FL263 - We catch up with former guest Daniel Hulsman after his membership launch

In today's episode, we catch up with former guest Daniel Hulsman after his membership launch.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we catch up with former guest Daniel Hulsman after his membership launch.

Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flip 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. You ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started.

Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flip Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. I am really pumped up today because we are welcoming back a former guest, who was previously on the show. He's now launched his membership, launched his business, actually has customers, and this is even a more special former guest, because he is our favorite former troll. It's our good buddy, Daniel Hulsman. Daniel, welcome back to the show, man.

Daniel Hulsman: Hey, Shane and Jocelyn. Thank you for having me.

Jocelyn Sams: Yes, absolutely. We are happy to have you.

Jocelyn Sams: ... here, again, today. We have some exciting stuff to talk about, some, kinda, hard stuff to talk about. We just got a really good conversation brewing, today. So we're really excited about this. We've been following along with you after your membership launch. You've had a few ups and downs, I would say.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Just a few.

Shane Sams: Now, let me get everybody caught back up 'cause I think this is airing somewhere around December, January. I'm not exactly sure. So, Daniel was on the show back in July of 2018. It was episode 212. Right, Jocelyn?

Jocelyn Sams: Yep, flippedlifestyle.com/podcast212.

Shane Sams: So the interesting story behind Daniel even appearing on the show is Daniel didn't come to the Flipped Lifestyle community or podcast in, what I would call, the normal way. Daniel actually sent me some scathing hate mail at one point.

Daniel Hulsman: Oh. It wasn't that.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay.

Shane Sams: It gets worse every time I tell the story, though. You know how it goes.

Jocelyn Sams: In his defense, it's not the worse thing we've ever gotten.

Shane Sams: It's not the worse thing we've ever gotten.

Daniel Hulsman: It was definitely saucy.

Shane Sams: It was saucy? It was quite the criticism. Okay?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: As I'm known to do, I like to engage with people online whether it's via email or fan mail or not-so-fan mail. Right? I actually got into a great discussion with Daniel and, kind of, challenged him to come in and actually look at our community, check us out, see how everything's going. Anyway, long story short, I've even invited him on the podcast. I said, "I'll tell you what. Come on the podcast. We'll talk about it," and we did. Right? Daniel's been a member, now, for a while, in the Flip Your Life community and just an awesome guy, just a great heart, and I am so glad that we became friends and that we got to be doing this online business stuff together.

Shane Sams: So, long story short, we talked to you about your business and all that good stuff. Tell everybody a little bit, real quick, about your business, the nutshell version and, kind of, what's happened since you've joined the Flip Your Life community since that podcast. Tell them just a little bit about your business and where it ended up at, at this point, today.

Daniel Hulsman: Sure. Yeah. So, in a nutshell, I run a website called Video Game Music Academy which is a resource for new and aspiring composers looking to break into the video game industry which is something that I wanted to do when I was younger but there was never any resources. So I decided to make one in ... I believe we talked July 1 when we recorded that episode. On that day, I was just starting off with a 21-day challenge then at the end of that, I launched my membership website.

Daniel Hulsman: So on July 1, I had no plan to launch a membership website. On July 21, I launched a membership website.

Jocelyn Sams: It's, kind of, funny how that works. You know? A lot of people who know us, they're like, "You know what? I didn't really plan to have an online business but, then, I talked to you guys and y'all have one.

Shane Sams: It's funny when people talk to use. They'll come to use with a timeline. They sometimes say, "Yeah, I'm thinking about doing this three months from now."

Jocelyn Sams: We're like, "Yeah, I know."

Shane Sams: We're like, "What about three days?"

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, that kind of insanity was very motivating. I like that aspect of the challenge when it seems a little bit crazy. So, yeah, the kind of insanity of that short timeline was a great motivator. Since then, I'd say that my website has gone from what you really could've called a hobby, 'cause it wasn't really producing in any meaningful way, to a business where I've got an LLC now and I think that launch gave me a little over 30 members. I launched again for another week, and now the membership part of the website has 58 paying members.

Shane Sams: Amazing.

Jocelyn Sams: Wow. That is awesome.

Shane Sams: That's awesome, Dude. That's like a high. Right? Now, everybody thinks ... Let's look forward. One, congratulations. That's amazing. All right? We're proud of you for doing that. There's a lot of people listening to the show right now that wanna reach through and grab you and take your 58 members for themselves. Right?

Shane Sams: It's hard. It's hard to launch a business. It's hard to build a following and it's hard to convince 58 people to give you money every month. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: I'm sure that that was, kind of, of a high like one of the craziest best days of your life kinda deals.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I know that I was so excited when I saw this success story come in. You know? I check our community, pretty much, every day. When I saw that come in, I was like, "Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy." That was awesome. So, we're so pumped. Then, real soon after that, tell everybody a little bit about what happened.

Shane Sams: What happened ... Now, so you got members. You've got this active community. You've taken the leap from hobby to business. What happened next? How did it go next? What's happened since that day?

Daniel Hulsman: Well, I got hit with what I think I described in the membership community as soul-crushing lack of motivation.

