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Isn’t it frustrating how we tend to be hypercritical about ourselves to the point that we sometimes end up walking away from those rare, life-changing opportunities?
Think about it.
WHY are we inclined to be more supportive, if not tolerant, of other’s quirks than we are of ourselves?
“But it’s true, I’m not good enough at…”
Pause.
Hold it right there, buddy!
Just because you’re not the best at everything, doesn’t mean you’re not good at something.
The first step to unlocking your potential is to acknowledge that YOU HAVE POTENTIAL!
You don’t have to stay stuck there, being a peg in the machine, because YOU are more than capable of overcoming ANY obstacle.
You just gotta take initiative and put yourself out there because nothing worthwhile comes to us without putting in the necessary time and effort.
But don’t fret, there’s a way to make this journey a whole LOT easier!
“What do I need to do?”
BE KIND TO YOURSELF.
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.
BE YOURSELF!
“I’m not exactly sure how I can do that.”
Okay, how about we try this little exercise?
Remember this every time that voice starts bringing you down:
“It might take me longer to achieve the results I need, it might not even be as perfect as I’ve pictured it to be, but I am not alone and there’s help where it is needed. As long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other and do what it takes to flip my life, I’ll eventually find the road to success.”
Or do what Jocelyn does!
She stuck purple Post-it notes on her computer to remind her that SHE CAN DO IT.
If you still don’t believe the power of TAKING ACTION and how it leads to success, then you really need to check out this week’s guest!
We have none other than, Flip Your Life Community Moderator and the man behind RelaxandLearnGuitar.com, Kevin Depew.
Kevin has been a long time FYL member, who was promoted to a leadership role in the community forums, but he didn’t start his journey knowing everything he needed to take his next steps.
In fact, as with any budding online entrepreneur, Kevin had his share of struggles too!
From identifying what he was good at, to who the target audience is, to what’s he going to sell and how he’s going to sell his solution — he had to keep going, he had to endure the hardships and evolve to find and figure out his true calling online.
After months and months of learning, trying and moving forward, he finally tasted some hard-earned success in his “second-halfer,” guitarist-based online community — Kevin now has 29 paying members!!!
Now, you know what we say here at Flipped Lifestyle, “If you found one, you’ll find a hundred.. (a thousand, even).”
So, how will he find the right people to join and grow his membership?
Get ready for our action-packed, next level strategies that will help Kevin find more organic traffic and overcome the fear of not finding the right people to join his membership.
We’re talking about member engagement, live events, tools and goal-focused mindset shifts that are going to get your momentum to full swing.
Don’t miss it!
You Will Learn:
- Member engagement and why it’s the strongest foundation in your community
- Why live events are beneficial for you and your online business
- How isolation ends up eating your confidence
- Overcoming the fear of not finding the right people to join
- Strategies on how to get more organic traffic and subscribers
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
- Kevin’s Website
- Previous FL episodes with Kevin Depew:
- Teresa Perleberg’s Episode (sheep wool)
- Flip Your Life LIVE 2018 – Nashville
- How to Build Confidence
- Truth Bomb Mom
- Our TOP 7 Time management tips that actually work for busy entrepreneurs
- 3 Tips for Maintaining Focus from INC
- Asana: Task Management App
- Flipped Lifestyle’s Live Public Q&A
- Social Media Marketing: How to be effective
- Vid IQ
- Tube Buddy
- FL Disney Cruise Review
- The day our dog died, and what it taught us
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 comes from Brad Myers, and Brad’s success story title in the Flip Your Life community forums said, “I completed my action plan!”
Brad said, “I completed my action plan for last week, which was to write and start testing a complete autoresponder sequence full of seven emails for my first lead magnet.”
Brad’s Website: http://www.ballflightacademy.com
We have a wonderful action plan area in our community where people can post their action plans no matter how simple, and work toward getting them done and have accountability from other people.
So this is awesome, Brad, way to go!
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:
This week’s Can’t Miss Moment is picking up our new dog, Sam. He is a golden Lab, and we actually drove almost all the way to Missouri., took six hours to pick him up.
For those of you who may know, if you follow us on social media, we actually had a dog named, “Bandit,” and he was the best dog ever.
Unfortunately, a little while back he got hit by a car and he died. It was a really, really sad thing. And we have this other dog named, “Coco,” and she was so lonely and the kids were so upset.
You can never replace a pet, you can never replace something like that.
But after a while, we thought, “Man, we really need to help Coco out here. She needs a friend to run around out here on all of our land.”
So, we basically went and got this new dog.
He’s awesome and he’s just really kind of filling a hole in our hearts where our other dog had passed away.
It was an awesome experience just to be able to say, “Hey, let’s go, let’s take off, let’s drive six hours. We don’t have anything to worry about. We don’t have any appointments; we don’t have to be at work tomorrow. Let’s just go get this puppy. We can afford him and let’s go help our other dog be a little bit happier.”
We didn’t want a brand new baby puppy because we wanted one that could not have to go to the bathroom every two hours because we value sleep.
So, we decided that we wanted an older dog and we were able to find one, but he was in Missouri.
Yeah, so we did it! And people who take action win.
We took action, we went and got our dog, and he is awesome and everyone is happy.
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 to the podcast right now? Check out the transcript below.
Jocelyn: Hey, y’all! On today’s podcast, we welcome back Kevin and help him take his guitar website to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again this week. I’ve been waiting for this interview all day. Super excited because we are welcoming back one of our favorite guests, one of our most amazing Flip Your Life community members. Not only just a member, this is one of our Flip Your Life community moderators, a real leader in the Flip Your Life community.
