FL298 - How to Monetize a Podcast

In today's episode, we help Marty monetize his golf podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn: Hey y'all. On today's show, we help Marty monetize his golf podcast.

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

Shane: What's going on everybody, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. Great to be back with you again today. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community on to the show. Really excited about our guest today because he is a golfer and I love me some golf. So, welcome to the program, Marty Griffin. Marty, welcome man.

Marty: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm always happy to talk to anyone who's interested in golf, especially people who have kids who are interested in golf.

Jocelyn: Well, that would be us right now because our 10-year-old son, Issac, he has just started getting interested in golf a little bit. We did a golf camp this summer and he was really, really excited about it. And we should also mention that Marty is a fellow podcaster. So, it's always exciting to talk to someone who podcasts on our show.

Marty: Yeah, it's a ton of fun to do both of those things. I saw your picture of Issac at golf camp, and I was just like yes.

Shane: I think it's a sign. Issac's getting into golf. We've got a golfer on the show. All signs are pointing to getting him out on the range and out on the lakes this summer. So, we're going to do that and we're going to talk about golf later on today. But, Marty, tell us a little bit about you and your background and your online business.

Marty: I'm, like a lot of your community members, I'm a husband. I'm a father of two girls. We call them Moose and Goose. They're six and 10. I've been playing golf really, pretty much forever. I had some health issues early in life, and I actually had a couple open-heart surgeries. When I was 12 years old was when I had my second one. And the doctors told me that I couldn't do any of the sports that I was currently doing, which was wrestling and baseball.

Marty: So, I happened to follow my dad to the driving range one day and I had enough of a knack for it, and I enjoyed it enough that he saw that interest and he got me lessons. So, that was every single waking moment for about 15 years of my life was golf. I'm talking 16 hours a day over the summer, taking lessons, playing in national tournaments. I even tried to go pro for a little while.

Marty: So, I decided that in terms of my online business, like our good buddy Pat Flynn says, use your unfair advantage. I got 23 years in the bank doing something that I love that a lot of other people love, so I wanted to really flex that unfair advantage and really get into the golf side of things with my online business.

Shane: That's amazing. I played a lot of golf too, when I was a kid. I started playing when I was like 13. The first time I ever swung a club, my brother hands me a driver. I'm like, what do I do? And he goes, well, just hit it like a baseball, but point down. That's what he said. I'm like, okay, whatever. so I watched him swing for a minute and they showed me how to grip the club. I just torched this thing. It left the driving range straight ahead and I was just addicted. The first time I ever swung a club, this happened.

Shane: I got really into golf. We went every single day after school, me and my buddy. We would get straight in his car and drive to the next town over to the golf club that we played at. And I bet you for four straight years, I played golf every day it wasn't freezing outside. The best job that I ever had, I was a lifeguard at a country club. There were three holes, seven, eight, and nine, wrapped around the pool.

Shane: So me and my buddy, I got paid to do this, this is incredible. For two straight summers I worked at this golf club. I would sit in the chair for 45 minutes and he would go golf those three holes. And then he would get in the chair and I would go golf those three holes. And then when we got off work at the end of the day, we would go play nine holes. So we would play like 27 holes of golf every single day. And half the day we were getting paid to do it. It was unbelievable. How can I get that job back?

Marty: That's dream job stuff. That's the real flipped lifestyle Jocelyn is playing golf and being a lifeguard.

Jocelyn: Now, did you make any money at that job?

Shane: No, I made like minimum wage, but man, it was a good, hard-earned minimum wage. I think I lowered my handicap by about 10 that summer, so it was worth it.

Marty: You got yourself a tan and a pretty draw.

Shane: Exactly.

Jocelyn: It will take me about 10 seconds to tell you about my golf experience. We lived in a townhouse on a golf course when we lived in West Virginia, so there's that.

Shane: That was pretty much it. I think Jocelyn came out one time and we walked three holes, and I think she swung the club once. I actually got you a set of golf clubs one time for Mothers Day.

Jocelyn: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they never got used. But, actually, when I used to work in corporate, I would go and ride along with people, because you know in the corporate world, golf's a big thing. I did actually try to play a little bit then, but it was pretty laughable. So, anyway, tell us what is your website and your podcast.

