89: Tracie Shroyer: Traveling the U.S. from her RV Office

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast we tell the stories of ordinary business owners just like you. We talk about their story and how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. And these are discussions with real people who understand what it's like to own an online course or membership business. Before we begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show Notes. Let's jump right into our show.

And today my special guest is Tracy Shawyer. Tracy is a launch tech specialist for course and membership creators and she helps online entrepreneurs get past their tech blocks and launch their online courses, memberships or other business projects. She helps people set up their businesses, back end, connect all the dots and make a plan for the online course launch, all while living and traveling the US in an rv. And Traci, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to jump into our discussion here today and learn more about your entrepreneur journey.

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

So why don't you take a few minutes and kind of walk everybody through how you got started. Started into Online entrepreneurship Wow.

When I first started, I didn't think that I was getting into online entrepreneurship so much. I am from a family of entrepreneurs and so I kind of knew I wanted to do something for myself. But entrepreneurship seemed like this big word with a lot that was involved. And I was just a mom staying at home with my kids and I needed a job that I could do from home. And this was in the late 2000s, so it was quite a while ago. And I found this profession called virtual assistant. And no one knew what a virtual assistant was back then. I had to explain it to everybody. I couldn't call it a VA because people thought that was the Veterans of Affairs. And so I learned how to set up things online for my clients and it was sort of a learning process for several years. And while I was going through that process, we were also raising our kids. And with our kids we got really into, we got really interested in teaching them about money. And so we, a lot of people were watching what we were doing and they Said, oh my goodness, can you teach me how to teach your kids about, or to teach my own kids about money? And so we thought, you know, this is getting to be a lot of work, maybe we should have a course. And so I started trying to put together pieces for a course. Now this was probably, probably 2013, 2014. That was a really hard thing to do back then. The technology just was not there. I mean, I could do some of the pieces, but there were, there were a lot of pieces missing. And so we had to bootstrap and figure out on our own how to set up all of the different things we needed to do this course on kids and money. And as part of that process, I joined a pretty high end mastermind group on like, you know, setting up a business online and all of the pieces and doing launches specifically because now I had recorded a course and I wanted to release it to the world. And so I went out and, and joined this mastermind group on how to launch. And I was in the group and it was not cheap. It was, you know, it was over a thousand dollars a month I think we were paying and I had no money coming in at the time. And so it was a, it was a stretch, but. And the point of that is everybody that was in the group with me was paying the same amount of money. And we got to our first in person event and it was a very small event and maybe 50, 60 people. And I sat there the first day and realized that people did not know the basics of having an online business. They didn't understand why they needed an email list or how to set one up, why they couldn't just use their Gmail account. They didn't understand what a landing page was or a freebie. They didn't understand the terminology. And the thing that was killing me was we were six months into a year long membership that we were paying so much money for and they didn't even know how to use the basic components of this Mastermind membership group that we were in. They didn't. For six months they'd been paying all this money and been taking in the content. I had no idea how to implement it, but thought they were the only ones, so they didn't want to ask the questions. So as I was sitting in, sitting at a roundtable at this event during our first break, I realized that the people around me had no idea and I did. As the virtual assistant, I had the background in how to do these things and as somebody who had set up a course already. And so we went around the table. And people are like, man, I feel so stupid. I don't even know what a landing page is. Or, yeah, you think that sounds dumb? I don't know why I need an email list. And so I gradually started answering the questions just at my table. And by the time we got to lunch that first day, I had people waiting to talk to me because I was sort of the missing piece that everybody had been afraid to admit they didn't understand how to do. And throughout the course of the event, the person running the event was reviewing all of our, all of the launches we had done. And he said, you know what, I hate to tell you this, Tracy, your Kids and money product probably isn't going to work. And I only know that because I've tried to launch a Kids and money product myself and there's not enough pain. And, you know, there were a variety of reasons it wasn't going to work. But at that point, I had so many people that wanted to hire me to set up their launches for them that I had no problem letting go of the Kids and money course that I had struggled with. And I switched gears and moved into helping people set up their tech. So that's kind of how the story started. And that was in 2016, and that's what I've been doing ever since. And I think the tech piece is unusual in that a lot of people are afraid to admit they don't know tech or they are so convinced that they can never understand the tech. I'm not techie is what I hear a lot that they give up before they've even gotten started because they don't realize it's a skill that really anybody can learn.

I love what I love a lot of the stuff that you said there when you were going through it, I'm like, oh, I want to ask her this, I want to ask her this to figure out where do I start. I find it fascinating that you are at this mastermind in this high end mastermind group where you're paying $1,000 a month. And that was back in 2015. My goodness. And these, you know, the people in the mastermind group didn't know kind of the basics of an online business. That, that just fascinates me. But I'm not going to go there. So in terms of the comment that was made about your Kids and money product, I also find it fascinating that somebody told you that that wouldn't work because I know there's products out there. I know they even like, Dave Ramsey has products related to this particular topic. And I know because I've purchased them. So I think it's also fascinating that somebody told you that or kind of gave you, gave you that guidance. So when you were at this event and you were talking to these people and you knew, oh, I have a, there's definitely a market here in a market need for my services. Where did you take your business from there?

Well, let me step back one second and say, I think in today's online world, absolutely, there's a spot for kids and money products. Back then there wasn't. People were not as savvy about being online and parents in general were not looking to the Internet as much to buy a course and learn online. That was where my problem was, is that it was just the wrong time. I completely, I know that those programs are working today, but I was just a little early to the game and the area that I was trying to do it in. So if you are trying to do a kids and money product or financial literacy product for kids, you know, don't, don't take what I said to heart because I think that's, that climate has completely changed. So I do want to say that I don't want to crush anybody's dreams or anything.

Yeah. And I completely understand your point and where you're coming from there.

Yep, yep. So from there I think what happened was I started, you know, I'm the kind of person, I'm an action taker. Right. And so I, and I'm scrappy. And so one of the things that I knew really easily how to do was to set up an opt in page. And I had lead pages at the time. And so at that actual event. So I was told on Wednesday that maybe I should come up with a new idea. It was a five day event. Two days were the mastermind and then three days were this giant public event with a thousand people. And so on Wednesday morning, I think, or Wednesday afternoon, very first day, I was told, you know, very gently, very kindly and with great love. I just don't see how this is, that this is going to work. I started thinking about all the people whose names I was writing down that wanted my help on their own launches. And I got to start collecting these. So I put together an opt in form that they could like I could send them the link and they could give me their name that way. And that way I was, you know, complying with sending them email and things. And in, in order to do that, I put together like this little landing page. And then I thought, you know, this hotel has a business center. I'm going to pop together some business cards. So by Thursday afternoon, I had a landing page, and I had business cards, and I had a domain. And by the time the. The public event started on Friday, I had a following. Like, I had people every break. It was funny because I never got to go to the bathroom the entire time that I was at the event unless I missed a session, because the minute the speaker would stop speaking, word had spread, and I would get a lineup of people who needed help with this. And like I said, this was, you know, this was years ago when it wasn't easy to set these things up. It is a lot easier now. And so if you're thinking, oh, this is super easy now, I don't understand why people are having trouble. We didn't have the ways to connect things or the options for the different services that were you that we have now. And so by the end of the event, I had, like, a legitimate business with a URL and my husband was home with our kids. And so I was calling him and saying, can you look into buying this domain? Can you look in, you know, can you set this up for me? Can you set that up for me? And I go into a session, and so that was how it was started. And I've kind of really never looked back. I mean, I've tweaked what I've done, but the general need for people to get help with those first few pieces in their business has not changed. And so it's been a viable business for me for, you know, five years.

So I know now you're part of a bigger group. Tell us a little bit about that group and how you found your counterparts. And just describe it a little bit for folks, because you and I were talking beforehand, so I know a little bit about it.

Yes. So the once I, you know, when you're part of a mastermind group like that, and the group, the Mastermind itself had 100 people in it, but there were probably 50 to 60 at that event. Word spreads pretty quickly, like, oh, you need to reach out to this person. I join a lot of groups. I am, you know, part of a lot of the. Like, I follow Amy Porterfield and Jeff Walker and Stu McLaren, and I'm really active in those Facebook groups. And when you become active in a Facebook group and you focus on giving to people and helping people without any strings attached, people start to find you. And so I have a very strong social media presence in the groups that I'm in. And word starts to spread. I've also in like some podcast collaborative groups where we help each other out and it's again, you, once a month we get on a call with each other and it's not about I want to be on your podcast. It's more, oh, I know somebody that you should interview for your podcast. I have a pretty good memory for people and what they do, and I can't always remember which group I found them in. Sometimes I have to do some detective work. But at this point, having been in these groups for as long as I have, and I love to go to live in person networking groups, which is really funny because I'm a complete introvert, I have to like really psych myself up to get there and to get myself out there. But then I love them once I'm there. I'm very good at connecting people. And so I have become the person that people are like. You know, I don't know someone, but I bet Tracy does. And so, and there's no, there's nothing that I do that is monetary monetized around that. It's just that I kind of, I like people and I like knowing what people do. I'm very interested in people. And so that's kind of how I've built my business. If Facebook were to go away tomorrow, I would probably have a little bit of a problem. And so I really, I really work on trying to get out of that realm. But with COVID and not doing live events right now, it's. It's a tough thing to do. So I'm always looking for new ways to, you know, broaden those networking experiences. But that's pretty much how I've built my community.

So tell us a little bit about how you moved in the online courses, why you actually decided to create some of your own instead of helping others with, with their portfolio. Tell Walk us through that process.

So the reason I created, I have a course called the LaunchTech Blueprint. And what it does is it walks people step by step through. This is how you set up a funnel. This is your, like if you're gonna, let's say activecampaign, that's my all time favorite. If you're gonna set up activecampaign and you need to build a list, you don't need to know how to do 30 things, you need to know how to do four. These are the four things you need to know how to do. And this is how you set them up. And I show you step by step and then I move to lead pages. I don't offer all the. All of the platforms. I don't offer all of the steps to do a full online launch. I focus on what you need to do to get started. Because what I truly, truly believe is that list building is where you need to start, no matter what your online businesses. Because if you don't have an email list, it doesn't matter how big your social media following is. It doesn't matter, you know, how many hits you're getting on your website. And honestly, I could go on about websites forever because so many people spend so much time and money on a website that very few people will ever see. But any of those things can come after you starting to build your email list. Because building an email list, well, takes time. And while that's happening, then you can go back and work on the social media. You can go back and work on the website if that's what you want to do, or you can start working on your course. And the other part of that is I'm a huge proponent of doing beta course launches, or they're also called seed launches, if you're in the Jeff Walker world and creating the course as you go. Because I know from experience I've created many courses around the kids and money product that did not sell, and I've put hours and hours and hours and hours into those courses, and then nobody wanted to buy them. So that was the first part of your question, and then I lost the second part.

Well, I was just. I was curious as to why you moved into building an online course.

Did you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Because so. So I was getting a lot of people that just wanted those same steps, wanted me to help them set up those same steps over and over and over again. And I was actually doing it in workshops, like online workshops. I'd get, you know, four or five people on a workshop and we'd do it together. And that just did not work well, because when you had a few people together, like, one person got it immediately and another person was like, I can't find the button to click. My computer's too slow or whatever. So I just put together a really quick course so that anybody can take it. It's super inexpensive. Because in my heart, I remember in 2012 when I was putting together my first landing page and my email and trying to hook it all up. Like, I so clearly remember this. It could have happened yesterday. My kids were little and my husband said, okay, I know you aren't getting stuff done during the day, working with the kids. So I'm going to Take them on Saturday and I'm going to give you a full eight hours and you can just do your business and get done what you needed to do, what you need to do. And I, I did. I was so excited. Like, I had my special coffee, I was like ready to go. And I worked super hard all day and I set up my landing page on lead pages and it was beautiful and I loved it. And I clicked the button to test it and literally nothing happened. Like, you couldn't have even. I didn't even know did the button work? Did I click the button? Did I not click the button? Nothing happened. And I was like, what the heck? Like, this is eight hours of my life. Nothing happened. And, and I realized now, well, yeah, you got to connect it to an email list. Like, what did I expect was going to happen? Like, that's second nature to me now. I was so non techie back then, I didn't even realize it was more than one step to the process. I just thought it was magic. Like, I'm just going to set this up and click the button and I'm magically going to like start collecting emails. And I realize now that that doesn't work, but I have a real heart for the people who don't know that that isn't going to work and who don't have a ton of money to pour into this because they just need to get started so they can get to the point where they can start making money. And so that's where my heart is. And that's why I started offering this course for. It's $47. It's just super. It's just enough to. And part of the reason I don't give it away is because when you give stuff away, people don't actually do it. And so I want you to have some skin in the game. I want you to take the course and learn the steps and implement them yourselves. And when you're done, you have this funnel. But I don't need to make a ton of money on this because I want you to succeed. And I truly am a passionate believer in the idea that every person out there has something that they can offer. And I want them to not have tech get in the way of that. And for people who do, I'm getting, I'm getting so passionate, I'm running out of like moisture in my mouth. For the people who do say, I am not techie. There is nothing less intuitive than learning how to ride a bike. You have to balance, you have to pedal, you have to Steer. You have to, like, understand what's going on around you. And yet most people have learned to ride a bike. Or there's other examples I'm sure I could come up with. And once you understand the steps, it's second nature. Like, you don't forget how to do the steps. And once you learn that, yeah, it's weird. It's like, why would we ever learn to do all these three things at the same time? But once you learn them, you're like, oh, total. Like, I've got this. And. And that is truly how I feel about the. The basic pieces of tech. Certainly there are things out there I don't even do in the tech world. But if you learn those basic pieces of setting up your email funnel and your lead gen funnel, then the rest is just repeating those same steps over and over and over again until you get to the point where you're really wanting to, like, level up. And by then, you're bringing in the money to help bring on the team or the experts to help you.

So, Tracy, let me ask you this. You've done a great job in building your business via networking events, figuring out a need in the marketplace. You've been networking, too, in Facebook groups. But even you said that if Facebook went away, you know, there'd be trouble. And obviously, the events with the last year with COVID have definitely stopped or slowed down. What do you see as next steps for your business for the remainder of the year?

Well, and interestingly enough, Covid actually has made me busier than ever because so many people have decided that they want to go online. But in terms of next steps for my business, what I've realized is that, yeah, there are people now in my realm who do want to go to the next level. They have their list. They spent time figuring out what their audience wants, and that's usually the biggest. Once you get past the tech, the biggest hurdle is really finding out what your audience wants. If you already know what your audience wants, the tech is pretty, pretty minor. And you've got. You almost for sure are going to have a viable business if you can give them what they need. And in my realm, what people really want is. Okay, Tracy, I've been with you for a while now. I've got my funnel set up. My list is built now. I want to take it to the next level. I know you. I trust you. I want you to do it for me. And so my, my course, even though the goal of it was to just get as many people as I could with their businesses, set up online and do it in such a way that I wasn't having to like do it over and over and over again for people once that happened that you know, it brought in a little bit of income. But what it really did is it, it increased my know, like and trust factor which is huge in the online business space. That wasn't my intent, but in a way it's sort of become a kind of a lead gen. So I'm actually using that course not only to help you people but also to start to build rapport with them. And the reality is the people who go through the course, they then have access to me. And so I have a tendency to like say, oh, I'm all tough guy in my sales page. Like okay, this is a DIY course. You're on your own. If you want one on one help, it's going to cost you more. But I'm not so great at like, you know, somebody reaches out to me by email and says tracy, I'm stuck. I'm not the one to say okay, you know, pay up. I help them. And so now that they have viable businesses, I've moving into the one on one complete launch done for you. And I just am starting. I'm super excited about the name. I just came up with a new name for it and I have the domain so, so it's safe. I can say it online but it's called the One Stop Launch Shop. And that's like a higher end thing that is for someone who has a business that's going and they have maybe a team or a, well a team that's helped them but they need a team specifically just for the launch part of it. And so that's kind of where my next steps are is I'm getting more into the one on one work but it's a little bit higher end and just kind of letting the course be a course for people who just need to get going.

Okay, so you're adding this one on one to your portfolio. Have you put together pricing around it or how far have you gotten with it?

So with the One Stop Launch Shop, it's super, super customized and it could be from. And I always hesitate, you know, like money is such a hard thing to talk about sometimes. And because my heart is with the beginner, this is hard for me. But these one, these online launch or these one on one launch packages start at $12,000 and they are, you know, the graphic design, the landing page design, the all the automation set up an activecampaign, you know, all of the pieces that you need to launch the video, the, you know, the editing of the video, which right now we're doing on Zoom and, and, or we're shooting the video on Zoom. And so, you know, it's, it's such a different market for me. But it is so fun to be able to really be with a launch from the very beginning through the very end and have you really develop a relationship with somebody because you know, no matter how well planned a launch is, a launch is a launch. Like there is something. It's sort of like running a marathon. Like you can practice, you can do all your test runs, you can have all of your food figured out who's going to meet you here and run with you. But the day of the marathon, you know, it's tough. There's, and that happens with launches. And so it's kind of an adrenaline fun thing. But I really get to go deep with people and I love that about it.

So I, you know, I love how you kind of started in kind of doing the one on one work. You also have the, you know, your course and now you have this higher level type service that you're going to be offering. So I wish you the best in that. I love how your business has kind of transitioned over the years from where you got started as a stay at home mom. My closing question for you, you've been doing this since around 2010 or late, late 2000s. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

My biggest advice is to really don't pay attention to the voices in your head that are telling you you can't do it. You know, whether it's the tech or whether it's, you think, oh, I've got this idea but I don't know how I'm going to make it work or you know, find a community. There's so many, so many even free Facebook groups out there where you can start, you can bounce ideas off of other people, you can talk with like minded people don't. Unless you're from an entrepreneurial family. And I am my entire family. Like when I was growing up, no one worked for somebody else. I came from a family of entrepreneurs, so I have an advantage in that. But even so when I try to tell my family is 100% convinced that I have some kind of skill scam going on because they don't understand how I can be making money on the computer. Like they just don't get it. Like in my family it's, you are, you know, laying Sod, you're a landscaper or you're a home builder or whatever. Those were the types of entrepreneurs I had. If you don't have any of that in your family, don't even like go there and tell them your ideas unless you think you're going to get support because likely you are not. Find other places to get the support that you want. There are so many, so many great communities out there where people will just out of the goodness of their heart and for networking, but also just because we need people, we need to share ideas and bounce ideas off of each other. There's so many great places to reach out and get to learn about others and have others help you. And so I think that the biggest mistake, the thing that I see the most is my family says it's not going to work. My best friend says it's not going to work. They laugh at me because I don't even know how to change my email settings on Gmail. How could I ever have a business online? It's Mary. This is Marie Forleo's word. I don't. This is not my word. But everything is figureoutable and I truly believe that. And in this day and age, if you can't find it on a Google search, you can probably find it in a group. You can find the answers that you need and so don't listen to the naysayers.

And I think that's some great advice. Tracy, can you let people know where they can find you? And I believe you also have some free resources for folks.

I do. So my website is launchtech made easy.com. another little pro tip next. When you think of your business name and the URL, think about how many times you're going to have to give that URL.

Well, we'll make sure the links in the show notes so they'll know exactly where to find you.

There is something to be said for it explaining exactly what you do, but when it's that long, it gets to be kind of a lot. So it's launchtech made easy.com and then I have, I put together a resources page for your listeners specifically. And it has three different things on it. There's a launch launch roadmap. It's all the things you need to know to not launch roadmap. All the things you need to know to grow your list. It's a tech roadmap. And so it tells you, okay, you need an email service, you need. This is how it kind of maps out and this is how these things connect. So that's called the tech roadmap. And then I also have if you're more in the launching framework, I have a launch checklist which is just a super quick like little checklist of the things you need to do. And then I have a super comprehensive launch Planner which is 27 pages long. It's a place to put URLs and to kind of track all of the launch tasks that you're managing. So all of those are available on my website at launchtech made easy.com.

And thank you Tracy. And like I said, I will make sure all of those links are in the show notes. And thanks so much for sharing your story. I loved hearing about it, how you are a stay at home mom and how your business has transitioned over the years to where you are today with launch, you know, with launching this new service, this new high end service that you're doing. So thanks so much for sharing with us.

Oh thank you. I had so much fun. I get pretty passionate about this and you know, I gave you the resources page. There are a lot of articles on my blog as well that can help people that are just starting out on setting up a lot of the steps too. So search around a little bit and I have a search bar on there. One of the keys to being good at an online business is knowing how to search for the topics you're looking for. So if you do a little search, you'll probably find some other articles on there to help you on some of the topics I touched on today but couldn't go into in depth. And and if you have a question, reach out to me because I love helping people, particularly people who are struggling as they're first starting out.

Thank you. Traci, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.