FL276 - We help Brenda take her art business to the next level

In today's episode, we help Brenda take her art business to the next level.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brenda take her art business to the next level.

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

Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. We are super excited to have another member of the Flip Your Life Community on so that we can help them take their business to the next level. Now a lot of people ask us, "How do you pick who gets to be on the podcast? Which members come on? Is there an application process, is there something else that you do to let people come on the show?" Well, really, honestly, it's action takers in the community who we bring on to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, and we look for people who are asking great questions in the forums, and we really look hard at our success story forum. And we had an amazing success story that we wanted to share with you today.

Shane: Flip Your Life Community member, Brenda Mullard said, in her subject line, "So much can happen in a short amount of time." I was like, "Oh that's interesting, let's open that up and read it". Brenda said, "Hi everyone, I was reflecting on what has happened with my business since Flip Your Life Live, and I thought I'd share my success and all that has happened. So much can happen in such a short amount of time, just about four months. When I left Flip Your Life Live I had a website and membership that was literally broken. I mean it was open to everyone and anyone, but it wasn't working. I was frustrated, sad, and disheartened after our working dinner at Flip Your Life Live, but I thought I would just hire it out and get it all fixed. The quotes were thousands of dollars. I looked at myself and said, 'Wait, um, what?' I thought to myself there was no way I could afford to do that."

Shane: "So with the help of my new crew, that I met at Flip Your Life Live, I changed my website theme to a new theme, I learned the new theme builder, and redesigned almost all of my webpages, over 100 pages of content. I created new opt ins, a sales funnel, and an email sequence to bring people through the process. I've added more regular lesson plans, presentations, posters, and resources to my membership. I've batched blog posts ahead of times and free downloads for the next few months, and I'm ready to go. I ran my first sale, and I raised my prices. I now had eight members in the Visual Art Academy Membership and excited to add more. As much as I feel like things move slowly, looking back, I realized I have really moved the needle. I feel like I have a very solid foundation created now, and the next move is to try to get more eyes on what I have to offer."

Shane: "This is what I need to learn more of, and I'm about to throw my ... as I try to throw my fear aside. So even when you don't think you have a whole lot done, then stop and reflect a little bit, and you'll probably surprise yourself."

Shane: So we read this amazing success story.

Jocelyn: I was so excited. I was like we have to have her on the podcast.

Shane: We've got to have Brenda on the podcast. She's taking action, she came to the live event. We got to have her on, so Brenda Mullard, welcome to the show. We have you on the podcast now.

Brenda: Well thanks so much for having me, you guys.

Shane: That was an inspiring success post, by the way. And I actually noticed something about your account too when we were reading this right before we came on air. I looked at your, your stats are over like under your name, you know like where it has the topics, replies, and coins and things. And what I love about this is you have six times the replies as topics started. And what that really tells us is not only are you taking action, but you're also like talking to other people, answering other questions, and helping other people sort out their problems too, so we're super glad to have you on the show today.

Brenda: Well thanks. I know I appreciate it when people answer my questions or just give me a little bit of a boost, and you can do this, and so I really try to do that for everybody else in the community too. I think that's really important.

Jocelyn: Absolutely, I love that. This is one of those shows where we have actually met Brenda in real life, which is awesome. She came to our event not too long ago, in last September in Nashville, and has done just some amazing things, and we're just really excited about all of the things that you're working on, and the action that you're taking, and all that kind of stuff. So now it's our turn to kind of give back to you and try to help you take the next steps in your journey, but before we do that, let's talk a little bit about you. Tell people about your background and about what you do online.

Brenda: Okay. Awesome. Well, I have three kids. I'm married, I have one husband. My kids are 17, a daughter who we are getting ready to send off to college next year, so we're getting all the applications and scholarships and all that kind of stuff going. I have a 14-year-old son who's a freshman in high school, and an 11-year-old son who is in fifth grade. I have been in the arena of art education for the past 20 years, and so I have moved within the past year from just a regular classroom into teaching part-time, but then also taking on an integrated arts program at one of the middle schools as a fine arts coordinator. So I kind of have two part-time jobs which are really actually two full time jobs, as well as my family.

Brenda: And then we kind of joke because my mom is ... I have an elderly mother who has a lot, a lot of health issues, and so we kind of joke that she's our fourth child, because I cook, clean, shop, do everything that I do for my children, only she just doesn't live with us. So, having that on top of everything is pretty, it's a pretty crazy busy life right now.

Shane: So I would say that that probably has a lot to do with why you're trying to build this online income that's more manageable, more passive, more controlling would be safe to guess?

Brenda: For sure. Yep. I, to be able to have the flexibility of a schedule and to have more time to do the things that I feel that I need to do, versus what I have to do, would be just phenomenal. So, yep, that's exactly why I'm working on doing this.

Shane: How did you first discover that online business even existed, or decided you wanted to do it? We all have different stories, because this world is kind of hidden from people, when you're in the 9 to 5, or even when you're in a government job or an education job or something like that. How did you discover online business?

