In this video podcast, Sarah Laws, the CEO of FullStack Marketing, shares her valuable insights on harnessing the power of Membership Masterminds to scale businesses. She provides tips on using Mastermind strategies to grow your membership sites and courses.
If you’re not familiar with masterminds, that’ll be explained in the episode but the ideas is that you act as a facilitator to connect individuals who will all work together to grow each other’s businesses by giving advice, feedback, and more.
Sarah is big on creating a lifestyle business such as membership sites, courses, and masterminds since they allow you to prioritize the lifestyle they YOU to live.
If you’re interested in getting help from Sarah and her team, visit: https://www.fullstackmarketing.co/
Some Key Takeaways From the Interview…
[4:30] – How do you select an opportunity and when do you know it’s time to move?
Sarah shares her decisions are driven by what excites her.
She admits to making mistakes in the past, but she sees these as learning experiences rather than failures. Sarah likes getting technical and learning new things.
Her recommendation is that you try to play to your strengths and continually reassess your goals, as she does even after being in business for over 10 years.
[12:42] – When should somebody who has an idea implement a mastermind?
It might be a good idea to start a mastermind even before having a real product.
Sarah explains that being the facilitator of a group doesn’t require knowing everything or even being an expert, but instead bringing together smart individuals — which can lead to amazing results.
Masterminds can provide significant learning opportunities and can be a straightforward way to add six figures of revenue to a business.
[17:00] – Can you explain what a hot seat is in a mastermind and how to run one?
According to Sarah, a hot seat is when each member of the mastermind has a designated time to share their business wins and challenges. This promotes mutual learning and problem-solving.
A mastermind is a safe space to share concerns about one’s business, facilitating collaboration and growth among the participants. The power of a mastermind, Sarah points out, lies primarily in the hot seats rather than the expert-led sessions.
[29:24] – How does Sarah approach the concept of community when building a membership site?
Being willing to put yourself out there in new communities can open a lot of doors for networking.
Community isn’t just online. Sarah regularly attends physical conferences in order to build her network and found herself facilitating a conversation she didn’t know much about the topic. However, she didn’t need to since she was just facilitating and in the end her network expanded.
[40:09] – What does Sarah advise people who are hesitant about starting memberships or courses?
Sarah urges people to just do it.
She believes it doesn’t have to be overly complicated, and suggests starting small, like a weekly session. Her core message is not to wait because life is happening in the present.
Start creating YOUR dream businesses now.
Full Transcript
[Micah: 00:04]
Hey everybody, it’s Micah with Memberium and today we’re talking to Sarah Laws CEO of Fullstack Marketing. Sarah has a variety of experiences that are directly applicable to membership sites and courses, but especially masterminds. I want to ask her about that, but she’s funny, she’s savvy, so let’s welcome laws.
[Sarah: 00:23]
Thank you. I feel like that was a great intro cuz I was gonna start with my Memberium fez.
[Micah: 00:29]
Ooh.
[Sarah: 00:30]
Pulled it off of the shelf and I was like, no, they don’t have to fix my hair but yeah.
[Micah: 00:35]
Wow. Is it like a knickknack on your shelf or is it hidden away?
[Sarah: 00:40]
It is. No, it sits on my shelf of over all my badges, from all the conferences I’ve attended, so I’m like, that was a group, like I should dust that shelf. I pulled it down then, yeah. It was, I don’t even know what year this was, 20 something, uh, 16, 14.
[Micah: 01:03]
So for anybody just listening who can’t see, I don’t know how to explain what a fez is. It’s like a hat with no brim, but it’s, it’s got a bunch of internet marketing junk on it, so it’s kind of fun.
[Sarah: 01:16]
Yeah. A little fuzzy velvet hat with a little tassel. You know? Why not?
[Micah: 01:23]
Why not? So Sarah, I guess there’s so many things we could talk about because your experience, I feel like is probably the most applicable to people who are starting. Like, what’s, what’s life for you like today?
[Sarah: 01:41]
Um, so you said that, and of course my internet froze. So I’ll just make up the question in between from Sarah, you have so much experience and how is that applicable to you today? What specifically membership sites gave me was just scalability, right? I’m only me and there’s a lot of knowledge that I have to share and give to the world. And membership sites and content that you can just create over and over gives me the lifestyle. I live three miles from the beach. My husband is retired, my kids do virtual school. So we have, other than my 15 year old, got a job that he has to be to three days a week. And our schedule’s pretty flexible. And you know, I always tell new business owners especially, create your perfect workday. Like your perfect day might just be on the beach with cocktails, but what does your perfect workday look like?
