FL285 - How to Make Money Online in a Small Niche Business

In today's episode, we help Brad overcome fears and obstacles while scaling his business.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brad overcome fears and obstacles while scaling his business.

Shane: 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 on life. 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. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community and help them take their business and their life to the next level. We've got an awesome guest today, Flip Your Life community member, Brad Grey, and I didn't even try to rhyme that it just happened, but Brad, welcome to the show.

Brad Grey: Hey guys, how are you doing?

Jocelyn: Hey Brad, we are excited to talk to you today. You have some really interesting things going on in your business, and I think that our listeners are going to love it. So let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about you, your background, and what you're doing online.

Brad Grey: All right. To start, I'm a husband and a father of three. Actually, I have three kids, two daughters, basically. Age seven and a four month old now, I guess. Yeah-

Shane: That's a busy house right there.

Brad Grey: Yeah. You're not kidding, and also a two year old son who is ... They have those terrible twos, so you've got all that going on and a dog running around. It's definitely busy. It's definitely a challenge to find that time, but I was able to kind of figure out ways to build that time with the help of you all, segmenting out the schedules and what not. I'm still a practicing biology/science teacher pretty much whatever they ask me to teach. I've been pursuing online business since about 2012 when I made a product, and I put it on Teachers Pay Teachers, and I started to blog a little bit. Just anything I could do really to make some extra money when we had my first child and every once in a while I'd get this little thing, a sale and it was like this bug just telling me, "Hey you need to be doing something else with this."

Shane: It's like a virus.

Brad Grey: It went on for years, and I just kept ignoring it like, it's only a couple of bucks here, a couple of bucks there but ... Then I came across your article in Forbes right about the same time I was finishing up my master's degree in curriculum and instruction and it was like a perfect storm. I was finishing up and I knew I didn't want to be the administrator, I wanted to just dive in and write curriculum.

Jocelyn: I have to stop you here because in your form that you filled out it says "I knew what I needed to do, and I consumed what I suspect was at least 150 podcasts and even listened to some several times."

Shane: That's amazing. You got the full Netflix binge listen of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast.

Brad Grey: Absolutely I used to love going to mow the lawn just so I could get a couple of episodes in.

Jocelyn: That is awesome. I love that.

Shane: We need to put that in all our sales copy. We even make mowing the yard fun.

Brad Grey: Yeah, tough to make that fun, but it was my only opportunity to really get out there and listen to you guys. I listen to several, some of them several times just, to help provide that motivation every once in a while you just need that kick in the butt. Listening to certain episodes helps with that for sure. It helps keep me going, and I'd listen to No Sugar Shane, telling us what's up. It helps keep us going.

Jocelyn: Absolutely. So you were listening to the podcast and you decided that you needed to get this thing onto your own website and then you decided to invest in yourself and become a member of our community. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Brad Grey: Yeah, so ... Well, I had it like a wordpress.org site, or a wordpress.com site. I rolled that over and then built it up from there. I did have a couple of blog followers, 75, to be exact and that I converted over to an email list, but really what the challenge was is just finding time, finding the motivation. I took your advice, early in your community you have a breakdown of how to manage your time. Basically I just charted out exactly what I needed to do and basically looked at the end goal and mapped out what I needed to do to accomplish each day in order to meet that end goal of being able to launch a full curriculum and whatever. It was like six or nine months out. So just sitting down and mapping that all out was extremely helpful and having a goal each and every single day to accomplish to make it all happen.

Shane: What's amazing is, we actually talked about when we were structuring the Flip Your Life blueprint, what's the order you need to do things in, because everybody out there is like, "Do your sales funnel, write your email list," and all this. Our background is busy working parents who are raising children. When are we ever going to find time to build a business? As we were structuring the Flip Your Life blueprint, and we were putting it in order, we were like, the first thing you have to do is get your calendar under control. If you don't, you're never going to have time to build all these things that the gurus say you have to have. We actually ... The second or third chorus is, time management. Look, got to fill this out. You've got to do this. It's not sexy, it's boring, and it takes a lot of discipline. If you don't do this part, then none of the others are ... It's like a meta skill, like it magnifies all of the other things that are happening.