Marty: I run a podcast called Golf Strategy School and the website is golfstrategyschool.com. It's been going since, I want to say I launched it in January of 2015. I initially started out trying to be like the John Lee Dumas of golf, where I was going to interview pros and coaches from around the world. And I did that for about the first year. It just didn't get the traction that I wanted.

Marty: So I took advice and niched down further. I just kind of kept niching down further and further and further where I could see the opportunity for it and the listenership kept growing. It was a nice kind of feedback point. But I want to say around late 2016, early 2017, I wasn't getting any traction from my audience. My listeners were kind of just non-responsive. So, I actually hung up the microphone, I guess you could say it that way, and walked away from the podcast for a while.

Marty: It wasn't until into 2018 about this time, June 2018, I started to get some emails from people who had found the podcast saying, hey, is it on hiatus, are you coming back? So, I started to kick around the idea of bringing it back.

Shane: Did you leave the website up, though? So, you left the podcast on iTunes, you left the website up. You just stopped making new episodes basically, for a year, something like that?

Marty: Yeah, correct. It was about a year. I just stopped producing new content. I just kind of felt like it was a one-sided relationship between me and my audience. I was just kind of shouting into a black hole.

Shane: But you were getting downloads, you were getting listens? It was like pulling teeth to basically get them to talk to you.

Marty: Exactly. I was getting downloads. If I went in a regular month, I might get 4,000 downloads. When I wasn't producing, I was still getting 2,500 to 3,000 downloads.

Shane: Jocelyn, what was it you were looking at the other day? It was like 90% of the podcasters were getting less than 200 downloads a month or something like that.

Jocelyn: Yeah, I'm in this group, it's a podcaster group on Facebook and they were doing a poll. How many listens do you get when your podcast comes out each week. The options were like 1 to 100 or 100 to 200. And then the final one was over 1,000. And hardly anyone was over 1,000.

Shane: Over 90% were like less than a hundred. You're getting this many downloads, that's a lot of people paying attention to you. That's 2,500 to 4,000 human beings that are literally listening to you every single month.

Jocelyn: And the thing about it is like, I think you were kind of even new on the podcasting game. I guess you could say you were ahead of your time. And I think really we were too, because podcasting is just now starting to become a mainstream-type thing, I feel like.

Jocelyn: I was walking yesterday with a friend of mine. My daughter has cheerleading practice and I was walking with one of the other moms and she was like, tell me what a podcast is. And I was like, wow.

Shane: And this is a smart, connected, professional person. It's not like this was someone who didn't have an iPhone or something like that. They knew technology. She works in a place where they use technology. It's just not the thing yet.

Jocelyn: And I don't really say that to make fun of people or anything like that. I'm just saying, it's just now starting to hit where people are like, oh, yeah, I know what a podcast is. It's starting to become more everyday knowledge rather than just sort of like people who are nerds, I guess, because that's what I am. I've been doing this podcast for a long time.

Shane: We've been doing this since like 2012.

Shane: Let me ask you this. There's an interesting twist here in the story. Even though you were not getting a lot of feedback, or maybe you just weren't doing it right where you were reaching out correctly or getting them to opt-in correctly. There was some kind of disconnect between you and your audience, even though they loved your content.

Shane: But, you actually started making money off of your podcast, correct?

Marty: Yeah, that's the interesting thing. So, I had done an interview in 2016 with a couple of guys who had invented a product. And I was told by my fellow golf podcasters that I should interview these guys, they're very charismatic. And they were. And they offered me an affiliate relationship on their product. They only make one thing and it's designed to help you swing your golf club faster. So, I interviewed them and they gave me a promo code. I'm thinking, wow, man, I've really made it I have a promo code.

Shane: Not even an ad, it's just a promo code.

Marty: Exactly. It's not an ad, no one's paying me to put anything out. It's just there's a promo code out there that's loosely related to my industry. I remember I got a paper check from them the following month for like $28. And I wanted to run up and down the street like I made I, I did it. It was my 11 cents.

Shane: You generated money from your words that came out of your mouth.

Marty: Exactly. I went right up to my wife, I'm like, see, people do pay me to talk.

Jocelyn: Totally killing it.

Shane: Crushing it. Taking you to Applebee's tonight, baby. That's right. $28 bucks.

