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Coming from a place of printing, cutting and shipping all of her products herself – Shonda switched to selling digital products online only.
She provided templates to online companies who would then take care of the rest for her.
It’s not always good to have all of your eggs in one basket when someone else is controlling that basket. If the basket is taken away a lot of your business can change.
We help her find direction on her product and avatar.
Using our own family as an example as to why we printed digital prints online for our children, we are able to explain to Shonda who her avatar could be.
We walk Shonda through if she should continue to depend on third party websites to sell her templates online, or focus solely on getting traffic to her personal website.
We also discuss how to decipher where the best place is to invest your time and money as an online business owner.
You will learn
- Why having your own platform is good.
- What determines the products you sell online.
- How to define your Avatar.
- Ways to get off the Product Hamster Wheel.
- Importance of asking yourself what you want.
- Have a destination you are funneling your consumers to.
- Delegate your tasks to virtual assistants.
- Have a strategy before spending money on promoting your site
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show
Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!
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Can’t Miss Moments
Each week Jocelyn and I share moments that we might have missed if we had not started our online business. We hope these moments inspire you to see the possibilities and freedom online business could provide for your family.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thank you for listening!
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If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
Jocelyn: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast we have Shonda take her party printable business to the next level.
Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your host Shane and
Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? Alright. Let’s get started.
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. Super excited to help another one of our Flip your life community members take their online business to the next level and get closer to their online dreams. Today’s guest is Shonda O. Shonda welcome to the show.
Shonda: Thanks for having me guys. I really appreciate it.
Jocelyn: Alright Shonda we have talked to you actually ones before a while back on our consulting calls and
now we want to talk about you. Tell us about your business and what you’re doing online.
Shonda: Just give you some personal background. I lived in the near the Richmond Virginia area. I’m married with two beautiful daughters, one that’s 16 and one that’s 12. So I’m pretty busy just with that alone.
Shane: Yeah, no doubt.
Shonda: I have a digital online business already so I’m already kind of there. It’s just a matter of trying to grow it but I do party printables and photo cards, invitations that sort of thing even wall art but everything that I sell is digital and I actually started years ago, I mean literally, kind of embarrassing actually. I started back in 2004 in this digital venture on eBay and when it kind of grew to overwhelming levels basically I started and at that time, it wasn’t digital I was actually just an online business but I was doing everything. I was printing orders, cutting them, shipping them, everything and that’s when I decided that’s not scalable and moved into just digital download side of party partible business so that’s where I’m today.
Shane: Right now are you doing this fulltime?
Shonda: It is and you know what I’m going it’s taken so many twist and turns over the last 12 years or so. Actually, the reason, besides the fact that it wasn’t scalable back when I was on eBay I was actually approached. It was just literally a gift from God I was literally approached by —– they are like an online photo printing. They do all kind of photo gifting that sort of thing and then they actually approached me about providing designs to them and so of course I thought this is like a dream come true because I would no longer have to be actually fulfilling orders anymore which was literally and I was getting by with a very little sleep for many years doing it all and doing it for pennies, it was a hobby. So basically when they approached me about just providing digital designs and I would earn basically a royalty off of the designs that they sold of mine then obviously I was in heaven at that point and that’s when I kind of realize at that point that how this business was going to be. So, today, 90% honestly of what I earn, it is all online, it is all digital but it is true that one major account but I do sell other places.
Jocelyn: So basically you provide digital templates for people to use on their surface right?
Shonda Absolutely, yes.
Shane: So you are not actually involved in any of the actual printing anymore that’s good. You provide these templates. You blow them and people download them. You get paid and someone else fulfills all the paper, actual parts of it.
Shonda: Absolutely.
Shane: Cool.
Shonda: That’s exactly how it works.
Jocelyn: This is great but I know that from talking to you before that the limitation with this is that when —– changes something that changes a lot of things for you.
Shonda: Yes for instance, like when they changed hands which happened this past Christmas and they were bought out by another company and yes, there’s just a whole lot up in the air. It’s a marked platform that I’m dealing.
