FL303 - How to Grow Your Membership From 0 to 100 Members

In today's episode, we celebrate with Kevin for crossing the 100 member mark.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast, we celebrate with Kevin for crossing the 100 member mark.

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. 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. It is great to be back with you again today. And we are super excited for a number of reasons in this episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Yes, we have a member of our Flip Your Life Community back on the show today. It's a guest that we have had before. He's actually the most prolific guest in Flipped Lifestyle Podcast history. This is his fourth appearance on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. And this one is going to be a great one because we are celebrating a major milestone in this member's life. His online business, his membership has just crossed the 100 member mark. Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, our good friend and member of the year at last year's Flip Your Life Live, Kevin Depew. Kevin, welcome back.

Kevin Depew: Hey, what's going on guys? It's great to be here.

Jocelyn Sams: We are so excited to talk to you today. We got a message not too long ago from Kevin. And he was really excited saying he had crossed over 100 members. And I think that it's safe to say, Kevin, that this was definitely not an overnight success.

Kevin Depew: Yeah, this would be the polar opposite of overnight success.

Shane Sams: Hey, success is success, right? And it usually takes a long time to become an overnight success. So, real quick, tell us a little bit. How many members do you have now? And-

Kevin Depew: We're at ... Go ahead.

Shane Sams: How many members do you have now? And tell us a bit about what your business is. Just remind everybody what's going on.

Kevin Depew: Okay. Yeah. We are at 105 members. We run a website, relaxandlearnguitar.com where I teach folks over 40 how to play guitar, so they can relax, have fun, and be part of a great online community.

Shane Sams: Man, I see your stuff in my newsfeed all the time because you know you see the stuff from your friends and stuff? And I just always see ... like, you always make me want to play guitar. I need to relax and learn ... I need to relax a little bit. I'm a little high strung. So, maybe I need to learn it. But man, that is so incredible just knowing your journey and knowing how long it's taken you to get to that 100 member mark. And that's a really big number for us because we tell everybody if you can get 100 people to give you $50 a month or 200 people to give you $25 a month, you can make real money. You could make $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year. And just getting 100 real people to give you money and you give them value and you make a difference in their life. Like, imagine if you were in your living room and you had 100 human beings pile into your living room right now, what would that look like? Your house would be spilling out into the streets because you couldn't fit 100 people into your house, right?

Kevin Depew: Yes, very crowded.

Shane Sams: Yes. And you've got 100 people that are in your thriving guitar-based community, man. And how long ago did you start Relax and Learn Guitar? What year did you start that in?

Kevin Depew: So, my ... Let's see, a bunch of pivots and a bunch of changes. And Relax and Learn Guitar, first member was December of 2016.

Shane Sams: Wow.

Kevin Depew: Yeah, two and a half years.

Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing. And I love how you said many pivots because you had another website. I remember when you joined the Flip Your Life community. And in the show notes for today's episode, we'll put all of Kevin's other podcasts. Just a little reminder, I remember you came in and you said you posted your first idea in the forums. And I remember reading it, distinctly yours for some reason, I remember reading it and thinking, "That's horrible."

Kevin Depew: What? Yeah!

Shane Sams: "That is terrible. What are you ..." What was that idea?

Jocelyn Sams: But of course, we never say that to our members. We say-

Kevin Depew: No.

Jocelyn Sams: "You might want to try something else."

Shane Sams: I'll tell you what, I said it in private this time, Jocelyn. I'm going to be open and honest here, no sugar. I went to Jocelyn and I went, "No, Kevin." What was that original idea?

Kevin Depew: Yeah. Well, I had a couple before I even joined the Flip Your Life community. The one that was original was a time management website, and then I was working with caregivers. I did a few other things. I was very much focused on the things I'd done in my work life. And then when I switched to, you would ask, "What do you want to do?" When I switched to something I was passionate about, that's when it really became much more clear what to do.

Shane Sams: Yeah, it became easier. I always felt that after you ... Like, when you switched off of the work thing and you did go after something that you like, you know? Because I remember saying, "What do you want to do?" And you were, "I just want to help people learn how to play guitar because they need to relax, they need to chill out. This is my meditation, right? What if I could help other people do that?" And you were then on fire. And that kind of gave you the energy and the perseverance to kind of stick with it because your membership didn't take off right out of the gate, did it?

Kevin Depew: No, not at all. It was very slow.

