August 2018 Archives

Episode 18: How to Give People An Aha! Moment

In this episode, I dive into some of the ways you can give people their aha! moment. This will make your writing, teaching, and influence far more powerful, no matter what niche you’re in.

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Full Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Julie today, I want to talk to you about something that I’ve really been thinking about on my own and also had one of my clients asked me about. She said, Julie, how do you create Aha! moments? She said, you’re such a good teacher, which I said, thank you. That was awesome. And she said, you know, you’re just always giving people those Aha! moments, like how do you do that?

So I want to talk about that today because I think if you’re trying to become an influencer or you’re a teacher or a coach, consultant, whatever it happens to be, part of your job is to help people have that Aha!. So how do we do that?

So the first thing is, I read a book once and this had nothing to do with teaching and everything to do with advertising, but I remember them talking about the combination of adrenaline and dopamine in the brain. And in advertising, there’s this fine balance between creating curiosity to get people to stop and look and pay attention. Russell calls that getting the hook, right? It’s the hook of whatever it is you’re doing.

And then there’s the story. There’s the resolution, there’s the context, right? So you get somebody to stop and get them to look. Then you tell them a quick story. You give them some context and they have that, oh, okay, I get it. There’s that resolution, right? So when you have the adrenaline side, which is the curiosity, right? That’s what happens. It piques your adrenaline, gets your heart racing a little bit, get you paying attention, focused at attention basically.

And then the story, the context is the dopamine hit. It’s that sense of resolution, that closed loop that we want. So when you combine those two things together, you really have an Aha! moment and so the most important thing you want to do in your teaching is give people that Aha!. So maybe even at the beginning of this episode when I said I want to teach you how to give people Aha! moments, maybe you were like, oh, how do you do that?

Like, oh, I didn’t even think of that. Oh, well maybe there was a little bit of a rush of curiosity of what was I going to say? How am I gonna? How am I going to explain that to you? And then I go and explain it, and then you have this resolution, the context where you feel like, oh, okay, I get it now. That’s the dopamine hit and now I’ve just given you an Aha!.

Now there’s lots of ways to give people Aha!. The first and the most powerful way I think to give someone an Aha! when you’re teaching is by using story. And when you tell a story, you have to remember the steps where the journey that you took or your client hook or whoever you the stories about what, what steps did they actually take that got them to their result?

Because a lot of us we forget and we think, oh, this is so cool. We’re always sharing what’s in the moment and we forget all the things we did to get where we wanted to go. A perfect example would be, you know, I do webinars now. I do them pretty regularly and make lots of money and it’s super fun to tell those stories and to tell people, but then people who are just starting or like, how do you do that?

And if I can walk back and go back to that first day when I discovered what a Webinar was, I did it completely wrong and I didn’t pitch and all these mistakes I made and if I start telling that story, I create that bridge where I go back to where I was, because chances are your customer, your client is back there too.

So you have to go back there and get really, really in touch with their story because it was probably your story at one point or somebody you know. And then what you do is once you’re back in there, you’re in that context and you’re dragging them along your journey. The idea is that in the telling of the story, you’re going to give them the same Aha! that you had.

We do this all the time in webinars where we look at what the false beliefs are when we’re trying to sell something. You know, if I’m trying to sell some sort of dieting program, the false belief is going to be like, this doesn’t work, right? This is crap. And so I have to go back to when I thought it was crap too, and I have to resonate with them in that moment and talk about how I felt when I thought it was crap, and then walk them in that story journey to the point at which I had that epiphany, that Aha! moment. That sense of all of a sudden something changed.

Because when you do that, you’re more likely to give them the Aha! than if you just talk about all the stuff you love about it now because you’re like 10 steps ahead of them. So one of the most powerful ways to give people Aha! moments is through story.

This is really similar, but another way to give people Aha! moments is to think about analogies. This works really, really well when you draw analogies between something that they know, but that’s unrelated. I do this all the time with business and dieting because we all know people who are on diets. Maybe we’re on diets. Maybe we understand the yo-yo cycle of dieting and so I can draw analogies to business, to marketing in the dieting world. And when I begin telling that analogy, usually there’s a little bit of adrenaline because there’s some curiosity, right?

I remember I wrote a blog post once called “If You Like Dieting, You Might Fail at Business”, right? Curiosity. It’s a hook. People are like, what is she going to say? And then I tell a story, I give the context, it closes the loop. We get the dopamine rush, we get the Aha!.

So practice telling analogies, finding things that are unrelated to the topic at hand, but are super, super relatable where you can draw those parallels.

Another example that I use is in sales funnels. When I’m talking about sales funnels and kind of the psychological mind games that happen when you’re building a sales funnel and you’re about to launch it, procrastination, fear, imposture syndrome, rabbit trails, all this kind of stuff. And I talk about it and I kind of draw the analogy that that launching a sales funnel is a little bit like giving birth.