Brenda: Well, about oh, I would say 14ish years ago, when my son was born, I kind of got exposed to working smarter not harder with my artwork, and so I was using my artwork and putting it, putting it on greeting cards, through a few different companies, and doing things like that, and all of the sudden realizing like oh, I made 42 cents today from selling two cards that had my design on it, and I designed it once and it sold multiple times. Just that idea that I could make income from content, or things that I produce, and then it's used over, and over, and over, and over again by multiple people, and you continuously get paid through that was really the first kind of exposure that I had.

Brenda: And then when I found you guys, I had tried doing some online, my lesson plans and things all on my own, and I probably for like two years or so just kind of waded through the whole internet business courses, process of all different things, and until I figured out and started learning from the community I just got a better idea of what it all took. Because people that do this online business entrepreneurial stuff, when you first begin, you don't understand how much goes into being successful in a business. Like you always use the iceberg scenario and that's so true. You only see the very top when people are really, really successful. You don't see all of the different layers and all the different work that goes into getting to that top peak.

Shane: But that's what you hear when you first discover it, right? Everyone is like, "Oh, I read a book, and I started a blog, and the next -"

Jocelyn: And they're making millions of dollars.

Shane: "And next thing I knew I had my own jet."

Brenda: Right. Exactly. I quit my job after five months of all this stuff, and it was so easy, and anybody that's, anybody that's actually doing it knows that that's not true.

Shane: Especially in the beginning. There is a ... What's it called? A dynamo, is that what it's called? When like the energy takes over and it just keeps running or something like that.

Jocelyn: Yeah, that's something, I don't know.

Shane: Science, yeah. Physics.

Brenda: Ignorance, ignorance on fire.

Shane: Ignorance but right, its like something happens when, I guess momentum, like there is a point where you'll get momentum where things get ... It's like a fire, you stoke the fire and it keeps burning. You just throw another wood, you don't have to like, it's harder to start the fire than it is to quit going. And like there is a point of that, but man those first, that first two years is really like you've got to decide that you're in it to win it or you're not going to win it. You know?

Brenda: Right, right.

Jocelyn: Okay, so tell our listeners what your business is.

Brenda: I have a website, and membership, that has secondary art education lesson plans and classroom resources for art teachers.

Shane: Okay.

Jocelyn: Okay, awesome.

Shane: And you actually have a following online. You have a Facebook group?

Brenda: I do. I started a Facebook group about, about a year and a half, two years ago. It's called Art Teachers Teaching Art, and actually, Shane, you gave me that title, which is awesome. It has over 6000 members in it right now, and it is a super, super active community. I mean I, I have probably if somebody posts a question, or is looking for something in there, I have six or seven people that immediately jump on and answer that question. It is a free group, but it is a super active, and it's really, really good group.

Shane: And I usually, I talk to a lot of people about building an audience through some kind of group or something, a page, whatever it is they manage, and we always pick, everybody's always well what should I call it? And people want to brand it and stuff, and I'm like, "No, what would people search for?" People would search for Art Teachers Teaching Art. They would not search for the Fantabulous Artsio Community or whatever. They wouldn't look for that. You've got to name that, that's, naming is really important and sometimes simple is the best. And Art Teachers Teaching Art is pretty straight forward, but you know what everyone in the group is doing. And when people find it they're like "Yeah, I shouldn't join that, because I'm not an art teacher teaching art, so I'm going to back out of this one."

Brenda: Right, and it started out with, I just started the group, and I literally started it out with just art teachers that I knew. I mean I threw it out to six art teachers that I knew were on Facebook, and that I knew personally. And within a year and a half, I've got over 6000 members where people have spread it to other people, and it's just kind of spread like wildfire across the masses. So that's pretty cool to think about that from people all over the world.

Shane: And the key is now though ... We talked about this a little bit off air, which we're going to get into some fears, and obstacles, and some other things that are holding you back in your business. You've done the hard part, you've gotten 6000 people to pay attention to something you've created for free. And the key is where, somewhere in there, there's 100 people that want to pay you monthly. You just have to convince them why and we'll talk more about that.

Jocelyn: Okay, so before we get into all that, I do want to talk a little bit about coming to the live events. So you attended our live event in 2018?

Brenda: I did.

Jocelyn: And I want to talk a little bit about what made you decide to do that, and by making the decision, what changed about the way that you were approaching your business, or like how did it benefit you in other words? Because we're starting to sell this thing again, there are probably a lot of people out there listening thinking, "Oh, you know, I don't know for sure if I want to do this." You know, "I have to take time out of my life," and all these types of things.

Shane: It's not cheap.

Jocelyn: Yeah, I mean.

Shane: It's not cheap to make a trip like that.

Jocelyn: There is an investment involved, and I just want you to talk a little bit about why you made that decision and what happened after you made that decision.

Shane: How, this success story was clearly sparked by people you met at the live event. All these things and people helping you, so how did that kind of change things for you?