Shane: That’s good and we’re going to work toward some different things here to kind of come up with some new ideas but I wanted just to say to half of our listeners out there, we’ve had this happen to a couple members where they’ve kind of had all their eggs in one basket and it was really lucrative and good for a while but things can change quickly when someone else controls your own platform, right? Or controls the platform. This is true whether it becomes to Facebook groups, Facebook pages, building your site like Etsy or anything like that and it is really important to always think bigger about your business and make sure that you’re not building on renin land and putting all of your eggs into somebody else’s basket because if they take the basket away a lot change. So that’s why we always promote like WordPress and having your own website and doing your own things and we’ll get into some of that as we talk to our discussion but, it can be good, sometimes that is what is she wanted to do because we all want to make a living and sometimes you’re going to make a really good living that way but we always want to think about other things as well. With all that in mind, let’s jump into your actual questions about we’re right now and kind of where you want to go and see if we kind of help you kind of get this business to the next level, okay?
Shonda: Okay, I think I mainly suffer from that concept called I guess analysis, paralysis. That’s probably my biggest hurdle but honestly I guess the thing I’m suffering with this clarity is trying to find out when it comes to this avatar, I’m struggling with even after doing this all these years, honestly trying to figure out whether my product that I’m currently making is what determines my avatar or whether my avatar kind of drives my product. It kind of seems like a circular issue. I can’t quite resolved that in my mind and how am I supposed to figure this out when I go to talk to my so called tribe of people or how I find that tribe of people.
Shane: It feels like a chicken and an egg kind of thing, right? You know what I’m saying which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Shonda: Right.
Shane: So I’ll say this just at the top of my head like your situation is weird because you know really you are doing all these templates for —–, right? And like they’re kind of selling that in their market place, right? Then as people download those, you kind of gain at, it’s almost like you don’t really have an avatar as a person — use your avatar because you’re making a product for —- and they are selling that to people so they’re kind of telling you what they want or you’re giving them the things they need so, it’s kind of like a business to business thing. You’re providing that template for them. If you are selling this individually on your own site.
Jocelyn: Which she is.
Shane: Which she is and that was the majority of your business, you know what I mean? Then I would say that your people, that what printable is going to determine your products and usually it is that way. It is usually the avatar that determines what you sell not you sell something and then the avatar finds you and discovers that they need your product. The person has to have a problem and you have to solve it. That’s what determines that. So the avatar in this case does come first because if you make a solution to a problem but no avatar has that problem then you just created something that’s useless but if you find an avatar person who has a problem and you create a solution for that then the product stems from what their problem was. In your case, Jocelyn just did this the other like we order printable for Valentine’s Day. Our kids had Valentine’s Day parties and as Isaac like sky landers which is this little video game toy. He wanted sky lander things and what did Anna get?
Jocelyn: She got shopkins and—
Shane: Shopkins another marketing masterpiece.
Jocelyn: You know me being the online shopper that I am, I don’t actually go to stores very often, so I was like buy this off Etsy and print them.
Shane: And print them and cut them. So just like Jocelyn in this case, so here’s how this works, Jocelyn is a 30 something, I’m not going to give away the real age baby, 30 something year old mother of small children under the age of 10 who was too busy to go the store to buy this Valentine’s Day cards so her problem was she did not have Valentine’s card so she went to Google to search for Valentine’s Day printable and someone have created this as a solution for her, the avatar because they know this problem exists and they know they had the solution. That’s kind of how avatar and product creation works.
Jocelyn: And I think for you, I mean, it’s a sort of broad avatar like broader than most people’s. Your avatar is a person who’s looking for printables. That pretty much it. Now there can be a lot of different kinds of printable which I see in your store here.
Shane: Yeah, birthdays, and Valentine’s Day, and holidays and all that.
Shonda: The struggle, the broad part, I think that’s honestly what I’m struggling which is I’m trying to do everything that I can imagine that a mom because you can print so many things that can help with just you know daily life with kids.
Shane: We’ve worked with people that do planners. We’ve worked with people who do printables and things like that but like, I think that your big existential problem here is you don’t know if you’re the graphic designer for —— or you’re a party printable creator for moms who need printables and you’re kind of walking both paths because you got a cash cow over here, over theoretically in —- but you’re in the mercy of their business whereas in your mind you’re like, if I can just sell these printables over here and reign really good on my own side I could just sell them myself, you know what I mean?
