AP 1097: Where Are They Now? Jake Gosselin (1053)

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 1,097 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a Where Are They Now call because earlier in the year, I was able to coach Jake Gosselin from Episode 1,053. He's the leader of a brand over at Churchfront.com, doing some amazing things. I gave him some advice and he's back on today to talk about what he's implemented, how things have been going, and where he's going next. So, sit back, enjoy. I love these episodes. They're just always great to inspire and motivate people to show what happens when you actually take action and hopefully you're taking action too. We are coming in on the end of the year here. By the way, my birthday's tomorrow. I just noticed this comes out on the 5th of December. My birthday is the sixth and man, I'm getting old, but it never gets old to listen to these stories. So, sit back. Here is Jake Gosselin from Churchfront.com.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jake. Welcome back to AskPat 2.0. How are you doing, man? Welcome back.

Jake Gosselin: I'm doing awesome. Thanks for having me back, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, this will be fun to catch up. We were just talking right before hitting record. You were on in Episode 1,053, which was I think in January or February, but we actually recorded that in November of 2018. So, it's been a long time since we last chatted. Just give us the update. What's going on, man? How are things?

Jake Gosselin: Yeah, so it's been going great. This has been, in the three years I've been doing this business, I've experienced the most growth since the end of 2018 to now. We're in beginning of September, 2019, so it's been a wild ride, and I was able to actually implement a lot of what you shared in our last conversation. And of course, you were right about a lot of things in terms of just helping me grow the business and also grow it in a way that really helps me not hate myself for it, and actually makes it more sustainable for my lifestyle. So, really my main product offering has been a subscription site for worship leaders, helping them learn the ins and outs for leading worship at churches. And I launched that like a year ago, and I think I was just a month or two in when we last talked. I had 150 subscribers at about a $50 a month average subscription price there when you consider promotions and things like that.

Jake Gosselin: And from over the next six months, I grew that to about 300 active subscribers.

Pat Flynn: Nice.

Jake Gosselin: And yeah, so it was cool. Got to double it. Definitely. Of course, I would have loved to have tripled or quadrupled that number. And I learned a lot though along the way. And it'll be interesting to kind of hear some of your thoughts on these things. But with the subscription model, like it was lots of benefits and pros to it, but over the past like nine months or so of trying to grow the site that way, I feel like I hit a ceiling in terms of the scalability of it, not from a fulfillment side of things, right, because everything is pretty much automated.

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jake Gosselin: They get a course library, community forum, and then I do some weekly Q and A calls. But part of me, I just got sort of like discontent, sort of tired of the grind of just trying to find different promotion angles and stuff like that to sell this thing.

Jake Gosselin: And part of it is I'm not the most patient person in the world. And some of the goals we even talked about last, like I would like to get this business to a point where I have a team of a dozen people, because there's a lot of pretty big dreams I have for it, and where I want to bring this, and how I want to serve my market. And in order to do that. I need the manpower to do it and the resources. So, scaling faster, because right now I just sense the market, the need out there in the way that I can help worship leaders in my market just so far exceeds what I'm able to even do right now with the current manpower and resources we have. So, all that said, I was experiencing a lot of great growth over the past few months, bringing the business from like $10K a month to closer to between $25 to $30K a month.

Jake Gosselin: And been experiencing some great success in those ways, but I felt like a lot of the customers, they're just not ... Especially because we still have active subscribers, and it's awesome, and we're still helping them out, but I feel like when people join a subscription site, there's just not as much of a clear path for them to actually get the results they want and/or need. And sometimes they might be experiencing a little bit of information overwhelm or they might just feel psychologically like, "Oh, I'm subscribed to this thing and therefore just by being subscribed to it, I'm becoming better at what I need to be better at."

Pat Flynn: Right. [crosstalk 00:04:47] Like a gym membership kind of thing.

Jake Gosselin: Yeah, exactly. So, I've been kind of questioning really my offering a lot lately, and how I want to pivot what I'm offering worship leaders, and how I can help them. So, for the past few months, I've been actually learning a lot more about kind of the online, the coaching world for people where I'm still doing, I'm still creating courses because I really think I can create some amazing online courses to deliver the right information to my market, but I want to pair that with some coaching process.