And then I start talking about giving birth and all of a sudden people are having that Aha! moment. That’s my best advice for you is when you want to give people that Aha! moment, it’s really about stories. It’s about analogies and it’s also about you going back in your past and being able to retrace your steps to really think about the points, the low points, the high points, the points where you went, oh my gosh, that’s it. The points where you felt blocked against a wall because the more able you are to get in touch with the past and kind of how you came to the journey or where you are right now, the better able you are to kind of reach back in and grab people.

I mean, it goes without saying that if you want to give someone an Aha! moment, you also need to have some sense of emotion. You can’t just be a bland, boring, monotone speaker, so you have to really be able to capture an emotion as well.

Finally, the last thing I would say is never stop learning. I think the more Aha! moments you have as an influencer or as an entrepreneur, the more you’re gonna be able to give to other people because the minute you have an Aha!, super important record, write, do whatever you have to do in that moment because you’re going to capture emotion. You’re going to capture feeling that you wouldn’t be able to get any other way.

A lot of you probably listened to one of my previous podcasts, I came back from Kenya. I wrote the blog post on the flight home. I was exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do to be quite frank, was write a 3000 word blog post, especially because there was a lot of movies. I was in First Class. I could lay down, I could go to sleep, but I knew that if I didn’t write and experience that again through my writing in that moment, that I would lose it, that it wouldn’t carry the same Aha!

I wouldn’t be able to give you that same emotional feeling. I had a really, really dark period of my life back in 2011. I haven’t really talked about it very much yet at least to this audience and I will, but I actually wrote a book. I wrote a 50,000-word book about my experience. It was a memoir and I thought I’d lost it because it was on an old computer. It’s not published right now. The other day I found it. It’s the first time I looked at it since 2011, so it’s been seven years and I read that and I remember writing it. I remember thinking, is it too soon to write this memoir? This just happened to me like two months ago, you know, and I knew there was so much grief involved. You guys, I read that manuscript, holy freaking crap.

I was immediately and 1000% brought back into that scenario. Not only that, but I read it and I felt really uncomfortable when I read it because I was like, I felt that way. Oh my gosh. What was going on in my head and I realized that that 40, 50,000 word manuscript is now a living, breathing capsule of my feelings and emotions at that moment, because I know that now that I’m eight years past or seven years past, l would never in a million years write that memoir, the way I wrote it, then.

I would write it completely differently. I’ve got so much experience, so much therapy, so much going on and I would never have remembered half of those feelings, but now it’s etched in time. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing because it’s a pretty dark and grimy story, but I have it.

And so for you guys, when you’re teaching, when you’re podcasting, when you Facebook Live things, you have to figure out some way to capture in the midst of those moments, in the midst of those emotions.

Otherwise, you’re never going to be able to then give it to people because even if you don’t share what you’re writing, the memoir, I’m not sharing it right now, but I have it. It’s recorded in time so that I can always go back and reach it. Which means when it comes time for me to help people who are in the situation I was in, I will be able to give them the Aha! because I will be able to walk that road again. So that’s my best advice for you. I hope that helps.

As always, I appreciate you and I will talk to you soon. If you’re ready to create growth scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com/podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.

How to Bootstrap an Online Business with $5000

In the last episode, I dove into bootstrapping your new business with $500-$1000. (Link to last blog post for words “bootstrapping your new business with $500-$1000)

Today, I want to talk about starting an online business with a $5000 budget.
If you had $5000 to start your online business, what should you spend it on?
You might need things like…

– A Website
– Sales Pages
– Project Management System
– Appointment Scheduler
– Professional Email Address
– Marketing Training
– Business Coaching

This week, I discuss specific ways and tools (some free!) to get your online business going for an entire year with only $5000.
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Video Transcript

Hi there, this is Julie. Today I’m doing something a little different. This is a bootstrapping series. I have people ask me all the time, I only have $500 or $1000 to start my business or a couple thousand. What do I do?

And so I’m going to break down exactly the tools and the courses and products that I would buy in order to build a business.

Now in another episode, you can check out on Juliechenell.com, I explain what you can do with $500 or $1000.

Today’s episode is going to include what to do if you have a $5,000 startup budget. And some of you might be like, oh my gosh, $5,000 is so much money, but to start an entire business that’s going to make you $50k to $100k to $200,000 a year is really not that much of an investment.

So let’s take $5,000. Let’s assume you already have a laptop. You already have wifi and we’re going to give you all the tools you need for one year. This will bootstrap your business for an entire year, so that gives you 12 months to find clients and continue growing.

The first thing I’m gonna have you do is buy ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is so important for a number of reasons.

Number one, you can build your entire website in it.

Number two, they give you a free domain for a year.

Number three, you can join the ClickFunnels Affiliate Program, and as a digital marketer, it’s so easy to sell, ClickFunnels and earn $456 a year for every client you sign up to it.

It also can take payment right through their shopping cart system. You can hook up stripe right into ClickFunnels and take payment for your business, so for a year of the ClickFunnels deal, you’re also going to get some extras that Russell throws in.

You’re gonna get Funnel Scripts, which is software that helps you write copy. If you’re building funnels and are doing ads for customers, this is gonna save you so much time.

So you’re going to get that as well. You’re also going to get an entire suite of training courses on digital marketing. Super important.

That’s going to cost you $2,000. $1997 for that, and you’ll have your domain, your website, and all the tools you need to really start doing digital marketing.

The second thing I’m gonna have you purchase is my Digital Gangsta program and this is from zero to a million dollars to build any kind of online business.

This has everything from copy to funnels to branding, to launching, to list building, to ads, to proposals.

It has everything you need and it also includes one year of weekly coaching through my membership community Create Your Laptop Life. I can’t quite explain what happens when you get all of that.

I mean, most people who purchased that never go on to purchase anything else because it’s everything they need.

That’s also $1997 and you’ll get all that content, all that training as well as a year of weekly coaching for me.

All right, awesome. So now you’re at about $3,994. You’ve got to bat a thousand dollars left.

Now we’re going to use some free tools. We’re gonna use Calendly for your scheduler. That’s going to be free.

You can use Trello for project management.

You don’t really need MailChimp when you… You can use MailChimp for free, but with the big ClickFunnels deal, you can actually do your emailing right in ClickFunnels.

And you don’t need any other courses because it’s all included.

So there’s just a few things left. We’ll need G-Suite. G-Suite will get you a professional email address as well as Google Drive and calendar to help you organize your business.

You also may want something like 17 hats or Dubsado. This is a customer relationship manager and it allows you to send contracts and invoices, which are really handy for an agency business. That’ll cost you about $250 a year.

At this point. With all of that, you still have about $650 left. I would save that and I would use that towards your first big networking event.

Whether it’s Funnel Hacking Live, whether it’s a smaller event, a Boss Mom retreat. Use that to go and actually find and network with people in real life who are going to become clients.

And that will bootstrap your business for an entire year. It gives you plenty of time to go find clients and start making money.

I know the best conversations happen after the camera stops rolling, so if you have any questions about bootstrapping your business, with the $5,000 investment, put them down in the comments below and to see the other episode in this series, you can go to Juliechenell.com. See you next time.

Coaching Create Your Laptop Life Podcast Digital Marketing Aug 9, 2018

Episode 17: Ready to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency? Listen First!

One of my students asked me the other day, “I’m about to hire a digital marketing agency. What do I look for?” It sparked a ton of thoughts and so I thought I would share them all with you today.

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Hey everyone, this is Julie and today I wanna talk to you about running or hiring an agency. A lot of people ask how I get ideas for my podcast and I will tell you I get them directly from my Digital insiders. That is my high-end mastermind where I support 60 small business entrepreneurs, startups and when they ask me questions I like to give them an answer. I like to give them as complete an answer as possible.

So one of my clients, students asked me, I am thinking about hiring an agency to do my digital marketing. What do I look for? And I thought, you know, that’s a great question because whether you’re going to hire an agency, whether you are an agency looking for clients or whether you’re thinking about creating your own internal agency for your business. And after all ClickFunnels. Where I work right now does that. They built an agency inside of ClickFunnels. So a lot of businesses will build an internal digital marketing agency and team. Others will hire out and others will be the agency. So I’m going to give you the lowdown on what I think you should look for and things to also watch out for.

So for those of you who don’t know, I ran a funnel building agency before I became a coach. So I’ve had a lot of experience in not only funnel building from the side of being an agency owner, but also now working in ClickFunnels really as one of the key, you know, project managers, overseers of that agency in there. As well as hiring my own agencies. So let’s talk a little bit about what you might hire a digital marketing agency for.

I break it out into a bunch of categories. Some people hire digital marketing agencies to build funnels, right? You have a product, you have a service, you want to generate leads and make sales. So you hire people to build a funnel for you.

Now in the funnel building process, there’s oftentimes info products and other kinds of products that have to be created. Unless, of course you’re in E-commerce.

Some digital marketing agencies will also help you with the products inside the funnel, right? The fulfillment. So whether it’s book design, e-book design, course design, membership design, or however you’re delivering those products.

But remember, digital marketing agencies traditionally focus on the marketing and sales side, not necessarily the fulfillment side. If you get a good agency, you’ll get someone who can do both, or sometimes you just have to find a specialist in each direction.

Other people hire digital marketing agencies for more traditional marketing things that we think of, like website design, right? You want a new website, maybe you want to show up on Google search for your business. Maybe you want SEO. A lot of people hire digital marketing agencies to do that kind of work as well.