Shane Sams: How long did it take you to get your first member, do you think?

Kevin Depew: That was almost three months to get the first member.

Shane Sams: Wow.

Kevin Depew: And then it was kind of one or two a month for a while for a long while. And I just kept at it with creating content consistently and trying to be really responsive to folks I did have, answer their questions. Did a lot of phone calls with people just to talk to them. It was probably six or seven months before we started kind of seeing the Facebook ads start to work and get more emails that then led into the membership.

Shane Sams: Interesting.

Jocelyn Sams: Imagine that. You put in the work and good things happened in time. Wow.

Kevin Depew: Yes. They are, it's pretty exciting now.

Shane Sams: So, let's walk through this because I want to take everybody kind of today on a journey to 100 members because a lot of people listening right now, they're just like where you were. They have no members.

Jocelyn Sams: And it sounds like such a lofty goal, you know? If you're just getting started, 100 members, "I don't even have one member, you know? How am I going to get 100?"

Shane Sams: Right. So, let's kind of walk through that a little bit, and we'll bring it up to today and figure out how you actually crossed the century mark and you filled 100 people in your house, okay? So, you get your first member, right? We talked about that back on an earlier episode of the podcast. What was it like after that, though? Because you said it took like six or seven months before any kind of traction started building, even after you got that first member. What kind of kept you going in that phase? Because we've got a lot of members that post that first sale success story, but then they get really frustrated because it's like they've tasted the promised land, but they can't get in, you know? Like, they can't build momentum on it. So, what kept you going after you got that first sale and then that huge gap until some traction started building after that?

Kevin Depew: Probably two things. Somewhere along the line about learning how to celebrate even small wins. So, even though you don't have your second, third, 20th customer who's paying in your membership, if you've got emails coming in with people asking questions, you have people sharing some of your information, you have people thanking you for what you are doing, that's probably a big part, celebrating kind of the small things along the way. And then, honestly it's probably the ... It was the Flip Your Life community I was really active in there and talking to other people that were on the same kind of journey and same questions and just kind of learning from them. And just kept trying. It wasn't really ... For me, it's never been a matter of if this is going to happen, it's always for me been, "When is this going to happen?" That's just my mindset. So, I'd say those two things.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I love how you talk about celebrating those small things. I think that's something that we are really bad at. I've talked about that on the podcast before because I think that we are such ambitious people. We've had such success in a lot of different areas, and we think that everything that we do is supposed to be a home run. And when it's not, it's so disappointing, you know? We feel this immense failure. And that's not a great way to be. And I love how you talk about just knowing that you're affecting one person, you're affecting four people, you know? Just all those little things adding up to be something really awesome.

Shane Sams: Yeah. I love how you talked about the community too because that's a good filter, you know, when you're struggling in your business or when something's going wrong, as you're kind of surrounded by other people. And when you have a question, like, "Why is this ad not working?" But then you see someone else ask that question, you can kind of think to yourself, "Oh, it's not just me. Someone else is struggling with getting their ad to work, so maybe we can combine forces and work together." Or when you are not having success and then you log in and you see 10 success stories posted last night, right? Then you get to be like, "Wow, it is real. There's other people doing it. And I just have to keep going because my success is somewhere under one of these rocks. I've just got to keep flipping rocks."

Kevin Depew: Yeah. My wife was much better at, and still is, about the celebrating part. And another kind of shift there was when she kind of saw, "Okay, this might work, there's people actually paying us," because it's all been ground up. She always says, "You built this from the ground up. You made the website, you've created the membership area. You're doing the videos. Be proud of that because a large amount of people don't even get to that point." So, she's much better at reminding me to celebrate small wins.

Shane Sams: Yes. Most people don't even create their first course. It's just always an idea, right? It's a dream that's kind of stuck in your head. And until you get it out there and you build it brick by brick or you grow a grassroots following, it's never going to become a reality. But the cool thing about when you build a grassroots following is your business has deep roots and those people are loyal to you and those people care about what you're doing, and they feel a part of your community, right? Like, sometimes success can come too fast, and then it flames out like a forest fire. And that's not what we want. We always say we want to be a glacier. We want to build strength and size snowflake by snowflake until we are an unstoppable, immovable force just roaring down the gorge, right? And as you build that momentum, and as you build that foundation, your house is built on rock, not on sand. You can say, "Hey, I've got 105 members today. Tomorrow I'm going to have 110. And then the next day I'm going to have 120." And you just keep stacking those bricks until your foundation is so strong it holds this big huge awesome online business and you've got this amazing worldwide community of second life halfer guitar players chilling out around the campfire.

