EP. 1 - ZERO TO 6 FIGURE MONTHS IN UNDER A YEAR WITH ONLINE COURSES

Hi everyone! In this episode we're going behind the scenes on our journey from full-time influencers to full-time course creators! We talk the struggles, wins, steps it took, and more that we've NEVER told anyone else before. Hope you enjoy!

If you're looking to learn how to make passive income with digital products so you can get your time and business back, watch our free masterclass and book a call to speak with us about your goals and see if you're a fit for our program, Influencer Course Accelerator, which takes you through the EXACT steps needed to launch a successful online course and make passive income.

Watch it here: https://influencercourseaccelerator.com/influencer-course-accelerator-masterclass-registration/

Transcript

00;00;00;03 --> 00;01;13;25
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. So I am so excited to be here with you guys. And also I'm having my husband Doug on my second YouTube channel. So today is a really exciting video slash first ever podcast episode. So we have started a podcast together. This is the first episode and it's basically called influencer to income. And it's a podcast where we teach you guys how to grow your personal brands as an influencer, and also how to make passive income through digital products. And the reason I had my husband Doug on this podcast, is that he's basically like the brains and the other half of this whole digital, product business that we've grown throughout the past 12 months. And I thought, I don't know, you guys might like to hear from someone different. I'm Excited to be here. You guys get me whether you want me or not. We're going to be recording these and putting them on YouTube for you guys to watch, but also they're going to be, you know, for your listening enjoyment. I don't know how I'm still used to YouTube, but you guys can listen to them wherever you listen to podcasts. He's setting all that up for me. We'll be releasing these every single week for you guys. So let's go ahead and get into the first episode. Hey everyone, welcome to the influencer to income podcast. We are your hosts. My name is

00;01;13;25 --> 00;02;27;24
Hayley and this is my husband Doug say, Hey Doug. Hey Doug. And basically this is our very first ever podcast episode. We have been wanting to do a podcast. And for those of you guys who are new, we're business partners. We're married. And yeah, we've been full-time influencers for how long? Since 2018? And we kind of like have transitioned to really focus on digital products. So this podcast is all about helping influencers grow their online personal brands and also make passive income through digital products, which is really where our expertise and our passion lies. So we're so excited to be here with you guys and the reason why I have my husband, Doug, and he's going to be in all of the episodes, I am so excited for it because I usually do everything solo. Um, but really he's like the brains behind just like, you know, creating passive income through digital products. And he's been the right hand go-to man for me for the last, however long we've been entrepreneurs. Since we've been married. Yeah, forever, obviously. And yeah, so in today's episode, we're gonna to be just talking about our journey, because I feel like, a lot of people don't really recount their journey, and when you just hear income reports, cause I'm very, obviously the, the podcast is influencer to income. So we're going to focus a lot on how much

00;02;27;24 --> 00;03;33;04
money we make, how much money we've made, where do we spend money and how you guys can maybe hopefully imitate some of the success we've had throughout the past year. So we want to be super transparent, but at the same time, share with you guys all of the struggles. So we're going to like throw it back to where it really began say think that it seems like it's so easy just to be an influencer, especially in 2021 almost, and just come up out of nowhere and make a bunch of money. But that is like the farthest thing from the truth. So I thought I'd have Doug start us out with maybe like how we even got here and we're going to try make it fast. I mean, I don't know. I like to hear these kinds of stories because there's, this is stuff that I've never shared online. So yeah. Do you want to talk about, Oh, go ahead. Uh, a lot of people see influencers currently where they are now and you found them after they've had massive success and after they're making a ton of money, it looks easy and it looks easy. And so you imitate what they do, but you're not in that same position. So we want to basically create like a common ground with you guys. Like we've been there and we know exactly what you're feeling. So hopefully this story just further emphasizes that we know and we've

00;03;33;04 --> 00;04;36;29
been there, but also that it's possible that it's possible to be able to kind of break out of it. And also, you know, the other big reason that I wanted to have Doug on a podcast is that this sounds real cheesy. I don't know. It sounds strange, but we are a family of influencers. Like I don't know how to say that, but like I was like, full-time YouTuber and we'll talk about that for like five years, pretty much, or full-time for like three years. And I've never really heard anyone's super raw transparent experience working with your spouse as an influencer and making all your money on sponsorships and ads and then looking at different revenue streams. Like I've never heard of anyone really talk about their numbers and stuff, because you know, now that I'm sort of out of that, which we're going to get to, I feel like I can finally take a deep breath and like share the things here's what's kind of really goes down a little bit. Yeah. I have a, go ahead, Doug, where did, how did, how did this, how do you quit your job? Yeah. So we'll, we'll throw it back to like, I don't know how many years ago it was five years ago or something like that. It was a while ago. And basically we were both living together pre-kids and Haley didn't want to do her job anymore. She wasn't about it, but she saw

00;04;37;00 --> 00;05;42;17
just like, maybe some of you guys have influencers having success in being paid money to do things like YouTube, because Instagram was like brand new. Yeah. Yeah. And so he said, you know, I can, I can do this on YouTube. Like if you give me a shot and I was like, sure. So she quit her job. And then I worked full-time at the time at a marketing agency and that's kind of where the journey began was with her seeing other people doing it. And so from there is she just kind of worked on it and did whatever she saw people doing. Right. And just kind of tried to imitate, uh, try to like fake it till you make it almost. Yeah. And honestly, I mean, Doug says it very nicely, but I was like straight up obsessed. So, you know, I quit my job and I like to be, I really want my goal for this podcast is to be like Uber transparent with numbers. Yeah. Super raw because I have nothing to lose. I mean, who cares about what was happening back then? I'm not living that life now, but at the time, and I know a lot of you guys have heard this story, but at the time I was having, I was pregnant with my first born Anabel. So I'm pregnant with my third right now, 33 weeks. Um, and you know, I was desperate not to put her back in daycare