Brenda: Absolutely, so wow, this is really hard to talk about, but literally when I, I signed up to go, I thought this is going to be the make or breaker. I have this website ... And I had paid to have it fixed and changed, a while ago, and little to my knowledge that it wasn't fixed and it was still broken. It was open to everybody, so I was in a point where I was super frustrated. I didn't know the next steps, even though we have the great community, and we have all the courses and things in there. I just felt way overwhelmed and way bogged down, and just didn't really know where to go from where I was at. And so I kind of thought all right, I'm going to go to this event. I've been to live events before, I know that I've always learned something, and usually there's a sit and get kind of things, where you go in, and you sit, and get information and then you take it home and try to implement, but the way this was set up, being a teacher myself, I loved the way that it's taught.

Brenda: There's questions, and then you do it. And so that was a huge part of how I think the success kind of started rolling. I also met people that I had talked to in the community online. A few of them we had had phone calls back and forth and things, but I think meeting those people in person, and having them be like, "Oh, this is what I do," and then show me, because I'm very visual. I'm a very visual learner, and so to have them actually sit down and show me some of the things that they were doing, where like keyword search and all these other things was so, so helpful. It was so helpful to me, and after our working dinner, realizing that my website was literally broken. Like I, and my membership was open to the world, anybody could get in, anybody could see anything. They could download everything and -

Shane: Didn't we talk about this like -

Brenda: We did.

Shane: Walking back to the elevator? Yeah.

Brenda: We did.

Shane: I remember this now. Because you were like, it was you, and who were you with? Kathy? And like ...

Brenda: Kathy, yep.

Shane: Yeah, Kathy Martin.

Brenda: Kathy and Evan.

Shane: Yes, Kathy and Evan, and we were walking back to the elevator, and I was like, "Brenda, what did you get out of the working dinner?" And you're like, "Yeah, everything's broken. Everything, everything. Start to finish." And I was like, "Oh, well, that's, well at least you know now." I do, I remember that conversation.

Brenda: Yep, yep, yep. You were like, "Okay, well we got to fix that."

Shane: "We've got to fix that. We've got to do something about that. That might need work there." And I love how you're not the only person who's said to me, "I got to the point where I was so frustrated and overwhelmed I just was about to quit. And this was my moment." And then clearly when you put that line in the sand, after the live event, you didn't go the other way and quit. You kept going, right?

Brenda: Right.

Shane: You changed your price. You got some members. You fixed your site. You know?

Brenda: I do.

Shane: And it's always amazing to me when I hear these stories that come out of live events, especially like ... It's not just us promoting Flip Your Life Live. Yes, we want everybody to come, it's awesome, but the reason we put the event in our schedule, and our calendar for everybody else, is because we know that the three biggest moments in our life came after we went to a live event. Like that's what changed the game.

Jocelyn: And it wasn't something magical about the person who was hosting the event -

Shane: Or even the information.

Jocelyn: Stuff they were talking about on stage. That type of thing wasn't the magic. And so yes, I'm telling you that Shane and I are not the magic, okay. That's kind of weird to say, but like that is not the magic of going to live events. It's just all of those connections that you make. It's having that anchor on your calendar, just knowing that you're going to this event, and you don't want to show up and have nothing done, or nothing to show for it, and I think just by taking that step and doing that, I think it's fair to say that you think it has been a, it's made a huge impact on your business.

Shane: And I, and it's also to just like the reason our event was changed, like Brenda you said we take action. How our event works is we do a live, we do a session, Jocelyn and I do a quick training, 20 to 30 minutes. We open the floor for the entire room for 20 to 30 minutes for questions. Make sure that everybody gets what we're talking about. And then we have a mastermind session immediately where we implement the thing that we just talked about. Even if it's just getting the plan in place and we did that on purpose, because we knew what really changed the game was taking action on what we learned at the live event. And we didn't like those sit and get things either, because you go home, you've got a 16 page notebook full of notes, and you don't know what to do. You're just more overwhelmed.

Shane: But if you learn, take action, learn, take action, learn, take action. That's when your website gets fixed. That's when you get some members. That's when these other things happen that happen in your story. You tell it in the forums.

Brenda: Right, and the crew that I sat with at the working dinner, I don't, I don't know exactly how we all kind of came together. We had been talking in the community prior, and Joanne and I had been friends back and forth online, and it just, it all just came together that night, and those group of ladies had surrounded me with so much support. Once they saw what had happened, and what was going on, it wasn't like oh poor Brenda, it was oh shoot, now what do we do to fix this? Let's help her fix this.

Shane: Yeah, I love, the we word that you just used is amazing. Like we, how do we fix this together, right?

