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In today’s episode, we help Laura get new members and also retain current members in her education business.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jocelyn: Hey, y’all. In today’s podcast, we help Laura take her online education business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flip Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sam. We’re a real family that 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? All right, let’s get started.
Shane: What’s going on everybody, welcome back to the Flip Lifestyle Podcast, it is great to be back with you again. Today, super excited to be with another member of the Flip Your Life community. This is a great episode, because this is a success story episode. This is a story with someone who has flipped their life. We’re talking to Flip Your Life member Laura Keybart today. Hey, Laura, welcome to the program.
Laura: Hey, thanks for having me, today.
Jocelyn: Yes, we are so excited to talk to you, especially with this awesome success story. We look for cool success stories to find people to be on the podcast. This one was one we did not want to miss, for sure. So before we jump into all that, we want to know a little bit about you, your family, and what you’re doing online.
Laura: Okay, sure. So I have a wonderful, supportive husband who has been behind me every step of the way that I’ve been going through this journey. I’m a step mom, I love dogs, I’m a distance runner, always running marathons, training for something. I’ve always got something on the calendar. We love traveling, we love planning vacations and different experiences around running events like those. So while I run while he watches football or visits a history museum.
Shane: Me and your husband would get along, dude. Like, if he’s watching football, I just went to Philadelphia, and I hit like five history museums. He should have went with me, I’m just saying. He should have went with me.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. Well, when I ran the Washington DC, the Marine Corp marathon, he was hitting the museums and visiting those places. So yeah, it works out.
Jocelyn: Cool, cool.
Laura: So I just completed my 18th year in education as a teacher. I taught english/language arts, which is reading and writing for, oh gosh, 15, 16 years, grade 6th through 12. The past couple of years, I was an instructional coach working with teachers at a local school district. Most of that was great, I love teaching and working with kids and teachers. But, it’s kind of the same thing that we all experience. We become fed up with terrible bosses, all the crazy workplace drama, mind numbing, ridiculous meetings and committees that go nowhere, and you start just kind of looking around.
Laura: What else could I do? I went through that. Is there something remote I could do? Something online I could do? Maybe I could teach myself how to code and build websites? Which, that was a joke, I tried that for a month. That’s not me. But what could I do so that I have a purpose, I can serve people, but I can also bring in an income that I can live on? What options are there? So I started listening to podcasts around setting goals, and working remotely, maybe even working for yourself. I would listen to all of these podcasts while I was doing my long training runs. That’s about the time I stumbled upon your podcast, it was maybe around episode, I don’t know, 40 or 50 or so, starting binge listening. I thought, okay, that makes sense. This whole thing makes sense now. I think maybe I could do that. Maybe one day, I can quit my job. That sounds crazy, but so was running 22.6 miles. That’s ridiculous too.
Shane: That is totally ridiculous. That is way more ridiculous than quitting your job, I’m telling you.
Laura: So anyway, so that day has finally come. My husband had been on me for months to just do it, just quit, we’ll be fine. Just do it. But all those doubts come in. Like, what happens if the few members I have now quit on me? What if the internet breaks? What about health insurance, what do you do about that? But everything is figure out-able. So I got to the point where I decided what am I more afraid of? Am I more afraid of the current status quo? Am I more afraid of trying this online thing full time now that I’ve had some success? Am I more afraid of trying that and then failing at it? What am I more afraid of? I decided I’m more afraid of the status quo. I’m more afraid of sticking with these traditional jobs and just having that be the next 20 years of my life. That seemed more frightening than quitting and possibly failing. That just seemed worse. So here I am. I quit, I feel good about it, now that I’ve done it. It’s okay. I’m gaining more members, the internet hasn’t broken, it’s fine.
Shane: That’s right.
Jocelyn: You’re still alive. That’s always a plus.
Shane: Yes.
Jocelyn: So let’s back up just a little bit.
Shane: For sure.
Jocelyn: Tell us about what you’ve been doing online. What did you start? When did you start it? What was the progression of it, I guess?
Shane: How did this grow, like so you listened to our podcast, and it was a long time ago. I mean, we’re in the 200s, that was back 40 or 50. So like, so you listened to the podcast, what are the next steps after that to try your thing, get into the community and stuff, to take you on that journey?
Laura: I guess you could say I eventually got to the point where I thought I either need to stop listening to these podcasts and stop thinking about this, or I just need to join the membership and just try it. So I joined and I just started going through all the videos. I just started going through how to build a website, how to create a sales funnel. Every step of the way, I was thinking, I’ll just try this, I’ll just try this next thing. I’ll just try this next one thing, and see if it works. If it doesn’t, I can always quit. I can always quit. But at the same time, I kept having small, progressive elements of growth.
Jocelyn: Wow, imagine that.
Shane: Imagine that, right? It’s like running. If I run a mile, and I don’t like it, I’ll quit. Somehow I run two miles, right?