00;05;42;17 --> 00;06;47;27
or put her in daycare at all. Cause I hated it as a child for whatever reason. So I had to make it happen. And I told Doug, like, I have to work weekends. Like you got to take these pictures of me. You guys all know if you're influencers the grind that the husband or boyfriend goes through. Yeah. It's real. It's, it's, it's hard. Um, so I ended up replacing my full-time income. We lived in LA at the time within that first year. Cause I was hustling. Like, I mean, I'm not going to go super, super in depth, but I was like pitching myself as a small influencer to literally anybody that would possibly work with me. And that's kind of how I did that, that first year just cause I was so desperate to not, you know, I just wanted to be with my baby for, you know, her whole life, but really that first year. Yeah. And it's not like I was rolling in money at the time. You can talk about how much that first year when Haley quit. I was making, I think 48,000 in LA and like South in the South Bay, literally like 23 years old, 24. So we were yeah, right out of college. So that was, that was pretty tough. But for her to be able to make that income up so quickly was huge. And basically what that kind of did was it helped me see the

00;06;48;08 --> 00;07;55;23
potential that's there. And I know that that might also be an issue for a lot of people that want to do this or that are currently doing it. Um, you know, their significant other may still not fully believe it may still not fully seasonally seems like a pipe dream, the possibilities of making an income, but it is hard. And it's hard to believe that. And it's hard to believe sometimes that some brand is going to send you money and that this is something that's sustainable, which is not to ruin the surprise, which is, which is why we're here talking about digital products at some point. But we'll get to that in a second. So after that point then, you know, Haley kept working at it and she started making more money. And then I started, I, I kept, I kept getting more raises. I was up over six figures and climbing my way through the, you know, the corporate ladder, the eight to it's more like seven to seven, you know, in a way. Yeah. And, and so, um, but there was a point in which Haley started really taking on big brands and it started taking up more, more time. Annabel was born. She was just being more serious about it. And we talked and we were like, you know, Doug, you can quit your job. Well, you didn't and we didn't Amazon first. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So do you want

00;07;55;23 --> 00;09;05;04
to talk about that because I do get questions for those of you guys who are probably listening or watching that have followed me for a while. I know it's probably the majority of you guys right now. You're like, well, I get questions like Haley, how do you sell products on Amazon? Because you've watched me for a long time. You know, we actually did start an Amazon business. It's funny because I totally forgot what we've done. A lot of things. So in, I think it was 26, 2017, we started yeah. 2017. We started our Amazon FBA business. Do you want to explain what that is and why we're not doing it? Yeah. Um, so we sold physical products on Amazon. Um, baby car seat covers. So FBA is just like the way, so Amazon takes care of the shipping and the handling and the customer service. And then what we do is we private labeled a product. So we found a generic product. We customized it, we put our own logo on it. We started our own business for it. And then we sold it on Amazon. And so that's what we, we just kinda jumped into it. Like we, we, we took a course of a course on it, which was awesome. Should we like 15,000 or something? Yeah. We had no money. No, we didn't really have any money. Yeah. I would say in total it was probably like 15 to 20,000, including like

00;09;05;08 --> 00;10;12;16
fees and courses and all the products that you have. And the reason I bring it up is because influencers always want to sell their own. Well, not always, but a lot of times they are looking at selling their own products. Yeah. And we did that. So obviously, yeah. Yeah. Well, no, no. They like, like anything, you know? So I was a motherhood and utuber primarily blogger, whatever you wanna call it. And I chose like a baby line cause I was like, this is going to be good. And it really helped me. Like we made a lot of money through that business and I still get questions, like, teach me about that. But we just have recently like phased it out. Like we still have some covers in the garage. We got to ship out. But do you want to talk about why? I mean, I have my reasons, I don't know, actually know why you well, phasing it out. Part of the reason to do that was because physical products at one is tough. And two, the market is like Amazon. The market's very competitive. When manufacturers can find products that work, they'll just cut out the middleman manufacturer themselves and then sell it for a lower cost overseas. Yeah. And so it's tough and it's, it's a very competitive place, but there is ways to be able to make it happen. But for us, we just felt like that wasn't the life that we

00;10;12;16 --> 00;11;24;19
wanted to move towards, which was constantly finding new products, handling, handling, and reinvesting in it. And then honestly trying to find, develop new products or try to stay on top of the market. Like it was, it wasn't our path that we could foresee to spending more time with our child. And then, you know, our potentially like our future. And I think like, I didn't know this at the time, but for me and now I really know why I wouldn't do Amazon again is because I'm still reliant on another algorithm that I don't own. So it'd be one thing. If you were selling products on your own website and maybe having like, I mean, I don't want to touch anything like physically, I don't want to wrap packages. Like I can't, I don't have time for that. I have almost three kids. Um, but at the time I was trying to find another income stream outside of YouTube pretty much because I was making all my money through sponsorships and AdSense and affiliates who were like Amazon associates. Um, but again, like with Amazon, it's still that algorithm game where people can take you down, you need reviews, you need to climb the rankings. It is very stressful. And not to mention obvious. The obvious thing is that it costs thousands of dollars. If you pick the wrong product, you're pretty much screwed. You're just, you're just out like thousands of dollars. So we dabbled in

00;11;24;19 --> 00;12;31;05
that and we did make a lot of money through that business that first year, thanks to my subscribers. Yeah. But that was like our first like, Oh, dipping or whatever you want to call it into entrepreneurship. And ever since then, we've just been like, Oh my God, we found out how to make money, you know, passively. Cause it is pretty passive. They like ship everything for you don't even touch the product. And we just wanted more of that. So we've always been on this like passive income train. And if you guys don't want passive income is I do get this question basically where you don't trade your time money so you can make money while you sleep. That's such an overused phrase, but it's absolutely, it's literally like, it's like you literally wake up and there's more money in your bank account before you went to bed the night before. Yeah. So w that is like the opposite of what being an influencer. A traditional influencer is in 20, almost 20, 21. Now, you know, with like a traditional influencer income streams and kind of what we're trying to teach you guys not to go towards. And the lessons we've learned, this is just one lesson with Amazon, but we've learned it several times over is that if you want to truly be financially free, you cannot pursue, you know, trading your time for money, those types of income streams like sponsorships and, you know,