Shane: It's funny you ... You kind of snuck up on us in the community Brad. When I saw your success story, I was like, who is this guy? Because I was like, "Brad Grey?" You posted in the success forums, "I have 136 members," and we're like, "What is it, where did that come from?" Because usually we're like, okay, we see someone make the lead magnet, we see someone make the product, we see someone do this, you just dropped this hundred plus member bomb into the success forums one day, and everybody started chiming in and I'm actually going to ... I don't always read the success posts, but I want to read a part of yours because it's amazing. I click on the link, I go in and it says, "Hey, I'm Brad Grey. I am a lurker. period." And, that's how you start the whole thing.

Jocelyn: I love it Brad, you're my people.

Shane: You're Jocelyn's people, and that's why we were like, okay, who is this guy? It says, "I tend not to share much, today as a result of listening to the most recent member calls and buying a ticket to Flip Your Life I wanted to share a huge success I've had in this community." You go through and say, "I learned about the Forbes article. I wasn't a member for a long time, but then I got started, got momentum and then I did a member count today, and I have 136 members. I have almost replaced my income from my full time job. It has been truly life changing. I can't think S&J enough and the community, now it's time to level up, replace my income and get to my dream level." And then you say, "I have found 136, I can find a thousand."

Shane: I was like ... It's just amazing to hear someone ... I'm sure you've got other posts in here, but I'm like, this is basically your first success post that's like really getting into the detail, and it's just like, "Hey, by the way I almost replaced my income." But that's so awesome because we forget like 80% of people are lurkers, and it's okay to lurk. It's okay to sit in the back. It's okay not to be talking about every single thing and asking a question every day as long as you're taking action and actually building your business. You've been doing that man. Congratulations on all that success dude. That's incredible.

Brad Grey: Thank you so much. It's work. A lurker mostly because I got no time. There's no time ... There was no time to dwell in the community. I had work to do and a very tight schedule, so just getting focused, that's what kept me from being an overactive member in the community, but-

Shane: We actually find that a lot though-

Brad Grey: I get what I need and I .... It was good. That check in and being able to have someone to go to when you need help and you need it fast, it's truly awesome.

Shane: That's okay though because we actually find that happens. A lot of people will at the very beginning of their journey, get into the community and use it as a resource. "Okay, I've got to watch this video, I've got to take action. I've got to jump in the forums real quick and ask a question." What happens that we see a lot in the cycle of people coming through the membership is once you get to that 100, 150, 200 member level, that's when you jump in and you celebrate. That's when you jump in and start, "wait, I'm going to chime in here. I've been through that," and you get that circle of people succeeding and helping, succeeding and helping. It creates this awesome feedback loop inside the community where you're getting what you need and you're helping other people get what they need and everybody is like moving forward and growing together. Right?

Brad Grey: Absolutely. It's just really incredible how much activity you guys have been able to generate within that community. It's just, everybody's there to support each other. It's really great.

Shane: Yeah, I can't wait till you actually get to the live event and you meet everybody and deepen those relationships and then you come back and you're like, oh my gosh, that's not just a picture in the forums. That's not just a person's name anymore, that's the person I ate lunch with. That's the person I sat by at the mastermind group. That's the person I jump on a Zoom call with every week now, and it becomes so much more real.

Jocelyn: Okay, Brad. You've had a really exciting journey so far, but a lot of our listeners they can't really relate to the ship. Maybe they're still coming up with their idea, maybe they're just getting started. Let's take it back just a little bit to when you were getting started doing your own thing, meaning like your own website or having your own membership. What was something that was hard for you that you were able to overcome in those early days?

Shane: What was your biggest challenge besides time when you first started out?

Brad Grey: I think for me it was just believing that it was going to work. No, I read the Forbes article. I felt good and great about it and I followed your stories and I saw the other stories and there's always this doubt that, "am I doing the right thing? Am I investing this time in the right way when I could really be spending more time with my family?" But making those time investments early on, for me, yeah, they paid off, but it was tough to pull back and convince myself that what I was doing is going to work and also convince my wife that this is actually a good use of my time.

Brad Grey: Getting the support all around was one of the biggest challenges that I had when I was going through this, because I would even ask for a babysitter so I can stay on track and meet my weekly goals of putting out content and building the curriculum. So it's not just my wife supporting me, but even grandparents supporting, just to help with the kids. There's a lot of investment there and a lot of, you just got to believe and it ends up working out.

Shane: It's hard in the beginning. A lot of times people will come to us and they'll say that ... Jocelyn always says, "Well, that's great for you. It worked for you, but I don't know if that will work for me." That's one of the common things that we hear and see all the time, and when you were talking about your story there, it's not necessarily just the belief in yourself. Most people, once they get into their content and they start creating these things, the belief in the self and the actual knowledge and actual expertise pours out of you. But for the first six months you don't get feedback. Like you don't get, surveys and listeners and purchasers. There's no reward and sometimes it feels like you're digging a ditch and filling it back up, and then you're digging a ditch and then you're filling it back up. Right?

Brad Grey: Absolutely.

Shane: And you just ... Until you get to the tipping point, which could be six, nine months down the road ... We didn't quit our job for 13 months. It took us about a year and then in the 13th month we quit our job before we even were close and that was still after sacrificing, selling our house, getting our bills down to an acceptable level where we thought we could take the risk. We did a lot of stuff within that and you don't feel that feedback for months and months, and months. There are a lot of days and long nights where you're going to bed saying, "Man, is all this worth it? Is this going to pay off?" And you know what the ... I'll tell you what's the honest answer is.

Shane: The honest answer is you never know. You kept going and you get to the point ... We know if we work as hard as we can and never give up that, something's going to come of it, but I think the lack of belief comes from that. There's no guarantees. You're just doing this work and you're just waiting for some like positive feedback.

Jocelyn: I think that sometimes people think that, oh well, this person they don't support me, they don't support my dreams. It's not really from a place of, I guess, anger or hostility or anything like that. It's just from a place of the unknown. That's really hard for a lot of people. It's really hard for me. I don't like not knowing what's going to happen next. I don't think that your wife or anyone else is coming at it like, "Oh, I don't support you because you're a loser." It's more just because they don't know. They don't know what's going to happen, and that's hard for a lot of people.

Shane: Is your wife on board now? Bet she's on board now.

Brad Grey: Oh absolutely. Yeah. She's on board now.

Shane: You just got to prove it. Like that's the thing is like ... Jocelyn, even to this day, I'll come up with some harebrained idea, which is at least like every three hours and she just looks at me and she's like, "Prove it. Prove it. If that's possible, prove it." But then you got ... It always reads. I'm actually about to teach a new training tonight for the Flip Your Life community, for the Flip Your Life members. Each week we do a training for Flip Your Life live attendees to get them ready. We're talking about these phases that entrepreneurs go through in their life. You figure out something, you yearn for more then you learn about it, then you'd go earn it and then you just keep burning it up until it makes it happen. But what's funny about being an entrepreneur, being a business owner is you go through these cycles and they keep resetting.

Shane: So like your ... We're going to talk about this in a little bit. You're at this stage now where you've reached this point and you went through that first cycle where you wanted something, you put in the work and you weren't saying anything, you didn't believe it was possible, and you had to keep going anyway. Then it happened and now you see what's possible, but the next level, that's an even higher mountain and it starts over, right?

Brad Grey: Absolutely, yeah.

Shane: You just keep resetting the process, and that's something that we've really been stressing to people lately is, people will say like, "Well, I'm scared." I just ... I know somehow if I believe this is possible for me, and we're kind of like, that never goes away. If you want in the game, if you want to be self employed, if you want to stay self employed, you want to make money online, you want to work from home, you want to be location independent, snapping the Instagram pictures on the vacation that you've never been on before. Right? You've got to get in the game and that fear stays and that uncertainty stays and that hustle stays and everything just keeps like going on and on forever but once you cross the line it's worth it.

Jocelyn: The only certainty is that if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

Shane: Right. That's exactly right. And you've done a lot ... I love your story too because it's like, "I am a lurker. Nobody knows I've been in here all this time incognito, making things happen." But you made it happen. You were doing it and you look like an overnight success, but people don't realize there was a moment where you didn't believe. There was a moment where you had to keep going. There was a disagreement with your wife on whether you should do it and like, "am I doing the right thing?"

Shane: I remember specifically when Anna Jo was really little, when we started out. There were many nights when we were grinding and I was like, "Man, like I'm losing an hour today that I could be playing with her," or, "I'm losing an hour today while I could be playing with Isaac," but now, I spent this morning ... I just spent two and a half hours of my kids homeschooling. Cool, right? I bought ... I spent the hour then to get the two and a half hours back today. That's really where the investment comes from. That's what overcoming the belief, the lack of belief, the fears and all that comes in is, hey, do it a little bit now so you can have a lot more later.

Jocelyn: Okay, Brad let's jump a little bit forward to today. Let's talk about what's going on as far as your mindset or what types of fears are holding you back right now.

Brad Grey: All right, currently I'm at about, well, I think 143 I checked right before this call in terms of numbers, my goal by the end of the year is to get to 500. Right now, I guess I'm just stuck. I know that my current strategies for growth aren't going to get me to that 500 mark. Just knowing my numbers and knowing how quickly I can build up my list, so I guess I'm just stuck in terms of how to get to that 500 number and what strategies I need to do in order to get there.

Brad Grey: I've done a webinar, one, in my house with my three children. It's really a struggle to find time to have that quiet time to really be able to run a webinar from my house. Again, that could be a mindset issue. I know I was able to do it once, I could probably do it more, but it is a challenge. That's one aspect that's kind ... That I feel as though it's holding me back and just not knowing what direction to go. Like Shane was mentioning before you, you reach this point where you made it over the first mountain and now I feel like I'm at the bottom of the other mountain and I'm not sure which direction to go to get to the top.

Brad Grey: I also feel like my niche ... I get concerned that maybe my niche is a little bit too small to get to my dream number or even my end of year number of 500. I know there's 550,000 biology teachers in the US and I have about 5,000 on my list. Getting to that 50,000, I pretty much need every single biology teacher in the country to hit the goal that I want to hit.

Shane: Well, let's work backwards here. We'll talk about ... We'll go back to the time then ... Let's talk about that size of the niche problem first. You have a hyper targeted niche and anybody with a hyper targeted niche is going to be able to convert a lot more of their list, than someone who's like in a really, really broad niche because the people that join your email list or join your thing, they are biology teachers. It's not like I'm passing interest in email marketing or I'm passing interest in painting pictures, so I join some artist's email lists to learn how to paint more. It's not a hobby, that is their career. They are this, they need it, they want it. That's why they're in.

Shane: So it's not above and beyond the expectation to say you could easily convert 10% of your list, which is 5,000 emails, that's 500 people. That is not like rare air for a hyper targeted niche. When every single human being that joined, pretty much a biology teacher or teaching biology in some way, it's just a matter of giving them more opportunities to buy. You can get 500 from the 5,000 people that have already found you. Okay?

Brad Grey: All right.

Shane: We see that over and over and over again, so don't let that limiting belief or ... Sometimes we hear these statistics. We usually throw out general things like the 5% rule. Like if you have 1,000,000 people listen and 5% might opt in and 5% of them might open your email, then 5% of might buy, whatever, it just keeps going. We throw that out there as a baseline, but it's not the truth in every single niche. Your niche is temperate targeted. The goal there is focus on those 5,000 and figure out why 136 have joined, and where are the other 464 or whatever it is, that was 364. Figure that out, focus on marketing to them. If you can increase ... Increasing conversions is 100 times easier than increasing traffic and opt ins. So let's just get more of those people out. That is 100% possible.

Jocelyn: I would just say too, one size doesn't fit all. You have to remember that whatever your goal is, the reason that you're wanting 500 members I presume is to hit a specific income goal, right?

Brad Grey: Yes. I think that's an appropriate amount for me to be able to have more flexibility and I desire to quit my job.

Jocelyn: Just remember that there are other ways to reach that goal and one way is to retain more people, another way is to increase your price. There might be other ways of doing it, like selling one off products. There are other things that you can do, so don't feel like you're totally constrained by, "I must fit this exact mold."

Shane: Yeah, a simple price increase could bring the number down to 400. You just do the math and you're like, "Wait a minute. It might be easier to get 400 people, so what would the price point be to get that and reach the same financial goal?" Don't get pigeonholed into yourself thinking your niche is small. I'm telling you right now, guys, if you've got 50,000 people doing something, 500 will pay for it, so you've just got to be able to increase those conversions, do more to give them more opportunities to buy and get more involved in the increasing ... Increasing conversions is way more important than increasing traffic. Our list is not huge, Jocelyn and I don't put a lot of effort into like huge ad campaigns and traffic and things like that because we convert podcast listeners into email subscribers, into members really, really well. We do it at a high clip.

Shane: Our business has grown something now like 18, 19 months in a row with very little ad spend because we focus a lot on giving people opportunities to join our membership. We say it every week on our podcast, I PS it on every email I send out and like we just focus on converting more people and that's going to produce a lot more income. It doesn't mean that other stuff's not important, but if you start thinking and trying to do the math, "Oh well there's only so many of these people in the world, I can't get there," your brain's going to subconsciously believe that and you won't get there.

Brad Grey: Absolutely. I really like your ideas with the changing things up a little bit in terms of mindset, like selling a one off product to my list or just working on retention. That was something.