We’re welcoming back to the show today, Kevin Depew.
Kevin, welcome to the show!
Kevin: Hey, thanks! Great to be here.
Jocelyn: We are very excited to talk to you today. We always do a little bit of prep in the car on the way after we drop our kids off at school, and we saw your name and we were super happy because I just love talking to people, bringing them back on and seeing where they have come from and where they are today. We’re super happy to have you here!
Shane: And we got super excited, too, because we realized we’re actually only like two hours from you. You really are, man, one of the best members in the community, a great leader. So encouraging to everybody else. And your story dude is awesome because I can remember many moons ago, when you first came into the community on this whole other trajectory, and I remember one day we were talking one day in the forums, going back and forth, and you were like, “I don’t know if this is the right idea.” And I was like, “Man, I looked at your website and I don’t even know what your idea is.”
Jocelyn: You were kind of like, “Neither do I.”
Shane: Yeah, “Neither do I! What’s going on?” I remember we were talking in that forum posts that day and I was like, “Dude, what do you like? Forget this other stuff. What do you like?” And you’re like, “Man, I just loved to relax and play my guitar.” Eureka! And that was it. And that’s where relaxandlearnguitar.com was born. So it’s just an amazing story. Tell us a little bit more about you real quick, Kevin, your family and tell us a little bit more about your online business, where it is today.
Kevin: Okay, sure. And thanks for all the kind words. I really appreciate it. I really enjoy being in the community and the moderator thing is awesome too.
Well, I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio, so right up the road, my wife and I are empty nesters. We have twin grandsons that we like to spend time with and she has recently semi-retired from her job, and is now helping with the guitar website and moving right along with that.
I still work full time. I have a full time plus some job working in a private nonprofit with children and families. The guitar website, I did have to make a couple of pivots from working with it, but the community is what really helped me get through all of that. Finally, settling on exactly what to try and the Relax and Learn Guitar website has been around officially since about a little bit over a year. In that time, I have tried to grow my email list and have done lots of work within the membership with videos and e-books and lessons, and a private Facebook group.
I’ve currently got 29 members and the membership and yeah, it’s been a little bit of time to get there, but it’s been amazing learning all this stuff as I go, so I just tried to learn something new and then build on that and keep going.
Shane: You said something very interesting there. You started your website about a year ago. It took us a little while before that even gets you right into your lane of what you wanted to do, what you could do, and you’ve got this awesome membership. You got 29 people and for everybody listening, if you’ve got 30 people that are paying you $50 a month– let’s just pull a number out of her head and all of a sudden you’re making $1,500 a month just out of nowhere. You got money to invest back in to grow to 100 members, 200 members, whatever it is.
But when you said to me a little bit to get there, but now it’s starting to click. That’s what I think people really need to embrace because so many people are like, “Well, I tried this for a month and it didn’t work, and my first idea didn’t work so I might as well as strikeout and never do anything again.”
That is not how online business works. Everybody moves at a different pace. Some of us are more technical than others, so we might be able to move past the technical stuff faster, but then we get bogged down in our strategy. Some people are more strategic or hone in on what they love, but they might struggle with the technical stuff so it takes them a little bit longer.
I just love how you said that man. I’m just one foot in front of the other moving forward and it’s starting to grow, and I’m going to get there eventually.
Jocelyn: Tell the listeners a little bit about how has your membership setup, like what do you do on your site?
Kevin: Okay. Right now I have a monthly and an annual membership level. Folks pay a recurring amount monthly or annually and that payment gets them access to the private forum, is where I have over 100 video lessons now, including PDFs and print offs and tablature, there’s an ebook in there. In addition to that, they also get access to a private Facebook group, and what I’ve really learned is that I can get people into that Facebook group the retention goes really high.
That private Facebook group is where I do most of my answering questions. I do weekly lives on Facebook, and members have been coming to that, which has helped a lot because they can kind of say, “Oh yeah, you guys should join,” which is really cool! I don’t ask them to do that. So it’s a pretty awesome thing — those things.
It’s a private Facebook group and then the private forums with lessons, e-book and a lot of support from me. I also have some folks that have embraced the idea of sending me videos of themselves or audio, and then I give them feedback about their guitar playing.
Shane: Brilliant.
Kevin: I thought a lot of people would do that at first when I thought of this membership, but that’s not the case — that’s maybe 20%. It’s hard for people to kind of take that leap and be on camera, and I totally get that or even audio, it just kind of like being able to go in and look at the lessons at their own pace kind of thing.
Shane: And that’s amazing because you’ve created great engagement, which is the strongest foundation for any membership. Engaging with the leadership, engaging with the community, that’s really what people are after. I don’t know anything about playing guitar, so I’m sure there are chords that you teach them, whatever.
Kevin: Yes, there are chords.
Shane: There are chords, that’s how it works, right? I’ve heard that word before in relation to guitars. They could learn that from somebody else. There’s a lot of people that are teaching chords, but what people can’t recreate is Kevin and your vibe, and you know your demographic and how they relate to you and relate to each other in their little tribe that you’ve created.
So I think that’s super smart, dude, what you’re doing by creating this community effort, this, “Hey, we’re in a group together. We are literally in a group together talking about playing guitar, better practicing together. We’re doing life together in this one specific area,” and that’s why your retention is blowing up. I also love how yours works a little different than even our membership, because we don’t go off of our forum. We do everything in the community, but you’ve kind of transitioned to, “Yeah, there’s some community discussion, but I’m going to add this other tool, this other element that’s going to take it to the next level.”
