FL304 - How to be 100% positive your idea will make money online

In today's episode, we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online.

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

Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community. You'll have to bear with us. Jocelyn and I are just getting back from a conference, and both of our voices are a little shot. We're still a little jet lagged, but that's not going to hold us back from helping today's Flip Your Life community member, Brian Kelley. Brian, we're tired, but welcome to the show.

Brian: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Shane: And Brian's on the road too. He's on the road too.

Brian: I absolutely am, yup.

Shane: He's in Chicago at a conference, so he might be a little tired too. We're going to go through this now. We're going to fight through it together. How's that?

Brian: That sounds great.

Jocelyn: We're excited to talk to you today, Brian. You are coming to our event, which is coming up very, very soon so that is super exciting. And I know that you have been taking a lot of action lately which is how you got on the show today, so congratulations for that. And we can't wait to hear a little bit more about it, but before we get there let's hear about you and your background.

Brian: All right. I work in restaurants. I've been in the restaurant industry for about 25 years, and I actually love it. I love my job. I'm married with two kids, and the issue I tend to run into is that I'm concerned about our financial future. I like what I do, but both of our kids have special needs, and it requires extra planning for the future. I don't think that there's a way for me to get my family where we ultimately need to be at retirement with just our incomes. So I'm looking to supplement it with something online.

Brian: And then the other reason that I've been pursuing it is just because I think it's a lot of fun. I've listened to your Podcast for a long time now, and I've actually been a member for a year. Everything that I learn that's new and sitting down and actually creating a website and stuff is really intriguing to me. I find it exciting, and I like it, so that's kind of why I chose this path. I'm just looking for any bit of success at this point. I think I've done a lot of the base level stuff. I'm up and rolling, and I'm just trying to get that first dollar made.

Shane: Dude, I get it, man. I sat there for months and months waiting for any amount of money to flow into my pocket. And what's crazy is we ask our guests on the show, we look for people in the forums who are taking action, filling out success stories, helping other people, and you have just had this flurry of activity. You've been taking all the courses, talking in the forums, coming to the live event in September, and all of this stuff lately. And that's kind of how we were like, "Whoa, what is this guy doing? He is doing everything. We've got to get him on the show, we've got to help him because we really want to reward action takers in the community." What caused this flurry of activity. You said you've been in the community for a year now. What's happened lately or changed or how'd you [inaudible 00:03:42] to get moving forward in your business?

Brian: It was two things. It was, one, probably first and foremost, a new idea for a website. And secondly was I just got really angry that I hadn't finished my last idea, that I hadn't succeeded with it. I got mad and determined because of that. So I just committed and said I was starting again and going to try to do it again.

Shane: And are you looking to create a full time income right now or is it more like a side hustle like you love your job? Are you looking to create something on the side that's more like, "Hey, now I can make a lot more money and still do this job that I love, and then maybe someday I can use it to get some time freedom back?" What's the ultimate goal right now?

Brian: The ultimate goal is to create a full online business.

Shane: Right, right, right.

Brian: [inaudible 00:04:39] I want now like I really meant it when I said I think this stuff is really fun, and I'm extremely dedicated to it. I don't have to have ... I'm not beating down the door to escape my job. I love it. I love the people I work with. It's not an urgent need, but there is that need. It has to happen over the next 10 to 20 years for sure.

Shane: For sure, yeah. Recently I met this guy named Mark Mason. He has a Podcast called Late Night Internet Marketing, and his story reminds me of yours a lot. He was like, "I love my job. I've got a great job. It fulfills me. I love the people I work with. But I like other things too," is what he said. And he's like, "And of course, if anything ever happened I've got this other thing. It's sitting there waiting for me. I've got choices in my life." And that's what online business can do for you. It gives you choices, and it gives you exactly what you need in the moment. Some people may love their job and just want some extra money or some people may love their job, but they're not quite sure how it could handle a recession, so they want to have something in their back pocket to do that. And some people are like, "Man, I love my job right now, but I'm smart enough to look into the future and see I'm going to need something different later," right?

Brian: Yes.

Shane: All of us should be doing that. Even in our online business right now we do that a lot. We look into the future and be like, "What is our business going to look like 10 years from now? What does it need to look like based on our needs, our kids' needs, our future needs as we get older or whatever?" And we have to think about those things, and it's really cool that you're seeing the flexibility here of, "Hey, let's not get desperate. Let's not get crazy. Let's just build something cool and have fun with it, and it will be there for me if I need it and my kids need it.

