FL256 - We help Janet take her Spanish education business to the next level.

In today's episode, we help Janet overcome obstacles and set goals to focus on increasing membership revenue.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all on today's show, we help Janet take her Spanish education business to the next level.

Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to Flip Your Life? All right, let's get started.

Shane Sams: What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. Super excited to have another real member of the Flip Your Life Community, a real person out there starting, building and growing their own online business so they can change their family's future. We're here to help them take their business to the next level and let you guys listen in so that you can take your online business to the next level as well. We are really, really excited today because we have Janet Jimenez on the podcast. Janet, how are you doing?

Janet Jimenez: Good. Thanks for having me.

Shane Sams: Did I say that right? Jimenez or Jimenez? How do you say it?

Janet Jimenez: You're pretty close to it, it's Jimenez.

Shane Sams: Okay. Janet Jimenez. How do you spell that for me? Spell that out for us.

Janet Jimenez: Okay. It's got a J, J-i-m-e-n-e-z.

Shane Sams: So before I got on air, I just went straight Kentucky, uneducated redneck on Janet. I said, hey Janet, I'm going to introduce you as Janet Geminiz, and she was like, no, that is not.

Jocelyn Sams: except you're not, 'cause that's not my name.

Shane Sams: Except you're not because that's not how we pronounce that at all.

Janet Jimenez: Well, I thought for a big sports fan. You would know how to pronounce the last name there.

Jocelyn Sams: No, actually. I probably would have because I like to talk about how I did take four years of Spanish in high school. Unfortunately that was 20 years ago and I remember very little of it, which is sad, but I do remember that.

Shane Sams: Jocelyn is amazing because she can read it and understand it, but not always speak it in like, so we'll go places where there's like Spanish speaking and she'll kind of know what's going on. But she doesn't ever use it so I can't even imagine how good she would be at it if we just dropped her into a Spanish speaking country for a year. She could probably be fluent.

Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. To just be immersed and then you'll pick it up.

Jocelyn Sams: yeah exactly. I love going places though and just trying to see if I can read things. A lot of times I can still read. It's just the Kentucky Spanish that I learned, I don't think the speaking was always very accurate.

Shane Sams: That's where we know the Geminiz not Jimenez, you know what I'm saying?

Jocelyn Sams: Well my teacher her parents were from Puerto Rico, so I mean hers was really good but just trying to learn it was kind of hard. All right, well let's jump in. I love these kind of podcasts because we've actually met you in real life, which is super cool.

Shane Sams: Janet is also a member of our all access mastermind. So we get to talk to her quite a bit over the phone.

Jocelyn Sams: And I love talking to people that we have met in real life because you just already have a rapport with them, which is really cool. So let's jump into a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online.

Janet Jimenez: Sure. So I am a mom of six. I have five children plus a stepson. My husband is from the Dominican Republic, so an island in the Caribbean and a Spanish speaker and I am a teacher. I have worked as a teacher for 13 years in Spanish immersion school, so that's basically elementary school in Spanish. And I have a business that sells educational resources to busy bilingual and Spanish teachers.

Shane Sams: And what is your domain name?

Janet Jimenez: Oh, it's spanishprofe.com.

Shane Sams: And that's p-r-o-f-e? Is that right?

Janet Jimenez: Correct.

Shane Sams: What does that mean?

Janet Jimenez: It's just like professor but I guess it'd be-

Jocelyn Sams: In Espanol?

Shane Sams: in Espanol.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah in Espanol exactly.

Shane Sams: I want to go back here real quick because I always do. You have six children, right? You have five and one and you're still building an online business and working full time, correct?

Janet Jimenez: Yes. It is chaotic, but it's getting done.

Shane Sams: And your online business actually does make money, correct?

Janet Jimenez: Yes. More than my day job.

Shane Sams: That is amazing and I always point that out because the biggest thing that we hear from people is well, you don't understand how busy I am and I know that worked for you guys, but it doesn't work for me because of X, Y, Z excuse. And most of the time the excuse is family stuff, work stuff. I just don't have time to do this. But we've got somebody here that's making money, working full time, raising six kids. So anybody out there listening, six or below, you lose. Janet wins every time. I'm just saying.

Jocelyn Sams: I need to know a little bit about how you met your husband because there's some gaps here that I need to fill okay. So He's from the Dominican Republic?

Janet Jimenez: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: You are from where?

Janet Jimenez: I'm from Minneapolis.

