’ve got too much work, we’re stressed and we’re not quite able to deliver the learning we want for our children because there’s so many sorts of exams now and government pressures and all that kind of thing.
But what I was able to see was the fact that there is some fantastic stuff going on. It’s just hard for people to talk about it all for them to see. So my thought was Education on Fire was just to share some of the great things that are happening in schools, the great resources that are out there so that you can actually– even within the restraints of the curriculum as it is these days, certainly here in the UK, but I think the same across the world, especially in the US, too– actually what you can do with some small things and a little bit of information you can make a big difference.
And so if you can ignite that spark in a child so they’re really excited about what they’re doing, then it just changes their whole way of learning. As an adult, learning about podcasting and that ability to be able to share that stuff online and to anyone around the world, I’ve gotten that excitement now and I’m able to learn that in the age of 40. So if we can keep that going through the children as they start to learn through school, I think that’s just an incredible thing to better try and achieve.
And one thing I noticed, especially when I was dropping my kids off in the playground, especially when they were younger, is the fact that you see these sort of four- or five-year-old kids who just don’t have a care in the world who just want to play. They just want to learn the stuff that’s around them. And as they get older they start to feel the pressures of all those things going on. I just know that some of the projects and some of the things that are out there, if you can learn in that kind of cohesive way and that sort of creative way, you can keep that going through all of their school life and into their adulthood.
If I can find anything that can actually help them do that, then I think that’s going to be just the change in the way that people learn. Hopefully, it’ll change the way that schools can work from the ground up, really. Because the one thing we know is unless you’re a politician and you can actually change a policy, nothing’s going to change overnight. But these small increments of just sharing great knowledge which can help people in the profession is I think something which is really valuable.
Shane: So really if you’re looking at a grassroots kind of– all right, fine, the institutions are doing what they’re doing. But from a parent level, from an attitude level, from an almost philosophical level, it’s like we can still change our kids and make them lifelong learners and make them enjoy it. This really resonates with me and Jocelyn right now because we’ve really been thinking hard lately.
Our kids are getting older. Isaac’s going to be 10 years old this year. Anna Jo just turned 7 and we’ve been thinking about their education and we’ve been thinking about that high pressure, everything teach-to-the-test mentality and we’re kind of like, “Man, what can we do to make sure that our kids still keep that love for learning and that they want to take their education and their learning to the next level and do what they’re destined to be?” To have their journey without being like squashed under the expectations of society.
Jocelyn: Yeah. And as you know, it’s hard doing what we do because we have an amazing life that we built for ourselves, and then we send our kids off to regular school every day. We’re starting to kind of question that. Is that the right thing for us? And you know, as of right now, we don’t really know what that’s going to look like in the future but we know that we’re very unsettled about it.
Shane: And from our background, if anybody’s new to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, Jocelyn and I were school teachers in the public school system for almost 10 years. We’ve been in the system. We know the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we know there is a lot of good out there. There’s a lot of great teachers working really hard to try to do that but they are handcuffed by the way that education all over the western world especially is going.
And it’s so cool to hear you say that. What I love about this, your story, in particular, is everyone’s like, “Oh, I love my passion, I want to live my passion and I want to live the flipped lifestyle.”
Like you’ve got to do. You’re touring the world, playing your music, teaching kids music you love, and teaching a child how to play an instrument is like the best of humanity. That’s like art. That’s like amazing but still, you’ve got this thing because of your experience through your kids and the education world. You’re like, “Man, I think I can make a difference here.” I just want to throw that out there because I know there are people listening going, “Well, my passion is this. Can I really make money doing this or can I make influence doing this?”
But you know, we all have passions and then we all have fires in us that want to make things better. We all want to help other people. We all want to maybe just do something. I just really think it’s cool that you could have easily been like the drum guy, the percussion guy. You know what I mean? But you’re like, “No, I’m doing what I love and now, I want to make a difference in an area that’s important to me.” And if everyone would just look at this online business thing like that, it would really, really change everybody’s life.
Mark: Yeah. And I think for me the other thing was, I know that the only reason I’m able to follow my dreams and be a drummer and be percussionist is because I had that opportunity at school. Because those opportunities are getting less and less, and if you’re from the right background, if you have the money, if you have parents that understand where you can go outside of school to get these things, then you can still do an OK job with it.
But if you’re that kid that just needs that experience in school, that kind of the world opening up just to see what it is that you fancy, that’s getting less and less. I think it was a combination of those things. Just being able to see myself, if I was going into school now the chances are I wouldn’t be where I am today in my professional life. Because I can see those whole circles all joined together, I think it’s that combination — it’s exactly the things that you said, that sort of light that fire for me.
