FL295 - How to Launch an Online Course or Membership

In today's episode, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Crystal launch her product and find customers.

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

Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Super excited to be back with you today. We've got another member of the Flip Your Life community on the show, and we are going to help them take their online dreams to the next level. Want to welcome Crystal Harper to the program today. Hey, Crystal. How you doing?

Crystal Harper: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.

Shane Sams: And I'm super excited to have Crystal on the show, because Crystal is one of our private mastermind people. We've been working with her for a few weeks, now. And she has taken massive action and made massive progress in her online business, and we're ready to get to the next level, and go to the next steps.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, it is great to have you here today, and I look forward to everyone else in our audience knowing more about your business and what you are up to. So let's start out by telling everyone a little bit about you, your background, and what you are doing online.

Crystal Harper: Okay, well I got my bachelor's degree in psychology back in 2007. And back then, I was planning on getting my PhD in clinical psychology, but I actually had a daughter right after I graduated, so I decided to take time off from school. I became a waitress. I wanted to be on my daughter's schedule during the day, so her dad watched her at night, and I worked at night. But when I turned 30, and my daughter started first grade, I decided to go back to school for my teaching certification, thinking that I would be on my daughter's schedule. But once I was in the program, I realized that wasn't really the case. So I started thinking that working in the classroom wasn't really what I wanted to do, so I decided to go back to school again and get my Master's degree in e-learning, which I will graduate from in December.

Crystal Harper: So I've just kind of been on the fence of where I'm going. And then I ran into you guys, beginning of April, and I just felt like that's where I needed to be. I've just always wanted to own my own business, but never knew how I could possibly do that. Yeah, like I said, I just found you guys and the rest is history.

Shane Sams: It's funny, because Crystal, when she says, "I found you guys," here's what she actually means. So Crystal finds our podcast, signs up for the membership, buys a ticket to Flip Your Life live, and she went to our private mastermind, all within a week. I'm watching this happen, as the week's going on. Monday, I see ... Like, "Oh, we got a ticket to Flip Your Life live. Whoa, they joined the community. Wow! They signed up for private coaching!" What is going on here? So you dove into the deep end.

Jocelyn Sams: You went all in, Crystal.

Crystal Harper: I did.

Jocelyn Sams: I like that. And you're also our people because I like how you're like, "Okay, so I started out to work in education, and then I decided I didn't want to work in education."

Shane Sams: Pivot.

Crystal Harper: Yeah. Right?

Shane Sams: All right, like, "Fork in the road, go left. I don't even know what's right. Let's just go left."

Jocelyn Sams: Oh, that's sort of the way we were. We were kind of like, "We want schedule flexibility. Let's be teachers." And then we're like, "No. Let's not."

Shane Sams: That's not as peachy as you think it is. You Know?

Crystal Harper: I know.

Shane Sams: But it is really important for people to take that lesson, though. Just because you've already invested a certain amount of time into something doesn't mean you have to keep going down that road if you don't want to do it. And when you realize you don't want to do it, you don't just finish something. When we quit our jobs, I sat down and gave my letter of resignation to the principal. Right? And he looked at me and he goes, "How long have you been teaching?" And I said, "Nine years, going on ten. This'll be my 10th year," if I was going to finish. And he goes, "Nine years." He goes, "You've got all that retirement in, and you're just going to give that up?" And I looked at him, and I went, "Yeah, but I've got 18 left. I'm not just going to finish the last 18 years to retirement because I've got 9 in the system." You don't do that. I realized I don't want to do this, so I'm going to pivot. You know?

Crystal Harper: Right. I mean, and it's all a learning experience, too.

Shane Sams: Exactly. And I know there's a lot of people out there that probably know your story. Like, "have lived your story." Didn't know what they wanted to do, they were waitressing, being a waiter, doing stuff, just kind of floating around. Went back to school, and now this sucks, too. "That's it, I'm getting a new degree." Go to another direction, and that's where it brought you today.

