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Do you find yourself holding back from taking the next step because you’re terrified it might not work?
Maybe you’ve seen other people do it and you’re pretty sure you can do it too, but sometimes there’s just this weird nagging feeling that’s weighing you down.
Well, we’ve been there before too (most entrepreneurs do)!
We struggled with confidence issues, wrestled with mindset hurdles, and we definitely didn’t know everything we do now.
The thing is, we are where we are because we took action.
Because if you want to do something so bad, then you would go out there and do what it takes to go after it, learn it, and make it happen.
We have the perfect guest to share their journey to show you what’s possible when you put yourself out there!
This week’s guest is Flip Your Life community member, Marcy Travis.
Marcy is a 60 years young, married empty-nester, who lives in very rural town much like ours. Marcy and her super supportive husband have 3 adult children together, and 3 wonderful grandchildren.
She had recently retired from her 21 years of service in the employment sector but finds her greatest passion pursuing her coaching career online.
As a Certified Career Coach, she helps her clients identify their strengths, reframe their ideas and perspective so they can focus on finding a practical action plan that will allow them to achieve their career goals.
Marcy has been steadily growing her content for 4 years and has been working on turning her passion project into a reliable source of income to supplement her retirement and give her the freedom to travel with her family.
She has already found some success with a few members, but now it’s time to take that next step and grow her community.
Join us as we give her insight on how she can grow her email list and how to implement marketing strategies even if she’s not what she calls “Sales-y.”
Time to mine for nuggets of wisdom, so don’t miss this episode, y’all!
You Will Learn:
- Things you can do to grow your email list
- Different avenues to get your name in front of your audience
- Marketing strategies you can implement on your site
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show:
Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!
Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show!
We may even read yours on the air! ?
Success Story of the Week:
We got an awesome success story this week from one of our Flip Your Life community moderators, Kathy Martin!
For those of you who don’t know, we have a huge community, we call it the Flip Your Life community and we’ve got a lot of great leaders in our community that we have promoted to moderators. And they’re in there, not only so they can build and grow their online business, but they’re really in there on the front lines helping other people too. Kathy’s one of our absolute rock star members. She had an awesome success story this week titled, “I got four new members from my five-day challenge.”
Kathy says, “I’m pretty excited that after my five-day challenge last week, I was able to convert 10% of my participants to my membership, three monthly members and one annual. I learned a lot after these five days, and maybe I’ll post about the process if anyone can use that info. But I’m pretty stoked at the results. I now have the tools to duplicate this again and double down on my efforts to convert more people. Thanks to Shane for telling me to automate as much as possible because my plan was to go live on Facebook every day, but I decided to change that after Shane’s advice. And thank God I did because it would have fallen apart without automation. Keep learning and growing, keep moving the ship forward.”
Kathy’s website: https://www.prealgebrateachers.com/
This is just a pure example of how the Flip Your Life community actually works. Kathy, one of our great leaders, one of our awesome action-takers, goes in, celebrates her success and the first thing out of her mouth is “I’m offering to help anyone who wants to know how I did it. Come look at this process. I’m totally transparent.”
She did exactly that. She actually posted a detailed account of everything that she did in our community. So if you’re a member or you’d like to become a member, you can see what Kathy did in detail, and I’m sure she would be happy to answer any questions for you.
That’s what’s awesome about being in a community like this. Nobody has all the answers, but together we can figure out anything. We have tens of thousands of online business posts inside of the Flip Your Life community, and thank you so much, Kathy, for not only getting out there, and celebrating your success with us but for sharing that process with everybody in the community.
We would love to help you write the success story for your online business.
At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Can’t Miss Moment:
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is a wedding dress mini photoshoot we recently had with Anna.
My (Jocelyn) college roommate, she is actually a photographer in the Cincinnati area, has been doing these, what she calls, ‘Wedding dress mini photoshoots’ for a couple of years now. She started it last year, and I really wanted to do it last year, but we had a dance competition so we were not able to do the photoshoot.