00;12;31;05 --> 00;13;38;02
physical products, anything that you do yourself, because then it just feels like an eight to five job, you know? So once we got a taste of that, we were like, well, what other passive income streams can we start? And like help grow and nurture. Um, so quickly after that though, you know, once we found that success, we paid off like $40,000 worth of student loan debt. So it was a blessing, but we found that I was just making a ton of money in sponsorships. So, I mean, we lived in California at the time or no, we lived in, we moved to Charleston for a year and I think I was getting probably around $3,000 per sponsorship. Sometimes five, sometimes six. Yeah. There were a couple of films, a couple that were five figures. Yeah. And I, I didn't, I don't think I had, maybe I had like around 80,000 subscribers on YouTube. So I was like to tell you guys what to expect and allow a lot of you guys are like, wow, that is amazing. I only make three K a month, but it was like a ball of stress. And this is what influencers don't talk about. So, but anyways, Doug ended up quitting a six figure per year job because it's like six figures a year is amazing, but we never saw him. You know what I mean? Like that was over here. I was always, and you know, what's funny is

00;13;38;02 --> 00;14;41;12
they never saw me, even though I worked at the house cause I worked from home. Yeah. Charleston. So I had like my little upstairs office where I was just like, sit there and work hard to work from home. It was hard to work from home, but it was very time consuming. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, well, maybe Doug can help me, you know, watch Annabel our first born, I was pregnant with our second and you know, he'll quit his job. And obviously it's, I know I kind of ran on the whole influencer parade and I kind of have already done that, but it was such a blessing. Like, I mean, having him come home from work because of like all the sponsorship money we were making, it was, you know, it was like a light at the end of the tunnel. It's like so amazing. So we're so we thought, or so we thought, no, we really did love it. The first like six months was like incredible. Yeah. We were not even working a hard time. I know. I was just, I was literally just sitting back like the kid, just like the stay at home dad, you know? And it was cool. Um, so we did that for two years. We were like, full-time YouTubers is really like my personal brand, but he was in like almost everything I was doing sponsorships with. I mean, pamper, I still do a couple

00;14;41;12 --> 00;15;41;21
of sponsorships here and there. So you guys will see him, but like Pampers and like big name brands. We were in a magazine. I mean, what in the world? I don't even have like a million subs you in there. Oh, you, you were shot. I don't know if he was, but you know, we were in, I think it was like parent parents magazine. Yeah. Yeah. So crazy things happen. And I didn't have a million subscribers. I had like around a hundred thousand at the time and I was like high on life because I was like, this is finally like everything I've worked for, you know, like talking to like my mom on YouTube for like the first six months. Yeah. So, I mean, I didn't think I was a hot shot literally at all, but I was like, this is amazing. You know, everyone else is working eight to five and we can just explore Charleston, like our new home at the time. Right now we live in California. But at the time we were just chilling. Then we moved back to California where rent is double. What were we paying at the time? I think probably $3,300. No, in California. Oh yeah. It was yeah. 3,300 3,300. So it was a lot more obviously. And it depends on where you live. It probably is not a lot to some of you guys and a lot to a lot of you, but our expenses increased

00;15;42;04 --> 00;16;50;12
and just a little bit, not like a crazy amount. So we were on year two of being this like full-time influencer family. I think at the time we were making anywhere between, I mean, $15,000 a month to sometimes $30,000 a month through like YouTube ad sense. Like I said, you know, mostly Amazon associates sometimes rewardStyle, it didn't link a lot of fashion things. That's not my thing. Um, and then what else? Sponsorships, obviously, sometimes commission, like from the sponsors I worked with. And so I know a lot of you guys who are like, you know, new influencers would see that kind of income and think that is the lap of luxury. And I w I thought that too, I thought that because I actually had my own YouTube channel for a little while. I don't know if you remember that brief moment in time. Um, but I was making money. I was making, I was making money on AdSense and affiliate marketing, and I was like, yeah, how much were you making? You only have like five videos and they went, they went viral. Well, some of them did, I had, I think I had like 5,000 subs and I was making like two grand a month. Yeah. But it's because of the Mitch make money on through Amazon. He was doing for a hot second. And then also you will meet a lot of money because you're a blue host, like chemist. Yes. I

00;16;50;12 --> 00;18;02;18
had, um, no psych just SiteGround SiteGround anyways. So yeah, we were excited. I mean, the first year of being full-time informs our family, it was like, this is the life, you know what I mean? The second year, like I said, I had my second baby Scarlet. And I mean, if anyone has children and is like, I mean, I wouldn't say that I was the breadwinner, cause I could not literally make the money without Doug helping me watch the kids buy it by definition, he negotiated all the contracts, he signed all the things. Like I couldn't do all the things. Like I'm not, I don't have a clone of myself, but if it wasn't for this face, you know what I mean? Like you could be like, here's Huggies diapers, you know, here's Huggies diapers. And like, he couldn't meet obviously doing that kind of stuff. So I had to do it and I had the, the postpartum hormones, slight depression, anxiety, whatever, just like normal things that happen, nothing extreme and not normal things that happen when you have a, you know, your second child, um, or just children in general. So when that whole happened, the transition of two kids, and then also me having to be the face, I was so done, like I was making, you know, over 20 K a month and we weren't working a lot, but the pressure was the most intense pressure. And I, I still have PTSD

