Ep #114: Make Money While You Sleep with Lisa Johnson

You are listening to the Design You podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 114.

Welcome to the Design You podcast. A show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth and joy. Here’s your host, Tobi Fairley.

Hi, friends. Do you want to make money while you sleep? I want to make money while I sleep, and I do, and it’s the best thing ever, I love it so much, and I want that for you too.

So today on the Design You podcast, I have Lisa Johnson, who’s known as the Passive Income Queen. She’s known as that moniker over in the UK, over in England where she lives. And you’ll see why after this episode, because on this episode we talk about so much that is so good, that’s going to help you consider how to start making money while you sleep.

And it sounds easy, passive income, making money while you sleep. The only way you get to make money while you sleep is do a whole bunch of hard work first. So let’s be clear, it’s not like you just go to sleep and money pours into your bank account. It’s a very, very intentional, and it takes some work, a lot of it actually. And there’s a very specific path to it but Lisa is so helpful in being clear on how we do that in this episode. And I think it’s going to really inspire you.

So for those of you who haven’t already believed me, who haven’t already joined my Design You coaching program to let me help you create passive income with a course, or a program, or a membership, or something else. This is your chance for me to inspire you, and Lisa to inspire you, to push you a little bit further into what is possible for your business and your life. So enjoy this great episode with the passive income queen, Lisa Johnson.

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Tobi: Hey, Lisa. Welcome to the Design You podcast. I’m really excited to talk about passive income today.

Lisa: I’m really happy to be here, thank you.

Tobi: So much fun. So why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Lisa: So I’m known here in the UK as the passive income queen. In the last, probably about 18 months, I’ve gone from earning low six figures by doing things one to one, to changing my whole business model up to one to many and earning a million a year. And that’s only happened because of passive income. So I now teach other people how to do the same, in all different kinds of industries and all different kinds of businesses.

I also have eight year old twins so I’m often found juggling, juggling them and juggling traveling the world, which is my favorite thing to do.

Tobi: That’s so much fun. So are your twins, boys or girls or one of each?

Lisa: Two boys and they’re busy, especially now, we’re in lockdown at the moment, so we’re doing home schooling at the same time.

Tobi: Alright. Twins in general is so busy, I can’t even imagine. Okay, let’s get right to the meat of this because you work with people that you take them from one to one, to one to many, I do the same thing. People would have so many reservations about it, they’re afraid; they don’t think it’ll work. Let’s just jump right in, where do you start with this whole idea that sounds too good to be true to some people of passive income? They’re like, “I want that.” But then when we start down the process they’re like, “Oh no, I don’t know, I don’t know about that.”

Lisa: Or that it’s too hard. Well, let’s get rid of a myth first of all. The word ‘passive’ does make it sound as if you just go to sleep and in the night, money rains down somehow on you. Right, let’s get rid of that, because that isn’t true. You do have to do something. In the beginning you have to build an asset of some kind.

I always explain it like if you were renting out a room in your house. You’ve already bought the room. You’ve already painted the room. You’ve put the bed in the room. You’ve marketed the room on Craigslist. And only then can you make money from it over and over again while a tenant pays you every single month. You’ve already done the hard work, so you do need to do some hard work.

But how you start is you decide who you want to help, before even thinking, I want a course, I want a membership, I want to do online workshops or whatever, think, who do I actually want to serve, who do I want to help? And you grow an audience of those people.

Tobi: Okay. So I love this and I agree, and I think when you ask some people that question, a lot of people don’t know, they’re like, “I don’t know.” And it’s great when they do know, because they’re like, “Oh, I’m already passionate about this thing.” And those are the easy ones, but what about the people – because they usually do know, they just aren’t in touch with it. But how do you start that path of helping people figure out who that it is that they really want to help, or what they want to help them with?

Lisa: So those people who are your ideal clients, the easiest way to think of it, I always think, is you are a version of your ideal client, usually. So if you kind of think back to people that you’ve worked with before that you’ve really loved. You will usually go, “The reason I liked working with them is because they were a bit like me, or they were me at a certain stage in my business or in my life.”

So if you can think of it that way and think well, when you think of who you want to help, it’s usually somebody that wants to do what you do and you’re already a few steps ahead of where they are. Or it’s somebody who would love to hire you but can’t afford you, and therefore you can give them something of a different value, where many people are doing things in one go rather than you giving all of your time to them.

Tobi: Yeah, I love that so much, that’s a great distinction. So it’s either you teaching them how to do what you do or you’re just making yourself more accessible to them, where it’s still a win, win. Because the opposite of that is just lowering your price, which doesn’t work for a one on one, and then it’s a broken business model pretty much. Or you have to get creative of how could I make this worth my while to still help people in a way that they get the information, but I get paid by a whole lot of people all at the same time, right?

