Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
“What can I even do online? I don’t have any special skills, I’m a nobody.”
Does this sound familiar?
If you told us 5 years ago that we’d be making thousands of dollars online, we probably wouldn’t have believed you.
Because when we started out, we didn’t know what we were exceptionally good at either!
We didn’t know how to sell a product online.
We didn’t even know if anyone would buy anything from us.
We were just normal school teachers from Kentucky!
How could we possibly create something no one else had already done?
See, that’s the thing!
Even though there’s already a seemingly endless river of content online, we took action and focused on what we can do.
Ask yourself, “What can I create right now?”
You don’t have to be the leading expert in something to start, build and grow your own online business.
The way you present things will be slightly different from everyone else’s because YOU are unique and whatever you create will be a reflection of how you perceive the world.
You don’t need to have the perfect idea to change the world because there’s nothing perfect online — everything is open for improvement.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, because it’s all about being resourceful!
We’ve noticed that people won’t always have the resources to succeed, but whatever they lack in that department, they make up for by being resourceful.
Resourcefulness is the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.
It opens us to opportunities that wouldn’t have been available to us had we relied on just having all the necessary resources.
It keeps us on our toes and allows us to think outside the box.
As entrepreneurs, you will find this skill to be particularly useful since most complex problems often require such “outside the box” thinking.
Speaking of “outside the box,” our guest this week is someone who took initiative and was resourceful enough to find success in his auto detailing business.
We have Corey Doohan on the show and this is his story…
Corey Doohan was born and raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
He received a scholarship to go to Oklahoma, where he met his wife and got a degree in business.
But y’all know the struggle that comes to every graduate.
“What on earth am I going to do next?”
Corey didn’t know what he was going to do to earn a living post-graduation but soon realized that he might as well start somewhere.
“What could he do?”
Well, he knew how to detail cars!
And that’s exactly how he started to work in the auto detailing business.
After years of hard work, expanding his expertise and growing his clientele, he was able to open his own auto detailing shop.
He goes on to run this business for 5 solid years before selling it in December 2017, when they had to move to Minnesota with their 4-month-old son to be closer to their family.
Corey now works as an internet sales manager for Camping World.
But this isn’t where his story ends.
New baby, new State, new house and a new career?
This just gets Corey even more fired up to find a better way to provide for his family AND be able to spend time with them.
He takes his first steps in his online business journey by starting his website, autodetailcourse.com, and a blog, detaillikeapro.com.
Several courses and blog posts later, he realizes that it’s not gaining as much traction as he expected and goes on to call the cavalry for help.
(Clue: We are the cavalry!)
What do you do when you’ve got content created and no one’s paying it any attention?
In this episode, we’ll dive deep into how you can target your audience using keyword-rich content and why it’s important to speak the right language when you’re marketing your brand.
Tune in and find out how we help Corey take his online business idea to the next level.
You Will Learn:
- The importance of resourcefulness to your success
- Targeting your audience with keyword-rich content
- Marketing: How to see what you’ve already created
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- How to Build Confidence
- 5 Tips for Getting Your Spouse On Board with Your Online Business
- Corey’s Auto Detail Course
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:
This week’s success story from the Flip Your Life community comes from Carolyn Lincoln and the title of her success story post is, “I finished my course, and got amazing customer feedback.”
Carolyn says,
“My success story is that I’ve got subscribers, a new course, and that I got an awesome email with customer feedback. I have a new course called ‘Improve your dog’s behavior,’ and it’s finally all set up to promote and sell. I have slides, handouts and b-roll later. I’m waiting for feedback to keep improving it, but I manually sold it to three people about two weeks ago, and I got great feedback from all. One email was over the top. My list is now over 300 subscribers. Yay! I have an ongoing Facebook ad. I now need to work on a second one. It’s not time to promote the course. Wish me luck!”
She has been ready to launch that course for a while, she finally put it out there, and she got not just her first sale but also an awesome customer feedback. We love it! Congratulations, Carolyn! Your success story is a great source of inspiration and encouragement, that if you put in the work, you’ll reap the rewards.
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 visiting the indoor water park. It’s called Wilderness at the Smokies.
Not long ago, we took a trip down to the Smoky Mountains and stayed at the Wilderness Hotel, which has an indoor waterpark. It’s something we do a lot, and you might have heard us talk about this in the past on Can’t Miss Moments, but it’s something that we really enjoy. It’s a fun thing to do in the winter here because there aren’t a lot of options sometimes, especially when it’s like 20 degrees like today, but we had a great time. The kids love it because they’re starting to run around by themselves a little bit more now.
That’s a cool Can’t Miss Moment: Your children being old enough to keep themselves alive. That’s pretty awesome!
We loved the waterpark, I always think back when we were like trying to plan a weekend trip or trying to get away. We used to be like, “Oh my gosh, what’s the cheapest option? The cheapest hotel, the cheapest this, the cheapest that.” And that has kind of went away a little bit.