Oftentimes when you’re building a website, you need graphics, right? You need a new logo, new brand board, all those kinds of things.

And yet still some people hire digital marketing agencies for social media. They do it because they want someone to run their Facebook page or their Instagram account or their YouTube channel. So there are digital marketing agencies that focus a lot on traffic and social media.

There are also agencies that are just specifically paid traffic. So they are ads. So a Facebook ad agency or a Google ads agency.

Okay. And then again, there are digital marketing agencies that do it all. The one last piece that maybe I haven’t talked about yet, some agencies will do it, some won’t, is the copy. Copy is so incredibly important and that is sprinkled everywhere, whether it’s in your content, in your social media, on your ads, in your funnels. A lot of digital marketing agencies will have a copywriter on staff, some will ask that you deliver your own copy.

So that’s kind of another sort of specialized subset in the agency world. And lastly, can’t forget video. Some digital marketing agencies will have a video team and they will do all your video editing. Others will fly out to you and produce the content. Sometimes though you may need to find an agency that does exclusively that.

So what do I do in my business? My business right now has an internal agency for most of the pieces. I have an internal agency that handles the copy, the funnel building as well as the fulfillment. So that’s kind of all the stuff and the social media, I should say that too social media. So all of those aspects are done internally on my team with people that I’ve hired, either as employees or contractors.

I have a third party outside agencies helping me in two key areas, one with video and one with ads.

Those are easy things that happen in a business that can kind of be separated out. Sometimes it’s hard to separate out when you’re building funnels and fulfillment. All that kind of stuff just starts to mush together. And it’s really hard to work with an outside agency because day to day things change, you pivot. Whereas ads and video content can often easily be outsourced because the boundaries are really clear.

All right, so you are a startup. Maybe you are looking to hire an agency. The first thing I would ask you is what you love to do and what do you hate to do? Because some people actually like being on social media. They enjoy figuring out what kind of content would be cool and they feel nervous about putting that job in somebody else’s hands because they want to make sure their voice is consistent. and on brand.

If that’s you, obviously as the business owner, you can’t be doing all your own social media. But what you can do is create an internal social media team. Some people call it like a social listening team and engagement team where you have people that are really bought into your culture, bought into your voice. bought into your business. And so they’re out there as your social media voice. Okay?

So in that case, I would not outsource your social media to an agency. I would build an in-house team. If you are the kind of person who loves building funnels, you may want a funnel builder because chances are if you are building lots of funnels and creating lots of offers and always trying new things, it’s going to get very, very expensive to have a third party agency constantly doing that for you.

On the other side, if you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what, I just want to focus on one or two really amazing funnels and then I want to go out and teach and speak and write my book and do all that kind of stuff and you’re not really into the Internet marketing game. I would say it’s totally worth paying an agency to build those funnels for you to maintain those funnels for you to optimize those funnels for you so that you can focus on the things that you love to do.

Other people are like, okay, I can build the funnels, but I just don’t want to do the ads. Ads are super easy to outsource because it’s very clear. A good ads agency will connect with whoever your funnel builder is to make sure that the funnel is optimized before you run the ads.

If they’re not asking about optimizing the funnel, then they’re not a good ads agency and run for the hills.

I think that everybody should have an in-house copywriter. Even though I know a lot of agencies come with copywriters. I think it’s really, really helpful when you have someone who gets to know your voice and who can write as you, because writing is one of the things that you do most. So those are kind of my ideas.

If you are going to build a completely internal team, you will need a copywriter. You will need a funnel builder. This is someone who can do ClickFunnels work or whatever program you use. You will need a designer. This will be someone who can do things like logos, course logos, maybe pdfs if you’re delivering worksheets in a course. So any sort of graphics assets, you’ll probably need a videographer, video editor of some kinds who can edit out your video content or even produce it.

And then you’ll need a social media team. A team that’s producing the content, distributing the content and also listening to the customers out there in groups and in private messages and on comments to make sure that you understand the pulse of your customer. So that’s what I would do if I was going to build an internal team.

And I know the next question is how much is this all going to cost? And it really, I mean it’s just all over the map. I could start with some easy numbers. So if you are going to outsource your ads, for example, Facebook ads, you can find providers who will do it for a thousand dollars a month. You can find providers who will do it for $5,000 a month.

A lot of times when you start running a lot of money for ads, you’re going to notice that people are wanting a commission as well. Bonuses, royalties, things like that. So that’s pretty common with ads agencies.

Video production. You can spend very little and just have someone be an editor, you know, a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a month. Or you can have someone that you have on retainer for about $5,000 a month where they produce your videos, edit them, create your ads, and really just work to support your business from a video standpoint.

Social media managers, if you’re hiring, can be, you know, there again all over the map, $500 to $2,000 a month. It really depends. If you hire a specialist on Instagram, you could pay $2,000 a month just for the Instagram growth.

