Loading...
businessentrepreneurship
FL265 - We help Christal take her Virtual Assistant Business to the next level
About this Episode
In today's episode, we help Christal take her virtual assistant business to the next level.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast, we help Christal take her virtual assistant 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.
Shane Sams: We're a real family who 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 today. We're super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show so that we can help them take their business and their dreams to the next level. Our guest today is Christal Allen Harrahill. Christal, welcome to the show.
Christal H.: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Jocelyn Sams: It is great to talk to you, we saw you not too long ago at Flip Your Life live, which was awesome. If you've watched our highlight video, you may even see me chatting with Christal a little bit at the event. So definitely look for that. But yes, it is great to have you, we are really excited to talk to you today.
Shane Sams: How awesome was Flip Your Life Live by the way, was that not amazing?
Christal H.: It really was, I was so amazed at the organization of it and how much I actually got done while at the event. I've been to a lot of conferences in the past and that was rare.
Shane Sams: Yeah, we tried to make it a working event because we looked back at all the live events we had ever been to when we were planning and creating Flip Your Life live. That was what we said to ourselves, we looked at each other and we're like, man if you don't get anything done, what's the point, you're just going to a party, and you can have a party at the house.
Jocelyn Sams: Exactly, I mean it's nice to get all the information, but then if you don't do anything with it, what was the point.
Christal H.: Exactly.
Shane Sams: We were talking before we actually started recording. We just released the highlight reel for Flip Your Life Live, which you might have seen that on social media or somewhere out there in the internet sphere. But we were talking about how we got emotional, 'cause we were like oh, I miss everybody. Like it was so fun, like where is everybody.
Shane Sams: So luckily there will be another Flip Your Life Family Reunion next year, we'll be all over that.
Christal H.: And the food was amazing by the way, I'm still missing that hot chicken.
Shane Sams: Oh man, we're southern people, and when we get that southern food going, we're not holding back.
Jocelyn Sams: When you come to a live event in the south, you've gotta have some good southern food.
Shane Sams: Yeah, you're not just getting wraps from some takeout joint. We're going southern fried chicken and hot chicken, all that good stuff.
Jocelyn Sams: So if you come for nothing else, come for the food okay.
Shane Sams: We actually went before we planned the event. We drove down there to taste the food.
Jocelyn Sams: Because it was very important to me. When we went down there, I was like there will be no frozen biscuits or nothing from a mix. These things have gotta be homemade. Some of these people have never had biscuits before.
Christal H.: That's right.
Shane Sams: The chef that ran the hotel, he's like, you want me to do what. I'm like we want grandmamma's southern biscuits, you are not a grandmother, he was a dude. I was like, you're not a grandmother, but I want it to taste like my grandmamma made them biscuits.
Jocelyn Sams: And y'all I got a good southern pallet here okay, you better be making those biscuits from scratch, and they had better be appropriately salted and they better be good.
Shane Sams: So the dude walks out in the thing and his first try at a grandmamma southern biscuit. He actually made this, looked like a cake, it was like as big as my head. He made this giant biscuit and he was like, I was just trying to mess around and get it right. Then he made like some other biscuits at the thing.
Shane Sams: But he had made this huge biscuit, he was like man I never made a biscuit like that before. He got it right though.
Jocelyn Sams: We actually went down there, we drove four hours to taste these biscuits.
Shane Sams: We drove four hours to taste the biscuits.
Jocelyn Sams: To make sure they're all right. Well that's a lot of talk about biscuits.
Shane Sams: Let's drag it back around here. You wanna try a Flip Your Life biscuit, you gotta be at Flip Your Life live next year.
Jocelyn Sams: We gotta bring it next year, we gotta make sure these are good again.
Shane Sams: I know right.
Jocelyn Sams: Okay, well I'm sure the listeners would like to hear about something more than southern biscuits. So let's start talking a little bit about you. Let us know who you are and a little bit about your background and what you are doing right now online.
Christal H.: Well, my story really begins in my previous career in higher education. Towards the end, I found myself driving myself to the emergency room for the second time in two years. That really was my wake up call. I was under a lot of stress and I just found myself in a toxic situation. Not to say anything bad about higher ed, it was just a very specific situation.
Christal H.: I love higher education, I'm always an advocate for it. But that really was my wake up call that I had to make a change, and I had been feeling that it was no longer a good fit for me anyhow. I've always wanted to be in business. So I took a step out on faith, and I started a personal concierge business, where I would literally drive around town and take kids to ballet practice, drop off dry cleaning, and then I also had a client who was in town, but I worked for him virtually.
Christal H.: So after a couple of months, almost nine months of doing the business as I just described, I realized that the driving around part of it wasn't really the best way to make money. I decided to transition that to where I only work virtually so I could stay in one location and serve a lot more clients. My general virtual assistant business was then born. But as I just mentioned, it was general, and I served a lot of different clients, I had a personal chef, I had a virtual CFO, I had franchise consultants that I served and it was a great learning lesson, but I finally came to the realization after a lot of research and soul searching that I really needed to niche down. That came in the form of serving realtors and managing their transactions.
Christal H.: That's what my virtual assistant business looks like today, and in the meantime, I also married my neighbor and had a baby.
Shane Sams: Throw that in there, just some minor stuff by the way.
Christal H.: Just the minor things, you know.
Shane Sams: Did you say you married your neighbor?
Christal H.: I did, my husband and I, it was just one house in between us and we lived next to each other for six years without paying attention to each other.