It’s all because of this amazing thing called online business, where we can make our money online while we’re at the waterparks. What’s always awesome is when we check our numbers, and we’ll be like sitting at the Waterpark, Jocelyn will be reading her magazine and the kids are in the pool and I’m sitting there beside her or maybe eating some pizza or something, and I’ll be like, “Hey, we just got a sale.” We’re in this waterpark having fun, spending time together, doing our thing, and we’re still making money online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s just an amazing thing and we really want you to have those Can’t Miss Moments too. So what are you waiting for? Take action. Start Your online business!
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: On today’s podcast, we help Corey take his online business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright, let’s get started.
What’s going, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Super excited to be back with you again this week. Cannot wait to talk to this guy. We’re going to have an awesome member of the Flip Your Life community on the show today and help him take his business to the next level.
All the way from Minnesota, it’s Corey Doohan.
Corey, how you doing, man?
Corey: Woo! Fantastic! Thank you so much for asking.
Shane: When we were getting ready to do the show, we always ask people how to pronounce their names because as longtime listeners of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast know, people from Kentucky cannot pronounce names right. You know what I’m saying? And I said, “Is your name, ‘Do-Han’?” And he said, “No, it’s like, ‘Do-in’,” and I said, “Well, that’s great because that’s how I actually say that, like, ‘What are you ‘Doin’ this weekend?”
Corey: It’s like, “How you doin’? How you doin’, man?”
Shane: I got that. We don’t have G’s in Appalachia. We don’t use G’s at the end of words. Yeah, you got to shorten this stuff.
Jocelyn: Corey, before we jump in and start talking about your business, we want you to tell us a little bit about you, your family, and your background.
Corey: So I was born and raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, got a scholarship to go to school in Oklahoma, met my wife there, we lived there since 2013 and had our four-month-old boy and moved up to Minnesota closer to family.
During that time, I started in auto detailing business and I ran that for five years pretty successfully. Took care of our family, sold it December 2017, and up here in Minnesota, I am now the Internet sales manager at Camping World where they sell RVs and that’s me in a nutshell.
Shane: How is detailing work in Minnesota? Because it’s really cold there. You’re cleaning these cars, you’re cleaning them out, you’re doing the spic and span on the inside, but where are you washing them at? Like inside and stuff, like when that was going on, where were you doing it?
Corey: Not outside, let me tell you that. But if you owned a car wash, you actually wash your car more in the winter than you do in the summer. Car washes make more money during the winter than they do summer, so that’s kind of a crazy fact that blow people away.
Shane: Why did you sell it? Why did you sell the business?
Corey: Main reason, I guess, was I was located in Oklahoma and we were wanting to move to Minnesota, a little closer to the family.
Shane: Oh, I see. This was back in Oklahoma, where you had this?
Corey: Yeah, I couldn’t really reopen another shop up in Minnesota because it’s colder up here. I could have, but I didn’t have a shop up here. It’s too much, it’s too much. I had a guy down there in Oklahoma, he actually had a lot washing business so he goes around to all the dealerships and lot wash and then he was looking to get into the detail and business. That’s what I had, so he bought me out. So I packed up my bags, head up north. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to live the dream online.
Shane: Exactly. I was so excited when we first read your story and read about you and that you had done this detailing thing.
It’s so funny because I told Jocelyn, “I can’t wait to talk to this guy!” because my dad when we were growing up… like my dad is an insurance agent, right? He has an insurance business. He’s really into politics and he’s an older guy, he always wants to talk about the economy and stuff like that. He always used to tell me– my dad is the ultimate plan B guy. He’s got plans C, D, E, P, Q, you know, he’s got all the plans right, he’s ready to go.
One of his plans was, he’s like, “Here’s what you do, Shane. If the economy goes bad, you lose your job, whatever happens,” he goes, “People are always going to have cars so you can just go detail their car. That’s all you’ve got to do. You go pick them up while they’re at work, you take them in, you wash them.” And I was like, “This is my dad’s guy! Corey’s living my dad’s idea right here.”
Jocelyn: Living the dream!
Corey: I really got to talk to your dad because I’m telling you when I was in college and you’re getting close to graduation date and you’re like, “What on earth am I going to do when I graduate?” I have no idea. No one wants to hire me. I’ve applied to a bunch of places. I don’t have any experience. I’m a nobody. Well, I can wash a car and I could detail a car. One thing led to another, just kept building more clientele and ended up being my full-time gig.
Shane: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Corey: You can do it.
Shane: I’m really excited for your online business because the biggest thing that we find separates people from winning and losing online is their resourcefulness. A lot of us don’t have resources. We don’t have a lot of time, we may not have a lot of money, but if we get really resourceful we can figure out a way to make it work, and that’s what you’ve done.
Jocelyn: And I love it that you did it just right out of college too because I remember when I graduated from college a few years ago–
Shane: Pfft. A few.
Jocelyn: A little more than a few years ago.
Shane: All caps and bold?
Jocelyn: Almost 20 years ago, but we won’t go there. Anyway, so when I graduated from college, I just remember that I had a really hard time finding a job because we live in a small town and there just weren’t a whole lot of jobs available. I wish at that time I would have been courageous enough to say, “Oh, well, let me start my own thing,” because I mean obviously there were plenty of things I could’ve done, but it took me almost 20 years to realize…
Shane: “I can do whatever I want with my life.”
