FL294 - The Power of Having a Brick & Mortar Business AND an Online Business

In today's episode, we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all on today's podcast we help Jennifer scale her yoga business online.

Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your host, 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. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, it is great to be back with you again today. Really excited about today's guest because this is going to be an interesting show. We've been talking a lot on the podcast about different ways to live the flipped lifestyle, different ways to take control of your life, to be able to make your own money to become and stay self employed, offline, online, work from home, work in your office, wherever it may be.

Shane Sams: And this episode is going to fall squarely in the middle of every one of those possibilities because we have someone that has flipped their life through their brick and mortar business, but now they want to scale it online. There's all kinds of, we're at a fork in the road and there's 47 prongs on the fork. So we're going to dig into this a little bit today and see if we can make sense out of it. We want to welcome flip your life member Jennifer Dixon to the show.

Jennifer Dixon: Hey guys, thank you for having me.

Jocelyn Sams: We are very, very happy to talk to you today. Jennifer is one of our more active members. We see her over and over again on member calls-

Shane Sams: Asks amazing questions and I was telling her off air before we started the show. Set a new world record for amount typed into the podcast intake form. I mean we're talking to some multiple paragraphs here folks. I mean it was impressive. It was very impressive.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so let's just end this podcast now and maybe you should write a novel.

Shane Sams: It's prolific that's it, that's right. You just to write a book and it'll be so prolific that no one won't be able to help but purchase it.

Jocelyn Sams: Like podcast done that is like a record.

Shane Sams: That's a record. We'll see y'all next week. Bye. All right, so first of all, before we get started tell us about your background. How you ended up doing what you do now in your brick and mortar business. Right? And then maybe a little bit about how you found us and then we'll jump from there?

Jennifer Dixon: Okay. So you all can tell me to speed it up or slow it down because as you can tell, I'm not great at brevity. That might be the Southern roots. I don't know. We just go slow.

Shane Sams: We'll edit you out, it's okay.

Jennifer Dixon: All right, so I got into yoga about 10 years ago. I was really active and running, I was training for a marathon at the Disney marathon, actually with my sister and doing crossfit at the time. And I herniated a disk in my low back and I went from being able to sling weights around and run for hours on end, which I used to love to do, to basically being bedridden. I went through eight rounds of four epidural shots in my back. I wasn't even 30 at the time. And the next step really was surgery is what the doctor had said. And I was not willing to do that. My Dad's had back surgery and I am not a huge fan of the ramifications of that. So, my boyfriend now husband at the time was like, "Why don't you try yoga?" And I was like, "Yoga is for sissies." Famous last words.

Jennifer Dixon: And he took me to my very first heated power class, and when I was getting into the studio, I had to use the handles to get out of my car, my back was hurting so bad. And by the time the class was over, I could touch my toes and my back didn't hurt. And ever since then I basically practice nearly every single day for this'll be, I think my 10th year. And yoga's given me my life back, it's legitimately saved me from living a life full of pain. And that's how I got into it. I got certified right away to teach. I didn't really ever think I was teaching, I had a very, very lucrative career in the energy industry. And I just did yoga and taught yoga on the side because it was fun. And then lo and behold, I got laid off of my very lucrative position. I think you talk about that there's not really jobs security when you're working for somebody. And boy is that not the truth. Two weeks after coming back to work from having my first child, I was laid off. It was divine providence, I know it's totally a God work, because my husband was laid off Wednesday. I was laid off two days later Friday.

Shane Sams: Oh my gosh, woah that's crazy.

Jennifer Dixon: That's when you know God's got his hands into something. And it was funny, they had this box full of tissues on the table and I think they were prepared for this emotional breakdown. And I was like, all right, God, I have no idea what you're doing, but all right, give me my severance. What's my insurance? And then we moved home in two weeks. And I sat around on unemployment for about six months and I interviewed and interviewed. And at the time I was working 60, 80 plus hours a week, traveling everywhere. And that was really cool before I had a baby. But then once I had a baby, and the baby didn't like bottles she just wanted to nurse, and she lost all this weight in two weeks. I didn't want to do that anymore. And I found a yoga studio for sale. And I kind of laughed at first when I first saw it because I was like, we can't live off of that. Famous last words.

Jennifer Dixon: And at the end of unemployment I was like, all right honey, this is still there. Maybe this is what we should be doing. And my husband, he's a saint. God bless him I'm so lucky. He's like, whatever you want to do honey, whatever you want to do. And that was three years ago this month. Yeah.

Shane Sams: So you basically bought an existing yoga studio that had clients already? And you just kind of picked up and started teaching and then you grew this into a way to make a living and kind of control your schedule, control your life. And you've just got this place now and you've built a community up there and you have plenty of members and things like that?

Jennifer Dixon: Correct. Well, I'm not going to say we have plenty of members. We can always grow. I do have a fantastic community. The best thing about it is I have a group of teachers that love to teach, and they love to work and teach for me in the community, it's unlike any other yoga studio I'd ever been in, which that was kind of the things that I wanted when I took over the studio is a lot of times yoga studios are not known for being like tears is the joke that I like to use. You know, where everybody knows your name, and that is exactly what the studio is. You come in, we get to know you. We get to know about your family, we celebrate your successes. It's a very tight knit community and I love that part of it.