Jocelyn Sams: And so how did you get interested in Spanish, is this?-

Shane Sams: How did you meet your husband?

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah.

Janet Jimenez: Well I was in high school I was exchanged into Argentina and then I kind of got the travel and live abroad bug from there. And then in college I studied abroad in Spain and in Brazil. And then I wanted to keep traveling. So I had a friend, she's Dominican and I was visiting her and she is actually married to my husband's half brother. So that's how I met him through my friend.

Shane Sams: Where do you live now?

Janet Jimenez: Just outside of Minneapolis.

Shane Sams: Is your goal someday maybe to go back to the Dominican Republican and live?

Janet Jimenez: Yes, so we are building a house there.

Shane Sams: Oh Wow.

Janet Jimenez: We are hopefully moving there for a while. We have one way plane tickets for June 13.

Jocelyn Sams: Oh wow.

Shane Sams: Oh my goodness.

Janet Jimenez: But nothing has been totally determined yet. But yeah, we would like to have our kids grow up at least for a few years in the Dominican Republic so they can be fully bilingual. Right now they speak and understand some Spanish but not up to our expectations totally.

Shane Sams: This just turned into an episode of House Hunters International. It's like you're going there, you're picking your house you're getting ready to move, the one way ticket. You're never coming back.

Jocelyn Sams: We love House Hunters International. We watch it all the time.

Shane Sams: Yeah, that's like our favorite show.

Janet Jimenez: Yes. That is a fun show.

Jocelyn Sams: I hear wonderful things about the DR. I have a friend who lived there for a while and I mean she just loved it.

Shane Sams: How was the internet compared to the states? We were just in Jamaica not long ago. Which is a Caribbean nation. It's like, no, the Internet was really, really good. Like way better than Mexico or other places we've been abroad. How's the internet and then the infrastructure in the Dominican Republic?

Janet Jimenez: Actually the internet installed in our house there was faster than my internet here.

Shane Sams: Wow.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah. And they do have fiber optic in some of the neighborhoods. So it's good. It's perfect. Sometimes though the electricity does go out but there are backup plans for that in the Dominican Republic.

Shane Sams: Isn't that amazing though that this online business that you're building, you can just pick it up and take it with you and not miss a beat as long as you've got the Internet where, as a lot of people they have the nine to five job, that's all they do. And if they moved to a new place or if they want to go abroad and want to do something, it's like gosh I've got to find work when I get there and this, that or the other. But man, if you just build this online business, you can just leave and you just show up and it's like nothing is different.

Shane Sams: We have some friends in California and they're taxes and the housing costs and everything is going up so high they've been looking at other places around the country. And I was just talking to my friend the other day and he was like, man, we can just move and it's like nothing changes when we get there.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah exactly. That's one of the main reasons I got into online business and then I guess the only thing we have to consider is our kids and moving at appropriate time during the school year. But besides that, yeah. It's awesome that you can do whatever you want.

Shane Sams: What brought you to the Flip Your Life Community? What brought you to what we do online and our courses and things like that?

Janet Jimenez: Well, I connected with you guys just because you were teachers and since I am an educator as well I felt like we're on a similar path and then just you selling resources or educational resources is what I do. So I felt like it would be a good fit for me.

Shane Sams: Did you ever look into anything else or did you just want to go straight into digital products?

Janet Jimenez: I actually had a previous business online, but I kind of changed directions. I wasn't in love with that idea I guess.

Shane Sams: You weren't passionate enough to kind of keep it going. And this is something that you really feel strongly about. You want it to go deeper into and it was. And it's something you clearly have expertise in 'cause you teach it, right?

Janet Jimenez: Yeah. I mean what I do now is what I've been working in for the last, I don't know, 13 years. So I really like it, the subject matter and my previous business I was doing well but it wasn't what I liked.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So I just want to dive into that just a little bit because I was talking about this yesterday on a YouTube video actually about how your first idea is not always the idea that you're going to go with. And I just love that you said that. I think a lot of times people think, well if you're doing well in the online business space it's because you waved your magic wand and fell into a vat of money. No, that's not how it works. You tried something, you decided you didn't want to do it for whatever reason, you changed direction and now the thing that you're starting to do is starting to have some traction.

Shane Sams: And then that thing before. I bet it was easier the second time you set everything up and tried something different, wasn't it?

Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. I mean I was able to develop all the skills of blogging regularly and social media and all those skills could be instantly transferred to my new endeavor.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah so I just wanted to kind of talk about that a little bit because I think that sometimes people think, well, if I try one thing and it doesn't work, then it's over. And that's not true.

Shane Sams: It's funny because out of all of our friends who are in the online space and then all of the hundreds of people who come through the community, if I'm sitting here realistically saying off the top of my head who succeeded on the first thing they ever did as a couple or as an individual or as an entrepreneur. I can't think of a single person where they just jumped in and they made it on the first thing. They may have made some money, they may have done okay. They may have done this, I may have failed, but whatever that first scenario is, almost every single person I've ever encountered online eventually evolves into something else.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah I think people just learn and are able to pivot and go where they want to. Yeah. That first idea isn't set in stone and you can change and do whatever you want whenever you want. That's the beauty of the internet.

Shane Sams: Just like you're getting ready to move to the Dominican Republic. Whenever you want.

Jocelyn Sams: Exactly.

Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, so your specific thing, is that used in classrooms, you said it was bilingual kids or is it for homeschool people? What's the market that you're going for before we jump into all your questions?

Janet Jimenez: Sure. So my resources are used by the teachers. So it is resources that the teachers use in the classrooms.

Shane Sams: Okay. Perfect.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about what you have going on so far. So I know that you're selling in a third party marketplace.

Shane Sams: Where's your income coming from?

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah how many resources do you have? That type of thing.

Janet Jimenez: Okay. So I have been a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers a third party marketplace for educational resources since August 2015 and I have I think over 320 resources posted on there.

Shane Sams: And you didn't start that way. You just kind of built it up over time, right?

Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah, no I started with like two and then just keep on, keep on swimming, keep on adding more resources.

Jocelyn Sams: So then you also had-

Shane Sams: Finding Nemo reference there.

Jocelyn Sams: You also have a website then, right?

Janet Jimenez: Yes. And then on my website I have products. Most of my products listed for sale on a one off stores. So you could just purchase the same as you can in the third party marketplace and a membership with all everything packaged together and curated.

Shane Sams: Now this is the newest part of the program though right?

Janet Jimenez: Yes. All the same materials just packaged differently in different places.

Shane Sams: And if I remember correctly from the form that you filled out for the podcast, the third party marketplace that you started first represents about 75% of your income. It's like 20% is on your single seller one off store. And then we've already got some members in the membership. It's about 5 to 10% right?

Janet Jimenez: Yeah. Just about that. Though in the last month since attending the live event, my members have increased. I think I went to the live event with 11 or 12 members and I now as of this morning have 34.

Shane Sams: Whoah! Wow! We got the percentages shifted. That's the live event, Flip Your Life LIVE, it's all Flip Your LIfe LIVE, every bit of it.

Jocelyn Sams: Let's speak to that for just a second.

Shane Sams: How did that happen?

Jocelyn Sams: Not to make this like a total advertisement for Flip Your Life even though it kind of is. Like, what do you think was the big catalyst from that? What did you learn there that you kind of brought back and said okay, I'm going to change the way I'm doing things and make this different.

Shane Sams: 'Cause that's like 300% growth for your membership in two months.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah I feel like you say that so casually, like oh yeah, like I just grew this membership.

Janet Jimenez: No, in one month and two days, Shane. In one month and two days.

Shane Sams: That's one month. You just kind of were like yeah tripled my membership in a month.

Janet Jimenez: I honestly haven't done that much but what I have done is made a few small changes to my website. So I made that join button, a different color that popped kind of like websites and then I changed the header and worked a little bit with Shane on the wording on the header on my website and then I did my first Webinar as well. So just small things.

Shane Sams: Don't undersell yourself. That's a lot. That's more than some people would do in their online business in the next three months because they're just scared to change anything and like we had a working dinner at Flip Your Life live and I sat at Janet's table with her and I remember looking through your stuff and we had our screens there and there was another member sitting beside us in a similar space and we were looking back and forth and going over each website. And just calling attention that you offer a monthly membership like that was a big deal because I'm looking at your site and I'm like, does anyone even know you have this membership right? And you're talking about adding a join button, making it pop, changing your header, even changing your language just to hey buy my products to hey join the membership. Things like that. And then doing a webinar like showing up live.