Jocelyn: I can do something else, I don’t have to go with the norm. I don’t have to do what the rest of society does. I can do something different. So, that’s awesome, I’m like so excited for you that you had the foresight to do that.
Shane: So right now, you got a brand new baby, just moved to a new area.
Corey: Got a house.
Shane: Got rid of your old business, got a house. So tell us a little bit now about your online business idea. You got a job now, you got to steady, you’re up there getting situated, getting moved in, awesome decision to probably just sell your business and not try to jump into something new because Jocelyn and I can attest too much stuff too fast is crazy like moving and doing new things and all that. Now you’re ready to kind of get back into the groove, tell us about your online business idea.
Corey: Basically, I had my auto detail shop. It fluctuated because of seasonal hours and how many employees I had. But I ran into this problem where I constantly had to train these guys in person or have my manager train them. Essentially I was like, “This is a waste of time, I need to create some videos to kind of show them what to do.”
Then I started making these videos and then that kind of led to, “Well, I could do this for other people, not just my shop. What about other shops? What about dealerships?” It just kind of morphed into that.
I created autodetailcourse.com and threw a course on there and you know, just trying to build the need of, you have someone that, “Oh, yeah, I’d love to auto detail, that’s a great idea, but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know the first thing about it.” So I’m hoping to fill that need and I have that on there. I have a blog detaillikeapro.com.
It has no traction whatsoever, but I did some work. I put a lead magnet together. I got like 15 blog posts, I got an auto detail course. I’ve got a couple of free courses on there as well, not getting traction. So I’m like, “I need to talk to Shane and Jocelyn.”
Shane: That’s what we’re here for, right?
Jocelyn: We will try to help you.
Shane: So let me ask you a couple of questions just to follow up real quick to get some context. The courses that you have, are they just auto detailing or are they also about “Here’s how you have to run your business and actually be a business owner and pay your taxes,” and do all these things, or is it just like, “Okay, here’s how to do a car?”
Corey: Great question. They are only auto detailing.
Shane: OK. This is very interesting because a lot of people do this. You created a bunch of digital things that almost when you looked at them, you were like, “I think that’s a digital product. I could sell those to someone,” and now you’re looking at what the next evolution of that is, so it’s not just walk up to a car lot and say, “Hey, you can teach your guys how to clean cars with my course and save some money.” Now it’s like, “Well, wait a minute. Could I teach other people in other places how to start a business like this?” That’s what you’re going toward, right?
Corey: Yeah. I’m trying to shoot towards helping people start their own small business with auto detailing.
Shane: Have you sold any of these courses? Have you sold any of these videos already? In the real world or anything?
Corey: In person, I have sold a couple. I had a booth at a show and I got maybe 15 email addresses and sold a couple. But I’ve never sold anything online strictly like someone I never met.
Shane: So let me ask you this real quick, and this is something we always ask everybody. You’ve had a little success selling these to car lots and stuff like that. So why online business? Why do you want to take this to the next level? Just because you feel like that’s how you’re going to reach these other people and that can scale better? Why online instead of, “Let’s just sell these car lots or sell these to something else?”
Corey: Yeah. I think trying to scale, like you, said is a good reason to go online. I can only meet so many people in a day myself personally, but if I put my products and my videos online, who knows how many people might be able to find me. So that’s kind of the logic.
Shane: Do you have any emails? Have you collected any contacts or anything?
Corey: I have not very many emails, I got like 15 for this specific blog for my previous customers from my small auto detail business, I have like 500. But I haven’t touched that list because that’s kind of a different list if that makes sense, but those customers still might be interested in auto detailing themselves too, I don’t know.
Shane: Sure.
Jocelyn: Yeah, absolutely. You have a good start. Even then, you haven’t been doing much, as far as like the online business side goes. I like where you’re headed and I think that we can help you to move this thing forward.
Shane: Also, you’ve got the seeds for a really awesome digital masterclass on how to start an auto detailing business because you’ve already got all the videos on how to clean the car. That’s the hard part. You know what I mean? The rest of it is like that’s like you on a whiteboard telling people how to run their business and, “How do you balance your checkbook? How do you manage your employees?” That’s all the easy stuff you’re just talking.
Jocelyn: It’s nice to hear that you have some of it already figured.
Shane: Also, you’ve got 15 real human beings that signed up for that actual blog.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think people sometimes discount that. They’re like, “Oh, well it’s only 15 people.” I mean, those are 15 people that said, “I’m interested in this.”
Shane: That’s 15 humans. The guy just lost his job (maybe), and got online and thought, “Well, I can clean cars.” That’s you when you figured this out and he just wants a little help doing it and he’s just looking for that help.
I just looked it up, I got the Google AdWords keyword tool pulled up, and ‘auto detailing business’, ‘how to start auto detailing’ and things like that are getting like over a thousand searches a month. This other term is getting, it says 10,000 to 100,000, you know. I believe there are going to be more people out there that you think that are looking for this. It’s just going to be how you present it more than anything else.