Kevin Depew: Yes.

Shane Sams: So, the ads start clicking, okay. What kind of happened next? So, when you saw the ads start to work, what happened there? Did you get to like 20 members or 25 members? What started happening with your ads?

Kevin Depew: Yeah. I would say ... So, once the kind of cold ads started getting traction, then it was making the warm ad, repixeling. And I've just slowly moved it from $5 a day, $6 a day. We're at about $20 a day now on the ads. And it's just a cold ad and a warm ad to get folks onto the email list. I would say we got to probably 30 members by the end of 2000 ... See, I have to go back a little bit, end of 2017, I guess, about 30 people we had in the membership. And most of that was just paid traffic and ads was the primary way to get them.

Shane Sams: What do you think was the biggest difference to where the cold ... That's that hard one, right? When people learn about us, warm ads, you can upload your email list, you can find people that follow you and target them.

Jocelyn Sams: The people who have landed on your website.

Shane Sams: Yeah, yeah, people who know about you. What do you think the difference was in getting a cold ad to work? Was it just targeting? Was it the ad itself? What do you think helped you turn the corner and get some traction there?

Kevin Depew: When I had enough traffic to make a lookalike audience that was big. And then, doing a video. Video has been everything. So, when I was first starting out, and it seems kind of ironic, I'm playing guitar, but I didn't really have a YouTube channel. And yes, I mean, I built the website, I built the membership. And then everything else kind of came after that. But once I kind of embraced the live video, I was doing live video on Facebook. And then it's moved to the live video on YouTube. And once the ad changed to a video ad, that's when it moved.

Shane Sams: Wow, that's amazing because people saw you playing, they could hear you playing.

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: There was proof right there that you knew what you were doing and could teach someone.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, and it also gives you somewhere to send people. So, like if somebody messages you on social media and says, "Hey, I found your stuff. It's pretty cool." You can say, "Well, check it out. I also have a YouTube channel."

Kevin Depew: Yes. I always joke and say, "If it wasn't for Johnny Cash, I would not have a membership."

Shane Sams: Why? Because that was the-

Kevin Depew: That's the one ad. That Johnny Cash ad has done very well as far as learning how to play. Yeah.

Shane Sams: Everybody wants to be Johnny Cash.

Kevin Depew: Yeah. I do.

Shane Sams: You've got to burn that ring of fire, man. You've got to burn that ring of fire. It's interesting you say that now for just everybody listening who's a beginner, cold ads are to people who don't know about you. The main thing for a cold ad to do is to create awareness and hopefully create an opt-in, where they can become more familiar with you, they can build that relationship with you. And cold traffic is everything. It's the life blood of your business. You have to be found by new people before ... to be able to grow your business and get more members because you can't just stay static. You can't just protect what you've already got. You've got to grow. So, the cold ad started creating enough awareness and traffic to make your warm ads work because everybody thinks, "I'm going to get a cold ad, they're going to opt-in, they're going to join. This is going to be amazing. It's all going to work flawlessly." But that's not true. Cold ads, they need to see you probably five or six times before they even recognize you enough to try to trust you, you know?

Kevin Depew: Yes.

Shane Sams: So, people are constantly seeing you strumming Johnny Cash in their newsfeed, right?

Kevin Depew: That's the idea.

Shane Sams: That's right. And eventually they say, "Who is this guy? He looks so relaxed while he's playing his guitar. Maybe I need to relax and play guitar."

Kevin Depew: He makes it look easy, I bet I could do it.

Shane Sams: He makes it look easy.

Kevin Depew: Guess what? You can.

Shane Sams: There you go everybody. You're going to learn how to play guitar before this episode is over. Get your guitar out, Kevin. All right, so in 2017 then, you got about 30 members, right? That's not making a living, but it's making something.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, I mean that's no joke.

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Jocelyn Sams: Having 30 members.

Shane Sams: You know? So, then you come in to Flip Your Life Live, which is in November ... I'm sorry, when was it?

Jocelyn Sams: September.

Kevin Depew: September 18.

Shane Sams: September of 2018. So, you go into 2017 with about 30 members, how many members did you have coming into Flip Your Life Live in 2018?