Brenda: Yeah, and it was totally, it was a we. I did not ever feel like it was a me. When I got home and started trying to find someone to help me with fixing my website, and adding a new theme, and all this other stuff, I had, I have over 100 pages of content, and I was quoted between four and $6000 just to have five to seven pages of my website transferred over into a new theme. And I thought there's no way that as a teacher I'm going to be able to afford that. There's no way, and so that's where I had to roll up my sleeves, and I had the same crew of ladies rallied around me again, and were like this is how we've done it. This is what you do. Jump on, and they sent me videos on how they've done it and it was just, it was just the fact that I never, and I still to this day, do not feel alone.

Brenda: We are, we have a Voxer group that we kick each other's butts, and we hold each other accountable, and we help each other when we need help, and it's just ... It's an amazing group of people that I would have never ever, ever met if I wouldn't have gone to the live event.

Shane: And that's what I love is like, it's like I love, that's the iceberg. We already talked about it a little bit earlier, but you just said, "Man, I've got this amazing group of people now, and we got to the live event and we all just ended up together." But before the live event you were in the community, you had seen each other in the forums, you had talked on Facebook, maybe connected an ad at each other. And then you get to the live event, you all gravitate, "Hey, Kathy." "Hey, Joanne, hey Brenda," and then you kind of end up together. And it feels like the universe pulls you together, but it's all of this stuff you had done before that. All the frustrations, all the overwhelm, all the questions in the community, all the replies in the community, all the logging in and just seeing Kathy's face and recognizing her. You know what I mean?

Brenda: Yep.

Shane: And that's what leads to that moment where you're in the battle together for two days. You get it done, you help each other, and then all of the sudden the relationship deepens, and that doesn't happen unless you get in person live. All these other things are amazing. We've created this support network because we know what it takes to get people together. It is different when it's live. It just really is.

Jocelyn: Yeah, that's, I just love it because the whole reason that we do this is to get people who are like-minded together. The people that you were in a mastermind with are the people that you talk to on Voxer. Those people have what's called a growth mindset. I've been reading a lot about this mindset stuff lately, and the people that we surround ourselves with in our everyday lives oftentimes have a fixed mindset. If you would have told someone, maybe a friend of yours at school, "Hey, my website's broken," then they might have said, "Oh, well, that website stuff's crazy anyway. Like why don't you just give it up, just close it down?" But the people with the growth mindset say, "Oh no, we can fix this. We can help you fix it, and it's going to be amazing when you get finished." It's just surrounding yourself with those people, meeting them in person. It's cool to talk online, but meeting in person is just so much more impactful in my opinion.

Shane: And there's no end game to this online business thing either. You don't just succeed and make it. Something good doesn't just happen and it moves on. Even today when we were getting ready for your call, like Jocelyn was, we had like two calls today, so we were like, "Hey, who's on the schedule today?" And I'm like, "Oh, it's Brenda." "You know, remember? Yeah, Brenda. Remember? Yeah." But like we know you. I know what you look like. I've talked to you in person. I stood there at midnight, after four hours of everyone masterminding, and talked to you about your site being broke.

Shane: It's a different level than when we interview somebody that we haven't met in person. And it's just cool to see everybody triumph. There's one thing I love about our community, and we've researched a lot of communities. We've been a part of a lot of communities, and the one thing I'm most proud of about the Flip Your Life Community is just how everyone tries so hard. Not just for like themselves, but each other. And I just, I really feel that coming from your group. And even just seeing your interactions that I'm not a part of. And that is amazing. It's amazing.

Brenda: Honestly you guys, Jeanette and Kathy, and Joanne, and I, the four of us are like tight. Ever since we're that, that's our Voxer group and I don't know. I seriously do not know how I would have ever made it without them, and I still, I still I don't know, because every day we kick each other's butts. It's awesome. I love it.

Shane: That's what people don't realize. If you don't have that, you don't make it. Just getting everything you did before that moment, then now that you have that, you have everything you need now to make it. You're going to make it. It's just, but you couldn't have done it without all that frustration, all that hard work, and without surrounding yourselves with these people.

Jocelyn: And you know people are always asking about masterminds, like how do I get in one? How do I create one? But the thing about it is like you guys did what it took to get together in person. It was facilitated by our event, but everyone there made the investment, everyone there traveled to the event, so you know those people are in it. They're going to do what it takes to get to the next level, and that's the kind of people that you want to surround yourself with.

Shane: But it really is true ... Every day we get up, we look at each other and we're like our job. People think that our job is to teach them how to do online business. That's part of our job, I guess. And then like, and how to help them figure out what to do next, but that's a part of our job. The way we actually view Flipped Lifestyle, the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast and the Flip Your Life Community, and Flip Your Life Live is, our job is to give everyone the opportunity to go succeed on their own, because they don't realize that they have the opportunity. We just got to put it in front of them.

Shane: And but if we can do a live event, but if you don't come to the live event, you don't have a Voxer mastermind after the live event. You don't have these ladies in your life, and that's really what the live event is. It's the ultimate opportunity to give yourself a boost to actually succeed.

Brenda: Right, exactly.

Jocelyn: All right. We -

Shane: Ooh, okay, all right.

