The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about how you can improve your email open and click through rates, so you can grow your online business and build a more engaged audience. The most important and valuable time you get with a new email subscribers is your thank you page and first couple of emails. You need to give them really clear instructions and personalize for your brand. Be clear not clever People want to hear real world stories and case studies that they can relate to. Don’t take all the personality out of your emails and just share facts and figures. We’ll talk about some great examples of how to do this (while also making sure you’re providing tons of value). [Tweet "Don't sell in your emails; provide value, tell stories, give them a reason to open & click"] You will learn How to indoctrinate people who sign up for your email list Be Clear, Not Clever - How to write better subject lines Why you should tell lot’s of stories in your emails Why every email should not be a sales pitch. How to start training people in your autoresponder Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Interview with Pat Flynn Elementary Librarian Aweber Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Listen to what others are saying about Flipped Lifestyle Hi everyone, today’s been a good day for us. Our wedding planning eBook has been featured along with our wedding on a large wedding blog. This has led to the first of subscribers to our email list. Woohoo! At last we are starting to build an audience. Thanks to some good advice and encouragement from Shane and Jocelyn, we have gotten our follow up series finished yesterday. So now, we are ready to try to engage with these new subscribers. We can’t wait to report back with our first sales. Dean and Hannah - ownyourwedding.com" Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! 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!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week! Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today's podcast, we're going to share how to improve your email open rates and click through rates. SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, 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? All right, let's get started. SHANE: what’s up guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Great to be back with you as always this week. You are listening to part three of our series email campaigns autoresponders. Everything about getting people on your email list, getting them to open and click on your emails and going through to hopefully eventually become a great paying customer. In episode 52, our first podcast in this series, we talked about how to setup your email marketing, how to collect emails,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Heather figure out how often to email her list and what she should be sending to them when she does. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Contact your niche as often as your audience will allow. Test, every niche is different. "] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s question from Heather Jackson at Potato Sack Diet Project Article on Periscope Live Event Elementary Librarian US History Teachers Flip Your Life Community Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Q&A with S&J. Got another great question about email marketing for you this week. We have a theme going on this month; we’re talking all about email marketing on all of our podcasts this month. This is how to get a bigger email list and sell to that list better. Today’s question comes from Heather Jackson who is a Flip Your Life community member. You can follow her at Facebook.com/potatosackproject. She’s got a cool little Facebook page there, she’s working on her website, and that will be up soon but you can follow her over on Facebook and check out what she’s up to. Heather writes, “How often should you keep in touch with your email list and is sending just your blog post links when they publish, enough? I am just starting out so I don’t really have a list but as it grows, I want to make sure I’m contacting them consistently. What should I do?” Jocelyn, what do you think about that? JOCELYN: Alright, well, I have not always been the poster child for great email success. SHANE: But we’ve gotten a lot better. JOCELYN: We have improved a lot, and the thing that you have to remember Heather, and everyone else out there who maybe struggling with this question is that people give you their email address because they want you to contact them. That doesn’t mean that you should contact them ten times a day, but don’t feel bad about contacting them about once a week, maybe even twice a week. But don’t feel like you have to have a rigorous schedule and don’t get bent out of shape if you don’t adhere to that schedule that you build up in your mind. I think that’s a problem that a lot of people have, and they think that just sending out links to blog posts for instance like you mentioned is not good enough. But in fact, I think that sending out links to blog posts is totally a great list of – or a great use of your email list, and as long as you are sending them good value, and consistently sending them information that they are interested in, then that is perfectly acceptable to send to your list. SHANE: It’s kinda like baseball; something like – we send out every Wednesday – our podcast comes on Tuesday and I’ve had people ask me before, like why don’t you send me an email out on Tuesday when your podcast releases? Well, I know that so many thousand people are gonna listen to that podcast because they are subscribed. You know, X-thousand people are gonna come in, download it, regardless of if I email him or not. Those people, I just want to go ahead and let them download everything and then I’ll wait till the next day before I schedule our email announcement for our podcast on Tuesdays, until Wednesday. We want that to come in on Wednesday to catch everybody else in our audience that might not be subscribed on iTunes or maybe missed that the podcast had c...