Shane Sams: I mean if everyone listening would just do something live and promote it once a month, you know their business would grow. So I don't want you to like shortchange yourself because those are also scary actions like changing your website to where it's kind of working. I don't want to mess, I don't want to break it, but you change it and try something new and even just showing up live like that's a hurdle that most people don't really get over. So don't shortchange yourself there. You did a great job at that. Your actions are ... Even the small ones made the huge difference that added to your membership.

Jocelyn Sams: I think really the biggest lesson or takeaway here is just the momentum that you gained from that event. I mean, do you think that's fair?

Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean I think just being with other people who are doing the same thing I do makes me realize that it's more possible and I can get where I would like to.

Shane Sams: Awesome. And how intense was that day that we did that working dinner? Because it could be started at like 8:30 in the morning and we all walked out of that room at 11.

Janet Jimenez: It was a long day, but it was definitely worth it.

Shane Sams: Awesome.

Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's jump into a little bit of what's going on now. Let's talk about a fear, maybe an obstacle or a mindset issue that is currently holding you back, like you're making some progress, but as all of us do, we start taking a few steps forward and then we're like, oh okay. I'm a little bit scared. Let me take a few steps back. So let's not do that. We want to stop where we are and help you to move forward. So what is holding you back right now?

Janet Jimenez: I think just putting myself out there. So like I said, I did my first webinar and that was my first ever video or live anything. So just kind of putting a face to who I am and also within my space I am not a native Spanish speaker. And for some that is a big deal. For others they don't care because they just want the resources and don't care who made them as long as they're good.

Janet Jimenez: So I think that's kind of my biggest hangups right now is putting myself out there and so people know who they are working with.

Shane Sams: Yeah. This is something we hear a lot of and this was a huge fear for us when we were getting ready to launch this podcast. Because every other podcast who are in the space is either from New York or from California and they've got this millennial cool vibe or whatever. And we're like man, we're from Kentucky. We talk funny, we're from the south. And there were like no other really southern sounding people in the online space and we're like, who's going to listen to us? People are going to hear us and immediately turn it off because we're not this uber hip, millennial, former employee of Google or something on the coast. Right. And what we decided, we were talking about it before we ever recorded the first podcast and we said man, we need to just embrace that and we need to just forget about all those people.

Shane Sams: If they don't like what we have to say, that's their problem because they're confusing intellect for dialect and they're going to miss something that could change their life and there's going to be millions of people that could hear this in the south. There's 40 million people in the south. They may love it and they want somebody like us and as you said that kind of even the truth kind of came out and how you were saying that. Some people, it's a really big deal, but a lot of people don't care. And that's where all of your mental energy, all of your passion, all of your power needs to go to is those people that don't care. 'Cause I'd say there's a lot of people teaching Spanish that are not native Spanish teachers. When I was a teacher in high school, three doors down was the three Spanish department or whatever, like three classrooms for Spanish.

Shane Sams: And I think only one of those out of the three teachers was an actual native Spanish teacher. One of them was just like you. She went overseas, got the bug when these Spanish speaking teachers came back and got educated as a teacher. So I would say embrace that and turn that around to oh, I wonder if somebody will care to, I don't care if you care and I'm going to find the people that absolutely do care.

Jocelyn Sams: I think it's all about finding a way to make that a positive. So just tell people straight off like hey, I'm from Minnesota. And I started traveling abroad and I love the Spanish language and the Spanish people so much that I decided to become a Spanish teacher. And I love what I do. I'm so happy to do it every single day. I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but I'm so glad that I was able to immerse myself in this culture. I was able to learn this language and I was able to bring that passion for it back to my home state of Minnesota.

Shane Sams: You could even be more overt on sales pages and even in your normal content, because you could literally just say, "I'm not a native Spanish teacher, you're not a native Spanish teacher, but we are both teaching Spanish together" and you could just call it out and be overt. And that way the people that get to your page or see your ad never click it, that don't care, and the people that do, do because there's millions and millions of people out there that don't really ... That doesn't matter as much as you think it does to, and they'll actually identify better with you because of those exact reasons. We have another member in the Flip Your Life Community who she works with bilingual parents like you situation where you have one person speak Spanish natively. One person doesn't. They're raising their kids together bilingually.

Shane Sams: And that's something that she talks about in her brand is this is the way it is and if you don't like it, don't worry about it. Right? This is the way I teach it and if that's not for you, it's just not for you and if you embrace that, I bet you your brand would grow even more because you would call out that identifier instead of kind of being like generic bilingual Spanish speaking education. You're just, whoa, I'm in your face. I'm not a native speaker and you're not either.

Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes our fears about these things, they come from something that we are self conscious about. I know this because I speak from personal experience, that's what I worry about. I worry that somebody is going to say well, okay you have a funny accent or you don't say this word right or whatever.

Jocelyn Sams: Those are the types of things that I worry about when instead what we should be worrying about are the people who get us and they love us and we just had to push the hate aside. It doesn't matter what you do. You could be the most perfect version of yourself that you think you could be and somebody is not going to like it. So be totally yourself and the people who don't like it, they'll go and listen to someone else.

Shane Sams: Even in this episode today, I on air called out ... I thought her name was Geminiz. That's just a part of who we are and I'm not going to sugarcoat it or hide it for anybody. There's probably somebody listening to this right now going, well, I can't put believe he couldn't pronounce her name. Why would he even say that out loud? I would never call out my fault and they're going to stop listening maybe, but you know what, that's not our Avatar by don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya. You know what I mean? It's just a part of the deal. And if you embrace that, I think your brand will actually grow faster.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean working with bilingual kids, our goal in the end is that they speak both languages fluently. So, since I can do that being a native English speaker, I think that that speaks to the resources and the angle for all the educators I work with.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah and I've actually worked with a mindset coach on similar things to this and what she told me is that you need to tell people what you want them to think. So I actually did this before our live event. That was one of the things that was really hard for me because I have a hard time putting myself out there too even though the people who were coming to this event, I mean they obviously know us. They obviously love us or they wouldn't have been traveling to Nashville to see us. But I was still just having a hard time. I was like what if I'm not what these people think I am or whatever. So I just did a video and I said, look, these are some things that I'm struggling with right now. I just want you all to know that really nervous about meeting you because I'm afraid that I'm not going to match up to your expectation of what you think I'm supposed to be.

Jocelyn Sams: And even that, just saying those words, it helped me to think, okay, these people know that I'm nervous about this. And now we can move on. I think sometimes just saying it and telling people what you want them to think. I think that you guys are gonna feel this way, but what I want you to know is that I'm really nervous about talking in front of you and it's going to be a little bit hard for me because I have to expend a lot of energy and there are a lot of people in the room.

Shane Sams: Have you overtly, Janet have you overtly blogged about this? Have you ever wrote a blog post or anything that's like I'm not a native Spanish teacher, but I teach Spanish, something like that. Have you ever overtly done a video or a blog or anything like that before for?

Janet Jimenez: No, not for, no.

Jocelyn Sams: I think sometimes even just speaking those words or writing those words is helpful. Like even if all of your audience doesn't even read it, just knowing that you've addressed it and you can just-

Shane Sams: And it can just stay on your blog or you can share it at any time in point.

Janet Jimenez: Okay. Maybe I will. I will add that to my to do list.

Shane Sams: I would also love to see you add this to your Webinar. One of the biggest things that we can do in any sales webinar is help people overcome the fears and objections they have, to buying our products. Right? And I would guess that some of the people listening to your webinars on your email list or reading your blog are exactly like you. They're native English speakers who went and learned Spanish, maybe they traveled abroad they came back, became these teachers and they struggle with this as well. And if you would address that in your sales presentation, right? It would probably just put people at ease and would also be a definer. Let's say 50 people show up on your Webinar. Let's say 25 of them are native Spanish speakers who speak English and 25 are native English speakers who teach Spanish.

Shane Sams: If you just addressed to this, who cares if those other 25 people check out? You now know exactly who the people are that you want in your membership. Right? So that could be a very powerful thing to address in your sales presentation is like anytime ... I was reading a copywriting book the other day 'cause I'm just a nerd and I sit and read about copywriting all the time. It said something very interesting about talking about yourself and it said, be very careful when you're talking about yourself. You don't want to be bragging about what you do or what you've done or anything like that. But the general rule of thumb is it's always okay to speak of yourself and about your fears in a negative light. Anything like that. If you talk about, man, I worry about this. It almost always makes people relate to you more and makes them even more receptive to your sales message when you get there. So that might be a way to really blow up those webinars and improve them too.

Jocelyn Sams: And people they appreciate vulnerability. Like everyone has something that's vulnerable about them. So when you show them, hey, I'm a real person who has fears and I have vulnerabilities, people like that. It's like why you're drawn to anyone that you're drawn to. You don't want to think that the people that you follow are perfect because that's like an unattainable standard. So show people your vulnerability, show people your fears a little bit and they'll be drawn to you that much more.

Janet Jimenez: Yeah I mean, no one is perfect. Everyone is improving. Yeah, I think that's a great idea to show what my hangups are and maybe I'll attract more people just like me.

Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. Okay. So we have talked about your mindset struggles. What else is going on in your business? What can we help you with to move it forward?

Janet Jimenez: So I am trying to balance out my income streams. Kind of make them a little bit more equal. So that since I have a large family, I can rely on the three different income streams just than heavily on the one the Teachers Pay Teachers. I would like to increase those other income streams. What would be the best route to do that?

Shane Sams: Yeah. So you have three things. There's different advantages and disadvantages to each of your revenue streams. Okay. And this is true for any online business. So you have a third party market that's like you sell your stuff on someone else's store, right? So it's like you're putting your stuff in Walmart or something like that. That's a great way to make money because usually those third party marketplaces have bigger audiences that are already looking for your products. Okay? So that's one way you're making money. Another way you're making money, is your own one off store. That's another great thing. It's like opening your own store on the corner or in the shopping center, you've got your own place. People come in, there are some disadvantages there. You're controlling all the overhead. You got to get traffic to it and all that good stuff.

Shane Sams: And then the third way is you got this membership, this recurring revenue where the steady income comes from. And it's like, okay, every member, I get stacks on top of each other, but I've got to get people to kind of commit to it, right? So your gut instinct I'm hearing in all of your questions is how do I kind of balance those out? 33, 33, 33, whatever, right? Where it's like, okay, if one goes bad and one goes good, it kind of works itself out. But that's intuitively where most people go to. But in almost every situation that we've seen or coached over the last few years, it's almost always better to actually put all of your effort and energy into really blowing up one. And the one that creates the most stable income is that membership. Okay? And other avenues are actually used for different purposes.

Shane Sams: So let's take the third party marketplace, what we do in our education businesses with a Teachers Pay Teachers or there's another one, I can't remember what it's called offhand. That's almost where we get discovered. We want people to find those lesson plans. We actually lowered our prices a little bit and then we re geared all of our downloads to where it has a link back to our sight, right? And we want people to find us there and that's great. We promote that still, we use that still, but we don't want to rely on that as income because what if they shut the store down? What if you can't promote correctly or they show somebody else in the search results? You don't get to control their algorithm. You can't control anything on that. The same thing goes for your actual website where the individual lesson plans are. Do you have all those in like a store? It's just a storefront where you click on them and go through on your website?

Janet Jimenez: Yes. On my website yeah. There is a storefront and then also the place where you would join the membership.

Shane Sams: Right. So what we did in that regard is we realized we had a storefront at one time where you could buy lesson packs and things like that. But it was kind of like all on one or two pages. And we were like, man, we're getting no traffic on this. So we actually wrote a blog post for every individual lesson, especially on US history teachers but we had a link to buy the product, right? So that way we wanted to have a better SEO strategy for each individual plan to help people find our stuff better. So, even our individual sales there, were still promotion. There were still SEOs still something that we could promote. Like I could share a link to that blog post that was like let me tell you all about Abraham Lincoln lesson plan 101 or whatever. And then at the end of it they could get the plan if they wanted. It was descriptive, right? And then we focused almost all of our energy on growing our membership because that's that steady predictable, long term revenue that you can look at, and you can even see now that you're getting 30, 40 members, you're like wow, that's pretty cool that most of those people are going to pay again next month. And I don't have to worry if I make individual sales. I don't have to worry if somebody finds my site every month.

Janet Jimenez: Oh yeah. It's very rough in the summers just because my income goes from $4k or $5k a month to like $600.

Shane Sams: And that's 'cause of the one off sales and nobody buys those one off sales?

Janet Jimenez: Exactly.

Shane Sams: So what you can do is, with the membership is you can get annual sales, you can get monthly sales and they keep paying through those months and that dip is not as bad. So it makes more sense to just focus totally on the membership.

Jocelyn Sams: And I'm okay with people buying things one off. Are you sending them an email sequence once they buy something from you just say hey, I have a membership. You paid X dollars for this product, but for only so much a month you can get all of these products?

Janet Jimenez: Yup. So when they open my product before they even see the product, they see the advertisement for my membership. So yes, that's the first page they see before they see what they purchase.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. That's good. I like that.

Shane Sams: But if you were bringing, if you were inviting everyone that made an individual product purchase to an actual live training every month, right, and you were really like, okay, let's see, last month I sold 100 one off products. This month now let's all come to a webinar I'm gonna do a training. It's going to be free for you guys and then you sold the monthly membership. This is another mistake people make too. We've done this in the past, so I don't want to say it's always wrong, but trying to sell that annual, trying to get that big hit, trying to get that whatever. We would much rather stack monthly members and give ourselves a raise every day. Like every time we get a new member to the Flip Your Life Community or on one of our other websites, I look over at Jocelyn, I snap my fingers and go, we just got a raise today 'cause that's one more person paying me every single month, right?

Shane Sams: If I have a $50 membership and I had 10 members in the month, I gave myself a $500 raise this month. Right? And who gets to give their self a raise? Most people are like, I don't get a raise. I get like a 3% increase a year. You can give yourself a raise every day when you're giving yourself a monthly membership 'cause now you're going to get that money again next month too. So if you could rejigger your funnel that's a good Kentucky word, rejigger. If you could rejigger the funnel and you could say, hey, everything that happens, whether it's on Teachers Pay Teachers, on my individual one off sales or even on my email list is funneling to that live thing where I pitched the monthly membership, unlimited access. I'm going to help you all that. You get really excited about it.

Shane Sams: And you're going to start saying, okay, 10 more members, 500 more dollars, 10 more members, 500 more dollars, 10 more members, and all of a sudden you look up and it's like $10,000, $15,000 a month because you keep adding people on top of what's already there. Instead of saying, hey, you bought something and now you're gone.

Jocelyn Sams: But on the flip side of that, I do think that it's important to offer the annual membership to purchase order sales. Are you doing purchase orders sales right now?

Janet Jimenez: Yeah. So I have had a few purchase order sales as well.

Jocelyn Sams: That's another thing that you can really push even on the webinars. So once you get done pitching the monthly membership, the people are kind of like, well that sounds great but I can't afford that. Then you can say, oh well you don't have to because your school can pay for it. That's your next step. So once they come to your Webinar, once they open your emails, once they reject that monthly offer, then you go back to those people and say, oh by the way, did you know that I accept purchase orders?

Shane Sams: So a purchase order for everybody listening to that is how government institutions buy products. So a school or even like city hall before they can buy something for their employees, they have to create a purchase order. And this is actually in a simple form, it's an objection. So there's a lot of objections people have, like, I won't buy that by myself. Well, in any online business or anything you sell, could their company pay for it? Could the government institution pay for it? Is there another way to get somebody else to pay for it? Another way that a lot of people are like, well, I can't necessarily buy the annual plan, but I'd love to save the money. Or they might say I can't afford your monthly price. Well they could finance it on their credit card. That's a purchasing objection that you can overcome by saying, hey, there's other ways to pay for this besides just straight cash out of your wallet that you open and stick in an envelope and mail to me. Okay.

Shane Sams: So always be thinking about why people are saying no. And that's what Jocelyn is saying here. If they're saying no because it's their money, in your space, is there a way they can spend someone else's money? Because a lot of people do you have access to do those things?

Janet Jimenez: And then also thinking I get about 60% of my traffic is actually coming from Pinterest to one off products. So, I was trying to think of a way, be it a pop up or something that kind of once they're on a product that would kind of pop up and say, did you know that you can access everything for this price?

Shane Sams: Yeah. My favorite way to do this is to actually make it a button beside product that costs the same as the price. How much do your products cost?

Janet Jimenez: Well, it varies, but anywhere from a dollar to $20, but the majority are $3 to $5.

Shane Sams: So what I would do then is probably put, there would be three options on every page in your cart. So like if you actually go to our website, flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. You'll see this down at the bottom. We've got the monthly option, the annual option and the free option. There's actually a free trial right there beside the other two options, right? Our main objective is to get people to try our membership because you can attest to this. Once you get in the community, once you see how many courses there are and once you get to work with me and Jocelyn, we know people are going to stay, right? So that's what we want. Is we want that free trial by the month, but some people jump in the monthly and the annual 'cause you can save on the annual plan, but a lot of people will just go ahead and take that free option.

Shane Sams: So this is the same thing you're doing. Let's say they land on a sale on I don't know like a random worksheet that's $5, right? All right, so it's five bucks here, but then you have a thing right beside of it that says or you could join the monthly membership for $19 a month or whatever, and you can say get everything for this and then you've got the annual plan right beside it. So now they've got three things buy this one time one product, monthly membership or annual plan. You've got all three options on the page ready to go, boom. And now it's like a choice. It's not like oh, there's a popup. This thing's kind of over here. I'm looking at it now. It's like oh, I can get this worksheet this way or I could get it this way or I can get it this way. And just put them all on the same page together and then they've got it's right there in front of them staring them down.

Shane Sams: Yeah and if your cart won't support this as the membership product, all you gotta do is have a button that goes to another page that they can order the membership.

Jocelyn Sams: And also don't underestimate the power of advertising on your own site. I did this on Elementary Librarian. You know, how you'll go to people's sites and see ads for something on Google or something on Amazon or whatever. Make your own ad. Put a block of graphics or whatever on your site that says, hey, join my membership, so many materials, hundreds of materials for a low monthly costs, whatever.

Janet Jimenez: I have that now, but I was thinking of changing it to like for less than a dollar a day or something more attractive to a teacher who is working on a fixed income.

Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely.

Shane Sams: Yeah. Anytime you can relate your price to something like in real life. We always call it, especially in the teacher space, we call it the happy meal pricing. If I can get my prices somewhere around what people would pay, like for you with six kids it's like $47 to get them a happy meal.

Janet Jimenez: Less than school lunch.

Shane Sams: Yeah less than school lunch. Make it relatable to them that's something that sounds affordable. And people will really react to that. But the key is just promote. You can't promote 97 things, right? This was a mistake that a lot of people make. You can't say like an ad for this, an ad for that ad for this. You have to set things up in order like steps for people and you got to concentrate on promoting the one thing the most, if you're going to make it the most important thing. So, if you can just ... That's why you would put the monthly, like if they were to buy a lesson plan, the left option is the one off plan. The middle one's always the monthly membership.

Shane Sams: 'Cause that's what you're promoting, right? Like what are they staring? And you put best deal at the top of that one, that way they're like, this is the thing you should buy 'cause it is. It's the most affordable plan to get everything, right. So in all your ads, don't advertise 20 different one off product., One thing membership all over the place. They're going to land on that page through search and through social to get the individual thing. That's how people find individual stuff. They don't look around your website, but when they get to your website, what's your one goal for them to take next? Yes, it's to buy a product, but really is to join that membership. So you've got predictable revenue that you can count on.

Janet Jimenez: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: All right Janet, we've had a great conversation with you today. I think that you've got some really actionable ideas to take advantage of and just run with. So let's talk about one thing that you are planning to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today.

Janet Jimenez: Well, I'm going to do two. So I'm going to make a blog post about not being a native Spanish speaker of bilingual students. And then I am going to find out a way to put that buy button next to my one off products so that they know that they can access everything instead of just getting that one product.

Shane Sams: That is absolutely amazing. Imagine just putting that button on every single product you have. Just doing that it's got to take ... the action steps going to get people to buy more memberships because it's more available. It's every time they see the button they're going to be able to do that. So thank you so much, Janet for coming on the show today and being so transparent. We're so appreciative and grateful that our members will do this, will come on 'cause we know it's kind of scary to come on a podcast and there's thousands of people listening. But like man, what we talked about today is going to help somebody out there and we're just so thankful that you did that.

Janet Jimenez: Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

Shane Sams: What a great interview with one of our Flip Your Life Community members today. We hope that you got something out of that that can help you take your business to the next level. Before we close our podcast, we always like to end with a Bible verse Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration from the Bible and we wanted to share some of that with you today. Our verse today comes from Ecclesiastes 11 verses four through six, and it says, "Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud they never harvest, just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother's womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God who does all things. So plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon for you don't know if profit will come from one activity or another or maybe both."

Shane Sams: So what is the Bible saying here, guys? Get out there and take action. Don't be afraid. Don't wait for perfect. It ain't gotta be perfect, it's just got to be done. And if you take that mindset into your online business, you will be successful too. And if we can help you be successful in your online business, we'd love to do that. All you have to do is join our Flip Your Life Community. We have all the training, coaching, community, and resources you need to take your business to the next level. You can have a 30 day free trial right now, at flippedlifestyle.com/free. That's flippedlifestyle.com/free. Go there and start your 30 day free trial today.

Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time we have for today. We are so thankful that you tuned in. Whatever you do between now and the next time you hear this podcast, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life this evening.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Janet's website
• Flip Your Life community 30-day trial

Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family!

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