Jocelyn: We've gone, we've gone on and on about how amazing Flip Your Life is. Flip Your Life Live. And if you're not coming, you can find out more about that at flippedlifestlye.com/live.

Shane: Good segue. Good segue.

Jocelyn: We'd love to see you there. And let's jump into a little bit about what's going on. Okay, so we talked about your success story. We talked about how you have some people in your membership, which is awesome.

Shane: And you've actually pulled the ship around and fixed the broken things, right?

Brenda: Yep.

Shane: That's always good.

Jocelyn: All right, and so that is past you now, which is awesome. It's always good to get past those technical things. Let's talk about what is going on as far as growing the membership. What types of fears, or mindset issues, or obstacles, are holding you back now?

Brenda: I feel like I, I've really created a really good foundation. I have lots of content, I've got opt ins, I've got sales funnels, I've got my email list, I've got my Facebook group. I have all the right things, I feel like, in place. Clearly I can always add more opt-ins and things like that, but every week I publish a blog post, with usually an opt in and a catch to it, and then brings them back to the website. And so I guess I'm looking for ways to well, obviously grow the membership, but I feel like there is a missing link somewhere to where I'm not getting enough fresh eyes on my website, or the people that have been involved with the Facebook group just aren't purchasing. And just finding out why they're not joining the membership, or what is it that I'm missing that I need to add or do, or change, or whatever to change that so that there are more members coming into the membership.

Shane: All right, so I am pulling up Art Teachers Teaching Art, the group, right now. Let's see, is it private?

Brenda: It is.

Shane: Okay, hold on. So I'm going to hit join group, could you approve me?

Brenda: Yep, let me see if I can do that right now?

Shane: Don't hang up. We're -

Brenda: No.

Shane: We're live, folks, right here on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Admins have got it. I don't think I've ever, I don't think I've ever joined a Facebook group live on the podcast, so this is a first.

Brenda: I don't think I've ever okayed a member on a podcast either.

Shane: All right, so what I want to see is, I want to look, while you're looking for that.

Brenda: Yep, there you are, I've got you.

Shane: I got me, all right, here we go.

Brenda: You're on, you're in, you're in. You're in like Flynn.

Shane: All right, so I'm looking at the group here. And what I'm seeing is what I thought I would see once I got in. So I'm going to count one post, let's see, you were doing a Facebook live. I see a quote, two, three, four, five, six. I'm six posts in, I see no promotion. I see welcoming art people, seven. I see a good start question, starter with some comments. Okay, so I'm 10 posts in before I saw the first thing that said anything about adding packets to the art thing, and it's a link to Teachers Pay Teachers, which is a third party marketplace for lesson plans. Okay?

Brenda: Right.

Shane: Now that was on, let's see, that was about, looks like about four days ago. Three of four days ago. Now I'm going to keep going back, I'm going to keep scrolling. I see you're just giving, you've got a lot, there's so much value here. There's just so much conversation going on, you're this, you're doing a great job leading this community. People clearly feel a part of it. But I have to go all the way back to, oh gosh I'm back into December. We're recording in January. I'm still not seeing another promotion. So what I'm getting at here is you're not promoting the membership enough. You're leading your community, you threw something to a third party marketplace, but you're not doing the thing that actually builds your business which is getting more members.

Shane: That's where we got to look at is your promotion strategy for the membership. I had another Flip Your Life member, her name's Jennifer, that I was working with in our private mastermind group. And she had this really huge fear holding her back of ruining her third party market sales, and she didn't want to promote her membership, because she was scared she would ruin her one off sales. And I was like, "You've got to get over that. Like the thing that builds your business is building your business, not building the third party marketplaces business." And she, so basically she did a mindset shift in eight weeks, she added like 300 people to her membership. And you may know Jennifer from the live event, of course.

Brenda: I do, I do.

Shane: Yeah, exactly. So what I'm saying is, this is a decision to promote your membership every day. Does that mean you have to post about it in your Facebook group every day? No. But it's just a decision, I'm going to promote this thing relentlessly until I have 100 people in it. And how we do that, we can talk about strategically, and make a decision, but you're just not promoting it.

Jocelyn: It doesn't have to be a big spam fest. You don't have to go in there every day and be like join my membership. You can do it in ways that are more subtle than that. And that's the way that I always like to do it on Elementary Librarian, and especially if you have been ... Okay, so if you've had this group for a long time and they're not used to a lot of sales pitches, you don't want to go in there every single day and hit them over the head with this thing, because that's going to kill your group. But what you want to do instead, is making sure that you're giving them plenty of value.

Shane: Which you are.

Jocelyn: And I know that you're already doing that, and then you're going to go to them, and you're going to be subtle about selling. So yes. So the way that you're going to do that is you are going to present something to them of value, and you're going to say, "Hey, if you like this free thing I have much more of this in my membership, and you can find more information about how to join that here."

Shane: Yeah, you've got to move them not to the quick, I gotta a couple sales on a third party marketplace mindset to, "Hey guys, here's a free thing. Click here to get it for your classroom." And you've got to move these 6000 people to 6000 emails which get automated emails to sell them your thing. Right?