Jake Gosselin: Like whether it's one-on-one or some group coaching, and things like that, and actually make it just a more higher priced one-time investment for them. So, I mean, it's kind of a long story and there's a lot more details we can go into that, but that's kind of where I'm at now. Where it's like I get this, I have 300 active subscribers in the website, and the past few weeks I'm experimenting with pivoting more towards this higher ticket coaching offer where they get access to all the courses, but they're also getting way more time from my team, and we're providing like way more accountability in terms of helping them focus on what they need to focus on, and get the results they need to get.

Jake Gosselin: So, that's where we're at there, just kind of business and product offering. And then team member wise, I hired my first full-time editor and content creator, his name's Ashton, back in, it was like March. So, he started with me full-time. Huge game changer because I do do a lot of content creation on YouTube, and podcasting, and blogging, all that stuff. So, he was the first full-time guy I hired. He's super bright kid, just graduated high school, and he was taking a gap year, and he just wanted to ... Ended up, he's not going to college, he really enjoys what he's doing for me right now being a content creator. So, he's doing that and that's really saved me so much headache in terms of just keeping up with the content calendar.

Jake Gosselin: Then I have some part-time guys who help me out. So, I have one guy that helps me out with podcast production, another who helps with taking our YouTube content and transcribing it into blog posts. And then, I have another guy who helps out with like community support, some other admin stuff, reaching out to people to interview for our podcasts. So, it's cool. I have like a little team of like four or five people helping me out with a lot of this day-to-day stuff, so I can ... I've been able to really focus on kind of the more important things that only I can focus on.

Pat Flynn: Good for you, man. First of all, super proud of you for taking action and congrats on the growth. I think you're sort of reaching that next level now where you're like, "Okay, we're growing, we know we can kind of do whatever we want to do, so what do we want to do?" And I love that you're thinking about that and moving forward into something a little bit different, a little bit more higher level in terms of the interaction and likely the results that you're going to get are even bigger.

Pat Flynn: And it's obvious that your heart is in the right place in terms of making sure that the people who are working with you are getting the best results that they can, because it can definitely feel like people are just there if you have a membership or even courses versus you actually kind of extending your hand out and helping them kind of along the way. And although you may help less people, which is often the case, especially when you kind of pivot, you're helping people on a more deeper level, and you're able to kind of track every individual's process a little bit more.

Pat Flynn: You're getting to know their individual life story versus just their kind of church sort of pastor story. So, the more deeper that you can get with your customers, the ultimate thing that's going to happen is your entire business is going to grow because you'll be better in tune with everybody. And not only that, you'll likely be able to see a lot more dollars coming in because when you get people those results that can sometimes only happen when they work on an individual or group basis, like a coaching process, they're going to want to continue to pay, and they have these incredible success stories that bring new people in.

Pat Flynn: And that's kind of the coolest thing that's happened since I started coaching people more on a one-on-one or one-on-many basis is that you get to know people as a person, and then when you are a part of their transformation, almost like on a weekly or monthly basis, they become a story that you can't forget ever, and then they become a part of your marketing, they become a part of your story, they become a part of the story of your product and coaching. So, that's really exciting and I'd love to dig into more of sort of what's on your mind related to that in just a minute.

Pat Flynn: But yeah, we don't need to get ... I mean, of all the things that you did to grow, I'm curious because this is largely what we talked about in the last time we were together here on the show. What were the one or two things that worked out best for you based on the advice I gave you?

Jake Gosselin: Yeah, I remember one of the key words of advice you had was just kind of keep doing what you're doing. Like I didn't have to make any major shifts other than make sure ... I think you really helped me be intentional about recruiting other team members. So, I think that was just a huge thing. I cannot imagine my life right now doing everything that we're doing without the team members who are helping me out, and every other business owner I come across who maybe is a couple of years behind me, that's what I'm trying to coach them to do. It's like you have to start making systems, and operating procedures, and hand things off to other people, and then they're going to end up doing it better than you ever could.

