October 2020 Archives

Business Strategy Featured The Best Stuff Oct 31, 2020
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Behind The Scenes Of The Digital Insiders Mastermind

 

I’m sitting in cozy cold Connecticut (after our first freeze last night), hot cup of tea in hand, trying to figure out how I’m going to recap the last five days. Having just wrapped up our fall 2020 mastermind – there are endless things I could write about when you put 100 business owners in a Zoom together- it’s overwhelming to recap nearly 40 hours of masterminding. And I’m trying to think what would be worth the next few minutes of your time? What can I give here

in this post that will educate, inspire, motivate, or enlighten some piece of your business journey?

Here’s my very best attempt…

Behind The Scenes: How We Ran The Mastermind

Starting with a few logistics (handy if you are planning a virtual mastermind yourself), here’s how we ran the event.

Helen kicked off each morning with intentions and other such bonding exercises to help the group connect, get ready for the day, and bond within the confines of a computer screen. She led these mornings from 9-9:30am.

After that, we ran a packed morning, starting with two Mastermind Gives. These are presentations by the members on all kinds of topics from Pinterest, to book writing, non verbal communication, Enneagram, ads, funnels, copy, etc.

We had everyone in the mastermind that wanted to, pitch an idea, and then the group voted on the top 15 presentations. Those ran every morning from 9:30-10:30am and then again from 11:30am-12:00pm.

In between the gives, we broke into coach’s workshops. All the DI coaches split into breakout rooms to workshop on topics. These were a bit more hands on, or discussion style trainings. The smaller more topic specific groups were able to engage more people and they ran simultaneously.

Lunch always came super fast (at 12pm) – and we left the Zoom room open for open chat. Sometimes we’d talk about the morning presentations, other times it was just personal fun stuff, or we’d ask the new folks to give us some background on them (since we had 28 new members since our last mastermind in April!!!).

After lunch, I gave a keynote style presentation for 30-45 minutes and then opened up the group for questions. It was hard to break at 2pm because several of these topics had us in really intense conversations that were so good and helpful, but deep.

At 2pm, I split the group into nine mini mastermind groups that were separated into breakout rooms for an hour. Each person had 30 minutes to be on the hotseat, and much of these hotseats were focused on creative brainstorming and strategy.

Yes I named the groups after Disney characters because, why not? 

I believe this was team Captain Hook – which became Captain Hunk.

After that, we came back to the main room and each person who was on the hotseat got to share with the whole group – what their biggest takeaway was.

A few other fun things we did!

  • We had a wall of appreciation for members to share and express appreciation for another member who had something meaningful to share. It’s hard to go through this post without a tissue because some of the comments are just incredible.
  • We did a DI awards lunch on Wednesday where we celebrated all the big accomplishments from DIers over the past six months.
  • One of our members – Aryeh – took the night shift and opened up the Zoom room every night at 9pm for the night owls who wanted to have a drink and debrief from the day. If you can believe it, after 7 hours on Zoom, many of the Extraverts in the group were ready for the night run of DI!
  • Ahead of the mastermind, I sent out some swag boxes with notebooks, snacks, hoodies, and a camper mug that read “We Survived 2020 Together” (because we did!)

There was so much laughter (like the moment where Nathan turned his camera on to show that he was in fact listening WHILE on the massage table). There were tears. There was celebration! There was a ton of learning, ideation, and brainstorming. There were intense hard convos too.

One of three pages of Digital Insiders!

Some Takeaways For You!

“Events are a great way to create inciting incidents for your customers.” – Chris Creed

He spoke about how inciting incidents work in movies and they are key moments in a journey that change the character’s trajectory. How can you use events to create those moments for your students and customers? Chris runs a program that helps business owners launch a simple virtual event quickly and easily.

“Try to not have more than 3 links per email, and hyperlink your text vs. putting in the raw link.” – Brittany Bayley

She is the founder of Email Copy School and gave us a presentation on the topic of email deliverability. Though not a sexy topic, it’s a HUGE one for anyone doing email marketing so we were grateful for her insight!

There are five simple ways to leverage physical products in your business: loyalty/status cards, welcome kits, swag, merch, & complementary products.” – Tyler Jorgensen

He spoke on how to use buyer psychology and physical products to create more stickiness in your info product business. Tyler is the CEO of Four Sail – eCommerce & Social Media Agency.

“One of the fastest way to scale an agency is through software. You can white label virtually any tool you use in your agency to add more continuity.” – Matt Deseno

Founder of BAAM agency and High Level Pro Tools, Matt took us inside the way he combines agency + software to create ongoing recurring revenue in a service based business.

Every short form video script should go like this for maximum views: Start with the Hook, tease the Outcome, state a Testimonial, and then give Action tips.” – Elise Darma

She took us inside her short form video process for IG reels, TikTok, and IG posts, where she absolutely crushes these platforms with engagement, views, follows, and monetization.

“The easiest way to write a 294 page book in just a few weeks is to simply interview a bunch of experts in a niche with several simple questions, and then compile it and use Lulu.com or some similar site to drop ship free copies to the authors. Get them to share the book on social and watch the sales come in.” – Gabe Shillinger

I’m paraphrasing him slightly, but he blew our minds with a crazy process he went through to get in the top ten of Russell’s Traffic Secrets Affiliate contest. It included getting a book written, printed, and sold within 3 weeks. It was nuts!

“When determining who to hire, write down EVERYTHING you do, and then circle the things you WANT to do. Outsource everything else.” – Esther Inman

She went into her hiring process for VA’s (Esther runs a six figure a month business working very little hours) and she also trains VA’s. So she had a lot to share on how to hire, what to hire for, and how to make sure you’re in good shape when they join your team.

“When running a sponsored message campaign, aim to run it between 3-7 days. We did this and got less than $2.00 a webinar registration, whereas traditional ads were costing us $9-$10 a lead!” – Stephanie Blake

Even though Facebook bots are changing constantly, the Sponsored Message option for Messenger is still returning an insane ROI. She went behind the scenes of all the ways she’s using messages in her agency to reach more customers and leads!

“Don’t underestimate the power of celebrating birthdays, handwritten notes, personalized videos, or any personal contact you can do with your customers to help build retention.” – Melissa Lanz

She dove into all kinds of retention strategies for membership sites (she is the owner of Fresh20), and blew us all away with her simple yet “why didn’t I think of that?” lists of things we could all implement in our continuity programs.

“Stop making two sales at once!” – Renee Hribar

She gave us a great presentation and sales script to clear the path for a “Yes!” when on a discovery call. Her comment about stop making two sales at once was an aha! for how to build rapport before the call so that on the call, you only have to sell your product, not you.

“Your Table of Contents in your book should your sales page.” – Nick Pavlidis

Ghostwriter Nick took us through his book writing process, and showed us how to get momentum, make connections, and leverage a book – even before it’s written. He gave all of us a major aha! when he said that your table of contents can and should read similarly to how you might architect a sales page to sell your offer.

“Imagine if some of your Facebook Lives – long fallen way below on your page – are constantly revived and viewed – just because you have Pins that are leading to them!” – Michelle Diaz

An accidental Pinterest expert (using it to help her get to 100k subscribers and beyond), Michelle is a health coach and the owner of the mPower supplement for pregnant and nursing moms. She showed us how she links pinterest pins to her other social content to keep it alive and garnering views long after the FB algorithm has stopped showing it.

“Depending on your number on the Enneagram, you might be oriented towards the past, towards the present, or towards the future.” – Nicole McDonough

She went through the stances of the Enneagram with us, explaining how we respond to the world around us. The most enlightening part of the talk was showing how this is linked to people who are ALWAYS thinking ahead, frequently looking back and nostalgic, and those that prefer to be in the present.

“The fastest way to build trustworthiness with your customers and clients is through your hands.” – Gonzalo Jimenez

He did a fascinating presentation on how to become more charismatic, and he started the presentation with this interesting tidbit of social psychology. When people can see your hands (yes even on Zoom) you instantly build more trust than if they can’t be seen. Gonzalo is a Kartra expert and also (unbeknownst to all of us) certified in non verbal communication as well!

“Most of what stops people from doing YouTube ads is their resistance to doing video. If I showed you some top performing ads, you would not even believe how poorly done they are! If you can do a video without an old mattress in the background, you can do YouTube ads!” – Chris Wyatt

He spoke about YouTube ads and encouraged any of us running webinar funnels, to seriously consider YouTube ads – even though so many people are nervous to create video.

Inside My Workshops + Presentations

Unfortunately I don’t have notes from Helen, Jessie, and Emily’s coach’s workshops because I was often running something simultaneously – and I haven’t had a chance to review them. But rumor is that all of them were poignant, enlightening, helpful, and full of useful and applicable information that can be used right away. I just want to take a quick rabbit trail to say that everyone on my team, including my Executive Assistant Jess – are INCREDIBLE. Digital Insiders is so much fuller, better, and more awesome with them on board.

Okay, I emailed everyone a few weeks back asking which of the following presentations you’d like an encore of.

Drum roll….

Google Hacks for Productivity WAY outperformed any of the others! So I will be doing a FREE workshop for anyone who’s interested, November 20th at 2pm EST. You can register at that link to save your spot (my limit is 500 people on my Zoom plan).

As for my other presentations, here are the slides that I think had the most impact when I was teaching.

During the Art of Delegation, the group asked a TON of questions about how I managed to delegate so much.

In the Top Takeaways Presentation, I started off by showing people about how many minutes I’ve spent actively coaching and/or auditing funnels, and what a privilege it is to get to be a coach where you get this incredible vantage point.

In the Certification Workshop, we spent a good deal of time talking about how the curriculum of a certification needs certain components to help aid in the completion of the material.

In the Increasing Profit Margin discussion, I gave members a look at the way I prioritized and deprioritized parts of my business when trying to reduce expenses and increase margin.

In the discussion of Irresistibility, there was an intense discussion as soon as I dropped this slide. I encouraged people to have others read a sales page and guess the price. If they guessed the expected price, the anchor wasn’t done properly. You want people to get to the bottom and expect ONE price and be delighted when it’s less than that.

During the presentation about Designing Courses That People Finish, this slide was a funny way to present how so many people teach. They give you SO MUCH information you don’t need to know.

In the Transitioning to High Ticket Consulting Workshop, we talked about how to get your customers the SAME result without actually doing the work. Here we started to break down the pieces involved in high ticket consulting.

I could go on for easily another 3000 words, and truth be told – I missed 6 coach’s workshops and 45 mini master meetups, so this is just scratching the surface of what happened this week. For now, this hopefully gives you a few things to chew on.

Don’t forget to register for the Google productivity tips webinar on November 20th and if you’re interested in the Insiders, you can put in an application at Digital Insiders Mastermind. Right now we’re booking calls for a possible 2021 enrollment (as the group is full and we have a waitlist currently that’s ahead in line), but we anticipate openings in 2021). We’re happy to let you know if we think you might be a good fit!

xx

Business Strategy Create Your Laptop Life Podcast Oct 21, 2020
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Ep. 85 A Planning Breakthrough

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Hey everyone, this is Julie. What’s up? I hope you’re doing amazing. Today I want to talk to you about this new, it’s not really a new way, but it’s sort of like, I have these ideas and then I like aerate them, and reiterate them until they start to really work in my business.

So today I want to talk about a planning modality that has been working really well for me.

Now a quick back story, a lot of people think because of the level of productivity that I have that I am super organized. And I am organized, but I’m very organized at a macro level, not a micro level. In fact, if you saw my desk right now, you would see just how non micro level organized I am. I should take a picture. But I organize at the macro level because this is what allows me to do incredible amounts of work in a short period of time. Because I’m willing to ignore extraneous, unnecessary details, and I think this is where a lot of people get messed up. I see all kinds of organization products on the market, and they are so detailed and comprehensive, and that’s awesome, and entirely unsustainable.

So I’m constantly an advocate for macro organization, which allows you to still have some disorganization. So I’m trying new things all the time to try and see what works for me. So I just did a Q4 planning meeting with my digital insiders, of course I made this cool spreadsheet. And one of the insiders was like, “Every time you do a planning meeting, you give us a different process.” I said, ‘I know. Because I’m trying different ones because not everything works for everyone all the time and anybody that says they have one system that fits all people is lying.”

So I, but I love this one and I actually think I might stick to this one. So I introduced this idea back at the end of, oh my gosh, what year is it? 2019, when we did sort of an end of year workshop in Funnel Gorgeous. It’s this idea of promotion, process and production.

So in a business you have three different types of activities, you have promotional activities, which are related to outward selling of your services and products. So put that in promotion. You have process based activities, which are things you just do every day, whether it’s fulfillment, customer support, operations, just things that happen day in and day out to keep the business running. And then you have production, and production is the word I use that are project based, right. You’re building your funnel, you’re not going to have to build that funnel every day, so it’s a project. It has a start and an end. You’re building a new course, you’re building a new customer support system, whatever it happens to be. They’re production project based.

So I like to think about my business and my life in these three modalities. So I made this spreadsheet where I have three, so let’s say, we’re coming into November here, so there’s a November calendar for promotion, a November calendar for process, and a November calendar for production. Three calendars, three tabs. What I do is get in my brain, “Okay, what am I promoting for November? What is the focus?” Well, I know it’s black Friday, so the focus for us is going to be to open Funnel Gorgeous Society. We opened it in May, and now finally it’s almost finished. It’s actually finished, and now we’re ready to sell it to the masses.

So my promotional focus for November is FG Society. So then I think about, “Where am I going to promote? How is the prelaunch, the launch, all of that stuff?” I just make notations in my calendar, then I move to tab two.

Tab two is process. What are the things that are happening in November that I just am on the books for? So I put things like all my milestone calls for Launch Gorgeous and Funnel Gorgeous, all my audits for Digital Insiders, all my Voxers for Digital Insiders, the fact that I have to create YouTube videos and I have to record podcast episodes. I have group calls for Digital Insiders, I have hot beats, I have blog posts to write. I have content to create. So all of this stuff that I’m doing on an ongoing basis, I put there. Now, you could do it for your entire business if you wanted to, all the ongoing things. You know, customer support, social media ads, etc, etc. I don’t actually do any of that part of the business, so I didn’t put any of it in my calendar, just because I didn’t want to clog it up. Okay, so that’s tab two.

Then I go into tab three and I think simply about what projects, what things do I have to get done? Now the production calendar is often times related to the promotion because I know, for example, that I’m going to be promoting Funnel Gorgeous Society in November. So that means I need to make sure I have my funnel ready. So project wise, production wise I know I have to write sales copy for Funnel Gorgeous Society, I know I have to create webinar slides, I have to write launch copy for that promotion.

But there’s other production stuff happening, because I’m in the middle of creating brand new Launch Gorgeous curriculum while I’m teaching it. So I know I have a couple of phases I know I have to prep for. And I have a few other projects that are not related to promotion, or you know, they’re just operational. So we’re working on some software stuff. Those things are project related.

So what I’m doing in each of those three tabs is I’m not trying to think of everything. I’m just trying to think of what do I need to promote? What are my every day responsibilities? And what are my projects?

The cool part about it, is that tab four curates all of them. Now, it curates all of them so that I can quickly see, “Oh wow. So on November 18th I’ve got a promotional thing to do, I’ve got a process thing to do, and I also slated a production. Well, that doesn’t make any sense because I’ve already got a promotion and a process.” So I go and rearrange it.

Now, some of you might be saying, “Why wouldn’t you just do that all on one calendar?” You can, but I think that the ability for the brain to just stay focused on just one type of activity is going to make it better. So if you don’t want to use spreadsheets, you could go into Google Calendar, create three Google Calendars, one is promotion, one is process, one is production. Turn all the calendars off except for one, and start writing in all the activities you want to do for, you know, you’re promotional period. Then turn that one off, go to process, turn that one off, go to production. Then turn them all back on and see what you have and what it looks like.

The reason I love this method is because a lot of people when they’re doing their quarterly planning, they’re always planning promotional things and project things, and then forgetting the process. They’re forgetting the things that they’re already on the hook for, and then they inadvertently over commit and can’t meet their goals.

So that was something I just taught in Digital Insiders that has been really powerful. And I’ve modified it actually now, so that in the weekly meetings with Funnel Gorgeous I have, yes, you guessed it, a spreadsheet. And in that spreadsheet I’m asking questions, our agenda is promotion, production, process, you can do it in any order.

So what we do is we say, “Okay, what are the things that we’re promoting this week?” and we go through, you know, look through our coaching, our courses, our templates. Then we go to production, we say, ‘Okay, what’s currently in production? What do we have to produce this week for coaching, courses, and templates?” and then we look at process. How are process based things going in customer service, coaching, courses, and templates?

So in this way, you can see at any given moment what’s happening, let’s say from Funnel Gorgeous Society from a promotional aspect, from a process aspect, and from a production aspect.

So this is a very macro way to look at a business. Obviously it doesn’t account for everything. But it allows you to get a quick handle on what you’re doing. And it also makes sure that you’re not overly focused on promotion and then everything is falling apart on process, or overly focused on process, forgetting to market, or overly focused on projects, then promotion and process fall by the wayside.

Create Your Laptop Life Podcast Digital Marketing Oct 19, 2020
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Ep. 84 Tips for Giving Voxer Access To Your Clients

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Sorry for the long hiatus. I don’t know how many of you follow me on social media, but I just got back from a two week trip driving across the country.

So it has been quite the adventure. But today, I’ll save that for another episode, but today I want to talk about, it actually came up on social media. Someone was talking about giving Voxer access as a coaching consultant and what to look out for, and what are the upsides and downsides. So today I want to talk about high touch coaching, especially using apps like Voxer, so let’s dive in.

So many of you know that I run a mastermind, it began in 2017, it’s not 2020 so we’re heading into year 4, and it has about 100 members. And every single member in that group gets Voxer access to me. I originally learned this from Russell Brunson. He had an inner circle and offered Voxer access. And for those of you who don’t know what Voxer is, it’s really just a voice to voice app, people hit a button, they talk for everywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, and you listen and then respond. You can also do text or video as well.

So what are the upsides and the downsides to offering Voxer to clients and/or students? So the upside is pretty obvious, everyone in the mastermind I get to know incredibly well, they have 12 months of access to me. And I would say on average most members will vox me at least once a week, and then you will have a small number of people who really don’t use Voxer very much. And then a small number of people who that use Voxer almost every single day. So the upside is you get to know your client or student extremely well. There is nothing quite like voice to voice, and you can essentially have a 12 month conversation.

So for some of these people, I have been voxing with them now, coming up on 3 years. So my ability to coach and understand where they’re at in their business, give them feedback, understand their personality, is very good at this point. So that’s a relationship that takes time to develop, so that is the most obvious upside.

The second upside for Voxer access is that in a traditional coaching relationship, most of the time it’s 60 minute Zoom calls once a week. And I know for me when I was doing one on one coaching in that regard, it never failed that like 20 minutes after we got off the Zoom call, shit would go sideways in their business. And then they’d have to wait an entire week before they could talk to me again. So it doesn’t really work. Imagine if you were married or a business partner, you could only talk to them in one 60 minute block per week, it’s just a lot of stuff that happens. So the second upside is that you’re in real time with your client or customer.

Now let’s talk about the downsides, and these are all can be mitigated, but you really need to understand the downsides before you just offer Voxer access. Number one is that there is scope creep, right. And what I mean by that is just that people have different ideas about how they can use Voxer access. Maybe it’s 15 minute long Voxers, 3 of them a day. And now you’re listening to 45 minutes of messages, which is actually quite hard to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to listen to 45 minutes of a monologue, but it’s hard. So you have that issue.

The second issue is that because it’s voice to voice, sometimes people can ramble, because they don’t really know what their question is, because they don’t have to type it out, it can kind of meander along for a while, and then you get through a 5 minute message, and you realize that it was one question that they could have written and you could have answered in about 10 seconds. So that’s the second thing.

The third thing is that you could be on Voxer all hours of the day and night because the little orange dot appears that shows you that you have a new message, and then you answer it, you clear all your messages, and that really just triggers a response, because it’s a conversation. So it can feel like an unending checklist that never finishes.

So the threat for burnout with Voxer access is very real if you go into it not really understanding how Voxer works, how humans work, and your own bandwidth. So a lot of people will not do Voxer access to themselves because they can’t figure out how to manage it.

So now, saying all of that I’m going to tell you with 100 people having Voxer access to me, I have learned how to use and leverage Voxer without it swallowing me, because if I were going to get burned out, I’m now in year 3, it probably would have happened by now.

So a couple of things, number one, it is your responsibility as the coach, the provider, the consultant, to learn how to manage your own addictive behaviors. So I have no Voxer notifications turned on my phone. It never ever beeps, or dings, or rings. So that is the first thing. So I had to create a system for myself, and my system has adapted over the years. And if you have just a small number of people who have Voxer access to you, your system can be very simple. You decide what time of day you’re going to check it. So morning, afternoon, evening, when you go into Voxer you want to start from the bottom up, because those are the oldest ones, and don’t click on a message until you’re ready to read, listen, and respond. You just leave that orange dot there.

This has worked for me for the first year and a half, two years without any issue. The second thing you want to do, is if you have people who are giving you access to links, documents, things that you have to look at, my recommendation is that you forward those to a VA or an EA or you can just forward them to your own self. And look at things all at once, because it’s very easy to go down a rabbit hole. So when I’m answering all the Voxers that are just off the cuff answering from my brain and expertise, and then I go back and once a week I look at things. So whether they’re document links, you know profit and loss statements, funnels, ads, etc, I will open up all of those. So I forward them to my executive assistant who knows, “This is a link, this is something Julie has to actually look at, so put it on her calendar, put it on her board to look at on Mondays.”

So that helps because some people will give you things to look at. The third thing you can do is encourage people to give you texts. So if something needs to be spoken, that’s fine, but explain to them that text messages are going to get a faster response because you can read quickly, usually there’s less information, and it’s easier to respond. So some people just use it as a texting app knowing that they’re more likely to get a quick response because I can comprehend what’s happening faster.

Now when it comes to Voxer access, you also want to make it very clear at the beginning what they should vox you about or for. So in my mastermind I have several coaches that field questions that are better suited to send to them than to me. And the most important thing I can say is as you’re learning how to do this with your customers or clients, or let’s say you’ve given out Voxer access and now you want to bring on another coach, the best thing I can say is that are you’re kind of explaining to people what kind of questions, you can just forward your Voxers to the person it’s supposed to be to, and then just tell them, “Hey I forwarded this to so and so, you really should ask them this question because they’re going to be able to answer it better.

So you can kind of train people to say like, “This is the person you want to go to for this and that.” So the forward feature on Voxer makes it very easy. A lot of people want to know, how much time does it take to answer Voxers, and that really depends on how your customers or clients are using Voxer.

So I have the entire range from quick questions all the way to 5, 6 minute Voxers that are kind of brainstorm-esque. So it can me anywhere from an hour, up to 4 hours a day to answer Voxers with 100 people. So you can go ahead and do the math. With 50 people it’s about 2 hours, anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours. With 25 people it would probably be just a few minutes to an hour. I have a pretty high touch relationship with my clients, so I encourage them to vox me, I encourage them to share what’s going on in their world. So if you are wanting to be more boundaried about it, you can make it very clear what kind of questions.

And you don’t have to give unlimited Voxer access, you can give, you know, you can basically what you want to do is explain what you’re going to do. It never works as well if you say, “You can send me 10 Voxers a week.” Or “you can vox me once a week.” It’s more “You check your Voxers when…” So my rule of thumb is that I check my Voxers every single business day. I do not check on weekends unless I you know, want to. But I’m not required to. I don’t check my Voxers on holidays. And then during the year, if I take a vacation, I’ll let people know, “Hey, I’m going on a Disney Vacation. I’ll be off the grid for 5 or 6 days.”

So otherwise I’m answering Monday through Friday. As the group has gotten bigger, as I’ve gotten better, I have modified my system a bit, just because the number of people that I support. And what I have started doing, especially because some of my Voxers are not quick answers, they’re big decisions, they’re hard decisions, there’s no wrong answers, so some of those take time for me to think about.

So what I’ve started doing is, listening and quickly taking shorthand notes on all the Voxers, I use just Trello, I take all the notes and in my brain, I’m just in listening mode taking notes. And then I kind of have an idea of what’s behind the message. I mean, you never quite know when you see a 5 minute message if it’s an update or if it’s a big problem, so this kind of gives me a sense of like, “Okay, what’s going on.” And then later on, I go back and I read the notes, and then I respond. This has worked really well for me for longer messages, because it’s really hard for me to retain, you know, 2, 3, 4 questions in a 5 minute message that happened in the first 30 seconds. I’m always answering the last one and then I’m forgetting.

The other thing is that when you’re listening to messages the orange dot disappears and now you can’t quite remember who you responded to. So with this system I’m actually listening, taking shorthand notes, so that I have those notes to refer back to, which is really helpful, and then answering later. And then, that way my primary mode of learning, which is reading, allows me to read and absorb much more quickly, and it allows me to process, and be able to answer better and more clearly, and more comprehensively.

So once you get up there in numbers, that may be beneficial. You can also have a transcriber, or a note taker do that for you. Where you run through your Voxers, answer the short visually reading Voxers, and you know, any that are longer, 2 minutes or higher, you have short hand notes taken on them, and then you go through them. That might help. It’s also nice because it kind of keeps a trail, so that you have remembrance of what you’re talking about. Because sometimes it can get a little bit like, “Wait, what were we talking about?”

So I am a big proponent of Voxer access if you’re looking to really expand your coaching ability and get to know your customers and clients. I am a big not advocate of Voxer if you’re doing as part of a value stack to make it seem more valuable. Because you will burnout and you will not like it. I know people who have offered Voxer access and had, you know, 10 people have access to them and then feel like, “Oh my gosh, I regret this.” And you know, one of the key features here is I do all my own sales calls for my mastermind, so I don’t have a sales person selling people into my program, who then I have to work with for 12 months. Because I just would rather know who I’m going to be connecting with for 12 months.

So just keep in mind all of those things when offering Voxer access, and you know if you have a customer base that’s a beginner, or you know that there’s going to be a lot of questions, one of the things that really helps mitigate that is content. So I have a ton of content that I can direct my clients to so I don’t have to keep repeating myself over and over again. And I actually have in my Apple notes, I have several responses of like, “Hey, I think this is the best piece of content for you to look at. Do this first, do that second.” Because a lot of people have the same question, so if they’re asking me, “How do I do the thousand dollar Facebook ad strategy?” I can go into my Apple notes, find the response that I have that was about the thousand dollar Facebook ad strategy, copy it, and paste it in Voxer. You could also easily do that on your desktop, there’s all kinds of shorthand, for the Mac I think it’s Alfred. You can create shorthand responses, you can answer Voxers right on desktops, you get a lot of the same questions, you can just direct them to the content that they need.

So I hope that’s helpful, I hope that gives you sort of an overview of how to use Voxer, why it’s good, things to look out for when you’re serving coaches, I mean when you’re serving clients as a coach. Appreciate you all, talk to you soon.

Balancing it All Featured Oct 9, 2020
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Digital Insiders Take Moab

It never stopped feeling just a little bit crazy… even after we arrived.

Back in June/July, in the slog of quarantine and covid, the Digital Insiders were hankering for some sort of in person event. There was no way we could do a traditional mastermind, but I thought that if I could find a place with perfect weather and wide open spaces, we could have a safe get together outdoors.

Turns out the only spot in the country with truly perfect 24 hour outdoor camping weather is the high desert in Utah. So Moab it was. I booked four campsites, told people to show up with whatever they wanted (RV, camper van, tent, sleeping bag) and figured we’d wing it.

It wasn’t until about two weeks before we left that I started to feel the craziness of this idea. For me, Alex, and William, it meant a five day 33 hour drive across the United States as first time RVers.

The learning curve was steep. Less so for Alex who has a natural aptitude for cars + outdoorsy things.

But for me? I have a leg full of bruises to remind me that my “idea” of making lunch in a moving vehicle was far more aspirational than realistic.

Thankfully no sharp objects came flying out of the RV as we drove. William was an incredible trouper. We’d drive for 8 hours, stop once or twice for gas, and then camped at night. He basically had three hours a day of “non moving” time because by the time he woke up the next morning, we’d already be an hour into our drive.

Alex and I got really good at quietly securing everything in the RV so as to not wake William.

We also realized about halfway into day 2 that we needed to alter our driving schedule some because four days in a row of 8 hours was too grueling. So we stayed an extra day by the lake in Nebraska.

Ya’ll it took three days of the longest driving in my life to get to just the center of the United States. It’s incredible. And during all that driving, really the only thing you can do when you’re prone to carsickness is eat, sleep, and listen to stuff. All my grandiose ideas of writing and working were promptly buried about 4 hours into the first day.

RV life is pretty comfortable I’ve gotta say. I slept well…well except for the fourth day when we tried to pull an all nighter as Alex drove through the mountains of Colorado. That wasn’t a good night sleep. Basically – no sleep. It was far to windy and bumpy. By 3am I begged Alex to pull over so we could sleep, and with no hookups or generator running, we settled in for a toast 30 degree mountain winter slumber.

Arriving in Moab the next day, it was so strange to watch the lush green Colorado rockies turn into desert red rock with sand and cactus everywhere. I gotta say though, high desert camping is the best. No humidity. No mosquitos. Just a SHIT ton of dust, but for someone like me who loves the beach, I’m used to sand.

As we set up camp, Digital Insiders slowly started showing up. By nightfall, we had almost everyone.

  • Matt + Heather in their Rugged all terrain car and adorable little airstream.
  • Julia + Neil in their pop-up tent and truck looking like an advertisement for Patagonia.
  • Tyler flying solo with his itty bitty tent.
  • Robin + Ken with their two dogs and their trailer (after taking a more reasonable 6 days to get across the country).
  • Cathy, Erik, Maizen, and Aven… oh yes, and Lucky their dog.
  • Ausi + Ron who flew in with their tent.
  • Chris, Jen, + Jack came in with their tent and Christmas lights for some flair.
  • Stephanie, John, Josiah, Jude, Jocelyn, and Journey – PACKED to the gills in their Honda Odyssey.
  • Katie + Caitlin who rolled in with their minivan while smartly waiting for their fully prepared RV to be dropped off (no idea why we didn’t think of that).
  • Christina and her horse Shadrick and her dog Bella (she’s legit a badass).

This was the crew the first night. It was hard to believe we’d all made it – from all over the country, now sitting in the quiet desert rock of Moab – not a streetlight or wifi signal for miles. We were all ready to dry camp.

Well it wasn’t quite all of us yet. There were still a few missing.

Roxanne + John had gotten held up on their way out with a broken down RV. When they finally showed up Monday afternoon, we realized they were also pulling some pretty cool side-by-side and ATV vehicles on the back of their trailer.

Sean (aka Elon we nicknamed him) came in his Tesla in the middle of the night, and showed us all how it’s done with “camping” mode in the Tesla. No tent. No supplies. Just him and this weird little “almost chair” he brought for campfire chats at night.