Shane Sams: Sure. But the challenges of the brick and mortar, how big is the area that you live in? Like how big is the town you live in?

Jennifer Dixon: Chattanooga. It's pretty good size. I think-

Shane Sams: Pretty good size. But you probably have a lot of competition. I'd say there's other yoga studios and other gyms and things like that?

Jennifer Dixon: Exactly.

Shane Sams: The problem with brick and mortar is sometimes you hit up against like geographic boundaries of how many clients you can have and there's a lot of overhead I would assume in something like that correct?

Jennifer Dixon: Correct.

Shane Sams: Like you said there are coaches and staff and things like that. So did that lead you to say, hey, wait a minute, maybe there's another way to make money online or like what got you into thinking about like online business?

Jennifer Dixon: I was thinking about trying to come up with another peg of income, you've got to have multiple pegs if you're doing this on your own. And my two pegs I do teacher training and the yoga studio we were still struggling to create margin in our lives. And I was listening to another podcast where you guys were on. And I think it's hilarious because you talked bad about your accent but I love it because it just sounds like home to me. Because I'm just a few hours South of you.

Shane Sams: I need to put that on a T-shirt. Shane and Jocelyn sound like home to you.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, you all sound like home. It just sounded like my people, and I immediately signed up for your podcast after listening to that one, and kind of binged listened to it. And then one day, I guess it was funny because I've never thought of my life being flipped. It was a Friday. I was at the zoo. I can't remember if my son, yeah my son must've been born, I'm not sure if it was when I was pregnant or when he was born, but I'm pretty sure he was new. I was at the zoo with my daughter and you sent out an email about asking for a question or something. And here we were looking at the chimpanzees, my daughter's were making monkey noises and I sent you an email and you responded right away. And I was like, holy cow that's-

Shane Sams: Shane and Jocelyn actually talk to people. That's a miracle, right?

Jennifer Dixon: Exactly.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And sometimes we even send a video like just to make sure people know that it's really us-

Shane Sams: We jut like to mess with people basically, we just like to freak them out while they're at the zoo.

Jennifer Dixon: I love it. No, I was like, whoa. And I think that was a Friday and I signed up for the membership that Sunday. So that would've been a year ago actually. Really recently.

Shane Sams: So there's the first lesson for today's podcast y'all is be a real person and actually communicate with your audience and people will buy your stuff.

Jennifer Dixon: Oh yeah, that's true. I signed up like that, after the first webinar I was like, I'm in-

Shane Sams: I remember when you came into the community too because I can remember, you are on every single Q and A that we do. Which is awesome.

Jennifer Dixon: Nearly.

Shane Sams: Almost. But I remember the first couple of questions you had were basically like the theme of what we first initially talked about was how in the world can something like what I do become an online business? Because it wasn't about certifying other yoga instructors or anything like that. It was how can we just make the... If you look at a bullseye, you've got a bullseye in the middle. That's kind of where your brick and mortar business lives. And it's like, how can we create circles of income that span out from that and still do kind of the same thing right?

Jennifer Dixon: Correct.

Shane Sams: So what path did you choose to go down? What did you start creating? How did that go and kind of bring us up to speed with where you are now with the online stuff?

Jennifer Dixon: Sure. So right when I joined the community, I also decided to rebrand the studio because the studio had been around since 2010, and it had a different brand and I wanted to make it mine. And so this was a year ago in the summer was just one heck of a summer. I rebranded, redid a website, all that kind of stuff. And at the same time shot my very first material for a course, which I was going to put into a membership. And at first I titled it the Mommy Bounce Back program because my son was about a year. And this will go into probably a question later on. I'm not like a typical yoga person. And as long as I'm breastfeeding, I'm going to hold on the last 10, 15 pounds of momma weight, that's just my body everybody's different.

Jennifer Dixon: And I knew that if I marketed to the women that were, at least my thought was if I marketed to women who had had babies either recently or were never able to successfully get in shape postpartum, then I would look real to them because I was legit there. And so I created, I think it was almost five hours of material, different videos, full length videos. And to me a full length video at the time was a minimum of, I wanted to do an hour and my dad was the one who was shooting the videos. He was like, maybe you should do a 45 minute one. And in my head I'm like no way. And so we did like one 30, one 40 and then two 60 minute videos. And then I did a lot of little drills and I did it in Kajabi at first because that was easy. And I'm not a tech person. And I sold, I can't remember, I sold five, I think I sold five.

Shane Sams: That's amazing.

Jennifer Dixon: I was pumped, yeah I sold five, and then it was like crickets, and it was bad crickets. And then a friend of ours offered to help me market it and all that kind of stuff. And I think I sold one more at a really, really discounted price and then nothing. And so I shutdown Kajabi because I didn't want that monthly fee. And I just started trying to like what you guys talk about, be really prolific with my content creation. So in the summer, like right around when I was filming all this, I upped my blog post. I'm posting three times a week, I'm writing that stuff every three times a week. I'm doing live things on Facebook for the studio and for online at least weekly.

Jennifer Dixon: And then I started doing things on YouTube at least weekly. And then January happened and I was like, man, I'm so tired of living without margin. So I've got to make this work. I was up really late with my husband dealing with stuff and I said, honey, we've got to make this online stuff work. That's the only way we're really going to scale if I want to do this and this is what I want to do. And ever since then it's just been, all the ponies are running.