Jake Gosselin: I'm so excited. Like in my podcast, I've been doing it for two years, and I just offloaded that to a friend who, he's passionate about podcasting, and now he can put the time and focus into making it amazing. My voice is still going to be a big part of it. But just, man, taking the load off in so many ways is like ... It just really helps me enjoy the lifestyle side of things where I can show up to my office for eight hours a day or whatever, focus, get my work done, and not feel like I'm behind all the time.

Pat Flynn: Right, right.

Jake Gosselin: So, that was huge. And then, after when I was trying to basically continue to promote and sell the subscription site earlier on in the year, that was when I started to learn more about coaching offers, and following guys, and learning a lot from guys like Sam Ovens, and just learning how sometimes just getting people on a phone and learning about their needs, how they need help, and then making them an offer, just doing sales on the phone, that's one of the best ways to actually sell your product.

Jake Gosselin: And that's been kind of a really weird mind set shift for me because obviously, one of the beauty of online business is all the automated stuff, automated SIP marketing, automated sales, and it's great. But I think I've been, because I'm introverted by nature, I've been too okay with hiding behind all the automation and not actually interacting with people enough.

Pat Flynn: So, you're a little too far removed from a customer.

Jake Gosselin: Exactly. Yeah. Even though I'm helping tens of thousands of people with all my free content, and then I have a few hundred subscribers, it's like ... I'm like, "I actually need to get more involved in people's lives." Even though I've been having, like I've had ... The little tastes I've had of that because of my paid subscribers, of course there's like the the super fans subscribers, right, who they actually are the ones taking the time to work through things, and they hop on calls with me, and they're seeking out that help. I've just been learning how it's so much more satisfying for me as the product creator when we do have more of those high touch experiences.

Jake Gosselin: And I think from what I've learning, I can also scale this in such a way that I don't feel like it's me hopping on calls with people nonstop, but I can actually build a team who can actually do this too.

Pat Flynn: Yeah.

Jake Gosselin: So, that's kind of the next step and next phase for me. But back to the sales call thing, that actually from January to May, I probably did 300 sales calls and that's what helped me grow the site to 300 people. That was more effective than any of the webinar promotions or anything like that I was doing, and it was great, but I was like, "Man." When you're selling a lower ticket item on sales calls, you can get pretty burnt out pretty quickly there that way.

Jake Gosselin: I mean, I think it was really more of a great educational experience for me hearing my customers, knowing my market. But then, and then in May, I was so burnt-out with sales calls. Like, "Okay, I'm going to go back to doing webinars." So, I'd get an automated webinar up and running, and that worked well for a while, but all these promotional things, they just experienced entropy after a couple of weeks and I'm like, "Ugh. I just don't want to be making a new webinar every week or sending my list to the same webinar all the time."

Jake Gosselin: And it's just like ... I don't know. I found in business, my gut just tells me after a while, after a couple of weeks or months of experimenting with something, I'm like, "This isn't it." I don't know. I know sometimes I might be completely off in my strategy, but that was kind of the process.

Jake Gosselin: So, coming into about a month ago, that's when I seriously started to consider. I actually did just like a lifetime access offer to the school that was like $700, and a lot of people took me up on that. A Few dozen people actually went through with that and I'm like, "That's awesome."

Pat Flynn: That's cool. That's awesome.

Jake Gosselin: But the same thing with in terms of are they actually going to own it and get the results that they want to get? And my gut says, "I don't think they can without my team's guidance to help them focus on what they need to." Because we're selling this program that does ... It does cover a lot. We have a lot of courses that cover different aspects of things, and it's cool if people have lifetime access to it, but at least initially I want to give them like a two-month experience that's going to radically change their lives, and their ministry, and just completely set them on a new and better trajectory.

Jake Gosselin: So, that's eventually when I kind of landed on the whole really taking the higher ticket sale or higher ticket coaching/online training hybrid program model about a month ago. And it's been cool because I've been experimenting with that with the past couple of weeks, and I've had four people move forward with the process and sign up for it.

Pat Flynn: Nice, man. Yeah, I was going to ask you where you were with that and if you've experimented and tried it yet, and it seems like you've already pulled the trigger on that, and that's great. So, four people, how is that kind of structured in terms of working with you and your team?

Jake Gosselin: Yeah. So, I'm literally building the plane as I fly it. That's kind of the beauty of it, right? The whole being able to really make an offer, of course, knowing that, "Yeah, I can help these people get these results they want."

Pat Flynn: You validated it, right?

Jake Gosselin: Yeah. It's validating an offer before I try to spend all time, spend all day just trying to analyze how I'm actually going to fulfill it. But the beauty of it is ... Well, I guess I'll start back. So, the offer is it's a one-time fee of $2,500. We can break that down into two payments at the most for them. And then what they're going to get is a really intense ... Not intense, but they're going to get access to our team, a really high touch experience for about a 10-week period, and it's going to be a combination of one-on-one calls and group coaching calls.

Jake Gosselin: Right now, I'm just doing them all one-on-one because I've got time for it. I'm really building this process right now and my plan is basically once they sign up, we get started. We hop on a 45-minute, what I'm calling a growth plan call, and be like, "Okay, I already know quite a bit about you now, but just because of our sales process we went through. But I really want to know a clear picture of your ministry, and where you're at, and then I want to figure out how we can get the quickest wins for you possible over the next couple of weeks."

Jake Gosselin: And then kind of walking them through what I've broken down into my whole learning system, a few pillars. keeping it simple. Being like, "Okay, let's talk about your planning and admin work you do for your ministry. Let's talk about music, let's talk about theology, let's talk about tech." And really depending on the person, we'll focus more on one of those than the other, but I like to give people that framework just so they have a roadmap of where this is going. So, the goal is just to really set for them, is to set some specific goals that our team can help them achieve over the next two months, and then give them that direction of like, "Okay, you need to focus on this or that online course or these online courses we have in our online platform, and then you need a schedule, make sure he's definitely scheduled this or that coaching call for us to give you the customization or clarity as you try to implement these things."

Jake Gosselin: So, that's where I'm at right now. I'm honestly kind of making it up as I go, like I said. But the truth is I've been experiencing one of these programs myself over the past few weeks because it's pretty cool. It's pretty awesome and powerful to get that customized coaching and help along with the online training stuff.

Pat Flynn: Is just something you're going to add on top of the online training stuff in the membership that you have?

Jake Gosselin: So, what I've done is obviously everyone who's been active subscribers of the site, they are grandfathered in. They can, as long as they want to remain active subscribers, they still have access to everything. And what I'm doing though is for basically, I'm experimenting with new people who want to join our program. I'm actually not making the subscription site just an an offer at all anymore. Really the step is when they hit my landing page or when they get to an end of a webinar training, the call to action is hop on a strategy call with us and we'll see if this is the right fit.

Pat Flynn: That's cool. That's cool. I love it because you're kind of going all in with that and you're kind of just experimenting with it as you go. And that's often what I recommend for people when they start coaching. No matter what level they're at, whether they have successfully built an online course or membership website before, it's just do it, do it with a few people and you're going to learn so much about what they need, what you need, how to work together, how to make those systems in place.

Pat Flynn: I would just encourage you to make sure you're keeping careful, close attention to the systems around this coaching program, so that somebody else could likely come in that you hire to literally do the same exact thing after you sort of optimize it, which I'm sure you're thinking that way already. And then, as you begin to kind of recruit people, maybe even from your own audience who might have graduated, for example, to come and be a coach of yours as well, you could also add on like a certification program on top of it too. So, they're a Jake-certified pastor leader or you can name it really whatever you want, but it just adds even more credibility.

Pat Flynn: Just like how there's people who teach Dave Ramsey's stuff, but Dave Ramsey is nowhere to be found. But because they've been authenticated by him and his crew, he is a representative of them and can teach his own stuff to others where Dave couldn't possibly get to or reach because he's only one person. So, this is going to allow you to scale over time. And I love that you're already practicing what it's like to work with other people in your current business and in your content creation, it's just going to be the same exact thing. You're going to find coaches that are probably going to be better than you, and it's going to be amazing for you to to grow and reach more people and ultimately, like you said, help more people too.

Jake Gosselin: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: So, that's awesome, man. Any concerns, any questions you have about that? Or it seems like you know what to do.

Jake Gosselin: It's awesome. It's encouraging to just hear your perspective on this and because yeah, it's terrifying making a shift like this in an offering. And I mean, the beauty of it is with an existing membership site and all that stuff, and people being grandfathered in, even with they're existing subscriptions, I've got the flexibility and the cashflow to make these experiments, but at the same time it's kind of terrifying to go all in with a new idea like this. And just put myself out there because it's so much different to be like, "Hey, I can help you. It's only $59 a month or whatever." But now it's like, "I can help you and really give you the accountability that you're going to get results, but it's $2,500." It's really terrifying to put yourself out there like that.

Jake Gosselin: At least that first. But I know we have that, even just in the online content alone, we have that value, but at the end of the day it's just like, "Yeah, this is life changing stuff, and if people are actually going to take it seriously, they need to make an investment like this."

Pat Flynn: Right.

Jake Gosselin: So, this has been, it's been a good journey, but it's cool to hear, it's encouraging to hear your perspective on this and I appreciate you pushing me earlier on in the year in terms of being able to recruit team members and build systems, because without all that stuff I feel like I wouldn't have the flexibility to do these types of experiments.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, man. Well, just keep going with it. I feel like you know what to do. And the last thing is just keep experimenting, keep doing, because that's how you learn. I mean, we could jam on these strategies all the time and it's really the ones who come back on the show who have like just taken any kind of action. And the funny thing about your story is you're not doing what or you're pivoting away from what I told told you the last time, but it was those things that then unlocked this new sort of direction for you, which is really encouraging. So, we'll have to check back in with you again in the future to see how things go with this new direction, and I'm very confident in it, and you could tell from your passion, and you could tell in your gut that this is the right thing to do, and I think it's going to help loads more people, and ultimately be more fulfilling as well.

Pat Flynn: So, just congrats on it and we wish you all the best.

Jake Gosselin: Awesome. Thanks so much, Pat. Really appreciate you.

Pat Flynn: Thanks, Jake. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you got going on?

Jake Gosselin: You can go to Churchfront.com, and you'll find everything that I have there.

Pat Flynn: Churchfront.com. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Jake Gosselin: All right. Have a good one. Bye.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Jake Gosselin. Again, you can find him at Churchfront.com. I'm just so proud of what he's been able to accomplish and create, and I'm stoked for what's coming next because he's got some big plans as you could tell. We connected a little bit after the call as well, just to kind of go deeper into fulfillment and helping people and that sort of stuff, and you can tell Jake's heart is in the absolute right place.

Pat Flynn: He's following his gut, he's taking action, he's doing it all, and I'm just proud of him. So, we'll have to check back with him again later on. But we have another Where Are They Now episode coming next week. So, make sure you hit Subscribe to AskPat if you haven't already. Big shout out and thank you to all of Team Flynn who has left reviews for the show. That's super encouraging to me. I hope you're enjoying these shows at the end of the year here and we got some more AskPats coming up.

Pat Flynn: And also we have a need for more questions coming in. This wouldn't be AskPat if nobody was asking me anything. So, make sure you submit your application to potentially get coached in 2020 at AskPat.com. I'm here to serve, I'm here to help, and as you can tell, I've been doing this for a while, and it's just one of my favorite things to do, and I want to help you too. So, I can't get to everybody, but obviously I can't get to you if you don't submit your application. So, AskPat.com, hit Subscribe to show if you haven't already, and Team Flynn, you're amazing. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much. And of course, as always, Team Flynn for the win. Cheers.