Shane Sams: But tell us about e-learning, though, because this is going to be ... I mean, this is where we're going to go with your online business, but tell us a little bit about e-learning. What does that mean to have a degree in e-learning?

Crystal Harper: Well, it's e-learning and instructional design, is what the actual program is. So I'm really learning how to design courses online. So I can actually even work in the back end and just design courses for teachers, or I can teach online. So pretty much the business that we've came up with is teaching teachers how to learn how to teach online.

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Crystal Harper: Or showing them how to teach online.

Shane Sams: And giving them that path. Right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: A few weeks ago, we had a guest on. Her name was Gina, and she is an online teacher. She teaches English to Chinese children. Right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: But she needs to ... It's different teaching on the internet. It's different teaching an online ... It's different creating an online course, than doing something live, in front of 30 students. You got to know how to transition. And there might be a lot of teachers out there in the future who never walk in a classroom, because they are going to be teaching from their home, on the Internet, and they've got to know how to actually manage that process.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, and I've realized that especially since starting this business, that there are so many different opportunities to teach online that I didn't even realize while I was going through the program, but just doing all of the research, I mean, there's so many opportunities.

Shane Sams: Well, tell us a little bit about your journey so far, though. This was not your first idea. Right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: Right. What did you kind of dabble into before we started actually working together, and I was like, "No, don't do that. You can do this"?

Crystal Harper: I was just thinking about starting a business to help teachers learn how to work with technology better in their classroom, which I thought was a great idea, but then after talking to you, you kind of discouraged me of that.

Shane Sams: Well, we started researching it. It's always about the research, and nobody was really looking for that.

Crystal Harper: And I had even ... Yeah, I know. And I had even tried to find other people that were doing it, and I realized that there weren't.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and so usually when that happens, it might make you think, "Hmm, this might not be the best idea."

Shane Sams: If nobody's selling anything, and nobody's running ads about the thing, there's probably nobody making money with the thing. Right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: And it doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, it just might mean it's the wrong time for it.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, that's true.

Shane Sams: So tell us about your business right now, though. Now, what have we created? Now, what's amazing is, is just a few weeks ago, you had absolutely nothing. Right? And tell us what we're doing now. What's your idea, how it's evolved, and what you've actually already created?

Crystal Harper: Okay. Well first, I created the course. It took me almost, probably about three weeks, where I just created three different modules. So the first module is telling teachers about what opportunities they have to be able to teach online. And then the second module, what you helped me create, Shane, was the Harper Method. So I teach teachers, step by step, how to design their own online course.

Shane Sams: We have an onboarding call in our Voxer program, and we were like, "Well, what is this going to look like?" And we started ... Something happened, and we were talking about some kind of weird acronym, or something. And I was like, "What if your name was just an acronym?" And we just made up what the H, the A, the R, the P, the E, and the R were. Right?

Crystal Harper: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And by the end of this call, we were like, "I think we just invented a whole thing." It was like, "You are now the ... " Wait, trademark. "The Harper Method: How to be an e-teacher," basically.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and education loves their acronyms, anyway. So it's perfect.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, it seemed to work out. It seemed to flow well for me, and it makes me look a little more original because as I did the research, there are a lot of people out there who are doing the same exact thing.

Shane Sams: Which is a good thing, though, because that means there is a market and you just got to get your piece of the pie, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: What is the Harper method? What did we come up with? Tell everybody about the Harper method.

Crystal Harper: Okay. H starts for helping you understand your students. So, it's analyzing the characteristics of your students and their learning styles, just to determine what type of class that you're going to be teaching.

Shane Sams: Okay.

Crystal Harper: A is assign objectives and learning theory. R is resources, selecting and preparing your resources and strategies.

Shane Sams: Okay. What's the P?

Crystal Harper: P is participation, just you determine assignments, assessments, and feedback of how your students will be participating. E is evaluate. So, you evaluate your course that you've designed and look at where you need to improve. And then R is revision and repetition.

Shane Sams: Awesome.

Crystal Harper: So, you just go over what you've evaluated and repeat the process.

Shane Sams: And here's what's funny, that didn't exist before our meeting. And now you've created the actual Harper method. We have modules and courses that actually teach this to e-learners to help them become better. And I always tell people this. They're like, "Everybody else looks so official and everyone's got their accreditation and certification." Here's the deal, somewhere at some point, every one of those certifications that you see anywhere, someone just sat in a room and made it up. All these acronyms, all these things that we have. Common Core and all that was just people who made stuff up. And you clearly have the expertise in this, because you have a degree in it.

Jocelyn Sams: And I was going to say, it sounds very professional. To me I'm like, "Oh, wow."

Shane Sams: "The Harper method".

Jocelyn Sams: That sounds very legit.

Shane Sams: That's like hardcore. But like you can go out and create these things. My favorite is like coaches. There's this coach named Brendon Burchard. And he has high performance coaching and getting a high performance coaching certification's a big deal. But that dude just made that up. He didn't go get accredited by Yale or anything. He just made it up and he started selling it. And it's like yeah, he created a system, you learn it, and it will help you be a better coach. Right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: All you've done is created a system that will teach people who are not e-learners or not e-teachers to go be e-teachers, and you have every right to do that because you've got the expertise to do it. That's amazing.

Crystal Harper: Right. And it's funny because even going over the other models that are already out there, I feel like my model, I kind of ... Not made it better, but I tweaked things a little bit to where ... I can't. I'm sorry.

Shane Sams: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Jocelyn Sams: You're fine.

Crystal Harper: Well, you know how just things continually get better when you look at something, you can see what could make it better.

Shane Sams: Sure.

Crystal Harper: So, I just kind of looked at what's out there and I tried to make my model flow a little bit better than what I personally have seen.

Shane Sams: And the difference there between you and everybody else, okay? Anyone who doesn't take action, is you actually created this thing. There's probably 100 other people that looked at that same thing and said, "Well, I could do this better." But they never made the thing and you did. And that's why you've given yourself such an opportunity to go be successful and get your course out there, and actually start selling it and become this expert where people come to you to learn how to be like an e-learner, right?

Crystal Harper: Yeah. It's pretty cool.

Shane Sams: It's amazing.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, Crystal. So, you got your product kind of outlined and where is it at right now? You have already been working on it. Have you completed it? Have you sold it? Where are you at right now?

Crystal Harper: I did complete it. At first I put it on Udemy and I haven't made any sales on Udemy. But I have also put it on my website. So, I started up my website. I've been building my social media. That's mainly what I've been focusing on the last week or so is just building up LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest.

Shane Sams: So, basically you're following the Flip your Life blueprint. It's amazing how things happen when you do that. You created your course. You put it in a third party market just so it's for sale, just in case. You've built your website and your social media, you're building your platform, okay? You're creating infrastructure that will support this and now you have to take it to the next level and just find people to buy the thing, right?

Crystal Harper: Right. Right.

Shane Sams: So, tell me about your e-mail list. You've actually got that out there, too. What's happening with your email list?

Crystal Harper: Yeah. I made a few opt ins or lead magnets, and put them ... I have blog posts. I wrote out, I have a bunch of blog posts going all the way through October, but I put lead magnets on the blog posts and then on my website and people have been opting in. So, I got my first email a little over a week ago and then I got another one, and then I realized that ... Going back a little bit, I didn't have a lead magnet on the home page. And I actually just fixed that a couple days ago and then all of a sudden I got six more people-

Shane Sams: That's amazing.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, all in the last 30 hours, I've gotten six more people added to my email list.

Shane Sams: Let me ask you this now. How many actual blog posts are done? Because one of the things that we really preach in the Flip Your Life blueprint is batching your content ahead so that you can go back and promote the content you've batched, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: So, how many of those have actually went live?

Crystal Harper: Live, there's probably maybe around eight or so.

Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Now, think about that. People get frustrated at us sometimes because they listen to other people and they're like, "No, I have to have 100 blog posts and build an audience, and then I ask them what they want and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." But no. You've made your product, it's already for sale, and with just eight blog posts, you're being found. And people are subscribing. And now you can email them and you can sell them this product that you've already got that you can make money off. Even though it's in its infancy and it's just at the very beginning, like you can see things happening just because you're making things happen, right?

Crystal Harper: For sure, yeah.

Shane Sams: There's people that have 10,000 people reading their thing, but they never put an opt in up, so they never even get a lead, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: And you're starting to see it come to fruition.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, because they're like, "I'm not ready," or you know, "I don't know what they want." Well, here's the thing. If you make something, somebody might buy it. If you make nothing, there's no opportunity for anyone to buy it.

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: You're giving yourself massive opportunity.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, it's just putting yourself out there. I've just been posting on social media every day and I'm getting between 15 and 20 something views a day, so there's people out there-

Shane Sams: What's going to happen when you have 20 or 30 blog posts? And you've been consistently doing social media for months, right? You're going to start getting traction. The course will start evolving. You'll start talking to people and the first sales come, right?

Crystal Harper: Yeah.

Shane Sams: It's so funny how many times we've seen, I mean, we've literally watched hundreds of people go down the path and it always happens about the same way. And then we watch hundreds of others veer completely off the path and they just play on social media all day, and then they quit and say online business doesn't work, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: But it's like we said when we were first talking, "Hey, if you build the course and if you have a lead magnet, somebody's going to opt in." Lo and behold, guess what happened? You got leads, right?

Crystal Harper: Sure. Right.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. My first question would be have you asked these people to buy yet? Are they in some type of a sequence?

Shane Sams: Like an auto responder? Have you actually sent them an email and said, "Hey, I have a course over here"?

Crystal Harper: I have not and that's part of my action plan for this week is to create an email auto responder, especially since I got six new people in the last day or so, I feel like I need to be emailing them. That's definitely my plan. I've been promoting the course on social media, but I haven't sent it out in email yet.

Shane Sams: That's where the real power is. Because usually social media is kind of only good for getting you emails, like getting you leads, and then you follow up with them to actually make the sales. But that's okay, though. You're going in order. I'm telling you, you're doing things step by step. And that's why you're going to be successful at this, because you've done it right. Now you know, you're like, "Wait a minute, I have people that raised their hand, I just have to email them. And maybe they'll raise their hand again, except this time there'll be a wallet in it."

Crystal Harper: Right. I know.

Shane Sams: You know what I'm saying?

Crystal Harper: It's crazy when you go step by step, but it really seems like it's working.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay.

Shane Sams: Okay, cool.

Jocelyn Sams: You mentioned a little bit about putting yourself out there, and I know that it's one of the fears that you have because I'm looking at your form that you filled out before the podcast, so let's talk a little bit about that. What fear is holding you back just a little bit right now?

Crystal Harper: My biggest fear is going live. I don't mind as much going on video or audio and you record it and they see it later, but I'm terrified of going live.

Shane Sams: What are you terrified of? Is that the real fear or is there something behind it? What are you afraid is going to happen?

Crystal Harper: That I'm going to mess up and there's no erase button. I just, I guess I need to build up my confidence. I know that I know it. I know that I know the materials. But it's just like sometimes I get tongue twisted or just I don't ... Like right now, I don't know what to say.

Shane Sams: I was kind of setting you up there as well, because I'm never short for words, you know what I'm saying?

Crystal Harper: Yeah.

Shane Sams: But what's cool about it, though, is one, you don't have to go live. I do encourage people to go live a lot, but if you don't want to go live, Crystal, nobody's got a gun to your head telling you to do it, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: I was talking to somebody the other day about, we were talking content strategies. And we basically had a little bit of a disagreement on what worked online or what was the best way to be successful. He was really pushing for like, "No, write one blog post a month, 3000 words, epic post. Deeply researched. That's the best way to get traction in your content."

Shane Sams: And I was like, "No, be prolific. Go out there and share something. Write an email everyday," like I do, right? Or something like that. I like a prolific strategy. Be like John Lee Dumas. Do a podcast every day for whatever. If you want to get traction, throw as much mud on the wall, whatever. We had an impasse about what we each wanted to do, but we could both easily point to successful people in either direction, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: And you will find as many millionaires on Pinterest as you will on Facebook. Right? You just will. It doesn't matter. You'll find as many millionaire real estate developers selling single family homes as you will selling apartment buildings, okay? There truly 100% is no right way to do this. It's just your way. And right now you've just done blog posts and they've gotten you subscribers, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: Don't feel like you have to do that. Now, that being said, also don't be afraid to do it just because you might mess up. If you write a blog post, you're eventually going to write blog posts that have a spelling mistake, okay? If you make YouTube videos, you're eventually going to say something crazy. If we were on a member call, the last member call that we did for the Flip Your Life community, twice a month we answer premium member questions for members. They show up, we answer questions.

Jocelyn Sams: We do it on video.

Shane Sams: We do it on video. It's in our bedroom and we have two chairs that sit by this big bay window that look out at the lake. We were sitting here and we were like, "Whatever." I look behind me and Anna Jo is taking off her clothes in the back of this video, putting on-

Jocelyn Sams: Well, she's changing into pajamas.

Shane Sams: She's changing into pajamas. Like the dogs were in here, we were in here, the kids are allowed to come in here. And she literally had her shirt off. And I'm like, "What are you doing?" And she's like, "I'm putting on my pajamas," like it was just nothing, right? But you can't avoid every mistake is what I'm saying. It's impossible. I wouldn't necessarily even worry about getting tongue tied. People probably would like that better if you weren't perfect.

Jocelyn Sams: And here's the thing for me, Crystal, is that the live video actually gives me a sense of peace about doing video because I know that it's live and I feel like people might actually be more forgiving because of that. And if something happens, I might just be like, "Hey, live video, you know." Brush it off. No big deal. But I feel like if I am editing something, it has to be absolutely perfect.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: It's like in Game of Thrones, the last season of Game of Thrones, someone on Twitter noticed that they had left a Starbucks coffee cup on the table during-

Jocelyn Sams: On ye old table.

Shane Sams: Like ye old table during a scene of this medieval fantasy novel. Right? You know? But it was like they got butchered for it because you've got this $100 million a year show that has all the time spent, an extra year editing it to make it perfect, and they still left a coffee cup in, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: But live, it's like crazy stuff just happens live. It's just like no big deal. And I also love live, too, because I think it's actually easier for me to do a live video than it is to prepare, because I spend so much time preparing when I have to do something and I know I've got to prepare it and edit it and stuff. And some times when I do a live video, i' just like, "I have an idea. I'm going to write three bullet points and talk about it and then turn it off." And those are usually my most popular videos.

Crystal Harper: Really?

Shane Sams: Yeah, always. It's so funny that live seems so scary, but both of us kind of have agreed that it's actually a lot easier to do live.

Jocelyn Sams: The more you do it, the easier it will become. This was something that was just really hard for me. It took me probably years. But now when we sit down to do a video, I'm not perfect at it. And I still mess up. But I don't even really care that much anymore. It's become so much easier because I've practiced it all these times.

Crystal Harper: Right. I can see that.

Shane Sams: Another thing, too, that I think people really intimidated with live video is the teaching. Right? One, you have to know your content when you're teaching live. That's true. I think most, a lot of people that are listening right now, your fear is not going live, your fear is people finding out you don't know what in the heck you're talking about, right? So, if you know what you're talking about, it doesn't matter. I could get on and talk about football all day. I could talk about the 3-5-3 defense for hours. I could talk about online business. You put me on. I did a 45 minute training the other day off of three bullet points that I wrote down literally walking in the door before the show, right?

Shane Sams: And it was like I just know I'm talking about things I know. So, this thing that you've invented called the Harper method, if you want to talk about it, it's your thing. You're going to know more about it than anyone else on the planet. You shouldn't be intimidated by that.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: And just remember that ... I forgot what I was going to say.

Shane Sams: See?

Jocelyn Sams: See?

Shane Sams: Right there. Leave that in. We're not even taking the out. That's what happens.

Jocelyn Sams: Oh, okay. I know. And just remember that people do not expect you to have all the answers. It's okay to tell someone you don't know something. If someone asks you something and you're not sure, just be honest with them and be like, "Hey, I don't know the answer to that question. Let me look into it some and I'll be happy to get back to you later."

Shane Sams: And go after the low hanging fruit when you start. I think people think they have to do live videos that are like, "You're going to change the world with your next Facebook live," right? But sometimes a live video can be, "Hey, guys. Crystal Harper here. Founder and inventor of the Harper method. We've got a new blog post. It's titled The H in the Harper Method. Go check it out, I'm going to drop a link below." That's a live video.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Shane Sams: You don't have to tell them that something's going on. Your live strategy doesn't have to be live teaching.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Shane Sams: You can teach in those detailed blog posts and then just use live to show a little personality and tell people about your existing content.

Crystal Harper: Yeah, I like that. It's like baby steps.

Shane Sams: It's like baby steps, right.

Jocelyn Sams: Exactly.

Shane Sams: Or it's a strategy in and of itself.

Crystal Harper: Right, true.

Shane Sams: There's no right way to do this. Just incorporate all these awesome tools that we have to promote the stuff that you already do.

Crystal Harper: Okay. That makes sense.

Jocelyn Sams: All right. Let's talk about how we can grow this audience and get you to your next level.

Crystal Harper: Well, is it too early to be starting my membership? Because I kind of already have started looking into starting a membership, but that was one of my questions that I wanted to ask you guys, like when am I ready to take that step? I mean, I only have a few people even viewing me right now.

Shane Sams: Is it too early is what you're saying, basically?

Crystal Harper: Right, right.

Shane Sams: I don't think so. The answer to us for anybody that ever asks us this is no. It doesn't matter what you sell, it just matters that you sell, right?

Crystal Harper: Do I need to start a ... I hear you guys talk about beta groups. Is that the way I should go about it before I actually just throw a membership out there?

Shane Sams: Your first 20 members are your beta members anyway. Beta just means the first run and basically-

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Shane Sams: You've not started yet. You're literally crossing the finish line of having a thrown together platform with a product sitting in the middle of the stage, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: We just have to figure out how that product changes a little to make it into a membership. Basically, if you have the content living in a protected area on your site, the only thing you really have to add to it is access to you, and you have a membership.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: You could do member calls like we do. Teachers could come, ask you questions twice a month, and you charge a recurring cost for that. There's different ways that you could do that. You could sell the course and then sell a $19 a month talk to the founder of the Harper method twice a month kind of thing. Or you could package it all together. It really doesn't matter how you frame it, but I like when people start with their membership, because let's say you have 100 people on your list and you're charging $50 a month. If you get 10 of those people, you're making $500 a month, that's a car payment month one.

Shane Sams: When you have a membership, you don't have to convert so many people. If you're just selling a course by itself, like an email list of 100 people won't do it. But if you have 100 members, that'll totally do it. Like 100 times 50 is 60,000 a year, right? So, I like it when people start with the membership.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: The whole thing about doing the beta is that it gives you the opportunity to see if it's working for you and then also if it's working for your members. Like if you started out and you tell them that you're going to do two members calls a month and you don't like doing that or you want to change something about it, it gives you the opportunity to do so.

Shane Sams: You can evolve, basically, with the first members.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: You have an unfair advantage right now. Let's say you have 10 people on your list. You could literally record a video for all 10 of them and be like, "Hey, Christy. Thanks for signing up for my list. I'm getting ready to start a membership where I will personally teach you the Harper method. I'm only going to charge you $9 a month. This is eventually going to be $99 a month. But right now, limited time, get in. You can ask me questions about being an e-teacher. I can show you how to transition from classroom teaching to online teaching. I can show you how to do the curriculum and stuff. You'll literally get to talk to me, but it's a beta. So, I'm letting you select people and I select you," right?

Crystal Harper: Yeah, I like that.

Shane Sams: You could totally reach out to these people and try to get those beta members.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Shane Sams: Any time you can build recurring revenue as early as possible, you should do it.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: And I would even reach out to them personally before you get this auto responder done. These people just signed up for your list, so take advantage of the small numbers right now and write them back personally. Say, "Hey, I just wanted to thank you for signing up for my list. Are there any questions I can answer for you?"

Crystal Harper: Okay. Cool.

Shane Sams: The auto responder, I think ... People always ask me this in the community. I don't know if we've talked about this much on the air, but we've talked about this in our member calls quite a bit. Your auto responder is almost like whipped cream on the ice cream. It's like the cherry on top. People get this romanticized version of online business, like "I built a product and I had a single lead magnet that led to seven emails, and that's how everyone joins." Honestly, that's not how barely anybody really joins, you know what I'm saying?

Shane Sams: The auto responder, we always say it takes the low hanging fruit. There might be 5% of your email list that ever just signs up because you asked them with an auto responder, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: And there's no magical auto responder. There's no magical copy.

Shane Sams: No.

Jocelyn Sams: And one thing that we've decided to do is that we've decided to market like it's 25 years ago. We actually reach out to people. We send them videos. We reach out to our audience. We reach out to our members. We say, "How can we serve you? Would you like to buy a live event ticket?" These are things that we actually do and that's going to help you, especially in the beginning to build that know, like, and trust for people so that they will invest in what you're selling them.

Shane Sams: The auto responder is more like your day off insurance. Any time, like tomorrow, Jocelyn and I today had three podcasts that we recorded. We had a strategy meeting over lunch about some hiring decisions that we're making. We worked a lot today basically is what I'm saying. We put a lot of hours into the day and tomorrow we're going down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to take our kids to the water park at Dollywood.

Crystal Harper: Oh, cool.

Shane Sams: We're going to spend all day with the kids tomorrow. But I know that if anybody signs up for my list tomorrow, I've got an auto responder. At least they're going to get an email. They're going to get that coming out. We're going to have, we have a promotion running. We have like a quarterly promotion, like a first day of summer promotion. So, I know that email's going to go out this week to people who are not in the auto responder. I know that members are getting emails about Flip Your Life live next week. It's already kind of done.

Shane Sams: Those automated emails are not the end all be all. The followup is what matters. If someone hits reply and asks a question about Flip Your Life live, I have those pushed to me. And then I make them a video and freak them out. Right? That's where sales are made. They're not made in the auto responder.

Crystal Harper: And that's one thing I love about you guys is how you guys are just super connected with your customers. So, it just makes you seem much more real.

Shane Sams: Well, you actually get to talk to us.

Crystal Harper: Right. It's so cool.

Shane Sams: Right. And everybody can make that happen in their business, because we really mean it when we say, like who wouldn't want to make $60,000 a year working at home? As a minimum. As a baseline. That's 100 people, $50 a month. 200 people, $25 a month. Those are real numbers. And they're really possible for anyone who's listening to this podcast right now. If you do what we say. Build recurring revenue, do a membership. Be real. Reach out. Let them know you're a real human. Let them know the Harper method is actually ran by Crystal Harper, and they can talk to Crystal, and Crystal will help them implement that to change the way they run their business, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: And hopefully it will grow to a point where you can't do that forever, but there are still ways to get things like that done even if you grow to a really large number.

Shane Sams: And it's why we actually started the program that you're in. We call it S&J All Access is what we call it. And one of our big things is our community has gotten so big, right? It's impossible for us to literally talk to hundreds of people every day, right? But we find ways to go one to many. We find like the forums, we can jump in and kill a bunch of questions, the member calls twice a month. We're live, listening to people asking questions and answering them right there on the air.

Shane Sams: But the reason we started S&J All Access is because we have a philosophy where we say we need to be able to do for a few what we wish we could do for everybody. Right? I wish I could help every single person starting out do what you're doing. Like we're working like this. Crystal gets to actually talk to me on Voxxer. It's an app. Everyday she can send me messages. And I send her a message back and tell her-

Crystal Harper: I know, it's amazing. I love it.

Shane Sams: But I can't do it for everybody, right?

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: And there is a cost associated to it.

Crystal Harper: Right.

Shane Sams: But that keeps us, like someone asked me one time at mastermind, they were like, "Why do you let beginners into your private mastermind, your S&J All Access? Why don't you only work with people who have 500 members, you're trying to get them to 1000?" Which I do have people like that. But that's not the heartbeat of our community. The heartbeat of our community is people like you who are like, "I've got an idea. This is gold. We've got to make it happen. How do I do this?" Like, okay. Let's go. Let's go make it happen. Right?

Crystal Harper: Oh, yeah. If I didn't sign up for the Voxer program, I know I wouldn't be where I'm at now, that's for sure.

Shane Sams: I mean, most people aways tell me, "I don't think I would have made my course." Right? And I'm like, "Yeah."

Crystal Harper: Oh, yeah.

Shane Sams: "That's why I won't let you start until you make your course."

Crystal Harper: Right. Now I'm really learning the steps. I know what to do next.

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Crystal Harper: It's super helpful.

Shane Sams: And you'll do the same thing with that personal connection if you keep it in your business, and that's what creates loyalty. That's what creates recurring revenue. That's what creates a stable online business.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Crystal. We have had an awesome conversation today. It has been great talking to you. I cannot wait to meet you in person very, very soon. But before we go, we always like to ask our guest what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about on today's call?

Crystal Harper: I think the first thing I'm going to do in the next day is personally email each of my email subscribers and thank them for joining my list, and maybe ask them some questions, or what they would like to know with teaching online.

Shane Sams: And anyone that replies to you, ask them to buy your course.

Crystal Harper: Okay.

Shane Sams: Sell it. You got to sell that thing or you're not going to make any money on it, you know what I mean?

Crystal Harper: Right. Yes. Sounds good.

Shane Sams: All right. Listen, thank you so much, Crystal. I know Crystal was very nervous when we first got on the call today and I know it can be very intimidating to come on a podcast when it's not something that you do all the time. Thank you for just sharing your fears and your vulnerabilities. Listen, we all have these things that we have to overcome and there's a lot of people listening that just probably nodding their head with this episode like, "This is me. This person is me and I'm going to do this because she's doing it." So, thank you for coming on the show.

Crystal Harper: Yes, thank you so much. I really, you just have to put yourself out there and just do it, even if you have fears. You just have to go for it. And it gets a little bit easier the more you do it, I guess.

Shane Sams: Let's just keep building it and changing it and we'll flip that life. We won't just change your life. We're going to flip your life, right?

Crystal Harper: Right. That's true.

Shane Sams: You're amazing, Crystal. All right, guys. What an amazing conversation that we had with Crystal today. She is doing everything she needs to do to start, build, and grow a successful online business. She's got all the pieces of the puzzle laying on the table and we're just putting them together one piece at a time and I cannot wait to see what that picture looks like for her. And I cannot wait to see what it looks like for you as well. We would love to help you take your next steps in your online business inside of the Flip Your Life community. We have plans available for every budget and every need. All you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife and check out all of the great content that we have inside. Check out all of the amazing community support that is waiting for you inside of the Flip Your Life community. That's FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife and we would love to work with you inside.

Shane Sams: Before we go, we like to close every episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast with a bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration, motivation, and even our business ideas from the bible. Today's bible verse comes from Proverbs 28:10. The bible says, "Lead good people down a wrong path and you'll come to a bad end. But do good and you will be rewarded for it." That's all you have to do, guys. Take something that you know, that you can help someone else out there on the Internet with, build a business around it. And when you take action, you will be rewarded for it.

Shane Sams: So, thanks for listening today. Until next time, get out there. Take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Crystal'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