Jocelyn: Alright, as you’re getting this thing started, I know that there are probably some things that are maybe holding you back because everyone struggles with these mindset issues. So we want to know what, so far, is your biggest fear, what is your confidence issue, what are you struggling with, mindset-wise as far as getting this thing online and getting it rolling?
Corey: Probably just myself. I don’t know. I don’t have the confidence of “OK, let me put something out into the world, and get email addresses and get people to buy it.” I don’t actually know what I’m missing. And, uh, I’m sure you guys could see it plain as day. That’s kind of where I’m at right now.
Shane: It’s almost like the fear of the unknown. I remember back when we first started. I always looked at all these other people, and I could see them doing it. It’s easy to wrap your brain around, “I’m going to start an auto detailing business. I’m going to physically get in the car and move my arms.” It’s easy to say, “Hey, I’ll just go grab another job,” but when you see other people making money online and you’re like, “Is that really even possible? That’s got to be complicated.” Is that what you’re talking about? That kind of mindset?
Corey: Sure! I mean, I think I have also Shiny Object Syndrome as well. And I haven’t been able to focus on one thing at a time. I think that’s my other problem.
Shane: We’re going to get to this a little later, but anyone who comes to us and they’re like, “Well, I’ve got this website, and I’ve got this other website and I’ve got an idea for two more with three domains that I bought last night at 3:00 AM.”
Like, that’s usually where we’re like, “Whoa, boy, hold the horses. We gotta we gotta slow this down.”
Jocelyn: Never mind we’re not selling anything on any of the websites, but you know, whatever.
Shane: Here’s a general rule of thumb, guys: if you haven’t made money on one website, don’t start a second one. We’re just going to leave that one at that, okay?
Corey: That’s good.
Jocelyn: All right. So that is definitely a concern that a lot of people have is not knowing if this is the right thing for you and try to figure out, “OK, what should I concentrate on first?”
Shane: And you’re doing the right thing. Because the reason a lot of people in with that struggle, fail, is because they don’t go get help. They just sit and try and figure it out until they’re so frustrated, they just throw up their hands and go do whatever they’re doing.
Corey: Yeah, exactly.
Shane: Getting help and getting yourself around other people who are doing this is going to really take that to the next level.
Jocelyn: With that in mind, what outside influences are you trying to overcome in this journey? Maybe things like time, technology struggles.
Shane: People in your life.
Corey: Man, I am wracking my brain right now. I mean, when you asked me that question, I feel like, “There’s nothing that can stop me!” There’s nothing that can hold back and, so I’m really trying to rack my brain. I think it’s just myself. I just have this a lack of confidence that I know what I’m doing, and that I’m going to take the right steps to help people find my product.
Shane: And that’s so true. That’s one thing that Jocelyn and I look back. We always evaluate where we’ve been and where we’re going. The cool thing was, Jocelyn and I actually did have a really good technology background just through life. We both kind of grew up using computers.
Jocelyn: (cough) Nerds. Oops! Sorry. (laughs)
Shane: We didn’t have to do some things… we’re nerds, a little bit, you know what I mean? And like, and we really got the time thing under control early in our journey. It was just the mindset issues, or maybe a hater or two that were kind of holding us back and it wasn’t necessary. I think that’s important.
I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we all look for all the things that could hold us back instead of just saying, “Really, if I just figure this one thing out, I will probably win.”
Is your spouse on board with you going online and doing this?
Corey: 100% absolutely.
Shane: That is awesome.
Jocelyn: Yeah, that is definitely an amazing thing.
Shane: That is an unfair advantage, my friend, for many people out there.
Corey: It is.
Jocelyn: Yes, I love it, let’s run with that. Corey, let’s now start talking about how can we help you get to the next level and flip your life? What is the biggest question that you have right now when it comes to your online business?
Corey: What can I do today and tomorrow that is going to grow my email list?
Jocelyn: Alright, I love those two words, today and tomorrow, because you’re a man of action. I like this.
Shane: That’s right, that’s right. We’re moving forward. He is ready for the action step at the end of this podcast.
Jocelyn: Shane and I are big action takers, so we love that we’re all for that.
Shane: The two things we’re probably going to tell you are really counterintuitive. It’s going to throw you for a loop.
Number one, I think your product needs to be for sale, but in a different way. Like you need to go ahead and change your sales page, change your everything. Anything you’ve already created that’s just like, “Here’s how to clean the cars.” It needs to be, “How to start a business, how to be self-employed, how to work for yourself,” because you’re not actually selling an auto detail business, you’re selling a new life.
You’re selling a new career to the people who are going to find you, and the reason you probably aren’t getting a lot of traction so far, is because you’re really targeting on the auto detailing business part of it instead of thinking who would want a new job, what would they search for? Maybe they searched for MLM opportunities. Maybe they searched for, “How to do physical labor jobs.”
Jocelyn: Or, “How to make extra money.”
Shane: How to make extra money. How to make an extra $100 a month. That’s probably what’s holding you back right now from growing a little bit, is because you’re trying to be so specific. I know this guy in Canada and he has a business where he was out of a job during the great recession, right? So, what he did was he started going around to businesses that were not shutting their windows. He’s like, “Well, they must be riding out the recession because my business sure didn’t.” And he went up to them and said, “Hey, your parking lot has lots of trash in it. I’ll come in every night and for 20 bucks, I’ll come clean your thing, it’ll costs you a hundred bucks, but you’re going to have a clean parking lot, whatever, do this.”
So he just went to all these places and started doing that. And then he realized anyone could do this if they were out of a job. He created a course, but he never sold it as picking up trash. None of his commercials were about picking up trash. Nothing until you got to the sales page, basically told you what he would be doing. He just sold it as “I’ve figured out a way to make a living. I figured out a way how to only work from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM, and have my days free to go hang out with my kids and eat lunch with them at school,” and he sold it in a way to show them what life could look like if you pursued this business that anybody could do. And I think that’s exactly where you’re going to be right now.
Corey: Wow.
Jocelyn: I want to also wonder; what content are you making? I know that you said you had some videos. Are you doing regularly scheduled content on your website?
Shane: And is it like, “Here’s the correct motion to wipe an Armor All on the dashboard,” or is it like, “Oh, you’re out of work? Here are three things you could do right now. Clean a car, detail a car, service a car,” whatever. You know what I mean? Like, “What are you making right now?”
Corey: Those are two different night and day things. So I am doing the first thing. I am teaching you how to properly put that tire shine on that tire, not even breathing a word about the income potential of starting your own auto detail business. So I can definitely see the perception and then the creation of what you would do. It’s totally different, totally different.
Shane: There’s going to be a line in the sand in your content where, I’ll be honest with you, all this stuff about the detailing should never be talked about publicly. That should be in the thing, then make it sound like magic. Make detailing sound like the hardest thing in the world and you teach it in your course, but then you’ve got to go back and say this. You need to go write a blog post about “Man, auto detailing paid for my family’s trip to Disney in 2016,” or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, “Auto detailing paid my bills, and you know, when I got out of college I didn’t need my degree because I worked for myself.”
You’ve got to show people publicly what their life is going to look like after you solve their problem, and then when they give you money, you will give them your solution to their problem. Does that make sense?
Corey: Makes perfect sense and that’s a total shift in my thinking.
Shane: What were your domains called? What were your two domains called?
Corey: autodetailcourse.com, and then I also had a blog site, detaillikeapro.com.
Shane: Yeah, I think those are both really too– it’s too vocational, and I’m not against anything vocational. That’s eventually what you’re going to teach them. We need to make it sound cooler, like, “Clean your way to a new life.” I don’t know what it’s called, we’ll talk about that later. It could even be coreydoohan.com.
We’ve got to sell them like you’re a pro, you can change their life, you did this before, you know you could do it again, and you’ll teach them how to do it, too. That’s what you’re going to have to do.
Corey: I love it! I love it. Thank you so much for that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and you’re an expert at this. You started out, you needed to make money, you needed to figure out a way how to do that, and so you did it. There’s no worrying about, “Oh, I don’t know if people are going to trust me.” Of course, they are because you’ve done this before.
Shane: You’ve done this before, like period.
Corey: Sometimes it’s hard to see the picture when you’re in the frame. I get it.
Jocelyn: Yes.
Shane: When you’re an expert, you’re usually an expert at the gears. You’re usually expert about which buttons to push and what order. That’s how we all are. Like when I was a football coach, and I sold football playbooks, I taught people how to draw plays and run practices, but I sold people that I could help them not lose eight games next year, I could help them win more games than they lost.
Jocelyn: Really, I think your issue is a marketing issue.
Shane: Yup.
Jocelyn: It has nothing to do with what you’ve created. What you’ve created is fine, it’s just that you need to market it differently.
Corey: You’re absolutely right. I can see that definitely being the issue because I have put so much work into the technical aspects of this. I’ve got 12 modules and step-by-step-by-step, and I put very technical information to my blog post, and I’m like, “Well, what’s the deal? Why is this not picking up traction? And it’s like, “Well, because they’re bored out of their tree probably, and no one cares.”
- FYL Commercial: Start –
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, Tennessee this September.
Shane: You are 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.
- FYL Commercial: End –
Corey: That’s probably the reason.
Jocelyn: You’re selling them car technobabble when what they need to hear is, “Here’s an opportunity and here’s the way to go after that opportunity.” Nobody is searching for how to put tire shine on tires.
Shane: I know, right? Like, nobody is looking for that. But they are searching for ‘auto detailing business,’ I looked it up.
So what that person is not thinking, “Man, if I could just spit-shine that tire. Oh, gosh, I’m telling you.” What they’re thinking of is, “Is it possible to make a living doing that, and having the freedom to schedule cars when I want them?” To be able to do things like that– that’s what they’re really wanting. Even if you check our business right now, Flipped Lifestyle, we don’t go, “We will teach you the mechanics of how to set up your autoresponder software to automatically email people every day.”