And so basically, what it is, is you get out your old wedding dress and you let your daughter put it on. You know, she clips it so that it looks good on the little girl, but they take their picture in the wedding dress, and she had little cookies made and some pink lemonade and it was just a really fun day for the girls. And they played princess music. So, it was a very girly day, and she had someone there who does their hair, and I had done her makeup. The whole point of it is just for your daughter to be able to wear your wedding dress while she still thinks that it’s beautiful and cool because she probably won’t think so 20 years from now.
But the thing about those pictures is they’re very expensive. We had to drive three or four hours to get this photoshoot done.
Which most people probably wouldn’t do, or be able to do because they’d have work, or they’d have to go somewhere, or they’d have to take care of some errands on the weekend that they were neglecting all week. And it was just awesome to see Jocelyn and Anna Jo able to spend a whole day together and to be able to get these amazing memories. I mean, we’ve got these beautiful pictures now of Anna in her wedding dress. I was thinking the other day, we’ve actually got one when Anna was like two years old we took ourselves. It would be awesome to do this every few years and give them to her like right before she gets married someday, or whatever. But, just a cool experience that might not have been available to us if we did not have the resources and the time to go do that.
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 help Marcy take her online career coaching membership site 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. Super excited to interview another member of the Flip Your Life community and help them make great strides in their online business. We’re going to let you guys listen in so that you can learn from the consulting call as well.
Our guest today is Marcy Travis!
Marcy, welcome to the show!
Marcy: Thanks for having me, you guys. I’m so excited about being here!
Shane: Now, for a little background information, we’ve been trying to get you guys’ interviewed for a while. We’ve tried to talk to Marcy a while back, and a massive snow storm knocked out all of her electricity. It was just not meant to be that day because apparently the massive snowstorm only got her house. All of her neighbors had electricity but her. But we’re here now and the sun’s shining, and we’re ready to go!
Marcy: I’m excited to be here and yeah, a bit. That last time was just as recent as last Friday. So, hey, this is good!
Jocelyn: Oh goodness! Well, we’re glad that you made it on today. Let’s start out by telling our audience a little bit more about you, your background, and what you’re doing online.
Marcy: Okay, thanks! Well, I am married and I have a wonderful husband who’s very supportive of me. We were empty nesters, woo-hoo! But we really enjoy our adult children. We have three adult children that we see quite frequently and three grandchildren.
As far as my background, I have worked in the last 21 years in employment services. And I’ve also at the same time, in the last four years, become a career coach — I do a lot of coaching and it’s all online. Most recently, since I’ve joined you guys, very quickly, I was able to put up a membership site. I’m really excited about developing that and getting more of your input on that.
Shane: That’s awesome! And how much money are you making online right now, just a ballpark?
Marcy: On the membership alone or on everything?
Shane: Let’s just do the membership right now. Then you can talk about one-on-one coaching to help people get jobs, and find the work that they really want. Maybe separate them out, like how’s the membership doing is since it’s so new?
Marcy: So the membership, since it’s so new, I just got my first member in January, then I got two more members in February and everybody’s still with me. So I’m making a $105 a month with that.
Shane: That’s awesome because it’s so new. That’s amazing!
Marcy: It’s very new.
Shane: And you’ve gotten members. The cool thing is, what do we always say? If you find one, you can find 101. Let’s go get them.
Marcy: And that’s what you guys are going to help me with today.
Shane: But you’re making a full-time living, doing the one-on-one coaching, right? Is that what you do full time?
Marcy: I’m retired now. I’m sorry, I’m retired, but I’ve always done the one-on-one coaching on the side. That kind of ebbs and flows. I love the membership idea because I can get more people that need coaching and need my services, and at a lower price.
Shane: Yes, so they can afford it and you can get more people and help more people.
Marcy: Right. Exactly!
Shane: Cool! This is a very interesting call because you’re an empty nester, you’re retired and you’re transitioning into a stable passive income where you can still do what you’ve always done, do your calling, go help people get good jobs and find the work that they love. But you can do it in a low-key way that still lets you make a really good income.
Marcy: Absolutely. And I love the one-on-one, but I’d like to build the membership much more.
Jocelyn: Alright, awesome! That tells us a little bit more about what you’re doing and why you chose online business because you wanted to reach out to more people and do it more affordably, so that’s awesome.