Shane: And it’s funny how that mentality can creep and dictate our life because Jocelyn and I have total time freedom. We work for ourselves. We work from home most of the time. We can do whatever we want. Even this morning, when we woke up late, we didn’t say, “Hey, it’s a beautiful day. Hey, we’re going to talk to a bunch of cool people today.” We said, “Oh my gosh, we’re late!” and we’re like freaking out, and the whole day started crazy and we’re running to school, almost like someone has a gun to our head.
But what sucks is, I can see that mentality in our kids. I can see them freaking out about, they have a test on Tuesday, or freaking out because they’re going to be late. And I’m like, is that really what we’re supposed to be teaching our kids? Is that really what life is supposed to be all about? “I have to get to my desk, I got to sit down, I’ve got to prepare for the test, I’ve got to take the test. I’ve got to fail or not fail the test. I’ve got to–” You know what I mean? It is funny because I hate that I’m old enough to say, “Back in my day–“
Jocelyn: But we really are.
Shane: But we really are. I do seem to remember less of that when we were kids and it’s like we weren’t so pressured by the tests, we weren’t so pressured by everything else in the world. It was kind of like, “Let’s figure out what we want to be. Yeah, we got to learn some math and some history and some things like that, but let’s figure out what we want to do with our life.” And it just doesn’t feel that way anymore.
Jocelyn: Let’s talk about your online journey. What are you doing right now? It sounds like you have a couple of different things going on. What are you concentrating on as far as trying to monetize something online?
Mark: The podcast launched in December 2016, so it’s been on for just over a year now. I’ve got 60 episodes on there, and basically, it was just a question of going around meeting people, sort of like-minded and sharing these ideas. My aim was to be positive, as we just said before about the whole negativity thing — I wanted to keep it positive. I have had the opportunity to have a couple of affiliate things which are starting to be put into place, which is great.
But I’m kind of just sort of stuck in that area of, I want to keep the positivity. I want to have my theme seasons so that as a primary school teacher over here, you know, you have to teach everything. So I wanted to be able to say, “This is the music side and this is going to be the sports side and this is the technology side.” And so you get lots of great information with that.
But I want to be able to create a course or create something that supports all these things, but I don’t quite know which is the best way to go for that to begin with, really, with what I do it within the theme seasons or whether I actually do it as an independent thing.
Currently, it’s just a question of starting the affiliate thing going, but it’s just where I go from there, what kind of direction I go and what sort of course or what kind of development I do from there.
Shane: There’s actually a really valuable lesson in that part of your journey that you just shared with everybody on the podcast today. This really did start as a “This is an interest of mine. This is a passion of mine. I want to talk more about this. I want to open some discussion.” I love that your podcast is a year old and you’re just like, “Nah, I’m just going to go create this content and see where it takes me.”
I think, too many people, when they get into online business, they think, “All right, I’m going to try this for three weeks.”
Jocelyn: “If I’m not making money in one month, I’m out.”
Shane: “If I don’t get money in three weeks, then this is clearly not worth my time or effort.” But you’re like, no, we’re going to open dialogue, have conversations, meet cool people that are interested in the same thing I am. And then now it’s like, OK, I’ve built a little bit of an audience, I’ve kind of got this podcasting down, I figured out how to do the website stuff and maybe put a few affiliate links in. Let’s see if we can take this thing to the next level.
The second cool thing about what you just said too is you’re like, “Hey, this needs to support itself.” I think there’s also a mentality people get into where it’s like, “I have to be the altruistic human that spends eight hours of my day every day talking about this thing that’s important to me to try to spur dialogue to help everyone else.” And that is not true. We have a finite amount of time on this earth, and we do all have to have money to live, and if we’re going to invest our time in something, we can change the world and make money, too. And those two things work together.
So, you know, I think it’s interesting, your evolution of your online business was from passion project, podcast, dialogue, got to a point where you’re like, hey, I’ve got some people listening, hey, I think I could actually sell something and this supports itself and maybe it will help me have the resources to reach more people and make a bigger difference. Really cool!
Mark: It’s slightly more personal and a bit more, deeper than that as well. Because I sort of have and had the life where it’s all striving to within the community, you know, because I was a freelance musician. I’ve had the ability to have the time available to say, “I’m not going to work that day. I’m going to go to my school, to my daughter’s school play. Actually, I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do that.”
And that’s been brilliant but having that time flexibility also has all sorts of financial pressures as well because when you’re saying no, you’re then not earning the money, which is, which is a double-edged sword really, but it’s something that we’ve been able to sort of work between me and my wife and been able to fully enjoy our children as they’ve grown up, which is the greatest pleasure there is, really.