No, what we do say is, “By gosh, we sent out a few emails and we made like 35,000 in a month, and we quit our jobs,” because that’s the result of all those little mechanical things that you are going to eventually have to learn. Everyone’s going to have to learn that what you’re teaching them. That’s not what they need to push them over the edge to make them buy your product.
Jocelyn: I think that you need to do a combination of things. I think that you need to go after people who maybe have never even considered this before, and then you also need to create content for people who would like to start an auto detailing business, but they’re really not sure how. Those are going to be things like how to find customers for your auto detailing business, how to market in your auto detailing business.
Shane: How do I use Facebook to promote– that’s the stuff you’re thinking of. Nothing free should ever be you climbing in a car to show them where the Q-tip goes to get the funk out of the cup holder. You know what I’m saying? Save that for the paid stuff because they are going to have to learn that.
Jocelyn: Yes, because people do need to know that, but they need to know that after you have wowed them with your beautiful marketing packaging that this could change your life.
Corey: Yeah, I basically have done all the work for the technical aspect part of it. It’s just the marketing that I need to figure out at this point.
Shane: I think we’re going to have to have a better name. It doesn’t make sense what you’re really selling. You named your domain name a course, and really the domain name is not even important. But you named it after what your course actually teaches, which is fine.
Jocelyn: And you can leave your course stuff there.
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: But I would also have a marketing thing.
Shane: I think this is really a named brand kind of thing right now. You either need to name it something we come up with that makes it really clear that it’s like autodetailingbusiness.com or something. It’s like, that word business, or positioning you as the face of the company is where this probably needs to start. You can always change it later if you ever wanted to do that.
So, with that in mind, we basically said new target and new branding. Those are the two things that are counter-intuitive. You’re kind of like, “Let’s go get as many people I can to clean cars.” No, that’s not what we’re doing here. With that new framework in mind, and I can see questions you submitted here, but let’s, let’s see if we’re going in different directions.
Corey: Yeah, we are. We’re totally going in a different direction.
Shane: What question now do you have to build on that next? Like what’s the follow up to that for you?
Corey: What’re the next 200 questions that I have for you? Right!
Shane: That’s what the forums are for in the Flip Your Life community.
Corey: Exactly!
Shane: Member calls. We’ve got plenty of member calls, Corey, coming up. You know what I mean?
Corey: Guys, I’m so excited to be able to post some of these questions in the forums to get other people to help me brainstorm essentially my marketing aspect side of it. I think, right now, I’m going to have to redo my perfect avatar. I can see that’s really changing.
I think that if I can just find out– I don’t know, I guess what is the most important thing for me to focus on right now?
Shane: Usually the best thing to do is to work backward from what you really need to end up at in the next step.
The next thing you’ve got to get to is, your sales page has got to say, not “Learn how to clean the tire, learn how to wipe the windows.” It’s got to say the right things to sell it to the person who wants to start a business.
If you go to Flipped Lifestyles page, you will not see a name of a single course inside of our thing, you won’t see it. You will see results. “We will help you define your perfect customer and find them.” “We will help you get your products to market.” But you’re not going to see what the actual course is.
When we sold lesson plans publicly, Jocelyn’s sales page was hilarious for Elementary Librarian, because you know how like everybody’s got their 15 checks of everything that’s included in their big project?
Jocelyn’s was like, two lines. And it was like, “Lessons every day of the year, never plan a lesson, how you doing? Give me money.” It sold like hotcakes.
I think that we need to start at the sales page and figure out, OK, that’s the end game because now people can buy something from you. Well, what do we have to do there? We have to figure out what that’s going to say.
Then we look back and say, “Okay, who’s that talking to?” So we’re going to define that Avatar.
And then we can look back and say, “Well, wait a minute. If we’re selling this, we need to know what assets we need to create.” We’ve already got the auto detailing, so now we’ve got to do the business side of it, okay.
So working backward usually is the best way to figure that stuff out.
Going from the sales page, back to the Avatar, back to what courses we’re going to have to add to actually help someone run a business that will help us write that sales page.
Now, I want to stress here, just because we make an outline of those courses doesn’t mean we’re going to go ahead and create them right now.
We’re just going to get them on the sales page and then we’ll create them as people join, it’s called pre-selling.
So I think those are probably the three things you got to figure out. You’ve got to figure out those three things to move forward.
Corey: And I wanted to just throw this example out here real quick that I’m super excited about it because when I was doing my auto detailing business, I had never sold a gift card online. I had tried to do that and I was like, I kind of worked backward, just like you said, you kind of work backward and put the dream out in front. I said, “Hey, what is the best gift you could give someone who has everything? Well, how about having their car cleaned buy this gift certificate at our business?” Blah-blah-blah. Man, it sold great, I made a lot of money off of that.
Shane: And that would be a great course! That’s a great course about how to offer gift cards to run your business and make it better.
Jocelyn: Yes, exactly, so really you just need to start thinking in that way. I think that’s the most important thing for you right now is to think, “Okay, how can I make this look appealing to someone who is thinking about changing something in their life?” When you start to do that, and you start saying, “Okay, well, what can I offer this person? What kind of content would this person want?” That’s what’s going to help you.
