AP 1263: Where Are They Now? Jake Gosselin

AP 1263: Where Are They Now? Jake Gosselin

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1263 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a catch up call if you will, or a Where Are They Now? with Mr. Jake Gosselin from ChurchFront.com or WorshipMinistrySchool.com. This is actually the fourth time he's been on. We've sort of followed his journey.

The last time we talked, we were talking about a membership site that he created and the fact that he wanted to get into some higher ticket, higher priced items, like really white glove, higher end services for different churches. What his business is, is he helps churches and ministries get really tech savvy and lead amazing tech-centric, not tech-centric, but you know, just using tech to have a better experience at the churches.

And this is his expertise. He has a YouTube channel, and I remember the last time we chatted he said, Pat, I'm gonna try to get the YouTube channel to a hundred thousand subscribers. And I just checked today he's already passed 225 K, so crushing it there for sure. And we're gonna talk about all the things.

And of course, as we continue to grow our businesses, we continue to face new challenges. And we're gonna talk about some of those challenges today and where he is at and, and hopefully where he is going. So here he is, Jake Gosselin from Church Front on YouTube and ChurchFront.com and WorshipMinistrySchool.com.

Pat Flynn: Jake, welcome back to Ask Pat. It's a pleasure to have you back on.

Jake Gosselin: Thanks for having me again for that, I think the fourth time, this has been an incredible journey to be able to, like, I'm, I'm honored that you invite me back to, to come on and you're opening this up to do it, and man, I, I realize this show pretty much documents my entire business journey over like five years now.

Pat Flynn: That, that's why I love doing this, and that's why we people back again and again because we can kind of check in on you and see how you've been doing. And this is something that doesn't happen overnight, obviously as a podcaster. But because this has been a long lasting podcast, we can invite people like you back and I'm curious like, four times on now.

Like, can you, let's just say there's people who are listening who didn't cash any of those first episodes. Like, can you tell us a quick timeline of like, where you started and, and some of the big challenges that you had to overcome to get to where you're at today, and then we'll figure, we'll see where you're at today also.

Jake Gosselin: All right. This will be the hyper short version of it all, but 2016, I was working a full-time job as a worship pastor in a church. The person who directs all the music and tech on Sundays at churches. I had somehow come across on the idea of online business. I found your podcast. Started listening to your, your podcast six years ago.

Your, your main podcast, not the AskPat podcast. And I was just like, inspired by like, whoa, I, I kind of had, had an entrepreneurial drive. I think I could start something on my own, building an audience within a niche, the niche that I'm passionate about. And so I just kind of dove all in doing all the Smart Passive Income things back in 2016 and really followed the process, building the email list, YouTube channel.

Came out in my first courses using like the, kind of like the launch method from Jeff Walker and a lot of these principles, it's like, I still still use 'em to this day every, you know, every time I do a new course or anything like that. But, you know, got the business from a passion side, side project, part-time kind of income to full-time.

Within about, it was about two years, about 24 months in, that's when I launched a membership site, WorshipMinistrySchool.com. Simple membership site content behind a monthly subscription paywall for worship leaders and tech directors. Again, that's what I'm still doing to this day. I'm still very involved in churches and I'm living the dream cuz I get to build this business that helps tens of thousands of people like every single week.

And then I'm still helping my local church and it's a blast. So started that and you know, I was a solopreneur and I, that was back in the day where like I would hire just any, any like help I could find. Usually these were just like younger, younger guys who I was like, Hey, can you start editing some videos for me?

Just kind of doing some grunt work. And then in around 2020, 2019 to 2020. Couple things happened. 2019, the end of 2019 came out with a higher ticket coaching program that's a blend of courses people can walk through cuz courses are, for the most part, automated coaching, but then people also, Pretty much unlimited access to talk to someone real on my team to like get the help they need, kind of built this hybrid course and coaching program.

Also then the pandemic hit. That was a huge catalyst for growth for my business because churches had to livestream, right? So everybody, you know, my YouTube channel blew up cuz I had a few videos floating around on how to livestream your church, right? So like that videos got hundreds of thousands of views within just days and weeks and months. 2020 was just a, yeah, it was crazy year. And yeah, again, fortunately, like, it, it, it just kinda like accelerated I feel like the trajectory of where the business was already going and by that time, I dunno, our YouTube channel probably gets a hundred thousand subscribers and then it was like 2021, that's when I like, was able to start scaling the team in, in, I think in late 2020 we were like, We're like a high six figure business, probably 800 K or something like that.

That year. 2021 was, was then like over seven figures, like a million and a quarter business. Wow. Congratulations. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. And then I was able to kind of like focus more on, okay, let's get, instead of just finding the, whatever help I can to edit some videos, like I need to find some, like a team players who can really take ownership of different roles in the, in the company and just like keep taking it to the next level.

So that was the theme of, honestly, the last, last two years, even, even this past year, we were, we grew another, I think 10 to 15% over 2021. So 2022 should be just over that 2021 was probably 1.1, and this should be like one in a quarter, 1.3 or somewhere around there. And it's been a blast because 2022 has been a year of system refinement, team refinement. And like I have, well, there's only four of us now, three of us who are full-time, and then one's a full-time salesperson who's commission based. And I, I love it, like, I mean by, my team members are like really just solid guys who are just like taking things, owning it, and running with it.

And they're improving aspects of the business that I, I don't even have to talk to 'em about it. They just do it and it's really, it's really awesome and I can, because we have such a lean team, I can compensate them well for it, and they, they love that too. That's awesome. Yeah. So that, that was kind of 2021 into 2022.

We're still doing the, the, the courses. People can buy a, you know, as low as I think a a hundred dollars course from us if they want. It's kind of like a front end entry level product to now we have consulting programs that include some onsite consulting where our team member will actually fly to a church and we, this was new since May of this year where they'll like work on stuff for a couple days and really accelerate that process.

We can accelerate people's processes by doing things remotely, but now introducing some onsite work, especially cuz a lot of it's technical. It's like, Hey, let me just put this mixing console in or set the cameras up for you. Let's do it for you. That's been a blast and that's a $10,000 offer and it's been working great.

We've probably hads. Seven or eight of those signups over the past few months, just since May.

Pat Flynn: Who do you hire to do that? Is it the same team members who, who go out and do that or.

Jake Gosselin: Yeah, it's, it's, right now, this, this will be my next kind of question is maybe, is maybe figuring out how to scale it, but we have Adam, he's kind of my main, he's like, he's the main technical coach and course creator now, so, and that's a lot of our, what of our courses is, so he's the primary wants to go to go do that. So he was just on a trip this week out in Colorado taking care of that for a client. And so that's been fun.

The other thing has been the sponsorship deals, so it's. , Hey, keep doing the same thing you've been doing, making great fun YouTube videos that you like, but then like, you know, make over five figures for making a video. Yeah, right. That, that's been, that's awesome. That's been fun. So I feel like part of this year to, for 2022 has also been kind of finding these like new revenue streams by continuing to do what we've already been doing, but.

Some of my favorite videos to work on have been these paid deals because I like the product, I like the company, and then when someone pays me to actually make a video, I'm like just more motivated to like, make a fun video. Dude, we still make, I mean, mo majority of our videos are still like, you know, free videos.

We just put 'em out and no one's paying us to do, it's still like our marketing strategy, but this, this, the kind of symbiosis of it all really works well. Then the other thing we started doing, we did small 50 person events in 2021. We did two of those and then this year we did one event, had 200 people at it.

That was back in November. So now we're kind of getting to the live event space. That's a lot of fun cuz at the event space, we capture all the keynote, those go on the YouTube channel. People who are in our course library get access to all of them instantly. And then we do cool sponsorship deals with these brands who are like, hey, We talked to 'em about like, Hey, we can make a YouTube video and then you could also show up as a sponsor to our event and like kind of bundle things together and it's just, it's so complimentary.

So I know that was a lot.

Pat Flynn: I'm just like, no, that was, I'm just sitting here listening and actually I had questions and you literally answered them like right when I was thinking about them like, well, how big is your team and all this stuff. So you've given me everything. From the beginning really. And, and, and hopefully for those of you listening, you're like super inspired by this.

And this is, this is along how many years, Jake?

Jake Gosselin: This is like, it's about six years.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, six years. So this, this didn't happen overnight. And you can tell there's sort of like phases. There's consistency, there's some like good timing, right? With the pandemic and your services being perfect for that. And then now you're sort of leaning into things and I love sort of going deeper with your current client base. Like, Hey, if you want us to go to your place, like we'll do it for you. It's gonna cost you, but here we go. And so maybe to answer your first question there about like scaling that, there's a couple things I want you to keep in mind. Number one is the question, do you need to scale it?

Maybe you only do a certain number every single year, like. The big worry, not for you, but just in general for entrepreneurs at this stage where things are going really well is that you keep doing more things because you know you can do them now, right in, in the beginning you're like, I don't know, I'm kind of timid.

Now you have this motivation, you have this confidence, and because of that you see more opportunity and then you take every single one. And I'm not saying don't do it. All I'm saying is check yourself before you wreck. You know what I'm, you know what I mean?

Jake Gosselin: I've totally learned that cuz like I'm, I'm learning like just because now even though we're bigger, we have more resources, I could take some risks trying to do more or even start new product lines.

Right? Right. It's actually at the same time, maybe it's just cuz I'm kind of getting older or something. I'm like, I think about all the work it actually take to do something like that successfully and I'm like, I, no, thanks. Let's, good for you. A lot of these new revenue streams, I'm like filtering it out of like, man, does this compliment what we're already doing?

Well, like the live event thing, like it's definitely takes. Maybe a couple weeks out of the year to plan and like, takes quite a bit of mind power to, to, to do that. But the, it is totally worth it, the way it compliments YouTube channel sponsorship deals, and then the community, it builds around our brand.

Like that's a, that's another huge thing.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, for sure. I'm glad you're already having those self checks with, with those opportunities and so, you know. , maybe there's a certain number that you can handle. Mm-hmm, based on the number of team that you wanna have. Because the more team that you have, the more management that needs to happen.

The, like, it could just run smoothly the way it is and, and that's okay too. Like that's okay. You don't just have to grow because you can. But if you want to, you now know you can and you have to build the systems into place. And you've already done the biggest thing that there is to be able to enable yourself to grow.

And that is the find people. And that's really what growth needs to have is people is like the soil for plants. They keep you grounded. They nurture that thing and all together sort of provide what is necessary for the thing to grow. Right. So true. Which I'm gonna use that analogy in the future. I'm, I, I really like that.

That's great. But you don't want to soil yourself? No. Okay. Nevermind. That's not gonna work either. I'm just, I'm thinking out loud here.

Jake Gosselin: But, well, the, the, the beauty of that too, it's like we, I mean, some of our ideas we've had around it, cuz now, now when I make decisions, I do make decisions based on like, so Adam and Luke and Eric, those are our main three guys on the team.

And I'm like, how will this affect their role, their lifestyle, their, you know, like, I'm not, I'm not just care, like honestly, I would always like to grow revenue, but like at the level we're at right now, it's, it's more than I ever thought would be possible in my life, and the impact is huge. So I'm. I'm seeing now, it's, it's, it's not always about that top line number, you know, it's just, that's a way to, it's a hamster wheel that can, that can make it pretty miserable pretty quick.

Pat Flynn: For sure. And you had mentioned a keyword there, which is lifestyle and, and it's so smart of you as a leader to say, you know, not just your lifestyle, but the lifestyle of those who are helping and, and working with you because you wanna keep them around. You wanna keep them healthy and happy. And by thinking about them and the decisions that, that's the hard part about being a C E O really is like, The decisions you make literally impact other people's lives.

And that's a very scary thing. And if money is the center of those decisions, then that often will be at the sacrifice of something related to your team. So again, you're doing this exactly the right way. So maybe there is a way to, a systemize that process of having people be sent out and, and maybe just becomes integrated into the business.

And there's only so many perhaps that you do. So that there's always some on the plate and you don't have to even worry about getting clients right. When you have that in place and, and like there's a, there's gonna be a waiting list for that, in fact if you will, the other way to go about it would be if you wanted to go the opposite direction and really scale this, I have a friend of mine.

He is the founder of Ever Bowl. Ever Bowl is a Asai like company. It's sort of like a Chipotle, but instead of like burritos, it's an Asai bowl. You go in, you can choose the things you want, et cetera. And it's one of the fastest growing chains here in Southern California. He actually is a friend of mine.

We went to high school together. It's just, I'm really proud of him. He's super, super cool and he knew that in order to scale his. He needed to get up fast and so he actually started a secondary company, which is a construction company because he can now hire his own company to quickly build the ever bowls in the different strip malls and other places that are. Oh wow, required to build. Yeah. So like, let's just play a game. Let's imagine that you created a separate company. Led by somebody else who is in charge of growing that thing who could, who you could hire or like is a part of the maybe you have a partnership with this company that yes, it is your company, but it's run by somebody else.

And that's the team that goes out and literally is just the team who goes and does these things and you are one of their, You send, you know, two people, you help out two clients every single month. But now this business helps motivational speakers set up their events over here and you can kind of go and grind into other niches from there.

And now that company is a help you set up your livestream company that yes, services your business, but also can serve others. And now you're part owner of that. And like, again, I'm thinking big and you could go down that direction, but that's how you would handle it and scale it without scaling.

Jake Gosselin: Yeah, cuz the, the, the thing in our market is there is a huge market in the church world for full on AVL integration.

So that's when a church is like, Hey, we, we wanna drop a half a million dollars on all new audio, video, lighting, stuff like that. Yeah, and kind of what I, the reason why what we offer now is, is a good selling point, is we're like, hey, like we can actually make you help, you make a lot of great improvements through courses, through remote coaching, and then, you know, for less than $10,000, we can just help you make the most of what you have.

And that's a no brainer. That's a great offer. But there is, I think someday, I wouldn't be surprised within the next 10 years I hope to be doing this for the long haul. We could actually become more like I'd have a separate integration company. That church front, the media company and education company just sends the leads to be like, oh, okay.

Yeah, you want a big scale project. Let's, let's go with these guys. So, exactly.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, exactly. Love. And because it's like your business, like that money's just going back to you. I mean the, just like the way the money flow, it's like a really amazing thing that a lot of companies do. You know, you dive deeper into a lot of these corporations and they set up multiple corporations that basically all serve each other.

It's all integrated. I mean, it's similar to like Tesla in a way, except Tesla. They're all under the Tesla brand. The people who do the painting, to the people who do the creating of the car, to the software. Like it's all in one, and in this way it would be similar except other people are in charge of that.

So yeah. Man, dude, I could jam on this all day, but this is, this is really cool. What are the, and I always ask this question now to people who have gone through this journey. You are here now where you're at new levels, new devils, right? There's always gonna be new challenges and new things that arise as you continue to grow.

What are the struggles that you're having now at this stage that perhaps you, you didn't even have before or didn't think about?

Jake Gosselin: One of the epiphanies I had this year, and we talked a little bit on my last interview about I have these side interests within the finance investing Bitcoin world, Bitcoin, not crypto, big difference and, and you know, I there cuz there's a lot of things that just intrigue me, right? Like that's like a hobby and it's my, my struggle is to like keep things. Some, I always wanna make my hobby like a, you know, a means of income or something like that, or create content around it. And I, that's a good thing.

But I, I built my other channel that's about those topics, that's about 10,000 subscribers now, and I like that was after a year of making content. And then about this spring. Few things happened in life. One of them being actually we, our family moved for lifestyle's sake down here to Florida to be, we're here in Florida and in Colorado.

So that just took a lot of mind, space and energy to like make that move earlier this year. And I kind of backed off on my secondary channel and I also kind of did more reflection around that. Of like, I think the timing of it, it's like, I think this is something that is still a few years out for me to really put as much time as, as I thought I needed to into it because I just realized, like, I finally realized like how much of a gift my current business lifestyle is with church run and like this is, this is obviously it's great lifestyle.

It's great business, it's great revenue, but also I actually feel like I have a spiritual calling element to this of like, this is. I literally think God designed me specifically with my skillsets and all this to, to do this job, and it's like more of a external responsibility that I'm supposed to steward, and that, that just became very clear to me this year, especially from, from a few things.

You know, one of 'em being, I went to the Grow With Video Live conference with Sean Cannell. You were at that, this, this past. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was a phenomenal conference. And you know, I love Sean's. Like I followed Sean as another mentor for the past few years with, especially with the YouTube stuff and being back there cuz I hadn't been to at a marketing conference in, in a while.

Especially cuz covid like that was my first one in a while too. . Right. And that just kind of like in injected me with not just like in a temporary, like adrenaline or excitement, but it was really a recalibration for me to remember like the original passion I had for doing all this stuff. And dude, your keynote was amazing by the way.

And, and just like, oh, thanks man. You know, and you're, you and your focus on the, your super fans and your audience and like doing the things that like surprise people and, and nobody like those little things that just go a long way. If you show up and do 'em day after day after day, year after year. I mean now you're, you get to enjoy the fruit of that.

You've been doing this for, what, over 12 years or 10 years, which it's wild dude. . Yeah. So that's why I, I think I just had a recalibration this year to not be I won't say distracted. I, I still like to spend space time thinking about these other things, to gimme a break from my main thing and I'll make a YouTube video here or there on my other channel.

But now that channel to me is almost like if, if I died tomorrow, these are things that I want my kids to know about you know, that's life, business and finance, you know, stuff that's not really appropriate for me to put on the church front channel cuz it's not what people subscribe to it for. Right. But I'm like, this can be the Jake channel, whatever the heck I find interesting. I honestly don't care about channel performance and growth that much. I just wanna get this stuff out there that I wanna get out there. So that was kind of a, it was a weird wrestling I had earlier this year, and I think around that may timeframe, especially after going to that event, oh, I went to like another event within my industry.

You know, going to these conferences, having our own conferences, dude, the Pat, the number of people like, who come to me and they're like, they're like, oh my gosh, Jake, like, you don't know how much you helped us on this. Especially during the pandemic trying to get live stream up and like, and one person was like, I'm literally like, I feel like I gotta cry right now.

Cause like, you, you helped, like, you helped us so much. And it's weird, like it's kind of surreal, like hearing that stuff, but I'm like, wow, I, I think I need to appreciate like the, the impact that's being made. And it's so easy to be stuck behind a computer all day and, and kind of take it lightly, but it is, yeah.

Yeah. So the, all those things together kind of for me, recalibrated our focus and that honestly from especially the summer to the end of the year here, that kind of set me on trajectory to like, Hey, let's, let's make our, you know, event bigger and better. Let's get these sponsorship things going. Let's figure out how to make a bigger offer of like $10,000 plus thing o offer with onsite visits.

So that was a pivotal moment for me. So, so now I moving forward, I just, I, I'm like, I wanna be in this for the long haul. Like right now, I currently like, I genuinely feel that, like, I'm like, yeah, I'm the Church Front guy. I love doing this day after day, week after week, year after year. And I would love to look back after 20 years of just doing this.

And it's kind of nice to be okay with that now and not feel like, you know, the, the entrepreneurial space, it, I love it. It's inspiring, but sometimes it makes you feel like you're on this treadmill to be like, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? Oh, you gotta be a real, you gotta be a real estate developer.

Yeah, you gotta exit. And I, I, I, I, I don't know, I, and that's, that works for some, that's good for some people, but I do think for me, especially cuz of the calling element, I'm like, I act unless if there's a clear sign from God that I'm supposed to change directions, like this is, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Pat Flynn: I love it, man. I mean, to realize that is huge because that will define decisions that are made and and what you say yes to, what you say no to. And I love the idea of the other channel just to be an outlet for Jake, just to kind of be there for you and for others who just happen to be interested in, of course, for your family as well.

So that's that's amazing, man. Dude, I'm so proud of you and I'm so stoked to see where this goes. If you wouldn't mind for everybody who doesn't know. Yeah. Where can they go to follow your work and, and just follow you on the journey?

Jake Gosselin: Yeah. Go to ChurchFront.com.

Or on YouTube, you can find the channel pretty easily there. WorshipMinistrySchool.com, that's like our course consulting, product service platform. So if people wanna sign up for that or, or ask about that, if you're at a church and need the help, you can reach out there. Or I'm also on Twitter now. I'm gonna give Twitter more of my attention, as well as my personal YouTube channel.

Just Jake Gosselin. That's where I'm sharing more of the, this audience will be more interested in just like some of the actual things I've done to build a business that might go on Twitter in the YouTube channel. And then the Twitter. Twitter as well. Yeah, Twitter and YouTube are kind of. Truly Jake Gosselin, whatever I'm thinking is interesting at the given moment of time.

Pat Flynn: Thanks man. Well, we'll make sure to add those links in the show notes. Congrats to you on the success and the continued success, and we'll have to check in again in the future and see, see where you go from here. So thanks again for your time today, man. Thanks.

Right, I hope you enjoyed that Catch up with Jake. Jake, just congratulations to you and the success and the growing team and the just sending people to different places to set things up for higher end services. I mean, this is an, an incredible empire that you're building here and ultimately the work that you do. Of course, there's people who attend these services who then hear and and experience what it is that you're helping these pastors and these leaders in these spaces create. So well done and keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing the membership grow the YouTube channel, of course, and hopefully chatting again soon. Anyway, thank you so much everybody for listening through. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. And as we have been doing this entire year so far, we're catching up with people who've been on the show before.

It's one of my favorite things because we get to see how far they've come. What decisions did they make? What decisions did they not make? The whole shebang. So thank you so much. See you the next one.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is David Grabowski. Our series producer is Paul Grigoras, 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.