Brenda: Right. Right.

Shane: And you've got to have some kind of regular promotion, that you do live, probably for the next, I'd say two quarters. I would go at least like 24 weeks in a row, of every week. One night doing a live webinar, and at the end of your webinar you sell your monthly membership, period. And like -

Jocelyn: That's a great way to get emails, so just in your group say, "Hey guys, I'm having a free training on ... " Make sure that it's the people that you want to attract to your membership, so I think that we had talked a little bit earlier that you do more middle and high school ages, is that right?

Brenda: Right.

Jocelyn: Okay.

Shane: But you're getting a lot of requests that you think a lot of the people in the Facebook group are elementary, correct?

Brenda: There's a, there's quite a few that are elementary, but it's a lot of K through, like K through 8, so they do, some have to do some of the intermediate lesson plans, but also a lot of elementary as well.

Jocelyn: What I would do, if I wanted to attract primarily the people who teach upper grades, is I would say, "Hey guys, I'm having a free training for upper grades art," and some relevant topic. I'm not very artistic, so I can't really throw any examples out there. But like maybe something to do with Valentine's Day.

Shane: Calligraphy, I don't know.

Jocelyn: Yeah, like something. And so that way it tells people hey, this is for people who teach upper grades. Does that mean that no one else will register? No. But it's a good way to get relevant people on your email list.

Shane: It's stuff you've already created.

Jocelyn: Because it's a free training, they're going to tell their friends about it. And you can even suggest that. Like, "Hey, do you know anybody else who can benefit from this training? Let them know about it," and they will proceed to share it. But I would call it a training, rather than a webinar, because teachers don't know what a webinar is."

Shane: Yeah, and you're going to have to be prolific at this. Like that's what you're missing. You've been consistent, you've worked through the struggles, but you're not being very prolific, and your promotion of all this cool stuff, no one knows all this amazing stuff you have, because you're not telling them about it.

Jocelyn: And just because you posted about it six months ago in your Facebook group, doesn't mean that everybody saw it. And there's been a lot of people who have joined since then.

Shane: Yeah, you really do have to get, and this is for everybody listening to this show right now. If you don't have a mindset of daily promotion, your business will not grow, and when I say daily promotion there's a lot of ways to do that, but you've got to say, "I'm going to give myself a raise every day." Every time someone joins your membership you've got to raise that day. How many, how long do we have to wait at our normal nine to five jobs for somebody to give us a raise? But if I go get five members at $50 a month, I just gave myself a $250 a month raise.

Shane: So you've got to give yourself a raise every day, and that means maybe every day you promote this free training that happens every Sunday night for the next 24 weeks. And maybe you rotate it, do what Jocelyn said with the secondary people, because you can get them in now. But for your elementary stuff, you can do a great promotion. You could say, "Hey, this is the webinar, this ones for K through 6 only." So you get all those K through six people in there, that are looking through this stuff, and then because there was a lot of K through six teachers, elementary school that are teaching art. And so all of them show up for this one, and at the end of it you're like, "Hey guys, here's the deal, if anyone joins tonight, not only do you get this great rate on my monthly membership, but I'll let you personally request a lesson plan and I'll create it for you."

Shane: And they'll tell you all of this new stuff you need to create. They'll tell you exactly what they need, as you fill in the gaps in your content, and you'll be like, "Oh, these five people joined and they all five gave me a great idea for my next five packets that I'm going to create." So they just tell you what to do, and then that's going to make the next person buy better, because they're going to, you're already going to have then what they ask. You can do all these different ... You can rotate, like one week do the upper, next week do the lower, and that way your webinar's different every week. And you just every day, "Hey guys, I'm doing this training on Monday. Don't forget to register tonight," and you just do that every day in your group. It's really passive.

Shane: Maybe you give them a free resource for registering. "Hey guys, anyone that registers for my training, even if you don't make it, don't worry, I'll send you a replay, and I'll send you this free thing that's only found in my community." And you just constantly grow that list, and you transfer these people from Facebook to your audience, to the webinar, to your membership. And then you just get real prolific. You just say, "I'm going to do this. It's 24 weeks of my life to set up the foundation of the rest of my life, and I'm just going to knock it out, and I'm going to run on a sprint, and then I'll throttle back and we'll do some things that we grow a little more passively." But that's really the only component you're missing. That missing link is prolific promotion of all this amazing stuff that you've already created.

Brenda: Okay, that sounds terrifying to me, but I'm going to do it.

Shane: Scary. What's terrifying about that? Honestly, what's the, what's the scary part? The work, or the promotion, or the what?

Brenda: No, definitely not the work. The promotion part, yes, is a little bit scary. But I've had some pretty mean people send me messages, or send me things, of just something that they didn't agree with, or something that they didn't like about something, or something that they had seen and didn't agree with, and people can be pretty brutal when they're hiding behind a computer keyboard. So part of doing something live like that for a group of our teachers, I mean I have to think in the grand scheme there are maybe one or two that are just rude and mean, but in the grand scheme, there are going to be a lot more that won't be.

Shane: I actually discovered a really good tool to deal with people like that. It's called the door. So what I do is when anyone, if I read a sentence and it starts getting really mean in one of my Facebook groups, I just show them the door. Like you're, this is your group. You're in charge. Just drop the ban hammer and bye. You're kick, just kick them out forever without remorse. Nobody will even know they're gone.

Brenda: I have done that within the group, but I've had people send me the private messages too, that is just like crazy horrible things that people say, which I know it happens to many people and it's happened to you guys. I know that for sure, but it's just that fact of you could have 100 people telling you this is awesome, and it's that one person that says, "You suck, and you should get out of the profession now," and you know.

Shane: Someone told you to retire, that's awesome. I've never heard of that one before.

Jocelyn: Here's the cool thing about the electronic world, is that we have the capability of blocking people now. If someone does send you a hateful message, just block them.

Shane: And do it, and don't read the whole message. The second that I recognize someone's being a troll, and hateful, and not being constructive at all ... Like this morning I got an email, and this, this lady had, what she did was she went to our web page and she signed up for a free trial. Well she started the process, but she didn't finish it. We have a trigger, like after three hours, if you haven't finished the form, that it sends you another email. Well she sent ... The email went out, somehow the timing worked out where she finished the form right after that email went out, and then she saw the email. She wasn't like hateful about it. She was just like, "Hey, I think there might be a problem with your automation because i got both these emails." It was super nice, but I've had other people that are like, "I know this isn't a real person, and I hate you and you're the devil- I just hit delete.

Shane: As soon as I feel that negativity, you just got to get rid of it, because if you don't it will eat at you, like we're all human. We evolved in ways to go run from danger. The scary things matter more, and it's like you can't let that eat you alive, and the best way to do is just to ban them and let them go.

Jocelyn: Yeah, and one thing that I have done in the past, when I still used to answer customer service, and when I check my own email and stuff like that, I would do something that I would call the worst case scenario. I would just imagine what's the worst thing that someone could say to me, and maybe it's something that somebody has already said to you. Well, first of all, like Shane said, if they're being a troll for no reason but just to be mean, then kick them out immediately. But if they do have something to say, that you feel like you need to respond to, write a message before you even get that message, or that email.

Jocelyn: What I used to do is, the example I always use is when I raised my prices for Elementary Librarian, because I didn't just raise them a little bit, I raised them a lot. I pretty much more than tripled my prices. And I knew that one of the things that people would say is, "Hey, this is too expensive, why did you raise the price so much?" So what I did, is I wrote out a response before anybody even said it. That way, if I got that message, all I would have to do is just copy and paste. I didn't have to think about it, and my mind had already sort of dealt with that worst case situation, and that's something that really helped me.

Shane: Like if you come up with, come up with what are the ten worst things anyone's ever actually said to you.

Jocelyn: Or even like the three worst things.

Shane: Yeah, the three whatever, and then just like, you probably have a couple of examples. Go and just type a response out to that person, whatever they used to say and deal with it. And now just never deal with it again. It's been dealt with. And if there's 100 people just like them.

Jocelyn: And I'll say always remember the screen capture rule. You don't ever want to say anything to anyone that can be used against you. Just remember that people can screen capture, so I'm always very cordial. Thank you for your email, I understand.

Shane: 99% of the time we don't write back though. I can't tell you how many people in my Facebook, our Facebook page, I'm just like delete and ban. Delete and ban. Because it's just not worth it. You're not going to change their mind, nine times out of 10 they're just trolling.

Jocelyn: Like they're never going to become a customer, most likely, so block and move on.

Shane: I can usually tell the per- I've had a couple incidents where people wrote me, and I started reading the first couple sentences, and it was definitely hate, but it was almost like desperate help me hate. And there's a difference in that, and just you all suck, and talk funny, and you're from, you're hillbillies from Kentucky, why would anyone listen to you? Stupid crap that people say, compared to someone who's lashing out because they're frustrated.

Shane: And you've probably heard that, maybe they are frustrated because they can't pay your prices, or because they wish they had the ethic to go out and put this out there and sell it. That actually is jealousy. But ban hammer. Ban hammer.

Shane: Or you, and what you could do too is, you know like pay someone 50 bucks once a week, to go through all of your messages before you read them, and delete the bad ones. I mean, just find someone, give them 50 bucks and say bye. Delete all the bad one. Now you go in after them and check all the messages, and you only get to see the good ones.

Jocelyn: Yeah, we've done, we've done that in the past. It's totally okay to do that. But just know that you don't owe anything to anyone. The only person that you owe anything to is your paying customers and that's it. If somebody is complaining about something free, or some type of value that you're giving in your group, and it's not good enough for them, then don't let the door hit you on your way out. We don't have time for that. We don't have time for that kind of negativity.