Corey: That’s popping up in my mind right now that you guys can just blow out of the park. But I’m thinking in my head like,”Well, if they’re looking to get into an auto detail business is, does that mean they don’t have any money right now? They don’t have a job right now and they can’t buy my course?”
Shane: Not necessarily. No. Here’s the deal. I heard this great analogy for this one time at a conference or I think it was a conference, or I watched a teleconference. Can’t remember what it was, but this guy was onstage and he basically said, “People will find resources for things they think that they need or they think that they really, really want.”
This guy told a story about how his parents, you know, they were always poor growing up, right? And they would send him to school and he would basically have to do free and reduced lunch. Like he had a number, he didn’t have to pay for his lunch because he got free and reduced lunch because his parents were low-income earners and they didn’t have enough money to send him to school, right? They didn’t really feel like that was necessary because the school helped cover that.
Then he goes, but you know what? They both smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and they always found enough money to buy those cigarettes, so they felt like that was important to them right there in that moment.
If someone feels like something can change their life like, you’re not talking about cleaning cars here, bro. You’re talking about someone changing the direction of their family’s future and starting their own business. That’s amazing!
If you can present it that way and let people understand guys, this is an opportunity for you to control your schedule, to grow as big as you want to do whatever you want with your time to hire employees so that you can go do other stuff while they’re cleaning the cars.
If you can present it in that way, this is a life-changing opportunity. They’re going to find those resources. Also, not everyone’s going to be out of work. Some people are just going to be like, “Man, I really like to work with my hands, and I love seeing cars and stuff like that.”
Jocelyn: Or I need something to do on the weekends.
Shane: Yeah! There’s going to be so many people that come to you. The Why is not important.
Corey: Extra spending money.
Shane: Yeah, if I need $500 a month so I can pay for my family’s vacation.
Jocelyn: And there will be people who will say, “You know what, this is too expensive. I’m going to find all this information for free.” That’s fine, but it’s not all in one place. It’s not going to be conveniently packaged. Is there a way to find the same information you’re selling online? Probably. But you know, it’s not going to be as convenient and who knows if those people actually have experience doing it?
Corey: Yeah.
Shane: And there are so many ways that you can present this to people on top of that. But not only that, I see that people were actually looking for auto detailing business. Like there’s a lot of people looking for this right now to try to figure out how to do it, but I’m looking at all these other keywords that are being searched for actually in Google, ‘auto detailing near me’ is searched for almost a hundred thousand times a month.
What a great blog post to write to sell this is, “Did you know guys that 100,000 people a month are looking for someone to detail their car near them? What if that someone was you? What if you had your own auto detailing business and these people could give you their money to instead of somebody else for a bad job?”
Corey: Sign me up, Shane! Where do I sign up?
Shane: Exactly, right? I know right? We’re going into business together. Partner me up, Corey! But this is why it’s not getting traction now though, is you’re like, “Hey guys, come and look how to wipe the back bumper– stop.” You know what I mean? It’s not working. But once you make this little shift, worry about the people who do want it, don’t worry about the people who don’t. You’re going to be able to make this thing work like Gangbusters and sell this.
If you have a $500 course on this — and that’s totally worth it too, by the way, because you’re changing someone’s life, you’re helping them start a business– we’re talking 10 customers a month and you’re making $5,000 a month.
Corey: Yeah, that’s life-changing for my family. Yeah!
Shane: Exactly, exactly. So you know, I think we’re going in a really good direction with this and that we really just need to start taking one step at a time toward the end game.
Jocelyn: Alright, Corey, it’s been a fun conversation today. I think that you’re really just going to take this and run with it. I can’t wait to see what you do.
So with that in mind, we want to know what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next 24 hours or so to make progress on your goal and get closer to flipping your life.
Corey: Wow! Thank you so much, guys! I’m thinking about posting in the forums about brainstorming an idea for kind of a brand and a domain name. I think that’s a good step, and then I’m going to kind of outline just kind of my marketing strategy from this perspective of trying to sell the dream and not sell the shine.
Shane: That’s awesome, that’s a great way to say that. And I want to just free-throw in here at the very end of this conversation. You know, we get an intake form. People who’ve not been on the podcast or our Flip Your Life members, when they get picked to be on the podcast, they go fill out a form, and me and Jocelyn get some information.
One -of your questions here was, “Should I switch from car detailing to detailing RVs?” I read that and I was like, that is such a common thing that people do is, they freak out because it’s like, “Man, this thing I thought about isn’t what I thought.”
Corey: It’s not working!
Shane: “It’s not working, so I’m going to switch over to this thing.”
And we’re like, “No, you’re sitting on bags of gold. You’re just like not pulling the string right to open it, you know.” It’s so funny where this conversation was going to go, to where it is now. It was just awesome because that’s why we mastermind.
Corey: Well, I am so thankful for you guys. Yeah, because definitely, if we’re led to our own devices, we’re just, who knows where we’ll end up. But that’s why I was able to get connected with you guys and you guys can be like, “Woah, hang on, we’re on the other side of the minefield. Go this way!” I’m like, “Oh, thanks.”