Kevin Depew: 51. The big change there is that Vicki was able to quit her full-time job in early 18 and really help. I mean, she's taken on all the social media posts, a lot of the promotion stuff, and kind of the bookkeeping part, which was just huge. So, we basically looked at each other and said, "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We're all in on this. And let's go to the live event."

Shane Sams: Isn't it amazing how that first initial ... You know, some people feel discouraged when they have 25 or 30 members. And you're like, "No. This is creating a foundation. We've got enough money for ads. We've got enough money for you to come home. We're going to invest and go to this conference." And even though you were still grinding, like, let's be realistic, you added 20 members net in like seven, eight months, right?

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: It wasn't this avalanche of members coming in, but you could feel those baby steps starting to creep and add up. She comes home, you split focus. Now you could worry about content, she can do the backend, you're coming to this event to be surrounded by people, and it's just starting to build.

Jocelyn Sams: Let's talk about what happened after the event. So, you came to the event, both you and Vicki came to the event, which was awesome because it's the first time that we had met and in real life, you've been our member for a very long time. So, let's talk about what happened after that. Like, what did you implement as a result of being at the live event that helped you get to where you are now?

Shane Sams: Because you've doubled. You've more than doubled the membership now, right?

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So, we're starting to see the magic numbers like 2X, 5X, 10X, right? Like, these things are starting to happen now. What's the big difference?

Kevin Depew: I mean, I'm very much like if you tell me an idea to implement, I'm going to try it. So, I had my workbook, that was a big piece of just kind of going through the content from the event. The biggest part I would probably say though was I hooked up with some really great people and did a mastermind. We were talking monthly. One of those folks helped with a new Facebook ad that really took off and has increased the number of emails that we're getting.

Shane Sams: And these are people you met at Flip Your Life Live?

Kevin Depew: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Shane Sams: Give them a shout out. Who was it?

Kevin Depew: Shout out to Lauren from Corner of Hope and Mane. She's been-

Shane Sams: I love it.

Kevin Depew: ... Amazing with kind of Facebook ads and just marketing strategy stuff. Chris from Multiples, Living With Multiples, Leah from Mom Knows College. Those are the main folks.

Shane Sams: It's so awesome because I know all those people. Like, when you say their names, I see their faces. Like, we have literally hugged and eaten food with all of those people from Flip Your Life community, right? And you know, I think we even sang happy birthday to Leah last year during the live event, right? We had 100 people-

Kevin Depew: Yes, we did.

Shane Sams: That was awesome. So, just amazing knowing that you came to that place and met those people and they helped you. Together, you all doubled your membership, right?

Kevin Depew: Yes.

Shane Sams: And it's so parallel to our journey because when we first started out, we were the same way. We were all alone, we didn't know if this was real. We were kind of making some money, but we were like, "Is it all going to go bankrupt next month?" And then we start building momentum, we go to a live event, we meet people, we form a mastermind. We do huge things. And I just hear that story so much. Jocelyn and I just came back from FlynnCon. We spoke at FlynnCon with Pat Flynn on stage. And we were there and on stage we were talking about what was the biggest inference maker. And we told a story about going to one of Pat Flynn's early events called a one day business breakthrough. And we met our good friends Cliff and Jessica LaRue, the selling family. And they were at Flynn Con. And we had dinner with them. And it was so crazy because three years later, we're still friends with people we met at this very first live event. And you just can't replace those kind of relationships or even put a numerical value on how those relationships impact your business.

Kevin Depew: Right, yeah. It's been amazing. And we're in such different businesses, but we're in the same business, so that's the cool part.

Shane Sams: That was a Kevin bomb.

Kevin Depew: There we go.

Shane Sams: Kevin just dropped a bomb on your heads about masterminds.

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and that's the thing is most of the people that we have been friends with for all this time, we're in totally different businesses too, but it's just knowing someone who's also willing to invest in themselves, most likely if they're willing to travel and spend the money to come to an event. They're not a total psycho. So, there's that.

Shane Sams: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: And no guarantees about that. But most likely that's the case. And just having those shared experiences, I just think there's really no substitute for that.

Shane Sams: So, what other than ads have you done to grow your authority? To grow ... because I remember talking to you a lot about authority. Like, "Well, I'm just a guy who knows how to play guitar. I'm not Johnny Cash. Who's going to listen to me?" That's a big fear that a lot of people have. How did you kind of overcome that and grow your business? How did you build your authority from 50 to 100 members? How did you start leading your community and convince people, "Hey, this was the place where you needed to be?" Like, what other things did you do besides buying ads to grow your business?