Brian: Yes.

Jocelyn: All right. So you like your job now, but you want some options as far as making extra income, which I think is a great idea. I actually used to work in the restaurant industry too years ago. I don't know if you've ever listened to our Podcast where I talk about I used to work for a commercial dish machine manufacturer.

Shane: She puts your dishwasher in the back room is what she did for them.

Brian: Right. I heard you say that on the Podcast. I think about it every day when I walk by a dishwasher].

Jocelyn: Yeah.

Shane: That's hilarious. You might be the only person that sees a dishwasher and thinks-

Brian: I know people who sell this equipment. That's right.

Jocelyn: So I actually didn't do a lot of end user work. It was mostly to manufacturers' representatives and that type of thing. But anyway, so yeah I know about the restaurant industry. I've been to many trade shows and all that kind of thing, so I know a lot about restaurant stuff. Anyway, I love that you are trying to branch out and do something different. Let's talk a little bit about that. What have you tried before, and what are you doing now?

Brian: Okay. As far as what I've tried before there's probably a list of five or six, maybe more, things going back 10 years all the way starting with Etsy and just trying to make products for Etsy. I looked into doing drop ship stuff for a little while and decided that totally wasn't for me. Most recently when I joined the community I had an idea for online fishing tournaments. I thought it would be really fun to do online fishing tournaments. I have a lot of friends and family that are competitive at fishing, and I thought it was going to be a great idea. The issue I ran into was two-fold. One, it really wasn't ... What I had created wasn't conducive as it was, so the membership model and I really wanted to do that, and it required so much involvement that it just was never going to work with my schedule. I didn't have the time to execute the operation, so I kind of let it die, and I got discouraged because that was my favorite idea at the moment.

Shane: What is an online fishing tournament? How would that even work? Would I fish at my house and you would fish at your house and we'd take pictures?

Jocelyn: No, this is what I think of. Do you remember there used to be the Nintendo Wii that had those little controllers. There was a fishing tournament on there.

Shane: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jocelyn: That's what comes to my mind.

Shane: Oh yeah, we would compete on ... What was ...

Brian: Actually it was like real fishing, and it's modeled after the capture, photo, release style of fishing, which is what a lot of kayak fishermen do. So instead of wait it's on links, so I built an app and people could just take a photo of the fish they caught on a fish ruler and upload it. And basically it allowed people to compete wherever they were on the same species of fish.

Shane: That's actually a really cool idea though.

Brian: It is, but the problem is I had to be there to launch the tournaments, and I had to be there to judge the tournaments, so there were specific times where I would have to wake up at like ... Fishermen wake up at, like, four in the morning, right, to launch a tournament. And then I had to judge it, and then there were issues with faking species.

Shane: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian: There's some logistics that ... I still have that website. I have not thrown it away. I still have an e-mail list for it. There's a ton of interest in it. I just can't execute that right now.

Shane: Interesting. We'll keep that one in your back pocket, okay?

Jocelyn: I have never heard of an online fishing tournament. This is a first.

Shane: My nephew comes over. We've got this lake behind our house. And he'll just sit here and catch fish for five hours. He's all by himself, but I could picture that being like what if he was virtually with other people fishing at the same time?

Brian: And could win money for if he caught a big fish. It makes it a lot of fun.

Shane: What a cool idea? That's an amazing idea. What else did you try?

Brian: Oh gosh. We were doing ... I was trying to do something connected to restaurants so I modeled a website after some others I had seen that were basically just promoting websites kind of like an affiliate except it was locations and venues would pay a fee to be listed on the website, and the website would market to people that were traveling to the area, give them itineraries, lists to view, things like that.

Shane: That sounds cool. What was the holdup there? It's too hard to get every restaurant in the world on it kind of deal or ...

Brian: No, it was honestly ethically I didn't want to promote ... I work at a restaurant. I didn't want to promote my competition, and I didn't think that was the right thing to do. And it was honestly that started out as a way for me to gain a marketing strategy for my own restaurant briefly, and I just didn't feel okay doing that. And also there's a reason that ... I'm very experienced in the restaurant industry, but there's a reason that the things that I'm choosing to do are not related to the restaurant, and that is because I don't want burnout. Restaurant hours are long, so if I were to tackle more restaurant stuff after that I just feel like it's restaurant all the time, and that's just too much for me. I think I'd burn out because [inaudible 00:12:11] something new.