If you’re hiring more of a social media virtual assistant, you may be able to pay $2,000 a month and have her kind of just manage all the channels. So it really, really depends on whether you’re going for aggressive growth hacking techniques or you’re looking for someone who can distribute content and engage with your audience, but you’re not looking for that massive growth really, really fast.

Copywriters on retainer…. they can be expensive. They can be pricey. I mean, it’s not uncommon to pay a $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month for someone to do your emails and your Instagram captions and your ads. Oftentimes, copywriters won’t do a retainer package for sales funnels just because there is a lot of work. They’ll charge per piece. So they’ll charge you anywhere from $500 to $10,000 for a sales letter. It just depends on how good they are and what they do.

When I was doing just copy work, I was charging about $2,000 to write a sales letter. That was kinda my price point. So I was pretty reasonable at the time.

So let’s talk about funnel builders. Funnel builders, you know, again, you’ll get funnel builders who will just build you a funnel for three grand or build you a funnel for five grand. Or you can find a funnel builder who wants to be on retainer and expect to pay them four to $5,000 a month if you’re doing a lot of funnel building.

If you’re only doing a little funnel building, you might be able to get away with an online business manager or a tech virtual assistant, and they will charge you between two and $3,000 a month to kind of manage all your tech, right? Not just your funnels, maybe it’s your email marketing, your WordPress site, et Cetera, et cetera.

So, what do I look for when hiring? So I have chosen to do the specialist route where I’m looking for specialists in certain areas and that’s partly because in my background I’m very, very good at a lot of things and I have a team that’s very good at a lot of things so I don’t need someone who can just do everything.

I want super specialized help. So I needed to get to 10,000 followers on Instagram. So I hired an Instagram expert. I need really, really good on-brand video. I hired the video guy. so I do the specialist route.

If you are a small business and you don’t have, you know, 20 to $30,000 a month to spend on specialists in digital marketing and yes, it’s very expensive. Then I would definitely look for a comprehensive digital marketing agency that does it all. You’re still gonna pay probably five to $7,000 a month for them. If they’re really going to do it all, copywriting, funnel building ads, the whole nine yards, like don’t expect that to be less. But you won’t have to worry, they will be kind of doing the whole thing project managing the whole thing, and then you can really keep most of your digital marketing outsourced and only hire internally for things like customer support.

Obviously, there are multiple ways to skin a cat. If you are a digital marketing agency, you will stand out in the sea of digital marketers if you do more than the average. I know for me, I was building course materials in addition to the funnels and I was doing ads and copy and so it was really a one-stop-shop. People loved it. They just talked to one person and my team and my agency handled everything. That’s very, very compelling and it also makes it likely that they’re going to hire you.

If you’re an agency, but you want to be specialized, get really, really, really good at one particular thing. It’s a little easier to scale when you’re an agency that’s a specialist. Let’s say it’s Instagram because your process gets really tight. Whereas when you’re a comprehensive digital marketing agency, every client’s different. So, you know, there’s a lot of factors involved, so I hope this is helpful. I hope this is helpful for anyone who is thinking about hiring a digital marketing agency, bringing a team onboard.

This is stuff I love. I plan to talk more about it because I know everybody needs to either hire a digital marketer or be when themselves if you’re going to make it in the online space. As always, I appreciate you guys. Talk to you soon.

If you’re ready to create growth scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com/podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.

Balancing it All Create Your Laptop Life Podcast The Best Stuff Aug 3, 2018

Episode 16: Hardship is Never Wasted

In this episode, I give you some of my biggest business takeaways from my two-week journey over to Kenya Africa, and what happened when a business snafu happened while I was thousands of miles away.

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Full Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Julie, I’m back. I have been gone for the last two weeks in Kenya and I tried to batch my podcast episodes so that I would leave you with stuff while I was gone, but alas, I didn’t get as many done as I wanted. Today, this episode is a little different.

I want to just tell you about some of the things that happened to me in Kenya and some business lessons that I learned. And so I actually in my group, I have a membership community at createyourlaptoplife.com and every week I go live and I tell them stories and I answer questions. And somebody asked me what was the biggest takeaway from your trip to Kenya and how is that going to impact your life and your business? And there was a 20-minute response that I gave to her and so rather than rehash it here, I’d just like to share that with you.

So today’s podcast episode is actually an excerpt from my Q&A hour inside of my membership group createyourlaptoplife.com. Where I’m answering the question about the key takeaways I had from my two-week trip over to Kenya. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can always go to my Instagram account @Juliechenell where I have all the highlights there. I also have a really long blog post I wrote about Kenya. I was there for both business and personal reasons to help build a school in a county in the [inaudible], Kenya. I also was there, you know, kind of as a personal thing for me to go experience another part of the world. I traveled with Russell Brunson and a bunch of people from ClickFunnels. Anyway, it was a completely transformational experience, so I’m gonna share with you this clip for today’s episode and as always, I appreciate you and thanks so much for listening.