Are you working one-on-one with clients? Are you creating content? Are you teaching? Are you, what are you doing that makes you super excited? Do you like to get in there and get your hands dirty with technology? You know, when I started, that was kind of how I accidentally started, was building technologies when you of course taught me how to use Infusionsoft which is now Keap and having that knowledge was powerful cuz I was like, oh, people will pay me to do this. But I realized that I was creating a business and lifestyle that I didn’t want, you know, when something went wrong, I was the person that somebody called and I was like, oh, this is a problem, that’s definitely not me. So I like to, now just think backwards. If you have any option of any business and any skill that you have to turn it into a business and you’re starting out, what do you want your, and I don’t mean like you’re not gonna have to do work, you’re gonna have to roll your sleeves up and do some work but what does, what does that end goal look like? You have a perfectly running, smooth business. Right, because those all exist. Never. You build it and then it’s all perfect and nothing ever happens. But what kind of life do you wanna create? And I’m really intentional now about what kind of life I want to live.
And, you know, you are one of my very first mentors in the business space. And, you know, your go-to philosophy was like, just say no. Everything. Even if the answer wants to be yes, say no, and think about it. And I have a little bit of patience and can say yes, tend to say yes to everything. So now I’m very intentional and I say no first. And then think about it. And it might become a yes, but definitely saying no to every opportunity because they’re gonna continue to come at you at a million miles an hour.
[Micah: 04:24]
So you just going right off of that, you’ve done so many different things. How do you select an opportunity and how do you know when it’s time to move?
[Sarah: 04:36]
Yeah, it’s just what really excites me. You know, I had a lot to learn when it came to running a business and I had to make some mistakes and figure some things out. And sometimes you say yes to something and six months later it’s like, oh no, this is a very, very bad idea. So, I think maybe not being able to take it as a failure, is just something you had attempted.
What are the lessons that you can learn from that and apply them so that next time you don’t say no to the wrong thing? I am like, I like to get technical and nerdy and have my hands in some things, building some stuff out sometimes. I like to work with, you know, five clients at a time so that I can test different things and gain different knowledge. I’m always learning. Last year, I think I read 127 books. I had to figure out what worked for me, how to hack my, um, somebody yesterday on a webinar told me I wasn’t lazy. I was strategic. So I had to figure out my, you know, what my rhythms are and what I like to do and really play to my strengths. And I didn’t, you know, I’ve been a business owner for over 10 years now, and I still sometimes ask myself, what do I wanna be when I grow up?
[Micah: 05:57]
Hmm, do you ever get an answer back, like, does yourself answer?
[Sarah: 06:00]
No, she’s trying to jerk like that. She’s like, well, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And it’s like, no, this is not, I want someone to tell me what I need to do. And I think, it’s an innately human characteristic to want permission or want something from someone. You know, I, two years ago, moved from Arizona to Florida and it was like, wait. We can just move across the country.
We don’t have to ask somebody if we can do it first. So in an ideal world, would I like it if someone just said, this is what you’re gonna do and do this and you’ll be successful and guaranteed, probably not. Cuz I’m not wired to take instructions from people. So that’s part of where figuring it out as we go, comes into play.
[Micah: 06:49]
Okay, so we’ve been a little bit philosophical here. Let’s get to some specifics. Sarah. Let’s talk about how you started, because I think this is why I said it’s so applicable to most people who are wherever they might be, and you’re not, you know, the only person who was learning while doing something that wasn’t their end goal. Right. So where did you get started and what was a little bit of your journey like, you know, two minute version of the last 10 years or something?
[Sarah: 07:19]
Oh yeah, that’s easy to do for sure. I mean, I was working in a job that didn’t have, it was me and an attorney, so if unless I was gonna become a lawyer and wait for him to retire, that was kind of the path that I was on. And I started a little side gig in an MLM business, as a lot of people find them in, occasionally find themselves in, and it was like, I could just think bigger, you know, I got into email marketing and it was like, well, if I could just figure out a way to provide this service for everyone, like I’m using the system for myself, but if I could just deliver it to everyone, I could make more money and I wouldn’t have to go on a Friday night and sacrifice time with my family. So I was able to just see the opportunity that was there. What creating a business and this was, you know, I didn’t know at the time it was my end game in site, but, well, how could I have a business that allowed me to share my gifts with the world on a scale and started an online membership site accidently, I posted on social media accidentally grew to 150 members real fast. The system wasn’t ready for that. They were beta and didn’t know it, and it kinda got a little bit crazy and hectic and long days and sleepless nights.
But just having the tenacity to do it, you know, starting a business, any business is not easy. You have, there’s a lot of learning curves you don’t know are gonna happen and be there, and I think providing yourself with or surrounding yourself with tools to help you accelerate your learning curve is ideal. So I’ve pivoted. I’ve worked, definitely in the Keap space a lot over the last 10 years. I’ve won a couple of awards from them. Fullstack is one of the top-selling partners, so just transforming businesses and small business owners. Nobody starts a business because they wanna work 80 hours a week in it. I didn’t, that was definitely not my end goal. Um, and that’s why I love tools like Memberium and Keap because you can take yourself, put out exactly the effort you would want to, an experience that you would want every single one of your customers or clients to have or members, and give them the same experience every time at your level of perfectionism that you want.
[Micah: 09:40]
That sounds like a dream come true. It’s you used from one to many. So many people don’t quite understand how powerful that is. Just what you said, not only powerful in getting, oh, I can sell the same thing to a hundred people but powerful in that you can get a sense of satisfaction from this is what I want everyone to get like my best effort. They may not open every email or watch every video, but here it is. So all I was gonna ask about is how much content were you supplying versus was it live interaction of some sort, or consulting of some sort? What was that membership like that you suddenly had a bunch of members and had to
deal with?
[Sarah: 10:30]
Yeah, so that was a little bit more. Now looking at it more of like a SAAS for service providing done for you services for them. So there wasn’t a lot of interaction between the two. I think that in today’s, like that was, 12 years ago. In today’s environment, I always encourage people to pick their platform of choice.
You know, I believe it or not, hate being on webinars and I hate doing videos, but I’m doing them all the time because I have to. But if you absolutely have to and you absolutely hate it, what are you comfortable putting out there? Right? Is it content? Is it pdf, is it not live calls because they make you nervous? And I think just understanding ourselves and as business owners and what we’re comfortable with, and everybody will tell you, go out on a million different platforms. Just pick one. Where are your people hanging out? That’s. You’re probably where you’re hanging out already anyway. So yeah, maybe you could look for an audience on Facebook and Instant and TikTok and YouTube and yada, yada, yada, yada. But what’s the one thing that you’re actually gonna do and implement and do it straightforward? You have given a talk many times on, you can have a little bit of Project A that you’re working on, a little bit of Project B, a little bit of Project C, and if you don’t stick with one thing consistently, you’ll never finish it and it’ll never be what you actually want it to be.
[Micah: 11:56]
You were listening. No, I’m just kidding.
[Sarah: 11:59]
I know you’ve made me millions of dollars. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, but listening to you has made me multiple millions of dollars.
[Micah: 12:09]
Well, that’s good. I don’t recall getting my royalty cheque.
[Sarah: 12:12]
Yeah, there’s no royalty check. I mean, I’m sure I PayPal you something. I’ll talk to my accountant.
[Micah: 12:17]
No, I’m sure we’re square because, for example, I was in your mastermind at one point, so let’s talk about masterminds because you’ve been so in and around memberships and courses and masterminds from when I’ve known you from the beginning because I think we were in a mastermind together initially, and then later I went to some of yours and so on, and just kind of mutual friends. When should somebody who has an idea, let’s say they’re some sort of expert, right? You know, the typical membership site owner who thinks they can put a community together and make some money, when should they implement a mastermind?
[Sarah: 12:56]
Uh, it’s so funny because as I was preparing for this, somebody was texting me that they wanted to start a mastermind, and I said, it’s a very easy way for you to add an additional six figures of revenue to your business without putting a ton of extra work in it. And I had a lot of fear of launching my own just because it was like, why would people wanna listen to me? I maybe I know some things, but I don’t know everything. And the advice that I got was, you know, you can be the facilitator that brings the group together. You don’t have to know all the answers to everything.
And incredible things happen when you put smart people together in a room. I say launch a mastermind maybe even before you have a real product. You know, there are so many things that you can learn from the group and putting, I mean, making sure that you are doing all the things of running an effective mastermind, right? I’ve been part of ones that are like, oh my goodness, how are they even calling that, and the term Mastermind nowadays is, can get confused with group teaching and things like that. But the ones that I run are just purely hot seat based. So, Small groups of people, they come together, they have their time, we’re solving their challenge. And it’s not, I’m solving a challenge that’s one-on-one coaching, but in a group setting, you provide the facilitation skills. And I think everyone should be in a mastermind group and I think everyone should run a mastermind group. Yeah, the mastermind groups completely changed my entire life.
[Micah: 14:32]
Perfect, let’s go into it a little deeper then, because if you’re saying, okay, oh, I’ll do it right away. Somebody says, crap, now I gotta make a mastermind. That’s my next thing to do. Sarah said so. What did they do? What did you do?
[Sarah: 14:47]
I reached out to my network, just very strategic, not lazy. Shout out some Facebook messages “Hey, I’m thinking about putting a group of people together. Would you be interested?” And I rented a big Airbnb, charged everybody, what I thought was a fair price. They were my network and friends. So, I wanted to be reasonable and, you know, still make money obviously, ’cause that’s what pays the bills. And now I teach people how to start a mastermind, right? I have a launch, a mastermind course, and because you people don’t know where to start, but just reaching out to 20 people that you know and say, Hey, are you interested in this? Would you wanna get together and then start a conversation?
You don’t have to have a sales page, you don’t have to have a big plethora of content already generated. And that’s why I say start it now because it’s something that you can schedule for three months, six months out, get the revenue for it now, and maybe put that together for creating your course or your online content. It’s absolutely a way to start without having a ton of additional resources that you need. That makes sense. You probably have people in your network, right? Either there’s LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever that you can reach out to our clients. It’s a great way if maybe somebody is an author or a coach or speaker, you’re gonna have an audience and they want to hang out with you if they’re following you and looking, listening to your stuff, they want to come and hang out with you. And it can be as casual or as sophisticated and complicated as you want it to be.
[Micah: 16:28]
Yeah. I’ll share a little bit of experience and I’m not sure if you were at the very first one we did or not. I can’t remember where it was, but, so we had sold people into a mastermind and we show up. Three of us are the partners running it, and we have all this content and we’re presenting content, presenting content and one of the more savvy guys in the room on the second day is like, when are we gonna get to the actual mastermind? And you talked about hot seats earlier, so, talk about what a hot seat is and maybe some, you know, short tips for running one, because I’m sure people can go check out your course. I wanna talk about your course in a minute and some of your decision-making and building it as well, but can you just explain what a hot seat is? Because what I’m saying is we did it the wrong way initially. We went in saying this is a mastermind, but we were really just doing group coaching, kinda like you said. What’s the difference?
[Sarah: 17:25]
Yeah, and that’s where I said it there, it gets confusing these days because people will sell a mastermind and you show up and there are 200 people and you’re like, wait, this isn’t what I thought it was gonna be and it’s high-level coaching and great content. You guys had great content. There’s a piece, a section that you did that I am still an argument of in a French group of mine today from that first meeting, and I was there for that first meeting. It’s just funny how that stuff sticks but, uh, neither one is right or wrong, right?
But it’s definitely when you’re positioning what’s gonna sell, are they gonna come and learn a bunch of content from a bunch of experts? And then the beginning of when I launched mine, I would bring in one expert to give a small session. But the power really comes from the hot seats themselves. So if you put 10 people together in a room, you have a mastermind, there’s nine of them, and you as the facilitator, everyone gets time where they’re sharing, what’s a win that they’re having in their business now? What is the biggest challenge that’s holding them back from reaching their goals and how can we help them solve it? I was just, I’m like, what week is this? Last week I was in Toronto with Keith and did a mastermind and it was a combination of the two.
There were some training sessions in the afternoon and in the morning were hot seats and anybody who had filled out their goals for the year and some numbers was in the hot seat and you know, it’s scary sometimes to say to someone, This is not going right in my business, right? Our businesses are baby, and it’s like, no, it’s perfect. It’s fine. Well-behaved all the time. Listens, doesn’t ever give me any grief, but that’s not the reality of it. So Mastermind is a safe place to share your concerns with people in a trusted environment that you know that there’s not gonna be like, Competitive, whatever, and the groups that I run, people could look at it and be say, like, how are all those competitors sitting in the same room and sharing all their strategies and tips?
And it’s just a different mindset. People who wanna come to a masterminds don’t have the. Hey, I wanna rip everybody off, right? If you are teaching dentists marketing tips or something, you can put a room full of dentists together, and it’s not gonna just be like a shark show of everybody biting, attacking each other, and stealing everybody’s ideas. It’s is how can you help everybody grow together? And the experience from a group is people have had been in the same situation that you’ve been in. Maybe they’re looking to scale, maybe they’re having team issues, maybe they’re looking for VC funding, and there’s someone in the room who’s gone through that process or could help you or give you tips or ideas, to just skip past the learning curve. They’ve been there, they’ve done it, they’ve had the experience, and you might as well learn from them.
[Micah: 20:15]
Yeah, I think you said it earlier, kind of magical things happen when you just put people together in a room, especially around a topic because there’s gonna be these varying levels where one person gets to learn from somebody higher up, but the person higher up, they also get to like teach and mentor and they get, you know, something from that.
It was interesting to me as well, when running a mastermind initially we thought, oh, we’re gonna get all the people in the Mastermind and then they’re gonna stay in there and we’re not going to let anybody else in so they can build this tight relationship and get to know each other and have high trust and later come to realize it wasn’t necessary. Having new people come in each time was actually good because the existing people could, you know, share their knowledge and kind of see how far they’ve come along and the new people would just drink it up. So there’s so much there. Since you have a course on masterminds, I won’t spend too much time there, I’ll just tell people, I’ll make an early in-the-middle recommendation. We’ll talk more about it later to get your course.
When you went to build a course, you know, obviously people listening to this, they either have one, they wanna make, one, they wanna make more, what were some of your considerations as far as the length of the content, price? What problem were you really trying to solve with this? How did you, I guess, did you have other courses in mind that you were modeling? Were you just like, well, this is what I wanna do and what it’s worth? How’d you do it?
[Sarah: 21:42]
So I initially launched sort of Jeff Walker Product Launch, formula style. I sold it before I built it because I knew what I would do and the questions that I would ask, but I didn’t know what my audience would know or ask. I had ideas, but that doesn’t mean that they were correct. So I launched it where we did a seven-week course where I would create the content each week and then deliver it and then have open Q&A and homework for everyone. So that helped me sort of build the foundation for what I wanted to do. Then obviously that was recorded content and I could put it into a membership site. However, that’s not my main focus or one of my main things. It’s a revenue stream for me. It’s not my main, having courses isn’t my main money-earning product. And for years I was opposed to putting it on a platform that I didn’t own.
However, then I went through a platform that I didn’t own and put a course on Udemy, and going through their process of just setting up the tips that they have along the way was an interesting experience. I still think it’s sort of a beginner level and having your own content on your own platform is the absolute best, right? I lose SEO traffic, and everything if I send somebody to a different site, but just like a quick and dirty, put a course up, I could do it. I was capable of doing it. I could get out of my own way. It hand guided me through the process in a way that I had just not seen put together before. So I took an hour to put together the content, the course was about an hour long. I get feedback from it regularly, and then I accidentally sell key apps through it because I’m showing the system that I’m using to run my mastermind groups or build a virtual summit and things like that.
So it was so many times and if people are just new in here, you’re gonna have a million ideas. There are a million different ways that you can build a membership site, a million different ways to try different things, and you really just have to do it. You know, take that first step, put, move any hurdle out of your way, whether it’s, you don’t wanna be on video, just screen record and have your voice. You don’t wanna do, like just stop making excuses and get out there and do it. I love Memberium and being able to customize the platform, and do all the fun stuff. If you didn’t watch this video, tag them this way, and all of those things. But if you’re not there and you’re not at that level yet, just do something, just F and launch.
[Micah: 24:28]
Again, thank you for these answers because you’re so, I think, relatable to somebody who’s coming in and just want a simple answer. No fluff. Just keep the BS outta the way. And of course, I want people to use Memberium, right? Oh yes, software subscriptions for me. But if it’s gonna get in the way of launching your course, You know like you did go launch it on whatever platform is gonna be helpful and learn through the process because initially you’re not gonna be able to take advantage of all the bells and whistles anyways in most cases.
[Sarah: 25:01]
Yeah, well, it’s one of those things that get added to the to-do list, right? It’s like, oh, I have to build a site and I have to create the content, and I have to, and I have to, and I have to. But my ideal situation, and I feel like this is fully transparent to my strategic ways, is I will take that course that I create, have it all broken down into the videos, and then hire a partner, Memberium certified partner to go and build it for me. I don’t have to be the person doing it now. I’m getting revenue from one channel that’s paying for the partner to go and build it for me, and I don’t have to get in there. I don’t love being, I only, think every business owner should know enough to be dangerous, but not have to do and build all of the things.
I can build a Memberium site, however, that’s not where I and that doesn’t spark my joy. So it’s a lot easier for me to go to a partner that I know is trusted and can do all of the things, and everybody who’s gone through the certification program is incredible. And just hire them to do it. So then I can stay in my creative genius zone and not have to get bogged down with whether can I left justify everything on the screen. Can I go back to this is, I think it’s a perfect example. I’m slightly OCD with things and my first membership site. I couldn’t launch because I couldn’t make OptimizePress, left justify everything on my site, and it was driving me crazy. And I went a full week without launching because I couldn’t make one section of the website left justify.
And that was like what’s happening with my life. I was at a point where I couldn’t really afford to hire a developer to come in. I was too embarrassed to tell somebody that I wasn’t launching because of this happening. And then I was like, F it, I turned the whole website into a PDF from Word and anywhere you clicked on my website, you were going to my order form, whether you clicked anywhere, there was only one choice you were buying or you were leaving the site, there was no in between. And that’s how I sold my first 150 members off of a clickable pdf. And that’s what I mean about just not letting things get in your way. But that could’ve stopped me in my tracks and I have never done it because of embarrassment or resources and I was like, no, you just gotta get a little crafty. And nobody, I mean, I guess, super technical people could have figured it out, but I didn’t have anybody coming and saying, Hey, why is this just a pdf on your website? What kind of a clown are you? It didn’t deter me from my services and then after selling 150 members, I had the resources that I could pay somebody to do it and it didn’t have to be me.
[Micah: 27:47]
It’s beautiful. So, It cracks me up all the things that you’re doing, and I just wanna point out to anybody watching or listening that at each step, Sarah became more credible to everybody that she did this in front of. So she launches a website with a pdf and sells some members. You can think like a nerd, some people I’ve known in the past who, frankly was not very successful, but were finicky, would say like, oh, you’ve gotta fix that issue, you’ve gotta make a real website, you’ve got a this, you’ve got a that to not launch. But then launching it and having the members, you know, success is the best excuse for anything. It’s like, who cares now? Then suddenly you’re this mastermind personnel. You have a course on masterminds, you have an agency, and you have all these things happening. And I guess I’m just saying initially for all of ’em, you were human and had no idea what to do.
[Sarah: 28:48]
A blonde human, for those people who can’t actually see this guy, I always say that you have to teach the dumbest blonde in the room cuz I’m usually her.
[Micah: 28:56]
I don’t know about that. I’d say you’re pretty dangerous with these things and the nerdiness to back it up. You try to stay on the surface, but there’s nerdiness. So, let’s talk about community though, because you have done a great job, for example, in the Keap community of positioning yourself, positioning your company, just everything you’ve ever done.
You have a way about you, right? You’re very networked and very social. Somebody building a membership site, how or when should they bring in the community? What have you done with that aspect? Because I know you’re part of other people’s communities. What would your advice be, though, for somebody to have a community? Because I’m sure you’re building ’em for clients and things like that.
[Sarah: 29:43]
Absolutely. I think it’s bringing your authenticity, you know, where you wanna host your community and being engaged in it. I’m an introverted extrovert, you know, I’ll go to a conference, I’ll go to an event, be out there, networking and doing things, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I recently went to an affiliate Summit and happened to be facilitating meeting areas for different topics like telecommunications, which I have no experience in, and I’m like, I don’t know what I’m gonna help these people with like this sounds absolutely crazy, but just saying yes to something that was slightly outside of my comfort zone gave me force networking. And like I said, people, if you are the influencer in your community or arena, people want to be connected with you. They want the real you. They don’t want, if I’ve always said like if I show up on stage and I’m presenting and I’m wearing a pearl necklace and high heels and a dress like, that’s not who I am like I’m jeans and a t-shirt kind of girl. And, there’s nothing wrong with that.
And luckily today, I think some of the influencers out there are really bringing that to light. You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not, you don’t have to have all of the answers. I gave a presentation live last week and I didn’t have all the answers. Someone asked me a question, and I was like, well, that’s a great point. Uh, hadn’t even thought of it, hadn’t considered it where even in the past I’ve shared like, you know, it gets scary for me sometimes still. I definitely don’t have it all figured out. I don’t have all the answers to everything. I’ll get nervous before I send an email to my list and it’s like, can I just send it, what if everything goes wrong? What if it goes horribly? And it’s like you still just have to press play and press past those fears. I say all the time that on the other side of fear is greatness.
So if you can get over whatever trick or hack that you have to do to get out there and just do it, have conversations, be engaged in your community, and don’t just post silly memes to get interactions. Be real, make real connections. And the community’s gonna come.
[Micah: 31:57]
When I would ask, should they start doing that? Is that something to do from the beginning or later?
[Sarah: 32:05]
Absolutely. No, I think absolutely from the beginning, you know, you are probably already hanging out where your ideal numbers or clients are going to wanna be and just being active in it. And I don’t mean sitting on Facebook for 10 hours a day and commenting on things. I mean, putting out intentional pieces that will get engagement and conversations going. And it doesn’t matter. Like I treat everything like I’m working with one person. If I give a presentation to an entire room, my whole goal is that one person can take one thing away from that and implement it and get value out of it.
So if you, when you think one-to-one even, we’re all serving one to many. Everyone’s going to feel that. And I have very selfish intentions I want everyone to be wildly successful. And it’s selfish of me because sometimes I say, “Hey, let’s just fly to Vegas and see Usher in concert”, and my friends can do it because they’re wildly successful. It’s not like, oh, hey, I’ll have to check in with somebody else or figure these out. You know, we can, we can just do, and that’s creating the life that you want, putting yourself out there, being that person. With Keap, I’ve won most helpful partner three years in a row, and I genuinely just want to help people.
And I think that anyone who has good, pure intentions of whatever their gift is to share with the world, that success can come to them when they’re putting out good in the world. If I was just putting out negativity all the time, I’m not sure that I’d have the life that I do.
[Micah: 33:41]
Hmm. It’s funny how that works, eh?
[Sarah: 33:44]
It’s so weird. And I’m not like big into the secret. It’s funny, I was talking earlier, and my son said, Mom, do you think that if you just put crystals on your desk, you’re gonna make a million dollars? And I like, No, I definitely don’t. If I did, my desk would be covered in crystals. But I think being intentional with things and not always saying like, what am I gonna get out of it?
I go into a lot of situations, where like even the affiliate summit, For example, I didn’t need to help Clarion with their event. They could have found somebody else to facilitate those things. I didn’t know what would come from it and the opportunities that arose just, I feel a little hypocritical. In the beginning, I was like, say no to everything. And now I’m like saying yes to that opportunity. But it was right for me. I was going to the event. I wanted to get more connected in the performance marketing arena. This is just this place, a place that I’m playing a little bit more now. So saying yes to that opportunity was right for my end goal.
And, that’s where a little bit of that strategy has to come in, of initially say, no. Think about it, it doesn’t fit with your long-term vision and plan, and can say, yes, come from it. I don’t go to an event and like, I need a pure ROI of X, Y, Z to make this a win for me, it’s hey, I met this cool person and I don’t know what’s gonna happen, and that is enough. You have to put your own oxygen masks off first. So if you’re saying yes to everyone else, how many times are you saying no to you and your business? And finding that balance.
I still will give back. I went to Keap it wasn’t even like my territory or anything like that to go and help people. So I took time away from my family. I had hard expenses of plane and hotels and all of those things, and I can build that into my life where I can give back. I can, people are still following up with questions and wanting to see all my materials and things like that. So I can say yes in micro instances where it still fills my cup or my bucket full of joy, and as I said, I just genuinely want everyone to be wildly successful. So selfish.
[Micah: 35:57]
It is, it is. I want to capitalize selfishly on your desire to help people be successful. Let’s say somebody’s listening to this and they are stuck somewhere in the process. A few times you’ve talked about how you’ve been stuck and then you came to some sort of moment or whatever and decided, F it, I’m gonna go. How do you get other people through that? So I’m sure you’ve had friends who are stuck. What is that conversation like? If somebody here is your friend and you’re like, Hey, listen, I know you’re whatever, worried, scared, afraid. Shy, what do you say?
[Sarah: 36:34]
I mean, you just have to do it. Find out what drives you. Like if you said to me, Sarah, I just wanna do this, but I’m scared that this is gonna happen. It’s just like you just have to do it. I mean, anytime, you will have somebody in your life, whether you really know them or they’re just an online colleague, friend, or whatever. When I’m having a bad day, those are the people that I go to or everything’s going terribly wrong in my business. That’s why I say be a part of a mastermind group. If you don’t have that person, definitely find one.
And it doesn’t, I mean, go on Meetup and there’s probably one in your local area. It doesn’t have to be industry specific. You will get ideas from that. So having people in your back pocket that you can go to and be transparent with, I can be there and cheer you on. I will get questions all the time and I always say, if you can shoot me a message and I can help you solve a life, it just seems too big. It’s easy for me cuz I’m outside. You’re inside the drawer and the problem seems so much larger than they are, but I can read the label on the outside that just says, just twist to the left and you’ll find your way out.
It’s easier to get an outside opinion and if you just have to get crafty with how you’re looking for it, you know, whether it’s a podcast that can change your mind or a webinar or you’re just not motivated to do anything, pop on a YouTube, video and get some inspiration. I go through entrepreneurial funks and depression and I don’t wanna get outta bed, and it’s like, okay, what do I need to do? How do I need to hack myself and hack my own? I don’t wanna use the word flaw, character flaw, personality flaw, or whatever it is that just holds me back. How can I just look at it slightly differently to get out, to get outta that situation? How could I get everything left justified and just publish it? What is the obstacle? What and what is it really? Why am I afraid to hit send on a broadcast? Am I afraid somebody’s gonna buy it? Am I afraid somebody’s going to make fun of me?
I did an activity a year and a half ago, and this is a little more woo than I usually am, but I just wrote down everything I was afraid of and I did it. It took a couple of weeks cause new fears would come up as new situations presented themselves, and I just had a Google sheet or a Google Doc going on my phone. And then I just talked about them. I read those fears out loud and then said why they weren’t true and then they didn’t have power over me. And it was like, am I afraid that somebody’s going to think that X, Y, Z? No. That’s just a stupid story that’s happening in my head. It’s not real. If I hit send and there’s a typo in my email, they’re gonna think. Oh, she probably autocorrected or why isn’t that idiot using Grammarly?
But the plus side of that is maybe I’ll send that email and I will have the Scottish vacation paid for to take my family away for a couple of weeks. And there are just so many plus sides to saying yes to you. So say no to everyone else. Say yes to you. I feel like this has taken 12 years to get here, Micah.
[Micah: 40:02]
It’s all useful. It really is. I guess where I want to kind of wrap up is, first of all, was there anything you had in mind that you wanted to talk about when thinking of memberships and courses?
[Sarah: 40:16]
If both things give you the ability to live the life that you want and share the gift that you have, do whatever might be holding you back or stopping you from just doing it. Just do it. It doesn’t have to be crazy and complicated. Just put it out there, put it out into the world of you’re going to do it. Start a weekly session, and get a couple of people in there, or don’t pretend like the people are there and create your content.
Just don’t wait. Life is happening right now. Whether you are creating the dream business that you want or you’re not. And I would love for anyone listening six months from now say, man, I’m so glad I just hit play.
[Micah: 41:01]
Beautiful, well, how can people connect with you if they wanna know more about you or check out your course?
[Sarah: 41:12]
You’ll never be able to find me again. Google me, I dare you. No, I’m just kidding. I’m on social media. I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. If you have a specific question, feel free to email me, at sarah@fullstackmarketing.co. Just connect. Again, I mean for really, pretty much anyone, if I can help you solve the biggest challenge in your life over a five-minute text exchange, I’m here for it.
[Micah: 41:43]
That’s amazing. Well Sarah, thank you so much.
[Sarah: 41:47]
Yeah, thanks for having me.