Shane: You made a living doing this one-on-one and things like that. Then when the membership launched, and you got those three members. How did that feel when you just got those first couple of members?
Marcy: Oh my gosh! It was wonderful! Actually my first ever member, I felt like she was a gift from God because I had done one-on-one coaching with her and she had come back to me. I sent an email out as you guys had suggested, I think on one of the calls. I sent an email out to my prior one-on-one coaching clients, telling them what I was doing. She’s like, “This was just the right time!” She’s just so positive and so helpful and I was like, “Oh, this is the best person to try this out with.”
Shane: Isn’t it amazing? You put yourself out there to the world, and the universe answers back.
Jocelyn: I love it when people do what we say, too. And it works!
Shane: And I bring that up again too because when we made our first money online, we made eleven cents on an ad click. That was the first money we ever made. I literally jumped out of my bed like we had won the super bowl and I was the head coach. Jocelyn was so excited, like, “Wow, we can make stuff and people will give us money.” But then we’ve seen some people and they’re like, “Well, I’ve got a list of 20 people and I only got three members.” And I’m like, are you crazy? That’s like you found humans that will give you money for what you’re selling. There are seven billion of us. There are more humans out there. I just love your attitude toward, “Hey, three members, that’s the first step. Let’s go get the rest!”
Marcy: Oh yes.
Jocelyn: Yes, for sure.
Marcy: A lot of my questions, I think, fall around– I’m not real sales-y, so how I do the one-on-one coaching, I found what worked for me is just to do a 15-minute chat with them, like video chat. People are comfortable talking with me and so they’re really nervous thinking about coaching. I mean, I would be, right? They kind of like me, and I find out whether I think I can help them, and then we go from there. I don’t know how to transition into this.
Shane: It’s a different world.
Marcy: Yes, yeah.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and you can bring a lot of those skills over to online business. I think a lot of times people think, “Well, if I’m going to get into online business, I have to do things the way everyone else does them.” No, you don’t. And that’s what we’re realizing now, six years later, is that we were trying to build this business the way that other people would have built it, but then we’re looking at it saying, “How can we make it a little bit different and work better for us?”
Shane: And that’s how we built the Flip Your Life Blueprint. At first, it was like, “Let’s do all the technical things and show people this.” And then we’re like, “No, let’s guide people to find their own path with their own skills and their own niche, and they’re going to be way more successful if we do that.” So that’s how we’ve been doing everything. Let’s look at where your skills are, and let’s see how we can get them to the next point where you can actually grow your membership.
Marcy: Yes, exactly. That’s what helps people!
Jocelyn: All right. Marcy, one of the things that people love to hear about on our show are the internal struggles that people deal with as they’re starting to build their online business. All of us have mindset things that hold us back. What would you say so far has been your biggest fear, confidence issue, or mindset struggle that you’ve had to overcome so far in your Flip Your Life journey?
Marcy: I love your step-by-step program because it has really helped keep me on track. I love how you guys take us step-by-step in there as a blueprint.
I think my biggest thing I’ve learned just from being in your membership is to have more of a business mindset. Because when I coach people, when I’ve done the one-on-one coaching, and when I worked and talk to people one-on-one, it was more like, “What do you need? Let me give it to you. Let me give you more. Let me give you more.” And when I say more of a business mindset, I mean keeping track of how many members do I have on my email list, how many are converting? That type of thing of an outreaching online. I think that’s been my biggest mindset, is to, “Okay, I need to sit down and look at the numbers. I need to evaluate what I’m doing. I’m not just working with one person.”
Shane: That’s a huge struggle for most people because when you talk about fear, it’s kind of scary to look at the numbers sometimes, y’all. Sometimes you don’t want to do it.
Jocelyn: The numbers don’t lie.
Shane: The numbers don’t lie, that’s right.
Jocelyn: When you start looking into it, and you’re like, “Mmm, yeah.”
Marcy: Yeah, spending all this money on the website, and all this stuff, yeah.
Shane: That’s a great thing because a lot of people don’t view themselves either as a business person because we all come from different backgrounds, of we’re parents or brothers or sisters, or employees.
When you think about starting an online business, if you take the word ‘online’ out, you’re starting a business. It is a mindset shift to view yourself as a business owner.
When you’re a coach, you can still hold that, “I’m just hanging out with people and helping them. I’m making some money, but whatever.”
Jocelyn: Well, and I’ll tell y’all a little secret even if you have a business degree, because I have one, that doesn’t tell you all the secrets you need to know, either!
Shane: No. You have to figure that out through punches in the face over and over again in life. That’s how you figure out how to be a business owner.
Jocelyn: More like parenting, you know, like they don’t come with a manual. That’s sort of like online business.
Marcy: Oh, they certainly don’t. I have 3 girls. They do not.
Shane: Here’s the crazy thing about that mindset issue and what’s so important. I don’t care if you’re someone else who’s just starting out or like you, who’s got the pieces together, or making sales and we’re ready to take you to the next level or if you’ve “Made it,” you’re making a full-time living online, everything is going fine. Every time you move to the next level, you almost have to relearn how to be a new kind of business owner.
I definitely think in the last two quarters, like the last six months, our business has elevated to another level, and we didn’t even see it coming and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I feel like we are having to relearn how to run our business again.” It’s just a part of the evolution. It’s a part of the entrepreneurial life cycle.
I love how you’ve recognized that now because that’s going to keep you growing, keep you busting through plateaus because you were ready for it now — you know where there’s change coming.
Marcy: I also make myself as you guys do, do things that I’m uncomfortable with. Like another challenge, just real briefly, is being on video. I said to myself, why is being on video so, so scary because all my one-on-one clients, I do on video. We do on video. Why is it so scary going on Facebook live? I finally just thought out, “No, you’re just going to do it.” Because one of my last coaching clients was a videographer and she’s like, “Why aren’t you doing more video?” I said, “Because I’m scared.”
Jocelyn: Yes. And I feel you. I mean I am still scared of that, too. But you know, there’s something to be said for doing things a different way, too, because everyone says, “OK, well Facebook live, that’s what you need to do.” Well, maybe what you need to do instead is do a Zoom call where you can see people’s faces and they can see yours.
Shane: So it’s like a group call, but you can see them like your one-on-one calls. That’s a good idea, Jocelyn, actually!
Marcy: Yeah, that’s a good idea. You mean, as a sales tool?
Jocelyn: Yeah, absolutely! Ask people to come to a live Q&A. You know, it might not work when you have hundreds and thousands of people following you, but right now when you have dozens of people invite them to a live Q&A. Answer their questions right there, looking at them. When you start getting that experience on Zoom or whatever platform you decide to use, then that will later translate into feeling more comfortable on things like Facebook live. Just because some people are using one tool doesn’t mean that you have to do it the exact same way.
Shane: My favorite part about this though is you said, “You know, I’m afraid to do this, but you just gotta do it.” So many people sit around and wait until they’re over their fear. Well, the point is not to get over your fear and it’s gone. The reason we get afraid is so that we have the chance to go be brave. That’s what we tell our kids all the time. When my little girl says, “I’m scared to go upstairs,” and I’m like, “Well, it’s a good time to be brave because I’m not walking up there with you. So, go!” That’s what you’ve done, is you’ve just said, “I’m doing it. I don’t care. I know this is part of my brand. I’ll figure it out and I’ll just be afraid and do it anyway.”
Marcy: Yes, I’ve had feedback just on what I’ve done. “You were made to do this.” I’m like, “Oh really?” She’s like, “You look so comfortable.” I go, “I’m not.” But it’s great.
Shane: I tell Jocelyn that all the time because she’s gorgeous and she’s really better on camera than she gives herself credit for.
Marcy: Yes, she is gorgeous.
Shane: So she’s got to– Jocelyn, are you listening to this?
Jocelyn: Y’all making me blush.
Shane: I need you to blush on camera more, so you’d get on those Facebook lives with me.
Jocelyn: I’ll do it sometimes, but the thought of being on there by myself, like I just– I don’t know. I will maybe try it one day, but for right now, I’m happy to pop in and say hello. And be on the podcast. But you know what, typically, when people start saying that to you, there’s something to it. People wouldn’t just tell you that, especially like multiple different people, if something wasn’t correct about that. Just think about it and find a way to practice it, like I said, without completely throwing yourself out there and that will give you more practice and make you feel more comfortable when you do decide to do it.
Marcy: That’s a really good idea. Thank you.
Jocelyn: All right, so we talked about our mindset stuff and that’s like very, very important when we’re starting out. What is an outside obstacle or influence that you’ve had to overcome so far? Things like having enough time, maybe like technology issues or maybe even people in your life who say this online business stuff is crazy.
Marcy: Well, I think probably, lately technology issues. We talked about the electricity and that seems like a small thing, but it happened two or three times over the winter. I think, too, I grew up in an age when we didn’t have computers in school, so it was all new to me. Fortunately, I’ll stick with it. I just stick with that. I just push through it. But there’s not always somebody around to ask. The membership has been really helpful because I’ve run into technology things that I didn’t really know how to handle.
Okay, I’ll give you an example: I’ve been using MailChimp for my email provider and I was talking about my low open rates. Another member got on there, and they said that they use ConvertKit and got better open rates. I switched and I really did. It helped my open rates, but I would not have known that. So there’s a lot of technology stuff that I don’t know and when there’s so much you don’t know, it’s hard to know where to start.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and I’m glad you said that. I think that sometimes people think, “Oh well, if this person started an online business, they already know how to do all this stuff. They have an advantage over me.” That’s not true. All you need to know is how to solve problems. If you know how to solve problems, which usually is as easy as typing something in Google or typing something in YouTube, and watching a video, reading instructions– even using customer service, like it’s so funny how many people don’t even think to do that. Most of the time when you purchase some type of software, you have customer service that comes along with it, so ask them questions. It’s what you’re paying for every month.
Marcy: Oh, you sound just like my husband, Jocelyn. He’s like, “What have you been struggling with for the last hour? Have you typed in the chat?”
Jocelyn: Exactly! Yes, and that’s what those people are there for. I had a friend just a couple days ago, text me and she was like, “Do all of the people in your community know how to make a website when they come in?”
Shane: Nobody does! We didn’t!
Jocelyn: I was like, “No.” I said, six years ago I didn’t know how to make a website. We had to learn. But the thing about it is if you’re determined that you’re going to do it and you make a commitment that you’re going to do it, you’ll find a way.
Shane: We’ve spent all our time in the last five years building Flipped Lifestyle. We have trainings, we have trainings for everything, but we’ve really focused on building a community of people. Hundreds of people from all over the world. I just did a Facebook live. We had people from Africa, Paris, the United Kingdom, two people in Canada and like 100 people from America. There are people from everywhere, and we’ve really focused on that because that is the human element.
Sometimes you get stuck on Google, sometimes you get stuck and you’re like, “What should I do?” You just need somebody to say, “Dude, try this program. Hey listen, try this over here. Go to their customer service. I called them once and they were great.” It just makes us do the right thing when we’re all working together on something.
Marcy: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jocelyn: Alright, we’ve had a great discussion so far about things that you have overcome so far in your journey. At this point, we’d like to ask how can we help you get to the next level and continue to flip your life? What is the biggest question you have right now for your online business?
Marcy: I think the biggest question I have outside of marketing to my own list that knows me a little bit, and I have around 300 and so people, which isn’t a lot, is how to more people in the bucket to market to. We talked a little bit earlier about doing a question and answer session on Zoom, and I think that will work. I guess I can just go, if I do a question and answer session, I just go with whatever they want to know and try to do a free download or something to collect their email at the end. I’m just not sure as far as marketing, where to go from here, how to get more members. I started looking at doing Facebook ads, and I had not heard of cold, warm and hot ads, so that was helpful. But I’m not sure really what to focus on.
Shane: I think that content is going be really important for you right now. And also getting in front of people you know are looking for this stuff. It’s not just doing a Q&A because we’re not believers in, “If you build it, they will come.” You got to get your name out there, and you’re really good on this podcast, like talking to you, and we talked a little bit before we went on air. You’ve got a great voice, a great personality. I’m just wondering if maybe you shouldn’t pursue like getting in front of other peoples’ audiences.
If you go type in career or jobs in iTunes, you’ll find a thousand podcasts. And I’m just wondering if– you do have time because you’re retired, right? You control your schedule, so you could schedule calls with people and get on other people’s shows and offer opt ins. People are always, always looking for guests. If you just kind of skip those first three or four big podcasts in any category, usually you can reach out to interview shows and get interviews. You could probably get booked over and over and over again if you just sat and reached out to people all day and that would allow you to say, “Hey, this person’s got 2000 people listening and 20 of them got on my list,” or, “This person’s got 10,000 and 20 of them got on my list.”
You’re giving the host a good guest and good content about something that you’re going to talk about getting jobs and work and careers. I would say don’t call and say, “I can talk about anything in jobs.” Be like, “I specifically am really good at these three topics. Let’s talk about it.” That way you can get in front of other peoples’ audiences that you know are listening to the same kind of content that you are going to provide. They go to your email list and now you can market to them in Convert Kit.
Jocelyn: And I would say also, a lot of people want to just jump right into ads and you may be ready for that, but I would also look and make sure that your content is relevant to the people that you’re trying to talk to. Make sure that you’re coming out with regularly scheduled content and that you’re checking that for search engine optimization, also known as SEO.
Shane: Are you doing blog posts every week?
Marcy: Yes, I’ve been doing blog posts every week for the better part of over three years?
Shane: Why don’t you go to two a week, and make them a little bit shorter each time. Double your content just like that. All you gotta do is write next to blog post and that way you’re getting more SEO, getting more traffic while you’re looking for these opportunities.
Jocelyn: And don’t reinvent the wheel. Maybe just answer somebody’s question. Do people email you questions? I assume that they do.
Marcy: Yes. In fact, one of my members reminded me– my second member that I ever got in my membership, I didn’t recognize this name– but he said that I’d helped him two years ago by answering a question over emails.
Jocelyn: Yes. Just go in your emails, look for questions you’ve answered for people. Don’t use their name or you know, make up a fake name or whatever. Don’t use any identifying details obviously, but just go in there and put the information that you typed to that person. That way you don’t even have to think of anything and you know that it’s answering someone’s question. Those are some of our favorite types of content to do because we don’t have to think about it a whole lot.
Shane: There are all kinds of avenues to get your name in front of people. There’s a website called Haro. Is that what it’s called, Jocelyn?
Jocelyn: HARO. Help a Report Out.
Shane: Help a Reporter Out. And you can just sit and type in things like, “career,” “jobs,” “work,” and you’ll find reporters all over the country and all over the world who write for Huffington Post, and Medium, and everywhere, and they’ll be looking out for people to just be like, “Hey, I’m looking for someone to give me three quick tips on how to get a good job. I’ll leave a link to your website.” You just send them three tips on email, you drop a link, then they put it in their post.
Jocelyn: And I would say, like on all this content that you’re creating, I just want to make sure that when people land on your page, it’s obvious what you want them to do next. I think sometimes people miss that step. If you’re sending thousands of eyeballs to your site, but you’re not giving them the next step, then it doesn’t really matter. You know, it’s kind of like a waste. So you want to make sure that when people hit your site, it’s very obvious what you want them to do next, which normally is to join your email list.
Shane: Make sure in every email you send, every piece of content you have, every page on your website, in the upper right-hand corner, there is a button that says, “Join my membership!”
When you write a blog post, at the end say, “Hey, would you like your question answered? I’ll answer your question in my membership. Here’s a link to the sales page.” Anytime you do anything on the front page, over in the sidebar, “Hey, did you know I have a membership? Join here!” Be overt, be open. Let people know you have something for sale. Don’t hide it.
So many people wait until they launch or they wait until their email– or, “Oh, I don’t want to tell I got something for sale.” Like they’re scared little butterflies that will fly away. But they’re there to get answers to their questions and most of the time they’ll pay for it, so you might as well tell them you’ve got something for sale and get that low-hanging fruit out.
Marcy: Yes. Okay, so I need to do that on all my pages. I need to have a Join My Membership. I’ve started doing that on my blogs as I’m adding them, but I haven’t gone back to the old ones.
