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In today’s episode, we help Court plan his organic content strategy for his youth sport coaching website.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jocelyn: Hey you all. On today’s podcast, we help Court take his youth sport coaching 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 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 Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today as we talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community, and I’m really excited about this interview because this is a guy after my own heart. This is a coach.
Jocelyn: Is there something I should know?
Shane: A sports coach … No! Stop saying that. No, no. I mean we’re just attuned in our souls in the sports coaching world, Jocelyn, because my heart is only for you, baby. All right, in our podcast today, we want to welcome Court. Court, welcome to the show, man.
Court: Hey, thanks guys. This is really an honor to be here. I really appreciate it.
Jocelyn: We are excited to talk to you today. We know a lot about the coaching world. We have been sports coaches-
Shane: Oh, so deep into it. So deep into it.
Jocelyn: Sports coaching wives for a long, long time before we started doing online business, so we totally get it. So tell us a little bit about you, your background, and how you got started with your website.
Court: Yeah, so real quick, I grew up playing sports. I played everything. If it had a ball. I played basketball, football, baseball, golf, and when I went to college, I went to Kansas State University and had an opportunity to work with the football team there, and I started as an equipment manager, and I worked up to being a student assistant coach. And I really had a passion for that, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do after graduating, but I think Shane kinda what maybe you discovered. The pay was not good-
Shane: No, it was not.
Court: And I knew I was gonna have to move all over the country. Didn’t wanna do that, so I decided to, my undergrad degree was in education, so I became a English and Journalism teacher and I coached football and track for about 13 years. And then about five years ago, I went through a divorce and I realized spending time with my kids, I was spending more time coaching. Practice was going until 7:30 every night, and then my kids were already in bed. Or on weekends I was working all weekend and I wasn’t able to spend time. So I stepped away from coaching, stepped away from teaching, and took a new job in the business world doing social media. So I really have a background there in marketing and social media.
Court: And then when I started coaching my kid’s kindergarten soccer team a couple years ago, I said, this will be easy. I’ve coached high school. I’ve coached college. This will be no problem at all. And I realized it was a whole different world, and I’m sure you’ve probably experienced the same thing. So that’s what led me to, I said, other moms and dads need support and help to figure out how to coach their kid’s teams. So that’s what kind of led me to come up with this idea to start youthsportscoaches.com.
Shane: Awesome. Yeah, and it’s funny, your story is so-
Jocelyn: I’m wondering if you guys are the same person.
Shane: I know, right? It sounds so familiar, and because I look back at our journey and where we are now compared to where we’ve been in the last 15 years, right? And there were really two things that happened to us that I think started our Flip Your Lives journey before we even knew it was started. One of them was exactly what you said when we were like chasing the success ladder, and it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to be a college football coach and climb the ladder, or if you’re trying to be in the corporate world and climb the ladder. Even if you’re in like a government job and you’re trying to move from teacher to principal or whatever, right?
Shane: There comes a point when you’re chasing success when you look over and say, I haven’t seen my wife or kids in a few days, right? And you start questioning, is that worth it? And I can remember me and Jocelyn sitting down and I had a chance, I had a good friend of mine that recommended me for a job, and I literally had a job at Bowling Green University, right? We were in West Virginia at the time, and I had it. No, I was at Eastern Kentucky at the time, and he calls me, and he’s like, you don’t even have to interview it. I’ve already told him you’re the guy for the job. You just have to show up.
Shane: And this was a big job. It was a good job. But me and Jocelyn looked at each other and we said, do we really want to go down this path? Like what about having kids? What about seeing each other? This is committing to, I’m in this now and it’s my full time career, right? Now I’m working 12 hour days, and we decided at that moment that we were gonna go into high school or teaching or whatever to do that. Because we just said hey, I don’t want to go and not do, be able to ever see you again. We gotta go a different direction to find some more time. And it’s funny because then you get into high school, and you’re like, I’m spending more time with everybody else’s kids than I am my own kids.
Jocelyn: And you’re getting paid even less.
Shane: Even less to do it, right?
Court: Yes, and that’s what I figured out too is I think coaching football I made $3,000 a year, but you know it’s a year round thing. I mean, it’s summertime all-
Shane: It’s like a $1.30 an hour is what it is.
Court: Oh, it’s even less than that.
Jocelyn: If it’s even that.
Shane: I mean it’s absolutely ridiculous. And-
Court: And so yeah it’s just not worth it. You don’t see your kids. You don’t see your family and you’re working with other people’s kids all the time, which is great, but-
Shane: Oh yeah. There’s a place for it. I’m not saying that. You know what I’m saying?
Jocelyn: And you know what? I have a lot of respect for people who do it.
Shane: Yes, and I still step up and coach sometimes today reluctantly, although whenever anyone asks me to coach anything locally, like any kind of teams, I’m like, I’m retired. Sorry. I’m not going. But then the other day, I-
Jocelyn: No, we end up doing it though.
Shane: I ended up doing it anyway. I was at basketball practice the other day, and the coach, his son did something to his tooth and they had to take him to an emergency dentist, and I’m standing there looking around. I’m like, give me the ball. And I coached basketball for two hours. It’s ridiculous because once you are a coach, you’re the default coach. There’s still this old guy that sits in the front of my church, and whenever I walk in he always goes, hey Coach Sams. How you doing? I’m like hey, Bob. Haven’t coached in ten years, but whatever, you know what I’m saying. All right, so let’s talk about youthsportscoaches.com a little bit-
Jocelyn: First of all, I love this idea. Shane had actually talked about it years ago.
Shane: Oh yeah.
Jocelyn: Like wouldn’t it be cool if-
Shane: Because I coached tee-ball for the first time, and I thought the same thing you did. These are kindergarteners. It’s gonna be simple. I’ve handled college people with egos and everything-
Jocelyn: But then you realize that it’s like herding cats.
Court: Yes.
Shane: Yes, and they beat you into submission mentally by the time you’re through with practice. SO what do you use on youth sports coaches, like what are you teaching? What are you talking about? Is it fundamentals of the sports? There’s a lot of youth sports. Or is it more like just the mindset of it?
Court: Well, this is exactly, I only started this probably a month and a half, two months ago, and so I’m still in the building stage, and that’s one of the things I want to talk about is when I started coaching soccer, I did probably like what most parents do. I went to YouTube, and I just started searching for videos, and they were scattered all over. A lot of them were for older kids and didn’t really apply to kindergartners. And so, and I would watch other parents struggle at practice not really knowing what to do, and it just basically became throw the ball out there and let’s scrimmage for an hour, which it doesn’t do anybody any good.
Court: So my idea, and this is what I’m debating right now, is there’s lots of sites out there where they go a mile deep and an inch wide in one sport, and it’s the super competitive teams that travel. That’s not what I want to talk to. I want to talk to the dads and moms who are just getting started and they’re like, it’s herding cattle. I don’t know what to do. I need basic drills. I need practice organization. I need to know how to organize my team in the preseason. They’ve been thrown into this role either voluntarily or someone kind of asked them to do it, and they just need help and guidance.
Shane: Yeah. And-
Court: So that’s where I kinda am, trying to figure out what my model is.
Shane: Yeah, that’s cool. Even stuff like, one of the key words you said there was organizing practice. Dealing with parents, figuring out who’s bringing the juice packs on Saturday to the game, right? Like stuff like that that people just aren’t equipped to do, they need somebody to show them how to do that.
Jocelyn: I was gonna say how to start your team’s Facebook page. Should I start a Facebook page? All of these things, I think are really important and things that people probably leave out. I feel like probably actual mechanics of the game, drills, things like that, those are kind of covered, not necessarily for your age group, but I feel like maybe those other things get kinda left out.
Shane: Yeah, for sure. It’s easy to find out how to kick the ball into the goal. It’s hard to figure out how to handle all of the logistics that go along with being a youth sports coach.
Jocelyn: All right, so before we dive into nuts and bolts here, let’s talk a little bit about what is going on inside your head as you’re starting this. So everybody has some type of fear or something that holds them back. What is yours right now?
Court: It’s probably a little bit of imposter syndrome maybe that you guys would say, and like I said, there’s lots of coaches out there that go really deep into this. My background is, that I think I can bring to the table, is that organization and the logistics that you just mentioned. How to bring in those parents and see the value in it because I worry that people won’t see a value and wanna put their money where their mouth is for this type of product.
Shane: Sure. It’s interesting you say that because whenever you come from a higher level, what we perceive as going down to a level, like we know the value of organization because we’ve been on a football field with 100 players. If you’re not organized by the minute and practice, you’ve got problems. And that’s not what we’re saying you’re going to bring to these youth coaches, right? But it is block time, organizing, getting logistics.
Shane: One of the things that we did on our tee-ball team is, because we had a technology background and an organizational background in sports coaching. I was still a defensive coordinator in high school when I coached this tee-ball team. Is we had a Facebook group that we set up the day that we started coaching that baseball team so that we could coordinate with everybody there, and people loved it, because they knew what was going on. So it was the only team they ever knew what was happening, because we communicated with them, right?
Shane: But when we go down, we’re like, are they gonna get this, nobody else is doing this. Are they gonna understand? And that’ll be part of your marketing is bringing people in in what they do understand, like they understand looking up drills. That’s why people go to YouTube and say, they don’t type in soccer practice. They type in soccer drills, right? You’ll use those kinds of methods to bring people in and then it will be your job to explain the value through your marketing so that they will put their money where their mouth is.
Jocelyn: And honestly, I think you’re thinking too small. I see this as more of a system that you sell to cities, to organizations who do youth sports-
Shane: Oh yeah. We got-
Jocelyn: Maybe the churches. Because here’s the thing.
Shane: Yeah, that’s true.
Jocelyn: What is the number one problem that organizations have when they’re trying to do youth sports? They don’t have enough coaches, right?
Shane: Coaches.
Jocelyn: Okay, so if you could sell this to them as hey, I have this system and all you have to do is tell the parents, okay, we have the whole system. We have practice plans for you. We have organization plans for you. All you have to do is show up and follow this script. Like how much easier would that be? If somebody came to me, as a parent, and said, hey, look. We really need coaches, but you’re gonna have to figure everything out yourself. I’d be like eh, no. That’s too much to do already.
Shane: But how much does Upward Basketball or something need this? Like I coached Upward Basketball last year, undefeated champions. I’m just saying. But anyway, I coached Upward Basketball, but there was a lot of, they did their best. Everybody did so good. It was for the kids. It was for a good reason, but it was confusing. And there was a lot of confusion with coordination and communication and things like that. And Upward gives you some things, but it’s mostly drills, right? But it’s not how to get your parents together, how to organize practice, how to take them out to pizza, stuff like that. And you could just go to an organization that already has 100 teams and be like, hey. Why don’t I just, 20 bucks a team? You got it. Boom, there’s two grand.
Shane: So yeah, that’s a really good idea, Jocelyn. There’s a lot of things around this I don’t think you’re even seeing, and you just have to explain it. You gotta convey it. Everybody says, man, I just wish people would see the value in this and buy it, when they really need to say, it’s my job as a marketer to tell them the value and convince them to buy it, right? So-
Court: Well, you guys are in my mind. Yeah, you guys are in my mind. I had a conversation with a local rec commission about this, and they were really interested, and I told them I needed beta testers right now to get in and help me figure things out. And they’re like, yeah, our parents don’t know what they’re doing. We tell them just to go to YouTube but they don’t wanna coach because they don’t feel like they know what they’re doing. So you’re exactly right. I’m already thinking that. My question is how do I make those sales without just cold calling people. I don’t know how to get them into my sales funnel.
Shane: I gotcha. I gotcha. So are there any technical things that are holding you back besides mindset? Number one, please don’t let imposter syndrome hold you back because you have coached college football, right? You have coached in high school. You know what it’s like to organize a large group of people and from a coaching standpoint, and you can really help. 99% of people don’t have that experience, right? So you are more than expert enough to do this, right? Even if somebody’s listening out there, even if you had been a youth coach for ten years, I remember there was this old coach when I was growing up, and he coached the same basketball and football team every year for my whole life and the whole life of my brothers. He had literally coached the Nuggets for like 20 years in football and basketball in our community, right?
Shane: That dude was a pro youth football coach. That guy was a pro youth sports coach, and just having that kind of experience and being able to do it well at a high level is gonna more than make you qualified for the guy who didn’t know he was coaching soccer until Thursday, and shows up on the field Saturday.
Jocelyn: Well, and not to mention you’ve also coached youth sports, so you know the challenges. You know what people are thinking inside their head, because you’ve been there before. If you have had one day of experience coaching kindergarten soccer, you have more days experience than I do.
Shane: Exactly. So you’re more, don’t worry about the imposter syndrome. But is there anything else that’s holding you back from a technical standpoint? How was the website creation? Any external obstacles that you’re dealing with?
Court: Well, like I said, I have a really good background in technology. I have the website up. I have my email sequenced, Leadpages AWeber going. It’s getting people into my sales funnel right now. I just started writing a Facebook ad just the other day, and it’s not really converting. And so how to get those people in my sales funnel, and who to target on Facebook, because it’s moms and dads between, I think I said 26 and 42. I drilled down to parents, but then I also used interests like ESPN and college football, because it would be people who are interested in sports. But I don’t know how to target youth sports coaches, those moms and dads who are getting into it.
Shane: Yeah. Well what you wanna, let’s just go straight into that then. Let’s talk about how. One, your site is so new, the first place I would actually start is your organic strategy, not your page strategy. We’ll talk about both though, okay? But how are you creating consistent content right now? Do you have, are you putting out blog posts? Are you making YouTube videos? Because without a foundation of organic traffic, you can’t do paid traffic, because until you see what’s getting traction organically, you don’t know what to pour gas on, right? To make the fire bigger. So how are you doing that right now?
Court: I’ve been podcasting. I’ve batched. I’m up to six episodes. I’ve released three. I’ve got it on iTunes. I think I have five or six blog posts, started a Facebook, so yeah, that’s what I’ve been really focusing on. Lead magnets, I have lead magnets on each blog. So that’s what I’ve been doing so far.
Jocelyn: Okay.
Shane: So you’ve got a good, consistent strategy of releasing content regularly.
Jocelyn: Which is awesome.
Court: Yes.
Jocelyn: But what I was gonna say is, okay. I don’t know what your podcast format is, but what a perfect vehicle to talk to some of these people in these youth sports organizations.
Shane: Oh yeah.
Jocelyn: Ask them to be a guest on your podcast-
Shane: And at the same time-
Jocelyn: And oh, by the way. Let me sell you something.
Court: Yeah, I just did one of those.
Jocelyn: Yeah, exactly.
Court: I just did one last week, so yep.
Shane: Well, let’s talk about this real quick too. Okay so you’ve got a good, consistent thing on your own terms, but I just went into iTunes and typed in youth sports, okay? And I literally just found probably 100 or more youth, there’s youth, winning youth coaching. Actually, this guy’s name’s Craig. He would actually, I’ve been on his podcast before. And he’s been in the community. Youth baseball edge. Youth baseball talk. Coaching youth soccer. You might want to go and reach out to these people to be on their podcasts, because they’re always looking for guests, I’m sure, right?
Court: That’s a good idea.
Shane: So if you could go be on their podcasts, maybe they can come on your podcast. You start building an audience faster because they’ve already got an audience or they wouldn’t be podcasting. They’ve got somebody listening to them, so that starts magnifying your message, right?
Jocelyn: Here’s another pro tip for that. Find someone who is a competitor to you and see what podcasts they’ve been on.
Shane: Exactly. So you can type in their name and say, whoa, here’s ten more places that they’ve been. And for example, this coach Carl for coaching youth soccer, random plug for a random podcast on the show.
Jocelyn: We’ve never listened to it, so.
Shane: No, we’ve never listened to it before.
Jocelyn: So don’t be mad if it’s terrible.
Shane: But it looks like a lot of these are really focused on developing skills, right? And you’re not a competitor to them. You can just call them and be like, no, I just help people organize practice and stuff and organize their team and learn what to do and all that. I’ve got some drill stuff, but hey, you might find promotional opportunities here or learn more about it. So go out and try and get your name in front of all of these people that are already talking to youth coaches and youth parents, okay?
Jocelyn: I think really one of the best things that you can do is to get parents interested and let them know that hey, we offer discounts to youth sports programs, because they become your best advocate. That’s what happened to me on Elementary Librarian. I decided I was going to take school purchase orders so that way people didn’t have to spend their own money, and then they market it for you, because they don’t want to spend their own money.
Shane: So your marketing can, when you’re talking on it, you’re talking to the youth coach, but when you get a youth coach customer, instead of cold calling organizations, well, their youth coach, they’re in an organization. Hey, could you tell the director of your youth program that I’d offer a discount if he wanted to buy it for everybody in the organization. And now you’re not cold calling anymore. You’re going on other podcasts. You’re getting customers as coaches, and then you’re figuring out through them who they’re coaching for, and then that’s how you connect with the directors to buy it for the whole program, basically.
Court: That’s a great idea. So what I’m hearing you say, do you think I need to stay away from the drills, because that was one of my questions is do I even give a baseline of drills for those sports?
Shane: What a good question from today’s guest. We will get to the answer of that in just a moment. But first, did you know that you can get the answers you need to start, build, and grow your online business too? All you have to do is join me and Jocelyn and all of our other members inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can get all the training, coaching, and support that you need to build and grow your own online business. The best part? You can get started today for free, absolutely no cost to you. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and you can start your one month free trial right away.
Shane: Join hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can learn how we’ve started an online business, replaced our income, quit our full time jobs, and now we get to work from home. You can build a life that you want and you can get started today at no cost. Just go to flippedlifestyle.com/free and start your free month today. Now let’s get back to our show and back to our guest’s question.
Shane: No, you can do that. You can totally do that-
Jocelyn: I think you do because-
Court: Okay.
Shane: I think you have to do that.
Jocelyn: I think that’s what people are partially looking for.
Shane: When I was selling playbooks, I couldn’t figure out how to get coaches that were looking for my system, right? But what I did know is that every day at the beginning of every practice in America coaches did drills, right? So I started writing articles about quarterback drills. I didn’t coach quarterbacks. I coached the offensive line and linebackers, right? But I would write some basic articles, and that’s how people would find me, and then they would realize I was selling the other thing. So that’s how you’re gonna get some of your traffic is by writing the best five drills for a new coach in soccer, or the best five drills for a new coach in basketball.
Shane: And then they will find you and realize you’re helping them become a better coach, and even though you’re only offering simple drills, you’re offering so much more on the other side.
Court: Yeah, and that’s why I think this membership model really makes sense is because I think parents coach multiple sports. And so my idea is soccer season rolls right into basketball season, and so they would stay for the community, but then have drills for each of those sports, if that makes sense.
Shane: Yes, and also too, there’s different challenges in being a soccer coach to a basketball coach to a football coach. Even a baseball coach. Rain affects all four sports differently. Practice for basketball is different because it’s, like we’re on a basketball team with Isaac right now, our son, and it’s really hard to find gyms to practice in. That’s a totally different challenge then hey, let’s find grass to kick go kick the soccer ball on, right? So you’re dealing with these different challenges that they deal with in every sport as they go through it. It’s a perfect membership model.
Jocelyn: Well, and the thing about that is that people help you create your content. Like they start talking about their problems, and you can say, oh, well. What knowledge do I have that can help them solve this problem?
Court: Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Jocelyn: Yeah, and therefore bring more people into my funnel.
Shane: So when you’re thinking of your organic strategy, think about what people are looking for first. They’re looking probably, their first instinct is probably to look for drills, right? And then you market-
Court: Fun drills.
Shane: Fun drills. Stuff like that. Then your marketing is to convince them that the next step is your product, right? They know their first step or they wouldn’t be searching for it. They’re looking for the next step after that, because that’s where they get confused, and that’s what you’re gonna sell. And then your promotional strategy, you’ve got to go out and find people that already have audiences and get in front of them right? That’s where all these other pod … and you have a podcast so it’s really easy for you in this stage in your business to say, hey, let me be on your podcast, then I’ll let you be on mine, right? So you can just do a nice little exchange there, build relationships, and you can just grow your audience more organically that way.
Jocelyn: I would do maybe like a download of a checklist of some kind, like a youth sport coaching checklist, like things that you need to do. Things that everybody needs to do, like get people’s shirt size, find a way to communicate with the parents. Simple things like that, that could be a good giveaway for you as you’re starting to go on to other people’s podcasts. And then of course, you would have deeper trainings-
Shane: About all the things that are on the checklist. The checklist is one page, do all these things. Set up your Facebook group. Okay, wait a minute. How do I do that? You’ve got a little link at the bottom that says, I’ll show you how to do that whenever you download it, you see? And that’s how you guide people back.
Shane: All right, let’s switch back to the page strategy now. So you’ve already got some ads, you’re playing with it, and you started targeting people. So you said you targeted by age. You targeted these parents of kids from 0-12, whatever, right? And then that’s the things you’re targeting. The next thing I heard you say was a common mistake though. You said, okay, I’m just targeting people that like sports, right? You can’t do that because it becomes way too broad and you waste money. I did this with football. I thought at first, hey, I’ll target football like college football, NFL. Surely coaches would love those things.
Shane: But here’s the problem. So do drunk college kids. So do weekend warriors, fans of sport, alumni. And you have to dial down and drill down even more, and youth sports is really not that bad of a thing to look for, because you have big things you can target like USA football, which is the big youth football organization, right? You have, there’s soccer organizations. There’s other things you can target-
Jocelyn: But I would even be careful with that because here’s the thing. If somebody asked me to coach, I don’t like any of those things on Facebook. I might do it because I love my kid, but I know absolutely nothing about it. I personally like sports, so there’s a possibility I might like those on Facebook but probably not. So you have to remember who you’re going toward or who you’re looking for. I think probably for you, a better strategy would be to get emails for people like offer a lead main, get some emails, and then maybe do a local audience type thing.
Shane: Yeah. You could also, too, look at the different Facebook groups that are out there and just join them. There’s a lot of Facebook groups.
Court: Yeah, I’m in those.
Shane: And then you can organically connect with people. But even targeting, trust Facebook’s algorithm. People think you’ve got to go in and get your ad perfect, but sometimes you can just go in and be like, hey, I want people who are 25 to 45 and have kids that are under 12, and then I’m gonna write copy that’s about youth sports, and I’m just gonna trust the algorithm to start figuring it out for me, because the algorithm learns. It learns as you go, and the people that respond to your ad, Facebook can look and it can say, wait a minute. These other people are like these people. So I’m gonna stop showing it to the people who aren’t clicking and I’m gonna start showing it to people like the ones who are clicking.
Shane: You don’t have to drill down and get all those interests perfect. You can just start with an age range and the kids, right? You can also start in a demographic, maybe like $30,000 to $100,000. That’s usually the youth coach, the youth person who’s hustling and driving their kid around, you know what I’m saying?
Court: Right. Married.
Shane: Yeah, married. Yeah, people like that. Or here’s another thing that you could focus on too that I like. It’s not necessarily married because there’s a lot of single parents, divorced parents who are trying to get multiple kids to different sports.
Jocelyn: So just don’t-
Shane: Those are challenges you could talk about.
Jocelyn: Yeah, don’t drill down too much, and another thing you can do is add people who are competitors, people who do the same type thing as you do. See if you can add their audiences in. You know those people are interested in youth sports, so.
Shane: So basically, you could have two lines here. It’s like lines of play in sports. I like that. But one is set up an ad that does target youth sports organizations, like AAU, UA10, UA15, soccer, things like that, right? Upward Basketball. There’s a lot of people that like Upward because they’re participating in it. Some of those are coaches, right? Target some people by interest, but then set up another ad and just let it go with the age and demographic, and then eventually when you get your email list big enough, upload that and let Facebook go find people that are like them, right? That’s the, you gotta try a little bit of all three of those things. You can’t just say, I found people that like sports. That’s just too broad.
Court: Well, so before I added all those sports things, it was like 100 million people. It was a huge number when I just went off of age, some of those demographics. So you say that’s okay?
Shane: Yes.
Court: With it that big?
Shane: It’s okay, because Facebook will figure it out.
Jocelyn: Yeah, once people start responding to the ad, they’ll show it to more people like them.
Shane: Like those people.
Court: Okay, all right.
Shane: And it’ll actually dial down. And also too, you start a little broad, and then you can figure it out and move it down as you go. Try to find all the major youth sports organizations though, because some of those people, that will at least tell Facebook-
Jocelyn: Some of them will like those things.
Shane: It’ll tell Facebook that those are youth people, but set up a different ad that’s just for age groups. You don’t have to worry about it. Also, too, on your advertising, you need to be really season specific and not general. Like right now is baseball season, right? There’s a lot of baseball going on. A lot of travel basketball going on right now too. Those are the kind of ads that need to run this time of year. When August and September get here, you need to be having football pictures-
Court: Soccer.
Shane: Soccer, things like that. The swimming in the Spring. That’s, January, February, March is like swimming, right? USA swimming. So your pictures need to identify with people what they’re going through right now. So you need to be really in tune with the calendar and your ads, because if you’ve got a picture of someone coaching a … If you’ve got a baseball coach at first base and it’s the middle of winter, not many people are gonna relate to that.
Court: So my kind of tagline or motto, I think, needs to change, because it was kind of experience of coaching you’re, make coaching your kids a fun and rewarding experience. Because I want, that was what I was playing on was coaching your kids, but it-
Jocelyn: No.
Court: But it sounds like I need to change it more to the organization side.
Jocelyn: This is, I would say it’s even different than that. I would say survive coaching your kid’s sports team this season.
Shane: Yeah, that’s who needs this thing. And it’s almost like you’re trying, they want to have a fun experience with their kid. Don’t get me wrong. Okay? That’s gonna be a part of your message-
Jocelyn: But that’s a vitamin. Nobody’s gonna pay for that.
Shane: That’s a vitamin. It’s more like, don’t look like an idiot in front of all the other parents, right? How to keep parents from getting mad at you. These are the things that they’re really worried about that they need the help with. It’s like the, what’s it called? Oh, status. It’s their status. People want to look competent.
Jocelyn: How to run your kid’s team like a pro when you have no clue what you’re doing.
Shane: Yeah, stuff like that. That’s your messaging is, that’s what you’re trying to tell the parent, is … Now the benefit, the added benefit is you’re also going to have a great time with your kid, right? That’s cool, but man, when you’re overwhelmed and you’ve got parents yelling at you and you don’t know who’s bringing the snacks, and you don’t know if Johnny’s even gonna be there because your communication was terrible.
Jocelyn: If you’re stressed, you’re not gonna have fun coaching your kid. So that is the-
Shane: Stress free youth coaching.
Jocelyn: Yeah, that’s what you’re selling is take the stress away.
Shane: Yeah.
Court: Okay. Very good.
Shane: Okay? So where do you think this goes next? What do you think your next step is both, either, just in your promotion or advertise. What do you think you need to do next to kind of take this thing to the next level?
Court: Well I think change some of the messaging, but then I need to, I have the infrastructure I bought for the membership side from my sub domain. I need to start building that out, and building the membership, the courses. And then get beta testers in there to help me. And so that’s my goal here in the next month before fall sports start is to do that.
Shane: Yeah, this is gonna be a process, too, man. It’s not, because it’s almost like when Jocelyn launched her first lesson plan site, she did one month at a time, and you’re kind of, right now, like one season at a time. Because you gotta get some beta for football, get some beta for soccer, get some beta for baseball, the big sports first. Soccer, stuff like that. Then you can start adding maybe some things for some other things. But you gotta go through these seasons, get through this process. That doesn’t mean you can’t start selling and adding people in, right? You need to start selling it season by season, but don’t feel like you’ve got to have every single sport in the world covered right now.
Shane: It’s more like the next sport is your focus, and then the next sport is your focus, and maybe you pick up three or four people here, pick up four or five people here, pick up 10, 20 people there. You’re good.
Jocelyn: But I like what you’re doing with the beta testing. Those testimonials are really, really important. Especially if you’re trying to sell to organizations, you need some very strong testimonials.
Shane: Are you in a, what’s the population like in your area? Like where are you at?
Court: Kansas City. I mean, I don’t, it’s huge.
Shane: Yeah, yeah.
Court: Yeah, there’s lots.
Shane: Of course.
Jocelyn: Yeah, you can get all kinds of people just right there probably to help you pilot this thing.
Shane: It might even be good if you wanted to target some ads just at Kansas City and maybe you target and you say, even almost like a speaker thing. Like let me come in and talk to your coaches, right? That would be a really good thing to do locally, because there’s probably so many sports organizations. You could reach out locally, not cold calling, like I’m Court. I’m right down the road. I specialize in helping youth organizations get their parents on the level they need to be at, right? So that you have a better-
Jocelyn: Or more importantly, help your organization be able to easily find volunteers.
Shane: Yes, exactly. Because that’s a problem you’re solving for the youth director, right? And tell him, hey, I’d love to come in, and your coaches come in, and let me take them through a process for an hour so they’ll have a great season you’ll have less headaches. And as you do that-
Jocelyn: You’ll get their questions, you’ll find their objections.
Shane: Yep, and you’ll be able to talk to a lot of parents at once without having to travel or do anything crazy.
Court: Right. So what do you think pricing both for beta and for once I get into a membership? What do you think the value is of this?
Shane: The value, I think you’re probably gonna sell more like season passes than monthly memberships, and it would almost, you would call it a season pass, but it would kind of be quarterly, because the person right now is in the moment. And if, like my brother does this to me all the time, because he runs a youth organization here. He comes up to me, he’s like hey, hey. You’re gonna coach baseball, right? I’m like what? I hate baseball. But he, that’s what happens, you know what I’m saying?
Shane: And I’m only think, I’m not thinking about my son’s basketball season when I’m doing baseball. I’m in the moment. So it’s almost like season pass is now available for the baseball season or whatever, for summer. Season pass available for the fall, right? I’m thinking some kind of quarterly price, and I think maybe you start at like 100 bucks a quarter, or something like that?
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think it’s gonna have to be fairly low because-
Shane: Just to start and see.
Jocelyn: People don’t really want to do it anyway.
Shane: Right, exactly.
Court: Right, and that’s, that’s my thing.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean-
Court: They’re not gung ho about it.
Shane: But everyone won’t be, but there’s a million youth coaches. You only need like 1% of them to want it.
Jocelyn: So don’t make it way inexpensive. Make it something valuable, but make it affordable for people who don’t really want to coach anyway, but they’re reluctantly doing it. Again-
Shane: Like if I ended up coaching a sport that I knew absolutely nothing about. For example, I’ll give you a better example. If I ended up coaching one of my daughter’s teams, like I know a lot about coaching dudes and guys, right? But if I was in middle school and somebody wanted me to help with a youth girls’ basketball team, right? I don’t know, coaching girls is not the same as coaching guys, right? That might be some, but I’d pay 100 bucks for that. So you don’t need everybody to do it. You just need somebody to do it.
Jocelyn: But I think your big money is going to come from organizations, and then I think that later on, there are some upsells that you could do to kind of maximize that customer value, but that’s something that we need to save for another conversation.
Shane: But think about this though. Even if it’s a quarterly thing for 100 bucks, right? All three months for 100 bucks. They’re getting access to everything, but you found 500 people, that’s $50,000 a quarter, right? So that’s still big money, but it just fits in the mindset better of, oh, I can buy this just for my kid’s season and then I can get out if I don’t want to coach the next sport, right? And that’s really what you’re looking for. And then they’ll come back next year and join it again.
Jocelyn: But I can see other opportunities down the road for maybe consulting large youth sports organizations, maybe doing some speaking if that’s something that you might be interested in. There are other opportunities.
Shane: Also too, I’ll tell you one thing that frustrates me, even coaching Upward last year. The guy who ran the organization was a coach guy, sports guy. I was a coach. There was a couple other people who really had a lot of experience coaching. It’s really frustrating when you know how to run a team and a coach, and 80% of the other coaches in the league don’t.
Shane: So there’s a huge pain point there to harp on, man, you can find these other coaches who become advocates and evangelists for you because it’s like, let’s get all these coaches up to speed so that we all have a great year, right? So you’ve got easy pitch to all these big organizations.
Court: So do you think the buyer would be the league, or do you think they would help me sell it to the individual parents?
Shane: You would have two funnels. You’d have both.
Jocelyn: Yeah, I think you do both.
Shane: Because some leagues will want it, some leagues will want to help you, and some leagues won’t care.
Jocelyn: And some of them will refuse to pay for it, but parents will find you and they will be willing to pay for it themselves.
Shane: Yeah, that’s right. This is not, don’t [inaudible 00:38:17] down too far. You don’t have to segment everybody apart. It’s the same thing you’re selling to everybody. It’s just, am I selling it to a group, am I selling it through the group, or am I selling it to the individual? It’s like my history lesson plans. I could sell them to homeschool teachers. Doesn’t matter, right? I just, so I don’t want to, don’t pigeonhole yourself into, I only sell to this. John is my avatar, and John is a parent of age 24 to 32. Don’t do that to yourself. Just open up all opportunities and try to get the content out to as many people as possible.
Court: Very good.
Jocelyn: We’ve had a lot of fun talking to you today. I think that you have a lot of great potential in this site, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it. Before we go, we always ask people what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today?
Court: Well, I think changing that messaging of making it stress free youth coaching, kind of changing the direction of the site and then building those lead magnets around it, and making sure they’re sports specific by the season is, and then start writing those ads like we talked about.
Shane: Yeah. One more thing I wanted you-
Jocelyn: That was like four things.
Court: Oh, sorry.
Shane: That’s okay. He’s giving you the order. He’s [inaudible 00:39:28].
Jocelyn: No, I’m just saying, I want you to make sure that you’re doing it in little bite-sized chunks. Don’t overwhelm yourself.
Shane: Right now we’re recording this in July, right? We’re about six weeks from football kicking up, okay? It would be really good to reach out over the next six weeks to all the football youth groups around you and try to get something like we were talking about put together. One, I’m sure they would let you, because all you gotta do is say hey, I coached at Kansas State. I coached in high school. I’ve done the, and it sets your wheelhouse, because you’ve got so much football background anyway. It’ll be really easy to probably get in with one of those organizations and if they could just get you in front of 20 parents, how valuable would that be? Not only to pitch something, but to just talk about their questions. And kind of get in front of their audience too. So that might be something good you could do after these next 24 hours to set you up for success, okay?
Court: That’s great.
Shane: All right. Court, we’ve had a great time talking to you today, man. Can’t wait to see what you do with your business. Thank you for coming on the show and being so transparent and helping everybody out there get better as well. Really appreciate it.
Shane: All right guys, that wraps up another call to one of our Flip Your Life community members. Today’s bible verse comes from Luke, chapter 12, verse 15. It’s all about contentment. And in the bible, it says, “Beware and guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.” Guys, don’t get caught up in what the world says is right. Don’t get caught up in what the world says to do. Don’t get caught up in constantly chasing more and more and more money.
Shane: Your life is built out of can’t miss moments. Your life is built out of the relationships that you have with other people, and it’s built by the way you serve others through your online business, so keep everything in perspective while you’re building your online dreams, while you’re flipping your life, while you’re living that flipped lifestyle. Build the life that you want, that lets you have those can’t miss moments. That is how you find true contentment and true happiness in your life, not by becoming the next internet billionaire, gazillionaire. Not by becoming some Bitcoin investor that thinks he’s making hundreds of millions of dollars and getting rich quick. It’s about building a business and building a life that you want to live and that lets you be a blessing for other people.
Shane: 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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