AP 1040: Where Are They Now? Lisa Bunnage (From AP 1019)

About This Episode

Today I have Lisa Bunnage back on the show, a parenting coach with a site called BratBusters.com. She was featured back in Episode 1019 of AskPat, where I coached her on how to generate passive income online through her coaching business. Well, she's back to tell us all about how it's going!

We start off by diving into the structure of Lisa's new podcast and course and how she's growing through mastermind groups and online courses. We pivot and talk about Lisa's plans for the next six to eight weeks, and I offer her more tips and tactics, like how to structure and film her online course and how to use Agile project planning to knock out her goals. I hope to have Lisa back on again in the future!

What You'll Learn:
Learn strategies and mindsets for working through the growing pains of starting a new podcast and online course.

AskPat 1040 Episode Transcript

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Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 1040 of AskPat. I'm really excited about this one because this is the first of several Where Are They Now? episodes. Now that we've done thirty-nine, or several months worth of AskPat 2.0 coaching sessions—which you'll still hear more in the future, where I bring an entrepreneur on who's going through a pain or a problem and I coach them through that process. Well in this episode, 1040, this is the first one where we're bringing somebody back.

Today we're bringing back Lisa from Episode 1019, which was recorded how many months ago? About six months ago, and was published in June, so 1019 is when she was featured. There she had some issues with, “How do I take my coaching practice online and what can I do?” She helps parents deal with troubled teens and brats. Her business is actually helping people bust through the brats, that's why it's called BratBusters.com. You might remember that episode. If not, I recommend you listen to that one maybe after this one if you'd like, so 1019. We're going to get into this, she's made so much great progress and we'll get into that in just a moment.

But real quick, I just got to give a big shout out to FreshBooks.com for being an amazing sponsor for this show. They've just been amazing, not just because they've sponsored the show, but because they've helped so many of the listeners of AskPat. I still get feedback every single week from people who go, “Pat, thank you for introducing me to FreshBooks because they've helped me remove all the headaches in my business related to all the finances.” Because we entrepreneurs, we have a lot of hats that we have to wear and one of those hats is the financial person. That's not necessarily all of us, some of us are just natural born financial analysts, and can track, and book keep, and all those things really easily. Other people, like myself, are not so natural born when it comes to that stuff, so we have tools to help us with those sorts of things. I use FreshBooks, I love it. They serve millions of small businesses and they can serve you too.

What I love about them too is their invoicing feature. If you do any invoicing, like you're a freelancer, or you have coaching students, or you bill anybody for whatever reason, they make it really easy to make that happen for you. You can create one in less than thirty seconds and I use it for that purpose too.

You want to check them out: Full feature, thirty-day free trial available at FreshBooks.com/askpat. Just make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's FreshBooks.com/askpat.

All right, now here is the Where Are They Now? episode here in AskPat 2.0 with Lisa from BratBusters.com. Oh, by the way, pro podcasters make mistakes too. You'll hear the audio quality. I had plugged in a web cam in and because of that it changed the input microphone to the web cam microphone and not the nice pro mic that you're hearing from me right now. Hey, it happens to the best of us, and hopefully that makes you feel better, because it's still worth publishing because it's that great. Here is Lisa from BratBusters.com.

Hey Lisa, welcome back to AskPat 2.0. I'm so excited to chat about all the things that have happened since Episode 1019. How have you been?

Lisa Bunnage: I've been really good. I got a whole bunch of stuff to tell you.

Pat Flynn: Oh I cannot wait. Like, I was just saying right before I hit record, you're the first person to come back. This is my version of Shark Tank's Where Are They Now? It sounds like, just from the tone of your voice, that a lot of stuff has happened, so I would love for you to just tell me all the things and then I'll probably ask some followup questions if that's okay.

Lisa Bunnage: Okay, excellent. I want to say, financially it hasn't happened yet in a big way, but my movement on getting stuff going has been huge.

Since doing your last podcast, I think that was probably about two or three months ago, I have done five things that are kind of big. The first one was I started a podcast and it's called Parenting Like a Leader, and I've done five of them so far and I love it. I don't know if I have any views yet because I can't even figure out how to check the analytics, I'm so new at all of this. Anyway, I'm not sweating the small stuff. I'm getting it done, I'm enjoying it, and I'm going to build my audience once I get stuff to back it up more. But—

Pat Flynn: Do you have Power-Up Podcasting to help you create that?

Lisa Bunnage: Pardon me?

Pat Flynn: Are you in my course, Power-Up Podcasting, to help you figure out all that stuff?

Lisa Bunnage: No, I'm not in that one because I took another course a few years ago I started to use that—I realized it was kind of bull, and then I just thought, “I'm just going to dive in.” I did join Libsyn, I think it . . . Yeah, Libsyn.

Pat Flynn: That's a hosting company.

Lisa Bunnage: Yes, was that you?

Pat Flynn: No, that's not my company. That's one of the companies that I recommend when you start your show. That's the media hosting company. Anyway, I just wanted to touch on that because I wanted to make sure that we give you free access to that because a podcast is huge, and it sounds like you're almost there, and you've got it up and it's great, so after the call I'll send you information so you can get it.

Lisa Bunnage: That would be wonderful, because I really am horrible at marketing. That's my worse thing in the world.

Pat Flynn: It's a part of that course, for sure.

Lisa Bunnage: Yeah, and that's my struggle. Anyway, I've got that started, I'm really enjoying it. My first guest, well my second one, was my daughter and oh my god we had so much fun. It's just opened up this whole other door. It's just been fantastic. That's the first thing I did. That was sort of with your help.

The second thing that happened was completely you. You told me to increase my coaching fee to make room for upcoming courses. Never dawned on me to do that until you said that.

Pat Flynn: What was it and what did you increase it to?

Lisa Bunnage: I was charging I think $500 or $600; now it's $1500.

Pat Flynn: $1500? You've tripled it?

Lisa Bunnage: I tripled it right away. The reason is, that fee has been the same virtually for eleven years. I've never changed it. This is the funny part though, is my clients, not just two or three of them, but pretty much all of them say, “I can't believe how cheap this is for what we're getting.” It's $1500 for five weeks, so they get one session per week but it's unlimited emails in between. So I'm with them all the time. Some of them never email me. Some email me ten times a day, so whatever works for them and it's like a real . . . Unfortunately, for me financially I haven't got enough that that's a problem. Maybe one day it will be, but right now I can do that and I'm loving it. It's just fantastic, so I'm really with them. That was a direct result of you.

Pat Flynn: Was there any fear in the price increase and how did you get over that if there was?

Lisa Bunnage: No way, no fear whatsoever. Do you know why? Because I'm nurturing my clients in the last year, I'm giving them the old rates for another year. I get a lot of people coming back because their kids get older, or they have another kid, or their kids hit puberty and the poop hits the fan—well, with babies obviously, and with teenagers. That's what I'm doing, I'm nurturing my existing clients because I really worried about alienating people.

I'll be honest, all my older, older clients, I'm giving it to them for $1200, so like mate's rates-kind of thing. Actually, I lived in Australia for twenty years. I don't know if you have that term, mate's rates here.

Pat Flynn: I understand what that means; that's usually the family and friend's discount.

Lisa Bunnage: Yeah, like a mate; it's a mate rate. I think that people here in Canada go, “What? What's that mean?” Anyway, I increased my fee. You know what, Pat, I've just changed so much after talking to you because, not just that I trust you, but you just had a voice that made me feel . . . I don't know, you just gave me confidence. I'm not a person that doesn't have that. It just gave me a whole other level with what I should be asking for, because I know what I provide and I know what it's worth. The fact that I was underpricing myself just so that more people could get to me—but because I've got courses coming up, which is my next thing, I'm not worried about that. I put the coaching up right away to make room for the courses rather than bringing the courses out and then put . . . Maybe I did that wrong, but I can't sweat the small stuff or else I'll never do anything.

Pat Flynn: You're doing it right. Just to remind everybody, BratBusters.com, still the main website where they can see everything, right?

Lisa Bunnage: Yes. The name Brat Busters, it's close to my heart because the troubled teens that I used to mentor, they named it that. They said, “You're always busting brats.” I'd say, “You're not a brat.” They'd go, “Come on Lisa, don't lie to me now.” “Yeah, you're brats, yeah you were.” It got to be a joke so they named it.

Pat Flynn: So you got the podcast was number one, number two was increasing the fee by tripling it.

Lisa Bunnage: Yes.

Pat Flynn: What's number three?

Lisa Bunnage: Now number three is I bought a course on how to build a course, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but as soon as I bought that it just sort of sent me into this other mode. It's not just about building a course, it's like, then you got to start a Facebook group and there's all this other stuff out there that's kind of opened my mind to the fact that I feel more like I'm a machine, kind of at this point, like I'm just really going forward at a rate that I never did before. Now, I bought that course . . . and everybody who says when you first do a course—and I've had courses before, years ago, but I want to change the format now. I want them to all be video, nothing but video, pretty much anyway. I'll back it up with transcript, but I want it to be video. When I bought that everyone says, “You don't do your big signature course first. Do mini courses then do your signature one.” This held me back because I thought, “How on earth do I tell a parent who's struggling with a troubled teen how to get through it unless they already know all the basics of parenting?” It's like, it's really hard to offshoot to any other course without the big basic one first.

I found myself—every time I'd try and do a smaller course I was giving all the basics, which is my signature course. I stopped analyzing it and I'm just going to go with my signature course. I've been doing this for so long anyway, believe me, the material's there, I've just got to put it together now. How does that sound? Am I—

Pat Flynn: I bet it was a marketer that told you to do all those little mini satellite courses before the big launch.

Lisa Bunnage: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: It's just not for everybody. I would say just go with where the flow is for you. It sounds like you've found it and you're building it now, which is great. It's going to be your signature course. I have learned . . . Actually, this year we pulled back on creating more courses to provide more value to the people in my current courses and to better optimize them, to better market them and all those kinds of things. Focusing on one thing at a time, and if it's the thing then it's great. How far are you in the process, in the course creation sequence right now?

Lisa Bunnage: This is embarrassing. Because I just changed yesterday, I'm not very far—well I'm nowhere, but I will get hopefully now . . . I'll tell you all about that in the fifth thing I'm doing, is that I was just talking to someone today and they said they're going to keep me accountable. I'm hoping in six weeks I'll be able to release it, because I've already got all the information organized, I just really have to do the videos now.

I joined Thinkific as the host, just because the person that I bought the course off . . . Should I mention who all this is?

Pat Flynn: You can, yeah, totally.

Lisa Bunnage: Okay, it's Sunny Lenarduzzi. It was just one day I thought, “Yeah, she's cute. She seems to make it all simple,” which I need because I'm a bit stupid with all this stuff. She is using Thinkific, so I thought, “Just go with that, get it done.” It was all sort of on a whim. I hope to get that started hopefully by Friday, I'm hoping. I've got it in my calendar.

Pat Flynn: That's great. I think there's a big lesson there. You had mentioned Sunny. Sunny's a good friend of mine; she and I have met in person, have had lunch together. I invited her on my podcast, she invited me on hers. We're really good friends, I love her just so much and just the ways she teaches and, like you said, she makes it achievable, doable. I think that's a very important lesson. You have to find the person, or the mentor, or the person that you can just really relate to who can motivate you, and it's not always the same for everybody.

I think that's a really, really key lesson. Obviously, I hope the people listening to this consider me a mentor to them, but I don't have to be your mentor. My goal is to have you move, and take action, and go forward. It doesn't really matter to me who it is, I just need you to take action.

Lisa, you've been taking massive action here, which is great. I think that although on paper the course isn't started yet, I think that, in total, it has been because you've gone through those mental barriers and you've tackled them, and you already know what to do next. That's a huge part of this process. Although the course isn't created yet and you haven't started with the creation, you've gone through the most important part, which is the mental part of it.

Lisa Bunnage: Oh it's huge. I've been listening to you for years. I just met Sunny online, so she's all new to me. You're one of my core mentors, just so you know that. She's a new baby mentor to me, so just learning. I started a podcast, was number one. Two was I increased my coaching fee. Three was I bought the course, and number four is I decided on my signature course instead of mini courses.

The fifth one is really interesting. This came as a direct result of doing that AskPat before. I got contacted to join a mastermind group. They heard me on your podcast and one of the members in there is Steve—he wasn't the one who contacted me, but Steve Pasquini, I think, The PA Life. He was AskPat 1014, like 1014. He's such a nice young guy, so that's been a huge value, is to have these people that I can bounce ideas off of. That was another thing. It's not just a matter of saying, “Oh thanks, Pat, for what you've done.” But these are all things that anyone can do. It's just sometimes you need a push. I just didn't feel a real direction until our podcast. I think I felt a bit of pressure because I'd talked about what I wanted to do and I did it publicly, so there's definite pressure in that, and it's a good thing when you already have it all under your belt and you just have to let it fly, which is me. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to go on your podcast and it has helped me so much, as you can tell. I'm very exuberant.

Pat Flynn: I'm smiling from ear to ear right now.

Lisa Bunnage: It's wonderful, Pat. If someone says that to me, “You've inspired me,” I just get the Cheshire grin, that's what you do it for. This is what I do my business for, it's what you do your business for, I'm sure, is just to help people. It's been a huge help and I'm hoping that this podcast will encourage other people because I'm no different from anybody else. I have worked really, really hard at just trying to get myself moving. That's often the hardest part, is just to get moving.

Pat Flynn: That's amazing. Lisa, you're awesome, well done. Thank you again for speaking so highly of AskPat and what it's done for you.

Now I had imagined—and again, you're the first one to come back on the show in this way, I was going to ask everybody to tell me what the next six to eight weeks are going to be like for you. You've kind of given us that already. So just to confirm, the next couple months, what are the next action steps for the next couple months?

Lisa Bunnage: Well, I want to start the course. I want to get that done. Something I learned through Sunny was, she said, “You build your audience before you build your course.” That's sort of what you'd said too, but I didn't really get it, was you talked about pre-selling, which is sort of tied in with that. I haven't quite wrapped my head around that, but I'm not going to worry about that right now, but I'm definitely going to start talking to my newsletter list about that and just ask them what they want. I've never done that before. I coach clients so much, so I know by talking to them about what parents basically need, I'm hoping I know. I'm hoping to really get this course just finished. Then I'm going to hopefully . . . I don't know how to do this though. How do I get people to help me build it? That's what I struggle with. I feel like I'm sort of asking them a favor, like I have to pay them for it. That's what I haven't got my head wrapped around, and maybe you can offer me some insight about that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I can. Really when it comes to the actual creation of it and putting in the work, I always try to ask myself, “Okay if this were easy what would it look like?” Because we entrepreneurs, we always try to make things harder than they actually need to be. In terms of creating the videos, you don't necessarily need to hire this giant film crew to do it. You could—and I know a number of people who have succeeded by filming it on their phones and just having it be as simple as that. Just getting in a nice lit spot in their home and spending a couple days, three or four days perhaps, to really just crank it all out.

In terms of the technology, you've gotten involved with Thinkific, which is great. I know the founder, he's a great guy, his name is Greg, amazing program, and it's really easy to set up there. Once you create the videos you just upload them there. Obviously there are tools out there that can help you do other things like transcription, so you can take that video and run it through a program like Rev, where a real human being will go and transcribe it for you. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.] A lot of this stuff, there are software, there are people, there are tools out there that can do a lot of this stuff for us in terms of the creation. The cool thing about tools like Thinkific and Teachable, which is the one I use–the sales page and the collection of payments, all that stuff is just built in. Really it's just about you, and the content, and the creation of it. [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Teachable.]

I would recommend, if you are really at the start of this process for you and you haven't yet outlined the course, that would be the next step. To help you with that you might have seen a lot of the content that I have shared before, related to Post-It notes and how Post-It notes are great for brainstorming. So you could try that. You have all this amazing information in your brain about this topic, but it's hard to organize it into a course until you see all those individual pieces. Once you see all those individual pieces you can cluster them together, they become the courses, they become . . . It just magically forms the course itself. Then what I do is I take a Post-It note after it's in one of those groups and I go, “Okay, that's the video I'm going to film, and that's all I need to worry about in this next twenty minutes is answering that question, or showing that demonstration, or talking about that thing.” It's just baby steps really, because it is a big thing, but when you break it down like this it becomes doable and then you start to motivate yourself, you start to gain that momentum. An object at rest tends to stay at rest until it's in motion. Once it's in motion it keeps going, it starts to accelerate.

Lisa Bunnage: It is amazing how that happens. As you can tell by my excitement level I'm definitely in motion.

I did do your Post-It note thing. I did—that was fantastic because it's visual. I can't do it on a screen, I have to do it on paper like that. That was a really good idea, so I did do that. I am ready to go with that.

I know that everyone struggles with this. In my mastermind group they called me a moose and I thought, “What's that?” It's an old children's book called If You Give a Moose a Muffin. Then he needs a plate, next he needs some butter, then he needs a knife. It's really hard to stay focused when you keep seeing all these other things that you need. I'm getting better at that though.

Is that something . . . like at your level, you're obviously at the top of the hill. You're at the top of your game right now. Well, you probably wouldn't agree, but most of us would go, “Wow,” but you probably always think you got to grow, and grow, and grow. Do you find you're better, as you get more success and you've got steps, do you find you're better at focusing?

Pat Flynn: You sound like a podcaster the way you're asking these questions. I love it, Lisa.

Lisa Bunnage: Well, this is how I deal with clients. I don't know, I get into it.

Pat Flynn: No, this is great. I still have bright light syndrome and squirrel syndrome, where I see these new things and I gravitate toward it. I have a team, and every couple weeks we get together and we have what's called a sprint review because we treat two week chunks, we call them sprints. During that sprint we have very specific tasks that need to be done for the much larger projects those jobs relate to. It's a lot easier for me knowing that, “Hey, for the next two weeks this is my focus.” If something else new comes in I go, “Okay, is this actually helping me accomplish what I'm supposed to accomplish in the next two weeks?” If not, then let's put it in the pipeline and talk about it as a group later. Sometimes it goes into that bucket and never comes out. Other times it goes into that bucket and it comes back, and it becomes our next big focus, but it's just not the focus that I read right now. That's kind of how I approach, “What are the next things I should be doing and when?”

Lisa Bunnage: You call them sprints and they're two week blocks?

Pat Flynn: Correct, correct. That's kind of a form of that's called agile—running a business in an agile manner. There's all this literature on those kinds of ways of running a business. That's kind of what we've adopted in our team. It doesn't have to be complicated, two weeks—

Lisa Bunnage: I've never seen that. I can't believe I've never even heard of that before. Not that I think I know everything, but I usually know one iota . . . I know a little bit about everything, but not a lot about any one thing.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, just look up Agile Project Management or something like that on Google and you'll find a ton of stuff on that.

Lisa Bunnage: Okay, so when you do that in that two week sprint, that is pretty much all you're doing, except you've got a team to look after the admins, the marketing, and all that stuff, but your main focus is on that specific goal.

So when you write out a goal do you sit down and do your whole annual goals, or do you run in six weeks, or quarters, or how do you set up your goals? Or I guess you probably do them all.

Pat Flynn: We meet annually and we have meetings about them all. If you don't have a team it's essentially just a meeting with yourself. Once a year, usually in November, we plan for the next entire year. We don't plan to the day, but we plan to essentially the quarter, and sometimes the month like, “What do we want to happen and when during the next year?” Then in each quarter we plan for the next quarter after. Now that we know where we are trying to go based on our annual plan, every quarter we go, “Okay, so what are the next couple months going to look like?” Then those are broken down into the two week sprints. It's kind of reverse engineering those bigger goals into smaller chunks so that when we are doing the work and we're in the grind we're grinding on the right things.

Lisa Bunnage: I'll have to have a meeting with my team. You know me, I'll see if I'm available. Definitely I like that, I think that's a great idea because focus is very difficult, the shiny penny syndrome. Luckily I've been doing this for a while now, so it's a little bit easier maybe, but yeah it's very, very hard to focus on something because the reason is you're never sure if you're doing the right thing. Once you feel like you're in your lane, you're doing the right thing—like, just discussing it all with you I feel like I'm in my lane now so I can focus. When you're questioning yourself all the time it's impossible to focus and you just can't do it. How can you focus on something you think is wrong?

Pat Flynn: I think initially, last time it was about essentially just giving yourself permission to do those things, and you've done those things, so keep rolling with it. You're in your lane. I cannot wait to see where this goes. We'll have to get you back on for a third time to go, “Okay, how did the course go? What did you learn?” If that's cool with you I'd love to call you back again.

Lisa Bunnage: I would love that, I would love that. I hope by that time I actually do have a team because it would be really nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of.

That mastermind group, I really encourage other people to get into one because it's very isolating being an entrepreneur, solopreneur, especially a lot of people choose to do that forever. They never want a team, but I think I'd like one, one day. A mastermind group is just wonderful. I know you're in them, I know you are. They're just a really good thing to do. It doesn't have to be people that you have even a lot in common with, like not the same business at all. It's just, you're also entrepreneurs and you all need to be held accountable. You'd be amazed what you can learn off of other people too. You think that, “Oh well, I don't have anything in common with that person because they're doing this, but you do. If you're on your own and you're trying to run a business and get it started you could really help support each other. It's really nice too, because whenever I'm talking to people it's usually about parenting. To talk about business, it's a nice treat.

Pat Flynn: How often do you meet with you mastermind group?

Lisa Bunnage: Once a week.

Pat Flynn: Once a week.

Lisa Bunnage: We would like more people because right now we have four and we would like to increase it up to seven. So if anyone's interested feel free to contact me through you, or however it's done. I'm [email protected]. We'd love to chat with you and see if it would be a good fit because as I said, I got into it from just doing your last podcast, so maybe someone else will too from hearing this, and get involved. It's nice to have support.

Pat Flynn: You're amazing, Lisa. Thank you so much for . . . This is motivating to me. I hope it's motivating to everybody else too. Just one more time, BratBusters.com. Check out Lisa and you can hold her accountable now that you know where she's going next. Hopefully we'll see her course up there soon.

Lisa, one more time just, you're amazing. Thank you so much for coming on, and taking action, and being great.

Lisa Bunnage: Thank you very much Pat. I really do appreciate it.

Pat Flynn: All right, back to the pro mic now. Thank you so much for listening all the way through. I hope you enjoyed that. I'd love to know what you think. If you wanted to give me a shout out on Instagram or Twitter @PatFlynn, let me know what you think about these Where Are They Now? episodes. We have more coming your way.

Whether you are here for the first time or you've listened to the show before, if you haven't yet subscribed to the show please do that.

By the way, if you'd like to get coaching from me in this capacity all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and apply there. It's not necessarily random in terms of who I select, because there are a ton of people who apply. I get new applications every single day. It's kind of random because I get a lot and I scroll through my index to see which ones are interesting. Then I go, “What would be the most helpful for the audience to listen and learn from, and what's a unique story, what's different, and how can I best serve all of you?” If you want to apply go to AskPat.com. Just click on the button to apply, you'll answer a few questions there, and I may select you. If I do, I'll reach out to you or my team will reach out to you, we'll schedule a call, we'll make it happen. So AskPat.com.

Again, thank you so much for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. Guys, this is all about taking action and hopefully even if you are not coached directly on this show you are getting coached indirectly and should hopefully take action just like Lisa did here. Great job Lisa, great job everybody. Keep up the great work and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.
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