Kevin Depew: So, the game changer in 2019 has been challenges. We've done three of them this year, just finished one up in the middle of July, which is what pushed us over the 100 mark. So, it's a lot. I'll tell folks it's a lot of work, but it's really paid off for us. So, we've done, learn this song in five days, it's sent out to our ... we've got over 5,000 folks on our email list now.

Shane Sams: Wow, that's incredible.

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Oh my gosh.

Kevin Depew: Yeah, so it goes to the email list. And I've learned that I've tried running ads for the challenges and didn't have a lot of luck with that. So, I've just been focused on the folks already on the email list, getting them into this free challenge Facebook group. It's five nights. I do an email every morning with a PDF download of what we're going to work on. We go at seven o'clock every night five nights in a row with a different lesson each night. And at the end of the week, we've learned a song. And then I pitch the membership. And Vicki helps, the one who's kind of filming that and helping moderate the comments coming in. On the last challenge, we had over 300 people. So, about 100 probably by the end that were actually kind of viewing pretty consistently. And that's one of the questions I had for later, but those three challenges have gotten us over the 100 mark for sure. That's been the key.

Shane Sams: I love this story because we always tell people there's only two ways to grow your business, roll up your sleeves or open your wallet. And usually, it's both. You've got to invest in ads, you've got to grow your list, and then you've got to go after the people on that list. And we go after our list in different ways, right? I love copywriting. I love writing letters to our people, right? We don't do any kind of affiliate promotions. Someone just sent me a message the other day and said, "I have never received a sales pitch from someone else in your email list, and I really appreciate that," because we're not constantly jumping on all these affiliate launch bandwagons, right? And I activate my list with this personal ... Like, I feel like I'm writing them a letter. And I almost expect people to write me back. I love it when people write me back. So, listen guys, If you get an email from me, hit reply, okay? I love hearing from you.

Jocelyn Sams: You're going to have a bunch of emails.

Shane Sams: I get enough as it is, but I want more. But I love how you have found another way to do it. Yours is like, "Okay, get awareness, get people on my list, but then invite them to this periodic quarterly maybe five day live thing." This isn't pre-recorded. You're manually having this engagement and this relationship with them because you know it works. You've found what works for your people and you guys are just hammering that now, right? So, what an amazing testimony of how rolling up your sleeves a little bit, opening your wallet a little bit, how that can kind of add fuel to the fire that you already started. How often are you doing the challenges?

Kevin Depew: They've been about every six weeks. Let's see. I had one in March, May, July. So, six to seven weeks in between them.

Shane Sams: That's a good gap. It's not quite every month, so there's a little like, "When's the next challenge?" You know?

Kevin Depew: Yeah, if I wasn't working full-time, I could probably pull off the monthly.

Shane Sams: Right. This makes me want to do a challenge, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Sams: I know.

Shane Sams: We could do a come up with an idea challenge.

Jocelyn Sams: I've had so many ideas about this and I have taken notes on it when we've talked to other people who are successfully running challenges, and yet we still have not done it.

Shane Sams: We're not being prolific about doing it. I'm learning from you now, bro.

Kevin Depew: Okay, great.

Jocelyn Sams: I know, I have a lot of ideas about it.

Shane Sams: Yeah. Like, I love how we do learn as much from our community. You probably have found this in your mastermind, you're all kind of peers and we're all kind of working. And some people are ahead, some people are behind. But you learn something new from each other every day, right? There's not a day that I don't log into the Flip Your Life community that I don't look over at Jocelyn and go, "Look what this person's doing. That is really smart." Right? Because none of us have all the answers. That's why community is so important because we have to do that. Where did you get the ideas for the challenges?

Kevin Depew: I mean, Vicki had some of that. Lauren has helped with kind of that idea of saying, "You know, if you can get folks ..." Because before the challenges, I was doing weekly lives for probably seven or eight months both on Facebook and on YouTube. And we were getting folks to show up and like things and say positive things and they were getting things out of it. But they weren't clicking the link, the description.

Shane Sams: Buy button. Right, right.

Kevin Depew: They weren't taking that step. And I've learned too that in my audience, it takes a little while. So, there's folk that have been on my list for a year and come to two challenges before they join. But they're staying. So, I've had pretty good retention.