Shane: We have a Hashtag on the community: “We’re always better together.” And I really appreciate you coming on and talking to us today, and we had a great conversation, but just sharing your struggles and just talking about this stuff publicly, I don’t think people realize how amazing our community is and how the people in it are just so awesome because it’s hard to come on and say, “Hey man, I can’t figure this out. I need help.”
Corey: Kind of humbling.
Shane: Yes, but when other people on the podcast hear that, it lets them know they’re not alone either. We all need help at times, and if we would all just work together, we can figure this stuff out.
We’re going to keep working with you, Corey, and uh, we’re going to get this done, and we’re going to make sure this thing is as successful as that auto detailing business was so that you can flip your life again because you’ve done it once before. Let’s get in the forums, get to work, and we’ll do that man. So thanks for coming on the show today!
Corey: Thank you, guys! Love you, guys.
Shane: Another awesome call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. To learn more about our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippelifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business today.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our regular 9-to-5 jobs.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is visiting the indoor water park. It’s called Wilderness at the Smokies. Not long ago, we took a trip down to the Smoky Mountains and stayed at the Wilderness Hotel, which has an indoor waterpark. This is really cool. It’s something we do a lot, and you might have heard us talk about this in the past on Can’t Miss Moments, but it’s something that we really enjoy. It as a fun thing to do in the winter here because there aren’t a lot of options sometimes, especially when it’s like 20 degrees like today, but it was a great time. The kids love it. They are starting to be able to run around by themselves a little bit more now.
Shane: Anna Jo’s even tall enough to ride all the slides now, which is pretty epic.
Jocelyn: So I bring a big stack of magazines with me, and I sit there and let them run around in waterpark. There are lifeguards just so you know, and I’m not ignoring my children. Nobody called social services or anything like that. I am watching them. But now that they’re nine and seven, I’m able to kind of not keep my eye on them every single second to make sure that they’re still alive. So that is definitely a Can’t Miss Moment.
Shane: That is a Can’t Miss Moment. Your children being old enough to keep themselves alive. That’s pretty awesome! But we love the indoor waterpark, too. And I always think back when we were like trying to plan a weekend trip or trying to get away. We used to be like, “Oh my gosh, what’s the cheapest option? The cheapest hotel, the cheapest this, the cheapest that.” And that has kind of went away a little bit.
I mean we’re all but we’re very responsible people with our money, but you know, when we want to get away for the weekend, and it’s winter time, we want to go to the indoor waterpark. We don’t really look at the latest price or the deals or anything like that. We just say, “Let’s go there, let’s get a room and let’s do it.” And that’s just a very freeing experience to have the resources to be able to do that.
It’s all because of this amazing thing called online business, where we can make our money online while we’re at the waterparks. What’s always awesome is when we check our numbers, and we’ll be like sitting at the Waterpark, Jocelyn will be reading her magazine and the kids are in the pool and I’m sitting there beside her or maybe eating some pizza or something, and I’ll be like, “Hey, we just got a sale.” We’re in this waterpark having fun, spending time together, doing our thing, and we’re still making money online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s just an amazing thing and we really want you to have those Can’t Miss Moments too. So what are you waiting for? Take action. Start Your online business.
We love to talk about our Can’t Miss Moment with you guys each week right here on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, but there is one thing we like to talk about even more and that is the success stories from the members of our Flip Your Life community.
This week’s success story from the Flip Your Life community comes from Carolyn Lincoln and the title of her success story post is, “I finished my course, and got amazing customer feedback.”
Jocelyn: Carolyn says, “My success story is that I’ve got subscribers, a new course and that I got an awesome email with customer feedback. I have a new course called ‘Improve your dog’s behavior,’ and it’s finally all set up to promote and sell. I have slides, handouts, and b-roll later.” Love it, Carolyn. Good job! “I’m waiting for feedback to keep improving it, but I manually sold it to three people about two weeks ago, and I got great feedback from all. One email was over the top. My list is now over 300 subscribers. Yay! I have an ongoing Facebook ad. I now need to work on a second one. It’s not time to promote the course. Wish me luck!”
Shane: And this was a long time coming for Carolyn. She has been ready to launch that course for a while, and she finally put it out there, and she got her first sale. She got amazing feedback, and we can all be inspired by Carolyn’s actions, and get out there and put our stuff out there, too.
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, we want to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspirations and motivation from the Bible and we want to pass that along.
Today’s Bible verse is one of my favorites. It comes from Ecclesiastes 11:4, and the Bible says, “He who observes the wind and waits for all conditions to be favorable will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.” Now, what this Bible verse is saying, guys, it’s a very fancy way to say, “It ain’t got to be perfect.”
You can’t wait around in your online business for all conditions to be favorable. You can’t wait for the right opportunity for the clouds and the wind to blow by the perfect chance. You just have to take action, so go out there and sow the seeds and get ready to reap the harvest.
That is all the time we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life.
We will see you then!
Jocelyn: Bye!
Leave a Reply