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Have you ever just looked at your to-do list sometimes and say, “Alright, there are so many things to do, but my gut instinct is telling me that these 2 things are really important right now. So…”
Has this ever happened to you?
Life gets pretty crazy sometimes and you can find yourself juggling too many things, too fast, all at once, next thing you know you’re so overwhelmed and stuck right where you are!
The good news is you have the option to do something about being stuck, and this is why you’ll find great insight and inspiration in today’s guest, Oleg Leontovych.
Oleg is one of our International Flip Your Life members, and he’s here to ask his next level questions to flip his online business to the next level.
A quick look into Oleg’s online business journey…
Oleg is originally from Ukraine, but had moved to Canada and served the I.T. industry for 18 years where he focused on software quality assurance. He has changed employers in several industries, survived 3 layoffs, and eventually gotten so frustrated with the job itself due to the overwhelming fear that they can let him go despite his position.
He has been reading into online business, getting himself acquainted with things like passive income and learning how to start his own business since 2013, but lacked the motivation to pursue it any further.
This all changed in September 2017, when he decided to go all-in on creating a stable, passive income online after getting laid off.
Now, he calls the shots and has made up his mind to finally pursue something he is really passionate in: gardening and teaching others how to enjoy the literal fruits (and vegetables) of their labor!
But something is still missing from his equation, and that’s where we step in.
Join us as we help Oleg refocus and work on his first paid product to give him the momentum he needs to grow his online business!
P.S.
Stick around and tune in, don’t miss out on all the amazing tips we’ll share with this week’s guest!
You Will Learn:
- Best way to overcome the common fear every entrepreneur has to face
- How your calendar will help you prioritize and let you take that next step
- “Comparison” Syndrome and why you should avoid it
- Language barriers and why your voice is unique
- The power of creating consistent, quality content
- Plus so much more!
Links and resources mentioned on today’s show:
- Oleg’s website – https://gardenhowto.com/
- Flip Your Life Community – http://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife
- Join us at FYL Live 2018, Nashville, TN! – https://flippedlifestyle.com/nashville
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:
Today’s Success Story from our Flip Your Life community is from Cynthia, and Cynthia’s post says, “I quit my day job.”
Now, listen, when we log in, and we see one of these, “Quit my day jobs, I flipped my life, everything has changed, not only in my life but my kids’ life, my kids’ kids’ lives, everything going forward,” that’s when we take a big deep breath and are like, “Wow, man, that is unbelievable!”
So, we logged into the forums today, clicked over to the Success Forums, and I always try to start my day with all these positive posts in the success forum, and we saw this “Quit my job,” we got super excited.
And Cynthia writes, “After 10 years of working for a school as an interpreter, I resigned. I am now working full time for myself, selling ASL teaching resources and ASL courses,”
Cynthia’s website: http://aslteachingresources.com/
That’s American Sign language. And Cynthia is a long-time community member. Just an awesome person. She actually randomly figured out that she knew my sister-in-law. So, you’re talking about a small world, and my sister-in-law is actually a sign language interpreter, and they live near each other. So, just a really cool story.
It’s a really long post, so to kind of summarize it, she was talking about her boss. She had this really mean boss who was this domineering, dictator-type boss, and basically kept calling people in the office, kept writing people up and always threatening people with putting stuff on file, and told her that if she ever got out a single piece of paper or a book or anything else during work hours again, that she was going to get in trouble, maybe fired, whatever — just these ridiculous demands.
I just was on a podcast the other day, and the host told me that 70% of people quit their jobs because of hateful bosses. So, maybe you have a hateful boss. Maybe you can relate to Cynthia’s story, you’ve got a boss that’s just not good to you. And Cynthia has said, “No more!” She’s done, she’s quit her job, she’s in total control of her life now, and that’s what we want for you. We want you to be able to come into the Success Forum in the Flip Your Life community someday, and write, “I quit my job too!”
So congratulations, Cynthia. You’re a total inspiration for the Flip Your Life community and our listeners!