Kevin: Yeah. I tried the forums-only kind of approach for starting out probably for six months and it was not really taking off. When I started the private Facebook group, that’s when it really started getting going.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and I love how you just listened to your customers and you ask them, “Hey, what do you guys want?” And that was the winner, so that’s awesome.
Shane: We tell people this all the time because people think, “If I just copycat someone else, it’ll work for me too,” but that’s not how it works. You can look at someone else’s success and how they did it. Create a baseline, but then you’re going to have to evolve. You’re going to have to pivot because every single niche is different. The people who are in our online business community are not the same in your guitar community.
Earlier this morning we talked to a lady who sells sheep wool kits for knitting. That’s a different person. You don’t a different vibe. You’ve got to figure out what your people want, how you can get them to consume your content, talk to each other, and actually take action. Once you figure those three things out, it doesn’t matter what the tools are, it doesn’t matter where you’re doing these things, you’re going to be successful.
Kevin: and I should’ve mentioned, I also kind of go for folks who are, I call them second-halfers, so a little bit older than most. I really kind of target the folks that have maybe always wanting to learn how to play guitar, and just never picked it up, and now they’re retired and have more time to do that or they used to play and life got crazy and they want to start back up. So, that’s also like what I target is that 50 and up person.
Jocelyn: Yeah. I love that because there are a lot of other people out there who are probably targeting people who are just starting out. Maybe they’re teenagers, maybe they’re people in college who have nothing better to do.
Shane: All you college people out there, you’ve got nothing to do. You’ve got nothing to do, that’s what Jocelyn said.
Jocelyn: Yeah, sorry. You’re not a grown up yet, sorry to tell you. So anyway, you’re more targeting people who are a little bit older and just maybe need something to do or need to replace some time that they were doing something else with the holiday.
Shane: Or maybe they missed their dream, they always wanted to play guitar and they’re like, “I can do this now.” So another super exciting thing about Kevin, and we’re about to get into some awesome questions and really take his business to the next level.
Jocelyn: Also has something to do with the guitar because, Nashville.
Shane: Yeah, exactly. You are actually coming to Flip Your Life Live in Nashville in September of this year and your wife’s coming too, right?
Kevin: Yes. Vicky and I will be there and we’re really looking forward to it.
Shane: So my first question is, are you bringing your guitar and are you going to try to get a gig, like on music row? Or are you going to try to just walk in and be like, “Amateur night, get out of Kevin’s way!” Does that happen? Because I’m watching.
Kevin: I haven’t gone there, but you know, you never know.
Shane: Yeah. I’m bringing my phone and I will film it if we can get you up on stage on amateur night somewhere, okay?
Jocelyn: Anything is possible, right?
Shane: Let me ask you this. What made you really want to come to Flip Your Life Live? You were one of the people who’ve always said, “I can’t wait for this live event.” You know, we went for about a six-month period where there was like, “When’s the live event? When are we going to have a live event? When’s the whole community going to come together?” So when tickets went on sale, like what made you want to come to Flip Your Life Live in Nashville?
Kevin: I think a large part of it is… one thing I’ve learned in my membership is if you can learn things in more than one way, — so there’s video, there’s audio and then there’s live, and you’re doing like live stuff with your audience– but I think that just being in that kind of environment is going to be a lot more beneficial and get a lot more out of it.
Also hearing both of you, and also folks in the membership, talk about how they’ve gone to live events, and it’s really helped them take it to the next level with what they’re doing, and I’m just looking at it as an investment. Vicky and I can both go there. We’re on the same page already, but I think that will even just more solidify it as far as what we want to do with our business and actually being around the actual people that are already doing that, that I can learn from or are also starting up at and I can also help.
Shane: Have you ever been to an online business live event before?
Kevin: No.
Shane: Oh man!
Jocelyn: You’re starting with the first and the best ever!
Shane: You’re starting with the first and the best ever, right? The first one is the most epic, because it’s just new and exciting and awesome and it is going to be great. I think this one’s going to be even cooler because…
Jocelyn: Well, first of all, because it’s ours.
Shane: First, of all, we’re the hosts! I mean, come on people, right? But also, like we’ve always gone to live events and we really didn’t know people. We were on a member call couple of weeks ago and I said, “We don’t want this to be the Flip Your Life business conference. We want this to be the Flip Your Life family reunion.” These are people that we virtually see and talk to all the time. And we were just saying before I called you, I was like, “I feel like I’ve hung out with Kevin all the time and know him, and he’s like one of my best friends.”
That’s going to happen there. You’re going to walk in and be like, “Cindy! Jim!” it’s going to be just so much more energy and so awesome because it’s going to be really cool.
Jocelyn: And if you would like to come to Flip Your Life Live in Nashville
Shane: OH! I see what you did there!
Jocelyn: There are still tickets available at flippedlifestyle.com/nashville, please come, it’s going to be really fun! Hopefully, at the time of this airing, we will still have a few tickets available. They are selling out. They’ve sold actually–
Shane: I think we’ve only got like 18 left, at the time of this recording, which is like a month before you hear it, so check that out, flippedlifestyle.com/nashville and we will let you sit by Kevin. When he plays his guitar, you will get the front row of music row in some random place that we get him onstage for amateur night.
Jocelyn: It’s happening.
Kevin: Yeah. If that’s not an incentive, I don’t know what it is.
Shane: I don’t know what it is.
Jocelyn: Okay. Kevin, we talk a lot in the Flip Your Life community about mindset, just how important it is when you’re starting or growing an online business. So far on your journey, what has been your biggest fear, confidence or mindset struggle that you have overcame already or that you are currently trying to overcome on this journey?