Shane: If you go to flippedlifestyle.com, you’ll see in the upper right-hand corner, we have a ‘Join the Community’ button. But what I’ve also done is we changed our entire sidebar to be a sales page. There’s no navigation on our sidebar. It’s literally designed like a sales page to start at the top, work you down to the bottom and get you to click to join the membership. We do things like opt-ins and stuff elsewhere. We have a little plugin on our site that lets me put basically an ad at the bottom of every post so I don’t have to go in and put a link in every post.
I do anyway. I put texts links at the bottom. But I’ve got a little thing at the bottom of every post through this plug-in and that just says, “Hey, would you like to do what we do?
Click here.” So you can go in and do that really easy site-wide and have either your sales button or your opt-in right at the bottom of every post so you don’t have to worry about it.
Marcy: Okay, and you did that with a plugin.
Shane: Yeah, it’s a plugin. I’m not exactly sure what it is. Email Kat and see if she knows, and she can look in there and see. We’ll try and figure it out for you.
Marcy: Thank you!
Jocelyn: Alright. So we just threw a lot of information out there at you. How do you feel about all of those things that we mentioned?
Marcy: I think that you gave me some great ideas. I like that idea of doing an extra blog post and I liked the idea of getting on more podcasts. If I’m doing that well, then that’s great. I may as well do more of that. So I think those are two really good ideas and I can check out the HARO site as well. So I think, I think those are all good ideas.
Shane: Are you ready to spend money on ads? Do you have income to spend on that? Even if you just took what you were making off the membership now, could you not throw 100 bucks a month right now at just a little bit of advertising? You don’t want to necessarily focus totally on sales stuff, this would be just awareness. Just letting people know you’re there. Are you willing to do that right now?
Marcy: Yeah, I think I could. I might be more willing to do 50 a month just because I’m just afraid I’m going to mess it up so bad. If I mess it up with 50, I don’t feel as bad as if I mess it up with a 100.
Shane: If that’s what you’re comfortable with, go for it. Yeah.
Jocelyn: You do what makes you happy, but I think that just even the idea of trying it, I think is great.
Shane: We were at a conference one time, and we sat down at a table. I will not name the guru who was at the table, but you would definitely recognize them. They were telling these people at the table, they were like, “Well, what would you do if you had an ad like this?” And he was like, “I’d spend $30,000 on that ad if it was working that good, and I’d go borrow it if I had to, and mortgage my house or whatever.” And I’d sat back and I went, “Bro, that’s not what normal humans do because that’s stupid.”
And everybody was like– GASP! but I don’t really care. So I was just sort of like, “That’s crazy.” I was like, “You are crazy.” And everyone else was like, “Yeah, that is crazy.” Because they’re like, it just scared them to death. Like, well, if you can’t spend $30,000, you can’t run ads. That’s not the message you want. It’s like, “No, I’m ready to do this. I’ll tiptoe into it and I’ll just keep moving forward. And eventually, I’ll get to that point.”
Marcy: And measure my metrics like a good business-minded person.
Shane: Exactly! Paying attention, that’s what I’m talking about.
Jocelyn: Alright, Marcy, we had a lot of stuff thrown out there, a lot of good ideas and I think that you have a very bright future. But before we go, we always ask our guests, what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next day or so, based on what we talked about here today.
Marcy: Well, we did talk about a lot of things, and I thank you guys so much. I do think I need to get in front of people more. I think I’m going to look into getting on more podcasts, that’s one thing I’ll do.
Shane: That’s awesome. You’ll be shocked. If you just go right down the hundred podcasts when you go search for careers in iTunes, write them down, email them all, people are going to come call back. Once you get those first couple, now you can say, “I’ve been on these podcasts, can I be on yours?” And eventually it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You get more people, and just make sure every time you’re on one you say, “I’m Marcy, go to this site. I got a free gift for you.” And you’ll start growing that list.
Marcy: Super!
Jocelyn: All right, well thank you so much for being here today. We enjoyed talking to you so very much, and we can’t wait to see what happens as you move forward in your online business.
Marcy: Thank you so much for all you do you, guys.
Shane: What a great call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. We would love to have you in our Flip Your Life community as well. If you would like to become a member of our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can help you with your online business, too.