Shane: For sure. A lot of people come into the community, and one of the things that you hear online a lot is, "Chase your passion and the money will follow." And there is a lot of truth to that, but like Jocelyn and I usually try to start with something you're more familiar with because it's actually a lot easier to create something and make money with something you're trained for or that you know. But if someone doesn't want to do that there's lots of other alternatives. You don't have to do that, and I totally get the burnout stuff.

Shane: Even as much as I used to love football coaching, like I loved it. I ate it, I breathed it, I slept it. I was always on football coaching. But after you start a community for football coaches, you talk to coaches, you go to work and coach, you come home and coach, and you make playbooks, and you go study playbooks, then you use your playbook on Friday night I really felt the burnout. It didn't matter how much I loved or was passionate about coaching football, at the end of the day you've got to do something else, like you've got to do something else. I can totally get onboard with that.

Shane: Tell us about your idea now and how did you switch to that, and when did you start it?

Brian: All right. My ideal now is to educate people on credit card points, travel points and miles that you can accumulate spending on credit cards and how to cash them in for maximum value to book free trips and vacations. So my website now is learnthepoints.com, and there is a strategy in there which we teach people so they can earn eight to $10,000 worth of free travel in basically nine months. So that's my goal is to have people that are willing to pay for a monthly membership for even if it's a short term be educated on the best way to accumulate these points and to redeem them for the most value.

Shane: And also, too, make sure you're paying off the credit card, staying out of debt?

Brian: Yes, 100%.

Shane: It's always free money, right?

Brian: It's free money. Don't spend anything that you weren't normally going to spend and set up automatic payments, pay everything off every month. I came up with this idea. I got shocked, honestly, just recently. My wife and I do not have any debt. It took us a while to get there. We're very credit card averse. I had just never looked into credit card points before. I had heard people talk about miles and flying and all of that stuff, and I just assumed in my head that these were people that fly all the time, and that's how they do this or they're on these big corporate accounts, so that allows them to rack up all these points. And that's just something that's not for me, and I don't apply for credit cards, so when offers come by I don't look into that stuff.

Brian: But what happened was we went through a dark time in December as a family, and when the end of the school year was rolling around and it was summertime was coming up, and we were like, "We need a vacation." All I had set aside for vacation for free money was, like, 500 bucks, which is not bad. We can have fun as a family on 500 bucks, no problem. But all of our other money goes to saving. It all goes to retirement accounts or education accounts or you name it. So we've never really taken a really awesome vacation.

Brian: It was kind of out of desperation or just, "You know what? I'm going to look into this and see what it's about," that I discovered what the possibility was with credit card points. And then when I realized all these bonus sign up tricks and stuff I just got obsessed and started doing all this research and figured it out and based on that developed a strategy and a plan that's basically going to get us free vacations for the next three or four years for our family. I was like, "This is awesome. How did I not know about this for so long?" I was like, "Hey wait. This could totally be an online business. Other people need to know about this." So I just popped up a website real quick and then got enthused and jumped back into the trainings.

Shane: Wow. Brian, what happened in December?

Brian: Unfortunately in December we lost our daughter at birth. She died, and we were really excited. We have two boys that are young. They're four and five. Both of our boys have special needs. They're both autistic, and my oldest son has Down's syndrome. We were really excited not just to have a girl in the family but to have what would be most likely our first typically developing child as well. And it was just we were really excited about it, and there were complications during delivery, and she passed away. So it was a really sad time. There's a lot of grief and anger that comes with that, and it really ... My wife and I both went to counseling. We both got help through our church. We had spent probably three months was just like in shock and recovery. And then the next three months was kind of like just rebuilding your life a little bit and trying to return to normalcy.

Brian: But after being through those last six months and dealing with that there's just this need for a break like from all of life almost in a way. We work hard. We have separate schedules. It's crazy at the house because the kids are crazy. So I could see it on my wife's face like we need a vacation.

Shane: Like an actual remove from the world like-

Brian: Like the community pool is not going to cut it this time. We've got to go.

Jocelyn: Absolutely.

Shane: How did you explain it to your kids? It would be hard enough explaining it to kids who are developing at normal rate. Was it tough?

Brian: It was tough because we did a lot of practicing. We did a lot of therapy going up, so we had a doll that we carried for half a year before the due date where we were training the boys on, "Hey, this is Baby Sister, and this is how you hold Baby Sister." It took us three months before they stopped throwing the doll around. We were practicing and training and getting ready, and we had her room ready of course. We found our own special ways to talk about her with the boys and remember her. I feel like we're in a really healthy place thanks to the involvement of others in the communities that we're in mostly. It's always sad. It's just something that you're never going to forget. You don't move on from it so to speak, but you cope better and better every day.