Laura: Yeah, that’s a great metaphor, because I just kept thinking, okay, well, the website works now. Okay, well, I wrote a couple of emails, okay, I’ve got an opt in. Hey, somebody just signed up to my list. Hey, here is ten more people. Okay, well, this is working. I’ll just keep going. We’ll just see what happens. So I spent this whole time building things up, I’ll just see what happens, I’ll just see what happens. So over and over, that has been working. Now have I had, you know, did my website crash at one point? Yes. Was I up at three in the morning in tears because nothing was working and I still had a full day of work the next day? Yes. But-
Shane: I have been there. I’ll tell you, I cried like a baby a few times in the beginning, I promise you. So it’s, you’re not alone.
Jocelyn: But you know what’s funny, is that no journey, no matter if you’re working for someone else or if you’re working for yourself, no journey is perfect. You’re not just going to get up every day and everything is always going to be perfect, even if you work for someone else or if you’re doing your own thing. So that’s cool that you just kept going, and I like how you just took baby steps. I always say on the podcast, baby steps are going to get you closer to your goals than standing still.
Shane: You’re an english teacher, right?
Laura: Yeah.
Shane: So it’s like, you know, of course, the hero’s journey. We all hear that.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Shane: Well, the hero’s journey has a part in it where the hero leaves and keeps going, and has obstacles they have to overcome. Like, wouldn’t the hero’s journey be terrible if it was like, and the hero left home and got there, the end. Right? What a terrible story that would be.
Laura: True.
Jocelyn: What’s funny is that people think that’s what happens. People think that’s reality. They think, oh, well, these people started an online business, they were teachers, and it worked out for them. I mean, everything went perfectly for them. But there is no way that would happen for me. That’s the story that we tell ourselves when in reality, it’s nothing close to that.
Shane: Yeah, I shared a thing on Facebook the other day, Laura, is that it had three people standing on top of the Olympic podium, right? It had first, second, and third, and they were holding up their flowers, and it had hundreds of photographers taking a picture of them. But in the background, under them, it was like a pyramid, almost like that iceberg picture, you know, how you see 10%, but you don’t see 90%, like with the iceberg. But under it, it had all these blocks building this giant pyramid under it, and it was like tears, failure, conflict. It was all these hundreds of words that led to first, second, and third. That’s kind of what you’re saying here, I was up at three AM crying six months ago. But today, I quit my job. Right? So it’s like, that’s what people see, and they’re like, whoa, that’s cool. But they don’t see the three AM crying, though.
Jocelyn: But I venture to say that most people, in that situation, whether it be winning something in sports, whether it be quitting your job, I would be willing to say that most people would say it’s worth it.
Laura: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, because every tiny, small win along the way has made me feel like, okay, well, that’s working. It’s worth it, I’ll try this next thing.
Shane: When did you make your first ever sale?
Jocelyn: And what do you sale? Because I don’t think we’ve talked about that.
Laura: Okay, so I serve super busy middle school english language arts teachers. So grades 6th, 7th, and 8th, who value personal family time over prepping for class. So it’s a membership site, they get all their bell to bell lesson plans completely done for them, right? Every day, all year long. I also have a coaching and support member’s only community for that membership. So they pay monthly or annually, those are the two options I have right now. So that’s what I’m doing. I built it up from nothing. So I did the website, I got a little opt in going, I had a little bit of an email sales funnel going. I got, I had some interest. This was about, I guess this was two and a half years ago. I had some people interested. I was only doing 6th garde lesson plans. I thought, ooh, I’m going to really niche down, this’ll be great. Well, I had people coming in going, well, but I teach 6th and 7th. Or I teach 6th, 7th, and 8th. Do you do all middle school? Well, I … Sure, I can, yes.
Shane: That’s a slight pivot there, a little bit. There’s more work involved.
Laura: Yeah. So I just started creating these things, these lesson plans from scratch that they needed. Now I had things I had already created that I had used in the classroom. But some of that, I could not sell. It wasn’t all mine, or I don’t know where I got this resource or whatever. But I love creating lesson plans, that’s very creative for me, that’s fun for me, I enjoy it. I also enjoy writing. So it was doable, and even enjoyable for me to create what these people needed. So I was working that whole first year that I really had people paying me. I had like 14, 15 people paying me to create their lesson plans. I was working between one and two weeks behind what they needed.
Shane: Wow. No pressure there, right? Hey, thanks for your money. I’ll get this done. They paid me some money, right?
Jocelyn: But I actually kind of like that pressure though, because it just makes you get it done.
Laura: Well, it gave me confidence that, okay, I’ve got something valuable here that people are willing to pay me for. It was people all over the country. Like I said, only 14, 15 people, but still. One was in Oregon, one was in Indiana, right? One was in Louisiana, One was in Texas. So it just made me feel like, okay, I think I can do this. But I had just started my instructional coaching job, it was a new job, I had left the classroom. So started a new job, get this online business going, creating all this stuff, as people need it. It was crazy. There was no marketing, I was not doing any marketing. I was just trying to tread water.
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: To surviving.
Laura: Yes.
Shane: You said you were a stepmom too? So you have kids involved in this, you’re married, I mean, it’s like …
Laura: Yeah, I’m married, so-
Shane: You were doing all the life stuff, plus the work stuff, plus the online business stuff.