Shane Sams: Right. So basically then this is very common, people do this. They create the product, they sell something, it's exciting. And then it's like, we ran out of people to sell something to, so basically you've turned all your energy toward trying to build an audience, right? Like trying to get YouTube subscribers, get followers, get the blogs going on. Let me ask you this is the thing still for sale though? Are you still selling the thing you created to these new people? Because you've been creating an audience now for six months regardless of how big it gets or is. Did you just stop selling the thing all together?

Jennifer Dixon: Yes. I did, and I'm laughing until I forget which one of those, because I signed up for flip your life live, that was like part of that conversation with my husband. I was like, I've got to make this work, I'm going to this training. I know it's a lot of money. We're going to figure out how to do it. And so I don't remember which training it was Shane, but you were no sugar Shane, I guess. And you said, "If you got something, put it for sale," and you said Udemy which I didn't even know about. But like that day after the phone call or maybe the next day I had my course back up on Udemy. So it is for sale.

Shane Sams: It is for sale now. Okay, good. At least it's for sale somewhere. Because I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I don't remember where building an audience leads to not selling things to them. That was the disconnect I was finding there because you made all this content and that's where you got it to go. You know what I'm saying?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Well that's a good. There's a lot of people out there who do this. There's always a roller coaster. Just a little while ago we were talking to our accountants and we were looking at like our numbers, like we meet with them quarterly to see if numbers go up and down and we had a dip in April. And it was like totally because of stuff that we had done earlier in the year, some promotions, we had changed some prices and we had done some things, but our actual financial check mark dipped that month, and it always cracks me up when I talk to people and they're like, "Wow, you and Jocelyn just everything goes up and it's perfect forever." And I'm like, "No. It goes up and down, it is still feast or famine."

Shane Sams: The membership model that we teach and that we use smooths that out, but it doesn't protect you totally from it. Like that's just business, right? You know this with brick and mortar. And it's like anything else. If you open a store in a town of a hundred people and you sell to all the hundred people, you have to go to the next town to find more people, that's just the way it works. And so many people though, the problem is they have that, "I sold something," and then it dips and they're like, "Ah, that was a fluke," and then they quit forever.

Shane Sams: So I do want to like to commend you for like doubling down and getting your content going, running it in parallel, figuring out ways that you can use it with your existing business. And really that's what you just got to figure out now is how to maximize this new audience that you've created. So how is the audience building going? How is that prolific content creation panning out? Is it going up steadily? Is it spiking? What's happening?

Jennifer Dixon: So my blogging is I had a brand new website. I think my website's less than a year old, and within six months I was front page for yoga Chattanooga, or Chattanooga yoga. And then within just a couple months after that I was number one with one of those searches. So I really feel like the blogging has helped get people into my brick and mortar business, which is-

Shane Sams: Okay, that's interesting.

Jennifer Dixon: ... which is really great. And when we do our client intake, they say, Oh yeah, I found you online and all that. So that's been great. My online video stuff, not so much. I think I have like 138 YouTube followers and I have a really big family that makes up a large number of that.

Shane Sams: Well you know what, honestly though if you put 130 people in a room, that'd be a lot of people. You know what I'm saying?

Jennifer Dixon: It would be.

Shane Sams: And don't discount that. When Jocelyn and I launched our first product, how many people were on your email list?

Jocelyn Sams: A couple hundred maybe.

Shane Sams: Like 250 maybe. So you're not far off where we were at that tip to find that tipping point to start making some real money with this. So they're there. The problem is your product is totally geared toward expectant mommas right? or like mothers that just had baby?

Jennifer Dixon: Not anymore. Not Anymore. So when I relaunched it on Udemy, I think I called it, I should have known this and I'm just having a brain fart, thrive hit yoga is what I call it. And high intensity training, yoga inspired high intensity training. And I talk about how it's great for women, especially if you've had kids or even if not. And then all of the content that I've been creating since that course has just been that high intensity training focus. So it's very low impact. I don't jump around. I mean, once you have a herniated disc, you always kind of got one, right?

Jennifer Dixon: So you're not going to see me jumping around. But you're going to see me doing lots and lots of things that'll... You give me 30 minutes and you'll burn some calories or you giving me an hour and you'll really burn some calories, and it's just all yoga inspired fitness things.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So that is what you're selling then on your website, right?

Shane Sams: Is that what you put back on Udemy?

Jennifer Dixon: Udemy is technically the mommy bounce back, but I just repackaged it to not just talk about mommas.

Shane Sams: I gotcha.

Jennifer Dixon: And then what I'm creating now on Teachable is just thrive online a hit of high intensity yoga inspired fitness thing. Which has the mommas and it has other workouts.

Shane Sams: Okay. So what's the biggest problem you're facing right now? Like what's the biggest struggle? Is it like figuring out how to run these things together or is it like figuring out how to promote that thing? Is it do I sell this locally? What's the biggest thing right now that's holding you back? Because it sounds like you've got a lot of pieces in play. Okay, forget the in-person yoga studio. You've got consistent content being created, you're creating this thing on Teachable that is going to be able to be marketed to these people. Right? So where are you stuck? What's causing like, because you know this is how you want to scale. Where are you frozen at right now that you can't move forward?