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:
The pond/lake that is behind our house is the perfect size property for jet skis. I’ve been wanting them for a really long time and I finally talked Shane into it, and we bought them a few weeks ago. We’ve gotten on them several times, and it has been a blast. So, I know that if we hadn’t started an online business, I mean, first of all, we wouldn’t be living with this property with the lake behind our house. Also, we probably would not have been able to afford to buy jet skis. So, I’m very thankful for our online business, and for this Can’t Miss Moment that we were able to 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 Oleg take his food gardening business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams.
We’re a real family who figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright, let’s get started.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you as always this week. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community, and help them take their business to the next level.
We have one of our international members today! Our guest today is Oleg Leontovych. We had to practice this one a few times, but it’s Oleg Leontovych.
Oleg, welcome to the show!
Oleg: Thank you for having me, guys. I’m excited to hear from you!
Jocelyn: Yes, it is great to talk to you today. I love how you’re just cracking up at our pronunciation of your name.
Shane: Pretty much the whole pre-show was Oleg laughing at me. We’re having a good time.
Jocelyn: You couldn’t even talk because you’re just cracking up because we can’t say your name.
Oleg: It’s nice to start on a laughing note.
Jocelyn: Yes, exactly. And we’re very happy to have you. Tell everybody a little bit. I mean you’re obviously not American, so let’s talk a little bit about your background. Where did you come from and where do you live now?
Oleg: Okay, I was growing up in Ukraine, moved to Canada in 1999. I spent 18 years in IT, particularly in the quality assurance specialty. And then I started to realize that there is something more interesting and meaningful for me to devote my life and time to. I was laid off in September 2017. I took some time to filter out all of the– then decided to leave the job aside for a while and focus my time and effort on doing what I liked instead.
Shane: That’s awesome! Yeah, it’s funny how a catalyst like that– something that bad happens, like you lose your job– can make you re-evaluate life a little bit and say, “Hey, maybe there’s more to this, and it was almost a good thing that I got out of that job.”
Oleg: Yeah, exactly! It was not the first and last layoff. I survived through three layoffs before, but this time it was not so scary for me. But I started to look at what I wanted to do really instead of why do I have to go back to the job where I could be kicked out again?
Shane: So in Canada, you had a job and you got laid off last year and that’s where we’re going right now, right?
Oleg: Right, spent 18 years of Canadian experience in IT here.
Shane: And when you did that, when you got laid off, did you say, “I want to look for something like a career I want to do?” Or did you say, “Hey, I want to be self-employed, I don’t want to put my faith in someone else again because I keep getting laid off. I want to work for myself,” or are you just looking for a more fulfilling career?
Oleg: See, I started to get interested in such things as a passive income a while ago, probably since I was 2009 when I listened and read Robert Kiyosaki first. And then I started to get curious with things like, “Oh, you can receive money while you sleep in passive ways!”
Jocelyn: Yeah, that sounds pretty good!
Shane: Sounds pretty good. It’s better than getting laid off.
Oleg: But then I observed from others who has passive income, and seeing them still not being happy. I understood that something was missing, and that was really your ‘why’. The ‘why’ was missing. People still stay being kind of wealthy, but they are not happy.
Shane: Oh, yeah. That’s deep, dude. That’s such a good point because so many people want to get rich and instead of saying, “Hey, I want to do something I enjoy and I love and purposeful in my life,” and then the rich people just trade one job for another. Just because they work for themselves, they’re still not happy.
Oleg: Exactly. So, still while being employed, I started to read, listen and research all of these activities, what could be done on the side that could create more passion for me.
Jocelyn: That’s good! So tell us a little bit about why you decided to go online? Why not start your own IT business, or do something locally? Why did you decide that online business was going to be a good path for you?
Oleg: First of all, I’m sick and tired of physical businesses that do not provide any connection to the people around, do not fulfill them in personal life. And also I like online business because it provides more freedom in life location-wise, time-wise, activity-wise.
Jocelyn: I like that you said that about the relationship because I was thinking about that the other day. Like when you buy a product or service locally or from a store, there are very few times that you have a personal relationship with the people who sold it to you.
Shane: And especially when you’re in IT, an IT job seems like it could get really lonely because you’re just messing with the computers and the systems and the wiring or whatever you do. You don’t get to walk up and say, “Hey, I am helping you with this problem,” and you don’t see the person get the result. But in online business you do do that.