Laura: Yes.
Jocelyn: It’s a lot.
Shane: It’s a lot. Two things really stood out to me in that part of your story. Number one, sometimes people are like, well, can anyone besides a teacher do an online business, right? You said what you sold, and the first thing you said was not that you sold lesson plans. You served people that needed more time with their family and work was overwhelming them. So you gave them the thing that they needed to make their work life easier, so their home life could be better. Right?
Laura: Right.
Shane: That’s what anybody sales. You only sell, really, time. There was a guy who weed eated my [inaudible 00:12:31] yesterday, right? We keep like three acres weed eated where we swim. We don’t weed eat the other side. But he comes once a month, and he weed eats. Well, it took him like four hours to weed eat the side of the bank of this pond, right? I was looking out at him yesterday, I was working on something while he was doing that. I was so thankful for that dude, not because he was doing the weed eating, or doing something that I didn’t want to do, right? And it was raining on the dude, when he was doing it, right? It was kind of like, man, I’m glad he’s out int eh rain and not me.
Shane: But anyway, he was doing his job, but it was giving me back time to work on things that could make our family more money, or do other things. He was doing it for extra money for his family, and that’s how he pays for vacations and stuff like that. He wasn’t selling weed eating. He was selling me time back. Right? If you can do that for somebody, like the plumber, he’s selling expertise, because he knows how to fix the plumbing and I don’t, right? He’s not selling a pipe, he’s selling expertise. He’s selling time. That’s all any of us really sell. In any niche, in any space, no matter what your ideas, it will work, if you can give people back time in their life, or you can give them expertise that they can’t possibly get on their own. Right?
Laura: Right. When you asked me, a few minutes ago, what do you sell, what do you do, and I answered, I serve super busy middle school english language arts teachers who value personal family time over prepping for class, that is post … I read that off of my wall, in front of me, that I’m looking at, because that, that’s what’s on my website, it’s on my sales page, that is what I’m selling. Do you value personal family time over prepping for class? Okay, that’s what I’m selling.
Shane: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Laura: Yeah.
Jocelyn: Some people don’t. You know? Some people would rather keep their money and spend their time making their lessons, and that’s not who you serve.
Laura: Right, that’s not who I serve.
Shane: Another thing I love about this, I love your story, is you said about two and a half years ago, and I thought to myself when you said it, I was like, oh, you didn’t start your website and quit your job in two months? That’s amazing.
Jocelyn: And five minutes later you were making enough money.
Laura: No.
Shane: You had to stick with it for years, and I’m looking back at your posts, like, in the community, and there’s all these posts, and all these actions, and all these general forum questions. There’s all these things, right? You can kind of spell out that journey. How did you stay so persistent over the … Because you said only a few people at the beginning, but they were all over the country, and I thought if there is people all over the country, I’ve just gotta’ find more of them. How did you stay so consistent and persistent over the last two and a half years that got you to this point where everybody looks and goes, whoa, Laura quit her job? Overnight success story. Right? But how did you keep with it for those two and a half years? How did the community help you, the training help you, or whatever?
Laura: The training itself really helped me, because I needed something step by step. I needed someone to almost sit down and show me what to click on, what to say, what to do. That’s what those training videos do. The community itself, when I got stuck, when I had a question, or when I just needed some inspiration, what are other people out there doing? I just want to scroll through. Maybe I don’t even reply to anybody. I just want to see what other people are doing, what they’re struggling with, what’s working for them, what ideas they’re sharing that I can implement as well.
Laura: That really kept me going, thinking, well, other people are doing this. I mean, because we’re in the community, we know people in our community who have quit their jobs. So knowing it’s possible, and then holding onto what you always say, which you said a million times, if you can find one person, you can fine 100. If you can find 100, you can find 1,000. I mean, I had my 14 people or so. If I could find 14, why couldn’t I find 40, or 140? Right? So that just kept me going. People were buying this stuff. So why can’t I get more?
Shane: How did your first sale feel? Like when you got that first … The first time anyone ever bought anything from you, because that’s a turning point, right? It’s like, whoa. How did that feel?
Laura: That was like, wow. Somebody needs what I can offer, and I’m going to be paid for it. And, and, I want to do it. It’s so different from a traditional nine to five job where somebody is controlling your time, and telling you what meetings to go to, what committees you need to be on. It’s so different. I like doing this, and somebody wants me to provide that service for them.
Jocelyn: And somebody finds it valuable enough that they’re going to spend their money on it, which is just really cool. Okay, so you started out, you had some members, and then I’m assuming that you finished the bulk of the content throughout the year?
Laura: I did, yeah. So that brings us to about this time a year ago. So the bulk of the content is done. Now sure, I’m updating, I’m adding new things, tweaking. But I thought, okay, so what do I do to grow this site? If I can get 14 people, I should be able to get 40, or whatever. So I changed my sales page, I opened up a free Facebook group to see if there would be any interest in me finding my ideal people. How can I serve, and how can I learn more about them? Bringing them in. I really built up my nurture sequence for people who hadn’t bought. So I have a good 50 or 60 or so emails done. I worked on all that last year. So I started running some Facebook ads, and just experimenting with that. That brought in more people. So I was able to really build up a pretty solid membership throughout the course of this past year, to where I had 40, 50-ish members coming in. That made me think, okay, this is real. This is real.
Shane: Yeah, yeah. That 50 member, that’s usually our first goal for everybody. Your first goal is to sell your first membership or whatever, right? Then the next goal, if you get to 50, you start thinking, whoa. That’s like consistent, pretty good income, you know? That kind of puts that 100 mark on the horizon where you’re like, if I get 100 people to pay me $50 a month, I’m making 60 grand a year. Then it’s like, like you said, it just builds and you can see the finish line at that point, right? When you might be able to say, well, if I’m doing this part-time, what if I did this full time, right? That’s the question that goes through your head, and you’re like, I’ve got to go all in, at that point.
Laura: Yes. Yes. That’s what my husband was really encouraging me to do. So you’re doing this part-time, you’re working full time, it’s crazy around here. But what if you just quit the full time job and do this? So yeah, so I kind of … I had to play with that in my head for months, really thinking about what that would look like.
Shane: What was your biggest fear of quitting your job, like your mindset? Then, also, what did you think was the biggest external obstacle preventing you from quitting your job? Like maybe certain bills, or certain whatever? What was the fear holding you back? Your husband apparently got there before you did, which is often the case when you see somebody … Sometimes you can look outside in and see the forest for the trees, right? What was your biggest fear holding you back?
Laura: My biggest fear was thinking, okay, I’ve got something here, this is real, but what if it never becomes enough? What if I’m at a plateau and I stay at this plateau, where you’re kind of in that weird intermediate area where, okay, I’ve got something, but what if I stay stuck here? To where it’s never really enough? That was a big fear.
Shane: It’s funny, because just a few months, really, a year maybe, before, you’re like, you didn’t even know it was possible to make money online. Now it’s like, why is that a fear? Why does that hold us back? Because we did the same thing. We looked at each other, and we were like, what if we don’t make another penny the day after we quit our job? Which is totally unrealistic, you know?
Jocelyn: But you know what that is, though? I’ve realized it in the last few months. That’s just really a self confidence issue. You have a fear that you’re not good enough to do it is what it boils down to. You know that you are, logically you are good enough to do it, or you wouldn’t be here. But we still have that self confidence.
Laura: It is. It’s like the left brain, right brain. My left brain says this is working, do it, what’s the problem? My right brain says, but what if? What if? What if?
Shane: It’s the millions of years of evolution trying to keep us alive, but they didn’t have the internet 10 years ago, 20 years ago. That doesn’t matter anymore. There is always more opportunity if you just go do it, but we get held back by the fear. What was the scariest obstacle? Did you feel like there was something external holding you back at all? Were you worried about how other people would view you? Were you worried about social pressures, or how other people would view you as … You were a working mom, then you went home, because they don’t understand. What about social pressures or anything like that?
Laura: You know, I don’t really talk about this too much with … A lot of people in my circle have no idea what I’m doing. Now my close friends do, so they have been really supportive. I don’t know the extent that they really know what I’m doing, but they kind of know I’ve got this online thing going, whatever that means. They think it’s really cool. So it’s been fun. It’s been great. They’ve been really supportive. The tricky part is that many, many times I’ve had to say, no, I can’t go to happy hour after work, or no, I’ve got to leave or that event early, or I’ve got to be ready to go first thing tomorrow, because I’m doing a webinar. Things like that. That, in no way, is holding me back, it’s just that doesn’t go away. They’re all on summer break right now, okay, I’m not. I’m hitting the busy season in my niche. So I can’t do all the things that they’re doing, even though, supposedly, I did this for freedom and flexibility, right?
Shane: But that is freedom and flexibility.
Laura: It is.
Shane: That’s the thing that most people can’t get, and there is a reason. Most people don’t like going to their job. Right? So it doesn’t make sense why you would choose your job over something that other people are like, well, this is the fun thing. But, no, when I get up every morning, I look forward … The two things I look forward to the most in the morning is getting up and drinking my coffee, and writing my email to my list, because it’s so fun to go motivate people, and to try to sell this new idea I’ve got.
Shane: That is the cool thing, and you see the benefits, when you get those testimonials, like, wow, you changed my life, or you probably get a testimonial that says, man, I get to go home after work instead of slave for three hours. I get to see my kids, and take them to practice, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. People can’t see that from the other side, right? When you choose that. But you’re really choosing the thing, you are being flexible. You are choosing the thing that you want to do now, not the thing that you have to do.
Laura: Exactly.
Shane: That’s where the flexibility comes from.
Laura: Yeah. My husband travels a lot for his job, and he gets to go to some pretty cool places. So the other advantage, as far as location, independence, and flexibility, and time freedom, is that if he goes somewhere really cool, I can go with him now. Give me a wifi connection, I’m good. I’m set.
Shane: Wow, that’s amazing.
Laura: So that’s awesome, yeah.
Shane: I used to hate driving. I used to despise, like if we were going to go to Nashville or something, it’d take like three or four hours to get there. We would be like, oh, we’ve got to drive three or four hours. But now we’re like, could we go to Atlanta and drive six hours? Because that’d be more time that we could work on stuff, like you drive three hours, I’ll drive three hours. Then we pick our path, like if we want to pick roads, we’re like, okay, which roads have the best wifi connection? Because now we can work on stuff while we’re in the car.
Shane: It’s funny how just everything, you’re whole lens of what you look at in life completely changes when you have control over your life. You look at the world different, you look at tasks different. All of the things on your calendar end up there because you put them there. Like, whenever we get mad at something on our calendar, we look at each other, and we’re like, you know, we put that there. It wasn’t a boss telling us to do it. It wasn’t an obligation that someone put on us and pressured us to do, it was no, those 168 hours that we fill in every week, we choose every hour of them. That’s amazing. That is true power over your life. It’s not passive income, it’s not a Lamborghini, it’s not the mansion and whatever, all these things that we see in the Facebook ads. It’s, I have control of this piece of paper. I control and can plan ahead the next three months of my life, and nobody can tell me how to spend a minute. That’s what flipping your life really means.
Laura: I love that.
Jocelyn: Okay, so we’re in a really cool time right now. This is the super busy time in education, so this should be very, very exciting for you, I presume. How can we help you to get to the next steps in your business?
Laura: I enjoy working. I enjoy being productive. I like to work, I like to have a set schedule. So I can see myself becoming very busy, but not really being productive. So I know that what I need to do, and especially because it almost doesn’t seem real right now, as a teacher in education, I’d be off anyway this time of year. But what are the tasks I should be doing every day or every week to serve my members and to keep getting new ones? I feel like everything needs to go back to those two things, every single thing I do needs to be serving my current members and gaining new ones. But how do I do that without just being busy on random stuff all the time?
Shane: For sure. In any business, we can look at it, and we know what makes us money, if we really look at the numbers, right? We can tell the tasks that are really taking us to the next level. There is really five things that every business owner needs to look at, and we use this as our master priority list. When we get overwhelmed and there is 1,000 tasks, Joce and I will sit down and ask ourselves, okay, what is one thing that really keeps our customers happy, and we have to really focus on making that perfect? Okay?
Shane: Well, for us, it’s, one, it’s free content, like our podcast, right? But it’s also our member calls. That’s a really big priority to me and Jocelyn, and we spend a lot of time picking and planning when those happen, so that people can come on and ask us live questions in the membership, right? So the first thing you have to ask yourself when you’re running this kind of business is how do I keep my current customers happy? Okay? That’s priority number one, because that’s the foundation. Number two is what makes me new money? Right now in your business, you have to say, what is actually getting me leads? Is it this one content stream that I do consistently? Is it my Facebook ads?
Shane: Whatever it is for you, that’s the next thing that you work on, okay? Then the third thing is promote, promote, promote. How are you promoting those two things that work great? Right? If you can just get those three things right every single week, and you can become consistent at those things, the business will grow. Okay? So don’t let anything outside of that overwhelm that. We’ve got an email list that’s full right now of things that we’re supposed to be dealing with. We’ve got our business journey, we’ve got lots of fires to put out, we’ve got all these other things. But, our podcast is a priority, our membership is a priority. We’re going to do those things first every single day.
Jocelyn: The cool thing about what you do in education is that the type of membership that you have, I assume that it was similar to what I have with [inaudible 00:27:55], you can actually serve your members in a very automated way. That’s what I always used to do. So when you have hundreds of lesson plans, or any type of material in a membership, people forget what they have access to. It’s not like they’re logging in every single day and being like, let me explore the hundreds of lesson plans that are here.
Jocelyn: No, sometimes it becomes like a back of mind type thing. So what I would do is I wrote a series of every other week emails, so I wrote 26 emails, and I scheduled them out to go out throughout the entire year. So that way, I would just call attention to things, like, oh, hey, here is a lesson plan about banned books week, which is coming up in September, check it out here. You give them a link. Here is a cool conversation that was going on in the Facebook group, or whatever. So you can do some of that in real time. So I would write out all the content, schedule it out, and then I would add a couple of things in real time, like a couple of conversations in the community.
Shane: How we apply that, like look at the priority list that Jocelyn just went over, okay? Our number one priority is to keep our current customers happy, because they pay us every month, right? But, if you’ve got this autoresponder set up, that lets them know, or that you even in real time, on a Facebook live, at the same time, let them know, hey, don’t forget it’s, you could use this, it’s relevant to you right now, go get it from the community. That same piece of content, you could do an ad and say, hey, teacher that isn’t a member of my membership, did you know that if you join my membership, you can get access to this cool thing that my other members are using right now?
Jocelyn: Here is a piece of that lesson plan, it’s a worksheet, or whatever, you know what I mean?
Shane: That makes new money, and then you’re promoting … Promoting doesn’t mean promoting to strangers. You’re promoting that to your customers, and new people, at the same time. Right? So you’re kind of doubling up there.
