FL308 - How to Design and Launch Your Online Product

In today's episode, we help Theresa design and launch her product.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's show we help Theresa design and launch her product.

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. Super excited to welcome another member of the Flipped Lifestyle community onto the show so that we can help them take their business to the next level. We're really, really, really super excited today to welcome Theresa Steckel. Theresa, welcome to the show.

Theresa Steckel: Hey guys, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

Shane Sams: And lest you think that Shane and Jocelyn are perfect I'm going to tell you what happened earlier today. We looked up, and I got a notification that said someone had joined a Zoom call. And I looked down, and I was like, "What?" Because we were getting ready for an appointment. We had a student teacher meeting at Isaac's school as we were getting ready-

Jocelyn Sams: It was a parent teacher not a student teacher.

Shane Sams: Or a parent teacher not a student teacher. That's right. We're not the students. We're the parents. But we had this parent teacher meeting, so we were getting ready to go to that, and I looked down, and I was like, "Oh no. We've double booked, the dreaded double booking when five people are controlling your calendar and you're not one of them." And so I looked over at Jocelyn. I was like, "I think we have a Podcast right now."

Jocelyn Sams: And I was like, "What?" And I'm usually such a slave to the calendar. It's so funny. I get up every day, and I look at it, and I'm like, "Oh no we've got A, B, and C to do," but for whatever reason this morning I didn't do that.

Shane Sams: And then for some reason we had A and then B, B, B, and C because there was all sorts of stuff going on at the same time. So Theresa was kind enough to move this down a couple hours, and we have finally gotten on the call together. So we are sorry that we stood you up a couple hours ago, Theresa.

Theresa Steckel: You know, that is just the way it goes sometimes.

Jocelyn Sams: Yup, life happens. I really hate rescheduling Podcasts, but thank you so much for being kind enough to do that for us.

Theresa Steckel: You're welcome. I really am just happy to be on the call, so I appreciated you guys rescheduling too.

Jocelyn Sams: Alright. Well, I'm excited for you to talk a little bit about your background. We talked about it before. Before people come onto the Podcast we do like a little intake survey so we can learn more about you, and it sort of guides our discussion and lets you know what we're going to be asking you so you can start thinking about it. And one of the things that we ask about is your background, and I think your background is really interesting. So can you get into that just a little bit. Tell us about how you started and what it is that you do and anything else you want to tell us.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so going way, way back we moved to Oklahoma, I don't know, like 24 years ago, and I became a housekeeper in a nursing home making a whopping $4.25 an hour and decided that ... I got talked into going to an LPN program. One of my friends talked me into it, so I got admitted into this LPN program, and she did not make the class, so I ended up there by myself.

Shane Sams: Oh no.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah.

Shane Sams: What is an LPN?

Theresa Steckel: It is a licensed practical nurse so more technical and less assessment and critical thinking. So I worked as an LPN. I was married at the time. We had a daughter. So basically after that worked my way through nursing school and eventually as I was working through nursing school had two kids and a husband, was working full time. Spent a lot of time in pediatric hematology/oncology and then worked in public health for a few years and then decided I thought I wanted to teach. So I went back to school and got a master's with a focus in nursing education. I taught full time for about three years and then but really kind of missed the clinical care.

Theresa Steckel: I loved working with students, but I missed sort of that hospital piece of it, that acute care. So I got a full time job in nursing leadership, became a director of patient care. I was in that role for about seven years, and as part of that position I was responsible for 85 to 110 beds kind of depending on which time period you looked at, up to 200 employees at one time.

Shane Sams: Whoa.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, 125-200 was kind of ... Usually I sat closer to 120, which was a little more manageable. And then most recently about a year and a half ago was promoted to an executive level position and have been working more in focusing on service and kind of the patient experience side. I've loved really all the jobs I've had. There's always something you don't like. Really like I've spoken at state events and national events a little bit. I've really liked that. I love working with students and mentoring. As a leader you have a lot of chances to work with students and new nurse graduates, so I always really loved doing that. But that's kind of how I ended up here.

Shane Sams: This is crazy because you've literally climbed the ladder.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, this is like the classic American dream.

Shane Sams: This is the American ... I started out as a housekeeper making $4.25 an hour, and now I'm a vice president.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so it sounds great. So Theresa-

Theresa Steckel: It does sound great.

Jocelyn Sams: Why are you trying to do online business. Clearly you have the dream life, right?

Shane Sams: Yeah, like what's the ... Before we get into what you're doing online what is the desire there? Why online business instead of ... You're clearly successful. That's an amazing resume. Anyone would be proud. Gosh, in charge of 200 employees and 110 patients.

Theresa Steckel: Right, everyone's dream 200 employees.

Shane Sams: I know, right?

Jocelyn Sams: Definitely not my dream.

Shane Sams: Maybe not two employees. What is the goal? What's the dream? What's taken you down this path?

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, you know I've always wanted more flexibility with my family and my kids and always kind of had ... I called a bug or an itch or just sort of a deep desire to have your own business and do something on your own, and I've never really been able to shake it. So while I've kind of climbed and done great things in my career that's just never gone away, and feeling like there's something more that I'm supposed to be doing. Does that make sense?