Kevin: I think initially starting out, it was a fear of, “there’s so much stuff out there already for guitar lessons on the Internet,” that “they were better than me or it’s something I wouldn’t be able to do.” I think I’ve overcome that part because I’ve proven that there are folks that are able to join the membership and get something out of it, and they’re staying in liking it. I’ve really understood that if you put yourself out there, the more people can see it and get to know you the better.
I kind of overcome that one a little bit. The one I’m struggling the most with now is, “Will I be able to find enough people to make this work and eventually stop working my nine to five and do this full time?” That’s probably the biggest one now.
Shane: That’s really interesting because we all feel like we’re isolated in our bubble. I saw this awesome video. It’s called like Drop Bomb Mom or something like that. It’s a blog or something, or Mom Drops Bombs, or something like that. I don’t know what it is. But it’s this mom, and she invites people over to her house and they talk about their insecurities and their struggles and stuff– and if someone can please post this on the comments and tell me what it is.
But one of the things that she was talking to these moms about the other day is how we say things to ourselves that we would never say to other people. Like we would never say, “You’re not good enough at that. You need to stop,” to your friends or strangers or anybody. You wouldn’t just walk up to someone and say that. You would be tactful and move away.
But when we get alone in ourselves, we’re like, “Man, I’m not a good guitar player. I can’t teach anyone else guitar,” or “Man, I’m not a successful football coach. I could never teach someone a football play.” We beat ourselves up. It’s not even fear as much as we bully ourselves. Like you said, “AI good enough to do this? There are so many more people better than me,” but then there are millions of people who’ve never picked up a guitar and you’re better than them and by taking action you proved that.
I think it’s just awesome that you overcame that fear by taking action. That’s the only way you can overcome that fear. You’re never going to look in the mirror one day and go, “You know, I’m good enough. I’m smart enough and doggone it, I can play guitar.” You just need people to push you and say, “No man, just start putting it out there. And if nobody likes it, they won’t buy it so you’ll know.” But they did, so you’ve overcome that fear.
Kevin: Yes. Yeah, and I think the Flip Your Life community is why I did, so just hearing people say, “Try it, do it. It’s not going to be perfect when you first started out, but you can kind of refine it as you go.” And I have become a lot more comfortable in front of the camera and with the lessons and now I look back at some of my older stuff and go, “Oh Jeez, but you know what? It’s still out there, it’s not going anywhere. It’s going to stay there.”
Shane: Oh! I’m so glad you said that because we’ve had people in the community say, “Should I take all this old stuff down?” And we’re like, “No.” And you know what’s funny? We actually went through our stuff the other day. We were like, “Okay, what are our top blog posts?” Because we were going to update them and make them more SEO friendly. It was some of our earliest work that we listen to now and we’re like, “Did we even know how to plug in a microphone at this point? Because it sounds so terrible!” But it’s like some of our top contents still, and what if you just randomly took that down and killed traffic?
Kevin: Right!
Jocelyn: A lot of you have heard me say, on multiple occasions, that I generally do not ever listen back to this podcast. It’s not because really for any other reason except that I will be so upset and think, “Oh, it sounds so terrible. There’s no way I can leave this out on the air.” I just don’t listen to it because that way I don’t have to worry about that.
Shane: You got to find systems basically to get past that stuff. Maybe it’s surrounding yourself with people like you did to push you forward or like Jocelyn did– and I do it, too, because I listen to it sometimes, and I’m like, “Man, do we sound that country? Do we really sound that country?” Because man, we sound country on the air, you know.
We just stopped listening to the podcast. We just trust our editor. We trust our fans and we’re like, “Okay, you all listen to it. We’re just going to record it, and everything’s going to be okay.”
Jocelyn: Well, you just have to remember, too, that nobody knows what YOUR perfect in your head is except for you. I had to tell myself that.
Kevin: You know what, I look at it as, “It’s real and I worked hard on that. I’m not taking it down. So, it stays.”
Jocelyn: Exactly.
Shane: Let me ask you this about the second internal struggle because I think that’s something we’ve never talked about on the show before. You’ve got that mindset like, “Man, am I going to be able to find enough people to do this?” Why do you think that, like where does that come from?
Kevin: For me, personally, now is because of a little bit of a plateau. I had a lot movement at the end of last year with emails coming in from the ads I was running and with conversions to the email list. Then I was doing some sales and nearly tripled my membership in like a three- or four-month period. January rolls around, I have raised my prices, and since then it hasn’t gone as fast as I would like it. It might just be impatience. I mean, I’m very patient and I will stick with what I’m doing and what I say I do, I will do.
It’s just the fear of, you know, “What if nobody joins for the next four or five weeks and then, uh-oh, does that mean that I need to change something, or is it just a matter of finding something different to do to find them?” I know it’s a good membership and I know the people there are three or four guys that are the total rock stars of my membership, that are loving it and are doing great stuff and are basically marketing for me, so I know people will like it once they’re in there. It’s just the fear of not finding the right person to join.
Shane: I just thought, what an amazing analogy for this. Jocelyn’s looking at me with her eyes rolling because she loves my analogies. I mean, Jocelyn’s very literal and I’m very into imagery.
We all hit plateaus. Everybody. Us included. People think we just started on a straight path to the moon. It’s just like the stock market, it goes up, and then it goes down, and then it goes up– and you almost have to take one step back to take two steps forward, sometimes. When people say the plateau, and listening to you tell that story and you’re like, “Should I change something? Should I do something?” The answer is probably yes.