Shane: And there are opportunity costs there, is what you’re talking about. That’s what we tell our kids all the time. For example, Isaac yesterday, he wanted to play Xbox with me. We’ve got this game that we play. He’s got an Xbox in his room. I’ve got one downstairs, and we can play online together in the same house. Modern technology, it’s amazing. But anyway, we were going to play this game, but his friends got on. So two of his friends logged on and they wanted to play another game.
He was like, “Dad, I think I’m going to play another game with them.” And I’m like, “Cool man, go ahead. You know, it’s cool.” But then it was time for bed, and he comes downstairs and he goes, “Alright, can me and you play now?” And I’m like, “No, son. When you choose one thing, you lose another. You chose to play with your friends instead of me.”
Jocelyn: If there’s one thing that our children will know by the time they leave our house, it’s the concept of opportunity.
Shane: I mean, it’s like, “No, you picked milk instead of orange juice. Now, you picked Cheerios instead of Fruit Loops. Sorry, you chose one thing, you lose another. You picked the waffles instead of eggs.”
Jocelyn: This is a conversation we have every single day.
Shane: But what we’re saying is, living the flipped lifestyle is all about making choices. It’s empowering, but you do have to come to terms with, if I go volunteer at my kid’s school for three hours, I’m not going to be doing something that’s making money. Or like for you, if you’re recording your podcast with someone, if you’re up at 9:00 recording a podcast for two hours, you’re not practicing for your next percussion gig or whatever. You know what I mean? There’s always opportunity costs in every single thing we do.
Jocelyn: Alright, well, let’s jump in here, and talk about your biggest fear when you were starting out or like a confidence issue, some type of mindset struggle. What’s something that you’ve had to overcome so far?
Shane: Like, in the last year of your podcasting?
Mark: Well, I think certainly the ability of being an expert from that point of view. Because the podcast was really about sharing other people’s ideas and that, I felt very comfortable with. But because I’m not an actual school teacher, you know, I do teach in schools and I’ve got lots of experience of that and as I said, I’m in the part of the National Association for Primary Education, so I do have great insight and I’ve met some great people, but certainly that sense of actually, “Do people really want to know what I think?” as opposed to just sharing other people’s ideas.
I think as the year has gone on, and I’ve got more experience in it, it actually seems to be that that’s probably more of the way I should go. The sharing all the resources is fantastic and it’s really helpful for people but what I’m starting to hear is, “We really liked it when you talked about this,” and, “We really liked it when you were talking about this,” and I’m thinking, “Oh great, OK, that’s really great because I can talk about it forever,” but it’s just having that kind of, “But why would you listen to me?” I know that’s something that comes up quite a lot for people.
Maybe because I’m not a teacher or maybe because I am slightly one step removed from being inside the heart of the profession in that way, that I do have that slightly different and broader perspective, which is actually, I guess, what I’m trying to share because as we said, a bit further back, we want our children to have their education looking like this rather than it just having to be a certain way because that’s what we’re told it needs to look like.
Jocelyn: Yeah. I love that and I think that a lot of people struggle with that. I think a lot of people listening to this right now are saying, “Oh yes, I totally get that!” Because it is unsettling to think that you’re sharing your ideas with the rest of the world and there are probably going to be people out there who don’t like it.
Shane: That question that we all ask ourselves, even beyond, “Am I expert enough?” is “Why would anyone listen to me?” That’s a question that we all struggle with every day in our lives. I love what you said that as you done this, you’ve gained experience. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. Not only in online business, but your life is you go out there and do something. Even if you’re not quite ready to be the expert that everyone listens to, eventually you will be because you talk every week to an educator, to someone else, to an expert. All that starts to rub off on you and you’re like, “Man, I’m seeing all the puzzle pieces from every side.”
And that’s really like one of the reasons we even did Flipped Lifestyle was because, once we did it, and then we did it again, and then we did it again, and then we helped someone do it. Then we helped another person do it, and then we have a couple people quit their jobs. It was like, wait a minute! We’ve seen like 20 different angles at this that nobody else is even getting. So even if we’re not MBA business professional teachers from Harvard or whatever.
Jocelyn: I’m an MBA dropout.
Shane: Jocelyn actually dropped out of her MBA program. How about that? She is a dropout over here. You gather all the inside information and you become an expert. You only have to be expert enough. You just have to be ahead of a few people at first, you’ll become an expert.
I think about when I was a history teacher, when I got my first job as a history teacher, I remember talking to another teacher like, “Man, I don’t know anything about history. Like, I learned it. I took all the tests in college and I passed them all and I got my degree, but like I don’t have all the dates memorized.”
And he told me this older guy, he was like, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” Every teacher when I walk into a classroom doesn’t have a clue how to teach what they’re doing. They don’t know everything. But as you teach it, you will remember it and you will teach it so much that over the years, eventually, you’ll know it off the top of your head like it’s nothing. It’s easy to you. And that’s exactly what you said right there. That’s how you overcome that struggle, is you just go do it and everything will build on itself and you’ll become expert enough eventually.
Mark: I think it really is that one step at a time, isn’t it? Because you’re trying to think, “Well, I’ll do this now and then next month and then six months, and a year, and two years, and it will look like this.” But of course, what you don’t take into account is exactly all that acquired knowledge as you’re going through, which is the most important thing because then things just change from one experience to the other.
Jocelyn: Yes. It doesn’t really matter what you’re taught in school or what you’ve learned along the way. Those things do matter but what really matters is that experience that you get every single day doing something. That’s how we started this business. That’s why we do it every single day. We just keep getting more and more experience and learning new things. For us, we love that because we love learning new things.
Shane: This goes back to education a little bit because the world kind of tricked us into thinking, “If we bury ourselves in enough books and take enough tests, we’ll eventually be an expert,” instead of “Let’s create a foundation that gives you context, and then as you do and take action, you will become what you’re supposed to be. Not, you will eventually study enough to get a certificate that says what you are.”
Jocelyn: All right, Mark, let’s jump into the outside influences. So as you were starting out, what are some outside influences or obstacles that you’ve had to overcome in this journey? Things like maybe not having enough time, not understanding the technology, maybe other people in your life, things like that.
Mark: Certainly, the time aspect as I said. The one thing about not having a nine-to-five is the fact that you think you have time, but then also things can come in sideswipe you. It’s that kind of, “Great, I’ve set tomorrow aside to do some podcasting and do some editing.” And you get the phone call and it says, “Great, can you come and do this set of work for me? It’s going to be a week’s work and it starts at 10:00 AM in the morning.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay.”
I can’t really not do it because that’s what I do and that’s what I want to do, but at the same time– so that kind of a mentality of “what is it that I actually really want to do? and that kind of scheduling has been really important for me.”
Last year, I went to a podcast event in L.A. and I came back and I was kind of like, “Right, this really needs to be something which I schedule properly.” You know, and I can set the time of my professional career but on these days I’m going to have that in stone that this is what I’m going to do; because if I want to improve and I want to make even better content and learn these things, I need to do it.
I didn’t have the experience in the tech, so I’ve had to learn that along the way. It’s been great experience doing it, I’ve really enjoyed it but it is that time versus the tech, which I think has been the biggest thing.
The other thing is the family pressure and, sadly, our eldest daughter has been in the hospital for the last two or three months, which has been quite an emotional roller coaster for us.
And that batching of time has been incredibly important to say, “No, this is important. I’m going to do this,” but at the same time in terms of supporting my wife and the other two children at home, it’s just that kind of, “I know that you really need me now.” So what I need to do is to put this aside, and think, “No, this is OK. This is what I need to be doing and I can find the time elsewhere.”
It’s sort of a combination of all of those things but what it does is, it just really sort of fires me up to think that taking this business to the next level is going to be really important; because if I can get the online business working where I can get a little bit more revenue as well, I can be a little bit more choosy about where my time goes and also how it fits in with my professional life as well, which means that I can spend enough time and prioritize things in a slightly different way, which I think would be the most supportive thing for everybody.
Shane: I’m sorry to hear about your daughter, I just want you to know that you guys are in our thoughts and prayers and we’ll continue to keep her and you guys on our mind even after this podcast.
Mark: Thank you.
Shane: And thank you for sharing that because sometimes those things are really vulnerable, so we really appreciate that. And I love what you just said about priorities and also about you think you have so much time. Jocelyn and I have noticed that as well because you wake up every day and people think, “Oh, you’re free, your calendar is wide open!”
One of the things that we really struggled with in the beginning was people who… like stay-at-home moms, Jocelyn was friends with them, and they would always be like, “Come over and play for four hours,” and we were like, “We have to work.”
You still have to schedule in jobs and priorities and things like that. Freedom is not that your calendar is wide open, freedom is that you control how your calendar fills up because your calendar will always fill up and you get to say, “OK, this is a priority, staying at the hospital with your daughter. This is a priority, going into this percussion set or whatever. Then this is the next priority, my other two children and my wife and then, oh by the way, these two hours I have scheduled for my podcast.”
That’s really what freedom is. It’s not the lack of things to do is just controlling what you get to do on your calendar. That’s what we’re all striving for and there is a mentality like, “Oh man, I just want to wake up and prop my feet up and drink my coffee for about four hours and read a good book on the beach.” That’s the four-hour work week, right? But like that’s not what we want. We want a fulfilling, rich, priority-driven life of our own choosing and that’s kind of what we’re all chasing.
As we overcome these obstacles like scheduling, as we overcome the obstacles of, “Man, I just spent four hours on my WordPress website that was really only needed to take 20 minutes if I knew what I was doing,” and as we get better at it, that’s really the life that we all want to live – that’s what the Flipped Lifestyle really is.
Mark: Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s exactly right.
Jocelyn: Alright, Mark, let’s jump in and find out how we can help you get to the next level and flip your life. What is the biggest question you have right now in your online business?
Mark: My biggest question is in terms of monetization or certainly how to focus on how to get the podcast to generate some income, and more specifically is the direction.
As I said, teachers have a broad thing they need to teach them because the podcast is specifically in seasons, do I try and create content and focus on creating something for each of the seasons? Or, in terms of building the list and actually trying to get people engaged, do I do something which has an overall arc, so it may be working within time constraints or feeling stress and overwhelm? You know, create something which every teacher can identify with, and then from there as time goes on, creating more things that are specific to each particular episode?
- Start: commercial break –
Shane: Hey y’all! Just a quick reminder before we get back to today’s interview, Flip Your Life LIVE – Nashville tickets are on sale right now and we only have a few left.
Jocelyn: We want you to join us and over 100 Flipped Lifestyle listeners, members and fans, for a life-changing experience in Nashville, TN this September.
Shane: You’re going to have the opportunity to get help from us on your online business, build relationships with other family-focused entrepreneurs and take massive action toward your goals.
Jocelyn: Attending live events was the best thing we ever did for our online business and Flip Your Life LIVE is the game-changer you need to make your online dreams a reality.
Shane: We only have a few tickets left when we recorded this promo, so get your tickets fast.
As soon as you hear this, go to flippedlifestyle.com/nashville to order your tickets and join us this September at Flip Your Life LIVE.
That’s flippedlifestyle.com/nashville, we’ll see you there!
Now, let’s get back to today’s guest.
- End: commercial break –
Shane: I think that definitely, the common advice that we give people is you should start with something general when you’re building your first opt-ins and your first opt-in and sales funnel strategy because it is very overwhelming to look at every single podcast, even for us right now, we have a team of people that can help us do this. It’s really overwhelming to think, “OK, well what are we going to make for this episode? What are we going to make for this episode?”
We even strategically have categorical opt-ins. We’re working right now with a new web design company to redo Flipped Lifestyle and we’ve kind of identified three to four opt-ins that we think will work for pretty much a lot of our content that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time because that’s overwhelming.
Definitely a general opt-in but I even want a challenge like, I know you talk to teachers a lot. You brought us on as parents and former educators under your show, right?
I just would love for you to do a little more research into your audience, and see exactly who’s listening and make sure that you’re even targeting the right people. Maybe you are talking to teachers and you are talking to parents, but maybe you should not necessarily just assume that you’re going to monetize the teacher element, maybe you’re going to monetize the parents.
You know, like Jocelyn and I are clearly in your audience. We want to know what’s out there. We want to know the positive things. We want to think outside the box and how can we improve our kid’s life in public school now, or maybe there’s alternatives, maybe there’s something else there that you could monetize, and really how you’ve got to tackle this is you’ve got to figure out what problem you’re trying to solve.
Are you trying to solve, “Hey, teacher, be more positive and go in and create this environment even though you’re working in this really rigid system,” or like are you really saying, “Hey, parent, send your kids to school with this mentality. Send your kids to school with becoming a life-long learner,” and just let them know, “Hey, you’re going to be confined here, but you’re going to be free here.” I’m not exactly sure what problem you’re trying to solve, and who you’re trying to target. Does that make sense?
Mark: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that in my mind it’s the teacher. It’s that sense of, I know you’re constrained by the curriculum, and I know you’re overwhelmed and you’ve got governmental pressures on you but from that, if you look at this subject in this way, here are some resources. Here are some things that other people are doing it their school, which hopefully, would take some of that pressure off you, be a bit more inspiring for the children as well, and you can then really sort of inspire and have that creative edge.
I think that’s kind of where I was aiming from but it’s interesting you mentioned the parents’ element because I was at the Youpreneur Summit with Chris Ducker, just at the end of last year. We had a roundtable discussion, and that was something that someone mentioned there as well, was kind of, as a parent, I’m really interested in what you’re talking about because that’s the kind of education that I want my children to have.