Shane Sams: Don't sugar coat it now. Tell me how you were doing.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. No. Yeah. The soul was definitely under the heel of the boot there. I don't know what it was. Part of me suspected that ... One thing about me is that when I have a big challenge, that excites me, but when I see that I can attain the challenge, when I see that it's doable. If I've done step one and I see that I am capable of completing step 10, then it becomes a big demotivator for me. It's not as exciting anymore. I think that was part of it. Then another part of it was just that I, kind of, got hit with a little bit of the overwhelm, a little bit of the imposter syndrome. It's like all three of those things, sorta, hit at once.

Daniel Hulsman: I, kinda, went into a slump for a few weeks really ... right after I'd launched my membership site. It was really tough to get things done and to decide what the best thing to do was. It was really hard to dig myself out of that. It took me about a month, I think, to really dig myself out of that completely.

Jocelyn Sams: I love the conversation that came out of that in the community because I feel like there were so many people who jumped in and just said, "Hey, you're not alone," and I really loved that because you're not alone. In fact, I was thinking about that earlier today because one of the things that we did that was really big, recently, is we had a big live event. We thought, "Oh, this isn't possible," and we had this big build-up toward it. We did the event, and now we're, kinda like, "Okay. Well, now what?"

Shane Sams: Like you pulled something off that you really-

Jocelyn Sams: You really shouldn't have been able to do.

Shane Sams: ... really shouldn't be able to pull off. At least, that's what we're taught. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: You know, it's like we do that and then you're like, "Whoa." Then, on top of that, you're still working full-time. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, and it was actually interesting. Usually, you expect, when you get a launch and paying members, that that extra money would feel pretty good. But, in this specific case, I was transitioning between two teaching jobs. So my one contract ended at the end of July, and my next contract started at the beginning of September. So I ended up having a month where we just lost my income. That was the money from the website, really, started coming in which was great. It was really needed at the time ... super helpful but, at the same time, it also dulled a lot of the excitement because, instead of feeling like icing on the cake, it felt more like a patch on... a big hole. So-

Jocelyn Sams: Well, thank goodness for the patch, though. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Without the patch, it would've been massive panic attack.

Shane Sams: Yeah. You know, it's crazy what people forget when they think about starting a business, being self-employed, or even moving toward that kind of mindset and lifestyle, is just because you're doing that and just because you're succeeding in one area, you still got work. You still got family. You still got kids. All those things are still there and every time we add something, it cuts us a little thinner. You know what I'm saying? It's like in "Lord of the Rings," when he says, "I feel like butter spread too thin on toast," or something. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yes.

Shane Sams: That's what happens, especially early on, not just when you start building the online business, 'cause it's easy to get distracted when you're building everything. You know how you get in those modes of creation where you lose track of time and you look up and it's six hours later and you've built something. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: It's, kind of, like that when you're building the online business but, then when you launch and it goes out there, now you've actually added one more thing on your plate. Right?-

Daniel Hulsman: At least.

Shane Sams: ... and we just keep getting ... At least ... and we keep getting sliced thinner, and thinner, and thinner. That can add to the overwhelm. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Oh yeah. Felt like it. That's for sure.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I think that this is part of just being, I guess what you'd call a budding entrepreneur. It's because you have all of these things going on. You still have all of your personal life things going on. You still have all your work things going on. Then, you also have the membership community and once you've sold something to someone, you can't just be like, "Okay, guys. Take a little break. See ya." It doesn't exactly work that way. You have to be there for those people, too, which is really cool but it's also a little bit scary when you have so many other things going on, on all the other burners and you're like, "Okay, well, now what?" It's a weird middle ground between starting out and having, I guess what you'd call, a big business where you have people to help you.

Shane Sams: So where are we now? So we've got the soul-crushing motivation kicked in. We all had a pow-wow about that in the community. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Oh, yeah. Jocelyn's been like my personal cheerleader, among a lot of people but-

Shane Sams: Exactly. So we've gotten to the point where we're, kind of, grinding forward and moving, but where are you right now, just mentally and emotionally when it comes to the business and everything else? You're back in the classroom. You've got your new job. You've transitioned there. Right? So, at least, some of those spoils from that monthly membership feel a little better now. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: What's happening that's, kind of, stalled you out right now in your business and causing confusion?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. So, I just opened up the membership again and closed it on October 31. It was open for about 10 days, and got my new members in. So it's only be about a week since I closed the doors, and I know that this is a very critical time for the new members, and also know that I really want to kick things up a notch in terms of content creation inside of the membership community in terms of educational resources. I also know that in January I'm gonna be doing another quarterly challenge or just that 21-day challenge that I use to ... it's been my main source of leads that have turned into sales.

Daniel Hulsman: So I've got all these three different things. So I feel like I've got ... I really want to make sure I'm nurturing the community. I really wanna make sure that I'm preparing the website to scale a little bit more, and I also wanna make sure that I'm not just going to assume the funnel is going to be similar in January. I've gotta feed that funnel for the next challenge because I've now put my current list through that same challenge twice in the past six months. So I need to get new people coming in, new people on the list so that I've got more fresh blood in the challenge to go down that funnel towards the end.

Daniel Hulsman: On top of that, on the personal side of things, I've transitioned into a new job which is still very high energy. Beginning a new teaching job is tough, learning 500 students' names and blah, blah, blah, a lot of things that go with a new teaching job. I also have some things going on in the family that I'm not gonna go into, but it's been tough on the family and good news, on the positive end, we have our second son. He's gonna be due in early February.

Shane Sams: You got about three months, then.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: You're like a quarter away from having another human in your life.

Jocelyn Sams: And I love how you work, Daniel, because you're, kind of, like us. We're like, "Oh, we have a three-year-old and an 18-month-old. Let's start a couple of businesses. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, sounds like a good time. Like, yeah, totally doable. You know, sometimes, people are the way that they are is, like, you have to have a lot of things going on in order to get things done. I feel like you're probably one of those types of people. I think I'm like that too.

Jocelyn Sams: I remember the only time in college that I got all A's was when I had 18 hours and two full-time jobs ... no, two part-time jobs. Sorry. So it ended up being like a full-time job. Then I had 18 hours of course load.

Shane Sams: The only time in college I got all A's was the semester I met Jocelyn, to impress her.

Jocelyn Sams: 'cause we went to the library all the time.

Shane Sams: Once I felt like I was in, I just, kinda, slacked off a little bit. You know what I'm saying?

Jocelyn Sams: Which is so true.

Shane Sams: I'm listening to ... going back to the soul-crushing motivation moment. Right? Even over the last two months, when you were talking earlier about feeling spread thin, man, I don't blame you for feeling ... You should feel spread thin a little bit, Dude. You've got your day job. That's taking bandwidth. You've got things going on in your family life that you gotta deal with. You got a baby coming. Dude, that's like on your mind three months from now. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And then you've got this business that was, just for some more background for the listener ... it was just a Facebook group and some challenges. Right? Now, it's like this public Facebook group, this free opt-in email list, these challenges, this membership area, new content, promotion. You went from two things to 20 things overnight. Right? It's very, very oppressive. Entrepreneurship, in general, and life, in particular, is oppressive. It's really, really, really hard. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: You can't feel upset about yourself for, maybe, taking your eye off the prize here and there or getting that soul-crushing motivation because, honestly, humans are not made or equipped to deal with this very well.

Jocelyn Sams: I'm just gonna put it this way. Right now, I feel like you're in survival mode, and you know this means because you have another child. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yes. Yeah, I got a three-year-old.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Yeah, so you know what this means. Survival mode is when you don't even know how you got to work. You don't even know what you did while you were there because you're so blasted tired from not getting any rest and just, basically, sleepwalking through life because you have to. It's out of necessity.

Shane Sams: Like your brain won't turn off. I bet your brain won't turn off right now, very well. Will it?

Daniel Hulsman: You have no idea. I had just got home from teaching all day, and I just had a chaotic last class. So my brain is like firing in 20 different directions right now.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, there's some good news. So you work for public schools. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So the good news is you have some breaks coming up.

Daniel Hulsman: Oh, yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: That's good news for a couple of different reasons ... first of all, because you get a break from these crazy kids, but second of all because you're gonna have some bandwidth back to concentrate on some things that you really need to concentrate on. I feel like that is the thing that is really missing, right now. I just feel like you don't have that bandwidth there.

Jocelyn Sams: What I'm trying to say is you're gonna have to really take advantage of these breaks. What I mean by that is getting some rest, but I also mean you're gonna have to, kind of, push the pedal to the floor a little bit in this business, I feel like.

Shane Sams: Yeah. That's what, kind of, is the bad part of what we all do. Right? We're all trying to build a better life for our family. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yes.

Shane Sams: But that's hard-won territory. It doesn't come easy or everyone would just go do it. Right? There's a lot of times where we need that personal cheerleader like you were talking about, Jocelyn. You go post in the forums and 20 people rally around you to lift you up. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Then there's another part of us that just has to say, "Life is manufactured of facts and these are the facts that I'm dealing with right now and no matter how I emotionally feel, I factually have to figure out a way to deal with every one of these variables. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And that sucks. That really does, sometimes, suck. It really does, especially when things are swirling around us in all aspects of our life.

Jocelyn Sams: And some are just completely out of our control.

Shane Sams: And some are really good. I think that's what people discount is ... sometimes the good things overwhelm you to the point where it breaks you. You know?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Like the baby coming or all these different things, like a business taking off. Right? Those are good things but, factually, they're also hard things and overwhelming things. So planning, like Jocelyn said, and resting are probably your two biggest things that we've gotta do next for you. Or you're just gonna break, 'cause you're just gonna try to get up everyday and juggle and you can't do that.

Daniel Hulsman: You two get me.

Shane Sams: Yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: I really get you because I have a feeling that we're a lot alike. So-

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, I feel that same thing. When you're-

Shane Sams: I got 20 years of experience dealing with people like you, Daniel. So I think we can figure this out.

Jocelyn Sams: I also know that, because we are alike, that you are way too hard on yourself. I know that because I'm very hard on myself. If I let one little thing fall through the cracks, I just can't handle it and I feel like that you're probably my soul brother on that.

Shane Sams: It's easier, sometimes, to just turn that thing off than it so keep it going. Like you just lost a membership and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. No." Right? It's just like-

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Flip the switch.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, it's really easy to find all sorts of things to fidget with, especially once you've just built a website that could be a lot better. I found a lot of ways to not move the needle in terms of-

Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely.

Daniel Hulsman: ... my member experience. Then, it just got to a break point with that or, one night ... I think it was like one a.m. or something ridiculous like that I was up because I was up. I was just finishing all of the things I had to do for the day. I sat down at my laptop and I opened up the membership community because I had been, kind of, avoiding it 'cause I'd been feeling so cruddy. Then I just, kind of, laid it all out there. Then, once I did that, I felt like I had a path forward, but it took a lot of pain to get me to that point where I felt like I could push myself through and pick it up. So, like you said, I know myself pretty well, especially having gone through these last three months and I wanna be really careful and really deliberate in terms of what I plan for myself. I feel I really wanna be prolific, but I also wanna not overwhelm myself and shut down.

Shane Sams: That's a good point, man, 'cause I do say a lot, "The key to really hyper success is being consistent and prolific." Right? But, man, in the times where you're overwhelmed or tired, the prolific thing has to go to the wayside. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you do have to figure out the bare minimum things to be consistent with and take that step back so that you can go take two steps forward and not feel guilty about it. Right? Even in a membership, you feel like it's like constant growth. There might be a time where you don't open the doors for a month or two, and even if you do have a little attrition, that's okay because you're just finding your equilibrium again. Right? Maybe there are times where you ... maybe you don't open a challenge and you do something different. Maybe you change the way you interact. I do this with a lot of people who have Facebook groups. I join groups. Right? Everybody in the community, I usually jump into their groups. I'm a member and I can, kind of like, spy on what's happening in their Facebook.

Jocelyn Sams: See if you're really doing what we tell you to do.

Shane Sams: See if you're really doing what I tell you. I'm in your group. One, your group is fascinating, video game composers. That's, kind of, my third-wheel house. Right? I see you doing a lot of things in your actual Facebook group that really seem like they should be reserved more. You know what I'm saying? For paid customers ... that's a way to get some bandwidth back is change the way you're interacting with your free customers. Change the way you're interacting with your audience, in general. Right?

Shane Sams: I would rather you step back and get bandwidth back and become consistent at fewer things, even if it slows the growth a little, than to be so prolific that you burn yourself out. That's not gonna help you, your family, or anybody going forward.

Jocelyn Sams: So, I'm glad that you jumped into that because that's, sort of, the same thing I was thinking, too. At this point, I think we need to give you some homework and, more importantly, I think that we need to give you some permissions. What I mean by that is permission to not do some things.

Daniel Hulsman: Okay. All right.

Shane Sams: So, what are the things in your business? Let's just forget about the life stuff right now, because life stuff is much more organizational and there's so many things you're negotiating with other people. Right? Even your kids and your spouse and everybody else-

Jocelyn Sams: Let's go with things that are completely under your control.

Shane Sams: Completely under only Daniel's control. He's the only person that is even involved, which would be the video game academy. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep. The Vide Game Music Academy.

Shane Sams: So, what do you think are three to five things that you have to do right now or everything will collapse and fall apart? What do you think those things are?

Daniel Hulsman: Ah, Geez.

Shane Sams: It's usually the things that have been overwhelming you the most, like in the last week.

Daniel Hulsman: I think it's stuff because I feel like this doesn't feel like everything will fall apart, but I feel like this will make everything slowly grind to a halt, later and this what I'm talking about is new free content creation to feed the top of my marketing funnel. I started this whole membership site journey with a pretty sizeable email list. I started, I think, with 26 hundred people on my email list that I had been building up for years. Now, it's even bigger which is great. But it's also something where I wanna make sure that I'm putting people in with content and not just the challenge. I don't know. That's my intuition anyways, but...

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Let's stop right there for one second. Okay. My first question to you is how long have you been sending people this content? How long have you been creating content, in other words?

Daniel Hulsman: On the one hand, so I've got my blog which ... and the Facebook group, and there, I've really not been doing much in terms of content generation over the past year. So an extremely minimal in terms of the 21-day challenge. That, I did it in July and I did it in October. That was the second and third time I've done the challenge, total. Then, through those 21 days, not only are people interacting online in the community, but they're also getting emails from me with writing prompts or they're getting tips for composing and things like that. So they're getting content.

Shane Sams: All that's already done. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, all that's already done-

Shane Sams: Real time. You're just repeating that process for people. Correct?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. I'm repeating it and I'm tweaking it a little bit, too.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay.

Shane Sams: So do you feel like you have to create more content on your blog and the Facebook group to get more new people ... to get more in the challenge? Where do you think you need to create this content?

Jocelyn Sams: And what's on your website now?

Daniel Hulsman: Sure. So, yes, to answer that. I do feel like my blog is almost inactive. So I feel like I need to get people to the website and basically give myself ways to interact with people who've never encountered my brand, other than that 21-day challenge in between the 21-day challenges. They have them quarterly so that's two months in between there, and I feel like-

Shane Sams: Okay stop.

Daniel Hulsman: Okay.

Shane Sams: I'm gonna give you a permission here.

