AP 1197: Where Are They Now? Jake Gosselin

AP 1197: Where Are They Now? Jake Gosselin

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,197 of AskPat 2.0. We are closing in on 1,200 episodes here of AskPat, and that's insane. What's also insane, and insanely cool, is that this entire month we've been interviewing and bringing back people who've been on the show and had been coached one time before, or a few times before. Today, we are speaking with Jake Gosselin, who has been on the show a couple times. So we've gotten to sort of see his journey from creating a membership program and his offerings. And last time we were discussing, okay, well, how do I potentially offer a high-ticket item on top of my membership and my courses and stuff? You can find him at Churchfront.com. Again, his name is Jake Gosselin. He helps lead gospel-centered and tech-savvy worship. So, he helps you if you have a church and you're looking to do it in a... Learn the tech behind that.

He has a really popular YouTube channel under the same name, Churchfront, and he's also started something new. And that's one thing we talk about today because he's got the business going pretty well now, and you'll hear just how his offerings for his high-ticket items went. Blew me away. It's going to blow you away. And then he's starting something new. And he references the thing that I started new recently, which is a YouTube channel about Pokémon. And we go back and forth and jam on ideas on how to make sure we don't sort of bleed into things that we shouldn't, and allocate our time appropriately, and still be there for our business and our families and stuff. So, a lot of great stuff happening here in this episode. And I cannot thank Jake enough for coming back to give us an update because, wow, what an update it is.

So, Jake Gosselin from Churchfront.com and his new YouTube channel, which is just his name, Jake Gosselin. You'll hear more about it in a minute. Here we go.

Jake, welcome back to AskPat. Thanks for joining us for a third time here on the show. Welcome back.

Jake Gosselin:
Thanks. So great to be here, Pat.

Pat:
So you've been on a couple times before your business at Churchfront has gone through over the years, several evolutions, right? And so, the last time we chatted, we talked about specifically going from the membership stuff to more higher ticket stuff. And I'm curious to see what has happened since then. Do you recall a little bit of the last conversation, what we talked about, and what did you do with that?

Jake:
Yeah, I spent some time this morning just listening through that conversation. That was about, almost exactly two years ago when we had that conversation. And yeah, boy things have changed and grown, continue to grown. And I just wanted to, again, I know I say this every time I talk to you, but I don't know if you realize how exponential your impact is, doing what you do to help entrepreneurs. Because then our businesses keep growing and helping a ton of other people, beyond just Smart Passive Income, right? So, I just want to encourage you, because it's been insane. The past two years, 2019, that's when we pivoted to offering high-ticket program, which is a combination of... Basically people get access to the online courses we've built and that library has continued to grow and get better. And we just keep refining that product over time. Then they get coaching access to our team. So we're really getting in the weeds with people, helping them out in their worship ministry.

At the end of 2019, getting that coaching program off the ground, it worked. We started with a... I think it was a $2,500 offer. Then we moved to $2,800. In 2020, it was $3,800. And now in 2021, it's $4,800 program, because we just doubled since that first iteration. And it's really helped us scale in a really healthy way as a business. So, back when we talked last, it was myself and one other full-time video editor helping me out. And now our team is, including me, five full-time team members, and then one part-time team member. And then a contractor here, there. 2021 we should, well, the past couple years have pretty much doubled every year revenue, and then 2021, we should crack seven figures this year.

Pat:
Jake, congratulations, man. That's sick. That is so cool.

Jake:
Yeah. And what's more exciting, I use Baremetrics to see customers, where they're from or just all the subscription data and payment data. And they have a map feature that shows the whole globe of where all your customers are from. And that map, over the past four years, five years of building this, now has over 12,000, almost 13,000 customer dots all around the globe. So, it's just fascinating to just reflect on that. And that's what I mean when I tell you, it's hard for you to even probably fathom just the impact you're making on a second or third order consequence of the work that you do. And yeah, it's just been such a fun ride. So, man, I do have questions today about what's next and love to get your insight.

The high-ticket thing, it's worked well. And really what we're doing now, it's a blend of I'd say, maybe a third of our revenue is from the high-ticket program. Probably another 25 percent is from the subscriptions option. Because we actually realized that our market needs some options of what's best for them depending on budget, level of access and amount of help they need for them. So, we've just really refined our offerings to be... On the low end, we have a $47 front-end course that a lot of people, that's their first introduction to us. And then we have that $97 a month subscription option where they can just get course access only. Then we have our highest-ticket offer that I told you about that's $4,800 where they get basically six months of unlimited access to my team. It's pretty crazy what we can do, helping people remotely over Zoom, and they get lifetime access to the courses and stuff too. And then we have a mid-tier option, that's $1,500. That's a blend of, they get the courses and group coaching calls for a limited time, three months basically.

So, we just found it's... At the end of the day, it's all the same product, but it's really just different levels of access to the same product. So, it keeps our operations in product development and fulfillment still very simple and focused on the same thing.

Pat:
That's fascinating. I love it. I have a question about that, but first I want to reference what you mentioned earlier about impact. Now, you are making an impact and you have this ripple effect, right? And somebody had an effect on me, I'm just paying it forward. I'm trying to do my part. So are you, so are your students, and so we're all in this together, right? So, this is why I love it so much. And thank you so much for saying that, because that just, this is why I do what I do, to be a part of that journey with everybody. Thank you.

On the multiple offers, how do you organize that in a way where a person... How does a person know which offer to get into first? How are you creating that customer journey so it's not, or maybe it is just a page that says, here are the different ways you could work with us, choose your own adventure. How are people getting to know where to work with you?

Jake:
Probably one of our most effective lead generation mechanisms is selling a $47—it's a beginner sound training course for worship ministries because they have a lot of volunteers that are trying to run a mixing console for the first time, right? So that's our most popular need. And that's just a Facebook ad that we run and it's kind of, people are like, “I need help with sound.” They buy it, right? And that introduces them to our whole ecosystem of what we do. And this is something we're trying to refine more and more, is, okay, we can acquire a customer for the first time with a pretty, really affordable product for pretty much anybody who wants it? And then once they get in, they often ask us about upgrading because they have a course within this library and they see the rest of our course library and they're like, how do we get it?

Part of it's because I haven't invested much into software development on our website to make it fancy. But part of it's also a sales strategy to be like, talk to someone real to find out what you actually need for your next steps. So, whether that might be our subscription, it might be the more intensive coaching program that we have. So we do a lot of sales calls, today I have a full-time sales advisor. Today he's on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. He's on about eight 30-minute calls today and that's a good full day. Some of those people want to upgrade from something they bought. Some of them are just cold inbound applications that come in and we just take it by case by case.

Pat:
And that person's on your team? Full-time?

Jake:
Yep. Yeah he's full-time on the team and I'd say he's 25 percent salary, 75 percent plus commission, kind of the model we have for his compensation. But all the other full-time team members are just normal full-time salary. But yeah.

Pat:
That's cool on the $47 product. Is that essentially net zero in terms of money you're spending on ads and then money you make back on that? Basically that's just there to generate leads. Is that how it works?

Jake:
Yeah. I put $200 a day right now into that. And sometimes I put more. Definitely breaks even, and then, because it's got one of those funnels where, okay, you buy the course, you're checking out. It's like, “Hey, well here's the next step, more advanced training. Do you want to add that for a discounted price?” So, it could be a $47 checkout or it could be a, close to almost $500 if they want the more advanced one. So, on days where people do take that up, then it's actually, it is really profitable on the front end. And then we have a bunch of other courses from our YouTube traffic because we have 175[,000] YouTube subscribers now, too. So that's just generating a lot of our leads all day long. People will buy other basic trainings that we have that are just, again, good entry points that... It just meets the immediate need that we know our market's looking for right now.

The other one... Dude, this is the other thing about last year. Crazy year, 2020, right? And for our, it was kind of, I don't know, it was kind of scary for our market too, because churches couldn't meet to worship, right, for a while. But the thing is, it's like they all needed help with live streaming, right? So that was a huge catalyst for our business. Because, for the past three years, I've been building this brand around, "I'm the worship tech guy for small to mid-size churches needing help with this stuff." That's why they came to us last year. So, that's just fortunate luck, the timing of that all and it just really did accelerate the growth of everything. So people bought our beginner live streaming courses and we developed a ton of content around that.

Pat:
I'm looking up on YouTube and I want to correct you, you said 175 subscribers. It's 175,000 subscribers, by the way.

Jake:
Oh yeah, sorry. 175,000, that's what I meant. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Pat:
Just so people know, this is legit, check out Churchfront on YouTube to check this out. I typed in Churchfront to go and find it, and then the first thing that popped up was Churchfront. And then the auto-fill thing, the next thing was Churchfront livestream. People are looking for help on that probably, and you're showing up, you're doing that. You got the great video qualities I can see here. And just people see that and they're like, I want that, right? I want to do it like that. That's really cool. So what's coming next? You said there were some questions you had, I'd love to support you on the next leg of your journey.

Jake:
The next phase for me is, it's a lot of it's refinement and optimization of systems that we've done most of the heavy lifting of building. And part of it too is my own... I've been going so hard the past four to five years to get this thing going, and now it's going and I have a team that can really operate maybe 80 percent of the business without me. And right now I'm just doing, I'm still the lead of marketing strategy, making YouTube content, and that's stuff I like. I'm not doing sales calls, I'm not doing coaching calls. I still make courses, I still like doing that too, right?

Pat:
You're doing exactly what I'm doing in my business. I have 13 full-time and I'm the talent, if you want to call it "talent." But also, I'm the marketing person. And I create the courses. Literally same thing. So, I'm curious what your question is, or what you want, because we're in this together.

Jake:
It's funny because I look at... I've been inspired by your journey ever since you were let go from your architecture firm back in the day and you did this, I... The whole story, right? That was the Kool-Aid I drank a couple years ago. It was great. Maybe Kool-Aid is the wrong word for it, but you know what I mean?

And now I'm looking, you're still a great role model. Because it's, okay, now I've built this thing and I still want to be a part of it, I don't have any plans to sell my business anytime soon. It is truly something I feel a calling to, for the rest of life, but I still want to build a team, and that's a big thing. For my next five years, I think it's about developing just an even stronger team. I still want to be a part of it, but I want my team members to even have more of a stronger voice and bring the personality to the brand and not just me all the time. And I feel like I've done a decent job at that the past couple years, but it's still got ways to go, to do that.

And the other thing too, is just sustaining a passion for what you do. And part of that too, and this is where I'm coming back to modeling what I've seen you've been doing recently. I saw you started your Pokémon channel and that's a fun, probably... Even though that's smaller and it's a smaller channel than your main Pat Flynn one, you probably have more fun making those videos than you do your Pat Flynn content, sometimes, right?

Pat:
I do. And I will say it, it is growing faster than the SPI channel right now. And it's already making more money sooner than what Smart Passive Income did. Partly because now I know what I'm doing here, right? And I don't have to fumble anymore and I've made the mistakes before, let's not do that again. So, it sounds like you have an itch to try something different or something new? Am I reading that correctly?

Jake:
Yeah. And I already have. Or the equivalent of your Pokémon hobby is, for me I've just been fascinated with the world of investing and finance and crypto and stuff like that. That's literally... Some people are into sports or hunting or fishing or Pokémon. That's my thing. Ask my wife, it's literally all I think about. I'm addicted to my investing apps and stuff like that. And then it's, okay, I follow a lot of great YouTubers in the finance space and I love them, and I'm like, you know what? It seems like it's an already saturated space, but I think I can bring my unique voice to this. And there's just, I don't know, it'd be a lot of fun. So, that's what I've been doing. I started my... My channel's just called Jake Gosselin. That's my own, just the finance channel. And it's funny, because it's built, I started in January this year. It's already got, or now it has 1,400 subscribers, which seems really slow when you have a larger channel.

Pat:
That's true. Yeah.

Jake:
But now it's, okay, now it's actually picking up steam and I'm starting to see the growth curve kick in. And I mean, I just love YouTube so much, and the opportunity that it has. And I'm 200 hours away from being monetized on that channel. So-

Pat:
That's so close, dude. Congrats. When you were talking about that, you'd said one word that I want to correct. And that word was, I think I have something I could bring to this space. With the Pokémon stuff, first of all, I immersed myself in that space to see what was out there and what was going on. And I joined livestreams. I just got so immersed in it that it became so clear to me that I absolutely can bring something different, right? And that changed everything as far as the approach and why things started to speed up much faster because I know, and I'm not saying this because I'm cocky, nobody in the Pokémon space can create videos and story tell like I can. That's my unique selling proposition in there. There are people who are way more knowledgeable than me. I don't pretend to be an expert. There are people who have way better cards than me, way better cards. I'm not even close, but I can tell stories around these things and I can showcase them in videos.

So, that's what I lean into. That's why I bought and invested this crane thing that allows me to do these drone-looking shots over my desk, because that's what I'm leaning into, right? And I know that you know the things that you could bring, that some of the people in there can't. You have a huge advantage having this digital expertise and live streaming stuff capability and video and the quality and the sound. Just the way your voice sounds is going to be different than a lot of those other people. So, I know you have it in there. You need to change that story in your head from, I think I can, to I know I can and just lean into it. And you're not going to be cocky about it, I know you, just from the three conversations we've had. When you show up, chest-out situation, people gravitate toward that. They see that confidence and they know it. And people have responded well on the Pokémon stuff, and they will for you too.

By the way, I'm into the bitcoins and the crypto stuff too, maybe we could chat about that off recording at some point. But that sounds fun, dude. What matters for me though, is, okay, I got to make sure my business is taken care of, right? That's 80 percent of my time, is on SPI and the things I know I need to do. And the team obviously has helped a lot, because they're taking care of stuff that I'm not even touching anymore that is required to happen. And so, you're building that out now. You've already built some of that. That's great.

But, there are moments with the Pokémon stuff where I'm like, I should just spend all week doing this. But I have to create those boundaries. Friday is my day, even though I know today's Friday, Friday is my Pokémon creator day. And so, dividing that energy from 80/20, literally 80/20, right? Twenty percent of my time, one day a week to that new thing. But I get so stoked for Friday, knowing that Friday is going to be my day to get to do this thing that I'm really, really... And I get to take a break from this other thing. And then I get to do it all over again. That helped out a lot, at least in the beginning, as far as... Because some people will go all in on one and then forget the other thing and then vice versa. I'm not saying you're going to do that, just, that just came to mind.

Jake:
No, I can't, or don't want to because I have people's salaries relying on the first thing too, right? It's just a responsible thing. And I think, like I said, I do really love the Churchfront, the main business and just lots of more exciting things keep happening there. But I started this new thing because I still feel like after you make 300 to 400 videos about the same topic, you're like, okay, I kind of want to think about something else and make videos about that for a bit. I want to say it's just affirming to see you already have gone this direction, it's working out for you, and I'm starting to feel that too. But the hesitancy is, how do I not make it feel like I'm cheating on my girlfriend or something. I mean, I don't a girl, I have a wife, but it's just like that. How do you lead your team in such a way to be like, hey, what you guys are doing is still very important, even though I'm excited about this new thing.

Pat:
And when you are excited about the thing that you're doing, you become more confident in the other thing, right? The Pokémon stuff has made me become a better person at SPI and a better communicator with my audience. And they relate to each other, right? I pass things back and forth, and people coming from the Pokémon stuff are actually now fans of SPI and vice versa. It's just been really fun and interesting. And I think that if you are lit up, if you are jazzed, if you're stoked, it just bleeds into everything else you're doing. And those things people can read and see.

So, I'm on your financial channel now, Jake Gosselin. Just look up his name on YouTube, you'll find his channel. Twenty-seven videos only, and essentially 1.5k subscribers. That's a great rate, dude. It's going to continue to exponentially grow, just keep at it. And as I've heard most YouTubers who have done this for a while, say, just get to your first 100 videos. Just get there and just have fun with it while you do it. You can experiment. Some are going to hit. Some are not going to hit, as you know. It's been fun to "start over." And I hope you're having fun with it too.

Jake:
Yeah, no, because you learn so much and it's... And the other thing too is, I've told so many people in my life, start a YouTube channel, start a YouTube channel. And then I'm like, okay, I get so sick of telling them to do it and they don't do it, I'm just going to do another one. And just for fun, build one from scratch. I guess the other thing I want, just real quick was, what's your quick, your go-to... In building a really strong team to take ownership of the business and keep innovating it and pushing things forward, while you're spending a little bit of time doing these other things. What's your biggest, I don't know, top one or two tips about developing strong team members? I don't know. Or just helping them reach their potential.

Pat:
I think, number one, letting go is a part of it. Because I think a lot of us who are building teams, we maybe spend more time micromanaging that team because we don't trust them, or we don't know if they're going to do things the right way. Sometimes you got to let go, and knowing that, okay, things might not be perfect, but you work through those imperfections, you work through that dissonance to then have resolution after, those music terms for you. But, I think that it's important to allow a person to have some freedom to make mistakes, but also have them understand why that position they're in is... what they're responsible for. What's been really need is giving more of our team members an idea of, well, who is it that we're serving? Let's actually share some of these stories from within the community and the impact that we're all together making. And they see the reasons now, why they... We're all on the same page, right? And that's big.

If you consider companies like Tesla, everybody knows, the reason Tesla exists is to accelerate the world's transition to more sustainable energy. Anybody who works there knows that that's what they're a part of. Especially working with Elon, which is hard, they do it anyway because there's a bigger mission, and they'll step up to support that mission.

So, as, so long as everybody on the team knows why they're doing it and what this is for, then you can let go and leave that they're going to do it. On that, there's a tactic that I love, called the commander's intent. Instead of giving a person, okay, here are the five things I need you to do. You give them the intent. Here's the end result that I want you to get. And here are ways that are other people have done it. You can find out a way that might work even better and become more efficient. And as you said, refined, right, and optimized. And when you empower your team to find optimization moments, you find that they start to take even more ownership on those things. And that's been really need, because then they'll be able to save time, and if you recognize it, and every good leader should recognize the great work that their team is doing, they'll feel even more just committed to what the mission is and their role in it.

And then giving some of your team even some time to play. I know that ConvertKit, which is a company I advise in the email marketing space, they have something called the mandatory fun day. They have a mandatory fun day, where every single person who works for the company, and I don't know if it's once a month, or what the cadence is, but they're not allowed to work. They're not allowed to sign on to Slack. They have to go do something fun that relates to a hobby or something that they enjoy. And that team culture is really, really cool and it gets people to root for the company and work even harder for the company later.

And then of course, just always not tapping out. I've seen a lot of CEOs who then build a nice team who end up disappearing in a way and going like, okay, you guys got it. I'm going to be over here and do this other thing. You still have to show up and create space for that. Whether that's a weekly retro meeting or something where people can come to you, or office hours for just your team only to come to you if they have something to say. The other big component of this is, I have Matt. Matt is my chief operating officer, co-CEO. If there's a team-specific thing, he's on the front lines of that and takes care of it before it comes up to me. So, that's his responsibility and I pay him well for that, and he deserves it. He owns a share of SPI now, and he's now stepping up and feels like it's partly his company too, because he now, not just owns the share of it, because he's responsible for those things too.

Jake:
Who do you talk to, to learn how to structure employee ownership? I mean, that could be a whole other conversation, but-

Pat:
Yeah. Geez. We should talk with Matt or get Matt on a podcast and talk about that, because that's his specialty. It's team and structure and stuff. There's got to be other people out there, I think. Patrick Lencioni, who wrote the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team would be a great place to go. I know he has a huge consultation company that can help if you wanted to, for example, work with them. But we had him on the podcast. Great, great work with building team and making the team rise up. Maybe that book would be a great place to start.

Jake:
Yeah. Yeah.

Pat:
Whew.

Jake:
That's so helpful.

Pat:
Man, we're getting deep today, Jake.

Jake:
I'm glad we're recording this so I can listen back to it.

Pat:
Yeah, no, for sure. You just scared me. Yes, it is recording, and we'll play it, and obviously everybody listening to it already has it. So, Jake, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on the success. Future advanced, congratulations on where you're going from here. I'd love to bring you back on for a fourth time and we'll just create this nice little docu-series of Jake and what you're up to. And we'll see the YouTube channel at 10K subs. And it's just going to be awesome, man. We'll connect again.

Jake:
I'll try to get the second one to 100k before we talk again. That'll be a personal challenge to myself. Okay. Appreciate you so much, Pat. Thanks for having me on here.

Pat:
Appreciate you too, Jake. Peace, man.

Wow. I hope you enjoyed that catch-up with Jake. That was a really, really fun conversation. I mean all these Where Are They Now episodes are super fun, but Jake especially, because we've had him on the show a couple times before. Just to see the journey and getting in his head to understand the decisions that he's making, the high-ticket stuff is just going incredibly well. And now he's like, "Okay, well that's going, I don't want to leave that behind. I don't want to leave, but I also want to try something new," and we discussed a lot; as you just heard, how are we going to make sure we manage that appropriately?

And I'm so glad that I was able to track with him because I'm doing the same thing and still managing the businesses that I have to and doing also the things that I want to. I love everything I do. And of course, we as entrepreneurs, especially, just all of us, you included, the listener, we all have those itches that we want to scratch, right? And so managing that, creating boundaries around that, putting lanes in that we could still stay in, so we're not getting too far off-track, is really really important.

So, I hope you enjoyed this episode and this month's of episodes with “Where Are They Now?”s. Last week was with Mark and we had Rose Griffin and Joaquin back. Make sure to go back and listen to the last few episodes because wow, they've been absolutely amazing.

So, what's coming in December? Well, you're going to have to subscribe to find out because maybe we'll do some more, especially leading into episode 1,200, which is going to happen mid-month in December. My birthday is coming up soon, which is pretty insane. Thirty-nine, almost the big four-oh. So, feeling young, feeling good, feeling excited, and that's largely in—due to you and your support and your feedback and your reviews. They make me happy. They give me energy and I appreciate you for that. And that energy goes right back into you. So, thank you so much for an amazing month here. If you haven't subscribed yet, make sure you do, because we do have a lot of great episodes coming up. And if you want to potentially get asked questions by me and get coached by me, head on over to AskPat.com and I'd be happy to read your application and see if we can make it happen.

So, good luck. Thank you. I appreciate you. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate. And I'm very grateful and thankful for you. And I look forward to serving you continually here on the show and with Smart Passive Income. And make sure to check out SPI Pro if you're an entrepreneur and you want to connect and network with other people. This isn't a place just to absorb more content. In fact, that's the last thing people want. We want connection and accountability and support and just finding other people like us. If you want to check out SPI Pro, we likely have an enrollment period coming up soon. You could check out when the next enrollment period is, but you have to apply, smartpassiveincome.com/pro is where you can go to check that out and see if you qualify. And we'd love to have you in there. We have so many amazing entrepreneurs, all supporting each other, and it's going to be a lot of fun, especially in the future. So, make sure to get in now, smart passiveincome.com/pro.

Thank you. I appreciate you. And until next week, next month, the final month of a crazy 2021. Keep rocking it. Take care. Peace out. And as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.