FL292 - How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

In today's episode, we help Brooke overcome imposter syndrome and implement new marketing strategies for her nursing student membership.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we help Brooke overcome imposter syndrome and implement new marketing strategies for her nursing student membership.

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 online. 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 have another real member of the Flip Your Life Community onto the show. Cannot wait to celebrate a big success in their business and help them take their business to the next level. But, first, we wanted to let you know that the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast is brought to you by the Flip Your Life Community. That's where we teach real people, real people just like our guest and just like you how to start, build, and grow an online business of their very own.

Shane: We are proud to be one of the only business podcasts that does not sell ads or sell interview spots to guests who are in turn selling their latest book or pushing affiliate products. No, we are 100% supported by our members, listeners, and fans. That keeps us independent, free, and focused on doing what's best for Flipped Lifestyle listeners just like you. We would love to have your support and help support you on your online business journey inside of the Flip Your Life Community.

Shane: Flip Your Life members get early access to the Flip Your Life podcasts each week, bonus and extended episodes of the show, complete access to our entire training library. Of course, there's over 50 training videos to help you find your business idea, launch your online business, and sell things online. Plus you will get access to hundreds of other family focused entrepreneurs from around the world in one of the most active business communities online.

Shane: So help us keep the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast ad and affiliate free all while we help you build your business and help you create a better future for your family. We have affordable plans starting for as little as $19 a month and your first month comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. There's absolutely no risk when you join. You can cancel anytime. To learn more go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D-L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E dot com/flipyourlife all one word. Join today. We appreciate your support and can't wait to support you and help you reach your goals inside the Flip Your Life Community. That's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Join today.

Shane: But today we are super excited to welcome Flip Your Life Community member Brooke Butcher to the show. Brooke, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast.

Brooke: Hey, guys, thanks for having me.

Jocelyn: We are very, very happy to have you here today. I am especially interested in what you're doing for your day job right now. We'll talk about that just a little bit. But before we jump into all that, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

Brooke: You bet. I am from Oklahoma. I am a wife and a mother to two girls, five and three, so we're pretty busy around here. I'm a nurse, but I don't really work at the bedside right now. I went back and got my Master's so I could start teaching several years ago, and I worked as a professor for about five years teaching in the final semester of the nursing program at one of our colleges. I have stepped away from that as well just because it wasn't very flexible.

Brooke: Right now for my 9:00 to 5:00, I'm working with nursing students in an online university serving in more of like a mentor role to help them navigate their classes and graduate on time. Sadly, it's not a teaching role or it would be more fun and tolerable frankly, but I basically have to check in with them weekly and do these calls. I'm working from home, so that's kind of a hard battle right now with the girls being the ages that they are and trying to keep them out of the office and that sort of thing while I'm working.

Shane: You left out... On your intake form that you filled out you said, "A call that many of them despise."

Brooke: That's absolutely right.

Shane: So basically you're forcing these poor nursing students to spend time with you on the phone and they hate this. Why do they hate it so bad?

Brooke: It's a weekly call and basically just to check in to say, "Are you doing your work?" You did this well last week. Seriously, some of them will answer the phone and be like, "Hello?" I'll say, "Hi, Nicole, it's Brooke."

Brooke: "Oh, hi."

Shane: Oh, no.

Brooke: You can hear this shift in energy in their voices.

Shane: Are these like nontraditional... I know not a lot of nurses are nontraditional students. Are some of these older people too that have families that went back?

Brooke: Most of them are. These are actually students that are already... They're already nurses. They're going back to get their BSN.

Shane: Oh, okay. See, that's even worse because you're taking... If you get on to college student, sorry if there's any college students listening out there, but those are children. You're getting real adults that you're taking time away from what they're doing. They probably just hate you for it.

Jocelyn: Yeah. I was particularly intrigued by this because I'm just surprised that you actually call these students every week. I did my master's online when I was getting my education degree, and nobody called me every week to make sure I was getting my work done. In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't contact me at all.

Brooke: Right.

Shane: Why do they do that? Is it like a retention strategy for the nursing school or something or is it just meant to be support?

Brooke: Yeah. It's meant to be support. They call it... They say it's like their secret sauce to the success of the students in their program. It's not just the nursing college, it's all of the colleges through that online university. It's a hard role because most people don't appreciate it. Some really do, but for the most part it's just frustrating. I'm not a phone person, which kind of adds insult to injury, but I took the job because it's really flexible with my family for the most part, and it offers much better pay than you'd get at a brick and mortar college these days.