Daniel Hulsman: All right.

Shane Sams: You don't need to create any more content right now because creating content is high bandwidth work. Okay?

Jocelyn Sams: You've gotten all these people without doing that.

Shane Sams: Well, and you've got other content, now. You just said what you actually need to do, which is promote existing content. Okay? You just said, "I've got all these people who I need to bring in new to interact with my content." Well, that's really what you need to do. Promotion is lower impact because promotion is really just starting an ad and letting it run or sharing in different places content you already have.

Shane Sams: If you had a list of 14 places online that were great places to share all your content like Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter ... things like that ... then, all of a sudden, instead of sitting down and creating content and figuring it out, you just say, "Oh, that was a good blog post I wrote back then. I'll update it for five minutes and then I'm gonna share it in these 14 places. I'm done for the day. Right?

Shane Sams: If you can make a process, and systemize sharing old content, that is a lot less energy than, "I have to create all this content." Right? It's a lot easier to tell the same speech to a new audience than it is to write a new speech and find a new audience. Does that make sense?

Shane Sams: So, right now, you could probably just eliminate new content creation-

Jocelyn Sams: For now.

Shane Sams: ... for now, and just say to yourself, "Man, I just need to promote some of my best stuff. What if I just took my three best posts that anyone's ever reacted to, and I just rotated those and shared the crap out 'em every three weeks, for the next three months, that's going to bring in more people. That make sense?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep. That makes sense.

Shane Sams: So let's just eliminate creating content for a while. Does that mean we're never gonna come back to it? No. Three months from now, you're gonna be in a different state. Well, three months from now, you're gonna have a baby. So six months from now-

Daniel Hulsman: I'll be in a very different state-

Shane Sams: Well your brain-

Daniel Hulsman: Tired is the state.

Shane Sams: Yes. Once you get past that, and start sleeping for six hours. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so there's one.

Jocelyn Sams: Then, we have the promised land of summer which is music to an educator's ears.

Shane Sams: So, does that make you feel a little relief that you don't have to do that?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, it does. That's a lot of noise that I can put away.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, and let's put that on the back burner until summer because summer is when you have a big chunk of time. You can work on things more. You can batch it up.

Shane Sams: For people who are not teachers, that might be our weekend. It might be your vacation time. There's always times that you can block off for new content creation and then promotion's a hundred times more important anyway. So, there's one thing. What's another thing that's overwhelming you?

Daniel Hulsman: Creating course content within the membership community.

Shane Sams: Okay. So how are you doing that now? What's in there right now? Just ballpark, how many courses? What's in there?

Daniel Hulsman: So, there are three video courses that I put together in there, so far. I will skip over one criticism that you've already given me the podcast episode I was into last week. That was about ... you mentioned how much time you can sink into a slide show. That's been a real sticking point for me where I've gotten stuck working on slide shows and making it perfect when, really, I could just talk and either pay someone else to make the slides or just make them stupidly simple with just like an outline and not worry about the animations and what things look like.

Jocelyn Sams: Could you do this? Could you have your people meet you live and say, "You know what? Today, we're gonna talk about this particular topic, and I'm going to answer your questions."? That's no preparation for you. You can record it on Zoom and have it there. That's content for your community.

Shane Sams: Yeah, the hardest part about content is the preparation. That's where the mental bandwidth and space really comes from. Right? You gotta plan. You gotta get a organized thing, whatever, or you could just say, like Jocelyn said, "Here's the topic. I know you have questions like, 'Where do you submit your music to get it to the video game companies?'" Maybe you just talk about that topic. Right?

Jocelyn Sams: That's no preparation. People ask the questions for you. This is what we do. If you guys haven't noticed, this is what we do.

Shane Sams: We have found, too. I haven't made a course in, like, a year and a half because ... We do trainings, where we talk to people because it's way more beneficial and people can take action way better when you just answer their questions. Right? So it's better for your member. It's better for you. I'm not sure if you ever really have to create any more courses. You could just have a conversation once a month with your members. That gives them a huge reason to stick around. Instead of going 10 hours, it's one hour of your life.

Daniel Hulsman: The one trick with that, and I agree with you. I think actually found a solution for this trip-up here. But the one trip-up here is that I am personally not a working composer. This is something that I wanted to do and saw a hole and so I started educating myself and piecing things together. In terms of some of the expertise that people may ask me about on those live calls, I don't have it.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well, how about if you have a special guest on?

Daniel Hulsman: That is what I have done, actually. I was feeling like I should do something like that, but I was really anxious about answering the questions myself. So I'm gonna try to do these monthly. I'm doing industry expert calls, so I'm having them come on.

Jocelyn Sams: I think that's perfect.

Shane Sams: People are there to actually ask the questions, too. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep, yep. Yep.

Shane Sams: I will say this, though. Just from a mindset issue, anyone who's holding any kind of member calls, you're never going to have all the answers.

Jocelyn Sams: We definitely don't have all the answers.

Shane Sams: If you listen to alot of our member calls, you will find many times where we say, "I don't know." It's the most powerful three words you can say in the human language. Anyone who says they've got all the answers is lying. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: There's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know, but I will find the answer for you."

Jocelyn Sams: You know what the beautiful thing is. A lot of times on our member calls, we won't know the answer. Then there will be other people in the room that are like, "Hey, I had this experience, and this is what I found out." They'll talk to each other, and you can say, "Hey, Jane said that she did x-y-z.

Shane Sams: You can also do this like this. "Hey, I don't know the answer, but I know a guy who does. So how about next month, I get him on here or her on here, and we'll talk to them about it." Then they're like, "Sweet. I'm paying another month 'cause I wanna come back when you get that next special guest." Right?

Jocelyn Sams: That's part of the allure ... is that you probably have industry contacts that they don't have.

Shane Sams: Look how low-energy this could be right now. All right. "I don't have to create any content anymore." There's bandwidth back.

Jocelyn Sams: I find somebody to help me answer questions that I don't know the answers to.

Shane Sams: I systemize promotion where Monday, Wednesday, Friday, these are the tasks that I do with old content. I'm done. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: I stop thinking that I've gotta create a training every month, and I just literally schedule one hour of my time to do expert interviews or one-on-one calls. I still think you should not be scared to go by yourself. Okay? Even finding a guest requires bandwidth. Okay? So if you can go one month with a guest, one month without, you buy yourself all that bandwidth back. Okay?

Shane Sams: So what's next, what's the third thing that's just ... other than that?

Jocelyn Sams: What about interacting with your group? We, kind of, talked about that a little bit earlier. Is that something you would say?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah, I've got a pretty tech-savvy group on a pretty not-so-attractive ... or even super ... it doesn't even work that great, forum website. It works. It is like if you saw, "Pirates of the Caribbean," the dinghy ship that he comes in on at the beginning of the movie that's slowly.. Yeah. It totally got him there. You know? And it's getting people there.

Daniel Hulsman: It's also something that I've gotten feedback on and that it has taken some time in terns of me troubleshooting it. So, to drive to my answer here, I would love to make the website work work a little bit better so that I don't have to spend as much time troubleshooting things or fixing things when I ad more people in January.

Shane Sams: So, have you researched any solutions for that?

Daniel Hulsman: I have. A couple of them, I've tried, and shouldn't have and undid those.

Jocelyn Sams: You're not alone.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. You know? That code doesn't look that scary. I'll copy and past things and see what happens.

Jocelyn Sams: Have you ever broken your website at least once? You're not a real entrepreneur-

Shane Sams: You're not alone.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Backup your website, people. Back up your website, people. Backup your website. Just like there's a learning curve. There are times when I think something's broken, but it's not actually broken. So It's just a lot of things have come up, but I've fixed a couple. There are a couple that I've not been able to fix. There's one big one that I'm ho[ping a buddy of mine is gonna fix for me tomorrow. So, I'm trying to get there. I've got actually a tool I'm really excited about that's gonna help me fix the look and feel without me having to actually code anything, which is great.

Shane Sams: This is interesting. So ... and this is important for people to remember ... Sometimes there's no solution besides grind. Right? This is an issue that you're just gonna have to get past or, I promise you there's stuff in our forums that break. Like there's one thing that was happening to our moderators. Every time something happened, it would knock them back in the normal participants. Right? It's bizarre. It was terrible, though, because the moderators would log in and everyday you had to turn them back into a moderator or they couldn't do that they were doing.

Shane Sams: Here's the deal. We found out it was a glitch within the software itself and there was no fix for it. Now, we could've said to ourselves, "Well I gotta fix this. I gotta change everything. People are complaining about it." Whatever, or we could say, "Here's the deal. When it happens, we're going to turn your moderator light back on." It's someone human is just gonna have to touch that thing. Okay? And we get someone to program it and fix it.

Shane Sams: Just accepting the warts and all of the things that we use, because no system is perfect. Everything's got glitches. Everything screws up all the time, and it's just true. That's a fact. Accepting that can give you a little bit of bandwidth back, even when it's frustrating. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Just knowing that, eventually, you might evolve into something different will be fine.

Jocelyn Sams: I know that you are dying inside.

Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. It's like all, Daniel hears is a fork on a chalkboard with the words that are coming out of my mouth.

Jocelyn Sams: I totally know that that is what you're feeling right now because this is what I feel when he says this to me.

Shane Sams: But, in reality, you just gotta accept it and you gotta move forward with what you got because ... and I always challenge Jocelyn 'cause she brings these issues to me, as well, all the time. I always look at her and I go, "How many members do we have? How many people have actually complained about it?" Nine times out of 10, that's a single digit percentage. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: So, unless 30 members are like, "This is terrible," it may not be as big a problem as you think it is. It's just something you're latching onto because it feels good.

Jocelyn Sams: So, for right now, we're asking you to be like Elsa and let it go.

Shane Sams: Let it go.

Daniel Hulsman: Wow. That just happened.

Shane Sams: That just happened.

Daniel Hulsman: Did you just frozen me?

Shane Sams: I just frozen you.

Daniel Hulsman: We are parents. If it's not obvious, we are parents.

Jocelyn Sams: Parent life.

Shane Sams: Anyone with a child in the last ten years knows what we're talking about. Okay, so let's just look at these three things. The list can keep going. This gives us a framework. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Getting bandwidth back, in those first two things, gives you a lot more bandwidth to deal with that third thing. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Really, it's just about listing all those tasks out, Dude, one at a time and saying, "What can I control? What can I not control? What can I let go of? Do I need to do anything else besides just keep hammering what worked?", which was doing the challenge, getting more members, doing the challenge, getting more members, dong the challenge, getting more members, doing the challenge, getting more members. Anything else, really, probably, just needs to be let go because you've got so much else going on.

Shane Sams: What happens is you get to a critical mass point where it's like, "Man, I've been doing this long enough, now," and it's working, and you look up and you're like, "Oh, wait. I may not have to go to that job anymore," or, "I may be able to let something go," or "Maybe I ought to turn this over to somebody else 'cause I can afford to hire somebody." Then it starts getting easier. Right?

Jocelyn Sams: So, basically, for everything, you just need to ask yourself, "Will this move the needle?" That's not a hard question to ask.

Shane Sams: Or, "Will it remove a little bit of this weight off my back"? That's an important question, too. You know. Entrepreneurs are all success-driven, but, man, sometimes, it's just like, "You know what? It ain't worth it and I'm not gonna deal with it, and I need this off my back 'cause it's stressing me out. So I'm just not gonna do that thing." When you do that, you get lighter and everything else becomes good again. That's where we want to get you to ... is that place where everything's good again.

Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Yes. Still, I feel anxious.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, Daniel, if you're anything like me, and as I said before, I suspect that you are, you will probably always feel anxious.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: You felt better in the first two answers. Then the last one, you're like, "Oh, anxiety."

Daniel Hulsman: Well, it's that feeling of disbelief. It's like, "If I really let those things go, it's really not gonna fall apart." All that's going through my head right now is if I'm not creating content in the way that I've got stuck in my head ... If I'm not sending more emails, if I'm not doing that kind of stuff content-wise for my members, am I really going to keep growing the number, or is the trend number gonna grow?

Shane Sams: May not grow as fast. You know what I'm saying? It it's really bothering you, take your calendar and figure out a week where you can block some content creation and, at least, you'll offload it onto that calendar and you'll know there's a point where you'll come back to it.

Jocelyn Sams: Things like content creation, that has to be batched. You hear us say that all the time. You have to get it. Maybe during Christmas break, choose one day and say, "Okay, I'm gonna spend this whole day making content, and then I'm done."

Shane Sams: And it's over. Then you not gonna worry about it. Just schedule it, and it's done, and it gets it off your plate. Even then, it doesn't always have to be done. There's days we don't create content.

Shane Sams: I email people most days, but I think yesterday, I didn't send any emails out. I might've. I can't remember. You know, some days I wake up and I'm like, "Man I got a lot of other stuff going on. My son's got this. My daughter's got that. Me and Jocelyn gotta be somewhere. We're gonna have three podcast recordings." It's just like, "Man, something's gotta give." It has to. Can't do it all. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So, it's just about getting to that point where this is all a slow roll forward. That's what being in business for yourself really is, and, as long as you keep moving forward, sometimes you can slow down. Sometimes you can speed up. I read a great quote the other day that said, "Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."

Daniel Hulsman: Oh, I like that.

Shane Sams: Isn't that a good quote? That's, kind of like, where we're at is like, "Just move forward right now until you get the energy back or other things clear up in your life or your work to give you enough bandwidth to focus more on the one thing." It's not a race. It doesn't matter when you get to a hundred members. It just matters that you get to a hundred members. If I get there in six months and you get there in 12, well, 12 months from now, we're still sitting around going, "Hey, good job." We both got to a hundred members, but don't put so much pressure on yourself to succeed so fast. Another thing, too, that ... the highs and lows, man, like dealing with the dopamine rush is part of being an online ... You just got your first taste of the high. Right? Well, the next high will be higher 'cause something's gonna happen and you're gonna have another breakthrough, and all of a sudden, 200 customers show up. Then the crash after that's a little bit harder. Right?

Shane Sams: It's like last year when we sold out our live event in a week. We were like, "Oh, best thing ever." Then, literally, a week later, we're both in this existential crisis of life, like, "What are we doing?" You know, like-

Jocelyn Sams: Like we find things that are wrong. If things are going well, we're like, "Oh, well this one thing's not," and it's just like something totally ridiculous. We're like, "Why do we do this?"

Shane Sams: Our brains are always seeking that ... our brains hate change, whether it's good or bad. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Jocelyn Sams: Subconsciously, people always try to get back to the status quo.

Shane Sams: And we don't want you to go back to the status quo. You've come too far to turn back now. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Awesome. Okay, well let's zero back around. This is deep conversation. A lot going on. A lot to unpack here, as the gurus like to say. What do you think your focus should be? Usually we ask 24 hours, but because you've got so much going on, and we've got about six weeks left in the year ... or seven ... What do you really, really the one thing that should really get your attention in those next seven weeks? What do you think that is?

Daniel Hulsman: I think I should not create content on the blog. I should not deliberately not think about that and deliberately not beat myself up for it. I guess what I need to do is I really need to repurpose existing content and, maybe, that's externally for non-members and, internally for members, I need to just loosen up. Make things a little bit more casual in terms of the content like the monthly calls things. That works well. Even, we've got this chat thing that we run Discord for gamers, and it's a Discord server. It's like a chat server. I drop audio files, of me just talking, in there. People love that. So just like doing that, just me talking, answering a question directly, and posting ... kinda like you're doing now in the forums. It's like I saw a question I might post a video response. Like doing that kind of stuff. Keeping it a little bit less formal, but a little bit easier for me to just bang out whatever I can.

Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely. I love that.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. So, I guess-

Jocelyn Sams: People will find value in that.

Daniel Hulsman: Yeah. Whenever I've done that, people have really enjoyed that. That happened one day where I just got in there and was just typing responses quickly. I guess someone was in the middle of a negotiation, and they wanted advice. Everyone else was in there. It was like, "This is gold." I was like, "Oh."

Shane Sams: There you go, man.

Daniel Hulsman: Okay. Great.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So there's the training, right there.

Shane Sams: Let me challenge you really quickly to do one more thing too. Okay?

Daniel Hulsman: Sure.

Shane Sams: When are you gonna do your next challenge? How far away is that?

Daniel Hulsman: January 1, it should start, keeping schedule. Yep.

Shane Sams: I really wanna challenge you. You just, basically, had three categories. You had non-members. You had members. Then you have your challenge coming up. Okay? I really wanna challenge you to only spend about four hours a week on your online business. Now, when I say that, I don't mean like the little thing you just said where you were chatting with them and dropping in thing. That sounded fun to me ... like you were, kind of, geeking out about doing that. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep. Yep.

Shane Sams: You were talking about something you love. I'm talking about actual work.

Jocelyn Sams: Like work that feels, kinda, heavy.

Shane Sams: Work that feels like work. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Divide that up however you want. Right? It can be an hour on non-members, an hour on members, an hour on your launch, then an hour for something else each week. Okay?

Daniel Hulsman: Okay.

Shane Sams: Really, really challenge yourself to put four hours on the calendar and don't work past that on this online business. Okay? Really discipline yourself to do that. The other stuff's fine, like if you're just sitting around, watching a TV show, and you're like, "Hey, I wonder what's going on in this work group?" Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: That's different, totally different. That's fun stuff, but put it on the calendar. Stick to it and every other minute of your calendar, give to all these other things that are coming. You got a baby coming. You got other things. You got work. You got all these other things.

Jocelyn Sams: You have a very pregnant wife who needs your help.

Shane Sams: Yeah, right, exactly. That's important.

Daniel Hulsman: Yes.

Shane Sams: Even like coming home today. I know we had this podcast. Just communicating that you need 30 minutes of quiet or whatever to recharge or letting yourself know that and take back some of the time. You'll find it's gonna be like putting a magnifying glass on those four hours.

Jocelyn Sams: And you will automatically prioritize because you have no choice.

Shane Sams: You have no choice. You have to cut things out in that way. All right?

Daniel Hulsman: Okay.

Shane Sams: All right, man.

Daniel Hulsman: All right.

Shane Sams: Daniel, I'm so thankful that you came on the show today, that you were super transparent, and you got a lot of stuff going on. People always wanna think that, "After I launch and make my money, everything's gonna be okay," but that's, actually, when it gets hard.

Jocelyn Sams: It also gets super rewarding. There is something good on the other side. It's just like you have to go through some pain to get something beautiful.

Shane Sams: Yeah. When it ends up being 500 members and life looks really, really different and things really, really get to the point where you're in control again, it's gonna feel a lot better. I told someone, just the other day, this. When you get your business going, the first thing you have to do is change your life, and that's really, really hard. Right? It's really getting everything in place to change your life, but after you do that, you get the choice of what the rest of your life looks like. It feels so out-of-control when we first launch, when we first make money, when things really start happening 'cause all these moving parts enter our life that weren't there the day before the launch. Right?

Daniel Hulsman: Yep.

Shane Sams: Eventually, somewhere down the road, you it a point and you're like, "I have a choice. I have a choice to do anything I want with everything else for the rest of my life," and it was totally worth it. You're almost there, Dude. You just gotta keep going. Okay?

Daniel Hulsman: Sounds good.

Shane Sams: All right.

Shane Sams: All right, guys. That was a great, great conversation with Daniel. We cannot wait to see what he does next in his online business and we cannot wait to see what you do next in your online journey, as well. We hope that you would allow us to be a part of that journey inside of the Flip Your Life community.

Shane Sams: You can start a 30-day free trial to the Flip Your Life community, right now. All you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/free. If you're out there. If you're grinding, and you feel like you're alone and you need some support and you need some help, like Daniel did that day when he felt that soul-crushing lack of motivation, everybody rallied around and picked him up. Jocelyn came in and cheered him on. We would love to be that for you, as well. So go to flippedlifestyle.com/free, and start your 30-day free trial today.

Shane Sams: All right, guys. That is all the time we have left for this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. We cannot wait to be back with you again next time. Until then, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Daniel's Website
• Flipped Lifestyle Podcast 212
• Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Waiting List
• Flip Your Life community 30-day trial

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

Get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW!

– https://flippedlifestyle.com/free