Lisa: Yeah. You either have to do high volume, low cost in a business model, or you do low volume, high cost. And that’s what we know as high ticket and one to one. And that should be, you know, you’re giving your time, your time is your most precious commodity. That should be the most expensive thing you have.

So when it comes to, you know, I think of it as kind of mopping up everybody else on the table. Like if you’ve grown an audience of let’s say 1,000 people, 20 people want to work with you on a high end program or one to one. Then what you’ve got is a load of people that really want to work with you, but you’re not offering them anything. So if you can offer them something like a course, or even a membership, you’re mopping all of those people up, so they still have the chance to work with you, and you still get paid.

Tobi: Yes, I love it. So what happens when someone has the mindset, which so often is true for a lot of my clients, and I’m sure it’s true for a lot of yours too, that their particular one to one thing, their particular high ticket thing. They choose to believe is the exception to be able to being this one to many thing, I guess what I’m really saying is how do you bridge that gap when you work with your clients?

Because there’s so many people for me that are event planners, or interior designers, or something that feels very custom, very one on one, and it’s just not even within kind of their realm to think about it as one to many. And maybe, they’re like, “Maybe I see a course.” But to me what most of them do is they kind of even think their course is not even for their same client. They’re like, “I have this really high end client, or I have to create this really kind of subpar DIY course.”

And I’m like, “There’s nothing that says just because you make one to many it has to be kind of this $39 bottom of the barrel DIY thing.” So how do we start to get them to understand how to make this leap from one to one, to one to many?

Lisa: I think the easiest way, and I work with a lot of creatives, I’ve probably had over 50 wedding or event planners, because I used to be a wedding planner. So, wedding event planners who have decided to go one to many. And I think the easiest way to get comfortable with it, because it is uncomfortable thinking, well, I do high end.

I do really good work one to one with these people, and you can still do that. Is to think when you have your one to ones with people, there is often the same questions being asked of you over, and over, and over again. If you can tell a lot of people at the same time the answer to those questions, why wouldn’t you? And it means that you are making yourself more accessible to people that ordinarily wouldn’t be able to afford your services. And you can still impact lots of people that way, so I think that can only be a really good thing.

But I also think it’s good to not necessarily put yourself in a box of whatever I do in my day-to-day business is the thing that I am going to do my recurring revenue stream in, because every single person out there has many, many other transferable skills that they can teach.

Tobi: Yeah. So you’re saying – and we talked about this a little bit before we started the show. So I’m typically trying to help my clients have their passive income under their kind of main umbrella, just so they’re not having to essentially build two brands or two businesses at the same time.

Lisa: And two audiences.

Tobi: Yes, which you totally can do. But it is, let’s just be clear; it’s like double the work. If you’re going to build a passive income stream on your hobby, which we’re going to talk about, which I think is still really cool. Knowing you’ve got to split your time between the two things, the two audiences and whatever. So I do believe it is easier if you can come up with one that fits your main audience.

But I love what you’re saying, that it’s not the only option. And even in just considering some of those other options might drive someone to make the right decision for them, which I love. But could you start to explain a little bit about – because I think it’s so helpful for people to have an example.

So when you’re talking about these event planners, and you used to be one, and then they’re coming up with a one to many thing, what does that look like? Are they truly teaching individuals how to create their own events at home or whatever, or coordinate it? What’s an example for people that just can’t quite get their head around this of what it looks like?

Lisa: Yeah. So I’ll give you a few examples just from the wedding planning community. So I have one wedding planner, she does destination weddings. So what she decided to do is teach other wedding planners how to add destination weddings to their repertoire of skills, so that’s one way, in a course.

I have another one called The Wedding Academy, and what they do is they teach other wedding planners the business side of weddings. Because a lot of people go into the wedding industry, because they love weddings, and they don’t know the business side, so they help people to get clients. I have another wedding planner that teaches other couples how to plan their own wedding, if they can’t afford a wedding planner. Because in the UK, a tiny percentage of people use wedding planners, so they teach people how to do it themselves.

I have another wedding planner that has a membership for people, so she has the largest Jewish wedding blog, if you like, in the world. And she decided to set up this thing called VIP Brides. And so it’s like a membership really for people that are planning their own Jewish wedding.

Tobi: I love that. So something like that, the people – it’s kind of like a course too, because once you buy a course, like once you buy it, you’re not going to buy it again. But a membership like that, they’re going to be her member for a period of time, 6 months, or 9 months, or 12 months, or however long they are deciding to take to plan their wedding, right?

Lisa: And actually afterwards, what she’s now done is added on a bit that is like a Jewish married life section, and so they stay in even longer. And so you want to keep them…

Tobi: Yes. And then she can probably do like how to start a family, or how to – like once you get this ideal client and they’re really a fit and they’re really loving you, that’s the whole point. It’s like you niche on the front end, or niche on the front end, but then once you build this, like these raving fans, and they want more, and more, and more, there’s so much more that you could give them. You just don’t start giving it all to them on the front end, or you would confuse everybody, right?

Lisa: Absolutely. And remember that in a membership, people come into a membership because they want to solve a problem of some kind, or they want to be around other people that are going through the same thing as them. They stay in a membership because of the community, they make friends in there. And I have a membership of 550 female entrepreneurs, and I know you’re going to be talking…

Tobi: I have a membership, yeah. Yeah, I’m going to be your guest.

Lisa: Yeah, and you have a membership as well.

Tobi: Yeah, I’m going to be your guest soon, yeah.

Lisa: You are, yeah. And there are 550 people in there and they came in because they wanted to learn how to get more clients. Now, a lot of those women are making £10,000, £20,000 a month, they aren’t leaving. They’re staying in there because that’s their people now.

Tobi: Right, exactly, yes, I know, so true for me. I think we have about 250 people in our membership. It’s a high end membership. All of our courses are in the membership. So it’s a more high dollar one, instead of being like on the back end of a course. But the same thing, I think we have about 250 ish now. And the same thing, it’s such a tight knit community, and there’s so much value there. And I just keep, like you, I’m sure, just keep pouring value in there.

And I have a new idea and I’m like, “We’re going to give this to the membership and I’m going to give this to the membership and we’re going to throw this in.” Because it’s so fun, because once you build that community of people, you can just love the heck out of them with all the things you do, right?

Lisa: And they’re your biggest cheerleaders for everything else that you do. So every time I put any other kind of course out there, or program, they’re the ones that are saying, “This is an amazing thing.” I never had to use a Facebook Ads or an affiliate until I was already at seven figures, because if you have that crowd of people, they’re going to love you back.

Tobi: Yes, I really just started a lot of that too. I’ve never done an affiliate launch, we may done one later this year or early next. And we took years before we even started using Facebook Ads, like you, because there was such a tight knit grassroots community of people and fans and followers. I love it.

Okay, so those were such great examples, because what you’re really saying is there’s a few ways you can look at it. You can either help your peers, other people that are in the business you’re in, or you can – so like B2B. Or you can help the consumer, B2C, like the people that are going to be the one actually wanting to plan the wedding or design their interior, or groom their dog or whatever kind of thing you teach.

And then I think you told me there was one other thing. Oh, the hobby, yeah, there’s the totally unrelated to what you do, passive revenue stream. So let’s talk about that one a little bit, even though it is extra work to build kind of a second brand and a second audience. If people are like, I’m just not feeling it, but I really do want to play with this idea and build something that makes me money while I sleep, what are the other options besides their business, their main business, yeah?

Lisa: I have quite a lot of people that come to me that want passive income. But the business they already have, they don’t really have an audience for, it’s maybe been word of mouth. So for instance, they don’t have a Facebook with a load of clients there. They do corporate, or it’s been word of mouth or whatever.

So when they are starting on their passive income journey, they can really choose anything they want to. And so sometimes we look at their business and they say, “Well, actually I don’t want to do anything connected to my business, it’s not fun for me to do that.” So we start looking at, “Well, what else do you like?”

And so I have memberships from my clients in things like Caribbean cooking. I have courses in how to potty train your kids. I have dating, sex, anything you can imagine. If you have the knowledge in your head, and you can make money out of it, because people will always pay to learn what you know already.

Tobi: Yeah. And you were telling me about one success story earlier. Share that success story, because I love this story.

Lisa: Yeah. So, Lauren came to me, she works in schools at the moment doing cookery, it was nothing to do with her passive income stream. And she said, “I want recurring revenue because I have this feast or famine, it’s seasonal. Every time the school’s shut I’m not making money anymore.” And so I said, “Okay, well, what do you like doing?” And she gave me a list, and one of them was she really likes going to the theater. And I said, “Well, if you like going to the theater, there are other people like going to the theater.”

We’re like we were when we were kids; we want a membership card to be with other people like us. So she started this membership up called VIP Theater. And she started inviting people in, and I think it was only something like £20 a month or something like that, and people were coming in. And then what happened was she realized when she had quite a lot of people in, she had over 1,000 people. She could get theater tickets in bulk and sell them to those people. So within a six month period she made 600,000 from this membership.

Tobi: Wow, that’s incredible.

Lisa: And it’s growing all the time.

Tobi: So I was going to ask you, like what value does she add? So she’s probably reviewing shows and telling people what’s available. And now she’s selling these tickets at a price.

Lisa: And which seats are good and inviting people who are in the West End shows to come in and do interviews. So at the moment, obviously we can’t go to the theater at the moment, so was like how are we going to keep these people in? And so she’s bringing in the West End Theater to these members, to talk to them, to sing to them.

Tobi: Amazing. So much fun, and I think that’s the thing, a lot of times people are coming to this opportunity to build a membership, or to build a course. And they’re believing it’s so hard, it’s just hard, everybody comes in and because it’s unknown to them, they haven’t done it before. And the interesting thing is it’s really not that hard. It feels to me like it’s a lot of commonsense; it’s a lot of trusting your intuition and just trying it. And I think that’s what keeps people from moving forward, the ones I know, they’re like, “Well, I want to get it right the first time.”

And with her, she didn’t know until she had 600 or however members that she could get theater tickets, she couldn’t at the beginning.

Lisa: We cannot be a perfectionist in this, with passive income it’s about the now, it’s about doing things quickly. And remember that most of my clients were like, “But I’m not the expert, there’s this big thing, I’m not the expert.” But actually the definition of an expert is the person that knows the most about a particular subject in an average room, not the world or the internet.

Tobi: I love that. So literally you just have to know more than everybody in the room, so if it’s a virtual room, and not even more than everybody, just more than enough people that are going to want to hire you. That’s what I say to people all the time too, they’re like, “Well, I have to be the top expert on this.” And I’m like, “Well, that makes no sense at all.” You really just need to know more than a 100 people.

Lisa: Yeah, the person that wants to hire you.

Tobi: Yeah. Aren’t there at least 20, 30, 100, 300, might be 500 people and there are of course many, many more that you know more than, that you’re two steps ahead of on any given thing. And of course the answer is also yes.

Lisa: Yeah, it’s always yes, and once you get over that imposter syndrome, it makes things much easier. But you’re right in that people think it is hard to do. And I think that’s because there’s no step by step guide. And so what I started to do is put together kind of like the steps of what to do, instead of everybody trying different things. What were the things that I was putting into place to bring in passive income into my business? What was I telling my clients to do?

And I came up with a system that I call the CASsH system, and it’s C.A.S.s.H. I would have loved to it have just been C.a.s.h, but I couldn’t shoehorn it in, so we’ve got to go with the two S’s.

Tobi: Perfect.

Lisa: Yeah, it’s fun.

Tobi: Perfect. That means even more cash.

Lisa: And so that stands for, the C is for client. Think about who you want to serve, who you want to help, work out everything about that person. What do they do at 3 o’clock in the morning, when they’re awake, what are they worried about? Let’s think about them. And then the A is for audience, grow and nurture an audience of those people that you just worked out in the C. And you can do that in Facebook groups, email list, wherever you want to do it, I love Facebook groups, so that’s where all mine are.

And then the S is for structures and systems, so which system do you want to use? The tech used to be our big problem, like I hate the tech. Now it’s too easy to use the tech, they’ve made everything simple, so that’s it. Work out where you want to host things, work out how you want to structure what you’re giving. For me, I’m a video girl, so I’m always going to do my courses on video. Some people love workbooks, whatever works for you and for that audience.

The next S is selling, which means launching, when you’re talking about large passive income streams. So you want to be launching over and over again the same product so that it’s a sustainable long term business model. You don’t want to do it once, because you’re doing all that hard work at the beginning, so you want to get money from it time and time again.

And launching is like a process that takes between 6 and 12 weeks. So many people come to me and they say, “I’ve put a course out to my audience and they didn’t want it.” And I say, “Well, how did you launch?” And they say, “Well, I just told them about it.” And that’s not enough. It has to be bigger than that. I mean I’ve done five launches this year, all of them have made over six figures, but they all took six weeks, it takes time to get that right.

And then the H is about keeping your clients happy, because if you are going to keep people in a membership, you want to retain them for as long as possible, there’s always going to be some natural churn. But you really want to retain them as long as you can. And if you’re going to remarket your courses, you want people to get results, because if they get results, they are going to be the people that give you the best testimonials. That’s what’s going to keep selling your courses over, and over, and over again.

And remember that the first time you’ve written it, you’re just turning up to deliver it, or you’re just putting it on your website for somebody to buy it, it becomes much easier. So that’s the CASsH system, and if you follow those five steps you will make passive income. But the audience going bit is the bit where most people give up.

Tobi: Because it takes too long or what, they just feel like I only have 200 people? And so they think it’s not worth their time to keep growing, to keep doing it?

Lisa: Yeah, I think it takes time, and I always say there’s this snowball effect. You could be growing an audience in a Facebook group for three months, and only having four people make a comment or like it. And it feels like you’re talking to this tumbleweed, and it’s so – it’s despairing, and I’ve been there. But if you carry on, you eventually get this snowball effect where someone comes in and asks a question, and somebody else answers that question, you don’t do anything. And then that just suddenly starts to snowball.

And I had this client that – she’s called Selene, and she really hated Facebook groups, and I made her do one. And she said, “Yeah, but nobody’s like – I feel I’m talking to myself, it just doesn’t feel good.” And I said, “Just keep pushing through, this is the hardest bit.” And she got to three months and she was like, “I don’t want to do it anymore, I’m giving up.” And I said, “Just give it one more month.” Because normally between four to six months is when it starts to happen. She gave it one more month, in month five she made 45,000 just from that group.

Tobi: Wow, that’s awesome, I love it. So, yes, I agree with you totally. And just quieting the mind on the nobody’s listening, because I tell people all the time the same thing as you. It’s like, you know, they’re like, “Well, I did a Facebook Live and nobody watched, and then I did another one and three people watched. And then I did another one and only two people watched, so I guess I’m doing it wrong.” And I’m like, “No, you just have to commit to doing it every week or however long you’re going to do it for, 6 months or 12 months before you even let yourself consider.”

It’s not a do it, get feedback from people, if nobody was there to cancel it on the first trial. It’s literally like you commit for a period of time and you keep showing up no matter what. And if you do that enough, like you’re saying, four to six months, you’re going to start getting some traction then.

Lisa: Yeah, and it’s about consistency. But actually if you think about anything that any coach anywhere teaches you, it will work, whatever one thing you do will work with consistency. But what most people do is they do something for two months and there’s a shiny object over there so they try that, and they don’t stick to one thing for long enough.

Tobi: Yeah, I agree, okay. Then I also want to talk about the second S, selling, because I would say the two areas where I have seen people struggle so much is the audience and the selling. And both of those, I think are because they have to put themselves out in a big way. And you already have said you love being on video. I love being on video, that’s not hard for us, it’s so hard for a lot of people.

I just coached some people in my membership earlier today, and I was like, “You know what, you’re hiding behind your digital assets and other things.” And I’m like, “Why are you not already selling?” And they’re like, “Well, I’m waiting for my website to be done and I’m waiting for my lead magnet to be done, and I’m waiting for my email campaign to be done.” I’m like, “Yeah, but you don’t have to, like you can just literally get on Instagram Live today. You can pick up the phone and call some people today.”

And what we really find out is they think they’re going to create these lovely digital assets and they’re going to put them out and if I build it they will come.

Lisa: They will come.

Tobi: Yeah. And then they put it out and they already wasted four or five months, they could have been just selling, and they weren’t. And then they put it out and it doesn’t sell, and then they quit because they’re like, I was believing that if I make a good enough, fill in the blank, course, program, lead magnet, webinar, whatever, that people will buy. And it doesn’t work that way, right?

Lisa: Because you are your brand. People are only going to buy from you, people resonate with you, and that’s why they want to buy from you. There could be a million people doing what you do. There will still be people that resonate with you, but only if you show up, only if you’re the one that’s visible, only if you’re the one that’s talking about, not just the business, but you as a person.

Tobi: Yeah, so can you speak to that a little bit more? How do you help people get out of that? Because you’ve spoken about imposter syndrome, which we all – people think that goes away, it might get a little dimmer, but it never goes away, they’re still nervous.

Lisa: I still get it.

Tobi: Me too. And if we raise the bar and go on a stage or go somewhere else and it’s a bigger audience or a bigger thing, you still feel just as an imposter, right?

Lisa: Absolutely. I got a TEDx this year, and as soon as they told me I’ve got a TEDx, the first thing that goes through my head, why are they going to want to listen to me? It’s always going to be there, you’re always going to have it. So we need to operate with it already there. But actually this visibility thing, especially doing lives, the thing that people are most worried about is the shallow stuff like I don’t like what I look like, I don’t like what I sound like. This eye is smaller than the other. I say erm and err too many times.

And the way that I help people get over that is to be quite – a bit of tough love and to say, “Well, actually that’s your ego talking, because it’s about you. What you need to start thinking is them, the audience, what are you giving to them? How is what you’re saying going to really change their lives and going to really help them on this day?” And once you start thinking of it in that way you get rid of your ego, you no longer care about what you look like or what you sound like.

Tobi: I absolutely agree. I even tell my clients, “If you’re so focused on yourself, don’t even go journal about yourself, go journal about the people you want to help.” Because the minute you start writing about their problems and you see how much you could be helping them, it really moves you to action, doesn’t it?

Lisa: It’s a really good idea, a journal around it, yeah.

Tobi: Yeah, I love that, I love that. So I agree with you, that they’re focused on themselves, my voice is weird, or my face is fat, or my hair is thin, whatever, my shoulders are too broad. We can find anything wrong with us if we look. But I think beyond that what I see more of too, the next step or the kind of best friend of that thinking is people are going to judge me. And it’s so funny, because what I notice is the people that are afraid of judging them are never their potential clients, it’s always their peers, their friends.

Lisa: Their family.

Tobi: Yeah, somebody I know is going to be like, “What is she doing? Why does she think,” you know, so…

Lisa: Who does she think she is?

Tobi: Yeah, so is there any trick for that too? Because I’m like that is so funny, you’re not even worried about your clients hearing you, even though you told me you wanted to make money. You’re worried about your husband’s ex wife seeing you and saying, “Oh my God, she’s gotten so heavy,” or something like that.

Lisa: And I had this. I had this exact same thing, because I was bullied really badly as a child and as a teenager. And so I was always terrified to be visible and put myself out there, because to me that was inviting more bullies. And let’s be honest, there are online bullies, and I did get bullied online, and that nearly stopped me. But then I realized that other people’s opinions are never going to pay for my first class lifestyle.

Tobi: That is so good.

Lisa: And I want that lifestyle more than I care about those opinions.

Tobi: Yeah. So let’s say that again. So other people’s opinions are never going to pay for my first class lifestyle. I love that so much. And of course there are going to be bullies, or at least, negative feedback. In fact we want that, we want there to be certain people who know they’re not a fit, that we repel those people, and only attract the ones that are a fit.

And it’s so funny to me, the bigger the splash I make, or the bigger the launch, the more people I get saying, “Oh my gosh, you’re salesy,” or “You’re sleazy,” or, “You’re bossy,” or you’re whatever. But I’ll also know that I get also way more people who are like you, change my life, you changed everything. I just made triple the income this year. And so it’s kind of the bad that comes with the good, you can’t have one and not the other.

Lisa: No. You can if you’re really nice about everything all the time and you’re completely vanilla. But actually you don’t want to be that online, you want to be polarizing, you want to be – I don’t know whether you guys have marmite. You want to be marmite, you want to be that…

Tobi: Yeah, I don’t know what it is, yeah.

Lisa: So marmite in the UK is something that people either absolutely love or they absolutely hate. And that’s who you want to be online, because if you’re polarizing enough that people really dislike you. It means that you’re going to get right through to those ones that love you.

For me, my polarization is that I talk about money online a lot, I put my bank statements online. I’m all about the money. And so when I talk about those things it shows people what’s possible, because I come from a welfare kind of council estate in Lincolnshire in England.

And so people like me don’t make the kind of money I make, or that’s what I used to think. And so I want other people to see that it’s possible for them too, so I show people what you can get and what you can do, and what lifestyle you can have. And that polarizes, that really triggers people, you know, that [crosstalk].

Tobi: Yeah, because all the people that are thinking they’re not living up to their potential and feeling sorry for themselves, they reach out and they blame you for that, because you make them feel uncomfortable. You stir up something in them, and so for some people would stir them up and move them to action, and other people it just sort of further submits them in their victim role or their excuses or whatever. And so then you become the villain for those people.

Lisa: Absolutely. And if I didn’t get that reaction it means I’m not doing enough to get the reaction, which is those people that really need that are so attracted to me. And they come to me and they’re like, “I love that you talk about money like this and you show money online.” Because in the UK, talking about money is vulgar, we should never do it. Literally you could go to a pub with your five girlfriends and they will talk to each other about what sexual position they were in last night, but you must never ever tell them how much money you make.

Tobi: That’s great. That’s kind of like the south. Now, we won’t talk about sex either in the south, we don’t talk about – in the south or the US, we don’t talk about sex or money, or politics, because it’s all in bad taste. Because you don’t ever want to make anybody feel uncomfortable. And if you are in that, I don’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable then you’re not going to be any level of attracting your dream clients, right?

Lisa: No, you need to make people feel uncomfortable because you’re saying something, you’re starting a movement that not everybody’s going to be happy with, and not everyone’s going to agree with. And that’s okay, you don’t want to attract everybody, you want to attract your people. So once you get over that fear and you’re like, “You know what, I don’t care what people think of me anymore because I own my own self-worth,” everything online becomes easier.

Tobi: That’s so good. Okay. And we can go into that in a minute or two if we have time. I love that owning your own self-worth. I’m going to make a note so I don’t forget it. But I want to talk a little bit about launching, because I agree with you. So on that note, I was saying I see a lot of people trying to hide behind digital assets because they don’t want to put themselves out there.

But I also see people doing like minimum standard of some kind of putting themselves out there. And they’re like, “I’ll just dip my toe in the water.” But yet their expectations are that it should convert.

They’re like as somebody in my membership said yesterday, “I had a terrible tantrum and then I realized I was being a complete emotional child, because I put my very first ever lead magnet out. And just for some reason I had a crazy expectation that everybody would flock to it.” And then I was like, “That’s hilarious that I even thought that.” And she was able to catch herself in it.

But I think people are like, you know, I get questions like, “Well, how much time is it going to take?” Or, “How much money is it going to take?” Or, “How many times do I have to go live?” And I’m like, “Well, how much success do you want?”

So talk to us a little bit about that, because you were saying the same thing of it is a lot of work. It is six – and when you say six weeks, you don’t mean just six weeks of creating the launch. It is showing up for six weeks, teaching webinars for six weeks, emails, like all of the stuff that you’re actually actively doing things. So speak to that a little bit, so people can really get a better expectation. Because I think they’re like, “Well, I want all of the stuff, the results.” But when they see what it takes, then like you said, they’re like, “Well, that’s too hard.”

Lisa: If you’ve got this audience sitting there, the worst thing you can do is not nurture that audience, not warm them up ready to buy. So if you start right from – let’s say you know that you’re going to have cart open in September, you need to then go back to almost July, August, July really and start prepping.

And start saying, “Right, what emails am I going to need for cart open? What am I going to do to get eyes on me?” I’m probably going to do, let’s say a challenge, or a boot camp, or an online summit, or whatever it is that you’re going to do that you enjoy doing. And so you need to start warming people up, and that means educating them on what they need. So starting talking about those pain points in a daily way, we’re talking all the time until you get to the point where you’re getting people to sign up for your challenge, you’re doing the challenge.

I’m in challenge week now and I haven’t stopped, it’s like morning till night in challenge week. And then launch week will be next week. And launch week, I will be doing personal outreach, I’ll be doing webinars. I will be doing QAs online, I will be taking phone calls from people. It will be full on morning till night. But then you make the money and then you can chill out for a bit. But you have to put the work in before a launch.

Tobi: Yeah, yeah. So it’s so funny, it’s like anything else in the world, once you really get the truth behind anything, including something like passive income that sounds amazing. The truth is you have to be willing to go all in and do whatever it takes to build it. And that separates, you know, what’s the saying, the men from the boys, the ladies from the girls, whatever. That’s what shows if you’re serious or not, because like anything else, there are tons of courses, and tons of memberships, and tons of other passive income that fail, most fail, like any other business.

Lisa: Most fail, 95%, yeah, fail.

Tobi: 95% fail, and the difference is basically these things in your CASsH system, the idle client, the building the audience. How long would you say – so you said it takes four to six months ish to just kind of start getting your first foothold of building the audience? And that’s showing up all the time, every week or multiple times a week?

Lisa: And it’s average. It’s average. So, if I take some of my clients, and I’ve had over a 1,000 now, so some of those clients rarely, so I had somebody last week that grew her audience in three weeks organically. Had only 190 people in there and made 52,000 when she launched, that’s really rare. The usual will be six months, four to six months growing an audience, planning out the launch. Then launching, writing all the sales pages and everything that goes with that, then launching, and making somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000.

But some people will take a year to grow that audience because it’s all individual, how much are you going to put into your group to get them engaged, or to your email list? How many times do you email them? You need to get them to a point where they know they can trust you and they are willing to buy from you, and will answer you when you ask them, “What do you want me to create for you?”

Tobi: Yeah. And if you’re only emailing them once a month, then it could take three years, four years to connect with somebody, right?

Lisa: Yeah, exactly.

Tobi: Yeah, it’s so good.

Lisa: It’s about the effort.

Tobi: So let’s talk a little bit about this idea of owning your self-worth, because I love that, and how that plays in. Because if you’re saying, “I came from a place that nobody’s even supposed to be successful on paper, from the place I’m from. It’s like not typical and I was bullied.” And you have this whole story, yet you did this. And so what did that look like for you to shift from kind of essentially showing yourself and everybody else what’s possible, what did that look like of owning your self-worth?

Lisa: It’s a story and I had to rewrite my story several times to get there. But it got to a point in my early 20s where I’d been bullied my entire life. I had a knife to my throat when I was 15 years old, it was horrific. And then I got to this point after my first real job where I was bullied again by a gang of girls, that I didn’t know whether I really wanted to go on anymore, it got to that point, it was quite dark for me.

And I gave myself a test and I said, “Okay, if I can rewrite this story, if I can do something that will prove to all of those people that so far have said I’m worthless, I’m ugly, I’m never going to be anything, I’m poor. If I can do something that proves that maybe I am smart, maybe I can do something, then I will allow myself to carry on living. If it doesn’t work I will allow myself to go.” And that was my chat to myself. I was sitting on the floor at the time in a bedsit with a bottle of wine and some pills, and I gave myself that talk.

And so I felt, well, what can I do to prove this? I hadn’t even finished school; I’d left school so early. And so I decided to do a law degree by distance learning while I had a full-time job as a PA. So every night I would go and read my books in my room for three hours. And then I would go and take the exams in May and then start all over again in September, without actually going to a university at all, or a college. And then at the end of four tough years I was one mark away from the top, that you could get, law degree that you could get.

So it convinced me that I could do something. So that changed my belief system in myself, and so then I started climbing the corporate ladder and I became an investment banker, and did all of these great things. And then unexpectedly got pregnant with twins, and was going through a divorce at the time. And so I had to rewrite my entire story again, and this time I decided to start a business, and that’s what started all of that.

But the way I got this self-worth and this was taught to me years ago, and it took time, is that once you know all of the bad things about yourself, and we all have bad things. My bad thing right now, I judge people really quickly, within a minute I’ll have you pegged, and it won’t be right most of the time. This is something I know I need to change.

Tobi: I’m a terrible judge of character, but I keep doing it anyway.

Lisa: I keep doing it anyway, yeah. So this is something I know I need to change. So if you write down all the flaws that you have, and you write down all of the things about you that you love, and you decide you are going to love yourself with all of those things, not just the good, but the bad too. And you already know what is good and what is bad about you.

So the next time that somebody, let’s say says something bad about you, or complains to you, instead of you having this rollercoaster of, hey, I’m confident right now, my self-worth is up here, they’ve said something good.

And then someone says something bad and so it dips right down and you’re in the gutter again, which is most entrepreneurs go through that rollercoaster of emotions daily. Instead of that happening, if somebody says something bad, you’re going to listen to it, you’re going to learn from it. But it’s going nowhere near your self-worth, because you already know who you are. But you have to do the same with the good, if someone says, “You look beautiful,” or, “You’re brilliant at what you do,” you can accept it and you can thank it, it’s not going in, you already know if you’re good or not.

So you have this core then inside you that is going to keep you strong no matter what anybody says to you. And you’ll never need the extrinsic things again, it’s all internal.

Tobi: That is so good, and I’ve heard that said in a similar way of, you have to kind of throw out both extremes, the super negative that people say about you, but also the super positive. And I think what so many people do, which is the opposite of that. Like you said, they’re looking from all of this outside of them. Then we go around trying to collect all these gold stars from people to prove that we’re worthy, which are all the good things. And those feel, at least, temporarily, amazing.

But then invariably you’re going to have one of the bad ones too, and like you’re saying. So you’re essentially at the mercy always of other people, which is the rollercoaster. That is – I love how you said that. And I think it’s so true and so important. It doesn’t mean you dismiss someone’s compliment, you can just be grateful for it, and it’s like a bonus. But it doesn’t change anything about…

Lisa: Then you’re steady, you’re steady all the time, because otherwise what happens is we get 10 clients that tell us we’re amazing. And we get one bad comment and we hate ourselves again, because we take that one comment to mean much more than we would ever take a good comment, or 10. And so by doing it this way we’re just level all the time, nothing goes up and down.

Tobi: Yeah, I love that, it is so good. And I think you’re right. And the thing about owning all of the negatives is – and really I mean I don’t think you have to necessarily go shouting it from the rooftops all the time, but it’s no longer a secret. And I think once we take things out of the dark then we can’t have all of that shame and it doesn’t have any power over us anymore. Yeah. Yeah, it’s so good.

Well, this was so fun to really (a) get to know you better before I come over and coach in your community in a couple of months, but just so, so valuable in so many ways. And I love, as I know you do, just continuing to bring other evidence of other people, so that you’re not just an it factor, or I’m just not an it factor or an outlier. But literally you can create any kind of money, any kind of revenue stream that you want if you just believe that you can and you’re willing to do the work, right?

Lisa: Yeah. I’ve started interviewing clients on my Facebook page three times a week just to show people that it’s possible for them too. If they’ve made this money, they’re no different to you, so you can too. And there’s no magic secret, there’s no big thing that we’re all hiding from you, we’re just putting the work in, and you can do that too.

Tobi: Yes, exactly, and I think that is it. And I think when people try to continually go around discomfort, or go around hard work, or find the magic pill, or whatever, you’re just wasting time. You could have already done so many of the steps. You probably could already be having the benefit that you’re looking for, the result you’re looking for if you just literally start, yeah, you just get started. It was so fun talking about this.

Well, thank you so much, I’ve loved having you here, and thanks for sharing all of the honesty about yourself and your story, because I know that’s just so helpful to so many people as well.

Lisa: Thank you for having me.

Tobi: So much fun.

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Alright, are you ready? Are you ready to make that money while you sleep? Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and do the work? Are you ready to believe in your own worthiness? So you can go create something and essentially be like Teflon from all of those comments and things in the world that drag us down, that stop us from stepping into all that we’re capable of being. Well, I hope you are.

I hope this episode was the perfect medicine to get you out of that sort of up and down cycle of having things outside of you validate you. And you’ve learned now how to validate yourself so you can go make all the money that you dream of, friends. Here’s your chance, do it, and if you need my help, let me know, I’m here for you.

My coaching program is here for you, and Lisa and I would both love to hear from you about what you thought about this episode. So let us know, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook. And we can’t wait to hear from you and how you are making money hand over fist. Okay, bye for now, friends.

Thank you so much for listening to the Design You podcast, and if you are ready to dig deep and do the important work we talk about here on the podcast of transforming your mindset and creating a scalable online business model, there has never been a more important time than right now. So join me and the incredible creative entrepreneurs in my Design You coaching program today. You can get all the details at TobiFairley.com.