Shane: For sure. And it is... There's always trade-offs, right? We all make trade-offs no matter what our business is. There's going to be something in it that you don't like. Every job, even when you fully start your own online business and you're doing it self-employed forever, there's going to be something you don't like. But does the trade-off match up? Do you get the hours back with your kids? Do you have more money than another job or are you able to pursue another thing like your online business because you took one job over another? Kudos to you for not only supporting the nurses of the future but taking all their crap when they're mad at you.

Shane: Well, tell us a little bit about what you're doing online. One reason that we asked you on this show was because you've been very active in the Flip Your Life Community, very active in our Flip Your Life LIVE attendee sessions by the way. Just chatted with you last night in one of those. We're super excited that we get to meet you and we get to talk to you, and we get to help you. You've been doing some really cool things online, and you've had some success. Tell everybody what you're doing online on the side, and tell us about these success stories you've been having, these big wins.

Brooke: Yeah, you bet. I provide online resources for nursing students. These are not the student's I'm working with now. These are students who are trying to get their RN degree so they can go be nurses at the bedside. It's set up as a membership site. Right now I have it on Teachable where students pay $25 a month, and they have access to PowerPoints and videos, cheat sheets, study guides, practice questions, all kinds of things. Then I have a private Facebook group where I do Facebook lives, answer Q&As and offer extra trainings and things like that over testing and study habits and everything that goes along with nursing school basically.

Brooke: There are four semesters in nursing school. I currently have all of the resources built out for the fourth and final semester, and I started a beta group back in January as I was building out the rest of the content and had I think around 22 or 23 students join there.

Shane: Did you charge for your beta group or was it kind of like a free thing?

Brooke: No, I charged for my beta group because what I did, I had been working with this group of five students. I had been tutoring them from the first semester. This was from the college that I used to work at, and one of the faculty members had given them my name and said, "Oh, I know sometimes she does tutoring on the side." These students had reached out to me. I was tutoring them as a group. Every week I would meet with them for an hour or two hours and go over content. Whenever it came to the fourth semester, I thought, "I have all of the content ready to go for this because I taught this entire semester." I sent one of them a group message on Facebook and said, "Basically made a template on Teachable. This is what this would look like. Do you think people in your class would be interested in this resource?"

Brooke: I didn't realize this, but the student sent it to her entire class of 75 students.

Shane: Wow.

Brooke: Brooke is willing to build this out for us if she has people who are willing to pay for it. Within 24 hours she sent me back 44 messages that said yes.

Shane: Oh, my gosh. That is amazing. This happened just last September, correct?

Brooke: That's right.

Shane: Wow.

Brooke: That happened in August, and then I was like, "I better get my butt in gear." I started building out like the first unit. I said, "I'll have that ready to go by the day that your class launches." I think 25 people signed up right away. I offered two different tiers then because I was kind of afraid of my bandwidth having this full time job and everything. I said, "For those of you who will pay $25 a month I'll do Facebook lives for you and provide you with the video content and that sort of thing." Everybody else I think I only charged $10 or $15.

Shane: This is the beta group, right, not what you're doing now?

Brooke: That's right.

Shane: This is the beta group.

Brooke: Yeah.

Shane: Okay.

Brooke: That have access to the content. I should've just-

Shane: Super smart.

Brooke: Yeah. So it worked out really well, but, of course, that was the fourth semester so they all graduated in December.

Shane: You basically built in your own attrition to stop all the payments?

Brooke: Yes, so it was not a great plan.

Jocelyn: Well, you know, the good news is you did that at the beginning, so that's a nice little lesson for you of what not to do.

Shane: That's right. Right, exactly. This is an amazing.. I was writing things out as you were saying this like an outline. I just looked over at Jocelyn, and we're like fist pumping every time you said the next step that you took. Because you were like just doing something one on one kind of randomly tutoring people, and then you kind of just put it out there to a group, and you built an outline, and then you didn't even have anything ready to go. You just showed them kind of what it was like a prelaunch. And you had all these people raise their hand and then half of them gave you money. Basically what you just said too, I wrote this down, there were 75 people in the class who heard about this. That's like an email list of 75 humans. That's 75 people. Just like an email list of 75 people, that was a classroom of 75 people. Forty something of the 75 raised their hand and 20 something of those actually opened their wallet.

Shane: That just goes to show you if you just put yourself out there even if it's not perfect, even if it's not done, you don't need a huge amount of people. If you can find an email list of 75 to 100 people, and they're the right people, you may be sitting on a membership of 25 to 30 people paying you $25 a month tomorrow and then once they give you money, you're going to be so pumped up and scared, you have to go create the content because you took their money. That's what you get, right?