Helen asked me this question. She says, what was your biggest takeaway from Kenya and how will you be applying it to business and your life? That is such a loaded question.

Many of you guys don’t know this about me, or maybe you do. But I got married at 21 and had three babies really, really fast. Which means when everybody else in my world was adulting and figuring out what they wanted to do with their life, I was nursing children and changing and in the swarms of motherhood.

So I graduated high school with a boyfriend, went to college with that same boyfriend, got married in college with that same boyfriend. Really didn’t have any space to do anything other than churn out babies. So going to Kenya was the first time since I was 18 years old because I only went away to school for one year, first time since I was 18-year-olds that I was without a husband, like in the vicinity without a spouse, without children and really without any work responsibilities.

So it was very, very, very uncomfortable for me because I have been very crowded with responsibility my entire life and so not only was it the first time in 17 years I had been alone for 10 days, it was also in a country on a continent that was completely foreign to me.

It was like I knew Dave and I knew Russell, right? Those were the two people I knew going on the trip. Everybody else was a complete stranger. And with the exception of two other people on the trip, everybody came as either a couple or a family. Right. So they had somebody that they were experiencing this brand new, very overwhelming situation with. There were two other people that I came to find out later had come on their own.

So that first night I was terrified. I was terrified to touch the water to do anything because the health clinic guy made me paranoid. I was like, the mosquitoes are going to give me malaria. I can’t take a shower. The guy gave me juice and I was like, I don’t know if I should have that juice.

And I just remember laying in my bed being like this was the dumbest idea ever. I have nobody to talk to. My SIM card wasn’t hooked up and it was really scary. The first, two or three days I barely ate, barely slept. I just felt so out of my element.

I have a pretty strong spiritual background. So for me, I think one of the biggest things that happened was that I had to dig deep and find my ability to talk to God again because it’s been a long time for me and. That was big. He was the only one I had. There was nobody else and as the trip went on, I developed relationships and friendships with people where I’ve started sharing those experiences and so there were other people that I could lean on and talk to and I got a SIM card finally. I was able to reach Alex and text him and talk to him and share with him my feelings. That first night was probably the scariest in the camp.

I think one of the things that I learned about it is that hardship is never wasted. And I would see these situations where there’s so much poverty and so much hardship and yet it was like I couldn’t decide if I wanted to take the hardship away or if I wanted to just be in awe of what the hardship produced.

And so for example, we had this gathering where we were opening the school and it was a two and a half hour presentation and the politicians were there and there was 200 children sitting in the hot sun paying attention for two hours. I was like, there’s no way in hell any American kid would sit here for two hours in the blazing hot sun without food, without drink, without any entertainment, no phones and pay attention.

Right. It would just be complete mayhem. People would be on their phones and get a snack. They need water, they need shade, they need this, that and the other thing. So I’m watching this and I’m in awe at these children and their ability to focus and so I’m like, I don’t know whether to be like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. Or if I should be like, what kind of hardship do they endure on a daily basis that creates the kind of character needed to be in that situation as a six-year-old and handle it.

I don’t have the answer, but all I knew is I was watching this. I’m like, hardship is never wasted. A couple of days into the thing, I got word from on Voxer that my ad account… actually it was like an email that my ad account got shut down.

So here I am in the IDP camp and I’m looking at kids who come in and they have one meal a day. There’s this little three-year-old boy. He comes to the camp. I don’t even know where his mother is. I don’t see him eat or drink all day long. I don’t see an adult. And then he just leaves when it’s dark again. And I’m freaking out that my ad account got shut down because now I’ve got this huge business. I got all these expenses and my revenue goes from here, and it just tanks.

And I’m like okay, I can panic about this. There’s nothing I can do. I am abajillion miles away on a mountain somewhere or I can just remember that hardship is never wasted. And I’m so stupid because like who fucking cares that my ad account shut down because look at what I’m looking at, you know?

But in my world, an ad account being shut down is a really big deal. Right? It’s, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got bills to pay, I’ve got people to pay, I’ve got things I have to do.

But I just had that moment where I was like, I felt God say to me, “Julie, any hardship that you’ve come across, whether it’s personal hardship, relational hardship, physical hardship, no matter what, I’m not going to waste it.” And so to me that was like, okay, so then that means no matter what happens in the entrepreneurial journey, whether good stuff happens or bad stuff happens, it’s not going to be wasted.