Jocelyn: Alright, next we are going to move into the Can’t Miss Moment segment of our show, and these are moments that we were able to experience that we might have missed if we were working at 9-to-5 jobs, still.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is wedding dress pictures that we had made recently with Anna. So a friend of mine who used to be my college roommate a few years ago– we won’t talk about exactly how many years ago that was–
Shane: A few years. I thought we didn’t sugarcoat things around here, Jocelyn? I’m just saying.
Jocelyn: Yeah, it was a few years.
Shane: I better be quiet because I’m going to be 40 in like a week.
Jocelyn: A few years ago. Anyway, my college roommate, she is actually a photographer in the Cincinnati area now. She has been doing these, what she calls, ‘Wedding dress mini photoshoots’ for a couple of years now. She started it last year, and I really wanted to do it last year, but we had a dance competition so we were not able to do the photoshoot.
And so basically, what it is, is you get out your old wedding dress and you let your daughter put it on. You know, she clips it so that it looks good on the little girl, but they take their picture in the wedding dress, and she had little cookies made and some pink lemonade and it was just a really fun day for the girls. And they played princess music. So, it was a very girly day, and she had someone there who does their hair, and I had done her makeup. The whole point of it is just for your daughter to be able to wear your wedding dress while she still thinks that it’s beautiful and cool because she probably won’t 20 years from now.
Shane: But the thing about those pictures is they’re very expensive. We had to drive three or four hours to get this photoshoot done.
Jocelyn: Which most people probably wouldn’t do.
Shane: Which most people probably wouldn’t do, or be able to do because they’d have work, or they’d have to go somewhere, or they’d have to take care of some errands on the weekend that they were neglecting all week. And it was just awesome to see Jocelyn and Anna Jo able to spend a whole day together, and to be able to get these amazing memories. I mean, we’ve got these beautiful pictures now of Anna in her wedding dress. I was thinking the other day, we’ve actually got one when Anna was like two years old we took ourselves. It would be awesome to do this every few years and give them to her like right before she gets married someday, or whatever. But, just a cool experience that might not have been available to us if we did not have the resources and the time to go do that.
Jocelyn: And if you would like to see the results of this picture, you can head on over to flippedlifestyle.com and look at today’s show notes.
Shane: As much as we love our Can’t Miss Moments, there’s actually one thing we love even more than that and that is a success story from our Flip Your Life community members. We got an awesome success story this week from one of our Flip Your Life community moderators, Kathy Martin!
For those of you who don’t know, we have a huge community, we call it the Flip Your Life community and we’ve got a lot of great leaders in our community that we have promoted to moderators. And they’re in there, not only so they can build and grow their online business, but they’re really in there on the front lines helping other people too. Kathy’s one of our absolute rock star members. She had an awesome success story this week titled, “I got four new members from my five-day challenge.”
Jocelyn: Kathy says, “I’m pretty excited that after my five-day challenge last week, I was able to convert 10% of my participants to my membership, three monthly members and one annual. I learned a lot after these five days, and maybe I’ll post about the process if anyone can use that info. But I’m pretty stoked at the results. I now have the tools to duplicate this again and double down on my efforts to convert more people. Thanks to Shane for telling me to automate as much as possible because my plan was to go live on Facebook every day, but I decided to change that after Shane’s advice. And thank God I did because it would have fallen apart without automation. Keep learning and growing, keep moving the ship forward.”
Shane: This is just a pure example of how the Flip Your Life community actually works. Kathy, one of our great leaders, one of our awesome action-takers, goes in, celebrates her success and the first thing out of her mouth is “I’m offering to help anyone who wants to know how I did it. Come look at this process. I’m totally transparent.”
Jocelyn: She did exactly that. She actually posted a detailed account of everything that she did in our community. So if you’re a member or you’d like to become a member, you can see what Kathy did in detail, and I’m sure she would be happy to answer any questions for you.
Shane: That’s what’s awesome about being in a community like this. Nobody has all the answers, but together we can figure out anything. We have tens of thousands of online business posts inside of the Flip Your Life community, and thank you so much Kathy, for not only getting out there, and celebrating your success with us, but for sharing that process with everybody in the community.
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 can 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.
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