It might be that the reality is, is that it’s the pressure from parents wanting their children to have the lifestyle that they really crave, which is actually more powerful than trying to support the teachers who feel like they’ve got their wrists tied.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I think it’s something to explore. I would definitely reach out to the audience and see what they think, what they want you to talk about more, what they want to explore further, and I think that’s going to probably tell you a lot. I mean, we can give suggestions of what we think but the most powerful thing is to reach out to that audience and say, “OK, what is going to be the most impactful for you?”
Shane: You have something very valuable. You do have people listening so you can talk to them. You can have a dialogue. Even if only a few people will email you or even if only a few people will follow you, any information you can get from your audience to understand who it is, because you can create the best lead magnet possible but if you put it in front of the wrong person, you’re still not going to get any contacts, you’re still not going to make any money because it’s just the wrong person.
It’s like Jocelyn and I have been watching the Winter Olympics. Jocelyn loves figure skating, always has always will. I’m impressed by some of the crazy nonsense that they do out there, but I don’t care about figure skating. So if you brought to me, “Hey, look at this: the top 10 highlights of every Olympics ever of the best figure skating moves on the planet,” I’m going to be like, “I don’t care.”
You bring that to Jocelyn, she’s going to hit play and put it in. And that’s where you kind of are right now. It’s like, you’ve got to figure out exactly who you’re going to talk to. And I do have a framework that helps with this.
So, number one is you need to open our discussion over the next couple of weeks with your audience. Give them a reason to come tell you. Just tell them, “Hey, what are you struggling with in your education?” And we actually have a better way that we word this. We say, “What’s frustrating you right now?”
That word frustration really makes people take action. So use that word frustration and say, “What is frustrating you right now?” Like you could say, “Teachers, what is frustrating you right now with your job as an educator? Parents, what is frustrating you right now with your child’s education?” That’s going to trigger some responses, maybe just give them a straight email on air, go into some groups online that contain teachers, that contain parents about education, like search for homeschooled people.
Figure out what that big frustration is and then once you figure those things out, ask yourself this, what’s the biggest problem? What can you do to solve that problem or at least give them a Band-Aid? and then how can you frame what they really want to show them where you were going to take them? What’s their return on investment? That’s how you should always look at your lead magnets because if you figure out who it is, what their problem is, and then you’re like, “Hey, I can do something to solve that problem,” then all you have to do is paint the picture of what they really want and they’ll be fine.
So for us, it might be, let’s say you’re targeting me and Jocelyn because we’re in your demographic, clearly, okay? “Shane and Jocelyn, what’s frustrating with your education?” “Well, our kids feel like they’re in a prison and we really want them to have a more free learning environment where they can figure out what their destiny is.” So, “The big problem with Shane and Jocelyn is their kids are unhappy at school.” So what can you do to solve that?
Well, through all of the vast things that you’ve discovered and you’ve learned and you’ve looked at, you can say, “Well, guys, you know I know this. Parents who have done A, B and C, they’re kids have started to be happier school. They’ve started to look at school in a different way, and they’re starting to react better to it. You can do this once a week with your kids and they’re going to have a better experience and then they’ll come home happy. Then you will be more satisfied. Your kids will do better in school, even though they’re in this rigid system that you don’t know what to do yet.”
So that’s kind of the framework you’ve got to go through whenever you’re thinking about a lead magnet is: problem– what can you do to solve the problem? And then paint a picture of what life will look like for them after they use your solution. That’s not as specific as, “Mark, I think that you should do this,” but at least it gives you kind of parameters you can work in to figure it out.
Mark: Yeah, and I think that’s really important. I think what you’ve pointed out there, which I’m not sure I’ve quite clocked before is the fact that it’s actually doing all the individual links. Part of me would say, “if you’ve listened to the podcast, then you would be able to hear that this teacher has done X in this particular subject, and that would really help you.” But I think what I’d do is, I have a very big assumption that people are doing lots of things because that’s what I think they’re doing, a little bit like you said.
You need to paint the whole picture of the background of what’s going on, and I think the better mode of dialogue for me, as well to just show how all that is and specifically being able to answer those questions and very clearly show that, I think it would probably fill in some of those links, which would help me get there.
Jocelyn: Definitely. I think that’s a great plan, moving forward. Start reaching out to that audience, and let them tell you what they want. That’s such a powerful thing.
Shane: You have to assume that every person that ever finds your content is the first time. Yeah,that’s a big problem that people have is they assume that everyone listens to everything. And, really, this is something even Jocelyn and I started learning and started doing it more lately is, you have to pretty much tell the story every single time and you’ve got to guide people to that one thing that you can do for them.