When you hit a plateau that might just mean you’ve kind of hit the peak of what you’re doing now you might need to do something else. It’s like you ever get up at night, and you go to the fridge, and you open the fridge and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to eat, man. I need to go to the store,” and you look out and you close the fridge and you’re like, “Man, I’m still hungry!” So you go over to the cabinet, right? And you look around the cabinet, and you’re like, “Yeah, none of that sounds good either.” What do we all do? You go back to the fridge. Why do you do it? You look at the fridge again, like something was going to transport into your refrigerator. Right?
But that’s kind of like what online business really is, and it’s why a lot of people plateau and why some people do fail is because instead of looking at the fridge, they don’t go put their jacket on, get in the car, go to the store. That one’s closed, go to the next one. When we hit plateaus, and we start feeling that, we’ve got to take different actions, we’ve got to try new stuff and that’s how we get past that real fear.
You go over here and you’re like, “Oh, I went down to the drive-thru and got something. That’s where I found my next customer,” and that’s exactly what you’re doing right now.
Jocelyn: We kind of talked about this on the show before about how I think this was sort of like a self-protection mechanism. Things get hard and we’re like, “Oh, I could go and do these four or five things, or I could stay the same and say people just don’t like this membership.”
Shane: “I’ve found the only 29 humans on the earth who want to learn guitar from Kevin.” I mean, “We did it fast, guys. It was a good run, but it’s over!”
Jocelyn: Would you agree with that though?
Kevin: Oh yeah. I would agree. I mean, but I’m also in the camp of, “Yeah, I’m not stopping here.”
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: Exactly, that’s good.
Shane: That’s one thing I love about you is, you are probably the most determined, head-down, I’m-getting-it-done person that I’ve ever met because we’ve asked you to do some crazy things. We’re like, “Yeah, you should scrap your website and start over,” and you’re like, “What?!” But you did it. That is an amazing quality of you. This is probably just one of those times.
If you let that voice in your head say though, “That’s it, it’s over,” that’s where out of nowhere, that mentality of, “I’m doing this no matter what,” can get squashed, and we’ve really got to be careful of that, those internal voices.
Jocelyn: I think that’s something that you might want to try is some affirmations. Maybe even in the morning. This is something that I’ve kind of resisted for a long time because I thought it was kind of woo-woo.
Shane: Jocelyn is the opposite of woo-woo.
Jocelyn: Yeah. I’m just not that kind of person, but I had a really stressful year last year and I started doing some meditation and it really started helping me. That’s something that I never would have dreamed I would do either. But that’s sort of really helping me.
So lately I’ve been trying to do these affirmations, and I’ve said it, I think on the show before, on my computer I have a little Post-it note and it says, “I am a good leader, I’m making a difference in the world.” And I say those two things out loud anytime that I look down at it. I have a little purple Post-it note on my computer right now that says those two things.
And I think even just that you could say, “I’m making a difference in the world. People need more guitar lessons.”
Shane: Or, “My next member is waiting for me to find them,” you know. Something like that just to keep yourself moving forward and let that voice that’s saying, “The only 29 humans have been found.” We got to smack that voice in the face and tell it where it’s supposed to go. But I have no doubt that you’re relentless and you’re going to keep moving forward.
Jocelyn: Alright, we talked a little bit about the internal struggles that you have faced on your journey. Let’s talk a little bit about outside influences or obstacles that you’ve had to overcome so far. Maybe things like time, technology, something, other people in your life. What are some things that you’ve had to overcome in your journey so far?
Shane: Just to get to where you are today?
Kevin: I think the biggest one is probably time. Technology-wise, I do pretty well if someone just kind of points me in the right direction or I can watch a video about how to do something. Also, the Flip Your Life community has been amazing with folks that have done these things before and are all willing to share how they’ve done it. That hasn’t been as much as probably just time.
For me, it’s because I am still working full time and then some. And I feel like I, oftentimes, know or I have a general idea of what to do next, but I feel like there’s four or five things to do next, and I know I’ve got to just do one of those. I only have so much time in the day to do them, and I would like to have more time to do it.
Shane: Wouldn’t we all? This is kind of identifying ‘What’s Wrong’ too, sometimes. Or not what’s wrong, but like what’s kind of holding us back. Prioritization and time is kind of a different thing because we all put too many things on us. What is that you always say, Jocelyn? We can only be good at like a couple of things or something like that.
Jocelyn: Yes, I read this article, I think it was from Ink. I’m not 100% sure about that source. But anyway, I read this article that said that humans are only able to concentrate on three things. It gave a lot of examples of health, your job, and your family. Several different things, I can’t remember all the things. I’ll try to look this up so we can put it in the show notes. But you can only really concentrate on three.
This is something that we struggle with a lot because for me, I want to be the Martha Stewart kind of mom and I want to look like a swimsuit model and have the best online business. We just aren’t able to do all those things so we have to pick the few things that we really want to concentrate on and those are the things that we can concentrate on. We can’t be the best at everything.
Shane: Yeah. So that’s like all my business. It’s like, “Man, I want to create a new course. I want to create a new ad. I want to go do a new live video with my members. I want to do this, do that, do this, do that.” And then you’re like, “I can’t do all that!” And you freeze and then the paralyzation sets in because you can’t go to the next level unless you do some of those things. The only way to overcome that is just to pick one and do it, and then do the next one. I mean that can be super stressful, man, when you’re trying to juggle all this stuff.