Shane: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. I know that's probably really hard to talk about.

Jocelyn: That's just heartbreaking. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Shane: It is. I'm having trouble even not crying right now, and I stammer over my words for a few minutes. I also want to just kind of highlight that you did recover, and you did move forward, and I love how you harnessed the negative thing to think about something positive like my family needs to more forward. We need to go on a vacation. That's not trivial. That's a thing that's going to help us to take the next step because we have to take the next step.

Brian: Right.

Shane: And then even to come up with an idea like we have a saying that we always say around our house and around our kids and others is like, "Successful people don't say I can't do that. Successful people say how can I do that?" So you didn't say, "Oh there's only $500 in the bank. I can't go on a vacation." You said, "No, this thing is important for our family. How can we make it happen?" And that's true for life. That's true for online business. That's true for anything like if you're going to be successful you've got to figure out how to do it. So regardless of whatever happens with this online business idea, dude, just the fact that you made that happen, and your family did the thing was totally worth going down that path.

Brian: Yeah.

Shane: That's a powerful story, man. There's an awesome story in the Bible, I believe it was David's son passed away. I don't want to butcher the Bible, but I'm just going off the cuff here. And he mourned, and then he immediately put on his cloak and got back to work. In the story people were like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I have to move forward. I've got other sons. I've got a kingdom I have to do," and I really felt that kind of story coming through when you were telling us that, man. I have no words about something like that, but I am very impressed and inspired by that story you just told me because if that ever were to happen to us I know, "Hey look, Brian got it, he stepped up, we can do this." So anybody else out there listening to this I hope you are really inspired by Brian's story too.

Jocelyn: Okay. I am kind of curious, and I'm sure other people are too. So you got this credit card thing going. You started learning about it. And were you able to book something?

Brian: We're actually we've racked up a ton of points, and we're saving them. We started kind of at the beginning of the summer, and my wife works for the school district. School's about to start, so we're just deciding what date we're going to book and where we want to go.

Shane: That's amazing.

Brian: We're kind of lined up and ready. We're all excited now. It's like one of those things where we were really anxious to go anywhere. We would've taken anything, you know what I mean, but now that we've got these points in the bank and we can pretty much go anywhere for free we're like, "Hold up, hold up, let's think about this. Let's pick a really good one."

Shane: Right. We get a lot of points too. We're like you though. We're like we hate debt. Credit cards scare us. I pay out credit cards. Any credit card use that we have I pay it off every week, every Thursday. I don't mess around. Every Thursday I sit down. But we use two cards. We have a business card, and we have a personal card. And we put everything on it, like everything. And we pay it off once a week because man those points are like free flights here, free all-inclusive vacation in Cancun. You can just book hotels.

Jocelyn: We travel a lot because our daughter's on a travel cheer team, and I got every room last year except for one for free.

Shane: Yeah, and that's like nine cheerleading vacations. Nine weekends of the year we're on the road staying two or three nights. And it's just you show up, and you have a room for free.

Brian: And what I think is crazy is that there are just so many people that were like me six months ago, had no idea that you could do this.

Shane: I didn't know you could do it either because we were Dave Ramsey people too of course. We're like, "Get out of debt. Never use a credit card. Credit cards are evil." And I'm like, "But they're giving you free money. Wait a minute. Let me look at this for a minute." Now, you're not going to get rich off of it, but free money's free money. It doesn't matter how you look at it.

Jocelyn: And disclaimer, we do not advocate going into debt to get credit card points.

Shane: No, don't go into $10,000 in debt to get $5,000 in credit card points. That doesn't make sense. You're losing money there y'all. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Brian: What I try to get people to understand, and I don't know if my message is really good. I'm still trying to perfect it to get it quick because there's a lot of pushback. People just don't know that you can do it. There are credit card fees on some of these cards, but essentially I had $500 in the bank. For $500 you can afford the credit card fees on eight different cards at one time. And if you were to do that you'd have somewhere between, depending on your spending, $8,000 and $12,000 worth of free travel. So it's not that it's-

Shane: Right, you're spending 500 for 8,000 basically.

Brian: Yeah. If you were going to spend 500 you have two options. You can either spend $500 on your vacation or you can spend $500 on the credit card fees and take a $10,000 vacation.

Shane: Yeah, that's incredible. We actually know a guy that does something similar to this. He was a member of the Flip Your Life community. His name's Brad Barrett. Have you ever heard of Brad Barrett?