Jocelyn: So if you do it every other week, which I did, it’s only 26 emails.
Shane: So what tasks do you think are irrelevant right now? Not irrelevant, but what tasks would you consider being busy tasks? Because that, sometimes, is hard to define.
Laura: Yeah. Playing with Canva images.
Shane: No, what? That’s not fun. I don’t do that at least an hour everyday.
Laura: Yeah, it’s so ridiculous. Like whether it’s pink or blue, is that really going to matter? But as far as branding, but then it’s like, oh, I’ve got to redo all of my images, because now I’ve got these branded colors that I’m comfortable with. I’ve got to make sure all the images match up, and get them on Pinterest, and …
Shane: That’s just perfectionism is what that is.
Laura: Yeah.
Shane: We actually set a rule in our business when we … About a year after we were in business for ourselves, and we were out of teaching and all that stuff. We looked at stuff and we would change stuff, and be like, try to go back and change everything. Then it got so big that if we change something, it’s going forward. We don’t go back and change anything.
Jocelyn: Really, deep down, perfectionism is not being really a perfectionist, it’s really about putting off something else that you need to be doing.
Shane: Oh, some truth coming from Jocelyn’s microphone tonight.
Jocelyn: You know what? I’ve realized this over the years, like, I’ve always said, oh, I’m a perfectionist, I like things to be a certain way. I do, there is some truth to that. But more of the truth is that I’m wanting to postpone other things that I don’t want to work on.
Shane: Yeah, we have a core value. We wrote our core values recently. One of our core values that we wrote down was we will do a few things consistently well. We didn’t say perfect, right? And we didn’t say a lot of things. We said, we will do a few things consistently well. What we choose in our business is we are going to do promotion really well, we’re going to do our podcast really well, and we’re going to lead our community really well. That’s all we focus on. Once you have a core value that’s like, once you’ve narrowed it down to those few things, then you can be consistent, you can be prolific, which means you do it a lot, and you can stay relevant, because you’re paying attention in real time.
Shane: If you can be consistent, prolific, and relevant, and you can take care of your customers, and you can get new customers, and you can focus on promotion, if you just do those things, over, and over, and over again, things start stacking on top of each other and you get results, right? The other two things in the equation is save and processes. We always look for ways we can save time and save money, okay? Then we block out time to create processes that have, like infinity, like they go on forever. Like Jocelyn told you to do that autoresponder. If you would do that now, then you can focus in real time on keeping your customers happy and promoting stuff in real time. Right?
Laura: Yes.
Shane: So that’s really how you narrow down your priorities. Like, the Canva image, you gotta’ set yourself a limit of how long you can make a Canva image. Like, it’s 15 minutes, I don’t get to choose anything after 15 minutes, I’m downloading it, right? Stuff like that, you’ve got to be disciplined and just say, no, that is not a prolific task. A prolific task is doing a Facebook live three times a week, right? Promoting your membership. Making a Canva image … In fact, that should probably be outsourced, in most cases, right? Just not even worry about it. So that’s kind of how we work through what’s a priority, what’s not. How do we not be busy? That’s why we plan our calendar every Sunday afternoon for the next week, because we spend our time before we live it. Then we can’t waste time, we don’t get to, because we’ve already spent it.
Laura: Okay, that helps. I just made myself a note, I want to make a list of what my prolific tasks are. The top, you know, two, three, maybe four things that serve my current members, that I can probably repurpose to bring in new members, and just go with that list. If I’m meeting that list every week, then logically, I should be growing.
Jocelyn: Yes.
Shane: When we set our core values, earlier in the summer, which we’ll evaluate them about every six months, right? When we looked at that and we said, let’s do a few things very well, and we started saying these things, like, I am consistent, I am prolific. But what am I consistent at and what am I prolific at? We went back and said, what actually brings members into the Flip Your Life community? Okay? Well, most of our sales happen through our email lists. It’s just a fact. Like, if people buy, it’s because they clicked something and went to a page, and they bought it, that’s just what happens.
Shane: So I decided that I was going to … I was like, how can I be more consistent with my emails? How can I do that? So I decided I was going to write an email to our list every day. Period. I have consistently done that 99% of the time in 2018. Like, I’ve pretty much wrote an email to our list, five days a week, at least every single week in 2018. Okay? Low and behold, our business exploded and grew more, because more people have more opportunities to buy thing. Then we said to ourselves, well, how can we be prolific?
Shane: Because that’s the difference in someone who makes a living online and someone who gets wealthy online. People who are consistent, like you’ve been so consistent, and you have replaced your income and created a situation to quit your job, right? But if you want to become comfortable, and then wealthy, and then change your family tree, you have to become prolific at something. If you’re not prolific, it’s not going to go past … That’s fine, some people don’t want to grow bigger than that. But if you want to take it to the next level, you’ve got to be prolific. So our prolific thing was how do we have four podcasts a week, if one podcast a week created this, what would four podcasts create? Right?