Kevin: Where I kind of prioritize stuff, I start with the folks that are in the membership and what’s happened is, as I’ve gotten more people, the way I’ve really structured things is, I basically say, “What lessons would you guys like?” And then we do a little vote on which one’s going to be done. I can’t do 20 lessons, right? I can only do one at a time, let’s vote on which one is going to be. But it’s kind of doing those things, answering their questions and then knowing in the back of my mind, and I still got to do something to my ad because it’s not performing like it used to. I know I need to do more live stuff, so I absolutely have that feeling of a lot going on and just kind of figure out what to do first.
Shane: We’ve got these huge lists in Asana. We use Asana for our task management. They’re very overwhelming. It’s very overwhelming to see what all we have to do every time.
Jocelyn: Because we put pretty much any idea that we have, we throw on the board just so we can basically get it out of our head and somewhere else.
Shane: And just reorganize it as we go. This week, man, we have 10 different things to do. We’ve got the live event, we’re trying to get meetings, we’re doing member calls, we’re doing podcast interviews. We’re going to Nashville next week for a radio interview.
Jocelyn: To check out our live event.
Shane: And we’re going to be staying at the live event place. How about that?
Jocelyn: That’s flippedlifestyle.com/nashville
Shane: So watch the Facebook newsfeed for that, guys. Videos are coming. I’ve kind of just adopted the ‘Do what’s next’ thing because if you just do what’s next, it doesn’t matter.
This week we were doing a live Q & A on Sunday for the public, first one we’ve done in months. I had to make ads for that, but I have like 10 other things that I had to do because we all have to do everything right. I kind of just said, “No, that’s the next thing on the calendar. I got to just work on that.”
Did some things end up on the back burner? You bet! Or do I still have to go back and do them sooner or later? Sure! But I’m just trying not to be so stressed about all the things and just be focused on the next thing.
Jocelyn: Alright, Kevin, you already have had an amazing start. We are so proud of you just for all of the progress that you’ve made so far, but what can we help you with to take you to the next level and get closer to flipping your life and hopefully leaving that full-time job? What is the biggest question you have right now for your online business?
Kevin: I think right now it’s converting the subscribers that I have on my email list and folks that are following me on Facebook and YouTube, how to convert them to members. I’ve been trying to do something different, and the biggest piece is doing more live videos.
I’ve been doing weekly live Facebook videos. I schedule them out as an event, and they’re on a topic that I’m just kind of rotating through the topics that are popular questions that folks have asked me. I’m getting pretty good engagement, I’ve got 20 plus people that are watching these Facebook live events, and they are asking questions and following up. Some of them say like, “I’m going to join,” or “Can’t wait to join,” or, “I should join,” but they haven’t.
So I think it’s just how to convert these subscribers and followers into members is where I’m kind of struggling right now.
Shane: Yeah. I’ve got two things to say about this because it’s so interesting you’re saying this because even though we’re a little bit ahead of you in the game, like this is some of the same things we’re struggling with. How do we break plateaus? How do we go to the next level? How do we do something different? Your stuff is really good from a social standpoint, from your email list, you are converting people even though it’s slower. I’m just wondering if the problem is not necessarily changing that component, but maybe doing something parallel to that to get more people.
It’s like if I’ve got a thousand people on my list and I can get 100 of them then what would happen if I had 2000 people on my list? Well, how do I get 2000 people on my list to grow it, even if the numbers stay the same, I will grow. Well, I might have to do something to get new traffic, new people, new blood. Something that we’re doing right now is we’re using YouTube videos with our Facebooks, but they have two different purposes.
Facebook is a very much engagement strategy. This is how we can talk to people, be with people, answer questions from people who are already familiar with us.
What we’re using YouTube for is we’re doing heavy keyword research, and I’ve got a tool called VidIQ. It’s vidiq.com, and we have no promotional relationship with this company, this is not an affiliate link, I’m just telling you about a cool tool that I found. It actually does keyword research only for YouTube. Only for YouTube. So you’re getting what people are searching for on YouTube, not Google overall because that’s different.
It looks at YouTube searches, and we’re finding things like one of the things that I found the other day was email marketing 2018. It got like hundreds of thousands of searches and January, February and March. And I was like, “Hey, I’m going to do a video. I’m going to call it Email Marketing 2018. I’m going to update our email marketing training. I’m going to do this live video, write a great description, put keywords in it and I’m going to put that video on, and maybe I’ll go find a few thousand more people that don’t know about Flipped Lifestyle, but are actually searching for Email Marketing 2018 in YouTube.”
For example, it might be– I don’t know– how to play Amazing Grace on the guitar for beginners or something. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the keyword they’re looking for, and you’re like, “Hey, that’s a cool keyword. There are 10,000 searches a month for it and it has low competition. I’m going to make that video.” And now people will find Kevin, they listened to your three-minute video on how to do this and at the end, you say, “For more guitar lessons, go to Relax and Learn Guitar.”
So maybe it’s not necessarily that you need to change what you’re doing. You just need to maybe get another traffic source where people are already looking for what you’re teaching and that way you can find more people.
Kevin: Yeah. It’s really interesting you say that. One thing that’s helped is that having Vicky being able to help out with this, one of the things we just– literally two days ago– so we’ve just thought about it, which is similar to what you’re saying. There’s a tool called Tube Buddy, which I don’t have any affiliation with, but it sounds like it does a similar thing.
I think the guitar stuff would totally fit in the YouTube world with that surge because Facebook is very social, like you said, and I’m hoping that it does eventually get to the point where maybe I do a sale in a couple of weeks and I targeted the people who have viewed these live videos on Facebook. But I only got about less than 400 people that are subscribers on YouTube, and if I could get that to be bigger, I know that would be very much helpful.