Brian: I did. I started researching everybody. I found his ... He has a Facebook group and a training that he does. And it's awesome. Facebook group is an awesome community. He built something really great there, and his training is very to the point and succinct, and it's good info to. So I really liked looking at his stuff.

Shane: Yeah. And he was an accountant, and he really did want out of his job. He just went all in. But he focused. He only went like ... It was to go to Disney. It was straight up to go to Disney. That's how he taught it. And we've met other people who do successfully do this. And I was just at a conference this weekend, and someone was telling me like, "You know, I feel like I've got to invent a brand new thing. I've got to go the blue ocean." You guys hear that blue ocean, red ocean stuff?

Brian: Right.

Shane: And I looked at him. I said, "No, that's not what you do." You don't have to bake a new pie. You don't have to invent a new recipe. You've got to look around and find a pie, and you just want a slice of that. So that's why we always really encourage people like if you see someone else doing something similar to you that's not bad. That's good. That means that they've figured out how to make money at it, and there's 4 billion people connected to the internet. I promise you they're not selling to all 4 billion people. You just need some of the other people that are interested in that space. It's like abundance mentality. There's more than enough customers out there. You don't have to invent the better mousetrap. You just need to find people that need a mousetrap and sell them one. You're on the right path, and there's definitely something to this. So what's holding you back right now? Is there a mindset issue or an obstacle from doing this?

Brian: Okay, so I went back and I watched the Vetting Your Idea video. So I had jumped into this full force before watching that video. I wish I would've watched it first.

Shane: Wait a minute. So you're saying you should do the Flip Your Life blueprint in order?

Brian: Shane, I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to take this opportunity to tell people to follow the plan the right way.

Shane: Right. People jump in all the time, and they're like, "I watched video 12, and it was awesome." And I'm like, "Did you watch one through 11 because they're important?" You've got to do it in order. The Vetting Your Idea course, you know what's funny about that course in particular. I laugh because I'm saying watch it in order. When we made the blueprint, when we created the blueprint that course didn't used to be in there. Yeah, because we were so caught up in helping people find their idea and get started. I kind of looked at it, and I was like, "I go through the process whenever we have a new business and I'm like is someone else doing this? How do I find out if it's making money online?" I have a process that I check things, and I realized we were ... Because a lot of times people get held back, and I didn't want to put too much information in front of someone like I just wanted you to get your idea and start because that's where the real magic is when you start.

Shane: But then I thought, "Wow, there's really an easy way to tell if people are making money on this, and I just need to show that to them." So we put that course back in later. I actually made that course after the original blueprint was created so that people could properly vet that, yes, this is a real idea. People are definitely making money online, and I can check it empirically. I can go and say, "That is a 100% truth. This can make money online. I just have to do it." And that's kind of probably what you saw when you watched that with the idea course.

Brian: Yeah 100%. So I started looking, and what I found a lot of regarding credit card points and miles there's a ton of people who are offering free courses, and they are using affiliate links for their credit card sign-ups.

Shane: Yes 100%.

Brian: That is what most, like 95% of what's out there is affiliates for the credit cards, which I don't think there's anything wrong with necessarily although I have started my website and really pushed that I am not an affiliate for the credit cards.

Shane: Great differentiator. That makes you different.

Brian: Yes. I've also noticed affiliates have different promotions and all that stuff, and sometimes teaching others isn't true. It's just not the best version of the information because they're promoting a specific credit card before another one, so I really wanted to focus on ... yeah. I really want to focus on what's going to be my users, my guests on my site, and what's going to get them the most bang for the buck the right way to do it. I'd rather not get involved with affiliates at all. I'd rather just tell them the truth like if you want to get the most money this is how you get the most money.

Shane: So one sticking point is like you're kind of ... You said a lot of other people have went down the road because if I can get you to sign up for the credit card I might get a $100 fee. The bad part about that strategy is you're really relying on a lot of traffic. You've got to have a lot of traffic coming in to make that work because you're not getting any recurring off these credit card points that you get people to sign up for. It's just you get 100 bucks, you move on. You know what I mean? So you almost have to get them to sign up for five at once just to make a good chunk of change out of the beginning. Are you concerned that nobody will pay for it because the other ...

Brian: Right. I was concerned that nobody would do a membership for the information. There is a lot of free information out there. It's just that my information's better than the free information that's out there, but I need to be able to convince people that it's worth whatever I'm charging right now I set it up to charge $25 a month.