Shane Sams: It totally makes sense. We always say that people are driven into online business for two reasons. It's usually inspiration or desperation, right? You're inspired to do something, you feel like there's something that you want to do or maybe something happens like we have like a negative experience, a catalyst that kind of drives you forward. Our good friend, Mark Mason he says the two reasons that you start a business are because you're being driven away from something ... I'm sorry, you're moving away from something, or you want to move towards something, right, it's kind of the same thing.

Theresa Steckel: Right, right.

Shane Sams: So you're definitely leaning on the I'm moving toward this rather than like I'm at the ... You're not at the end of your career, but you've kind of done it, you know, and it's like can I do this other thing inside of you.

Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jocelyn Sams: Well, and here's the thing. I feel like, Theresa, that probably you have other gifts and talents that you want to share with the world, and when you work in this healthcare space you're sort of in this one area mostly, right, instead of being able to share all that you have to offer.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, you have to kind of especially as a nurse find ways to not get pigeonholed into specific things. It's pretty broad. It is a great career. I wouldn't say that it's not, but trying to branch out into other areas you can't just go work at Google or something.

Shane Sams: Right, exactly, and like try some new project. 20% of your projects are all the same or, no, you're the vice president. You have one job, right?

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, yeah.

Shane Sams: Yeah, exactly.

Theresa Steckel: And I have definitely had kind of those events in my life in the past where I wish I had more flexibility. My mom was really sick for a long time, and I didn't have the flexibility to go spend the kind of time with her that I would've liked to. My job was great to let me go whenever I wanted to, but it would've been nice to just been able to go be with her.

Shane Sams: Yeah, without asking for permission basically.

Theresa Steckel: Right.

Shane Sams: Or making sure everything was okay on the backside. That was interesting. I was actually posting on, I took a picture of me and Jocelyn at the school today, and she was like, "Why did you just take a picture of us sitting in the waiting room at the principal?" And I was kind of like, "Because I want to remember," like this is cool like it's the middle of the day and we can go to a parent teacher conference, and at the end of the parent teacher conference we got to tell our teachers like we are always on call. If our kid ever needs us you call us, and if you need help let us know. We can volunteer. We can be here for that, and we don't have to check in with anybody. And that's one of my absolute favorite things about online business, period. Have you always wanted to do online business or did you maybe try some other things?

Theresa Steckel: No, no, I tried some other things. I did that whole thing, too, where you write down everything you can think of and try to pick a job or pick a business out of the sky, like socks. I was going to make socks.

Shane Sams: You were going to make ... Oh no, wait. This was not in the intake form, I don't think. You were going to make socks. What does that mean?

Theresa Steckel: No, it's like-

Jocelyn Sams: I don't know what this is.

Shane Sams: Yeah, I got to hear this one.

Theresa Steckel: I never quite figured it out, which is why it never worked. Not like make them myself but you can import things from China and get designs on them. I have a sister who is an artist, and I was like, "Ooh, she could design these cool socks," and then I don't know. We could sell them to nurses because they buy, like, compression socks and you know.

Shane Sams: That was the first person I ever had say, "My first idea was making socks." You know what I'm saying?

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. I had an idea of making curtains once. That's a little different than socks.

Shane Sams: Yeah, Jocelyn tried to sell curtains once. We went out, and we were teachers. We didn't have any money, but I was like, "Let's do it. Let's go buy the fabric, buy a sewing machine."

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, I made two sets of curtains, and they did work. The problem is it took me, like, you know-

Shane Sams: 75 hours to make the set.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, a long time.

Shane Sams: Right. Okay, so scratch socks. What happened next?

Theresa Steckel: So we've done a couple of different things. We had a brick and mortar business at one point, and I don't know if you read this in my intake form but sort of the last two weeks of that business I had our last child, so she was about a week old and my husband was supposed to find someone to work in the business because I had a full time job. So his job was the business, and I had a job job like a traditional nursing job. But he was also working part time, and he got stuck working this one weekend, so I had to run the business. And my baby was seven days old, and I'm working in this business where we rent out vehicles and trailers and I'm nursing, and it was horrible, and I was ...

Shane Sams: Yeah. I have to say this. You wrote in your form, "I was one very unhappy lactating mamma."

Theresa Steckel: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So hard when I read that because I was like, "Well, that's not a good situation for anyone."

Jocelyn Sams: No, that reminds me of teacher life too. My baby wasn't seven weeks old, but like when I had Anna I was working at the school, and it was a really old school, so every single square inch of space was taken by somebody and there was nowhere you could go to pump milk, so I had to go in this office, and I can remember one time the principal opened the door and I'm like, "Oh no, don't come here." He was going to bring a kid in there to talk or something. I'm like, "No, no, no."

Shane Sams: Oh my God.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, and it makes that noise, right. It's like [inaudible 00:11:37].

Shane Sams: Okay, for all the men out there uncomfortable about this breastfeeding discussion I'm going to move us forward.