Shane Sams: One day I went to a barbecue and there was Jim standing there and I said hey, I should have married you. That's a crazy story, how did you guys meet?
Christal H.: He sent me, I guess he noticed me walking my dog every now and again, then one day our street was repaved and we all had to park like a couple blocks away and we found ourselves walking next to each other. Then probably about a couple months later, I came home from work and found a basket on my door and it was a gift basket from him. It was like fruits and nuts and sweets and I went next door to thank him and it started from there.
Jocelyn Sams: The rest is history.
Christal H.: The rest is history.
Jocelyn Sams: Well at least he didn't tell you his printer was broken because that's bad news. Avoid those weirdos.
Shane Sams: Yeah that's how I got Jocelyn to hang out with me.
Christal H.: Oh, that's how you got Jocelyn.
Shane Sams: She was walking in the dorm and I saw her and I was like whoa, that girls' ... she was walking up the stairs and I was walking down the stairs. I was like holy smokes that girl's good looking and what's your name Jocelyn. I was going out with my friends and she was going up to her room and I didn't get to talk to her there. I left and I couldn't stop thinking about her and then a few days later she walked like into the dorm. So we did the classic hey, what's your major and all that good stuff.
Shane Sams: She goes computer science, and I'm like, my printer is broken, you're a computer person, you should come and fix this for me. But she got in the room and the printer worked. It was broken, but I thought-
Christal H.: But you were quick on your feet with that answer, that was pretty good.
Shane Sams: But moving on, I'm glad you threw Jim in there as a p.s., that whole story.
Jocelyn Sams: All right, and you've got a new baby, which is awesome.
Shane Sams: That's awesome.
Christal H.: Yes.
Shane Sams: Let me ask you a couple follow up questions real quick. What was the stress and the health problem. Was it a panic attack, or like what.
Christal H.: It exactly was that and I had never had one before. So if you've ever had one before, you think you're having a heart attack. The chest pain is intense and I was driving home from choir practice, and I had almost made it home and was literally like a couple miles away from the nearest hospital and I ended up calling my grandmother and just saying hey just stay on the phone with me until I make it to the hospital.
Christal H.: But yeah, it was a situation where I basically just, like I said it was toxic and I really at that point in my career hadn't really learned to use all of the maybe the resources and tools at my disposal, and didn't really have the support system that I needed to get help in that situation and didn't really ask for it as much as I should have. It was tough, it was really tough.
Shane Sams: It's amazing what we do to ourselves in the modern world like falling into societies norms and getting in lock step and doing these things where we push and we push and we push and we push ourselves until the point where we literally get sick. We feel like we're dying and it's all because of stress. It's because we get so caught up in the momentum that we can't stop ourselves and we feel out of control.
Shane Sams: I was reading a book the other day and it was talking about how in the modern world we're so stressed all the time by all of the expectations and social media and the internet and all these things that are really powerful tools that have made our lives better are also kind of slowly killing us because no matter how good we do, we can now see people all over the world.
Shane Sams: So we will always be able to find someone doing better, which makes us feel worse and gives us more stress and then all of a sudden we have a panic attack and it was talking about how the stress hormone cortisol that we're all releasing into our bodies more often than we ever have in human history. That's what makes you old, and that's what makes your body fail, and it's just all because of this crazy rat race that we put ourselves in. Even in the last 25 years because of how fast society works now.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah I saw this quote on Facebook actually this morning. One of my friends has posted it and it said, survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life. It is not meant to be how you live.
Christal H.: Oh wow, that's powerful.
Shane Sams: How many people right now listening to this podcast are just living in survival mode every day of their life. That's what me and Jocelyn have really talked about a lot lately with our mission for Flipped Lifestyle.
Shane Sams: It's always been about online business and then it expanded past that. Things like even service based businesses like you're doing with this personal concierge, this virtual assistant stuff. But really it's just about taking control of your life and being able to work for yourself, work from home, and get some of that life back so you can live a few hours a day not stressed out. Not freaked out by everything because if you don't ... if it doesn't kill you, it's at least gonna make your life miserable. That's not good because we only have one life.
Christal H.: Amen.
Shane Sams: This personal concierge business, this is brilliant. You're amazing, ever since the first time I ever talked to you. We had a coaching call a few months ago and even just me seeing you in the forums and your posts, it's amazing what you did to build to the point you are now. You said this is too stressful, you're in higher education, it's probably a pretty good job.
Christal H.: Right.
Shane Sams: You got benefits, you got things like that, it's not like you were digging ditches. But it's the same thing for us. We had good education jobs, tenured, all that good stuff. But you said this is too much and then you went and you invented this job. This personal concierge where you're literally doing these errands for people, but you built a business out of it.
Shane Sams: So many people want to jump straight to the full blown like impressive income and it's all perfect. But you're like no, I'm gonna create something new, I'm gonna get in my car and drive around. My dad always told me if the economy ever went bad, he's like we'll just start washing people's cars. We'll go to people who still have jobs, and we'll wash their car right in the parking lot. We'll bring a bucket of water with us.
Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes we'll play that game. We'll be like if everything falls apart, what will we do. We just kind of play that game, there's no way we could go back to regular jobs now.
Shane Sams: Oh no.
Christal H.: Same here.
Shane Sams: But like you just invented this thing, but then you evolved it, and you went to the next level and you said okay, now I'm gonna be a virtual assistant. How did you find gigs for that, 'cause I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that are like hey, I can do that, I can be a personal concierge or I could be a virtual assistant. Did you go to Upwork or other places like that to find gigs?