Jennifer Dixon: Well, I guess I'm not really sure where I'm stuck. I just know what I'm doing is not working and that's not the answer that you wanted. So I did a five day challenge. Again, that was something in the flip your life live training to get us to sell some stuff. So I did a five day challenge. Technically it was 27, but one was me and one was a duplicate. So 25 people signed up, of that five people actually did all five trainings most of them did not. And nobody converted. And that made me really bummed. And you said Jennifer, go reach out to all of them. So I finally got through all 25 of those yesterday. I sent them some bonjoros and of the 25, 16, 17 opened up, but nobody gave me any feedback.

Shane Sams: Interesting.

Jennifer Dixon: So this'll probably go into, I listen to your podcasts a lot, like those fears and things like that. I don't know if my content is too hard, if it's not hard enough. I know that based on what I've done online, my stuff is way harder. Because I don't like most of the stuff that I've seen online, it's not hard enough. If I feel I'm looking for a workout, if I'm looking for something gentle, there's plenty of that, but there's not a good workout. And so I don't know if it's too hard if it's, I don't know. So that's like where I'm stuck.

Shane Sams: I think it's just a connection problem more than anything because like 25 people signed up for the challenge, that shows they're interested. But then there was a disconnect and not one person sent you an email back. But 16 open the thing. That's amazing.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay. So first of all, I have several thoughts, but my first thought is that that's not a very large sample size. Okay. So if it were 300 people and you said nobody wrote you back, I would probably be a little bit more concerned. 25 people. I mean, who knows? This is like the busiest time of year for a lot of people. And we just came off of a crazy month of May. We were in Disney for a week. We had dance recital practice, we had dance recital dress rehearsal, we had cheer evaluations, we had two nights of dance recital. We are now three nights into vacation Bible school. Next week we have science camp. We have golf camp this week. The week after that we have-

Shane Sams: Not a lot of time to reply to the yoga instructor.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. So what I'm trying to tell you is that if you went to 25 of my friends during this time of year, they're probably not answering you either because we're just really busy. So I wouldn't say, okay, well this clearly didn't work because 25 people didn't answer me. I don't think that you have enough data to know that. So that's the first thing I would say.

Shane Sams: And five people finished it. Honestly, if you just think about it like it's a small sample size, but if you put 25 people in a room and five of them do it, that's pretty good. That's 80/20 rule, right? Like 80 people, a hundred people in a room, 20 will actually finish. So it's like don't look at it like a failure there's a lot of valuable insight there that something just didn't connect at the end when it was time to buy something.

Jocelyn Sams: And that's part of my next thought. Okay. So tell me what was the challenge exactly?

Jennifer Dixon: I called it the, and I'm terrible with online stuff, so I can't wait to hear what I did wrong. So I called it the five day hit yoga challenge and it was a drip campaign. I think that's the industry lingo. Where the participants were emailed a link to a video that was embedded on my website because I was trying to get them for people to stay on the website. It was a YouTube video and some of them were unlisted, some of them were public video embedded on my website where they can watch it.

Jennifer Dixon: And so each day for five days they got a video and then on the sixth and then each day they, I also tried to sell them the membership. And then on the sixth day I sent them a slightly longer video, like all the videos were 20, 30 minutes. And on the sixth day I think they got like a 42 minute video.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Jennifer. Whoa, back the truck up. Okay. First of all, why do they need to buy anything? Because you're giving them all this stuff. And second of all-

Shane Sams: You have to take it away or they won't buy it. You can't just keep giving them stuff.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay second of all, what were you trying to sell them and was that even related to high intensity yoga?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, I was trying to sell them into my membership that would have even more videos, just like the one that they had that they got access to. Here's like five different workouts you can do, and if you join the community, you'll get even more workouts with me. And this was in part of the emails, I'll come into the community and we can work out live until it got too big I figured we could do like zoom meetings where we can see each other, and if it's just a handful of people at first, my husband can be there and he knows enough about yoga that he can be like, hey, so and so it needs to do this or this person. And so then I can give them cues with him like in the background.

Shane Sams: Okay, all right hold on.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, let's hit the pause button of just a minute.

Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I are looking at each other like, okay, let's fix this.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, help me.

Shane Sams: Okay. So for one thing, you think you sold them the same thing that the challenge was, but it wasn't, okay? The thing you were selling was you leading them live and being a part of a community, but you had this very sterile challenge of 42 minute videos where you were sending them emails and they click and watch them alone. Like think why people join your yoga Studio. They want to be led and they want to be around other people who love yoga. And you did not provide that for these people in the online environment that's why they didn't buy, right? They weren't just doing it for the high intensity workout. They weren't just doing it for this cool structure that was different than everybody else. They basically were like, I want to do yoga with somebody, and I want someone to tell me how to do it.

Shane Sams: And yeah, that's kind of what you're selling. But it was totally different from the strategy. Imagine if your challenge had been like this, "Hey guys, we're going to make this challenge for five days. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do eight minute workouts every morning, live, I'm going to be there." And you do an eight minute tabata hit style workout that will make them just barely sweat. And then at the end of it, you say, "That's the end of the challenge, but I bet you feel better and you only had to show up live with me for eight minutes a day. What if we could do this for real? I teach 20 and 30 minute classes all the time. We can crush it, join the community, led live by me," and now they have an act. That challenge would have been a representation, an actual thing that you do in your actual community and it would've simulated what you do for people in your yoga Studio, right? Because people don't want an email campaign with videos. They can just go on YouTube and find videos.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so here's the thing too, Jennifer, is that usually with a challenge, what you want to do is sort of give them like the appetizer, and then you get them to purchase the main course. You gave them like a four course meal.

Shane Sams: You gave them the four course meal and the blue apron boxes to make the next three weeks of video of meals. You see what I'm saying? But the main thing was, I think 25 people signed up because they thought they were getting led by Jennifer's sample of what they were going to do, and they didn't buy because it wasn't what they thought they were going to... Basically what they probably thought they were buying was more emailed videos. You see what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Are we overwhelming you? You sound confused. You got really quiet.

Jennifer Dixon: I'm thinking. You can't see all the smoke.

Shane Sams: Ooh, that was her head exploding.

Jocelyn Sams: Jennifer's no longer with us, due to information overload.

Shane Sams: Okay so we're going to take over the yoga studio. But do you understand what we mean? Like you didn't do anything wrong. It's just you did a challenge, but the challenge wasn't exactly, it doesn't sound like what you were selling.

Jocelyn Sams: It didn't lead in to your paid offer.

Shane Sams: Right. And also too, like challenges are like Jocelyn said, sampler platters. It's the guy that stands in front of the Japanese food restaurant at the mall with the bourbon chicken. You know what I'm saying? It's like that's what challenges are for. But you just like, wow, like here. Did you say one of the videos was 42 minutes?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: That's just too overwhelming for a new person.

Jocelyn Sams: Your heart is in the right place. Like you were trying to give them something and be like, whoa, this is really cool. But the problem is you gave them more than they needed. Like if it were me, I'd be like, oh well, I can just do these videos. I don't even need anything else.

Shane Sams: Anytime you have a problem, an alignment between a lead magnet, remember the lead magnet is the first step. If it's a five day challenge, like imagine someone who was totally out of shape and never done yoga before, came to your yoga studio and you were like, get down and down dog for 42 minutes, let's go. You know what I mean? You would kill them. You know what I'm saying? Like it would be like, get in warrior three and don't move until I look back at you. That's like not the first step of yoga. if I came in to you and I was 200 pounds overweight and I said, I really wanting to do yoga, I think this is the way that I can get back in shape and get my life back. What would be the first thing you would tell me to do? Honestly. If I got 10 minutes to swing by could you show me a couple of things to get my feet wet, what would you tell me?

Jocelyn Sams: I think that your offer was more for like advanced people though right?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So is crossfit. Like I go to a crossfit gym, but when a beginner comes in, there's nothing not advanced about crossfit. But you still don't kill them. You give them a PVC pipe instead of a bar. You see what I'm saying? So even someone who wants advanced workouts, what would you do with them in the first day? If I was coming to your beginner 30 minute class, what would you do for me?

Jennifer Dixon: We only do hour long classes?

Shane Sams: Okay. What would you do for me in an hour long class?

Jennifer Dixon: You do the beginner poses, which is basically what was in all of the sequences, they're all beginner friendly poses. And you talk about the alignment a lot, you get a lot of cues, which I tried to do in the videos. And then you get the person comfortable with the names of the poses, the alignment, and then they move on to more challenging classes.

Shane Sams: Okay, so here's what you should have done. Like let's say your beginner class is one hour, right? You would take that into 10 minute videos and they never should've saw anything over 10 minutes. Like they're at home or by themselves. They're overwhelmed. 10 minutes today, 10 minutes tomorrow, 10 minutes the next, 10 minutes the next. Now you know all the poses, would you like to buy into our courses and try a longer class? Like that's the beginner version of online courses, right? You take that beginner part, they're not really there with you, so you can't assume you can do the same thing and you break it apart, right? Like you've got to step back.

Shane Sams: You're having some curse of knowledge things and I can really feel it coming through like, no, everyone should do this hour class because this is how I do it and it's better workout. That's fine. But you can't throw people into that online. They're home alone by themselves.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, not to mention, most of them have probably never heard of you before.

Shane Sams: Or done yoga. They don't even know what hit means probably they just thought yoga, sweet. And then they get in there and it was really hard.

Jocelyn Sams: Or maybe I'm a person who is an advanced yoga person and I'm like, wow, I really want to do this workout but I don't even know this person. Like they're just wanting to get a little taste of what you have to offer. And when you hit me with like a 35 minute video, what if I don't like it or what if-

Shane Sams: And also too they're not invested enough to finish something like that. Like the reason I would watch a 30 minute video is because I paid money for it. If I pay for my subscription in Netflix, I'm going to find a show to watch. Right? But if someone just told me the show, I'm not going to go out of my way to find it. You know what I mean? And also to that, did you say in the community you are doing these live?

Jennifer Dixon: Well I don't have a community yet.

Shane Sams: But that's your plan, right?

Jennifer Dixon: That's the vision, is to do like a zoom call, like what we're doing except with video. And then we work out together. So-

Shane Sams: Okay, that has to be a part of any challenges. You have to make people understand what you do, right? It's one reason why we changed our format of our podcasts. We don't talk to experts, we don't interview people who are writing books and stuff like that. We want to demonstrate how our community actually works. And the best way we can do that is to help someone, right? So even our podcast, even our free content is generated in a way that tells people that, you know what I'm saying? Because when you listen to this you're like, wow, Shane and Jocelyn brought a real member on and they're helping them, I want their help.

Shane Sams: So if I joined your challenge, like I'd be like, wow, Jennifer showed up for a tabata or something. You know what I'm saying? You do a four minute yoga pose. And like wow she showed up. That's really cool. I want more of this. You see what I'm saying? Someone told me one time, you never ever make noncustomers feel satiated. Noncustomers should always feel hungry. Always. So that's the problem here I think too is like one, it wasn't what you were selling. You were selling them something completely different than videos. You were actually selling them lead, live community, whatever. So there was a disconnect and you stuffed them, they were so over full they wanted to puke and didn't even finish their meal.

Shane Sams: So there was a disconnect there and if we can fix that disconnect, I would challenge you to do this again, but I would literally be like, remember what were those videos called Jocelyn? Eight minute abs, remember those from the 90s? Remember those eight minute abs that that guy would come on and be eight minute buns, eight minute arms. You know I'm talking about?

Jennifer Dixon: I've done a few of those.

Shane Sams: That's what I would do. I would say, hey, we're going to get on live every morning or we're going to do an eight minute workout or something like that. Just whatever. And it's just really short and you use it to teach the best 10 poses, right? Like you do two poses a day for five days. You just take them back and forth through the poses. Super simple. And then like the last one, you pick up the intensity a little bit, and make it more intense kind of 15 minute workout or something. And then when it's over, they're more into it, they got it. They got to see you every morning. They got to hear you say like, "Hey, it's good to see you again, Jennifer. Hey, it's good to see you again, John, it's good to see again, whoever." And it's like there's a feel there and then they lose that, and when they lose that, they'll buy it back. That's how challenges should work. So I wouldn't give up on that. I think it's a great idea. I love it. That would be really cool. It's like, what's the bike called, peloton?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Like this the same model. Right? Like you can get on, you can take a live class, but you don't have to leave your house. You don't have to go to the yoga studio or if you find a personality that you connect with, you can do it with them right there on the zoom call. correct?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So like I love the idea and I know a guy that does this, I've told you this before. We have a buddy named Jeff Mcmahon, he lives up in Cincinnati and he's probably listening right now, hey Jeff. And he kind of is the trainer for all the entrepreneurial people and podcasters and stuff, and he does virtual classes like all the time, even one on one and stuff like that. So there's definitely a model, people are definitely doing this. You just have to kind of connect those challenges better.

Jennifer Dixon: Gotcha.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay Jennifer, so tell us what is making you feel overwhelmed about this strategy?

Jennifer Dixon: So my top three, I'll give you my top three. What happens if I say, okay, I'm going to do this zoom video every day for I don't know, five days, six days and nobody shows up during the workout? Do I still do the workout as if there was somebody there and then the people that have the link, they can watch it later. Then that's one. Two is what possible time of day can I possibly say every day I'm going to give you 10 minutes of my time. I guess it's just two there's not three, there's just two.

Shane Sams: You're so overwhelmed you lost them.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: All right, well let's do number one first. Yes you would just go ahead and do it. You can actually do these in different ways. If you did it in a different way, maybe you could do the challenge even on YouTube live instead of Zoom, right? Because then you just do it live and then if someone finds it that's cool because you just got more leads. It's not a paid challenge so you really don't care that it's broadcasting for free. It might actually find you new people. Right? And then if they did not show up live, they would click through it and it would be there ready to go. See what I'm saying? I think YouTube live would be a better thing for free content like this. You could put like, hit yoga challenge day one, hit yoga challenge day two. So you're still emailing them, you're still getting them to come, but they can come live and they can participate in a chat, they can do things like that if you want to.

Jocelyn Sams: So I would jus take one of the videos that you're already doing, and I've done some hit training before. So is it basically like sequences that you do? So many exercises together?

Jennifer Dixon: No, it's not the interval. It's only one I. I don't know. It's just high intensity. I'm not doing intervals as much it's just high intensity. Honestly, it's a lot like a power class it's just not hot. And there's a little bit of psychology there, at least here at my studio if you say power then people are like, oh, I can't do that. I don't know it's just going to make me sound kind of silly. What people are searching for is that high intensity, that sort of workout, but they don't want maybe the jumping up and down. And so it's just yoga on-

Shane Sams: Do you hold poses for a long time or something like that?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, or you do poses dynamically. So anytime you're working your balance. Shane, you said you've done some yoga, I don't know if you've done it. Jocelyn you've done stairsteps so you can totally do this. It's moving between postures with control. That's really, really hard because you're having to use your balance, which incorporates your core muscles and your glutes and all that kind of stuff. So it's a high end. Oh, gosh, I shouldn't use the word in the definition.

Shane Sams: I know what you're saying. It's like get the high intensity workout you want without the impact.

Jocelyn Sams: With no impact.

Shane Sams: Basically. It's perfectly marketable. But the real key is the live component. That's the thing.

Jocelyn Sams: So I wonder if you shouldn't change your language a little bit to high intensity, low impact.

Jennifer Dixon: I've thought about that, but then when I look up high intensity, low impact, I'm like, if people see that and then they see what I'm doing, they're going to be like, this girl is crazy.

Shane Sams: That's okay though. That's a total assumption that you're putting on. You don't know that, you do not know that. There's no way you can know that.

Jocelyn Sams: So try it out and see what happens.

Shane Sams: You're trying to think like the small group of people who've walked into your studio and left, and not like the people that stay because they thought it was cool. Like that's curse of knowledge at its finest. I know this and when they know it, they'll leave. Like that's not true, but there's no way you can possibly know that, if someone types in like high intensity yoga, right? And they find you and then you say it's high intensity, low impact, just because it's hard doesn't mean they're going to freak out and leave. Right? I don't think it was because it was hard that people didn't finish the thing.

Shane Sams: I just think it was too long. Like not everybody wants to work out for an hour and a lot of people at home might just want a 20 minute workout in the morning, they may not want a big hour long thing. You know what I'm saying? Like-

Jocelyn Sams: Well, I think we have to be careful because we're making a lot of assumptions.

Shane Sams: Yes, a lot of assumptions. We're all making a lot of assumptions.

Jocelyn Sams: The thing about it is they wanted to see if they liked what you had to offer. You gave them a huge banquet of stuff to process through-

Shane Sams: And they didn't even do it.

Jocelyn Sams: And as a result I feel like they were kind of like, ah, this is cool but like whoa, I don't even know you-

Shane Sams: Yeah, it's like I don't even know if it was cool because I'm not even going to try that. You know what I'm saying? They looked at it and got scared basically.

Jocelyn Sams: So instead let's give them some more bite sized pieces that are more similar to your paid offer. And see if that-

Shane Sams: And I think you're thinking, I think you've gone SEO crazy. I hear a little bit of that too. Well not exactly the right people are searching for this exact right word, but that doesn't matter, what they're really looking for is probably just yoga at first. Like that's the core, right? They're looking for somebody to teach them yoga live at home. That's the whole gist of what you're really selling. No one cares about your method. Have you ever noticed that Jocelyn and I even on our sales page don't really go into what's in the flip your life blueprint?

Jennifer Dixon: Yes. I did notice that.

Shane Sams: We never talk about it. Because if I told you what was in there, it would overwhelm a beginners so much that they would pass out. So for all you beginners out there start passing out. Like if you got in there and really saw what it takes, if I threw all that out at you at first you would be so overwhelmed you'd never try. But if you came to me and said, whoa, here's where I am, I've got an idea. I even made a product, then I would look at you and say, let's build your website. I wouldn't say, let's go build an audience or let's get traffic, or let's start ads or let's do SEO research, I would just say, hey man, you need a website. It's the next step that's the most important step. It's not all the steps.

Shane Sams: So I think you're trying too hard to regurgitate all of your past experience onto these people in that five day challenge, and it's just so overwhelming they don't even try. You know what I'm saying?

Jennifer Dixon: I do.

Shane Sams: All right, so imagine this, imagine if your whole thing was the four minute, I picked tabata because it's four minutes. I just say. For those of you guys that are out there, it's like you work 20 seconds then you rest 10, whatever. You can plant that on almost any workout scheme. But like if you did something like that, that was like a 10 minute workout, let's just say, that's not overwhelming. Hey guys, we're going to do two poses a day, 10 minutes a day. You can do that. And then at the end you tell them there's more inside and to show up next Monday and you'll do the workout, and it's like a, my crossfit gym, sometimes the coach won't even tell us what the workout is until we get there. Because she's afraid if she post it, we won't show up.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, that used to happen to me.

Shane Sams: Right. You know what I'm saying?

Jennifer Dixon: It's like I'm not doing that.

Shane Sams: I know but you are doing that online. That's exactly what you did. Right? You're like, here's the 42 minute death workout, instead of hey guys, I'm not going to tell you how long we're going to go today so I'll just keep moving or whatever. So as for the other question, where am I going to find 10 minutes? Last I checked, you was running to the zoo, making chimpanzee noises with your kids.

Jennifer Dixon: Oh no but-

Shane Sams: You have time to find 10 minutes somewhere to do it.

Jennifer Dixon: It wasn't the finding of the 10 minutes. But from what I understood is you wanted it to be the same time everyday, and that's where I was like, crap, what is the same time every day where I'm doing something the same time? That's where the disconnect was. Because if I'm going to do a challenge, I imagine we've got to meet up at let's just say 10 o'clock Eastern time every single day. And that's where I was like, ooh-

Shane Sams: Make the time. If it's important enough, you'll find a way. If it's not you'll find an excuse.

Jennifer Dixon: Yep.

Shane Sams: But you can find the time. Like it's your schedule, it's your calendar. I would guess it would probably be early too, by the way. Like, I mean, you know, you can catch people before work, so maybe you do a 6:00 AM challenge to get people real fired up or you do a 9:00 PM challenge and you do it at night. Like we have webinars at 9:00 PM sometimes look at our member calls. You think we want to do a member call at nine o'clock on a Sunday? No, but we do it because we know people need it, and we know and we know they'll show up for it.

Shane Sams: So like sometimes you just have to pick a time and you have to do it. You can find that, that's the easiest part of the whole equation to figure out, is when you're going to do it. Just look at your calendar and say, all right, next week I'm going to do a challenge and I'm going to do it every day at 8:00 AM forget it, whatever. Because it's not forever.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah.

Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying? It's like not forever.

Jennifer Dixon: Would that turn people away if it was at my house? Because at like six in the morning, I'm going to be at my house. I'm not going to be-

Jocelyn Sams: No.

Shane Sams: No one cares.

Jocelyn Sams: I don't think it will.

Shane Sams: No one cares.

Jocelyn Sams: I watch workout videos all the time, like on YouTube and people are in their bedroom. People are in their living area.

Shane Sams: You watch our member calls twice a month and we're sitting in our bedroom.

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah but y'all aren't doing yoga and let's be honest yoga has a fair amount of, what is the word I'm looking for? Stereotype expectations. And that's probably like into one of the questions later. That's why I was like, oh, because my house is not decorated. I've got two little kids, there's probably green boogers on the wall somewhere.

Shane Sams: On the last member call that we had our daughter came in here changing into her pajamas.

Jennifer Dixon: I saw that.

Shane Sams: Yeah right. Exactly right behind us. And I was like, get out of here. There was dogs running in here. No one cares as long as you give them what they want. I mean, you can lock the door. And also too I'll tell you another story. I got to tour Michael Hyatt's office a couple weeks ago. He was an online guy. So they have these things in their offices called podcast closets. Okay. And they use them for webinars and podcast. Anybody at time can go on one of these closets shut the door and do it. And they've already got all this stuff set up for podcasts and Webinars, right? But they made it proportion. Like there's decorations on the back of the wall. It's so funny. All the decorations were smaller, there was paintings and pictures and stuff, and it looked really tiny. But it was done in a way of perspective. It made it look like they were in a huge room. You see what I'm saying? But it was totally an illusion, like they were in a big conference room with a wall of stuff but it was hilarious, because they had thought like, well, who cares where we are, we'll just make it look like we want.

Shane Sams: And we interviewed someone a few weeks ago on this program who teaches English to students in China, and she does it in her laundry room-

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah, I heard that one.

Shane Sams: Where the camera points at the white wall and she's got it looking like a school room. So I promise you, one Saturday you could go clear one wall in some room of your house that you can shut a door-

Jocelyn Sams: And make it look amazingly decorated.

Shane Sams: And make it look like you're in a yoga studio. You could make it look however you want it.

Jennifer Dixon: So that's not showing up every day. It's just doing it one Saturday?

Shane Sams: No, I'm talking about you pick one wall in your house that becomes the yoga wall and point your camera at that and nobody will even know you're in there. It doesn't matter. Like you can make it look as pretty as you want. You can make it look not as pretty as you want, it doesn't matter. All that matters is what's behind you on the camera. It doesn't matter if it's in this big room, and I still don't think people will care. They'll see a yoga mat and somebody working out and guide them through a workout. Here's another assumption we're making. You're assuming people care, like me and Jocelyn don't really care about stuff like that. Some people will care, but you just want the ones that don't care. You want the ones who care more about is this person real and authentic and will they show up for me when they say they will, and are they going to lead me through this process? If they will, I'll follow them and everybody else who doesn't. Like all the stereotypes in yoga.

Shane Sams: I'm six foot tall and 260 pounds and I do yoga. Is that stereotypical? Probably not. There's somebody out there that will follow you just the way you are and if you want to make it a little prettier you can. Like you don't have to have a film studio or a yoga studio or anything like that, that's not important, that's not what you're selling. You know what I'm saying? That's the Instagram model, 30 year old millennial Instagram yoga person. Let them go worry about what their camera looks like. You know what I'm saying? You're selling to moms. The mom that's doing yoga with you is probably doing it in her bedroom floor or she may be in the laundry room hiding from her children so she can do yoga. So she would probably appreciate that, that it is so real.

Shane Sams: But I guess just challenge those. You can't worry about what it looks like. You just can't. You just got to do it. You just got to make it happen and make it live and make it real. And I think people will actually probably like it better you know?

Jennifer Dixon: Got it.

Shane Sams: Yeah. I hope that makes sense?

Jennifer Dixon: Yeah. Get over myself.

Jocelyn Sams: All right Jennifer, we've had a really fun time talking to you today and trying to figure out what your next steps are going to be. Unfortunately we are almost out of time but before we go we'd like to ask everyone what is one thing that you plan to do based on what we talked about here today?

Jennifer Dixon: I will relaunch my challenge to include I guess three to five days of live mini trainings. No more than 10 minutes and try to get people into my membership that way.

Shane Sams: I think that's a good idea. I think that's good because you can use the same process and just teach it differently and try it again. And I would really invite those people that did it the first time. They'll probably sign back up and they'll probably do it this time, you can say I revamped it. It's all new. It's going to be much easier and you're going to love it even more. Okay?

Jennifer Dixon: Got it.

Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. What a great conversation with Jennifer about her business. Man it can be easy to get overwhelmed or even discouraged and frustrated when you're out there worrying about your online business, trying to make something work and you get a little success and then it goes away, and you just don't know what to do next to make it happen. And that's what the Flip Your Life community is all about. We would love to help you with your next steps inside the community, on our member calls and in our training area. You can check out everything we have to offer for the Flip Your Life community at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We'd love to have you in there. We'd love to see you on our next member call and maybe we'll even be able to talk to you on an upcoming podcast. So until next time, get out there, take action, do whatever it takes to flip your life.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

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

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