Shane: So we created a system to allow us to create four podcasts a week, and some of that is like you just said, repurposing other stuff for that. Okay? So Thursday we let three or four questions from a recent Q&A come out, so people, one, get new content, get new help for free. But two, they see, wait a minute, I can go in the community and ask Shane and Jocelyn a question? That’s amazing. Right? So we’re using that content, we’re repurposing it, and we’re being very prolific now in our content creation, Jocelyn is doing a YouTube series, that becomes a podcast. I’m doing YouTube and Facebook lives that become a podcast. Boom, all of a sudden, we’re prolifically creating four podcasts a week. So how can it not four X our business over time?
Laura: This is my big takeaway is you’re finding ways to kind of make that content explode. You’re not creating eight different sets of content, it really all comes from one source.
Shane: Which is funny, because I’m teaching, I’m at Flip Your Life Live in Nashville this September. I am teaching a session called content explosion, and we’re going to show everyone how we create 16 pieces of content a week in about three hours of work. Okay? So that’s part, that is exactly what we do. It’s just, you’ve got to explode everything and be prolific, and be relevant in real time. If you’re consistent, prolific, and relevant, you will make money. There is no way you can’t, because you’re doing what other people won’t.
Jocelyn: All right, well, I think that your mission is pretty clear. You have tons of content to go with. So, let’s make it happen. You’re a person who makes things happen. So I look forward to seeing what you do in the future.
Shane: So if we were going to say, like we usually ask people in the next 24 hours, what are you going to do to take your business to the next level, right? I think I want to change that a little bit for you, and just really quickly unpack … Did I just say unpack on the show? That was totally like cliché, guru, entrepreneurial. We’re going to unpack this little bit, we’re going to chomp on a few thought dogs and maybe get-
Jocelyn: Maybe we can hack it on-
Shane: We’re going to life hack this a little bit. Okay, I don’t like how I’m becoming, Jocelyn. Pull me back to the light. Okay. But like, what do you think, right now, top of your head, without having time to worry about it, what is the thing that actually brings in the most members that you’ve done?
Laura: Definitely my Facebook lives are bringing in members, because they’re getting to see what I can do to make things easier for them, and every time I do a Facebook live, I use resources from within my membership.
Shane: Okay. How often do you do them now?
Laura: I’ve been doing once, even twice a week now.
Shane: So, but basically once a week, right?
Laura: Yeah.
Shane: How much would your business grow in the next year if you just dedicated three 30 minute blocks a week to Facebook live?
Laura: I mean, that is in alignment with what you were just talking about with being prolific is if one or two a week is working, why not three or four a week?
Shane: How much more content would you have for inside your membership … Because remember, you can curate all your free stuff in a nice organized package inside. Like how much more would your customers be happy, because they’re not going to see all your Facebook live, right?
Laura: Right, right.
Shane: If you just did that, and you just edited them together and put them in as new content inside your community, and sent an email to your members once a week. How much would your retention go up? Right?
Laura: Yeah. What you’re saying right now, that makes total sense to me, because not only am I drawing in new people, showing them what I can do for them, I’m reminding my current people of what’s already in there.
Jocelyn: Exactly.
Shane: Hallelujah, my hands are raised like I’m in church on Sunday morning. You know? That’s it.
Laura: Exactly.
Shane: All it is, is a commitment to use an hour and a half a week of your 168 hours, and forget all the other stuff that’s taking up 20 hours a week and go live your life. Right?
Laura: Right.
Shane: All you have to do is consistently do that, and consistently email them that it’s there. You’re business is going to grow.
Laura: I love that. That’s so doable for me. I can do that.
Shane: Exactly.
Jocelyn: I love it. All right, Laura, this has bene an awesome conversation today. Congratulations to you for all your success so far, and we are super excited to see what happens next. You heard Laura, you heard her say that she’s been taking baby steps. If you have not started yet, or maybe you’ve taken one baby step, come and join us. Our membership is free right now for the first 30 days, fliplifestyle.com/free. Maybe in two and a half years, maybe shorter, you’ll be in the same situation as Laura.
Shane: All right, Laura, before you go, what is one thing you’d love to tell everybody listening to the podcast today?
Laura: Oh, wow. Well, my name is Laura Keybart, and I have flipped my life.
Jocelyn: Yay.
Shane: Yay.
Laura: Yay.
Shane: All right, that’s awesome, cool. We’re really proud of you, that’s amazing. That’s a great show, and just being … Not only that you got help to move your business forward, but when people hear, it’s one thing to hear it from us now, because people have heard it from us for years. But, man, when they hear it from other people, it makes them believe that it’s possible for them. That’s the goal. Right?
Laura: Yeah, it is. I was telling my husband the other day. He’s like, what do you do? What is this podcast, and what are you doing again? I said, I could not have done any of this without these people, without Shane and Jocelyn. Who? You know?
Shane: Right?
Jocelyn: Who are those people?
Shane: I found these rednecks from Kentucky, and they’re amazing. But we appreciate that. But you couldn’t have done it without you. There’s a lot of people that listen to our show, and there is a lot of people that join the community. They don’t do what you’ve done.
Laura: That goes back to what I was telling you earlier, I listened to you guys for a long time, and then I went back and binge listened, and eventually thought, what am I doing? I either need to stop listening to this and move on, or I need to do something with it.
Shane: Well, you did something with it, and your life is about to become very different, and much more awesome. Who knows where it’s going to be two and a half years from now, because you’re full time, at home, by yourself. It’s awesome.
Laura: Yeah. It’s awesome.
Shane: You have a great … Are you going to Nashville? I think you are, aren’t you?
Laura: No. I’m not, I can’t. I have a wedding that weekend.
Shane: Oh, that’s right. I think I remember you saying that.
Laura: Yeah, so super disappointing, but it’s like.
Shane: Well, we’re going to record stuff. So, maybe you can check it out afterwards.
Laura: Oh, I do a little side mini mastermind with Kathy Martin and Kareem, and they’re-
Shane: Oh, that’s amazing. That is awesome.
Laura: Yeah, we meet once a month, online, on Zoom.
Shane: Isn’t that helpful, to just connect? You know? We’re trying to … I’ve been working with a developer, we’re trying to create … Do you have the app? Have you downloaded the [inaudible 00:42:14] app on your phone?
Laura: I do have it, yes.
Shane: We’re trying to develop … We’re working on that one to make it even better, but to access the stuff in the community. But we’re trying, I’ve been working with a guy on creating an app made for Flip Your Life members to be able to mastermind together, through that app, because I don’t know if y’all use Vox or anything like that to talk to each other.
Laura: Kathy and I do. Yeah.
Shane: We’re trying to make it where it’s in the community, and you’ve got a Voxer on your phone, and you can click a button, and see each other.
Laura: That’s awesome.
Shane: Yeah, it’ll be amazing just to be able to do it through the community.
Jocelyn: Well, thank you for recording with us today, it’s been fun.
Laura: It has been fun. Thank you for everything.
Shane: Hopefully next year, no weddings, and you can come to Flip Your Life live.
Laura: I know, I can’t wait. I’m already excited for the next event that you haven’t even created yet.
Shane: Our paths will cross eventually.
Jocelyn: We’ll be working on it very soon.
Laura: Oh, good.
Jocelyn: Thank you.
Shane: Have a great day.
Laura: You too. Thank you so much.
Jocelyn: All right, bye.
Shane: Super call today with one of our Flip Your Life community members. We’d 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 fliplifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we can show you how to join today.
Jocelyn: It’s 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 a normal nine to five job. Today’s can’t miss moment is playing boardgames with our kids. Our kids love to play games, any kind of games, really. But they really, really like to play boardgames. One of the things that we do fairly often as a family is sit down and play boardgames. One of Anna’s favorites is [inaudible 00:43:53], and Isaac, he loves to play Monopoly Gamer. So those are two of the games we play pretty often around here. If you want to see a picture of us playing games with the kids, you can head over to fliplifestyle.com and click on today’s show notes.
Shane: We love to share our can’t miss moments with you each week on the Flip Lifestyle podcast. But there is one thing we love to share even more, and that is a success story from our Flip Your Life community. So before we go, we wanted to share an actual success story from the success forums in the Flip Your Life membership.
Jocelyn: Today’s success story is from Brad. Brad says, “At the advice of S and J, I sent personalized Loom videos to my list this morning. Woo-hoo. This is a huge accomplishment for me to send videos of myself. When I woke up today, I knew I needed to get it done. I was tempted to wait until I showered, and had the perfect video area set up. But, I went ahead and did it anyway. I ripped the bandaid off. Sitting on the back porch, in a plain white Tshirt, drinking coffee, I bashed all of my videos in one sitting. I’m so glad to have that done, and to have moved past my reluctance to get on video. I’ve already gotten a few views, and some great feedback on what I could put in future products. I’m looking forward to doing more of these each time I get a subscriber. I’m so thankful for the Flip Your Life community to share these success with, and I’m thankful to S and J’s obedience to the calling on their lives, and to help all of us do what we’re called to do.”
Jocelyn: Thank you so much for those kind words, Brad. We are so proud of you for putting yourself out there on video. So glad you just got it done, and I think that feedback is going to be invaluable as you move forward in your online business. Great work.
Shane: Today’s Bible verse comes from Habacuk two, verse three. In the Bible it says, “This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently for it will surely take place, it will not be delayed.” Guys, that vision of your flipped lifestyle, that dream that god has put into your heart, that vision that god has put into your head, it is going to come to pass. You just have to keep pushing, keep going forward, keep doing what it takes to win in your online business, in your entrepreneurial journey, in your marriage, as a parent. Keep doing the things you’ve got to do to keep moving forward. God did not put that vision in your mind just so you could dream about it. He put it in your mind so that it would be fulfilled. So even if it feels like things are slow right now, even if you’re having a hard time, even if it feels like it’s hard, wait patiently, because your dream, your flipped lifestyle will surely take place.
Shane: That’s all the time we have for this week. As always, guys, thanks for listening to the Flip 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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