Christal H.: No I didn't learn about Upwork until some years later, oddly enough. So I just networked within the city. So even though I knew I wanted to work virtually, yeah, I networked locally. I went to Chamber of Commerce and other ... yeah-
Shane Sams: It's a hustle.
Christal H.: Meetup and other networking events and just-
Shane Sams: See man, there's so many people listening to this right now and if Christal's not your role model at this point of the podcast, I don't know what you're listening to because you're sitting there listening going, man I wish I could change my life. But I don't know what my digital product would be.
Shane Sams: Well, how about don't do a digital product. Go to the Chamber of Commerce, or go up and down Main Street, knock on every door and be like hey, is there anything you'd like to outsource to me, I'll even pick up your dry cleaning.
Christal H.: Yeah.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you know we're trying to talk about this more and more now because I feel like this idea of "passive income" has become so romanticized, especially in this space. People have this, I don't know, like vision of going to sleep and making millions of dollars overnight while they're asleep.
Shane Sams: I'm sure somebody's doing that.
Jocelyn Sams: While that is possible-
Shane Sams: Like it or not.
Jocelyn Sams: While it is possible, like it's not the only way to make things work.
Christal H.: That's right.
Jocelyn Sams: I just love what you're doing and I love that message that if you really want to make something change badly enough, you'll make it happen.
Shane Sams: Yeah, I actually told a guy the other day, we were talking to ... he was trying to get to that point where he had some things he wanted to do. He's one of our all access mastermind clients, and he had this big thing he wanted to do and he wanted to get there and he wanted to choose his life. That's kind of where you are now, you're kind of like man, I've got some choices now, because I put in all this work. Because I went through this process.
Shane Sams: I've got this online business idea, I've got this expansion idea, I've got an idea or two to create some passive income and start scaling. He wanted to get to that point, but he wanted to skip all those things you've already been through Christal, like me and Jocelyn have already been through.
Shane Sams: I told him during our first session, I said, until you change your life, you don't get to choose your life.
Christal H.: I love that.
Shane Sams: That's what you did, you said, I'm dying from stress, and I've gotta make a change. So you physically went out and hustled your way into a change. Then you changed it again to make it even better, and now all of a sudden these choices are opening up before you, but it didn't happen until you made that decision to change, and change your life and do something different.
Christal H.: It really didn't, and there were times where I thought, is this really gonna go anywhere, and it was definitely scary to transition to working just virtually, because I wasn't connected to the online virtual world the way that I am now. I didn't have a Rolodex of people to reach out to, so you're right, I really did have to go out there and hustle.
Christal H.: It ended up with me eventually working as Natalie Egdall's executive assistant, and then through her I heard of you and Jocelyn and then got connected with you, and then used your tools and the membership community and the live event to help my dream of helping other people do what I do.
Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so lets sort of walk down this path a little bit. So we've told this story of you had a bad experience in your work, you started doing some side jobs like in real life. Kind of branched out into the virtual world, and so where are you today. What iteration has this taken now?
Christal H.: Sure, so right now I still have my virtual assistant business where I serve only realtors, and I have six clients that I serve and I do that by managing their transactions. Then obviously I'm working, my side hustle is building the membership community for virtual assistants who find themselves not being able to have enough hours because they're general and they haven't really looked at a specific industry. So I can help them learn how to get in this business of serving realtors.
Christal H.: Then also, working with stay-at-home moms who want to bring in income into their home or maybe they just want more than the title of mom. Sometimes I think women, we feel bad for wanting that. I wanna encourage women that you can do work that matters and have some self-fulfillment in addition to being a wonderful mom.
Shane Sams: Yeah, for sure. I love the way you've niched down because a lot of people do wanna be a virtual assistant, there's a million different ways to be a virtual assistant. We have virtual assistants that are editing our podcast, we have an administrative virtual assistant who's like our right hand woman, and she's making everything happen behind the scenes.
Shane Sams: We've had project managers, we've had all these people who work for us virtually, and I love even, like you think well how is Christal only gonna serve realtors. Well there's 1.1 million licensed realtors in the United States, according to this thing I just pulled up.
Christal H.: You got that right Shane, that's right.
Shane Sams: You only need like 10 of them.
Jocelyn Sams: And it's a really good living.
Christal H.: This is true.
Shane Sams: Like this is an awesome thing, and also it's controllable. That's the difference in the economy now and in the past is, you had to go to work for somebody 40 hours a week in the past. But you can build the life you want, like you just said, at home. Because what if you just got 10 hours a week that you were helping realtors and it helped your family move the needle a little bit financially, like you said, gave you that fulfillment.
Shane Sams: Maybe your kids are about to graduate high school, then it's wow, I can turn that into 20, 30 hours a week after they leave.
Jocelyn Sams: There are so many people out there who want to do something different, but they don't necessarily want to be a business owner. They don't necessarily want to be a CEO in charge of-
Christal H.: Right.
Jocelyn Sams: Different people. I love this because it just gives people opportunity where they might think, well there's no other opportunity out there, I have to go to this nine to five, no, there are other opportunities.
Shane Sams: Not everyone's gonna be a course teacher online. Like that's a good goal to get to, but man do not ever discount the ability to control your life through service based work on the internet.
Christal H.: Absolutely.