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Amy figure out when her product is good enough to launch and the steps she should take next. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire Today’s question is from Amy at meditatewithamy.com Flip Your Life Program Podcasters Paradise Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is John Lee Dumas of the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast and Entrepreneuronfire.com Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: Hey guys, welcome back to our Expert Q&A, great to back with you again on this Thursday. We have an awesome guest today, we wanna welcome back to the show, John Lee Dumas. John, welcome back, man! JOHN: Smoldering, smoking, the flame is still there. SHANE: The fire keeps getting bigger; we talked to you a little while ago and every month, it’s just getting bigger dude. You know what I’m saying? This is amazing. I mean, you’re gonna have a bonfire out there on the beach pretty soon. All right, let’s jump right into our question Jocelyn. JOCELYN: Right, today’s question is from Amy Paterson of meditatewithamy.com, and she says, “How do you know when it is time to stop working on a digital product? I’ve written an e-book but I’m too much of a perfectionist to stop fiddling with it, and just start marketing the thing. I have a feeling that as soon as I make it available for sale, that I will find something horribly wrong with it and be mortified, and no one will ever buy anything from me again. Should I just set a deadline and say no more changes after that? When is enough, enough, and how do you know when it is time to launch?” SHANE: I love this question man, because we – you know, we have like dozens and dozens of people and we see it in our Flip Your Life course, and we see this over and over again. You know, people get to that point where they almost get that digital product created, and then they rewrite it where they start over, or they keep working on it and we are like, ‘Oh, what are you doing?’ So what is your perspective on this John, what do you think about when to launch a product? When is enough, enough? When do you put yourself out there to the world? JOHN: Okay, I’m like foaming at the mouth for this question; and I’m glad you guys have like the tough love like Sundays or whatever you do – SHANE: The tough love stick, baby, we bring up the tough love stick right here. JOHN: Yeah, this is like a tough love, like super-bowl right here because this is like such a sticking point for me, because so many entrepreneurs fail and fail and fail because of this very question that they just run in circles around. And my first answer to Amy here is, you’ve waited way too long already. You’ve already wasted a ton of time, in my opinion, in my experience, which I have had experience wasting a ton of time in a similar situation, multiple times before because until people actually pay with their wallet, they actually vote with their wallets for an idea, you don’t even have a clue if your audience is starving enough. They’ll tell you all day long; ‘I want this, I want X, I want a Y, I want a Z’, ‘Oh yeah, if you create this, I will definitely buy this.’ Believe me, I know you have a great relationship with your audience and believe me, I know that you think you are making the right product for t...

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about how you can grow your email list, so you can build a better online business. When growing your email list you have to make sure you’re talking to your target audience and creating amazing lead magnets for that specific avatar. It's not all about selling your digital products from the first interaction, build your email list create a loyal audience over time. [Tweet "The best way to get email opt-ins, is to solve your audience's problems"] You will learn Define your specific audience so you can define their problems. The value of an amazing lead magnet. Why you need to provide solutions for audience more htan anything else Why you shouldn’t rely on your sidebar for email addresses. Pop up or no pop up? Why you should spend money to build a relationship Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Flip Your Life Program Canva Matthew Kimberly Popup Pro Alley Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Listen to what others are saying about Flipped Lifestyle This week, I went live with my website, Facebook and Twitter pages. By the end of the week, I had made my first sale of a ten-dollar product, even though my goal was just to get subscribers. By the end of the week, I have 138 Facebook likes, eight subscribers on my email list, and one product sale. I’m so encouraged overall after this first week, I could not have done it without the Flip Your Life community. Thanks to each of you and ‘thank you’ to Shane and Jocelyn. Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! 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!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week! Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today’s show, we’re going to five of our best tips for growing your email list, fast. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What is going on guys? Welcome back to the flipped lifestyle podcast. It is awesome, as always, to be with you this week. We are in week two of our series on email marketing. Last week, we talked about how you should set up your emails to where you could actually collect them, getting the services that you need to be able to do that on your website. But now, we’re gonna show you how to actually get people to get on your list. You know, it’s awesome to be able to set up all these systems and buy these tools that let us collect emails and get them on our list, and send them an autoresponder and be able to broadcast emails. But if nobody is on your list, you’re probably not going to make a lot of money through email marketing. So today, we’re gonna tell you how to get people to sign up and how to keep them on your list. But first,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Melissa figure out how quickly she can pitch a product to her email list using an autoresponder. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Use your email list to provide value & drive traffic. Do the selling on your site."