People get so wild about a hundred opt-ins and doing all these things and that is important. That is what you grow to when you can handle it, but you’ve just got to tell people that one thing over and over, “I can help you, I can help you, I can help you.”
We’ve noticed, over and over lately, the biggest problem people have with starting an online business is time and coming up with an idea. Those two things are really, really hard for people, so that’s what Jocelyn and I’ve been really focused on helping the beginners in our community do, is just focus on those two things.
If we can fix that, the other stuff will come and you’ve just gotta find that one or two things you talk about all the time and who that one or two people you’re talking to is, and once you do that, it’ll make it a lot easier to come up with a product.
Mark: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have to say it’s the one thing that I thought, having listened to your podcast regularly, is that reinforcing of what I think I already know. You know, this is our family situation. This is what we do. This is how we started these things, and actually it feels more familiar and it actually is a very supportive thing, rather than a repetitious thing and I think that feels slightly hard for my point of view because you do just feel like you’re just saying the same things over but actually from an audience point of view, it feels really supportive.
Shane: Jocelyn really struggles with this because Jocelyn is a very direct person. She has high expectations for the other humans around her, so she’s like, “If I told you once,” she tells this to our kids, like, “I told you once. You should know this.” But in business and in life, we have to repeat it kind of over and over again. It was so funny because we’re doing a live event in Nashville in September.
Flip Your Life Live, Nashville for our community.
Someone wrote me a message the other day and I almost blew a gasket and they’re probably listening to this, but I’m not going to say who they are. They said, “Hey, I really feel like I’ve got all this figured out and I just want to know what the content is going to look like at the event, and if we’re going to be talking about X, Y, and Z advanced topics.” And I just sent them a message and I said, “How much money are you making online again?” And they’re making none. And I was like, “You’re not an expert. You need to reinforce the foundations. You need to do things over and over.”
It’s just like my son at basketball practice. Isaac started basketball this year and he’s terrible at it at the beginning of the year but the more he goes to practice, all of a sudden the shots start falling. All of a sudden he’s not dribbling it off his leg. On the way to practice, one day he said, “Dad, I know how to dribble.” So I’m like, “Really? Here’s what we’re going to do.” So I gave him the ball and when we got there, I said, “I want you to dribble the way down the court with your left hand.” “What?” “Yeah, do it. You know how to dribble.” What does he do? He dribbles three in a row. Then he kicks it and it goes flying.
I feel like some people are like, “Someone told me how to do an online business. I’m an expert now,” and they’re dribbling it off their leg because they’re not doing the same thing over and over and building those fundamentals and foundation.
Jocelyn: I would venture to say that we’re pretty good at online business. We’ve been doing this almost six years now and we still go back to the foundations.
Shane: Oh my gosh, every day!
Jocelyn: And talk about it all the time. There is nobody out there who has it all figured out. Or at least, I haven’t met them yet.
Shane: This web design process with me and Jocelyn, I mean, oh, there’s a pure example of this is. We’re sitting there asking the most basic question. “Who is this page targeting? What do they want? How can we give that to them, and then how can we show them what it’s going to be when they do it? To get them to actually opt in or buy it, and that’s exactly what you have to do right now at the beginning of your journey, is figure that out and then it’ll be a lot easier to make those decisions.
Mark: Yeah.
Jocelyn: All right, Mark. Unfortunately, we are just about out of time for today, but before we go, we want to know what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next 24 hours to make progress on your goal and get closer to flipping your life?
Mark: I think the thing I’m going to do is I’m actually going to record a podcast which is directly going to ask exactly the questions we’ve talked about. “What are your frustrations, and how can I help and how can I support you?” And I have done that through some of my emails but I think actually having that direct conversation which is really powerful, which is exactly what’s been so great about this conversation, I think we’ll get a really positive response and really give me the information I need to move forward.
Shane: We usually don’t mess up people’s thing because they’ve got momentum but like I think you should do the podcast, and the same week, schedule a Facebook Live or something, you know? Like, “Hey guys, look, I want to hear from you. You can email them or you can whatever, but guess what? Let’s go talk about this. I’ll be on Facebook live at this time and then let’s do it.” Let’s do it and promote it, and get there, and see if you can get people actually in a room chatting with you. That way you’ll have that true conversation and you’ll get all the information you need.
Mark: Brilliant.
Shane: Alright guys, that’s all the time we have for today. I just want to thank you so much, Mark, for being really transparent, letting us have a look into your life and letting us know that we’re all frustrated, we’re all struggling, we’re all doing something to try to grow our online business. If we’ll just ask the right questions, we’re going to find the answers that we need. So thank you so much for being on the show today!
Mark: I really appreciate it. And on the advice and the support that we have through the community and you guys, it’s just awesome.
Shane: What a great call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. We’d love to have you in our Flip Your Life community 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, too.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of our show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were working at 9-to-5 jobs, still.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is our kids, Isaac and Anna, making their first money online.
It was $24.76 on their YouTube channel — FL Kids. If you haven’t checked it out or subscribed yet, we would love it if you would do that. They love getting new subscribers. They think that it was like the most amazing thing ever when they get subscribers, and/or comment. So, if your kids want to check it out and leave them a comment, we will be sure to show that to them.
All you have to do is go to flkids.tv, and it will take you directly to their YouTube channel, so Isaac and Anna Jo have created this awesome YouTube channel where they play video games, they go on trips.
Anything we do, they want to document it. Isaac says, “Can we vlog this dad?” He’s got his own little vlog there and we also gear it toward teaching like entrepreneurial lessons to kids and also good things. One of their videos that got like 10,000 views, Anna Jo took a squishy toy and cut it open and it squirted everywhere. But at the end of it, they get cleaned up their mess, and said, “Kids, always clean up your mess.”
It’s a really positive channel, really fun channel. We’re working on growing that but we were really surprised to see that like last month, when we pulled up the analytics, we put ads on all of their videos, and Isaac and Anna Jo’s video’s got $24.76 and I always think back to our first money that we made online, which was eleven cents. We got an ad click for eleven cents, and that was kind of what sparked our obsession with making money online. And here, our kids, 9 years old and 6 years old, and just because they’re creating content, just because they’re taking action, just because a nine and six-year-old are doing stuff, doesn’t even matter if it’s good stuff or right stuff or wrong stuff, whatever it is, they’re taking action. In one month they made $24.76, and we actually let them go spend that.
They went and bought some toys and some games on their iPads with it and they learned, “If I put in the work, then I’m going to get the reward.” So what an awesome experience or an awesome example. Anybody out there that’s not taking action, our nine-year-old and six-year-old made money last month on the Internet. What are you doing? What are you waiting for? Get out there so you can have Can’t Miss Moments like this, too.
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. So, before we go, we wanted to share an actual success story from the success forums in the Flip Your Life membership.
Alright, guys, we’ve got an amazing success story for you today. It is from longtime Flip Your Life family member, Ben Landers and he says, “I crossed the 200-member mark this week,” and he’s got like the little emoticon that’s like shocked with his mouth open at the end of his subject line.
Jocelyn: That is awesome, Ben. It says, “What’s up, Flipped Lifers? I just want to just celebrate a pretty big milestone. I announced my price raise two weeks ago, and since then my membership has been selling like hotcakes.” It sounds like a good southernism.
Shane: They’re selling like hotcakes.
Jocelyn: “I just hit 200 yearly members this week.” That is awesome. “I’m super pumped about this, and so glad to see the last three years starting to pay off. Thanks to Shane and Jocelyn and the FYL crew for the help, advice, encouragement, tutorials along the way. Hearing about all your successes has been super motivating to me, so I hope I can return the favor. You can do it!” Wise words from Mr. Ben Sanders. You can do it!
Shane: That’s right. You can do it! Everybody can do this, if you just put your mind to it, put your head down and get it done.
Imagine how Ben feels right now. Imagine if you had 200 people in your membership, 200 people paying you $50 a month would be $10,000 a month. If you had an annual membership and it was a thousand dollars and you had 200 people paying you a thousand dollars a year, that’d be $200,000 a year. Guys, that’s not a lot of people. There are four billion people on the planet earth. Ben found his 200!
Jocelyn: There’s seven billion.
Shane: Oh, there are four billion people on the Internet. That’s right, there are seven billion people on the Earth, four billion people on the internet. We’re getting into technicalities here, but you know what I’m saying! Ben found his 200 people. If you can go find your 200 people, then you can find your niche. You can find your online business that helps you to be free, helps you replace your income, quit your job and change your life.
So what a great example Ben, just that awesome inspiration. Take hold of Ben’s success and think about your life and how you can get those 200 people to.
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 today guys, I want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I close every single one of our shows with a Bible verse. We get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible, and we want to share some of that with you.
Today’s Bible verse comes from 1 Corinthians 9:24, and the Bible says, “Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
Make sure that you are giving every ounce of effort, that you are dedicated to making your online business work and run that race in such a way that you will get the prize and everything will work out in your online business.
That’s all the time that we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and until next time get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life.
We will see you then!
Jocelyn: Bye!
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