Shane: Right.

Brian: I did find at least one site that is doing a membership model, and that gave me hope, but it was hard to find.

Shane: To be fair the internet's a big place. You know what I mean? So there's probably other people out there doing it to. If you found one there's probably more.

Brian: Yeah, I would think so. There is another aspect to it. Some people are also doing one-on-one coaching and booking trips for people using their credit card points to get the most value for it. So those are some one-offs that I found. But my biggest concern is that looking for validation that approaching this from the membership model setting up a $25 a month membership to educate people and provide them with free tools and resources is something that somebody will pay for, that it'll work.

Shane: I would say they would if you position it correctly, right? Because there's an old saying in copywriting where if you can give people free money they'll buy your product. And this is a free money product. It is. It's like if you get the cards you will get free money. You will get the points. So if you can say, "Hey look, I ..." Telling your story is the most critical part of your marketing because you literally did this. You're like, "Look, I have no debt. I have these cards. I've got three vacations, enough money for three vacations over the next three years. I have $8,000 in credit card points. I spent $500 to do it. I made $7,500." This is true. These are all facts. You can check it. It's 100% real, and it happens when you do it this way. So like that's free money. It really is. It sounds so scammy but it's not. It's free money. It really is free money.

Brian: It is, yes.

Shane: And you've actually done this. Your story is where you have to start with your marketing to convince people that that's going to happen.

Jocelyn: I almost feel like this is one of those situations where it's a side-by-side. And what I mean by that is that you have a course on one side, and you list all the benefits of just doing the DIY course. And then on the other side you have your monthly payment, which is the same price as your course, but it just recurs. And you position that as this is the courses plus support from me as you go through this.

Shane: Yeah. So it is kind of two products. The content is isolated, but then there's a way to interact with you like I'm going to help you make purchasing decisions, and I'm going to help you. I'm going to walk with you as you spend the money. We're going to have a ... A buddy of mine does a membership, so listen to what this is. He does this membership where basically it's a writing hour. So twice a week he shows up, he does a quick writing tip, and then basically he has, like, 300 members and they all just show up to write together. That's what they do, but it's accountability. It's to ask a question. It's to just hang out really. There's no relieving content involved in the membership, but people love it because they've got somewhere to go in the moment to either get accountability or ask a question.

Shane: So it's like you could have a weekly pay off your credit card party. Hey guys, last week we got our groceries. Hey Jim, what'd you do? Oh man, I bought a subscription to Netflix. Okay, let's pay that off. You could keep people out of debt parties. It's not like you're really even answering questions. It's just you show up, and everybody's accountable to stay out of debt while they're accumulating their points. And then they can ask questions to you like, "Well, I found this other card. Is this a good card Brian?" Yeah it is. That's a good card. You should do this. You should do that. Don't worry. You can trust my advice because I'm not an affiliate for that card.

Brian: Exactly.

Shane: But you can throw stones at the other people like, "Hey guys, all these other people they're recommending cards that give them the best affiliate payout. Not me. Brian you can trust because I'm here for you." I love the idea that the course is separate or they can work with you for real, work with you. And your whole story then becomes so important because now they trust you to join your membership community. So you're not selling them content anymore. You're not selling them the path anymore. You're really just selling you. You know what I mean? And your experience, your coaching, and your leadership.

Brian: If I switch this over and change it so I've got this side-by-side thing going on on the website would you market or promote the course, and then when they get to the landing page they would see the course or the membership option then?

Shane: I'm going to give everybody that's listening a tip right now. Nobody cares what's in your course. Nobody cares about the course. All they care about is your story. The only thing I would be telling yours like you need to go on this vacation, and you need to have some pictures of it, and you need to be able to talk about it, and you need to be able to blog about it. And everything happens going forward is I had this horrible experience. I knew my family needed vacation. I found a way. We did it. And now I'm bringing the torch back from Mt. Olympus. This is a heroes journey story if there ever has been one.

Jocelyn: I agree. And I don't think that the course material is unimportant per se.

Shane: Right. It's not unimportant. It's just not the most important.

Jocelyn: But I do feel that the most important things are being able to relate to you, can you solve their problem, and then the course material is way on down the list.

Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the second thing.

Jocelyn: And I think people get this backwards. People always want to do their sales page look at all these wonderful things that I have in my course or program. And they want to give you the 10-minute rundown of every nut and bolt in their program. People don't care about that. People care about can you solve my problem and do I like you?

Shane: What most people remember at any event, like let's say you go to a rock concert, when musicians create their set they really focus on the first song and the last song because that's what you're going to remember. It's like a movie. You remember how a movie started. A lot of stuff happens in the beginning, and we all remember the end. You know what I'm saying?

Jocelyn: Right.

Shane: It's like Avengers. There's like 18 movies over like 20 years, and pretty much it all boiled down to at the beginning Thanos wanted some rocks, and at the end Iron Man fights him. That's what we all remember in between, right? So that's kind of what you're doing here. It's like, "This is my story. This is real. You can trust that it's real because all these other people are only recommending things that pay them good. I'm not because I'm not an affiliate for any of these people. I'm telling you the truth, and inside my community I'm going to help you do it.

Shane: So you can have a general list of things like categorical these are the results you'll get inside. Know the first thing you'll buy. Know the first card to get. Know the order that they're going to get. You're more telling the results, but you're not telling the exact courses and all that stuff. There's no reason to. No one cares. But when they get inside we get into detail.

Jocelyn: Okay.

Shane: First course, blueprint one, second course, blueprint two, third course, blueprint three. That's when you get really into it. Don't try to sell the content. Like you said the content's free. I hate to tell everybody this. All content's free. Every piece of content that has ever existed inside of any course is somewhere free on the internet. Now, can you find it? Is it hard to find? That's where curation and courses come into play. But it's all free. You've just got to figure out how to make your free stuff look better, and your story is the best way to do that.

Brian: Okay, great.

Jocelyn: Okay, Brian. I think that we have some good ideas about moving forward as far as your product goes. What else do you need help with right now?

Brian: I think I'm up to close to 400 people on my e-mail list. That's mainly coming through Facebook and Facebook ads with my lead magnet. However, I have not converted anybody on my e-mail list into purchasing as of yet.

Shane: How often do you e-mail your list? Let me ask you a couple questions here. It's a big list. You should've converted something, so let's figure this out.

Brian: Yeah. I have an auto responder set up for the first eight e-mails that follow very closely the e-mails in the blueprint. So those go out, and I follow the same timeline, so it's like a couple immediately and then about a week later and then a couple days later. And then there's one at the end two weeks out that's like, "Hey, I'm not going to send you anymore. You'll just continue to get vacation updates from me basically." And I send out whenever I have time to design a new vacation that somebody can take for free I just e-mail that to my whole list.

Shane: So basically your e-mail ... So only your auto responder is what's tried to sell this so far. You've only [crosstalk 00:40:30].

Brian: That's true. That's correct, only my auto responder, yeah.

Shane: Okay. What if you sent them a message that said, "Hey, I'm doing a live training this week, and I'm going to show you how to get $8,000 for free?"

Brian: I haven't done that yet.

Shane: Okay. You've got to add more layers to it. The auto responder is just for picking low hanging fruit, the lowest of the fruit. Actually it's like walking under an apple tree, and the apple has already fell off, and you bend down and pick it up. That's where automation comes in. You're never going to convert more than a single digit percentage off of your e-mail list, right? You have to add live Webinars. You have to add weekly Podcasts or blog posts or something.

Shane: I'm also looking at your site here, and it definitely needs a facelift. It's just too plain, and it's also too ... It looks too pie and the sky. For example, let's take you. I'm going to describe your website as I go through here. One, at the top you've got all these credit cards. That's cool. Then it says, "Become a member." You know what I'm saying? It's just like okay that's cool. Then it's like a picture of four probably 18-year-old girls running down a beach. That's not Brian. Brian was a dad who had just lost his daughter and went through a dark time. And the rest of his family needed him to step up and help them climb out of the darkness, right?

Brian: Right.

Shane: So Brian, with his two children and his wife went forward together. I need to see a family here. That's what I need to see. I don't need to see this.

Shane: Then the next one is a guy with like a mini Afro and a surf board. He's like, "Whoa, dude, I'm a cool 18-year-old dude on a beach in Thailand making six bucks a day or whatever." That's not Brian, man, I really came home from work at the restaurant and I was tired, and I knew we needed a vacation. So you're not talking to the other guys out there that are like, "Yo, I'm tired. My family really needs me to step up and figure out a way. I've not been able to afford a vacation in three years. What can I do to help my family get a little break?" You know what I'm saying?

Brian: Right.

Shane: It's just not resonating. The people who are on your list are just not resonating with what they're seeing and hearing in your marketing.

Brian: Ah, that makes sense, okay.

Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your story is not being told, and that's why nobody's buying anything from you. We tell some pretty deep stories, and we wrestled with how much of our personal life we always want to share on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast or when we speak on stage. And 99% of the time it's be an open book because our stories are what really help someone else. And we told our stories this week. We were at FlynnCon, and we spoke with Pat Flynn on stage, and we told the story of Isaac being mistreated in a daycare center. That's a really hard story to tell when you find out someone was literally locking your child into a bathroom to punish them for potty training accidents at three years old it's horrifying to even say that out loud. But that story always makes people realize how important their kids are, how important their time is. They want to get their kids out of daycare centers and home with them.

Shane: I have to tell that story because if I don't then I can't relate to someone enough to make them change their life. So your story has to take over this page. Your family has to take over this page. And you have to say to somebody, "If we did it you can do it too," and that'll resonate more as well. And then showing up live not just in their inbox is going to give you a better chance to convert those.

Shane: If you could get 50 of those people to come to a Webinar, and you told us your story like the way we even talked about it off air today before the Podcast started people are going to resonate with that because they're going to look at their kids, and they're going to look at their family, and they're going to realize this guy's for real. If he wasn't for real he'd be signing up for all the affiliate things just trying to get my affiliate check, right? But he's telling me the truth, and I need to listen to this guy, and he can help me. Where do I sign up? So if you could just plant some storytelling overtop of all of this, and then do the work. And I know you're going to do the work because you're an action taker, you could turn this thing around. 400 people, man, you've got members. We just have to get the message right to do it.

Shane: I'd love to see your e-mails too. We don't have time to go over every e-mail in your auto responder today, but your e-mails should be telling the story. It shouldn't just be here's all the benefits. It's like in 2018 December this happened. It moves into why you went down the path to the credit cards, and that creates trust, and it shows them like, "Hey, this guy figured it out. I can figure it out. Let's do this."

Brian: Okay. Yes.

Jocelyn: All right Brian, it has been great talking to you today, and I can't wait to see what you do next. Before we go we always ask our guests what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today?

Brian: I am going to ... Since I am out of town right now I am going to set up the side-by-side course versus the membership on the website and just get that done quickly. And then when I get back home I'm going to start taking some pictures with my family and redoing my story on the website.

Shane: Love it. I love that you're like, "I'm going to take some pictures with my family. We're putting them on there." That's good. And I want to see the website, so make sure you send it to me in the forums or hit me up, and I want to see the link when you redo it because it'll be awesome.

Brian: Will do.

Shane: Hey Brian, before we go let me ask you a question. What made you come to Flip Your Life Live? Flip Your Life Live happens in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19 through the 21st of 2019. It's our big Flip Your Life Flipped Lifestyle Podcast family reunion where all of our listeners, fans, followers, and members can come together in one place to hang out together, eat together, work together, and really get inspired to do big things for our families. I always love to hear people's stories. Why did you come to Flip Your Life Live? What made you look at it and go, "I got to go. I just got to go to Flip Your Life Live?"

Brian: I wanted to dive all in. I didn't want to leave anything on the table. Really I am not afraid of failure. I am really afraid of not trying, not giving it my all. And I just felt like, "Hey, this is something I haven't done, and I can't say that I gave it all I could if I didn't go."

Shane: I love that, man. No regrets, right. I'd rather have a life full of failures than a life full of regrets at the end of it.

Brian: Also I'm not paying for the flight, so that helps.

Shane: Shameless plug for the credit card points. I love it. That's amazing.

Jocelyn: Love it. That is awesome.

Shane: Listen. If you would like to join us and Brian in Lexington, Kentucky at Flip Your Life Live this year go to flippedlifestyle.com. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/live. We have a few tickets left, but they are almost sold out, and this will be the last big conference Flip Your Life Live that we do for a while. We are not doing the event in 2020, so you can't go all in next year. You might as well go all in with us and Brian this year at Flip Your Life Live.

Jocelyn: And who knows, maybe if you join Brian's membership maybe he can get you a free flight too.

Shane: That's right. Maybe you can fly there too. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. We'd love to see you at our live event. All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast today. We would love to see you inside of our community as well. Who knows, you may end up right here on the Podcast just like Brian did. So if you'd like to take action today go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can check out all of our membership options.

Shane: Before we go today we like to close every show with a verse from the Bible. Today's Bible verse comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19. The Bible says, "Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. This is the will of God for your life."

Shane: Until next time, guys, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Brian's Website
• Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information
• Flip Your Life community
• PROLIFIC Monthly

Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family!

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https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife