Oct 1, 2019
Today on the show, we have Lisa Johnson. Lisa is an expert in passive income. We're going to be exploring a lot of different ways to create passive income, myths about passive income, and Lisa's journey from working really hard, being overstretched and burnt out, to now being able to have a multiple six-figure business based mostly on passive income.
Something I'd definitely like to have in my own life, if I'm being honest. So with that, let's hand it over to Lisa. Lisa Johnson, welcome to The Story Engine Podcast.
What You Will Learn On This Episode
- Passive Income
- Know Your Audience
- Use Facebook Ads To Build Your Audience Not To Sell To
- Identify And Organize Your Audience Into Low, Medium and High Tier Clients
- ...and check out what a mini-coaching sessions looks like
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
https://www.facebook.com/lisajohnsoncoaching
https://www.instagram.com/lisajohnsoncoaching
Transcription
Kyle Gray:
Hello, and welcome to the Story Engine Podcast. My name is Kyle Gray, and today on the show, we have Lisa Johnson. Lisa is an expert in passive income, and we're going to be exploring a lot of different ways to create passive income, a lot of common myths about passive income, and Lisa's journey from not making any passive income and working really hard, being overstretched and burnt out, to now being able to have a multiple six-figure business based mostly on passive income. Something I'd definitely like to have in my own life, if I'm being honest. So with that, let's hand it over to Lisa. Lisa Johnson, welcome to The Story Engine Podcast.
Lisa Johnson:
Thanks for having me.
Kyle Gray:
Lisa, I'm really excited to chat with you today. It's a topic that we have not discussed on this show yet, at least not directly. It's passive income and there's lots of different areas that I want to explore with you on this. First, I want to introduce you properly to the audience. Can you tell me about a time in your life that has defined you to who you are, what you care about, and maybe even a little bit about what you're talking about today?
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, absolutely. There are a couple of times, but one time stands out, and it was when I was a child. At the age of 16, I had a bully at my school, holding a knife to my throat while about 20 or 30 children and my classmates, stood around egging her on, so to speak, to do something. And, it followed years of bullying because I was born into a very humble household. I lived on a council estate in England, which is like welfare. I think you call it welfare in the U.S. and I managed to get a kind of scholarship to a very prestigious, private boarding school. It became very obvious at the age of 11 that I was very different to the people that were there.
Lisa Johnson:
They had these lovely cars and they were going on lovely holidays, and I had secondhand clothes and I had tickets to get free school meals and that kind of thing, and so bullying started from then. And then, by the time I was 16, that happened and even after that, that was like a defining moment where I didn't believe in myself anymore because of that happening to me. And from then, I was then bullied in the workplace, too, and there was a time when I decided I either wanted to give up or I was going to do exactly what I wanted to do in life and show everybody that I could be a success. And that defining moment is what brings me here. So, I now in the last two and a half years, have gone from £30,000 in debt to, having over half a million pounds in income, in revenue, from 90% passive income. And I'm a massive believer that so many people can get more freedom in their lives by having passive and semi-passive income stream. And so, what I do is I help people to do exactly that.
Kyle Gray:
Wow. Okay, so first question, now that you have all of this passive income, you no longer have to deal with any more people to bully you-
Lisa Johnson:
That's not true.
Kyle Gray:
Have you isolated?
Kyle Gray:
Just like, "I've got the passive income, I'm staying home! Don't need to deal with any of you!"
Lisa Johnson:
No. And I think that what I didn't realize when I came into this online world was that it's even worse online. But it's easier to deal with, when you believe in yourself more and you know who you are, and your self-esteem is where it should be rather than when you're a child, it's difficult. And about seven years ago, when I had twins and I was, even then, being bullied in the workplace, I had twin boys, and just decided that this was my chance to get out of that and do what I always wanted to do, to make a difference and to lead an extraordinary life. I didn't want a 9-5 life, and so, I took the opportunity to go and do that.