Oleg: Exactly. Yes, I agree!
Shane: My favorite part about our job is when people email us and tell us what’s going on in their life and their business. I just did a Facebook live last night, I did it at like midnight. Someone had sent me a message and said, “Oh, it’s 11:00 and I’m so tired and I just don’t feel like this. What should I do?” And I started a Facebook live at midnight and I was like, “You get over it, let’s go! You got to stay up. You shouldn’t want to sleep. You should be passionate! You should be helping people!”
In the beginning of your journey, you got to put in some extra time even when you’re tired. But this morning I got an email. When I woke up I checked my email and it was like, “Man, I saw your Facebook live last night right before I was so tired and about to go to bed and I stayed up. I recorded a podcast–” and he listed like these five things that they did. It’s awesome in online business because you get that immediate feedback that you don’t get in the real world.
Oleg: Yes, true.
Jocelyn: Alright, Oleg, so you got started not too long ago, and you have found our community, which is awesome. We’re very excited to have you. So tell everybody what, so far, has been your biggest fear, confidence issue or a mindset struggle that you are trying to overcome in this online business journey?
Oleg: You know when I joined the Flip Your Life community, I have already filtered the major fear, the internal obstacle that might still be left is how will I stick to what I’ve chosen. I still get kind of a doubt of, “Is it really what I would like to do for the rest of my life?” And then, “Is it really my passion or there is something more interesting, more specific that I should focus on?”
Shane: Sure. That’s a common fear. Most people feel like, “I’ve got to have it all figured out at all times.” That’s what entrepreneurs feel like, “I should know how to do this. I should know how to do the next thing,” and, “I should know that this is the thing I want to do forever in our life.” What Jocelyn and I did when we started out was we started having that same conversation.
Before we started any of our businesses, we were like, what can we do? What should we focus on? And then we asked ourselves that same question, “Do I really want to make library lesson plans the rest of my life? Do I really want to do football playbooks the rest of my life?” Whatever it was we were doing. And we said probably not. But if we don’t start something and succeed at something, we will not have the choice later on to do whatever we want.
That’s how you kind of get past that fear, and that’s how we got past that fear, we said, “Look, let’s just do what we’ve got right now. This is our idea. We’re going to do it. We like it, let’s do it. And then we can change later.” And that’s exactly the flow of our business. We both started in education, but then we said, “Hey, what’s our real passion? Helping families change their future.” So that’s what we’ve worked ourselves into.
Jocelyn: And I feel like sometimes people think they have one chance, and if they don’t get it right this very first time, like you never have another opportunity. Well, we’ve had probably a dozen websites.
Shane: That’s being generous, Jocelyn.
Jocelyn: A handful of them have been very successful. Well, if we’re talking domains, we probably have hundreds.
Shane: Oh, gosh, I think we still have hundreds of domains right now, owned.
Jocelyn: But actual things that we tried to build, I mean we’ve probably had about a dozen over the years. A few of them have been successful. Others, not so much. It’s not like it’s a one shot thing. I think that’s what you have to remember. Everything that you do, even if it’s not incredibly successful from a financial standpoint, is successful from a learning standpoint. When you start something and it doesn’t work out so well, then you know what to do the next time or you know, what mistakes you’ve made or what you did right, and you want to repeat again. So I think that a lot of times people don’t view it that way, they think that it’s now or never.
Shane: Yeah. There is a mentality, Oleg, that I hear you bringing in from the nine-to-five world. We feel stuck. That word, ‘stuck’, is a very powerful word because a lot of people feel stuck in their nine-to-five or they feel stuck in their career. Like, “If I quit my job today, I wouldn’t be able to get a good job tomorrow. I’m stuck here.” You’ve got to leave that mentality totally behind when you enter into this world. You’re never stuck. When you do online business, you’re in total control of your destiny every day.
If Jocelyn and I woke up tomorrow and said, “We don’t want to do X.” Then we could immediately do Y. We could start something new. And that’s what’s so cool about being self-employed and about doing it online is, you can change so fast. You can pivot so fast. And really, it’s just the decision to do it. That’s how you get over that fear, is just don’t feel stuck. Don’t bring that nine-to-five mentality to your online business. This is just your first thing, and you’re going to let it either evolve or change it later, and it’s all good.
Oleg: Yeah, that’s right. I think you relate to the same point that you brought in one of the recent podcast. Start throwing mud to the wall and see what sticks.
Shane: Yes. Yes, I think I drive Jocelyn crazy–
Jocelyn: You think?
Shane: Yeah, because I throw a lot of mud on the wall. We just got into a heated discussion this morning of some mud I was throwing up the wall and Jocelyn was like, “Slow down,” and she’s like, “At 2:00 today, we can throw mud on the wall. We’re not going to throw mud on the wall again.”
Jocelyn: Well, I just wanted to be on the same wall. Sometimes, I don’t think we’re on the same wall.
Shane: There’s like eight walls and I’m throwing mud on all the walls and Jocelyn’s like, “Throw mud on this wall! Please, just do that.” Yeah, but that’s what you’re doing, man. You’re just throwing that mud on the wall to see what sticks right now. And, hey, the cool thing about online business, too, is it compounds. That’s what is so awesome about it. Right now it feels like, “Oh, I’m throwing mud on the wall. I don’t know if it’ll stick. I don’t know if I really want to do this.”
You’ll learn so much in this first pass through that the next time you do this– because you will do it the next time, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to do it again– the next time you do something, it’ll happen so much faster. Jocelyn and I can literally get an entire business off the ground in probably a week now, and get traffic and start making sales. So it’s like not a big deal once you learn the process to just try new things, and keep going and go faster.
Jocelyn: Alright, Oleg, we talked a little bit about things that are going on inside your head. Let’s talk a little bit about outside influences or obstacles that you have either overcome or you’re working on overcoming in this journey.
Oleg: Okay. I can say that from the external side, what’s holding me up is how to manage everything by myself day to day because I am recently divorced. I’m just doing everything by myself, and I’m in the process of following in my actions down in strategic movement towards the end goal. Too many things to handle, when and how to decide when it’s time to delegate to someone else while you focus on the more major things to do.
Shane: That’s really hard in the beginning because you do have to kind of wear all the hats when you first start out. Most people, when they start out, don’t have a ton of extra money to go hire people, and outsource things. That can become stressful and then when you add in life, like staying alive, taking care of people, you know, all that good stuff, it can get really, really, really overwhelming.
One thing I’ve learned in the last year is no matter how many people we hire, there’s still more to do, and it’s almost impossible to hire out everything.
Jocelyn: Even that comes with its own set of problems because once you hire people, you have to manage them.
Shane: Exactly. There’s so many things to juggle at all times in our business. Jocelyn kind of keeps us grounded though by saying, “Hey, we don’t have to do everything at once. All this doesn’t have to be done today. We don’t have to talk about what mud Shane’s throwing on the wall at this minute. We can do it later.”
We always default back to the calendar here. You’ve just got to look at your calendar and say, “What can I do?” And that gets done first, and then everything else just gets done whenever you can get to it.
Jocelyn: And I recommend having a list that you go back to. When something’s on your mind, put it on your list, and just by putting it on the list, it makes your brain think that you have done something productive, okay? So you might not actually take action on that item right that second, but you get it down, you get it out of your head temporarily and then you can look at your list and say, “Okay, what is most important today? Or, “What do I have time to do?” Paired with, “What is most important from this list?”
Shane: I just did this, this morning because I’m working on a new sales funnel. I’m literally writing this out, building the sales funnel right now. Right in the middle of the sales funnel, while I was working on it, I had an idea for a course that I really wanted to make for our members in the Flip Your Life community. But my whole being at that moment said, “Stop working on the sales funnel, and go make this course,” because it sounded really exciting and fun, and I do that.
Jocelyn: And Shane love starting things.
Shane: I love starting things, not necessarily finishing things. What I did was I did exactly what Jocelyn said. I just wrote it down over on a notebook, and I’ll get to it eventually. I’ll get to it sooner or later, but then I went back to the sales funnel to work on that.
Don’t you look at your list sometimes and you say, “All right, there’s 50 things to do, but I know that these two things are really important right now.” Do you ever do that?
Oleg: Right, absolutely!
