FL279 - We celebrate Eva's first five-figure month and help her hire a virtual assistant

In today's episode, we celebrate Eva's first five-figure month and help her hire a virtual assistant.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's show, we celebrate Eva's first five-figure month and help her hire a virtual assistant.

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

Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It's great to be back with you again today. Super excited to bring you another amazing success story from The Flip Your Life Community. We've got a great guest today, Eva Klein. Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast.

Eva Klein: Thank you so much for having me.

Jocelyn Sams: We are very excited to talk to you today. You have been posting success stories for quite a while now, and I can't wait to get into exactly what you've been up to.

Shane Sams: This is a good one. This is a big one, y'all.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and especially with your life circumstances because you have recently had a new baby, right?

Eva Klein: Yes, I had my third son. Well, I have two daughters and now I have a son who was born in September.

Shane Sams: Wow.

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, that is incredible. We are definitely going to dive a little bit deeper into that. Before we do, tell everybody a little bit about you and your background and what it is you do online.

Eva Klein: Sure. I am as I said married with three kids. I live in Toronto and I am the owner and founder of mysleepingbaby.com, which is a pediatric sleep consulting business where I help exhausted parents get the sleep that everybody in their family needs and I specifically work with parents that have little ones in the zero- to five-year range. I'm actually a lawyer by training and I got into this business kind of by accident after my ... When my middle child was born, unlike her older sister who was a really easy-going, happy-go-lucky baby who, of course, was a naturally fantastic sleeper. My middle child, was born two years later, was the complete opposite. She was extremely difficult, cried nonstop, and of course, sleep did not come naturally to her.

Eva Klein: I've always really needed my sleep and so as the months went on and the sleep deprivation really kicked in, I was legitimately suffering. I had no choice but to actually open up all these sleep books and figure out what the heck to do so I can get my sanity back. On my own, I managed to not perfect the situation, but I managed to make it more ... I made it more manageable for myself.

Eva Klein: I remember she was about four or five months and here in Canada we have 12 months of maternity leave. I was on maternity leave, and I thought to myself, "Gosh, I should launch a side business. I should ... I love what I'm doing. I love sleep. I would love to help other families. I should become a sleep consultant and just have it as a side hustle where really it's just gonna be some fun money where I get a new client and I go buy a pair of shoes. I'm not giving up law or anything like that. I mean, that would just be crazy. That would be insane.

Shane Sams: Come on, who does that? Right?

Eva Klein: Yeah. No, seriously, why in my wildest dreams would I ever do that? There's an ongoing theme of, "Man plans, God laughs." That was plan number one. Plan number one was I'm gonna launch a side business, keep it is a side business." Thankfully my boss had allowed me to go back to work on a part-time somewhat flexible arrangement. I'm working from home and what not, which was great. That plan quickly changed where ... When I launched my business ... This was 2014, like September of 2014 when baby was one, and someone had posted in this big mommy Facebook group that I'm in that she was looking for a sleep consultant recommendation.

Eva Klein: I had just completed my certification myself and I had had a lot of volunteers that came from this group to help me complete the certification. I had messaged all of them on Facebook and I said, "Guys, check out this person's post. Can you recommend me? I helped you. Can you tag me? Can you recommend me?" I had, I don't know, over at least 10 or 15 people recommending me, and then within 24 hours, because of that single Facebook post, I had four people call me and book one-on-one packages with me, which was about $1600 in revenue. From one Facebook post.

Shane Sams: Wow. Isn't it-

Jocelyn Sams: Then the wheels start turning, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah, yeah. That was where I'm going, "That's a lot of shoes."

Shane Sams: That's a lot of shoes. That's a closet full of shoes, y'all.

Eva Klein: Yeah, or one really, really expensive pair of shoes...I probably don't even need. That was when I immediately took a step back and I said to my husband ... I said, "I can actually ... I think I can make real money here." I said, "Look at what just happened." He looks at me and he goes, "All right. Go for it."

Shane Sams: Wow.

Eva Klein: "Do what you need to do. You've got my blessing. Go run with this." The plan changed from, "This is gonna be my fun side business", to, "This is something that I would love to build up so I can do this one-on-one coaching full time, and then when I'm good and ready, I'm gonna leave my job." Of course, I'm in control of everything, so I'm gonna leave when I'm good and ready and when I feel like my business is big enough ... For now, I'll just continue hustling on the side when I'm not working and when the kids are asleep and then decide when it's the right time for me to make the big move.

Shane Sams: Okay, hold on one second before you get into that. Let me unpack a little bit of this first, okay?

Eva Klein: Yes.

Shane Sams: You basically decide you're gonna do something that you're untrained to do and-

Eva Klein: Well, no. I got my certification.

Shane Sams: Right, that's what I'm saying.

Eva Klein: I did spend.

Shane Sams: Before that, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah, the entire ... Sorry, I forgot to mention this, that I'm not just ... I didn't just have a couple of kids and decide to become ... To call myself an expert, because the baby at the time was five or six months and I had another six months of maternity leave and she was now sleeping well, I was able to spend the next six months doing my certification online while she napped and while she slept.

Shane Sams: Okay, so you went and got certified through like an organizing body or-

Eva Klein: Yes.

Shane Sams: Experts or whatever?

Eva Klein: Exactly.

Shane Sams: You are not a trained medical person. You are not a trained psychologist or sociologist-

Eva Klein: No-

Shane Sams: Per se, you are a lawyer who experienced something in her life, and then went out and got some training in that, but not like a full-blown PhD degree, whatever. You went to a certifying body that it does help you perfect or master what you've already figured out on your own, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: You started a business basically by participating in another person's Facebook group it sounds like.

Eva Klein: Yeah, yep.

Shane Sams: You went into this Facebook group, participated, gave people advice, helped people in the group, and then when the time came to charge for it, these people were kind of like your testimonials, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah, totally.

Shane Sams: For everyone listening, if you're looking for a business model, I'm not saying go into baby sleeping, but I'm saying that's the classic thing that people are like, "How will I ever get a testimonial?" Well, you go help people for free. "Well, how will I ever ... I'm not an expert in this. I didn't go to college for it." So? You could probably get certified in whatever you want to do, right?

Eva Klein: Yes.

Shane Sams: There's so many paths that can lead you ... You didn't even expect to end up here when you started this-

Eva Klein: No, no.

Shane Sams: Let alone having a full-blown business and not being a lawyer anymore.

Eva Klein: It was shoe money, that's what this was. It was fun side money.

Shane Sams: Maybe everybody out there that's listening, that you've been sitting on the fence and you won't get in the community and do the courses and start ... Maybe you just need some shoe money, right? Maybe you just need a few more skins for your kids on Fortnite, right? Yeah, so maybe you just need a smaller goal, and when you get into it, you start making money, you realize ... We hear this story all the time. People come in, they start ... Even for a side hustle ... Sometimes it might not be shoe money. It might be car payment or insurance, whatever it is.

Shane Sams: Someone just wants to make a little extra money and then they look down and they can pay their mortgage and they're like, "Whoa." That's like real money that we can actually spend on our life to stay alive and move forward and maybe even make life better. It's just ... I just love your story, how it started out as, "Yeah, I want some shoes. Whoa, hold on a second. That's like a lot of money there."

Eva Klein: A lot of shoes.

Jocelyn Sams: All right. You're going along, you're doing your day job as an attorney. You are doing this side hustle as a sleep consultant and-

Shane Sams: This is pure one-on-one coaching, right?

Eva Klein: Yes, all one-on-one coaching.

Shane Sams: At this time? Okay

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jocelyn Sams: What happens next? How do you decide to take this sort of to the next level? What did that look like?

Eva Klein: I didn't. I went into that ... Remember, there's an overall theme here, "A man planned and God laughs." My second plan, which was, "I'm gonna quit when I'm good and ready", that fell from the wayside when my boss pulls me into the office one day and says, "We need you back full time. Full time, we can't have you working from home anymore because the nature of the job is changing and we need you. There's gonna be more team work involved." At the time, my kids were three and one and that meant ... I mean, I thought that my world was crashing before me because I wasn't ready. I was about six months in to doing this side hustle. I was not ready to be quitting my job and to have to continue to build my business while working full time, not at home, I mean, it would have been impossible.

Eva Klein: Plus, given that my three-year-old was already in school, it would mean we would have to pay for a nanny, which would be a massive added expense to cover before and after care. I was-

Shane Sams: At this time you're not making anywhere near your salary I assume? It's not-

Eva Klein: I was-

Shane Sams: Or maybe-

Eva Klein: It was growing.

Shane Sams: Like equivalent after taxes?

Eva Klein: Yeah, it was growing, but then when I sat down with my husband and we figured out, "Okay, if I were to keep my job and work full time, but then we're dishing out all this money for all this added extra child care, we would need a full-time, Monday-to-Friday, eight-to-six nanny to cover the before and after care. It would be a lot of added expenses. Given that my business was growing and that my job I guess really wasn't, then the next plan was, "Okay, I'm not gonna do this job full time because it's not gonna work. My next plan is I'm going to say goodbye to this job and I'm gonna continue to grow my business while I continue to look for something else part time."

Eva Klein: That was ... Are we on plan number two or plan number three that basically didn't end up panning out? That was the next plan. It was ... Listen, it was very, very scary because it was not what I personally had planned, but again, that's just an overall theme here. That's often how life ends up working out and-

Shane Sams: Sure.

Eva Klein: So I was looking for something part time and I actually had a number of leads, but then as ... It takes a little bit of time for people to get back to you and interviews and whatnot, but as time was going on, my one-on-one coaching business just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger because I had even more time now to be able to dedicate to hustling and going on all these other Facebook groups and kind of growing my I guess Facebook brand if you can call it that way-

Shane Sams: You're following, growing an audience of some kind, but before-

Eva Klein: For sure-

Shane Sams: You were kind of ... I don't know what the right word is. You were kind of like siphoning an audience off here and there of places you were participating as an audience member, but as you had more time to put into this, you started ... I mean, it's like seeing someone around the local place all the ... It's like Norm on Cheers, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Like, "Oh, there's Eva. Oh, there's Eva. She's in every group I go to."

Eva Klein: Yeah, yeah, "I've heard about her", and then all of a sudden it's, "Oh, my baby is sleep" ... I started getting referrals from people that, "Oh, you helped my friend with her baby and now I'm gonna hire you because I need help, too." Before I knew it, I didn't have time for a part-time job because I was ... My hours were filled up with all this one-on-one coaching.

Shane Sams: We had a very similar experience, actually, because of the nature of teaching. We had like six to eight weeks off in the summer, right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: Now, I say off. Jocelyn was a longer contracted worker as a librarian, so she was in like throughout July getting the library ready for a book, and I was coaching football every day, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: It was probably ... Instead of our normal nine-to-10 our day it was a four-hour day or whatever, you know?

Eva Klein: Uh-huh.

Shane Sams: As our business grew, we went about a year ... That last ... Probably two to four months of the year is where we really had massive growth in the first year, and it was like as we had more time, it started growing faster. As we started getting ready to go back to school, we looked at each other and said, "Man, if we can do this part time, what could we do full time?" We weren't ready yet. That's why we actually went back into our school year that year and we taught for a couple more months before we looked down and the money started getting crazy and we're like, "Why are we here? We shouldn't be here." It was that moment where you turn the corner that would probably have hit anyway if you had just quit earlier. You know what I'm saying? If you had never-

Eva Klein: Yeah, but I don't have-

Shane Sams: A part-time job or whatever, but you don't realize it till you get there or something.

Eva Klein: I didn't have the guts that you guys had to be totally honest. I needed other circumstances to kind of ... I needed the stars to align differently for me because I think to be totally honest, it's very, very scary if we're to get up one day and say, "Oh, okay. I'm quitting my job", so-

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's really just a mindset thing. Your mindset wasn't there yet.

Eva Klein: Yeah, no it wasn't.

Jocelyn Sams: It takes a while to get there. I think sometimes people don't really get that or they ... I guess they don't recognize it in their own life. Maybe they've been listening to this podcast for years and they think, "Oh, well, these people have something that I don't have." No, it's just that we were able to wrap our mind around it and figure out that it was possible and that it is something we could do.

Shane Sams: Also, too, a lot of people ... There is a lot of motivation and inspiration stuff. People look for that. Like, "I want to be more inspired. I want to go listen to somebody and be more inspired or be more motivated." A lot of times it does take a catalyst. It takes an outside force to push you so far out of your comfort zone that you can't help but make a change or you have to. In your case, you had no choice. It was like, your time or you're not.

Shane Sams: In our case, it was like this really cruel experience from a boss that made me like hate my job and hate the people that were over me so bad that I was ready to get out. I was not there before that. Before there, I was cruise control, retirement when we're 55, whatever. Just like, "Let's go." It took a catalyst to even force us down a different path. You had a catalyst that kind of made you make a decision you weren't ready for, but that's kind of like how all of our decisions in life ... Like, are you really ready to get married ever? Are you really ready for the first kid? The second kid? The third kid? Right?

Eva Klein: No, never.

Shane Sams: I mean, you're never ready for it, and we need those kind of pushes to ... That's why we surround ourselves with great people who will push us, 'cause sometimes we don't have catalysts in our life. Listen, some people are listening right now, their job's secure, they're comfortable, that's why they're not hungry enough to go out and build the thing that they've got this dream, but-

Jocelyn Sams: They kind of want something else.

Shane Sams: Yeah, they kind of-

Eva Klein: I would tell those people, "Don't quit your job. Don't do something drastic. Start something from the side and see where it takes you."

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Eva Klein: That's all that you need to do. That is ... It's a risk-free move and I happen to be fairly risk averse when it comes to these types of life decisions. If it happens to be ... If I had told my husband, "I don't want to go back to work. I just want to do sleep consulting full time", he probably would have given me his blessing, but I don't tick like that. I needed to do things my way, where I'm going to go back to work and have my steady paycheck, but then hustle like crazy on the side, because that is technically as risk free as it gets.

Shane Sams: It's kind of like the story of the farmer who's working hard and planting seeds and it's been dry for months and months and months or whatever. Someone ... His neighbor's like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm preparing for rain." If you start your side hustle, if you get the thing ready, if you do a couple of things, just experiment and have some fun and have some shoe money, if and when the catalyst comes, at least you'll be ready for it. You know?

Eva Klein: For sure.

Shane Sams: That's why we always have multiple revenue streams. We've got different ... We got a couple little side businesses off of our side businesses because you just never know what's gonna hit and you never know what's gonna hit you. If you're risk averse, it's actually crazy to just be all-in on one thing like a job. Why not have a side hustle? Why not have your own thing? Why not have something else to kind of protect you from all these contingencies?

Eva Klein: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: You go back into work. They're like, "Hey, come in full time." You're like, "Yeah, no, I'm not doing that."

Eva Klein: Not happening.

Jocelyn Sams: Keep building up this consulting thing. What form has it taken now? I know that's probably about the time you came into our community, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah. Well, so 2015 was the year of, "Well, Eva, so you're not going back to law. You're actually doing this full time? Wow, that's crazy. Good for you." That was 2015. 2016 was, "Okay, what's next?" I've ... This is ... I haven't looked back. I'm not going back to law ... I mean, not at this point, anyways ... I'm pretty full time when it comes to all this coaching, but there is ... When you're working in the dollars-for-time type of business model, there is a maximum amount that you can make, really, 'cause there's only 24 hours in a day and-

Jocelyn Sams: You can only raise your prices so much.

Eva Klein: Exactly. It's exhausting because when literally you don't work, you don't get paid, and so it's a very stressful situation to be in. Beginning of 2016 was when I started to try and figure out, "Okay, what's next? How do I expand my brand? What do I do?" I thought about maybe adding some extra service providers under my brand and maybe adding in some night nurses or maybe training some other sleep consultants, but that didn't really excite me so much. I'm gonna be totally honest, I came across your Forbes article, where it was talking all about how you guys made money selling digital products. That's when I went, "That's it! That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create an online sleep program. That's it!" It was like, "Huzzah! That's what I'm gonna do."

Shane Sams: You're the first person that's ever said "huzzah" on The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast.

Eva Klein: Really? No one's ever said that before?

Eva Klein: No one-

Shane Sams: No one's ever said it. I say it personally 'cause I love that word, but never heard it on the podcast, so ...

Eva Klein: I was so excited because this was the first time that I had ... I was toying with so many ideas in terms of expanding, and none of them excited me. That was when ... That was my real aha moment. "Okay, this is what I'm doing next." I'm just warning you, when I tell you how long it took me to launch, I'm gonna give you guys a mini heart attack, because I know that you're all about put a couple of things together and launch. I did the complete opposite where it took me a year and a half, and it's not because I was slack. It was because it took me months and months and months to come up with all the content and another year to film it and put it together and do ... It was beyond ridiculous. Edit the videos and then add headlines underneath and subtitles underneath the videos. It was a little bit ridiculous, or a whole lot.

Jocelyn Sams: Not to mention that you're also like birthing babies during this time.

Shane Sams: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Jocelyn Sams: You had a few things going on in your life.

Shane Sams: Children are being born, things going on.

Eva Klein: Yeah, it was-

Shane Sams: Kind of put a damper on it.

Eva Klein: It was insane, but anyways, long story short, it beta launched in December 2017 and fully launched in January. It's been running now for just over a year.

Shane Sams: It's so funny, 'cause I remember the aha moment that I had, too. I was riding a lawn mower, listening to a podcast, and I heard a guy talk about a PDF that he was selling for $49. People would pay him and he'd email it to them, right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: It never ... I just remember telling Jocelyn, "How did this never occur to me before? Why do we not see the thing ... We're already ... We're teaching people, we're saying the same things over and over", and sometimes it just takes like an example, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Someone just asked me the other day, "Why do you guys podcast?" It was like a little round table discussion, right? There was different answers, "'Cause I love this subject matter", there was this that and the other. I said, "I want to show people what's possible." If you can't see what's possible, it can't click, right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Shane Sams: If I'm frazzled 'cause my baby won't sleep, which I've been there, terrible, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: If I don't see you holding a baby that's sleeping and you're like, "Look, I've figured this out. This baby just slept for nine hours", whatever, I don't know it's possible, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: It's amazing to me that it just clicked and you attacked it and you built this course. Even if it took you 18 months, like errors, I mean, in theory, Flipped Lifestyle took us, what, two years to get to before we actually ever had a course or anything. We had talked about it, but people don't see that. They only see the moment after you launch, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: I mean, you only get to experience the rest of your life. You can't worry about ... What did you always say about trees? Like the ...

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, it's like there's a saying. The best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago, the next best time is today.

Shane Sams: Right. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to do it as long as you do it.

Jocelyn Sams: Just get started.

Shane Sams: I know there's one more layer to this. We're gonna talk about that in a minute with the membership and things like that, but when you launched your course and you start selling your course as you start moving out, 'cause you still do coach, right? You still do-

Eva Klein: Yes, yes.

Shane Sams: Okay. Did you feel relief? Did it feel better? Were you like ... Did you see like a path forward now where you could start moving that sliding scale? Like, "Okay, well, right now, 90% of my revenue is this, but man, last month was 10% of my courses. Man I could see now I could get a thousand people to buy this course and it's gonna start moving that bar chart down." Right? Like, it's gonna start-

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Yeah. Well, what happened after you launched your course?

Eva Klein: Well, I think the biggest ... I mean, I launched ... Yeah, I launched it immediately as a membership and I think the biggest sigh of relief was that I had all the ... I had this extra revenue that meant that I could justify not taking on as many one-on-one clients that month.

Shane Sams: Yes, and it's a little bit more predictable, right? You could-

Eva Klein: Yeah-

Shane Sams: It's like, "Oh, I've got 50 members. I'm probably gonna have 48 next month at least, and I'll go get a couple of more." It's like, "Can I hire a virtual assistant? Could I actually do that without worrying about someone bailing on me or a launch not going good or my courses not selling or a one-on-one client leaves?" It creates more stability in your thing.

Shane Sams: Now, obviously, this was about a year ago, right? This was like December of 2017?

Eva Klein: Yeah, that was when I beta launched.

Shane Sams: You've been doing this for about a year now, with coaching and memberships and courses running side by side, right?

Eva Klein: Yes.

Shane Sams: You recently had a huge win, you had your first five-figure month, correct?

Eva Klein: Yes, yes. In November ... I should mention the baby was three months, two and a half months at the time, yeah, was my first five-figure month.

Shane Sams: It's actually grown since then, we talked about a little bit.

Eva Klein: Yeah. Yeah, and then January it was still a five-figure month, but a bigger five-figure month.

Shane Sams: That's amazing.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that is so awesome. What was the sentiment in your house? How did you feel? What was your husband saying about this?

Eva Klein: My husband was just ... I think he was just also relieved that I finally got there, 'cause he knew it was just a matter of time.

Shane Sams: Yeah. It's funny how that works, isn't it? Like at first you're like, "Can I make any money doing this?" Then you're like, "Wow, that's a lot of money. That's not just shoe money." Then you're like, "Wait a minute, this could actually pay our bills." Then you're like, "Where does this stop?" At that point when you start asking yourself like, "Where does this stop?" And it just keeps growing, it kind of ... I don't want to say you get numb to it, because when you hit your five-figure month it's like, "Whoa, five-figure month."

Shane Sams: I mean, there's a lot of lawyers not making five figures a month. I'm just saying, and there's a lot of people in the legal industry not making that much money. It's like ... It does kind of get an almost expectation, like "No, I can scale this. No, I can do this." You get more confidence as you go forward on through these milestones. To me, the first money we made online always was my most exciting moment. Even more than massive numbers that we've hit in the future, you know what I'm saying?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: It was almost like your husband expected you to do it, and you kind of expected to do it. Now it's like, "Okay, how many people can I help? How many people ... How much money could we make?"

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Eva. All of this is awesome, obviously, but I know that there are probably a few people out there saying, "Okay, well, this is all sunshine or roses, and is it this easy?" Tell us a little bit about some things that have happened along the way that maybe made things difficult or some kind of obstacle that you have had to overcome along the way.

Eva Klein: I guess ... I hate referring to my third child as an obstacle, because he's so cute, but let's be real. I mean, babies take up time, and as you guys always say, you've got either time or you have money. Those are your two main currencies, no pun intended. I think until I had him ... My girls are seven and five, so throughout a lot of this process they were either in school or daycare or something and I was able to have the full work day to commit to my business.

Eva Klein: When I had my baby in September, that changed, and he happens to be, thank God, a very easy baby, but it does take up time and it does mean that even though this is what I do for a living, he's only five months and his sleep ... He's not sleeping 12 hours through the night just yet. It's just not expected for a lot of five-month-olds, and so because of that, it's obviously challenging. It hasn't been ... Not challenging ... It hasn't been possible for me to get everything done that I used to be able to get done before he was born.

Shane Sams: Yeah, and that's ... We always joked when I was sitting in the locker room. I remember this one time this guy had ... He had two kids and he was going to three, and we always joked that he was going from man-to-man to zone coverage, which in football is harder. It's a lot easier to pick your guy and run beside him. It's a lot harder when there's another one moving around and you gotta figure out where the third one is and like ... It's just like you still got all these responsibilities that already existed. You do have another huge responsibility that's just come into your life and you don't get to ignore that, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: People out there, and Eva included, with three or more children-

Shane Sams: God bless you.

Jocelyn Sams: I mean, props to you because I'm struggling with two kids, okay? I just ... I don't even know how it happened. Especially when they start getting older and they're involved in different activities. How in the world do you get them there? That's just the only question I have.

Shane Sams: It's amazing, though, because you actually have ... There's a really good piece of wisdom there. As your pie gets thinner ... Each slice of the pie gets thinner as we move through life, right? It doesn't matter if it's a kid or a new job or other responsibilities. Maybe an aging parent. Your pie is always getting cut thinner as you go, right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: We all try to keep doing all the things that we're doing or try to do all the new things and that's what we want to do, but what you said was, "I can't do it all. I just can't. I've got it" ... There are trade-offs and things we've gotta do to delegate, to let things go, to make the most important things happen. Talking to you off-air a little bit, that's what you've been doing. You've been ... You've still been making things happen. Your business is still growing, even though you may not be doing all the things that you want to do yet because you do have a new baby.

Jocelyn Sams: You put together all that infrastructure and you started it years ago, because you sort of baby stepped this thing along the way, you're now able to have this growing business that is sustainable that maybe even just a couple of years ago, you might not could have had. You had your baby a couple of years ago, it might not have happened. It's just the way everything worked out, and because you got started and took the steps that you needed to take, now you have something that is a legitimate business.

Shane Sams: Well, listen. It is ... I am always amazed when people come in and have these incredible success stories of just taking what life gives you and going forward and doing whatever it takes to reach the next level, even when you got things in your life, like a new baby or a bigger family or a job that's changing. When we read your posts in the forums and we said, "Wow, five-figure month." That is absolutely incredible. Before we go any farther, we just want to say congratulations. You are awesome.

Eva Klein: Thank you.

Shane Sams: You're amazing. You inspire us 'cause-

Eva Klein: Thank you.

Shane Sams: You've got the kids, you're killing it.

Eva Klein: Thanks so much.

Shane Sams: What we really want to do for the rest of the call, though, is see how we can help you grow this even more. See how we can help you get more free time back with your family, and see what your next steps are. What questions do you have for us on how to grow what you've already created?

Eva Klein: Yeah. My first question has to do with hiring a VA. For very obvious reasons, my business is getting bigger and the amount of time that I have is shortening ... Is lessened because of my baby. It was just a very obvious next move that I needed some help, outside paid regular help with my business. I have someone that I'm gonna hire on for about five hours a week and I'm just trying to figure out I guess what specific tasks ... Like how to prioritize the tasks to give her that I'm no longer able to do.

Eva Klein: For example, so I'll tell you the main things that I was able to get done before the baby was born that I just have not been able to do on a regular basis or at all to begin with. Before the baby came, I was blogging every week. I have not created any new content since he was born. I was posting on social media every day. That has not happened. I still post on social media, but it is not regular because of sheer time. I have been able to still email somewhat regularly. I mean, that's been my main priority, but the new content creation and as you guys like to say, showing up ... Show up in social media ... In email and social media. I think I have been sort of showing up in email, but I haven't been showing up in social media nearly as much as I could or should be.

Eva Klein: I'm at this point trying to figure out if I got someone for five hours a week, how do I figure out what are the most important tasks for her to be doing?

Shane Sams: I would be really careful adding back in things that you have not been able to do because what we have always found is ... Like let's say we are crunched for time. Let's say something happens. For example, right before we did our live event last year in Nashville, we basically had a complete turnover of staff. Over like a two-month period, we lost four people, okay?

Jocelyn Sams: We fired two people, and then two people quit 14 days before the event.

Shane Sams: Out of nowhere. Right. We were kind of scrambling. We had all this capacity that disappeared over a week or two period, right? What we did was, we said ... We basically sat down, pulled out a notepad, and said, "What can we do if it's just me and you and the people we have left?" We found that we got all the things that really needed to be done done, and all the things that kind of went to the wayside, we didn't really add 'em back 'cause they didn't help us and we still grew the business and we still succeeded. We had kind of created a bunch of jobs for other people that didn't even ... Were not even necessary.

Shane Sams: I would really evaluate more so what you should be doing, which is probably the things that you've held onto at the fringes when you got ... If you've got like one hour a day, you're gonna do the most important thing, right? I don't know if I'd start at the things you're not doing, and just think about the things that you know grow the business. For example, when you do launches, you do webinars, you do email launches, what do you do that gets the most members? What do you that grows the membership? That's the goal now is ... Right now, you're ... Part of your business is memberships, part of it's the coaching.

Shane Sams: We might want to slide that membership farther up so we'll grow revenue and get time back as we lose one-on-one clients. What does that? Is it social media posting? Maybe it is, but it's probably not because your business grew without it, right? Is it blogging every week? Maybe, maybe, but it might be blogging really, really good once a month, okay? That means freeing you up to do something more prolifically, which means that person that comes in might need to do something else like maybe they can handle your schedule for your one-on-one client. Maybe they can handle some of the marketing and some of the ads and some of the stuff like that. You really need a task list of everything you're doing right now, and then you need to say, "What can only Eva do? That's what Eva should do." Right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: That person's gotta take over other stuff. Be very careful whenever you hire someone to just give them a bunch of tasks or try to ... Or you realize you're not doing something and you give them all the tasks back because they may not ... You might not even need those tasks, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: What do you think think is the most important ... If you could do three things every week, what would those three things be? Like you didn't have time to do anything else, you have no help, you've got six hours this week to work. You can get three tasks done. What would you do right now?

Eva Klein: Well, I guess number one is I have to respond to my one-on-one clients' emails. That's absolutely mandatory because that's the service that they're paying for. They're paying for daily email support from me when they're utilizing their sleep plan. Nobody else can do that except for me. I think the second thing is regular emails. Giving emails, having a VA write my emails doesn't sit well with me. I'm sure there are people that do it, but it doesn't feel authentic, so I need to be the one, especially because I get very personal in my emails. I talk ... I give over personal anecdotes about my kids and-

Shane Sams: I'm with you. Yeah, I-

Eva Klein: It would be very strange to have somebody else-

Shane Sams: I would rather someone actually do our blog posts or our podcast rather than write our emails, 'cause those come from us.

Eva Klein: Right, exactly. Exactly.

Shane Sams: Right, so one-on-one response to the client, emails to your list, I assume to sell more stuff.

Eva Klein: I guess the support within my membership. People are posting questions every single day and they are expecting expert feedback from me on their specific situation, so nobody else can do that except for me.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so then that leaves some other things such as customer service. Is that something that you think that you'd have your VA do?

Shane Sams: Are you doing ... You're doing all that right now I assume, like-

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: "I can't get logged in, I can't do this, I can't do that." Okay.

Eva Klein: I guess customer service I could give to her.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's one thing I would definitely offload. One way that you can do that, and you can start now, is by moving to a ticketing work system. The reason I think this is important is because right now you can answer the tickets and the good thing about the ticketing system is that it will save those responses so that when you hire someone they will be able to search and see responses that you have given.

Shane Sams: Do you use a ticketing system right now? Or is just a contact?

Eva Klein: No. No, I don't. They just contact me through email.

Shane Sams: We use Zendesk is what we use.

Jocelyn Sams: There are other ones out there.

Shane Sams: Yeah, it doesn't matter-

Jocelyn Sams: That are totally fine. They are relatively inexpensive to use. You can have one user usually for around like $5 a month.

Shane Sams: Yeah, it's super cheap.

Eva Klein: Oh, okay.

Shane Sams: Like Jocelyn said, the main reason to do that is just so like as you hire other people or other people are doing it, they have like a bank of easy to get to responses so they don't have to come up with new answers every time.

Eva Klein: Also if you have turnover in staff for any reason, all those responses are still there. You can go in and look ... See what people are responding-'

Shane Sams: Everybody gets a little number so like they can say, "Oh, this is referencing ticket 3947382, just like you would if you called your insurance agent or whatever. That's one thing.

Jocelyn Sams: I would go ahead and start doing that now.

Shane Sams: What else are you doing?

Jocelyn Sams: Before that person even gets started.

Eva Klein: What else am I doing that you're saying I could give to someone else? I mean, the one-on-one ... The actual consultation that I do with my one-on-one clients, to actually sit down and come up with a plan, that's only me. I can't give that to anyone else to do. I am posting. I am showing up on social media, I'm just not doing it regular.

Shane Sams: Does that make you money?

Eva Klein: I think it does. In other words, I'm actually on my Google Analytics page right now and social is the second ... No, hold on. It's the third-most popular way that people get to my site.

Shane Sams: What's first and second?

Eva Klein: First is organic, and the second is just a direct link. The third is my newsletter. No, the fourth actually is Facebook.

Shane Sams: O'kay. I mean, I would probably have her spend maybe a little time scheduling, but I'd be careful with that.

Jocelyn Sams: That would probably be a back burner item for me, honestly. If you have extra time ... Say you're at four hours and 30 minutes and you have extra time, then that would be something you could do.

Shane Sams: You're still gonna have to create the posts, I'm telling you. You're gonna have to create 'em and she can schedule 'em.

Jocelyn Sams: The way that I've done it in the past and something you might want to consider is I have written out a big spreadsheet of posts and I used to have my VAs go in and schedule. I would just write them all at one time and then they would come in and schedule them.

Shane Sams: There's all kinds of tools like ... You can ... Like, MeetEdgar is a tool that will allow you to fill up ... That you could take one day, do a hundred posts, and they'll keep recycling through stuff. If you've got 50 blog posts, you could put them all in MeetEdgar in one day and they would just post to social media for you over time and then just start over. We do that on my U.S. History site. We have like 150 memes, funny things about school, and it just keeps recycling through 'em twice a year. People still share 'em and laugh 'cause they don't remember the last time it got posted, you know?

Eva Klein: Right. I guess I could have her ... I guess I could have her do that.

Shane Sams: Well, sure she could.

Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely.

Shane Sams: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jocelyn Sams: When you have a limited amount of time, like when you're hiring someone and you have a limited amount of time such as five hours a week, I would just put together the priorities, and that's what that person works on. Customer support, that's probably gonna be your number one priority because you want to make sure people who are paying you are happy. You start there, and if you spend three hours a week that week on customer service, then you only have two hours left to do whatever else. If you spend one hour that week on customer service, you have four hours left to do everything else.

Shane Sams: I would even push back a little bit ... I'm looking at your list here. I do think as long as you have a one-on-one business that is gonna be only you, unless you hire another coach on your staff, right? I do fully agree. It doesn't mean someone couldn't do your marketing emails better, but like I get the emotional connection to writing your own emails. That's ... We do that, you know what I'm saying? I would have a hard time letting that go myself, okay?

Shane Sams: I would push back about supporting your forums and your membership because that is a limiting belief that will stop you from scaling eventually. What people want from you is not always exactly you live, they just want an answer to their next question, okay?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: You could train this person. If she spent ... I'm assuming ... Is it a woman?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: I keep saying "she", I don't want anybody hating on me on Twitter 'cause I'm just assuming things, right? I'm assuming that she could do customer service and go into your membership and like, for example, someone asks a question that's clearly answered in one of your courses, you don't need to answer that. You just need someone to say, "Hey, Eva answered this in module three." What you need is someone who learns your course inside and out. The person you hire needs to watch all of this and know it and know where these things are, and that'll help her in customer service. It'll also help her in your ... You could turn that over, which would allow you to do what I would say is more important, which is creating that content again. Creating those blog posts, creating that prolific, really good stuff that's free to draw in more members, to share on social, to email your list, m'kay?

Eva Klein: Right [crosstalk 00:42:25]-

Jocelyn Sams: Just remember that it doesn't have to feel icky, because I know that you have a lot of personal contact with these people and you feel like they want to talk to you. I totally get that because we're in the same position, but where I have ... What I have my assistant do is she ... She doesn't post as me, she posts as herself, but she will go in and she will answer people's questions. She'll say, "Hey, so and so asked this question a couple of months ago and this was the response that Shane or Jocelyn did." Or, "Shane covered this in the module about your idea. Here's a link to it."

Shane Sams: Just like your one-on-one capped and you felt that, right? If you ... The point of the membership is to give people a community, not to give them you, 'cause then you have hundreds of people that can help each other, not just you, 'cause we don't have all the answers, either, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: It's to bring together dozens that ... If you've got someone who's had three kids and been through your course three times and they're still a member of your community 'cause they're on their third baby, they're gonna be able to help probably in your group just as much, right? Or if you have a customer service person that's trained to know where everything is, 80% of those questions are gonna be answered.

Shane Sams: Now, what our assistant does ... I just got a message from Kathy the other day, she said, "Hey, you need to post on this." Sometimes Jocelyn will drop me one or I'll drop her one, 'cause it's like something that we haven't ever talked about, right?

Eva Klein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: Maybe someone said "huzzah" for the first time, whatever. We'll go in then and now we've got that answer, so the next person that comes up with that, our assistant can point them back to it. If you don't do that now when your membership is young and growing, what'll happen is you're gonna hit another number. It might be 200 instead of 20, like with one-on-one coaching, but there will be a number where you're gonna look back and go, "I can't answer any more questions. I just can't do it."

Shane Sams: You're gonna have to do this eventually no matter what, and that mindset hurdle might need to be jumped now when there's less people instead of more. Remember, you feel like you've promised them your whole soul and presence, but that's not what most people expect. They expect an answer and a solution and a result. However you deliver that in your membership is gonna help them.

Eva Klein: I think the main challenges I have with having someone else support ... Answer questions in my community is because unlike with your business where there technically isn't a wrong answer, as long as you do something with your particular online business, something is better than nothing, right? Versus with my people and my business, there is a wrong answer. You could put your baby on the wrong schedule, which could make things worse.

Shane Sams: That's not a question-

Eva Klein: That's the issue.

Shane Sams: That's not a question they would answer. For example, I'm just gonna make something up here. This is probably not related to anything in your program, but I'll just talk to you about what we did, okay? One of the things that Jocelyn did with our kids was she would keep them awake and not let them go to sleep with like a wash cloth at certain times.

Jocelyn Sams: After eating.

Shane Sams: After eating.

Jocelyn Sams: When they were tiny babies.

Shane Sams: When they were tiny babies. Regardless if that's right, wrong, or indifferent, we learned that from a book, okay? The answers that can be answered by your courses that already exist are not ... It's not your assistant answering the question, it's you. They are not giving them the wrong answer.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and like ... Okay, here's the thing. In your business and our business and everyone's business, everyone thinks that their situation is unique. Most people's situations are not unique.

Shane Sams: That's right.

Jocelyn Sams: 90% of the questions we answer are the same.

Shane Sams: Same questions.

Jocelyn Sams: Stuff we answer over and over and over and over again.

Shane Sams: This is true in every niche that we've ever encountered. Like 80% of the things you're telling people are probably something that someone else has already asked you or you've made a course for it.

Jocelyn Sams: Your assistant is not giving an opinion. Your assistant is pointing someone to a question you've already answered.

Shane Sams: That's right. This might not happen exactly perfectly right now, but if you ... We've created systems to track all of our courses when we've answered questions. We've got a sheet of all the questions that have ever been answered on a member call, right? That like if someone says to me something that does have a very right answer like, "How do I install Paid Membership Pro?" There is only one answer to that in WordPress, right? That does have a direct answer. There's no way I would answer that question 'cause I answered it once. Now it's in our spreadsheet and now our person can say, "Go listen to this member call at the five-minute mark. Shane and Jocelyn answered that question."

Shane Sams: The fear here is that you're not answering the question, but the truth is you are answering the questions.

Jocelyn Sams: Someone else is just pointing someone to your answer.

Shane Sams: To your answer you've already done, and you'll find ... I would bet if you went and looked at every question that someone's asked you, you would find common thread, right? Things that ... Another thing, too, is a really wise mentor told me one time, "Don't rob people of all their problems by spoonfeeding them all the answers." You have to get people in ... You may have a course that generally talks about the topic they're dealing with that might not be the exact perfect specific thing to them, but that's okay, because only your client has all the variables anyway. You're just trying to give 'em the general practice that's the best and they're gonna tweak to get where their answer is. They're gonna have their aha moment through your answer, right?

Eva Klein: Right.

Shane Sams: Just try to move away from that a little bit. I would much rather you get some of that time back and not be answering the same questions a hundred times so that you can go create amazing content or something to get you found by hundreds of more people who need your help. If you could help 2,000 families get through this, but you've created artificial limits that cap you at helping 200, there's gonna be 1800 families that never get helped by you and your program. Does that make sense?

Eva Klein: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of direction as far as your virtual assistant goes. I think we have time for just one quick little thing else. What else did you want to ask about today?

Eva Klein: Yeah. I would love to get some direction from you both on how I can I guess better perfect my I guess you can call it the elevator pitch, the way I describe and really market the program, because I'm not quite convinced it's as good as it could be because I do get quite a bit of people that come to my webinars and who open up my emails and follow me on social media. While I recognize it, it can take a long time for people to buy in. A lot of the time when I ask people why they haven't joined, it's because they're not convinced that this general program can help them with their specific issues. They're convinced that they need specific one-on-one help from me because, as you said before, they're convinced that their situation is unique and different from any other situation.

Shane Sams: Sure.

Eva Klein: How do-

Shane Sams: What's your 30-second pitch now? Go.

Eva Klein: My 30-second pitch now is that the ... My Sleep Bible Program, it's an audio/visual step-by-step online sleep program and community to help fix your little one's sleep challenges for little ones ages four months to five years and keep them sleeping. That's in essence what the pitch is.

Shane Sams: I would focus probably ... The only thing I hear wrong with that probably is the getting the baby to sleep is not the result they want. They want to sleep, and the baby is keeping them awake.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and I heard also in that, the nuts and bolts of your program, people don't care about that. People care about, are they going to get the result that they want for their problem.

Shane Sams: Yeah, so it's more like, "Has your baby ever kept you up all night 'cause he or she won't sleep? Well, this program will put your baby to sleep all night-

Jocelyn Sams: So you can get the rest you need.

Shane Sams: So that you can feel rested at work tomorrow. That's what they really want to hear. All they need to hear ... They don't need to hear step by step, hold you by the hand ... Some of that's important sometimes. You can use it in different contexts, but they basically just want to say like, "I'm tired. I don't want to be tired no more. Wait, Eva, your program makes my baby sleep so I'm not tired anymore?" That's where you gotta focus all your ... The next step is fears and obstacles. Your FAQ is more important than your elevator pitch, right? Your FAQ answers all of their objections. That's where ... Don't worry too much ... This is just to get people to come to the door, right?

Eva Klein: Yeah.

Shane Sams: It's just, "Man, you're tired. I can fix that. I'll see you at my webinar in an hour." The webinar answers all their questions, like all, all their obstacles, all the things where they would say, "Yeah, but my baby's different." Not really. "Yeah, but my schedule won't let me do these things." Yeah, not really. You're just answering all of these things. "Yeah, but if I don't work directly with you" ... "No, trust me. Try this, then I'll work with you if it don't work." You're just answering all these questions as you kind of spiral down the rabbit hole. That make sense?

Eva Klein: Yes. Yes. Okay, so I kind of need to add much more on to my FAQ section and just make the elevator pitch a lot more simple and straightforward?

Shane Sams: The farther we go down this path in online business, the more we realize that our webinars need to be short and our Q&As need to be long because that's where the money's made. Same thing with yours, too.

Eva Klein: Short webinar, long Q&A.

Shane Sams: There you go.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Eva. It has been a great conversation today. I feel like we've been on here like 10 minutes and it's been like a really long time, but it's been super fun. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing about all your successes and I can't wait to see what happens next for you. Thank you so much for being here today and for sharing with us.

Eva Klein: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, guys, and thank you again for creating The Flipped Lifestyle Community. I wouldn't have my online business if it wasn't for you guys, so thank you.

Shane Sams: All right, guys, that wraps up another awesome talk with one of our real Flip Your Life Community members. We would love for you to try out The Flip Your Life Community as well. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can join right now for as little as $19 a month. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife to check out all the great programs we have to help you take your life and business to the next level.

Shane Sams: Until next time, guys, get out there and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

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

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

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