Lisa Johnson:
And I'm not saying it was easy. It wasn't easy, those first few years of struggle in my first business, which was a wedding planning business, but it set me up, knowing all of that, all of the things that can go wrong, all of the mistakes I made, it completely set me up. And during that time, I was bullied so many times online. There were so many times when, people wouldn't like that I was visible, what I was putting out there. And, by friends, by people I knew, but also by people that I had no idea who they were, they were just other coaches. But, it's made me stronger and I've learned to deal with it, but also, I can now help others deal with it. And, I'm a partner in a bullying charity called BulliesOut where I help lots of adults who are being bullied online deal with it better.
Kyle Gray:
Wow. That is such a challenging thing, and it's amazing how creative some people can be to do bullying, yeah. It's a very kind thing to contribute back to and turn around, because I think it's also really misunderstood and underestimated, the effects that it can have on somebody.
Lisa Johnson:
Absolutely. I see so many people who, they were bullied when they were younger, and they're expected to just get over it when they're an adult, but actually for years, if there's a group a teenage girls, walking down a road, I would cross the road. Even when I was in my 30s.
Kyle Gray:
Wow.
Lisa Johnson:
So, it has a huge effect.
Kyle Gray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). But, like you said, this in some ways was an inspiration and an impetus that eventually got you here to this current world, where you are doing very well for yourself on passive income. And, I want to explore a little bit of that now. Can you tell me, just give me your definition of passive income, and then maybe follow up with a couple of common, either misunderstandings about what passive income is, or misconceptions about it.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, sure. So, I believe the easiest way to explain passive income is no longer trading time for money. I think that what we do mainly, especially in the online workspace, is we trade time for money. We do something, we get paid for it. We do something else, we get paid for it. And I think that, the biggest myth out there on passive income, is that it's passive and it's because of the word passive income. We expect that we do nothing and we make money, that's a fairytale, it doesn't exist. However, what it does mean is that you can do a lot of work upfront, and it is a lot of work, right at the beginning, to then, make money over and over again without doing any more work. So, for instance, I have courses out there that I did at the beginning, two years ago, that I'm still making six figures every few months from now. So, to me the definition is just no longer trading time for money.
Kyle Gray:
Perfect. So you mentioned courses. What are a couple of the other common types of income that maybe you have or you commonly see as promising avenues for it?
Lisa Johnson:
One of the biggest and I guess this would be semi-passive income, and, I should probably explain what that means. When something's semi-passive, you're still doing a small amount of work, but nowhere near the amount of work that you would need to do normally to make that amount of money. So, as an example, I have another course out there which goes over ten months. It's already written, because it's gone out six or seven times already, so the work's already written, the presentation's already written, but once a month, I will go in and deliver it live. So, rather than a do-it-yourself model, I will deliver it live and answer questions. So, for one hour every month over ten months, therefore ten hours, I will make between £150,000 and £200,000.
Kyle Gray:
Nice.
Lisa Johnson:
And normally, you wouldn't be able to make that amount of money in ten hours. So, it's not completely passive because you're still having to do something, you're still having to go in and deliver once a month. So, that's semi-passive, whereas you can have courses that are completely passive, they just go off and do it on their own. So, some other semi-passive income streams are things like memberships. Completely passive would be an e-book. Affiliate marketing, would be semi passive, where you're selling somebody else's, product to your audience.
Kyle Gray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Johnson:
Things like, comparison websites, or even, stocks and bonds, is not a good one too, I wouldn't say go out and do that to everybody because it's something you need a lot of knowledge in. But that's passive. If we get right down to the basics of it renting out a spare room is passive income.
Kyle Gray:
I like that. And I like that you've really encompassed the full breadth of it. And you've also shown us kind of a philosophy to have around it and a way to look at income, that may be different than many people have considered before. I have a couple of passive income streams. I've got three books, which have been creating passive revenue on Amazon, the books itself, It's not a life changing amount of income. But, it is like every even a small stream of passive income to something that's well welcomed. I've done, affiliate marketing as well, which, depending on what you sell, some of it can be really nice. And some of it, you have to sell quite a lot of.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
sometimes with software, selling software, email automation, landing pages, Click Funnels out there is like the ultimate affiliate marketing masters.
Lisa Johnson:
There are people that have an entire web page, if you take somebody like, who's a big coach out there, Amy Porterfield, she has an entire web page on her website, saying, these are the things I use and would recommend. And literally every time someone clicks on that, she's going to make money.
Kyle Gray:
There's a lot of people with those, it's a nice thing, I've seen it with Pat Flynn, has his tools Lyft for podcasters. That's an excellent one for people who have a lot of content. This is a great, if you have a lot of traffic going through your site. And, there are people interested in a skill and what you're doing and how you're doing it. Yeah, that can be in a very, very promising stream. Or, even if you're a part of an agency or doing services for people, and you need to get them to sign up for something. If you're in a marketing service, then, you might need to get people to sign up for an email marketing platform. And you can provide avenues for passive income.
Kyle Gray:
Or if you're writing books, recommending tools and having maybe a recommended tools download. I like the way you looked at, doing a workshop or somethings that aren't... I wouldn't ask commonly associate those with passive income. But you've got a unique approach to how you're working those.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, so if I find do things like workshops. Well, to be honest with you, if I do things like anything, courses, workshops, whatever, my biggest tip would be to sell fast. So I've never written a course. And then sold it, I've only ever put something out there, seeing if people wanted to buy it, got the money from it, and then created it as I went along, especially the first time. So that's the first thing that people say, "How can you do that?" But actually I think it's a much smarter way of working rather than if people that I see spending six months getting these really polished videos.
Lisa Johnson:
And, they're really slick and amazing, but no one wants to buy the product. So first of all, don't create first. The second, with things like workshops, you can have hundreds of people on a workshop if you do it online. So, it's trading time for money, the fast time, but then you can put it out there, time and time again. So the next time it's going out there, you're just making money from doing nothing.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah. Okay. So, I have two questions, and now they're battling, in my head. I want to hear about, how you get people into these workshops every month.
Lisa Johnson:
Okay, do you mean it's part of my membership? Or how I start creating passive income, right from there?
Kyle Gray:
I guess I understand now, the workshops you're giving every month, is that part of a membership?
Lisa Johnson:
That's part of a membership,
Kyle Gray:
I see.
Lisa Johnson:
So people pay me 49 pounds a month to be part of, a membership I have called the Get Shit Done society. And, in that membership, I have a guest come in every month to give a workshop to the people there. So, I make about 200,000 a year from doing that. But I don't do anything, because it's the guest speakers that are coming in and doing the work. I'm just getting my VA to book them.
Kyle Gray:
Awesome.
Lisa Johnson:
So it's still semi passive, because I still go into the Facebook group and answer questions every now and again. And, and pop in every now and again. But it's a lot more money than you would normally get doing something like that.
Kyle Gray:
Okay, so now I remembered my first question. Can you tell me about a time when you tried to pre sell a course. And then you failed, and maybe what you did and what happened because I think a lot of people hearing this, or I've done this myself, when you try and pre sell something or when you're winding up for it, it's scary, because people might not buy it, and that keeps people from maybe even putting themselves out there and taking that risk, because it's actually, easy to make a really polished video and invest in that and feel like you're doing something, it's scary to just get it out there and face it and try and make an offer.
Lisa Johnson:
Absolutely. And we've all done it, we've all put something out there that hasn't worked. And I think that's absolutely fine to do that. Because you learn along the way, I've put courses out there where all I had to do was come up with the content, make a sales page, and put it out and launch it out there to my audience. And if it doesn't work, I figured out why it hasn't worked. And it's normally, it's the way to things, that the audience doesn't want it. It isn't what the audience problem is, you're not providing the right solution for them. Or, if you haven't launched properly. And, I have a system that I use that, very early on, when I started making passive income, it was only a year into my business. I started realizing very quickly that actually, I have the time to be, coaching people one to one all the time.
Lisa Johnson:
Because I'm going to hit an income ceiling. If I hit this income ceiling, then what am I going to do? I going to make more money. How will I do it? So I started looking at different passive income streams. And, I realized that every time I did it, and I was successful, and every time I showed a client how to do it, and they were successful, I was following a kind of formula. And I have written that into a system, to teach people and it's called the cash system. And, it basically starts with, first of all, knowing who your client is. Because if you know who your client is, you're going to know what they want. So you'll never make mistake again, of putting something out there, that your audience doesn't want. So, this is for client, like know everything about them, just like you would in any other area of your business, you'd know your avatar or whatever you want to call them your ideal client.
Lisa Johnson:
And, then once you know who that client is, you can then grow, an audience of exactly those people, using a sales funnel, just like we've all been taught how to use the sales funnel. So, you can build this email list or Facebook group of your ideal clients, you then nurture that ideal client, until you're ready to sell to them. And then when you sell to them, it's about how you launch. And I'm a big believer in doing proper six to eight week, launches, that can all be prepared in advance, and you can launch the same way over and over again. So it's not taking your time again. Try and keep things lean, and then keeping the client happy, so that you retain them in a membership, or re market to them with another course. And that's kind of my system.
Kyle Gray:
That makes a lot of sense. And, in your own personal journey. It kind of sounds like, if I were imagining, like I'm trying to visualize a graph in my head, and there's one line, that's the passive income line and the one line, that's the Active Time for money consulting coaching line, and it seems like, the active line started out high, the passive line was low. And they started slowly, like the path of one started slowly going up and active started slowly go down. And so, as this is happening, you were using coaching, and you are using a lot of these things, which aren't necessarily bad things, they're great ways to create your cash flow. And then you use this cash flow, you use your businesses, and you use the money that you're earning from coaching, to invest into these other passive assets, and so that you can dial back the coaching over time as well.
Lisa Johnson:
Absolutely. And at the beginning, you don't have a lot of money to do that. Yeah, it's very difficult when you're kind of just getting started, and you're having your first one to one clients to put money into Facebook ads, for example. And Facebook ads, are needed. When it comes to having a big audience. And, I say big, my audience is tiny compared to most people's audiences, I have about 5000 people in my audience, but it took Facebook ads to get them. And then it's on you to nurture them. You can only go so far with Facebook ads. But I remember that at the beginning, I was doing really well with one to one clients. But another reason why I wanted to do passive, is because they were all asking me the same questions over and over again.
Lisa Johnson:
And I'm sitting there thinking, I've just had this conversation four times with four different people, how to work out who your ideal client is, how to get over your money mindset. And so, it was smarter for me to say, "Well, why don't I put this into a program and tell them all at the same time." And then I'm only saying it once.
Kyle Gray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I like it. And it's a journey of, like you were saying, but it's also kind of, your passive income. And I'm almost repeating what you're saying as a factor of how well you understand your customer. And you understand your customer through the process of coaching, and services. And, getting your hands dirty and making mistakes, but also creating a lot of success along the way, until you start to see the patterns and what they're doing.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, and things that happened to you too, because, my ideal client is a version of me. So, I can look at the mistakes I made and the things I wish I'd known at the beginning, and put that into something that will help others. But also, once you've grown an audience, maybe we say, I've got an audience I don't want to give them, ask them. Right there, right there. Just ask them, "What do you want? What are your problems?" And then make a solution, is as simple as that. Some people like to complicate business, and it isn't complicated.
Kyle Gray:
If there were a couple of your favorite questions that you would ask your audience that deliver surprising insights, what would those be?
Lisa Johnson:
I ask very regularly. If somebody could give you one thing that would make your business work. What do you think that would be? I also ask things like, if somebody gave you 500 pounds right now or 1000 pounds, what would you spend that money on. And then, if they come back, and they will say, "SEO, I'd spend it on SEO." Then instead of spending 1000 pounds, I can give them something for 50 pounds, that will tell them how to fill an SEO. Because, you can do it cheaper if you have volume, so if I'm going to have 500 people, pay me, 50 pounds to give a workshop on SEO, they don't need to spend 1000 pounds or 500 pounds each, to do that.
Kyle Gray:
No.
Lisa Johnson:
It's just a way of working smarter instead of harder. And if I'm honest about it, in the first year or a year and a half, I was just working harder and harder and harder. I'm feeling burnt out, I was not spending time with the kids, I'd left the nine to five to work six till 11. And, I was just a bit like this can't be it, this is not the extraordinary life I wanted. I wanted to travel. And I now travel with my twins for about six months of a year, off and on. And once you have passive income, you can do that. And, if you get ill, your business isn't going to stop. If you want to go on holiday, your business isn't going to stop, if you just don't want to work for two weeks, your business isn't going to stop.
Kyle Gray:
That is nice. So Lisa, on this journey, you worked really hard, you, took a lot of risks, and you made a lot of investments. And, I always feel that in people's stories, there's always a moment of making a big investment that, at the time feels scary, you kind of feel it in your stomach, and you're like feeling really vulnerable, and you make the investment but then like, it pays off in big and unexpected ways. And you start moving forward. Do you have a story like that?
Lisa Johnson:
I have the opposite.
Kyle Gray:
Really?
Lisa Johnson:
Yes. So, I know people always say that, that hasn't happened to me. What happened to me, the first two big investments I made, those investments where you think, "What am I doing?" Was, 27,000 pound for Facebook Ads Manager, for three months, that delivered nothing, I got no return on investment at all. And so I was scared of Facebook ads for a while. And the second one, was I gave 30,000 pounds, to a coach that was basically a con artist. It seems ridiculous to say this, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because it made me realize really early on, what values mattered to me, being a coach, I was going to be like and it's really helped me to be successful, knowing those things.
Lisa Johnson:
So in one way, yes. And do my due diligence around, when I now buy something, I didn't do my due diligence at the beginning, I handed over 27,000 pounds to a Facebook person because they were everywhere. And, they looked like they were working with some really good people. But I didn't speak to anybody. I didn't quiz them. I just handed over the money. Those two lessons, with that coach, and that Facebook Ads manager, have made me really smart in business.
Kyle Gray:
Wow. He's like the best worst coach.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Gray:
It would be like, a Zen master who like is just a jerk.
Lisa Johnson:
A mistress, it was a woman.
Kyle Gray:
Oh, mistress.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
Is that masterers. Oh, my gosh.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. I kind of want to get across to people, it's okay, if you make these ridiculous mistakes, it doesn't mean that you stop. And you'll be really wary of doing things. And since that day, I've invested 150,000 in different coaches and courses to learn everything that I need to learn and to be supported by people, strategy and mindset wise. And if I'd have let her stop me, that wouldn't have happened. So I think it's really important that when you make mistakes, you don't worry about it, you just carry on, and you learn something from them, because then it will still help you.
Kyle Gray:
Beautiful lot. That is an excellent way to bring all of that together. And, you mentioned you were afraid of Facebook ads. But now currently, you've grown your audience with Facebook ads. And so, you've learned something in between these two points and, something has changed. Can you tell me a little bit about your philosophy with ads or, how you see ads now, that you're handling them you yourself.
Lisa Johnson:
I'm still, at this in between stage with ads. So, the first time I grew an audience, it took me six months to get around 1500 people in a Facebook group. And I did it completely organically, which was great because I spent no money. And then I put a course out to them. And I made 60,000 pounds. The second time, I decided I wanted to do it quicker. So I was going to use Facebook ads. So I paid 2000 pounds per month, for three months in Facebook ads to grow the same amount of people, I put a course out there and I made the same amount of money. So, it was just quicker. That's all, it didn't give me more people. It was just quicker. And then, interestingly enough, I've been using Facebook ads since then. And this year, very early this year, I did a launch. And, I've always used Facebook ads, and I did a launch and I couldn't use ads, because the word passive, was suddenly blocked by Facebook, you weren't allowed to use it.
Lisa Johnson:
And my course is called passion for passive. So there was no way of getting around it. And as I changed the whole thing. So I just said, You know what, I do it with no ads, I'm just going to launch with no ads. And I made 130,000. So I made all that I had the other time. So then that kind of taught that actually, for me, my philosophy on using ads, is to use ads to get people into your world. So use Facebook ads, like on a monthly regular basis with a sales funnel or with a nurturer sequence to get people into a group or onto your email list. Because then when you launch, you don't need to use lots of Facebook ad money to launch because the people are already there, they've already been nurtured by you and you can sell to them.
Kyle Gray:
Oh that sounds good.
Lisa Johnson:
That's now, my philosophy on doing it, rather than chucking, 10,000. In every time I launch.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you've got a community that you can continue to reach and create content for. I think that's really thoughtful.
Lisa Johnson:
Most of my community will buy time and time again. So although, I remember looking at Facebook ad costs and thinking well hold on a minute, my entry level product is 49 pounds a month, and it's costing me four pounds to get each lead that I can sell the entry level product to. You've always got to remember the lifetime value of a client. So most of my clients, the average spends 14,000, they start at 49 pounds, but then they do other things. So, it's always worth remembering that even though Facebook ads consuming and costly, if you have a number of different products, it's still worth it.
Kyle Gray:
So, right now, I would be interested to hear what you think of this, in my own personal business. I've put together a large audience around this podcast and around my books and around this following. And then I have an agency, where I'm teaching people how to do great presentations. I'm mostly working with a specific niche audience. But I get a lot of those people from traveling to conferences and workshops and either facilitating those or teaching at them, or being present, but it's a lot of handshaking.
Lisa Johnson:
Relationship building.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, yeah. But I've kind of felt that, the audience and my kind of online following, which is around the same size, has been kind of a resource that I haven't really connected with. Yeah.
Lisa Johnson:
Okay.
Kyle Gray:
And, they're interested in the same kinds of content. My books are all around storytelling, content marketing, and presentation. So I'm still in the same area. But yeah, I guess I haven't put together my own lower ticket products.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, and I haven't been as successful in having kind of launches around those, but I'm able to be at a place and make relationships and find high end clients
Lisa Johnson:
But you do actually have this audience of low end clients that you're not promoting anything for, you're leaving money on the table, because not everybody can afford, the high ticket.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah.
Lisa Johnson:
So, they can afford even the mid tier ticket, if you still have fans that want to buy something from you, and you're not giving them anything to buy that's leaving money on the table. So, I would be saying to you, "Okay, the audience that you have now, what do you think they want from you? What do you think they want to learn from you?"
Kyle Gray:
There's a couple of things. I get a lot of questions around setting up my podcast and how I run this show, or how I do some of my video podcast episodes, which I've just released a couple of those, or, I get a lot of interest in writing books since I've written them. And I've also been ghostwriting for a couple of people as well. So, there's a couple of those. And then, I've been working, I've been getting a lot of people, interested in speaking and presentations, speaking on stage and on webinars. And so, those are a lot of the areas that I have expertise in.
Lisa Johnson:
But there's so much, to do with them. There's so much with that. I mean, just from first thoughts, I'd be thinking, "There are so many people that want to know how to do a podcast." I was one of them, I just paid someone to do it for me. But if there was a membership for people that wanted to do podcast, get more listeners, all the things that you know, I'd be setting up a membership for them, first off. Where you just go in and teach once a month or twice a month or whatever. And there's maybe a little course in there as well. Speaking, I'll do a workshop on and monetize that workshop once and then monetize it as a tripwire on my funnel. And then, when it comes to things like writing a book, that's a brilliant course.
Kyle Gray:
Oh my gosh, I have two dead course
Lisa Johnson:
It doesn't need to be. All it needs to do, is get them the results they want. And they'll still pay you for it. So, if you can do a six step, this is what you need to do to write your book and some accountability there. Then, you could sell that, and it's just about how you launch it, you've already got an audience.
Kyle Gray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's true. And, recently, I brought on a really, really talented team. And so we have much more horsepower too, and mind power to coordinate a more interesting launch. And so, I'm excited. We've been doing a lot of good client work recently. And I think we've been really coming together building great sales pages and presentations and all these things. And now I'm excited because I think it's finally time to, direct that energy inward.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, at least create. One big goal is to create a passively generation system. So, an automated webinar, and attracting people with Facebook ads too. If nothing else, get client calls.
Lisa Johnson:
If you are going to do that, then you may as well have a set out at the end of it to something small that's passive, write an Ebook on the equipment you need when starting a podcast.
Kyle Gray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Johnson:
And just sell that. You may as well have a trick, why? Because, when people buy from you once, even if it's a small amount, they're much more likely to buy from you again, with a bigger amount.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I could have dozens of, simple courses that-
Kyle Gray:
I like creating or I try to create smaller things, these days, that are just easy, and like a short result that makes a lot of sense.
Kyle Gray:
My old courses were a big. They weren't the biggest, but they were like five or six hours of content.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
And I like having them really focused, I tried to write my new book, Selling With Story, I set out to be like this is going to be a short book, 100 pages. It's just going to be the essentials. And I couldn't do it. It turned into a long book, or, I don't know, there's like 220 or something pages.
Lisa Johnson:
Longer than you wanted.
Kyle Gray:
Longer than I set out to write. Yeah.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. And just make sure that, the smartest thing to do, is just to put a poll, to your audience, and, give them choices and say, "If I was going to teach you this, this, this and this, what are you most interested in?" And just create the one they want. Not the one you want to give them.
Kyle Gray:
Sounds good. Yeah, we were actually, just planning on doing a poll to the audience. So yeah, yeah, we're going to be asking that soon. I'll reach out to you and let them know.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Kyle Gray:
I bet it'll be funny, it might be just your instincts.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, you never know. And, I've had, really wrong instincts, where I've said, "I know what they want, they want this." And actually, then I put that out there and nobody's bought it. And they want something that I haven't even thought of, that's much more basic. So, I've put things out before about how to make passive income, and what they actually want, are the stage there at that time is, how to just grow the Facebook group. That's all they need, just, how do we grow this audience. And so then I've created that for them. And it's so brilliantly.
Kyle Gray:
That's funny. Since I work with, a lot of functional medicine, kind of practitioners, chiropractors, those types of people, who are very, very smart at what they do, but, often, how they talk, and they talk in terms of protocols. And, they think about how they're going to do something, but they always miss the point of what the person actually wants and needs to hear. And so it's one of the best things that I do is always reminding them about the basic things. But it's funny because whatever you become an expert in, you get these blind spots.
Lisa Johnson:
You do.
Kyle Gray:
And I feel like you need to be working with, I think brilliant people outside of yourself. And always, as we've kind of come back to time and time again, in this interview, have a real pulse on your audience.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, it's really good advice to have people around you that can kind of help you with those blind spots. Really good advice.
Kyle Gray:
Well, Lisa, we have explored quite a lot today, and I've had so much fun talking to you.
Lisa Johnson:
Me too.
Kyle Gray:
Do you have any closing thoughts? And after that, let us know where we can engage with you more.
Lisa Johnson:
Sure. The biggest thing that I would say, if you're thinking about making passive income, just start growing your audience, even if you don't know what your passive income is going to be, if you know who you want to help, who your audience is going to be, just start growing them. You don't have to have it all figured out yet. But the longer you take wasting, not growing an audience, you're going to have to do that later on. So just start with that, and take it step by step. And, if you want to hang out where I hang out, I have a Facebook group called, The Fabulous 5%. And I'm on there every day just having chats about passive income.
Kyle Gray:
Lisa, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you again for sharing your wisdom with us on The Story Engine Podcast.
Lisa Johnson:
Thanks for having me.
Kyle Gray:
Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned on this episode and every other episode at thestoryengine.co. If you're looking to learn more about how to use storytelling to grow your business, then check out my new book, Selling With Story: How to Use Storytelling to Become an Authority, Boost Sales, and Win the Hearts and Minds of Your Audience. This book will equip you with actionable strategies and templates to help you share your unique value and build trust in presentations, sales, and conversations, both online and offline. Learn more at sellingwithstory.co. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.