Shane: You know what’s amazing though, when you do a YouTube live, they advertise it in search results while it’s happening. It’s not just your subscribers that know you’re doing it. You will immediately find new people on your YouTube lives when you do them. Yes, and what’s even cooler is when you do a YouTube live, it becomes a YouTube post and it stays there forever.
We took a Disney cruise in June– or was it July? When did we go, Jocelyn? Was it June?
Jocelyn: June.
Shane: June. I did a big hour-long review of the trip, and out of nowhere it’s got like 40,000-50,000 views and people keep finding us. Someone wrote us the other day and said, “We found you because of your Disney travel review.”
Kevin: Oh, that’s awesome!
Shane: Yeah, so we did this video, put it up six months ago, and all of a sudden, BAM! You might get a member from it today, you never know. We actually are doing Q & A’s on YouTube like you now. You know how people have big fancy webinar software and chat and stuff? We’re just driving the traffic to our YouTube live and when we do these public Q & A’s, which are mainly about the community, then we’re going to answer them and do them right there so we can find new people in real time.
Kevin: Okay. Awesome!
Jocelyn: I was just going to say I think that will help you with the organic traffic and we’ll get you more subscribers and ultimately more customers.
Kevin: Yeah, the organic traffic is huge. I don’t have a lot of it. You guys always say you have time and you have money. I have definitely chosen the money route to get where I am so far — from running ads basically. I would love to have more of an organic presence. I was going to ask, do you guys do any advertising on YouTube? I’ve never done that.
Shane: We actually are starting our first ads this weekend on YouTube. I’ve done a couple videos already in our new strategy of this keyword research and stuff. So I’ve actually got them on there and I’ve just learned how to do the YouTube ads, and then I’m actually starting an ad today for our next public webinar or a Q & A, whatever to see how it goes because you can just dial down. ‘Guitar lessons for beginners’ on YouTube gets searched for– are you ready for this? Hold your hat– 1,363,636 times a month! ‘Guitar lessons for beginners!’ YouTube’s ad platform is way better than Facebook’s for using it.
When you go in there, you said you’re a second lifer, a second time– What did you call it? Second timers.
Kevin: Second halfers.
Shane: Second halfers, there you go! Is that like, old timers? I don’t know. But second halfers. What age group do you think that starts at? Like what’s the age that starts at?
Kevin: I typically target like 50 and up.
Shane: Alright. Fifty and up. You could make a video called ‘Guitar lessons for beginners’ and then you could have like a subtitle called ‘Your first chord’ or whatever. People could find that. Are you ready for this? You could run an ad for that and only target people who are searching for that who are 55 and older. Bam. Now you’re fine to traffic. That’s a really powerful tool that you could use.
Kevin: Yeah. The Facebook thing has been good because it’s gotten me traffic, but what’s happened is I’m getting folks on my email list, but it’s not exactly the avatar that I’m looking for 100% of the time just because the Facebook stuff is really pretty broad as far as what you’re targeting.
Jocelyn: I would recommend, too– how many customers have you had lifetime? Not currently.
Kevin: I have eight people leave the membership, so seven total over?
Shane: Yeah. It might not be quite large enough, but one audience that I’ve had really good luck with on Facebook is a lookalike of paid customers. Facebook is usually pretty good at finding people who are very similar to people who have actually paid you. It’s one thing to find people who are like people on your email list, but when you start looking for people who are exactly like paid customers, that has been a really good audience for us. As you get more paid customers, I’m not sure what the minimum audience size is for that, but you might want to look at that and just see if you can do it.
Shane: These combine very well. You can say in your brain, “YouTube is for people finding me, Facebook is for people engaging with me so that I can sell to them.” All these people who find you on YouTube, you need to have an opt-in ready to go at the end of every video. You’re only targeting people in the age group you want to have; that’s going to get them on their email list where you can invite them to your Facebook lives and continue to engage with them until they buy. These things stack, basically.
Kevin: Yeah. If you guys can see my head, it’s blowing up right now. BOOM!
Shane: That’s what we do around here at Flipped Lifestyle. We blow people’s minds!
Kevin: And you were talking about having an opt-in ready. Doing a video ad or however that works, I can look into that. And then you’re just saying like at the end of that, just the concept of, “To get the rest of this lesson,” or, “In order to get more lessons like this–” and then have a link in the description that they go, or a link, I guess, on the video too, you could do.
Shane: Yes. Get their contact and invite them to where you’re engaging with them live. I mean, I would just do some research. That YouTube Buddy or this can do the same thing, they just look up the keywords. Then look up and say, hey, here’s my 10 keywords. I’m going to make these 10 videos over the next couple of weeks. That’s what you’re worried about right now. Don’t worry about the ads yet.
Get some content out there. Let people start finding it. Maybe you’ll rank for a couple of words, and you’ll probably have a thousand new people that discover you in the next couple of weeks. If 10 of them get on the list, and two have them buy, you got two more members. You are over 30. And then you just keep doing it over and over again and you’re not really changing anything.
You’re still just playing guitar on video, you’re just doing it for new people. The more people that see you, the more people will join your list, the more people will buy.
Kevin: Okay, great.
Jocelyn: That was a lot of stuff we threw out there!
Shane: We always wrap up our interviews when we see people’s heads explode, that’s when we stop.
Jocelyn: We probably need to pull back on the reins, pump the brake a little bit. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re going to do next. So we always like to ask people at the end of our podcast, what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so to make progress on your goal and get closer to flipping your life?