Shane Sams: So, what I'm seeing develop here is we always talk about consistent, prolific, relentless, right? Like, you're consistently creating content, you've been super prolific with your content creation because you've been doing Facebook live, you've been doing YouTube live.

Jocelyn Sams: And when something didn't work, you didn't just throw it all out the window and say, "Online business is not for me, better try something else."

Shane Sams: Exactly.

Jocelyn Sams: You tried something different.

Shane Sams: That's right, and it worked. You just created an event that was more ... I don't know what to say. It's more-

Kevin Depew: Interactive.

Shane Sams: It's more interactive and bigger than your daily lives, okay? And you created this thing where you could relentlessly sell. Like, it's pretty relentless to say, "I'm blocking off a week and I'm going to get up and email these people every day manually. I'm going to go live with them at 7:00 PM at night, and then the last day I'm going to do a webinar." That's what we're talking about about being relentless, you know what I'm saying? So, dude, what a great job. I mean, I'm just so impressed by you, Kevin. I can't-

Kevin Depew: Thanks.

Shane Sams: I feel like it's awesome developing the friendships that we've developed in the Flip Your Life community. It's not a teacher, student relationship. We do teach a lot, but you're one of our friends. You're right down the road, you're a couple of hours away. And we've met you in person, and we're so impressed by you and everything you've accomplished. And we just know that you are a great example for everybody listening. Hey, real people can take something they love and turn it into a business, and they can go get 100 members. And if you can get one, you can get 100. And when you get to 100, you start opening your eyes and saying, "Wait a minute, could I get 1,000? I probably could. That's probably possible." And that's what we're going to try to move you to next, man.

Kevin Depew: Okay, great. Thank you very much. Couldn't have done it without you guys and without the community for sure. Vicki and I are very appreciative.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Kevin, we appreciate your kind words about our community so much. And we appreciate you for being an awesome member for such a long time, being so relentless, just not giving up, and keeping pushing forward always. So, that is so awesome. Now, let's talk about what happens next for Relax and Learn Guitar.

Shane Sams: So, 100's not enough.

Kevin Depew: Okay, yeah, I'd like to increase.

Shane Sams: You've got to become the guitar guy, that's what we want. So, what do you need help with right now? Are you stuck? Do you feel like there's good momentum? Or what's kind of holding you back?

Kevin Depew: I'm probably just kind of question mark. So, probably the most specific, and it's kind of a specific nitty gritty question. So, the strategy for the first two challenges that we had done, we had done the five days, I left the videos in that Facebook group to replay for folks who couldn't make it to the live each night. And I left them in there for maybe four or five days past the challenge finishing. And kind of said, "Sign up now for the membership, and the videos are going to be taken down on Wednesday," or whatever. And I took them out of that group. People stayed in the group.

Kevin Depew: This last time, we didn't take that approach. So, I don't know if I ... I want the events because I think that's really the answer, at least initially for a while. I think we can keep building the list, offering a challenge every six, eight weeks, whatever it is, and selling the membership that way. Do I leave all of that content in that free Facebook group just to play in between the challenges? Or does that make it less special?

Shane Sams: You're recording each [crosstalk 00:28:47].

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Are you doing a different song every challenge?

Kevin Depew: Yes.

Shane Sams: Okay.

Kevin Depew: However, the first three nights of each challenge are very similar because we go through dexterity, finger exercises, chord, chord changes, rhythm. That's a very ... Like, part of that five day challenge, the first three days are very similar. The last two really gets into the new part of the songs.

Shane Sams: Let me ask you this, how long is each lesson of the challenge? You said you go on at 7:00. How long is it?

Kevin Depew: It's 30-45 minutes each night.

Shane Sams: I just wonder if you couldn't do something differently and start creating evergreen funnels behind the live events. Like, I think you could get out of there, right? Take it out of the Facebook group. It has to disappear, the live parts, right? But what if you had challenges that were, "Learn this song in a day." And you structured it in a way where people could opt in. So, you take the challenges that you're using to sell your membership, you pull them out and you rebuild them as a course, okay? And it's like, rebuild them as an evergreen funnel. Like, you have a thing that says, "Learn Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire in a day. Click here." They opt in. And this is kind of a long opt in. We usually say a short opt in. But this is kind of a ... Philosophically it's can they get a result in a day? You could probably, if someone was obsessed and took a whole Saturday, they could spend 30 minutes, do one course. Spend 30 minutes ... Like, five hours longer, they'd be playing the song a little bit.