Theresa Steckel: I'm a nurse, so I can talk about just about anything.

Shane Sams: Talk about anything, that's right. I was just kidding. But is says you and your husband are still married through this-

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, we are still married, 25 years even after that incident. But when he talks about brick and mortar I look at him, and I don't know how he doesn't die because I think, "No. No, I'm not doing that again."

Shane Sams: All right, so brick and mortar is out. Making socks is out. What was next?

Theresa Steckel: So we dabbled in a little bit of MLM, but it always felt like a bait and switch to me. I was never comfortable with it. You're not really selling the product. You're selling an opportunity, and-

Shane Sams: Oh.

Jocelyn Sams: Yes.

Shane Sams: Jocelyn hates MLMs.

Jocelyn Sams: Oh, you are speaking my language, Theresa. MLMs, I don't know. I was reading this thing about them the other day about 99 point something percent of people lose money, and I'm like, "How are they still in business?"

Shane Sams: I know, right? Yeah. It always makes me mad because when we try to run Facebook ads sometimes it says like, "Are you an MLM because we don't allow MLMs to advertise on Facebook?" I'm like, "No. We don't even ... No. We have no products. We're not trying to do that, like we're not even an MLM."

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, and before we get e-mails we're not an MLM because you own your own business. You're not trying to recruit people.

Shane Sams: Right, we're more of like a marketing ...

Jocelyn Sams: We don't take any cut of it.

Shane Sams: ... marketing and promotions company. That's what we are really. We're just helping you build it and market it basically.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah. So didn't do that. And then my husband's had a couple of service-based businesses I haven't really helped out with, but I just really want something, like I said, that's flexible, still allows me to be creative, kind of use my leadership the way that I want to. So I probably have for four years been just trying to think of ... And at that time I still didn't know about ... I knew there were online businesses, but I didn't really know what that meant, which is kind of ... And now that I've discovered you guys I don't know how I was so slow to figure it out.

Shane Sams: Yeah because if Shane and Jocelyn can do it surely I can.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah.

Shane Sams: You guys can figure it out, what's taking me so ...

Jocelyn Sams: I don't know. This interview's going downhill.

Shane Sams: It's going downhill fast. We're off the rails.

Theresa Steckel: It just didn't make sense to me until ... I still remember the moment I was listening, and so I know that this is a common way that people find you. But I discovered Pat Flynn through a different conference I had gone to, and he was a speaker there, so a couple months later I was doing some back reading into some of that material, and I thought, "I'm going to check this guy out a little bit more." So I went to his stuff, I listened to a bunch of his Podcasts, and I still remember. I was like on the stair climber at the YMCA, and I heard I think it was Shane's maybe second interview on the Pat Flynn show, and I was like, "Oh, that makes sense to me like that's something I could do," because when I would Google things that nurses were doing online they were doing a lot of blogging where they were really just doing affiliate marketing, so they didn't have a product. They were just peddling other people's things, and I didn't like that. And I'm not totally opposed to affiliate marketing. I just didn't want that to be my only thing.

Shane Sams: It shouldn't be your only ... We're not against affiliate marketing either. We don't do affiliate launches and stuff because we like to ... One, we don't want to spam our e-mail list with everybody else's stuff. But we do recommend products. We recommend things like aWeber and Kajabi and stuff like that like we've done that in the past.

Jocelyn Sams: And that is a way to do business.

Shane Sams: But it should not be your only way to do business like your business has to be your courses, your services, your products because it's your family and it's your future and it's your life, and you can't rely on somebody else's stuff to support you. That's more like gravy, right. That's the extra stuff that you get.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I think when I heard your Podcast just the concept of the idea made more sense to me. But I still was like, "I don't know what I'm going to do," and then I just kind of like I said I listened to ... I was on one of the member calls one time where Shane was like, "Get off your butt. Just pick something." I was like, "Oh, I don't know." "Just pick something."

Shane Sams: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: Theresa, you're making our member calls sound unappealing.

Shane Sams: Right.

Theresa Steckel: No, they're great. They're a lot of fun. Just, you know ...

Jocelyn Sams: Our member calls are amazing.

Shane Sams: Hard core. We're hard core in the member calls. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. If you want to see how they go we have a couple clips. We actually cut out individual clips of some of our best questions and answers, and we put them on your YouTube channel, so flippedlifestyle.com/youtube, check that out okay. All right, so let's pivot here then. Let's talk about, okay, what was the thing that you just picked and then tell us how that's kind of turned into something different and the direction that you're taking now with your online business.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so what I did was I called a couple of my friends who were instructors, full time nursing instructors, and I said, "What do you need?" And a couple of them were like, "I really need some good case studies." And so in nursing education that's one of the ways we teach students. You kind of go through, "Okay, this 50-year-old male walks into the emergency department and he has these symptoms. What's your first thing, what's your second thing, what meds, what diagnosis?" You kind of walk them through a real scenario. So I thought I'll do that. I'll write some of those. So I started trying to write those, but again I'm in leadership, so it was just the amount of time ... And I don't know. I'm still trying to learn for myself what part is necessary and what part is me just trying to be perfect. And I can't quite figure that line out yet. But it has to be accurate, right. You're teaching people how to take care of patients. So just the time that it was taking to build all that and validate that the data was accurate.