Jocelyn: Appetizers on me.

Marty: I was going to say, we're going to have to split that appetizer.

Shane: Split the appetizer and we're drinking water, but we're paying for it with this check.

Marty: So, a couple months later the affiliate revenue died down because I was still producing content. Well, after I had hung up the microphone. Out of nowhere, I got some email from PayPal saying, hey, someone gave you money. I look, and it was the company that I had my affiliate relationship with.

Marty: And first month it was like 48 bucks. I'm like, hey, that's more than I got before. That's awesome. The next month, July rolls around, hey, you got like $97 from that company. I'm like, no way. August comes by, I got like 150 bucks. It just kept growing and growing and growing until I'm fairly business-minded. I knew the fourth quarter was coming up.

Marty: Lo and behold, December rolls around, I get like 900 bucks. From this company.

Shane: That's insane. From one podcast, one affiliate.

Marty: One day's worth of work.

Shane: That's amazing.

Marty: and it just keeps paying. So, I'm thinking to myself, okay, that was Christmas, that was all Black Friday, Christmas, all that rolled into one. January rolls around, 1,100 bucks. February, 1,248 bucks. That was the peak that I hit was 1,248.

Shane: And that was this year? Was that in 2019?

Marty: Correct. That was 2019. So I'm getting this giant red flag being waved at me by my PayPal account saying, hey, these people want you to do more things. So, kind of buckle up and let's do it here. So, I decided to re-launch the podcast.

Shane: That's awesome. So, there's some interesting things here. And we'll go deep into this. Okay, there's some red flags here too. One, it's really a testament to everybody out there listening to create some freaking content. This is ridiculous. If you create it, you've got a chance. You created this content way before the money ever started rolling in. But then it just started rolling in and it was true passive income.

Shane: Somehow that episode got ranked or that coupon code got put into what's it called, Honey, is that that app? The Honey app picked your coupon code. Something happened, and you got found in a search engine. That's what happened. How many episodes did you record before you picked it back up again? When you stopped?

Marty: Before I relaunched. I stopped at about 70 episodes.

Shane: See, you put 70 episodes in and one of them hit. That's just a great lesson for everybody out there, that if you're not creating consistent content and you're not prolifically creating content and you're not putting things in there that can make you money. That episode had the coupon code that made you money. That's just like selling something. You gave yourself a chance to make money online and lo and behold, you did.

Shane: So, what if all 70 episodes were giving you a chance to make money? Maybe there'd be something to that.

Marty: Yep, that's exactly what I started to do. I started to make advertisements for myself in my podcast.

Shane: Exactly. That's the good thing. That's the lesson that I want everybody listening to the podcast to get today is go make 70 podcasts, I don't even care if you know what you're doing yet, just figure it out. You've got to niche down, you've got to figure it out. If you're not doing it, you can't niche down. You can't figure that out.

Marty: Yep, you've got to start.

Shane: Here's the second thing. If that algorithm changes, you will go back to zero because you don't know exactly where it's coming from, how it's being found. There's ways that we can look into that. You can research that a little bit on your site. You can look at your top pages and what keywords are driving. Do you have Google Analytics on your website?

Marty: I just set it up maybe about a month ago.

Shane: Good. That's going to give you some data and kind of maybe figure out what people are typing in to find you. If the promo code itself was picked up in that Honey app or some other app that might be a little harder, but you could get some clues.

Shane: It's kind of like living on rented land at this point. You've got this podcast, these guests came on. It's working, but if anything outranks you, you're done. I've got a buddy who ranked number one for a very prolific term. He gets like a million hits a month on his website. Crazy traffic. He was number one for a website and he was making like 60,000 off this one page on his website. Just all kinds of affiliates and things like that that he had on the page to monetize it. It was a big operation. It was designed SEO-wise to be number one. Well, he got knocked to third place, and it knocked off $40,000 in revenue, just one algorithm change.

Shane: That's the danger of having uncontrolled revenue or relying on affiliate. Or what about this. What do they call it, the super speed trainers, or whatever.

Marty: Yep, Super Speed Golf.

Shane: If Super Speed Golf goes out of business and they're not selling that product anymore. Guess what, you don't get to make any more money.

Marty: Absolutely, yeah.

Shane: So, that's the risk of where you're at right now. But, I do love that you paid attention. So many people when they give up just turn everything off. You didn't do that. You left it on and you let it just keep running and you left those breadcrumbs for Hansel and Gretel to follow you back and they followed you back and gave you some money.

Jocelyn: I think it's kind of an interesting lesson. You kind of hung it up for a while, but then you were like, oh, wait, this is starting to do something. This is kind of cool. I don't think that what Shane's trying to say is that there's anything necessarily wrong with having affiliate relationships.

Shane: No, not at all.

Jocelyn: There's nothing wrong with it, but it's always a good idea to have something else to diversify in some way.

Marty: Yep. And that's my big concern right now is the fact that I only have this one revenue stream. In my nine to five, I'm a public speaker for a financial thing. And so, this is what I preach to people all the time. So, the fact that I'm just kind of walking down this very thin high wire, I'm like I know better.

Shane: Don't we all? I think that all of our jobs that we all fall into is eventually so we can preach to ourselves. Jocelyn and I talk about it all the time. Of all people we know what to do. We tell people what to do, we help people figure out what to do, we've seen hundreds of people what to do. But sometimes we're sitting around and we're not doing what we know we're supposed to do.

Shane: So, even just talking about it with you guys, with our guests, with our members, everybody, it's just like helping us. I remember when I was a football coach and I would coach the younger coaches. You had to teach the younger coaches how to be coaches. And I would tell them, do X, Y, and Z. And then I would think to myself, am I doing X, Y, and Z? Am I getting my scripts ready, am I?

Shane: It makes you think about that in the real world. You're on stage telling people diversify, have multiple streams of income. Then you look down and you've got one coupon code bringing in the cash. Let's try to figure that out. We'll try to expand and grow. I've got one more question. Since you've started your podcast back, are the numbers back up to where they were?

Marty: Way, way, way above and beyond. I just finished June and I had 11,000 downloads in the month.

Jocelyn: Great!

Marty: I just shared in the community that I crossed 200,000 downloads for my podcast over the lifetime.

Shane: That's amazing.

Jocelyn: That's awesome.

Shane: We've got to monetize that better. How many days a week do you podcast?

Marty: One episode a week.

Shane: That's great numbers, for only having four episodes a month. That's really, really good. There is massive amounts of potential there, once we tap into it.

Jocelyn: Let me ask you about your website. Other than the affiliate promotion, or the affiliate code, is there anything else that you're selling? Is there something that you plan to sell? What's going on as far as that goes?

Marty: So I had, before I hung the microphone up, I had a membership area. And I only got like two people that signed up and I was banging down their door every possible opportunity about how can I help you, how can I do something for you. And they were just dead silent. The eventually stopped.

Marty: So, now my plan is to, now that I've niched down further, is to recreate the membership with more focus towards my new audience.

Shane: And what is that audience? Are you selling a course on something now?

Marty: It's helping people break 90 for the first time. It's the average golfer. It's the once a month kind of player. How can I help you think your way around the course better so you don't make the stupid mistakes so you can play better.

Shane: It's like a virtual caddy, basically.

Marty: Oh, stealing that, immediately.

Shane: Everybody thinks a caddy just carries clubs for people, but a caddy for a pro, the main reason they're there is to go play the course, walk the course, know every distance from every tree to the pin and basically, they're the brain. They're playing chess with the player on, the upside of going around this tree, might save you a stroke. But the downside is there's a water hazard and you could lose two. Then the golfer makes the decision on the risk.

Shane: But that little book that they're flipping is not the scorebook, it's the strategy guide for getting around the course. So, that's kind of what you're doing. You're teaching people how to make good decisions to get as much upside as possible and reduce the downside as possible.

Marty: Absolutely.

Shane: I get this. I see where you're going with this. That's pretty interesting. And it's strategies that they could apply to any course.

Marty: We go through practices and drills that people can do to improve their skills. But when it comes to on the course time, the way that I envision it is almost like four different modules. So, working from short game out until actually how do we play the course.

Shane: That's amazing. That's awesome. I think that could really capture a part of the market. A lot of people just focus on the swing and taking strokes off your short game, and drills and things like that. But this is literally like, hey, let's learn how to play the game. It's like tapping into the people who are the thinking golfers. You do think about what your next shot's going to be. You think about what club you're supposed to use and not showing off how far you can hit the pitch and wedge.

Marty: Exactly. That's one of the questions that I ask in my email sequence is do you want to have a lower score, or do you want to have a cooler story in the clubhouse having drinks afterwards. Because that's really what it comes down to. If you want to cooler story, have a great time, go somewhere else.

Shane: Are the courses done?

Marty: No.

Shane: Why not?

Marty: The text version of them are done, but the video version of how do I actually provide this to people is not.

Jocelyn: Let's dive a little bit into why you haven't done this. So, you say that your videos are not done. Usually, when we are dragging our feet on creating a product to sell, it's usually because of some reason. So, let's hear it, Marty. What's your reason?

Shane: What's the fear. What's the mindset struggle that's holding you back from just getting this finished?

Marty: It's the same thing for a lot of people for me, I think it's imposter syndrome. This is something that I have literally dedicated decades of my life to. And what happens if people don't like it?

Shane: Are you afraid they're going to judge you as golfer if you do that?

Marty: Yeah.

Shane: Are you an actual golf pro? Have you ever been a golf pro at a clubhouse or anything like that?

Marty: Right out of high school I was trying to accomplish that, but I didn't know how to do it at the time, so I never actually completed that end of the spectrum.

Shane: Is that part of this? Well, I never was a golf pro at a country club, so who's going to listen to me? Is that part of it?

Marty: I don't think it's that so much because some of the biggest, best teachers that teach the best pros on the PGA tour, they are not affiliated with the PGA.

Shane: For sure. 100%. The guy that's going to be teaching Issac his private lessons is not a golf pro. But he's a heck of a high school golf coach, I'll tell you that much.

Marty: Exactly. And for me, it's the fact that I've done this for 23 years and for a large portion of those 23 years, that was like 100% of my life. It's the fear of kind of striking out of the thing that I put all this time into.

Shane: If me and you went golfing today, just a normal, average round for you, what would you shoot?

Marty: Probably 75, three or four over par.

Shane: There are 99.9% of anyone who will ever play golf will never shoot a 75. You are more than qualified and an expert. There's no reason you should ever consider. No one could ever possibly judge you for that. I think my lowest round ever was like an 81. Like ever, ever, one time magic day. Sorcery. God looking down and said, angels, kick that ball out of the rough. Where we went with that. And you're like, 75, whatever.

Jocelyn: Not a bad day.

Shane: Yeah, not a bad day. But that's what I'm saying. I know you know this. But the scoreboard's all that matters. No one can ever judge you or tell you good, bad, right, or wrong, because it's like yo, bro, did you shoot a 75 last week? No, you didn't scoreboard.

Shane: A lot of times fears or mindsets don't have a quantifiable number that proves something. Imposter syndrome's a really difficult one because it's like, well, am I expert in it. Jocelyn struggled with this when we started her elementary librarian site because she's like, well I've only been a librarian for a few years. And there were probably older librarians that came at her and said you're not qualified to do this.

Shane: Yours is literally like, I have a score, I can go prove this any day of the week with clubs and balls and grass and divots. You've got a score, just latch on to that. Because nobody can touch you on that.

Jocelyn: Have you been able to provide results for someone else?

Marty: Absolutely, yeah. I ran a challenge a few years ago trying to drum up subscribers for my email list. At the time my email list was like 70 people. And I got 300 people to sign up for this challenge. What I did, was I walked them through three lessons a week for a month. In hindsight, I realize that was the course. And that's why I say the text version exists, but the video version doesn't.

Marty: The feedback was fantastic. Facebook post after Facebook post of just shot 79 for the first time in eight years.

Shane: So, where is this coming from, then? This is crazy. Not you're crazy, but this is crazy. Imposter syndrome is crazy. I don't know why it hits us all. Is it just like a block of some kind? Are you scared at the haters? Because you know there's going to be haters.

Marty: Absolutely. And I think some of it is, probably the lion share is probably fear of the haters. Because when I was running that challenge. I had one, and I sent out my scheduled email and a guy emailed me back, just like I invite people to at the end of every message. And he was like, hey, this is dumb. You shouldn't teach putting this way, it's teaching you to miss putts. And I got in this long drawn out back and forth email with him.

Marty: Eventually, at the end of it, I realized this one guy out of 300 is taking up so much of my time. Just delete, walk away.

Shane: Here's what you should have wrote that guy back instead of arguing with him about putting technique. You should have wrote him back and said, hey, where's your challenge with 300 people following you? And he wouldn't be able to write you back because he's just some dude who thinks he knows how to putt. Why did you sign up for the challenge, bro?

Marty: If you knew this.

Shane: Right. If you knew all this. And, if you're so good at this, why aren't 11,000 people listening to your podcast. You've got so many numbers that can just defeat the haters. You've just got to latch onto that.

Marty: Even beyond that, for some reason, I'll argue your side of the argument against myself. I just got back from Scotland. I played the third-oldest course in the world. It was the eighth-most difficult. And you talk about your miracle day where heaven and earth all aligned for an 81. Without my own clubs, because I just rented them there, playing at 11:00 at night in 40-mile an hour winds at the eighth hardest course in the world, I shot 82.

Shane: That's what I'm saying. Anyone who can't do that, you get to teach. That's just the way it is. Because you know more than they do. So, you've just got to go create this thing and give it to people. And if anybody complains about it or doesn't want it, give them their money back and say goodbye.

Jocelyn: They're just not your people. We're not everyone's cup of tea. Some people turn this podcast on and say these people are hicks from Kentucky and I'm not listening to them. And that's fine. Move on. There are plenty of other people out there that you can follow.

Shane: I think there's something deeper than imposter syndrome. I think that's the easiest one you've kind of latched on to. Let me ask you this. This happens to people to, this is kind of a hidden fear that some people get. We see a lot of people that will come into the community, and they'll do what we tell them, and bam, they make money. And they freak out and quit.

Shane: They get scared or they doubt themselves because they feel lucky. Do you ever feel like that with this affiliate thing? Oh man, I made some content, but I got lucky. That was someone else's product that carried the burden of being quality and good. If someone hates the Super Swing Swing Swing Club, then they're going to hate them, not me. Is some of that at play here? Do you feel like that's happening to you?

Jocelyn: Isn't that a wing of the imposter syndrome museum?

Shane: I think it is, but it kind of dips into fear of success. When you feel lucky.

Jocelyn: Honestly, that's what I was going to say is fear of success. I've even had this happen in my golf life. When I was trying to go pro, I was playing an event and I shot six under par and everyone was congratulating me, I won the event. High-fives, handshakes, hugs, drinks afterwards. An I went and I sat down in my car and I had a full-blown meltdown. Like, holy crap, I'm capable of this. Am I committed am I passionate enough to actually do it?

Shane: That's deep. I wish there was an easy answer for this. The only solution is to just make the product. And kind of accept the meltdowns. Accept stuff like that.

Shane: I remember last year when we did Flip Your Life LIVE. Two years ago, when we decided to do a big live event, we were like can we, by ourselves, with no guest speakers, put over 100 people in a room. Could we get 100 people to fly to Nashville Tennessee and come just to see us speak for two days? Because usually you go to an event and they get six or seven headliners and a keynote. Because that way all of their audience is drawn, they can get a bigger crowd.

Shane: But we were just like, can we do this. And I remember when we sold out. I remember specifically when we sold out and we looked at each other and we were like did we just do that? Why is anyone coming to listen to us? We're just Shane and Jocelyn from Kentucky. We struggled with that, deeply.

Shane: But then once we'd sold it, that's actually a good reason to pre-sell things. Because once you sell it, you've got no choice to make it even if you don't believe in yourself anymore. Because you owe someone something for their money. I remember when we were kind of like, no, we did do this. And we podcasted for four years to earn the right to get these people to come and listen to us.

Shane: That's kind of where it is now. At that point, it was like, well we've got to do it. We've got to go make the things. You know what, massive results for people who came out of that. People came in, they took action. And we saw people add 300 members over the next few months. We saw people launch their businesses and actually quit their jobs and all these things happened. And it's just because we did it.

Shane: You will see that as soon as you make this course. People will start writing you those messages of the lowest round of their life. The sun and moon aligned and all that good stuff. And then bam, all of the sudden, it's like, well I do deserve to do this and the haters don't matter. But until you kind of force your way past it, it's like being stuck on a roller coaster and you really wish you could get off.

Marty: Only way out is through.

Shane: Only way out is through. You've just got to go. You've just got to push forward and you've got to get the product done. That's where you're at.

Jocelyn: Hopefully, that helps you to be abl to move forward and actually get this product created so you can help other people with their golf game. Let's talk about what we need to do next in terms of getting this out there to your existing audience and what that looks like.

Marty: Right now, I've got roughly 600 people on my email list. I send my weekly emails with my episodes and any blog articles that I've written. It's essentially only contacting them when I have something new to share. I'm not doing any selling because I don't have anything to sell at the moment.

Shane: How do you get those emails? Do you get them from the podcast? Do you just offer lead magnets, what do you do?

Marty: I've got a lead magnet on my website that has three free short game lessons. Those are videos that I had created. I just don't get a lot of website traffic. I only get about maybe 1,000 people per month. So, my emails have actually come from doing contests and giveaways and stuff like that.

Shane: On the podcast? Or on the website?

Marty: It's on all fronts. So, I'll mention it on the podcast. I'll have little popup floaters on the website and then I used $80 worth of Facebook ads last time.

Shane: Here's what you need to do. One, I really think you need to pre-sell this thing. You need some way to force yourself to do this product. The easiest way that we have ever found to do that is to pre-sell it. The four modules are going to be short game, mid-game, driving, and then strategy, or something like that, right?

Marty: Yep.

Shane: I'm thinking that you need to probably go ahead and create a sales page that tells what's going to be inside it. Especially since you basically have the outline because of those text files. I think you need to go four straight weeks in a row and just hammer this product. You need to have episodes about this product, four in a row.

Shane: one of them is, all right guys, I'm telling you about module one, telling you about module two, telling you about module three, talking about module four. And then basically at the end of every episode, I'm doing a beta launch. This is eventually going to be, whatever the price is going to be. But I'm going to let beta people in right now for 29 bucks or something stupid. Really cheap price.

Shane: And then what happens is, over those four episodes, you're basically doing an extended webinar for each module inside of what the course is going to look like. And you're going to have a sales page and you're going to sell it, and they're going to pay it. And then there's going to be a countdown on the thank you page that says, "We launch this day." You're going to get those done by that day. You leave yourself no choice, this way.

Shane: And it doesn't have to be right immediately after. If you did this four weeks in July, you can say that it's going to come out August 21st or something stupid. And then you just leave yourself no mercy. Let's say you sell 20 of these. Not a lot of money, but you've got 20 people that gave you money and you're on the hook to create it now. You have to, you have no choice.

Shane: And all you've got to do is go film this stuff. It doesn't have to be perfect it can be edited shoddily right now and then it can be made better later. But at least the first draft would be done. And you have an audience that's big enough right now to sell. If you've got 11,000 downloads a month, there's probably 20 to 25 beta members just waiting for something like this to fall onto their lap, you just have to go out and tell them about it and sell it and then be on the hook for it. Because you don't want to give back 500 bucks to anybody.

Marty: No, I don't. That's a transactional direction I do not wish to participate in.

Shane: After you do that, I think your whole podcast needs to switch over to getting emails. Because you've got 11,000 people listening to you a month. Or 11,000 downloads. You've got 1,000 people visiting your site. Your site's not going to get you email addresses. Your whole life will be podcast to email list to sell this thing. That's the whole flow of your sales funnel at that point.

Shane: But right now, your biggest problem is you know what you need to do, you just have to be forced to do it. And you need some financial accountability from your customers to make it happen. Do that. Plan four episodes. Each episodes is about one of the four modules. And at the end of every episode, you say to your audience, hey, I'm opening this to beta members now. It's $29, it's going to be $99, whatever it's going to be for the course. Forget the membership thing right now. Just get the product done because that's going to seed the membership.

Marty: As a follow-up, as I'm thinking through what you're saying here. If we do four episodes, let's say like you said in July. One about each module. Because each module's going to be multiple videos. Am I incorrect in thinking it's a good idea to maybe put one of those videos in the blog post supporting that podcast episode, saying hey, this is something from the actual course. Sign up here.

Shane: The only thing I'm worried about that is you don't have these done yet. Now, that could give you some accountability to go get that done.

Jocelyn: I like the idea of that, for sure. Just to give people an incentive to get on the list. If people are just listening to your podcast, but they're not on your list, you can tell them about it once on the podcast, but if they don't do anything, you have no way to contact them.

Shane: I want you go to make an order form that's $29 or something. And you say at the end of the podcast, go to what was your domain name again?

Marty: Golfstrategyschool.com

Shane: Go to Golfstrategyschool.com/beta and go there right now. This is going to be $100, I'm going to give it to you for $29. Golfers know that language, that's how everything's sold in the golf world.

Shane: This driver was $400, now it's yours for 99 cents. Whatever.

Marty: It has been a while since you played if you purchased something for 99 cents.

Shane: Right. I got my clubs at flea markets. I bought them at yard sales. But what I'm saying is I want them to go buy it. I don't even want them to opt in. A waiting list, you can still bail on. It's like, no, this is the module, go to this page, buy it. This is what I'm going to teach you. These are the results you're going to get in this module. You can get the whole thing right now for 29 bucks, I'm going to make this, it's going to be launched on August 21st, I'm going to launch it at $99, I'm going to give it to you for $29.

Shane: And the second week is I'm going to tell you all about this new thing. I know that golfers have a problem with this. That really sucks because you can't score what you want to. Here's all the benefits in my thing that I'm going to teach you. All the skills and strategies. Oh, by the way, that's going to lower your strokes by five on your next round. This is happening. But you need to get it now because once I close the doors on it, the beta price is gone forever. And you're going to do this all four modules, tell everybody about it. For a month, you're just going to talk about this product.

Shane: And then, here it comes. Then we launch it, then we go. Then you have 21 days to create it, which means you have to get out on the golf course and film all your modules. That's how you do it.

Shane: Jocelyn used to do this with a month of lesson plans. She would sell them and they weren't even finished. Then she would go and sit down in a room and be like, crap, I've got to give these to everybody by Monday and she would do 20 days of lesson plans for five grades.

Jocelyn: It's amazing how much you can get finished when you know someone's waiting on it and they've paid for it.

Shane: And perfection doesn't matter when it's due on a certain date. It's just got to be delivered.

Marty: That's the strategy that I used when I created my first challenge, which essentially is going to be the course. I said, hey, does anybody want to do this? 300 people raised their hand. I said, oh, crap.

Shane: Exactly. But if 30 of those people give you money, it's really going to light a fire under you. Pre-launching is an amazing strategy to bust through barriers and overcome these obstacles that you're facing because you have no choice anymore. And that's really what we want to put on you right now is that pressure and give you absolutely no choice.

Jocelyn: All right, Marty, I can't wait to see how this turns out. It's going to be really exciting to see the next steps that you take with this audience. Before we go, we always like to ask people what is one thing that you plan to do in the next 24 hours or so based on what we talked about here today?

Marty: So, I think I'm going to go down the route that Shane was saying and I'm going to build a sales page.

Shane: That's perfect. Get the sales page, get the order form, and then now you're ready to outline the podcast and you're off to the races.

Shane: Listen, Marty, what a great conversation. Good talking golf with you today. I'm super excited. I may buy one of your challenges. Because then you got me looking over your neck, like give me this thing. I need to get my short game back. I got to teach my son how to play.

Shane: Listen, thanks for coming on the show, thanks for sharing numbers, downloads, all these things that people kind of keep close to the vest and just being really super transparent. We're always so grateful that our members are willing to come on the show and be very vulnerable in a real-live coaching situation so that everybody that listens to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast can benefit from that. We just really appreciate you for coming on the show today.

Marty: It was an absolute blast. I hope other people can gain from this as well, and thank you so much for the opportunity.

Shane: All right, guys, that wraps up another episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. What a great conversation with Marty. Maybe you're struggling with imposter syndrome. Maybe you have a great idea or an outline and you're just so close to getting that product created. Or maybe you're ready to launch or pre-launch something on your existing platform. We would love to help you do all of that inside of the Flip Your Life community. You can learn more about the Flip Your Life community at Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have plans for every budget and every need. You can get 100% access to all of our training courses, all of our forums, and hang out with us live twice a month right now. All you have to do is go flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Who knows, you may be a future guest on the show.

Shane: All right, guys, that is all the time that we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Whatever you do, until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

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

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