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Flip Your Life program Info on our live events Aweber Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Q&A with S&J. We got a great question today for you from Melissa Harley. Melissa is a member of our Flip Your Life membership community; we get to work with Melissa quite a bit in our forums over at flipyourlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and Melissa’s question today is, “My question is, when do I send my list an ad for my product in the email if they’ve signed up for my blog post or my newsletter? Should there just be a link to it in every single email? How often or when should I sell people something?” And we get this question quite a bit. I think people are scared they are gonna jump in and make that pitch too early, and all of our questions this month are about email marketing, so this is a great and timely question for what we are talking about. Jocelyn, what do you think about that? How soon or often should people sell in their email list? JOCELYN: All right Melissa, I think that there are actually a couple of answers here because there’s selling in an autoresponder, and then there’s selling in like a normal broadcast, which I think is what you are asking about. But as far as an autoresponder goes, I don’t really like to put a sales link in the first couple of emails. I really want to, kind of, overwhelm people with value and what they are getting from me instead of asking for something from them right away. I don’t have a problem with in the email autoresponder, if you maybe put like a PS link and let people know that you have something for sale, in say maybe the third email or the fourth email something like that. Some people even do it in the first couple of emails and if that’s what you choose to do, I mean, you could certainly test that out, see if it’s working for your audience, but I personally just don’t like to do that right away. Now as far as the broadcasts goes, I think that you really could do it a lot of different ways; what do you think? SHANE: Okay, I think with broadcasts, that’s where you probably should be selling. Like Jocelyn was saying, the autoresponder, there’s going to be a pitch that’s for sure, but like she said, the first email is to kinda introduce yourself and deliver that thing you promised them, the second, third, and fourth emails are pretty much just to train them to open your emails. So Jocelyn said earlier that she wants to really overload them with value in those first few emails. If people don’t get used to opening your emails, they’re never going to click the link inside them anyway so you got to make sure they know that opening your email is like a Christmas gift. So make sure you are giving a lot of stuff away in those first couple of emails. Train them to click links though, they got to go to your website to get those, and then maybe in your autoresponder, you could sell something, maybe a quick offer around the fifth or sixth email, is that too early you think or – JOCELYN: No, I think that’s probably reasonable; just depending on your audience and your niche,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Eric figure out if he should be driving traffic to his products or trying to get more likes from Facebook ads. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Use Facebook ads to generate leads. Pay for emails, not likes. @RickMulready"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is Rick Mulready from RickMulready.com Today’s question is from Eric Gale from thechristianjedi.com Art of Paid Traffic Podcast Rick’s Facebook Ads Course Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is paid traffic specialist, Rick Mulready of rickmulready.com. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J. We are excited to bring you another Expert Q&A today, and we have one of my absolute favorite online experts. We always say, we don’t have a lot of time to listen to podcasts but I do catch this guy’s podcast, ‘The Art of Paid Traffic’ whenever I can. We are bringing on Rick Mulready, the Facebook and paid traffic legend. Rick, welcome to the show, baby! RICK: I’ve never been intro-ed as a legend – SHANE: You have now. RICK: – but I kinda love that, thanks guys. SHANE: Yeah, you should put that in all of your requirements now to go on anyone’s podcast. RICK: I’m going to. It’s going on my ‘About’ page now. SHANE: I love it. We are totally surprising Rick with all these questions. I told him, I said, we’re not even going to tell you the questions this time, so you’re gonna have to just come out cold and show how much of a legend you are. So that’s how are going to roll today. RICK: I’m up for it. JOCELYN: You got a lot to live up to. SHANE: You got a lot to live up to, I’m telling you. So, let’s get to today’s question, Jocelyn. JOCELYN: All right, today’s question is from Eric Gayle of the christianjedi.com and Eric says, “I’m two months into my online business. I create Bible studies based on the Star Wars movies.” Very interesting. “I use Facebook ads to drive my ‘Likes’ to 225+ on my Facebook page, and I also sell my book on Kindle Direct Publishing. My question is, should I use Facebook ads to get more ‘Likes’ on my page, or should I use Facebook ads to direct my products on Kindle, or drive traffic to my blog or website? What is the best way to spend money on Facebook?” SHANE: This is a huge question we get on a lot Rick; people are like, where do I spend my money because you know, people want that vanity number, they want a lot of ‘Likes’ for social proof, but they also want people going to their websites. So, like what’s the best way to spend your money? Should you go after those ‘Likes’ or just drive that direct traffic? RICK: Yeah, I generally for most people don’t recommend that you spend money on ‘Likes’ and getting more fans. And the reason for that is, most of us have limited budgets when we are, you know, running our Facebook ads. So I’d much rather see somebody – I’m sorry, what was the person’s name again that asked the question? SHANE: Eric Gayle. RICK: Eric, okay; so Eric, I’d much rather see you and anybody else who’s listening, that can relate to this sort of situation, I’d much rather see you run Facebook ads to try to build your email list so that you can develop a relationship with your tar...

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about how to get started with email marketing and the best email marketing services for your online business. We’re going to cover the quick essentials if you don’t have any experience with email marketing and then dive into the services you need to get started. We break it down and give you practical advice on what services you should be using depending on where you business and email list is at. [Tweet "Every click your visitors take should lead them closer to an opt-in for your email list"] You will learn What is email marketing? How to get started with email marketing. How to setup your first autoresponder. Your first email marketing service - Aweber vs Mailchimp Why you shouldn’t use free programs. Advanced email marketing services - Infusionsoft vs Ontraport When you should switch from one email marketing service to another. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show The Flip Your Life Community Article on Periscope Aweber Mailchimp Ontraport Infusionsoft Active Campaign Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Listen to what others are saying about Flipped Lifestyle I had my first get-out-of-bed-and-find-a-sale moment today. I actually made money while I was sleeping. Thanks so much to everybody in the Flip Your Life community for all your support. You are amazing, I can’t believe this is actually starting to happen. Jeanette Stein Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! 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!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week! Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about email marketing and review the best email marketing services. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What is going on guys? Welcome back to the flipped lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again this week. This is also a very special week because this podcast, or the long podcast number 52, this is exactly one year to the day that we launched our Flipped Lifestyle podcast. I didn’t even notice it because all the Q&As and stuff have added up over time so we’ve got well over a hundred actual shows, but Jocelyn looked over at me right before we started and was like, ‘Have we really been doing this for one year?’ And I was like, ‘How do you know that?’ And she was like, ‘It’s episode 52.’ JOCELYN: Yeah. So, I mean that’s pretty exciting though; we’re just so thankful to still be here, and that we have people listening, and just for all your encouraging words. This morning we got a review from Germany,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Rina figure out what to do with her email autoresponder even though she doesn’t have a product to sell. Here’s a hint - Have your autoresponder set up from the very beginning. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "You should have an autoresponder set up from day 1, even if you don't have a product yet."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s question from Rina at rinaorellanaflamenco.com/ Podcast on Sales Funnel Aweber Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys, welcome back to another Q&A with S&J. Our question today comes from Flip Your Life community member, Rina Orellana and I cannot pronounce that name, I am not sure what that is. Her website is rinaorellanaflamenco.com; not flamingo like the pink things you put in your front yard but the flamenco dancing. JOCELYN: Sounds like fun. SHANE: Flamenco dancing. And her question is, “I am working on my product right now, dance lesson videos and I have a small email list of less than 500 people. I am working on my lead magnet as well. My question is, should I have an email list and an autoresponder series at all if I don’t have a product to sell yet? What should that look like? I have heard your podcast on sales funnels and I thought it was fantastic, but I’m wondering how to apply it to myself when I don’t even have a product to sell?” JOCELYN: All right, so I think that you should definitely go ahead and have an email autoresponder series even if you don’t have your product quite ready yet. The reason for this is to get people just more acquainted with you, and get them to know you, and when you do have your product ready to sell, you’ll already have your email list there and you would already have been talking to them. In the meantime, what you can do is just introduce yourself and give a summary of what all is included on your website and where people could find it. And then also you can communicate with them and get them to tell you more about themselves; what they are doing in the dance world, what they need help with, what are their pain points that you could possibly solve with a paid product. SHANE: Yeah, one of the very first things that you should do when you are starting an online business is start collecting emails whether you have anything or not. Even if it’s just the old, ‘Sign up for my newsletter’ or email list or anything – and you are going to get an opt-in done fast, we want you to do a lead magnet, we want you to have a product mentality first and get something up there that you can exchange for an email address. But you’ve got to have something on the other end of that email collection that’s going to happen over time. Even if it’s just – this is not a great way to do it, but even if you are just broadcasting every week, ‘Hey, here’s my new blog post’, or like Jocelyn said, if you are just asking them a question like, you know, ‘What is the one dance step you have the most problem with?’ I’m not exactly sure, anything about flamenco dancing, but something where you could open that dialogue, keep people coming back, you definitely don’t want to get people’s emails and then never talk to them again until you have something ready which might be months down the road because if you do, those leads are warm, that’s why they gave you their email address in the first place,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Preston figure out health insurance as an entrepreneur and how it can help him save on taxes. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Learn what to do with health insurance costs on your taxes with @CPAonFire"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is Josh Bauerle from CPA on Fire Today’s question is from Preston from Graphic Design Blender Last time Josh was on Flipped Lifestyle Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert, Josh Bauerle of cpaonfire.com Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Q&A with S&J. We have another Expert Q&A for you guys today; we have an awesome guest on, his name is Josh Bauerle, and he is from cpaonfire.com. Josh, welcome to the program. JOSH: Thank you, glad to be back. SHANE: And you may remember Josh, we had him in a long episode talking about running his online business. His wife was on with him, a great episode, we’ll put that on the show notes and today we have him on to answer a tax question because Jocelyn and I are scared to death to answer anything about accounting and taxes. JOCELYN: And for good reason. SHANE: For good reason, okay? So Jocelyn, do you have a question for Josh? JOCELYN: Yes, and it is from Preston, and Preston is from graphicdesignblender.com, and says, “Hey guys, you all are so inspiring. Congratulations on all the success; I have a question for you, one of the biggest fears I have faced from quitting my job is losing our insurance. How did you guys bridge that gap? Also, will buying private health insurance save me anything on taxes? Can I write that off?” SHANE: And this was a huge question that we had too because we were teachers, the State was basically – our jobs were paying for our insurance and we had no clue how this would impact us or the taxes. So josh, why don’t you tell Preston a little bit about that and how switching to private insurance can impact what he pays on taxes. JOSH: Absolutely, and you guys have been much better experts at the part about getting private insurance, but I’ll go over the tax benefits here. So, this is actually one area that is actually a huge benefit to be an entrepreneur. So typically, if you are going to get private insurance, the only way there can be a tax deduction is to write them off in what they call ‘itemized deductions’ and medical expenses are super-hard to take as an itemized deduction. Basically in the simplest terms possible, they are going to reduce it by 10% of your income, and then you can only take the amount over that. So, if you made 100,000 dollars, they would immediately take off 10000 dollars of your insurance costs and then you can only take the amount over top of that. So that’s if you are an employee. As an entrepreneur, if you have a business that makes money, you can write off those insurance costs against the revenue in your business, all right? So, let’s say that you made the same 100,000 dollars, as an entrepreneur you paid 20,000 dollars in insurance, and now it’s gonna look like you made 80,000 dollars instead of 100,000. SHANE: This will save you a fortune really, ain't it? JOSH: It is and one key here to remember though is that’s if you made money in your business. So if you are showing a loss in your business,

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about defining your target audience, so you can properly target your advertising, pricing and positioning your product. A lot people struggle to figure out pricing and product positioning when they first launch their business. We’ve found that a lot of the time it’s because you haven’t properly defined your target audience, and really found the right prospects to go after. In this conversation we help Karen and John really define exactly what they’re selling and who they’re selling it to, making a pivot from what they originally thought. [Tweet "Your product solves a problem.  It's your job to find the person with that problem."] You will learn How we leveraged SEO to build our audience. Why we would be buying ads from day 1. How to target a great audience on Facebook. How to set pricing for your product. Should you do memberships or one time payments? How to sell to school districts. (or any government entity) Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Google Adwords Keyword Tool Jocelyn’s website Elementary Librarian. Podcast on Paid Traffic Rick Mulready and Facebook Advertising Course Our Last Live Event Fresh Books Gravity Form Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week! Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we’re going to help Karen and John take their online business to the next level. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: Hey y’all, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast! We have got another flipped podcast for you today; that is where we bring in an audience member and we give them a free consulting call and help them take their online business to the next level. And we let you guys listen in so that everyone can learn from the information that we share. Today’s guest is Karen Aachen [phonetic] and her brother, John Hodgeden, [phonetic] I hope I said that right. Karen, John, welcome to the show. KAREN: Thank you. JOHN: Thank you for inviting us to the show. SHANE: We have a brother and sister partners in crime here today, so let’s keep the sibling rivalry down a little bit. First of all guys, tell us a little bit about your online business and what you are trying to do to make money online. KAREN: Okay, this started about ten years ago when I had come out of a position where I was teaching social skills for a year and then I went into teaching a regular classroom and realized that teachers really need to incorporate both social skills training in as many lessons in the classrooms so it’s kinda seamless in the way they teach because it has really been my belief that ability may get them to the top, but it takes character to keep them there.

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Ashlyn figure out how to segment her email list and set up her first sales funnel for new and current subscribers. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet ""Keep it simple. Create multiple lead magnets, but feed them into 1 email sequence.""] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s question from Ashlyn Tengan at amomintraining.com Podcast 44 Podcast 45 Aweber Flip Your Life Program Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome to this week’s Q&A with S&J. We are here on a very rainy, Kentucky day – SHANE: Which you can probably hear the thunder right now. JOCELYN: Yeah, it’s a little loud so, we are here with you today just hanging out, and thought we would answer some questions. SHANE: Alright today’s question comes from Flip Your Life community member, Ashlyn Tengan, I’m not exactly sure how to say that Ashlyn. I know your first name is Ashlyn so we’ll go with Tengan right now. How do you think you say that? It’s T-E-N-G-A-N. JOCELYN: I am not sure but – SHANE: I don’t know; but either way, her website is amomintraining.com. So if you want to go ask Ashlyn how to pronounce her name and check out her content, head over there. She is a Flip Your Life community member and her question is, “After to listening to the podcast number 44 and 45, I am setting up my email autoresponder series, and my sales funnels for two different lead magnets that I have. I am using AWeber” That’s a good choice, we like people to start out with AWeber. “My plan is to create two separate lists in which their own autoresponder series sales funnels sell each product, then set up an automation rule that will put them on my main list also –” So basically you are trying to create two different email autoresponders, but get them on your main list as well. “–Since I already have about 100 email subscribers on my main list which currently has no sales funnel, but I do know which lead magnet each person subscribed through. How can I put each group of people through the right autoresponder after I create it?” JOCELYN: Alright, this is an interesting question and I think that it actually could have multiple answers. But where I would start with the people that are already on your list is, by sending them an email and trying to get them to choose one or the other. If you have two options, maybe you would have two links there, ‘Which one would you like to learn more about, A or B?’ And then that in turn, would segment then on to another list. Now, if you wanted to start them on your new sales funnel, you probably don’t want to give them a welcome email because they already sort of, know you. So, what I would do for them is just start them out on email number two. SHANE: So that way, you can send out one broadcast email that has the two options and let them kind of jump in to where they want to be at that point. And then you can kind of just work them into the main part of your list. JOCELYN: So it’s a little bit unclear to me if the people who subscribe to each lead magnet are the way that you are wanting them segmented; if that’s true, I mean, you can go ahead and segment them on to your other list and to start them at email number two of those particular sales funnels.

  In today’s Q&A, we are helping Sam discover how to differentiate herself and understand why someone should listen to her when there is so much content out already out there online. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "This is how you differentiate yourself - you stand for something @mjkimberley"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is Matthew Kimberly from matthewkimberley.com Chris Ducker Event Matthew on Twitter Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is Matthew Kimberley at matthewkimberley.com. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Expert Q&A with S&J podcast. This is our Thursday edition where we bring on experts to answer your questions. Jocelyn and I always say, we do not have all the answers but boy, we get all the questions. So we like to pass these on to people that know more about certain subjects than we do. And we have an amazing guest for you today, a guy that we met just a couple of weeks ago, in the Philippines, at Chris Ducker’s ‘Tropical Think Tank’ event. One of the best speakers we have ever seen and a real guy that knows how to book yourself solid. It is Matthew Kimberley from Matthewkimberley.com. Matthew welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. MATTHEW: Great to be here, S&J. Thank you for having me. SHANE: Yeah, we are so glad you are here because we are clueless about some of these questions, especially the one we’ve got for you today. So Jocelyn, let’s throw Matthew a question here. JOCELYN: Alright, this question is from Sam and Sam says, “There’s so much information out there that I find it hard to differentiate myself. How do I make my blog stand out in the crowd and make it unique? I’m talking about a subject that is well-covered by many others. Why would anyone listen to me?” SHANE: This is a great question Matthew because, you know, we think about this all the time because really, when you think about it, every issue is pretty well covered on the internet. So how do you make yourself stand out in such a crowded world that we live in these days? MATTHEW: Sure, absolutely great question and the first thing that comes to mind is don’t worry at all about the content. It’s great that there’s information out there, it’s great that other people are talking about what you are talking about because if they weren’t, there’s probably a reason for that. So, if you find that you are the only person talking about something, unless it’s brand new and very, very, very little – is brand spanking new, then that’s validation. That’s external validation. If other people are talking about vacuum repair, then that means that other people are listening to other people talk about vacuum repair. So that’s great, good job, there’s other information out there. Now, how do you differentiate yourself and how do you make your blog stand out? There’s a couple of ways that I would go about doing this and a couple of ways that I would advise my clients that they could go about doing it. The first one is, you. Okay, so the information that you are presenting is standard, it exists elsewhere, but you are the only person who can deliver it the way that you can deliver it. Many of us, when we adopt a public persona, we water down the really interesting parts of our self. SHANE: Right.

In today’s podcast we’re going to help Scott and Alyssa figure out how to balance work life while growing their online business - Happen to your Career. Every couple and parent has similar questions to Scott and Alyssa. How do you record a podcast with kids? When do you work on your business vs. play with your kids? (when you’re also working a full-time job) How do you build lasting relationships with other people online? We’re going to cover all of those and more to help them figure out where to focus on in their business to see the greatest returns. [Tweet "When working with your spouse delegate tasks and get out of each other’s way. "] You will learn How to work together as a married couple. The importance of delegation and automation. How to schedule priorities so you know when it’s time to work. (and not) What kind of live events to attend to build better relationships. Where you should be investing your business profits. The importance of batching your content. Why you shouldn’t “Be Everywhere”. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Scott and Alyssa’s website happentoyourcareer.com Jill and Josh Stanton - Screw the Nine to Five Live event we hosted in San Diego Chris Ducker - Tropical Think Tank Flip your Life Program Jocelyn’s Elementary Librarian Website Apply to be on the show If you’re interested in a consulting call with us Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family! Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week! Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we’re going to help Scott and Alyssa take their online business to the next level. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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. JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome back to another Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We are super excited today to bring you a Flipped podcast and today’s guests are Scott and Alyssa Barlow. We are very excited to have you guys today, welcome to the show. SCOTT: Thanks. JOCELYN: And I want to just say that our Flipped podcast is where we bring people on for a consulting call, and they ask us questions, and we help them to either get started in the online business or in this case, with Scott and Alyssa, to really try to work to take that to the next level because they’re already having some success online and we are going to get into that in just a little bit later. But first of all, tell us about yourselves, where you are from, and anything that you want to share with our listeners. ALYSSA: Okay, I’m Alyssa and we are from Moses Lake, Washington, located in Central Washington State; if you don’t know where that is, it’s a pretty small town. We both graduated from high school here, left for a few years and then eventually made our way back. SCOTT: We tried to get away,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping David figure out how to create a lead magnet that solves a quick problem so he can grow his email list for his online business. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Treat your lead magnet like a tourniquet rather than a band-aid"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s question from David Bilbey at homestyle.education Flip Your Life community Guide to using the Google Keyword tool How to Create a Sales Funnel Template for Your Online Business Foodtruckr Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast again this week. We are glad to have you here. Today’s question comes from David Bilbe and David writes in and says, “Shane and Jocelyn, you are so relatable.” Thank you, David, we appreciate that. “I have started a homeschooling blog at homestyle.education. I am struggling to come up with an idea for a lead magnet. I am a software developer, so I have the possibility of writing some sort of software, but I’m still struggling to come up with something. How do you create a lead magnet that is not a topic you plan on covering by blog posts and how do you create something that doesn’t take six months? It would take me a long time to write software. Should I do this or should I do something else?” JOCELYN: Hi David, this is a question that we actually get a lot and I was just talking to somebody yesterday in our Flip Your Life community about this very issue. People make it out to be a lot harder than it really is when really all that you need to do is just solve a problem for your audience. And this is where a lot of people get confused because they want it to sound nice and – SHANE: Huge, and long and epic. JOCELYN: You know, give everybody their hopes and dreams but that’s not what people care about. People want to solve a problem; they want to immediately stop a pain. So, that’s what you really need to think about when you are starting to write your opt-in magnet, or your lead magnet. You need to solve a quick problem for your audience so that they know that your content is good and they’re ready to move on and consume your paid content. SHANE: For your example David, like you got homeschool curriculum, I did a quick Google search in the Google AdWords keyword tool and we have actually a video that teaches our members in our Flip Your Life community how to use that tool, how to go in and find keywords that are specific to your niche. I went into the Google AdWords keyword tool and I typed in ‘homeschool’ and I looked into some of the words and I found some things like ‘homeschool programs’, ‘homeschool curriculum’, ‘how to find homeschool curriculum’, and one of them was ‘how to find accredited homeschool curriculum’. So you could create – you can see that there’s thousands of people, this one has 2400 searches for accredited homeschool curriculum. You can go in and say, ‘Get my free download on the top ten, accredited homeschool curriculums’ and you just create a one-page PDF that is a list that solves that problem. People are out there actually searching for the answer to that question. They want to find homeschool curriculum that is accredited, that meets national standards, that’s going to make sure their kids are learning the things they need to ta...

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Amanda figure out how to validate her idea before she spends a lot of time and money developing her digital product. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Ideal customer =  least amount of work and most amount of money @solohour"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal from solopreneurhour.com Our episode with Michael O'Neal Evernote Michael’s product called Sololab Tim Ferris Screw the Nine to Five Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is Michael O'Neal of The Solopreneur Hour podcast and solopreneurhour.com. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, 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? All right, let’s get started. SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J mini-podcast. Today we have an Expert Q&A and we are super-excited to welcome back Michael O'Neal of The Solopreneur Hour podcast and solohour.com. Michael, welcome back to the show, man! MICHAEL: Hey guys! So good to be back, I appreciate you having me on again. JOCELYN: Yeah, we are excited for you to answer another question – MICHAEL: Appreciate chya! Does that sound better? JOCELYN: Yeah, that’s better. SHANE: I told somebody we were on your show and I said, I swear he had a drawl at the end of that; we sucked him into the south, man. MICHAEL: I’m ready, I’ll do the whole show like this. I don’t mind. JOCELYN: All right well, Amanda of teachsheetz.com says, “How do I validate my idea with my audience? I want to tell teachers about my Teach Sheetz website I'm currently working, on which can be used to create customized board sheets. Instead of sifting through the millions of options online, they can customize their own worksheet in under five minutes, using a site that has a functionality of Canva. I think this is a great idea but how can validate it with my target market? How do I know others can think it’s a good idea before I spent all the time selling it? I don’t have a huge audience, what do I do?” SHANE: This is a huge question we get Michael, and I’m really interested to see what you think about this because most of the time when I hear people get frustrated and quit online marketing, it’s because they spend a month creating a product and nobody bought it. So Mike, how do you look at an idea and validate that in your business before you spend all that time, you know, creating something that nobody may even want? MICHAEL: I have an answer for both scenarios: One being that you have no list, no platform and one being that you have some list and some platform. So, the no-list and no-platform, here’s one misnomer I think people have about online marketing in general is that everything has to be done online. And when you have more time than money, you can afford, time-wise, to actually go talk to people and if she is already immersed in the teaching community – I think a lot of times, when people come out with ideas for very, very niche businesses or products, it’s because they are totally immersed in that – SHANE: They are the market basically. MICHAEL: They are the market. She’s creating something for herself in this case. So, she has to go out and literally go find some of herself which is, don’t do it super-casually, don’t be like, ‘Hey, you want to come to happy hour at six o'clock and we’ll have a chat’. It’s like no,