Kevin: I think I would probably settle on the YouTube research plan. So like I said, I just downloaded the app in Chrome, so I think it’s a matter of going in and seeing what folks are searching for and then kind of start thinking about which videos I could create for those, and start getting that stuff out there. I mean, that’s like a long answer to your question, but I guess the short answer is YouTube.
Shane: I think that’s a perfect thing to do. If you want to drop that in the forums too, so that we can help you with that. Maybe zero in on the five to ten best keywords. I’d also like to throw something else out there with one of the things about Flip Your Life, Nashville, is you’ve got an anchor on your calendar. You have a definite place where you’re landing from September 19th through September 20.
I really want to challenge you to think bigger and don’t think about the plateau. I want you to go try to get 100 members before you get to Nashville because I’m just throwing it out there that you have not found the only 21 people that want to learn guitar lessons with Kevin Depew.
Jocelyn: 29.
Shane: Or 29 on the planet earth. There are 71 other people right now waiting to discover Kevin Depew.
Jocelyn: And you have six months to find them, so you better get cracking.
Shane: You got this man! Let’s go out there! Let’s challenge you!
Jocelyn: That’s a little over 10 a month. You got this!
Shane: Yeah, you got this, that’s 10 a month, man. That’s a couple of weeks. Let’s go them!
Kevin: Yeah, blow their minds, and then increase the plan.
Shane: Smack you upside the head and throw the gauntlet. That’s what I’m doing right now. I want you to come in with momentum. Like if you’re aiming for the stars and you hit the moon, you’re just like, “Okay, I was aiming for $100.”
Jocelyn: Turn your seat the other way around.
Shane: Whatever. you’re aiming for something that’s higher than the other thing and you’ve got the thing that was lower. We’re still trying to get the higher thing. But if you get to Nashville and you’ve got 78 members, you ain’t going to be mad. Now, you’re going to be ready to push to 200. So I really want to challenge you to bust through that plateau by setting a big goal, something that feels a little unattainable right now, and just attacking it with everything you’ve got with this new strategy. And let’s walk into Nashville and start thinking about a thousand members or something crazy. Okay?
Kevin: Alright, yeah.
Jocelyn: Alright, Kevin, it has been an awesome conversation. We have enjoyed talking to you so much today and we cannot wait to see you at Flip Your Life, Nashville.
Kevin: Me too. I can’t wait to see you and see what’s going on then, the next steps there.
Shane: That was another information-packed call with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Hope that you’ve got a lot of benefit out of our answers to our guest questions as well.
If you would like to become a member of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business.
Jocelyn: It’s time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment of the show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal nine-to-five job.
Shane: This week’s Can’t Miss Moment is picking up our new dog, Sam. He is a golden Lab, and we actually drove almost all the way to Missouri.
Jocelyn: He came from Missouri.
Shane: He came from Missouri and we drove six hours to pick him up. He was an AKC, an American Kennel Club dog, so he was not cheap. And just what an awesome thing to be able to do. For those of you who may know, if you follow us on social media, if you follow us on Facebook, we actually had a dog named Bandit, and he was the best dog ever.
Unfortunately, a little while back he got hit by a car and he died. It was a really, really sad thing. And we have this other dog named Coco, and she was so lonely and the kids were so upset. You can never replace a pet. You can never replace something like that.
But after a while, we thought, “Man, we really need to help Coco out here, she needs a friend to run around out here on all of our land.” So we basically went and got this new dog. He’s awesome and he’s just really kind of like filled a hole in our hearts where our other dog had passed away.
Man, it was an awesome experience just to be able to like say, “Hey, let’s go, let’s take off, let’s drive six hours. We don’t have anything to worry about. We don’t have any appointments; we don’t have to be at work tomorrow. Let’s just go get this puppy. We can afford him and let’s go help our other dog be a little bit happier.”
Jocelyn: And there aren’t a lot of people who would have probably drive across the state to get this dog. But we did. And it’s like we always say, that’s the reason that some people are successful and some people aren’t. We wanted to get a dog. We didn’t want a brand new baby puppy because we wanted one that could not have to go to the bathroom every two hours because we value sleep.
So we decided that we wanted an older dog and I was able to find one, but he was in Missouri. I said to Shane, I’m like, “Well–
Shane: “Could we drive to Missouri, and get a dog?” And I’m like, “Sure, why not? Let’s do it.”
Jocelyn: Yeah, so we did it. And people who take action win. We took action, we went and got our dog, and he is awesome and everyone is happy.
The Flip Your Life podcast is not just about our Can’t Miss Moments, guys. We’re all our members’ success and we wanted to share a member success story with you today.
This week’s success story comes from Brad Myers, and Brad’s success story title in the Flip Your Life community forums said, “I completed my action plan!”
Jocelyn: Alright, Brad, you’re my kind of people. Brad said, “I completed my action plan for last week, which was to write and start testing a complete autoresponder sequence full of seven emails for my first lead magnet.” And that is awesome. We have a wonderful action plan area in our community where people can post their action plans no matter how simple, and work toward getting them done and have accountability from other people.
So this is awesome, Brad, way to go!
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 sign off, I like close every one of our shows with a verse in the Bible.
Today’s verse comes from Proverbs 4:25-27. “Look straight ahead and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet. Stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked.”
That’s all the time we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, and until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life. We’ll see you, then.
Jocelyn: Bye!
Tina says
Shane: The person you were talking about in this episode is Kristina Kuzmic, the “Truth Bomb Mom” and she ROCKS! I regularly watch her videos and they are always amazing! (And often funny!) This is the video you were referencing: https://youtu.be/PnzlG5NYT8M