Shane Sams: Out of those 1.1 million realtors, I'd say some of them haven't sold anything.
Christal H.: This is true.
Shane Sams: There may be some realtors' people in the industry right now that are working in the industry and thinking wait a minute, you mean I can just serve the realtors, stay in the industry. What a selling point if you're a realtor and you're having trouble with the sales part. You know the industry, you know.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah.
Shane Sams: You could go serve them through their transactions.
Christal H.: That's right.
Shane Sams: In any niche you're in, there's some way to serve someone virtually. With the marketplaces we have now, like Upwork.com and things like that, that's a great entryway into online business and building your own thing. You're awesome Christal, so.
Jocelyn Sams: Well we're very excited about this subject. Like I said, we're rally trying to talk more about services and less about just things that are, I guess you would say intangible.
Shane Sams: Also, the combination of the two, which is where we're getting to in your business like you've done the service thing. You're not gonna stop just doing the service thing, but you have this education thing now where you can help other people do what you're doing, you can help them make money like this virtually through these real estate offices. That's where your courses and stuff are going now online, correct.
Christal H.: That's correct.
Shane Sams: Okay, Christal, tell us a little bit about what your product offering looks like right now.
Christal H.: Sure, so right now I have a couple ways that people can work with me. They can work with me through a strategy session, where I take 45 minutes of their time, and we take a deep dive into their business and they leave with an action plan. Or what they can do is work with me through my membership community, which is where I have the TC, which is the transaction coordinator, master class located.
Christal H.: In that master class, they will, after taking that course, they will know how to start the foundational work of the actual business. Which means, how to find realtors, how to set up procedures for your business, how to charge, different documents and resources that they should use when starting their business. Checklists, community, I give bi-monthly coaching calls, so that's really the most important way that I'm excited about serving people is through the membership community. So I just need to grow that because I'm so excited about it.
Shane Sams: Okay, now have you done strategy sessions with people?
Christal H.: I have and I love them Shane.
Shane Sams: How much did that cost?
Christal H.: They're $137.
Shane Sams: Okay, that is amazing. So that's ... this is the whole gamut of nine to five to hustle and grind in a service based thing, to learning how to do it and making a living for yourself, to coaching, which you've already got people doing it. I hope everybody's taking notes. You all need to pull over wherever you are right now. If you're on a treadmill, get off and go-
Jocelyn Sams: If you're on the lawnmower-
Shane Sams: If you're on the lawnmower, get off. Now, you created a course before you launched the membership, correct?
Christal H.: That is correct, I did have a beta group. So I had a beta group of six people and I had a very small email list at the time, I think of like 33 people or something, plus a YouTube channel. I launched the beta group, and got six people to sign on before I'd even created the class. I literally hadn't even created the first lesson yet.
Shane Sams: There's presell.
Christal H.: Yes.
Shane Sams: We got it, you must be going through the Flip Your Life blueprint right now.
Christal H.: Yeah, you guys taught me.
Jocelyn Sams: You've been listening, I like that.
Christal H.: I have been.
Shane Sams: How much was the course when you sold it?
Christal H.: I just did it for $55 each.
Shane Sams: That's fine, yeah that's perfect. Gosh you got six people to get ... you made 300 bucks just for recording some videos, is that not amazing.
Christal H.: It was, yeah.
Shane Sams: And you had a list of 33 people?
Christal H.: A very small list, and to be honest with you, we'll probably talk about this, but my list is not that big right now.
Shane Sams: Right, so basically, let's see, what is the percentage on that Jocelyn, this ones math.
Jocelyn Sams: That's math, I can't do, you know that.
Shane Sams: Let me do some math here, divided by 33 equals ... you converted 18% of your list.
Jocelyn Sams: Which is pretty darn good.
Shane Sams: So you can go get 1,000 people on the list.
Christal H.: Yes, I need to do that, you have to help me do that.
Shane Sams: We will do that. The membership it's how much right now?
Christal H.: So the membership will be $57.
Shane Sams: And this is brand new correct?
Christal H.: That is correct, I just launched it three weeks ago, and as of right now, I don't have any members in it. So it's $57 a month.
Shane Sams: Then what was the deal you offered for the launch?
Christal H.: So the launch, I offered the beta members that monthly price of $19 a month for the six beta people, then $57 for everyone else.
Shane Sams: And no one has took that yet, correct?
Christal H.: That is correct, and I do have to tell you that I honestly haven't really promoted it as much as I'm going to and I know I should have. But I think I got to a point where I was really grinding and staying up late. This was also during a time when my baby was young and he would wake up during the night to feed.
Christal H.: So I was pretty exhausted, and I told myself when I went to Nashville, that after leaving that event, I would absolutely launch the membership community. Then I just needed to listen to my spirit and just be quiet for a little bit. I know it sounds kind of counterproductive, because I had all this momentum leading up to your live event, and I learned so much, and I really did implement some things. But I just needed to listen to my spirit and just be quiet for a bit.
Christal H.: I did, I took time and I went to bed early and just really took care of myself the way that I probably should have been doing before.
Shane Sams: That's perfect.
Christal H.: Yeah
Shane Sams: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. I love that mentality, that's the counter of what everyone else says, like work all the time period. That's what you got away from.
Christal H.: Yes, exactly.
Shane Sams: You've actually created freedom in your life to be able to choose that, and really everyone has that choice, they just don't acknowledge it. I love it, I love that, is that why I was looking at your form here. You launched this, when we're recording this it's November, you launched this, was it in October that you launched it?
