In today's Q&A, we are helping you using Pinterest to maximize exposure of all your content.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Check out this post on Pinterest

Verify your Pinterest account

Elementary Librarian

Canva tutorial - 5 simple steps for all your image creation needs

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome back to another Q&A with S&J. Today’s question is from Teddi Lyn Plumley. I’m sorry Teddi Lyn. I know that we always mispronounce y'alls names and I know what that’s like because when I was growing up, my name was Jocelyn Hyravy so I feel your pain.

SHANE: H-Y-R-A-V-Y, the happiest part of our wedding was Jocelyn only having to write Sams for the rest of her life.

JOCELYN: Yeah but now people write like S-A-M-M-S, so.

SHANE: Right, so they still spell it wrong.

JOCELYN: It’s a little easier thought. All right, Teddi Lyn says:

“Is there an actual strategy to using Pinterest or do you just pin your own post or content and hope they spread like wild fire?

SHANE: I hope they all spread like wild fire because that would be good.

JOCELYN: Yeah that would be pretty nice but it doesn’t exactly work that way. This is a question that we actually get a lot and the reason why is because I do mention Pinterest a lot in some of the content that we put out. The reason why is because Pinterest has been really big for me and my business especially in the Elementary Librarian business. The reason for that is because my audience is mostly women. Now Pinterest is not just for women. There are a lot of men on it and all the Pinterest folks out there will very quickly correct you when you say that it’s for women, but the fact of the matter is that mostly women do use Pinterest.

SHANE: What’s funny is though, I actually pinned a lot of things about my football stuff when I first started out. I didn’t really think about it. I just was kind of trying to be everywhere kind of deal. I was making sure it was in the list of things to do whenever I posted something – tweet it, Facebook it, pin it, whatever.

I actually have made sales because women have seen my stuff and have told their husbands about it. I know that for sure because I have received emails from those people that were like, “My wife saw your playbook on Pinterest and she told me about it.” Even if you don’t think you have a huge audience that’s out there using Pinterest or maybe you have a male dominated audience, don’t negate the fact that putting stuff on Pinterest can get your message right in front of the people that need to see it.

JOCELYN: All right, when we were talking about this topic, we actually came up with a lot of different ideas that we could talk about so I think we’re actually going to make this into a longer podcast. Be on the lookout for that but really quick, we are going to give you a couple of actionable tips that you can start using right now for Pinterest.

SHANE: The first one is to verify your website. When you go into Pinterest, you can actually go in and say, “Hello. This is a legit website. This is my account but this website goes with me and I am the owner of this website.”

Pinterest only allows you to verify the website on one profile so it makes it kind of legit. That way when search engines see your stuff on Pinterest, they are going to trust it more because you have this verified account. So make sure that you go into Pinterest, look it up. You can just type in “verify my Pinterest account.

In today's Q&A, we are helping you figure out which tasks are suitable for being done in a coffee shop and how to stay focused.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Read our full post on tips for working in a coffee shop

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

What’s up guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J, the mini podcast where we answer your questions about online business. Today’s question comes from Felipe Hernandez. Felipe writes:

“I see you guys work at coffee shops a lot. What tasks are your favorite to do in the coffee shop? The distractions make it so I only get very little done. How do you stay focused?”

It’s funny you ask that, Felipe, because the first blog post that we ever wrote on FlippedLifestyle.com was actually about working in a coffee shop. You can find that at the link FlippedLifestyle.com/coffee and I think it was, was it three tips or five tips? I think it was five tips. Five tips for working in a coffee shop because Jocelyn and I, one of the reasons we love online business is because we don’t have to be a slave to an office.

We don’t have to work, even in our home, we can just get out and change our scenery every day. We work in cars when we’re driving. Not like while we’re driving. One of us drives while the other one works. We go to coffees shops, the library, just anywhere we can go get some work done – during a basketball game or watching TV – anytime we can get work done, we do it then and coffee shops are one of our favorite places. We’ve got a great little store down here down the road, great little coffee shop, just an awesome atmosphere and just love going down there and to get a bunch of work done and kind of socialize and hang out with people. But it can be a very distracting environment.

JOCELYN: I actually don’t love to work at the coffees shop. It’s okay and I do it from time to time but it is very distracting for me, just all the people coming in and out, and people wanting to talk to you and things like that. I’m a person who really needs to focus on what I’m doing so it is kind of tricky for me. Sometimes I’ll go if I have things that don’t require 100% concentration.

Maybe if I’m working on some blog graphics or something that I just don’t have to concentrate on fully, I might do something like that at the coffee shop. But as far as like writing blog posts or maybe if I’m doing research for a post or podcast or something like that, I don’t really like to do things like that sitting at the coffee shop because there are just too many distractions for me. Shane and I often will do planning at the coffee shop, like things that we have to talk about together, plans for the next few weeks, for the next few months, whatever the case may be. We will do things like that a lot of times at the coffee shop.

SHANE: Yeah, anything that’s conversational like maybe we’re meeting with someone who we’re helping or maybe someone is helping us come up with some ideas or something like that, or like Jocelyn said, we just went to the coffee shop the other day. We went to lunch, grabbed a burger, and then we went over to the coffee shop and sat down and basically planned out our entire 2015, what we’re going to do next year. That was very good because Jocelyn gets a little tea. She’s not much of a coffee drinker. I grabbed the coffee and we shared a brownie and just kind of wrote everything down on paper to kind of get our plans. So that’s a great thing to do at the coffee shop.

In today’s podcast we are going to help you set big goals and dream bold dreams for next year!

We are also going to let you in on a few of our dreams for next year!  We have set some HUGE goals and can't wait to share them with you in today's podcast!

You will also learn:

Why you should be dreaming big and aligning those dreams with your partner

How often you should be goal setting

The goal setting exercise we do to reach our goals every time

Why setting an actual measurable goal made all the difference in our business this year

The importance of acknowledging your obstacles and how to overcome them

How to figure out exactly what to do to accomplish your goals

How to find a mastermind group and accountability to see your dreams come to pass

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

Listen to what others are saying about Flipped Lifestyle

Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air!

 Links and resources mentioned in today’s show

Flip Your Life eCourse

Elementary Librarians

CoachXO.com

Amazon.com

BONUS: Get our FREE couples Goal Setting Guide

Thank you for listening! Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business.  Help us by sharing the show!

Share on Facebook

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If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.  See y’all next week!

Can’t Miss Moments

Each week Jocelyn and I share moments that we might have missed if we had not started our online business. We hope these moments inspire you to see the possibilities and freedom online business could provide for your family.

Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about how to set and achieve goals for your life in online business. [spoiler title="Click to View Transcript"]

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

What’s going on guys? It’s great to be back with you again this week. Hope everyone out there had a fantastic Christmas and I hope you are getting ready to have an awesome New Year because it’s just a couple of days away. Since New Year is only a couple days’ away, we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to share with you guys our dreams and goals for next year. Every six months or so, Jocelyn and I, we really sit down and write down on paper our big dreams and our goals for the future. We want to make sure that we’re aligned together, that we’re moving in the same direction but also that we’re reaching for things that are really worthwhile and are really, really big goals that we want to go after so that as we’re working toward things in the future, we’re always kind of moving toward that objective.

You may hear a little background noise today. We’re actually recording in our daughter’s bedroom. We’ve set up a makeshift studio and she has a window unit air conditioner and it’s on like literally five feet behind me but the painters that we have hired to come in and paint our house are actually painting our home office today. So we got ran out of that room. We had to make do. We have to get something done and that’s kind of how online business works. You just kind of wing it, you’ve got to fly by the seat of your pants sometimes, and you just got to get the job done one way or another.

Before we start talking about our goals and dreams and we guide you through the process, we’re going to show you exactly how we do this ever...

In today's Q&A, we are helping you determine whether or not your online business requires a Facebook group.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Elementary Librarian

Flip Your Life e-Course

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome to today’s Q&A mini podcast. We are going to answer a question today from Beth Philips. Beth says:

“I’m hesitant to start a Facebook group for my site because I’m afraid of the time suck plus I don’t want people to answer questions incorrectly if I don’t constantly jump on to monitor. I’ve heard of people jumping into Facebook groups once a week or so to answer questions, but I don’t want to have to contradict people, etc.

On the other hand, I want to be able to help people. How do you manage Facebook groups and/or forums on your site without it consuming all of your time? I do get questions via email through my site but I’m trying to figure out a more efficient way to answer questions that are repetitive, and FAQ page is not helpful because while issues can be similar, each situation is slightly different.”

SHANE: Okay, the first thing that you have to do when you’re tackling your question, Beth, and you do have to be careful because when you start a Facebook group, you can open kind of a Pandora’s box. I’ve got a Facebook group that I started for a certain football product I’ve got and it has got like 1,800 coaches or something in it now. There’s no possible way that I can answer every single question and that does take a little bit of effort to monitor.

You do have to be careful when you’re starting a Facebook group because it can kind of get unwieldy and it can kind of grow out of control. You also have to remember this - we all want to help as many people as possible. That is something that we want to do in our niches with our products and in our website, but there is no way, no matter what system you create that you can possibly help everyone.

We were talking to Cliff Ravenscraft and he gave us some great advice. He told us that you can’t help everybody so you have to do for a few what you wish you could do for everybody. So right away before you go into any Facebook group, before you answer another email, before you do anything like that, just remember, you cannot possibly answer every single question especially if you are doing it in a free avenue like a free forum or on your Facebook group, or on your email list. Make sure you’re looking at it from the right mindset before you actually go in to creating these groups and realize that even though you can help more people, you’re not still going to be able answer every single question that get asked to you.

JOCELYN: Beth, in your situation, I would really recommend a Facebook page. This is what I have for my Elementary Librarian page and the reason that I recommend that is because you control all of the content. On a group, people can put posts and they will surface up to the top when other people visit the group. On your page, the only thing that’s really going to show up prominently is posts that you post yourself. Everybody else’s posts are going to go kind of over to the side. It’s not going to be front and center where everybody sees it.

One thing that you could do is take a reader question so many days a week or maybe once a week, whichever your schedule allows and you might just put first name asks, and type their question out, and then you would put, “My response is this.

In today's Q&A, we help you understand how to manage multiple sites in multiple niches.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Elementary Librarian

Ontraport

Flip Your Life e-Course

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online.

Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Q&A with S&J Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be with you today of all days because it is Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all of our listeners out there!

JOCELYN: Merry Christmas y’all.

SHANE: And we are here bringing you great content even though it is Christmas Day. Don’t worry, though, we are not working on Christmas Day. We have prerecorded this and scheduled this so that you guys would have something to listen to because we know a lot of you are off work today. We are glad that we can provide that content for you when you’re at home.

Our question today comes from Eric Gale and Eric writes:

“You’ve mentioned that you were involved in a number of niches – coaching, Elementary Librarian, Flipped Lifestyle, a history site, and I think there are others. How do you manage multiple sites in multiple niches? From content creation to managing the store and aspects, how do you handle all of that work?”

That is a great question, Eric, and we do not recommend upfront that anyone start a lot of different projects at once. This is something that I struggle with because I like to have a lot of, is it irons in the fire? Is that how you say that?

JOCELYN: Yeah or shiny object syndrome.

SHANE: Shiny object syndrome, that’s what Jocelyn says that I have because any little shiny object that flashes in front of me, I surely chase it. But we do not recommend that you do that. We do manage multiple projects because of the way our business grew. I started a site, Jocelyn started a site and as we mastered and perfected those websites and we created systems and we hired help us to manage those things. We started adding other projects kind of on our plate but we don’t recommend that anyone do that at the beginning.

At the very beginning, you should start one project, work it through to completion, and see if it works or if it doesn’t. At some point if it’s failing, you can quit that project and move on to something else, but you want to give everything a little bit of time to make sure you can do it. We highly recommend that especially for the beginner or people just starting out, if you’ve already started two or three websites, go ahead and put two of them on pause and focus on one that seems to be gaining traction through completion. That’s going to really help you be more successful.

Now if you do have multiple projects, the only way that you can actually manage as many things as we are doing is to hire out help. We have virtual assistants all over the world that we’ve hired over the past, I don’t know, four, five, maybe six months that have been helping us do some things like managing our social media accounts in some ways, creating products, or even posting products onto our stores or our sales pages. All these little tasks, answering emails, things like that that take away from us our time from creating content, we actually outsource all that material. So Jocelyn and I are not like super heroes that are sitting here doing all of these, working 20 hours a day and sleeping four hours a night.

JOCELYN: Definitely not.

SHANE: Not that. We have kids. We have a life. We are not going to spend our entire life working.