Theresa Steckel: And then I think when I was at the live event last year I'm trying to think who asked me the question, maybe Bonnie, about content. And that was when I realized that other people could help you create some of that stuff I thought ... But even with that hiring people through Upwork to create some of it was really expensive. And it was, I think, February before I even had, February 2019 like three case studies ready to sell. And I didn't enjoy it really. So I kind of kept doing it because I didn't have any other ideas, and my daughter started nursing school in January. So she was coming to me and asking for help with this or that, and I kind of told her how I made it through nursing school and how I've coached my other students to make it through nursing school. And then I started looking at some of the things that she created after I kind of told her how I had done it.

Theresa Steckel: And suddenly I was thinking, "You know what, it would make so much more sense for me to just do that because that's what I really like." So then I pivoted towards more tutoring students starting with the first semester because I kind of have all that content together. And I can still use those case studies that I've made. They're not first semester material. They're more second and third. But they'll flow really nicely in there. So what I've been focusing on now since probably the beginning of July is trying to create materials for nursing students and then figuring out what would the rest of that look like if I built that around a membership.

Shane Sams: I assume that's going smoother and coming a little easier.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I haven't made any income off of it, but I haven't really put it up for sale, anything for sale yet within that piece but as far as-

Shane Sams: [crosstalk 00:19:25] not for sale.

Theresa Steckel: I know.

Shane Sams: Right?

Theresa Steckel: Right. But the content creation is much easier to me. It flows much ... It just feels more authentic.

Shane Sams: Good, that's awesome.

Theresa Steckel: Does that make sense?

Shane Sams: It makes total sense. And that's why we're so big ... Like people come into the community, and they really wrestle with their ... Like the first course that you take is learning your idea and then validating it, right?

Theresa Steckel: Right.

Shane Sams: And people really struggle with that part because they want ... We all want to go hit the home run or we hear the guy on stage that hit the home run, right. And we want the home run, and we think that's how you do it is that you really research it, and you make a good decision, and your first business works out. But here's the truth. 90% of people's first tries at online business don't work. But we always find this. It bends you toward what eventually does work, right, like even now just in the story you just told I just did something, and I did it, and I realized it wasn't right, but it made me wrestle with it, and that pushed me back to where I think I should've been the whole time, right?

Theresa Steckel: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And until you make that decision you can't get to that part.

Theresa Steckel: And I think listening to you guys for the last year and a half you say that a lot. And I just had to keep reminding myself of okay, this might not be the thing, but it will turn into the thing. And I also knew I didn't know how to build a website. I didn't know what an autoresponder was. I didn't know about e-mail list creations. I didn't know any of that. So just doing something forced me to learn those steps. And I haven't sold a lot of my first product, but actually two this week. It's my best week ever.

Shane Sams: Congratulations. That's awesome.

Theresa Steckel: But I've learned the process.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That is amazing. And there are so many people who are listening right now who have maybe been listening to us for years, and they haven't even done that much. So even if it wasn't the perfect thing think about how much you've learned, and now even if you decide to pivot it's going to be so much easier this time.

Shane Sams: Oh yeah like we just had, a couple weeks ago we had Kevin Depew. He just crossed over-

Theresa Steckel: I listened to that, yeah.

Shane Sams: Yes. Actually we played a best of episode the weekend before that. I wanted everybody to hear his first episode where he was just like, "I have nothing." But he was kind of where you are. He was in his second iteration, like he had tried a couple ideas, didn't work, but he was to the point where he was comfortable with tech. He was comfortable with the terminology. And he was like, "Yeah, I can pivot really fast now. I think I can actually have this thing launched in a month instead of a year." And he did, and now he just crossed over his hundred member mark, and he's doing really well. But it's all because he made a decision to try something. And he failed a couple times, but it got easier and easier, and then the ideas can happen faster.

Shane Sams: Jocelyn and I were talking just we launched a product a couple months ago, and it was a paper newsletter. It's called Prolific Monthly, and it's like deep marketing strategy like daily promotions. And I launched the entire product line on a completely new platform that we had never used by myself with absolutely no help from our team in three days, right? And this thing required logistics. I had to figure out who was going to mail it, how we were going to make it, what was going to be in it, like the whole thing. But it's just after years and years now of launching products and seeing hundreds of other people launch products you just get good at it. And I look back and I'm like it took me ... I don't even know how long it took us get our first digital product online, like probably six months. But now it's like, "I've got an idea." Three days later we have a product.

Shane Sams: So anyone out there that's listening to this do what Theresa did. Pick something, do something, learn things, pay your dues, get through the ropes, and then bam, the next idea is probably the one that's going to make it, okay. So let's figure out how you're going to make this idea big. Before we get into the technical stuff of the business, it sounds like the product's kind of being created, what fears and mindset struggles are holding you back?

Theresa Steckel: I think ... There's so many, and recently it's a little bit ... It's been a lot of anxiety lately and a little bit of exhaustion. I'm used to knowing what I'm doing. I just know what I'm doing. I know what I'm going to do the next day. I'm kind of in control. So I think starting a new job and this online business at the same time and just learning so much in a year and a half has been a little overwhelming and exhausting, and learning to manage my energy has been a little bit more challenging. And then just like I had a sale this week, and she said she couldn't find the product, so I tried to send it back to her, and she didn't respond to my e-mail. I didn't sleep the entire night.

Shane Sams: Like you were just worried about the customer.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah. I was just, you know, and I'm like ... And then you start thinking I'm like, "Gosh, what are they going to say about me? It's online and I'm going to have ..." You know, it's so weird.

Jocelyn Sams: I suspect we are the same person.

Shane Sams: Yes. I think you guys are related somehow.

Jocelyn Sams: Like you're sitting here talking, and I'm like, "Yup, yup, mm-hmm (affirmative)."

Shane Sams: They're going to tweet about me, and all the world will know.

Theresa Steckel: Right. That I'm a total failure, and my people at work are going to know.

Jocelyn Sams: Why didn't I tweet my customer and make it right? The whole world will know that.

Shane Sams: Then I'll tweet that, and people will think I'm lying because they'll believe the customer.

Theresa Steckel: Exactly. That is exactly where my brain went.

Jocelyn Sams: We're sitting in two chairs, and I'll tell you more. Right now he's just sitting here looking at me like, "It's you. It's you."

Shane Sams: As you were talking I was sitting there pointing at Jocelyn while you were doing that because it's the same things that she says.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. It totally is.

Shane Sams: I am glad you didn't say imposter syndrome because if you were like, "You're the vice president of 24 years. Whatever, you don't get to be imposter." Like when I hear that though, they're like, "The stress of getting it right for your customer and just the anxiety and the ..." I love how you put those. I've never ... It's funny how many Podcasts we've done now. I've never heard someone say that and felt so related to what you said. You said anxiety and exhaustion because we feel that a lot.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And I'll tell you I think that was a lot of what was going on with me the past couple of years because I've had all this stuff going on, and I guess I didn't really let myself have permission to think about it or rest or whatever, like I just kept going, and I finally just reached a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And I just started kind of falling apart. And then on top of all that we brought the kids home for home school, and I don't know that just made it that much worse.

Shane Sams: Well that was kind of like what Theresa's going through like, Theresa, you said, "I just started this new job as a vice president what like a year ago, something like that."

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, about the same time I started trying to build a business too.

Shane Sams: Oh yeah, so it's like you basically launched two new things, and you were vastly over prepared for one and maybe under prepared for the other, and that just collided like a battering ram basically and kind of created some exhaustion in there.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, it's a lot of learning.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, absolutely. I just wonder if maybe now might be a good time for you to hire someone on a very part time basis to help you with some of the website stuff.

Shane Sams: Do you have anybody that helps you in your home like do you hire a housekeeper or anything like that?

Theresa Steckel: No.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. That might be the best place to start actually.

Shane Sams: Yeah. This is something that we've been talking about a lot lately with people especially like our one-on-one clients is we're seeing people ... People know they need some kind of support network to help them achieve their goals, right, and their dreams. And everybody goes straight to, "Well, I need a virtual assistant or I need this or I need that," but not really.

Jocelyn Sams: And it's okay for people to do that.

Shane Sams: Sure, it is.

Jocelyn Sams: People think, "Oh, hiring a virtual assistant. That's my next step." But then when you mention hiring someone to help you with housework or something that's when people step on the brakes, and they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."

Shane Sams: Why would I do that? Hold on. I can't do that.

Theresa Steckel: I know. I've definitely been thinking about it for a while.

Shane Sams: I'll tell you right now. I love everybody we work with. We have an awesome small and mighty team right now, and they're the best people ever, but if I fire anybody it's everybody but the lawnmower guy and the person that is our personal assistant at our house because if we don't have the support ... We have a personal assistant who comes every day from 10:00 to 3:00. And she helps us handle all of the chores like not deep cleaning. We have a cleaning lady that comes in on Thursday who does the deep stuff, right. But Jen helps us get all the other stuff done. She does our errands for us.

Jocelyn Sams: She files stuff.

Shane Sams: Files stuff like if Jocelyn needs her to run to the store to get the stickers for the kids' project tomorrow or whatever.

Jocelyn Sams: She does grocery shopping. She buys birthday presents.

Shane Sams: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: And really in most areas it's a relatively inexpensive thing to hire.

Shane Sams: It's actually cheaper, probably, than hiring some kind of online assistant or marketing help. And what's crazy is it's not that we don't want to ... like we think we're like too good to do those things. It's when she handles that it allows us to serve you, right, and for us to be there for our community and be there for our clients and to be there for our members and to be there for the people who write in every week from our Podcast listeners. We have to clear that mental space. We have to clear it even if it's only a couple hours a day.

Shane Sams: Pat Flynn, we spoke at FlynnCon, and he asked us on stage like, "Do you mow your yard anymore?" Because the story that ... I discovered online business while I was mowing my grass. I was on the lawnmower. I found The Smart Passive Income. I heard this guy talk about online business, and I nearly wrecked the lawnmower I got so excited because I was like, "That's it. That's how I'm going to do this." And he asked me, "Do you mow your yard anymore?" I'm like, "I haven't mowed a yard in five or six years," because if I'm mowing the grass I'm not in here talking to you on this Podcast.

Jocelyn Sams: And it's not about being lazy or anything like that. It's about clearing your mental space because right now our assistant is actually, she's on vacation. She was on vacation today, and what I'm sitting here thinking right now even is that, "Oh, I forgot to put the laundry in the dryer."

Shane Sams: Right.

Jocelyn Sams: I mean I'm serious thinking that, and I really did so I have to do that after this Podcast. It just takes off that kind of stress. And there are other things that you can do. It's not just somebody to do your laundry or whatever. If you're sitting here thinking, if you're listening out there and you're thinking, "Okay, well that sounds nice, and if I had the money I would do it," well how can you ... Don't say why you can't do it. Think about how you could do it. Could you skip a meal eating out this week and pay someone to come in even two or three hours and do your laundry? Could you pay someone to watch your kids for a little bit while you do some work? Could you pay someone to mow your grass? There's a lot of different possibilities. And I don't want to dive too far into this because I'm actually presenting a talk on it at the live event.

Shane Sams: So you're going to here a lot more about this.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, I have to hold back just a little bit.

Jocelyn Sams: Just a little bit, but.

Shane Sams: Actually the reason I stopped mowing my grass was because we had a coach, like, six years ago, and I was still mowing my grass, and I got on a coaching call with him, and I was still mowing my grass. And I said, "Hey man, I just got done mowing the grass," and he goes, "Why are you mowing your grass?" I'm like, "I don't know. It doesn't take ... It's an hour and a half." And he goes, "That's an hour and a half that you could've grown your business." And I was like, "Oh, that is true."

Jocelyn Sams: Ouch.

Shane Sams: And then he told me, he said, "I want you to hire someone to mow your grass next week, and I want you to sit at the window, and I want you to have your laptop in your lap and I want you to watch out the computer or watch out the window while they're mowing the grass. And I want you to make five times more money than you pay that guy to mow your grass." And I did it. I wrote an e-mail, I sent it out, made a couple hundred bucks. I paid that guy 20 bucks to mow my grass because it was a small yard.

Shane Sams: So that's what we're saying here is like can you ... The anxiety may still be there, but maybe you can get rid of the exhaustion if you would just take back five hours of your life every week like write a list of everything that you're doing at home besides your job and besides your online business and your kids, right. And just say to yourself, "How can I get back five hours a week, 20 hours a month around my house?" If you can do that the exhaustion goes away, the creativity comes back up, and you get to move forward without feeling anxious and exhausted at the same time. Does that make sense?

Theresa Steckel: Yup.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa. It's been a fun conversation today, and I think we got to delve a little bit into topics that we sometimes don't get to, so it's been kind of fun. But let's talk a little bit about moving your business forward. What can we help you with just to kind of overcome and move to that next step?

Theresa Steckel: Well, I think I have probably two key things. One thing is more kind of technical, so I still have stuff on the old website, and then I have the new website. And I know that my e-mail list, which isn't very big, like maybe 43 people now, 50, I can't remember, but I know it's a mix of students and instructors. I just sent out an e-mail this morning that was written towards instructors, but it was really like, "Hey, I have this free dosage calculation Webinar that your students could have. Do you have anyone that's struggling? Maybe they would like to watch this." But I'm not quite sure how to kind of transition that. Do I just kind of let it float over there by itself or do I just get everything redirected to my new site? Does that make sense?

Shane Sams: It does. I think in any pivot there's always this question of what do I keep, what do I get rid of, what do I turn off, what do I turn on, right?

Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: And you'll have much more clarity when your product is completely done. How far are you from being completely finished with the student-focused product?

Theresa Steckel: For the first semester?

Shane Sams: Yeah.

Theresa Steckel: If I could take a week off of work I would be able to get it done. It's probably going to take me ... I think it's going to take me a few more weeks. I've noticed that I have this really bad habit of, I don't know if it's a habit, but I get creative and I start creating a bunch of stuff, and then I've got to go back and put the logo on it and the website name. And I didn't organize it very good as I was creating it, so I've got almost probably two thirds of the actual stuff created. It's just kind of going back and reorganizing it is taking me almost as long as it took to create it.

Shane Sams: Yeah. I think the best ... Anytime someone doesn't have their product done, and they're asking us about all these other questions I almost always tell them do your product. Forget everything else. Don't send any more e-mails.

Theresa Steckel: Okay. Just get it done.

Shane Sams: Yeah. Don't send anymore e-mails, don't do anymore blog posts, don't do anything else. You're so close to having the actual product. Because when the product is done it becomes a magnifying glass shining the sunlight onto the ground, so it focuses everything like you all of a sudden know exactly what to do because you say, "Wow, I've got this product. What do I need to do? I need to tell people about the product." And that's what everything becomes about. And if you're going to pivot I would just like when you get the product done abandon the other thing like don't worry about it like put the stuff in there, forget it, shut it down. Anything that you want to bring over bring over to the new place. And go all in. Go all in on this one thing and make it grow. You've already got the passion behind the content. You know this is where you kind of want to be going forward, so don't worry about what's happening on that old stuff.

Shane Sams: Go all in on the new thing, but get that product first. If you can finish the product all this other stuff becomes so much more clear like how do I get it ... How does my e-mail list grow? Well I need a lead that leads to the product. What kind of content do I create? Content that leads to the product. So just finish that product, and if you get that done it's going to help you do so much better so much faster.

Theresa Steckel: And then I think the second ... So that makes sense to me. And actually I kind of forgot that I had stuff for sale on the other website, so when I got a couple sales this week I was like, "Oh no, what do I do?"

Shane Sams: Yeah. That's where the greed kicks in. You're like, "Maybe I should focus on that a little."

Theresa Steckel: Yeah. And then I thought I'm having all this anxiety about a product I'm not even planning on continuing to sell, so sort of wasted emotion a little bit. And then the second piece is ... So the part I like is ... So I am an introvert, which isn't always obvious when you meet me, but I like the one-on-one kind of interaction with people. And I think one of the hard things for the online business to me is you can't really see how people are responding to you, so it makes it scarier to me. I mean it's much more vulnerable than when I'm just in a one-on-one situation. So I'm trying to figure out what would fit for me as far as like I've thought about kind of doing Zoom calls or Webinars with students a couple times a month.

Theresa Steckel: You know, I guess I'm trying to figure out what would that look like? Would it just be a Q&A where I'm like, "Hey, what are you struggling with?" Or would I have a topic I've designed to talk about or is that something that I can just figure out after I get the product done?

Jocelyn Sams: Yes. So the beautiful thing about online business is that you can design it any way you want it to be designed. So I often say the best product or the best way to do something is the intersection of what your customers want and what you're willing/able to provide them. So you have to figure out what it is they're looking for and what fits your skillset and your strength the best to get it done.

Shane Sams: And you can change it any time like right now so we've always done Q&A in a chatroom format. So in the Flip Your Life community if you're a premium member of our community you get to go in, and there's two live Q&As with me and Jocelyn every single month, right. We answer questions, we do all that. We've always done it where people type in the chatroom, Jocelyn reads the questions, we answer them, okay, but last ... They changed some of the tech on YouTube, which is how we used to deliver this content, so we said, "All right, we're going to use Zoom." And since we were going to use Zoom we decided, "Let's let people answer the questions this time." So everybody puts their-

Jocelyn Sams: Ask the questions.

Shane Sams: Or ask the questions, yeah, not answer them. So everybody put their questions in the chat. Jocelyn picked one. I just clicked on them, and they talked, and they got the answer to their question and talk to us live on air, right. It was awesome. It was totally cool. We've always kind of not done that because of logistics, but I kind of wish we always had now because it was really, really fun. It could change in the future. We could ... I was just coaching somebody the other day, and they didn't want to do live calls where it was too confusing to get all of their people together in one place at the same time or something. So what they did was the people submitted the questions early, and then they read the question online, and then they just did like a Q&A, but you submit your question ahead of time. So there's a thousand different ways.

Theresa Steckel: Okay.

Shane Sams: And I would just do it and practice a couple different ways and change it on the fly and see what happens because you'll eventually find something you're like, "This is it. I love this, and I want to do it this way." And that's what you're looking for, but you won't know until you experiment a little bit.

Theresa Steckel: So just pick something is what you're saying.

Shane Sams: Yes. That's usually what I say to people.

Jocelyn Sams: The moral of your story, Theresa, is pick something and move ahead.

Shane Sams: Yeah. You know what's so funny. It's like pick something is probably the wrong way to do it.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah.

Shane Sams: I should tell people pick the next thing. Just pick the next thing because the next thing probably has no bearing on the three next things, right. It's just do the next thing, and it will lead you to where you have to go next.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa, we are at the point in the show where we are going to ask you what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about here today?

Theresa Steckel: I have two, but I think my first thing is I'm going to get my product done.

Shane Sams: I think you should do that.

Theresa Steckel: Yes. And second I'm going to hire someone.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, awesome.

Shane Sams: Love it.

Theresa Steckel: Clean my house.

Shane Sams: And I am going to see you ... Let's see, right now we're recording this. What is today, August what?

Jocelyn Sams: August 23rd.

Shane Sams: It is August 23rd, so we are going to see you on September-

Theresa Steckel: Ooh, like a month.

Shane Sams: Okay, it's almost exactly a month. As soon as I see you at Flip Your Life Live I'm going to say, "Theresa, who did you hire, and is your product done?"

Jocelyn Sams: And let's see the product.

Shane Sams: And let's see the product. Actually you got to come up to me on your phone and pull it up.

Theresa Steckel: Okay.

Shane Sams: Is that a deal?

Theresa Steckel: Sure. That won't make me nervous at all.

Shane Sams: That's a massive accountability, massive accountability, okay.

Jocelyn Sams: All right. So if you would like to see Theresa's product and know who she hired join us in Lexington September 19th through the 21st. We would love to see you there at Flip Your Life Live.

Shane Sams: I don't even know if this is going to air before Flip Your Life Live, but if it is-

Jocelyn Sams: Well, if it does ...

Shane Sams: If it does you sign up flippedlifestyle.com/live. If not, you've got to buy the replay, sorry.

Jocelyn Sams: Yup, buy the video if it's after.

Shane Sams: All right, guys, what a great, great conversation with Theresa. Man, that was an awesome talk. I love watching people's journey. I love seeing them make those big pivots. And I love watching them find the thing that really they latch onto, and they're ready to take it to the next level. We would love to help you take your next steps. We would love to help you choose your next thing over at flippedlifestyle.com. We have a free course to help you come up with your idea, validate that it's going to make money online, and even get your product started. There is a free course over at flippedlifestyle.com. It's called our online business quick start guide, and we would love to have you go check that out over at flippedlifestyle.com.

Shane Sams: All right guys, that's all the time we have for this week, but before we go we always like to close our show with a Bible verse. Jocelyn and I get a lot of our inspiration and motivation from the Bible. There's a lot of great stuff in there about being successful at business, but today Theresa has a Bible verse that she'd like to share with us, so Theresa take it away.

Theresa Steckel: Yeah, so I chose Matthew 6:26, which says, "Look at the birds in the sky. They don't plant or harvest. They don't even store grain in barns, yet your father in Heaven takes care of them. Aren't you worth more than birds?" I always think about that verse, and this is going to sound really silly, but when Shane tells his cow story I always think of this verse. If God cares about that cow he cares about you.

Shane Sams: I know like let me tell the cow story because someone might be like, "A cow story? What are we ..." This whole conversation.

Jocelyn Sams: We should make them go back and listen to the podcast.

Shane Sams: Oh I should, but I'm going to tell the cow story. When I was selling insurance in my young 20s right out of college, and I had this little office where I was just ... I was a glorified secretary, and I hated my job so bad, and I just wanted out of it so bad. And I remember leaning up one day on the filing cabinet looking out the window, and there was a herd of cattle across the street. And I remember thinking to myself right there in that moment I would love to be one of those cows. Look at those cows. They're just free, free to do whatever they ...

Theresa Steckel: I know. I'm from Nebraska, so I can so connect with that.

Shane Sams: That's right, that's right. So if God takes care of the birds and the cows he's got something for us too, right Theresa?

Theresa Steckel: Right.

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

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Shane Sams: Even if you just had someone like Monday and Thursday.

Jocelyn Sams: And I'll tell you it'll make you so happy when you come in and like-

Theresa Steckel: Everything's clean.

Jocelyn Sams: Yes.

Shane Sams: Yes.

Theresa Steckel: We've been working on what things we can cut out of our budget because my husband's decided now too he's not going to do online, but he's trying to do something new. So we for, like, the last two weeks have been just kind of line item like what can we cut out, what can we cut out, what else can we cut out.

Shane Sams: Yup. But this is buying back time. It's way more important than spending money.

Theresa Steckel: Right, right.

Jocelyn Sams: And mental space.

Shane Sams: Yes. Because that's going to allow you ... Like for example if you cut ... It looks like you ... I'm not saying you do this, but let's say you cancel cable, right? But you take that money and immediately put it right back into somebody else or something else, right?

Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: That doesn't really make you anything. But if you put it back into this mental space and this time it allows you all that time back to go make more money and more space. Do you see what I'm saying, so like there's ROI.

Theresa Steckel: Right. And that's what we're trying to look at is what things can we cut out that really aren't going to move us forward so that we can pay for things that are going to move us forward.

Shane Sams: When you're looking at your line item veto what we do is we say ... We're actually about to do this. We do this every about quarter. I've got all three of our last, like, statements printed from the business and our personal life, and we're going to through it with a highlighter, and we're going to say, "How does this save us time or how does this make us money?" And if it doesn't do one of those things, especially the business side of the equation it's probably going to get axed, right?

Theresa Steckel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: So just ask yourself that every time. Does this save us time? Does this save us money? Does this make us money? Nope, bye, and it's gone. And then start looking at those other things that do, okay.

Theresa Steckel: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, Theresa, you've got this. Can't wait to see-

Theresa Steckel: Thanks, guys.

Shane Sams: We'll see you soon, okay.

Theresa Steckel: Have a great day.

Jocelyn Sams: All right, thanks, bye.

Theresa Steckel: All right, bye, bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Theresa's Website
• Flip Your Life Community
• PROLIFIC Monthly

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