Christal H.: It was.
Shane Sams: But the deadline was like December something, right?
Christal H.: Yes, that's when I told the beta group that they had to use their coupon code. They had until the end of the year.
Shane Sams: Yeah, perfect, so that's why no one's took it by the way. If you'd made it 72 hours, someone would have already bought. That's just the way it works. So when you start sending emails out, like before December 31st, especially these people that have already bought the course.
Jocelyn Sams: They will jump on board.
Shane Sams: They will jump on board.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: Humans do not do anything until the deadline arrives. That's how we are. Until we have to disrupt stasis and the status quo we're not going to.
Christal H.: Okay, yes.
Shane Sams: So you pushed that deadline out so far, that's why that. But I love that, once again, we might just talk all day. These are good decisions you're making, like you don't have to be ruthlessly efficient and ruthlessly productive and ruthlessly moving forward at all times in your life to make progress. What an amazing lesson you've learned through this whole journey.
Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you have a lot of amazing things in place already as we have mentioned. Let's talk a little bit about what is kind of holding you back a little bit. So talk about, maybe it's a fear, maybe it's some type of mindset issue or like maybe even an obstacle that's holding you back.
Christal H.: I know that I struggle with marketing to my tribe. I think that comes in the form of knowing that this is a business that you can't leave your nine to five on Friday, start on Monday and make a five figure income for that year. It doesn't happen that quick. You do have to put some effort and some time into really making it happen. Those are only the people who I wanna serve with that type of mindset.
Christal H.: But how do I communicate that to them in my marketing, also, there were some lifestyle changes that I had to make when I transitioned to virtual. Like for example, I had to work on getting rid of credit card debt. I went to try to pay my car off, the kind of personal decisions that I've made that allowed the virtual business to be more obtainable, because I didn't have so much debt weighing me down, for example.
Christal H.: But how do I communicate and work with people through that without taking complete responsibility for them to do that.
Shane Sams: Yeah, there's a couple things here. One, you have to let go of that word responsibility for other people. Jocelyn and I always say that it is our mission to give people the opportunity to change their life. This in the beginning wasn't the way we would word that. We said we want people to change their life, but we realized that no matter what we did, we could always lead that horse to water, but we couldn't make it drink.
Shane Sams: In reality, we could take the 20% of the people that would take action, and then take the 20% of those people and you can keep dividing down. There's always gonna be a minority of people that make it. Because honestly, not everyone is willing to do what it takes to change their life over time. It's not as important for you to take responsibility for other people, or convey that as much as it is for you to realize it's not up to you if they succeed. It's only up to you to provide opportunity. Quality of opportunity is all that matters in the world, we all have it, we all make choices, and we all have choices every day.
Shane Sams: Until that person decides not to buy your course, but to take action and try your course, they're never ever going to make it anyway. So anyone teaching online has to ... I'm not gonna say you go as far as letting go of the outcome that people get. Because we really do wanna study that and see how we can improve the possibility of a good outcome.
Shane Sams: But you've gotta let it go totally or you're not gonna be able to move forward. 'Cause you're gonna take it so personal when people fail, and I'll tell you right now, the majority of every niche will fail, that's just the way it is. But the people listening to this, and the people listening to you have to decide is if they're going to be the one that fails, because that's their choice.
Christal H.: That's true.
Jocelyn Sams: With all that being said though, there are some things that you can do in your marketing to help people to draw that line, and that's something that we're gonna be working on in the very near future. You can tell people, hey, I'm giving you all of this opportunity, but if you haven't made up your mind to do it yet-
Shane Sams: Don't take it.
Jocelyn Sams: Then, it's just not gonna be right for you. So in other words, you can say things like, if you're coming here looking for the easy button, this is not it.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: You've gotta be overt with that. You can still present the dream because you have to present the dream. You have to show people what's possible or they'll never attain it.
Jocelyn Sams: And back it up with evidence, other people who have done this. People you have helped yourself. Show people the evidence that it is possible, it can be done. But there's nothing you can do to make something happen. I could meet with you every single day for the next month, and if you haven't made up your mind to do something, it's still not gonna work.
Shane Sams: It's like climbing Everest, or running the four minute mile. You see the guy do it, but still a minority of humans will ever go up that mountain. Still a minority of humans will ever run the four minute mile. But it is possible, there are steps to get you there, and then you're gonna need a little bit of good fortune, and you're gonna need some help along the way. But it's possible, and that's really what you're trying to tell people.
Shane Sams: I got this amazing email I wanna real read quick. I was trying to look for it here while Jocelyn was talking. I pulled it up, actually posted this on Facebook. 'Cause I got a very similar ... this might help you with the verbiage of how to respond to this.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: I got an email the other day and it said, "Hey Shane, I have a question for you about your Flip Your Life community. You have a 30 day free trial. In that 30 days do you think someone that has no clue how do to this type of stuff, can start something and get it up and running and make money in the first 30 days. The reason I'm asking you is, me and my wife live paycheck to paycheck. I've seen all you and Jocelyn did, my big worry is that I'll try this, and when it's time to start paying for things, I won't be making enough money to cover the monthly fee."
Shane Sams: So this is the exact question you're talking about. This is the, you think I can do this, is this the magic button, is this the magic pill. Am I gonna be making plenty of money to cover all my business expenses and be making a profit in 30 days.