Jocelyn: And let’s talk while we’re on that subject, let’s talk about how that’s going, are you selling things on your website? Do you have people on your email list?
Shonda: I do but I will admit, my lead magnet is suffering. I definitely need something more clickable and honestly I think I’ve avoided it because I’m not really quite sure back to the broad issue again. Now, I probably never defined my avatar. I’m on Etsy, I have a website, just basically I put on Etsy I’ll go over and stick on the website but because Etsy has the traffic already there and they have my idea audience already there, I tend to just click and look at what selling there and kind of just follow that as a guide and took what to produce but I’m on a product hamster wheel so to speak. I am just making more products to reach more people.
Shane: You’re targeting different segments of overall avatar basically?
Shonda: Yes.
Shane: I think that, but still that’s a small percentage of what you make compared to what you make from —- right?
Shonda: Oh, it is. It is. Very small.
Jocelyn: Why would you say that your sales at Etsy as compared to your website?
Shane: The percentage wise?
Shonda: I would say it’s about 10% of what I make from —-
Jocelyn: But I’m talking about like Etsy to website what’s the percentage of sales?
Shonda: Etsy to my personal, my business website?
Shane: If you have the 100% of the pie, 90% is —- 10% is everything else. Of that 10% how much of it is Etsy and how much of it actual direct sales on your website? Mostly Etsy or not?
Shonda: I would say 75% of it is Etsy.
Shane: Okay so really your website is only making about 2% of your overall revenue and Etsy is doing 7%.
Shonda: Yeah, that’s why I keep feeding it because I’m feeding to places that make me money but I’m not really able to focus on the website very much.
Shane: This still comes back to the fundamental question of like I think this is a what do you want question not as my avatar correct question, like what do you want out of this like because to me, I think you need to make a decision like, are you going to be a producer of these printables in this market space by yourself or would your time better be spent looking at the opportunity cost of just saying, I’m going to focus a 100% on — do they only request things from you or can you make things anytime you want and put them on —?
Shonda: That used to be the way it worked but now it’s a very curated process so they request a deadline’s and you know the whole nine yards.
Shane: So this is really, I don’t want to behold into that anymore not an avatar problem. We know the avatar. You know the product, you know the market. You’re just kind of having a little bit fear issue of do I go all in on myself or do I keep betting on —- and that’s what a lot of people spend their wheels around when it comes to online business is they try to figure out all these things and buzz words and avatars and lead magnets and sales funnels but really the question is just what do you want to do? And I think what I’m hearing is I want the security of being able to own my destiny on my own website, selling printables whether it’s Etsy marketplaces and not have to rely on this —– thing, is that what I’m hearing?
Shonda: Absolutely and I want to say, I’m so blessed to be a part of that —- team and I’m so great but yes, I do want, I would prefer to have the security of knowing that I can, yeah, that everything is on my site.
Jocelyn: If you needed to move on, you would have the opportunity to do so.
Shane: Let me give you some like what I think here, just listen to that conversation, I want you to know from a confidence standpoint that one, we know that your materials are super high quality and super good and they’ve proven themselves in the marketplace so you should feel really confident about the things you make and sell and you’ve seen them sell in that marketplace over on —- right? That’s the first thing. Number two, you are spot on and you totally do understand your avatar and the products. I fully believe that you have the grasp of what people want, you understand that you need to make new things and that’s cool. Really the question is now, forget all that, that’s taking care of we’re past that point. You would have made money all this time anyway, right?
Shonda: Thank you I appreciate it.
Shane: So forget being afraid, let’s just move forward now and figure out how we can turn your Etsy store and this other third party marketplaces and your actual website into the actual cash hub of your business instead of saying all my eggs are in one basket because that’s just the decision at this point that you’re going to do that and then we’re going to figure out how.
Jocelyn: I personally, and I don’t say it often but I think that it may be worthwhile to dump the website and just go all in Etsy because I mean when I want to order something that’s where I went to order my kids valentines. I didn’t search on Google. Well, at first I search on Etsy and find what I wanted so at the end searched on Google so I think there’s some merit on Google but I think the problem is because it’s such a small piece of your income your splitting focus and I think that you could do better going all in one or the other and I think Etsy is probably the answer. We have another client. Her name is Kat and she is over craftercoach.com but she works with the Etsy sellers to help them to build their businesses bigger.
Shane: She’s a member of the Flip Your Life community?
Jocelyn: Yeah so I think that maybe just investing sometime and figuring out what ranks highly on Etsy, how you can leverage other parts at the internet like on Pinterest, on Google to grow that Etsy store, I think that maybe a better option for you. I went and I ordered these valentines off somebody’s website, I don’t remember whose website it was, there is a little box there, do you want to join my email list and I’m like, no I don’t want to, why would I do that?
Shane: First place that she usually goes is Etsy there for stuff like that.
Jocelyn: Yeah, so I’m just thinking like for longevity sake, I don’t know that this website is the best thing, there are maybe some people who are out there, who want to join some type of subscription service for this but I just don’t really see that being the case for this I think you are better off with one off and I think you would be better off putting all of your eggs in Etsy basket for your personal stuff.
Shane: Yeah and that kind of, it feels like you’re doing the same thing as —- that they can change and things like that. We are not saying that you don’t need a website, what we’re saying is you’re doing double work. You’re trying to get all your stuff on Etsy and then you’re trying to get all your stuff on your site and then you’re trying to get all your stuff here and all your stuff there. You can still have, you are still going to do content marketing on a blog. It’s still going to be the home of your social media like your Pinterest and things like that but your goal becomes let’s funnel everyone to where I can exchange money for this things instead of let’s just put all my products everywhere and hope something good happens. There’s no, you are not being strategic right now and you’re doing double work for no reason basically.
Shonda: That’s actually like just hearing you say that out loud Jocelyn or both of you, I feel like a weight is lifted off of my shoulders because right now, the fact that I do all the designing of every single product I mean every piece of it and then trying to do content marketing and then trying to have it in all of these three different places is so overwhelming right now.
Shane: And I think as the business owner, you’re supposed to be the content creator and marketer. You know what I mean?
Shonda: Yes.
Shane: Now, one thing that we found a lot of people that we’ve worked at and a lot of people we know that start out in a design space like that what’s it really is it’s a design type business. They are doing the design because they are good at it or whatever. They have trouble letting that go, what you really probably should be doing is hiring out the design based strategically on what you determine through your research the market wants. Like let’s just say, oh, lots of people, like Shopkins is this little toy that it’s taken over the universe. It’s like garbage vogue kids and whatever, yeah. I hate them. They are always stuck in my foot and I find them in my pillows and I think I found one in like of bowl of cereal the other day because Anna has 5,000 of them. Anyway, if you find out through your research right now, that’s a hot kind of birthday card or Christmas card or Valentine’s Day card, well you know that coming up you want that design, you should go have that design by someone else while you figure out how you’re going to get that set up in your Etsy store marketing. If you could let that go, that would be huge.
Shonda: Well that was actually my next question because that’s been something like I’ve said I’ve been doing this for 12 years so as you can tell, I have struggled with that letting that go because I’ve kind of defined my brand by what I produce. It’s connected but I’m wondering at this point whether I should be so spending more time on the content, part of the business and the marketing and maybe letting go of that of the art part of it but that is going to be a hard thing for me to do.
Jocelyn: It will be and I can speak to this a little bit because we are in the middle of the transition right now and I’m having to let go of some other things that I was doing before on my elementary librarians and I feel like I’m the best person for the job and I still feel like I’m the best person for the job, however I feel like that other people can probably do it like 85% as well as me and even that it’s better than me spending my time doing it because I need to do things that only I can do.
Shane: Here are some fucking Kentucky man I am about to throw at you now. So what you just said was and I don’t know these percentage of somebody is going to mail me.
Shonda: This percentage is what I add up. I can already tell you
Shane: These percentages do not add up but I don’t care. Let’s say that Jocelyn has marketing and production today right? She’s going to make a lesson plan and do marketing. If she does both, there are pretty much only got to be 50% as good as, she only has a limited time. So if she spends half her time over here and half her time over here, she’s going to get about half as good as a result out of both sides, right? But if she hires someone to do it, 90% as good as her and then she spends a 100% of her time on the marketing promotion then she’s going to have 190% good over on this side. That’s not good math.
Jocelyn: I don’t think that made any sense at all.
Shane: It’s not good math but it makes good sense, you know what I mean? So like, that’s what you got think here, it’s if I just let, you know why your businesses isn’t growing it’s because you are not growing it you are still trying to produce the things.
Shonda: That’s I believe.
Shane: You can plant seeds from here to kingdom come but if you don’t go back and water them then that don’t happen so you’re going to start being able to water your business and making it grow by content creation, advertising, promotion, getting in front of the right product, your product in front of the avatar and you can keep all these things coming at the back end. Jocelyn hired out lesson plans. She’s got someone else that does all of her lesson plans now.
Jocelyn: Are they exactly what I would do?
Shane: No.
Jocelyn: Not exactly but they are pretty close. I gave this person a procedure. She does it pretty well close to what I do and people are happy with it.
Shane: The history site where we sell lesson plans, I didn’t make one single lesson plan, I hired it all out, completely. I just created a template of what I wanted and they just made it.
Jocelyn: And you might be surprise that the type of quality you can get. I mean there are virtual assistants out there I mean you can hire somebody a Westerner, somebody from America, you can go somebody overseas, just I would show them a portfolio of things and say I want you to create things that are similar to this. Here is the list of subjects.
Shane: It’s like this. Even on these designs you could make one thing or you can pay people to make five things and get more things to the market place quicker and make more money.
Shonda: Yes. I have thought about all of this. As a matter of fact so much so that I actually do have a VA that I’ve worked with for several years now on the Philippines and I adored him and he’s very talented graphically, graphic design speaking but what I basically been doing so I wouldn’t let go of the actual illustrating and designing myself was basically just handing him the designs and having him kind of take it from there and put it in the format that it needs to be uploaded to the site or whatever but you’re saying that’s hobby still not enough.
Shane: Not enough you got to let it go.
Jocelyn: Because you’re still too engrained in actually creating the design. That’s taking up a lot of mental space, it’s taking up a lot of your energy and time and you need to get out of that. if you are doing it for —–, if you are doing it for them, I mean that’s one thing, if you’re going to actually opt to do it like I get that but as far like the Etsy stuff people don’t care that Shonda made it. People care that it meets their needs.
Shane: That’s exactly right. So, that’s what you got to look at when all these things that are being created, are you solving the avatar’s problem? If you are, it doesn’t matter if you made it or the other person made it. You created the shop in cart. That’s what they want it. You know what I mean? I heard something very powerful the other day as I was listening to the presentation by the guy and he said, who was that, I can’t remember but he said something like that if you are a successful entrepreneur, your job description should change about every six months to a year because as you become more successful, there’s certain things in your business that only you can do. At first you try to do everything because you have to because all entrepreneurs are going to get started but your role should be changing and if you are looking back over the last four or five years and you are saying I’m still doing the design work, you’re not allowing your role to change and that’s why your growth is not happening because you’re not saying this is the thing only I can do that something I could delegate out and that’s what you’ve got to do for your business to really take off here.
Shonda: I guess the part that I struggle with is just that I try to always thought of myself as anything I really can do well is just the designing part, does that make sense?
Shane: Yeah, I know what you’re saying and that’s not true.
Jocelyn: You know what, that spring of a valid point though because I think that sometimes we get ourselves into the thought that we have to be constantly moving on. I don’t necessarily think that’s true. I think that you could also delegate some of this business growth task.
Shane: Yeah, that’s true.
Jocelyn: If you really love the design work and that’s what you want to do then that’s fine. Delegate some of these other tests; hire an Etsy coach, hire somebody to go in and SEO your stores so that it ranks higher.
Shane: You can even hire people to right the content, you can hire ghost writers to write all your blog post. You don’t have to do that.
Jocelyn: Pay for advertising, get up to the sponsor post of Etsy, I mean there are other things that you can do to grow this business besides stepping out of the design role but just one of the things.
Shane: Does that make sense?
Shonda: No it does, you are actually answering my questions before I even ask them so yes.
Shane: That’s how good we are right here in the Flipped Lifestyle baby, we can read people’s minds.
Shonda: That’s how you can throw the Flipped Lifestyle microphone.
Jocelyn: I mean we’ve seen this time and time again though and it’s the same thing that we go through in our business as well, when we grow, when things start getting bigger and better that means that we need to expand to be able to serve more people and you’re on the same place right now. You just have to make some hard decisions, what are you going to cut out, what are you going to do more of and what are you going to do less of, you have to do something. This is one of my favorites, if you change nothing, nothing will change.
Shane: Yeah, so like what basically, like, what, if you could say that right now, you’ve got one thing that you have to do to grow your business like what would it be for you Shonda? What do you need to be doing? Something has got to be different. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. That’s insanity. So like, what is that? What is the thing you have to do to take this from not relying on one big company and being able to go and grow all the things you do have control over better?
Shonda: So you are asking my opinion of what I think will happen next?
Shane: Yeah because only you know that, you know.
Shonda: I do and I’ll tell you of course I have information overload and I never put any of it, I try to put it into play but it’s still many little pieces. I’ve been, I’ve spent a lot of money on Facebook ads, I know I need to be doing that better. I’m doing everything a little bit; a little bit of blogging, a little bit of social media, a little bit of Facebook ads that you understand what I’m saying?
Shane: Sure.
Shonda: Trying to do it all and do the design as well and of course the design is taking up 90% of my time. So I’m not doing any of the promotion of the stuff well so I know that it needs to change. I know that for a fact.
Shane: So now how does this changes the question like do you put all your time in it and hire a designer or do you hire an expert for Facebook ads and promotion and you keep doing the design. You got two choices, you just got to make one that’s best for your business.
Shonda: Right, right, right and so I’m thinking probably in the beginning I would probably like to be a little more educated on the Facebook stuff from somebody that knows what they’re doing and I think that the thing that’s hanging me up there as well is the fact that I’m doing well on —- but I’m not having to do anything to promote —– but trying to promote my site, I feel like it’s just kind of a sink hole, I’m spending money but I’m not doing it well enough to get any return on what little steps taking.
Shane: Everything, we tell people to get shocked when they’re coming to our website or into the community because everything they hear is, I’ll go buy Facebook ads to solve all your problems and we’re like, don’t spend any money that’s crazy. You have no strategy. You don’t know what the end game is, you’re just trying to get likes and get people to know about your brand, that’s useless. Like, so you’ve got to make at what you’ve got to have is a linear plan a strategy before you go into this promotion stuff to say, this is the exact thing that must be sold to this person. How do I close that gap with a plan?
Jocelyn: That’s why I think that you’re going to be really, really well served to do something like Kat’s program, craftercoach.com.
Shane: Or hire a coach or some kind for this.
Jocelyn: Some type of coaching and I think Kat would be great for you if you are going to stick with Etsy but I mean some kind of direction because that’s going to give you like kind of a more step by step this is what I need to get done because without that I think that you are probably a type of person like other people I know sitting across the desk from me who get a little distracted by things.
Shane: Jocelyn and I spend a large amount of our business budget is dedicated to going out and hiring the information we need at that time. Sometimes that’s joining a course, sometimes that’s going and talking to someone in person, sometimes it’s going to a live event that like we are constantly engaging with multiple experts that are better than we are at the things that we are trying to accomplish because that goes back to that delegation. You can’t do it all and if there’s someone that’s better than you, why not just hire them for that because the ultimate goal is for us all to be doing what we’re best at and hiring out the rest of it.
Jocelyn: And we just love coaching calls accountability or consequence and that means that you invest in yourself, you put some money down to say, I’m going to learn this and I’m going to do it the right way and then you’re accountable to someone that saying, are you doing this?
Shane: It’s not like, everybody wants a mastermind group and we have a couple of people that we talk to every once in a while but like, why are you active in Flip Your Life community, it’s because you pay a monthly right to be in there. Why are you talking to this right now? Why did you show up at this time because you have investment in that process so you just have to figure out the best place to invest.
Shonda: That’s the hard part for me, I think I’m kind of like Jocelyn just said, I’m so distracted by all of the I should have be, I should be doing this, I should have been doing, I need to be doing and that I need to be doing the design as well which is so time consuming. It’s just trying to figure out what I can let go of, that I should be letting go of and then researching the people that I need to be taking that stuff over.
Shane: Here’s what I want you to do, normally we ask people what they need to do. Sometimes, there’s a little bit ambiguity even after one of these calls. Here’s what I want you to do this week, I want you to list every single task in your business that gets done on a weekly basis, okay? I want you to just get a little journal and I want you to write down every day what happens, what are you doing, what is your VA doing, I wanted you to do all of these task and then I want you to go into flip your life forums and I want you, by the end of next week, I want you to put a bulleted list of every tasks that you wrote down. Then Jocelyn and I and the rest of the community will come in and I want you to like, when you do this kind of bolt the ones the you have identified as the things you think you should or best at and then we will help you formulate a perfect plan that would meet your needs, delegate what you need to delegate, free up all that time and help you and show you what to prioritize and focus on in your business so that you can move forward and start getting some growth instead of just being the same thing over and over again. We’ll get a bunch of eyeballs on it that help you take those tasks and turn them into roles and then we’ll rid of the roles and give you just what you need to grow.
Shonda: God bless you, that would be a wonderful thing.
Jocelyn: That’s what we’re here for, we love helping our community members. So I hope this was helpful for you. I mean this is a really interesting conversation. I love talking to people who do things that are a little bit different than what we do just because it just gives us insight into what else is going on in the online marketing space and that’s really interesting for me.
Shane: And a lot of people for everybody listening who go just like you Shonda when you go through this. We all go through this periodically, like I think that what you’re going through here literally happens to us every six months just because things changed, things go, things grow, things explode and then you plateau, right? So something has to shake the system there to make the growth come back. The best analogy is to check mark, you go, u, up, up and then you plateau. You changed something, there’s a little dip and then you rocket back up again and that’s we are with you we’re at that point we’re at that point kind of plateaued so let’s change something shake it up, dip back up and get the growth where you wanted to be again, okay?
Shonda: Yes, sounds like a great plan to me.
Shane: Well, Shonda thank you so much for being in the show. This is a super call and I think it’s going to be helpful for a lot of people who listened.
Shonda: Thank you so much because I really appreciate it.
Shane: That was another information packed call with one of our Flip your life community members, hope that you got a lot of benefit out of our answers to our guest questions as well. If you’d like to become a member of Flip Your Life community, head over to Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we can help you with your online business.
Jocelyn: Right. It’s time to move into our can’t-miss moments segment of the show and these are moments that we are able to experience that we might have missed if we were still working at a normal 9-5 job. Today’s can’t-miss moments is our son Isaac reading to our daughter Anna and this one is cool because Isaac is in first grade right now and he has nightly reading every night and there are some nights that we don’t always do our nightly reading until the morning. So kind of telling ourselves here but we do the reading everyday but sometimes we slack and don’t do it til the morning and this particular day, we did not get the reading done the night before so we were sitting at the breakfast table and we’re watching Isaac read to Anna. If you want to see a picture of it you can check out today’s show notes over on our site but he just was reading the book to her and showing all the pictures and I decided it was so cool because a long time ago when we were still working at school we were rushing around like crazy in the morning and we never had time and enjoy anything, it was just work as quickly as possible to get ready for school and some days are still like that but this particular day we had time to just watch them interact with each other, watch Isaac read to her and it was just a really good time for all of us.
Shane: Like I don’t even remember mornings when we had 9-5 jobs because like Jocelyn said, it was so crazy and like Jocelyn had to be at work so early like she had to be there 30 minutes before I did so she would just leave. Sometimes it will just be like I didn’t see her walk out the door and now everything in our life is much controlled, it’s slower and we actually do get to notice moments like this. If you are out there right now, and you really rush every morning and it’s stressful getting to work every day and you are really try to make this online business work, know that it is worth it to put in all the effort upfront because once you do quit your job and you do what we do, you really get to start enjoying and experiencing life more than that’s what it’s all about. Before we go we like to close every single one on our show so the verse in the Bible. Today’s bible verse comes from Proverbs chapter 11 verse three and the bible says, “honesty guides good people. Dishonesty destroys treacherous people” so make sure you are always building an honest online business that’s full of integrity and you treat people you would want to be treated. That’s all the time we had 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!
Charlotte Waltz says
Hello There! Thank you for the great content and information. Would you be willing to share Shonda’s website or Etsy link?