Shane: That gut instinct is where you got to go. That’s what you got to work on. And don’t worry about everybody else and what they’re doing. If Oleg looks at the list, and says, “That’s it, I know I’ve got to work on that thing. I want to work on all these things and all these things need to be done eventually. But come on, man. That’s the thing I got to work on right now.” That gut instinct, man. That’s where you got to go in that situation.
Oleg: Yeah, because sometimes even visiting in the forum pulls you out as a distraction. Well, you see, many people on different levels doing different things, like you kind of get confused. “Wow, so much to do!”
Shane: Yes, because that’s what happens is you see other people and you start getting into that comparison syndrome. “Well, that person posted 50 times on Twitter this month, why didn’t I do that?” And then you want to go do that, but really that’s not where you’ve got to work, and where you should be at.
Oleg, let me step out of the box here a little bit. We normally just bring those external obstacles out of our guests.
I have one very specific thing that I’d love to ask you. Do you feel like the language barrier holds you back ever? And I asked that because I just got an email yesterday. It was a Flipped Lifestyle listener who said English was their second language, and they were afraid to start an online business because I guess they didn’t want to be judged or they didn’t feel like they could communicate their message effectively, and they really wanted to sell to an English audience. How do you overcome the language barrier when you’re making your content, when you’re thinking about your ideas and does that ever scare you or hold you back?
Oleg: Not anymore. I’ve had the same obstacle and fear before, but then I joined The Toastmasters. And while making speeches in the Toastmasters, I have started to hear the feedback when people do not say anything about your accent, and sometimes they compliment on the accent, saying that, “Oh, you have a cute accent!”
Shane: Oh, that’s awesome!
Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s kind of the way we feel!
Shane: And Toastmasters is like a speech thing, right? Like you give speeches? It’s like a local group or whatever.
Oleg: Exactly! Yes. Yes, it’s public speaking. Even after the public speaking, I have shot down my inner voice that always told me, “Oh, you have accent, you’re a kind of an immigrant, you’re a foreigner here.” I’m not sure how it would work in other countries outside of North America, but over here, I don’t feel you should ever focus on your accent.
Shane: That’s awesome.
Oleg: Because you are surrounded with similar people from around the world and everybody has their own accent.
Shane: That’s so awesome you said that because when we started out, one of the things that we were really afraid of is that people will judge us because we’re from the south, but we’re from like the worst south. We’re from Kentucky South, which is the worst accent in America. We can go to like Philadelphia and New York and people won’t be able to understand us because our accent is so strong. But we did the same thing you did. We said, “Hey, people will probably love this because we sound different than other people they listen to, right?”
Oleg: Yeah, that’s true.
Shane: We have never once, in– how long have we done this now? Like, four years? The podcast?
Jocelyn: Four years, I think?
Shane: We’ve never once had someone say anything bad about our accent. It’s only been complimentary.
Jocelyn: And you know what, there are probably people out there who think, “They’re a bunch of crazy rednecks, I’m not listening to them.” And that is fine.
Shane: Jocelyn, we are hillbillies, not rednecks. We need to get our vernacular in order here, okay, we’re from Kentucky.
Jocelyn: And that’s fine. You know, there are going to be people who don’t like that, but that’s okay. There’ll be people who find it endearing. Like I love to talk to someone from another place. I find it fascinating. For me, that’s a really positive thing.
There are people out there, if you don’t feel comfortable on video, then do audio. Or if you don’t feel comfortable on audio or video, type. There are different ways of getting out there even if English might not be your first language or whatever language that you’re speaking or writing in, there are other ways to communicate, if that’s not your favorite.
Shane: What’s the core type of content you’re going to create, Oleg? Are you doing video, audio, blogs, like what are you doing?
Oleg: Well, I started with blogging. But then I feel that I have to step up and do the videos.
Shane: Yeah. I think your accent is amazing! You need to do videos! If you were on video, this accent is perfect, and you were just really getting passionate about the topic, I think people would love it. Absolutely love it, because you have a great personality.
Oleg: I started to talk with my avatar live and I’m comfortable with presenting my ideas live. Of course they would like to listen by old media, by audio, video and by blogging. But really I like to do it in video.
Shane: That’s awesome. That’s amazing.
Jocelyn: Okay, Oleg, we’ve had some really good conversations about some things that are holding you back, but let’s jump into how we can help you to get to the next level and flip your life. What is the biggest question you have right now for your online business?
Oleg: My biggest question is kind of connected to the external obstacle. What major activities I should focus to get traction, to get noticed, to create the following, and at the same time, cut out the minor stuff that is not important? Like, at this point, the website is there. There are many drafts to do. What should go first, the hen or the egg?
Jocelyn: Okay. Let’s back up just a tiny bit because we talked about this a little bit before we started the show, but I don’t think we told the listeners what it is you’re trying to do online. So tell us just a little bit about what you have gotten started.
Oleg: I have started the website where I promote the healthy way of living through growing your own food in your yard, on your balcony, in the pots on your patio. It’s about growing the vegetables, fruits and berries instead of relying on the food supply from the stores.
Jocelyn: Okay. So you’re doing a website about gardening. What is your content right now? Like what do you have on there so far?
Oleg: I have a bunch of blogs, but it’s not enough yet. I know that I have to create more writing content.
Shane: Okay. So you kind of just answered your own question, right? Remember what I said earlier, like trust your gut, trust your instinct on what you should do next? It’s funny because you said, “Oh, what should I do? There’s so many things to do,” but as soon as Jocelyn said, “What’s there now?” You said, “Blogs, but I need to do more blogs.” And the answer that you’re gravitating to there is content. And that is almost always the correct answer in the beginning.
So many people want to go straight into sales funnels, straight into advertising, straight into all these more advanced strategies that you do need to learn how to do. But until you have a really, really, really solid base of content, you’re probably not going to be able to build anything.
Consistency in creating content is what builds wealth. I just sent an email a couple days ago that said that, because they were like, “Oh, I’m only doing like one blog post a week.” And Jocelyn and I were talking this morning about our own business and we’ve been looking at what makes us grow, and really the only thing that makes you grow is more content. More content leads to more chances to be found, leads to more eyeballs on your offer, leads to more sales. Right now you really need to probably focus on just getting more content out, maybe being more consistent about what you’re writing.
Maybe you do a quick video every day in your own garden, right? Maybe you just take your phone out on a Facebook live every day and you’re like, “Hey guys, it’s Oleg, I just want to show you I’m growing these tomatoes,” or something, whatever you’re growing.
Jocelyn: Cucumbers.
Shane: Yeah, cucumbers. And then say, “Hey, I’m doing this. This is what I’m doing today. Check this out, here’s a tip,” and bam, you’re done. Then go turn that into a blog post, and just make yourself crank out content so you can get more eyeballs basically.
Oleg: Alright, but where should the product creation fit?
Shane: We always say product first because product is a piece of content, so it fits in your content strategy. If you look at the course inside the Flip Your Life community about content strategy, it will tell you, make the product first, make a lead magnet that goes to the product next, and then make tons of content that all points to the lead magnet.
We have the Flip Your Life blueprint. I think a couple of years ago, I redid the whole thing in February. I spent a whole month recreating the whole Flip Your Life blueprint because we knew we had to update and fix the product the way we want it to be. So it’s product first. After we got the product done, we had to start thinking of like a lead, magnet strategy. Well, how do we get people into the Flip Your Life blueprint? Well, we have free offers that give you ‘How to Start an Online Business.’ We have the six courses that help you come up with an idea and things like that. If you go to our website, you can take that course free. Now we have to come up with content that points to that.
In my strategy right now, I’m doing a YouTube video every week based on keyword research. I’m doing one called, “Finding your niche.” I’m going to make a piece of content, that content is going to point to a lead magnet that says, “Hey, here’s a free workbook to figure out your idea,” and then we will tell them that, “Hey, there’s a video about this, a whole course to help you do this, and people you can talk to you inside the community.” That’s what we sell.
So your content strategy always starts with your product, goes to your lead magnet, and then you start making content to support that. What products do you have right now? Do you have your full product done or what do you have?
Oleg: No, I didn’t create a product yet.
Shane: You don’t have to create, “How to grow every plant that’s possible to grow on your balcony ever.” You just have to say, what would be a good food to start with that’s a good staple thing, like lettuce or something. And just say, “Hey, this is how you grow this thing.” And then you can add to it over time.
Jocelyn: I think some people get confused when we say that we want you to create a product, and they think that we want you to create a 200-page book or a 60-hour video course or something like that. It doesn’t have to be anything huge.
Oleg: Or a membership site.
Jocelyn: Yeah, right. You don’t have to do that right away. Let’s just make something small, make it available for sale, and make a little path for people to get to it.
Shane: Yeah, and there’s actually some confusion there. The way you said that makes me think, “Oh, I should start a membership site.” Like that’s this huge undertaking. Right?
Oleg: Right.
Shane: But you could literally do this. In one day, you can say, “I’m going to start a membership site. And you’ve installed the plugin, you set up your payment processor, and you now have a membership area. You could put that one course on how to grow the first thing in your membership area, and then immediately start selling your membership saying, “Hey guys, this is the ‘How to grow your own food on your balcony,’ membership, and every month I’m going to release a new thing that you can grow.”
Your membership’s ready. It’s over, it’s done. You’re going to create something every month forever and you can sell it and say, “Hey, we’re going to talk every month about a new plant,” and you just do that for the next 12 months. You know exactly what your content is going to be. Your members are happy as larks because they’re getting all this new content every month. You can even put a list on your sales page. “Hey guys, I’ve already got the lettuce course in there. I’m going to show you next month is going to be this herb. Next month is going to be this vegetable. Next month is going to be this fruit. This is what I’m going to do. Join the membership now!”
Even creating a membership is not this huge undertaking that people think it is. It’s just a little bit of forethought to know where you’re going to go, and then you let members join. So, “Hey, $19 a month, I’ll teach you how to grow a new plant on your balcony every single month. We’ll plant the seed on the first, and you’ll have a sprout coming out on the 30th.” Bam, and you’re done. You don’t even have to create the stuff ahead of time. You just make that.
It’s about getting something starting that people can pay for, and then adding to it as you go. That’s what online business is. It’s just adding as you go along.
Oleg: Awesome.
Jocelyn: Okay, well that was a lot of information that we just threw at you. So before we go today, we always like to ask our guests, what is one thing that you plan to take action on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today?
Oleg: I will set up my videos going, and start creating one small course as a small product.
Shane: That’s perfect. Do you have a little traffic right now or any kind of audience or any place online you can go to get information from your audience?
Oleg: Oh, I have 3,100 likers on Facebook.
Shane: Okay, perfect. What you need to do is you need to come up with 10 ideas for a course. Plants probably is where you need to focus on, like what you grow. You need to go do a poll in that group and say, “Hey guys, I’m making a course on how to grow this thing in 30 days,” or whatever. Right? “Which one do you want?” Let them vote and just do them in that order. You now know each course you’re going to make every month for the next 10 months. You could probably launch your membership to those 3,100 people a month from now, and just start with that first course.
Oleg: Yeah, exactly.
Shane: Awesome. All right, one more thing before we go. I’m really excited because Oleg is joining us at Flip Your Life Live in Nashville! So he’s going to be flying down from Canada Town, right? And joining us in Nashville, man. Why did you decide to come to Nashville, and I mean, how pumped are you that we’re going to be hanging out together here in a couple months?
Oleg: Because I want to see you guys live and talk in person, and communicate with other Flip Your Life community members in person, meet also the friends that we communicate with in our mastermind group, too.
Shane: Awesome.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I love that. I cannot wait to meet you in person, and we can talk, we can listen to some music in Nashville and have a great time.
Shane: And I’m a hugger, Oleg. I need a big Ukrainian-Canadian-American hug when I see you, right? We’re talking bro hug, double pats on the back, all that good stuff!
Jocelyn: Hey, guys, you all know you want to meet Oleg. Don’t miss this opportunity. We have a few tickets left!
Shane: As we’re recording this, we have eight tickets left to Flip Your Life Live, Nashville. We are not adding any more. And if you sign up today, I will sit you at Oleg’s table so that you can sit with Oleg, and learn how to grow your own food. So go to flippedlifestyle.com/nashville, and get one of the last remaining tickets to Flip Your Life Live. It’s going to be awesome! It’s the only live event we’re doing this year, and it will change your life. Just like online business changed our life, online business changed Oleg’s life.