Brooke: This is right.

Shane: How motivated were you after those people signed up to be like I have got to get this stuff done. I need to do six months of work in a month because these people are expecting this from me.

Brooke: Oh, yeah. I was super motivated and kind of terrified because I was thinking, "How on earth am I going to pull this off?" I honestly had this vision since 2012, and I did not take action on it because I just kept saying oh well, now we've got a new baby. Oh, now we've got this and that. And now I kick myself because why didn't I take steps. For all of the listeners who are just sitting on something, just do it. I finally decided even if it fails, at least I gave it a shot, and I won't ever have this regret. I won't ever wonder about it.

Shane: And don't worry, that happens to a lot of people too. I don't know if we've said this on the podcast before. I think I've talked about it a little bit here and there. Back in like... When was I selling those playbooks on Ebay on DVDs, Jocelyn? Was that like-

Jocelyn: That was like 2002 maybe.

Shane: In like 2002, we had just graduated from college. Jocelyn was working as a sales and marketing director for commercial dishwashers.

Jocelyn: Don't be jealous.

Shane: Exciting task right there, living the high life, let me tell you. Then I was working for my dad doing insurance. For some reason, I got this idea that I could sell football playbooks on Ebay. I would just download them and put them on a DVD and sell them.

Jocelyn: And physically mail them.

Shane: And physically mail them to people.

Jocelyn: Because people still did that in 2002.

Shane: Yes. What's crazy is I somehow built this website with dream weaver. I went and bought a book from the bookstore about dream weaver the old HTML website software that you did on your Windows 98 computer or whatever we were using back then. And I actually made money. I made like almost $500, but then I just stopped. I just went down a career path. I got a job coaching football, and I said, "I'm just going to go do this." Internet marketing wasn't a thing then, but this was a full 10 years before we circled back around and we're like, "Hey, I wonder if we can make money online." I often look back and go, "Oh my goodness, what if I had just kept going?"

Jocelyn: And didn't play as many video games.

Shane: What if I didn't play as many video games back in 2002 as I did? Where would we be? But you can't really do that, right? All you can say is, "Well, wait a minute. What's happening now, and how can we turn this into a better tomorrow?" It's truly amazing. Let's fast forward a little bit. You sell this thing, you build it accidentally where everyone has an end date, and they all leave in December. What happens in January of this year? Kind of bring us up to where you are in your membership today, how many members do you have and things like that.

Brooke: In January, one of the students that I had been tutoring she had to sit out her semester in the fall because she had a baby. She was the first one to jump on and say, "Yes, I will sign up for your membership," because she had already been working with me, and she knew that what I was providing was valuable. She had clearly talked to some of her friends, and they weren't really biting. Some of them would come to some of the Facebook lives I was doing just on my regular Facebook page, but they weren't invested in any of it. So I started kind of implementing some of your strategies and things like that, and going on and doing more lives just to show people what I was capable of offering them and that sort of thing and reaching out. You said, "Send out an email that just says 'What are you working on right now?'" So whenever somebody would come visit or sign up for a cheat sheet or something like that, I would say, "What do you need help with right now?" Half of them would respond.

Brooke: I think through doing those little things like that it started to gain some momentum, and I think it was in February I got 17 new members. Just slowly, week by week I'll look up and I'll have five new members and six new members. Now I'm at 36 right now.

Shane: Amazing.

Brooke: I started a beta group for the third semester students a couple of months ago, and I only have four students in that, which has been fine because I've had more on my plate than I anticipated. So that's been working well. Now, of course, this semester has finally ended this last week, and so I'm hoping that I'll have some time over the summer to really build out that MP3 content, the third semester content, so that way I won't lose all of my students each semester.

Shane: Right. Basically, the long term play then is to have all four semesters covered, and then you can figure out a way to support... Maybe the first two semesters is totally passive people, just courses. They just join and do courses until they're out of those two semesters, and then you support with your Facebook lives, your Q&As the third and fourth semester people who are really anticipating I've got to buckle down and graduate. I need help. Right? I would say nursing students it's probably a huge attrition from the first two semesters into the end. You start with 100 people, and I don't know, half of them or less probably actually graduate?

Brooke: Yeah. It kind of depends. Where I was, one, two and three weren't as bad, and then the jump to four was just crazy. They would lose all their students between two and three and then a bunch of people couldn't make it through four.