Shane Sams: So here's my answer. The very first sentence says, no period. Like it just says no, like not hey thanks for your question, it's just no, that is not possible. I go on to say, it took me six months to make our first money online. From our experience, the vast majority of people will not make money in their first month. But I do know this, you could and if you don't start, one month from now, six months from now, 12 months from now, you definitely won't be making any money, because you never got started.
Christal H.: That's right.
Shane Sams: We bought our first courses by having yard sale, canceling cable, we stopped eating out, we sold our house, we shopped at Aldi instead of Kroger, we resold clothes. I've even heard of people giving up all of their hobbies and free time to take a pizza route or driving for Uber to make the investment in their online business.
Shane Sams: The free trial exists to get you started, to get you involved, to get the ball rolling. There are months, maybe years of success, failure, trial and error after that. No other expert will tell you that, but me and Jocelyn will. Victory is long fought, hard earned, but well worth it.
Shane Sams: So I challenge you with this, if this is important for you to change your life, to really learn this, to do this you'll find a way, and if not, you'll find an excuse. Half the battle is shedding the belief in your past limitations, we hope to see you inside, good luck. Then I put a little P.S., everyone who has ever succeeded online at one time lived paycheck to paycheck.
Shane Sams: So you can see-
Christal H.: That's good.
Shane Sams: We don't shy away from this. We make it a part of everything we do because it's the truth and that's our most important thing we can do when we start teaching someone is to tell them the truth. So that's how you handle that Christal. You don't sugar coat it.
Jocelyn Sams: And you can say it in a nice way. I mean you don't have to be like, if you're here looking for an easy button, get out. You don't have to be rude about it, but there's ways of saying things that lets people know that hey this is not easy, it is going to require some work, but here are the testimonials, here are the people that we've helped, and they will tell you that it's worth it.
Jocelyn Sams: So yeah, it's just a mindset thing, it's a mindset thing for your audience. You just have to let them know hey, I want you to understand that this is not something that you can just do overnight.
Shane Sams: The fear here Christal, really, and a lot of people go through this when they're teaching online especially. The fear here is that if the people that are listening to you discover that one person or ten people failed when they tried this, that it makes what you're saying not true, and it makes it not possible, and it makes it not real and we feel like we're lying.
Shane Sams: In some ways it's a confidence issue, 'cause we look back when we do succeed at something or when we do learn something and know something, and society beats us back of bragging about that. We don't believe what we've accomplished. It's like you look down and you think how in the world did I create a top personal concierge service by showing up at a Chamber of Commerce, and then walk around town and convince people to let me be a virtual assistant, and then expand to a worldwide market and be able to do this from home.
Shane Sams: Like how did I do that, and we wonder was it luck, did I do something special, is this possible for other people. We get scared to tell people the truth, that it was really hard and it was a big fear and that's what you've gotta get through. The more honest you are, the more successful you'll be when it comes to online business.
Christal H.: Okay, I can do that.
Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we talked about some of the mindset issues that have to do with your audience and even yourself, like in moving this thing forward. What else is going on that we can maybe help you move past to get to the next level?
Christal H.: I have had to realize and acknowledge that I'd been having these moments of entrepreneurial loneliness. I don't know how to get over it, it's not constant, but I do feel moments where I feel really lonely in doing this.
Shane Sams: Do you feel like that's holding you back. Is it making you question things, are you saying to yourself ... is it making you question if you want this or is it making you not motivated to build your business, but you know it's worth it, you're just like, man I'm lonely and I'm not motivated, how is that specific thing stopping you? Do you think that's what lead you to the point where you needed a little break?
Christal H.: I think it is, and I think it's the latter description of I love it so much. I love teaching and those strategy sessions, they really are my favorite because I really get to work with people one on one. But I do realize that it's hindering ... the loneliness, those feelings, it really is hindering my motivation. So it's not like a long run of motivation, it comes in spurts I have found.
Jocelyn Sams: I totally get that because I'm right there with you. Where do you live, I can't remember?
Christal H.: I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Jocelyn Sams: Okay, well we live, of course, in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky.
Shane Sams: Literally in the middle of nowhere, if you found nowhere and went to the middle, that's where we live. I'm looking out our back window right now and there's nothing but trees and water.
Jocelyn Sams: I feel the same way sometimes, I am an introvert, which means that I get energy from being alone. But, sometimes I do like to talk to other people and I was actually talking to a friend of mine last night. My daughter, she's on the cheerleading team, and they got a bid to a competition called the Summit, and it's like a really big deal. I was looking for people to tell about it, and I was like, I don't really have anybody. I told Shane about it, and I told my parents about it, and then I was like, well who else do I talk to. I don't even have a friend to share this with really.
Jocelyn Sams: I'm just saying that I go through this too, and it is like a really hard thing because there are very few people in the world who do what we do right now. There are even fewer people in our local area, so this is definitely something that can be concerning.
Shane Sams: When you have your own business, when you have your family, the older we get the more responsibility that we take on, our circle shrinks. Like when you're a kid, your circles' huge until you're in your 20s, but then you get married and your circle shrinks. Then you have kids and your circle shrinks, and all these things that start taking a piece of the pie, especially working on a business take up a lot of time.
Shane Sams: That doesn't leave you time necessarily to go get that social interaction. But the good thing is, you can build this into your business and into your life because once you take control, once you work from home, one you're self-employed, you're one choice away from changing the dynamic of how your day goes.
Christal H.: That's true.
Shane Sams: You're doing some of the things I think already that would help with that. Like going to live events, maybe that's something you need to schedule more of. Get out and do those things. Maybe some of the old things that you did before, like getting out and going. Working in a coffee shop instead of working at home. Finding out where some people you know hang out and work out there where you have a chance to run into people.
Christal H.: Yeah.
Shane Sams: Go back to those Chamber of Commerce, maybe even doing local workshops at your library for free to let people come in and give you that ... maybe you do a bi-monthly once every other week interaction for free just to serve your community and let people come in and create leads for yourself.
Christal H.: I like that, yeah.
Shane Sams: You'll be able to work with people, maybe scheduling more one on one calls, maybe promoting that a little bit more. That's one reason why I started our all access thing. The way our all access mastermind works is, we use an app called Voxer. People get it on their phone and literally they can send me and Jocelyn a message in real time. But I love that program, and the reason I wanted to do it is because I love to talk to people. That's my favorite thing on the planet.
Shane Sams: I get to talk to like 30 people every day. So it kind of dulls some of that. Our friends really live all over the world. Jocelyn talks to people in Michigan, Australia, like, that kind of-
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you should see people in the stores. Last night I went to Lowe's, I was looking for some Christmas stuff to put in my house. I was playing out Voxer, and my friend from Australia, Kat, I was playing her messages, and people were just looking around like what is that. Because in the middle of Kentucky, you don't hear a lot of Australian accents.
Christal H.: Exactly.
Shane Sams: One reason we did that was because we couldn't find masterminds here, we had to solve that problem. The way that we talked to our masterminds is on Voxer 'cause we don't have time for one on one meetings, we don't have all four get together on a zoom and do a hot seat.
Shane Sams: We can talk to each other whenever we want. I wake up every morning, I got a buddy of mine, he sends me a message every day and he's like my brother from another mother. I get it every morning, but we've created these systems in the last little bit to kind of fight that loneliness. Because that is one of the drawbacks, when we trade our problems in our life for a new opportunity, what we're really trading it for is a new set of problems.
Shane Sams: That's how life works, you're not really getting rid of anything, or reaching Utopia, it's do I like this set of problems better than this set of problems. Can I overcome this set of problems and this way of life more than I can overcome these problems.
Shane Sams: So there's all kinds of things that you can do to combat that loneliness, but the first thing you have to do is realize that it's just part of the deal.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I would say also take some personal responsibility in it. I think sometimes when this happens, we'll sit back and be like oh, woe is me, I don't have any friends. I know this because I do it, oh you know nobody's coming to me, whatever. Well maybe I need to be more proactive about it. This is something that we try to do. We do things that other people won't do.
Jocelyn Sams: I can remember one time we were over in western Kentucky visiting my family and there were some people who we were like acquaintances with online, and they live just a couple of hours away. We reached out to them, we were like hey do you guys wanna meet us somewhere and like just hangout and get to know each other, because we had never met before. So they were like, well we would love to, but we can't leave right now, so can you maybe come to us.
Jocelyn Sams: We're like well, I mean I don't see any reason why we can't. So we drove like two hours out of our way.
Shane Sams: We stopped in a cornfield and had to stay at a random Super 8 because we were so tired coming home.
Jocelyn Sams: But that guy is now one of Shane's best friends. He talks to him every single day. So we took an opportunity, we took a chance, but we didn't know for sure if it was gonna work out, but it did and because we took that chance, now Shane has a really good friend.
Shane Sams: And going out of your way to connect with people and talk to people. Another one of the people that we met online actually through the Flip Your Life community, I met him, talked to him, we had a lot of similar interests, and we started going really out of our way to see each other. We would fly to places to meet at live events, just 'cause we knew he was gonna be there.
Shane Sams: I've got a four hour drive here in December that I'm gonna make just to hang out with him, I may drive there and drive back just to see him in real life. But, that dude flew to our live event, and was literally the MC that introduced us. But it's like getting up and changing the dynamic is always the right answer.
Shane Sams: I think that's what Jocelyn was saying like, that loneliness is totally 100% in your power to fix, and no ones gonna come running to your door to be like, I heard you were lonely. I'm here-
Jocelyn Sams: Let's hang out.
Shane Sams: Let's hang out. So if you don't fix it, nobody will.
Christal H.: That's right.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's why we're so passionate about going to live events and actually meeting people in person, because there's no substitute for that. I'm not just saying that 'cause I want you to come to our event, but I do because it was awesome. But I want people to go to events and meet up with people because that's where you're gonna find your people. There are people that we've met all around the world that we still talk to to this day. I mean we've met them years ago.
Shane Sams: I would venture to say actually the only friends ... let's draw a line here. There's a difference in friends you go to church with, or the parents of your children's friends. Isn't that how all of our friends end up, we only see people that are the same age as our kids, right. 'Cause we go to practice and we go to all these things. Once you have kids they just consume every aspect of your life.
Shane Sams: That's your like who your acquaintances right, but your business friends, your entrepreneurial friends ... I'd say every person we talked to on a daily basis is somebody that we've had to get on an airplane and drive to and meet.
Christal H.: Wow, okay.
Shane Sams: 'Cause they just don't get it, nobody else is gonna get what you do now, except those people. Like you guys, like the Flip Your Life community, those are the people we interact with now because they get it. They understand and some people just won't.
Jocelyn Sams: You get to a place where you really have to guard your friendships too. Because you don't wanna be around people who discourage what you're trying to do or they're overly negative. I'm not saying that we shut those people out of our lives, but that's something that really, really brings me down.
Jocelyn Sams: If I'm around people who just don't get it or they don't care about what we're doing or they don't understand what we're doing, that makes it really, really hard for me. So I'm still friends with those people, I still love them, but honestly, I don't spend a lot of time with them because I need to be around people with that big vision who totally understand what we're doing.
Shane Sams: Going down that a little farther and it's so interesting, that's why I love talking to our members, because your journey and our journey is pretty much the same, and I think that's where you're gonna have to ... like people go okay, I have this full-time job, it's killing me, or it's not conducive to my life. I changed my life and I would say if you go back to your job, toxic situation or not, jobs in the past you've had you weren't as lonely because you go to work with people every day.
Shane Sams: So when you make that change, I guess loneliness is just a phase we all have to go through if we're gonna make it.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: You just have to have those strategies in place to fix it because it's part of it.
Christal H.: That's helpful.
Shane Sams: So what do you think that you could do in the next two months to remedy some of this?
Christal H.: Well I already know one thing that I'm gonna do for sure, I'm gonna add a personal coaching service on, where we do Voxer just like you do with your group. I think that would be wonderful to have a group of people who I work with and they have access to me via Voxer and I can shoot ideas to them and support them. I think I would really thrive in that, that would be great.
Shane Sams: Yeah, you could even offer that for 50 bucks a month right now until you get to so many people, then you can raise the ... you're gonna have to raise the price later because when you have hundreds and hundreds of people vying for your time eventually, which you will, right. Gotta slice that up because you can't talk to everybody every day.
Christal H.: This is true.
Shane Sams: Every day. But yeah, that would be a great thing to rollout like right now. What about in-person, 'cause you live in a pretty big area.
Christal H.: I do and-
Shane Sams: What are the opportunities there where you could be like, man I can get out twice a month and go to X.
Christal H.: Right, and I think it's actually a couple of things like you mentioned. It's going back to how I got started and that's doing networking in person and really finding some opportunities to teach workshops, I really like that idea.
Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely, and that's an unfair advantage that you have, like you've had that prior experience. Really latch onto that.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: Moral of the story is, don't build yourself a black and white online business, no gray, it must be all courses, it must be all this. Like build the life and the business you really want to experience every day.
Shane Sams: Kind of step back and say am I really building what I want, or am I building what I heard some expert build or told me to build or this is what worked for that person. We have total control to build anything, any life that we want to build if we'll just do it.
Christal H.: Yes.
Shane Sams: You don't have to follow anybody's rules, right.
Christal H.: Yeah, I think it's like the old ways, they kind of seep back into your mindset sometimes. It's hard to get those bad habits and that bad mindset out.
Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's so important. I know probably some people are thinking, wow, what a first world problem, like you guys don't have any friends. But it is a first world problem, but first world problems are still problems. If you don't get past them, you won't move forward in your business.
Shane Sams: So get out there and just do it.
Christal H.: I will.
Shane Sams: I want you to schedule, we usually don't tell anybody what to do at the end of the show, we ask them what they're going to do in the next 24 hours, but I'm gonna tell you what to do. You should go right now and look for something in person within the next week and put yourself on your calendar. That way the ball is rolling. Because if you put it on your calendar, it's real. Plans don't matter unless they are on the calendar or have a deadline.
Christal H.: That's right.
Shane Sams: So just go out there and try to find something to kill that loneliness and find those people to surround yourself with. 'Cause if you don't, it will kill your business.
Christal H.: Okay.
Shane Sams: Because you won't like your business, and we don't do things as humans that we don't like.
Christal H.: That's right, yeah, I can do that. I'll make it happen.
Shane Sams: Wow, I'm serious we could talk forever, Christal is
Christal H.: Yeah, this has been amazing.
Shane Sams: Amazing conversation and I love it when we get to talk to people that we know so well, 'cause we have interacted with you so much it's just, man so much truth can come out when people are just sharing their experience and being real. So thank you so much for being so real and just transparent today because I know this particular episode of the podcast is gonna help a lot of people.
Christal H.: Well thank you.
Shane Sams: Before we go, we always like to share a bible verse, and we are super excited today to let Christal share a bible verse, Jocelyn and I get a lot of inspiration for our business, for our life, from the Bible. Christal has an awesome verse that she would like to share with you guys today. That gives her a lot of inspiration too.
Christal H.: I would like to share Proverbs 3:5-6, and this particular scripture really I can lean on it no matter what I'm going through in my life. It reads, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
Shane Sams: Love it, that is so powerful and I just love the verse. Just cling to it in those moments where you're just feeling inadequate.
Jocelyn Sams: That's why we ain't never alone baby, Jesus' is with us.
Shane Sams: That's right. All right guys, that was a great talk with Christal. What an inspiring story of someone who was in a bad situation, made the choice to change her life and continues moving forward, making progress, and evolving into a life that she really, really wants.
Shane Sams: We would love for you to experience that journey too, and we'd love to help you do it, inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can start your 30 day free trial right now at FlippedLifestyle.com/free, that's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle.com/free. We'd love to help you get started, we'd love to help you come up with an online business idea, we'd love to help you find customers for that idea and create products to sell them, we do all of that inside of the Flip Your Life community.
Shane Sams: We will see you there, until next time, get out there and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life.
Jocelyn Sams: Bye.
Links and resources mentioned on today's show:
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!
Hosts & Guests
No transcript available for this episode.