00;18;02;18 --> 00;19;07;00
from it because, you know, I would spend a whole day filming like a vlog or something, or like, um, a video for hampers or I don't know, I'm just making them, they're a reason to work with. Okay. I'm not like shading any brands, but any kind of like, you know, motherhood, baby brands. That's kind of the channel that I had and I wouldn't spend the whole day, but it's like, I get ready, take the next two hours to memorize your lines for the sponsorship, which is a lot more time consuming than anyone can imagine. Um, cause you have to say it right. Or I'll stay rejected. Then you spend the next, however long doing it with your family or by yourself and you edit it, you send it to the brand and they tell you it's wrong. You gotta redo it. So like the whole day, like the whole day spent. And I'm not saying that happens like every time. No, but it happened more than it happened more than people think. Yeah. Like they would, these brands will give you guidelines. And nowadays you have to say exactly what they want. Even if you don't like really agree with a certain one liner like this teeth whitener made me have 10 shades, whiter teeth. And you're like, no, it really only had maybe like two shades wider, like little, little things that I found myself having to do. And I'm not saying that it's

00;19;07;03 --> 00;20;16;19
ethical. Okay, fine. We're not going to get into the ethics of influencing right now. Maybe save that for another time. But I'm not saying that like, I'm not going to say I got myself into a hole, but at the time I was saying out loud, I'm in this whole, like, how did I get here? They're telling me exactly what to say. Yeah. And what ended up happening, you know, to try to summarize here. Cause we can go on and go. This is why I'm here. Um, it was like, we went from an eight to five job to freedom back to an eight to five job with like triple the stress. And there was just so much stress about it because I couldn't really do anything about it. I couldn't be the face of it. I think we did one video and that was back in Charleston a long time ago where I actually did the integration. I was like, you're doing this and we love the drone. I'm not saying that the products that we did or like crap products, I liked them. Yeah. But what, but what people don't see as like the amount of time that we're, we're working around our children and talking about stuff and the amount of time that Haley couldn't see them because she's the face and, and she was trading time for money. So she was trading her time of spending and working on the sponsorship and doing

00;20;16;19 --> 00;21;20;12
the filming at the time, even doing the editing and you know, spending all the time away from them. And it really just started having an impact on the kids and sort of having an impact on our marriage. It started, it was just kind of every friendships. Like we didn't see friends anymore. Yeah. And you know, there's a huge thing. People don't realize. Cause you could obviously be like, Oh, it's hard to do sponsors or whatever. But then you also don't realize that if a sponsor pulls out, you're screwed. You know what I mean? So nothing is reliable. Nothing is passive. You are trading time for money, which is like the biggest thing that I wish I could go back and slap myself, but I didn't know any better. You know? So when a sponsor, like you saw, this has only happened, I think twice. And I've done hundreds of sponsorships. Probably, maybe hundreds. I mean, I don't know, maybe 200 maybe more. I don't know, but this is only happened twice. So you film something and then you do it all, you spend all your time doing it and they're like, sorry, we can't pay you for this because like something happened with the brand. So that's only happened a little bit, but you know, what does happen is that, like I said, you film something and then they don't like it. So you're working like it takes you like multiple days to do one

00;21;20;12 --> 00;22;22;14
thing. You have to literally what you guys don't realize. Sometimes if you're not full-time influencer, you have to get ready in the same clothes and redo that segment. Like, and look, I don't want to be, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I could beat a dead horse. Oh man. Not only did she have to like redo that section, but then anything that was planned for the next day had to be, Oh my God, I had to communicate with all of the other brands. Like, Hey, we have a delay, this one and then they're mad. And then they want to like pay us less or like other things happen. So there was a lot of things like I have to be that horse for a little bit more also something people don't realize when you're a full-time influencer and like you're striving for this life. And you're like, wow. She just talked about home chef for 30 seconds and got paid five grand. That's amazing. Well, you don't realize is that you don't know the income that a lot of times the K and I'm a micro influencer. So if you have a million followers, maybe you're in a different scenario. You probably are. You probably have contracts booked out for like months and stuff. There's other issues with that in my opinion. But if, as a micro-influencer making this good amount of money in comparison to like other Americans, what you

00;22;22;14 --> 00;23;43;11
don't realize is you don't know what you're going to book next month and maybe you do next month. Usually I had only two months booked out like the third month. So you're always kind of shitting yourself, you know, like I know I made 30 grand or 20 grand this month, but is it gonna just blow up? Like, is it going to go away? And so God has blessed our family because coronavirus hit and I didn't have to be a full-time influencer because of online courses. So maybe we should pivot. Yeah. Maybe we should like, just turn those rollercoaster around here. Okay. Let's not, we were sinking pretty deep. Oh man. That year is crazy. This was 2019. Okay. So things have happened ridiculously fast, correct? Yeah. So let's, let's shift a little bit Haley somehow. Yeah. We had to do something different and of course I, I never figured out anything different. Haley's like the amazing person that discovered. And so she does. Can I just say that Doug is like, Doug, you guys will hear in the podcast and just get the sense that Doug's like the doer, you know, so he's really good. Like he is like the provider, you know? Yeah. He's, he's like, I'll do whatever, but I'm always looking to the next thing. And for some reason he just, he doesn't know any, he doesn't know anything about influence. Listen, listen, on our literal business titles, is she CEO COO

00;23;44;04 --> 00;24;47;09
literal. That's the way set up that's cause I'm always shitting myself trying to move to the next thing. Okay. I don't do that much. So, so we somehow come up with the idea of like, you know what we've seen people we've kind of ran into these courses and people selling courses. So maybe we should learn how to do that. So, well, I stumbled upon someone's income report and I was like, this person was making like a hundred thousand dollars a month. Yeah. And so we're like, okay, maybe we should do this. So for the first time, actually the second time, because the first time we bought a course and invested in a mentor was with Amazon. Yeah. And so then after that, we were kind of used to it. That did work out. That was awesome. Um, how much was that course thousand? It was a thousand. Yeah. Yeah. And so then we got a course to be able to learn how to make courses because we thought that the lines that was there. Um, and so that's what led us up to October, 2019, um, with YouTube burner, with the initial launch. Can I just say that, like, this sounds like, Oh, you were making a bunch of money and then you started online courses and you made a bunch of more money, but you guys, it wasn't like that at all. So I told Doug because I was so like, I don't even want,

00;24;47;09 --> 00;25;52;06
I don't know if depressed is the right word, but I was still just done with it, all of the emotions with the second baby and the nursing and the craziness, you know, how that is, and then doing influencing for so long. I told him that I'm only going to be an influencer for three more months. I kept pushing it back a month, which is why, like, I don't know, my subscribers totally caught on and I love them so much. Like they're so they're literally the best ever, which I could talk about that all day because they supported my family. But you know, I digress. So I told Doug, I only relying on influencing whatever you want to call it for three more months. So we have to make money. We have to make this passive income stream in three months. So I was really, and um, you know, Tony Robbins says, and it always stuck out to me. People are more apt to run away from fear than they are towards pleasure. So yeah, we were making a bunch of money, but I didn't even care. You know, I could like go buy like a lot of nice things. I didn't even care. I was running away from fear. So I was ready to literally throw that money in the garbage. I didn't want anything to do with it. Money is not happiness, you know, like it's not, and I know I can say that,

00;25;52;06 --> 00;27;01;14
but no, one's going to believe me until you're in this kind of situation, but it could be misery. So it was misery for me. And I told Doug that. So do you want to, what happened then? We invested a lot of money to like mentors and coaches. Yeah. Like a ton of, I mean, it was like around 20,000, at least. Yeah. On a credit card. So I'm not afraid to say that. Yes. A lot of credit and it was not just one credit card. It was multiple credit cards because we never use like, like pre all of this happening. We were very like pay off all your debt and debt is not good. And then our, and then we hear it, all these people just going into mounds of debt in order to come out of it on top. And we were like, well, I guess we're gonna start, I'm gonna start taking some risks. So across like all of our credit cards, we're putting like 20 to 30 grand on mentors and programs and coaching the stuff people don't talk about. But like, and maybe we'll say this for a different episode, but you know, the one thing I've found that differentiates people, you know, from having like super fast success, like multiple, whatever six figures in a year or two years, three years is they leverage debt. They make money work for them. They're not scared of that. And that's like the opposite

00;27;01;14 --> 00;28;12;07
of what you're taught and trained and your life. So I was, we were both just in an intense amount of fear at the beginning of this year. You know, we had a lot of money on credit card. We never had that before, unless it was student loans. I was like, I'm not taking these sponsors. I'm turning them down. And living in Southern California with a really like right under $4,000 a month in our rents. Um, because we couldn't even buy a house because we, like, it's not the down payment. It was like, our income is crazy. Yeah. It wasn't like for two years and all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of where we were. It was wild. So yeah, basically we took a risk. We invested probably over 20, definitely over 20,000 now it's probably near. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Over 20, probably nearing 30 and that's not including ads, but I was not about to go have him get another eight to five job. I would rather go live on like hardly any money. Cause I couldn't go back, you know, but I also couldn't go back to influencing. So what did we do then Douglas, we had our first course launch, launched it to like primarily your subscribers, honestly. And it was, we, we basically put a thing out there that was like, Hey, if you're interested in becoming a YouTuber, Haley has this thing that's happening. And we ended

00;28;12;07 --> 00;29;17;26
up making like 140 sales or a hundred, got 140 students. And it was like mind blowing, like absolutely my blog. I remember sitting at the kitchen table just with my hand on my head. As I see the number going up like 18,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000. It was like 40, 42, 43,000 for the first time. And like, obviously, you know, you guys are probably thinking, well, you're making a lot of money per month. Like who cares about that? Did we made that in like three days? But it's not so much that I look now as like, I feel like I am qualified to be calling myself an entrepreneur now. Totally different person than who I was last year. Really different. I don't know how it's possible, but the 40,000 plus or whatever that we made was passive pretty much. Yeah. I mean, we did. I mean, we worked on the course. We did upfront work, but it was not like it's coming in because there's payment plans. It just kept coming. I saw a different way. Like I valued that income stream, like so much more than like the huggy sponsor or whatever. I keep pulling out diapers, but you know what I mean? Like the home chef and all that kind of stuff, like, I mean, and I told him not to tell me how much it was. I didn't want to like mentally, but he was over there. Like, this is possible. This is

00;29;17;26 --> 00;30;15;18
possible. Like you don't have to do sponsorships. And my mind was blown. It was, it was, it was crazy because we went into it thinking like, dude, if we can get like five people to sign up. Yeah. It might be, it might be worth it. Can I just say, cause I know this is a huge thing with you guys. Like you want to start a course or, or a digital product, whatever coaching, but you're so scared because you're not qualified. You're not good enough. When I told Doug that I really want us to do courses. I also said I can't do, like, I was like, we gotta do it, but I'm not good. Okay. I'm a terrible YouTuber. I know I was making money, but I edit an I movie. I forget I don't have drone shots. Like I don't know. You know, and I know about the algorithm cause I have a lots of like, I have a good bank of viral videos. Like I know how to make videos viral, but I was just imposter syndrome, like through the roof. Like, it doesn't matter for making X amount of money. You still have imposter syndrome. So he helped me create the first course. He did like a lot of the first course, cause he's like, he's an expert in analytics. That's what he did for his job. So I mean, I could barely like without him, I don't definitely wouldn't have created it

00;30;15;18 --> 00;31;23;12
cause I would've just been like, yeah. And that's, that's one of the first things that I think we're going to actually do a show on that specifically about like imposter sin, trying to figure out, you know, and believing in yourself and being able to believe in yourself in that. And even, even so, you know, like going through and making that kind of money, like it still sits there. So it's like a brain thing it's never going to have to Intercon. Yeah, it really is. But so let's continue for the sake of not being here for six hours, we will, uh, let, we'll kind of continue on within the journey. So we did that first launch. It happened in October, we closed the closed enrollment to the course down. We went through it, we made revisions and um, we were like, we don't want to have to change there's refunds. Like it's a very stressful time period in what you're trying to enroll. And if you, if you launch your course in one month, then you wait like two or three months and then you launch it again, wait two or three months and you'll launch it again. And that, and it kind of brought back PTSD of, Hey, we did the sponsorship now Jenny know where we're going to book an extra, are we going to book another one? So can we have another $40,000 launch? So it was a better way, but it wasn't

00;31;23;12 --> 00;32;31;10
like it wasn't perfect. Nothing's going to be perfect. But it wasn't what we wanted because we went into the deep end of being entrepreneurial and being like, Hey we're we were nearly like, like on a sales person, full commission salary is kind of what it was like. Yeah. Like if you didn't work, then you didn't make the money. And that's not what we wanted. You know, we found more coaches and we found more mentors to be able to learn about how to do things, um, more passively, which is how to run Facebook ads on social media at that point and how to set up automated systems so that we could make sales without having to do these crazy launches and being stressful and, and guessing because like everybody wants numbers. Everybody wants to be able to have consistent numbers that they hit every single month. And if you don't, you're kind of a fool because like you want to be able to know what's going to happen three months from now. You know, I know we sound crazy and we are, I mean, it's really me, but like we're about to have three kids and this is not the life like that. We necessarily, we didn't want, like we make a lot of money and we did, we have, but it's different. There's no like security, you know? So we didn't, we didn't want that. We wanted to sort of replicate the security that you

00;32;31;10 --> 00;33;34;13
get with an eight to five. And honestly, you know, not to mention when I set out to be a full-time influencer and you know, do the cool things, even as a micro influencer that you can do like retire your husband. I mean, I say retire, but he's still obviously doing so many things, but that's what people kind of say, you know, have your spouse quit their job. I, uh, in the back of my mind, actually in the front of my mind, I always just wanted to be like a full-time mom or whatever you want to call it. So I never had this ambition to, and seriously, I always say this, but like no shade to people that have help. I mean, just earlier today we were interviewing a babysitter to help us out. So like, I am not opposed to getting help or treating it like an eight to five job if that's what you want. But for me personally, I always just wanted to be the stay at home mom that still makes us have in common. I want it all, you know, like I want to be with my kids. I potentially, maybe I don't know, want to homeschool my kids. So I want to be that, you know, presence force that is the mom all the time. So when you, when I found myself, you know, living this full-time influencer life, I was working a lot. And I don't think we really

00;33;34;13 --> 00;34;33;13
touched on that. I mean, I, we touched on the fact that like I had to redo sponsorships and it was a lot of the daily grind, but I was still working like full-time hours. And Doug was the one that was the only dude at the park with the two toddlers, like seriously surrounded by moms, nothing wrong with it. But how much do you think that was? Don't worry. I've got some stairs. He doesn't mind it, but how much do you think I was working? Like editing and talking with the brands on the phone? I mean, so usually the way it worked was it was like wake up breakfast, do usual thing. And I'm like nine to 12. I would watch them. Haley would work through the nap with Scarlet and Annabel and she'd be editing or doing whatever. And then from like two 30 to five, I would watch them again. Yeah. And it sucks like, you know, and that is not a bad life. Okay. I am so thankful. So blessed all the things, but it sucks because that's not what I wanted. Like I just wanted to hang out as a family. And I know a lot of people are like, well, you want a lot of things. I do. I want a lot of things for my life. We want to sit on the beach and then like your phone's like, ding, you just made $10,000. And you're like, cool. I used

00;34;33;13 --> 00;35;39;24
to think like that's not possible. And now I'm like, we're living the life right now. So it's absolutely possible. And I think that's why we're so passionate about sharing with you guys a new way, like a better way to still be an influencer, but to have like job security, financial security, and to be able to be like, whatever kind of parent you want to be, whatever kind of person you want to be. I think like influencers are definitely put in this box and I put myself in the box of like, I have to do these sponsors. I have to work this kind of hours. I have to be on. That's another story. Be on 24, seven. I have to appease algorithms. I have to be on top. Like I have to go viral. I have to do all these things. You don't have to do any of that. If you don't want to, you know, you can live opposite and make way more money. So yeah, that's what you, that's what you assume needs to happen. And that's what you assume the steps are. And you're like, this is just the way life is like, this is, I am an influencer. This is what you have to do. And influencers, I think like they definitely plateau. I mean, nobody climbs forever. There are influencer even like Casey Neistat. Who's amazing. Like top of his game, you know, he, he found a plateau, everybody plateaus. So

00;35;39;24 --> 00;36;45;27
I don't like that. You know, I always want to keep growing and there just reaches a point where it's like, you can't keep doing this until you're 45 years old. Like, you know, I mean, so a lot of 45 come back on the channel today, I'm doing my sponsorship ventures company. What do you think of my dentures? That's not what he means by that, but maybe okay. Maybe 45 is bad, but like, you know, 70 years old, like what, you gotta do something different. And I wanted to do it when my kids were young, you know, I didn't want to be away from them a lot. So that really led us to obviously pursuing digital courses like we've talked about. And I mean, I work, we both work less now. I can't even like fathom how much we worked before. And it's wild. Like how much, how many hours? I mean, so we got to, I mean, not many at all, like one to two hours a day. And we got to go back to talk about like what got us to this point of constantly stressing constantly and trying to figure about launching and then, you know, getting from working three hours at a time and then do that twice a day, six hours total work and doing a bunch of things in order for things to be passive. You can't be the one that's doing the work all the time. Right? So you

00;36;45;27 --> 00;37;47;23
can't be the one that's always saying that's always making all the decisions. That's also always doing all the implementing. And even though Hailey and I split things, you know, she was always forward-thinking and trying to give me instructions on what to do and I would start there and then go to wherever I needed to in order to get the job done, whether it was uploading or, or editing or, you know, setting up funnels, whatever it might've been. It was, you know, there was still the two of us, but there were still so much to do all the time. So as far as online courses, making it passive and turning the online course journey from, you know, constantly working on it to not working and, and, and trying to do other things. I think what people don't realize is that, and I think you might actually realize this after, like, at this point of the podcast, but you know, obviously it's not enough just to have big launches and people do that. Like, don't get me wrong. I mean, I just bought a course the other day about mindset. It's like a $2,000 course about mindset. I was it's the best ever, but she has $500,000 months, this one, you know, influencer course creator. And she launches only. So she doesn't even like run Facebook ads or do any of that stuff. But it took like, it takes a massive audience for that. And I didn't

00;37;47;23 --> 00;38;48;03
want to wait around to like have millions of people following me. So I wanted to have that like quicker. Yeah. So what we had to do to get to where we are now is we had to outsource, we had to, you know, spend more money. Like people don't understand also you spend money on your business a lot. And so, although we're like, yeah, we hit six figure months and you know, and like, that's where we are now. And even though we're still hitting those, we don't see all, it's not like a hundred percent revenue just goes straight into your pocket. You have employees that you need to pay. You have agencies that you need to pay, you have to pay for your programs. You have to pay for a lot of things. So making that transition from going from launching to evergreen was difficult. And it was scary. We were putting a ton of money on credit cards, running Facebook ads. We hired a Facebook ad management team. And how much is that? I mean, that was like in total, everything was 8,000 a month. Yeah. Like over Facebook ads, we never done anything like that in our life, but we were willing to take a really big risk. I only saw upside because I'm weirdly. And so that's, and so that's kind of what we had to do was we had to learn from people, take risks and find ways to be able to

00;38;48;03 --> 00;39;54;23
get that stability that we wanted. And, you know, we, I don't want to go into all the details cause I could spend weeks talking about the details of what it takes to be able to do that. But there is a way to do it and it is possible. And that's what we want to help people do is we want to help people understand that like the, the dream life of making money as an influencer, without having to depend on sponsorships as possible, or a launch, like a big launch with a huge audience. Um, and you know, like I know we talk a lot. We obviously have shared a lot of struggles, which I don't feel bad about at all. Cause I think like I don't want to paint this rainbow unicorn like fantasy land, because it's not the case. It's not been the case. It's been a lot of, especially with your spouse, like you can imagine, but it's absolutely worth it. I mean, I think last month we hit $80,000 be more positive. Yeah. There's so many things for us to be positive. So last Monday I think we hit over $80,000. Um, and that is just like wild when like, so yeah, I mean we went from last year, me trading my time for money, Doug being like pretty much the primary caretaker while I was doing like caretaker is a good way to putting it. I mean, we still are now, but

00;39;54;24 --> 00;41;03;29
it's, we, we love it obviously. But you know, going from that last year, hitting like really good numbers, you know, comparing to like even just some doctors, you know, and it's a lot of money, six figures, multiple six figures a year is like really impressive. But you know, I worked a lot and it was not always stable. And also algorithms changed so much not to mention, I forgot to say, I'll just say briefly YouTube turned off all the comments on my channel when that happened. I was like, I'm done. Like I don't trust any of this. Yeah. So that's what channels are getting demonetized and comments were getting turned off. You just had didn't know what was going on. They're still off. But you know, it was a very scary time. So we went from there, you know, to obviously now, I mean, I barely work at all. We have a team of people working with us and for us that we absolutely love and we're hiring more people. We hired more people this week. So it's just like so crazy. And if we hadn't taken all these really crazy, scary risks and you know, I hate to say it, but leveraged credit. I'm not telling you guys to do that at all, but I don't regret any of it because you just like, you know, we did it because we wanted to pay for it. We want it to pay. You learn through other

00;41;03;29 --> 00;42;03;19
people's mistakes. Like we didn't want to have to make two or three or five years of mistakes. We wanted to see someone else do it first and learn. So we didn't have to make all those mistakes. And it just like cut the time I shouldn't have to. And you shouldn't want it if you don't want to have to make those mistakes yourself, people are out there teaching this for. Yeah. And it's funny because I had to have this huge mindset shift, Doug too, about, you know, paying for information. And we talk about digital products and a lot of people say like, well Hailey, why would people pay for my advice? Well, you made all the mistakes. They don't want to make, you have the track record of success that they don't have. And they don't want to spend hours sifting through a bunch of different varying pieces of advice online. That's the same exact thing. So we teach people how to do this. Yeah. But we will, like, we have bought $30,000 worth of products like this info products or whatever you want to call it that have made us like hundreds of thousands of dollars in such a short amount of time. So, you know, anyways, just to like wrap that up, like it's just wild. So that's why we feel like now's the appropriate time to share about it and to teach you guys all the stuff that we wish we knew, because

00;42;03;19 --> 00;43;06;05
although it happened for us in 12 months, we have been like just savages, like every day, because we had to, we were running from something that we hated. We were running away from fear, you know, um, holding our breath the whole time. So it's been absolutely worth it. And we feel so passionate about teaching influencers that you don't have to live a life dependent on algorithms and also public perception. Like if you say something that pisses a lot of people off it's okay. Like, yeah, we're not into that. We just, you know, we want stability for our family. So do you want to talk about, I guess our, our plans for the day? Yeah. So if that's, if that's you like, if that's how you feel, if you feel like you need to get off the typical influencer train, or if you had an idea of how influencers were and how they made money, and this is kind of opening your eyes, or if you knew that this is something that's possible, you just don't think it will happen, or you're scared about people not buying something or you just don't know what the steps are to take. Then this is the show for you like this. This is what we're here for. We want to be able to help people overcome those things and achieve the lifestyle that they want. Like, you know, like we said, we want to go from influencing to making

00;43;06;07 --> 00;44;01;14
an income with digital products because we just feel so strongly about that. So for this show, it's going to be both on, on YouTube and on whatever it is that you, you listen to podcasts, we're going to get it, you know, put out everywhere so you can kind of pick and choose how it is that you want to listen to it. It's going to be basically the same, but the point here, and the thing that we want to do is we just want to help people. Yeah. We just want to make it and make them know that it's possible and really be raw with, with what we do. Like I'm never on anything. And the fact that I'm here just it's, it's kind of like an OSHA Doug's here. Like, like something is going down because I don't talk, I don't talk about things, you know? Yeah. We've been like, obviously trying to get our head above water now that it's well above. Like we can help our family and we can live in Southern California and do like crazy things that we never thought, like it's still sinking in for us. Anyways. The money stories are like a whole other podcast that we could talk about, but in our issues with that, and everyone's kind of issues with it. But the other thing that last thing that I have to say in this podcast is thing that I feel super passionate about. And is

00;44;01;14 --> 00;45;08;07
that with digital products, you don't have to have a large audience because I know a lot of you guys who are listening or watching right now, you still think, well, Haley, you had a big audience, you're a micro influencer, but you know, you add over a hundred thousand people following. I mean, they were all, all watching first off. Um, but you have a lot of people following. So I'll just like, wait, but if I had, I mean, I did think that for way too long would, if I had started this journey like five years ago, when I had a hundred people following me, I would have done the same thing in the, in the 12 months. So why I think that it's such a missed opportunity for influencers and why we want to get on top of it, particularly for influencers, because they already have an influence. Even if it's like a hundred people, you know, they can make such a bigger dent in their income versus just like sitting on their hands and waiting to explode magically and go viral. There's no need to wait. And just an aside, like I think most people consider micro influencers, like 3000 followers, a hundred, a hundred. Cause like where I used to work, they were like, Oh, these micro influencers. And I was like 500 people. It was like 5,500. That was five years ago. But now influencers are like around 50 to a hundred thousand.

00;45;08;20 --> 00;46;16;03
So that even though like Haley said, like micro putting air quotes out there for people who are listening to podcasts or influencers. Yeah. That's, isn't a time that isn't a thing, a goal that you need to hit or is it like a bar that you need to reach before you do anything? I mean, we've had students that they like no following a, a thousand people or less hitting 10 K months within 30 days, you guys like it. Cause like you, the thing that, I mean, we could talk about this forever. But the thing that people don't realize is that when you sell your own products with that are digital, you have low overhead or no overhead. You don't even need to pay into some fancy platform. You could just deliver it through email, for free, with the free plan. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can do all of that. There's low overhead. You don't have to spend thousand dollars in products like we did with Amazon. And you take home like 90% of the profits. It's ridiculous versus a sponsor who like, when I was working with home chef, you know, they paid me whatever 3000, but they were making like $45,000 off of like me, cause they're taking home all the profits. Yeah. And it's a side from like the 95% take home, which is a true number. Like when I first read our books, because I also used to do the accounting

00;46;16;03 --> 00;47;25;23
before we got an accountant, he did everything. And it was like 95% take home after everything, which was crazy. It was kind of blew my mind aside from all of those things. So aside from like the 95% take home that you have with this, even if you start early and you start when you're like a micro-influencer, you know, like 50,000 whatever, um, the turnaround and the time you can make your investment back is like instant. Well, we should know. We literally spent like 20 grand on a coach. We made it back within the first year. Was it? Yeah. Two months. Not even the first two months within the first month that we went through, like, okay, like 32 days. Yeah. We spent 18 or, Oh, we spent $20,000 or so on, uh, on a program with coaching and mentorship. We made it back in like 32 days. Yeah. Because it's just like the way that you can make it back is so fast because you're not waiting. You're not waiting. And you hit a number. You're not waiting for sponsorship sponsors to reach out to you. You're not waiting for products to be shipped to you. You're not waiting for the algorithm to like you, like whatever people say and whatever, all the other excuses are, which that's going to be another episode here, which is excuses. Because I hear them a lot though. We heard them a lot, grow it, like growing our business.

00;47;26;04 --> 00;48;26;29
And we've heard, we've felt every excuse. Well, let's not, I don't wanna ramble on too long. That's here. Yeah. What kind of wrap this up? But if all of that sounds like you, and if all that sounds like that, you know, like I said, you want to make money. You're an influencer. You're struggling to make money. You want to be an influencer, but you've discovered digital courses any of your time, or you don't want to wait to get a huge influence to make money. Like you want to make it now. You don't have the luxury. Cause like we didn't have the luxury to wait. So this is why this income stream is particularly helpful. If you're impatient like us. But if you don't like people telling you what to do, that's awesome. If that sounds like you subscribe, make sure that you head over and you know, to your podcast player, program of choice podcast, leave a review because that will help us get some exposure and it will help people. You know, we wanna, we want to help you guys build an income, make an impact on the world. So if you guys do that, that's kind of like, you know, playing your part. Yeah. So we're excited. I'm excited. Are you there? Yeah. So excited. And we're going to be doing episodes like really raw ones. So we're going to be doing income reports on here talking about, cause I know maybe a

00;48;26;29 --> 00;49;27;02
lot of you guys are like, well how much do they pay for all these things? It's not, it's not a lot. I know Facebook ads can be a lot, but you make a lot back, you know how to do them. Um, or if you're paying someone that's smart, like we did. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about like what the heck is going evergreen, because yeah. You know, you want passive income, but you don't want to launch all the time. So we're going to talk about what exactly that means. We're going to talk about the people that we've worked with and like the crazy success they've had with smaller audiences. I mean, if I had done this years ago, I can say that all the time, but yeah. And all those things just like educating you guys on what that looks like. And also, you know, just in general, like being an influencer in different revenue streams, things that we've learned. I mean the world of influencing it has been like flipped upside down recent events and the way things that are going and you know, the silver lining is that people have learned about this revenue stream and you don't have to stop being an influencer to do it. So yeah, you don't have to quit doing things like that. But as an influencer or somebody who's doing influencer, you're getting into it, you know, any stage of the

00;49;27;02 --> 00;49;46;05
journey, you have a unique opportunity. So I, you know, we just want to make sure that you take this opportunity. Yeah. Go for it, do it. And we're here to help. But yeah, I think that's pretty much all that I have, but we haven't practiced an ending for podcast episodes. Thank you guys for listening or watching and I mean, we'll see you guys in the next week. Yeah. All right. Bye guys.