Kevin Depew: Absolutely, yeah, because part of that 30 minutes is questions and answers, saying hello to people. The cool part is-

Shane Sams: So, you can edit all of that out.

Kevin Depew: Yeah. Yeah.

Shane Sams: You know? And you could turn each one of these into just a pure evergreen opt in funnel. And it always pitches in the last lesson.

Kevin Depew: Okay.

Shane Sams: So, that might be some low hanging fruit where 5-10% of the people opting in could just go ahead and join you, right? And if they did one of these, even if they didn't do it or didn't join it, they would be so much more hyped for the live one, right? So, that's probably where you should take that content out. It's too valuable to leave it in there, okay?

Kevin Depew: Okay. That's what I was kind of thinking. Yeah.

Shane Sams: Yeah, and don't put it in your courses though. You could, you could put it there too. But use it as opt ins. Say, "Hey, learn this song in a day. Hi, I'm Kevin. I've got a challenge for you. You've always wanted to learn guitar, you've never known what to do. You've kind of messed around with it, but I'm going to teach you how to play a song in one day. All you got to do is get up, pour a cup of coffee, block off a couple hours, and three or four hours from now, you're going to be playing this song. Promise this is going to happen if you do the work. So, opt in, I'll give it to you for free." And now you've got kind of like an evergreen webinar, but you've structured it like a free course.

Kevin Depew: Okay.

Shane Sams: And then that will go ahead and start selling people and really warm them up because if they go do the live challenge then, how much easier is it to follow up, "If you loved doing the challenge by yourself, you're really going to love doing it with 300 people."

Kevin Depew: Okay.

Shane Sams: And that's where I would probably put that stuff is keep using it as leads, but make some evergreen funnels now, so you can kind of ... When you go eight weeks in between a challenge, it doesn't matter. You've got challenges running every day and you can have those on your sidebar, "Learn to play Ring of Fire. Learn to play a Nirvana song." Whatever, you just pick different genres because people will like different genres. And how many of those have you done so far? You said three or two?

Kevin Depew: We've done three, yeah.

Shane Sams: So, what songs?

Kevin Depew: Did some Bob Dylan, some Hank Williams, and some Johnny Cash.

Shane Sams: Oh my goodness, you've already got a nice little-

Kevin Depew: Yeah, you've got to have the core, right?

Shane Sams: Yeah, if you're not doing those guys, who are you going to do, right?

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So, start some ads on those. Just go take a day or two to edit them and put some evergreen challenges on it. Just make sure you're pitching. The pitch needs to be in there at the end, right? Full blown pitch it at the end when they watch that last course, you're going to start picking up a lot more sales that way.

Kevin Depew: So, you see this as an ... I mean, could I use it as an opt in and also to the email list? I mean, it could be part of the autoresponder.

Shane Sams: Yes.

Kevin Depew: Once they apply through, "Hey, I do live challenges, but you don't got to wait. You can do one now. Click here," kind of thing.

Shane Sams: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: Absolutely.

Shane Sams: And I would also put it in your member area so you can curate it because some people are like, what if they missed the Hank Williams Junior challenge and they join your membership? That can go in the community too.

Kevin Depew: Yes, I already do that because at the end I say, "If you missed any of this or you would like the replays, you can slow the speed down, whatever you want to do, become a member and all of these challenges are inside the membership for sure."

Jocelyn Sams: Perfect.

Shane Sams: Yep. 100%.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Kevin. At this point in the call, we usually ask for an action step. But today, we want to know a little bit more about where you're heading more longterm and just your overall goals? So, what are you planning for the site? And what about for your life? Like, is there a magic number that you have to hit to maybe leave your job? Tell us just a little bit about that.

Kevin Depew: Yeah, so goals is to keep growing this. I love what I'm doing in there, the interaction with the guys is amazing. And the messages I get back from them and the interactions about how much they've enjoyed and now are looking forward to things in their life is great. So, we want to keep growing that. And yes, we have a magic number. 300's kind of the low end of the magic number that we could probably make it work, but believe me, we've already talked about that. The goal is ... I joke and say this is my retirement plan. So, I'm not going to ever probably quit working, but I would like to quit working in a full-time job and work full-time for myself inside this membership and have that be kind of what I'm doing maybe two years out, I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and the cool thing is that when you do this kind of work, it doesn't feel like work because you do what you love every day.