Jocelyn: It's just like this podcast. We give, give, give. We do not have any commercials, other than sometimes we mention a URL for our own stuff, but other than that we have no sponsorships. We have no interruptions. We bring you content once or twice every single week. And we ask for nothing in return. I mean, the only thing we ask in return is please start a business, or please make some, take some type of action.

Shane: Right, exactly.

Jocelyn: That's the only thing that we ask from our listeners. And so when people complain, we're just kind of like whatever.

Shane: Jocelyn had a good point up there to though. Where you do want to listen to the complaints and the negativity is if a paying customer finds something wrong. You've got to be able to not associate that with anything personal, it's for some reason they feel let down and we've got to address that. Now, it's still going to come up sometimes, half the time where that's going to be like okay, that might be unreasonable, or that might not be what's happening, they're just confused but we still have to, we have to address paying customers because they pay. But that's a different kind of animal. But in that free group, if someone's going to complain that you're going to give a free training, and get email opt ins and sell something at the end of it, come on bro.

Jocelyn: And they don't have to sign up.

Brenda: And they can leave at any time. They can turn it off.

Shane: Yeah, it's not like you're holding them hostage. Ha ha, I got you in the group. Like you can't get out. Everybody grab your markers, art class, go.

Shane: I know that that's an easy answer to a not easy thing, because that is ... It's not like you're just going to walk out of here with a ban hammer strapped over your shoulder. And you're just like ready to kick people out of your group. But you're awesome, you've got something that people bought. You found members. That means there's 100 more members, let's worry about those people a lot more going forward than the negative people and just do it.

Shane: And here's another thing too. If you'll do what I told you to do for the next 24 weeks, like what is that? Two quarters? If you'll do that, I promise you by about the fourth week, you're just going to be over, you're going to hear all the things you could possibly hear, and you're just going, it's going to become so much habit of just doing this every week, and it's just over, and you just grow your business and you're not going to care. When 10 people join at your first webinar, and then 10 people join at your second webinar, and then someone sends you hate mail, you're like, "I got 30 members now, I don't care." Right?

Brenda: Right.

Shane: That's where it'll just all go away.

Jocelyn: Okay, Brenda, we have had a lot of fun talking to you today. We want to know what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about in this call?

Brenda: Well I am going to grab a calendar, and I am going to map out one live webinar, or training, a week with probably three or four different subject areas that I'll touch on. And then I'll be able to do those lives and then repeat those lives at different times, and with tweaks, and everything, after I kind of figure out how to do the first couple of them.

Shane: That sounds, hey listen, that's ... Being prolific in that way is going to grow your business like you couldn't imagine. The first couple might be hard, but then it's going to be like this is working. This is working. And don't forget I have a webinar training in the community, so like it's got a Google Drive sheet, you can download it, and I have every slide with notes on what should be on that slide.

Jocelyn: And you can just edit it.

Shane: You can just edit it, and fill it in, and make your webinars that way.

Brenda: Perfect. That's awesome.

Jocelyn: All right. I see here that you also have a bible verse that you would like to share with our listeners. And tell us what that is, and you can go ahead and read that.

Brenda: Sure, it's Isaiah 40:31. And it says, "But they that weighed upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

Shane: That is a really good verse for entrepreneurs. Because sometimes it feels like you're waiting for a while. But then you figure out you're on the eagles back and everything's okay. So good stuff. That's a great thing.

Brenda: Yep, and I'm surrounded by eagles.

Shane: Oh, she's got them eagles out. They're listening right now, you know that, right? They're going to hear this podcast. We're going to give them a shout out. Real quick just give a, give your group a shout out. Who are they? They've all been on the podcast I think.

Brenda: Yep, yep. Joanne, Jeanette, Kathy, and I'm going to even give a little shout out to Evan, because he's helped me quite a bit too.

Shane: Evan Burse, the man, the myth, the legend. Good stuff.

Brenda: Yeah, another fellow artist.

Shane: Another fellow artist. He is. And he's over at the cartoonblock.com. All right, listen Brenda, thank you so much for being so transparent, so open with your fears, your struggles, your frustrations, and really just giving us all an insight on how to get through those things because they don't go away, and we really are better together when we're all walking down this entrepreneurial road. Thank you so much, and I cannot wait to see how your webinar series goes.

Brenda: Thank you so much guys, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.

Shane: All right guys, that wraps up another great episode with one of our Flip Your Life community members, and man what an awesome discussion we had today with Brenda about Flip Your Life Live, and the impact that it had on her life and her business.

Shane: We would love to see you at the next Flip Your Life Live, this September 2019, in Lexington, Kentucky. You can learn all about that event at flippedlifestyle.com/live. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-Dlifestyle.com. Tickets are selling in an amazing rate, and VIP tickets are almost sold out. So make sure if you plan on attending, or would just like to look at it and try and attend, that's flippedlifestyle.com/live. We'll see you there.

Shane: All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Brenda's Website
• Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information
• Flip Your Life community

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