So that was huge for me and I think I was able to then relax and be like alright, this freaking sucks. And so for you guys, you know, you don’t get a contract or a client gets really mad at you or your ad account gets shut down or something doesn’t go as planned and you’re just like, why me? Right? That’s your sensations. What did I do to deserve this? How do I fix it? Everybody else seems to have a perfect life, perfect business…

And it’s an opportunity. Every hard thing that happens becomes an opportunity and it becomes an opportunity to be bigger, to be better, to learn more. And as I watched that happen over and over and over again, I was like I wanted to take all the hardship away from the kids. I wanted to feed them and I wanted to do all those things and yet I was like that hardship wasn’t wasted in them.

And so that was a really big deal for me and that was probably my biggest takeaway. Definitely at the camp… right? Because the trip was divided into two sections and I would love to take you guys to this camp.

In fact, Stu and Amy at the end, By the way, Stu and Amy are like the most amazing humans in the world. I have never met people that are as awesome as these two people. So just Yay for them. They made a comment that they’re hoping that the donors who went on this trip will start to bring in their communities and so the Indaho community is where I was. So I told Stu and Amy I have a community, I can rally the troops. And so I think coming in the future, there may be some opportunity for us as a community to impact this community. Maybe even go to Kenya, which would be amazing.

So anyway, that was the camp part and the second half was a safari. The safari. So we went back, we got off the mountain, we went back to Nairobi. We spent a day in Nairobi doing touristy things, the market, the shops, all that kind of stuff.

And then the next morning we hopped on this little puddle jumper, in a 12 person plane and we flew an hour and landed in the Maasai Mara Reserve. The airport is dirt. It’s like a big square piece of dirt, you know what I mean? And the very first thing I noticed when I got off the plane was how quiet it was. No electricity, no streets, no lights, no cars, no nothing. It was just like, there’s nothing. I wish I could bottle up the silence and share it with you guys because it was the most profound silence. Very unnerving, very unnerving.

So we get to the camp. Camp is beautiful. I mean it’s like next level camping. I mean this is not camping like you think. It’s amazing. Right? But we go and they dropped me off in my tent. Right. And I’m in my tent alone so this is yet another experience where I’m like all alone and they’re telling me that I can’t leave my tent at night because there’s animals and it’s ungated and I need a guard and all this kind of stuff and I’m laying there and I hear this slap, slap, slap noise, what is that?

And I go outside and I look outside my tent and there’s a crocodile on the riverside, slopping…I didn’t know what it was, like some giant lizard trying to decapitate it. And I had no books with me. I didn’t bring my laptop, I had nothing and I was like, the only thing I can do is sit here and watch this crocodile decapitate its prey.

And for me who is workaholic extraordinaire. I didn’t even have anyone in my tent to talk to. It was so uncomfortable. I can’t even tell you. It was just like, what am I going to do? Like what? What do I do now? And so then I sat down and I was just. I had a piece of paper and a pen and I started journaling and so again, that was that, that eerie silence.

But then as I started to lean into it, the lack of choices was so freeing because there was only one thing you could do in that camp, right? It was talk to your people, which if you were in a group that was fine, but if you weren’t in the group, all you could do is just hang out with the animals. That was it. And so that created a tremendous amount of space for me to think, for me to figure out what I love, what I don’t love. It was an amazing experience.

The actual safari itself, I have always, always been attracted to animals, always my whole life. In fact, my mom, she read my blog post, she’s like, Julie, when you were little, you wouldn’t go on rides, you would always hang out with the animals. It didn’t matter how many dogs bit you or what, you never were afraid of animals. You were always afraid of other things.

And for those of you guys who don’t know, I struggle with anxiety. I have a tremendous amount of anxiety in my life. But there’s one area where I’m not afraid and animals I’m not afraid of animals. And I noticed that some other people were more nervous. That was one thing I wasn’t nervous about.

And so I don’t typically do anything with animals because it feels really frivolous because I’m just like, people need help more than animals. You know, I need to help my kids. I need to help my clients. Animals, you know, that just seems like a luxury to be able to help animals, you know. But when you go on safari and you see animals completely wild, it’s a spiritual experience that I don’t really know how to explain because it reminds you that life… when you release your white-knuckle grip on life, the world keeps working, right?

Right now, lions and elephants and giraffes, they’re just out doing their thing. They don’t need..they just are living who they are, their true north. Whoever they are, whatever their instincts are, whatever God gave them. They’re just doing it. They’re just existing. They’re just being.

And so that was… I felt in that moment for me that I felt God kind of touch down and be like, okay Julie, you see all these, they’re all just fine. They’re, you know, some days they have a great win, some days they don’t, but like they’re just being like, what about you? Do you know how to just be? I have no idea.

So it was an amazing experience to just be, to just sit and be and to let that, that passion that I have for wildlife kind of come back because I was like, this is not anything that I care about normally, but it’s actually something that in my personality I’ve always loved.

So the last day there was a really early morning drive from six to seven in the morning and most people said no because we had to pack and we had to eat, we had to check out and do all this stuff and I was like, I have to do this. I have to go out. And so I woke up really, really early so that I could pack and check out and eat and do all of this stuff so I could get on the drive. And there was, I don’t know, there’s like 12 of us out of 40 that managed to get on this drive and within 30 minutes we found that male lion, I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. And I came within four feet of this ridiculous lion and had way more eye contact with him then I was really comfortable with and I will never forget it as long as I live.

I felt the presence of God in that experience that I don’t even know what to do with it. So it was pretty remarkable. It was amazing. And I cannot wait now all I want to do is take people back that I know love these things that I want to be like, come back with me. Come check this out.

I’m exhausted. You know, it was, it was an exhausting travel trip and there was a lot of things that, you know, I had to adjust to. But it was amazing. It was amazing. So I’m very excited. I’m very excited to continue to invest in what Stu and Amy are doing to kind of bring you guys along and also to try to like take the things that I’ve learned and to try to make them a part of my marketing, my business as much as I possibly can because I don’t want to lose the lessons that I learned in those moments because I know that it was a gift that not everybody gets to get.

If you’re ready to create growth scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com/podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.

Coaching Digital Marketing Aug 3, 2018

How to Bootstrap an Online Course Business with $500

Starting any business takes money, but there are ways to bootstrap if you’re short on cash.

We’re lucky enough to live in a time where it only takes a few hundred dollars to start a business on the internet and we don’t have to physically walk into a bank for a huge business loan.

If you only had $500 to start your online course or info-product business, what should you spend it on?

You’ll definitely need things like…

– A course platform
– Sales pages
– Order forms
– A way to take payment
– An Email service provider
– Custom domain

This week, I discuss specific ways and tools to get your online course business up and running with only $500.

Have $1000? I also cover a few extra things you could spend money on with a little higher budget.

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Video Transcript

Hey there, this is Julie and today I’m doing something different. I’m doing a bootstrapping series where I explain what I would spend my money on if I were starting a business from scratch and I really didn’t know what I needed to know to build a course or info product business.

So today I want to talk about what happens when you only have $500. Now that’s not very much money for a course based business and if you really only have $500, I would encourage you to actually start a service-based business and I have episodes that explain exactly how to do it with $500.

But even though it’s not very much, I’m going to go ahead and give you the $500 budget.

First thing is you’re going to need three months of ClickFunnels at $97 a month. That’s about $291. And here’s the reason why I encourage you to use ClickFunnels.

Number one, it’ll be your members’ area for your course.

Number two, it will also be all of your landing pages, your sales pages, webinar pages, any kind of pages you need.

Number three, it will take all the payment that you need. It’s really everything in one.

Plus, they give you a domain for free for a year, so you don’t even have to buy a domain.

Now, you’ll probably want some storage. I want a professional email address, so I would go get three months of G-suite. That’s $10 a month. That’s going to be $30 bucks.

Next, I want you to go get the Internet Marketing Bible that’s Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. This will teach you everything you need to know about marketing and selling your products online.

The two books, Dotcom Secrets, and Expert Secrets are $8 bucks each, and then the Funnel Hacker Cookbook is free, so that’s super easy.

Next, you’ll need a way to communicate with your list. I prefer Convert Kit. Convert Kit starts at $29 a month, so for about three months, you’re looking at $150. It’s not too bad.

Okay, so at this point, you’re really close to about $500.

So for those of you who are like, well, I don’t have any money for ads, how do I build my list? Yeah, you’re gonna have to bootstrap it because you really need ClickFunnels.

You need Convert Kit, you need all those things to build a course-based business.

So this means a lot of attraction marketing. Go get on podcasts, do blogging, get guest posts, do interviews, open up a Facebook group.

You’re going to have to do a lot of organic traffic methods because you’re not really going to have money for ads just yet.

Now, if you have a thousand dollars to spend, now we’re talking, maybe you have some ad money. It’s still not very much, but you have anywhere between three and $500 to spend on ads.

You can start to get even a small little list. Do a webinar and see if you can sell some of your course so that you can then bootstrap and continue using ads.

A couple other things you might want to think about at that $1000 mark, you may want to get something like Zoom with a webinar feature, three months of that will cost you $150 and that allows you to go live and Facebook Live stream your screen, record it, save it, all that good stuff. I love Zoom for webinars and live streaming.

And lastly, I don’t know if you’ve heard about ManyChat or messenger bots, but three months of ManyChat will cost you about $30 bucks and this is a great way to communicate with the people that are joining your list because the open rates are amazing.

So with $1000, you have more room for some ads and a couple extra little features. You’re going to have to hustle hard no matter what, with the course-based business.

So I know the best conversations happen after the camera stops rolling. So if you’re interested in starting a course-based business and you only have $500 to $1000 to spend, let me know in the comments below what you’re thinking.

And for more episodes like this, you can go to Juliechenell.com. Thanks. And I’ll see you next time.