Shane Sams: That's right.

Kevin Depew: Absolutely. Yeah. I want to hang out at home with my wife, work on the guitar stuff, and we just got a new puppy, so that's fun.

Shane Sams: Hey, well listen, that puppy's going to grow up and maybe, maybe Relax and Learn Guitar moves to doing beach live challenges, right?

Kevin Depew: I would love to do a live event too with my guys.

Shane Sams: Yeah, sitting on a campfire on the beach, puppy running in the ocean, time to learn some Margaritaville or something, right?

Kevin Depew: Yep. That's perfect.

Shane Sams: We're ready to roll, man. Well, listen dude, we love you man. Like, we do. We're so impressed by you. You inspire us. Every time that I think about, "Man, I wish someone would do this," or, "I wish we could do that." I'm just like, "Man, look at Kevin Depew. Look what he's done." When you hit the 100 member mark, dude, I cried. I am not lying. You can ask Jocelyn. I was sitting on my couch and Jocelyn told me about it, and I cried, dude. I just was so proud.

Jocelyn Sams: I think we've had the most celebratory ... I don't even know what you'd call it.

Shane Sams: Moments or whatever.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, about your successes because we've just been with you since the very beginning.

Kevin Depew: Yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: I can remember being upstairs and Shane yelling to me that you got your first member, you know? We were both like, "Yeah." We were screaming in the house.

Kevin Depew: That's awesome.

Shane Sams: Yeah, it really is our life blood to hear these success stories, not because we helped do it or helped in any way. You did the work, you made the investment. But it's just we know that people's lives are changing. And 100 members, man, if you can get 100, you can get 1,000, right? It might take a couple of years, but you're going to get there. And I know you're going to do the work. I know you guys are going to keep investing. And we are just so happy for you guys and we are so proud of you guys. And we're just thankful for the example that you set inside of the Flip Your Life community. And we're super thankful that you've came on the podcast four times now. And we just keep sharing you, we just keep begging you to come on to share your story because I know you're inspiring other people out there, man. We just really appreciate you.

Kevin Depew: The feeling ... it's absolutely mutual. I am so appreciative for the work you guys have done and what you've created to help me and Vicki and a lot of other people. And just honored to be part of it and flattered for the compliments. So, thank you. One more thing, another part that was very important in the success was the one on one coaching with you guys through Voxer that happened right after that live event. So very helpful to be able to say, "I've got a question today." And it was like, I think I got a question a day. And I absolutely used that every day. And then, to get an answer back from you guys, that was a really, really important part of this too as well.

Shane Sams: Man, I appreciate that. That's why that program exists. We usually reach out to people when we see them on the verge of something crazy, you know? When we know they're at the tipping point, but maybe they're frustrated, or maybe they don't know exactly how to handle the next step, that's when we reach out to people in the coaching program. And I love people like you, Kevin, who come into our Voxer program or one-on-one coaching because I know you're going to take action on what we say, right? We talk about it. We figure out a solution. And within 24 hours, Kevin's knocked it out and got his next member. So, man, you killed it in the Voxer program. And it's there just for that reason.

Shane Sams: Wow, that wraps up our amazing interview with Kevin Depew. What an awesome, inspiring, incredible dude that guy is. Him and his wife are action takers extraordinaire. They're an awesome example of what can happen when you invest in yourself, when you roll up your sleeves and you do the work, you can build a life changing online business. You can literally grow from zero to 100 members and change your life and the lives of all of those people who are in your membership. We would love to help you guys achieve this kind of success. We have dedicated our lives to helping other families do what we did, start an online business, turn it into a membership, get that recurring revenue, grow to 100 members. Imagine having 100 people giving you $50 a month. That's $60,000 a year. You can take control of your life and you can change your family's future. And you can do it inside our Flip Your Life community.

Shane Sams: So, if you'd like to learn more about the Flip Your Life community, if you'd like to come hang out with us, if you'd like to come hang out with Kevin Depew, all you have to do is go to Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have programs available for every budget and every ability level, and we would love you to join the community today.

Shane Sams: All right, guys, that's all the time we have for this week. Before we close the show, we would love to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible, and I've got a great verse for you today. In Galatians chapter six, verse nine, the Bible says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." So, be like Kevin, be like Kevin Depew. Go out there, keep grinding, keep hustling, keep investing, and you too will reap a harvest when the time is right. Until next time, guys, get out there, take action, and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

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