Oleg, we will see you in the community, and we will see you at Nashville, man. Thanks for being on the show today!
Oleg: Excellent. Thank you very much, you guys, for having me!
Shane: Super call today with one of our Flip Your Life community members. We would love for you to be a member of our community as well. If you would like to join our Flip Your Life community, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can show you how to join today.
Jocelyn: It is now time to move into our Can’t Miss Moment segment. These are moments that we were able to experience recently that we might have missed if we were still working at our normal 9-to-5 jobs.
Today’s Can’t Miss Moment is getting our new jet skis. They are not exactly new. They were made in the 1990’s, but we decided to buy some jet skis for our pond, behind our house, and also just for fun just to take to other places. When I was a young girl, we used to go to the lake all the time, and I knew that it was something that I wanted to do for my kids.
The pond/lake that is behind our house is the perfect size property for jet skis. I’ve been wanting them for a really long time and I finally talked Shane into it, and we bought them a few weeks ago. We’ve gotten on them several times, and it has been a blast. So, I know that if we hadn’t started online business, I mean first of all, we wouldn’t be living with this property with the lake behind our house. Also, we probably would not have been able to afford to buy jet skis. So, I’m very thankful for our online business, and for this Can’t Miss Moment that we were able to do that.
Shane: The Flip Your Life podcast is not just about our Can’t Miss Moments, guys. We’re all about our members’ success and we wanted to share a member’s success story with you today.
Jocelyn: Today’s Success Story from our Flip Your Life community is from Cynthia, and Cynthia’s post says, “I quit my day job.”
Shane: Now, listen, when we log in, and we see one of these, “Quit my day jobs, I flipped my life, everything has changed, not only in my life but my kids’ life, my kids’ kids’ lives, everything going forward,” that’s when we take a big deep breath, and are like, “Wow, man, that is unbelievable!”
So, we logged into the forums today, clicked over to the Success Forums, and I always try to start my day with all these positive posts in the success forum, and we saw this “Quit my job,” we got super excited.
And Cynthia writes, “After 10 years of working for a school as an interpreter, I resigned. I am now working full time for myself, selling ASL teaching resources and ASL courses,” American Sign language. And Cynthia is a long-time community member. Just an awesome person. She actually randomly figured out that she knew my sister-in-law. So, you’re talking about a small world, and my sister-in-law is actually a sign language interpreter, and they live near each other. So, just a really cool story.
It’s a really long post, so I want to kind of summarize it, but she was talking about her boss. She had this really mean boss who was like a domineering, dictator-type boss, and basically kept calling people in the office, kept writing people up and always threatening people with putting stuff on file, and basically told her that if she ever got out a single piece of paper or a book or anything else during work hours again, that she was going to get in trouble, maybe fired, whatever. Just these ridiculous evil demands.
And I just was on a podcast the other day, and the host told me that 70% of people quit their jobs because of hateful bosses. So, maybe you have a hateful boss. Maybe you can relate to Cynthia’s story, you’ve got a boss that’s just not good to you. And Cynthia has said, “No more!” She’s done, she’s quit her job, she’s in total control of her life now, and that’s what we want for you. We want you to be able to come into the Success Forum in the Flip Your Life community someday, and write, “I quit my job too!” So congratulations, Cynthia. Total inspiration for the Flip Your Life community. And thank you for sharing that in the forums today.!
Jocelyn: We would love to help you write the success story for your online business. At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you could learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
Shane: Before we go today, we like to close off every show with a verse from the Bible.
Today’s bible verse comes from 1 Peter 4:10, and it’s all about using your talents to serve other people. The Bible says, “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of gifts. Use them well to serve one another.”
Guys, that’s all you have to do to be successful with your online business, is find that thing that you’re expert enough in. Find that talent, find that gift that God has put deep inside of you. Use that gift to help other people to solve their problems, and serve other people, and you will be successful.
God would not have put that dream in your heart, that idea in your head, he would not have given you that talent if he did not want you to go use it to serve the world. So, don’t waste that gift. You, listening now, have a gift that someone else needs. Only you can help somebody else, you’ve just got to take action and put yourself out there into the world so that those people can find you.
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!
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