Jocelyn: Just think outside the box a little bit. You can figure out other ways to make this happen, but don't get distracted by a lot of unnecessary things. As far as like what to do next, you already have an offer that's clearly converting, so I think the next step for you is really probably just finding more people. So I would concentrate maybe on some advertising. The good thing about the education space is that it's really easy to advertise and fairly inexpensive because there aren't a lot of people doing it.

Shane: And with finding more people means from your list. Like, it's ... All those, there's probably right now 200 more people that will instantly buy your product, if they don't know it's there, so you can upload your list and advertise to those people. You can go in and just advertise straight to your email list about your members. They've already signed up.

Jocelyn: A price increase is a great way to do it.

Shane: Yeah.

Jocelyn: Shake people out who maybe wanted to join but they didn't for whatever reason. Oh well by the way, I'm getting ready to do a price increase.

Shane: Yeah, "We're raising prices next year, but you can lock it in now, you've got 72 hours to do it," send that out to your list and you just shake the apple tree. That's how you find more people for your membership is in this audience that you already control. There's other things you can do like on Teachers Pay Teachers. I know you've got individual lesson plans uploaded there, correct?

Brad Grey: Yes.

Shane: The strategy here for everybody listening at home is, I have a core product that I sell on my own website, but then I find a third party marketplace to go sell my products individually to get discovered, to make extra money. It's a great strategy to boost your income. My lesson plans in Teachers Pay Teachers are structured to make sure they know that there is a ushistoryteachers.com. There's a copyright with my domain on the bottom of every paper, the last slide of every single slide deck and any PowerPoint that I sell on Teachers Pay Teachers always is a sales page for the membership. I've injected sales copy and these things in there to make sure that anyone who buys any resource knows there's another step. There's another place to go get these things, to build memberships.

Shane: So just a little bit of strategy. You could probably go out and get 10, 20% more members right now, and then with a little more application you can get in front of the people you already have that already know about you, and let's just convert. Let's get the 300 members out of that list as soon as possible before we ever go to the big task of how to ... You created the biggest mountain possible. You said this earlier, "I have to get every human that's in my niche on my email list by the end of the year." That's not going to happen. When we create these ghosts and these demons that we have to fight it does become oppressive. It does become very hard right to actually do those things. The better thing is to say, "Well, wait a minute, what do I already have available and what am I not doing to maximize that?" That's what we need to do in your case too.

Brad Grey: Awesome. Thank you so much. I love some of the ideas that you shared there. Price increase is always get people to jump ship-

Shane: Always.

Brad Grey: It's crazy to see. Kind of in line with what you've mentioned I think a good transition would be ... I was talking, tossing around in my brain the idea of introducing another curriculum because a lot of teachers at the high school level teach multiple subjects and another one might be, for me, environmental science. I was thinking about ... I think it would be relevant to my current list as well, so I was just curious what your thoughts were on doing that because I know you always hit the nail on the head, hit the nail on the head. Just curious if you think that would be advisable to invest time into creating that or just keep building the current curriculum that I have.

Shane: I would not do that yet, because you've got so much more potential on this email list that you've already got that you haven't even tapped into yet. There's at least enough people there to get to 250. It's going to be so much easier to just get really consistent and prolific marketing what you already have to people who are already interested than to hope that they want more and move heaven and earth to create this thing. This is the knee jerk reaction to most people when they hit a plateau, is, "I've got to create something new, this thing's not working as good as it was anymore because whatever," but really it's just you haven't squeezed that rag dry yet. If you just put your effort into that for maybe another year and really zero in and laser dial in on focusing what you already have, it's a lot lower energy, it's a lot easier and you're going to get to a higher point where then maybe you can go hire some support to create the new thing instead of you doing all the work by yourself.

Shane: I created most of the trainings in the Flip Your Life blueprint that exists the way it does now, was that in 2016 or 15?

Jocelyn: 15.

Shane: In February of 2015 I sat down and said to myself, "What are the most evergreen concepts that everyone has to know that even have a chance to succeed?" Like if a family comes in and they want to change their future, I need to know exactly ... They need to know exactly what are the steps to get there. The steps that will always exist. Create an idea, get an Avatar, go out and create a product, market your product. How do you market that? How do you use advertising? How do you do these things? How do you build recurring revenue? How how do you do all that? How do you research to make sure your idea will actually make money in the marketplace? I wrote all these things down and I started looking through it and I took out some of the tactical stuff that was really like, well, this is how Leadpages works today, but then they change in six months. We threw that out. We said, "What are the core evergreen principles that you have to do to make this work?"

Shane: I created all that in one month. I created like 30 or 40 courses in one month. I only now update videos when members specifically need them. Does that make sense? I'm doing a training tonight, it's going to be really, really important for the Flip Your Life live attendees, and it's a course that we've been meaning to add. We're just adding on top. We're just a little sprinkle. We'll sprinkle on top of the cupcake. That's the ... We're adding these courses as we go. We don't move heaven and earth but every like five years. Our main goal is to say, "Hey, we've created this amazing thing that we know works. We've seen hundreds and hundreds of people start their business, quit their job, do all these crazy things with it. We just need to tell more people about that."

Shane: That's it. That's our job. Tell more people, spread the word, get the message out, and that's what your job is like right now. That's what you have to do, and this actually goes back to that first question you asked about, "Well, I'm having trouble getting this webinar done, I've got a lot of kids, the kids are in the house. I've to find a time when they're quiet, for my audience," and stuff like that. I feel you're at ... You're bucking up against the wall and you really need to just juggernaut through the wall right now because none of that matters. You've been to our member calls and you've seen us in our community, our kids are eating bags of chicken in the background, there's dogs, like my dog has a sledge hammer on her head and if we lock our doors she just keeps ramming it until it opens because she wants to get to us.

Shane: There's ... You've never seen anything perfect from us, that includes on our webinars. We were at ... We were doing a webinar one night and it's like pack of dog's was like barking outside or something. This was a sales webinar but it sold just as many as anything else. So do you want to get in a quiet room? Yeah, but you don't have to worry about the kids being asleep. You don't have to worry about background noise. Nobody cares. I read this awesome thing the other day, but like said, "You're so busy worrying about what," like when you go to a party, "You're so busy worrying about what you look like and stressed out and anxious, but the thing is everybody else is so worried about what they look like, they don't even look at you because they're just worried about themselves."

Shane: The person that shows up at your Webinar, they're not there for you. They are kind of ... They're kind of there for you. What they're really there for is how can this make my life better? That's what they're there for. They're not ... 90% of their attention is on you, not the baby crying in two rooms away. You know what I'm saying?

Brad Grey: You're absolutely right.

Shane: Yeah man. It's just like, just do it. We've done it right. I did ... Where was I doing that Facebook? I did a Facebook live the other day on our Flipped Lifestyle page. I was in the kitchen, our assistant was here and she was cleaning and doing something in the kitchen, unloading groceries or something, Jocelyn was talking to her, the kids were walking around playing with the dogs and watching a TV show in the living room, and I didn't even use a microphone. I just turned it on and I needed to do that video, I needed to do it right then it was to promote something so I just did it. Not one person said, "Man, could you tell everyone in the background to be a little quieter." No, they were like focused on what I was talking about and you just got to do it.

Shane: You just got to do it. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter it's perfect, you'll make so much money someday you can go buy an office and you can go get a loan and have a quiet room that's soundproof. Right, but right now you just got to kill it. You just got to crush it. You got to be consistent. You got to be prolific and you got to be relentless. I always throw that one in because you can't let stuff like that hold you back.

Brad Grey: You're definitely right. Hearing no sugar, Shane. Tell it how it is, is really what I needed right now to help me break through this wall here.

Shane: I do that from time to time, except for Jocelyn because she tells me how it is and then I've got to back off because Jocelyn, Jocelyn's it's no sugar Jocelyn, at our house.

Jocelyn: Pretty scary individual. Okay. I think we have some good ideas as far as like mindset and just getting ready to go into this next phase of growth. With that in mind, what question do you have for us that we can help you with as you enter this next phase?

Brad Grey: I guess what specific growth strategies do you or members in the community seem to be getting the most success with right now?

Shane: For us it's promoting live type webinars, like live events. It's the easiest funnel to create to get to consistently work. You basically advertise or promote the webinar. So you would email your list and maybe start an ad with your uploaded list. Again, like let's just target those 5,000 people until we get everybody that we can in the membership. Every week, same Webinar, post it, they go and they register. Some of them show up, you pitch and they buy, and you'd do it again and again and again and again and again, because 90% of people on your list won't show up for this webinar this week. So let's go back and get those 90% to maybe come next week and then maybe the next week and then maybe the next week and doing them live really does make a difference because you're there, they see you're real, you're calling them by name and when you ask them to join, it's like inviting them over.

Shane: You also then, they raise their hand and say they wanted more information, you know the hottest people on your list. You have three or four followups to pitch them afterwards just via email automated. So there's nice automation to it, it really only takes a couple hours a week to be able to set up and it's just the easiest way to grow your business. It really, really is. Now, when you get more advanced, you can do things like evergreen webinars where people go to watch an on demand training. So you sell it like Netflix at that point, but if you really want to go to 100 to 500 people, 252 webinars in a row relentlessly and watch your business grow, it will happen. It can't not happen when you're constantly doing the work like that.

Shane: So for teachers, your needs are specifically to teachers, you would think about their calendar and you would say, "Hey, these people are off on Sundays and they're probably dreading work on Monday because they've been at the AAU basketball league or the cheerleading or the dance or the baseball park all weekend. They've been doing all these other things with their family and stuff. It's Sunday, they don't have a lesson for Monday. "Hey, come and do a free,"" call it a professional development, speak the language of your people. Talk about a topic to get them through, that leads to the pitch of, "Hey, get in here and get this curriculum, teacher your students, they'll improve, you'll improve. You won't be planning lessons all the time." You can go sell it to them and, hey, maybe 20 show up every Sunday. Maybe you get 20 people on your entire list to show up on every Sunday night.

Shane: If you do that, 20 people times 52 weeks in the year, that's 1,040 teachers. 1040 people in your niche from your list that would show up, and hear you give this speech every single week for 52 weeks in a row. If you can convert 20% of those, you would have 208 more members just like that.

Jocelyn: This is a really effective thing to do right before the beginning of school. So I would wait until summer is winding down, so maybe like mid July to late July type time. That's when people are really starting to be like, "Oh brother, school is getting ready to start. I haven't done anything this summer. I need to get with it." I've always had a lot of success doing education related trainings right before school is going to start.

Shane: Because we're playing that calendar. If you started this on July 15th and you went every week of the school year and what you do then is you just maybe give it a little flavor. You don't have to change the webinar, but you can give it a little flavor, like maybe certain things are taught in biology in September, certain things are taught in November. You can give it a little flavor to make it more relevant with your subject lines and stuff but it's basically the same thing. It's basically like this is how to do this. You can have a couple of webinars if you wanted to do two or three and rotate them. That's a powerful strategy. If you can ever get three or four webinars that you rotate and are all relevant to your list and you're just constantly every month in your list. Then you just grind it out man. You will get more than 20 people a webinar.

Shane: 50 people are probably going to show up. If 50 people show up to every webinar, now you've got it 408 or 400 and something new members, which gets you to your goal, 500 members. The moral of the story is, this is probably the best thing that's working right now, and it just ... You got to roll up your sleeves and you've got to do it right. You just got to roll up your sleeves and make it happen, but once you get in a rhythm, it becomes easy. You know what I'm saying?

Brad Grey: Right. Like anything else. No, I really like the idea of webinars. Now, I've been thinking about them a lot, obviously. One thing I like is even if people are not showing up, they're at least seeing that you're hosting, one. I think it ups your credibility at least a little bit.

Shane: You're top of mind.

Brad Grey: Top of mind as well. I also like ... You made a light bulb go off in my head when you said, I have 5,000 people on my list, but you've said it before, over and over again, not everybody's seeing all of your emails and retargeting those people in different ways, even though I'm sending those emails, I can look at my stats and I know that not everybody's responding to the emails but I have the ability to retarget them in other ways too.

Shane: You have to plan all your stuff out to support each other. Every Saturday or most Saturdays I send out like a little newsletter to our email list and it has like, it's all the stuff that we did that week. If I did a YouTube video I put it in there, if we had a cool Facebook post that ... We would do a prayer thread every Sunday, if you're not following us on Facebook and you got to flippedlifestyle.com/facebook or facebook.com/flippedlifestyle, we do a prayer thread every week. If our community needs prayer, like we pray for every one of them. We go through and Jocelyn and I read all those and it's just something we do, but we promote that in our email list because you want everything to be a big circle.

Shane: If you're on my email list, I also want you over on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, I'd like to have you on Twitter. If you're on Twitter, why don't you follow us on Instagram? Because we want as many places to reach you as possible. Flip Your Life live attendees, we have a special, exclusive Facebook group for them that's outside of the membership. Why do we do that? Well, I need ... If I'm doing a training, I need to be able to post in the Facebook group, send you an email and I'll go post it inside of the community. I know I got three chances to hit you instead of one, and I'm telling you, you got to contact people every day. I don't know if it's on social, I tried to do it on email every day.

Shane: You got to contact people constantly. If they unsubscribe, let them go, they weren't going to buy anyway, but you've got to constantly. You can't just say, "Well we're doing our monthly sale and now we're going to have a business." Nope. We're going to sell daily to our list, daily in our ads, weekly on these webinars and daily we're going to promote it. If you do that, you can't help but succeed over time. It just ... Not everybody will do it. There's a lot of people listening right now, you're shaking your head, you're driving in your car down the freeway, you're stuck in traffic, you're on the treadmill, you're sitting there right now going, "Man. Yeah, that's what I got to do." But not everybody's going to do it. The people that do, do it are the people that get to 500 members, that get to quit their job, that get to replace their income.

Shane: They get that trade that one hour now to get that three hours back later with their kids and their spouse. You've proven time and time ... Again, you're the guy that's going to do it. You just got to do it, man.

Brad Grey: Absolutely.

Jocelyn: All right Brad. It has been a lot of fun talking to you. I know that you are an awesome action taker, so I cannot wait to see what happens next in your journey, but before we go, I just want to ask you what we ask most people on the podcast, is what you plan to work on in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today?

Brad Grey: I think it's going to have to be just buckling down and starting to schedule out some webinars. I purchased EverWebinar and WebinarJam a long time ago and I've used it once, it's sad. So I have the tools to do the job, I just need to buckle down and just really start hammering through some webinars and maybe create a couple of others to go along with the ones that I already have so I can mix it up a little bit and just squeezing my list and trying to hit them in a lot of different directions in terms of just being top of mind, making sure they know I have a product for sale.

Shane: Yeah man, don't be shy. That list exists for one reason, to buy your stuff. That's why you created it. So go out and get it. Don't be afraid to ask your list for money. That's why it's there. That's like not asking an apple tree for an apple, that don't make no sense what's growing on the apple tree? Apples. They taste good. You're not just going to sit and watch them. Like, "Man, I'd love an apple today, but I only pick apples on Mondays." All right? Right now you walk over to the tree and grab an apple. That's what you've got to do to your list all the time.

Shane: All right, well listen, Brad, man, that was an awesome chat. Thank you so much man for being on the show today. Thank you for being an amazing member and thank you for shining the light on the lurkers cause there's a lot of lurkers taking massive action in the Flip Your Life community. We see you, we know you're there guys. We know you're doing it and then not everybody's going to be up and just talking about all this stuff they're doing all the time. But man, you've done a lot of great things. I have no doubt that you will do many great things in the future and also I have no doubt that what you share today, it's going to help a lot of people listening right now to take action and change their families future too. Thanks again for being on the show.

Brad Grey: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate all that you guys have done and are doing.

Shane: All right you all. Thank you so much for tuning in today. What an amazing chat with Brad. He's doing great things in his business and we expect you to take what you learned today and take action and go out there and grow your business so you can change your family's future as well.

Shane: Before we wrap up, we want to leave you some wisdom from the Bible. Jocelyn, I get a lot of our information, a lot of our inspiration from the Bible. There's a lot of great Bible verses that are directly related to building and growing businesses. Today's Bible verse comes from Romans 8 verse 18 and it says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Listen guys, whatever you got to do, whatever you got to suffer through, whatever you got to go through right now to build your business, to change your family's future, it's going to be worth it, and it will not even compare to what you're going to see on the other end of this journey.

Shane: All the things that Brad went through in the beginning, don't even compare to where he is right now or where he's going to go. All the things that we suffered through when we started our online business don't even compare to the amazing life that we have built today. So whatever you are doing, whatever you are grinding through, whether it's trying to find that idea, building your product, getting that WordPress website set up so that you can build a membership and build recurring revenue. It's hard. It is going to be difficult. You're not going to see the rewards right away, but all of that will not even compare to what your family's future is going to look like.

Shane: All right guys, that is all the time that we have today. We would love to have you inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can join Brad in there. It doesn't matter if you're a lurker, it doesn't matter if you're a question answerer or a question asker, whatever you are, we want you in the community right where you're at. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can learn all about the amazing training, forums, community and resources that we have inside and if you would love to meet Brad and meet me and Jocelyn at Flip Your Life LIVE 2019, go to flippedlifestyle.com/live and we would love to see you there. That's all the time we've got for this week guys. Until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to Flip Your Life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

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

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