Shane: That's crazy. Here's what's amazing though. You have had this idea forever, right? Since you've taken action in just a few short months, you've basically built a business that... Granted, you've not even turned the temperature up on it. You've not even put the fuel to the fire. You just got the fire going. You've already built a thing that's basically creating $1000 of extra income a month just from your content and just from you showing up to a couple of lives. It's totally scalable because the way you're doing it is one to many, so you could add another 40 members and be making $2000 a month really, really fast and eventually create an entire income off of this.

Jocelyn: I think that there's a longer term play for this too that's a little bit different than some industries because it is sort of like a short term product meaning that once they're finished with school then they probably won't need it anymore. I wonder if maybe you could set up some type of program where they could refer other people to you maybe in exchange for being added to a free support group.

Shane: Yeah, or something like that.

Jocelyn: Or something like that.

Shane: Or like a post nursing school support group for their first year. That could even be a community or something like that just to extend that lifetime value.

Jocelyn: It's such like a close knit group, you know? It's like nurses know other people who are going to nursing school, and that would be great leads for you.

Shane: Yeah. Also, too, what's really cool about this niche is it does seem short term. Let's say, how long does it take them to go through a semester? Is it like an actual college type semester like four months of the year or whatever? Let's say you get the third semester and the fourth semester done. You've basically created a situation where you've got a good seven to nine month retention, something like that. But the cool thing is, there's always new nursing students the next semester. There's always new nursing students going into the third semester. With the right marketing funnel and the right support to your sales process, you're just going to reset your members all the time. You got new members being created every day or every semester that they start their new nursing thing. If you ever get to the point where you've covering all four semesters, you've just got this amazing revolving door of I've got eight month retention for every new member I get, I've got new members coming in right when they leave. That's pretty amazing. It's all because you took action even though you started thinking about taking action seven years ago. That's crazy.

Shane: Well, listen Brooke, before we go any farther, congratulations because you are farther ahead than 99% of people will ever make it. You have done some amazing things just from taking action, just from putting yourself out there. I can confidently say that with what we're seeing here you are definitely going to grow this thing, and it is going to be an awesome thing for you and your family.

Jocelyn: Thanks. Yeah. I'm really excited to see where it goes. I'm really kind of curious also. What does your husband have to say about this? When you were getting started, and then it started working, was he like, "Whoa, this is really cool"?

Shane: Well, first of all, when you started it, was he like, "Are you listening to those people from Kentucky again? Come on."

Brooke: That's right.

Shane: What was that like? Then when you dropped a grand in his lap, were you like, "I told you so"?

Brooke: Yes. I remember last summer whenever the student came back to me with that list of all the students I said, "So I'm going to do this." He looked at me. He is not a man of few words. This man can talk for days. Speechless. I mean, he didn't say anything. He looked at me like-

Shane: Jocelyn would know nothing about what you're talking about.

Jocelyn: Yeah, I definitely do not know about that.

Brooke: He seemed kind of confused about it a little bit, and he said, "All right. Well, I support you," but it seemed skeptical. Anyway, after a few months I would show him, "Oh my gosh, I've hit the $500 mark. I've hit the $1000 mark." Then recently hit the $3000 mark, and was just really excited. He was very much more supportive of me going to the Flip Your Life LIVE than I anticipated he would be because of the success he'd seen.

Shane: That's amazing. What made you decide to come to Flip Your Life LIVE? Flip Your Life LIVE to us it's an event that we do once a year. It's kind of like the Flip Your Life Community family reunion. It's not just for members though. Anybody can come. It's open to all listeners, supporters, fans, members. It doesn't matter. We did that because live events are what really took our business to the next level. We wanted to kind of pay that forward by hosting our own live event, getting people to put this on their calendar, be really focused, and be able to go meet everybody in the community in real life because a different energy happens when you're in the same room together. What made you decide though to come to Flip Your Life LIVE?

Brooke: Like I said I've had this vision and this dream for a really long time. I didn't just... I was actively looking for resources to help me learn how to get there, and so I was an avid podcast listener. I would consume a whole lot of SPI and listen to all kinds of different podcasts and read blogs and things like that about things, but I didn't take action on any of them or I would take tiny baby steps but not see any sort of momentum at all and get frustrated. I heard you guys on Pat Flynn, and I think I heard your second guest appearance first, and then he said they were also on the podcast back on this episode. As soon as that first one ended, I immediately went back and listened to the other one and then went to your website because I just really liked your energy and it seemed like you guys were really real, and it seemed approachable what you were doing. I mean, that's where I am education space, and you made it happen.

Brooke: I started looking around at what you had to offer, and I just thought... And you had the 30 day free membership I think at the time. I joined that, and that was in January, I believe. I honestly started to see results right away with what I was implementing. I became a member, and I thought, "I'm going all in with this. I can't waste my life at that computer calling students any longer." You posted something on Facebook, and it rings in my head, "Don't live the same year for 77 years and call it a life." I can't do this job anymore. I want to spend time with my family. I want to be there for them. I want to be able to have a flexible schedule where we can go do things as a family. I think that's my ticket.

Shane: I asked that because I love it when I see people do this. I'm like, "Hey, this person signed up for this level. Whoa, this person upgraded. Whoa, they just bought a ticket." It just like all happens in succession that leads you all the way to that Flip Your Life LIVE. You've been actively... We do weekly training sessions that are exclusive to our attendees. You've been coming to those, checking those out, and it's just going to be an awesome experience. I'm really glad you're coming because if you think great things are happening now, wait until you get to that live event, and you go home and do more work in a month than you've done in two years.

Jocelyn: I love that quote that you were talking about about don't live the same year 77 times.

Shane: The life, right?

Jocelyn: Then there's another one that I really like that is similar. It says, "You're only one decision away from a totally different life." I really like that one too.

Shane: You've already made those decisions, so now we've got to figure out how to get you to the next level. What kind of fears and obstacles have you run into now? You've launched this thing. You've already busted through a lot of fears and things like that to get to the point that you're at now where you're making money online. It's starting to stack up. You're starting to see money that could turn into a real income in a very short time, but there's always little things that kind of get in our way. What things are happening inside your head or maybe some external obstacles are you facing right now that are keeping you from getting to that next level?

Brooke: One thing I definitely struggle with off and on is imposter syndrome. It doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, but when it hits it can really derail me for days. I had a bout of this maybe like a month and a half ago as I was building out some of the newer content. All of a sudden this hit me like you don't know what you're talking about. You haven't taught this in seven years, and you're not going to be able to answer their questions on this live session. Honestly, it set me back for maybe three to four days where I was putting off working on it because this was such like a looming thing for me as opposed to just kicking it to the side and moving on with my work.

Jocelyn: Yeah, this is a tough one because I think that we all go through this. It's like everyone no matter what field you're in you're going to have this feeling at some point if you don't have it all the time. I have it pretty much every day. But the cool thing is that most people don't expect you to be perfect. In fact, they usually like you better if you do show a little bit of vulnerability. Sometimes you say, "You know what? I don't have all the answers, and I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm going to find out and let you know." That's really all most people ask for.

Shane: Yeah. Imposter syndrome comes from this myth that to be a "expert," you have to know everything about the subject. Because when we watch Bill Nye the Science Guy come on his scripted science program, these personalities that we see, they look like they know everything, but we don't realize that they sat in a room and they had to research all the answers to their little questions for their little TV shows. They are not totally the expert. If you caught them out in the street and asked them a question, they wouldn't know the answer either. But experts do know where to find the answers. That's what you really know. That's what you have to lean on is you're helping students who definitely don't have the answers. Right?

Brooke: Right.

Shane: They're like going through the process of learning some of the answers, but you've been through it, you've seen it, you've got experience helping other people. You've tutored now dozens of people, and you know how to find the answers even if you can't recall it. That's what Jocelyn and I really try to do like on our member Q&As. When we come in the door our premium membership there's two Q&As a month where people could come in and ask us questions. There are times when we get stumped. You've probably heard us get stumped on our member calls, and we just say, "Hey, I don't know that for sure. Post it in the forums. We will go research it, and we'll circle back around with an answer." Because we do know where to find the answers. Usually it's in somewhere where we've posted it before. We just have to go back and remember what we talked about.

Shane: Imposter syndrome is insidious because it makes us feel inferior. It makes us feel like we don't belong, and it makes us feel like we're not the ultimate expert on the entire earth in our subject matter. But really, we don't' have to be that. We are just a little ahead of other people who we are trying to help achieve a goal. We're all just a little bit ahead of somebody else. But if anybody's behind you, you can help them. You can clearly help your students and they've acknowledged that you can do that. Try to change it to where you're saying, "Hey, I need all the answers," to, "Wait a minute. I just have to help that person find the answer they need. If I can do that, I'm expert enough. I'm worthy of being able to do this because I'm just their guide. I'm just their mentor. I'm not the know it all that knows everything. I'm not Oz behind the curtain." Right?

Shane: The moral of the story is something Jocelyn just said, that does not go away. You would think that we would never suffer from imposter syndrome because we've literally been doing this every single day since 2014. We've woken up every day and all we do is help other people with their online business, build our own businesses, and do all these things. Man, anytime a question comes up and you get stumped, you're like, "I don't know everything." Right? It just doesn't go away, and that's a part of the rollercoaster, and you almost have to learn how to ignore it basically.

Jocelyn: It's also like we all have our own insecurities whether they are conscious or subconscious. Anytime someone brings one of those up, like maybe someone says, "Hey, I asked you this question, and you didn't know the answer to it," and it brings up something that you're already self-conscious about, then it makes us feel bad. Just remember that we all have haters. There's always going to be someone who's dissatisfied with what we do, and that always helps me just to know that there's no one in the world that everyone likes or that everyone thinks has all the answers. For me, that makes it okay.

Shane: Because now I don't have to please everybody because I can't. I just have to please the people that pay me, and you're paying us in the Flip Your Life Community membership, so we're here to help you, and you're here to help those other nurses.

Jocelyn: All right. Brooke, let's move on talking about how we can help you to move this thing forward.

Brooke: As we've discussed I have hit a roadblock in that all of my students graduate and leave me. I would really like to have a good game plan or kind of a roadmap in place what I can do over the summer in order to help start the school year off really well, get a lot of members, because I really never advertised it to the masses as I know I should because I've been afraid that students who are not in that content when they show up to the membership, like those from earlier semesters, will show up and be disappointed and leave. I guess I just kind of... I don't know what next steps to take or how to prioritize really the best things to do in order to get the membership really rolling at the part of the semester.

Shane: Yeah, and keep more retention, more live time value and things like that, right? Are you planning on making all four semesters' content? Are you planning on doing that?

Brooke: Yes. I would like it to be a one stop shop, like this is where students go forever.

Shane: And you already have the fourth semester? Is the third semester done or are you working on it right now?

Brooke: I'm working on it right now.

Shane: You know, I'll be honest. This probably... Even though you've already got the membership, you've already got some promotion, you've already got that marketing stuff kind of ready for that fourth semester especially, this seems like a product first problem. I almost think you have to just buckle down and knock out all four semesters just to get it done. Because you can't really promote this correctly to get people in longer. Imagine if you got a first semester student. Right when they're running in, they find you, they join the community for 25 bucks a month, and this all of a sudden is a two year member. That's a lot of LTV. That's a lot of guarantee.

Shane: Imagine if you got 100 people at $25 a month, that's $2500 a month, and you could predict that you were definitely going to make that base income going forward for 24 months. That would be amazing, right?

Brooke: Right.

Shane: But you can't do that without that content being created. You know?

Brooke: Yes.

Shane: So sometimes it really just means buckle down and do it. Back in February of 2016 or something, I was looking at all of our content in the Flip Your Life Community, and we were constantly updating stuff. We had stuff in there about lead pages, stuff in there about WordPress, just tools that always change on you. They update them every six months, and, well, I better go update that course. I don't know how Facebook ads course people to keep up with Facebook. I don't know how they make new courses every three months. I looked at it and I said, "This isn't going to be sustainable. This isn't going to work." I went through and said, okay, I'm going to redo the entire Flip Your Life blueprint and make it more evergreen. Focus on the strategy, focus on the tactics.

Shane: You've been in the Flip Your Life blueprint, there's a lot of courses in there, a lot of videos, a lot of workbooks, a lot of stuff. I actually did every single one of those in about a five week period. I just buckled down on February 1st. I looked at Jocelyn and said, "I'll see you in March." I knew if I would put that one month in then, it would produce freedom for me for the next three or four years because I wouldn't be updating courses every single month. I think I did 50 something videos over like a five week period because I just knew it had to be done, and I really believe that you're at that point where you're like, "This works, people react to it, I've just got to make sure that I can get all of the nurses into it."

Jocelyn: It's also going to take a huge mental load off of you because you're not sitting there thinking about it. Like, "Oh, well, if I only had this done, then maybe I could attract more people." Or, "If I only had it done, then I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore." Right?

Brooke: Sure, yeah.

Shane: Right now you're probably feeling like, man, I'd love to market. Also, too, the biggest class, we've talked about this earlier, is the first semester nurses. That's your biggest audience, your biggest segment. You can't even market to them right now. When you get the content... I'm not saying that the content needs to be perfect. I'm just saying-

Jocelyn: At least get it started.

Shane: Yeah. If you could hit the main themes... How much content is in your membership right now? In semester four, what does it look like?

Brooke: I mean, probably like 25 topics. It takes a lot of work to build out the content for each semester because you learn an ungodly amount of material.

Shane: Oh, sure.

Brooke: I mean, it probably took me a month to build out each unit, and there were four units in that.

Shane: So there's four units in each? Would that be the same for the second and first semester?

Brooke: The same for the first. The second and third semesters are different because you enter into mental health and OB, and you split it up.

Shane: Here's the deal. If you can set yourself some deadlines with consequences, I'm willing to bet that you could do the first semester in a month and the second semester in a month, and you could just be done with them. I'm not saying it's the final product, I'm saying it's the minimum viable product. It's the least that you could do. You don't have to do every single thing that's in there. Basically you just have to create the course in a way where you can like, "Okay, here's week one. You study this," but then you come to the Q&A, they ask questions, you record those, and you start bulking up the course.

Shane: I use this analogy sometimes when we're building courses. Everybody says, "Oh, it took me four weeks a unit. It took me 16 weeks. I got to do this thing." You built this massive product. That's fine. We're going to get there. The game that you're playing is kind of like a football field. Everybody does this. You know, the football is 100 yards long and 53-1/3 yards wide. That's what an actual football field looks like. That sometimes we get in our mind, "Well, I've got to play that game." But that's not true. You get to make the field. You get to create the rules. So you could say, "Our football field is going to be 50 yards long, and it's only going to be 25 yards wide." I'm going to do that right now, but we might extend it a little bit as we go.

Shane: If you said to yourself, "I have to have something available for these first semester students, and I have to have it done in four weeks, that's the field. That's the game I'm playing on," what would that look like? What would be the minimum thing to get these people started just to get them one thing a week plus they get to come to that live thing with me to ask questions. What would that look like? It wouldn't look like the finished product, but it would look like something that you could sell. Right?

Brooke: Yes.

Shane: That's really what you've got to do next is you've got to say... What month is it now? We're in May. So you've got June and July and then you've got to start marketing for these people going into this semester. Correct?

Brooke: Yes.

Shane: Okay. You have got to say to yourself, "What does the first semester look like if I only had four weeks to create it, X hours a week, and it has to be done?" Imagine you've sold this to 20 people, and you have to deliver something, not the final thing. It's going to bulk up over time. What would that look like? That's your next step, and you've got to go out and create that. Then you do the same thing in July. You just say, "Okay, well, what would the second semester look like if I only had four weeks and I've got to get this thing ready to sell knowing I've got plenty of time to add to it as we go, and I'm going to do live Q&As to fill in the gaps?" Then you create those two things, and now you look and say, "The one stop shop, Brookebutcher.com. Here we go." What's your website? What's your domain name?

Brooke: Thenursingprofessor.com.

Shane: All right. Thenursingprofessor.com is now the one stop shop, period. Then let your members that buy your product tell you what to add to it and what you left out. That's a mindset shift. That's not, "Oh, I got to spend 16 weeks creating a new course." I have four weeks. This has to be done. Let's go.

Jocelyn: And it also allows you to not be able to hide behind that. You can't tell yourself, "Well, I'd probably sell more memberships, but I don't have that done." So it takes that excuse away from you.

Shane: Yeah, because there is something there to sell. What you have to be prepared for is someone will go in there, you have to be prepared for the questions. Someone's going to go in and say, "Oh, where's this? I'm studying this." And you'll be like, "Oh, yeah, I didn't put that in there because I was in a hurry." Then you just make it real fast, and you put it in there, and now it's there forever. Then the next person will say, "What about this?" You say, "Oh, don't worry." But that's what the Q&As are actually for is to show you holes in your system. If you can't point to a course at a Q&A, then you just found your next course you need to create basically.

Brooke: Okay.

Shane: Does that terrify you?

Brooke: Well, I mean it just makes me feel like I'm not going to get much sleep this summer.

Shane: That's right.

Jocelyn: Well, you know, the sun stays out longer in the summer, so maybe you'll feel like you have more time.

Brooke: You're right.

Shane: Yep. Let me ask you this. How many hours do you usually work on... Let's say you're going to make courses. How many hours do you actually have in a day to work on this?

Brooke: Not much. I start my job at 7 a.m., and I'm calling students while running around and getting my kids ready and fed and out the door to school. Then one or two nights a week I also have to work in the evening time. I mean, I use fringe hours. I try to get up early a couple of days a week when my daughter doesn't beat me to it, and then I stay up late working, so maybe four or five.

Shane: A week?

Brooke: Yeah. If my husband's working late one night, then I power through and get as much content done on those nights as I can.

Shane: Okay. Let me ask you this. Let's say there's five hours that we're going to try to get back in a week. What is something that you're doing right now that you could give up for eight weeks to give your family a better life for the next eight years? What is something that you could stop doing even if it's just one more hour a week right now?

Brooke: I honestly think it's just sleep. I don't watch a lot of TV when my girls are here. They're five and three. I do sometimes hire a sitter or schedule a play date with cousins and such so I can get some more work done. I've got family who's really supportive of stuff like that sometimes.

Shane: Okay, let's say this then. We found something. You can part with something. You can part with money to hire a sitter, right? That's your main focus is to say, "I want to work five hours on this business a week, period." That's more than enough time. That's 20 hours in the month of June. That's more than enough time to create the outline of this content, right? That's more than enough time. But you have to be proactive with making sure on your calendar at the beginning of the week that you've got your sitter lined up. You may find those three hours that you're definitely going to work, but you got to be proactive about making sure you've got childcare and backup childcare to make sure those other two hours don't disappear on you.

Shane: If it shrinks to three hours in a week, we've got a problem. Correct?

Brooke: Yes.

Shane: There's your strategy. That's what you're going to give up. You give up the 25 bucks to whoever is watching the kid or whatever, and that's what you do. For some people it might be Netflix and Chill. You give it up for eight weeks to give your family a better life for eighty years, whatever. It doesn't matter. You've got to give up something. Remember, it's only in the short term, and once you make this content, you're not going to have to do it again for a while. You may give up... Let's say you give up 50 bucks a week or whatever, 200 bucks a month for two months, that's 400 whole dollars, but if you go out and you sell 100 extra memberships to first year nursing students, you immediately 5x'd your money on the backside.

Shane: It's just giving up something in the short term to get a whole lot of benefit in the long term, and you've got to lock it down like I am working five hours on this a week, and then what you do is you write down, as soon as you get off this call with us, you talk about it in the forums, we can go through and hash that out a little bit with you more in there. Now, you write down a plan. You say, "I have 20 hours. I am going to guarantee myself 20 hours in June. I will create this first semester program in June in those 20 hours. What can I do in 20 hours?" You say, "Hour one. Make this thing. Hour two, make this thing. Hour three, nope, that takes too long. Erase it. I'll do it later. Hour four..." You see what I'm saying?

Shane: That gives you a 20 hour plan. You've got 20 hours to create whatever that first semester minimum viable product looks like, and we are selling it in August, and it's happening, and then we'll make it better.

Brooke: Game on.

Shane: That's game on. That's right.

Jocelyn: All right, Brooke. It has been fun talking to you today. We always ask people before we go what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours based on what we talked about here today.

Brooke: I will map out these 20 hours and start making an outline of what to do for my first semester content.

Shane: Boom. That's what I'm talking about, Brooke. That is a game plan. I'm excited to see what you create. You've got all these deadlines that matter coming right at you too because you've got to sell this thing when they go back to school, and you got to show up to Flip Your Life LIVE to tell us how it went.

Brooke: Right.

Shane: Listen, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing your success with everybody in the Flipped Lifestyle universe out there who's listening in. I know that your story has inspired some people who've had dreams since 2012 to get off the couch and take action, and we really, really appreciate that.

Brooke: Thank you guys for having me.

Shane: Also, Brooke, has a Bible verse that she would like to share with us. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration from the Bible for our life and our business. We know a lot of other people out there do the same. Brooke would like to share a verse with us today.

Brooke: This is from Ephesians 5:15 and the verse of 16. Be very careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise making the most of every opportunity.

Shane: How ironic that we're going to make the most out of those 20 hours next month. They do know the verse, but I knew it was going to be related because God always turns it back around on the show. That's awesome stuff. Okay, Brooke, thanks again. We appreciate you.

Brooke: Thank you guys.

Shane: All right, guys. What another great show with one of our Flip Your Life community members. Brooke is doing amazing things. It took her a while to get off the sidelines, but once she got in the game, she really took it to the next level. She's making things happen. I have no doubt that she's going to be very successful in the next steps in her business.

Shane: That's what you have to do as well. You can't waste any time. You cannot stay on the sidelines anymore. If you're just listening to the podcast, if you're just hearing about other people's success stories, it's never going to happen for you in your life. You've got to take action, and the best way to take action is to join the Flip Your Life community. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and we would love to have you as a member of our community. We've got all the training you need. We have a massive community, an active community that is ready to rally around you and help you achieve your goals. Jocelyn and I will be there for you all along the way. Again, that's flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and you can get your journey started today.

Shane: 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 back.

Jocelyn: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Brooke'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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https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife