The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about the final 3 things that are stopping you from succeeding in your online business. We’ve seen the problem with the current stereotypes of people who make online business work (working 24/7, going it alone until 4 in the morning) and how they consistently hold people back. That’s why in part 2 of this series we’re going to cover three more roadblocks that are probably holding you back from success in your online business. [Tweet "Money is replaceable, time is not."] You will learn Why it’s necessary to batch content. How the stereotype of an entrepreneur going it alone is wrong. The value of finding a community (even if it’s one person). Need a mastermind? Join our private Flip Your Life Community We help our members succeed every day Learn more: https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife Why you need to invest in yourself. The issues with “free” tools in your online business. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Subscribe to the Podcast on Itunes Flipped Lifestyle on Stitcher Shareaholic Leadpages Podcast with Michael O'Neal The Flip Your Life Community 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 heard about S&J a month ago and started listening to the podcasts two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve listened to every single one. Why? Because Shane and Jocelyn share information in every episode that is essential to running an online business. This is not your typical podcast for online sellers. They tell you how it is and give you all the information you need to do it and keep you motivated in the process. If you are listening to more than one business podcast and S&J at Flipped Lifestyle isn’t one of them or at the top of the list, then you are missing out and wasting time. Flipped Lifestyle has changed my business and my life. Thank you. “My Uncluttered Life” 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 continue last week’s discussion about the six reasons your online business may not be successful. 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 back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We are talking about six reasons your online business may not be as successful as you would like and we actually started these back last week in Episode 48. And if you want to catch the first part of this podcast, you can head on over to flippedlifestyle.

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Hannah understand how we explain to people what we do and how we make money 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 "First they’ll ask you why, then they’ll ask you how."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Cliff Ravenscraft - Podcast Answerman Flip Your Life Program (teaching how we did it) 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: Hey guys, welcome back to the Q&A with S&J, we are recording our podcast from 30,000 feet above the Philippines right now; we are about to land, we’ve managed to record three or four of these for you guys and we’re gonna roll them out over time. Always batch your content, we always want to stress, if you got the podcast stuff out, record four of five podcasts. If you got the blogging going, do three or four blog posts and we are batching content right now on the airplane. We are sitting up in business class, it’s only a few people around and couple of them are asleep. So we kinda moved seats where nobody can hear us record. We are going to knock out another Q&A today. Today’s question comes from Hannah and she asks – this is a great question; she says, “When people ask you guys what you do, what do you say? How do you explain what you do in your small town? How did you explain when you quit your job, what you were about to get into? Do people even get it?” That is an awesome question because every internet marketer that we talked to, whether it’s from Pat Flynn to the people in our mastermind groups, it’s really hard to explain to people what you do because people are so used to ‘No, I’ll go get a job. I work for someone, I trade time for dollars.’ And it’s a really confusing subject when people start talking about how you make money online. JOCELYN: It’s especially hard where we live because we live in a really small town, and what we do is just far off of most people’s radar screens. I mean, they don’t even know that this world exists. So, a lot of times when we are talking to people, they’ll kinda look at us like we have three heads. So, it’s very interesting and we have to try to put it in terms they’ll understand and so normally I say to people, ‘We sell digital products’ and they look at me again like I’m crazy. Then I’ll say, you know, ‘like e-books, sort of like Kindle’. Usually people will understand what Kindle is so they can sort of, understand what that means when I put it that way. But it is really hard, and being from a small town when people do understand what we are doing, you know, we have a lot of people who want to meet with us all the time and like, you know – SHANE: Show them how basically. JOCELYN: Yeah, everybody wants to know how we do it and can we show them step-by-step. And you know, we love to talk about this stuff as you know, but it’s just really hard because we can't meet everybody for an hour, a week, or a day, or whatever. SHANE: And actually that’s exactly why we created Flip Your Life originally because we helped a couple of people around here when we first started out and they had some success and made some money online with some digital products. The word spread, and just so many people kept asking us and there was just no way that we could meet with everybody. And I kinda felt really bad about that at first and got some – I’ve actually mentioned this before, I got some great advice from Cliff Ravenscraft the Podcast ...

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Warren figure out if he should use a script or not while recording a podcast (and what will sound more natural) Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "I wouldn't be here if I didn't start recording that first episode @katelerickson"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is from Kate Erickson of entrepreneuronfire.com Today’s question is from Warren Cinco of breakingwork.com Kate’s Podcast 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 Kate Erickson of Kate’s Take: The Entrepreneur on Fire Audio Blog. 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 podcast, this is our Q&A with S&J and today we have another expert to come on and help answer our question for this episode. We want to welcome back to the show, Kate Erickson of Kate’s Take: The Entrepreneur on Fire Audio Blog and entrepreneuronfire.com. Kate, welcome back to the show. KATE: S&J thanks for having me back. SHANE: Awesome. JOCELYN: Yeah, we are excited to have you. Today’s question is from Warren Cinco of breakingwork.com and Warren says, “Hi Shane and Jocelyn, love your site and podcast; been picking up valuable tips since I first heard about you guys and your stories are very inspiring. I have a question about doing a podcast. I want to start one of my own from my site, but my one hesitation is that I may not sound natural communicating. Do you follow a script or do you just talk normally? Which is better?” SHANE: And this is a great question because we’ve got someone who’s been a part of like almost a thousand podcasts probably on entrepreneuronfire.com and her own podcast, Kate’s Take. So what do you think about this question, like how do you think is the best way to approach doing a podcast? KATE: Well, I love where Warren’s train of thought is at because these are the exact questions you should be asking yourself if you are thinking about starting a podcast and Warren, you are certainly not alone. Feeling like you might sound awkward on the mic is definitely going to happen when you first start. SHANE: That’s right. KATE: Yeah, right, you guys know this as well. JOCELYN: Absolutely. KATE: But the key is to just start. The key is to just start recording because it’s going to be awkward in the beginning, but that’s the thing is that you are never going to find your voice and find what flow works for you until you get on the mic and start recording ‘cause it’s gonna be different for everybody. I know people who get on the mic with absolutely zero preparation and that’s what works best for them. I know other people who literally have entire outlines in front of them while they are recording every single one of their podcast episodes. So, if you just start recording, you are going to find out really, really quickly what’s going to work best for you. JOCELYN: Yeah, I agree with that. For me, podcasting was a little bit difficult because I don’t like to hear myself and in fact, I always tell people that I never listen back to my shows until after they are aired because if I do, they would probably never be released. I’m very critical of myself especially so yeah, that’s definitely a hesitation that a lot of people have. Shane and I do follow a script when we record; it’s not a super – lik...

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about 6 specific things that might be stopping you from actually making your online business work. When talking with hundreds of people trying to start online businesses we’ve definitely seen the same roadblocks coming up again and again. Once you understand these foundational elements you’ll be able to start to take the RIGHT actions toward creating a website (online business) that actually generates revenue. [Tweet "Online business is a series of small things that add up to big things"] You will learn Why you should focus on your audience and not your idea. Strategies for how you can test your digital product ideas. The importance of the product first mentality. Why you shouldn’t “copy” someone else. Embrace the brand of you. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Podcast 41 on the FLIP principle Leadpages Chris Ducker 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 Hey guys! I just finished my first eBook. It felt so good. My plan for tomorrow is to make my lead page and it live before I got to sleep tomorrow. Amy (from our Flip Your Life Course ) 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 tell you six reason why your online business may not be working. 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 going on guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast,. Always great to be back with you again this week. You know we get a lot form messages from people out there going, “oh my gosh how did you guys make it work? I have been trying this online business thing for months and months and I can’t make my 11 cent moment happen. I can’t make my money online. I feel like I am pouring a lot into this and nothing is coming back out of it and my online business is failing or my online isn’t working. What am I doing wrong?” so we wanted to take this opportunity and go through here and first I will give you some encouragement and say listen it takes time. Don’t give up. There is probably a few tweaks you can make and you are going to start experiencing more success. You might not just be hitting the right thing or you’re prioritizing the wrong thing that you are working on. And we are going to focus this podcast on identifying six reasons,. Six things that you might be doing in your online business that may be preventing you from becoming successful, maybe stopping you from going to the next level. It’s always important to point out these road blocks.

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Matthew discover a step by step process of going from product idea to implementation, and launching that 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! Resources Mentioned in this Episode The Flip Your Life Community Leadpages 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, thanks for joining us for today’s Q&A with S&J mini podcast. We are still recording from 30,000 feet up in the air. We are on a plane and trying to stay awake. We are batching content today so we are recording several Q&As for you here in the air. Today’s question is from Matthew Dunstone, he is in Australia and he says, “I am a new recruit to online marketing, I have yet to create a website. I’m trying to make good early decisions on technologies and workflow. What I need is a string of practical examples of how individual sales campaigns are put together. I want to see what was for sale, how it was presented, what automated steps and technologies were employed. I guess I’m asking for a diary of a project.” SHANE: All right, first of all, kudos to you Matt, for thinking about the sales process and your product first before creating your website. That’s something we are going to talk about kind of in this episode really quick. You’ve got this going correctly because you’re thinking in the right order. You’re thinking about what am I going to sell, how am I going to sell it, how is that going to work, what should I create and then you’re going to go back and make that website thing. So basically on that note, what happened recently is we just created a project and I’m going to go over that real quick. We’re gonna talk about how we actually put that together. We started Flip Your Life sometime last in 2014, I think it was November, maybe. I think there was actually one session before that, our beta test group and we got everyone through the project, and we don’t talk about building websites and all we do is build my digital product and we get it for sale and we get it marketed and we get it out there, to get those first sales made and to learn the process of selling something online. And in that process, a lot of people asked, ‘How do you build a website? I’ve got this product now, I know how to sell it, now I’m ready to build my website’. So that was an obvious cue to us that there was a market that wanted us to show them how to set up a WordPress website. So, we didn’t just make that product as soon as we saw the need for it because we didn’t know for sure. People will ask for things but sometimes they are not actually willing to pay you for that thing. So what Jocelyn and I did is, we basically outlined how would you make a WordPress website from scratch knowing everything we know over the last three years and we’ve create a bunch of websites in that time. What is the least you need to know, the basic steps to get it started. We created an outline for that project, this is page one in your diary here, and we presented that to the people in Flip Your Life who had already you know, came into our system and said, ‘Is this something you are interested in?’ and we pre-sold that for a hundred dollars. JOCELYN: And we actually do this with a lot of our products basically just to see if there’s interest there and so that we have money there, and we know people want it before we start working on it. And it’s been really good for us; I mean,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Ryan understand what microphone and gear he should use for recording a high quality sounding podcast. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Take action with the equipment you can afford right now...don't wait" #podcasting @johnleedumas"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire John’s last expert QA Logitech ClearChat - Starter microphone, 7/10 sound, great value Audiotechinica ATR 2100 - 8.5/10 sound quality, all you need Heil PR40 - 9.5 /10 sound quality, go pro Presonus Firestudio Mixer - John's Mixer Adobe Creative Cloud - Adobe tools including photoshop and illustrator Ecamm Call Recorder - Used to record Skype calls on a MAC Pamela Recorder - Record Skype calls on a PC Scarlett2i2 - Shane & Jocelyn's Mixer (to hook up 2 mics) 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 y’all, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Expert Q&A podcast; excited to bring in another expert to answer your questions about online business. We do not have the only way to be successful online. Love to introduce you to other perspectives from different experts in different fields especially when you send us questions that we have no clue of what the answer is. So we’d like to bring people on and let them know. We would love to welcome back today, the one and only, John Lee Dumas. John was on about a month ago and he is back again today to answer another audience question from the Flipped Lifestyle community. John, welcome back man! JOHN: My friends, I am still on fire. SHANE: You are always on fire. You’re like the everlasting flame; you know what I’m saying? JOHN: I love it. The Olympic torch. SHANE: That’s right, you’re the Olympic torch of online business. All right Jocelyn, what’s our question for John today? JOCELYN: All right, today’s question is from Ryan and I’m not sure how to say his last name, Belolo, maybe, and this is via Twitter. It says, “Hey guys, do you each use your own microphone for your podcast? What does your setup look like and what is the best microphone and in your opinion, the best way to hook up two microphones to one computer? I can't figure it out.” SHANE: And we wanted to bring John on to answer this specific question ‘cause Jocelyn and I have the least knowledge of – we’re barely on the podcast ourselves right now, but John Lee Dumas knows a thing or two about podcasting. So John, how does that work man? What’s your set up look like and how do you get two people talking in the same place? JOHN: Well, whatever you all the doing, the audio sounds amazing. I give it the thumbs up. SHANE: There we go. JOHN: Let me break it down microphone wise. I have three mic recommendations starting at the low, going to a medium and then ending at a high cost. The low cost is the Logitech ClearChat. It’s a 29-dollar headset microphone, USB, plugs into any USB port and you can get it on Amazon. It’ll be free shipping with Prime in two days. 29 dollars. It’ll take your audio from a two, which is what most people do and talk at their computer and let the crappy microphone pick it up to, a seven.

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about how to batch content so you can save time and also eliminate a lot of stress from your life. Toward the end of the show we’ll walk you through the exact system we use to not only create content but schedule our promotion and updates. A quote from past guest John Lee Dumas really sums this episode up well “you have to spend time to make time”. [Tweet "If you want to run a real business, you have to start batching your content."] You will learn What batching content means for your online business. Advanced concepts on how to start batching content. What types of content should you be batching? How to set up a calendar for your content. The step by step system we use in our batching process. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show The Flip Your Life Community Buffer Meet Edgar Interview with John Lee Dumas Pat Flynn’s Podcast 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 The passive income has started to come in and I quit my full-time job and ramped up my freelance clients. I am now fully booked with fantastic projects through November. My husband and I are also moving to Fernandina Beach, Florida, at the end of May. We are so excited to start the life we have always wanted. I appreciate the motivation that you guys give to everyone that is trying to change their lives. It is really, really important. 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 are going to show you how to save time strategies for batching contents. 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. JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, today we are going to be talking about creating content in a very efficient way and if you are creating content in real-time that is not a very good idea. A lot of people start out this way and that they try to do everything as this go along and it just doesn’t work very well. It’s not very efficient, something will come up in inevitably. It’s just like real life. This always happens so today we are going to talk about how to batch content to get ahead in your online business in an efficient way. But before we move into that we are going to tell you about one of our most recent success stories. SHANE: Alright guys today’s audience members success story comes from Andrea and Andrea is a member of our Flip Your Life Community. Andrea sent us an email the other day and said, “The passive income has started to come in and I qui...

In today’s Q&A, we are talking about what we do in our free time when we’re not working on our 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 "Don’t let life pass you by while you’re trying to build a better future."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Chris Ducker’s Tropical Think Tank The Flip Your LifeCommunity Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q and A with S and J. 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 going on guys? Welcome back to another Q and A with S and J. This is a special episode, we are going to have a few of these. We are on an airplane right now at 30,000 feet. JOCELYN: And we are trying to not fall asleep because we need to stay awake until we get to our destination so we thought we would answer some of your questions. SHANE: We are going to the Philippines to Chris Ducker’s tropical think tank, thanking him right now and we have been awake for 24 hours. This has been a long, long trip and we got a couple more hours to go and we’ve got to stay awake so we thought, you know what better start than to answer a bunch of Q and As and how cool is it that we are doing this from an airplane. You can probably hear the engines rolling in the back. So today’s questions comes from Chad and Amy and they write, “Hey S and J, it sounds like you guys work on your online business all the time.” that is true. Pretty much we do a lot of it. “What do you do when you are not ‘flipping lives’ and working together in your online business? What do you each like to do for fun and fun together?” JOCELYN: Hey Chad and Amy, thank you for your question. We have actually been thinking about talking more about than we normally do and so if that’s something you guys want to hear then be sure to ask us more questions about our lives. We don’t mind to share with you. We actually have a lot of different interest. We do work on our online business a lot because that is a very passionate interest of both of ours. SHANE: We both actually have a lot of doing this so is kind of one of the things we do to enjoy. JOCELYN: But we also enjoy other things as well. I like to go jogging. I have a jogging partner that we train for races sometimes and that I something I really enjoy doing. I also, ironically, enjoy cooking so that sort of cancels each other out, right? SHANE: Jocelyn and I really don’t do a lot of individual things together because we like different kinds of movies, different kinds of shows, all of that so we really don’t do stuff like that together. I do like to play video games. I am 37 years old but I play video games. When I play video games I got a core group of guys that I play with, my brother and two of my best friends going way back from when I was a kid and just a way for us to get together. We are all busy, we got kids and we can get on there for about an hour and a half on Monday night and just kind of hang out and chill and have some fun. I also like to watch wrestling. I love professional wrestling. I like to read all the message boards and the news and the rumors. And one of my best friends who is also an online business, he is a huge wrestling fan so we talk about wrestling probably way too much during the day where we should be actually working on our online businesses. But those are some things we like to do. We both love to go to the gym. I love to lift weight. I don’t run.

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Tanya decide if she should use personalization in her email autoresponder or if it just feels fake. Special guest Michael O'Neal of solopreneurhour.com brings his perspective into the conversation and offers some great advice about how to write better emails for your audience. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Write directly to your audience vs the generic route @solohour"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal from solopreneurhour.com Today’s question is from Tanya Grant at craftymummy.com Aweber - Email Marketing Software Check out Michael on twitter @solohour Let’s dive into this week’s question! JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an expert Q and A with S and J. Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal of the Solopreneur Hour Podcast in solopreneurhour.com 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 going on guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. This is another Q and A with S and J. We got a special one for you today. We have another expert Q and A. super excited to invite this guy on for the first time to our expert Q and A podcast. Today we have Michael O’Neal from the Solo Hour and Solopreneur podcast at solohour.com. Michael welcome to the show man, MICHAEL: What’s up you guys? Good morning for me and afternoon for you. JOCELYN: Absolutely. SHANE: That’s right. We got lunch cooking you got some breakfast cooking I think. MICHAEL: I smell it. I just had a protein shake so that counted as breakfast. SHANE: That’s right. That’s all you need brother. That’s all you need. MICHAEL: That’s right. JOCELYN: Alright. Well we have a great question for you today. This is from Tanya Grant of the craftymummy.com. I assume she is in the UK somewhere. Nope, just kidding, it’s Australia. It says, “I am in sunny Queensland Australia and you guys keep me company when I am cooking dinner. That’s when I listen to your podcast of course I am curious whether you use personalization in your emails and how important you think this is. I often see emails which inserts the reader’s first name in the greeting and the subject and I have tried this in my own email newsletter but I am not sure how effective it is. It seems fake, doesn’t everyone already know that is a form letter? What do you think?” SHANE: This is a good question. We have experimented a lot with this and I know you do a lot of marketing yourself so I am very interested on what you think about this Michael. Do you think it’s good to add personalization? Or do you think that I something that most people kind of see through or does it even matter? MICHAEL: I think that it’s funny. I don’t know that everybody sees through it. When I do an email to my list and I say hey I’d love to hear—guest suggestions for instance. People are writing me back. Oh man thanks for writing me. SHANE: Right we get those too. MICHAEL: So you don’t realize that it is sort of response from an auto responder if it will. Also I don’t know if everybody feels like it is not personalized even though all the current modern software allows you to basically when you compose the email—this is just for your listeners—you can compose the email and there is just a little chunk of code that you can put in that will say, “Hey [blank]” and then that blank is first name.

In today’s podcast we’re going to help Julie shift her business online and walking through some of the first steps she needs to take in her journey. Julie is a family photographer who wants to take her in person service based business online, teaching people how she built up her customer base using social media as she moved around the country. We’re going to talk about the exact steps she should be taking to create her first digital product, talking through defining her target market and how to get everything set up technically. We’ll walk through some stories and examples that will help anyone get some great ideas on how to get started. [Tweet "Once you narrow down your niche and avatar, your decision paralysis is going to stop! "] You will learn Some of the very best strategies for getting started with your first product. Why Julie should start with one specific industry in mind. How to overcome decision paralysis. The first step on “the list” that you should take action on. Your prices aren’t set in stone - So don’t let it stop you from moving forward. How to know what personal information you should share. (and how much) Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Julie’s current website The Flip Your Life Community AuthorAudience.com 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 show, we’re going to help Julie choose a niche, and find her customer avatar. 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 back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Today we are excited to have Julie Renner on our Flipped podcast. This is where we give our audience members an opportunity to come on, and have a free consulting call, and we answer their questions about moving to the next level in their online business. Welcome Julie, we are really glad to have you today. JULIE: Thanks so much, glad to be here. SHANE: Julie, your website is Julierennerphotography.com and we just wanted you, before we get started, to tell everyone in the audience about your business, and maybe a little bit about why you want to flip your life, why do you want to dive straight into online business and make something out of that. JULIE: Okay, well, thanks for having me; my business is called Julie Renner Photography and I have been a family photographer for approximately eight to ten years. I primarily focus on photographing families, kids, on vacation and I do that in the evenings and on the weekends when families are available. In addition to that, my husband’s job has moved us all around the country and we’ve moved five times in different states everywhere. So, I’ve had to sort of restart my business each time and I have done that through social media. And so,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Zach figure out how to make a video and landing page for his online course he’s releasing. 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’re not gonna make a dime if you don’t create some kind of sales page"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Leadpages Fiverr 99 Designs Odesk Elance Podcast 21 on Landing pages 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 are on the road traveling right now and we are in a hotel room, and we thought we would go ahead and record some podcasts. We do not have our normal microphones with us, so we’re using the internal microphone on our MacBook Pros. So that is why the audio sounds a little weird in this episode of the Q&A podcast. Today’s question comes from Zach Lazarus and he writes, “How the heck do I make a landing page for my video course? I am on a bootstrapping budget and I need to make a sales page. I don’t have enough money to buy one of the tools like Lead Pages, so what should I do?” JOCELYN: Hey Zach, we really like Lead Pages because they do show you the conversion rates for each type of sales page and I think that that makes it a little bit easier for people who are new at making sales pages because you don’t have to guess and wonder if the sales page actually coverts. However, if you don’t have the budget for Lead Pages right now, you can also have someone make a sales page or a landing page for you and there are a variety of different places that you can have this made. You can do it on Fiverr, you can go to 99Designs I think is one that does that, oDesk, Elance, all of these places, you can probably find somebody to make a sales page for you for less than your monthly cost of Lead Pages. However, just like I said before, you may not be sure about the conversion rates. But don’t stress about it too much because I had, pretty much, the most terrible landing page on Earth on my Elementary Librarian site and it was very successful for a very long time. I have since changed it to a Lead Page and it has increased my sales even more since then. But what I'm trying to say is that don’t stress about having the exact, perfect, landing or sales page on your website. Just get something up there to promote your product and tell people about its benefits. SHANE: We actually did a podcast about everything that you can include in a sales page or a landing page and that was flippedlifestyle.com/podcast21 and that’ll kind of go through all the elements. I’m not gonna get into that right now about what you need for a landing page, for your digital product or any kind of product that you create. But it’s like Jocelyn said, you don’t have to use a tool like Lead Pages. It saves you a ton of time to do that, so the cost may look high but you’re saving so many hours of your life creating things like landing pages that it’s actually really, really worth it and you’re actually, probably saving and making more money in the long run by using a tool to create your landing pages. But if you ever have a WordPress site, all you have to do is create a page and put all of the information about your product on that page and put a button to buy it. It doesn’t have to look perfect like all the gurus say, it doesn’t have to have all these specific, little buttons and bells and whistles and checkpoints and you know,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Laura figure out what she needs to create to be successful (even though she’s shy on camera) in her 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 "How can you best deliver value to your perfect customer? @katelerickson"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s Expert is Kate Erickson of EntrepreneurOnFire.com Check out Kate’s podcast 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 Kate Erickson of Kate’s Take, the Entrepreneur on Fire audio blog. 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 Expert Q&A with S&J. Jocelyn and I always say, we do not have all the answers and you send us so many questions, sometimes we just scratch our heads. So we wanted to start bringing on some experts to really give you guys the best answers to the questions that you send us. We are really excited today, to have a special guest on our show; it is Kate Erickson from Kate’s Take, the Entrepreneur on Fire audio blog and Entrepreneuronfire.com. Kate, welcome to the show. KATE: Shane and Jocelyn, thank you guys so much for inviting me on, I’m stoked to be here. JOCELYN: Yeah, we are very excited to have you and I know that our listeners will love your advice for them. SHANE: That’s right. JOCELYN: So, let’s start out with today’s first question; this is from Laura and Laura says, “I’m so confused about what to create. Everything I hear and read online says I need a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a webinar to speak live, etcetera to be successful. Where should I start? I’m a little scared because I hate talking and being on camera. Do I need all that to make it? I’m a little overwhelmed and would love some advice.” SHANE: We get this question all the time Kate, because you know, people, I think they see a lot of people doing all these things and so they think they have to too. So what’s your take on that? What do you think about this question? Where do they need to start at? KATE: Well, I can totally relate to Laura and I think this is such a timely question because there’s so much information out there and Shane to your point, there’s a lot of people who are able to do it all, but that’s because they have built their business over years of work and so they are able to dabble in all these different areas. But, my best piece of advice for Laura would be to focus. So, you really wanna start by figuring out what are your biggest strengths, how can you best deliver value to your perfect customer. So is that through a blog, is that through a YouTube channel, is that through a podcast? You wanna just start by figuring out how you can best deliver that content and focus on that one medium and then after you’ve gotten to the point where you are actually delivering consistent, valuable content through that one medium, then you can start to kinda look out at all the other options that are out there for you. SHANE: So let’s look at that, just maybe, as an example; let’s say you were starting out, okay, what medium would you choose to communicate with, and maybe, what’s the one social network that you would focus on, if you were just starting out today? KATE: Yeah, well, I can take it back to the day I joined Entrepreneur on Fire and it was very clear to me that writing was a strength of mine and it’s also somethi...

In today’s podcast we’re going to talk about how to write a highly effective email autoresponder sequence for your sales funnel. An effective sales funnel is all about taking people from your market, turning them into engaged followers, and ultimately paying customers. We’re going to walk step by step through a practical example of a sales funnel with Jocelyn’s business Elementary Librarian. [Tweet "We really want to stress here, how good your opt-in needs to be!"] You will learn What you need to know about an email autoresponder The exact process we go through to set up a sales funnel in our online businesses. How to run through the numbers and discover the true potential. What a good lead magnet really looks like. What your first small paid product should look like. What you should expect when setting this up for yourself. Links and resources mentioned in today’s show Aweber - email marketing tool Jocelyn’s site Elementary Librarian 101 Library Centers Book The Flipped Lifestyle Sales Funnel Template - Free PDF Email templates - COMING SOON! Click Here to Download The Flipped Lifestyle Sales Funnel Template 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 recently launched my first online product and made 347 dollars. It was less than what I wanted but more than I ever would have thought I could make just a year ago. I have learnt so much about online products through this first effort and I’m so excited to refine this product, my sales process and re-launch it in the spring. In addition, I’ve learnt a lot about the small potatoes product which will help me launch a signature product this January. This first one was 47 dollars, and my signature will be at least 249 dollars. Thanks so much for all you guys do.” Dave Shrein at Daveshrein.com 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! Today we’re going to show you how to write an email autoresponder sequence with your sales funnel in mind. 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 podcast; great to be back with you again this week. We are recording this episode on a Friday night here at Flipped Lifestyle headquarters. My mom wanted to have a sleepover with the kids, so we dropped them off, we went a got a little workout at the gym, just and Jocelyn and what do you do when you get rid of the kids on date night? You pop some popcorn and record a podcast. JOCELYN: We know how to party around here. SHANE: That’s romance baby, that’s what it’s all about over here at the Flipped Lifestyle, you know what I mean? So forget about that, let’s just go on into our topic today because it’s an embarrassing date night,

In today’s Q&A, we are helping Dawn figure out what hardware (specifically iPad or Macbook) is the best for running her 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 "You can kind of future-proof your business if you’ll invest a little more money upfront in really good technology."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today’s question from Dawn Ginese at thesingingnurse.com Ipad Mini with Retina Display Macbook Pro 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 today’s Q&A mini podcast. We are recording in a hotel room so the sound maybe a little weird. SHANE: We are not using our microphones. We are just recording straight on the internal mic on the MacBook today. So little echoey. JOCELYN: And today’s question is from Dawn Genese, I hope I said that right Dawn. SHANE: Genesis. No, there’s no S on the end of it. We’re gonna go with Genese. JOCELYN: Sorry if I messed it up. Her website is the seeingnurse.com and Dawn says, “I wanted to let you know I’ve really been enjoying your podcast. I like the fact that you are both educators which I am also a preschool teacher with a nurse’s hat. I provide resources for parents, teachers and nurses that help them educate young children for life and how they are living. Which iPad Mini, would you recommend? Should I get the Retina display, 32 gigabytes? I’m not sure.” SHANE: All right, we actually have three iPad Minis so we can speak to this. Our kids live and die by their iPads, they have to have their tablets everywhere they go because they play games and they do all those things. They FaceTime on them which is hysterical to me because they’ll FaceTime us within our own house; like, I’ll be sitting there working and they’ll be in the living room and all of a sudden, my FaceTime pops up and it’s Ana Joe and when I answer it, she just starts laughing absolutely hysterically. But we do have three iPad minis, we have the Retina display and we actually got the one with the 16 gigabyte internal memory. And we really regret that decision because they fill up very fast. It’s always good probably to get the absolute biggest hard drive or RAM that you can get. I wish we had got the 32 gigabyte but we do have them, we like our iPads, they are – our kids play them all the time, everyday and – but I think this speaks to a bigger issue of not just which iPad to pick. It also talks about what kind of hardware you should by in general and what you should be looking for whenever you invest in equipment for your business. JOCELYN: It’s really best to go with the best quality that you can afford especially when it comes to Apple products. If you’re gonna purchase an Apple product, it is a good product and so just get the best thing that you can afford. When we were buying our computers, we looked at all the different products that were out there available but we really knew that we wanted the MacBook Pro. We got the best one that we could afford and we just recommend to do that any time that you can especially when it comes to that type of technology. It makes the resale value a lot better, later on, if you want to upgrade, if you do have the better model, it’s going to make it easier to sell for you. SHANE: It’s also good when you are doing this to really think ahead. Like, you may say to yourself, ‘Oh my goodness,

In today’s Q&A, special guest - John Lee Dumas helps Karen figure out how to get visitors to stay on her site longer. Karen has a lot of traffic coming from Pinterest and wants to increase how long visitors stay on her site from the current length of 11 seconds. [Tweet "Ask questions, engage, be consistent and get visitors on your email list. @johnleedumas"] 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 of EntrepreneurOnFire.com Today’s question from Karen Foo at kipkitchen.com Amy Porterfield 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: What’s going on guys, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Expert Q&A podcast. Jocelyn and I always stressed, there’s more than one way to be successful online; we don’t have all the answers and our way is not the only way. So we thought it would be fun to start bringing experts on to the Q&A podcast to give you all a different perspective about online business. We are really excited today, to have our first guest on the Expert Q&A podcast and it is none other than, the one and only, John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire. John, welcome to the show, man. JOHN: Shane, Jocelyn, I’m excited to be here and prepared to ignite. JOCELYN: Awesome, we are so excited to have you. SHANE: All right man, let’s jump straight into these Q&As, we like to get straight to taking action here on the Q&A podcast. So Jocelyn, give John the question from our audience member. JOCELYN: All right, our first question for you is: it says, “Hi Shane and Jocelyn, hope you are all well. I run a food blog called Kip Kitchen. Pinterest is a big social media channel and a traffic source in this niche but I can see, from Google analytics, that Pinterest visitors only spend an average of 11 seconds on my blog. How can I get these visitors to stay longer and keep them from leaving in just a few seconds?” SHANE: So John, how could she improve her bounce rate? How can she get people to stay on her website longer? JOHN: So there’s a number of things that pop to mind; number one is consistency. So, when you are on Pinterest and you are coming from Pinterest, you’re there because it’s visual and it’s beautiful. You want to have that same representation on your blog as well. You don’t want people to go from this beautiful image and all these great pictures, to suddenly a text-heavy blog. SHANE: Black and white pictures. JOHN: Yeah. And I’m sure it’s probably not, knowing that she’s a Pinterest person but, just really be specific that you are keeping that consistent feel throughout. They don’t feel like they are going to a whole brand new site but it’s an extension of your Pinterest. Another thing that’s so important to do is, how are you attempting to engage your visitors? Are you asking them a question? I mean, that’s engaging, you’re actually saying, ‘Hey, thank you for being here. How can I help you?’ Like, what specific question do you have and like have a path so that they can start going down, so they can feel like this was catered to them. And that’s really important to keep the engagement level up, to ask those specific questions. Again, you know what your audience is gonna want beca...