And last but certainly not least, Dani came rolling in with her truck and crazy cooking supplies (she’s a food blogger and knows camp food like nobody’s business).

We did it. We overcame all the headache of packing for four days of dry camping where you begin your day in a down jacket, gloves and hat, and end the afternoon wading in the frigid waters of the Colorado river in your bathing suit.

  • Where there is no cell service.
  • No water.
  • No electric hookups.
  • No stores for at least 45 minutes.

For experienced campers, this is still glamorous of course. With an RV and only a 45 minute ride to town, it’s hardly roughing it. But if you’re not a camper, this is a stretch.

Nonetheless the promise of four days of just being together in nature, with nothing to do but chat, cook, hike, and enjoy the outdoors, it was enough to pull everyone into the adventure despite the headache it was to get here.

Most everyone woke up between 6-8. In fact, I notice without my phone, my body QUICKLY adapts to the rhythm of the sun. I am nearly asleep by 9pm at the campfire, and I open my eyes just as the sun starts to cast that pink glow on the mountains.

We all just huddle around in our jackets and hats, with tea or coffee in hand, and just chat. Make plans for the day. Some go hiking. Some go off roading. Some just want to sit and stare at that rock and have nothing to do and revel in the absence of the crazy modern world.

At lunchtime, there’s usually another transition as people return to eat lunch, strip off all their morning clothes and change into full on summer weather gear, and settle in for the hot afternoon.

By 4pm, there is nothing to do but bring your chair down to the river where you can wade into the water about to your knees. The water is FRIGID and moving quickly. It’s too dangerous much beyond that but it’s a good way to cool off.

Around 6pm, we’re all back. The campfire gets lit, food comes out, and it’s time to just sit and be together. The kids run around in the dust and sand chasing each other with glow sticks.

Erik puts on his Russian Siberian winter hat and comes out with his tray of S’more fixings.

There’s lots of talk about the sky, which is littered with stars, and a crystal clear view of the Milky Way galaxy.

People retell their harrowing stories of climbing mountains, or nearly dying in some Hell’s Revenge car trail that seems like utter madness to me, but they love it.

It’s easy for me to get choked up in moments like this. I know that the investment into the Digital Insiders over the last three years has created a network that almost acts like a family. I mentally thought about all those that weren’t able to make it, and try to figure out how I can plan more of these adventures that bring all of us together.

I am so blessed.

I am sad today is the last full day. It went by so quickly, and I know that this will probably be the last time until spring that I see people other than my immediate family.

Last night William (I wish you could have seen him)… he was still in his bathing suit from the day, but it was so cold he had on a down jacket on the top, bathing suit on the bottom. Covered head to toe in sand from rolling around in it playing some game of tag.  He was so sad to have to go to bed. This was just the kind of vacation he needed after 7 months of staying in CT without any friends other than his siblings to play with.

We plopped him in bed and I saw a plume of dust land on his pillow, but I didn’t care. It’s been about 8 days since we’ve had a shower. They’ll be time for all that later.

Tomorrow we pack up and begin the long drive home. Our schedule for home was EVEN more ambitious than getting here, which just points to our naivety about RV life. I’m not sure how it’s going to go. I’m a little worried about the cascade of notifications on my phone when we go back into civilization, but just one day at a time right?

People asked me, “What do you think about RVing now that you’ve done the mother of all trips?”

I would say I REALLY enjoy it, but you have to go at a slower pace. 6 hours of driving a day. Staying one or two nights at a stop. I LOVE the high desert which is hard, because it’s so far away from home, and even if I can handle the trip, it does mean at least 2-3 weeks away from home, which is a lot.

Katie’s “drop off the RV” and fly in idea wins in my book. When we do this again, that’s what we’ll most likely do.

People also asked how hard was it to eat vegan the whole trip? Hard. We broke the rules a few days, but not as bad as you might think.

We did a few ham sandwiches for lunches on the road because to whip up beans + rice or some soup wasn’t feasible. Dinners were easy because we were stopped and could cook. Breakfasts were toast + jam or avocado toast, so… not as hard as you might think.

We did try a few dehydrated vegan camper meals, which were pretty tasty!

Lastly people asked, “Would you do it again?” The answer is most definitely yes. If we can make this work in the middle of Covid, we can do anything.

It is always worth it to do these things, even when it’s hard. Like John Maxwell says, “Everything worthwhile is uphill all the way.”

**Photos not included because I’m doing this all on cell data hotspot and I wasn’t in the mood to upload photos!

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