AP 1232: Where Are They Now? Wendy Lewis

AP 1232: Where Are They Now? Wendy Lewis

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here. And welcome to episode 1232 of AskPat2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And in fact, today is a where are they now episode. Wendy Lewis was with us a number of episodes ago and at the time she was about to come out with a book. She was thinking about taking her very in person client work online, but was getting very overwhelmed with how to do that. And we gave her some tips. We helped her out. And we're back with Wendy today. We recap a little bit of what we talked about in the last time, but then now we go into, well, where is she at now?

And how is she doing this? And she's discovered and is doing some amazing things. And you could check out her business at Prana Reflexology, P R A N A Reflexology. And she is a board certified reflexologist. And taking that business online can be a little difficult, but she's done amazing. And you're about to hear exactly what she's up to and some of the fun things that she's been doing, especially since the pandemic.

I think you'll love it. So here she's now Wendy Lewis, this will be awesome. Enjoy the show.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Wendy. Welcome back to AskPat pleasure to have you back. I'm excited to catch up. How are you?

Wendy Lewis: I'm doing fantastic. I'm excited to catch up too.

Pat Flynn: This will be super fun. I think the last time we chatted was quite a while ago. And you were just starting to think about, or, or just putting together like an online course. Can you remind for everybody listening? What is that you do just in case they haven't heard that episode yet?

Wendy Lewis: Yeah, sure. So I am a professional reflexologist. It's a very specific kind of body worker, similar to massage therapy, where I work on feet and hands, mostly feet. And I work on sometimes for relaxation, but sometimes to address particular injuries or, you know, plantar fasciitis, things like that.

Pat Flynn: Nice. Okay. So what do you remember about the last conversation we had? Do you remember what your big takeaway was from that?

Wendy Lewis: Yes. So I had a couple of things in the pipeline at that time, and I honestly, probably just getting overwhelmed with all of it.

I had a book that was about to come out and then I was also thinking I want to take my reflexology knowledge and monetize it into a course. But feeling completely overwhelmed with the course. How do I create a course, especially for something like this, that usually with a modality like that, it's one on one in person with somebody like, well, can I actually teach this online?

So I was feeling very overwhelmed with it and thinking that it would probably take me a year to put something together and my big takeaway was that start really small. I think you said to me, I have it written down here. Fail small to win big.

Pat Flynn: Did I say that? That's really good. I gotta use that more often.

Wendy Lewis: Yeah. Fail small to win big. So I kind of had that in my head the whole time and I thought, okay, how small can I actually make this? And you know, it really helped.

Pat Flynn: Where did you start from there? So did you create a course and like how big was it or what did it focus on?

Wendy Lewis: Okay, so I haven't actually created the course yet, but what I did do was I did a beta launch with a small group and we discussed that too.

And I have to give the SPI Pro mastermind groups a shout out too, because I joined that turned out to be instrumental in my motivation because I joined one and I was meeting weekly with three guys who were just brilliant. And I felt like a, a, like a dufus talking to these people. But, you know, the, the idea is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you.

So that's, it kind of worked. So it wasn't a, an accountability group per se so much, but. Knowing that I was going to have to talk to these people every week. You know, I didn't wanna be the one saying, oh, I didn't do anything this week. So they, they really helped me get on track. So, uh, and some of them had like, not necessarily course creation experience strictly, but you know, had done other things.

So it was actually very helpful. One of them, you know, recommended equipment for example. So what I did was I did a beta launch. I recorded a video, I just sat down in front of a camera. I sat and I, you know, sent this out to my regular email that I sent to my reflexology clients. And I said, look, I'm looking to do a course. This is why I'm doing it. I need some participants. I, you know, I'm not promising anything like a Hollywood production here, it's gonna be scrappy, but what you get out of it is you get some very low, low cost training and in return, what you were gonna help me do is see what I need to teach, because I have 20 years of experience doing this. And I mean, I could. Teach 10 layers deep, but that's probably way too much for most people, especially starting. What they helped me do was really think about on a granular level how am I going to teach this? So I, I just wrapped it up. We did Monday nights, this past month we met four times, uh, four zoom calls.

I had a very small group, just three people, but it was supposed to be five, but two of them, like the dates didn't work at the last minute, but I said, you know what? I don't care if it's just me alone, I'm gonna do this. So, so we had a three very dedicated, very motivated people. We had a ball.

Pat Flynn: So good. Oh, I love it.

Wendy Lewis: Yeah, it was, it was really fun. It actually turned out to be nice just having this real small group. And he was like a little foot party every week. Um, we had, we had a blast. For me, I have to say the big, big takeaway was everywhere I looked in learning how to put together a course, everybody said to me, and everywhere I read said, you need to do a beta launch first and work out the bugs.

And I thought, oh no. But that was the best thing I ever did because especially something like this, it forced me to really think about how am I going to convey this information? How am I gonna break this down for somebody else? It's one thing to think about it up here in my brain, but then quite another thing when I said, okay, you know, my students are expecting me next Monday at six o'clock, what videos am I gonna have?

Is everybody gonna be completely confused? What it forced me to do was really break everything down. I put together some PDFs, a course outline for each meeting, a wrap up. I swear I did it half for myself and half for them because as I was putting it together for them, I was saying, okay, this is what I'm gonna work from when I do the big version.

So what I ended up doing was. In our weekly zoom meetings, I set up two cameras. I have a talking head, like, you know, just like I'm speaking to you. And then I set up an overhead camera. I, I think they call it a shootdown or something like that. It's kind of like, yeah. Top down. Yeah. A top down. When they, you watch a cooking show, when you see the person's hands, you know, kind of like that.

And I have my plastic foot, I have Freddy the foot, right. Here's Freddy, the and I had some washable markers and I actually. From using the looking down view on the camera. I, I would draw on the foot and show the reflex points and show what you're supposed to do. And so I would switch off during our zoom calls. I would do screen shares. And then the, the camera pointing down with my hands on the foot kind of demonstrating. And then I volunteered my boyfriend, you know, and that's one cool thing about doing this is you don't have a hard time finding people, like please rub my feet. So, uh so in between, in the week in between our zoom calls, what I would do is pay very careful attention to what questions were asked of me and what things people stumbled on. And I realized like those were. Learning moments for me, cuz I would see where the holes in my teaching were and what I needed to bone up on. So what I ended up doing just to beef up the week to week calls was during that week, I would grab my boyfriend and set up my camera either in the living room or like at my office with my massage table. And I would have two camera views and one was kind of far away so that people could see what my body positioning was. Cuz. Really important, cuz you don't wanna mess up your own ergonomics when you're working on somebody. And then I just used my iPhone for all of it. I have an iPhone 13, which has an excellent camera.

This was very low budget. Then I would do a second view of my in person techniques with a real foot, you know, attached to a real person. I would put the phone actually between my chest and the foot that I was working on. And it, it was a little awkward, cuz it's like real close. The result was. I gave my students a, you know, my point of view.

Yeah. That was like a winner. So I just did very simple non Hollywood production type videos in iMovie, and I would do a split screen. So I would just kind of show a view of me working on the foot and how my body was positioned. And then I would kind of insert a split screen so that they could see exactly what I was doing from my point of view.

That was a big hit. Everybody loved it. They were like, oh my God, that was the most helpful thing ever.

Pat Flynn: It's so good to get that like directed, immediate feedback. Isn't it? It like makes it all worth it.

Wendy Lewis: Yeah, it was really wonderful. And yeah, my students were great and I, I don't wanna send all like horny, but it really was very nice to, got hear the feedback that I got. I mean, one of my participants worked on her boyfriend who has sleep problems and she said, every time I worked on him within five minutes, he would be sleeping in the chair. Yeah. Some, one of my other, one of my other students was, uh, she worked on her son. Who's about 13 years old and she was teaching him the technique so he could do it on her.

What I like it was just so rewarding just to know that other people were benefiting. Like this domino effect, you know, I'm teaching them and they're going and teaching other people. And it was the coolest thing.

Pat Flynn: This came from three students of yours, who you worked with, like these feelings, like imagine when this gets shared publicly and more and more people are getting it and sharing it.

And, and the ripple effect is much bigger than I hope that you're collecting testimonials from your students. Are, are you doing that?

Wendy Lewis: Yeah. So I'm, I'm, uh, in the process of getting testimonials from them actually, because this was all local people next week on Saturday, we're just gonna have a little party gonna meet at my office and I'm gonna yeah. I figured, you know what? I might not ever get a chance to do this again, because. Someday, maybe my students will be worldwide and we can't all get in the same room. So I said, you know, let's, let's do that. And if there's any other questions they have, you know, they can ask me, I can show them, I'll pay close attention, see what I missed.

You know, it'll be a learning opportunity for me too. But I, I also figured I'd throw that in as like a little bonus. Thank you for being you. Such great students.

Pat Flynn: Ah, that sounds so cool. And even though it's a small group, big win for them, of course. And a big win for you. I mean, what does this do to your confidence about teaching this material now?

Wendy Lewis: Oh, my confidence is just through the roof. I mean, I, I have always loved teaching and I've taught this before, but it's been. 15 years ago and always in person, you know, like I used to teach at a community college like night courses, but this, this was a big challenge for me to do it online. I really was not sure if I could do something like this online and this proves to me that I can.

Pat Flynn: I mean, you've, you've unlocked that truth. You have to struggle a little bit to, to figure it out and, and get going. And there are many other teachers out there who likely would love to teach this stuff online as well. But guess what? They're not gonna go through the same things as you. They're not investing in the same things as you they're haven't figured it out yet.

So that leaves more room for you to come in and be the person that people go to online for this stuff. Does this help you in terms of content creation as well? Like what you've learned from putting together this course. And are you gonna potentially put some of the skills that you've learned here into YouTube videos and, and other things like that too?

Wendy Lewis: Definitely. I got so much more accustomed to putting together the videos and really just being forced to think about how am I going to convey this information, uh, was probably the biggest learning curve for me, but the most beneficial too. So yeah, I I'm like, I think when we spoke last, we discussed the, the sticky note, like the post-it note idea.

Anytime you get like a, an idea, it just sticking on the wall with a post-it note. I'm not sticking them on the wall cause I don't wanna mess up my walls, but I have this great big piece of foam board it's full of sticky notes. So during this process, I came up with like a million ideas for how I wanna do my, my bigger course.

And so I feel like a lot of it is already kind of done because I have my handouts from this. I feel like the hard part is done. The, the easy part now will be just to making, making it more polished. And even this was, I didn't have like a teachable account or anything like that yet. So what I did was I have my regular website that promotes my business.

And so what I did was I just created a called it the super secret student page. And it there's no navigation on it, so no, you know, nobody can publicly find it, but I only sent the link to my students and what I did there was I just loaded the page with all of the PDFs. The links to my YouTube, my videos for, for them, which I just put on YouTube, like unlisted.

Yeah, yeah. Unlisted. And I explained to everybody, you know, what that was all about. And I recorded the Zoom sessions and I put them on YouTube also so that they could review them. And there were a couple of supplies, you know, like, you know, practice feet and stuff like that. And I got a, um, I linked to them on Amazon and I got, you know, I applied for an affiliate link.

I mean, I didn't make very much from that, but hopefully that will change, but I, I really just threw it all on one webpage and it was very low budget. I mean, that cost me nothing.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I was gonna say you went bare bones with what you needed to just provide value. I mean, many people go, okay, I wanna create a course. First thing, I'm gonna sign up for this like premium program and get all the bells and whistles. But honestly, that just kind of overwhelms and distracts more than anything. And I love how you just went well, let me get some people in here. And I mean, that lights your fire up right under you. When you know that there's people now who are like waiting for your content to come, you kind of figure things out as you go.

It's tough because too many of us wanna have everything aligned first and then go do it. And you kind of were able to figure it out as you went along, continue to gain that much more confidence. And I mean, look at you now, what are the next steps for you? What, where are you gonna go from here?

Wendy Lewis: So I get overwhelmed easily and I realize that now. So I'm learning, I'm learning Teachable. I don't know if I'm supposed to use name brands here, but I know it's who you use for the SPI courses.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.

Wendy Lewis: Okay, cool. I did sign up for an account with them and they're having this like launch accelerator program that I'm doing right now.

So in five weeks, you know, you're supposed to have a course set up, ready to go. So I'm working on that and I'm doing just a very simplified, very focused course. I'm still working on the title, but it's like Beat Stress and Anxiety with Five Reflexology Inspired Techniques, boom, period. It's not like the big overarching thing.

So I'm just using this small course as a way to train myself on how to do this, but also a way to get some customers who might not pay $300 for a huge course, but maybe they would pay, you know, a lot less. Maybe they would pay 20 bucks for something that addresses one small problem that a lot of people deal with.

So that's what I'm working on now. Just trying to keep, whenever I feel overwhelmed, I've learned to kind of pull back and keep it very small and say, okay, how small can I make this? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's kind of it.

Pat Flynn: Wendy, you're doing awesome. I'm so proud of you.

Wendy Lewis: thank you so much.

Pat Flynn: I know you're gonna have this like little mini party with your clients and students, but like, you should definitely be proud of yourself and your work and, and celebrate.

And you know, this is where it starts. Right. We don't need to start with a million dollar launch or anything like that. Like just get into who it is that you're serving and serve them. And then we can now just continue to do that with more and more people. And it's just so fulfilling. I think that you're gonna have so much fun from this point.

I mean, not that you weren't having fun before. But you gotten a taste now what it's like to help people like directly. And once you feel that that's like rocket fuel, you know?

Wendy Lewis: Yeah. It really is. And, and people, these three people that have been so on fire doing this, they've they've been telling everybody.

And so I've heard from other people saying each one of them has said like, oh, I know three people who wanna do it once you get it polished and this and that. If you do this again, they wanna do it. So I'm like, okay, this is cool.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. They're ready for you.

Wendy Lewis: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Wendy, so good. Where can people go to, if they're curious about that info, where would they go to find you?

Wendy Lewis: Well, I will be posting information on my reflexology website, which is Prana P like Peter, R A N A Reflexology.com. And also unrelated to that, but we talked about it in the last time we spoke, my book is published. That's on WendyZLewis.com. It's called Jump in the Holes and Other Small Ways To Live Your Biggest Life. It's a collection of small stories from my life. Kind of along the lines of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a you know what, crossed with All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. So initial feedback from that is really good too.

So if anybody's interested in that, they can look that up too.

Pat Flynn: So good. I hope they do. And Wendy, thank you so much for coming on and giving us an update. I look forward to continuing to chat with you and seeing you in Pro and just keep with the great work you're doing awesome.

Wendy Lewis: Absolutely. Thank you. It's been a wonderful experience. Good talking to you again.

Pat Flynn: You too.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoy that conversation and catch up with Wendy Lewis. Again, you can find her at Prana Reflexology, PranaReflexology.com and you can check out her work there. And we'll link to the older episode as well, in case you wanna go back in time as we often love to do here on the show, and hear where she came from.

Anyway, so, so, so much fun to catch up. We have more catchups coming every single month. But for now, make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out. And we got some coaching calls coming up. And if you'd like to get coached on AskPat, perhaps, head on over to AskPat.com. You can use the application on that page and we'll see if it's a right fit and we'll reach out to you if the time is right and would love to help you out too.

So anyway, thank you so much. I appreciate you. And I look forward to serving you in the next one. Cheers, 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 Sarah 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.